ROSALIND AND HELEN

A MODERN ECLOGUE

Rosalind and Helen was published, together with other poems, in a thin volume, with Shelley's name, at London, in the spring of 1819, under the imprint of C. H. Reynell for C. & J. Ollier. The poem was begun at Marlow as early as the summer of 1817, and was sufficiently far advanced to lead Shelley to send copy to the publisher just before leaving England in March, 1818; it was finished, apparently, on Mary's request, in August, at the Baths of Lucca. Shelley's original Advertisement to the volume, dated Naples, December 20, 1818, opens with the following:

"The story of Rosalind and Helen is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy favorable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded the conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which inspired it."

The remainder of the Advertisement is printed, in this edition, in the NOTES upon Lines written among the Euganean Hills.

ROSALIND AND HELEN

ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child.

SCENE. The Shore of the Lake of Como.

HELEN

COME hither, my sweet Rosalind.
'Tis long since thou and I have met;
And yet methinks it were unkind
Those moments to forget.

Come, sit by me. I see thee stand
By this lone lake, in this far land,
Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
United, and thine eyes replying

To the hues of yon fair heaven.
Come, gentle friend! wilt sit by me?
And be as thou wert wont to be
Ere we were disunited?

None doth behold us now;

the power

That led us forth at this lone hour
Will be but ill requited

If thou depart in scorn. Oh, come,
And talk of our abandoned home!

Remember, this is Italy,

And we are exiles. Talk with me

Of that our land, whose wilds and floods, Barren and dark although they be,

Were dearer than these chestnut woods

;

Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
And the blue mountains, shapes which seem
Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream;
Which that we have abandoned now,
Weighs on the heart like that remorse
Which altered friendship leaves. I seek
No more our youthful intercourse.

That cannot be! Rosalind, speak,

Speak to me! Leave me not! When morn did

come,

When evening fell upon our common home,
When for one hour we parted, · do not frown;
I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken;
But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token
Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown,
Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me,
And not my scornèd self who prayed to thee!

ROSALIND

Is it a dream, or do I see

And hear frail Helen? I would flee
Thy tainting touch; but former years
Arise, and bring forbidden tears;
And my o'erburdened memory
Seeks yet its lost repose in thee.

I share thy crime. I cannot choose

But weep for thee; mine own strange grief
But seldom stoops to such relief;

Nor ever did I love thee less,

Though mourning o'er thy wickedness
Even with a sister's woe. I knew

What to the evil world is due,

And therefore sternly did refuse

To link me with the infamy

Of one so lost as Helen. Now,
Bewildered by my dire despair,

Wondering I blush, and weep that thou
Shouldst love me still thou only! - There,
Let us sit on that gray stone

Till our mournful talk be done.

HELEN

Alas! not there; I cannot bear
The murmur of this lake to hear.
A sound from there, Rosalind dear,
Which never yet I heard elsewhere
But in our native land, recurs,

Even here where now we meet. It stirs
Too much of suffocating sorrow!

In the dell of yon dark chestnut wood
Is a stone seat, a solitude

Less like our own.

The ghost of peace

Will not desert this spot. To-morrow,
If thy kind feelings should not cease,
We may sit here.