aieith - pee te ekg rire t prayers ey ebere! yen dhe bibse phe leas donk baw edie Tah. Gehenge nat gatt st ie tetatae mest Utena LNA il i it ities e gt iq NE ; Paaerleipiete lesley WH. seh e ye ponies THHE nytt ti Titty Teed het Ry pansy 2 Bye heer het ite yeh Wish bey he iE bet Hiiepii ty Higgeat ate sas pope abe ke Fiseshshtbaeresedech HELE Tipish Zyphabch Tats Tht t4 2 vith sR hale ‘ornell University Library Complete poetical works. Che Cambringe Enition of the Poets SHELLEY EDITED BY GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY The Cambridge Poets BROWNING ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING BURNS BYRON CHAUCER DRYDEN ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS HOLMES KEATS LONGFELLOW AMY LOWELL JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL MILTON POPE SCOTT SHAKESPEARE SHELLEY SPENSER TENNYSON THOREAU WHITTIER WORDSWORTH edited by Horace E. Scudder Harriet Waters Preston W. E. Henley Paul E. More F. N. Robinson George R. Noyes Helen Child Sargent, George L. Kittredge Horace E. Scudder Horace E. Scudder Horace E. Scudder Horace E. Scudder Harris Francis Fletcher Henry W. Boynton Horace E. Scudder William Allan Neilson George E. Woodberry R. E. Neil Dodge William J. Rolfe Henry Seidel Canby Horace E. Scudder A. J. George he Complele I, on Wonks HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON Camlyidge Clin The Riverside Press Cambridge URIS LIBRARY JUN 1.8 1986 COPYRIGHT, I90I, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED SIXTH PRINTING R The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE - MASSACHUSETTS PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. To EDWARD DOWDEN FOR, HIS SERVICE TO THE MEMORY OF SHELLEY THIS EDITION IS DEDICATED é EDITOR’S NOTE TueE text of this edition is that of the Centenary Edition of Shelley’s Postical Works, 1892, but differs from it by the omission of variant readings and emenda- tions except in cases where the text is acknowledged to be corrupt or of doubtful authority. The only contribution to our knowledge of the sources of the text since 1892 is Professor Zupitza’s description of some of the Oxford (formerly Boscombe) MSS., contributed to the Archiv fiir das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, Band XCIV, Heft 1, from which a few corrections have been noted ; but for the student of the text the Centenary Edition is indispensable. The Me- moir of that Edition is reprinted as the Biographical Sketch, and a condensation of the documentary extracts which in that edition were used to illustrate the history of the poems has been embodied in the Headnotes. The long notes in French and Greek affixed by Shelley to QUEEN Mas have been omitted at the suggestion of the General Editor of the series; and the Original Poetry of Victor and Cazire, of which a copy was found in 1898, has not been included. The Nores anp Ixuusrrations have been mainly confined to the more important poems of Shelley, especially ALAstor, PRomMETHEUS Unpounp, EprpsycHipion, Aponats and Hexuas; and they embrace only simple explanations of the text, the principal sources and parallel passages in the poets familiar to Shelley, and such cross-references as seemed to throw light on his ideas and habit of mind, together with a few critical comments ; no attempt has been made to include such information as can be readily obtained from encyclopedias, dictionaries, manuals of mythology, and like works. In this portion of the work the editor has made use of the labors of scholars and critics who have studied particular poems of Shelley, and he takes pleasure in acknowledging special obligation to Professor Al. Beljame’s Alastor, Miss Vida Scudder’s Prometheus Unbound, Reossetti’s Adonais, and Dr. Richard Ackermann’s investigation of these three works and also the EripsycHipion; the fact that these studies have appeared in the last ten years in France, America, Lngland and Germany indicates the vitality and extent of Shelley’s fame. G. E. W. August, 1901, TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . .. xv QUEEN MAB: A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM. Inrropucrory NotE. . . . 1 To Harrier *#*** , . : F 2 QuEEN Map, i . ‘ é 3 ALASTOR: OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOL- ITUDE. Intropuctory Note . 5 © BL ALASTOR . é ’ 3 « . 33 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM, Inrropuctory Nore . ‘ < . 43 AUTHOR’s PREFACE . : 5 . 45 . . . . 49 Canto First . ‘i ° . 51 Cayto SECOND . < ‘ : - 61 Canto Tutrp . ‘ # * . 69 Canto FourrH . i . . . 74 Canto Firra . 3 qi a - 80 Canto SixtH a ¥ ‘ . 6.0 OL Canto SEVENTE i . ‘ - 100 Canto E1cHTH 7 3 : . 107 Canto NiInTtH . : ‘ y - Wt Canto TENTH. . é . «117 Canto ELEVENTH . f ‘ « 495 Canto TWELFTH .« - 129 ROSALIND AND HELEN: A MOD- ERN ECLOGUE. Inrropucrory Note . - 136 RosaLINnD AND HELEN 137 JULIAN AND MADDALO: A CON- VERSATION. Intropuctory Nore . . - 151 AUTHOR’s PREFACE - 152 JULIAN AND MappALoO . 7 - 152 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND: A LYRI- CAL DRAMA. Inrropuctrory Nore . ~- ~- 160 AUTHOR’S PREFACE - eS - 162 Act I. ‘ je ‘ % : « 163 Acr Il . . . . . . - 178 ActIIT . . . «+ « « 189 ActIy . ‘ . . 5 . - 197 PEGE THE CENCI: A TRAGEDY. = Inrropuctory Notre . - « 206 Depication to LeigH Hunt, Esa. . 208 AUTHOR’sS PREFACE . ‘ . - 209 ActI . * * * é 4 - 211 Acr TI. : 3 il feta 8 - 218 Act III. ‘ ‘ ‘ a. Aa OE AcrIV. ae Ug ‘ o i “289 ActV . x : x ‘ 2 » 242 THE MASK OF ANARCHY. Intropuctory Note eis we 252 Tue Mask or ANARCHY . . » 253 PETER BELL THE THIRD. Inrropuctory Norse ‘ * - 258 DEDICATION . 3 p ‘ . « 259 PROLOGUE - ‘ 7 260 Part THE First: Taare * . « 260 Part THE Seconp: Tue Devin . 261 Part tHE Turrp: HELL . ‘ « 262 Parr roe Fourts: Sin. x - 264 Parr THE FirrH: GRACE. + 265 Part THE SixtH: DamMNnaTION + 267 Part THE SEVENTH: DousLE Dam- NATION . 7 ‘4 . - 269 THE WITCH OF ATLAS. Inrropucrory Notes . * e » 271 To Mary . * ‘ ‘ « 272 Tue WitcH oF anna - 273 CEDIPUS TYRANNUS, OR SWELL- FOOT THE TYRANT: A TRAGEDY. Inrropuctrory Nore . 3 . » 283 ADVERTISEMENT é ‘ ‘ - 284 ActI. * ‘ % + 284 Act Il. < a < ‘, ‘A - 291 EPIPSYCHIDION. Intropucrory NoTE . we ie - 297 ADVERTISEMENT ‘ . ‘< 298 EPpIpsycHIDION .« . 3 fe - 298 ADONAIS: AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS. Intropuctrory NoTE . 4 ‘ - 307 AUTHOR’S PREFACE > + © « 37% ADONAIS . ie « & % @ 808 x CONTENTS HELLAS: A LYRICAL DRAMA, PoEMS WRITTEN IN 1819. InrRropucrory Nore s 6 we S Lines WRITTEN DURING THE Cas- ‘Auruor’s PREFACE . . - + 318 TLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION . 364 PRoLoGUE: A FRAGMENT . . 820 Sone to THE Men oF Encuanp 364 Herras so 6 ww ee 88D To SmMmouTH AND CASTLEREAGH . 365 ENGLAND IN 1819 . 2 . - 865 NavionAL ANTHEM. . . . 365 ‘MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. OpE To HEAVEN . ie Ute - 3866 Harty Poems. An Exnortation . . . . 367 Eveninc: To Harriet . * - 839 OpE To rHE West Winp . . 867 To IANTHE . - « 840 AN ODE WRITTEN OcTOBER, 1819, STANZA Sate ar Brack- BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD RE- NELL é ‘ . 340 COVERED THEIR LIBERTY . - 869 To —— (‘O8, THERE AR SPIRITS On THE MEpusA oF LEONARDO DA O¥ THE AIR’). ‘ . - 340 VINCI IN THE FLORENTINE GAL- ‘To — (‘YET LOOK ON ME — TAKE LERY : - «+ 3869 NOT THINE EYES AWAY’) . - 341 Tur InpIaAn SERENADE . . . 370 ‘Sranzas. APRIL, 1814. fi . 841 To SopH1a. 7 - + + 870 ‘To Harrier. - 342 Lovr’s PHILOSOPHY . ‘ » Oh ‘To Mary WoutsronecRaFT ‘Gop- POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820. WIN. : $ ‘ - . 342 Tue Sensitive PLant. ‘Movasirans, 5 ‘ i 2 . 348 Part First... . » 3872 On DeatH. . . - 343 Part SECOND . » « B74 _A Summer Evexine Gugncecritn, 343 Parr THIRD . 7 oe 1875 ‘To WokDsworTtH . ‘i * . 344 ConcLusion . “ ; » 876 ‘Feevincs oF A REPUBLICAN ON A VISION OF THE SEA . « oT THE Fatt oF BONAPARTE . . 344 THE CLoup ¥ . * ‘ - 380 Lines (‘THE COLD EARTH SLEPT To a SKYLARK. : » « 881 BELOW’) . , 3 « 845 Oprz to Liserty . a i a B82 "POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816, To —— (‘I FEAR THY KISSES, GEN- Tuer SUNSET . 3 . . 345 TLE MAIDEN’). ‘ ; Z . 387 Hymn To INTELLBCTUAL Beauty 346 ARETHUSA . . . . 887 Monr BLanc: “INES WRITTEN IN Sonc or PROsERPINE WHILE GATH- THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI - - 847 ERING FLroweRs ON THE PLAIN POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817. or Eywa. . «. . «~ «888 Marianne’s DREAM. ‘ « 850 Hymn or APOLLO. j 3 - 388 To ConsTANTIA SINGING 7 « 352 Hymn or Pan . : ‘ : « 889 To Tue Lorp CHANCELLOR. s 353 THE QUESTION ‘ : . 389 To WiuirAm SHELLEY . » . 354 Tue Two Spits: AN Aeaeaony 390 On Fanny Gopwin.. » 855 Lerrer To Maria GisBoRNE . 390 Lives (‘THAT TIME IS DEAD FOR- Ovz ro Napuzs i « 895 EVER, CHILD’) . j ‘i » 855 Autumn: a DircE : x - 898 DratH. ; ‘i 7 « B55 Drath 7 o : 3 ‘ « 898 Sonnet. =OeauAs . . 356 Liserty . - 898 Lines To A CRITIC . . ‘ - 356 SUMMER AND Winter - + 899 ‘POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818. Tse Tower or Famine . » 399 Sonnet: To tHE Nite . ; « 857 An ALLEGORY (‘A PORTAL AS OF PassaAGE OF THE APENNINES . 357 SHADOWY ADAMANT’) ‘ - 899 Tue Past . . . : » 358 Tue Worup’s WANDERERS . « 400 On a Fapep Vicumn . , - 358 Sonnet (‘YE HASTEN TO THE LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EuGa- GRAVE! WHAT SEEK YE THERE’) 400 NEAN Hits . e 3 ‘ . 858 Lines To A REVIEWER « 400 Invocation to Misrry » 362 Time Lone Past . - 400 STANZAS WRITTEN IN Pees Buona Norrr ) ‘ « 400 NEAR NAPLES. ‘ 363 Goop-Nicut é ‘ % - 401 ‘Sonnet (‘Lirt Not THE Shane PoEMS WRITTEN IN 1821. VEIL WHICH THOSE WHO LIVE’) 363 Dirce FoR tHE YEAR . ef » 402 CONTENTS at Time 3 7 4 _ » 402 FRoM THE ARABIC: ae ImiratTion 403 Sone (‘RaRELY, RARELY, COMEST THOU’) . 3 ‘ a ‘ - 403 To Nicur ri » + 408 To — (‘ Music, WHEN SOFT VOICES DIE’) . 404 To—(‘ Wuen PASSION’S TRANCE IS OVERPAST’) . é “i - 404 MurTABiLity . » 404 Lines (‘ Far, FAR away, O YE a?) 405 Tue Fuceitives. z : + 405 LINES WRITTEN ON HEARING THE News or tHE DEATH oF Napo- LEON . . ¥ - 406 Sonnet: PoriricaL Gunernues - 406 A Bripau Sone . ‘i , - 406 EpiTHALAMIUM . 3 . ‘ . 407 ANOTHER VERSION F : 407 Evenine: Ponts au Mare, Prsa 407 Tue AzioLa . ‘ a - 408 To —— (‘ONE WORD IS TOO OFTEN PROFANED’). ‘ < é - 408 REMEMBRANCE . - ‘ ‘ - 408 To Epwarp ee . - 409 To-mMoRRow - z : - . 410 Lines (‘Ir I watk iw AUTUMN’s EVEN’) . * c - 410 A Lament (‘O women O ure! O TIME!’) , f ‘i 7 i . 410 PoEMS WRITTEN IN 1822. Linss (‘WHEN THE LAMP IS SHAT- TERED ’) . - 410 Toe MacGnetic Lavy 7 TO HER Pa- TIENT . . « * a - 411 To JANE. Tue INVITATION . m - 412 Tue RECOLLECTION . . - 412 Wits a Guitar: To aoe + 418 To JANE . F Boa » 415 Eprraru (‘ THESE ARE TWO FRIENDS WHOSE LIVES WERE UNDIVIDED’) 415 Tue IstE 3 z » 415 A Drrcze (‘ Bevan sen THAT MOANEST LOUD’). P . 415 LINES WRITTEN IN THE Bay < OF LERIcI . ‘ 4 ‘ ‘ - 416 Fracments. Parr I. Tur Damon oF THE WORLD, Part I. - ‘ * % « 416 PartiIl . w ss s - 420 Prince ATHANASE. Parti. a « « 425 Part II i - 7 : - 4227 Tar WoopMAN AND THE NIGHT- INGALE . . . ° . . 430 Orgo .« «© «© o© «© « 481 Tasso . * ‘ ‘ oe « abl MarRENGHI . ‘ i * ~ 432 LINES WRITTEN FOR JULIAN AND MappaLto . 435 LINES WRITTEN FOR Pkoumianna UngounpD . i ‘i 3 . 4385 LInEs WRITTEN FOR Mont Buanc 435 Lines WRITTEN FOR THE INDIAN SERENADE : . . é « 435 LINES WRITTEN FOR THE ODE TO LIBERTY . i ‘ » 436 STANZA WRITTEN FOR THE ODE WRITTEN OCTOBER, 1819. - 436 Lines CONNECTED witH Epipsy- CHIDION . é < i + 436 LINES WRITTEN FOR Apowats - 438 Lines WRITTEN FoR Hetpas. . 439 Tue Pine Forest or THE Cas- CINE NEAR Pisa. First Drarr or ‘To Jane: THE Invirarion, Tue REcoLLECTION’ . - - 440 ORPHEUS . . i i , » 441 FiorpDIsPINA : - 443 Tue BirrH oF Puma s - 444 Lovet, Horr, Desire, anp FEAR . 444 A SaTiRE on SATIRE . - 445 GINEVRA . . . - 446 Tue Boat oN THE Sanonro . 449 Tue Zucca é 5 3 7 + 450 Lines (‘WE MEET NOT AS WE PARTED ’) 5 z ‘ ‘ + 452 CHARLES THE First. Inrropcctory Norr. . » 452 Scene I . . 3 » 6 453 Sceve II. ‘ ‘ , - 456 Scene III . A . » 464 Scene IV . r yi . « 465 Scene V . ‘ é 466 FRAGMENTS OF AN Caacasme Drama. ‘ : - 466 Tuer TRIUMPH OF Timi i - 470 Part II. Minor Pes Home. ‘ - 480 FRAGMENT OF A | Grown Srony - 480 To Mary (‘O Mary DEAR, THAT YOU WERE HERE!’) . . 480 To Mary (‘ THE WORLD IS DREARY 7) 480 To Mary (‘My pDEAREsT Mary, WHEREFORE HAST THOU GONE’). 481 To Winiiam SHELLEY (‘My Lost WILLIAM, THOU IN WHOM’) - 481 LINES WRITTEN FOR THE PoEM TO WituiAm SHELLEY ‘ - 481 To WiLuIAM SHELLEY (‘ Tuy LIT- TLE FOOTSTEPS ON THE SANDS’). 481 To ConsTANTIA : . «+ 483 To Emma VivianI «ss 482 xii CONTENTS To —— (‘O mGHTy MIND, IN WHOSE To Music (‘SILVER KH#Y OF THE DEEP STREAM THIS AGE’). . 482 FOUNTAIN OF TEARS’) * - 488 SonnET TO Byron . ‘ ‘ . 482 To Music (‘No, Music, THOU ART A Lost LEADER . ‘i «+ 482 Not THE ‘‘Foop or LovEe”’’). 488 On Keats . ‘ . ‘ » 482 ‘I arnt, I PERISH WITH MY LOVE!’ 489 To —— (‘For ME, MY FRIEND, IF To SILENCE ‘ ‘ é - 489 NOT THAT TEARS DID TREM- ‘OH, THAT A Cuanror oF CLouD BLE’) : : i ‘ . 483 WERE MINE!’ .. a » 489 Mixron’s Spirit . é . 483 ‘THE FIERCE BEASTS’ . . - 489 ‘MIGHTY EAGLE’. ; ‘ - 483 ‘HE WANDERS’ . é - 489 Laure. . . 7 : - 483 Tue DrsEerts oF Scamp 5 » «489 ‘ONCE MORE DESCEND’ : 4 » 483 A Dream a i . 489 InsPIrATION 3 a 483 Tue Heart's Toms a : 7 - 489 To tHE PEOPLE OF yamine - 484 Hors, Fear, anp Doust . 489 -WHAT MEN GAIN FAIRLY’. - 484 ‘Aas! THIS Is Nor WHAT I THOUGHT Rome . ‘ e j : % - 484 LIFE WAS’ . : . . + 490 To IraLy fs : a - 484 CROWNED .- . < a ‘ - 490 ‘UNRISEN gammpon! ‘ a » 484 ‘GREAT SPIRIT’ 4 - 490 To ZEPHYR . . a » 484 ‘O THOU IMMORTAL datas é + 490 ‘Fottow’ . & % % ‘ - 484 ‘YE GENTLE VISITATIONS’ . + 490 Tuer Rarn-WinpD . ‘ : » 484 ‘My THovcHTS’ ‘ . 5 - 490 Raw . ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ . 484 ‘WHEN SOFT winps? , ‘ . 484 | TRANSLATIONS. THE VINE . ‘ ‘ =< ® . 485 From Homer. Tue Wantnc Moon . ¥ - 485 Hymn ro MEerRcurY .- ‘ - 491 To THE Moon (‘ BRIGHT WANDERER, Hymw To VENUS. a Z - 503 FAIR COQUETTE OF HEAVEN’). 485 Hymn to Castor AND Potuux . 504 To Taz Moon (‘ART THOU PALE Hymn To Minerva « 5 é . 509 FOR WEARINESS’) . ‘ » 485 Hymn To THE Sun ‘ ‘ - 504 Portry aNnp Music . ‘ . - 485 Hymn to THE Moon 3 : + 505 ‘A GENTLE STORY’ . i . 485 Hymn ro tHe Earru, MorHEer oF Tue Lapy of THE SouTrH ._ . 485 ALL - . ‘ x 4 F « 505 Tue Tate Untoww. : » 485 From Evuripipes. Wine or EGLANTINE : . » 485 Tue Cyciops: A Satyric Drama 506 A Roman’s CHAMBER . e - 486 EPIGRAMS FROM THE GREEK. Sone or THE FuRIES 6 ‘ - 486 Sprrir or PLATO. . ; » 519 ‘THE RUDE WIND IS SINGING’ . 486 CIRCUMSTANCE a ‘ . » 519 BrErorE AND AFTER. . . . 486 To STELLA . - ‘ ‘ ‘ . 519 Tue SHapow or HELL : « 486 Kisstinc HELENA . a SF .- 519 CONSEQUENCE . a . ee 486 From Moscuus. A Harer-Sone ee OE Se ABE I, ‘WHEN WINDS THAT MOVE NOT A Face i = F ‘ ; » 486 ITS CALM SURFACE SWEEP’ . 520 Tuer Porr’s LovER . g . 487 II. Pan, Ecuo, anp THE SaryR 520 ‘I WOULD NOT BE A KING’ - 487 III. Fragment or THE ELEGY on ‘Is Ir THAT IN SOME BRIGHTER tHE DratH or Bion. - 520 SPHERE’. . . - 4 . 487 From Bion. To-pay . . . 3 - 487 FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE Love’s ArMosPHERE 5 : . 487 DEATH oF ADONIS sede « 520 TorpPok . ‘I Q ‘ . . 487 From Vircit. ‘WAKE THE SERPENT NOT’ + 487 Tue Trento Ectoguze . ; - 521 ‘Is NOT TO-DAY ENOUGH ?’ . - 487 From Dante. ‘To THIRST AND FIND NO FILL’ . 487 I. Aparrep From A SONNET IN Love (‘ WEALTH AND DOMINION THE ViTa Nuova . 522 FADE INTO THE MASS’). . . 488 II. Sonnet: Dante Seneaient Music (‘I panT FOR THE MUSIC TO Gummo CavALCANTI + 622 WHICH IS DIVINE’). « 488 III. Tae First Canzone oF THE To One Sincine . « 488 Conviro .« . . . 52h CONTENTS xiif IV. Martitpa GATHERING FLowERs 523 Stanza FROM A TRANSLATION OF V. Ucorrno . a ~ oof THE MarsrinuAiseE Hymn . . 661 From CavALcantTi, Bigotry’s Victim . . é - 561 Sonnet: Guipo CAvVALCANTI TO On an IctcLE THAT CLUNG TO THE Dante ALIGHIERI. * . » 525 Grass OF A GRAVE . ‘ » B62 From CALDERON. Love (‘Wuy Is IT SAID THOU CANST ScreNES FROM THE Macico Propi- NOT LIVE’). . ‘ - . 562 GIOSO. On a Firs at Carron House . 563 ScpryneI . . . ‘ - 526 ToaStrar . z - 563 Scene II . : . ‘ - Beal To Mary, WHO DIED IN THIS ersian 563 Scene III . : « ‘ » 533 A TALE or SOCIETY AS IT IS FROM Sranzas From Cisma DE InGLA- Facts, 1811 563 TERRA . . . ’ = «/B8T To THE REPUBLICANS ‘OF Norra From GoETHE. AMERICA. . ar de 565 ScrenEs FROM Faust. To IRELAND . ‘ ‘i - 565 Scene I. Protocuz in Hza- On Rosert Eumer’ s Gavin, - 566 VEN ‘ ‘i ‘ 5 538 Tue Retrospect: Cwm E xan, 1812 566 Screng II. May-pay Nicur' .. 540 FRAGMENT OF A SONNET TO HARRIET 568 To Harriet. « 568 JUVENILIA. Sonnet: Toa Batzoon LADEN WITH Verses onACAaT . - 546 KNowLEDGE . 569 OmENS . é . . 547 Sonnet: ON isennaie Some ‘Bom EpiraPHIuM: Laine ‘Version OF THE EpiraPH in Gray’s Engcy 547 In Hororocium F @ 3 - 548 A DiaLocuE . ‘ ‘ - 548 To razr MoonsBEAM A » 549 THe SoLirary. . 549 To DeatH . ‘ r 549 Love’s Rose . . . ~~ . 550 Evers 550 PorMs FROM Sr, Invyne, OR THE RosicRvucian. I. Vicroria . 3 551 II. ‘ON THE DARK HEIGHT OF Jura’, . * 551 III. Sister Rosa: Aa Bites, 552 IV. Sr. Invynen’s TowER - 553 V. BEREAVEMENT i ‘ - 553 VI. Tae Drownep LovER - 554 PostHumous FRAGMENTS OF MARGARET NIcHOLSON. War i i sh Me FRAGMENT SUPPOSED TO BE AN EpitHALAMIUM OF Francis Ra- VAILLAC AND CHARLOTTE CoR- DAY ‘i . ‘ - 6557 Dusvsts . 558 FRAGMENT (‘ Yrs! ALL Is PAST — SWIFT TIME HAS FLED AWAY’) . Tue Spectra, Horseman . Me.topy ro A ScENE OF FoRMER Timms «© © © « « -» 555 559 559 TLES FILLED WITH KNOWLEDGE INTO THE BrIstoL CHANNEL . 569 Tue Devit’s WALK: A BAaLtap_. 570 FRAGMENT OF A Sonnet: Fare- WELL TO Nort Devon . . 572 Ow LEAvING Lonpon FoR WALES. 572 THE WANDERING JEW’s SoOLILoquy . 573 DOUBTFUL, LOST AND UNPUB- LISHED POEMS. VICTOR AND CAZIRE. DoustFruL PoEms. Tor WANDERING JEW . “ 573 InTRODUCTION. ‘ ‘ 573 AUTHOR’s PREFACE 3 575 CantolI . ‘ - .« 576 Canto II . x é . 579 Canto III . : 7 - 581 Canto IV . a - 2 . 585 Tue Dinner Party ANTICIPATED 589 Tue Magic Horse ‘ é » 589 To THE QUEEN OF My HEART. 589 Losr Porms . : i 3 - « 589 UNPUBLISHED PoEMS - 590 OniGInAL Portry By VICTOR AND Ca- ZIRE. - “ “ . 5 q - 692 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS . _. 594 INDEX OF FIRST LINES. . . 642 INDEX OF TITLES. . . . «647 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH In a small southwestern room of the old-fashioned country house named Field Place, in Sussex, there stands over the fireplace this inscription: — Shrine of the dawning speech and thought Of Shelley, sacred be To all who bow where Time has brought Gifts to Eternity.’ Here Percy Bysshe Shelley was born, on Saturday, August 4, 1792. He was the eldest child of Timothy and Elizabeth (Pilfold) Shelley. In this home he had for playmates, as he grew up, four younger sisters, and « brother the youngest of all: and on their memories were imprinted some scenes of his early days. He was fond of them, and as a schoolboy, when they came in to dessert, would take them on his knee and tell them romantic stories out of books on which his own imagination was fed; or he would declaim Latin for his father’s pleasure; sometimes he led them on tramps through the fields, dropping his little sister over inconvenient fences, or he romped with them in the garden, not without accident, upsetting his baby brother in the strawberry bed, and being re- proached by him as ‘bad Bit.’ St. Leonard’s Wood, off to the northeast of the house, was traditionally inhabited by an old Dragon and a headless Spectre, and there was a fabu- lous Great Tortoise in Warnham Pond, which he made creatures in their children’s world; nearer home was the old Snake, the familiar of the garden, unfortunately killed by the gardener’s scythe; and, these not being marvels enough, a gray alchemist resided in the garret. He once dressed his sisters to impersonate fiends, and ran in front with a fire-stove flaming with magical liquids, — a sport that readily developed with schoolboy knowledge into rude and startling experiments with chemicals and electricity. Altogether he was an amiable brother, mingling high animal spirits with a delightful imagination and a gentle manner. His young pranks were numerous. He delighted in mystification, both verbal and practical; he invented incidents which he told for truth, and he espe- cially enjoyed the ruse of a disguise. A single childish answer survives in the anecdote that when he set the fagot-stack on fire and was rebuked, he explained that he wanted ‘a little hell of his own.’ He also wished to adopt a child, —a fancy which lasted late into life, —and thought a small Gypsy tumbler at the door would serve. As child or boy, all our recollections of him are pleasant and natural, with touches of harmless mis- chief and vivid faney. There was a spirit of wildness in him. Even before he went away to school, while still a fair, slight boy, with long, bright hair and full, blue eyes, running about or riding on his pony in the lanes, — where, after spending his own, he would stop and borrow money of the servant to give the beggars, —he attracted the notice of the villagers at Horsham as a madcap. Toward the end of his boyhood he liked to wander out alone at night, but the servant sent to watch him reported that he only ‘took a walk and came back again.’ Of all the scenes of this early home life, while it was still untroubled, the most attractive is the picture impressed on his five-year-old sister, Margaret, whose closest childish memory of him was of the day when, being xvi PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY home ill from Eton, he first went out again, and, coming up to the window where she was, pressed his face against the pane and gave her a kiss through the glass. His education began at the age of six, when he went for the rudiments of Latin and Greek to the Rev. Mr. Edwards, a Welsh parson at Warnham, and got traditional Welsh instruction trom the old man. At ten he was sent away from home to Sion House Academy, near Brentford, under Dr. Greenlaw, whom he afterward spoke of ‘ not without respect,’ says Hogg, as ‘a hard-headed Scotchman, and a man of rather liberal opinions.’ Shelley was then tall for his years, with a pink and white complexion, curling brown hair in abundance, large, prominent blue eyes, — dull in reverie, flashing in feeling, — and an expression of countenance, says his cousin and schoolfellow, Medwin, ‘ of exceeding sweet- ness and innocence. He was met in the playground, shut in by four stone walls with a single tree in it, by some sixty scholars drawn from the English middle class, who, writes Medwin, pounced on every new boy with a zest proportioned to the ordeal each had undergone in his turn. The new boy in this case knew nothing of peg-top, leapfrog, fives, or cricket. One challenged him to spar, and another to race. His only welcome was ‘a general shout of derision.’ To all this, continues Medwin, ‘he made no reply, but with a look of disdain written in his countenance, turned his back on his new associ- ates, and, when he was alone, found relief in tears.’ It was but a step from the boys to the masters. If he idled over his books and watched the clouds, or drew those rude pines and cedars which he used to scrawl on his manuscripts to the end of his life, a box on the ear recalled him; and under English school discipline he had his share of flogging. ‘He would roll on the floor,’ says Gellibrand, another schoolmate, ‘not from the pain, but from a sense of indignity.’ He was a quick scholar, but he did not relish the master’s coarseness in Virgil, and though he was well grounded in his classics, he owed little to such a moral discipline as he there received. He was very unhappy, and Medwin does not scruple to describe Sion House as ‘a perfect hell’ to him. He kept much to himself, but he had pleasures of his own. He formed a taste for the wild sixpenny romances of the time, full of ghosts, bandits, and enchantments; and his curiosity in the wonders of science was awakened by a travelling lecturer, Adam Walker, who exhibited his Orrery at the school. He and Medwin boated together on the river, and ran away at times to Kew and Richmond, where Shelley saw his first play, Mrs. Jordan in the ‘ Country Girl.’ Sport, however, played a small part in such a boyhood. ‘He passed among his school- fellows,’ says Medwin, ‘as a strange and unsocial being, for when a holiday relieved us from our tasks, and the other boys were engaged in such sports as the narrow limits of our prison court allowed, Shelley, who entered into none of them, would pace backwards anc forwards, —I think I see him now, — along the southern wall.’ Rennie, another schoolmate, from whom comes the anecdote that Shelley once threw a small boy at his tormentors, adds that, ‘if treated with kindness he was very amiable, noble, high-spirited, and generous.’ It is noteworthy that at Sion House he first developed the habit of sleep- walking, for which he was punished. A single fragment of autobiography softens the harshness of these two years. It is Shelley’s description of his first boy friendship : — ‘I remember forming an attachment of this kind at school. I cannot recall to my memory the precise epoch at which this took place; but I imagine that it must have been at the age of eleven or twelve. The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a character eminently generous, brave and gentle; and the elements of human feeling seem to have been, from his birth, genially compounded within him. There was a delicacy and simplicity in his manners inexpressibly attractive. It has BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Xvi never been iny fortune to meet with him since my schoolboy days; but either I confound my present recollection with the delusions of past feelings, or he is now «# source of honor and utility to every one around him. The tones of his voice were so soft and winning that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so deep that in listeniug to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred sentiments of friendship. I remember in my simplicity writing to my mother a long account of his admirable qualities and my own devoted attachment. I suppose she thought me out of my wits, for she returned no answer to my letter. I remember we used to walk the whole play-hours up and down by some moss-covered palings, pouring out our hearts in youthful talk. We used to speak of the ladies with whom we were in love, and I remember that our usual practice was to confirm each other in the everlasting fidelity in which we had bound ourselves toward them and toward each other. I recollect thinking my friend exquisitely beautiful. Every night when we parted to go to bed we kissed each other like children, as we still were.’ Shelley went up to Eton, July 29, 1804, being then almost twelve. Dr. Goodall, an amiable and dignified gentleman, was Head Master, and was succeeded in 1809 by Dr. Keate, renowned for flogging, who was previously Master of the Lower School. Shelley went into the house of a writing master, Hecker, and later into that of George Bethel, remembered as the dullest tutor of the school. He found a larger body of scholars, some five hundred, a more regulated fagging system, and a change of masters; but if he was better off than before, it was because of his own growth and of the greater scale of the school, which afforded more freedom and variety and better companionship. He retused to fag, and he brought into the world of boyhood a compound of tastes and qualities that made him strange. ‘He stood apart from the whole school,’ says one of his mates, ‘a being never to be forgotten.’ In particular the union in him of natural gentleness with a high spirit that could be exasperated to the point of frenzy exposed him to attack; but he was dangerous, and once, according to his own account, struck 2 fork through the hand of a boy, — an act which he spoke of in after-life as ‘almost in- voluntary,’ and ‘done on the spur of anguish.’ He was called ‘Mad Shelley’ by the boys, who banded against him. Dowden describes their fun: — ‘Sometimes he would escape by flight, and before he was lost sight of the gamesome youths would have chased him in full ery and have enjoyed the sport of a “ Shelley-bait ” up town. At other times escape was impossible, and then he became desperate. ‘I have seen him,” wrote a schoolfellow, “ surrounded, hooted, baited like a maddened bull, and at this distance of time I seem to hear ringing in my ears the ery which Shelley was wont to utter in his paroxysm of revengeful anger.” In dark and miry winter evenings it was the practice to assemble under the cloisters previous to mounting to the Upper School. To surround “ Mad Shelley ” and “nail” him with a ball slimy with mud, was a favorite pastime; or his name would suddenly be sounded through the cloisters, in an instant to be taken up by another and another voice, until hundreds joined in the clamor, and the roof would echo and reécho with “Shelley ! Sheliey! Shelley!” Then a space would be opened, in which as in a ring or alley the victim must stand to endure his tor- ture; or some urchin would dart in behind and by one dexterous push scatter at Shelley’s feet the books which he had held under his arm; or mischievous hands would pluck at his garments, or a hundred fingers would point at him from every side, while still the outery “Shelley ! Shelley!” rang against the walls. An access of passion —the desired result — would follow, which, declares a witness of these persecutions, “made his eyes flash like a tiger’s, his cheeks grow pale as death, his limbs quiver.”’ xviii PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Shelley, however, though private, was not a recluse. He took part in the school life on its public side as well as in his studies. He boated, marched in the Montem proces- sion as pole-bearer or corporal, and declaimed a speech of Cicero on an Election Monday. He once appeared in the boys’ prize ring, but panic surprised him in the second round. He became an excellent Latin versifier and began that thoughtful acquaintance with Lucretius and Pliny’s Natural History, which afterwards showed its effect in his early writings, and he learned something of Condorcet, Franklin and Godwin. Why he was called the ‘atheist,’ as the tradition is, cannot be made out, as there is no other trace of the word in the Eton vocabulary. His scientific interest was reinforced by a visit of the same itinerary Adam Walker who first revealed the mechanism of the heavens to him; and he bought an electrical machine from the philosopher’s assistant, which the dull tutor, Bethel, unexpectedly felt the force of, when he undertook to investigate his lodger’s instruments for ‘raising the devil,’ as Shelley boldly proclaimed his occupation to be at the moment. The willow stump which he set on fire with gunpowder and a burning glass is still shown, and there are other waifs of legend or anecdote which show his divided love for the ghosts of the cheap romances and incantations of his own inven- tion. Chemistry, his favorite amusement, was forbidden him, and from these escapades of a youthful search for knowledge, doubtless, some of his undefined troubles with the masters arose. In the six years he passed at Eton his native intellectual impulse was the strongest element in his growth. He began authorship, and there wrote ‘ Zastrozzi,’ his first published story, and with the proceeds of that romance he is said to have paid for the farewell breakfast he gave to his Eton friends at the same time that he presented them with books for keepsakes. The reminiscences of these friends, several of whom have spoken of him, relieve the wilder traits of his Eton career. Halliday’s description is the most full and heartfelt :— ‘Many a long and happy walk have I had with him in the beautiful neighborhood of dear old Eton. We used to wander for hours about Clewer, Frogmore, the Park at Windsor, the Terrace; and I was a delighted and willing listener to his marvellous stories of fairyland and apparitions and spirits and haunted ground; and his speculations were then (for his mind was far more developed than mine) of the world beyond the grave. Another of his favorite rambles was Stoke Park, and the picturesque graveyard, where Gray is said to have written his “ Elegy,” of which he was very fond. I was myself far too young to form any estimate of character, but I loved Shelley for his kindliness and affectionate ways. He was not made to endure the rough and boisterous pastime of Eton, and his shy and gentle nature was glad to escape far away to muse over strange fancies; for his mind was reflective, and teeming with deep thought. His lessons were child’s play to him. . . . His love of nature was intense, and the sparkling poetry of his mind shone out of his speaking eyes when he was dwelling on anything good or great. He certainly was not happy at Eton, for his was a disposition that needed especial personal superintendence to watch and cherish and direct all his noble aspirations and the re- markable tenderness of his heart. He had great moral courage and feared nothing but what was base, and false, and low.’ Such guidance as he had he received from Dr. Lind, a physician of Windsor, a man of humane disposition and independent thought, but of unconventional ways. Shelley always spoke of him in later years with veneration, and idealized him in his verse, but his influ- ence can be traced only slightly in the habit Shelley learned from him of addressing let- ters to strangers. At one time, when Shelley was recovering from a fever at Field Piace, and thought, on the information of a servant, that his father was contemplating BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xix sending him to an asylum, he sent for Dr. Lind, who came, and, at all events, relieved him of his fears. While Shelley was still an Eton schoolboy Medwin spent the Christmas vacation of 1809 at Field Place, and recalls walks with him in St. Leonard’s Wood, and snipe-shoot- ing at Field Place Pond. He envied the marksmanship of Shelley, who was a good shot, pistol-shooting being a favorite amusement with him through life. Shelley was already in the full flow of his early literary faculty, which was first practised in collaboration with his friends. At Eton he at one time composed dramatic scenes with a schoolmate, and acted them before a third lower-form boy in the same house. His sister Helen says that he also sent an original play to Mathews, the comedian. He had written ‘ Zastrozzi,’ and he now began a similar romance with Medwin, ‘The Nightmare,’ and also a story, having the Wandering Jew for its hero, which was immediately reworked by the joint authors into the juvenile poem of that title. By April 1, 1810, he had completed his second published romance, ‘St. Irvyne,’ and before fall came he had, in company with his sister Elizabeth, produced the poems of ‘ Victor and Cazire,’ of which he had 1480 copies printed at Horsham. Sir Bysshe, his grandfather, is said to have given him money to pay this village printer, but just how Shelley used this liberality is unknown. Shelley was always in haste to publish. He had sent ‘The Wandering Jew’ to Campbell, who returned it with discouragement, but the manuscript was, nevertheless, put into the hands of Ballantyne & Co., of Edinburgh. Shelley had begun, too, his knight-errantry in be- half of poor and oppressed authors, and while at Eton had accepted bills for the purpose of bringing out a work on Sweden, by a Mr. Brown, who, to take his own account, had been forced to leave the navy in consequence of the injustice of his superior officers. He undertook also on Medwin’s introduction «a correspondence with Felicia Brown, after- wards well known as Mrs. Hemans, but it was stopped on the interference of her mother, who was alarmed by its skeptical character. These were all noticeable beginnings, mark- ing traits and habits that were to continue in Shelley’s life; but the most important of all the events of the year was the attachment which was formed between him and his cousin, Harriet Grove, during a summer visit of the Grove family to Field Place, and a con- tinuance of the intimacy at London, where the whole party, excepting Shelley’s father, immediately went. Shelley’s attraction toward his cousin, who is described as a very beautiful girl, amiable and of a lively disposition, was sincere if not deep. The match was seriously considered by the two families, and at first no hindrance was thrown in its way. Shelley went up to Oxford in the fall of 1810 at the age of eighteen, with « cheerful and happy mind. He had signed his name in the books of University College, where his father had been before him, on April 10, and, returning to Eton, had finished there in good standing. His father accompanied him to his old college and saw him installed; and Mr. Slatter, then just beginning business as an Oxford publisher, a son of Timothy’s old host at the Inn, remembered a kindly call from him in company with Shelley, in the course of which he said: ‘My son here has a literary turn. He is already an author, and do, pray, indulge him in his printing freaks.’ Shelley had already a publisher in London, Stockdale, afterwards notorious, whom he had induced to take the 1480 copies of the poems of ‘ Victor and Cazire’ off the hands of the Horsham printer; but Stockdale, how- ever, undertook ‘St. Irvyne,’ and brought it out at the end of the year, and he considered ‘The Wandering Jew,’ which Ballantyne had declined; but events moved too rapidly to admit of his issuing the poem. Shelley found at Oxford the liberty and seclusion best fitted for his active and explor- £x PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY ing mind. There is no safer place than college for a youth whose mind is confused and excited by the crude elements of new knowledge; the chaos of thought, on which Shelley's genius sat on brood, would naturally take form and order there, in the slow leisure of four years of mingled acquisition, reflection and growth; but such fortune was denied to him. He maintained friendly relations with his old Eton companions, though he was intimate with none of them; but he was absorbed in the first revelation of dawning thought and knowledge, and needed an intellectual auditor. He found his listener in Hogg, —‘a pearl within an oyster shell,’ he afterwards called him, —a fellow-student from York, destined for the law. Hogg developed into a cynical humorist; but to his gross nature and more worldly experience, Shelley was the one flash, in a lifetime, of the ideal. He always regarded him as a spirit from another world, whose adventures in his journey through mortal affairs necessarily took on the aspect of a tragi-comedy. Yet he was devoted to him to a point singular in so opposite a character, and he told his story of Shelley out of real elements, with fidelity to his own impression, though touching it with a grotesqueness that is, in its effect, not farfrom caricature. Hogg first met Shelley in the common dining-hall. They fell into talk, as strangers, over the comparative merits of German and Italian literature; and the conversation, being carried on with such ani- mation that they were left alone before they were aware of it, Hogg invited his inter- locutor to continue the discussion at his room, where the subject was at once dropped on their mutual confession that one knew as little of the German as the other of the Italian which he was defending. Shelley, however, was furnished with large discourse, and led the talk on to the wonders of science while Hogg scanned his guest. ‘His figure was slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode of the day ; but they were tumbled, rumpled and unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful. His complexion was delicate and almost feminine, of the purest red and white ; yet he was tanned and freckled by exposure to the sun, having passed the autumn, as he said, in shooting. His features, his whole face, and particularly his head, were in fact unusually small; yet the last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence, and in the agonies (if I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his locks unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough. . . . His features were not symmetrical (the moutn per- haps excepted), yet was the effect of the who.e extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire and enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence that I never met with in any other countenance. Nor was the morai expression iess beautiful tnan the intellectuai. The one blemish was the shrill, harsh, discordant voice, which ceased when the speaker hurried away to attend a lecture on mineralogy, — ‘ About stones, about stones,’ he said, with downcast look and melancholy tones, on his return at the end of the hour. The evening continued with talk on chemistry, and at last on metaphysics and the prob- lems of the soul, as such youthful college talks will do. ‘I lighted him downstairs,’ says Hogg, ‘and soon heard him running through the quiet quadrangle in the still night. The sound became afterwards so familiar to my ear that I still seem to hear Shelley’s hasty steps.’ Such was Hogg’s first night, and the others were like it, and are told with similar graphic power. Peacock corrects the detail of Shelley’s shrill voice, while acknowledg- BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxi ing the defect, which was ‘chiefly observable when he spoke under excitement. ‘Then his voice was not only dissonant, like a jarring string, but he spoke in sharp fourths, the most unpleasing sequence of sound that can fall on the human ear ; but it was scarcely so when he spoke calmly, and not at all when he read. On the contrary, he seemed then to have his voice under perfect command ; it was good both in time and tone ; it was low and soft, but clear, distinct and expressive.’ The matchless disorder of Shelley’s room, with its various studious interests of books and apparatus betraying the self-guided seeker in knowledge, though similarly overcharged in the description, reflects the state of Shel- ley’s mind. He was completely absorbed in the intellectual life. He read incessantly, as was his custom throughout life, at all times and in all places, — in bed, at meals, or in the street, threading even the crowds of London thoroughfares with a book before his eyes. His faith in great minds was an intense feeling. When he took up a classic for the first time ‘his cheeks glowed, his eyes became bright, his whole frame trembled.’ He approached Hume and Locke in the same way. What he read was thought over and discussed in the long evenings. Life went on with him, however, as it does even in revo- lutionary periods, with much matter of fact. He was indifferent to his meals, and showed already that abstemiousness which characterized him. Bread was his favorite food ; perhaps because it was handiest, and could be eaten with least interruption to his pursuits. In London he would go into a shop and return with a loaf, which he broke in two, giving the fragment to his astonished companion. Sweets, fruits and salads were relished, but he cared less for animal food, which he afterwards gave up wholly in his vegetarian days. Wine he took rarely, and much diluted, and, indeed, he had no taste for it. In his morals he was pure, and he was made uneasy by indelicacy, which he always resented with a maiden feeling. He was given to a bizarre kind of fun in high spirits, and occasionally to real gayety. He was always capable of a childlike lght- heartedness, and from his boyhood he would sing by himself. These traits, which Hogg describes, are gathered from a longer period than their college days. At Oxford his physical régime was sufficient, if not bearty. He was well and strong. Every afternoon the friends took a long walk across country, and Shelley always car- ried his pistols for practice in shooting. Several of their adventures on these walks are recorded, and are too characteristic to be wholly passed over. The picture of him feed- ing a little girl, mean, dull and unattractive, whom he found oppressed by cold and hun- ger and the vague feeling of abandonment, and drew, not without a gentle violence, to a cottage near by to get some milk for her, is one of the most vivid. ‘It was a strange spectacle to watch the young poet whilst . . . holding the wooden bowl in one hand and the wooden spoon in the other, and kneeling on his left knee, that he might more cer- tainly attain to her mouth, he urged and encouraged the torpid and timid child to eat.’ His adventure with the gypsy boy and girl, also, is pretty. He had met them a day or two before, and, on seeing him again, the children, with a laughing salutation, darted back into the tent and Shelley after them. ‘He placed a hand on each round, rough head, spoke a few kind words to the skulking children, and then returned not less pre- cipitately, and with as much ease and accuracy as if he had been a dweller in tents from the hour when he first drew air and milk to that day.’ As he walked off he rolled an orange under their feet. On returning from these excursions Shelley would curl up on the rug, with his head to the fire where the heat was hottest, and sleep for three or four hours ; then he woke and took supper and talked till two, which Hogg had sternly fixed as the hour to retire. Hogg describes Shelley’s figure rather than his life. He had come up to Oxford with xxii PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY many plans already on foot, but he constantly found something new to do. The practical instinct in him was as strong as the intellectual. He was in haste to act, and not merely from that necessity for expression which belongs to literary genius, but with that passion for realizing ideas which belongs to the reformer. In his early career the latter quality seems to predominate because its effects were obvious, and, besides, literary progress is a slower matter ; but both elements worked together equally in developing his character and determining his career. Stockdale had withdrawn the poems of ‘ Victor and Cazire,’ but he was publishing ‘St. Irvyne,’ and considering ‘The Wandering Jew.’ The Oxford printers undertook ‘The Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson,’ a new collec- tion of poems, and published it. These verses, in which only the slight burlesque element, due to Hogg, was contemporary, represent the results on Shelley’s imagination and taste of a really earlier period, and belong with ‘ Zastrozzi,’ and ‘St. Irvyne.’ His poetic taste was improving, but the ferment of his mind was now mainly intellectual, and the new elements showed their influence principally in the propagandism of his spec- ulative opinions, his sympathy with the agitators for political reform, and his efforts to be of service to obscure writers. He continued to be interested in Brown’s ‘Sweden,’ and on his last day at Oxford, became joint security with the publishers for £800 —a loss which fell upon them — to bring out the work. He also encouraged the publication (and may have undertaken to help pay for it) of a voluine of poems by Miss Janetta Phillips, in whom he thought he had discovered a schoolgirl genius like Felicia Brown. He was more deeply interested in the case of Finnerty, an Irish agitator imprisoned for political publications, and published a poem, now lost, for his benefit, and subscribed his guinea to the fund for his relief ; and, in connection with this case also he first addressed Leigh Hunt, urging an assoviation of men of liberal principles for mutual protection. His acquaintance with Hume and Locke, and the writings of the English reformers, led him to skeptical views. He informed Stockdale of a novel (presumably ‘Leonora,’ which was printed but not published, and is now unknown, in which Hogg may have had the principal share) ‘ principally constructed to convey metaphysical and political opin- ions by way of conversation,’ and also of ‘A Metaphysical Essay in support of Atheism, which he intended to promulgate throughout the University.’ The most important expres- sion of these new views was made in his letters to his cousin, Harriet Grove, to the alarm of herself and her parents, who communicated with Shelley’s father, and broke off the match. Stockdale, also, found it to be his duty to inform Shelley’s father of his son’s dangerous principles, and at the same time to express injurious ideas of Hogg’s influence and character. When Shelley returned home at Christmas, between the anxiety of his family over his state of mind and his own feeling of exasperation and sense of injustice in the check given to his love, he had little enjoyment. On his return to Oxford his intel- lectual life reached a climax in the publication of his tract, ‘The Necessity of Atheism,’ which he seems to have intended as a circular letter for that irresponsible correspondence with strangers of which he had learned the habit from Dr. Lind. He strewed copies of this paper in Slatter’s bookstore, where they remained on sale twenty minutes before dis- covery ; but the friends who at once summoned him to remonstrate were shocked when he told them that he had sent copies to every bishop on the bench, to the vice-chancellor, and to each of the Heads of Houses. The college authorities did not at once act, but on March 25, they assembled and summoned him. Hogg describes what followed :— ‘It was a fine spring morning, on Lady Day, in the year 1811, when I went to Shelley’s room. He was absent, but before I had collected our books he rushed in. He was ter. ribly agitated. I anxiously inquired what had happened. “I am expelled,” he said, as BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxiii 3oon as he had recovered himself a little, “I am expelled! I was sent for suddenly a few minutes ago. I went to our common room, where I found our Master and two or three of the Fellows. The Master produced a copy of the little syllabus, and asked me whether I was the author of it. He spoke in a rude, abrupt and insolent tone. I begged to be informed for what purpose he put the question. No answer was given, but the Master loudly and angrily repeated, ‘Are you the author of this book?’ ‘If I can judge from your manner,’ I said, ‘ you are resolved to punish me if I should acknowledge that it is my work. If you can prove that it is, produce your evidence. It is neither just nor lawful to interrogate me in such a case and for such « purpose. Such proceed- ings would become a court of inquisitors, but not free men in a free country.’ ‘Do you choose to deny that this is your composition ?’ the Master reiterated in the same rude and angry voice.” Shelley complained much of his violence and ungentlemanly deport- ment, saying, “I have experienced tyranny and injustice before, and I well know what vulgar violence is, but I never met with such unworthy treatment. I told him calmly, but firmly, that I was determined not to answer any questions respecting the publication. He immediately repeated his demands. I persisted in my refusal, and he said furiously, ‘Then you are expelled, and I desire that you will quit the college early to-morrow morning at the latest.’ One of the Fellows took up two papers and handed one of them to me, — here it is.” He produced a regular sentence of expulsion drawn up in due form, under the seal of the college. . . . I have been with Shelley in many trying situations of his after-life, but I never saw him so deeply shocked or so cruelly agitated as on this occasion. . . . He sat on the sofa, repeating with convulsive vehemence the words “expelled! expelled!” his head shaking with emotion, and his whole frame quiver- ing.’ Hogg immediately sent word that he was as much concerned in the affair as Shelley, and received straightway the same sentence. In the afterncon a notice was publicly posted on the hall door, announcing the expulsion of the two students ‘ for contumaciously refusing to answer questions proposed to them, and for also repeatedly declining to disa- vow a publication entitled “Necessity of Atheism.”’ That afternoon Shelley visited his old Eton friend, Halliday, saying, ‘ Halliday, I am come to say good-by to you, if you are not afraid to be seen with me.’ The next morning the two friends left Oxford for Lon- don. Medwin tells how, a day or two later, at four o’clock in the morning, Shelley knocked at his door in Garden Court in the Temple. ‘I think I hear his cracked voice, with his well-known pipe, “ Medwin, let me in! I am expelled!” Here followed a loud half-hysteric laugh, and the repetition of the words, “I am expelled,” with the addition of “for atheism.”’ He and Hogg took lodgings in London, but in a few weeks the lat- ter went home and left Shelley alone. If Shelley was shocked, Field Place was troubled. His father demanded that he should return home, place himself submissively under a tutor, give up all connection with Hogg, apologize to the authorities at Oxford, and profess conformity to the church; otherwise he should have neither home nor money. Timothy Shelley was not a harsh man or an unfeeling father; he was kind-kearted, irascible and obstinate, inconsequential in his talk, and destitute of tact, with character and principles neither better nor worse than respectability required. He received the world from Providence, and his opinions from the Duke of Norfolk, and was content. He was a country squire and satisfied his constituents, his tenants, his family, and his servants, and all that was his except his father and his eldest son. It is pleasant to recall the fact that long after Shelley was dead his old nurse received her Christmas gift at the homestead to the end of her days. KXIV PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY Timothy Shelley was both alarmed and seandalized by his son’s conduct, and he was evi- dently sincerely concerned. He did not understand it, and he did not know what to do. At this time, too, Shelley was an important person to his family, which had recently obtained wealth and title. He was looked to, as the heir, to maintain and secure its position, and the entail was already made for a large portion of the estate, —£80,000, although a remainder of £120,000 was still unsettled. Old Sir Bysshe, who had been made a baronet in 1806, was the founder of this prosperity. If he was an abler man than Timothy, whom he was accustomed to curse roundly to his face, he was a worse man. He was miserly, sordid, and vulgar in his tastes. He professed himself an atheist, and though be appears to have favored his grandson, when young, he had set an example which profited him ill. He was born in America, where his father had emigrated early in the last century and had married with a stock not now traceable, so that there were some drops of American blood in Shelley’s veins. On his father’s return to England, owing to the lunacy of his elder brother, to take charge of the small family place at Fen Place, Bysshe, then eighteen years old, went with him, and began the career of a fortune- hunter. He twice eloped with wealthy heiresses, and their property was the nucleus of the estate he built up. Two of his daughters followed his example in their mode of marrying. He had devoted himself to founding a family and had succeeded, and at the end of his days he was deeply concerned in the fate of the settlements. There were reasons, therefore, for making Shelley take a view of his place more in harmony with family expectations. Shelley, on his side, was not lacking in family affection. He was tenderly attached to his sisters, and Hogg relates that at Oxford he never received a letter from them or his mother without manifest pleasure. He certainly left in their minds only pleasant mem- ories of himself. He had a boy’s regard for his father in early years, and his letters are, if firm, not deficient in respect. The only sign of distrust up to this period was the sus- picion, already mentioned, that his father intended sending him to a lunatic asylum at the time when he was home from Eton ill with fever. But, however warm his home affections were, he was not, at the age of eighteen, prepared to abandon on command his mind and what was to him moral duty; and he declined to accede to his father’s terms. His relatives, the Medwins and Groves, helped him in London, and his sisters, who were at school, sent him their pocket money by a schoolmate. In the course of six weeks, after several ineffectual letters and interviews, a settlement was brought about, appar- ently through a maternal uncle, Captain Pilfold, who lived near Field Place and was always Shelley’s friend; and it was agreed that Shelley should have £200 a year and entire freedom. This was toward the middle of May, and early in June he returned home, where he was well received, though he found his favorite sister, Elizabeth, whom he hoped Hogg might marry, less confiding in her brother than before these events. He was especially struck by the fact that the principles of his parents were social conven- tions, and that conflict with his own ideas did not proceed from any real convictions. In Shelley’s enforced absence from his family an unknown opportunity had been given for blasting their hopes more effectual than any concession that could have been made which would have kept him near them. He had become acquainted with Harriet West- brook in the Christmas vacation before he left Oxford. She was a schoolmate of his sisters at Mrs. Fenning’s, Clapham, like Sion House a middle-class school; and he had been commissioned to take her a gift. A correspondence sprang up, which, like all of Shelley’s correspondences, was confined to his opinions, as he was still in the missionary stage of conviction. When he was living in London, it was she who acted between him BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXV and his sisters and brought him their savings. There was also an elder Miss Westbrook, Eliza, thirty years old, who was very kind to Shelley; she took him te walk with Harriet, invited him to call, and was on all occasions ready to bring them together, guided the conversation upon love, and left them alone. Mr. Westbrook, Shelley noticed, was very civil, He was a retired tavern-keeper. Shelley’s interest was the more engaged, because Harriet was reproached at school for being friendly with a youth of his principles, and suffered petty annoyances. She was a pretty, bright, amiable girl, sixteen, slightly formed, with regular features, a pink and white complexion uncommonly brilliant, and pure, brown hair —‘like a poet’s dream,’ says Helen; and with this youthful bloom she had a frank air, grace, and a pleasant lively laugh. But Shelley, though interested in his ‘little friend,’ as he called her, was untouched; and when he went down to his uncle Pil- fold’s in May, in search of reconciliation with his father, he there met another to admire, Miss Hitchener, a school-teacher of twenty-nine, who was to hold a high place in his esteem, and with whom he began his customary correspondence on metaphysics, educa- tion, and the causes that interested him. He remained at home a month, and wrote apparently his lost poem on the féte at Carlton House, and in July went to Wales to visit his cousins, the Groves. He was taken soon after his arrival with a brief though violent nervous illness, but recovered, and was greatly delighted with the mountain sceners,, then new to him. In his rambles in the neighborhood he met with that adventure with the beggar which seems to have impressed him deeply. He gave the man something and fol- lowed him a mile, trying to enter into talk with him. Finally the beggar said, ‘I see by your dress that you are a rich man. They have injured me and mine a million times. You appear to me well intentioned, but I have no security of it while you live in such a house as that, or wear such clothes as those. It would be charity to quit me. The Westbrooks also were in Wales, and letters came from Harriet, who wrote de- spondently, complained of unhappiness at home, dwelt upon suicide, and at last asked Shelley’s protection. ‘Her letters,’ says Shelley, writing two months later to Miss Hitchener, ‘ became more and more gloomy. At length one assumed a tone of such de- spair, as induced me to leave Wales precipitately. I arrived in London. I was shocked at observing the alteration in her looks. Little did I divine its cause. She had become violently attached to me, and feared that I should not return her attachment. Prejudice made the confession painful. It was impossible to avoid being much affected; I promised to unite my fate to hers. J stayed in London several days, during which she recovered her spirits. I promised at her bidding to come again to London.’ This was in the early part of August. He wrote to Hogg, whom he had previously told that he was not in love, detailing the affair, -nd discussed with him whether he should marry Harriet, or, as she was ready to do, should disregard an institution which he had learned from Godwin to consider irrational. He went home and did not anticipate that any decision would he necessary at present. Within a week Harriet called him back because her father would force her to return to school. He went to her, took the course of honor, and in the last week of August went with her to Edinburgh, where they were married, August 28. He was nineteen, and she sixteen years of age. Shelley was no sooner married than he began to feel the pecuniary embarrassments which were to become familiar to him. He had never been without money, except for the six weeks in London after leaving Oxford, and he did not anticipate that his father would eut him off. He had borrowed the money for his journey from the elder Medwin, and now, his quarterly allowance not being paid, he was kept from want only by a kindly remittance from his uncle Pilfold. Hogg had joined them at Edinburgh, but Shelley xXxvi PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was anxious to make a settlement, and early in October the party went to York, where Shelley left Harriet in Hogg’s charge while he went on to his uncle’s to seek some com- munication with his father. Within a week he returned, unsuccessful, to York, whither Harriet’s elder sister, Eliza, had preceded him. He found on his arrival that Hogg had undertaken to intrigue with Harriet. A month later, in a letter to Miss Hitchener he gave an account of the interview he had with him: — ‘We walked to the fields beyond York. I desired to know fully the account of this affair. I heard it from him and I believe he was sincere. All that I can recollect of that terrible day is that I pardoned him, — fully, freely pardoned him; that I would still be a friend to him, and hoped soon to convince him how lovely virtue was; that his crime, not himself, was the object of my detestation; that I value a human being not for what it has been, but for what it is; that I hoped the time would come when he would regard this horrible error with as much disgust as I did. He said little. He was pale, terror- struck, remorseful.’ After this incident Shelley remained in York but a few days, and in November left without giving Hogg any intimation of his intentions. ‘I leave him,’ wrote Shelley, ‘to his fate. Would that I could rescue him.’ He took a cottage at Keswick. He had already written to the Duke of Norfolk, who had before been brought in as a peacemaker between father and son, soliciting his inter- vention, and was invited to Greystoke by the duke, where he spent with his family a few days at the expense of almost his last guinea. He wrote to the elder Medwin: ‘ We are now so poor as to be actually in danger of every day being deprived of the necessaries of life.’ In December Mr. Westbrook allowed Harriet £200 a year, and in January Shelley’s father made an equal allowance to him, to prevent ‘his cheating strangers.’ At Grey- stoke he had met Calvert, who introduced him to Southey. ‘Here is a man at Keswick,’ wrote Southey, ‘who acts upon me as my own ghost would do; he is just what I was in 1794.’ Shelley had long regarded Southey with admiration, and ‘Thalaba’ remained a favorite book with him. But, although Southey was kind to him, contributing to his domestic comfort in material ways, the acquaintance resulted in a diminution of Shelley’s regard. On January 2 he introduced himself to Godwin by letter, according to his custom, having only then heard that the writer whom he really revered was still alive, and he interested the grave philosopher very earnestly in his welfare. Meanwhile he had not been idle. Through all these events, indeed, he must have kept busy with his pen. He designed a poem representing the perfect state of man, gathered his verses to make a volume, worked on his metaphysical essays, and, especially, composed a novel, ‘Hubert Cauvin,’ to illustrate the causes of the failure of the French Revolution. At Keswick, too, occurred the first of the personal assaults on Shelley, which tried the be- lief of his friends. He had begun the use of landanum, asa relief from pain, but he had recovered from the illness which discloses this fact, before the incident occurred. On January 19, at seven o’clock at night, Shelley, hearing an unusual noise, went to the door and was struck to the ground and stunned bya blow. His landlord, alarmed by the noise, came to the scene, and the assailant fled. The affair was published in the local paper, and is spoken of by Harriet as well as Shelley. Some of the neighbors disbelieved in it, but his simple chemical experiments had excited their minds and made him an object of suspicion, and it is to be said that the country was ina disturbed state. Shelley’s thoughts were already turned to Ireland as a field of practical action, and, his private affairs being now satisfactorily settled, he determined to go there and work for the cause of Catholic emancipation, At Keswick he wrote his ‘Address to the Irish People,’ and in spite of BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxvii the dissuasion of Calvert and Godwin he started with his wife in the first days of Feb« tuary, 1812, and arrived in Dublin on the 12th. Shelley sent his ‘Address’ to the printer, and within two weeks had fifteen hundred copies on hand, which he distributed freely, sending them to sixty coffee-houses, flinging them from his balcony, giving them away on the street, and sending out a man with them. He wrote also ‘Proposals for an Association,’ published March 2. He had pre- sented «a letter from Godwin to Curran, and made himself known to the leaders. On February 28, at a public meeting which O’Connell addressed, Shelley also spoke for an hour, and received mingled hisses and applause, — applause for the wrongs of Ireland, hisses for his plea for religious toleration. He also became acquainted with Mr. Lawless, a follower of Curran, and wrote passages of Irish history for a proposed work by him. Meanwhile Godwin sent letters dissuading him from his course, and finally wound up, — ‘Shelley, you are preparing a scene of blood.’ Shelley’s Irish principles were but remotely connected with the practical politics of the hour, and coasisted, in the main, of very general convictions in regard to equality, toleration, and the other elements of republican government. He did compose, out of French sources, a revolutionary ‘ De- claration of Rights.’ He was soon discouraged by the character of the men and of the situation. His heart, too, was touched by the state of the people, for he engaged at once in that practical philanthropy which was always a large part of his personal life. ‘A poor boy,’ he writes, ‘whom I found starving with his mother, in a hiding place of unut- terable filth and misery, — whom I rescued and wasabout to teach, has been snatched on a charge of false and villainous effrontery to a Magistrate of Hell, who gave him the alternative of the tender or of military servitude. . . . 1 am sick of this city, and long to be with you and peace.’ At last he gave up, sent forward a box filled with his bocks, which was inspected by the government and reported as seditious, and on April 4 left Ireland. He settled ten days later at Nantgwilt, near Cwm Elan, the seat of his cousins, the Groves, and there remained until June. In this period he appears to have met Pea- cock, through whom he was probably introduced to his London publisher, Hookham. In June he again migrated to Lynmouth in Devon. Here he wrote his ‘Letter to Lord Ellenborough,’ defending Eaton, who had bec sentenced for publishing Paine’s ‘ Age of Reason’ in a periodical. He amused himself by putting copies of the ‘ Declaration of Rights’ and a new satirical poem, ‘ The Devil’s Walk,’ in hotties and fire balloons, and setting them adrift by sea and air; but a more mundane attempt to circulate the ‘ De- claration of Rights’ resulted unfortunately for his servant, Dan Healy, who had become attached to him and followed him from Ireland, and was punished in a fine of £260 or eight months’ imprisonment for posting it on the walls of Barnstable. Shelley could not pay the fine, but he provided fifteen shillings a week to make the prisoner’s confinemens more comfortable. The government now put Shelley under surveillance, aud he was watched by Leeson,a spy. At Lynmouth‘ Queen Mab’ is first heard of. In September he removed to Tanyrallt, near Tremadoc, in Wales, where he became deeply interested in a scheme of Mr. Maddock’s for reclaiming some waste land by an embankment. I¢ was a large, practical enterprise, which engaged both Shelley’s imagination and his spirié of philanthropy. He subscribed £100, and on October 4, went to London, seeking to interest others in this undertaking. Here he first met Godwin, through whom he became acquainted with the Newtons, of vegetarian fame, but before this, while in Dublin, he had himself adopted that way of life. It is uncertain whether at this time he saw God- win’s daughter Mary. He renewed his acquaintance with Hogg, in whose narratire scenes of ShelJey’s life at this period, presented with the same vigor and vivacity as in RXViii PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY the Oxford time, occur. None of them are more humorous than such as describe the ap< pearance of Miss Hitchener, who, yielding to Shelley’s long expressed wish, had joined the family before they left Wales and was now an inmate of the household. Shelley had idealized her at a distance, but her near neighborhood was disenchantment. Hogg’s de- scription of his walk with the ‘Brown Demon,’ as he called her, on one arm, and the ‘Black Diamond,’ as he nicknamed Eliza, on the other, has given her an unenviable figure. She was finally got rid of, and a stipend paid her to make good the loss she had suffered by giving up her school-teaching; but in her after-life she was much respected by those with whom she lived; and she appears to have remained very loyal to the poet, whose correspondence for nearly two years was so large a part of her life. Shelley returned to Wales on November 13, going to Tanyrallt. There he worked very constantly at his essays, an unpublished collection of ‘ Biblical Extracts’ for popular distribution, and ‘ Queen Mab.’ There also occurred the second assault upon him, which has been received with more distrust than any other event in his life. On February 26, between ten and eleven o’clock, Shelley, after retiring, was alarmed by a noise in the parlor below. He went down with two loaded pistols to the billiard room, and followed the sound of retreating footsteps into a small office, where he saw a man passing, through aglass window. The man fired, and Shelley’s pistol flashed, on which the man knocked Shelley down, and, while they struggled, Shelley fired his second pistol, which he thought took effect. The man arose with a cry and said, ‘By God, 1 will be revenged! I will murder your wife! I will ravish your sister! By God, I will be revenged!’ He then fled. The servants were still up, and the whole family assembled in the parlor and remained for two hours. Shelley and his servant, Dan, who had that day returned from prison, sat up. At four o’clock, Harriet heard a pistol shot, and on going down, found that Shelley’s clothes and the window curtain had been shot through. Dan had left the room to see what time it was, when Shelley heard a noise at the window; as he approached it, a man thrust his arm through the glass and fired. Shelley’s pistol again missed fire, and he struck at the man with an old sword; while they were still struggling, Dan came back, and the man escaped. Peacock was there the next summer, and heard that persons, who examined the premises in the morning, found the grass trampled and rolled on, but there were no footprints except toward the house, and the impression of the ball on the wainscot showed that the pistol had been fired toward the window and not from it. There are other accounts of what Shelley said. Jn after years he ascribed the spasms of pain, from which he suffered, to the pressure of the man’s knee on his body. It is not unlikely, as Dowden remarks, that Dan Healy had been followed by a spy, and it is known that Shelley was dogged by Leeson, whom he feared long afterwards. If the affair is regarded as an illusion of the sort to which Shelley was said to be subject, the material circumstances show that the event was one of intense reality to Shelley, and it is not strange that he immediately left the neighborhood, finding life there insupportable. He made a short journey to Ireland, where he arrived March 9, visited the Lakes of Killarney, and returned to Dublin, March 21. Early in April he was back in London. On returning to London, Shelley entered again into negotiations with his father for a further settlement. He would soon be of age, and it was necessary to make some terms to prevent the loss the estate would suffer by raising money on post-obit bonds. He was much harassed by his creditors, and his father is said privately to have taken measures to relieve him from their persecutions without his knowledge. It is uncertain whether he lived in a hotel or in lodgings. His first child, Ianthe Eliza, was born in June. At the end of July he was settled at Brackne!!, near the Boinvilles, who were connected BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XX1x with the Newtons. Here Peacock visited him, and from this time became intimate. Peacock’s cold judgment, notwithstanding his trequent skepticism and imperfect know- ledge of Shelley’s affairs, makes his impressions valuable. To him, more than to any other external influence, is to be attributed the devotion of Shelley, which now began, to Greek studies. In the first week of October Peacock joined the family in a journey to Edinburgh, taken in a private carriage which Shelley had bought for Harriet. Nothing noteworthy occurred except that Shelley made a new convert, Baptista,a young Brazilian, who corresponded with him and partly translated ‘Queen Mab,’ which had been printed in the late spring, into Portuguese; but he died while young. Shelley returned to London in December. Two years and a half had now passed since Shelley’s marriage, and the union, in which love upon his part had not originally been an element, had become one of warm affection. Through all the vicissitudes of his wandering life it was a main source of Shelley’s happi- ness. Time now began to disclose those limitations of character and temperament which were to be anticipated. The last pleasant scene in this early married life is Peacock’s description of Shelley’s pleasure in his child : — “He was extremely fond of it, and would walk up and down the room with it in his arms fora long time together, singing to it a monotonous melody of his own making, which ran on the repetition of a word of his own making. His song was, “ Yahmani, Yahmani, Yihmani, Yihmani.” It did not please me; but, what was more important, it vleased the child, and lulled it when it was fretful. Shelley was extremely fond of his “hildren. He was preéminently an affectionate father. But to the firstborn there were accompaniments which did not please him. The child had a wet nurse, whom he did not like, and was much looked after by his wife’s sister, whom he intensely disliked. I have often thought that if Harriet had nursed her own child, and if this sister had not lived with them, the link of their married love would not have been so readily broken.’ In the autumn of 1813, on coming to London, Harriet began to vary from that de- scription of her which Shelley had written to Fanny Godwin in December, 1812: — ‘How is Harriet a fine lady? You indirectly accuse her of this offence, — to me the most unpardonable of all. The ease and simplicity of her habits, the unassuming plain- ness of her address, the uncaleulated connection of her thought and speech, have ever formed in my eyes her greatest charm; and none of these are compatible with fashionable (fe, or the attermpted assumption of its vulgar and noisy éclat.’ 4i was to please her that he then bought a carriage and a quantity of plate, and she Aisnlaver a taste for expensive things. On the birth of the child her intellectual sym- painy witn him seems to have ended. Afterwards she neither read nor studied. She was disenchanted of his views, which, Peacock mentions, she joined with him in not tak- ing seriously; she was disenchanted, too, of the wandering life and recurring poverty to which they led. Her sister’s presence in the household became a cause of difference between her and her husband. The first expressed sign of domestic unhappiness occurs in Shelley’s melancholy letter to Hogg, March 22, 1814. He had then been staying for a month with Mrs. Boinville, and looked forward with regret to ending his visit. He thus refers to Eliza: — ‘Eliza is still with us, not here, but will be with me when the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart. I am now but little inclined to contest this point. I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul. It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror to see her caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I may hereafter XXX PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY find the consolation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the overflowing of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm that cannot see to sting.’ Shelley felt keenly the contrast of the peaceful home in which he was staying with his own. Some years afterwards, in 1819, he wrote to Peacock: — ‘I could not help considering Mrs. B. when I knew her as the most admirable specimen of a human being I had ever seen. Nothing earthly ever appeared to me more perfect than her character and manners. It is improbable that I shall ever meet again the per- son whom I so much esteem and still admire. I wish, however, that when you see her you would tell her that I have not forgotten her, nor any of the amiable circle once assembled around her; and that I desired such remembrances to her as an exile and a Pariah may be permitted to address to an acknowledged member of the community of mankind.’ With Mrs. Boinville and her daughter, Mrs. Turner, he now made his first acquaint- ance with Italian. On March 26 he remarried Harriet, who had not been with him for the previous month, in St. George’s Church, London, in order to place beyond doubt the validity of the Scotch marriage and the rights of his children. Shortly afterwards, in April, Harriet again left him, and to this month belongs the poem, ‘Stanza, April, 1814,’ the most melancholy verses he had yet written, in which he speaks of his ‘sad and silent home,’ and ‘its desolated hearth.’ During the next month Harriet was still away; and, at some time in it, he addressed to her the stanzas, ‘To Harriet, May, 1814,’ in which he appeals to her to return to him and restore his happiness, tells her that her feeling is ‘ remorseless,’ that it is ‘ malice,’ ‘revenge,’ ‘ pride,’ and begs her to ‘ pity if thou canst not love.’ There is no evidence that Harriet rejoined Shelley, and, when her residence is next discovered, in July, she was living at Bath apparently with her sister. The story of Harriet’s voluntarily leaving Shelley may have sprung from this protracted absence. Meanwhile Shelley had met Godwin’s daughter, Mary, a girl of sixteen, who is de- scribed as golden-haired, with a pale, pure face, hazel eyes, a somewhat grave manner, and strength both of mind and will. Early in June he was feeling a strong attraction toward her. He confided in her, and out of their intimacy, through her sympathy, sprang that mutual love which soon became passion. The stanzas ‘To Mary, June, 1814,’ show deep feeling and a sense of doubtfulness in their position, but do not disclose any thought or suggestion of a relation other than friendship. But to Shelley, who was suffering deeply and was indeed wretched, it was not unnatural that he should reflect whether this was not one of those occasions justifying separation, which he had always held should be met by putting an end to a relation which had become false. This was his view of marriage, well known to Harriet at the time that he married her, when he had observed the ceremony for her sake, and openly repeated in his writings dedicated to her within a year. Shelley would not violate his principles by such an action; nor could it be pleaded that he had taken up with this view after obligations already incurred or subsequent to the incidents which made him desire a change. Harriet probably did not realize what Shelley’s convictions were, and may have been deceived by her experience of his disposi- tion. The natural inference from the state of the facts, which, at best, are imperfectly known, is that, as Shelley had now come of age and was in a position to make his rights of property felt, Harriet, under the guidance of her sister, who had been the intrigner from the start, desired such a settlement as would put her in possession of the social posi- tion. and privileges which were at Shelley’s command; that differences arose in the home, possibly on the comparatively slight question whether Eliza should continue to live with BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxxt them; and that Harriet, swayed by her sister, was endeavoring to subdue Shelley to her way by a certain hardness in her conduct, and by if not refusing to live with him, refrain- ing from doing so. But Shelley, on his part, in Harriet’s absence, had come to love Mary, and to see in following that love the way of escape from his troubles. The time was one of intense mental excitement to him, especially when the crisis came early in July. He secured Mary’s consent. She was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and of Godwin, and derived from both parents the same principles of marriage, both by practice and precept, that Shelley held. In their own eyes neither of them was committing a wrong. Shelley sent for Harriet. She came to London, and he told her his determina- tion. She was greatly shocked and made ill by the disclosure. Shelley acted with a certain deliberation as well as with openness. He directed settlements to be made for Harriet’s maintenance, and saw that she was supplied with money for the present. At the same time his state of mind was one of conflict and distress. Peacock describes his appearance: — ‘Nothing that I ever read in tale or history could present a more striking image of a sudden, violent, irresistible, uncontrollable passion, than that under which I found him laboring, when, at his request, 1 went up from the country to call on him in London. Between his old feelings toward Harriet, from whom he was not then separated, and his new passion for Mary, he showed in his looks, in his gestures, in his speech, the state of a mind “ suffering like a little kingdom the nature of an insurrection.” His eyes were bloodshot, his hair and dress disordered. He caught up a bottle of laudanum and said, *T never part from this.” He added, “I am always repeating to myself your lines from Sophocles : — 6 «¢* Man’s happiest lot is not to be: And when we tread life’s thorny steep Most blest are they who earliest free Descend to death's eternal sleep.’ ’’? Mary appears to have been determined at last by fears for Shelley’s life, and on July 28 she left England with him. It is unfortunately necessary to notice another element in the situation. It is the tes- timony of the common friends of Harriet and Shelley — Hogg, Peacock, and Hookham — that, up to the period of their parting, she was pure. It is said, indeed, on what must be regarded as the very doubtful authority of Miss Clairmont, that Shelley persuaded Mary to go by asserting Harriet’s unfaithfulness. What is certain is that, after Harviet’s death, he wrote to Mary, January 11, 1817, ‘I learned just now from Godwin that he has evidence that Harriet was unfaithful to me four months before I left England with you.’ That Godwin had such a story is known by his own evidence. The name of an otscure person, Ryan, who was acquainted with the family as early as the summer of 1813, was brought into connection with the affair. Shelley at one time doubted the paternity of his second child, Charles Bysshe, born in November, 1814, but he was afterwards satisfied that he was in error. I do not find any reliable evidence that Shelley ever maintained that he was convinced in July, 1814, of Harriet’s infidelity. He afterwards believed that she had been in fault, as is shown by his letter to Southey in 1820, in which he maintains the rightfulness of his conduct: ‘I take God to witness, if such a being is now regarding both you and me; and I pledge myself, if we meet, as perhaps you expect, before Him after death, to repeat the same in his presence — that you accuse me wrongfully. I am innocent of ill, either done or intended. The consequence you allude to flowed in no respect from me.’ At the time of the event itself, it was not necessary XXXI1 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY to Shelley’s mind to have a justification which would appeal to all the world and ordinary ways of thinking ; but, when time disclosed such justification, he made use of it to strengthen his action in his own eyes and the eyes of Mary, and, though only by implica- tion, in Southey’s judgment. He appears never to have meutioned the matter to others, Shelley’s habitual reticence was far greater than he has ever received credit for. Shelley and Mary had for a companion on their voyage Miss Clairmont, a daughter of the second Mrs. Godwin by her first marriage. They visited Paris, crossed France, and stopped on the shores of Lake Lucerne, near Brunnen. There they remained but a short time, and, descending the Rhine to Cologne, journeyed by Rotterdam to England, where they arrived September 13. Peacock describes the following winter as the most solitary period of Shelley’s life. He settled in London, and was greatly embarrassed with his affairs, endeavoring to raise money and to keep out of the way of creditors. He had written to Harriet during his journey, often saw her in London, and seems to have been upon pleasant terms with her. Godwin, who had at first been very angry, renewed his relations under the stress of his own financial difficulties, and the money to be had from Shelley. In January, 1815, old Sir Bysshe’s death greatly improved Shelley’s position by making him the immediate heir. He went home, and was refused admittance by his father; but negotiations could not be long delayed. They lasted for eighteen months. He was given the choice of entailing the entire estate, £200,000, surrendering his claim to that part of the property, £80,000, which could not be taken from him, and accepting a life interest, on which condition he should receive the whole ; or, refusing this, he should be deprived of the £120,000, which would go to his younger brother, John. Shelley refused to execute the entail, which he thought wrong, and yielded the larger part of the property. To pay his immediate debts he sold his succession to the fee-simple of a portion of the estate, valued at £18,000, to his father for £11,000, in June, 1815, and by the same agreement received a fixed annual allowance of £1,000, and also a considerable sum of money. He sent Harriet £200 for her debts, and directed his bankers to pay her £200 annually from his allowance. Mr. Westbrook also continued to his daughter his allowance of £200, so that she now had £400 a year. Early in this year Shelley was told that he was dying rapidly of consumption. His health was certainly broken before this time, but every symptom of pulmonary disease suddenly and completely passed away. In February Mary’s first child was born, but died within a fortnight. In the spring he settled at Bishopgate and there wrote ‘ Alas- tor.” In 1816, Mary’s second child, William, was born. In May, Shelley, with Mary and Miss Clairmont, left England for the Continent, and within two weeks arrived at Lake Geneva, There he became acquainted with Byron, and spent the summer boating with him. Unknown to Shelley or Mary, Miss Clairmont, before leaving London, had become Byron’s mistress, and the intrigue went on at Geneva without their knowledge. There Shelley also met Monk Lewis. On returning to England, where he arrived Sep- tember 7, he settled at Bath for some months. The two incidents that saddened the year occurred in quick succession. On October 8, Mary’s half-sister Fanny, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and Imlay, committed suicide by taking landanum at an inn in Swansea. Shelley was much shocked by this event, but another blow was in store for him. He seems to have lost sight of Harriet during his residence abroad, and it is doubt- ful whether he saw her after reaching England. She had received her allowances reg- ularly. In November Shelley sought for and could not find her. It is affirmed that she was living under the protection of her father until shortly before her death. She was in lodgings, however, in that month, and did not return to them after November 9. Ou BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xxxiii December 10 her body was found in the Serpentine River. Of the two suicides, he said that he felt that of Fanny most acutely; but it is plain that, while he said at a later time she had ‘a heart of stone,’ the fate of Harriet brought a melancholy that was not to pass away, though he had ceased to love her. Unfortunately there is no doubt that she had erred in her life after leaving his protection, but the letters she wrote to an Irish friend excite pity and sympathy with her. Shelley was imarried to Mary December 30, in St. Mildred’s Church. He immediately undertook to recover his children from the Westbrooks. These children had been placed, before Harriet’s death, under the care of the Rev. John Kendall, at Budbrooke. The Westbrooks were determined to contest Shelley’s possession of them. The affair was brought into the Chancery Court. It was set forth that Shelley was a man of atheistical and immoral principles, and ‘ Queen Mab,’ which had been distributed only in a private way, was offered in proof. The case was heard early in 1817 before Lord Eldon. Shelley was represented by his lawyers. On March 27 Lord Eldon gave judgment against Shelley, basing it on his opinions as affecting his conduct. The children were not placed in the hands of the Westbrooks, but were made wards, and the persons nominated by Shelley, Dr. and Mrs. Hume, were appointed guardians. Shelley was to be allowed to visit them twelve times in the year, but only in the presence of their guardians, and the Westbrooks were given the same privilege without that restriction. Shelley settled at Marlow early in 1817, having with him Miss Clairmont and her new- born child Allegra, and his own two children, William and Clara. In the summer he wrote ‘The Revolt of Islam,’ besides prose pamphlets upon polities; but he had now really begun his serious life as a poet. The only cloud on his happiness was the separa- tion from his children, which his poems sufficiently illustrate. Hunt, with whom he was now intimate, says, that after the decision Shelley ‘never dared to trust himself with mentioning their names in my hearing, though I had stood at his side throughout the business.’ He was in fear lest his other children should be taken from him; and he finally determined to leave England and settle in Italy, being partly led thereto by the state of his health, for which he was advised to try a warm climate. The private and intimate view of Shelley, from the time of his union with Mary in the summer of 1814 to that of his final departure from England in the spring of 1818, is given by Peacock and Hunt. Peacock had become his familiar friend, though Shelley was less confidential with him than Peacock supposed. In the solitary winter of 1814-15, which was spent drearily in London, Peacock saw him often; and in the next summer, during his residence at Bishopgate, the pleasant voyage up the Thames to Lechlade was taken. It was on this excursion that Peacock’s favorite prescription for Shelley’s ills — ‘three mutton chops well peppered ’ — effected so sudden a cure. Peacock attributes much of Shelley’s physical ills to his vegetarian diet. He observes that whenever Shelley took a journey and was obliged to live ‘on what he could get,’ as Shelley said, he became better in health, so that his frequent wanderings were beneficial to him. On these jour- reys, he notes, too, Shelley always took with him pistols for self-defence, and laudanum as a resource from the extreme fits of pain to which he was subject. Shelley was appre- hensive of personal danger, and he had a vague fear, till he left England, that his father ‘vould attempt to restrain his liberty on a charge of madness. He also had at one time the suspicion that he was afflicted with elephantiasis. Peacock took these incidents more seriously than is at all warranted. Shelley’s mind was, in general, strong, active and sound; his industry, both in acquisition and creation, wasremarkable; and the theory that be was really unbalanced in any material degree is not in harmony with his constant xxxiv PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY intellectual power, his very noticeable practical sense and carcfulness in such business as he had to execute, and his adherence to fact in those cases where his account can be tested by another’s. He had visions, both waking and sleeping; he had wandering fears that became ideas temporarily, perhaps approaching the point of hallucination; but to give such incidents, which are not extraordinary, undue weight is to disturb a just impression of Shelley’s mind and life, as a whole, which were singularly distinguished by continual intellectual force, tenacity and consistency of principle, and studies and moral aims main- tained in the midst of confusing and annoying affairs, perpetual discouragement, and bodily weariness and pain. The excess of ideality in him disturbed his judgment of wo- men, but in other relations of life, except at times of illness, he did not vary from the normal more than is the lot of genius. Peacock brings out, more than other friends, the manner of Shelley, his temperance in discussion, especially when his own affairs were concerned, and his serene demeanor. One anecdote is illustrative of this courtesy, and at the same time indicates that limitation under which his friendship with Peacock went on: — ‘I was walking with him in Bisham Wood, and we had been talking in the usual way of our ordinary subjects, when he suddenly fell intoa gloomy reverie. I tried to rouse him out of it, and made some remarks which I thought might make him laugh at his own abstraction. Suddenly he said to me, still with the same gloomy expression: ‘‘ There is one thing to which I have decidedly made up my mind. I will take a great glass of ale every night.” I said, laughingly, “A very good resolution, as the result of a melancholy musing.” Yes,” he said, “but you do not know why I take it. I shall do it to deaden my feelings; for I see that those who drink ale have none.” ‘The next day he said to me, “ You must have thought me very unreasonable yesterday evening?” I said, “I did, certainly.” Then,” he said, “I will tell you what I would not tell any one else. I was thinking of Harriet.” I told him I had no idea of such a thing; it was so long since he had named her.’ This is the single instance of expression of the remorse which Shelley felt for Harriet’s fate. Peacock mentions the heartiness of Shelley’s laughter, in connection with his failure to cultivate a taste for comedy in him, for Shelley felt the pain of comedy anc its neces- sary insensibility to finer humane feeling; but this did not make him enjoy less his famil- iar, harmless humor, in which there was a dash of his early wild spirits. He was always fond of amusements of a childlike sort. Peacock thought that it was from him Shelley learned the sport of sailing paper-boats, happy if he could load them with pennies for the boys on the other side of stream or pond. At Marlow he used to play with a little girl who had attracted him, pushing a table across the floor to her, and when he went away he gave her nuts and raisins heaped on a plate, which she kept through life in memory of him, and on her death willed it, so that it is now among the few personal relics of the poet. At Marlow, too, he visited the poor in their homes, as his custom was, helping and advising. His house there was a large one with many rooms, and handsomely fur- nished, the library being large enovgn for a ball-room, and the garden pleasant. Pea- cock’s last service was to introduxe him to the Italian opera, cf which he became fond, just before leaving England. Hunt had once seen Shelley ip earlier years, and in prison had received letters of ad- miration and encouragement frem him; but he did not really know him until the end of 1816, just at the time of Harr:et’s death. He is more evenly appreciative, and no such allowances as are made for ogg and Peacock have to be observed in his case. Shelley BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXXV was especially fond of Hunt’s children, and would play with them to their great delight. The anecdote of their begging him ‘not to do the horn’ (meaning that he should not twist his hair on his forehead in acting the monster) is well known. It had been the temptation of setting off fireworks with the Newton children that took Shelley away from Godwin on his first night with the philosopher and introduced him to the vegetarian circle. Hunt was in many ways more fitted by nature to enter into sympathy with Shel- ley than any one he had known; the friendship they formed was delightful to both, and Shelley’s part in it caused him to show some of his finest qualities of tact, toleration and service, that asked no thanks and knew no bounds. On the other hand, Hunt several times defended Shelley’s good name under virulent and slanderous attacks, and after his death was one of those who repeatedly spoke out for him. Hunt ascribes Shelley’s dis- repute in England in considerable measure to the effect of the Lord Chancellor’s decree depriving him of his children. He says: — ‘He was said to be keeping a seraglio at Marlow, and his friends partook of the scan- dal. This keeper of a seraglio, who, in fact, was extremely difficult to please in such matters, and who had no idea of love unconnected with sentiment, passed his days like a hermit. He rose early in the morning, walked and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, walked and read again, dined on vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine) conversed with nis friends (to whom his house was ever open), again walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten o’clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily existence. His book was generally Plato, or Homer, or one of the Greek tragedies, or the Bible, in which last he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring interest.’ Hunt notices, as others have done, the great variability of Shelley’s expression, due %o his responsiveness to the scenes about him or his own memories, and in particular the suddenness with which he would droop into an aspect of dejection. He admired his char- acter, and did not distrust his temperament because some of his moods might seem at the time inexplicable. He especially praises his generosity, and the noble way of it, as he had reason to do, having at one time received £1,400 from him, besides the loans (which were the same as gifts) in the ordinary course of affairs; and, indeed, nothing but its emptiness ever closed Shelley’s purse to any of his friends, who, it must be said, availed themselves somewhat freely of his liberal nature. One anecdote told by Hunt brings Shelley before the eye better than pages of description, and with it he closes his reminis- cences of the Marlow period: — ‘Shelley, in coming to our house that night, had found a woman lying near the top of the hill in fits. It was a fierce winter night, with snow upon the ground; and winter loses nothing of its fierceness at Hampstead. My friend, always the promptest as well as most pitying on these occasions, knocked at the first houses he could reach, in order to have the woman taken in. The invariable answer was that they could not do it. He asked for an outhouse to put her in, while he went for a doctor. Impossible. In vain he assured them that she was no impostor. They would not dispute the point with him; but doors were closed, and windows shut down. . . . Time flies. The poor woman is in convulsions; her son, a young man, lamenting over her. At last my friend sees a car- Tiage driving up toa honse at a little distance. The knock is given; the warm door opens; servants and lights pour forth. Now, thought he, is the time. He puts on his best address. . . . He tells his story. They only press on the faster. “ Will you go and see her?” “No, sir; there ’s no necessity for that sort of thing, depend on it. Im- postors swarm everywhere. The thing cannot be done. Sir, your conduct is extraordi« xxxvi PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY nary.” “Sir,” cried Shelley, assuming a very different manner and forcing the flourishing householder to stop out of astonishment, “I am sorry to say that your conduct is not ex- traordinary, and if my own seems to amaze you, I will tell you something which will amaze you more, and I hope will frighten you. It is such men as you who madden the spirits and the patience of the poor and wretched; and if ever a convulsion comes in this country (as is very probable) recollect what I tell you: you will have your house, that you refuse to put the miserable woman into, burnt over your head.” “God bless me, sir! Dear me, sir!” exclaimed the poor, frightened man, and fluttered into his man- sion. The woman was then brought to our house, which was at some distance and down a bleak path; and Shelley and her son were obliged to hold her till the doctor could arrive. It appeared that she had been attending this son in London, on a criminal charge made against him, the agitation of which had thrown her into fits on her return. The doctor said that she would have perished, had she remained there a short time longer. The next day my friend sent mother and son comfortably home to Hendon, where they were known, and whence they returned him thanks full of gratitude.’ Shelley left England for the last time on March 12, 1818, and travelled by the way of Paris and Mont Cenis to Milan. Thenceforth he resided in Italy, with frequent changes of abode at first, but finally at Pisa and its neighborhood. He had now matured, and his intimate life, his nature, and his character, are disclosed by himself in the rapidly pro- duced works on which his fame rests. From this time it is not necessary to seek in others’ impressions that knowledge of himself which is the end of biography; and the singular consistency and self-possession of his character and career, as shown in his poetry and prose, and in his familiar letters, bearing out as they do the permanent traits of his dis- position already known, and correcting or shedding tight upon what was extraordinary in his personality, give the best reason for belief that much in Shelley’s earlier career which seems abnormal is due to the misapprehension and the misinterpretation of him by his friends. It was the life of a youth, impulsive and self-confident, and, moreover, it is the only full narrative of youth which our literature affords. If the thoughts and actions of first years were more commonly and minutely detailed, there might be less wonder, less distrust, less harsh judgment upon what seems erratic and foolish in Shelley’s early days. His misfortune was that immaturity of mind and judgment became fixed in im- prudent acts; his practical responsibility foreran its due time. Yet the story, as it stands, demonstrates generous aims, a sense of human duty, an interest in man’s welfare, and a resolution to serve it, as exceptional as Shelley’s poetic genius, intimate as the tie was between the two; for he was right in characterizing his poetic genius as in the main a moral one. The latter years, during which his life is contained and expressed in his works, require less attention to such details as have been followed thus far; his life in manhood must be read in his poetry and prose, and especially in his letters, but some account of external affairs is still necessary. He had taken Miss Clairmont and her child with him, but at Milan the baby, Allegra, was sent to Byron, who undertook her bringing up and education. He enjoyed the opera at Milan, and made an excursion to Como in search of a house, but finally decided to go further south, and departed, on May 1, for Leghorn, where the party arrived within ten days. The presence there of the Gisbornes, old friends of Godwin, drew him to that city, which became, with Pisa, his principal place of residence. Mrs. Gisborne was a middle- aged woman of sense and experience, and possessed of much literary cultivation. She had been brought up as a girl, in the East, and had married Reveley, the student of Athenian antiquities, in Rome. He was a Radical, and on returning to England became BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXXVii associated with Godwin, Holcroft, and others of the group of reformers; and in this way it happened that when Mary’s mother died at her child’s birth, Mrs. Reveley took the babe home and cared for it. Two years later, when Reveley died, Godwin proposed marriage to her, but was refused; and afterwards she married Mr. Gisborne, with whom she had lived in Italy for some years. She welcomed Mary with great cordiality, and the pleasantest relations, which were orly once broken, sprang up between the families. She introduced Shelley to Calderon, and read Spanish with him, as time went on, greatly to his pleasure; and, on his side, he became attached to her son, Henry Reveley, a young engineer, and especially assisted him in the scheme of putting a steamboat on the Medi- terranean; but the plan, in which Shelley had embarked capital, failed. It was in the financial complications springing out of this affair that opportunity was given for the breach of confidence which then occurred, as Shelley thought he was to be defrauded; but the trouble between them was amicably settled. These events took place at a later time. Shelley did not at once settle in Leghorn, but took a house at the Baths of Lucca, where he spent a quiet period, pleased with the scene, his walks and rides, the bath under the woodland waterfall, and all the first delights of Italy, while he was not blind to its miseries. He finished ‘ Rosalind and Helen,’ which he had begun at Marlow, and translated Plato’s ‘Symposium.’ Miss Clairmont had already begun to be discontented at the separation from Allegra, and was far from comforted by what news reached her of Byron’s life at Venice. Shelley yielded to her anxiety and, on August 19, accompa- nied her by Florence to Venice, where Byron received him cordially, and offered him his villa at Este, where her mother, whose presence in Venice was concealed, would be per- mitted to see Allegra. Shelley wrote to Mary, who left Lucca August 30, and the family was soon settled at Este. Here their youngest child, Clara, sickened, and, on their tak- ing her at once to Venice for advice, she died in that city, September 24. The loss made the autumn lonely at Este, but there, except for brief visits to Byron, Shelley remained, writing the ‘ Lines on the Euganean Hills,’ ‘ Julian and Maddalo,’ and the first act of ‘Prometheus Unbound.’ His poetic genius had come somewhat suddenly to its mastery, and his mind was full of great plans, keeping it restless and absorbed, while his melan choly seemed to deepen. On November 5 they departed for the south, Miss Clairmont still accompanying them, and she continued to live with them. They arrived at Rome November 20, and, remaining only a week, were settled at Naples December 1. Here Shelley was intoxicated with the beauty of Italy; he visited Pompeii, ascended Vesuvius, and went south as far as Paestum, and in his letters gives marvellously beautiful descriptions of these scenes; but he was, for causes which remain obscure, deeply dejected and unhappy to such a degree that he hid his verses from Mary and disclosed no more of his grief than he could help. She ascribed his melancholy to physical depression, but there were other reasons, never satisfactorily made out. He worked but little, only at finishing and remodelling old poems, except that he wrote the well-known personal poems of that winter. On March 5 they returned to Rome, and there he plucked up courage again, and fin- ished three acts of ‘ Prometheus Unbound,’ writing in that wilderness of beauty and ruin which he describes with asad eloquence. Here the most severe domestic sorrow they were to undergo came upon them in the death of their boy, William, on June 7. Shelley watched by him for sixty hours uninterruptedly, and immediately was called on to forget his grief and sustain Mary, who sank under this last blow. ‘ Yesterday,’ he wrote to Peacock, ‘after an illness of only a few days, mv little William died. There was no hope from RXXViii PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY the moment of the attack. You will be kind enough to tell all my friends, so that I need not write to them. It is a great exertion to me to write even this, and it seems to me as if, hunted by calamity as I have been, that I should never recover any cheerfulness again.’ He removed with Mary at once to Leghorn, that she might have Mrs. Gisborne’s com- pany, and there spent the summer. ‘The Cenci’ was the work of these months, written in a tower on the top of his house overlooking the country. On October 2 they went to Florence, where his last child, Perey, was born November 12. The galleries were a per- petual delight to him, and especially the sculptures, on which he made notes and from which he derived poetic stimulus. Here he wrote the fourth act of ‘Prometheus Un- bound,’ finishing that poem. On January 27 they removed to Pisa, where they found a friend in Mrs. Mason, one of the Earl of Kingston’s daughters whom Mary Wollstonecraft had once in charge. She was one of their set of acquaintances from this time. Shelley was much troubled in the opening months of this year, 1820, by Godwin’s complaints and embarrassments, but as he had already given Godwin £4,000 or £5,000, and in order to do it had divested himself, as he reminded Godwin, of four or five times this amount, which he had raised from money-lenders, and as he was really unable to accomplish anything by such sacri- fices, he receded from the impossible task of extricating him fromdebt. Miss Clairmont, too, toward whom Shelley’s conduct is tenderly considerate and manly, caused him trouble by her anxiety about Allegra, and her inability to keep on good terms with Mary, who was now unwilling that she should continue with them. His discharged servant, Paolo, also was a source of uneasiness and exasperation, as he first attempted to black- mail Shelley and then spread scandals about his private life, which were taken up in Italy and echoed in England. On June 15 they again removed to Leghorn, taking the house of the Gisbornes, and on August 5 went for the summer to the Baths of San Giuli- ano near Pisa. To these months belong ‘The Witch of Atlas,’ and ‘dipus Tyrannus;’ but Shelley’s principal works were the occasional pieces. He had become greatly dis- couraged by the continued neglect of the public, and by the personal attacks to which his character was subjected in England. He certainly felt keenly his position as an out- east, and though his enthusiasm for political causes was undiminished and flamed up in ‘The Mask of Anarchy,’ and the ‘ Odes,’ his spirit was depressed and hopeless. Miss Clairmont left them at the end of the summer, and became a private governess in Flor- ence, though from time to time she visited them. On October 22 Medwin joined them for some months, and directly after, on October 29, they returned from the Baths to Pisa for the winter. Here their circle of acquaintance was now large, and included Professor Pacchiani, Emilia Viviani, Prince Mavrocordato, the Princess Argiropoli, Sgricci, Taaffe, — new names, but, excepting two, of minor importance. Emilia Viviani was a young lady who interested Mary and Miss Clairmont as well as Shelley in her misfortunes. She was the occasion of ‘ Epipsychidion,’ in writing which Shelley expressed his full idealization of woman as the object of love and in so doing broke the charm of this last object of his idolatry. The event ended in exciting a certain jealousy in Mary, who was soon disen- chanted of the distressed maiden; but she continued to be treated by all with the great- est kindness. Mavrocordato was the occasion of Shelley’s keener interest in the Greek revolt, which was expressed in ‘Hellas,’ an improvisation of 1821, and he was welcome also to Mary, who read Greek with him. The most important addition to the circle was Edward Williams and his wife, Jane, who came on January 13, 1821, and were Shelley’s tonstant and most prized companions, from this time to the end. The summer was spent & the Baths of Giuliano, where ‘ Adonais’ was composed, except that Shelley went to BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXxiX Ravenna to see Byron in August; and the winter was passed at Pisa, where Byron settled in November with the Countess Guiccioli. Medwin also returned and joined the circle. It was proposed, too, to invite Hunt, who was in straits, to Italy, and a plan was made for him to join with Byron in issuing ‘The Liberal’ there, and in consequence of this arrangement, and by Shelley’s free but self-denying material aid, he was enabled to come, but did not arrive so soon as was hoped. Such, in rapid outline, was the external course of Shelley’s life in these four Italian years up to the spring of 1822. He had accomplished his poetic work, though it remained in large part unpublished, and he looked upon himself as having failed, — not that he did not know that his work was good, but that it had received no recognition. In private life he had continued to meet with grave misfortune, and his character still stood black- ened and traduced in the eyes of the world. His life with Mary had been a happy one, but he had early learned that it was his part to deny himself and contain his own moods and sorrows. It is plain that he felt a lack of perfect sympathy between them, a certain coldness, and something like fault-finding with him because of his persistent difference from the world and its ways. He was pained by this, and made solitary, and Mary afterwards was aware of it, as her self-reproaches show; but the union, notwithstanding, was one of tender affection in the midst of many circumstances that might have disturbed it. To Shelley’s continued loneliness must be ascribed the deep melancholy of his verses to Mrs. Williams, the sheaf of poems that was the last of all. Edward Williams, who had been at Eton in Shelley’s time, may have had some knowledge of him, but he was practically a new acquaintance. He was manly and generous by nature, and had a taste for literature, though his previous life had been an active one. Shelley became much attached to him, and found in his company, as they boated on the Serchio together, great enjoyment. Both he and Mary express warm admiration for their friend. Mrs. Wil- liams suffered the same idealization that Shelley had wrought about every woman who attracted him at all; and the peace and happiness of her life with her husband especially won upon him. The verses he wrote her were kept secret from Mary, and have the personal and intimate quality of poems meant for one alone to read. This friendship was the last pleasure that Shelley was to know, and Williams was to be his companior in death. Trelawny, from whom the true description of Shelley at the end of life comes, joined the circle January 14, 1822. He had led a romantic life as a sailor, and was now twenty- eight years old when he sought out Shelley, and made friends with Byron, and through these friendships became an interesting character to the world. The scene of his intro- duction to Shelley has been often quoted: — ‘The Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner. We had a great deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near the open door opposite to where I sata pair of glittering eyes steadily fixed on mine. It was too dark to make out whom they belonged to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams’s eyes followed the direc- tion of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, “Come in, Shelley; it’s only our friend Tre, just arrived.” Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall, slim strip- ling held out both his hands; and, although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed, feminine and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment. Was it possible this mild-looking, beardless boy could be the veritable monster at war with all the world ?— excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, xl PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY deprived of his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it; it must be a hoax. . . . He was habited like a boy in a black jacket and trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his “sizings.” Mrs. Williams saw my embarrassment and, to relieve me, asked Shelley what book he had in his hand. His face brightened, and he answered briskly, ‘‘ Calderon’s ‘Magico Prodigioso.’ I am translating some passages in it.” “Oh, read it tous!” Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents, that could not interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly manner in which he analyzed the genius of the author, his lucid interpretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated into our language the most subtle and imag- native passages of the Spanish poet were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity. A dead silence ensued. Looking up I asked, “ Where is he?” Mrs. Williams said, “ Who ? Shelley ? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit, no one knows when or where.” Pre- sently he reappeared with Mrs. Shelley.’ Trelawny’s whole narrative is very vivid and clear, and, in particular, he renders the boyishness of Shelley better than Hogg or Peacock, who turned it to ridicule. He found in him the old qualities, however, and many of the old habits. He still read or wrote incessantly, and could close his senses to the world around, even at Byron’s dinner- parties, and withdraw to his own thoughts. He had no regular habits of eating, and lived on water and bread, — ‘bread literally his staff of life.’ He could jump into the water, on being told to swim, and lie quiet on the bottom till ‘fished out,’ — an incident that would have read very differently in Hogg or Peacock, but is here told with perfect nature. He was self-willed. ‘I always go on till I am stopped, and I never am stopped,’ he said. He had filled Williams with enthusiasm for self-improvement, and won him over wholly to books and thought and poetizing, just as he always sought to do with his friends, men or women. He was as passionately fond of boating as ever and eager for the craft he had ordered for the summer, which they were to spend in the Gulf of Spezia, as had been decided; and he wandered out alone into the Pine Forest to write, as when he composed ‘Alastor.’ The same features, the same traits, are here as of old, — with the difference that they are told naturally without the suggestion of grotesqueness on one side or of incipient lunacy on the other. This sustains our belief in Shelley’s always having been a natural being, subject to no more of eccentricity or disease than exists within the bounds of an ordinary healthy nature. ‘He was like a healthy, well-condi- tioned boy,’ says Trelawny. The gentle timidity is here, too, the half ludicrous fear of a ‘party’ with which Mary had ‘threatened’ him, and similar shynesses that existed in his temperament, with the openness that knew no wrong where no wrong was meant. His dislike of Byron, mixed with admiration of his genius and discouragement ia its pre- sence, is not concealed, and the vigor and brilliancy of his talk, its eloquent flow, together with his spells of sadness and the physical spasms that made him roll on the floor, but with self-command and words of unforgetting kindness for those about him who were obliged to look on, and also the constant discouragement of his spirits in respect to him- self and his life, — are all spread on these pages, which are biographically of the highest value. It is fortunate that there is so faithful a witness of these last days ; but this memoir must draw to a close without lingering over the last portrait. The plan to pass the summer on the Gulf of Spezia was carried out. On May 1, after BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xii some difficulties in finding a place of abode, Shelley was settled in the Casa Magni, a lonely honse on the edge of the sea, under steep and wooded slopes, beneath which rocky footpaths wound to Lerici on the south and to the near village of San Terenzo on the north. The Williamses were with him, and, temporarily, Miss Clairmont, to whom in the first days he there broke the news of the death of Allegra. ‘The spot is one of inde. scribable beauty, with lovely views, both near and distant, wherever the eye wanders ot rests ; but it had also an aspect of wildness and strangeness, which depressed Mary’s spirits. ‘The gales and squalls,’ she says, ‘that hailed our first arrival surrounded the bay with foam. The howling winds swept round our exposed house, and the sea roared unremittingly. ... The natives were wilder than the place. Our near neighbors ot San Terenzo were more like savages than any people I ever before lived among. Many a night they passed on the beach singing, or rather howling, the women dancing about among the waves that broke at their feet, the men leaning against the rocks and joining in their loud, wild chorus.’ It was among these villagers that Shelley’s last offices of charity were done, as he visited them in their houses, and helped the sick and the poor as he was able. On May 12 arrived the boat which Shelley christened the Ariel, — ‘a per- fect plaything for the summer,’ Williams said. They made also a shallop of canvas and reeds, and in one or the other of these crafts he incessantly boated. He wrote ‘The Triumph of Life,’ going off by himself in his shallop in the moonlight. Mary thought it was the happiest period in his life. ‘I still inhabit this divine bay,’ he wrote, ‘reading Spanish dramas, and sailing and listening to the most enchanting music.’ Again he says, ‘If the past and future could be obliterated, the present would content me so well that i could say with Faust to the passing moment, — “Remain thou, thou art so beautiful.”’ Mary unfortunately was not so happy, and she says, took no pleasure excepting when ‘sailing, lying down with my head on his knee, I shut my eyes and felt the wind and our swift motion alone.’ She was also at one time dangerously ill, and Shelley himself was far from well. The house was a place of visions. One night, when with Williams, he saw Allegra as a naked child rise from the waves, clapping her hands; again he saw th. image of himself, who asked him, ‘ How long do you mean to be content?’ And Mrs Williams twice saw Shelley when he was not present. Two months passed by in this retreat, and it was now time for Leigh Hunt to arrive. Shelley set off to meet him at Leghorn, taking Williams and the sailor-boy, Charles Vivian, with him. Mary called Shelley back two or three times and told him that if he did not come soon she should go to Pisa, with their child Percy, and cried bitterly when he went away. The next day he arrived at Leghorn. Thornton Hunt always remem- bered the ery with which Shelley rushed into his father’s arms, saying, ‘I am inexpressi- bly delighted! you cannot think how inexpressibly happy it makes me.’ He saw the Hunts settled, and arranged affairs between Hunt and Byron ; but both he and Williams were anxious to return to their families in their lonely situation. On July 8 they set sail in the Ariel, not without warning of risk. The weather was threatening, and in a few moments they were lost in a sea-fog. Trelawny describes the scene : — ‘Although the sun was obscured by mists it was oppressively sultry. There was not a breath of air in the harbor. Tue heaviness of the atmosphere and an unwonted stillness benumbed my senses. I went down into the cabin and sank into a slumber. I was roused up by a noise overhead, and went on deck. The men were getting up a chain cable to let go another anchor. There was a general stir amongst the shipping; shifting berths, getting down yards and masts, veering out cables, hauling in of hawsers, letting go anchors, hailing from the ships and quays, boats sculling rapidly to and fro. It was xlii PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY almost dark, although only half past six. The sea was of the color and looked as solid and smooth as a sheet of lead, and covered with an oily scum; gusts of wind swept over without ruffling it, and big drops of rain fell on its surface, rebounding, as if they could not penetrate it. There was acommotion in the air, made up of many threatening sounds, coming upon us from the sea. Fishing craft and coasting vessels under bare poles rushed by us in shoals, running foul of the shipsin the harbor. As yet the din and hubbub was that made by men, but their shrill pipings were suddenly silenced by the crashing voice of a thunder squall that burst right over our heads. For some time no other sounds were to be heard than the thunder, wind and rain. When the fury of the storm, which did not last for more than twenty minutes, had abated, and the horizon was in some degree cleared, I looked to seaward anxiously, in the hope of descrying Shelley’s boat amongst the many small crafts scattered about. I watched every speck that loomed on the hori- zon, thinking that they would have borne up on their return to the port, as all the other boats that had gone out in the same direction had done. I sent our Genoese mate on board some of the returning crafts to make inquiries, but they all professed not to have seen the English boat. . . . During the night it was gusty and showery, and the light- ning flashed along the coast; at daylight I returned on board and resumed my examina- tions of the crews of the various boats which had returned to the port during the night. They either knew nothing or would say nothing. My Genoese, with the quick eye of a sailor, pointed out on board a fishing-boat an English-made oar that he thought he had seen in Shelley’s boat, but the entire crew swore by all the saints in the calendar that this was not so. Another day was passed in horrid suspense. On the morning of the third day I rode to Pisa. Byron had returned to the Lanfranchi Palace. I hoped to find a letter from the Villa Magni; there was none. I told my fears to Hunt, and then went upstairs to Byron. When I told him his lip quivered, and his voice faltered as he ques- tioned me.’ Trelawny sent a courier to Leghorn and Byron ordered the Bolivar to cruise along the coast. He himself took his horse and rode. At Via Reggio he recognized a punt, a water keg, and some bottles that had been on Shelley’s boat, and his fears became almost certainties. To quicken their watchfulness he promised rewards to the coast-guard patrol. On July 18 two bodies were found. ‘The tall, slight figure, the jacket, the vol- ume of Aschylus in one pocket, and Keats’s poems in the other, doubled back as if the reader in the act of reading had hastily thrust it away, were all too familiar to me to leave a doubt on my mind that this mutilated corpse was any other than Shelley’s.’ The second body was that of Williams. A few days later, the body of the sailor-boy, Charles Viviau, was also found. Trelawny went on to Lerici and broke the news to the two widows there, who, after suffering great suspense, and going to Pisa and returning, still hoped against hope through these days. There was nothing more to be done except that the last offices must be discharged. The bodies had been buried in the sand, but permission was obtained from the authorities to burn them. Trelawny took charge. He had a furnace made, and provided what else was necessary. On the first day Williams’s body was burned, and on the second, August 18, Shelley’s. Three white wands had been stuck in the sand to mark the grave, but it was nearly an hour before his body was found. The preparations were then completed. Only Byron and Hunt besides Trelawny and some natives of the place were present. ‘The sea,’ says Trelawny, ‘ with the islands of Gorgona, Capraja and Elba, was before us. Old battlemented watch towers stretched along the coast, backed by the marble- crested Apennines glistening in the sun, picturesque from their diversified outlines, and BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xliii not a human dwelling was in sight.’ And Hunt takes up the description: ‘The beauty af the flame arising from the funeral pile was extraordinary. The weather was beauti- fully fine. The Mediterranean, now soft and lucid, kissed the shore as if to make peace with it. The yellow sand and blue sky were intensely contrasted with one another; marble mountains touched the air with coolness, and the flame of the fire bore away to- ward heaven in vigorous amplitude wavering and quivering with a brightness of incon- ceivable beauty.’ Wine, oil and salt were thrown on the pile, and with them the volume of Keats, and all was slowly consumed. Trelawny snatched the heart from the flames. Hunt and Byron hardly maintained themselves, but at last all was over, and they rode away. The ashes were deposited in the English burying ground at Rome, in the now familiar spot where Trelawny placed a slab in the ground and inscribed it; = Percy ByssHe SHELLEY Cor Corpium Narus IV Auc. MDCCXCII Osnr VIII Jon. MDCCCXXH ‘Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange.’ G. E. W. QUEEN MAB A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM WITH NOTES ECRASEZ L’INFAME! Corréspondance de Voltaire. Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante Trita solo, juvat integros accedere fonteis ; Atque haurire: juvatque novos decerpere flores. Unde prius nulli velarint tempora Muse. Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus; et arctis Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo. Lucretius, lib. iv, Ads 10d o7®, kal Kéomov KWHTw. ‘During my existence I have incessantly speculated, thought and read.’ So Shelley wrote when he was yet not quite twenty years old; and the statement fairly represents the history of his boyhood and youth. Queen Mab was composed in 1812-13, in its present form, and issued during the summer of the latter year, when Shelley was just twenty-one. It embodies substantially the contents of his mind at that period, especially those speculative, religious and philanthropic opinions to the ex- pression of which his ‘ passion for reforming the world’ was the incentive ; and, poetically, itis his first work of importance. Much of its subject-matter had been previously treated by him. The figure of Ahasuerus, which was a permanent imaginative motive for him, had been the centre of a juvenile poem, The Wan- dering Jew, in which Medwin claims to have collaborated with him, as early as 1809-10; and youthful verse written before 1812 is clearly incorporated in Queen Mab. It may fairly be regarded, poetically and intellectu- ally, as the result of the three preceding years, from the eighteenth to the twenty-first of the poet’s life. The poem owes much to Shelley’s studies in the Latin and French authors. The limitations of his poetical training and taste in English verse are justly stated by Mrs. Shelley, in her note: ‘Our earlier English poetry was almost un- known to him. The love and knowledge of ARCHIMEDES nature developed by Wordsworth — the lofty melody and mysterious beauty of Coleridge's poetry — and the wild fantastic machinery and gorgeous scenery adopted by Southey, com- posed his favorite reading. The rhythm of Queen Mab was founded on that of Thalaba, and the first few lines bear a striking resem. blance in spirit, though not in idea, to the opening of that poem. His fertile imagina. tion, and ear tuned to the finest sense of har- mony, preserved him from imitation. Another of his favorite books was the poem of Gebir, by Walter Savage Landor.’ Queen Mad is, in form, what would be ex- pected from such preferences. His own Notes indicate the prose sources of his thought. He dissented from all that was established in so- ciety, for the most part very radically, and was a believer in the perfectibility of man by moral means. Here, again, Mrs. Shelley’s note is most just: ‘He was animated to greater zeal by com- passion for his fellow-creatures. His sym- pathy was excited by the misery with which the world is bursting. He witnessed the suf- ferings of the poor, and was aware of the evils of ignorance. He desired to induce every rich man to despoil himself of superfluity, and to create a brotherhood of property and service, and was ready to be the first to lay down the advantages of his birth. He was of too un- compromising a disposition to join any party 2 QUEEN MAB He did not in his youth look forward to grad- ual improvement: nay, in those days of intol- erance, now almost forgotten, it seemed as easy to look forward to the sort of millennium of freedom and brotherhood, which he thought the proper state of mankind, as to the present reign of moderation and improvement. Ill health made him believe that his race would soon be run; that a year or two was all he had of life. He desired that these years should be useful and illustrious. He saw, in a fervent call on his fellow-creatures to share alike the blessings of the creation, to love and serve each other, the noblest work that life and time permitted him. In this spirit he composed Queen Mab.’ Shelley’s own opinion of the poem changed in later years. He always referred to it as written in his nineteenth year, when it was ap- parently begun, though its final form at any rate dates from the next year. In 1&7 he wrote of it as follows: . .. ‘Full of those errors which belong to youth, as far as imagery and language and a connected plan is concerned. But it was a sin- cere overflowing of the heart and mind, and that at a period when they are most uncorrupted and pure. It is the author’s boast, and it consti- tutes no small portion of his happiness, that, after six years [this period supports the date 1811] of added experience and reflection, the doctrine of equality, and liberty, and disinter- estedness, and entire unbelief in religion of any sort, to which this poem is devoted, have gained rather than lost that beauty and that grandeur which first determined him to devote his life to the investigation and inculeation of them.’ In 1821, when the poem was printed by W. Clark, Shelley, in a letter of protest to the edi- tor of the Examiner, describes it in a different strain : ‘A poem, entitled Queen Mad, was written by me, at the age of eighteen, I dare say ina sufficiently intemperate spirit — but even then was not intended for publication, and a few TO HARRIET **##* Wuosk is the love that, gleaming through the world, Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn? Whose is the warm and partial praise, Virtue’s most sweet reward ? Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow ? Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on, And loved mankind the more ? copies only were struck off, to be distributed among my personal friends. I have not seen this production for several years; I doubt not but that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition; and that in all that con- cerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysi- eal and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature. I am a devoted enemy to re- ligious, political, and domestic oppression ; and I regret this publication not so much from lit- erary vanity, as because I fear it is better fitted to injure than to serve the sacred cause of freedom.’ Queen Mab, as Shelley here states, was pri- vately issued. The name of the printer was cut out of nearly all copies, for fear of prose- eution. The edition was of two hundred and fifty copies, of which about seventy were put in circulation by gift. Many pirated editions were issued after Shelley’s death both in Eng- land and America, and the poem was especially popular with the Owenites. By it Shelley was long most widely known, and it remains one of the most striking of his works in popular apprehension. Though at last he abandoned it, because of its crudities, he had felt inter- est in it after its first issue and had partly recast it, and included a portion of this re- vision in his next volume, Alastor, 1816, as the Demon of the World. The radical character of Queen Mab, which was made « part of the evidence against his character, on the occasion of the trial which resulted in his being de- prived of the custody of his children by Lord Eldon, was a main element in the contempo- rary obloquy in which his name was involved in England, though very few persons could ever have read the poem then; but it may be doubted whether in the end it did not help his fame by the fascination it exercises over a cer- tain class of minds in the first stages of social and intellectual revolt or angry unrest so wide- spread in this century. The dedication To Harriet ***** ig to his first wife. Harriet ! on thine :— thou wert my purer mind ; Thou wert the inspiration of my song ; Thine are these early wilding flowers, Though garlanded by me. Then Eee into thy breast this pledge of ove ; And know, though time may change and years may roll, Each floweret gathered in my heart It consecrates to thine. QUEEN MAB 3 I How wonderful is Death, Death, and his brother Sleep ! One pale as yonder waning moon With lips of lurid blue ; The other, rosy as the morn When throned on ocean’s wave It blushes o’er the world ; Yet both so passing wonderful ! Hath then the gloomy Power Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres 10 Seized on her sinless soul ? Must then that peerless form Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, those azure veins Which steal like streams along a field of snow, That lovely outline which is fair As breathing marble, perish ? Must putrefaction’s breath Leave nothing of this heavenly sight But loathsomeness and ruin ? 20 Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, On which the lightest heart might moral- ize? Or is it only a sweet slumber Stealing o’er sensation, Which the breath of roseate morning Chaseth into darkness ? Will Ianthe wake again, And give that faithful bosom joy Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch Light, life and rapture, from her smile ? Yes! she will wake again, 31 Although her glowing limbs are motionless, And silent those sweet lips, Once breathing eloquence That might have soothed a tiger’s rage Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror. Her dewy eyes are closed, And on their lids, whose texture fine Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath, The baby Sleep is pillowed; — 40 Her golden tresses shade The bosom’s stainless pride, Curling like tendrils of the parasite Around a marble column. Hark ! whence that rushing sound ? ’T is like the wondrous strain That round a lonely ruin swells, Which, wandering on the echoing shore, The enthusiast hears at evening ; 2 °T is softer than the west wind’s sigh ; °T is wilder than the unmeasured notes Of that strange lyre whose strings sz The genii of the breezes sweep ; Those lines of rainbow light Are like the moonbeams when they fall Through some cathedral window, but the tints Are such as may not find Comparison on earth. Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen! Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air; 6¢ Their filmy pennons at her word the furl, And stop obedient to the reins of light ; These the Queen of Spells drew in ; She spread a charm around the spot, And, leaning graceful from the ethereal car, Long did she gaze, and silently, Upon the slumbering maid. Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams, When silvery clouds float through the wil- dered brain, When every sight of lovely, wild and grand 7a. Astonishes, enraptures, elevates, When fancy at a glance combines The wondrous and the beautiful, — So bright, so fair, so wild a shape Hath ever yet beheld, As that which reined the ccursers of the air And poured the magic of her gaze Upon the maiden’s sleep. The broad and yellow moon Shone dimly through her form— 8 That form of faultless symmetry; The pearly and pellucid car Moved not the moonlight’s line. °T was not an earthly pageant. Those, who had looked. upon the sight Passing all human glory, Saw not the yellow moon, Saw not the mortal scene, Heard not the night-wind’s rush, Heard not an earthly sound, 96 Saw but the fairy pageant, Heard but the heavenly strains That filled the lonely dwelling. 4 QUEEN MAB The Fairy’s frame was slight — yon fibrous cloud, That catches but the palest tinge of even, And which the straining eye can hardly seize When melting into eastern twilight’s shad- ow Were scarce so thin, so slight ; but the fair star That gems the glittering coronet of morn, Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful, 100 As that which, bursting from the Fairy’s form, Spread a purpureal halo round the scene, Yet with an undulating motion, Swayed to her outline gracefully. From her celestial car The Fairy Queen descended, And thrice she waved her wand Circled with wreaths of amaranth; Her thin and misty form Moved with the moving air, 110 And the clear silver tones, As thus she spoke, were such As are unheard by all but gifted ear. FAIRY ‘Stars ! your balmiest influence shed ! Elements ! your wrath suspend ! Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds That circle thy domain ! Let not a breath be seen to stir Around yon grass-grown ruin’s height ! Let even the restless gossamer 120 Sleep on the moveless air ! Soul of Ianthe ! thou, Judged alone worthy of the envied boon ‘That waits the good and the sincere ; that waits Those who have struggled, and with reso- lute will Vanquished earth’s pride and meanness, burst the chains, The icy chains of custom, and have shone The day-stars of their age;— Soul of Ianthe ! Awake ! arise !’ Sudden arose 130 Tanthe’s Soul; it stood All beautiful in naked purity, The perfect semblance of its bodily frame; Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace — Each stain of earthliness Had passed away — it reassumed Its native dignity and stood Inwortal amid ruin. Upon the couch the body lay, Wrapt in the depth of slumber; — 140 Its features were fixed and meaningless, Yet animal life was there, And every organ yet performed Its natural functions; ’twas a sight Of wonder to behold the body and the soul. The self-same lineaments, the same Marks of identity were there; Yet, oh, how different! One aspires to Heaven, Pants for its sempiternal heritage, And, ever changing, ever rising still, 150 Wantons in endless being: The other, for a time the unwilling sport Of circumstance and passion, struggles on; Fleets through its sad duration rapidly; Then like an useless and worn-out machine, Rots, perishes, and passes. FAIRY ‘Spirit ! who hast dived so deep; Spirit ! who hast soared so high; Thou the fearless, thou the mild, Accept the boon thy worth hath earned, Ascend the car with me !’ 161 SPIRIT ‘DoI dream? Is this new feeling But a visioned ghost of slumber ? If indeed I am a soul, A free, a disembodied soul, Speak again to me.’ FAIRY ‘Iam the Fairy Mas: to me ’tis given The wonders of the human world to keep; The secrets of the immeasurable past, In the unfailing consciences of men, 170 hee gem unflattering chroniclers, nd; The future, from the causes which arise In each event, I gather; not the sting Which retributive memory implants In the hard bosom of the selfish man, Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb Which virtue’s votary feels when he sums up The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day, QUEEN MAB 5 Are unforeseen, unregistered by me; And it is yet permitted me to rend 180 The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit, Clothed in its changeless purity, may know How soonest to accomplish the great end For which it hath its being, and may taste That peace which in the end all life will share. This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul, Ascend the car with me!’ The chains of earth’s immurement Fell from Ianthe’s spirit; They shrank and brake like bandages of straw 190 Beneath a wakened giant’s strength. She knew her glorious change, And felt in apprehension uncontrolled New raptures opening round; Each day-dream of her mortal life, Each frenzied vision of the slumbers That closed each well-spent day, Seemed now to meet reality. The Fairy and the Soul proceeded; The silver clouds disparted; 200 And as the car of magic they ascended, Again the speechless music swelled, Again the coursers of the air Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen, Shaking the beamy reins, Bade them pursue their way. The magic car moved on. The night was fair, and countless stars Studded heaven’s dark blue vault; Just o’er the eastern wave 210 Peeped the first faint smile of morn. The magic car moved on — From the celestial hoofs The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew, And where the burning wheels Eddied abovethe mountain’sloftiest peak, Was traced a line of lightning. Now it flew far above a rock, The utmost verge of earth, 219 The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow Lowered o’er the silver sea. Far, far below the chariot’s path, Calm as a slumbering babe, Tremendous Ocean lay. The mirror of its stillness showed The pale and waning stars, The chariot’s fiery track, And the gray light of morn Tinging those fleecy clouds That canopied the dawn. 230 Seemed it that the chariot’s way Lay through the midst of an immense con- cave Radiant with million constellations, tinged With shades of infinite color, And semicircled with a belt Flashing incessant meteors. The magic car moved on. As they approached their goal, 238 The coursers seemed to gather speed; The sea no longer was distinguished; earth Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere; The sun’s unclouded orb Rolled through the black concave; Its rays of rapid light Parted around the chariot’s swifter course. And fell, like ocean’s feathery spray Dashed from the boiling surge Before a vessel’s prow. The magic car moved on. Earth’s distant orb appeared 25a The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven; Whilst round the chariot’s way Innumerable systems rolled And countless spheres diffused An ever-varying glory. It was a sight of wonder: some Were hornéd like the crescent moon; Some shed a mild and silver beam Like Hesperus o’er the western sea; as Some dashed athwart with trains of flame, Like worlds to death and ruin driven; Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed, Eelipsed all other light. Spirit of Nature | here — Tx this interminable wilderness Of worlds, at whose immensity Even soaring fancy staggers, Here is thy fitting temple! Yet not the lightest leaf 269 That quivers to the passing breeze Is less instinct with thee; Yet not the meanest worm That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead, Less shares thy eternal breath! Spirit of Nature! thou, Imperishable as this scene — Here is thy fitting temple! Il L£ solitude hath ever led thy steps Tc the wild ocean’s echoing shore, And thou hast lingered there, Until the sun’s broad orb Seemed resting on the burnished wave, Thou must have marked the lines Of purple gold that motionless Hung o’er the sinking sphere; Thou must have marked the billowy clouds, Edged with intolerable radianey, 10 Towering like rocks of jet Crowned with a diamond wreath; And yet there is a moment, When the sun’s highest point Peeps like a star o’er ocean’s western edge, When those far clouds of feathery gold, Shaded with deepest purple, gleam Like islands on a dark blue sea; Then has thy fancy soared above the earth And furled its wearied wing 20 Within the Fairy’s fane. Yet not the golden islands Gleaming in yon flood of light, Nor the feathery curtains Stretching o’er the sun’s bright couch, Nor the burnished ocean-waves Paving that gorgeous dome, So fair, so wonderful a sight As Mab’s ethereal palace could afford. 29 Yet likest evening’s vault, that faéry Hall! As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread Its floors of flashing light, Its vast and azure dome, Its fertile golden islands Floating on a silver sea; Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted Through clouds of cireumambient darkness, And pearly battlements around Looked o’er the immense of Heaven. The magic car no longer moved. 40 The Fairy and the Spirit Entered the Hall of Spells. Those golden clouds QUEEN MAB —_— That rolled in glittering billows Beneath the azure canopy, With the ethereal footsteps trembled not; The light and crimson mists, Floating to strains of thrilling melody Through that unearthly dwelling, Yielded to every movement of the will; so Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned, And, for the varied bliss that pressed around, Used not the glorious privilege Of virtue and of wisdom. ‘Spirit!’ the Fairy said, And pointed to the gorgeous dome, ‘This is a wondrous sight And mocks all human grandeur; But, were it virtue’s only meed to dwell In a celestial palace, all resigned 60 To pleasurable impulses, immured Within the prison of itself, the will Of changeless Nature would be unfulfilled. Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come! This is thine high reward: — the past shall rise; Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach The secrets of the future.’ The Fairy and the Spirit Approached the overhanging battlement. Below lay stretched the universe! 70 There, far as the remotest line That bounds imagination’s flight, Countless and unending orbs In mazy motion intermingled, Yet still fulfilled immutably Eternal Nature’s law. Above, below, around, The cireling systems formed A wilderness of harmony; Each with undeviating aim, 80 In eloquent silence, through the depths of space Pursued its wondrous way. There was a little light That twinkled in the misty distance. None but a spirit’s eye Might ken that rolling orb. None but a spirit’s eye, And in no other place But that celestial dwelling, might behold Each action of this earth’s inhabitants. 9 But matter, space, and time, In those aérial mansions cease to act; QUEEN MAB 1 - And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps The harvest of its excellence, o’erbounds Those obstacles of which an earthly soul Fears to attempt the conquest. The Fairy pointed to the earth. The Spirit’s intellectual eye Its kindred beings recognized. 