"A baby's or an ideot's brow, and made Their nests in it. The old anatomies

Sate hatching their bare broods under the shade

"Of dæmon1 wings, and laughed from their dead eyes To re-assume the delegated power,

Arrayed in which those worms did monarchize,

500

Others more 505

'Who made this earth their charnel.
Humble, like falcons, sate upon the fist
Of common men, and round their heads did soar;

"Or like small gnats and flies, as thick as mist On evening marshes, thronged about the brow Of lawyers, statesmen,2 priest and theorist ;

And others, like discoloured flakes of snow
On fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair,
Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow

"Which they extinguished; and, like tears, they were A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained In drops of sorrow. I became aware

“Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained The track in which we moved. After brief space, From every form the beauty slowly waned;

"From every firmest limb and fairest face

The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
The action and the shape without the grace

1 In former editions, demon.

So in Mrs. Shelley's editions: Mr. Rossetti, I think wrongly, substitutes lawyer, statesman.

510

515

520

3 Mr. Rossetti suggests the substitution of eyes for those. The text seems

to me better as it is.

"Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft

With care; and in those eyes where once hope shone, Desire, like a lioness bereft

"Of her last cub, glared ere it died; each one

Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown

"In autumn evening from a poplar tree.

Each like himself and like each other were 1

At first; but some distorted seemed to be

"Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air;
And of this stuff the car's creative ray
Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there,

"As the sun shapes the clouds; thus on the way
Mask after mask fell from the countenance
And form of all; and long before the day

"Was old, the joy which waked like heaven's glance The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died;

And some grew weary of the ghastly dance,

"And fell, as I have fallen, by the way-side;Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past, And least of strength and beauty did abide.

"Then, what is life? I cried.”—

1 Mr. Rossetti alters this line to Each like himself, and each like other,

were...

but he does not claim to have any

authority for so doing.

540

So in the MS., but Wrapt in former editions.

MISCELLANEOUS POSTHUMOUS

POEMS.

VOL. III.

A A

[With The Triumph of Life Shelley's career ends,-with the solemnly appropriate words "Then, what is life? I cried"; and here closes the second chronological division of this edition. The series of mature works published by him has been followed by the series of principal mature works which he left behind him unpublished; and it now remains, before passing to his translations and juvenilia, to classify as best I may those of his smaller posthumous poems that are left from the collections printed in his own volumes. The plan will of course be still chronological; but the poems can hardly be arranged quite as in other editions for want of those already published in Vols. I and II of this edition, in the places assigned to them by Shelley, and on account of the new material discovered of late years. This seems, however, an appropriate point at which to introduce Mrs. Shelley's Preface to the volume of Posthumous Poems published in 1824,which she herself reprinted, in later editions, immediately before the Translations. In this reprint, the preface was scarcely altered,—a few corrections in orthography and punctuation, and the omission of the word Mr. some half a dozen times (so as to read Shelley for Mr. Shelley, and so on) being the extent of the variations.-H. B. F.]

MRS. SHELLEY'S PREFACE TO THE

POSTHUMOUS POEMS, 1824.

In nobil sangue, vita umile e queta,
Ed in alto intelletto un puro core;
Frutto senile in sul giovenil fiore,
E in aspetto pensoso, anima lieta.

PETRARCA.

IT had been my wish, on presenting the public with the Posthumous Poems of SHELLEY, to have accompanied them by a biographical notice: as it appeared to me, that at this moment, a narration of the events of my husband's life would come more gracefully from other hands than mine, I applied to LEIGH HUNT. The distinguished friendship that SHELLEY felt for him, and the enthusiastic affection with which LEIGH HUNT clings to his friend's memory, seemed to point him out as the person best calculated for such an undertaking. His absence from this country, which prevented our mutual explanation, has unfortunately rendered my scheme abortive. I do not doubt but that on some other occasion he will pay this tribute to his lost friend, and sincerely regret that the volume which I edit has not been honoured by its insertion.

The comparative solitude in which SHELLEY lived, was the occasion that he was personally known to few; and his fearless enthusiasm in the cause which he considered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement of the moral