LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF LERICI. 297 IV. Though the sound overpowers, Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling 20 Are one. 1822. LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF LERICI. SHE left me at the silent time When the moon had ceased to climb The azure path of Heaven's steep, And like an albatross asleep, Thinking over every tone Which, though silent to the ear, The enchanted heart could hear, Like notes which die when born, but still Haunt the echoes of the hill ; 5 ΙΟ 15 As if her gentle hand, even now, And thus, although she absent were, That even Fancy dares to claim : Her presence had made weak and tame 20 All passions, and I lived alone 25 As they had been, and would be, not. my My thoughts, but thus disturbed and weak I sat and saw the vessels glide Over the ocean bright and wide, Like spirit-wingèd chariots sent 30 For ministrations strange and far; 35 As if to some Elysian star Sailed for drink to medicine Such sweet and bitter pain as mine. Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day, And spear about the low rocks damp Too happy they, whose pleasure sought 40 45 50 1822 That moment is gone for ever, Like lightning that flashed and died, Which the dark shadows hide. III. That moment from time was singled As the first of a life of pain, The cup of its joy was mingled - Delusion too sweet though vain ! Too sweet to be mine again. IV. Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden Ye would not have then forbidden V. Methinks too little cost For a moment so found, so lost! THESE are two friends whose lives were undivided; So let their memory be, now they have glided Under the grave; let not their bones be parted, For their two hearts in life were single-hearted. 1822. NOTES. ALASTOR. THE circumstances in which this poem was written serve to throw light upon its meaning. Already at twenty-three Shelley was disillusioned of some eager and exorbitant hopes; the first great experiment of his heart had proved a failure; his boyish ardour for the enfranchisement of a people had been without result; his literary efforts had met with little sympathy or recognition; and, during the early months of the year, he had felt how frail was his hold on life, and had almost confronted that mystery which lies behind the veil of mortal existence" (Dowden's Life, Vol. I, p. 530). "In the spring of 1815," says Mrs. Shelley in her note on this poem, "an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a consumption." The mood reflected in Alastor is the mood in which Shelley regarded his own past, with death staring him in the face. As he looks back on his life, he notes especially its isolation and apparent fruitlessness. He feels that he has been a creature alone and apart, pursuing aims which the mass of men do not understand, and thus cut off from the wholesome and stimulating sympathy of his fellows. This "selfcentred seclusion," as he explains in the Preface to the poem, is not the result of a cold or egoistic nature; he does not belong to the class described in the second paragraph of the Preface. His isolation is caused by the loftiness of his ideal and by his perfect' devotion to it. He neglected attainable but imperfect good for the sake of ideal perfections which forever escape his grasp. One form of this devotion to the ideal is the desire for complete sympathy of mind and feeling, such as would be afforded by a woman in perfect harmony with his own highest self; it is this aspect of his eager but vain quest which is made especially prominent in Alastor. These experiences, then, of Shelley's spiritual life and this mood in which he regards them, form the substance of the poem; the poet does not, however, describe these things directly: he symbolizes them in |