Are things which in this century don't strike

The public mind,- -so few are the elect; And the new births of both their stale virginities

Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.

We learn from Horace, "Homer sometimes sleeps;"

We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes,

To show with what complacency he creeps,

With his dear "Waggoners," around his lakes.

He wishes for "a boat" to sail the deepsOf ocean?—No, of air; and then he

makes

Another outcry for "a little boat,"
And drivels seas to set it well afloat.

If he must fain sweep o'er the ethereal plain,

And Pegasus runs restive in his "Waggon,"

Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain?

Or pray Medea for a single dragon? Or if, too classic for his vulgar brain,

He fear'd his neck to venture such a

nag on,

And he must needs mount nearer to the

moon,

Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon?

"Pedlars," and "Boats," and "Waggons!" Oh! ye shades

Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this?

That trash of such sort not alone evades Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss

Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades

Of sense and song above your graves may hiss

The "little boatman" and his "Peter Bell" Can sneer at him who drew "Achitophel!"

London

THE sun went down, the smoke rose up, as from

A half-unquench'd volcano, o'er a space Which well beseem'd the "Devil's drawing-room,"

As some have qualified that wondrous place:

But Juan felt, though not approaching home,

As one who, though he were not of the

race,

Revered the soil, of those true sons the mother,

Who butcher'd half the earth, and bullied t'other.

A mighty mass of brick, and smoke, and shipping

Dirty and dusky, but as wide as eye Could reach, with here and there a sail just skipping

In sight, then lost amidst the forestry Of masts; a wilderness of steeples peep

ing

On tiptoe through their sea-coal

canopy;

A huge, dun cupola, like a foolscap

crown

On a fool's head-and there is London Town!

Aurora Raby

AND then there was-but why should I go on,

Unless the ladies should go off?-there

was

Indeed a certain fair and fairy one,
Of the best class, and better than her

class,

Aurora Raby, a young star who shone

O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass,

A lovely being, scarcely form'd or moulded,

A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet

folded;

Few and short were the prayers we said, And we spoke not a word of sorrow; But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,

And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed

And smoothed down his lonely pillow, That the foe and stranger would tread o'er his head,

And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's

gone,

And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him; But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep

on

In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our weary task was done When the clock struck the hour for retiring;

And we heard the distant and random gun That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory;

We carved not a line, and we raised not

a stone,

But we left him alone with his glory.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
(1792-1822)
Ozymandias

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.

From PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

Asia's Song: My soul is an enchanted boat

My soul is an enchanted boat,

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;

And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it,

Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.

It seems to float ever, for ever, Upon that many-winding river, Between mountains, woods, abysses, A paradise of wildernesses! Till, like one in slumber bound, Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In music's most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy
heaven.

And we sail on, away, afar,
Without a course, without a star,

But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,
The boat of my desire is guided:
Realms where the air we breathe is love,

Which in the winds and on the waves

doth move, Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

We have passed Age's icy caves,

And Manhood's dark and tossing

waves,

And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:

Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee

Of shadow-peopled Infancy, Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;

A paradise of vaulted bowers, Lit by downward-gazing flowers, And watery paths that wind between Wildernesses calm and green, Peopled by shapes too bright to see, And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;

Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!

From THE CENCI

Song: False friend, wilt thou smile or weep

FALSE friend, wilt thou smile or

weep

When my life is laid asleep?
Little cares for a smile or a tear,
The clay-cold corpse upon the bier!
Farewell! Heigho!

What is this whispers low? There is a snake in thy smile, my dear;

And bitter poison within thy tear.

Sweet sleep, were death like to thee,
Or if thou couldst mortal be,
I would close these eyes of pain;
When to wake? Never again.

O World! Farewell!
Listen to the passing bell!
It says, thou and I must part,
With a light and a heavy heart.

The Cloud

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noonday dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast, And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

Lightning, my pilot, sits,

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that

move

In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains, Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor

eyes,

And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead,

As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like
floor,

By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl;

The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.

From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.

The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-coloured bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colours

wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when with never a stain

The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams,

Build up the blue dome of air,

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph.
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost
from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

To a Skylark

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strain of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire;

The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun,

O'er which clouds are brightning,

Thou dost float and run;

Like an unbodied joy whose race is just

begun.