May love like ours assume?), not even then
Shall Custom so corrupt, or the cold forms
Of this desolate world so harden us, 45
As when we think of the dear love that binds
Our souls in soft communion, while we know
Each other’s thoughts and feelings, can we say
Unblushingly a heartless compliment,
Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world, 50
Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve
That knits our love to virtue.  Can those eyes,
Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart
To purify its purity, e’er bend
To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears? 55
Never, thou second Self!  Is confidence
So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt
The mirror even of Truth?  Dark flood of Time,
Roll as it listeth thee; I measure not
By month or moments thy ambiguous course. 60
Another may stand by me on thy brink,,
And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken,
Which pauses at my feet.  The sense of love,
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
Prolong my being; if I wake no more, 65
My life more actual living will contain
Than some gray veteran’s of the world’s cold school,
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed,
Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude, 70
Freedom, Devotedness and Purity! 
That life my Spirit consecrates to you.

***

SONNET.

TO A BALLOON LADEN WITH KNOWLEDGE.

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

Bright ball of flame that through the gloom of even
Silently takest thine aethereal way,
And with surpassing glory dimm’st each ray
Twinkling amid the dark blue depths of Heaven,—­
Unlike the fire thou bearest, soon shalt thou 5
Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom,
Whilst that, unquenchable, is doomed to glow
A watch-light by the patriot’s lonely tomb;
A ray of courage to the oppressed and poor;
A spark, though gleaming on the hovel’s hearth, 10
Which through the tyrant’s gilded domes shall roar;
A beacon in the darkness of the Earth;
A sun which, o’er the renovated scene,
Shall dart like Truth where Falsehood yet has been.

***

SONNET.

ON LAUNCHING SOME BOTTLES FILLED WITH KNOWLEDGE INTO THE BRISTOL CHANNEL.

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