2. 
I could stand
Upon thy shores, O Erin, and could count
The billows that, in their unceasing swell,
Dash on thy beach, and every wave might seem
An instrument in Time the giant’s grasp, 15
To burst the barriers of Eternity. 
Proceed, thou giant, conquering and to conquer;
March on thy lonely way!  The nations fall
Beneath thy noiseless footstep; pyramids
That for millenniums have defied the blast, 20
And laughed at lightnings, thou dost crush to nought. 
Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,
Is but the fungus of a winter day
That thy light footstep presses into dust. 
Thou art a conqueror, Time; all things give way 25
Before thee but the ‘fixed and virtuous will’;
The sacred sympathy of soul which was
When thou wert not, which shall be when thou perishest.

...

***

ON ROBERT EMMET’S GRAVE.

[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated 1812.]

...

6. 
No trump tells thy virtues—­the grave where they rest
With thy dust shall remain unpolluted by fame,
Till thy foes, by the world and by fortune caressed,
Shall pass like a mist from the light of thy name.

7. 
When the storm-cloud that lowers o’er the day-beam is gone, 5
Unchanged, unextinguished its life-spring will shine;
When Erin has ceased with their memory to groan,
She will smile through the tears of revival on thine.

***

THE RETROSPECT:  CWM ELAN, 1812.

[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887.]

A scene, which ’wildered fancy viewed
In the soul’s coldest solitude,
With that same scene when peaceful love
Flings rapture’s colour o’er the grove,
When mountain, meadow, wood and stream 5
With unalloying glory gleam,
And to the spirit’s ear and eye
Are unison and harmony. 
The moonlight was my dearer day;
Then would I wander far away, 10
And, lingering on the wild brook’s shore
To hear its unremitting roar,
Would lose in the ideal flow
All sense of overwhelming woe;
Or at the noiseless noon of night 15
Would climb some heathy mountain’s height,
And listen to the mystic sound
That stole in fitful gasps around. 
I joyed to see the streaks of day
Above the purple peaks decay, 20
And watch the latest line of light
Just mingling with the shades of night;
For day with me was time of woe
When even tears refused to flow;
Then would I stretch my languid frame