than hers was to be preoccupied. If the reader desires a portrait
of Mary, he has one in the well-known antique bust sometimes called
"Isis" and sometimes "Clytie": a woman's head and shoulders rising
from a lotus-flower. It is most probably the portrait of a Roman lady,
is in some degree more elongated and "classic" than Mary; but, on the
other hand, it falls short of her, for it gives no idea of her
tall and intellectual forehead, nor has it any trace of the bright,
animated, and sweet expression that so often lighted up her face.

Attention has often been concentrated on the passage in
"Epipsychidion" which appears to relate Shelley's experiences from
earliest youth until he met with the noble and unfortunate "Lady
Emilia V., now imprisoned in the convent of--," whose own words form
the motto to the poem, and a key to the sympathy which the writer felt
for her:--"The loving soul launches itself out of the created, and
creates in the infinite a world all its own, far different from this
dark and fearful abysm." The passage begins,--

"There was a being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth's
dawn."

And this being was the worshipped object of Shelley's adoring
aspirations in extreme youth; but it passed by him as a vision,
though--

"And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,
I would have followed, though the grave between
Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:
When a voice said,--'O thou of hearts the weakest,
The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.'
Then I,--'Where?' The world's echo answered, 'Where'!"

She ever remained the veiled divinity of thoughts that worshipped her,
while he went forth into the world with hope and fear,--

"Into the wintry forest of our life;
And struggling through its error with vain strife,
And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,
And half bewildered by new forms, I passed
Seeking among those untaught foresters
If I could find one form resembling hers
In which she might have masked herself from me."

The passage grows more and more intelligible. Hitherto he has been
simply a dreamy seeker; but now, at last, he thinks that Fate has
answered his questioning exclamation, "Where?"

"There, one whose voice was venomed melody
Sat by a well, under the nightshade bowers;
The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers;
Her touch was as electric poison; fla