For bread, and gold, and blood: Pain, linked to Guilt,
Agitates the light flame of their hours,
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.
There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers _10
And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,
The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers
Of solitary wealth,—the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air,—
Are by its presence dimmed—they stand aloof, _15
And are withdrawn—so that the world is bare;
As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror
Amid a company of ladies fair
Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror
Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue, _20
The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error,
Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew.
NOTE: _7 For]With 1829.
***
AN ALLEGORY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
A portal as of shadowy adamant
Stands yawning on the highway of the life
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
Around it rages an unceasing strife
Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt _5
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.