2.
Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn
From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run,
Or could the morning shafts of purest light _10
Again into the quivers of the Sun
Be gathered—could one thought from its wild flight
Return into the temple of the brain
Without a change, without a stain,—
Could aught that is, ever again _15
Be what it once has ceased to be,
Greece might again be free!
3.
A star has fallen upon the earth
Mid the benighted nations,
A quenchless atom of immortal light, _20
A living spark of Night,
A cresset shaken from the constellations.
Swifter than the thunder fell
To the heart of Earth, the well
Where its pulses flow and beat, _25
And unextinct in that cold source
Burns, and on … course
Guides the sphere which is its prison,
Like an angelic spirit pent
In a form of mortal birth, _30
Till, as a spirit half-arisen
Shatters its charnel, it has rent,
In the rapture of its mirth,
The thin and painted garment of the Earth,
Ruining its chaos—a fierce breath _35
Consuming all its forms of living death.
***
FRAGMENT: 'I WOULD NOT BE A KING'.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition.]
I would not be a king—enough
Of woe it is to love;
The path to power is steep and rough,
And tempests reign above.
I would not climb the imperial throne; _5
'Tis built on ice which fortune's sun
Thaws in the height of noon.
Then farewell, king, yet were I one,
Care would not come so soon.
Would he and I were far away _10
Keeping flocks on Himalay!
***
GINEVRA.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824, and dated 'Pisa, 1821.']
Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
Who staggers forth into the air and sun
From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain _5
Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
Of objects and of persons passed like things
Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,
Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;
The vows to which her lips had sworn assent _10
Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
Deafening the lost intelligence within.