At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
    He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
    Of putrid marshes.  A strong impulse urged
    His steps to the sea-shore.  A swan was there,
    Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. 
    It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings
    Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course
    High over the immeasurable main. 
    His eyes pursued its flight:—­“Thou hast a home,
    Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home,
    Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck
    With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes
    Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. 
    And what am I that I should linger here,
    With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,
    Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned
    To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers
    In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
    That echoes not my thoughts?” A gloomy smile
    Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. 
    For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
    Its precious charge, and silent Death exposed,
    Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure,
    With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

William, the eldest son of Shelley and Mary Godwin, was born on the 24th of January, 1816.  In the spring of that year they went together, accompanied by Miss Clairmont, for a second time to Switzerland.  They reached Geneva on the 17th of May and were soon after joined by Lord Byron and his travelling physician, Dr. Polidori.  Shelley had not yet made Byron’s acquaintance, though he had sent him a copy of “Queen Mab”, with a letter, which miscarried in the post.  They were now thrown into daily intercourse, occupying the villas Diodati and Mount Alegre, at no great distance from each other, passing their days upon the lake in a boat which they purchased, and spending the nights in conversation.  Miss Clairmont had known Byron in London, and their acquaintance now ripened into an intimacy, the fruit of which was the child Allegra.  This fact has to be mentioned by Shelley’s biographer, because Allegra afterwards became an inmate of his home; and though he and Mary were ignorant of what was passing at Geneva, they did not withdraw their sympathy from the mother of Lord Byron’s daughter.  The lives of Byron and Shelley during the next six years were destined to be curiously blent.  Both were to seek in Italy an exile-home; while their friendship was to become one of the most interesting facts of English literary history.  The influence of Byron upon Shelley, as he more than once acknowledged, and as his wife plainly perceived, was, to a great extent, depressing.  For Byron’s genius and its fruits in poetry he entertained the highest possible opinion.  He could not help comparing his own achievement and his fame with Byron’s; and the result was that in the presence of one whom he erroneously believed