Perish—let there only be[1]
Floating o'er thy hearthless sea,
As the garment of thy sky
Clothes the world immortally, 170
One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tattered pall of time,
Which scarce hides thy visage wan;—
That a tempest-cleaving swan
Of the songs[2] of Albion,175
Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion
That its joy grew his, and sprung 180
From his lips like music flung
O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror:—what though yet
Poesy's unfailing river,
Which thro' Albion winds for ever, 185
Lashing with melodious wave
Many a sacred poet's grave,
Mourn its latest nursling fled?
What though thou with all thy dead
Scarce can for this fame repay190
- ↑ This passage (lines 167 to 205) seems to have been an after-thought. Mr. Frederick Locker possesses a copy of Rosalind and Helen, &c., containing the MS. interpolation sent after the poem had gone to the publisher; and with his kind permission I have followed that in preference to the printed text. The variations, though numerous, are very slight, being confined to matters of pointing and "capitalling." Shelley heads the passage thus:
"After the lines
From thy dust shall nations spring
With more kindly blossoming."Doubtless he quoted from memory, and had no intention of changing your to thy, and new to shall, in the first line of the couplet.
- ↑ I cannot but think this word should be sons, not songs. It has always, as far as I am aware, been printed songs; and it certainly is songs in Mr. Locker's MS. This, however, is somewhat hastily written; and Shelley might easily have made such a clerical mistake as I suspect; but in the absence of any other MS. the text must of course remain as it is,—the expression a swan of the songs of Albion being conceivable, and indeed being considered, by some critics with whom I have discussed this point, more probable than a swan of the sons of Albion.
