Or broke its cage to perch on mine, But knowing well captivity,

Sweet bird! I could not wish for thine! Or if it were, in winged guise,

A visitant from Paradise;

For-Heaven forgive that thought! the while
Which made me both to weep and smile;
I sometimes deemed that it might be
My brother's soul come down to me;
But then at last away it flew,

And then 't was mortal - well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown,
And left me twice so doubly lone,

Lone
Lone

as the corse within its shroud,

as a solitary cloud,

A single cloud on a sunny day,
While all the rest of heaven is clear,
A frown upon the atmosphere,
That hath no business to appear

When skies are blue, and earth is gay.

XI

A kind of change came in my fate,
My keepers grew compassionate;
I know not what had made them so,
They were inured to sights of woe,
But so it was :- my broken chain
With links unfastened did remain,
And it was liberty to stride

Along my cell from side to side,

And up and down, and then athwart,

And tread it over every part;

And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun,
Avoiding only, as I trod,

My brothers' graves without a sod;

For if I thought with heedless tread
My step profaned their lowly bed,
My breath came gaspingly and thick,
And my crushed heart fell blind and sick.

XII

I made a footing in the wall,

It was not therefrom to escape,

For I had buried one and all

Who loved me in a human shape;

And the whole earth would henceforth be

A wider prison unto me:

No child no sire—no kin had I,

-

No partner in my misery;

I thought of this, and I was glad,
For thought of them had made me mad;
But I was curious to ascend,

To my barred windows, and to bend
Once more, upon the mountains high
The quiet of a loving eye.

XIII

I saw them and they were the same,
They were not changed like me in frame;
I saw their thousand years of snow
On high- their wide long lake below,
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow;
I heard the torrents leap and gush
O'er channelled rock and broken bush;
I saw the white-walled distant town,
And whiter sails go skimming down;
And then there was a little isle,
Which in my very face did smile,
The only one in view;

A small green isle, it seemed no more,
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor,
But in it there were three tall trees,
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze,
And by it there were waters flowing,

And on it there were young flowers growing,
Of gentle breath and hue.

The fish swam by the castle wall,

And they seemed joyous each and all;

I had not left my recent chain;
And when I did descend again,
The darkness of my dim abode

Fell on me as a heavy load;

It was as is a new-dug grave, Closing o'er one we sought to save,

-

And yet my glance, too much oppressed, Had almost need of such a rest.

XIV

It might be months, or years, or days,
I kept no count - I took no note,
I had no hope my eyes to raise,

And clear them of their dreary mote; At last men came to set me free,

I asked not why, and recked not where, It was at length the same to me, Fettered or fetterless to be,

I learned to love despair.

And thus when they appeared at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watched them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill - yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learned to dwell-
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are: even I
Regained my freedom with a sigh.

VII

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

N

(1792-1822)

I

Aн, did you once see Shelley plain,
And did he stop and speak to you,
And did you speak to him again ?
How strange it seems, and new!

II

But you were living before that,
And also you are living after;
And the memory I started at
My starting moves your laughter!

III

I cross'd a moor, with a name of its own
And a certain use in the world, no doubt,
Yet a hand's-breadth of it shines alone
'Mid the blank miles round about:

IV

For there I pick'd up on the heather
And there I put inside my breast
A moulted feather, an eagle-feather!
Well, I forget the rest.

ROBERT BROWNING.

O prose writer ever adequately described Shelley, but without knowing it he described himself almost perfectly in his "To a Skylark."

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.

There is Shelley for you, perfectly portrayed. If you do not like and understand this you will never care for Shelley.

66

One word alone seems to apply to Shelley, and that is "ethereal." And if we would know what ethereal" means, let us reread the “Skylark.” He was born a singer, like the lark, and he sings the things of the spirit as spontaneously, as inevitably, as Burns sang his love songs to any maiden who would listen.

Shelley's life is open to criticism, but the purity of his ideals cannot be doubted. Says Professor Dowden:

"There is a wisdom which the world sometimes counts as folly—that which consists in devotion at all hazards to an ideal, to what stands with us for the highest truth, sacred justice, purest love. And assuredly the tendency of Shelley's poetry, however we may venerate ideals other than his, is to quicken the sense that there is such an exalted wisdom as this and to stimulate us to its pursuit. . . . Shelley at the age of nineteen was possessed by an inextinguishable hope for the world and an enthusiasm of humanity which never ceased to inspire his deeds and words."

...

If we cannot explain and reconcile what he did with what he professed, let us remember with Professor Dowden that "he was a creature, not of reason, not of intellect, not of moral purpose, not of passion, but of feelings and imaginations.' And again:

"We are touched through his poetry with a certain divine discontent, so that not music nor sculpture nor picture nor song can wholly satisfy our spirits, but in and through these we reach after some higher beauty,