I paused. But soon his gestures kindled New power, as by the moving wind

The waves are lifted; and my song

To low soft notes now changed and dwindled; And, from the twinkling wires among,

My languid fingers drew and flung
Circles of life-dissolving sound,

Yet faint. In aëry rings they bound
My Lionel. As every strain

Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien
Sunk with the sound relaxedly;

And slowly now he turned to me,
As slowly faded from his face
That awful joy. With looks serene
He was soon drawn to my embrace;
And
my wild song then died away
In murmurs. Words I dare not say
We mixed; and on his lips mine fed

Till they methought felt still and cold. "What is it with thee, love?" I said ;—

No look, no word, no motion! Yes,
There was a change; but spare to guess,
Nor let that moment's hope be told.
I looked, and knew that he was dead;
And fell, as the eagle on the plain
Falls when life deserts her brain,

And the mortal lightning is veiled again.

Oh that I were now dead! But such
(Did they not, love, demand too much,
Those dying murmurs ?) he forbad.
Oh that I once again were mad!-
And yet, dear Rosalind, not so,
For I would live to share thy woe.
Sweet boy! did I forget thee too?
Alas! we know not what we do
When we speak words!

No memory more
Is in my mind of that sea-shore.
Madness came on me, and a troop
Of misty shades did seem to sit

Beside me on a vessel's poop,

And the clear north wind was driving it.

Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers;
And the stars, methought, grew unlike ours;
And the azure sky and the stormless sea

Made me believe that I had died,
And waked in a world which was to me
Drear hell, though heaven to all beside.
Then a dead sleep fell on my mind;
Whilst animal life many long years
Had rescued from a chasm of tears.
And, when I woke, I wept to find
That the same lady, bright and wise,
With silver locks and quick brown eyes,
The mother of my Lionel,

Had tended me in my distress,—

And died some months before. Nor less
Wonder, but far more peace and joy,
Brought in that hour my lovely boy.
For through that trance my soul had well
The impress of thy being kept,
And, if I waked or if I slept,

No doubt, though memory faithless be,

Thy image ever dwelt on me ;

And thus, O Lionel ! like thee

Is our sweet child. 'Tis sure most strange

I knew not of so great a change

As that which gave him birth who now

Is all the solace of my woe.

That Lionel great wealth had left

By will to me-and that, of all,

The ready lies of law bereft

My child and me-might well befall. But let me think not of the scorn Which from the meanest I have borne When, for my child's beloved sake,

I mixed with slaves, to vindicate The very laws themselves do make. Let me not say scorn is my fate, Lest I be proud, suffering the same With those who live in deathless fame.

She ceased." Lo, where red morning through the wood'

Is burning o'er the dew!" said Rosalind.

And with these words they rose, and towards the flood
Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves, now wind
With equal steps and fingers intertwined.
Thence to a lonely dwelling-where the shore
Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses
Cleave with their dark-green cones the silent skies,
And with their shadows the clear depths below,
And where a little terrace, from its bowers
Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers,
Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er
The liquid marble of the windless lake,
And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar

Under the leaves which their green garments make--
They come. 'Tis Helen's home; and clean and white,
Like one which tyrants spare on our own land
In some such solitude; its casements bright
Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun,
And even within 'twas scarce like Italy.

And, when she saw how all things there were planned
As in an English home, dim memory

Disturbed poor Rosalind: she stood as one

Whose mind is where his body cannot be.
Till Helen led her where her child yet slept,
And said: "Observe-that brow was Lionel's,
Those lips were his, and so he ever kept

One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it.
You cannot see his eyes, they are two wells

Of liquid love. Let us not wake him yet."
But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept
A shower of burning tears which fell upon
His face; and so his opening lashes shone
With tears unlike his own, as he did leap
In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.

So Rosalind and Helen lived together

Thenceforth; changed in all else, yet friends again, Such as they were when o'er the mountain-heather They wandered in their youth, through sun and rain.

And after many years (for human things
Change even like the ocean and the wind)
Her daughter was restored to Rosalind ;
And in their circle thence some visitings
Of joy mid their new calm would intervene.
A lovely child she was, of looks serene,
And motions which o'er things indifferent shed

The grace and gentleness from whence they came And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed

From the same flowers of thought, until each mind Like springs which mingle in one flood became ;

And in their union soon their parents saw

The shadow of the peace denied to them.

And Rosalind-for, when the living stem
Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall—
Died ere her time. And with deep grief and awe
The pale survivors followed her remains,
Beyond the region of dissolving rains,

Up the cold mountain she was wont to call
Her tomb. And on Chiavenna's precipice
They raised a pyramid of lasting ice;
Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun,
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,
The last, when it had sunk. And through the night
The charioteers of Arctos wheelèd round

Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home; Whose sad inhabitants each year would come, With willing steps climbing that rugged height,

And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound With amaranth-flowers, which, in the clime's despite, Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light. Such flowers as in the wintry memory bloom

Of one friend left adorned that frozen tomb.

Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,

Whose sufferings too were less, Death slowlier led Into the peace of his dominion cold:

She died among her kindred, being old.

And know that, if love die not in the dead

As in the living, none of mortal kind

Are blest as now Helen and Rosalind.

NOTE ON ROSALIND AND HELEN, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside-till I found it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind and develop some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned love but he shed a grace borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed, on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of life, which inasmuch as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves and others, he promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable truth. In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or insensibility, or mistake. By reverting in his mind to this first principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could disclose the secret of all hearts; and his delineations of passion and emotion touch the finest chords of our nature.

Rosalind and Helen was finished during the summer of 1818, while we were at the baths of Lucca.