Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/24

Rh shallow way and with not much force, but now it was become deep and strong, which entitles his wife to a broad credit mark, one may admit. He ad dresses a long and loving poem to her, in which both passion and worship appear:

O thou Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path Which this lone spirit travelled,

. . . wilt thou not turn Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me, Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven And Heaven is Earth?

Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve, But ours shall not be mortal.

Shelley also wrote a sonnet to her in August of this same year in celebration of her birthday:

Ever as now with Love and Virtue s glow May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn, Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o erflow Which force from mine such quick and warm return.

Was the girl of seventeen glad and proud and happy? We may conjecture that she was.

That was the year 1812. Another year passed— still happily, still successfully a child was born in June, 1813, and in September, three months later, Shelley addresses a poem to this child, lanthe, in which he points out just when the little creature is most particularly dear to him: