As As an earthquake rocks a corse So white Winter, that rough nurse, As the wild air stirs and sways January gray is here, Like a sexton by her grave; March with grief doth howl and rave, A FRAGMENT. THEY were two cousins, almost like two twins. Except that from the catalogue of sins Nature had rased their love-which could not be But by dissevering their nativity. And so they grew together, like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Lull or awaken in their purple prime, Which the same hand will gather—the same clime Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow ΤΟ ONE word is too often profaned One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it; One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother, I can give not what men call love, But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not,The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow? NOTE ON THE POEMS OF 1821. BY THE EDITOR. My task becomes inexpressibly painful as the year draws near that which sealed our earthly fate; and each poem and each event it records, has a real or mysterious connection with the fatal catastrophe. I feel that I am incapable of putting on paper the history of those times. The heart of the man, abhorred of the poet, Who could peep and botanize upon his mother's grave, does not appear to me less inexplicably framed than that of one who can dissect and probe past woes, and repeat to the public ear the groans drawn from them in the throes of their agony. The year 1821 was spent in Pisa, or at the baths of San Giuliano. We were not, as our wont had been, alone-friends had gathered round us. Nearly all are dead; and when memory recurs to the past, she wanders among tombs: the genius with all his blighting errors and mighty powers; the companion of Shelley's ocean-wanderings, and the sharer of his fate, than whom no man ever existed more gentle, generous, and fearless; and others, who found in Shelley's ociety, and in his great knowledge and warm sympathy, delight, instruction and solace, have joined him beyond the grave. A few survive who have felt life a desert since he left it. What misfortune can equal death? Change can convert every other into a blessing, or heal its sting-death one has no cure; it shakes the foundations of the earth on which we tread, it destroys its beauty, it casts down our shelter, it exposes us bare to desolation; when those we love have passed into eternity, "life is the desert and the solitude," in which we are forced to linger-but never find comfort more. There is much in the Adonais which seems now more applicable to Shelley himself, than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned. The poetic view he takes of death, and the lofty scorn he displays towards his calumniators, are as a prophecy on his own destiny, when received among immortal names, and the poisonous breath of critics has vanished into emptiness before the fame he inherits. Shelley's favourite taste was boating; when living near the Thames, or by the lake of Geneva, much of his life was spent on the water. On the shore of every lake, or stream, or sea, near which he dwelt, he had a boat moored. He had latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There are no pleasureboats on the Arno, and the shallowness of its waters, except in winter time, when the stream is too turbid and impetuous for boating, rendered it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float. Shelley, however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend, contrived a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the Maremma, to cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the forests, a boat of laths and pitched canvas; it held three persons, and he was often seen on the Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians, whe remonstrated on the danger, and could not understand how any one could take pleasure in an exercise that risked life "Ma va per la vita!". they exclaimed. I little thought how true their words would prove. He once ventured with a friend, on the glassy sea of a calm day, down the Arno and round the coast, to Leghorn, which by keeping close in shore vas very practicable. They returned to Pisa by the cana hen, missing the direct cut, they got entangled among weeds, and the boat upset; a wetting was all the harm done xcept that the intense cold of his drenched clothes made Shelley faint. Once I went down with him to the mouth of the Arno, where the stream, then high and swift, met the tideless sea and disturbed its sluggish waters; it was a waste |