The boy expired-the father held the clay, "Twas borne by the rude wave wherein 'twas cast; Then he himself sunk down all dumb and shivering, And gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering. [Description of Haidee.] [From the same.] Her brow was overhung with coins of gold They nearly reached her heels; and in her air Her hair, I said, was auburn; but her eyes Were black as death, their lashes the same hue, Of downcast length, in whose silk shadow lies Deepest attraction; for when to the view Forth from its raven fringe the full glance flies, Ne'er with such force the swiftest arrow flew : 'Tis as the snake late coiled, who pours his length, And hurls at once his venom and his strength. Her brow was white and low; her cheek's pure dye, (A race of mere impostors when all's doneI've seen much finer women, ripe and real, Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal). [Haidee Visits the Shipwrecked Don Juan.] And down the cliff the island virgin came, Mistake you would have made on seeing the two, And then she stopped and stood as if in awe, (For sleep is awful) and on tiptoe crept And wrapt him closer, lest the air, too raw, Should reach his blood; then o'er him, still as death, Bent, with hushed lips, that drank his scarce-drawn breath. And thus, like to an angel o'er the dying Who die in righteousness, she leaned; and there All tranquilly the shipwrecked boy was lying, As o'er him lay the calm and stirless air: But Zoe the meantime some eggs was frying, Since, after all, no doubt the youthful pair Must breakfast, and betimes-lest they should ask it, She drew out her provision from the basket. And now, by dint of fingers and of eyes, No doubt, less of her language than her look: As he who studies fervently the skies, Turns oftener to the stars than to his book: Thus Juan learned his alpha beta better From Haidee's glance than any graven letter. 'Tis pleasing to be schooled in a strange tongue [Haidee and Juan at the Feast.] Haidee and Juan carpeted their feet On crimson satin, bordered with pale blue; Their sofa occupied three parts complete Of the apartment-and appeared quite new; The velvet cushions-for a throne more meetWere scarlet, from whose glowing centre grew A sun embossed in gold, whose rays of tissue, Meridian-like, were seen all light to issue. Crystal and marble, plate and porcelain, Had done their work of splendour; Indian mats And Persian carpets, which the heart bled to stain, Over the floors were spread; gazelles and cats, And dwarfs and blacks, and such-like things, that gain Their bread as ministers and favourites-that's To say, by degradation-mingled there As plentiful as in a court or fair. There was no want of lofty mirrors, and The tables, most of ebony inlaid The greater part of these were ready spread Of all the dresses, I select Haidee's: She wore two jelicks-one was of pale yellow; Of azure, pink, and white, was her chemise-'Neath which her breast heaved like a little billow; With buttons formed of pearls as large as peas, All gold and crimson shone her jelick's fellow, That the hand stretched and shut it without harm, A light gold bar above her instep rolled Of lavish pearls, whose worth could scarce be told; Her hair's long auburn waves, down to her heel The silken fillet's curb, and sought to shun Her overpowering presence made you feel It would not be idolatry to kneel. Her eyelashes, though dark as night, were tinged Her nails were touched with henna; but again The henna should be deeply dyed, to make On mountain-tops more heavenly white than her; The eye might doubt if it were well awake, She was so like a vision; I might err, But Shakspeare also says, 'tis very silly 'To gild refined gold, or paint the lily.' Juan had on a shawl of black and gold, But a white baracan, and so transparent The sparkling gems beneath you might behold, Like small stars through the milky-way apparent; His turban, furled in many a graceful fold, An emerald aigrette with Haidee's hair in't Surmounted as its clasp-a glowing crescent, Whose rays shone ever trembling, but incessant. And now they were diverted by their suite, Dwarfs, dancing-girls, black eunuchs, and a poet; Which made their new establishment complete; The last was of great fame, and liked to show it : His verses rarely wanted their due feet And for his theme-he seldom sung below it, He being paid to satirise or flatter, As the Psalms say, 'inditing a good matter.' [The Death of Iaidee.] Afric is all the sun's, and as her earth, Her human clay is kindled; full of power For good or evil, burning from its birth, The Moorish blood partakes the planet's hour, And, like the soil beneath it, will bring forth: Beauty and love were Haidee's mother's dower; But her large dark eye showed deep Passion's force, Though sleeping like a lion near a source. Her daughter, tempered with a milder ray, Like summer clouds all silvery, smooth, and fair, Till slowly charged with thunder, they display But, overwrought with passion and despair, Where late he trod her beautiful, her own; Thus much she viewed an instant and no moreHer struggles ceased with one convulsive groan; On her sire's arm, which until now scarce held Her writhing, fell she like a cedar felled. A vein had burst, and her sweet lips' pure dyes Were dabbled with the deep blood which ran o'er, And her head drooped as when the lily lies O'ercharged with rain: her summoned handmaids bore Their lady to her couch with gushing eyes; Of herbs and cordials they produced their store: But she defied all means they could employ, Like one life could not hold nor death destroy. Days lay she in that state unchanged, though chill- All hope to look upon her sweet face bred When exquisitely chiselled, still lay there, And ever-dying gladiator's air, She woke at length, but not as sleepers