deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven
That echoes not my thoughts?" A gloomy smile
Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.
For Sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly
Its precious charge, and silent Death exposed,
Faithless perhaps as Sleep, a shadowy lure,
With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

William, the eldest son of Shelley and Mary Godwin, was born on the 24th
of January, 1816. In the spring of that year they went together,
accompanied by Miss Clairmont, for a second time to Switzerland. They
reached Geneva on the 17th of May and were soon after joined by Lord
Byron and his travelling physician, Dr. Polidori. Shelley had not yet
made Byron's acquaintance, though he had sent him a copy of "Queen Mab",
with a letter, which miscarried in the post. They were now thrown into
daily intercourse, occupying the villas Diodati and Mount Alegre, at no
great distance from each other, passing their days upon the lake in a
boat which they purchased, and spending the nights in conversation. Miss
Clairmont had known Byron in London, and their acquaintance now ripened
into an intimacy, the fruit of which was the child Allegra. This fact
has to be mentioned by Shelley's biographer, because Allegra afterwards
became an inmate of his home; and though he and Mary were ignorant of
what was passing at Geneva, they did not withdraw their sympathy from
the mother of Lord Byron's daughter. The lives of Byron and Shelley
during the next six years were destined to be curiously blent. Both were
to seek in Italy an exile-home; while their friendship was to become one
of the most interesting facts of English literary history. The influence
of Byron upon Shelley, as he more than once acknowledged, and as his
wife plainly perceived, was, to a great extent, depressing. For Byron's
genius and its fruits in poetry he entertained the highest possible
opinion. He could not help comparing his own achievement and his fame
with Byron's; and the result was that in the presence of one whom he
erroneously believed to be the greater poet, he became inactive.
Shelley, on the contrary, stimulated Byron's productive faculty to
nobler efforts, raised his moral tone, and infused into his less subtle
intellect something of his own philosophical depth and earnestness. Much
as he enjoyed Byron's society and admired his writing, Shelley was not
blind to the imperfections of his nature. The sketch which he has left
us o