4. 
All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot—­
Love itself would, did they not. 15

***

LIBERTY.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]

1. 
The fiery mountains answer each other;
Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;
The tempestuous oceans awake one another,
And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter’s throne,
When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. 5

2. 
From a single cloud the lightening flashes,
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,
An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound
Is bellowing underground. 10

3. 
But keener thy gaze than the lightening’s glare,
And swifter thy step than the earthquake’s tramp;
Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare
Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun’s bright lamp
To thine is a fen-fire damp. 15

4. 
From billow and mountain and exhalation
The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;
From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,
From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,—­
And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night 20
In the van of the morning light.

NOTE: 
4 zone editions 1824, 1839; throne later editions.

***

SUMMER AND WINTER.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley in “The Keepsake”, 1829.  Mr. C.W.  Frederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in Mrs. Shelley’s handwriting.]

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon—­and the stainless sky 5
Opens beyond them like eternity. 
All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,
The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees. 10

It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when, 15
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold: 
Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!

NOTE: 
11 birds die 1839; birds do die 1829.

***

THE TOWER OF FAMINE.