I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream, 125

It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that lady fair, 130
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away: 
’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change:  their might 135
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.

NOTES:  19 lovely Harvard manuscript, 1839; lively 1820. 23 of the morning 1820, 1839; of morning Harvard manuscript. 26 snow Harvard manuscript, 1839; now 1820. 28 And lilies were drooping, white and wan Harvard manuscript. 32 Leaf by leaf, day after day Harvard manuscript;
    Leaf after leaf, day after day 1820;
    Leaf after leaf, day by day 1839.
63 mist]mists Harvard manuscript. 96 and sudden flight]and their sudden flight the Harvard manuscript. 98 And under]Under Harvard manuscript. 114 Whether]And if Harvard manuscript. 118 Whether]Or if Harvard manuscript.

***

CANCELLED PASSAGE.

[This stanza followed 3, 62-65 in the editio princeps, 1820, but was omitted by Mrs. Shelley from all editions from 1839 onwards.  It is cancelled in the Harvard manuscript.]

Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake,
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake,
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high,
Infecting the winds that wander by.

***

A VISION OF THE SEA.

[Composed at Pisa early in 1820, and published with “Prometheus Unbound” in the same year.  A transcript in Mrs. Shelley’s handwriting is included in the Harvard manuscript book, where it is dated ’April, 1820.’]

’Tis the terror of tempest.  The rags of the sail
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale: 
From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,
And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven,
She sees the black trunks of the waterspouts spin 5
And bend, as if Heaven was ruining in,
Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass
As if ocean had sunk from beneath them:  they pass
To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,
And the waves and the thunders, made silent around, 10
Leave the wind to its echo.  The vessel, now tossed
Through the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost
In the skirts of the thunder-cloud:  now down the sweep