It loosens the serpent which care has bound The dissolving strain, through every vein, As the scent of a violet withered up, Which grew by the brink of a silver lake, When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup, And mist there was none its thirst to slake— And the violet lay dead while the odour flew On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue As one who drinks from a charmed cup Of foaming, and sparkling, and murmuring wine, Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up, Invites to love with her kiss divine. * DIRGE FOR THE YEAR. ORPHAN hours, the year is dead, Come and sigh, come and weep Merry hours, smile instead, For the year is but asleep : ! 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 razed 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 He faints, dissolved into a sense of love; 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, The worship the heart lifts above 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 society, 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 alone has no cure; it shakes the foundations of the earth on |