XXIII

The dizzy flight of that phantom pale
Waked the fair Lady from her sleep,
And she arose, while from the veil
Of her dark eyes the dream did creep;
And she walked about as one who knew
That sleep has sights as clear and true
As any waking eyes can view.

TO CONSTANTIA

SINGING

I

THUS to be lost and thus to sink and die,

Perchance were death indeed! - Constantia,

turn!

In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie, Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn

Between thy lips, are laid to sleep;

Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odor it is yet,

And from thy touch like fire doth leap.

Even while I write, my burning cheeks are

wet

Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not

forget!

II

A breathless awe, like the swift change
Unseen but felt in youthful slumbers,

To Constantia. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824.

Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,

Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers.

The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven
By the enchantment of thy strain;
And on my shoulders wings are woven
To follow its sublime career
Beyond the mighty moons that wane
Upon the verge of Nature's utmost sphere,
Till the world's shadowy walls are passed and

disappear.

III

Her voice is hovering o'er my soul - it lingers
O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings;
The blood and life within those snowy fingers
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.
My brain is wild, my breath comes quick -
The blood is listening in my frame,
And thronging shadows, fast and thick,
Fall on my overflowing eyes;

My heart is quivering like a flame;

As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies,
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.

IV

I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee,
Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
Flows on, and fills all things with melody.
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong,
On which, like one in trance upborne,
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep,
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn ;

Now 'tis the breath of summer night,
Which, when the starry waters sleep,

Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright, Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.

TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR

I

THY country's curse is on thee, darkest crest
Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm
Which rends our Mother's bosom! - Priestly Pest!
Masked Resurrection of a buried Form!

II

Thy country's curse is on thee! Justice sold, Truth trampled, Nature's landmarks overthrown, And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold,

Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne.

III

And, whilst that sure slow Angel, which aye stands Watching the beck of Mutability,

Delays to execute her high commands,

And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and

thee,

IV

Oh, let a father's curse be on thy soul,

And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb;

Be both, on thy gray head, a leaden cowl

To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom!

V

I curse thee! By a parent's outraged love,
By hopes long cherished and too lately lost, -
By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove,

By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed;

VI

By those infantine smiles of happy light,

Which were a fire within a stranger's hearth, Quenched even when kindled, - in untimely

night,

Hiding the promise of a lovely birth;

VII

By those unpractised accents of young speech,
Which he who is a father thought to frame
To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach -
Thou strike the lyre of mind! - oh, grief and

shame!

VIII

By all the happy see in children's growth,
That undeveloped flower of budding years
Sweetness and sadness interwoven both,
Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears -

IX

By all the days under an hireling's care,
Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness, -
Oh, wretched ye if ever any were,

Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless !

X

By the false cant which on their innocent lips
Must hang like poison on an opening bloom,
By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse
Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb

XI

By thy most impious Hell, and all its terror;
By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt
Of thine impostures, which must be their error -
That sand on which thy crumbling Power is
built-

XII

By thy complicity with lust and hate

Thy thirst for tears - thy hunger after gold

The ready frauds which ever on thee wait

The servile arts in which thou hast grown old