The blue Ægean girds this chosen home,
With ever-changing sound and light and foam.

But the chief marvel of the wilderness

Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know.

'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,

Some wise and tender ocean-king, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,

Reared it, a wonder of that simple time.

This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed
Thee to be lady of the solitude.

And we will talk, until thought's melody
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
And our veins beat together; and our lips,
With other eloquence than words, eclipse

The soul that burns between them; and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
Confused in passion's golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one,
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
One heaven, one hell, one immortality,

And one annihilation!

Woe is me!

The winged words on which my soul would pierce

Into the height of Love's rare universe

Are chains of lead around its flight of fire—

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

In the year following, 1821, Keats died, and Shelley wrote

the great Elegy of Adonais:

Oh, weep for Adonais-he is dead!

Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!

Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep

Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;

For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend;-oh, dream not that the amorous Deep

Will yet restore him to the vital air;

Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

Shelley was under the impression, as Byron was, that Keats had been killed by the critics. The impression was an error, but Shelley's retaliation is a superb piece of invective:

The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;

He sets, and each ephemeral insect then

Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again;
So is it in the world of living men:

A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight

Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirits' awful night.

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But be thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow:
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,

And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt-as now.

Nor must we fail to note the gorgeous lines:

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly.
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,

Stains the white radiance of Eternity.

Shelley himself thought Adonais the best thing he had written. “I confess," he said, "I should be surprised if that poem were born to an eternity of oblivion." It may be noted

that, during his own lifetime, none of his poems sold a hundred copies, and many not a single one.

We must now consider Shelley's songs and lyrics. We will take only such as can be quoted complete, for to take portions of The Skylark, The Cloud, The West Wind, and so on, is to ruin the effect which the poet had in mind. It is first to be observed that Shelley had two styles, quite different styles, the gorgeous and the simple. Of the first, let us take To Night, a most Shelley-like example:

Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon-

Sleep will come when thou art fled.

Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night-
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

Compare the style of this with Ozymandias, in its sublime simplicity:

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Shelley is, of course, one of the world's supreme songwriters. Here are two examples which are worthy of the greatest of the Elizabethans: