Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/390

360 This quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin, In colour like the wake of light that stains The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains The inmost shower of its white fire—the breeze Is still—blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas. And in this bowl of quicksilver—for I Yield to the impulse of an infancy Outlasting manhood—I have made to float A rude idealism of a paper boat:— A hollow screw with cogs—Henry will know The thing I mean and laugh at me,—if so He fears not I should do more mischief.—Next Lie bills and calculations much perplexed, With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint Traced over them in Hue and yellow paint. Then comes a range of mathematical Instruments, for plans nautical and statical; A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass With ink in it;—a china cup that was What it will never be again, I think,— A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink The liquor doctors rail at—and which I Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, And cry out,—'Heads or tails?' where'er we be. Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks , A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books, Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms. To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray Of figures,—disentangle them who may. Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie, And some odd volumes of old chemistry. Near those a most inexplicable thing, With lead in the middle—I'm conjecturing How to make Henry understand; but no— I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo, This secret in the pregnant womb of time, Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.

And here like some weird Archimage sit I, Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery, The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind The gentle spirit of our meek reviews Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,