, now imprisoned in the convent of--," whose own words form
the motto to the poem, and a key to the sympathy which the writer felt
for her:--"The loving soul launches itself out of the created, and
creates in the infinite a world all its own, far different from this
dark and fearful abysm." The passage begins,--
"There was a being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth's
dawn."
And this being was the worshipped object of Shelley's adoring
aspirations in extreme youth; but it passed by him as a vision,
though--
"And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,
I would have followed, though the grave between
Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:
When a voice said,--'O thou of hearts the weakest,
The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.'
Then I,--'Where?' The world's echo answered, 'Where'!"
She ever remained the veiled divinity of thoughts that worshipped her,
while he went forth into the world with hope and fear,--
"Into the wintry forest of our life;
And struggling through its error with vain strife,
And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,
And half bewildered by new forms, I passed
Seeking among those untaught foresters
If I could find one form resembling hers
In which she might have masked herself from me.
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