wake, Lay at her heart, whose earliest beat still true She looked on many a face with vacant eye, And recked not who around her pillow sat: Her father watched, she turned her eyes away; However dear or cherished in their day; At length those eyes, which they would fain be weaning And then a slave bethought her of a harp : The harper came and tuned his instrument : At the first notes, irregular and sharp, On him her flashing eyes a moment bent; Then to the wall she turned, as if to warp Her thoughts from sorrow through her heart re-sent; And he began a long low island song Of ancient days ere tyranny grew strong. Anon her thin wan fingers beat the wall : In time to his old tune; he changed the theme, And sung of Love; the fierce name struck through all Her recollection; on her flashed the dream Of what she was, and is, if ye could call To be so being in a gushing stream The tears rushed forth from her o'erclouded brain, Like mountain mists at length dissolved in rain. Short solace, vain relief! thought came too quick, And whirled her brain to madness; she arose As one who ne'er had dwelt among the sick, And flew at all she met, as on her foes; But no one ever heard her speak or shriek, Although her paroxysm drew towards its close; Hers was a frenzy which disdained to rave, Even when they smote her, in the hope to save. Twelve days and nights she withered thus; at last, Without a groan, or sigh, or glance, to show A parting pang, the spirit from her passed: And they who watched her nearest could not know The very instant, till the change that cast Her sweet face into shadow, dull and slow, Glazed o'er her eyes-the beautiful, the blackOh to possess such lustre, and then lack! She died, but not alone; she held within Brief, but delightful-such as had not stayed Its dwellings down, its tenants passed away; PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was the son and heir of a wealthy English baronet, Sir Timothy Shelley of Castle Goring, in Sussex, and was born at Field Place, in that county, on the 4th of August 1792. In worldly prospects and distinction the poet therefore surpassed most of his tuneful brethren; yet this only served to render his unhappy and strange destiny the more conspicuously wretched. He was first educated at Eton, and afterwards at Oxford. His resistance to all established authority and opinion displayed itself while at school, and in the introduction to his Revolt of Islam, he has portrayed his early impressions in some sweet and touching stanzas Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear friend, when first The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was, When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, And wept, I knew not why: until there rose From the near schoolroom voices that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woesThe harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. And then I clasped my hands and looked around, But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground; So, without shame, I spake 'I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannise Without reproach or check.' I then controlled My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. And from that hour did I with earnest thought more Within me, till there came upon my mind A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. With these feelings and predilections Shelley went to Oxford. He studied hard, but irregularly, and spent much of his leisure in chemical experiments. He incessantly speculated, thought, and read, as he himself has stated. At the age of fifteen he wrote two short prose romances. He had also great facility in versification, and threw off various effusions. The forbidden mines of lore' which had captivated his boyish mind at Eton were also diligently explored, and he was soon an avowed republican and sceptic. He published a volume of political rhymes, entitled Margaret Nicholson's Remains, the said Margaret being the unhappy maniac who attempted to stab George III.; and he issued a syllabus from Hume's Essays, at the same time challenging the authorities of Oxford to a public controversy on the subject. Shelley was at this time just seventeen years of age! The consequence of his conduct was, that he was expelled the university, and his friends being disgusted with him, he was cast on the world, a prey to the undisciplined ardour of youth and passion. His subsequent life was truly a warfare upon earth. Mrs Shelley, widow of the poet, has thus traced the early bias of his mind, and its predisposing causes Refusing to fag at Eton, he was treated with revolting cruelty by masters and boys; this roused instead of taming his spirit, and he rejected the duty of obedience when it was enforced by menaces and punishment. To aversion to the society of his fellow-creatures-such as he found them when collected together into societies, where one egged on the other to acts of tyranny-was joined the deepest sympathy and compassion; while the attachment he felt for individuals, and the admiration with which he regarded their powers and their virtues, led him to entertain a high opinion of the perfectibility of human nature; and he believed that all could reach the highest grade of moral improvement, did not the customs and prejudices of society foster evil passions and excuse evil actions. The oppression which, trembling at every nerve, yet resolute to heroism, it was his ill fortune to encounter at school and at college, led him to dissent in many things from those whose arguments were blows, whose faith appeared to engender blame and execration. "During my existence," he wrote to a friend in 1812, "I have incessantly speculated, thought, and read." His readings were not always well chosen; among them were the works of the French