Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/194

164 That which from thee they should implore:—the weak Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts The strong have broken—yet where shall any seek A garment whom thou clothest not? the darts Of the keen winter storm, barbed with frost, Which, from the everlasting snow that parts The Alps from Heaven, pierce some traveller lost In the wide waved interminable snow Ungarmented, , often when the eyes are cold and dry, And the lips calm, the Spirit weeps within Tears bitterer than the blood of agony Trembling in drops on the discoloured skin Of those who love their kind and therefore perish In ghastly torture—a sweet medicine Of peace and sleep are tears, and quietly Them soothe from whose uplifted eyes they fall But hair was brown, her spherèd eyes were brown, And in their dark and liquid moisture swam, Like the dim orb of the eclipsèd moon; Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came The light from them, as when tears of delight Double the western planet's serene flame.

[Begun at Marlow, 1817 (summer); already in the press, March, 1818; finished at the Baths of Lucca, August, 1818; published with other poems, as the title-piece of a slender volume, by C. & J. Ollier, London, 1819 (spring). See Bibliographical List. Sources of the text are (1) editio princeps, 1819; (2) Poetical Works, ed. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, edd. 1st and 2nd. A fragment of the text is amongst the Boscombe MSS. The poem is reprinted here from the editio princeps; verbal alterations are recorded in the footnotes, punctual in the Editor's Notes at the end of this volume.]

The story of Rosalind and Helen is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in the highest style poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing the imagination, it awakens a certain ideal melancholy favourable to the reception of more