No More Learning

And Rosalind, for when the living stem
Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall,
Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe
The pale survivors followed her remains _1295
Beyond the region of dissolving rains,
Up the cold mountain she was wont to call
Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice
They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,
Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun, _1300
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,
The last, when it had sunk; and thro' the night
The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round
Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home,
Whose sad inhabitants each year would come, _1305
With willing steps climbing that rugged height,
And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound
With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's despite,
Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light:
Such flowers, as in the wintry memory bloom _1310
Of one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb.

Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,
Whose sufferings too were less, Death slowlier led
Into the peace of his dominion cold:
She died among her kindred, being old. _1315
And know, that if love die not in the dead
As in the living, none of mortal kind
Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind.


NOTES:
_63 from there]from thee edition 1819.
_366 fell]ran edition 1819.
_405-_408 See Editor's Note on this passage.
_551 Where]When edition 1819.
_572 Ay, overflowing]Aye overflowing edition 1819.
_612 dear]clear cj. Bradley.
_711 gore editions 1819, 1839. See Editor's Note.
_932 Where]When edition 1819.
_1093-_1096 See Editor's Note.
_1168-_1171] See Editor's Note.
_1209 rescue]rescued edition 1819. See Editor's Note.


NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY.

"Rosalind and Helen" was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside--till I
found it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care
for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind,
and develop some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human
life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more
delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned Love but
he shed a grace borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other
poet has bestowed on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of
life, which inasmuch as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves
and others, he promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable
truth. In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and
pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or
insensibility, or mistake. By reverting in his mind to this first
principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could
disclose the secrets of all hearts, and his delineations of passion
and emotion touch the finest chords of our nature.

"Rosalind and Helen" was finished during the summer of 1818, while we
were at the Baths of Lucca.

***


JULIAN AND MADDALO.

A CONVERSATION.

[Composed at Este after Shelley's first visit to Venice, 1818
(Autumn); first published in the "Posthumous Poems", London, 1824
(edition Mrs. Shelley).