Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round

Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,

A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.1
The boundless 2 universe

Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul

That owns no3 master; while the loathliest ward1
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest

Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,-
To which the eagle spirits of the free,

Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,
Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die
And cannot be repelled.

Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,
They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop
Through palaces and temples thunderproof.

1 In Mrs. Shelley's editions, vault. 2 In Mrs. Shelley's editions, mighty. 3 Mr. Rossetti substitutes a master for no master, presumably on the authority of the note-book; but I think the reading of Mrs. Shelley's editions, no master, is far finer, and again suggestive of some other source than the note-book. The sense that the free soul is too big for the universe is far

55

more like Shelley's way of thinking than the sense that servility makes the universe too narrow.

In Mrs. Shelley's editions, spot.
5 In Mrs. Shelley's editions, cradled.
6 In Mrs. Shelley's editions these
two lines stand thus:

Return to brood over the [ ] thoughts
That cannot die, and may not be repelled.

SCENE V.1

ARCHY.

I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and court the tears shed on its old roots (?), as the [wind ?] plays the song of

"A widow bird sate mourning

Upon a wintry bough."

[Sings]

Heigho the lark and the owl!

One flies the morning, and one lulls2 the night:

Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,

Sings like the fool through darkness and light.

"A widow bird sate mourning for her love

Upon a wintry bough;

The frozen wind crept on above,

The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare,

No flower upon the ground,

And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound."

1 Mr. Rossetti says this "fragment of a scene appears to belong to a much later portion of the drama than those which have preceded; perhaps to the period of King Charles's captivity, or even after his death." I give the snatch of prose as given in Mr. Rossetti's edition; but I suspect we should read count for court. That edition was the first in which the beautiful lyric was

coupled with the name of Archy. The two quatrains in inverted commas appeared in the Posthumous Poems as A Song, among the Miscellaneous Poems, and never, in editions preceding Mr. Rossetti's, as having any connexion with Charles the First.

2 I cannot but think this word is wrong probably we should read flies again.

THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.

[As already stated, The Triumph of Life was the last great work on which Shelley was occupied. Speaking of the boat Don Juan, Mrs. Shelley says "When Shelley was on board, he had his papers with him; and much of the 'Triumph of Life' was written as he sailed or weltered on that sea which was soon to engulf him." Mr. Garnett communicated to Miss Blind numerous emendations from the MS., in Sir Percy Shelley's possession; and these were published in The Westminster Review (July 1870). What the work would have been, it is hardly possible to imagine; but, with this grand fragment before us, it would be difficult to exaggerate the magnitude of the potential poem which was shaping itself in Shelley's mind at the time of his death.-H. B. F.]

THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.

SWIFT as a spirit hastening to his task1
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask

Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth—
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth

Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,

To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose

Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray

Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent,

Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould,
Rise as the Sun2 their father rose, to bear

1 In the MS. of The Triumph of Life there is a cancelled opening, as follows:

Out of the eastern shadow of the Earth
Amid the clouds upon its margin grey,

5

10

15

Scattered by night to swathe in its bright birth
In gold and fleecy snow the infant Day,
The glorious Sun arose, beneath his light
The earth and all.

2 In Mrs. Shelley's editions, sun, with a small s.