And then he died! Behold, before ye, Life, Death, and all that is of Glory. THE STORMY PETREL. A thousand miles from land are we, The hull, which all earthly strength disdains, Up and down! Up and down! From the base of the wave to the billow's crown, And amidst the flashing and feathery foam The Stormy Petrel finds a home, A home, if such a place may be, For her who lives on the wide wide sea, On the craggy ice, in the frozen air, And only seeketh her rocky lair To warm her young, and to teach them spring O'er the Deep! O'er the Deep! Where the whale, and the shark, and the sword-fish sleep, Outflying the blast and the driving rain, The Petrel telleth her tale-in vain ; For the mariner curseth the warning bird, Who bringeth him news of the storms unheard! Once more o'er the waves on thy stormy wing! PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. THE most daring genius of modern times is undoubtedly that of P. B. Shelley, the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley of Castle Goring in Essex. The precocity of his mind was developed in an unhappy direction, which landed him ultimately in Atheism. Every system of religion he esteemed a curse of the human mind, and he was impressed by the consequent conviction that all the laws, institutions, and conventions of mankind are founded in the fraud, tyranny, and self-interest of the few, while the bulk of society lie in the misery, delusion, ignorance, and vice which he conceived to be the result of this state of things. These principles had germinated in his spirit since he had felt the oppressions of an Eton schoolboy. His avowal of his opinions caused his expulsion from Oxford University, and an imprudent early marriage cast him off from his family. After the birth of two children, he separated from his wife and went abroad. Shortly after his return, the unhappy woman committed suicide, a result that overwhelmed the obnoxious poet with a torrent of public execration. On account of his opinions, he was deprived by law of the guardianship of his children, whom he loved with all the ardour of a peculiarly affectionate nature. He contracted, a few weeks after the suicide of his first wife, a second marriage with the daughter of Mr. Godwin the celebrated novelist. In search of health, and in dread 1 Mr. Godwin's writings aim at many of the social objects that formed the framework of Shelley's views: Mrs. Shelley was the authoress of the singular tale, "Frankenstein," and other works of fiction, and the editress of her deceased husband's collected poems. Her mother was the celebrated Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley's marriage seems to have been adopted to secure the estate to his family. of deprivation of his other child, Shelley retired to Switzerland, where he first met Byron: thence he removed to Italy; and, after some years of disease, intense study, and literary labour, clouded also by domestic sorrows, he was drowned in the gulf of Spezzia, in the east of the Genoese territory, during his return from a marine excursion. The quarantine regulations forbade his burial: his body was reduced to ashes, which were deposited with his heart, which had remained unconsumed, in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, in a spot formerly selected by himself, where his dead child reposed. Notwithstanding the lawlessness and even licentiousness of his political, religious, and social systems, few have lived more morally pure than this unfortunate poet. His connection with Miss Godwin before marriage (both parties despising matrimony) was part of his system. He was gentle, affectionate, and remarkable for his liberal beneficence to distress in every shape. But as God has appointed that we cannot transgress a physical or a moral law without drawing down its social punishment, even in this world, and, it may be, transmitting it to our descendants so it would seem as if this ordinance extended to intellectual laws; the formation and the promulgation of a false and detestable philosophy, however pure and even honourable were the poet's motives, proved the curse of Shelley's life. It is sad to reflect that a spirit gifted with all the most beautiful susceptibilities of humanity, "interpenetrated" (to use one of his many coinages) with the multitudinous beauty and harmony of nature, strong, intellectually, to grasp the universe,―pure, as unaided man is pure in motive,—and clear, in the same sense, from active vice,—was yet not protected from the glittering seductions of vanity and presumption, but proudly confident, walked, like a beautiful demon, in mystic paths, "where angels fear to tread." In spite of the intensity of its beauty and feeling, in spite of its far-reaching sublimity of intellectual grandeur, of its gorgeous pomp of many-coloured learning, we shrink from the poetry of Shelley like something that our "nature's chilled at." It is almost wholly wanting in human interest and sympathy; it has no affinity with actual life. Yet who can restrain admiration of the exhaustless wealth of his mind? His images stream like the opal-hued abundance of a sunny waterfall; breaking in music on each other to catch the eye in renovated forms, while it can scarce mark the point whence one sprung from the other. The music of his verse is subtle, intricate, and varied, “in linked sweetness long drawn out :" like the strain heard by the "Ancient Mariner," "Now it is like all instruments, Now like a lonely lute." The poems that embody his philosophy, either allegorically or directly, are, "Queen Mab," written at the age of sixteen: "Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude," perhaps the most innocent of them; "Prometheus Unbound," a play on the model of Eschylus; "Helas, or the Revolt of Islam," etc. His smaller pieces, in every varied tone of verse and feeling, are numerous. His Tragedy, the " Cenci," though revolting in its subject, is reckoned the most successful effort in modern times in this department of literature. THE CLOUD. THE CLOUD.1 I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, I bear light shade for the leaves when laid From my wings are shaken the dews that waken When rocked to rest on their mother's breast I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, I sift the snow on the mountains below,' While I sleep in the arms of the blast. In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, Lured by the love of the genii that move Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead. As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, As still as a brooding dove. 471 1 Mrs. Shelley says, "The odes to the Skylark and the Cloud, in the opinion of many critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his productions.' That orbed maiden with white fire laden, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, While the moist earth was laughing below. I am the daughter of earth and water, I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; For after the rain when with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. TO A SKYLARK. Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. |