While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Thro' many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed ; I was not heard--I saw them notWhen musing deeply on the lot Of life, at the sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming,-Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! VI I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine-have I not kept the vow? LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF THE everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, 1 Mont Blane was inspired by a view of that mountain and its surrounding peaks and val leys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following mention of this poem in his publication of the History of a Six Weeks' Tour, and Letters from Switzerland: "The poem entitled Mont Blanc is written by the author of the two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. It was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and, as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untamable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang." (From Mrs. Shelley's Note on the Poems of 1816.) Compare Coleridge's Hymn before Sunrise in Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pin nacle, A city of death, distinct with many a tower And wall impregnable of beaming ice. Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky Kolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing Its destined path, or in the mangled soil Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down From yon remotest waste, have overthrown The limits of the dead and living world, Never to be reclaimed. The dwellingplace Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; Their food and their retreat for ever The voiceless lightning in these solitudes Keeps innocently, and like vapor broods Over the snow. The secret strength of things Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee! And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, if to the human mind's imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy? July 23, 1816. 1817. TO MARY DEDICATION OF THE REVOLT OF ISLAM So now my summer task is ended, Mary, And I return to thee, mine own heart's home; As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faëry, Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome ; Nor thou disdain that, ere my fame become A star among the stars of mortal night, If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, Its doubtful promise thus I would unite With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light. The toil which stole from thee so many an hour Is ended-and the fruit is at thy feet! No longer where the woods to frame a bower With interlaced branches mix and meet, Or where, with sound like many voices sweet, Waterfalls leap among wild islands green Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I fears: And, through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth, Of glorious parents, thou aspiring I wonder not-for One then left this earth Whose life was like a setting planet mild, Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled Of its departing glory; still her fame Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name. One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit Which was the echo of three-thousand years: And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, As some lone man who in a desert hears |