...

’How slow and painfully you seem to walk, 60
Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk.’ 
’And well it may,
Fiordispina, dearest—­well-a-day! 
You are hastening to a marriage-bed;
I to the grave!’—­’And if my love were dead, 65
Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie
Beside him in my shroud as willingly
As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought.’ 
’Fie, child!  Let that unseasonable thought
Not be remembered till it snows in June; 70
Such fancies are a music out of tune
With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night. 
What! would you take all beauty and delight
Back to the Paradise from which you sprung,
And leave to grosser mortals?—­ 75
And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet
And subtle mystery by which spirits meet? 
Who knows whether the loving game is played,
When, once of mortal [vesture] disarrayed,
The naked soul goes wandering here and there 80
Through the wide deserts of Elysian air? 
The violet dies not till it’—­

NOTES:  11 to 1824; two editions 1839. 20 e’er 1862; ever editions 1824, 1839. 25 sea edition 1862; sense editions 1824, 1839.

***

TIME LONG PAST.

[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.  This is one of three poems (cf.  “Love’s Philosophy” and “Good-Night”) transcribed by Shelley in a copy of Leigh Hunt’s “Literary Pocket-Book” for 1819 presented by him to Miss Sophia Stacey, December 29, 1820.]

1. 
Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
Is Time long past. 
A tone which is now forever fled,
A hope which is now forever past,
A love so sweet it could not last, 5
Was Time long past.

2. 
There were sweet dreams in the night
Of Time long past: 
And, was it sadness or delight,
Each day a shadow onward cast 10
Which made us wish it yet might last—­
That Time long past.

3. 
There is regret, almost remorse,
For Time long past. 
’Tis like a child’s beloved corse 15
A father watches, till at last
Beauty is like remembrance, cast
From Time long past.

***

FRAGMENT:  THE DESERTS OF DIM SLEEP.

[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]

I went into the deserts of dim sleep—­
That world which, like an unknown wilderness,
Bounds this with its recesses wide and deep—­

***

FRAGMENT:  ‘THE VIEWLESS AND INVISIBLE CONSEQUENCE’.