Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/229

Rh Her mien had been imperious, but she now 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 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: 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.' I urged and questioned still, she told me how All happened— but the cold world shall not know.

'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  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. 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 Is the unheeded clanking of my chains, The which I make, and call it melody.'

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