XXXI.

"Then suddenly I stood, a wingèd thought,
Before the immortal senate, and the seat
Of that star-shining Spirit, whence is wrought
The strength of its dominion,-good and great,
The Better Genius of this world's estate.
His realm around one mighty fane is spread,
Elysian islands bright and fortunate,

Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead,
Where I am sent to lead." These winged words she said,

XXXII.

And with the silence of her eloquent smile
Bade us embark in her divine canoe.
Then at the helm we took our seat, the while
Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue
Into the wind's invisible stream she threw,
Sitting beside the prow: like gossamer

On the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew

O'er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair,

Whose shores receded fast while we seemed lingering there.

XXXIII.

Till down that mighty stream, dark, calm, and fleet,
Between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven,
Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet,
As swift as twinkling beams, had under heaven
From woods and waves wild sounds and odours driven,
The boat flew visibly. Three nights and days,

Borne like a cloud through morn and noon and even,
We sailed along the winding watery ways
Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.

XXXIV.

A scene of joy and wonder to behold

That river's shapes and shadows changing ever! Where the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold

Its whirlpools where all hues did spread and quiver, And where melodious falls did burst and shiver Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river;

Or, when the moonlight poured a holier day,
One vast and glittering lake around green islands lay.

XXXV.

Morn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran
The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud
Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man

Which flieth forth and cannot make abode.

Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode, Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned

With cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,

The homes of the departed, dimly frowned

O'er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round.

XXXVI.

Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows
Mile after mile we sailed, and 'twas delight

To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows

Over the grass; sometimes beneath the night
Of wide and vaulted caves whose roofs were bright
With starry gems we fled, whilst from their deep

And dark-green chasms shades beautiful and white
Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep,
Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.

XXXVII.

And ever as we sailed our minds were full

Of love and wisdom, which would overflow

In converse wild and sweet and wonderful,

And in quick smiles whose light would come and go
Like music o'er wide waves, and in the flow

Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress

For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know That virtue, though obscured on earth, not less Survives all mortal change in lasting loveliness.

XXXVIII.

Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling
Number delightful hours-for through the sky
The sphered lamps of day and night, revealing
New changes and new glories, rolled on high,-
Sun, moon, and moonlike lamps, the progeny
Of a diviner heaven, serene and fair.

On the fourth day, wild as a wind-wrought sea
The stream became, and fast and faster bare
The spirit-winged boat, steadily speeding there.

XXXIX.

Steady and swift,-where the waves rolled like mountains
Within the vast ravine whose rifts did pour
Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains,
The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar

Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore,-
Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child

Securely fled that rapid stress before,
Amid the topmost spray, and sunbows wild
Wreathed in the silver mist.

In joy and pride we smiled.

XL.

The torrent of that wide and raging river
Is passed, and our aërial speed suspended.
We look behind; a golden mist did quiver

Where its wild surges with the lake were blended,—
(Our bark hung there-as on a line, suspended
Between two heavens)-that windless waveless lake
Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended
By mists, aye feed: from rocks and clouds they break,
And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.

XLL

Motionless resting on the lake awhile,

I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear
Their peaks aloft; I saw each radiant isle;
And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere
Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear

The Temple of the Spirit. On the sound

Which issued thence drawn nearer and more near,

Like the swift moon this glorious earth around,

The charmed boat approached, and there its haven found.

NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, BY MRS SHELLEY.

SHELLEY possessed two remarkable qualities of intellect a brilliant imagination, and a logical exactness of reason. His inclinations led him (he fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions. I say "he fancied," because I believe the former to have been paramount, and that it would have gained the mastery even had he struggled against it. However, he said that he deliberated at one time whether he should dedicate himself to poetry or metaphysics; and, resolving on the former,

he educated himself for it, discarding in a great measure his philosophical pursuits, and engaging himself in the study of the poets of Greece, Italy, and England. To these may be added a constant perusal of portions of the Old Testament the Psalms, the book of Job, the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime poetry of which filled him with delight.

