I hated thee, fallen tyrant!  I did groan
To think that a most unambitious slave,
Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave
Of Liberty.  Thou mightst have built thy throne
Where it had stood even now:  thou didst prefer 5
A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept
In fragments towards Oblivion.  Massacre,
For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,
Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,
And stifled thee, their minister.  I know 10
Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
Than Force or Fraud:  old Custom, legal Crime,
And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.

***

LINES.

[Published in Hunt’s “Literary Pocket-Book”, 1823, where it is headed “November, 1815”.  Reprinted in the “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.  See Editor’s Note.]

1. 
The cold earth slept below,
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around, with a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of night like death did flow 5
Beneath the sinking moon.

2. 
The wintry hedge was black,
The green grass was not seen,
The birds did rest on the bare thorn’s breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track, 10
Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.

3. 
Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon’s dying light;
As a fen-fire’s beam on a sluggish stream 15
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

4. 
The moon made thy lips pale, beloved—­
The wind made thy bosom chill—­ 20
The night did shed on thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

NOTE: 
17 raven 1823; tangled 1824.

***

NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

The remainder of Shelley’s Poems will be arranged in the order in which they were written.  Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside, and I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of others, and I never saw them till now.  The subjects of the poems are often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess, by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant.  In the present arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed together at the end.