Ethereal, flushed, and like a throbbing star
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose;
Into her dream he melted, as the rose

Blendeth its odor with the violet,

320

Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows Like Love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet Against the window-panes; St. Agnes' moon hath set.

XXXVII

'Tis dark quick pattereth the flaw-blown sleet: "This is no dream, my bride, my Madeline!" 'Tis dark: the icèd gusts still rave and beat: "No dream, alas! alas! and woe is mine! Porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine. — Cruel! what traitor could thee hither bring? I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine, Though thou forsakest a deceived thingA dove forlorn and lost with sick unprunèd wing."

XXXVIII

"My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride! Say, may I be for aye thy vassal blest?

330

Thy beauty's shield, heart-shaped and vermeil dyed? Ah, silver shrine, here will I take my rest

After so many hours of toil and quest,

A famished pilgrim, saved by miracle.

Though I have found, I will not rob thy nest Saving of thy sweet self; if thou think'st well To trust, fair Madeline, to no rude infidel."

340

XXXIX

"Hark! 'tis an elfin-storm from fairy land,
Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:
Arise arise! the morning is at hand;
The bloated wassaillers will never heed:
Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see, -
Drowned all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:
Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,

-

350

For o'er the southern moors I have a home for thee."

XL

She hurried at his words, beset with fear,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears;
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found,
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,

Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar; And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

XLI

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall!
Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide,
Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,
With a huge empty flagon by his side:

The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,
But his sagacious eye an inmate owns :
By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:

The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;
The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans;

360

XLII

And they are gone: aye, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.
That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
Were long be-nightmared. Angela the old
Died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform;
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold.

370

NOTES-SHELLEY

TO A SKYLARK

P. 1, 1. 8. Cloud of fire: What is it that is like a cloud of fire ? What would be the difference in meaning were the semicolon transferred to the end of line 7?

1. 15. unbodied joy: Certain critics maintain that the adjective should be embodied, and that it was so intended by Shelley. Which adjective seems to agree best with the spirit of the poem ?

THE CLOUD

P. 8, 1. 53. And I laugh to see them whirl and flee. Compare Wordsworth's Night Piece:

"And above his head he sees

The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There in a black-blue vault she sails along,
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives."

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

"In December (1819) the last act of Prometheus Unbound was brought to a close. Several weeks earlier, on a day when the tempestuous west wind was collecting the vapors which pour down the autumnal rains, Shelley conceived, and in great part wrote, in a wood that skirted the Arno, that ode in which there is a union of lyrical breath with lyrical intensity unsurpassed in English song-the Ode to the West Wind . . Harmonizing

under a common idea the forces of external nature and the passion of the writer's individual heart, the stanzas, with all the penetrating power of a lyric, have something almost of epic largeness and grandeur." – DowDEN.

P. 11, 1. 21.

of Bacchus.

Mænad: a bacchante a priestess or votary

P. 12, l. 41. grow gray with fear: Shelley explains: “The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it."

WITH A GUITAR, TO JANE

Mrs. Jane Williams, the wife of Edward Williams, who was drowned with Shelley, was a warm friend of the Shelleys. Mrs. Shelley speaks of her as,

"A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye."

Shelley writes of them as "the most amiable of companions." The poem accompanied the gift of a guitar.

P. 14, l. 1. Ariel to Miranda: The complete beauty of the poem cannot be felt without acquaintance with The Tempest.