“Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries 'Away!'
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood;
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy
stay:
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.”
Back to the solitude of his now empty home, that is!
“Away! away! to thy sad and silent home;
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth.”
........
But he will have rest in the grave by-and-by. Until that time comes,
the charms of Bracknell will remain in his memory, along with Mrs.
Boinville's voice and Cornelia Turner's smile:
“Thou in the grave shalt rest--yet, till the phantoms flee
Which that house and hearth and garden made dear to thee ere while,
Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are not free
From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.”
We cannot wonder that Harriet could not stand it. Any of us would have
left. We would not even stay with a cat that was in this condition. Even
the Boinvilles could not endure it; and so, as we have seen, they gave
this one notice.
“Early in May, Shelley was in London. He did not yet despair
of reconciliation with Harriet, nor had he ceased to love her.”
Shelley's poems are a good deal of trouble to his biographer. They are
constantly inserted as “evidence,” and they make much confusion. As
soon as one of them has proved one thing, another one follows and proves
quite a different thing. The poem just quoted shows that he was in love
with Cornelia, but a month later he is in love with Harriet again, and
there is a poem to prove it.
“In this piteous appeal Shelley declares that he has now no
grief but one--the grief of having known and lost his wife's
love.”