Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/608

Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain. 15

III
And from its head as from one body grow,
Asgrass out of a watery rock.
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
And their long tangles in each other lock, 20
And with unending involutions show
Their mailèd radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.

IV
And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft 25
Peeps idly into those^[1] Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,
And he comes hastening like a moth that hies 30
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.

V.
'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
Kindled by that inextricable error, 35
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become aand ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there—
A woman's countenance, with serpent-locks,
Gazing in death on Heaven from those wet rocks. 40

 

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

[Published by Leigh Hunt, The Indicator, December 22, 1819. Reprinted by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. Included in the Harvard MS. book, where it is headed An Anacreontic, and dated 'January, 1820.' Written by Shelley in a copy of Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book, 1819, and presented to Sophia Stacey, December 29, 1820.]

I
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever^[2]
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single; 5
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and^[3] mingle.
Why not I with thine?—

II
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister^[4]-flower would be forgiven 11
If it disdained its^[5] brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work^[6] worth
If thou kiss not me? 16

1. 26 those 1824; these 1839.
2. Love's Philosophy.—3 mix for ever 1819, Stacey MS.; meet together, Harvard MS.
3. 7 In one spirit meet and Stacey MS.; In one another's being 1819, Harvard MS.
4. 11 No sister 1824, Harvard and Stacey MSS.; No leaf or 1819.
5. 12 disdained its 1824, Harvard and Stacey MSS.; disdained to kiss its 1819.
6. 15 is all this sweet work Stacey MS.; were these examples Harvard MS.; are all these kissings 1819, 1824.