Page:Valperga (1823) Shelley Vol 2.djvu/199

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Ch. VIII.]
VALPERGA.
193

and, although disappointment, and the bitterness of destroyed hope, robbed her of every sensation of enjoyment, it was no longer that mad despair, that clinging to the very sword that cut her, which before had tainted her cheek with the hues of death. Her old feelings of duty, benevolence, and friendship returned; all was not now, as before, referred to love alone; the trees, the streams, the mountains, and the stars, no longer told one never-varying tale of disappointed passion: before, they had oppressed her heart by reminding her, through every change and every form, of what she had once seen in joy; and they lay as so heavy and sad a burthen on her soul, that she would exclaim as a modern poet has since done:

Thou, thrush, that singest loud, and loud, and free.
Into yon row of willows flit,
Upon that alder sit,
Or sing another song, or choose another tree!
Roll back, sweet rill, back to thy mountain bounds,
And there for ever be thy waters chained!
For thou dost haunt the air with sounds
That cannot be sustained.
****Be any thing, sweet rill, but that which thou art now

VOL. II.
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