philosophers: as far as metaphysical argument went, he temporarily became a convert. At the same time it was the cardinal article of his faith, that, if men were but taught and induced to treat their fellows with love, charity, and equal rights, this earth would realise Paradise. He looked upon religion as it was professed, and, above all, practised, as hostile, instead of friendly, to the cultivation of those virtues which would make men brothers.' Mrs Shelley conceives that, in the peculiar circumstances, this was not to be wondered at. At the age of seventeen, fragile in health and frame, of the purest habits in morals, full of devoted generosity and universal kindness, glowing with ardour to attain wisdom, resolved, at every personal sacrifice, to do right, burning with a desire for affection and sympathy, he was treated as a reprobate, cast forth as a criminal. The cause was, that he was sincere, that he believed the opinions which he entertained to be true, and he loved truth with a martyr's love: he was ready to sacrifice station, and fortune, and his dearest affections, at its shrine. The sacrifice was demanded from, and made by, a youth of seventeen.' It appears that in his youth Shelley was equally inclined to poetry and metaphysics, and hesitated to which he should devote himself. He ended in unit ing them, by no means to the advantage of his poetry. At the age of eighteen he produced a wild atheistical poem, Queen Mab, written in the rhythm of Southey's Thalaba, and abounding in passages of great power and melody. Shortly after this he married a young woman of humble station in life, which still further exasperated his parents and relatives, without adding to his own happiness. He seems, however, to have been free from pecuniary difficulties, and after a tour on the continent, during which he visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, he settled in the neighbourhood of Windsor Forest, and in this woodland retreat composed his poem, Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, designed, as he states, to represent a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius, led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. The mind of his hero, however, becomes awakened, and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception; and, blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. In this picture Shelley undoubtedly drew from his own experience, and in none of his subsequent works has he excelled the descriptive passages in Alastor.' The copious picturesqueness of his language, and the boldness of his imagination, are here strikingly exemplified. The poet's fortunes did not improve with his genius. His domestic unhappiness induced him to separate from his wife, by whom he had two children, and the unfortunate woman afterwards destroyed herself. Shelley was on this account subjected to much obloquy and misrepresentation, and the cup of his misery was filled by a chancery decree, depriving him of the guardianship of his children, on the ground of his immorality and atheism. He felt this deeply; and in a poetical fragment on the subject, he invokes a curse on the administrator of the law, 'by a parent's outraged love,' and in one exquisite verse By all the happy see in children's growth, That undeveloped flower of budding years, Sweetness and sadness interwoven both, with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama.' No change of scene, however, could permanently affect the nature of Shelley's speculations, and his 'Prometheus' is as mystical and metaphysical, and as daringly sceptical, as any of his previous works. The cardinal point of his system is described by Mrs Shelley as a belief that man could be so perfectionised as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation; and the subject he Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears! loved best to dwell on, was the image of one warring Shelley contracted a second marriage with the with the evil principle, oppressed not only by it, but daughter of Mr Godwin, author of Caleb Williams, by all, even the good, who were deluded into conand established himself at Marlow, in Buckingham-sidering evil a necessary portion of humanity. His shire. Here he composed the 'Revolt of Islam,' a poem more energetic than Alastor,' yet containing the same allegorical features and peculiarities of thought and style, and rendered more tedious by the want of human interest. It is honourable to Shelley that, during his residence at Marlow, he was indefatigable in his attentions to the poor; his widow relates that, in the winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the poor cottages. This certainly stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race, though the nature of his philosophy and opinions would have deprived them of the highest of earthly consolations. The poet now prepared to go abroad. A strong sense of injury, and a burning desire to redress what he termed the wrongs of society, rendered him miserable in England, and he hoped also that his health would be improved by milder climate. Accordingly, on the 12th of March 1818, he quitted this country, never to return. He went direct to Italy, and whilst residing at Rome, composed his classic drama of Prometheus Unbound. This poem,' he says, was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of odoriferous blos next work was The Cenci, a tragedy, published in 1819, and dedicated to Mr Leigh Hunt. Those writings,' he remarks in the dedication, which I have hitherto published, have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to be, or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content to paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, that which has been.' The painting is dark and gloomy; but, in spite of a revolting plot, and the insane unnatural character of the Cenci, Shelley's tragedy is one of the best of modern times. As an effort of intellectual strength, and an embodiment of human passion, it may challenge a comparison with any dramatic work since Otway; and it is incomparably the best of the poet's productions. His remaining works are Hellas; The Witch of Atlas; Adonais; Rosalind and Helen; and a variety of shorter productions, with scenes translated from Calderon and the Faust of Goethe. In Italy Shelley renewed his acquaintance with Lord Byron, who thought his philosophy 'too the past. