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

xv

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^[1] work to bear to many a saint165
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.

xvi

And odours in a kind of aviary

Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,170
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,175
To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.

xvii

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,180
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^[2] of the dead.

xviii

Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,185

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 rage190
Of gold and blood—till men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above;

xix

And how all things that seem untameable.

Not to be checked and not to be confined,
Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill;195
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.200

1. was its transcript, B; is its ed. 1824.
2. envied so all MSS. and edd.; envious cj. James Thomson ('B. V.').