that, during his own lifetime, none of his poems sold a hundred copies, and many not a single one.

We must now consider Shelley's songs and lyrics. We will take only such as can be quoted complete, for to take portions of The Skylark, The Cloud, The West Wind, and so on, is to ruin the effect which the poet had in mind. It is first to be observed that Shelley had two styles, quite different styles, the gorgeous and the simple. Of the first, let us take To Night, a most Shelley-like example:

Swiftly walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!

Out of the misty eastern cave

Where, all the long and lone daylight,
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,
Which make thee terrible and dear,
Swift be thy flight!

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,
Star-inwrought!

Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;

Kiss her until she be wearied out,

Then wander o'er city and sea and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand—
Come, long-sought!

When I arose and saw the dawn

I sighed for thee;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone,

And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,

And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest,
I sighed for thee.

Thy brother Death came, and cried,
"Wouldst thou me?"

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee,

"Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me?" And I replied,
"No, not thee."

Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon-

Sleep will come when thou art fled.
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night—
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon!

Compare the style of this with Ozymandias, in its sublime simplicity:

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Shelley is, of course, one of the world's supreme songwriters. Here are two examples which are worthy of the greatest of the Elizabethans:

(1)

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine
In one another's being mingle.
Why not I with thine?-

Some mention must be made of Shelley's prose. Matthew Arnold thought that his prose writings "would resist the wear and tear of time better, and finally come to stand higher, than his poetry." The words, like Hamlet's, are rather wild and whirling. No prose ever written is likely to do that. But if not, like his verse, unique in splendour, Shelley's prose is of a beauty all its own. Perhaps the best of it is in his letters, with their travel-pictures, the pen-paintings of a poet.

Sometimes Shelley painted the same scene both in prose and verse, so that we are able to set the two pictures side by side. His description of Pompeii is an excellent example:

Above and between the multitudinous shafts of sunshining columns was seen the sea, reflecting the purple heaven of noon above it, and supporting, as it were, on its