Over heaps of unvalued stones; Which amid the streams Are as green as the forest's night :- And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. Like spirits that lie In the azure sky When they love but live no more. SONG OF PROSERPINE. WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA. SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth, Thou from whose immortal bosom, If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers Till they grow, in scent and hue, Fairest children of the hours, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine. Poems of Home Life. TO MARY SHELLEY. O MARY dear, that you were here Singing love to its lone mate In the ivy bower disconsolate; And your brow more Mary dear, come to me soon, O Mary dear, that you were here; TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. (With what truth I may say- Non è più come era prima !) My lost William, thou in whom Where art thou, my gentle child? The love of living leaves and weeds, Let me think that through low seeds 1819. TO WILLIAM SHELLEY. THY little footsteps on the sands Where now the worm will feed no more : Thy mingled look of love and glee When we returned to gaze on thee. LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE. LEGHORN, July 1, 1820. THE spider spreads her webs, whether she be In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree; The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, To catch the idle buzzers of the day— But a soft cell, where when that fades away, Which in those hearts which must remember me I wist, Whoever should behold me now, Would think I were a mighty mechanist, Bent with sublime Archimedean art To breathe a soul into the iron heart Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, For round the walls are hung dread engines, such |