Now while the dark about our loves is strewn,
Light of my dark, blood of my heart, O come!
And night will catch her breath up, and be dumb.
Leave thy father, leave thy mother
And thy brother;
Leave the black tents of thy tribe apart!
Am I not thy father and thy brother,
And thy mother?
And thou--what needest with thy tribe's black tents
Who hast the red pavilion of my heart?
* The cloud-shapes often observed by travellers in the East.
_BUONA NOTTE_
_Jane Williams, in her last letter to Shelley, wrote: "Why do you
talk of never enjoying moments like the past? Are you going to join
your friend Plato, or do you expect I shall do so soon? Buona
Notte." This letter was dated July 6th, and Shelley was drowned on
the 8th. The following is his imagined reply from, another world_:--
Ariel to Miranda:--hear
This good-night the sea-winds bear;
And let thine unacquainted ear
Take grief for their interpreter.
Good-night; I have risen so high
Into slumber's rarity,
Not a dream can beat its feather
Through the unsustaining ether.
Let the sea-winds make avouch
How thunder summoned me to couch,
Tempest curtained me about
And turned the sun with his own hand out:
And though I toss upon my bed
My dream is not disquieted;
Nay, deep I sleep upon the deep,
And my eyes are wet, but I do not weep;
And I fell to sleep so suddenly
That my lips are moist yet--could'st thou see
With the good-night draught I have drunk to thee.
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