Page:The complete poetical works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, including materials never before printed in any edition of the poems.djvu/400

370 And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint, Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis. Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint With the soft burthen of intensest bliss. It was its work to bear to many a saint Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is. Even Love's:—and others white, green, gray, and black, And of all shapes—and each was at her beck.

And odours in a kind of aviary Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, Clipped in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept; As bats at the wired window of a dairy. They beat their vans; and each was an adept, When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds, To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.

And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep, And change eternal death into a night Of glorious dreams-or if eyes needs must weep, Could make their tears all wonder and delight, She in her crystal vials did closely keep: If men could drink of those clear vials, 'tis said The living were not envied of the dead.

Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device, The works of some Saturnian Archimage, Which taught the expiations at whose price Men from the Gods might win that happy age Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice; And which might quench the Earth-consuming rage Of gold and blood—till men should live and move Harmonious as the sacred stars above;

And how all things that seem untameable. Not to be checked and not to be confined, Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill; Time, earth, and fire—the ocean and the wind, And all their shapes—and man's imperial will; And other scrolls whose writings did unbind The inmost lore of Love—let the profane Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.