sadness of his later poems:

O world, O life, O time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more--oh, never more!
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more--oh, never more!

In 1822, when only thirty years of age, Shelley was drowned while sailing
in a small boat off the Italian coast. His body was washed ashore several
days later, and was cremated, near Viareggio, by his friends, Byron, Hunt,
and Trelawney. His ashes might, with all reverence, have been given to the
winds that he loved and that were a symbol of his restless spirit; instead,
they found a resting place near the grave of Keats, in the English cemetery
at Rome. One rarely visits the spot now without finding English and
American visitors standing in silence before the significant inscription,
_Cor Cordium_.

WORKS OF SHELLEY. As a lyric poet, Shelley is one of the supreme geniuses
of our literature; and the reader will do well to begin with the poems
which show him at his very best. "The Cloud," "To a Skylark," "Ode to the
West Wind," "To Night,"--poems like these must surely set the reader to
searching among Shelley's miscellaneous works, to find for himself the
things "worthy to be remembered."

In reading Shelley's longer poems one must remember that there are in this
poet two distinct men: one, the wanderer, seeking ideal beauty and forever
unsatisfied; the other, the unbalanced reformer, seeking the overthrow of
present institutions and the establishment of universal happiness.
_Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude_ (1816) is by far the best expression
of Shelley's greater mood. Here we see him wandering restlessly through the
vast silences of nature, in search of a loved dream-maiden who shall
satisfy his love of beauty. Here Shelley is the poet of the moonrise, and
of the tender exquisite fancies that can never be expressed. The charm of
the poem lies in its succession of dreamlike pictures; but it gives
absolutely no impressions of reality. It was written when Shelley, after
his long struggle, had begun to realize that the world was too strong for
him. _Alastor_ is therefore the poet's confession, not simply of failure,
but of undying hope in some better thing that is to come.

_Prometheus Unbound_ (1818-1820), a