| With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness, |
| And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, |
| Pursued like raging hounds their father and their prey. |
| A pard-like Spirit, beautiful and swift— |
| A love in desolation masked; a power |
| Girt round with weakness; it can scarce uplift |
| The weight of the superincumbent hour; |
| It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, |
| A breaking billow; even whilst we speak |
| Is it not broken? On the withering flower |
| The killing sun smiles brightly; on a cheek |
| The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. |
| His head was bound with pansies overblown, |
| And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; |
| And a light spear, topped with a cypress cone, |
| Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew |
| Yet dripping with the forest’s noon-day dew, |
| Vibrated as the ever-beating heart |
| Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew |
| He came the last, neglected and apart; |
| A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter’s dart.” |
Shelley is no longer “neglected,” but I believe his works have never been republished in this country, and therefore these extracts may be new to most readers.
Byron naturally in our hall of imagery takes place next his friend. Both are noble poetic shapes, both mournful in their beauty. The radiant gentleness of Shelley’s brow and eye delight us, but there are marks of suffering on that delicate cheek and about that sweet mouth; while a sorrowful indignation curls too strongly the lip, lightens too fiercely in the eye, of Byron.
The unfortunate Byron, (unfortunate I call him, because “mind and destiny are but two names for one idea,”) has long been at rest; the adoration and the hatred of which he was the object, are both dying out. His poems have done their work; a strong personal interest no longer gives them a factitious charm,
