there is a painting by his son. It depicts an eagle
struggling with a serpent, and is illustrative of a superb passage
in Shelley's "Revolt of Islam". What memories, what deep thoughts,
it must have suggested; how significant, to us, the circumstance!
But weak as the poet was, he yet did not see the shadow
which had begun to chill the hearts of the watchers.
Shortly before the great bell of San Marco struck ten,
he turned and asked if any news had come concerning "Asolando",
published that day. His son read him a telegram from the publishers,
telling how great the demand was and how favourable were the advance-articles
in the leading papers. The dying poet smiled and muttered, "How gratifying!"
When the last toll of St. Mark's had left a deeper stillness than before,
those by the bedside saw a yet profounder silence on the face of him
whom they loved.

--------

It is needless to dwell upon the grief everywhere felt and expressed for
the irreparable loss. The magnificent closing lines of Shelley's "Alastor"
must have occurred to many a mourner; for gone, indeed,
was "a surpassing Spirit". The superb pomp of the Venetian funeral,
the solemn grandeur of the interment in Westminster Abbey, do not seem
worth recording: so insignificant are all these accidents of death made
by the supreme fact itself. Yet it is fitting to know that Venice
has never in modern times afforded a more impressive sight, than those
craped processional gondolas following the high flower-strewn funeral-barge
through the thronged waterways and out across the lagoon
to the desolate Isle of the Dead: that London has rarely seen
aught more solemn than the fog-dusked Cathedral spaces,
echoing at first with the slow tramp of the pall-bearers,