Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/56

 MARK TWAIN

were apart again, and the former was back in his odorous paradise. This time it is the wife who does the deserting. She finds Cornelia too strong for her, probably. At any rate, she goes away with her baby and sister, and we have a playful fling at her from good Mrs. Boinville, the &quot;mysterious spinner Maimuna&quot;; she whose &quot;face was as a damsel s face, and yet her hair was gray&quot;; she of whom the biog rapher has said, &quot;Shelley was indeed caught in an almost invisible thread spun around him, but uncon sciously, by this subtle and benignant enchantress.&quot; The subtle and benignant enchantress writes to Hogg, April 18: &quot;Shelley is again a widower; his beauteous half went to town on Thursday.&quot;

Then Shelley writes a poem a chant of grief over the hard fate which obliges him now to leave his paradise and take up with his wife again. It seems to intimate that the paradise is cooling toward him ; that he is warned off by acclamation; that he must not even venture to tempt with one last tear his friend Cornelia s ungentle mood, for her eye is glazed and cold and dares not entreat her lover to stay:

Exhibit E

Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries &quot; Away ! &quot; Tempt not with one last tear thy friend s ungentle mood;

Thy lover s eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay: Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Back to the solitude of his now empty home,

that is!

Away! away! to thy sad and silent home; Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth.

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