As a poet, his intellect and compositions were powerfully influenced by exterior circumstances, and especially by his place of abode. He was very fond of travelling, and ill-health increased this restlessness. The sufferings occasioned by a cold English winter made him pine, especially when our colder Spring arrived, for a more genial climate. In 1816 he again visited Switzerland, and rented a house on the banks of the lake of Geneva; and many a day, in cloud or sunshine, was passed alone in his boat-sailing as the wind listed, or weltering on the calm waters. The majestic aspect of nature ministered such thoughts as he afterwards enwove in verse. His lines on the Bridge of the Arve, and his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, were written at this time. Perhaps during this summer his genius was checked by association with another poet whose nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, yet who, in the poem he wrote at that time, gave tokens that he shared for a period the more abstract and etherialized inspiration of Shelley. The saddest events awaited his return to England. But such was his fear to wound the feelings of others that he never expressed the anguish he felt, and seldom gave vent to the indignation roused by the persecutions he underwent ; while the course of deep unexpressed passion, and the sense of injury, engendered the desire to embody themselves in forms defecated of all the weakness and evil which cling to real life.

He chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of liberty, some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the opinions of the world; but who is animated throughout by an ardent love of virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons of political and intellectual freedom on his fellow-creatures. He created for this youth a woman such as he delighted to imagine-full of enthusiasm for the same objects; and they both, with will unvanquished, and the deepest sense of the justice of their cause, met adversity and death. There exists in this poem a memorial of a friend of his youth. The character of the old man who liberates Laon from his towerprison, and tends on him in sickness, is founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, when Shelley was at Eton, had often stood by to befriend and support him, and whose name he never mentioned without love and veneration.

During the year 1817 we were established at Marlow in Buckinghamshire. Shelley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no great distance from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames. The poem was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech-groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is distinguished for peculiar beauty. The chalk hills break into cliffs that overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech; the wilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant vegetation; and the cultivated part is peculiarly fertile. With all this wealth of nature which, either in the form of gentlemen's parks or soil dedicated to agriculture, flourishes around, Marlow was inhabited (I hope it is altered now) by a very poor population. The women are lacemakers, and lose their health by sedentary labour, for which they were very ill paid. The poor-laws ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates. The changes produced by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with them the most heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley afforded what alleviation he could. In the winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the poor cottages. I mention these things--for this minute and active sympathy with his fellow-creatures gives a thousandfold interest to his speculations, and stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race.

The

poem,

bold in its opinions and uncompromising in their expression, met with

own.

many censurers, not only among those who allow of no virtue but such as supports the cause they espouse, but even among those whose opinions were similar to his I extract a portion of a letter written in answer to one of these friends. It best details the impulses of Shelley's mind, and his motives: it was written with entire unreserve; and is therefore a precious monument of his own opinion of his powers, of the purity of his designs, and the ardour with which he clung, in adversity and through the valley of the shadow of death, to views from which he believed the permanent happiness of mankind must eventually spring.

"Marlow, Dec. 11, 1817.

"I have read and considered all that you say about my general powers, and the particular instance of the poem in which I have attempted to develop them. Nothing can be more satisfactory to me than the interest which your admonitions express But I think you are mistaken in some points with regard to the peculiar nature of my powers, whatever be their amount. I listened with deference and self-suspicion to your censures of Laon and Cythna; but the productions of mine which you com mend hold a very low place in my own esteem; and this reassured me, in some degree at least. The poem was produced by a series of thoughts which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm. I felt the precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this task, resolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume contains was written with the same feeling-as real, though not so propheticas the communications of a dying man. I never presumed indeed to consider it any thing approaching to faultless; but, when I consider contemporary productions of the same apparent pretensions, I own I was filled with confidence. I felt that it was in many respects a genuine picture of my own mind. I felt that the sentiments were true, not assumed. And in this have I long believed that my power consists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contem plation. I am formed, if for anything not in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the moral or the material universe as a whole. Of course, I believe these faculties, which perhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist very imperfectly in my own mind. But, when you advert to my Chancery-paper (a cold, forced, unimpassioned, insignificant piece of cramped and cautious argument), and to the little scrap about Mandeville, (which expressed my feelings indeed, but cost scarcely two minutes' thought to express), as specimens of my powers more favourable than that which grew as it were from the agony and bloody sweat' of intellectual travail; surely I must feel that, in some manner, either I am mistaken in believing that I have any talent at all, or you in the selection of the specimens of it. Yet after all I cannot but be conscious, in much of what I write, of an absence of that tranquillity which is the attribute and accompaniment of power This feeling alone would make your most kind and wise admonitions, on the subject of the economy of intellectual force, valuable to me. And, if I live, or if I see any trust in coming years, doubt not but that I shall do something, whatever it may be, which a serious and earnest estimate of my powers will suggest to me, and which will be in every respect accommodated to their utmost limits."