***

FRAGMENT OF A SONNET.

TO HARRIET.

[Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated August 1, 1812.]

Ever as now with Love and Virtue’s glow
May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,
Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o’erflow
Which force from mine such quick and warm return.

***

TO HARRIET.

[Published, 5-13, by Forman, “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1876; 58-69, by Shelley, “Notes to Queen Mab”, 1813; and entire (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Dowden, “Life of Shelley”, 1887; dated 1812.]

It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven
More perfectly will give those nameless joys
Which throb within the pulses of the blood
And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth
Infuses in the heaven-born soul.  O thou 5
Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path
Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,
Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits
Which mark the bounds of Time and of the space
When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn 10
Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me,
Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven,
And Heaven is Earth?—­will not thy glowing cheek,
Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine,
And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame 15
Of my corporeal nature, through the soul
Now knit with these fine fibres?  I would give
The longest and the happiest day that fate
Has marked on my existence but to feel
ONE soul-reviving kiss...O thou most dear, 20
’Tis an assurance that this Earth is Heaven,
And Heaven the flower of that untainted seed
Which springeth here beneath such love as ours. 
Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,
But ours shall not be mortal!  The cold hand 25
Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds
Half frozen now; the frigid intercourse
Of common souls lives but a summer’s day;
It dies, where it arose, upon this earth. 
But ours! oh, ’tis the stretch of Fancy’s hope 30
To portray its continuance as now,
Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when age
Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given
A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow
Which blazing on devotion’s pinnacle 35
Makes virtuous passion supersede the power
Of reason; nor when life’s aestival sun
To deeper manhood shall have ripened me;
Nor when some years have added judgement’s store
To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire 40
Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then
Shall holy friendship (for what other name