Wasting the fountain-stone away.
And in that dark and evil day
Did all desires and thoughts, that claim725
Men's care—ambition, friendship, fame,
Love, hope, though hope was now despair—
Indue the colours of this change,
As from the all-surrounding air
The earth takes hues obscure and strange,730
When storm and earthquake linger there.
And so, my friend, it then befell[1]
To many, most to Lionel,
Whose hope was like the life of youth
Within him, and when dead, became735
A spirit of unresting flame,
Which goaded him in his distress
Over the world's vast wilderness.
Three years he left his native land,
And on[2] the fourth, when he returned,740
None knew him: he was stricken[3] deep
With some disease of mind, and turned
Into aught unlike Lionel.
On him, on whom, did he pause in sleep,
Serenest smiles were wont to keep,745
And, did he wake, a winged band
Of bright persuasions, which had fed
On his sweet lips and liquid eyes,
Kept their swift pinions half outspread,
To do on men his least command;750
- ↑ In Shelley's edition we have again befel instead of befell, as at p. 31.
- ↑ The whole construction of this sentence, from Three years, is very loose; but I do not think there is any corruption. It is of course meant, not that he went away three times in as many years, but for three years. "On the fourth, when he returned," I take to be elliptical for "On his return at the dawn or beginning of the fourth." Mr. Rossetti substitutes in for on. See note 2, p. 20.
- ↑ In Shelley’s edition, striken, as at p. 26.