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom their sisters sion from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit into the universe of things. Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man.' The remote abstract character of Shelley's poetry, and its general want of anything real or tangible, by which the sympathies of the heart are awakened, must always prevent its becoming popular. His mystic idealism renders him obscure, and his imagery is sometimes accumulated, till both precision and effect are lost, and the poet becomes harsh and involved in expression. He sought to reason high in verse-not like Dryden, Pope, or Johnson, but in cold and glittering metaphysics, where the idealism of Berkeley stood in the place of the moral truths and passions of actual life. There is no melancholy grandeur in his pictures, or simple unity in his designs. Another fault is his partiality for painting ghastly and repulsive scenes. He had, however, many great and shining qualities-a rich and fertile imagination, a passionate love of nature, and a diction singularly classical and imposing in sound and structure. The descriptive passages in Alastor,' and the river-voyage at the conclusion of the Revolt of Islam,' are among the most finished of his productions. His morbid ghastliness is there laid aside, and his better genius leads him to the pure waters and the depth of forest shades, which none of his contemporaries knew better how to describe. Some of the minor poems are also imbued with a true poetical spirit, and speak the genuine feelings of nature. One striking peculiarity of his style is his constant personification of inanimate objects. In the 'Cenci' we have a strong and almost terrible illustration of this original feature of his poetry :— spiritual and romantic.' He was temperate in his habits, gentle, affectionate, and generous; so that even those who most deeply deplored or detested his opinions, were charmed with the intellectual purity and benevolence of his life. His favourite amusement was boating and sailing; and whilst returning one day, the 8th of July 1822, from Leg-abide-abide, because there is no portal of expreshorn (whither he had gone to welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy), the boat in which he sailed, accompanied by Mr Williams, formerly of the 8th dragoons, and a single seaman, went down in the bay of Spezia, and all perished. A volume of Keats's poetry was found open in Shelley's coat pocket when his body was washed ashore. The remains of the poet were reduced to ashes by fire, and being taken to Rome, were deposited in the Protestant burial ground, near those of a child he had lost in that city. A complete edition of Shelley's Poetical Works, with notes by his widow, has been published in four volumes; and the same accomplished lady has given to the world two volumes of his prose Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments. Shelley's life was a dream of romance-a tale of mystery and grief. That he was sincere in his opinions, and benevolent in his intentions, is now undoubted. He looked upon the world with the eyes of a visionary, bent on unattainable schemes of intellectual excellence and supremacy. His delusion led to misery, and made him, for a time, unjust to others. It alienated him from his family and friends, blasted his prospects in life, and distempered all his views and opinions. It is probable that, had he lived to a riper age, he might have modified some of those extreme speculative and pernicious tenets, and we have no doubt that he would have risen into a purer atmosphere of poetical imagination. The troubled and stormy dawn was fast yielding to the calm noonday brightness. He had worn out some of his fierce antipathies and morbid affections; a happy domestic circle was gathered around him; and the refined simplicity of his tastes and habits, joined to wider and juster views of human life, would imperceptibly have given a new tone to his thoughts and studies. He had a high idea of the art to which he devoted his faculties. 'Poetry,' he says in one of his essays, is the record of the best and happiest moments of the hap: piest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling, sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression; so that, even in the desire and the regret they leave, there cannot but be pleasure, participating as it does in the nature of its object. It is, as it were, the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the morning calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it. These and corresponding conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions; and whilst they last, self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe. Poets are not only subject to these experiences as spirits of the most refined organisation, but they can colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world; a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or passion, will touch the enchanted chord, and reanimate, in those who have ever experienced those emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of I remember, Two miles on this side of the fort, the road Behold! |