And thro' the crowd around him there,
And thro' the dense and murky air,
And the thronged streets, he did espy
What poets know and prophesy;[1]
And said, with voice that made them shiver890
And clung like music in my brain,
And which the mute walls spoke again
Prolonging it with deepened strain:
"Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith;895
They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death:
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells,
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,900
Like wrecks in the surge of eternity."[2]
I dwelt beside the prison gate,
And the strange crowd that out and in
Passed, some, no doubt, with mine own fate,
Might have fretted me with its ceaseless din,905
But the fever of care was louder within.
Soon, but too late, in penitence
Or fear, his foes released him thence:
I saw his thin and languid form,
As leaning on the jailor's arm,910
Whose hardened eyes grew moist the while,
To meet his mute and faded smile,
And hear his words of kind farewell,
He tottered forth from his damp cell.
- ↑ In Shelley’s edition prophecy.
- ↑ This stanza occurs with some slight variations in the poem to William Shelley, written when Shelley feared the Lord Chancellor might seek to deprive him of that child also, after having taken away Charles and Ianthe. The variations are will for shall in line 894, evil for bloody in line 895, raging for mighty in line 896, depth for depths in line 898; and line 899 has no commas in it in that version. In Shelley's edition there is a comma after Fear not, which Mrs. Shelley rightly omits both from Rosalind and Helen and from the poem to William.
