Illumining, with sound that never fails
Accompany the noonday nightingales;
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain,
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.

Shelley's landscapes are seldom more terrestrial than this enchanted island. Shelley, unlike Wordsworth, scarcely ever writes "with his eye on the object." The Lines written among the Euganean Hills are his closest approach to direct study of landscape.

Ay, many flowering islands lie
In the waters of wide Agony:
To such a one this morn was led,
My bark by soft winds piloted:
'Mid the mountains Euganean
I stood listening to the pæan,
With which the legioned rooks did hail
The sun's uprise majestical;

Gathering round with wings all hoar,
Through the dewy mist they soar

Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,
Flecked with fire and azure, lie

In the unfathomable sky,

So their plumes of purple grain,
Starred with drops of golden rain,
Gleam above the sunlight woods,
As in silent multitudes

On the morning's fitful gale
Thro the broken mist they sail,

V

And the vapours cloven and gleaming
Follow down the dark steep streaming,
Till all is bright, and clear, and still,
Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread like a green sea
The waveless plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath day's azure eyes
Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite's destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
On the level quivering line

Of the waters crystalline ;

And before that chasm of light,

As within a furnace bright,

Column, tower, and dome, and spire,

Shine like obelisks of fire,

Pointing with inconstant motion

From the altar of dark ocean

To the sapphire-tinted skies;

As the flames of sacrifice

From the marble shrines did rise,
As to pierce the dome of gold
Where Apollo spoke of old.

Shelley's last home, if this wandering spirit could be said to have a home, was the Villa Magni on the bay of Lerici; behind lie the Carrara hills. "Went ashore to see some fishermen drag their nets," writes Williams, when he and Shelley visited the place in search of a house. I, too, remember seeing the fishers drag their

BISHAM ABBEY

Bisham Abbey, near Great Marlow, where Shelley lived when he wrote the Revolt of Islam, in his boat Mrs. Shelley states, while it floated under the beech groves of Bisham.