Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracks her there-how hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.-Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-dæmon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire, envelope once this silent snow?
None can reply-all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be
But for such faith with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

IV.

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell
Within the dædal earth; lightning, and rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower;-the bound
With which from that detested trance they leap;

The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him and all that his may be;

All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die; revolve, subside and swell.

Power dwells apart in its tranquillity

Remote, serene, and inaccessible:

And this, the naked countenance of earth,

On which I gaze, even these primæval mountains

Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep

Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,

Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,

A city of death, distinct with many a tower
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin

Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky

Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing

Its destined path, or in the mangled soil

Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown

The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race

Of man, flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves
Shine in the rushing torrent's restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

V.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high :-the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,

And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,

In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,

Or the star-beams dart through them :-Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy?

July 23, 1816.

:

The imprint of the History of a Six Weeks' Tour is as follows:

Reynell, Printer, 45, Broad-street,

Golden-square.

JOURNAL AT GENEVA

(INCLUDING GHOST STORIES)

AND ON RETURN TO ENGLAND, 1816.

[With the History of a Six Weeks' Tour &c. ends the series of prose volumes and pamphlets issued by Shelley during his life. The remainder is posthumous, and to a great extent fragmentary. The following Journal is taken out of its chronological position among the posthumous prose writings because it connects itself with the letters forming the latter portion of the Six Weeks' Tour volume, having been written by Shelley during the continental trip of 1816. Mrs. Shelley published it in the second volume of the Essays, Letters, &c. (1840), from which it is now simply reprinted.-H. B. F ]

JOURNAL.

Geneva, Sunday, 18th August, 1816.

SEE Apollo's Sexton,' who tells us many mysteries of his trade. We talk of Ghosts. Neither Lord Byron nor M. G. L. seem to believe in them; and they both agree, in the very face of reason, that none could believe in ghosts without believing in God. I do not think that all the persons who profess to discredit these visitations, really discredit them; or, if they do in the daylight, are not admonished by the approach of loneliness and midnight, to think more respectfully of the world of shadows.

Lewis recited a poem, which he had composed at the

Matthew Gregory Lewis, M.P. for Hindon, author of The Monk, The Castle Spectre, Tales of Terror, &c., thus addressed in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers:

Oh! wonder-working Lewis! monk, or

asked him earnestly,-'Why did you call me Apollo's Sexton.' The noble Poet found it difficult to reply to this categorical species of reproof." Some of these stories had appeared in print when Mrs. Shelley published the Journal in 1840; but, "as a ghost story depends entirely on the mode in which it is told," these were justly thought worth preservation as having been "written by Shelley, fresh from their relation by Lewis."