Some might lament that I were cold,
As I, when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan;
They might lament-for I am one
Whom men love not, and yet regret,

Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set,

Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE
[Published in part (1-67) by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824;
the remainder (68–70) by Dr. Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862.]
A WOODMAN whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,

One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;-
And as a vale is watered by a flood,

Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness-as a tuberose

Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale

In this sweet forest, from the golden close

Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters,-every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,

And every beast stretched in its ruggèd cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle-ever from below
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow

Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,

Itself how low, how high beyond all height

The heaven where it would perish!-and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night

Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone,

35

Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm

Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.

And so this man returned with axe and saw
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law

Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene

With jagged leaves,-and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep-or weeping oft
Fast showers of aëreal water-drops

Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness ;-
Around the cradles of the birds aloft

They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers

Hang like moist clouds:-or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers,
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,

Surrounded by the columns and the towers

All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion-and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,

Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast

Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,

Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.

65

The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.

70

MARENGHI1

[Published in part (stanzas vii-xv) by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824; stanzas i-xxviii by W. M. Rossetti, Complete P. W. of P. B. S., 1870. The Boscombe MS.-evidently a first draft—from which (through Dr. Garnett) Rossetti derived the text of 1870 is now at the Bodleian, and has recently been collated by Mr. C. D. Locock, to whom the enlarged and emended text here printed is owing. The substitution, in title and text, of Marenghi for Mazenghi (1824) is due to Rossetti. Here as elsewhere in the footnotes B. the Bodleian MS.]

I

LET those who pine in pride or in revenge,

Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,

Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn

Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.

II

A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now

III

Another scene ere wise Etruria knew

Its second ruin through internal strife,
And tyrants through the breach of discord threw

The chain which binds and kills. As death to life,
As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)
So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison."

IV

In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold

Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn: A Sacrament more holy ne'er of old

Etrurians mingled mid the shades forlorn

Of moon-illumined forests, when

And reconciling factions wet their lips

With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit Undarkened by their country's last eclipse.

7 town

3 Who B.; Or 1870. 6 Marenghi's 1870; Mazenghi's B. 1870; sea B. 8 ruined 1870; squalid B. ('the whole line is cancelled,' Locock). 11 threw 1870; cancelled, B. 17 A Sacrament more B.; At Sacrament: more 1870. 18 mid B.; with 1870. 19 forests when . . . B.;

forests. 1870.

1 This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province.-[MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1824.]

5

10

15

20

VI

Was Florence the liberticide? that band

Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,
Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand,

A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted
Of many impious faiths-wise, just-do they,
Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' prey?

VII

O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory,

Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour; Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,

As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender :The light-invested angel Poesy

Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.

VIII

And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
By loftiest meditations; marble knew
The sculptor's fearless soul-and as he wrought,
The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
And more than all, heroic, just, sublime,

Thou wert among the false was this thy crime?

IX

Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine
Of direst weeds hangs garlanded-the snake
Inhabits its wrecked palaces ;-in thine

A beast of subtler venom now doth make
Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own.

The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,

And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
And good and ill like vines entangled are,

So that their grapes may oft be plucked together ;-
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi's sake.

ха

[Albert] Marenghi was a Florentine;

If he had wealth, or children, or a wife

Or friends, [or farm] or cherished thoughts which twine
The sights and sounds of home with life's own life

Of these he was despoiled and Florence sent.

23, 24 that band Of free and glorious brothers who had 1870; omitted, B. 25 a 1870; one B. 27 wise, just-do they 1870; omitted, B. 28 Does 1870; Doth B. prey 1870; spoil B. 33 angel 1824; Herald [?] B. 34 to welcome thee 1824; cancelled for .. by thee B. 42 direst 1824 ; Desert B. 45 sits amid 1824; amid cancelled for soils (?) B. 53-57 Albert... sent B.; omitted 1824, 1870. Albert cancelled B.: Pietro is the correct name. 53 Marenghi] Mazenghi B. 55 farm doubtful: perh. fame (Locock).

ΧΙ

No record of his crime remains in story,
But if the morning bright as evening shone,
It was some high and holy deed, by glory
Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
From the blind crowd he made secure and free
The patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy.

XII

For when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set
A penalty of blood on all who shared

So much of water with him as might wet
His lips, which speech divided not-he went
Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.

XIII

Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold,
Month after month endured; it was a feast

Whene'er he found those globes of deep-red gold
Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.

XIV

And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,

All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,-

XV

He housed himself. There is a point of strand
Near Vado's tower and town; and on one side
The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide,
And on the other, creeps eternally,
Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.

XVI

Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few
But things whose nature is at war with life-
Snakes and ill worms-endure its mortal dew.
The trophies of the clime's victorious strife-
And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,
And the wolf's dark gray scalp who tracked him there.

70 Amid the mountains 1824; Mid desert

62 he 1824; thus B. mountains [?] B. 71 toil, and cold] cold and toil edd. 1824, 1839. 92, 93 And ... there B. (see Editor's Note); White bones, and locks of dun and yellow hair, And ringed horns which buffaloes did wear1870.