Of a dark and distant shore20
Still recedes, as ever still
Longing with divided will,
But no power to seek or shun,
He is ever drifted on
O'er the unreposing wave25
To the haven of the grave.
What, if there no friends will greet;
What, if there no heart will meet
His with love's impatient beat;
Wander wheresoever he may,30
Can he dream before that day
To find refuge from distress
In friendship's smile, in love's caress?
Then 'twill wreak him little woe
Whether such there be or no:35
Senseless is the breast, and cold,
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve40
That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortured lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now[1]
Frozen upon December's bough.
- ↑ Mr. Rossetti substitutes for this line
Is like a sapless leaflet now;
and says in a note that he has "rescued these lines (with some consciousness of audacity) from the annoying grammatical solecism of the original—
'Every little living nerve
Are like sapless leaflets now.'"Mr. Swinburne says (Essays and Studies, pp. 228–9)—"If the editor finds the license of such a phrase ... too 'annoying' to be endured by a scholastic sense of propriety, the annoyance is far keener which will be inflicted on others by his substituted reading ... Shelley has indulged in a loose and obsolete construction which may or may not be defensible; I should not at the present day permit it to myself, or condone it in another; and had the editor been engaged in the revision of a schoolboy's theme, he would certainly have done right to correct such a phrase, and as certainly would not have done wrong to add such further correction as he might deem desirable; but the task here undertaken is not exactly comparable to the revision of a schoolboy's theme."
