Her mien had been imperious, but she now 600
Looked meek— perhaps remorse had brought her low.
Her coming made him better, and they stayed
Together at my father's—for I played,
As I remember, with the lady's shawl—
I might be six years old—but after all 605
She left him' . . . 'Why, her heart must have been tough:
How did it end?' 'And was not this enough?
They met—they parted'—'Child, is there no more?'
'Something within that interval which bore
The stamp of why they parted, how they met: 610
Yet if thine aged eyes disdain to wet
Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered tears.
Ask me no more, but let the silent years
Be closed and cered over their memory
As yon mute marble where their corpses lie.' 615
I urged and questioned still, she told me how
All happened— but the cold world shall not know.
CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF JULIAN AND MADDALO
'What think you the dead are?' 'Why, dust and clay,
What should they be?' ''Tis the last hour of day.
Look on the west, how beautiful it is 620
Vaulted with radiant vapours! The deep bliss
Of that unutterable light has made
The edges of that cloud fade
Into a hue, like some harmonious thought.
Wasting itself on that which it had wrought. 625
Till it diesandbetween
The light hues of the tender, pure, serene,
And infinite tranquillity of heaven.
Ay, beautiful! but when not. . . .'
'Perhaps the only comfort which remains 630
Is the unheeded clanking of my chains,
The which I make, and call it melody.'
NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY
From the Baths of Lucca, in 1818, Shelley visited Venice; and, circumstances rendering it eligible that we should remain a few weeks in the neighbourhood of that city, he accepted the offer of Lord Byron, who lent him the use of a villa he rented near Este; and he sent for his family from Lucca to join him. I Capuccini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious houses; it was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill at the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk, a pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the
