she had "cultivated her mind beyond what I
have ever met in Italian women;" and a rhapsody composed by her upon the
subject of Uranian Love--Il Vero Amore--justifies the belief that she
possessed an intellect of more than ordinary elevation. He took Mrs.
Shelley to see her, and both did all they could to make her
convent-prison less irksome, by frequent visits, by letters, and by
presents of flowers and books. It was not long before Shelley's sympathy
for this unfortunate lady took the form of love, which, however
spiritual and Platonic, was not the less passionate. The result was the
composition of "Epipsychidion," the most unintelligible of all his poems
to those who have not assimilated the spirit of Plato's "Symposium" and
Dante's "Vita Nuova". In it he apostrophizes Emilia Viviani as the
incarnation of ideal beauty, the universal loveliness made visible in
mortal flesh:--

Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!

He tells her that he loves her, and describes the troubles and
deceptions of his earlier manhood, under allegories veiled in delicate
obscurity. The Pandemic and the Uranian Aphrodite have striven for his
soul; for though in youth he dedicated himself to the service of ideal
beauty, and seemed to find it under many earthly shapes, yet has he ever
been deluded. At last Emily appears, and in her he recognizes the truth
of the vision veiled from him so many years. She and Mary shall
henceforth, like sun and moon, rule the world of love within him. Then
he calls on her to fly. They three will escape and live together, far
away from men, in an Aegean island. The description of this visionary
isle, and of the life to be led there by the fugitives from a dull and
undiscerning world, is the most beautiful that has been written this
century in the rhymed heroic metre.

It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise;
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and spirited, innocent and bold.
The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,
With ever-changing sound and light and foam
Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wan