To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight, Go sleep like closing flowers at night, And Heaven thy morn will bless." ALL SAINTS' DAY. WHY blow'st thou not, thou wintry wind, Now every leaf is brown and sere, And idly droops, to thee resigned, The fading chaplet of the year? Yet wears the pure aërial sky Her summer veil, half drawn on high, Of silvery haze, and dark and still The shadows sleep on every slanting hill. How quiet shows the woodland scene! Each flower and tree, its duty done, Reposing in decay serene, Like weary men when age is won, Such calm old age as conscience pure And self-commanding hearts ensure, Waiting their summons to the sky, Content to live, but not afraid to die. Sure if our eyes were purged to trace God's unseen armies hovering round, We should behold by angels' grace The four strong winds of Heaven fast bound, Their downward sweep a moment stayed On ocean cove and forest glade, Till the last flower of autumn shed Her funeral odors on her dying bed. So in Thine awful armory, Lord, The lightnings of the judgment-day Pause yet awhile, in mercy stored, Till willing hearts wear quite away Their earthly stains; and spotless shine PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 1792-1822. [PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, eldest son of Timothy Shelley (afterwards Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart.), was born at Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex, August 4, 1792. He was educated at Eton and at University College, Oxford; but was expelled from Oxford in 1811 on account of his authorship of a tract on The Necessity of Atheism. In the same year he married Harriet Westbrook, a girl of sixteen, daughter of a coffee-house keeper, but separated from her in 1814. His intimacy with Mary Godwin, daughter of William Godwin, author of Political Justice, and of Mary Wollstonecraft, led to a marriage with her after his first wife's death in 1816. In 1817 he was deprived by Lord Eldon of the custody of his children by his first marriage, and in 1818 he left England for Italy, in which country he resided, mainly at Naples, Leghorn, and Pisa, till his death by drowning in the Gulf of Spezia, July 8, 1822. Queen Mab, his first work of any note, was privately printed in 1813; Alastor was published in 1816; and Laon and Cythna, published and withdrawn in 1817, was reissued as The Revolt of Islam in 1818. The Cenci and Prometheus Unbound were both published in 1820. Epipsychidion was printed, and Adonais published in 1821, and the list is ended by Hellas published in 1822,- -the year of the poet's untimely death.] IANTHE SLEEPING. How wonderful is Death, Hath then the gloomy Power Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres Seized on her sinless soul; Without a beating heart, those azure Which steal like streams along a field Will Ianthe wake again, And give that faithful bosom joy Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch Light, life, and rapture, from her smile? THE FAIRY AND IANTHE'S STARS! your balmiest influence Elements! your wrath suspend! Let not a breath be seen to stir boon That waits the good and the sincere; Those who have struggled, and with The icy chains of custom, and have The day-stars of their age; -Soul of Awake! arise! Sudden arose Ianthe's Soul; it stood All beautiful in naked purity, The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, Each stain of earthliness Upon the couch the body lay, And every organ yet performed The self-same lineaments, the same Marks of identity were there; Yet, oh how different! One aspires to heaven, Pants for its sempiternal heritage, Of circumstance and passion, struggles on; Fleets through its sad duration rapidly; Then like a useless and worn-out machine, Rots, perishes, and passes. TO THE NIGHT. SWIFTLY walk over the western wave, Out of the misty eastern cave Wrap thy form in a mantle gray When light rode high, and the dew was gone, And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, Thy brother Death came, and cried Death will come when thou art dead, Sleep will come when thou art fled; |