99 The thronging thousands, to a passing view, Seemed like an ant-hill’s citizens. How wonderful! that even The passions, prejudices, interests, That sway the meanest being —the weak touch That moves the finest nerve And in one human brain Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link In the great chain of Nature! ‘Behold,’ the Fairy cried, ‘Palmyra’s ruined palaces! 110 Behold where grandeur frowned! Behold where pleasure smiled! What now remains ? — the memory Of senselessness and shame. What is immortal there ? Nothing — it stands to tell A melancholy tale, to give An awful warning; soon Oblivion will steal silently The remnant of its fame. 120 Monarchs and conquerors there Proud o’er prostrate millions trod — The earthquakes of the human race; Like them, forgotten when the ruin That marks their shock is past. ‘Beside the eternal Nile The Pyramids have risen. Nile shall pursue his changeless way; Those Pyramids shall fall. Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell — 13 The spot whereon they stood; Their very site shall be forgotten, As is their builder’s name! ‘Bebold yon sterile spot, Where now the wandering Arab’s tent Flaps in the desert blast! There once old Salem’s haughty fane Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes, And in the blushing face of day Exposed its shameful glory. 140 Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed The building of that fane; and many a father, Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man’s God to sweep it from the earth And spare his children the detested task Of piling stone on stone and poisoning The choicest days of life To soothe a dotard’s vanity. There an inhuman and uncultured race 149 Howled hideous praises to their Demon- God; They rushed to war, tore from the mother’s wonb The unborn child — old age and infancy Promiscuous perished ; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends! But what was he who taught them that the God Of Nature and benevolence had given A special sanction to the trade of blood? His name and theirs are fading, and the tales Of this barbarian nation, which impos- ture Recites till terror credits, are pursuing 160 Itself into forgetfulness. ‘Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, There is a moral desert now. The mean and miserable huts, The yet more wretched palaces, Contrasted with those ancient fanes Now crumbling to oblivion, — The long and lonely colonnades Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks, — Seem like a well-known tune, 170 Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear, Remembered now in sadness. But, oh! how much more changed, How gloomier is the contrast Of human nature there ! Where Socrates expired, a tyrant’s slave, A coward and a fool, spreads death around — Then, shuddering, meets his own. Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, A cowled and hypocritical monk 180 Prays, curses and deceives. ‘Spirit ! ten thousand years Have scarcely passed away, 8 QUEEN MAB Since in the waste, where now the savage drinks His enemy’s blood, and, aping Europe’s sons, Wakes the unholy song of war, Arose a stately city, Metropolis of the western continent. There, now, the mossy column-stone, Indented by time’s unrelaxing grasp, 190 Which once appeared to brave All, save its country’s ruin, — There the wide forest scene, Rude in the uncultivated loveliness Of gardens long run wild, — Seems, to the unwilling sojourner whose steps Chance in that desert has delayed, Thus to have stood since earth was what it is. Yet once it was the busiest haunt, 199 Whither, as to a common centre, flocked Strangers, and ships, and merchandise ; Once peace and freedom blest The cultivated plain; But wealth, that curse of man, Blighted the bud of its prosperity; Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, Fled, to return not, until man shall know That they alone can give the bliss Worthy a soul that claims Its kindred with eternity. 210 ¢There’s not one atom of yon earth But once was living man; Nor the minutest drop of rain, That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, But flowed in human veins; And from the burning plains Where Libyan monsters yell, From the most gloomy glens Of Greenland’s sunless clime, To where the golden fields 220 Of fertile England spread Their harvest to the day, Thou canst not find one spot Whereon no city stood. * How strange is human pride! I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of grass That springeth in the morn And perisheth ere noon, Is an unbounded world; 230 I tell thee that those viewless beings, Whose mansion is the smallest particle Of the impassive atmosphere, Think, feel and live like man; That their affections and antipathies, Like his, produce the laws Ruling their moral state; And the minutest throb That through their frame diffuses The slightest, faintest motion, 240 Is fixed and indispensable As the majestic laws That rule yon rolling orbs.’ The Fairy paused. The Spirit, In ecstasy of admiration, felt All knowledge of the past revived; the events Of old and wondrous times, Which dim tradition interruptedly Teaches the credulous vulgar, were un- folded In just perspective to the view; 250 Yet dim from their infinitude. The Spirit seemed to stand High on an isolated pinnacle; The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe Above, and all around Nature’s unchanging harmony. III ‘Fairy !’ the Spirit said, And on the Queen of Spells Fixed her ethereal eyes, ‘I thank thee. Thou hast given A boon which I will not resign, and taught A lesson not to be unlearned. I know The past, and thence I will essay to glean A warning for the future, so that man May profit by his errors and derive Experience from his folly; 10 For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other heaven.’ MAB ‘Turn thee, surpassing Spirit ! Much yet remains unscanned. Thou knowest how great is man, Thou knowest his imbecility; Yet learn thou what, he is; Yet learn the lofty destiny Which restless Time prepares 2a For every living soul. ‘Behold a gorgeous palace that amid Yon populous city rears its thousand towers QUEEN MAB 9 And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops Of sentinels in stern and silent ranks Encompass it around; the dweller there Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not The curses of the fatherless, the groans Of those who have no friend? He passes on — The King, the wearer of a gilded chain 30 That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave Even to the basest appetites — that man Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles At the deep curses which the destitute Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy Pervades his bloodless heart when thou- sauds groan But for those morsels which his wantonness Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save All that they love from famine ; when he hears 40 The tale of horror, to some ready-made face Of hypocritical assent he turns, Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him, Flushes his bloated ckeek. Now to the meal Of silence, grandeur and excess he drags His palled unwilling appetite. If gold, Gleaming around, aud numerous viands culled From every clime could force the loathing sense To overcome satiety, —if wealth The spring it draws from poisons not, — or vice, 50 Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not Its food to deadliest venom ; then that king Is happy ; and the peasant who fulfils His unforced task, when he returns at even And by the blazing fagot meets again Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, Tastes not a sweeter meal. Behold him now Stretched on the gorgeous couch ; his fe- vered brain Reels dizzily awhile ; but ah ! too soon The slumber of intemperance subsides, 60 And conscience, that undying serpent, calls Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. Listen! he speaks ! oh ! mark that frenzied eye — : Oh! mark that deadly visage !’ KING “No cessation ! Oh! must this last forever! Awful death, I wish, yet fear to clasp thee !— Not one’ moment Of dreamless sleep ! Peace, Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity O dear and blesséd In penury and dungeons? Wherefore lurkest With danger, death, and solitude; yet shun’st jo The palace I have built thee? Sacre Peace ! Oh, visit me but once, — but pitying shed One drop of balm upon my withered svul !” THE FAIRY ‘Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart, And Peace defileth not her snowy robes In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters ; His slumbers are but varied agonies ; They prey like scorpions on the springs of life. There needeth not the hell that bigots frame To punish those who err ; earth in itself 80 Contains at once the evil and the cure ; And all-sufficing Nature can chastise Those who transgress her law; she only knows How justly to proportion to the fault The punishment it merits. Ts it strange That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe ? Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured 40 Within a splendid prison whose stern bounds Shut him from all that’s good or dear on earth, His soul asserts not its humanity ? That man’s mild nature rises not in war 10 QUEEN MAB Against a king’s employ? No—’tis not strange. He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives Just as his father did ; the unconquered powers Of precedent and custom interpose Between a king and virtue. Stranger yet, To those who know not Nature nor de- duce 100 The future from the present, it may seem, That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes Of this unnatural being, not one wretch, Whose children famish and whose nuptial bed Is earth’s unpitying bosom, rears an arm To dash him from his throne ! Those gilded flies That, basking in the sunshine of a court, Fatten on its corruption ! what are they ? — The drones of the community ; they feed On the mechanic’s labor; the starved hind 110 For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield Its unshared harvests ; and yon squalid form, Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, Drags out in labor a protracted death To glut their grandeur ; many faint with toil That few may know the cares and woe of sloth. Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose ? Whence that unnatural line of drones who heap Toil and unvanquishable penury 120 On those who build their palaces and bring Their daily bread? —From vice, black loathsome vice ; rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong ; From all that genders misery, and makes Of earth this thorny wilderness ; from lust, Revenge, and murder. — And when reason’s voice, Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked. The nations ; and mankind perceive that vice From Is discord, war and misery ; that virtue Is peace and happiness and harmony ; 130 When man’s maturer nature shall disdain The playthings of its childhood ;— kingly glare Will lose its power to dazzle ; its authority Will silently pass by ; the gorgeous throne Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood’s trade Shall be as hateful and unprofitable As that of truth is now. Where is the fame Which the vain-glorious mighty of the earth Seek to eternize ? Oh! the faintest sound 140 From time’s light footfall, the minutest wave That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing The unsubstantial bubble. Ay ! to-cay Stern is the tyrant’s mandate, red the gaze That flashes desolation, strong the arm That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes ! That mandate is a thunder-peal that died In ages past ; that gaze, a transient flash On which the midnight closed ; and on that arm 149 The worm has made his meal. The virtuous man, Who, great in his humility as kings Are little in their grandeur; he who leads Invincibly a life of resolute good And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths More free and fearless than the trembling judge Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove To bind the impassive spirit; — when he falls, His mild eye beams benevolence no more; Withered the hand outstretched but to re- lieve; 159 Sunk reason’s simple eloquence that rolled But to appall the guilty. Yes! the grave Hath quenched that eye and death’s relent- less frost Withered that arm; but the unfading fame Which virtue hangs upon its votary’s tomb, The deathless memory of that man whom kings Call to their minds and tremble, the re- membrance With which the happy spirit contemplates QUEEN MAB 11 Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth, Shall never pass away. 169 ‘ Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; The subject, not the citizen; for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other’s hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man OF virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate’er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame 179 A mechanized automaton. When Nero High over flaming Rome with savage joy Lowered like a fiend, drank with enrap- tured ear The shrieks of agonizing death, beheid The frightful desolation spread, and felt A new-created sense within his soul Thrill to the sight and vibrate to the sound, — Thinkest thou his grandeur had not over- come The force of human kindness? And when Rome With one stern blow hurled not the tyrant down, Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood, 190 Had not submissive abjectness destroyed Nature’s suggestions ? Look on yonder earth: The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak Peace, harmony and love. The universe, In Nature’s silent eloquence, declares That all fulfil the works of love and joy, — All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth 200 The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth u The tyrant whose delight is in his woe, Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams, Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch Than on the dome of kings? Is mother earth A step-dame to her numerous sons who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes — 209 Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men The playthings of their babyhood and mar In self-important childishness that peace Which men alone appreciate ? ‘Spirit of Nature, no! The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs Alike in every human heart. Thou aye erectest there Thy throne of power unappealable; Thou art the judge beneath whose nod Man’s brief and frail authority 220 Is powerless as the wind That passeth idly by; Thine the tribunal which surpasseth The show of human justice As God surpasses man! ‘Spirit of Nature! thou Life of interminable multitudes; Soul of those mighty spheres Whose changeless paths through Heaven’s deep silence lie; Soul of that smallest being, 230 The dwelling of whose life Is one faint April sun-gleam; — Man, like these passive things, Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth; Like theirs, his age of endless peace, Which time is fast maturing, Will swiftly, surely, come; And the unbounded frame which thou per- vadest, Will be without a flaw Marring its perfect symmetry! 24c IV ‘How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh, Which veal zephyrs breathe in evening’s ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven’s ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, Through which the moon’s unclouded gran- deur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love had spread To belies her sleeping world. Yon gentle 6. 12 QUEEN MAB Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; 9 Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend So stainless that their white and glittering spires Tinge not the moon’s pure beam; yon castled steep Whose banner hangeth o’er the time-worn tower So idly that rapt fancy deeimeth it A metaphor of peace; — all form a scene Where musing solitude might love to lift Her soul above this sphere of earthliness; Where silence undisturbed might watch alone — So cold, so bright, so still. The orb of day In southern climes o’er ocean’s waveless field 20 Sinks sweetly smiling; not the faintes breath Steals o’er the unruffled deep ; the clouds of eve Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day; And Vesper’s image on the western main Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes: Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, Roll o’er the blackened waters; the deep roar Of distant thunder mutters awfully; Tempest unfolds its pinion o’er the gloom That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, 30 With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; The torn deep yawns,—the vessel finds a grave Beneath its jagged gulf. Ah! whence yon glare That fires the arch of heaven? that dark red smoke Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round. Hark to that roar whose swift and deafen- ing peals Tn countless echoes through the mountains ring, Startling pate Midnight on her starry throne ! ae Now swells the intermingling din; the jar Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb; The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men Inebriate with rage: — loud and more loud The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene And o’er the conqueror and the conquered draws His cold and bloody shroud. — Of all the men Whom day’s departing beam saw blooming there In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts 50 That beat with anxious life at sunset there; How few survive, how few are beating now ! All is deep silence, like the fearful ealm That slumbers in the storm’s portentous pause; ‘ Save when the frantic wail of widowed love Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay Wrapt round its struggling powers. The gray morn Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphur- ous smoke Before the icy wind slow rolls away, 60 And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood Even to the forest’s depth, and scattered arms, And lifeless warriors, whose hard linea- ments Death’s self could change not, mark the dreadful path Of the outsallying victors; far behind Black ashes note where their proud city stood. Within yon forest is a gloomy glen — Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, 69 Waves o’er a warrior’s tomb. . I see thee shrink, Surpassing Spirit! — wert thou human else ? QUEEN MAB 13 I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet Across thy stainless features; yet fear not; This is no unconnected misery, Nor stands uncaused and irretrievable. Man’s evil nature, that apology Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood Which desolates the discord-wasted land. From kings and priests and statesmen war arose, 80 Whose safety is man’s deep unbettered woe, Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall; And where its venomed exhalations spread Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay Quenching the serpent’s famine, and their bones Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, A garden shall arise, in loveliness Surpassing fabled Eden. Hath Nature’s soul, — That formed this world so beautiful, that spread 90 Earth’s lap with plenty, and life’s smallest chord Strung to unchanging unison, that gave The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, That yielded to the wanderers of the deep The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust With spirit, thought and love,—on Man alone, Partial in causeless malice, wantonly Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul 99 Blasted with withering curses; placed afar The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, But serving on the frightful gulf to glare Rent wide beneath his footsteps ? Natnre !—no! Kings, priests and statesmen blast the hu- man flower Even in its tender bud; their influence darts Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins Of desolate society. The child. Ere he can lisp his mother’s sacred name, Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts His baby-sword even in a hero’s mood. 110 This infant arm becomes the bloodiest scourge Of devastated earth; whilst specious names, Learnt in soft childhood’s unsuspecting hour, Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims Bright reason’s ray and sanctifies the sword Upraised to shed a brother’s innocent blood. Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man Inherits vice and misery, when force And falsehood hang even o’er the cradled babe, rig Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. ‘Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps From its new tenement and looks abroad For happiness and sympathy, how stern And desolate a tract is this wide world ! How withered all the buds of natural good ! No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung 129 By morals, law and custom, the pure winds Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes, May breathe not. The untainting light of day May visit not its longings. It is bound Ere it bas life; yea, all the chains are forged Long ere its being; all liberty and love And peace is torn from its defencelessness; Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed To abjectness and bondage ! ‘Throughout this varied and eternal world Soul is the only element, the block 140 That for uncounted ages has remained. The moveless pillar of a mountain’s weight Is active living spirit. Every grain Is sentient both in unity and part, And the minutest atom comprehends A world of loves and hatreds; these beget 14 QUEEN MAB Evil and good; hence truth and falsehood spring; Hence will and thought and action, all the germs Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate, That variegate the eternal universe. 150 Soul is not more polluted than the beams Of heaven’s pure orb ere round their rapid lines The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise. ‘Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds Of high resolve; on fancy’s boldest wing To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield; Or he is formed for abjectness and woe, To grovel on the dunghill of his fears, 160 To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame Of natural love in sensualism, to know That hour as blest when on his worthless days The frozen hand of death shall set its seal, Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. The one is man that shall hereafter be; The other, man as vice has made him now. ‘ War is the statesman’s game, the priest’s delight, The lawyer’s jest, the hired assassin’s trade, And to those royal murderers whose mean thrones 170 Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore, The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean. Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, sur- round Their palaces, participate the crimes That force defends and from a nation’s rage Secures the crown, which all the curses reach That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe. These are the hired bravos who defend The tyrant’s throne—the bullies of his fear; These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, 180 The refuse of society, the dregs Of all that is most vile; their cold hearts blend Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, All that is mean and villainous with rage Which hopelessness of good and self-con- tempt Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth, Honor and power, then are sent abroad To do their work. The pestilence that stalks In gloomy triumph through some eastern land 189 Is less destroying. They cajole with gold And promises of fame the thoughtJess youth Already crushed with servitude; he knows His wretchedness too late, and cherishes Repentance for his ruin, when his doom Is sealed in gold and blood ! Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare The feet of justice in the toils of law, Stand ready to oppress the weaker still, And right or wrong will vindicate for gold, Sneering at public virtue, which beneath Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled where 201 Honor sits smiling at the sale of truth. ‘Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites, Without a hope, a passion or a love, Who through a life of luxury and lies Have crept by flattery to the seats of power, BAEDOR the system whence their honors ow. They have three words — well tyrants know their use, Well pay them for the loan with usury Torn from a bleeding world !— God, Hell and Heaven: 210 A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend, Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage Of tameless tigers hungering for blood; Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire, Where poisonous and undying worms pro- lon Eternal misery to those hapless slaves Whose life has been a penance for its crimes; And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie Their human nature, quake, believe and cringe Before the mockeries of earthly power. 220 ‘These tools the tyrant tempers to his work, Wields in his wrath, and as he wills de- stroys, QUEEN MAB 15 Omnipotent in wickedness; the while Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend Force to the weakness of his trembling arm. They rise, they fall; one generation comes Yielding its harvest to destruction’s scythe. It fades, another blossoms; yet behold ! Red glows the tyrant’s stamp-mark on its bloom, 230 Withering and cankering deep its passive prime. He has invented lying words and modes, Empty and vain as his own coreless heart; Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound, To lure the heedless victim to the toils Spread round the valley of its paradise. ‘Look to thyself, priest, conqueror or prince! Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor, With whom thy master was; or thou de- light’st 240 In numbering o’er the myriads of thy slain, All misery weighing nothing in the scale Against thy short-lived fame; or thou dost load With cowardice and crime the groaning land, A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self { Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e’er Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days Days of unsatisfying listlessness ? Dost thou not cry, ere night’s long rack is over, “When will the morning come?” Is not thy youth 250 A vain and feverish dream of sensualism ? Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease ? Are not thy views of unregretted death Drear, comfortless and horrible? Thy mind, Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, Incapable of judgment, hope or love ? And dost thou wish the errors to survive, That bar thee from all sympathies of good, After the miserable interest Thou hold’st in their protraction? When the grave 260 Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself, Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth To twine its roots around thy coffined clay, Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb, That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die ? Vv ‘Thus do the generations of the earth Go to the grave and issue from the womb, Surviving still the imperishable change That renovates the world; even as the leaves Which the keen frost-wind of the waning ear Has sentered on the forest-soil and heaped For many seasons there — though long they choke, Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, 10 Lie level with the earth to moulder there, They fertilize the land they long deformed; Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs Of youth, integrity and loveliness, Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights The fairest feelings of the opening heart, Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, And judgment cease to wage unnatural war 26 With passion’s unsubduable array. Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness ! Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all The wanton horrors of her bloody play; Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, Shunning the light, and owning not ita name, Compelled by its deformity to screen With flimsy veil of justice and of right Its unattractive lineaments that scare All save the brood of ignorance; at once 3a The cause and the effect of tyranny; Unblushing, hardened, sensual and vile; Dead to all love but of its abjectness; With heart impassive by more noble powers Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame; 16 QUEEN MAB Despising its own miserable being, Which still it longs, yet fears, to disen- thrall. ‘Hence commerce springs, the venal inter- change Of all that human art or Nature yield ; Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, 40 And natural kindness hasten to supply From the full fountain of its boundless love, Forever stifled, drained and tainted now. Commerce! beneath whose poison-breath- ing shade No solitary virtue dares to spring, But poverty and wealth with equal hand Scatter their withering curses, and unfold The doors of premature and violent death To pining famine and full-fed disease, To all that shares the lot of human life, 50 Which, poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain That lengthens as it goes and clanks be- hind. ‘Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, The signet of its all-enslaving power, Upon a shining ore, and called it gold ; Before whose image bow the vulgar great, The vainly rich, the miserable proud, The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings, And with blind feelings reverence the power That grinds them to the dust of misery. 60 But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is a living god and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue. ‘Since tyrants by the sale of human life Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, Success has sanctioned to a credulous world The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war. His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes The despot numbers ; from his cabinet 70 These puppets of his schemes he moves at will, Even as the slaves by force or famine driven, Beneath a vulgar master, to perform A task of cold and brutal drudgery ;— Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, Searce living pulleys of a dead machine, Mere wheels of work and articles of trade, That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth ! ‘The harmony and happiness of man Yields to the wealth of uations; that which lifts 80 His nature to the heaven of its pride, Is bartered for the poison of his soul; The weight that drags to earth his tower- ing hopes, Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, Withering all passion but of slavish fear, Extinguishing all free and generous love Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse That fancy kindles in the beating heart To mingle with sensation, it destroys, — Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, go The grovelling hope of interest and gold, Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed Even by hypocrisy. And statesmen boast Of wealth! The wordy eloquence that lives After the ruin of their hearts, can gild The bitter poison of a nation’s woe; Can turn the worship of the servile mob To their corrupt and glaring idol, fame, From virtue, trampled by its iron tread, — Althongh its dazzling pedestal be raised 100 Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field, With desolated dwellings smoking round. The man of ease, who, by his warm fire- side, To deeds of charitable intercourse And bare fulfilment of the common laws Of decency and prejudice confines The struggling nature of his human heart, Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds A passing tear perchance upon the wreck Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling’s door 110 The frightful waves are driven, — when his son Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man Whose life is misery, and fear and care; Whom a morn wakens but to fruitless toil; Who ever hears his famished offspring’s scream; QUEEN MAR 7 Whom their pale mother’s uncomplaining gaze Forever meets, and the proud rich man’s eye Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene Of thousands like himself ;— he little heeds The rhetoric of tyranny ; his hate 121 Is quenchless as his wrongs ; he laughs to scorn The vain and bitter mockery of words, Feeling the horror of the tyrant’s deeds, And unrestrained but by the arm of power, That knows and dreads his enmity. ‘The iron rod of penury still compels Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth, And poison, with unprofitable toil, A life too void of solace to confirm 130 The very chains that bind him to his doom. Nature, impartial in munificence, Has gifted man with all-subduing will. Matter, with all its transitory shapes, Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread. How many a rustic Milton has passed by, Stitling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care ! How many avulgar Cato has compelled 140 His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin or fabricate a nail ! How many a Newton, to whose passive ken Those mighty spheres that gem infinity Were only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven To light the midnights of his native town ! ‘Yet every heart contains perfection’s germ. The wisest of the sages of the earth, That ever from the stores of reason drew Science and truth, and virtue’s dreadless tone, 150 Were but a weak and inexperienced hoy, Proad, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued With pure desire and universal love, Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, Untainted passion, elevated will, Which death (who even would linger long in awe Within his noble presence and beneath His changeless eye-beam) might alone sub- due. Him, every slave now dragging throngh the filth : Of some corrupted city his sad life, 160 Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, Bluuting the keenness of his spiritual sense With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, Or madly rushing through all violent crime To move the deep stagnation of his soul, — Might imitate and equal. But mean lust Has bound its chains so tight about the earth That all within it but the virtuous man Is venal ; gold or fame will surely reach The price prefixed by Selfishness to all 170 But him of resolute and unchanging will ; Whom nor the plaudits of a servile crowd, Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury, Can bribe to yield his elevated soul To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world. ‘All things are sold: the very light of heaven Is venal ; earth’s unsparing gifts of love, The smallest and most despicable things That lurk in the abysses of the deep, 180 All objects of our life, even life itself, And the poor pittance which the laws al- low Of liberty, the fellowship of man, Those duties which his heart of human love Should urge him to perform instinctively, Are bought and sold as in a public mart Of undisguising Selfishness, that sets On each its price, the stamp-mark of he1 reign. Even love is sold ; the solace of all woe Is turned to deadliest agony, old age —_190 Shivers in selfish beauty’s loathing arms, And youth’s corrupted impulses prepare A life of horror from the blighting bane Of commerce ; whilst the pestilence that springs From unenjoying sensualism, has filled All human life with hydra-headed woes. ‘Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest 18 QUEEN MAB Sets no great value on his hireling faith ; A little passing pomp, some servile souls, 200 Whom cowardice itself might safely chain Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe To deck the triumph of their languid zeal, Can make him minister to tyranny. More daring crime requires a loftier meed. Without a shudder the slave-soldier lends His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart, When the dread eloquence of dying men, Low mingling on the lonely field of fame, Assails that nature whose applause he sells 210 For the gross blessings of the patriot mob, For the vile gratitude of heartless kings, And for a cold world’s good word, — viler still ! ‘There is a nobler glory which survives Until our being fades, and, solacing All human care, accompanies its change; Deserts not virtue in the dungeon’s gloom, And in the precincts of the palace guides Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime ; Imbues his lineaments with dauntless- ness, 220 Even when from power’s avenging hand he takes Its sweetest, last and noblest title — death ; — The consciousness of good, which neither gold, Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss, Can purchase ; but a life of resolute good, Unalterable will, quenchless desire Of universal happiness, the heart That beats with it in unison, the brain Whose ever-wakeful wisdom toils to change Reason’s rich stores for its eternal weal. 230 ‘This commerce of sincerest virtue needs No meditative signs of selfishness, No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, No balancings of prudence, cold and long ; In just and equal measure all is weighed, One scale contains the sum of human weal, And one, the good man’s heart. How vainly seek The selfish for that happiness denied To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they, Who hope for peace amid the ‘storms of care, 240 Who covet power they know not how to use, And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give, — Madly they frustrate still their own de- signs; And, where they hope that quiet to en- Joy Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, Pining regrets, and vain repentances, Disease, disgust and lassitude pervade Their valueless and miserable lives. ‘ But hoary-headed selfishness has felt Its death-blow and is tottering to the grave; 250 A brighter morn awaits the human day, When every transfer of earth’s natural gifts Shall be a commerce of good words and works; When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame, The fear of infamy, disease and woe, War with its million horrors, and fierce hell, Shall live but in the memory of time, Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start, Look back, and shudder at his younger years.’ VME All touch, all eye, all ear, The Spirit felt the Fairy’s burning speech. O’er the thin texture of its frame The varying periods painted changing glows, As on a summer even, When soul-enfolding music floats around, The stainless mirror of the lake Re-images the eastern gloom, Mingling convulsively its purple hues With sunset’s burnished gold. 10 Then thus the Spirit spoke : ‘It is a wild and miserable world ! Thorny, and full of care, Which every fiend can make his prey at will ! O Fairy! in the lapse of years, Is there no hope in store ? Will yon vast suns roll on Interminably, stil] iluming The night of so many wretched souls, And see no hope for them? — 20 QUEEN MAB 19 Will not the universal Spirit e’er Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?’ The Fairy calmly smiled In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope Suffused the Spirit’s lineaments. ‘Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fear- ful doubts Which ne’er could rack an everlasting soul That sees the chains which bind it to its doom. Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth, Falsehood, mistake and lust; — 30 But the eternal world Contains at once the evil and the cure. Some eminent in virtue shall start up, Even in perversest time; fhe truths of their pure lips, that never die, Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath Of ever-living flame, Until the monster sting itself to death. ‘How sweet a scene will earth become ! Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place, 40 Symphonious with the planetary spheres; When man, with changeless Nature coa- lescing, Will undertake regeneration’s work, When its ungenial poles no longer point To the red and baleful sun That faintly twinkles there ! ‘ Spirit, on yonder earth, Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth! Madness and misery are there ! 50 The happiest is most wretched! Yet con- fide Until pure health-drops from the cup of o Fali me dew of balm upon the world. Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn, And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, Which Nature soon with recreating hand Will blot in mercy from the book of earth. How bold the flight of passion’s wandering wing, How swift the step of reason’s firmer tread, How calm and sweet the victories of life, How terrorless the triumph of the grave ! How powerless were the mightiest mon- arch’s arm, 62 Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown ! How ludicrous the priest’s dogmatic roar } The weight of his exterminating curse How light ! and his affected charity, To suit the pressure of the changing times, What palpable deceit !— but for thy aid, Religion ! but for thee, prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men, 7o And heaven with slaves ! ‘Thou taintest all thou lookest upon !— the stars, Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, Were gods to the distempered playfulness Of thy untutored infancy; the trees, The grass, the clouds, the mountains and the ‘ sea, All living things that walk, swim, creep or Y> Were gods; the sun had homage, and the moon Her worshipper. Then thou becamest, a boy, 79 More daring in thy frenzies; every shape, Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild, Which from sensation’s relics fancy culls; The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost, The genii of the elements, the powers That give a shape to Nature’s varied works, Had life and place in the corrupt belief Of thy blind heart; yet still thy youthful hands Were pure of human blood. Then man- hood gave Its strength and ardor to thy frenzied brain; Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, 99 Whose wonders mocked the knowledge o thy pride; Their everlasting and unchanging laws Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stood’st Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum u The sie of all that thou didst know; The changing seasons, winter’s leafless reign, The budding of the heaven-breathing trees, -The eternal orbs that beautify the night, The sunrise, and the setting of the moon, 20 QUEEN MAB Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, 100 And all their causes, to an abstract point Converging thou didst bend, and called it God ! The self-sufficing, the omnipotent, The merciful, and the avenging God ! Who, prototype of human misrule, sits High in heaven’s realm, upon a golden throne, Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work, Hell, gapes forever for the unhappy slaves Of fate, whom he created in his sport To triumph in their torments when they fell! 110 Earth heard the name; earth trembled as the smoke Of his revenge ascended up to heaven, Blotting the constellations; and the cries Of millions butchered in sweet confidence And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land; Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stub- born spear, And thou didst laugh to hear the mother’s shriek Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel 120 Felt cold in her torn entrails ! ‘Religion ! thou wert then in manhood’s prime; But age crept on; one God would not suf- fice For senile puerility; thou framedst A tale to suit thy dotage and to glut Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend Thy wickedness had pictured might afford A plea for sating the unnatural thirst For murder, rapine, violence and crime, tg That still consumed thy being, even when Thou heard’st the step of fate; that flames might light Thy funeral scene; and the shrill horrent shrieks Of parents dying on the pile that burned To light their children to thy paths, the roar Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries Of thine apostles loud commingling there, Might sate thine hungry ear Even on the bed of death ! ‘But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs; Thou art descending to the darksome grave, 140 Unbonored and unpitied but by those Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds, Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun Of truth, and shines but in the dreadfol night That long has lowered above the ruined world. ‘Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light Of aun yon earth is one, is wide diffused A Spirit of activity and life, That knows no term, cessation or decay; That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, 156 Extinguished in the dampness of the grave, Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe In the dim newness of its being feels The impulses of sublunary things, And all is wonder to unpractised sense; But, active, steadfast and eternal, still Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars, Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves, Strengthens in health, and poisons in dis- ease; And in the storm of change, that cease- lessly 16a Rolls round the eternal universe and shakes Its undecaying battlement, presides, Apportioning with irresistible law The place each spring of its machine shall ll; So that, when waves on waves tumultuous heap Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven Heaven’s lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords — Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner, Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock, All seems unlinked contingency and chance — 1 No atom of this turbulence fulfils A vague and unnecessitated task Or acts but as it must and ought to act. Even the minutest moleeule of light, QUEEN MAB 2a That in an April sunbeam’s fleeting glow Fulfils its destined though invisible work, The universal Spirit guides; nor less When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, Has led two hosts of dupes tu battle-field, That, blind, they there may dig each other’s graves 180 And eall the sad work glory, does it rule All passions; not a thought, a will, an act, No working of the tyrant’s moody mind, Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast Their servitude to hide the shame they feel, Nor the events enchaining every will, That from the depths of unrecorded time Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass Unrecognized or unforeseen by thee, Soul of the Universe! eternal spring —_190 Of life and death, of happiness and woe, Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene That floats before our eyes in wavering light, Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison Whose chains and massy walls Wa feel but cannot see. ‘Spirit of Nature ! all-sufficing Power, Necessity ! thou mother of the world! Unlike the God of human error, thou Requirest no prayers or praises; the ca- rice 200 Of man’s weak will belongs no more to | thee Than do the changeful passions of his breast To thy unvarying harmony; the slave, Whose horrible lusts spread misery o’er the world, And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride His being in the sight of happiness That springs from his own works; the poison-tree, Beneath whose shade all life is withered up, And flee fate oak, whose leafy dome affords Atemple where the vows of happy love 210 Are registered, are equal in thy sight; No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge And favoritism, and worst desire of fame Thou knowest not; all that the wide world contains 5 Are but thy passive instruments, and thou Regard’st them aii with an impartial eye, Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel, Because thou hast not human sense, Because thou art not human mind. ‘Yes! when the sweeping storm of time 22a Has sung its death-dirge o’er the ruined fanes And broken altars of the almighty fiend, Whose name usurps thy honors, and the blood Through centuries clotted there has floated down The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee, Which nor the tempest breath of time, Nor the interminable flood Over earth’s slight pageant rolling, Availeth to destroy, — 230 The sensitive extension of the world; That wondrous and eternal fane, Where pain and pleasure, good and evil oin, To do the will of strong necessity, And life, in multitudinous shapes, Still pressing forward where no term can be, Like hungry and unresting flame Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.’ VII SPIRIT ‘T was an infant when my mother went To see an atheist burned. She took me there. The dark-robed priests were met around the pile; The multitude was gazing silently; And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien, Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye, Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth; The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs; His resolute eyes were scorched to blind- ness soon; His death-pang rent my heart! the insen- sate mob xa Uttered a ery of triumph, and I wept. “ Weep not, child!” cried my mother, “for that man Has said, There is no God.”’” 22 QUEEN MAB FAIRY «There is no God! Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed. Let heaven and earth, let man’s revolving race, His ceaseless generations, tell their tale; Let every part depending on the chain That links it to the whole, point to the hand That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls In silent eloquence unfold its store 20 Of argument; infinity within, Infinity without, belie creation; The exterminable spirit it contains Is Nature’s only God; but human pride Is skilful to invent most serious names To hide its ignorance. ‘The name of God Has fenced about all crime with holiness, Himself the creature of his worshippers, Whose names and attributes and passions change, 29 Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord, Even with the human dupes who build his shrines, Still serving o’er the war-polluted world For desolation’s watchword; whether hosts Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans; Or countless partners of his power divide His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke Of burning towns, the cries of female help- lessness, 39 Unarmed old age, and youth, and infaucy, Morribly massacred, ascend to heaven In honor of his name; or, last and worst, Earth groans beneath religion’s iron age, And priests dare babble of a God of peace, Even whilst their hands are red with guilt- less blood, Murdering the while, uprooting every germ Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all, Making the earth a slaughter-house! ©O Spirit! through the sense By which thy inner nature was apprised so Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled, And varied reminiscences have waked Tablets that never fade; All things have been imprinted there, The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky, Even the unshapeliest lineaments Of wild and fleeting visions Have left a record there To testify of earth. ‘ These are my empire, for to me is given & The wonders of the human world to keep, And fancy’s thin creations to endow With manner, being and reality; Therefore « wondrous phantom from ths dreams Of human error’s dense and purblind faith I will evoke, to meet thy questioning. Ahasuerus, rise!’ A strange and woe-worn wight Arose beside the battlement, And stood unmoving there. 7° His inessential figure cast no shade Upon the golden floor; His port and mien bore mark of many years, And chronicles of untold ancientness Were legible within his beamless eye; Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth; Freshness and vigor knit his manly frame; The wisdom of old age was mingled there With youth’s primeval dauntlessness; And inexpressible woe, 80 Chastened by fearless resignation, gave An awful grace to his all-speaking brow. SPIRIT ‘Is there a God ?’ AHASUERUS ‘Is there a God! — ay, an almighty God, And vengeful as almighty! Once his voice Was heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound; The fiery-visaged firmament expressed Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned To swailow all the dauntless and the good That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, Girt as it was with power. None but slaves gt Survived, — cold-blooded slaves, who di the work Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls | No honest indignation ever urged To elevated daring, to one deed QUEEN MAB 23 Nae and sensual self did not pol- ute. These slaves built temples for the omnipo- tent fiend, Gorgeous and vast; the costly altars smoked With human blood, and hideous pzans rung Through all the long-drawn aisles. A mur- derer heard 100 His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts Had raised him to his eminence in power, Accomplice of omnipotence in crime And confidant of the all-knowing one. These were Jehovah’s words. <“« From an eternity of idleness I, God, awoke ; in seven days’ toil made earth From nothing; rested, and created man; I placed him in a paradise, and there Planted the tree of evil, so that he 110 Might eat and perish, and my soul procure Wherewith to sate its malice and to turn, Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth, All misery to my fame. The race of men, Chosen to my honor, with impunity May sate the lusts I planted in their heart. Here I command thee hence to lead them on, Until with hardened feet their conquering troops Wade on the promised soil through wo- man’s blood, And make my name be dreaded through the land. 120 Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe Shall be the doom of their eternal souls, With every soul on this ungrateful earth, Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong, — even all Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge (Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.” ‘The murderer’s brow Quivered with horror. «God omnipotent, Is there no mercy ? must our punishment Be endless ? will long ages roll away, 30 And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast thou made In mockery and wrath this evil earth ? Mercy becomes the powerful — be but just } O God! repent ard save!” «« One way remains: I will beget a son and he shall bear The sins of all the world; he shall arise In an unnoticed corner of the earth, And there shall die upon a cross, and purge The universal crime; so that the few On whom my grace descends, those who are marked 146 As vessels to the honor of their God, May credit this strange sacrifice and save Their souls alive. Millions shall live and Who ne’er shall call upon their Saviour’s name, But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave, Thousands shall deem it an old woman’s tale, Such as the nurses frighten babes withal; These in a gulf of anguish and of flame Shall curse their reprobation endlessly, Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, 156 Even on their beds of torment where they howl, My honor and the justice of their doom. What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts Of purity, with radiant genius bright Or lit with human reason’s earthly ray ? Many are called, but few will I elect. Do thou my bidding, Moses !” ‘Even the murderer’s cheek Was blanched with horror, and his quiver- ing lips Scarce faintly uttered — “O almighty one, I tremble and obey !” x6a ‘O Spirit ! centuries have set their seal On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain, Since the Incarnate came ; humbly he came, Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape Of man, scorned by the world, nis name unheard Save by the rabble of his native town, Even as a parish demagogue. He led The crowd ; he taught them justice, truth and peace, In semblance ; but he lit within their souls The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword 170 He brought on earth to satiate with the blood Of truth and freedom his malignant soul 24 QUEEN MAB At length his mortal frame was led to death. [ stood beside him; on the torturing cross No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense; And yet he groaned. Indignantly I summed The massacres and miseries which his name Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried, “Go! go!” in mockery. A smile of godlike malice reillumined 180 His fading lineaments. “I go,” he cried, “But thou shalt wander o’er the unquiet earth Eternally.’’ The dampness of the grave Bathed my imperishable front. I fell, And long lay tranced upon the charméd soil. When I awoke hell burned within my brain Which staggered on its seat; for all around The mouldering relics of my kindred lay, Even as the Almighty’s ire arrested them, And in their various attitudes of death 190 My murdered children’s mute and eyeless skulls Glared ghastily upon me. But my soul, From sight and sense of the polluting woe Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer Hell’s freedom to the servitude of beaven. Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began My lonely and unending pilgrimage, Resolved to wage unweariable war With my almighty tyrant and to burl Defiance at his impotence to harm 200 Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand, That barred my passage to the peaceful grave, Has crushed the earth to misery, and given Its empire to the chosen of his slaves. These I have seen, even from the earliest dawn Of weak, unstable and precarious power, Then preaching peace, as now they practise war; So, when they turned but from the mas- sacre Of unoffending infidels to quench Their thirst for ruin in the very blood 210 That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal Froze every human feeling as the wife Sheathed in her husband’s heart the sacred steel, Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love: And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war, Scarce satiable by fate’s last death-draught, waged, Drunk from the wine-press of the Al- mighty’s wrath, Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace, Pointed to victory! When the fray was done, 220 No remnant of the exterminated faith Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh, With putrid smoke poisoning the atmo- sphere, That rotted on the half-extinguished pile. ‘Yes! I have seen God’s worshippers un- sheathe The sword of his revenge, when grace de- scended, Confirming all unnatural impulses, To sanctify their desolating deeds; And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross O’er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun 230 On showers of gore from the upflashing steel Of safe assassination, and all crime Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord, And blood-red rainbows canopied the land. ‘Spirit! no year of my eventful being Has passed unstained by crime and misery, Which flows from God’s own faith. I’ve marked his slaves With tongues, whose lies are venomous, beguile The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red 239 With murder, feign to stretch the other out For brotherhood and peace; and that they now Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds Are marked with all the narrowness and crime That freedom’s young arm dare not yet chastise, Reason may claim our gratitude, who now, Establishing the imperishable throne Of truth and stubborn virtue, maketh vain The unprevailing malice of my foe, Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave, Adds impotent eternities to pain, 250 QUEEN MAB 25 Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast To see the smiles of peace around them play, To frustrate or to sanctify their doom. ‘Thus have I stood, — through a wild waste of years Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-en- shrined, Mocking my powerless tyrant’s horrible curse With stubborn and unalterable will, Even as a giant oak, which heaven’s fierce flame Had scathéd in the wilderness, to stand 260 A monument of fadeless ruin there; Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves The midnight conflict of the wintry storm, As in the sunlight’s calm it spreads Its worn and withered arms on high To meet the quiet of a summer’s noon.’ The Fairy waved her wand; Ahasuerus fled Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist, 269 That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, Flee from the morning beam ;— The matter of which dreams are made Not more endowed with actual life Than this phantasmal portraiture Of wandering human thought. VII THE FAIRY ‘The present and the past thou hast beheld. It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn, The secrets of the future. — Time! Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom, Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, And from the cradles of eternity, Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep By the deep murmuring stream of passing things, Tear thou that gloomy shroud. — Spirit, behold Thy glorious destiny!’ 10 Joy to the Spirit came. Through the wide rent in Time’s eternal veil, Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear; Earth was no longer hell; Love, freedom, health had given Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime, And all its pulses beat Symphonious to the planetary spheres; Then dulcet music swelled 1g Concordant with the life-strings of the soul; It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there, Catching new life from transitory death; Like the vague sighings of a wind at even That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea And dies on the creation of its breath, And sinks and rises, falls and swells by fits, Was the pure stream of feeling That sprung from these sweet notes, And o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies 25 With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. Joy to the Spirit came, — Such joy as when a lover sees The chosen of his soul in happiness And witnesses her peace Whose woe to him were bitterer than death; Sees her unfaded cheek Glow mantling in first luxury of health, Thrills with her lovely eyes, Which like two stars amid the heaving main Sparkle through liquid bliss. 49 Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queev ‘TJ will not call the ghost of ages gone To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore; The present now is past, And those events that desolate the earth Have faded from the memory of Time, Who dares not give reality to that Whose being I annul. To me is given The wonders of the human world to keep, Space, matter, time and mind. Futurity sc Exposes now its treasure; let the sight Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope. O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal Where virtue fixes universal peace, And, ’midst the ebb and flow of human things, : Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, A light-house o’er the wild -f dreary waves 26 QUEEN MAB * The habitable earth is full of bliss; Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, 60 Where matter dared not vegetate or live, But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude Bound its broad zone of stillness, are un- loosed; And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves And melodize with man’s blest nature there. * Those deserts of immeasurable sand, 70 Whose age-collected fervors scarce allowed A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring, Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard’s love Broke on the sultry silentness alone, Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, Cornfields and pastures and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness beheld A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs The unnatural famine of her toothless enbs, 80 Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang, — Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn, Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles To see a babe before his mother’s door, Sharing his morning’s meal With the green and golden basilisk That comes to lick his feet. ‘ Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail Has seen above the illimitable plain Morning on night and night on morning rise, 9° Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread {ts shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea, Where the loud roarings of the tempest- waves So long have mingled with the gusty wind In melancholy loneliness, and swept The desert of those ocean solitudes But vocal to the sea-bird’s harrowing shriek, The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm; Now to the sweet and many - mingling sounds Of kindliest human impulses respond. 100 Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem, With lightsome clouds and shining seas between, And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss, Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, Which like a toil-worn laborer leaps to shore To meet the kisses of the flowrets there. ‘ All things are recreated, and the flame Of consentaneous love inspires all life. The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, 110 Rewarding her with their pure perfectness; The balmy breathings of the wind inhale Her virtues and diffuse them all abroad; Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, Glows in the fruits and mantles on the stream; No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven, Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride The foliage of the ever-verdant trees; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, And autumn proudly bears ler matron grace, 720 Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring, bee mee bloom beneath the ruddy fruit Reflects its tint and blushes into love. ‘ The lion now forgets to thirst for blood; - There might you see him sporting in the sun Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed, His teeth are harmless, custom’s force has made His nature as the nature of a lamb. Like passion’s fruit, the nightshade’s tempt- ing bane Poisons no more the pleasure it be- stows; 13@ All bitterness is past; the cup of joy QUEEN MAB 2? Unmingled mantles to the goblet’s brim And courts the thirsty lips it fled before. But chief, ambiguous man, he that can know More misery, and dream more joy than all; Whaose keen sensations thrill within his breast To mingle with a loftier instinct there, Lending their power to pleasure and to pain, Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each; Who stands amid the ever-varying world, The burden or the glory of the earth; 141 He chief perceives the change; his being notes The gradual renovation and defines Each movement of its progress on his mind. ‘Man, where the gloom of the long polar night Lowers o’er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil, Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost Basks in the moonlight’s ineffectual glow, Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night; His chilled and narrow energies, his heart 150 Insensible to courage, truth or love, His stunted stature and imbecile frame, Marked him for some abortion of the earth, Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around, Whose habits and enjoyments were his own; His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe, Whose meagre wants, but scantily ful- filled, Apprised him ever of the joyless length Which his short being’s wretchedness had reached; His death a pang which famine, cold and toil 160 Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought: All was inflicted here that earth’s revenge Could wreak on the infringers of her law; One curse alone was spared —the name of God. ‘Nor, where the trovics bound the realms of day With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere Scattered the seeds of pestilence and fed Unnatural vegetation, where the land 170 Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease, Was man a nobler being; slavery Had crushed him to his country’s blood- stained dust; Or he was bartered for the fame of power, Which, all internal impulses destroying, Makes human will an article of trade; Or he was changed with Christians for their ‘old And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound Of the flesh-mangling scourge he does the work Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, 183 Which doubly visits on the tyrants’ heads The long-protracted fulness of their woe; Or he was led to legal butchery, To turn to worms beneath that burning sun Where kings first leagued against the rights of men And priests first traded with the name of God. ‘ Even where the milder zone afforded man A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, Blighting his being with unnumbered ills, Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late 190 Availed to arrest its progress or create That peace which first in bloodless victory waved Her snowy standard o’er this favored clime; There man was long the train-bearer of slaves, The mimic of surrounding misery, The jackal of ambition’s lion-rage, The bloodhound of religion’s hungry zeal. ‘Here now the human being stands adorn- ing This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind; Blest from his birth with all bland im. pulses, 200 Which gently in his noble bosom wake 28 QUEEN MAB All kindly passions and all pure desires. Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pur- suin Which from the exhaustless store of human weal Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise In time-destroying infiniteness gift With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks The unprevailing hoariness of age; And man, once fleeting o’er the transient scene Swift as an unremembered vision, stands 210 Immortal upon earth; no longer now He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, And horribly devours his mangled flesh, Which, still avenging Nature’s broken aw, Kindled all putrid humors in his frame, All evil passions and all vain belief, Hatred, despair and loathing in his mind, The germs of misery, death, disease and crime. No longer now the wingéd habitants, That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, 220 Flee from the form of man; but gather round, And prune their sunny feathers on the hands Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of their lay. All ftinee are void of terror; man has lost His terrible prerogative, and stands An equal amidst equals; happiness And science dawn, though late, upon the earth; Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame; 229 Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, Reason and passion cease to combat there; Whilst each unfettered o’er the earth ex- tend Their all-subduing energies, and wield The sceptre of a vast dominion there: Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends Its force to the omnipotence of mind, Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth To decorate its paradise of peace.’ Ix “O happy Earth, reality of Heaven! To which those restless souls that cease lessly Throng through the human universe, aspire! Thou consummation of all mortal hope! Thou glorious prize of blindly working will, Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time, Verge to one point and blend forever there! Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime, Languor, disease and ignorance dare not come! 10 O happy Earth, reality of Heaven! ‘Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams; And dim forebodings of thy loveliness, Haunting the human heart, have there en- twined Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss, Where friends and lovers meet to part no more. Thou art the end of all desire and will, The produet of all action; and the souls, That by the paths of an aspiring change 19 Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, There rest from the eternity of toil Thst framed the fabric of thy perfectness. ‘Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear; That hoary giant, who in lonely pride So long had ruled the world that nations fell Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids, That for millenniums had withstood the tide Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand Across that desert where their stones sur- vived The name of him whose pride had heaped them there. 3a Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, Was but the mushroom of a summer day, That 7 light-wingéd footstep pressed to ust; Time was the king of earth; all things gave way Before him but the fixed and virtuous will, The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, That mocked his fury and prepared his fall. QUEEN MAB 2G Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love; Long lay the clouds of darkness o’er the scene, Till from its native heaven they rolled away: 40 First, crime triumphant o’er all hope ca- reered Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong, Whilst falsehood, tricked in virtue’s attri- butes, Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe, Till, done by her own venomous sting to death, She left the moral world without a law, No longer fettering passion’s fearless wing, Nor searing reason with the brand of God. Then steadily the happy ferment worked; Reason was free; and wild though passion went 50 Through tangled glens and wood-embos- omed meads, Gathering a garland of the strangest flow- ers, Yet, like the bee returning to her queen, She bound the sweetest on her sister’s brow, Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child, No longer trembling at the broken rod. ‘Mild was the slow necessity of death. The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp, Without a groan, almost without a fear, Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 60 And full of wonder, full of hope as he. The deadly germs of languor and disease Died in the human frame, and purity Blessed with all gifts her earthly worship- pers. How vigorous then the athletic form of age! How clear its open and unwrinkled brow! Where neither avarice, cunning, pride or : care Had stamped the seal of gray deformity On all the mingling lineaments of time. How lovely the intrepid front of youth, 70 Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace; Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name, And elevated will, that journeyed on Through life’s phantasmal scene in fear- lessness, With virtue, love and pleasure, hand in hand ! ‘Then, that sweet bondage which is free- dom’s self, And rivets with sensation’s softest tie The kindred sympathies of human souls, Needed no fetters of tyrannic law. Those delicate and timid impulses 8c In Nature’s primal modesty arose, And with undoubting confidence disclosed The growing longings of its dawning love, Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost. No longer prostitution’s venomed bane Poisoned the springs of happiness and life; Woman and man, in confidence and love, Equal and free and pure together trod ge The mountain- paths of virtue, which no more Were stained with blood from many a pil- grim’s feet. ‘Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked Famine’s faint groan and penury’s silent tear, A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw Year after year their stones upon the field, Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower Usurped the royal ensigu’s grandeur, shook In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower, 101 And whispered strange tales in the whirl- wind’s ear. ‘ Low through the lone cathedral’s roofless aisles The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung. It were a sight of awfulness to see The works of faith and slavery, so vast, So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal, Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall! A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death 10g To-day, the breathing marble glows above To decorate its memory, and tongues Are busy of its life; to-morrow, worms In silence and in darkness seize the prey. 30 QUEEN MAB ‘Within the massy prison’s mouldering courts, Fearless and free the ruddy children played, Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows With the green ivy and the red wall-flower ‘That mock the dungeon’s unavailing gloom; The ponderous chains and gratings of strong iron 119 There rusted amid heaps of broken stone That mingled slowly with their native earth; There the broad beam of day, which feebly once Lighted the cheek of lean captivity With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone On the pure smiles of infant playfulness; No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds And merriment were resonant around. 129 © These ruins soon left not a wreck behind; Their elements, wide-scattered o’er the globe, To happier shapes were moulded, and be- came Ministrant to all blissful impulses; Thus human things were perfected, and earth, Even as a child beneath its mother’s love, Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew Fairer and nobler with each passing year. ‘Now Time his dusky pennons o’er the scene Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past Fades from our charméd sight. My task is done; 140 Thy lore is learned. Earth’s wonders are thine own With all the fear and all the hope they bring. My spells are passed; the present now re- curs. Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains Yet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand. ‘Yet, human Spirit! bravely hold thy course; Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue The gradual paths of an aspiring change; For birth and life and death, and that strange state 149 Before the naked soul has found its home, All tend to perfect happiness, and urge The restless wheels of being on their way, Whose fleahiings spokes, instinct with infi- nite life, Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal; For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape New modes of passion to its frame may lend; Life is its state of action, and the store Of all events is aggregated there That variegate the eternal universe; 160 Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, That leads to azure isles and beaming skies And happy regions of eternal hope. Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on. Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, Yet spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower, That blooms in mossy bank and darksome glens, Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. 170 ‘Fear not then, Spirit, death’s disrobing hand, So welcome when the tyrant is awake, So welcome when the bigot’s hell-torch burns; ’T is but the voyage of a darksome hour, The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. Death is no foe to virtue; earth has seen Love’s brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, Mingling with freedom’s fadeless laurels there, And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene 184 Of linked and gradual being has confirmed ? Whose senate bade thy heart look further still, ALASTOR 31 When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led, Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death ? And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, Listening supinely to a bigot’s creed, Or tamely crouching to the tyrant’s rod, Whose iron thongs are red with human ‘ore ? Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will Is destined an eternal war to wage 190 With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot The germs of misery from the human heart. Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, Watching its wanderings as a friend’s dis- ease ; Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, When fenced by power and master of the world. Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, 200 Free from heart-withering custom’s cold control, OF passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. Earth’s pride and meanness could not van- quish thee, And therefore art thou worthy of the boon Which thou hast now received; virtue shall keep Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, And many days of beaming hope shall bless Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy, Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 210 Light, life and rapture from thy smile!’ The Fairy waves her wand of charm. Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, That rolled beside the battlement, Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. Again the enchanted steeds were yoked ; Again the burning wheels inflame The steep descent of heaven’s untrodden way. Fast and far the chariot flew; The vast and fiery globes that rolled 2a. Around the Fairy’s palace-gate Lessened by slow degrees, and soon ap- peared Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs That there attendant on the solar power With borrowed light pursued their nar- rower way. Earth floated then below; The chariot paused a moment there; The Spirit then descended; The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil, Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done, 230 Unfurled their pinions to the winds of heaven. The Body and the Soul united then. A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame; Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed; Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs re- mained. She looked around in wonder, and beheld Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, Watching her sleep with looks of speech- less love, And the bright beaming stars That through the casement shone. 24a ALASTOR OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quezrebam quid amarem, amans amare. Alastor was published nearly three years after the issue of Queen Mab, in 1816, in a thin volume with a few other poems. It is strongly opposed to the earlier poem, and begins that series of ideal portraits, — in the main, incar- Confess. St. August. nations of Shelley’s own aspiring and melan. choly spirit, — which contain his personal charm and shadow forth his own history of isolation in the world; they are interpretations of the hero rather than pronunciamentos of the cause 32 ALASTOR and are free from the entanglements of politi- cal and social reform and religious strife. The poetical antecedents of Alastor are Wordsworth and Coleridge. The deepening of the poet's self- consciousness is evident in every line, and the growth of his genius in grace and strength, in the element of expression, is so marked as to give a different cadence to his verse. He composed the poem in the autumn of 1815, when he was twenty-three years old and after the earlier misfortunes of his life had befallen him. Mrs. Shelley’s account of the poem is the best, and nothing has since been added to it : ‘ Alastor is written in a very different tone from Queen Mab. In the latter, Shelley poured out all the cherished speculations of his youth —all the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, eensure, and hope, to which the present suffer- ing, and what he considers the proper destiny of his fellow - creatures, gave birth. Alastor, on the contrary, contains an individual interest only. A very few years, with their attendant events, had checked the ardor of Shelley’s hopes, though he still thought them well- grounded, and that to advance their fulfilment was the noblest task man could achieve. ‘This is neither the time nor place to speak of the misfortunes that checkered his life. It will be sufficient to say, that in all he did, he at the time of doing it believed himself justi- fied to his own conscience; while the various ills of poverty and loss of friends brought home to him the sad realities of life. Physical suf- fering had also considerable influence in caus- ing him to turn his eyes inward ; inclining him rather to brood over the thoughts and emotions of his own soul, than to glance abroad, and to make, as in Queen Mab, the whole universe the object and subject of his song. In the spring of 1815, an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a consumption; ab- scesses were formed on his lungs, and he suf- fered acute spasms. Suddenly a complete change took place ; and though through life he was a martyr to pain and debility, every symp- tom of pulmonary disease vanished. His nerves, which nature had formed sensitive to an unex- ampled degree, were rendered still more suscep- tible by the state of his health. ‘As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the Continent, he went abroad. He visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Swit- zerland. and returned. to England from Lucerne by the Reuss and the Rhine. This river-navi- gation enchanted him. In his favorite poem of Thalaba his imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage. In the summer of 1815, after a tour along the south- grn coast of Devecnshire and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopgate Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest. where he enjoyed several months of comparative health and tran- quil happiness. The later summer months were warm and dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the source of the Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Windsor to Crichlade. His beautiful stanzas in the church- yard of Lechlade were written on that ocea- sion. Alastor was composed on his return. He spent his days under the oak-shades of Wind- sor Great Park ; and the magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various de- scriptions of forest scenery we find in the oem. ‘None of Shelley’s poems is more character- istic than this. The solemn spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, the broodings of a poet’s heart in soli- tude — the mingling of the exulting joy which the various aspect of the visible universe in- spires, with the sad and struggling pangs which human passion imparts, give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had often contemplated during the last months as certain and near, he here represented in such colors as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it is pecu- liarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic than narrative: it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagina- tion inspired, and softened by the recent antici- pation of death.’ Peacock explains the title: ‘At this time Shelley wrote his Alastor. He was at a loss for a title, and I proposed that which he adopted: Alastor; or, the Spirit of Solitude. The Greek word, ‘ardorip, is an evil genius, kaxodaluwy, though the sense of the two words is somewhat different, as in the davels ’AAdoTwp fi ands Saluwy 1é0ev of Aischylus. The poem treated the spirit of solitude as a spirit of evil. I mention the true meaning of the word because many have supposed Alastor to be the name of the hero of the poem.’ In his Preface Shelley thus describes the main character, and draws its moral: ‘The poem entitled Alastor may be con- sidered as allegorical of one of the most inter- esting situations of the human mind. It re- presents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic to the con- templation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge and is still in- satiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions and affords to their modifi- cations a variety not to be exhausted. So long ALASTOR 33 as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous and tranquil and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he em- bodies his own imaginations unites all of won- derful or wise or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense have their respective re- quisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions and attaching them toasingle image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave. ‘The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet’s self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power, which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure EartH, Ocean, Air, belovéd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine; If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, And solemn midnight’s tingling silent- ness; If Autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood, And Winter robing with pure snow and crowns Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs; To If Spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathes Her first sweet kisses, — have been dear to me; If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred; then for- give This boast, belovéd brethren, and with- draw No portion of your wonted favor now! its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, de- luded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender- hearted perish through the intensity and pas- sion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who con- stitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives and prepare for their old age a miserable grave. ‘The good die first, And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust Burn to the socket ! * December 14, 1815.’ Mother of this unfathomable world! Favor my solemn song, for I have loved 16 Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, Thy messenger, to render up the tale Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness, 30 Like an inspired and desperate alchemist Staking his very life on some dark hope, Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks With my most innocent love, until strange tears, Uniting with those breathless kisses, made Such magic as compels the charméd night 34 ALASTOR To render up thy charge; and, though ne’er yet Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, Enough from incommunicable dream, And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, 40 Has shone within me, that serenely now And moveless, as a long-forgotien lyre Suspended ir the solitary dome Of some mvsterious and deserted fane, I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain May modulate with murmurs of the air, And motions of the forests and the sea, And voice of living beings, and woven hymns Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. 49 There was a Poet whose untimely tomb No human hands with pious reverence reared, But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o’er his mouldering bones a pyra- mid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilder- ness : A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : Gentle, and brave, and generous, — no lorn bard Breathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh: He figeihe died, he sung in solitude. 60 Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, And Silence, too enamoured of that voice, Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. By solemn vision and bright silver dream His infancy was nurtured. Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. 70 The fountains of divine philosophy Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great, Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past In truth or fable consecrates, he felt And knew. When early youth had passed, he left His cold fireside and alienated home To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Many a wide waste and tangled wilder- ness Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 8a His rest and food. Nature’s most secret steps He like her shadow has pursued, where’er The red volcano overcanopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes On black bare pointed islets ever beat With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves, Rugged and dark, winding among the springs Of fire and poison, inaccessible To avarice or pride, their starry domes 90 Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasurable halls, Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chryso- lite. Nor had that scene of ampler majesty Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder; he would linger long In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, Until the doves and squirrels would par- take 100 From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, And the wild antelope, that starts when- e’er The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own. His wandering step, Obedient to high thoughts, has visited The awful ruins of the days of old : Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste 10g ALASTOR 35 Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange, Sculptured on alabaster obelisk Or jasper tomb or mutilated sphinx, Dark Athiopia in her desert hills Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, Stupendous columns, and wild images Of more than man, where marble daemons watch The Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, 120 He lingered, poring on memorials Of the world’s youth: through the long burning day Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades Suspended he that task, but ever gazed And gazed, till meaning on bis vacant mind Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, 129 Her daily portion, from her father’s tent, And spread her matting for his couch, and stole From duties and repose to tend his steps, Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe To speak her love, and watched his nightly sleep, Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath Of innocent dreams arose; then, when red morn Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home Wildered, and wan, and panting, she re- turned. The Poet, wandering on, through Ara- bie, 140 And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, And o’er the aérial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxns from their icy caves, In joy and exultation held his way; Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants en- twine Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep There came, a dream of hopes that never yet 15a Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiléd maid Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held His inmost sense suspended in its web Of many-colored woof and shifting hues. Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, And lofty hopes of divine liberty, 159: Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy, Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame A permeating fire; wild numbers then She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp Strange symphony, and in their branching veins The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale. The beating of her heart was heard to fill The pauses of her music, and her breath Tumultuously accorded with those fits 17: Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose, As if her heart impatiently endured Its bursting burden; at the sound he turned, And saw by the warm light of their own life Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare, Her dark locks floating in the breath of night, Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly. 180 His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled 36 ALASTOR His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet Her panting bosom:—she drew back awhile, Then, yielding to the irresistible joy, With frantic gesture and short breathless cry Folded his frame in her dissolving arms. Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep 189 Like a dark flood suspended in its course, Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain. Roused by the shock, be started from his trance — The cold white light of morning, the blue moon Low in the west, the clear and garish hills, The distinct valley and the vacant woods, Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled The hues of heaven that canopied his bower Of yesternight ? The sounds that soothed his sleep, The mystery and the majesty of Earth, The joy, the exultation ? His wan eyes 200 Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly As ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven. The spirit of sweet human love has sent A vision to the sleep of him who spurned Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade; He overleaps the bounds. Alas! alas! Were limbs and breath and being inter- twined Thus treacherously ? Lost, lost, forever lost 209 In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep, That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death Conduct to thy mysterious paradise, O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rain- bow clouds And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake Lead only to a black and watery depth, While death’s blue vault with loathliest vapors hung, Where every shade which the foul grave exhales Hides its dead eye from the detested day, Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms? This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart; 220 The insatiate hope which it awakened stung His brain even like despair. While daylight held The sky, the Poet kept mute conference With his still soul. At night the passion came, Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, And shook him from his rest, and led him forth Into the darkness. As an eagle, grasped In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast Burn with the poison, and precipitates Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud, 230 Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight O’er the wide aéry wilderness: thus driven By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, Through tangled swamps and deep preci- pitous dells, Startling with careless step the moon-light snake, He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, Shedding the mockery of its vital hues Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on 239 Till vast Aornos seen from Petra’s steep Hung o’er the low horizon like a cloud; Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, Day after day, a weary waste of hours, Bearing within his life the brooding care That ever fed on its decaying flame. And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair, Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand Hung like dead bone within its withered skin; 251 Life, and the lustre that consumed it shone, As in a furnace burning secretly, ALASTOR 3) From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, Who ministered with human charity His human wants, beheld with wondering awe Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, Encountering on some dizzy precipice That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of Wind, With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet 260 Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused In its career; the infant would conceal His troubled visage in his mother’s robe In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, To remember their strange light in many a dream Of after times; but youthful maidens, taught By nature, would interpret half the woe That wasted him, would call him with false names Brother and friend, would press his pallid hand At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path 270 Of his departure from their father’s door. At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings Sealing the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main. His eyes pursued its flight: — ‘Thou hast a home, 280 Beautiful bird! thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts?’ A gloomy smile 290 Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge, and silent death ex- posed, Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure With doubtful smile mocking its owy strange charms. Startled by his own thoughts, he looked around. There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. A little shallop floating near the shore Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. 300 It had been long abandoned, for its sides Gaped wide with many a rift, and its fraiJ joints Swayed with the undulations of the tide. A restless impulse urged him to embark And meet lone Death on the drear ocean’s waste; For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves The slimy caverns of the populous deep. The day was fair and sunny; sea and sky Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. 310 Following his eager soul, the wanderer Leaped in the boat; he spread bis cloak aloft On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, And felt the boat speed o’er the tranquil sea Like a torn cloud before the hurricane. As one that in a silver vision floats Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly Along the dark and ruffled waters fled The straining boat. A whirlwind swept it on, 32a With fierce gusts and precipitating force, Through the white ridges of the chaféd sea. The waves arose. Higher and higher still Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourge Like serpents struggling in a vulture’s grasp. 38 ALASTOR Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven With dark obliterating course, he sate: As if their genii were the ministers 330 Appointed to conduct him to the light Of those belovéd eyes, the Poet sate, Holding the steady helm. Evening came on; The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues High ’mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray That canopied his path o’er the waste deep; Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks O’er the fair front and radiant eyes of Day; Night followed, clad with stars. On every side 340 More horribly the multitudinous streams Of ocean’s mountainous waste to mutual war Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock The calm and spangled sky. The little boat Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam Down the steep cataract of a wintry river; Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave; Now leaving far behind the bursting mass That fell, convulsing ocean; safely fled — As if that frail and wasted human form 350 Had been an elemental god. At midnight The moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffs Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone Among the stars like sunlight, and around Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves Bursting and eddying irresistibly Rage and resound forever.