In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,
Shall mine cling to thee,

Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love,
It may bring to thee.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

390

SONG

MUSIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken;
Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovéd's bed:
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

391

LAMENT

O WORLD! O life! O time!

On whose last steps I climb,

Trembling at that where I had stood before, When will return the glory of your prime?

No more-O, never more!

Out of the day and night

A joy has taken flight:

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more-O, never more!

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

A

392

BRIDAL SONG

THE golden gates of Sleep unbar,

Where Strength and Beauty, met together, Kindle their image, like a star

In a sea of glassy weather.

Night, with all thy stars look down-
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew-
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true!

Let eyes not see their own delight:
Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
Oft renew!

Fairies, sprites, and angels keep her !
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn-ere it be long !

O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!

Come along!

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

393

SONG

WHEN the lamp is shattered,
The light in the dust lies dead;
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow's glory is shed;
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.

As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render

No song when the spirit is mute :
No song but sad dirges,

Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges

That ring the dead seaman's knell.

When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest:
The weak one is singled

To endure what it once possessed.
O Love! who bewailest

The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest

For your cradle, your home and your bier?

Its passions will rock thee
As the storms rock the ravens on high.
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home
Leave thee naked to laughter,

When leaves fall and cold winds come.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

394

TO JANE

THE keen stars were twinkling,

And the fair moon was rising among them,

Dear Jane!

The guitar was tinkling,

But the notes were not sweet till you sung them Again.

As the moon's soft splendour O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven

Is thrown,

So your voice most tender

To the strings without soul had then given
Its own.

The stars will awaken,

Though the moon sleep a full hour later
To-night;

No leaf will be shaken,

Whilst the dews of your melody scatter
Delight.

Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing

A tone

Of some world far from ours,

Where music and moonlight and feeling

395

HYMN то PAN

'O THOU, whose mighty palace roof doth hang
From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth
Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death
Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness;
Who lovest to see the Hamadryads dress

Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken;

And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and hearken

The dreary melody of bedded reeds

In desolate places, where dank moisture breeds

The pipy hemlock to strange overgrowth,
Bethinking thee, how melancholy loth

Thou wast to lose fair Syrinx-do thou now,
By thy love's milky brow,

By all the trembling mazes that she ran,
Hear us, great Pan !

'O thou, for whose soul-soothing quiet turtles
Passion their voices cooingly 'mong myrtles,
What time thou wanderest at eventide

Through sunny meadows, that outskirt the side
Of thine enmosséd realms: O thou, to whom
Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom
Their ripened fruitage; yellow-girted bees
Their golden honey-combs; our village leas
Their fairest-blossomed beans and poppied corn ;
The chuckling linnet its five young unborn,
To sing for thee; low-creeping strawberries
Their summer coolness; pent-up butterflies

Their freckled wings; yea, the fresh-budding year
All its completións-be quickly near,

By every wind that nods the mountain pine,
O forester divine !

'Thou, to whom every Faun and Satyr flies
For willing service; whether to surprise
The squatted hare while in half-sleeping fit;
Or upward ragged precipices flit

To save poor lambkins from the eagle's maw;
Or by mysterious enticement draw

Bewildered shepherds to their path again;
Or to tread breathless round the frothy main,
And gather up all fancifullest shells

For thee to tumble into Naiads' cells,

And, being hidden, laugh at their out-peeping;
Or to delight thee with fantastic leaping,
The while they pelt each other on the crown
With silvery oak-apples, and fir-cones brown-
By all the echoes that about thee ring,
Hear us, O satyr king!

'O Hearkener to the loud-clapping Shears,
While ever and anon to his shorn peers
A ram goes bleating: Winder of the Horn,
When snouted wild-boars, routing tender corn,
Anger our huntsmen: Breather round our farms,
To keep off mildews, and all weather harms :
Strange Ministrant of undescribéd sounds,
That come a-swooning over hollow grounds,
And wither drearily on barren moors:
Dread Opener of the Mysterious Doors
Leading to universal knowledge—see,
Great Son of Dryope,

The many that are come to pay their vows
With leaves about their brows!

"Be still the unimaginable lodge

For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,

Then leave the naked brain! be still the leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth,
Gives it a touch ethereal-a new birth !

Be still a symbol of immensity;

A firmament reflected in a sea;

An element filling the space between ;

An unknown-but no more! We humbly screen
With uplift hands our foreheads, lowly bending,
And, giving out a shout most heaven-rending,
Conjure thee to receive our humble Pæan
Upon thy Mount Lycean!'

The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips?—