— Who shall save ?— The boat fled on,—the boiling torrent drove, — The crags closed round with black and jagged arms, 359 The shattered mountain overhung the sea, And faster still, beyond all human speed, Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, The little boat was driven. A cavern there Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on With unrelaxing speed. — ‘ Vision and Love !’ The Poet cried aloud, ‘I have beheld The path of thy departure. Sleep and death Shall not divide us long.’ The boat pursued The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone 370 At length upon that gloomy river’s flow; Now, where the fiercest war among the waves Is calm, on the unfathomable stream The boat moved slowly. Where the moun- tain, riven, Exposed those biack depths to the azure sky, Ere yet ih flood’s enormous volume fell Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass Filled with one whirlpoo! all that ample chasm: 379 Stair above stair the eddying waters rose, Circling immeasurably fast, and laved With alternating dash the gnarléd roots Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms In darkness over it. I’ the midst was left, Reflecting yet distorting every cloud, A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm. Seized by the sway of the ascending stream, With dizzy swiftness, round and round and round, Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose, Till on the verge of the extremest curve, Where through an opening of the rocky bank 391 The waters overflow, and a smooth spot Of glassy quiet ’mid those battling tides Is left, the boat paused shuddering. — Shall it sink Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress Of that resistless gulf embosom it ? Now shall it fall? — A wandering stream of wind Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail, And, lo! with gentle motion between banks Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, 4oc ALASTOR 39 Beneath a woven grove, it sails, and, hark ! The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods. Where the embowering trees recede, and leave A little space of green expanse, the cove Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes, Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave Of the boat’s motion marred their pensive task, Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, 410 Dr falling spear-grass, or their own decay lad e’er disturbed before. The Poet longed To deck with their bright hues his withered hair, But on his heart its solitude returned, And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame, Had yet performed its ministry; it hung Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods 419 Of night close over it. The noonday sun Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass Of mingling shade, whose brown magnifi- cence A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, Seooped in the dark base of their aéry rocks, Mocking its moans, respond and roar for- ever. The meeting boughs and implicated leaves Wove twilight o’er the Poet’s path, as, led By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, He sought in Nature’s dearest haunt some bank, 429 Her cradle and his sepulchre. More dark And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, Expanding its immense and knotty arms, Embraces the light beech. The pyramids Of the tall cedar overarching frame Most solemn domes within, and far below, Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, The ash and the acacia floating hang Tremulous and pale. Like restless ser- pents, clothed In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around 440 The gray trunks, and,as gamesome infants’ eyes, With penile meanings, and most innocent wiles, Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs, Uniting their close union; the woven leaves Make network of the dark blue light of day And the night’s noontide clearness, mutable As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns Beneath these canopies extend their swells, Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms 450 Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen Sends from its woods of musk-rose twin< with jasmine A soul-dissolving odor to invite To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades, Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well, Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, Images all the woven boughs above, 459 And each depending leaf, and every speck Of azure sky darting between their chasms; Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves Its portraiture, but some inconstant star, Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon. Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld Their own wan light through the reflected lines 470 Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark dept Of that still fountain; as the human heart, Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard 4o ALASTOR The motion of the leaves — the grass that sprung Startled and glaneed and trembled even to feel An unaccustomed presence — and the sound Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed To stand beside him — clothed in no bright robes 480 Of shadowy silver or enshrining light, Borrowed from aught the visible world affords Of grace, or majesty, or mystery; But undulating woods, and silent well, And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming, Held commune with him, as if he and it Were all that was; only — when his regard Was raised by intense pensiveness — two eyes, Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, 490 And seemed with their serene and azure smiles To beckon him. Obedient to the light That shone within his soul, he went, pur- suing The windings of the dell. The rivulet, Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell Among the moss with hollow harmony Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones It danced, like childhood laughing as it went ; Then, through the plain in tranquil wan- derings crept, 500 Reflecting every herb and drooping bud That overhung its quietness. — ‘O stream ! Whose source is inaccessibly profound, Whither do thy mysterious waters tend ? Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome still- ness, Thy eae waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs, Thy searchless fountain and invisible course, Have ae their type in me; and the wide szv And measureless ocean may declare as soon What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud 510 Contains thy waters, as the universe Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste I’ the passing wind !’ Beside the grassy shore Of the small stream he went ; he did im- press On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one Roused by some joyous madness from the couch Of fever, he did move ; yet not like him Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame 520 Of his frail exultation shall be spent, He must descend. With rapid steps he went Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow Of the wild babbling rivulet ; and now The forest’s solemn canopies were changed For the uniform and lightsome evening sky. Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed The struggling brook ; tall spires of win- dlestrae Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, And nought but gnarléd roots of ancient pines 530 Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes Had shone, gleam stony orbs :—so from his steps Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds And musical motions. sued The stream, that with a larger volume now 54¢ Calm he still pur- ALASTOR 4i Rolled through the labyrinthine dell ; and there Fretted a path through its descending curves With its wintry speed. On every side now rose Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms, Lifted their black and barren piunacles In the light of evening, and its preci- pice Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, ’*Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawn- ing caves, Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands 550 Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, And seems with its accumulated crags To overhang the world ; for wide expand Beneath the wan stars and descending moon Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom Of leaden-colored even, and fiery hills Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge Of the remote horizon. The near seene, In naked and severe simplicity, 560 Made contrast with the universe. A pine, Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response at each pause In most familiar cadence, with the howl, The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river Foaming and hurrying o’er its rugged path, Fell into that immeasurable void, Scattering its waters to the passing winds. 570 Yet the gray precipice and solemn pine And torrent were not all; — one silent nook Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, It overlooked in its serenity The dark earth and the bending vault of stars. It was a tranquil spot that seemed to smile Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped The fissured stones with its entwining arms, And did embower with leaves forever green 580 And berries dark the smooth and even space Of its inviolated floor ; and here The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore In wanton sport those bright leaves whose decay, Red, yellow, or ethereally pale, Rivals the pride of summer. ’T is the haunt Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach The wilds to love tranquillity. One step, One human step alone, has ever broken The stillness of its solitude ; one voice 590 Alone inspired its echoes ; — even that voice Whick hither came, floating among the winds, And led the loveliest among human forms To make their wild haunts the depository Of all the grace and beauty that endued Its motions, render up its majesty, Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm, And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould, Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss, Commit the colors of that varying cheek, 6co That snowy breast, those dark and droop- ing eyes. The dim and hornéd moon hung low, and poured A sea of lustre on the horizon’s verge That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank Wan moonlight even to fulness ; not a star Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds, Danger’s grim playmates, on that precipice Slept, clasped in his embrace. —O storm of death, Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night ! 610 And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still Guiding its irresistible career In thy devastating omnipotence, Art king of this frail world! from the red field Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, The patriot’s sacred couch, the snowy bed Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, 42 ALASTOR A mighty voice invokes thee! Ruin calls His brother Death! A rare and regal prey He hath prepared, prowling around the world; 620 Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms, Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine The unheeded tribute of a broken heart. When on the threshold of the green recess The wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that death Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, Did he resign his high and holy soul To images of the majestic past, 629 That paused within his passive being now, Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe Through some dim latticed chamber. did place His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk Of the old pine; upon an ivied stone Reclined his languid head; his limbs did He rest, Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay, Surrendering to their final impulses The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair, The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear 640 Marred his repose; the influxes of sense And his own being, unalloyed by pain, Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed The stream of thought, till he lay breath- ing there At peace, and faintly smiling. His last sight Was the great moon, which o’er the western line Of the wide world her mighty horn sus- pended, With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills It rests; and still as the divided frame 650 Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet’s blood, That ever beat in mystic sympathy With N: pamels ebb and flow, grew feebler still; And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alter nate gasp Of his faint respiration scarce did stir The stagnate night : — till the minutest ray Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. It paused — it fluttered. But when hea- ven remained 65 Utterly black, the murky shades involved An image silent, cold, and motionless, As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. Even as a vapor fed with golden beams That ministered on sunlight, ere the west Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame — No sense, no motion, no divinity — A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings The breath of heaven did wander — a bright ic. stream Once fed with many-voicéd waves — a dream Of youth, which night and time have quenched forever — 67a Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now. Oh, for Medea’s wondrous alchemy, Which wheresoe’er it fell made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale From vernal bluoms fresh fragrance! Oh, that God, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice Which but one living man has drained, wh¢ now, Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feel No proud exemption in the blighting curse He bears, over the world wanders for- ever, Lone as incarnate death! dream Of dark magician in his visioned cave, Raking the cinders of a crucible For life and power, even when his feeble hand Shakes in its last decay, were the true law Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled, Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn Robes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled ! The brave, the gentle and the beautiful, 68a Oh, that the THE REVOLT OF ISLAM: INTRODUCTORY NOTE 43 The child of grace and genius. Heartless things 690 Are done and said i’ the world, and many worms And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth From sea and mountain, city and wilder- ness, In vesper low or joyous orison, Lifts still its solemn voice :— but thou art fled — Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee Been purest ministers, who are, alas ! Now thou art not! Upon those pallid lips So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes joo That image sleep in death, upon that form Yet safe from the worm’s outrage, let no tear Be shed — not even in thought. Nor, when those hues Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone In the frail pauses of this simple strain, Let not high verse, mourning the memory Of that which is no more, or painting’s woe Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery Their own cold powers. Art and elo- quence, 710 And all the shows o’ the world, are frail and vain To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade. It is « woe “too deep for tears,” whey all Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, The passionate tumult of a clinging hope; But pale despair and cold tranquillity, Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things, Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 720 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM A POEM IN TWELVE CANTOS OZAIZ AE BPOTON E@NOX ATAAIAIZ ANTOMES@A, TIEPAINEI IIPOS EXXATON TIAOON: NAYSI A’ OYTE ITEZOZ ION AN EYPOIS EX YIIEPBOPEQN ATOQNA @AYMATAN OAON. The Revolt of Islam is a return to the social and political propaganda of Queen Mab, though the narrative element is stronger and the ideal characterization is along the more human lines of Alastor. It belongs distinctly in the class of reform poems and obeys a didactic motive in the same way as does the Faerie Queene, in the stanza of which it is written. It was com- posed in the spring and summer of 1817, and embodies the opinions of Shelley nearly as completely as Queen Mab had done, five years earlier. It was printed under the title Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century; a few copies only were issued, when the pub- lisher refused to proceed with the work unless radical alterations were made in the text. Shelley reluctantly consented to this, and made the required changes. The title was altered, Pinpar, Pyth. X. and the work published. The circumstances under which the poem was written are told by Mrs. Shelley, with a word upon the main characters : ‘He chose for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of liberty, some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the opinions of the world, but who is animated throughout by an ardent love of virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons of political and intellectual freedom on his fellow-creatures. He created for this youth a woman such as he delighted to imagine —tull of enthusiasm for the same objects; and they both, with will unvanquished and the deepest sense of the justice of their cause, met adversity and death. There exists in this poem a memorial of a friend of his youth. The character of the old man who liberates Laon from his tower prison, and tends on him in 44 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM sickness, is founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, when Shelley was at Eton, had often stood by to befriend and support him, and whose name he never mentioned without love and veneration. ‘During the year 1817 we were established at Marlow, in Buckinghamshire. Shelley’s choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no great distance from London, and its neighborhood to the Thames. The poem was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighboring country, which is distin- guished for peculiar beauty. The chalk hills break into cliffs that overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech; the wilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant vegetation; and the cultivated part is peculiarly fertile. With all this wealth of nature which, either in the form of gentle- men’s parks or soil dedicated to agriculture, Hlourishes around, Marlow was inhabited (I hope it is altered now) by a very poor popu- lation. The women are lacemakers, and lose their health by sedentary labor, for which they were very ill paid. The poor-laws ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates. The changes pro- duced by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with them the most heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley af- forded what alleviation he could. In the winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the poor cottages. I mention these things, — for this minute and active sympathy with his fellow-creatures gives a thousand-fold interest to his speculations, and stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race.’ Shelley himself gave two accounts of the poem, of which the most interesting occurs in a letter to Godwin, December 11, 1817: ‘The Poem was produced by a series of thoughts which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm. I felt the preca- riousness of my life, and I engaged in this task, resolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume contains was written with the same feeling, as real, though not so prophetic, as the communications of a dying man. I never presumed indeed to consider it anything approaching to faultless; but when I consider contemporary productions of the same apparent pretensions, 1 own I was filled with confidence. I felt that it was in many respects a genuine picture of my own mind. I felt that the sentiments were true, not assumed. And in this have I long believed that my power consists; in sympathy and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the moral or the material universe asa whole. Of course, I believe these faculties, which perhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist very imperfectly in my own mind.’ The second is contained in an earlier letter to a publisher, October 15, 1817: ‘The whole poem, with the exception of the first canto and part of the last, is a mere human story without the smallest intermixture of supernatural interference. The first canto is, indeed, in some measure a distinct poem, though very necessary to the wholeness of the work. I say this because, if it were all written in the manner of the first canto, 1 could not expect that it would be interesting to any great number of people. I have attempted in the progress of my work to speak to the com- mon elementary emotions of the human heart, so that, though it is the story of violence and revolution, it is relieved by milder pictures of friendship and love and natural affections. The scene is supposed to be laid in Constantinople and modern Greece, but without much attempt at minute delineation of Mahometan manners. It is, in fact, a tale illustrative of such a revo- lution as might be supposed to take place in an European nation, acted upon by the opinions of what has been called (erroneously, as I think) the modern philosophy, and eontend- ing with ancient notions and the supposed advantage derived from them to those who support them. It is a Revolution of this kind that is the beau idéal, as it were, of the French Revolution, but produced by the influence of individual genins and out of general know- ledge.’ Peacock supplements Mrs. Shelley’s note, with some details of the revision : ‘In the summer of 1817 he wrote The Revolt of Islam, chiefly on a seat on « high promi- nence in Bisham Wood where he passed whole mornings with a blank book and a pencil. This work when completed was printed under the title of Laon and Cythna. In this poem he had carried the expression of his opinions, moral, political, and theological, beyond the bounds of discretion. The terror which, in those days of persecution of the press, the perusal of the book inspired in Mr. Ollier, the publisher, induced him to solicit the alteration of many passages which he had marked. Shelley was for some time inflexible; but Mr. Ollier’s refusal to publish the poem as it was, AUTHOR’S 45 PREFACE backed by the advice of all his friends, induced him to submit to the required changes.’ Shelley subsequently revised the poem still more, in expectation of a second edition, but the changes so made are now unknown. PREFACE The Poem which I now present to the world is an attempt from which I scarcely dare to expect success, and in which a writer of es- tablished fame might fail without disgrace. It is an experiment on the temper of the public mind as to how far a thirst for a happier con- dition of moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tem- pests which have shaken the age in which we live. I have sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language, the ethereal combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of human passion, all those elements which essentially compose a poem, in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality ; and in the view of kindling within the bosoms of my readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those doc- trines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither vio- lence, nor misrepresentation, nor prejudice, can ever totally extinguish among mankind. For this purpose I have chosen a story of human passion in its most universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adven- tures, and appealing, in contempt of all arti- ficial opinions or institutions, to the common sympathies of every human breast. I have made no attempt to recommend the motives which I would substitute for those at present governing mankind, by methodical and sys- tematic argument. I would only awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to my moral and po- litical creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects in the world. The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first Canto, which is purely introductory) is narrative, not didactic. it is a succession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of individual mind aspir- iny after excellence and devoted to the love of mankind ; its influence in refining and making pure the most daring and uncommon impulses of the imagination, the understanding, and the ‘enses; its impatience at ‘all the oppressions which are done under the sun;’ its tendency vo awaken public hope and to enlighten and improve mankind; the rapid effects of the application of that tendency; the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom; the bloodless dethronement of their oporessors and the unveiling of the reli- gious frauds by which they had been deluded into submission ; the tranquillity of successiu. patriotism and the universal toleration and benevolence of true philanthropy; the treach- ery and barbarity of hired soldiers; vice not the object of punishment and hatred, but kindness and pity; the faithlessness of tyrants ; the confederacy of the Rulers of the World and the restoration of the expelled Dynasty by foreign arms; the massacre and extermination of the Patriots and the victory of established power ; the consequences of legitimate despo- tism, — civil war, famine, plague, superstition, and an utter extinction of the domestic affec- tions ; the judicial murder of the advocates of liberty ; the temporary triumph of oppression, that secure earnest of its final and inevitable fall; the transient nature of ignorance and error and the eternity of genius and virtue. Such is the series of delineations of which the Poem consists. And if the lofty passions with which it hag been my scope to distinguish this story shall not excite in the reader a gener. ous impulse, an ardent thirst for excellence, an interest profound and strong, such as belongs to no meaner desires, let not the failure be imputed to a natural unfitness for human sympathy in these sublime and animating themes, It is the business of the poet to com- municate to others the pleasure and the enthu- siasm arising out of those images and feelings in the vivid presence of which within his own mind consists at once his inspiration and his reward, The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all classes of men during the ex- cesses consequent upon the French Revolution, is gradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed that whole generations of mankind ought to consign themselves to a hope- less inheritance of ignorance and misery be- cause a nation of men who had been dupes and slaves for centuries were incapable of conduct- ing themselves with the wisdom and tranquil- lity of freemen so soon as some of their fetters were partially loosened. That their conduct could not have been marked by any other characters than ferocity and thoughtlessness is the historical fact from which liberty derives all its recommendations, and falsehood the worst features of its deformity. There is a reflux in the tide of human things which bears the shipwrecked hopes of men into a secure haven after the storms are past. Methinks those who now live have survived an age of despair. The French Revolution may be considered as one of those manifestations of a general state of feeling among civilized mankind, pro duced by a defect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in society and the inv 46 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM provement or gradual abolition of political institutions. The year 1788 may be assumed as the epoch vf one of the most important erises produced by this feeling. The sympa- thies connected with that event extended to every bosom. The most generous and amia- ble natures were those which participated the most extensively in these sympathies. But such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was impossible to realize. If the Revolu- tion had been in every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which the eaptive can unlock with the slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poison- ous rust into the soul. The revulsion occa- sioned by the atrocities of the demagogues and the reéstablishment of successive tyrannies in France was terrible, and felt in the remot- est corner of the civilized world. Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under the calamities of a social state, according to the provisions of which one man riots in lux- ury whilst another famishes for want of bread ? Can he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become liberal-minded, forbear- ing, and independent ? This is the consequence of the habits of a state of society to be pro- duced by resolute perseverance and indefatiga- ble hope, and long-suffering and long-believing courage, and the systematic efforts of genera- tions of men of intellect and virtue. Such is the lesson which experience teaches now. But on the first reverses of hope in the progress of French liberty, the sanguine eagerness for good overleapt the solution of these questions, and for a time extinguished itself in the unex- pectedness of their result. Thus many of the most ardent and tender-hearted of the wor- shippers of public good have been morally ruined by what a partial glimpse of the events they deplored appeared to show as the melan- choly desolation of all their cherished hopes. Hence gloom and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of a disappointment that uncon- sciously finds relief only in the wilful exagger- ation of its own despair. This influence has tainted the literature of the age with the hope- lessness of the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics,! and inquiries into moral and political science, have become little else than vain attempts to revive exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those ? of Mr. Malthus, caleu- lated to lull the oppressors of mankind into a 1 I ought to except Sir W. Drummond’s Academical tions ; a volume of very acute and powerful meta- physical criticism. 2 It is remarkable, as a symptom of the revival of public hope, that Mr. Malthus has assigned, in the later wditions of his work. an indefinite dominion to moral security of everlasting triumph. Our works of fiction and poetry have been overshadowed by the same infectious gloom. But mankind appear to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware, methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that belief I have composed the following Poem. Ido not presume to enter into competition with our greatest contemporary poets. Yet am unwilling to tread in the footsteps of anv who have preceded me. I have sought tu avoid the imitation of any style of language or versification peculiar to the original minds of which it is the character, designing that even if what I have produced be worthless, it should still be properly my own. Nor have I permit- ted any system relating to mere words to divert the attention of the reader from whatever in- terest I may have succeeded in creating, to my own ingenuity in contriving to disgust them according to the rules of criticism. I have simply clothed my thoughts in what appeared to me the most obvious and appropriate lan- guage. A person familiar with Nature, and with the most celebrated productions of the human mind, can scarcely err in following the instinct, with respect to selection of language, produced by that familiarity. There is an education peculiarly fitted for a poet, without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No ed- ucation indeed can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the chan- nels of communication between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to be something better. The circumstances of my ac- cidental education have been favorable to this ambition. I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes, and the sea, and the solitude of forests; Danger which sports upon the brink of precipices has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and seen the sur rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst 1 have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen populous cixies, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assem- bled multitudes of men. I have seen the thea- tre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and restraint over the principle of population. This con- cession answers all the inferences from his doctrine unfavorable to human improvement, and reduces the Essay on Population to a commentary illustrative of the unanswerableness of Political Justice. AUTHOR’S. PREFACE 42 war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment. Such are the sources from which the materials for the imagery of my Poem have been drawn. I have considered poetry in its most comprehen- sive sense, and have read the poets and the his- torians, and the metaphysicians1 whose writ- ings have been accessible to me, and have looked upon the beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth, as common sources of those ele- ments which it is the province of the poet to embody and combine. Yet the experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in them- selves constitute men poets, but only prepares them to be the auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found to possess that more essential attribute of poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom, is that which, to speak sincerely, I know not; and which, with an acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be tanght by the effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address. I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any contemporary style. But there must be a resemblance, which does not depend upon their own will, between all the writers of any particular age. They cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live, though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus per- vaded. Thus, the tragic poets of the age of Pericles; the Italian revivers of ancient learn- ing ; those mighty intellects of our own country that succeeded the Reformation, the translators of the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, the Dra- matists of the reign of Elizabeth, and Lord Bacon ; 2 the colder spirits of the interval that succeeded ; — all resemble each other, and dif- fer from every other in their several classes. In this view of things, Ford can no more be called the imitator of Shakespeare than Shake- speare the imitator of Ford. There were per- haps few other points of resemblance between these two men than that which the universal and inevitable influence of their age produced. And this is an influence which neither the mean- est scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any 1 In this sense there may be such a thing as perfecti- bility in works of fiction, notwithstanding the conces- sion often made by the advocates of human improve- era can escape ; and which I have not attempted to escape. I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful) not because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Mil. ton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity ; you must either succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But I was enticed also by the brilliancy and mugnificence of sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts ean pro- duce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure. Yet there will be found some instances where I have completely failed in this attempt, and one, which 1 here request the reader to consider as an erratum, where there is left most inadvertently an alex- andrine in the middle of a stanza. But in this, as in every other respect, I have written fearlessly. It is the misfortune of this age that its writers, too thoughtless of immor- tality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or blame. They write with the fear of Reviews before their eyes. This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when poetry was not. Poetry and the art which professes to regulate and limit its powers cannot subsist together. Longinus could not have been the contemporary of Homer, nor Boileau of Horace. Yet this species of crit- icism never presumed to assert an understand- ing of its own; it has always, unlike true science, followed, not preceded the opinion of mankind, and would even now bribe with worthless adulation some of our greatest poets to impose gratuitous fetters on their own im- aginations and become unconscious accom- plices in the daily murder of all genius either not so aspiring or not so fortunate as their own. I have sought therefore to write, as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton wrote, with an utter disregard of anonymony censure. I am certain that calumny and mis representation, though it may move me to com- passion, cannot disturb my peace. I shall understand the expressive silence of those sa- gacious enemies who dare not trust thenselves to speak. I shall endeavor to extract from the midst of insult and contempt and maledic- tions those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever imperfections such censurerg may discover in this my first serious appeal to the public. If certain critics were as clear- sighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent ment, that perfectibility is a term ~pplicable only ta science. 2 Milton stands alone in the age which he illumined. 48 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the public judge that my composition is worthless, I shall in- deed bow before the tribunal from which Mil- ton received his crown of immortality, and shall seek to gather, if I live, strength from that defeat, which may nerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may not be worth- less. I cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he meditated that poem whose doctrines are yet the basis of our metaphysical knowledge and whose eloquence has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of such censure as the hired sophists of the impure and superstitious noblemen of Rome might affix to what he should produce. It was at the period when Greece was led captive and Asia made tribu- tary to the Republic, fast verging itself to slavery and ruin, that a multitude of Syrian captives, bigoted to the worship of their ob- scene Ashtaroth, and the unworthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a precarious subsistence by administering, under the name of freedmen, to the vices and vanities of the great. These wretched men were skilled to plead, with a superficial but plausible set of sophisms, in favor of that contempt for virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith in portents, the most fatal substitute for benevo- lence in the imaginations of men, which arising from the enslaved communities of the East then first began to overwhelm the western na- tions in its stream. Were these the kind of men whose disapprobation the wise and lofty- minded Lucretius should have regarded with asalutary awe? The latest and perhaps the meanest of those who follow in his footsteps would disdain to hold life on such conditions. The Poem now presented to the public oc- cupied little more than six months in the composition. That period has been devoted to the task with unremitting ardor and enthu- siasm. I have exercised a watchful and ear- nest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands. I would willingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which long Jabor and revision is said to bestow. But I found that if I should gain something in exactness by this method, [ might lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh from my mind. And although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years. I trust that the reader will carefully dis- tinguish between those opinions which have a dramatie propriety in reference to the char- acters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own. The erro- neous and degrading idea which men have con- ceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself. The belief which some superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different from my own. In recommending also a great and important change in the spirit which ani- mates the social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our nature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There is no quarter given to revenge, or envy, or prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world. In Laon and Cythna the following passage was added, in conclusion: In the personal conduct of my hero and heroine, there is one circumstance which was intended to startle the reader from the trance of ordinary life. It was my object to break through the crust of those outworn opinions on which established institutions depend. I have appealed therefore to the most universal of all feelings, and have endeavored to strengthen the moral sense by forbidding it to waste its energies in seeking to avoid actions which are only crimes of convention. Itis because there is so great a multitude of artificial vices that there are so few real virtues. Those feelings alone which are benevolent or malevolent are essentially good or bad. The circumstance of which I speak was introduced, however, merely to accustom men to that charity and tolera- tion which the exhibition of a practice widely differing from their own has a tendency to promote. Nothing indeed can be more mis- chievous than many actions innocent in them- selves which might bring down upon indi- viduals the bigoted contempt and rage of the multitude. 1‘ The sentiments connected with and characteristic of es circumstance have no personal reference to the writer. DEDICATION There is no danger to a man that knows What life and death is: there’s not any law Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful That he should stoop to any other law. CHAPMAN. TO MARY 22 49 TO MARY —~ — I So now my summer-task is ended, Mary, And I return to thee, mine own heart’s home; As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faéry, Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome; Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame be- come A star among the stars of mortal night, If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, Its doubtful promise thus I would unite With thy belovéd name, thou Child of love and light II The toil which stole from thee so many an hour, Is ended, — and the fruit is at thy feet! No longer where the woods to frame a bower With interlacéd branches mix and meet, Or where, with sound like many voices sweet, Water-falls leap among wild islands green, Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen; But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been. III Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. I do remember well the hour which burst My spirit’s sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was, When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, And wept, I knew not why; until there rose From the near school-room voices that, alas! Were but one echo from a world of woes — Che harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. Iv And then I clasped my hands and looked around, But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground — So without shame I spake: —‘I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannize Without reproach or check.’ I then con- trolled My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. Vv And from that hour did I with earnest thought Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore; Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught I cared to learn, but from that secret store Wrought linkéd armor for my soul, be- fore It might walk forth to war among man- kind; Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more Within me, till there came upon my mind A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. vil Alas, that love should be a blight and snare To those who seek all sympathies in one! Such once I sought in vain; then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone: — Yet never found I one not false to me, Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee. §o THE REVOLT OF ISLAM vil Thou Friend, whose presence on my win- try heart Fell, like bright Spring upon some herb- less plain; How beautiful and calm and free thou wert In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, And walked as free as light the clouds among, Which many an envious slave then. breathed in vain ¥rom his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long ! VIII No more alone through the world’s wil- derness, Although I trod the paths of high intent, I journeyed now; no more companion- less, Where solitude is like despair, I went. There is the wisdom of a stern content When Poverty can blight the just and good, When Infamy dares mock the innocent, And cherished friends turn with the mul- titude To trample: this was ours, and we un- shaken stood ! IX Now has descended a serener hour, And with inconstant fortune, friends re- turn; Though suffering leaves the knowledge aad the power Which says, — Let scorn be not repaid with scorn. And from thy side two gentle babes are born To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we Most fortunate beneath life’s beaming morn; And these delights, and thou, have been to me Vhe parents of the Song I consecrate to thee. x Is it that now my inexperienced fingers But strike the prelude of a loftier strain? Or must the lyre on which my spirit lin- gers Soon pause in silence, ne’er to sound again, Though it might shake the Anarch Cus- tom’s reign, And charm the minds of men to Truth’s own sway, Holier than was Amphion’s? I would fain Reply in hope — but I am worn away, And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey. XI And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak: ‘Time may interpret to his silent years, Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtfu! cheek, And in the light thine ample forehead wears, And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears, And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy Is whispered to subdue my fondest fears; ee thine eyes, even in thy soul see A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. XII They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth, Of glorious parents thou aspiring Child ! I wonder not—for One then left this earth Whose life was like a setting planet mild, Which eae thee in the radiance unde- file Of its departing glory; still her fame Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name. XIII One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, CANTO FIRST 51 Which was the echo of three thousand years; And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, As some lone man who in a desert hears The music of his home : — unwonted fears Fell on the pale oppressors of our race, And Faith, and Custom, and low- thoughted cares, Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place. XIV Truth’s deathless voice pauses among mankind! If there must be no response to my ery — If men must rise and stamp with fury blind On his pure name who loves them, — thou and I, Sweet Friend! can look from our tran- quillity Like lamps into the world’s tempestuous - night, — Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by Which wrap them from the foundering seaman’s sight, That burn from year to year with unextin- guished light. CANTO FIRST I WHEN the last hope of trampled France had failed Like a brief dream of unremaining glory, From visions of despair I rose, and scaled ‘The peak of an aérial promontory, Whose caverned base with the vexed surge was hoary; Ana saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken Each cloud and every wave: — but tran- sitory The calm; for sudden, the firm earth was shaken, As if by the last wreck its frame were over- taken. Il So as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder Burst in far peals along the waveless deep, When, gathering fast, around, above and under, Long trains of tremulous mist began ‘to creep, Until their complicating lines did steep The orient sun in shadow: — not a sound Was heard; one horrible repose did keep The forests and the floods, and all around Darkness more dread than night was poured upon the ground. III Hark! ’tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps Earth and the ocean. See! the light- nings yawn, Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps Glitter and boil beneath! it rages on, One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown, Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddy- ing by! There is « pause — the sea-birds, that were gone Into their caves to shriek, come forth to Spy What calm has fall’n on earth, what light is in the sky. Iv For, where the irresistible storm had cloven That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen, Fretted with many a fair cloud inter- woven Most delicately, and the ocean green, Beneath that opening spot of blue serene, Quivered like burning emerald; calm was spread On all below; but far on high, between Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled, Countless and swift as leaves on autummn’s tempest shed. Vv For ever as the war became nore fierce Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high, 52 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM That spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce The woof of those white clouds, which seemed to lie Far, deep and motionless; while through the sky The pallid semicircle of the moon Passed on, in slow and moving majesty ; Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon, But slowly, fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon. vI I could not choose but gaze; a fascina- tion Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which drew My fancy thither, and in expectation Of what I knew not, I remained. The hue Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue Suddenly stained with shadow did ap- pear; A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew, Like a great ship in the sun’s sinking sphere Beheld afar at sea, and swift it carne anear. VII Even like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains, Dark, vast and overhanging, on a river Which there collects the strength of all its fountains, Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth quiver, Sails, oars and stream, tending to one endeavor; So, from that chasm of light a wingéd Form On all the winds of heaven approaching ever Floated, dilating as it came; the storm Pursued it with fierce blasts, and light- nings swift and warm. VITI A course precipitous, of dizzy speed, Suspending thought and breath; a mon- strous sight! For in the air do I behold indeed An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in ght :— And now, relaxing its impetuous flight, Before the aérial rock on which I stood, The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right, And hung with lingering wings over the flood, And startled with its yells the wide air’s solitude. Ix A shaft of light upon its wings de- scended, And every golden feather gleamed therein — Feather and scale inextricably blended. The Serpent’s mailed and many-colored skin Shone through the plumes its coils were twined within By many a swollen and knotted fold, and high And far, the neck receding lithe and thin, Sustained a crested head, which warily Shifted and glanced before the Eagle’s steadfast eye. x Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed Incessautly — sometimes on high con- cealing Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed, Drooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed, And casting back its eager head, with beak And talon unremittingly assailed The wreathéd Serpent, who did ever seek Upon his enemy’s heart a mortal wound to wreak, XI What life, what power, was kindled and arose Within the sphere of that appalling fray! For, from the encounter of those won- drous foes, A vapor like the sea’s suspended spray CANTO FIRST 53 Hung gathered; in the void air, far away, Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap, Where’er the Eagle’s talons made their way, Like sparks into the darkness; — as they sweep, Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumul- tuous deep. XII Swift chances in that combat — many a check, And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil! Sometimes the Snake around his enemy’s neck Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil His adversary, who then reared on high His red and burning crest, radiant with victory. XII Then on the white edge of the bursting surge, Where they had sunk together, would the Snake Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge The wind with his wild writhings; for, to break That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake The strength of his unconquerable wings As in despair, and with his sinewy neck Dissolve in sudden shock those linkéd rings — Then soar, as swift as smoke from a vol- cano springs. XIV Wile batfied wile, and strength encoun- tered strength, Thus long, but unprevailing. The event Of that portentous fight appeared at length. Until the lamp of day was almost spent It had endured, when lifeless, stark and rent, Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last Fell to the sea, while o’er the continent With clang of wings and scream the Eagle passed, Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast XV And with it fled the tempest, so that ocean And earth and sky shone through the atmosphere; Only, ’t was strange to see the red com- motion Of waves like mountains o’er the sinking sphere Of sunset sweep, and their fierce roar te hear Amid the calm ; down the steep path I wound To the sea-shore — the evening was most clear And beautiful, and there the sea I found Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slum- ber bound. XVI There was a Woman, beautiful as morn- ing, Sitting penpath the rocks upon the sand Of the waste sea—fair as one flower adorning An icy wilderness; each delicate hand Lay crossed upon her boson, and the band Of her dark hair had fall’n, and so sne sate Looking upon the waves; on the bare strand Upon the sea-mark a small boat did wait, Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left. desolate. XVII It seemed that this fair Shape had looked upon That unimaginable fight, and now That her sweet eyes were weary of the sun, As brightly it illustrated her woe; For in the tears, which silently to flow Paused not, its iustre hung: she, watch- ing aye The foam-wreaths which the faint tide wove below 54 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Upon the spangled sands, groaned heav- uy: And after every groan looked up over the sea. XVIII And when she saw the wounded Serpent make His path between the waves, her lips grew pale, Parted and quivered; the tears ceased to break From her immovable eyes; no voice of wail Escaped her; but she rose, and on the gale Loosening her star-bright robe and shadowy hair, Poured forth her voice; the caverns of the vale That opened to the ocean, caught it there, And filled with silver sounds the overflow- ing air. XIX She spake in language whose strange melody Might not belong to earth. I heard alone What made its music more melodious be, The pity and the love of every tone; But to the Snake those accents sweet were known His native tongue and hers; nor did he beat The hoar spray idly then, but winding on Through the green shadows of the waves that meet Near to the shore, did pause beside her snowy feet. xX Then on the sands the Woman sate again, And wept and clasped her hands, and, all between, Renewed the unintelligible strain Of her melodious voice and eloquent mien; And she unveiled her bosom, and the green And glancing shadows of the sea did pla. O’er its ‘eiactaoiedl depth — one moment seen, For ere the next, the Serpent did obey Her voice, and, coiled in rest, in her em. brace it lay. XXI Then she arose, and smiled on me with eyes Serene yet sorrowing, like that planet fair While yet the daylight lingereth in the skies, Which cleaves with arrowy beams the dark-red air, And said: ‘To grieve is wise, but the de- spair Was weak and vain which led thee here from sleep. This shalt thou know, and more, if thou dost dare With me and with this Serpent, o’er the deep, A voyage divine and strange, companion- ship to keep.’ XXII Her voice was like the wildest, saddest tone, Yet sweet, of some loved voice heard long ago. l wept. Shall this fair woman all alone Over the sea with that fierce Serpent go ? His head is on her heart, and who can know How soon he may devour his feeble prey ?— Such were my thoughts, when the tide *gan to flow ; And that strange boat like the moon’s shade did sway Amid reflected stars that in the waters lay. XXIII A boat of rare device, which had no sail But its own curvéd prow of thin moon- stone, Wrought like a web of texture fine and frail, To catch those gentlest winds which are not known To breathe, but by the steady speed alone With which it cleaves the sparkling sea: and now We are embarked — the mountains hang and frown CANTO FIRST 55 Over the starry deep that gleams below A vast and dim expanse, as o’er the waves we £0. XXIV And as we sailed, a strange and awful tale That Woman told, like such mysterious dream As makes the slumberer’s cheek with wonder pale! ’T was midnight, and around, a shoreless stream, Wide ocean rolled, when that majestic theme Shrined in her heart found utterance, and she bent Her looks on mine; those eyes a kin- dling beam Of love divine into my spirit sent, And, ere her lips could move, made the air eloquent. XXV ‘Speak not to me, but hear! much shalt thou learn, Much must remain unthought, and more untold, In the dark Future’s ever-flowing urn. Know then that from the depth of ages old Two Powers o’er mortal things dominion hold, Ruling the world with a divided lot, Immortal, all-pervading, manifold, Twin Genii, equal Gods — when life and thought Sprang forth, they burst the womb of in- essential Nought. XXVI ‘ The earliest dweller of the world alone Stood on the verge of chaos. Lo! afar O’er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone, Sprung from the depth of its tempestu- ous jar — A blood-red Comet and the Morning Star Mingling their beams in combat. As he stood All thoughts within his mind waged mu- tual war In dreadful sympathy —when to the flood That fair Star fell, he turned and shed his brother’s blood. XXVII ‘Thus Evil triumphed, and the Spirit of Evil One Power of many shapes which none may know, One Shape of many names; the Fiend did revel In victory, reigning o’er a world of woe, For the new race of man went to and fro, Famished and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild, And hating good — for his immortal foe, He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild, To a dire Snake, with man and beast un. reconciled. XXVIII ‘The darkness lingering o’er the dawn of things Was Evil’s breath and life; this made him strong To soar aloft with overshadowing wings ; And the great Spirit of Good did creep among The nations of mankind, and every tongue Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed; for none Knew good from evil, though their names were hung In mockery o’er the fane where many a groan, As King, and Lord, and God, the conquer- ing Fiend did own. XXIX ‘The Fiend, whose name was Legior Death, Decay, Earthquake and Blight, and Want, anc Madness pale, Wingéd and wan diseases, an array Numerous as leaves that strew the au- tumnal gale; Poison, a snake in flowers, beneath the veil Of food and mirth, hiding his mortal head; And, without whom all these might nought avail, Fear, Hatred, Faith and Tyranny, who spread Those subtle nets which snare the living and the dead. 56 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM XXX ‘His spirit is their power, and they his slaves In air, and light, and thought, and lan- guage dwell; And keep their state from palaces to graves, In all resorts of men— invisible, But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell, To tyrant or impostor bids them rise, Black wingéd demon - forms — whom, from the hell, His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies, He loosens to their dark and blasting min- istries. XXXI ‘In the world’s youth his empire was as firm As its foundations. Soon the Spirit of Good, Though in the likeness of a loathsome worm, Sprang from the billows of the formless flood, ; Which shrank and fled; and with that Fiend of blood Renewed the doubtful war. then first shook, And earth’s immense and trampled mul- titude In hope on their own powers began to look, And Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine shrine forsook. Thrones XXXII ‘Then Greece arose, and to its bards and sages, In dream, the golden - pinioned Genii came, Even where they slept amid the night of ages, Steeping their hearts in the divinest flame Which thy breath kindled, Power of holiest name! And oft in cycles since, when darkness gave New weapons to thy foe, their sunlike fame Upon the combat shone — a light to save, Like Paradise spread forth beyond the shadowy grave. XXXII ‘Such is this conflict — when mankind doth strive With its oppressors in a strife of blood, Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive, And in each bosom of the multitude Justice and truth with custom’s hydra brood Wage silent war; when priests and kings dissemble In smiles or frowns their fierce disqui- etude, When round pure hearts a host of hopes assemble, The Snake and Eagle meet —the world’s foundations tremble! XXXIV ‘Thou hast beheld that fight — when to thy home Thou dost return, steep not its hearth in tears; Though thou mayst hear that earth is now become The tyrant’s garbage, which to his com- peers, The vile reward of their dishonored years, He will dividing give. The victor Fiend Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend Animpulse swift and sure to his approach- ing end. XXXKV ‘List, stranger, list! mine is an human form Like that thou wearest—touch me — shrink not now! My hand thou feel’st is not a ghost’s, but warm With human blood. °*T was many years ago, Since first my thirsting soul aspired to know The secrets of this wondrous world, when deep My heart was pierced with sympathy for woe CANTO FIRST 57 Which could not be mine own, and thought did keep In dream unnatural watch beside an in- fant’s sleep. XXXVI ‘Woe could not be mine own, since far , from men I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child, By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen; And near the waves aud through the for- ests wild I roamed, to storm and darkness recon- ciled; For I was cali while tempest shook the sky, But when the breathless heavens in beauty smiled, I wept sweet tears, yet too tumultuously For peace, and clasped my hands aloft in ecstasy. XXXVII ‘These were forebodings of my fate. Be- fore A woman’s heart beat in my virgin breast, It had been nurtured in divinest lore; A dying poet gave me books, and blessed With wild but holy talk the sweet unrest In which I watched him as he died away; A youth with hoary hair, a fleeting guest Of our Jone mountains; and this lore did sway My spirit like a storm, contending there alway. XXXVIII ‘Thus the dark tale which history doth unfold I knew, but not, methinks, as others know, For they weep not; and Wisdom had unrolled The clouds which hide the gulf of mortal woe; To few can she that warning vision show; For I loved all things with intense devo- tion, So that when Hope’s deep source in full- est flow, Like earthquake did uplift the stagnant ocean Of human thoughts, mine shook beneath the wide emotion. XXXIX ‘When first the living blood through all these veins Kindled a thought in sense, great France sprang forth, And seized, as if to break, the ponderous chains Which bind in woe the nations of the earth. I saw, and started from my cottage hearth; And to the clouds and waves in tameless ladness Shrieked, till they caught immeasurable mirth, And laughed in light and music: soon sweet madness Was poured upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness. XL ‘Deep slumber fell on me: — my dreams were fire, Soft and delightful thoughts did rest and hover Like shadows o’er my brain; and strange desire, ‘The tempest of a passion, raging over My tranquil soul, its depths with light did cover, Which passed; and calm, and darkness, sweeter far, Came — then I loved; but not a human lover ! For when I rose from sleep, the Morning Star Shone through the woodbine wreaths which round my casement were. XLI ‘’T was like an eye which seemed to smile on me. I watched, till by the sun made pale it sank Under the billows of the heaving sea; But from its beams deep love my spirit drank, And to my brain the boundless world now shrank Into one thought — one image — yes, forever! Even like the dayspring, poured on va- pors dank, 58 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM The beams of that one Star did shoot and quiver Through my benighted mind—and were extinguished never. XLII ‘The day passed thus. thought, in dream . A shape of speechless beauty did ap- At night, me- ear; It sac like light on a careering stream Of golden clouds which shook the atmo- sphere; : A wingéd youth, his radiant brow did wear The Morning Star; a wild dissolving bliss Over my frame he breathed, approach- ing near, And bent his eyes of kindling tender- ness Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss, XLII ‘And said: “A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden; How wilt thou prove thy worth?” Then joy and sleep Together fled; my soul was deeply laden, And to the shore I went to muse and weep; But as I moved, over my heart did creep A joy less soft, but more profound and strong Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep The path of the sea-shore; that Spirit’s tongue Seemed whispering in my heart, and bore my steps along. XLIV ‘ How, to that vast and peopled city led, Which was a field of holy warfare then, I walked among the dying and the dead, And shared in fearless deeds with evil men, Calm as an angel in the dragon’s den; How I braved death for liberty and truth, And spurned at peace, and power, and fame; and when Those hopes had lost the glory of their youth, How sadly I returned — might move the hearer’s ruth. XLV ‘Warm tears throng fast! the tale may not be said. Know then that, when this grief had been subdued, I was not left, like others, cold and dead; The Spirit whom I loved in solitude Sustained his child; the tempest-shaken wood, The waves, the fountains, and the hush of night — These were his voice, and well I under- stood His smile divine, when the calm sea was bright With silent stars, and Heaven was breath- less with delight. XLVI ‘In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers, When the dim nights were moonless, have I known Joys which no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers When thought revisits them: — know thou alone, That, after many wondrous years were flown, I was awakened by a shriek of woe; And over me a mystic robe was thrown By viewless hands, and a bright Star did glow Before my steps — the Snake then met his mortal foe.’ XLVII ‘Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart ?’ ‘Fear it!’ she said, with brief and pas- sionate cry, And spake no more. me start — I looked, and we were sailing pleasantly, Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky, Beneath the rising moon seen far away; Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on igh, Hemming the horizon ronnd, in silence lay On the still waters — these we did ap- proach alway. That silence made CANTO FIRST 59 XLVII And swift and swifter grew the vessel’s motion, So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain, — Wild music woke me; we had passed the ocean Which girds the pole, Nature’s remotest reign; And we glode fast o’er a pellucid plain Of waters, azure with the noontide day. Ethereal mountains shone around; a Fane Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away. XLIX It was a Temple, such as mortal hand Has never built, nor ecstasy, nor dream Reared in the cities of enchanted land; ’T was likest Heaven, ere yet day’s purple stream Ebbs o’er the western forest, while the gleam Of the unrisen moon among the clouds Is gathering — when with many a golden beam The thronging constellations rush in crowds, Paving with fire the sky and the marmo- real floods. L Like what may be conceived of this vast dome, When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce Genius beholds it rise, his native home, Girt by the deserts of the Universe; Yet, nor in painting’s light, or mightier verse, Or sculpture’s marble language can in- vest That shape to mortal sense — such glooms immerse That incommunicable sight, and rest Upon the laboring brain and over-burdened breast. LI Winding among the lawny islands fair, Whose blosmy forests starred the shad- owy deep, The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair Its fretwork in the crystal sea did steep, Encircling that vast Fane’s aérial heap. We disembarked, and through a portal wide We passed, whose roof of moonstone carved did keep A glimmering o’er the forms on every side, Sculptures like life and thought, immovable, deep-eyed. LII We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof Was diamond which had drunk the lightning’s sheen In darkness and now poured it through the woof Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen Its blinding splendor — through such veil was seen That work of subtlest power, divine and rare; Orb above orb, with starry shapes be- tween, And hornéd moons, and meteors strange and fair, On night-black columns poised — one hol- low hemisphere! LUI Ten thousand columns in that quivering light Distinct, between whose shafts wound far away The long and labyrinthine aisles, more bright With their own radiance than the Heaven of Day; And on the jasper walls around there lay Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought, Which did the Spirit’s history display; A tale of passionate change, divinely taught, Which, in their wingéd dance, unconscious Genii wrought. LIV Beneath there sate on many a sapphire throne The Great who had departed from man- kind. A mighty Senate;— some, whose white hair shone 60 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Like mountain snow, mild, beautiful and blind; Some, female forms, whose gestures beamed with mind; And ardent youths, and children bright and fair; And some had lyres whose strings were intertwined With pale and clinging flames, which ever there Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the crystal air. LV One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne, Reared on a pyramid like sculptured flame, Distinct with circling steps which rested on Their own deep fire. Soon as the Woman came Into that hall, she shrieked the Spirit’s name And fell; and vanished slowly from the sight. Darkness arose from her dissolving frame, — Which, gathering, filled that dome of woven light, Blotting its spheréd stars with supernatural night. LVI Then first two glittering lights were seen to glide In cireles on the amethystine floor, Small serpent eyes trailing from side to side, Like meteors on a river’s grassy shore; They round each other rolled, dilating more And more — then rose, commingling into one, One clear and mighty planet hanging o’er A cloud of deepest shadow which was thrown Athwart the glowing steps and the crystal- line throne. LVII The cloud which rested on that cone of flame Was cloven; beneath the planet sate a Form, Fairer than tongue can speak or thought may frame, The radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm Flowed forth, and did with softest light inform The shadowy dome, the sculptures and the state Of those assembled shapes — with cling- ing charm Sinking upon their hearts and mine. He sate Majestic yet most mild, calm yet compas- sionate. LVIII Wonder and joy a passing faintness threw Over my brow —a hand supported me, Whose touch was magic strength; an eye of blue Looked into mine, like moonlight, sooth- ingly; And a voice said, ‘ Thou must a listener be This day; two mighty Spirits now return, Like birds of calm, from the world’s raging sea; They pour fresh light from Hope’s im- mortal urn; A tale of human power— despair not — list and learn! LIX 1 looked, and lo! one stood forth elo- quently. His eyes were dark and deep, and the clear brow Which shadowed them was like the morning sky, The cloudless Heaven of Spring, when in their flow Through the bright air the soft winds as they blow wae green world ; his gestures did obe The cradle mind that made his fea- tures glow, And where his curvéd lips half open lay, Passion’s divinest stream had made impetu- ous way. LX Beneath the darkness of his outspread hair He stood thus beautiful; but there was One CANTO SECOND 61 Who sate beside him like his shadow there, And held his hand —far lovelier; she was known To be thus fair by the few lines alone Which through her floating locks and gathered cloke, Glances of soul-dissolving glory, shone; None else beheld her eyes— in him they woke Memories which found a tongue, as thus he silence broke. CANTO SECOND I TuE star-light smile of children, the sweet looks Of women, the fair breast from which I fed, The murmur of the unreposing brooks, And the green light which, shifting over- head, Some tangled bower of vines around me shed, The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers, The lamp - light through the rafters cheerly spread And on the twining flax — in life’s young hours [hese sights and sounds did nurse my spirit’s folded powers. Il In Argolis, beside the echoing sea, Such impulses within my mortal frame Arose, and they were dear to memory, Like tokens of the dead; but others came Soon, in another shape — the wondrous fame Of the past world, the vital words and deeds Of minds whom neither time nor change ean tame, Traditions dark and old whence evil creeds Start forth and whose dim shade a stream of poison feeds. 11 I heard, as all have heard, the various Of human life. and wept unwilling tears. Feeble historians of its shame and glory, False disputants on all its hopes and fears, Victims who worshipped ruin, chroniclers Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state, Yet, flattering Power, had given its ministers A throne of judgment in the grave — ’t was fate, That among such as these my youth should seek its mate. Iv The land in which I lived by a fell bane Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side y side, And stabled in our homes, until the chain Stifled the captive’s ery, and to abide That blasting curse men had no shame. All vied In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied, Like two dark serpents tangled in the ust, Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust. Vv Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters, And the ethereal shapes which are sus- pended Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters, The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended The colors of the air since first extended It cradled the young world, none wan- dered forth To see or feel; a darkness had descended On every heart; the light which shows its worth Must among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth. : VI This vital world, this home of happy spirits, Was as a dungeon to my blasted kind; All that despair from murdered hope in: herits 62 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM They sought, and, in their helpless misery blind, A deeper prison and heavier chains did 2 And stronger tyrants:—a dark gulf before, The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; behind, Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from shore. VII Out of that Ocean’s wrecks had Guilt and Woe Framed a dark dwelling for their home- less thought, And, starting at the ghosts which to and f To Glide o’er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought The worship thence which they each other taught. Well might men loathe their life! well might they turn Even to the ills again from which they sought Such refuge after death!— well might they learn To gaze on this fair world with hopeless un- concern! VIII For they all pined in bondage; body and soul Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent Before one Power, to which supreme control Over their will by their own weakness lent Made all its many names omnipotent; All symbols of things evil, all divine; And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent The air from all its fanes, did intertwine Imposture’s impious toils round each dis- cordant shrine. IX I heard, as all have heard, life’s various story, And in no careless heart transcribed the tale: But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale By famine, from a mother’s desolate wail O’er her polluted child, from innocent blood Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale With the heart’s warfare, did I gather food To feed my many thoughts — a tameless multitude! x I wandered through the wrecks of days departed Far by the desolated shore, when even O’er the still sea and jagged islets darted The light of moonrise ; in the northern Heaven, Among the clouds near the horizon driven, The mountains lay beneath one planet pale; Around me broken tombs and columns riven Looked vast in twilight, and the sorrow- ing gale Waked in those ruins gray its everlasting wail! XI I knew not who had framed these won- ders then, Nor had I heard the story of their deeds; But dwellings of a race of mightier men, And monuments of less ungentle creeds Tell their own tale to him who wisely heeds The language which they speak; and now, to me, The moonlight making pale the blooming weeds, The bright stars shining in the breathless sea, Interpreted those scrolls of mortal mys- tery. XII Such man has been, and such may yet become! Ay, wiser, greater, gentler even than they CANTO SECOND 63 Who on the fragments of yon shattered dome Have stamped the sign of power! I felt the sway Of the vast stream of ages bear away My floating thoughts— my heart beat loud and fast — Even as a storm let loose beneath the ray Of the still moon, my spirit onward passed Beneath truth’s steady beams upon its tu- mult cast. XIII Tt shall be thus no more! too long, too long, Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound In darkness and in ruin! Hope is strong, Justice and Truth their wingéd child have found! Awake! arise! until the mighty sound Of your career shall scatter in its gust The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground Hide the last altar’s unregarded dust, Whose Idol has so long betrayed your im- pious trust. XIV It must be so—I will arise and waken The multitude, and like a sulphurous hill Which on a sudden from its snows has shaken The swoon of ages, it shall burst, and fill The world with cleansing fire; it must, it will — It may not be restrained !—and who shall stand Amid the rocking earthquake steadfast still But Laon? on high Freedom’s desert land A tower whose marble walls the leaguéd storms withstand! xv One summer night, in commune with the hope Thus deeply fed, amid those ruins gray I watched beneath the dark sky’s starry cope; And ever from that hour upon me lay The yuan of this hope, and night or ay, In vision or in dream, clove to my breast; Among mankind, or when gone far away To the lone shores and mountains, ’t was a guest Which followed where I fled, and watched when I did rest. XVI These hopes found words through which my spirit sought To weave a bondage of such sympathy As might create some response to the thought Which ruled me now — and as the vapors lie Bright in the outspread morning’s radi- ancy, So were these thoughts invested with the light Of language; and all bosoms made reply On which its lustre streamed, whene’er it might Through darkness wide and deep those trancéd spirits smite. XVII Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was im, And oft I thought to clasp my own heart’s brother, When I could feel the listener’s senses swim, And hear his breath its own swift gasp- ings smother Even as my words evoked them — and another, And yet another, I did fondly deem, Felt that we all were sons of one great mother; And the cold truth such sad reverse did seem As to awake in grief from some delightful dream. XVIII Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep Did Laon and his friend on one gray plinth, Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap, Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep; 64 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM And that this friend was false may now be said Ca:mly — that he like other men could weep ‘Years which are lies, and could betray ana spread Snares for that. guileless heart which for his own had bled. xIX Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow, I must have sought dark respite from its stress In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow — For to tread life’s dismaying wilderness Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless, Amid the snares and scoffs of human- kind, Is hard — but I betrayed it not, nor less With love that scorned return sought to unbind The interwoven clouds which make its wisdom blind. XxX With deathless minds, which leave where they have passed A path of light, my soul communion knew, Till from that glorious intercourse, at last, As from a mine of magie store, I drew Words which were weapons; round my heart there grew The adamantine armor of their power; And from my fancy wings of golden hue Sprang forth — yet: not alone from wis- dom’s tower, A minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore. XXI An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes Were lodestars of delight, which drew me home When I might wander forth; nor did I prize Aught human thing beneath Heaven’s : mighty dome ~ Beyond this child; so: when sad hours were come,, And baffled hope like ice still clung to me Since kin were cold, and friends had now become Heartless and false, I turned from all to be, Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee. XXII What wert thou then? A child most infantine, Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age In all but its sweet looks and mien di- vine; Even then, methought, with the world’s tyrant rage A patient warfare thy young heart did wage, ‘When those soft eyes of scarcely con- scious thought Some tale or thine own fancies would engage To overflow with tears, or converse fraught With passion o’er their depths its fleeting light had wrought. XXIII She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, A power, that from its objects scarcely drew One impulse of her being — in her light- ness Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew Which wanders through the waste air’s pathless blue To nourish some far desert; she did seem Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, Like the bright shade of some immortal dream Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life’s dark stream. XXIV As mine own shadow was this child to me, A second self, far dearer and more fair, Which clothed in undissolving radiancy All those steep paths which languor and despair . is SECOND 65 CANTO Of human things had made so dark and bare, But which I trod alone — nor, till be- reft Of friends, and overcome by lonely care, Knew I what solace for that loss was left, Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft. XXV Once she was dear, now she was all I had To love in human life —this playmate sweet, This child of twelve years old. So she was made My sole associate, and her willing feet Wandered with mine where Earth and Ocean meet, Beyond the aérial mountains whose vast cells The unreposing billows ever beat, Through forests wild and old, and lawny dells Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells. XXVI And warm and light I felt her clasping hand When twined in mine; she followed where I went, Through the lone paths of our immortal land. It had no waste but some memorial lent Which strung me to my toil —some monument Vital with mind; then Cythna by my side, Until the bright and beaming day were spent, Would rest, with looks entreating to abide, Too earnest and too sweet ever to be de- nied. XXVII And soon J could not have refused her. Thus Forever, day and night, we two were ne’er Parted but when brief sleep divided us; And, when the pauses of the fulling air Of noon beside the sea had made a lair For her soothed senses, in my arms she slept, And I kept watch over her slumbers there, While, as the shifting visions over her swept, Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept. XXVIII And in the murmur of her dreams was heard Sometimes the name of Laon. Suddenly She would arise, and, like the secret bird Whom sunset wakens, fill the shore and sky With her sweet accents, a wild mel- ody, — Hymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, strong The source of passion whence they rose to be; Triumphant strains which, like a spirit’s tongue, To the enchanted waves that child of glory sung — XXIX Her white arms lifted through the shad- owy stream Of her loose hair. Oh, excellently great Seemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme Of those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate Amid the calm which rapture doth cre- ate After its tumult, her heart vibrating, Her spirit o’er the Ocean’s floating state From her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing Of visions that were mine, beyond its ut- most spring ! XXX For, before Cythna loved it, had my song Peopled with thoughts the boundless uni- verse, A mighty congregation, which were strong, Where’er they trod the darkness, to dis- erse The cloud of that unutterable curse Which clings upon mankind; all things became 66 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Slaves to my holy and heroic verse, Earth, sea and sky, the planets, life and fame And fate, or whate’er else binds the world’s wondrous frame. XXXT And this belovéd child thus felt the sway Of my conceptions, gathering like a cloud The very wind on which it rolls away; Hers too were all my thoughts, ere yet endowed With music and with light their foun- tains flowed In poesy; and her still and earnest face, Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed Within, was turned on mine with speech- less grace, Watching the hopes which there her heart had learned to trace. XXXII In me, communion with this purest being Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise In knowledge, which in hers mine own mind seeing Left in the human world few mysteries. How without fear of evil or disguise Was Cythna! what a spirit strong and mild, Which death or pain or peril could de- spise, Yet melt in tenderness! what genius wild, Yet mighty, was enclosed within one simple child XXXIII New lore was this. Old age with its gray hair And wrinkled legends of unworthy things, And icy sneers, is nought: it cannot dare To burst the chains which life forever flings On the entangled soul’s aspiring wings; So is it cold and cruel, and is made The careless slave of that dark Power which brings Evil, like blight, on man, who, still be- trayed, Laughs o’er the grave in which his living hopes are laid. XXXIV Nor are the strong and the severe to keep The empire of the world. Thus Cythna taught Even in the visions of her eloquent sleep, Unconscious of the power through which she wrought The woof of such intelligible thought, As from the tranquil strength which cradled lay In her smile-peopled rest my spirit sought Why the deceiver and the slave has sway O’er heralds so divine of truth’s arising day. XXXV Within that fairest form the female mind, Untainted by the poison clouds which rest On the dark world, a sacred home did find; But else from the wide earth’s maternal breast Victorious Evil, which had dispossessed All native power, had those fair children torn, And made them slaves to soothe his vile unrest, And minister to lust its joys forlorn, . Till they had learned to breathe the atmo- sphere of scorn. XXXVI This misery was but coldly felt, till she Became my only friend, who had endued My purpose with a wider sympathy. Thus Cythna mourned with me the servi- tude In which the half of humankind were mewed, Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves; She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food To the hyena Lust, who, among graves, Over his loathéd meal, laughing in agony, raves, XXXVII And I, still gazing on that glorious child, Even as these thoughts flushed o’er her: — ‘Cythna sweet, Well with the world art thou unrecon- ciled; CANTO SECOND 67 Never will peace and human nature meet Till free and equal man and woman greet Domestic peace; and ere this power can make In human hearts its calm and holy seat, This slavery must be broken’ —as I spake, From Cythna’s eyes a light of exultation brake. XXXVIITI She replied earnestly: —‘It shall be mine, This task, — mine, Laon ! thou hast much to gain; Nor wilt thou at poor Cythna’s pride re- pine, If she should lead a happy female train To meet thee over the rejoicing plain, When myriads at thy call shall throng around The Golden City.’ — Then the child did strain My arm upon her tremulous heart, and wound Her own about my neck, till some reply she found. XXXIX I smiled, and spake not.— ‘ Wherefore dost thou smile At what I say? Laon, I am not weak, And, though my cheek might become pale the while, With thee, if thou desirest, will I seek Through their array of banded slaves to wreak Ruin upon the tyrants. I had thought It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek To scorn and shame, and this belovéd spot And thee, O dearest friend, to leave and murmur not. XL ‘Whence came I what Iam? Thon, Laon, knowest Howa young child should thus undaunted be; Methinks it is a power which thou be- stowest, Through which I seek, by most resem- bling thee, So to become most good, and great, and free; Yet, far beyond this Ocean’s utmost roar, In towers and huts are many like to me, Who, could they see thine eyes, or feel such lore As I have learnt from them, like me would fear no more. XLI ‘Think’st thou that I shall speak unskil- fully, And none will heed me? I remember now How once a slave in tortures doomed to die Was saved because in accents sweet and low He sung a song his judge loved long ago, As eas led to death. AII shall relent Who hear me; tears as mine have flowed, shall flow, Hearts beat as mine now beats, with such intent As renovates the world; a will omnipotent! XLII ‘Yes, I will tread Pride’s golden palaces, Through Penury’s roofless huts and squalid cells Will I descend, where’er in abjectness Woman with some vile slave her tyrant dwells; There with the music of thine own sweet spells Will disenchant the captives, and will pour For the despairing, from the crystal wells Of thy deep spirit, reason’s mighty lore, And power shall then abound, and hope arise once more. XLII ¢Can man be free if woman be a slave ? Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air, To the corruption of a closéd grave! Can they, whose mates are beasts con- demned to bear Scorn heavier far than toil or anguish, dare To trample their oppressors? In their home, 63 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Among their babes, thou knowest a curse would wear The shape of woman — hoary Crime would come Behind, and Fraud rebuild Religion’s tot- tering dome. XLIV ‘I am a child: —I would not yet de- art. When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart, Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp Of ages leaves their limbs. harm Thy Cythna ever. stamp Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm, Upon her children’s brow, dark Falsehood to disarm. No ill may Truth its radiant XLV 6 Wait yet awhile for the appointed day. Thou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean | gray; Amid the dwellers of this lonely land I shall remain alone — and thy command Shall then dissolve the world’s unquiet trance, And, multitudinous as the desert sand Borne on the storm, its millions shall ad- vance, Thronging round thee, the light of their deliverance. XLVI ‘Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain Which from remotest glens two warring winds Involve in fire which not the loosened fountain Of broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds Of evil catch from our uniting minds The spark which must consume them; — Cythna then Will have cast off the impotence that binds Her childhood now, and through the paths of men Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent’s den. XLVII ‘We part!—O Laon, I must dare, nor tremble, To meet those looks no more! — Oh, heavy stroke! Sweet brother of my soul! can I dis- semble The agony of this thought?’ — As thus she spoke The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke, And in my arms she hid her beating breast. I remained still for tears — sudden she woke As one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possessed. XLVIII ‘We part to meet again— but yon blue waste, Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess Within whose happy silence, thus em- braced, We might survive all ills in one caress; Nor doth the grave —I fear ’t is passion- less — Nor yon cold vacant Heaven: — we meet again Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.’ XLIX I could not speak, though she had ceased, for now The fountains of her feeling, swift and deep, Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow. So we arose, and by the star-light steep Went homeward — neither did we speak nor weep, But, pale, were calm with passion. Thus subdued, CANTO THIRD 69 Like evening shades that o’er the moun- tains creep, We moved towards our home; where, in this mood, Each from the other sought refuge in soli- tude. CANTO THIRD I Wuart thoughts had sway o’er Cythna’s lonely slumber That night, I know not; but my own did seem As if they might ten thousand years out- number Of waking life, the visions of a dream Which hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream Of mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast, Whose limits yet were never memory’s theme; And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds passed, Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast. II Two hours, whose mighty circle did em- brace More time than might make gray the in- fant world, Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space; When the third came, like mist on breezes curled, From my dim sleep a shadow was un- furled; Methought, upon the threshold of a cave I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled With dew from the wild streamlet’s shattered wave, Hung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave. Til We lived a day as we were wont to live, But Nature had a robe of glory on, And the bright air o’er every shape did weave Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone, The leafless bough among the leaves alone, Had being clearer than its own could be; And Cythna’s pure and radiant self was shown, In this strange vision, so divine to me, That if Iloved before, now love was agony. Iv Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night, descended, And we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphere Of the calm moon — when suddenly was blended With our repose a nameless sense of fear; And from the cave behind I seemed to hear Sounds gathering upwards — accents in- complete, And stifled shrieks,—and now, more near and near, A tumult and a rush of thronging feet The cavern’s secret depths beneath the earth did beat. Vv The scene was changed, and away, away, away! Through the air and over the sea we sped, And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay, And the winds bore me; through the darkness spread Around, the gaping earth then vomited Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung Upon my flight; and ever as we fled They plucked at Cythna; soon to me then clung A sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among. VI And I lay struggling in the impotence Of sleep, while outward life had burst its bound, Though, still deluded, strove the tor- tured sense To its dire wanderings to adapt the sound Which in the light of morn was poured around Our dwelling; breathless, pale and una- ware I rose, and all the cottage crowded found 7o THE REVOLT OF ISLAM With arméd men, whose glittering swords were bare, And whose degraded limbs the Tyrant’s garb did wear. VII And ere with rapid lips and gathered brow I could demand the cause, a feeble shriek — It was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low — Arrested me; my mien grew calm and meek, And grasping a small knife I went to seek That voice among the crowd —’t was Cythna’s cry! Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak Tts whirlwind rage: — so I passed quietly Tiil I beheld where bound that dearest child did lie. Vir I started to behold her, for delight And exultation, and a joyance free, Solemn, serene and lofty, filled the light Of the calm smile with which she looked on me; So that I feared some brainless ecstasy, Wrought from that bitter woe, had wil- dered her. ‘Farewell! farewell!’ she said, as I drew nigh; ‘At first my peace was marred by this strange stir, Now I am calm as truth — its chosen min- ister. IX ‘Look not so, Laon — say farewell in hope; These bloody men are but the slaves who bear Their mistress to her task; it was my scope The slavery where they drag me now to | share, And among captives willing chains to wear Awhile — the rest thou knowest. Return, dear friend! Let our first triumph trample the despair Which would ensnare us now, for, in the end. In victory ‘or in death our hopes and fears must blend.’ x These words had fallen on my unheed- ing ear, Whilst I had watched the motions of the crew With seeming careless glance; not many were Around her, for their comrades just withdrew To guard some other victim; so I drew My knife, and with one impulse, sud- denly, All unaware three of their number slew, And grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud ery My countrymen invoked to death or lib- erty. XI What followed then I know not, for a stroke, On my raised arm and naked head came down, Filling my eyes with blood. — When I awoke, I felt that they had bound me in my swoon, And up a rock which overhangs the town By the steep path were bearing me; below The plain was filled with slaughter, — overthrown The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow Of blazing roofs shone far o’er the white Ocean’s flow. XII Upon that rock a mighty column stood, Whose capital seemed sculptured in the SKY, Which’'to the wanderers o’er the solitude Of distant seas, from ages long gone by: Had made a landmark; o’er its height to fly Scarcely the cloud, the vulture or the blast Has power, and when the shades of even- ing lie CANTO THIRD 71 On Earth and Ocean, its carved summits east The sunken daylight far through the aérial waste. XIII They bore me to a cavern in the hill Beneath that column, and unbound me there; And one did strip me stark; and one did fill A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare A lighted torch, and four with friendless care Guided my steps the cavern-paths along; Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair We wound, until the torch’s fiery tongue Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung. XIV They raised me to the platform of the pile, That column’s dizzy height; the grate of brass, Through which they thrust me, open stood the while, As to its ponderous and suspended mass, With chains which eat into the flesh, alas! With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound; The grate, as they departed to repass, With horrid clangor fell, and the far sound Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom was drowned. xv The noon was calm and bright: — around that column The overhanging sky and circling sea, Spread forth in silentness profound and solemn, The darkness of brief frenzy cast on me, So that I knew not my own misery; The islands and the mountains in the day Like clouds reposed afar; and I could see The town among the woods below that lay. And the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy bay. xVI It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone Swayed in the air: — so bright, that noon did breed No shadow in the sky beside mine own — Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone. Below, the smoke of roofs involved in flame Rested like night; all else was clearly shown In that broad glare; yet sound to me none came, But of the living blood that ran within my frame. XVII The peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon! A ship was lying on the sunny main; Its sails were flagging in the breathless noon; Its shadow lay beyond. That sight again Waked with its presence in my trancé brain The stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold; I knew that ship bore Cythna o’er the plain Of waters, to her blighting slavery sold, And watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold. XVIII I watched until the shades of evening wrapped Earth like an exhalation; then the bark Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapped. It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark; Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark Its path no more! I sought to close mine eyes. But, like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark; I would have risen, but ere that I could rise My parchéd skin was split with piercing agonies. XIX I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever 72 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Its adamantine links, that I might die. O Liberty! forgive the base endeavor, Forgive me, if, reserved for victory, The Champion of thy faith e’er sought to fly! That starry night, with its clear silence, sent Tameless resolve which laughed at misery Into my soul — linkéd remembrance lent fo that such power, to me such a severe content. XX To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair And die, I questioned not; nor, though the Sun, {ts shafts of agony kindling through the air, Moved over me, nor though in evening dun, Or when the stars their visible courses run Or morning, the wide universe was spread In dreary calmness round me, did I shun Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead From one faint hope whose flower a drop- ping poison shed. XXI Two days thus passed —I neither raved nor died; Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion’s nest Built in mine entrails; 1 had spurned aside The water-vessel, while despair pos- sessed My thoughts, and now no drop remained. The uprest Of the third sun brought hunger — but the crust Which had been left was to my craving breast Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust, And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust. XXII My brain began to fail when the fourth morn Burst o’er the golden isles. A fearful sleep, Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn Of the riven soul sent its foul dreams to sweep With whirlwind swiftness—a fall far and deep — A gulf,.a void, asense of senselessness — These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep Their watch in some dim charnel’s lone- liness, — A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planet- less! XXII The forms which peopled this terrific trance I well remember. Like a choir of devils, Around me they involved a giddy dance; Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels, — Foul, ceaseless shadows; thought could not divide The actual world from these entangling evils, Which so bemocked themselves that 1 descried All shapes like mine own self hideously multiplied. XXIV The sense of day and night, of false and true, Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst That darkness; one, as since that hour I knew, Was not a phantom of the realms ac- cursed, a then my spirit dwelt — but of the rst I know not yet, was it a dream or no; But both, though not distincter, were immersed In hues which, when through memory’s waste they flow, Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now. XXV Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven, CANTO THIRD 73 Who brought me thither, four stiff corpses bare, And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven Hung them on high by the entangled hair; Swarthy were three — the fourth was very fair; As they retired, the golden moon up- sprung, And eagerly, out in the giddy air, Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung. XXVI A woman’s shape, now lank and cold and blue The dwelling of the many-colored worm, Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew To my dry lips — What radiance did inform Those horny eyes? whose was that with- ered form? Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna’s ghost Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm Within my teeth!—a whirlwind keen as frost Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed. XXVII Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane Arose, and bore me in its dark career Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that |. wane On the verge of formless space — it lan- guished there, And, dying, left a silence lone and drear, More horrible than famine. In the deep | The shape of an old man did then ap- |. pear, Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep. XXVIII And, when the blinding tears had fallen, T saw That column, and those corpses, and the | , moon, And felt.the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw My vitals; I rejoiced, as if the boon Of senseless death would be accorded soon, When from that stony gloom a voice arose, Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose, And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose. XXIX He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled; As they were loosened by that Hermit old, Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled To answer those kind looks; he did en- fold His giant arms around me to uphold My wretched frame; my scorehéd limbs he wound In linen moist and balmy, and as cold As dew to drooping leaves; the chain, with sound Like earthquake, through the chasm of that steep stair did bound, XXX As, lifting me, it fell!—-What next I heard Were billows leaping on the harbor bar, And the shrill sea-wind whose breath idly stirred My hair; I looked abroad, and saw a star Shining beside a sail, and distant far That mountain and its column, the known mark Of those who in the wide deep wander- ing are, — So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark, In trance had lain me thus within a fiend- ish bark. XXXI For now, indeed, over the salt sea billow I sailed; yet dared not look upon the shape 74 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow For my light head was hollowed in his ? And ie bare limbs his mantle did en- wrap, — Fearing it was a fiend; at last, he bent O’er me his aged face; as if to snap Those dreadful thoughts, the gentle grandsire bent, And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent. XXXII A soft and healing potion to my lips At intervals he raised — now looked on high To mark if yet the starry giant dips His zone in the dim sea—now cheer- ingly, Though he said little, did he speak to me. ‘It is a friend beside thee — take good cheer Poor victim, thou art now at liberty!’ I joyed as those a human tone to hear Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year. XXXII A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams; Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams Of morn descended on the ocean-streams; And still that aged man, so grand and mild, Tended me, even as some sick mother seems To hang in hope over a dying child, Till in the azure East darkness again was piled. XXXIV And then the night-wind, steaming from the shore, Sent odors dying sweet across the sea, And the swift boat the little waves which bore. Were eut by its keen keel, though slant- ingly; Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove, As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee On sidelong wing into a silent cove Where ebon pines a shade under the star- light wove. CANTO FOURTH I THE old man took the oars, and soon the bark Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone. It was a crumbling heap whose portal dark With blooming ivy-trails was overgrown; Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown, And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood, Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown Within the walls of that gray tower, which stood A changeling of man’s art nursed amid ature’s brood. II When the old man his boat had anchoréd, He wound me in his arms with tender care, And very few but kindly words he said, And bore me through the tower adown a stair, Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear For many a year had fallen. We came at last Toa small chamber which with mosses rare Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves in- terlaced. II The moon was darting through the lat- tices Its aoe light, warm as the beams of ay — So warm that to admit the dewy breeze CANTO FOURTH 75 The old man opened them; the moonlight lay Upon a lake whose waters wove their play Even to the threshold of that lonely home; Within was seen in the dim wavering ray The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become. Iv The rock-built barrier of the sea was passed And I was on the margin of a lake, A lonely lake, amid the forests vast And snowy mountains. Did my spirit wake From sleep as many-colored as the snake That girds eternity ? in life and truth Might not my heart its cravings ever slake ? Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth, And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth ? Vv Thus madness came again, —a milder madness, Which darkened nought but time’s un- quiet flow With supernatural shades of clinging sadness; That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe, By my sick couch was busy to and fro, Like a strong spirit ministrant of good; When I was healed, he led me forth to show The wonders of his sylvan solitude, And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood. VI He knew his soothing words to weave with skill From all my madness told; like mine own heart, ‘Of Cythna would he question me, until That thrilling name had ceased to make me start, From his familiar lips; it was not art, Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke — When mid soft looks of pity, there would dart A glance as keen as is the lightning’s stroke When it doth rive the knots of some an- cestral oak. VII Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled; My thoughts their due array did reas- sume Through the enchantments of that Hermit old. Then I bethought me of the glorious doom Of those who sternly struggle to relume The lamp of Hope o’er man’s bewildered ot; And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom Of eve, to that friend’s heart I told my thought — That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not. VII That hoary man had spent his livelong age In converse with the dead who leave the stamp Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page, When they are gone into the senseless damp Of graves; his spirit thus became a lamp Of os like to those on which it ed; Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp, Deep thirst for knowledge had his foot. steps led, And all the ways of men among mankina he read. Ix But enstom maketh blind and obdurate The loftiest hearts; he had beheld the woe In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate Which made them abject would pre- serve them so; 76 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM And in such faith, some steadfast joy to know, He sought this cell; but when fame went abroad That one in Argolis did undergo Torture for liberty, and that the crowd High truths from gifted lips had heard and understood, x And that the multitude was gathering wide, — His spirit leaped within his aged frame; In lonely peace he could no more abide, But to the land on which the victor’s flame Had fed, my native land, the Hermit came; Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue Was as a sword of trnth — young Laon’s name Rallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among. xI He came to the lone column on the rock, And with his sweet and mighty elo- quence The hearts of those who watched it did unlock, And made them melt in tears of peni- tence. They gave him entrance free to bear me thence. ‘Since this,’ the old man said, ‘seven years are spent, While slowly truth on thy benighted sense Has crept; the hope which wildered it has lent, Meanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent. XII ‘Yes, from the records of my youthful state, And from the lore of bards and sages old, From whatsoe’er my wakened thoughts create Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold, Have I collected language to unfold Truth to my countrymen; from shore tc shore Doctrines of human power my words have told; They have been heard, and men aspire to more Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore. XIII ‘In secret chambers parents read, and weep, My writings to their babes, no longer blind; And young men gather when their ty- rants sleep, And vows of faith each to the other bind; And marriageable maidens, who have ined. With love till life seemed melting through their look, A warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now find; And every bosom thus is rapt and shook, Like autumn’s myriad leaves in one swoln mountain brook. XIV ‘The tyrants of the Golden City tremble At voices which are heard about the streets; The ministers of fraud can scarce dis- semble The lies of their own heart, but when one meets Another at the shrine, he inly weets, Though he says nothing, that the truth is known; Murderers are pale upon the judgment. seats, And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone, And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne. XV ‘Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds Abound; for fearless love, and the pure law Of mild equality and peace, succeeds To faiths which long have held the world in awe, Bloody, and false, and cold. As whirl pools draw CANTO FOURTH 77 All wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway Of thy strong genius, Laon, which fore- saw This hope, compels all spirits to obey, Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array. XVI ‘For I have been thy passive instru- ment’ — (As thus the old man spake, his counte- nance Gleamed on me like a spirit’s) — ‘ thou hast lent To me, to all, the power to advance Towards this unforeseen deliverance From our ancestral chains —ay, thou didst rear That lamp of hope on high, which time nor chance Nor change may not extinguish, and my share Of good was o’er the world its gathered beams to bear. XVII ‘But I, alas! am both unknown and old, And though the woof of wisdom I know well To dye in hues of language, I am cold In seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell My manners note that I did long repel; But Laon’s name to the tumultuous tLron Were like the star whose beams the waves compel And tempests, and his soul- subduing tongue Were as a lance to quell the mailéd crest of wrong. XVIII ‘Perchance blood need not flow; if thou at length Wouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spare Their brethren and themselves; great is the strength Of words — for lately did a maiden fair, Who from her childhood has been taught to bear The Tyrant’s heaviest yoke, arise, and make Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear, And with these quiet words — “ for thine own sake I prithee spare me,” —did with ruth so take XIX ‘All hearts that even the torturer, who had bound Her meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled, Loosened her weeping then; nor could be found One human hand to harm her. Unas- sailed Therefore she walks through the great City, veiled In virtue’s adamantine eloquence, ’Gainst scorn and death and pain thus trebly mailed, And blending in the smiles of that de- fence The serpent and the dove, wisdom and innocence. XX ‘ The wild-eyed women throng around her path; From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor’s wrath, Or the caresses of his sated lust, They congregate; in her they put their trust. The tyrants send their arméd slaves to quell Her power; they, even like a thunder- gust Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell Of that young maiden’s speech, and to their chiefs rebel. XXI ‘Thus she doth eyual laws and justice teach To woman, outraged and polluted long; Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach For those fair hands now free, while arméd wrong Trembles before her look, though it be strong; 78 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright And matrons with their babes, a stately throng! Lovers renew the vows which they did plight {n early faith, and hearts long parted now unite; XXII «And homeless orphans find a home near her, And those poor victims of the proud, no less, Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir Thrusts the redemption of its wicked- ness. In squalid huts, and in its palaces, Sits Lust alone, while o’er the land is borne Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress All evil; and her foes relenting turn, And cast the vote of love in hope’s aban- doned urn. XXIII ‘So in the populous City, a young maiden Has baffled Havoe of the prey which he Marks as his own, whene’er with chains o’erladen Men make them arms to hurl down ty- ranny, — False arbiter between the bound and free; And o’er the land, in hamlets and in towns The multitudes collect tumultuously, And throng in arms; but tyranny dis- owns Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones. XXIV ‘ Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed The free cannot forbear. The Queen of Slaves, The hood-winked Angel of the blind and dead, Custom, with iron mace points to the graves Where her own standard desolately waves Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings. Many yet stand in her array — “she: paves Her path with human hearts,” and o’er it flings The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings. XXV ‘There is a plain beneath the City’s wall, Bounded by misty mountains, wide and vast; Millions there lift at Freedom’s thrilling eall Ten thousand standards wide; they load the blast Which bears one sound of many voices past. And startles on his throne their sceptred foe; He sits amid his idle pomp aghast, And that his power hath passed away, doth know — Why pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow ? XXVI ‘The Tyrant’s guards resistance yet main- tain, Fearless, and tierce, and hard as beasts of blood; They stand a speck amid the peopled plain; Carnage and ruin have been made their food From infancy; ill has become their good, And for its hateful sake their will has wove The chains which eat their hearts. The multitude, Exe ooiae them, with words of human ove Seek from their own decay their stubborn minds to move. XXVILI ‘Over the land is felt a sudden pause, As night and day those ruthless bands around The watch of love is kept—a trance which awes The thoughts of men with hope; as when the sound Of whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves and clouds confound, Dies suddenly, the mariner in fear Feels silence sink upon his heart — thus bound CANTO FOURTH 79 The conquerors pause; and oh! may free- men ne’er Clasp the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer ! XXVIII ‘If blood be shed, ’tis but a change and choice Of bonds — from slavery to cowardice, — A wretched fall! Uplift thy charméd voice, Pour on those evil men the love that lies Hovering within those spirit-soothing eyes ! Arise, my friend, farewell !’— As thus he spake, From the green earth lightly I did arise, As one out of dim dreams that doth awake, And looked upon the depth of that reposing lake. XXIX I saw my countenance reflected there; — And then my youth fell on me like a wind Descending on still waters. My thin hair Was prematurely gray; my face was lined With channels, such as suffering leaves behind, Not age; my brow was pale, but in my cheek And lips a flush of gnawing fire did find Their food and dwelling; though mine eyes might speak Asubtle mind and strong within a frame thus weak. XXX And though their lustre now was spent and faded, Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien The likeness of a shape for which was braided The brightest woof of genius still was seen — One who, methought, had gone from the world’s scene, And left it vacant —’t was her lover’s face — It might resemble her —it once had been The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace Which her mind’s shadow cast left there : lingering trace. XXXI What then was I? She slumbered with the dead. Glory and joy and peace had come and gone. Doth the cloud perish when the beams are fled Which steeped its skirts in gold? or, dark and lone, Doth it not through the paths of night unknown, On outspread wings of its own wind up- borne, Pour rain upon the earth? the stars are shown, When the cold moon sharpens her silver horn Under the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn. XXXII Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man L left, with interchange of looks and tears And lingering speech, and to the Camp began My way. O’er many a mountain-chain which rears Its hundred crests aloft my spirit bears My frame, o’er many a dale and many a moor; And gayly now meseems serene earth wears The blosmy spring’s star-bright investi- ture, — A vision which aught sad from sadnes_ might allure. XXXII My powers revived within me, and I went, As one whom winds waft o’er the bend- ing grass, Through many a vale of that broad con- tinent. At night when I reposed, fair dreams did pass Before my pillow; my own Cythna was, Not like a child of death, among ther ever: ov THE REVOLT OF ISLAM When I arose from rest, a woful mass That gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever, Asif the light of youth were not withdrawn forever. XXXIV Aye as I went, that maiden who had reared The torch of Truth afar, of whose high deeds The Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard, Haunted my thoughts. Ah, Hope its sickness feeds With whatsoe’er it finds, or flowers or weeds! Could she be Cythna? a shade Such as self-torturing thought from mad- ness breeds? Why was this hope not torture? Yet it made A light around my steps which would not ever fade. Was that corpse CANTO FIFTH I OvER the utmost hill at length I sped, A snowy steep: —the moon was hanging low Over the Asian mountains, and, out- spread The plain, the City, and the Camp be- ow, Skirted the midnight Ocean’s glimmer- ing flow; The City’s moon-lit spires and myriad lamps Like stars in a sublunar sky did glow, And fires blazed far amid the scattered camps, Like springs of flame which burst where’er swift Earthquake stamps. II All slept but those in watchful arms who stood, And those who sate tending the beacon’s light; And the few sounds from that vast mul- titude Made silence more profound. Oh, what a might Of human thought was cradled in that night! How many hearts impenetrably veiled Beat underneath its shade! what secret fight Evil and Good, in woven passions mailed, Waged through that silent throng —a war that never failed! II And now the Power of Good held victory. So, through the labyrinth of many a tent, Among the silent millions who did lie In innocent sleep, exultingly I went. The moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent From eastern morn the first faint lustre showed An arméd youth; over his spear he bent His downward face: —‘A friend!’ I eried aloud, And quickly common hopes made freemen understood. IV I sate beside him while the morning beam Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme, Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim; And all the while methought his voice did swim, As if it drownéd in remembrance were Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim; At last, when daylight ’gan to fill the air, He looked on me, and cried in wonder, ‘Thou art here!’ Vv Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth In whom its earliest hopes my spiriv found; But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth, And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound, And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound, Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded; The truth now came upon me— on the ground CANTO FIFTH 81 Tears of. repenting joy, which fast in- truded, Fell fast — and o’er its peace our mingling spirits brooded. VI Thus, while with rapid lips and earnest eyes We talked, a sound of sweeping conflict, spread As from the earth, did suddenly arise. From every tent, roused by that clamor dread, Our bands outsprung and seized their arms; we sped Towards the sound; our tribes were gathering far. Those sanguine slaves, amid ten thousand dead Stabbed in their sleep, trampled in treacherous war The gentle hearts whose power their lives had sought to spare. VII Like rabid snakes that sting some gentle child P Who brings them food when winter false and fair \ Allures them forth with its\ cold smiles, so wild ~ They rage among the camp; they over- bear The patriot hosts — confusion, then de- spair, Descends like night — when ‘Laon!’ one did cry; Like a bright ghost from Heaven that shout did scare The slaves, and, widening through the vaulted sky, Seemed sent from Earth to Heaven in sign of victory. VIII In sudden panic those false murderers fled, Like insect tribes before the northern gale; But swifter still our hosts encompasséd Their shattered ranks, and in a craggy vale, Where even their fierce despair might nought avail, Hemmed them around! —and then re- venge and fear Made the high virtue of the patriots fail; One pointed ¢ on his foe the mortal spear — I rushed before its point, and cried ‘ For- bear, forbear! ’ Ix The spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted In swift expostulation, and the blood Gushed round its point; I smiled, and — ‘Oh! thou gifted With eloquence which shall not be with- stood, Flow thus!’ I cried in joy, ‘thou vital flood, Until my heart be dry, ere thus the cause For which thou wert aught worthy be subdued! — Ah, ye are pale—ye weep — your pas- sions pause — *Tis well! ye feel the truth of love’s be- nignant laws. x ‘Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain; Ye murdered them, I think, as they did sleep! Alas, what have ye done? The slightest pain Which ye might suffer, there were eyes to weep, But ye have quenched them — there were smiles to steep Your hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe; And those whom love did set his watch to keep Around your tents truth’s freedom to bestow, Ye stabbed as they did sleep — but they forgive ye now. XI ‘Oh, wherefore should ill ever flow from ill, And pain still keener pain forever breed ? We all are brethren— even the slaves who kill For hire are men; and to avenge misdeed On the misdoer doth but Misery feed With her own broken heart!. Q'Earth, O Heaven! 82 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM And thou, dread Nature, which to every deed And all that lives, oris, to be hath given, Even as to thee have these done ill, and are forgiven. XII ‘Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past Be asa grave which gives not up its dead To evil thoughts.’ — A film then over- cast My sense with dimness, for the wound, which bled Freshly, swift shadows o’er mine eyes had shed. When I awoke, I lay ’mid friends and foes, And earnest countenances on me shed The light of questioning looks, whilst one did close My wound with balmiest herbs, and soothed me to repose ; XIII And one, whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside With quivering lips and humid eyes; and all Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide Gone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall In a strange land round one whom they might call Their friend, their chief, their father, for assay Of peril, which had saved them from the thrall Of death, now suffering. Thus the vast array Of those fraternal bands were reconciled that day. XIV Lifting the thunder of their acclamation, Towards the City then the multitude, And I among them, went in joy —a nation Made free by love; a mighty brother- hood Linked by a jealous interchange of good; A glorious pageant, more magnificent hee eae slaves arrayed in gold and ood, When they return from carnage, and are sent In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement. Xv Afar, the City walls were thronged on high, And myriads on each giddy turret clung, And to each spire far lessening in the sk Bright pennons on the idle winds were hung; As we approached, a shout of joyance sprung At once from all the crowd, as if the vast And peopled Earth its boundless skies amon, The sudden clamor of delight had cast, When from before its face some general wreck had passed. XVI Our armies through the City’s hundred gates Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits, Throng from the mountains when the storms are there; And, as we passed through the calm sunny air, A thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed, The token-flowers of truth and freedom fair And fairest hands bound them on many a head, Those angels of love’s heaven that over all was spread. XVII I trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision; Those bloody bands so lately reconciled, Were ever, as they went, by the contri- tion Of anger turned to love, from ill be- le And every one on them more gently smiled Because they bad done evil; the sweet awe CANTO FIFTH 83 Of such mild looks made their own hearts grow mild, And did with soft attraction ever draw Their spirits to the love of freedom’s equal law. XVIII And they, and all, in one loud symphony My name with Liberty commingling lifted — ‘The friend and the preserver of the free! The parent of this joy!’ and fair eyes, gifted With feelings caught from one who had uplifted The light of a great spirit, round me shone; And all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted Like restless clouds before the steadfast sun. Where was that Maid ? I asked, but it was known of none. XIX Laone was the name her love had chosen, For she was nameless, and her birth none knew. Where was Laone now?— The words were frozen Within my lips with fear; but to sub- due pe hope to my great task was ue, And when at length one brought reply that she To-morrow would appear, I then with- drew To judge what need for that great throng might be, For now the stars came thick over the twi- light sea. XX Yet need was none for rest or food to care, Even though that multitude was passing great, Since each one for the other did prepare All kindly succor. Therefore to the gate Of the Imperial House, now desolate, = passed, and there was found aghast, alone, The fallen Tyrant! —silently he sate Upon the footstool of his golden throne, Which, starred with sunny gems, in its own lustre shone. XXI Alone, but for one child who led before him A graceful dance—the only living thing, Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him Flocked yesterday, who solace sought to bring In his abandonment; she knew the King Had praised her dance of yore, and now she wove Its circles, aye weeping and murmur. ing. "Mid her sad task of unregarded love, That to no smiles it might his speechless sadness move. XXII She fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet When human steps were heard; he moved nor spoke, Nor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet The gaze of strangers, Our loud en- trance woke The echoes of the hall, which circling broke The calm of its recesses; like a tomb Its sculptured walls vacantly to the stroke OF footfalls answered, and the twilight’s gloom Lay like a charnel’s mist within the radiant dome. XXIII The little child stood up when we came nigh; Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan, But on her forehead and within her eye Lay beauty which makes hearts that feed thereon Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne She leaned; the King, with gathered brow and lips Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown. 64 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. XXIV She stood beside him like a rainbow braided Within some storm, when scarce its shadows vast From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded; A sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna’s, east One moment’s light, which made my heart beat fast, O’er that child’s parted lips —a gleam of bliss, A shade of vanished days; as the tears passed Which wrapped it, even as with a father’s kiss 7 pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness. XXV The sceptred wretch then from that soli- tude I drew, and, of his change compassion- ate With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood. But he, while pride and fear held deep debate, With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare; Pity, not scorn, I felt, though desolate The desolator now, and unaware Mhe curses which he mocked had caught him by the hair. XXVI I led him forth from that which now might seem A gorgeous grave; through portals sculp- tured deep With imagery beautiful as dream We went, and left the shades which tend on sleep Over its unregarded gold to keep Their silent watch. The child trod faintingly, And as she went, the tears which she did weep Glanced in the star-light; wilderéd seemed she, And, when I spake, for sobs she could not answer me. XXVII At last the Tyrant cried, ‘She hungers, slave! Stab her, or give her bread!’ — It was a tone Such as sick fancies in a new-made grave Might hear. I trembled, for the truth was known, — He with this child had thus been left alone, And neither had gone forth for food, but he In mingled pride and awe cowered near his throne, And she, a nursling of captivity, Knew nought beyond those walls, nor what such change might be. XXVIII And he was troubled at a charm with- drawn Thus suddenly — that sceptres ruled no more, That even from gold the dreadful strength was gone Which once made all things subject to its power; Such wonder seized him as if hour by hour The Ca had come again; and the swift a. Of one so great and terrible of yore To desolateness, in the hearts of all Like wonder stirred who saw such awful change befall. XXIX A mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours Once in a thousand years, now gathered round The fallen Tyrant; like the rush of showers Of hail in spring, pattering along the ground, Their many footsteps fell — else came ne sound From the wide multitude; that lonely man Then knew the burden of his change and found, CANTO FIFTH 85 Concealing in the dust his visage wan, Refuge from the keen looks which through his bosom ran. XXX And he was faint withal. him Upon the earth, and took that child so fair From his weak arms, that ill might none betide him Or her; when food was brought to them, her share To his averted lips the child did bear, But, when she saw he had enough, she I sate beside ate, And wept the while; the lonely man’s de- spair Hunger then overcame, and, of his state Forgetful, on the dust as in a trance he sate. XXXI Slowly the silence of the multitudes Passed, as when far is heard in some lone dell The gathering of a wind among the woods: * And he is fallen!’ they ery, ‘he who did dwell Like famine or the plague, or aught more fell, Among our homes, is fallen! the mur- derer Who slaked his thirsting soul, as from a well Of blood and tears, with ruin! he is here! Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none may him rear!’ XXXII Then was heard —‘ He who judged, let him be brought To judgment! blood for blood cries from the soil On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought! Shall Othman only unavenged despoil? Shall they, who by the stress of grinding toil Wrest from the unwilling earth his lux- uries, Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil Or creep within his veins at will? Arise! And to high Justice make her chosen sacri- fice! * XXXIII ‘What do ye seek ? what fear ye?’ then I cried, Suddenly starting forth, ‘that ye should shed The blood of Othman? if your hearts are tried In the true love of freedom, cease to dread This one poor lonely man; _ beneath Heaven spread In purest light above us all, through Earth — Maternal Earth, who doth her sweet smiles shed For all — let him go free, until the worth Of human nature win from these a second birth. XXXIV ‘What call ye justice? Is there one who ne’er In secret thought has wished another’s ill? Are ye all pure? Let those stand forth who hear And tremble not. Shall they insult and kill If such they be? their mild eyes can they fill With the false anger of the hypocrite? Alas, such were not pure! The chastened will Of virtue sees that justice is the light Of love, and not revenge and terror and despite.’ XXXV The murmur of the people, slowly dy- ing, Paused as I spake; then those who near me were Cast gentle looks where the lone man was lying Shrouding his head, which now that in- fant fair Clasped on her lap in silence; through the air Sobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet In pity’s madness, and to the despair Of him whom late they cursed a solace sweet His very victims brought — soft looks and. speeches meet. 86 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM XXXVI Then to a home for his repose assigned, Accompanied by the still throng, he went In silence, where to soothe his rankling mind Some likeness of his ancient state was lent; And if his heart could have been inno- cent As those who pardoned him, he might have ended His days in peace; but his straight lips were bent, Men said, into a smile which guile por- tended, — A sight with which that child, like hope with fear, was blended. XXXVii *T was midnight now, the eve of that great day Whereon the many nations, at whose call The chains of earth like mist melted away, Decreed to hold a sacred Festival, A rite to attest the equality of all Who live. So to their homes, to dream or wake, All went. The sleepless silence did re- call Laone to my thoughts, with hopes that make The flood recede from which their thirst they seek to slake. XXXVIII The dawn flowed forth, and from its purple fountains I drank those hopes which make the spirit quail, As to the plain between the misty moun- tains And the great City, with a countenance pale, I went. It was a sight which might avail To make men weep exulting tears, for whom Now first from human power the rev- erend veil Was torn, to see Earth from her general womb Pour forth her swarming sons to a fraternal doom: XXXIX To see, far glancing in the misty morn- ing, The cena of that innumerable host; To hear one sound of many made, the warning Of Earth to Heaven from its free chil- dren tossed; While the eternal hills, and the sea lost In wavering light, and, starring the blue Sky: The City’s myriad spires of gold, almost With human joy made mute society — Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be: XL To see, like some vast island from the Ocean, The Altar of the Federation rear Its pile i’ the midst —a work which the devotion Of millions in one night created there, Sudden as when the moonrise makes ap- pear Strange clouds in the east—a marble pyramid Distinct with steps ;— that mighty shape did wear The light of genius; its still shadow hid Far ships; to know its height the morning mists forbid! — XLI To hear the restless multitudes forever Around the base of that great Altar flow, As on some mountain islet burst and shiver Atlantic waves; and, solemnly and slow, As the wind bore that tumult to and fro, To feel the dreamlike music, which did swim Like beams through floating clouds on waves below, Falling in pauses, from that Altar dim, As silver-sounding tongues breathed an aérial hymn. XLII To hear, to see, to live, was on that morn Lethean joy! so that all those assembled Cast off their memories of the past out- worn: CANTO FIFTH 87 Two only bosoms with their own life trembled, And mine was one,—and we had both dissembled; So with a beating heart I went, and one, Who having much, covets yet more, re- sembled, — A lost and dear possession, which not won, He walks in lonely gloom beneath the noon- day sun. XLII To the great Pyramid I came; its stair With female choirs was thronged, the loveliest Among the free, grouped with its sculp- tures rare. As I approached, the morning’s golden mist, Which now the wonder-stricken breezes kissed With their cold lips, fled, and the sum- mit shone Like Athos seen from Samothracia, dressed In earliest light, by vintagers; and One Sate there, a female Shape upon an ivory throne: — XLIV A Form most like the imagined habitant Of silver exhalations sprung from dawn, By winds which feed on sunrise woven, to enchant The faiths of men. All mortal eyes were drawn — As famished mariners through strange seas gone Gaze on a burning watch-tower — by the light Of those divinest lineaments. Alone, With thoughts which none could share, from that fair sight I turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded her countenance bright. XLV And neither did I hear the acclamations, Which from brief silence bursting filled the air With her strange name and mine, from all the nations Which we, they said, in strength had gathered there From the sleep of bondage; nor the vision fair Of that bright pageantry beheld; but blind And silent, as a breathing corpse, did fare, Leaning upon my friend, till like a wind To fevered cheeks a voice flowed o’er my troubled mind. XLVI Like music of some minstrel heavenly gifted, To one whom fiends enthrall, this voice to me; Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted, I was so calm and joyous. I could see The platform where we stood, the statues three Which kept their marble watch on that high shrine, The multitudes, the mountains, and the sea, — As, when eclipse hath passed, things sud- den shine To men’s astonished eyes most clear and crystalline. XLVII At first Laone spoke most tremulously; But soon her voice the calmness which it shed Gathered, and —‘Thou art whom [ sought to see, And thou art our first votary here,’ she said; ‘I had a dear friend once, but he is dead! And, of all those on the wide earth who breathe, Thou dost resemble him alone. I spread This veil between us two that thou be- neath Shouldst image one who may aave been long lost in death. XLVIIT ‘For this wilt thou not henceforth pardon me? Yes, but those joys which silence well requite Fozkid reply. Why men have chosen me ‘To be the Priestess of this holiest rite I searcely know, but that the floods of light Which flow over the world have borne me hither 88 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM To meet thee, long most dear. And now unite Thine band with mine, and may all com- fort wither From both the hearts whose pulse in joy now beat together, XLIX ‘Jf our own will as others’ law we bind, If the foul worship trampled here we fear, If as ourselves we cease to love our kind !’ — She paused, and pointed upwards— sculptured there Three shapes around her ivory throne appear. One was a Giant, like a child asleep On a loose rock, whose grasp crushed, as it were In dream, sceptres and crowns; and one did keep Its watchful eyes in doubt whether to smile or weep — L A Woman sitting on the sculptured disk Of the broad earth, and feeding from one breast A human babe and a young basilisk; Her looks were sweet as Heaven’s when loveliest In Autumn eves. The third Image was dressed In white wings swift as clouds in winter skies; Beneath his feet, ’mongst ghastliest forms, repressed Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise, — While calmly on the Sun he turned his dia- mond eyes. LI Beside that Image then I sate, while she Stood ’mid the throngs which ever ebbed and flowed, Like light amid the shadows of the sea Cast from one cloudless star, and on the crowd That touch which none who feels forgets bestowed; And whilst the sun returned the steadfast gaze Of the great Image, as o’er Heaven it glode, That rite had place; it ceased when sun- set’s blaze Burned o’er the isles; all stood in joy and deep amaze — When in the silence of all spirits there Laone’s voice was felt, and through the air Her thrijing gestures spoke, most elo- quently fair. I ‘Calm art thou as yon sunset! swift and strong As new-fledged Eagles beautiful and young, That float among the blinding beams of morning; And underneath thy feet writhe Faith and Folly, Custom and Hell and mortal Melancholy. Hark! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning Of thy voice sublime and holy; Its free spirits here assembled See thee, feel thee, know thee now; To thy voice their hearts have trembled, Like ten thousand clouds which flow With one wide wind as it flies! Wisdom! thy irresistible children rise To hail thee; and the elements they chain, And their own will, to swell the glory of thy train! 2 ‘O Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven, Mother and soul of all to which is given The light of life, the loveliness of being! Lo! thou dost reascend the human heart, Thy throne of power, almighty as thou wert In dreams of Poets old grown pale by see- ing The shade of thee; — now millions start To feel thy lightnings through them burning! Nature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure, Or Sympathy, the sad tears turning To mutual smiles, a drainless treasure, Descends amidst us! Scorn and Hate, Revenge and Selfishness, are desolate! A hundred nations swear that there shall be Pity and Peace and Love among the good and free! CANTO FIFTH 89 —— 3 ‘Eldest of things, divine Equality ! Wisdom and Love are but the slaves of thee, The angels of thy sway, who pour around thee Treasures from all the cells of human thought And from the Stars and from the Ocean bronght, And the last living heart whose beatings bound thee. The powerful and the wise had sought Thy coming; thou, in light descending O’er the wide land which is thine own, Like the spring whose breath is blending All blasts of fragrance into one, Comest upon the paths of men! Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken, And all her children here in glory meet To feed upon thy smiles, and clasp thy sacred feet. 4 ‘My brethren, we are free! the plains and mountains, The gray sea-shore, the forests and the fountains, Are haunts of happiest dwellers; man and woman, Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow From lawless love a solace for their sorrow; For oft we still must weep, since we are human. A stormy night’s serenest morrow, Whose showers are pity’s gentle tears, Whose clouds are smiles of those that die Like infants without hopes or fears, And whose beams are joys that lie In blended hearts, now holds dominion, — The dawn of mind, which, upwards on a pinion Borne, swift as sunrise, far illumines space, And clasps this barren world in its own bright embrace ! 5 ‘My brethren, we are free! the fruits are glowing Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing O’er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dreaming. Never again may blood of bird or beast Stain with its venomous stream a human feast, To the pure skies in accusation steaming ! Avenging poisons shall have ceased To feed disease and fear and madness; The dwellers of the earth and air Shall throng around our steps in gladness, Seeking their food or refuge there. Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull, To make this earth, our home, more beau- tiful, And Science, and her sister Poesy, Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free ! 6 ‘Victory, Victory to the prostrate nations ! Bear witness, Night, and ye mute Constel- lations Who gaze on us from your crystalline cars ! Thoughts have gone forth whose powers can sleep no more ! Victory ! Victory! Earth’s remotest shore, Regions which groan beneath the Antarctic stars, The green lands cradled in the roar Of western waves, and wildernesses Peopled and vast which skirt the oceans, Where Morning dyes her golden tresses, Shall soon partake our high emotions. Kings shall turn pale! Almighty Fear, The Fiend-God, when our charméd name he hear, Shall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes, While Truth with Joy enthroned o’er his lost empire reigns !’ LII Ere she had ceased, the mists of night entwining Their dim woof floated o’er the infinite throng; She, like a spirit through the darkness shining, In tones whose sweetness silence did pro- long As if to lingering winds they did belong, Poured forth her inmost soul: a passion- ate speech With wild and thrilling pauses wover among, 90 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Which whoso heard was mute, for it could teach To rapture like her own all listening hearts to reach. LIT Her voice was as a mountain stream which sweeps The withered leaves of autumn to the lake, And in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps In the shadow of the shores; as dead leaves wake, Under the wave, in flowers and herbs which make Those green depths beautiful when skies are blue, The multitude so moveless did par- take Such living change, and kindling mur- murs flew As o’er that speechless calm delight and wonder grew. LIV Over the plain the throngs were scattered then In groups around the fires, which from the sea Even to the gorge of the first mountain glen Blazed wide and far; the banquet of the free Was spread beneath many a dark cypress tree Beneath whose spires. which swayed in the red flame, Reclining as they ate, of Liberty And Hope and Justice and Laone’s name Earth’s children did a woof of happy con- verse frame. LV Their feast was such as Earth, the gen- eral mother, Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles In the embrace of Autumn; to each other As when some parent fondly reconciles Her warring children —she their wrath beguiles With her own sustenance, they relenting weep — Such was this Festival, which from their isles And continents and winds and oceans deep All shapes might throng to share that fly or walk or creep; LVI Might share in peace and innocence, for gore Or poison none this festal did pollute, But, piled on high, an overflowing store Of pomegranates and citrons, fairest fruit, Melons, and dates, and figs, and many a root Sweet and sustaining, and bright grapes ere yet Accursed fire their mild juice could trans- mute Into a mortal bane, and brown corn set In baskets; with pure streams their thirst- ing lips they wet. LVII Laone had descended from the shrine, And every deepest look and holiest mind Fed on her form, though now those tones divine Were silent as she passed; she did un- wind Her veil, as with the crowds of her own kind She mixed; some impulse made my heart refrain From seeking her that night, so I re- clined Amidst a group, where on the utmost plain A festal watch-fire burned beside the dusky main. LVIII And joyous was our feast; pathetic talk, And wit, and harmony of choral strains, While far Orion o’er the waves did walk That flow among the isles, held us in chains Of sweet captivity which none disdains Who feels; but, when his zone grew dim in mist Which clothes the Ocean’s bosom, o’er the plains CANTO SIXTH 98 The multitudes went homeward to their rest. Which that delightful day with its own shadow blest. CANTO SIXTH I BesrpE the dimness of the glimmering sea, Weaving swift language from impas- sioned themes, With that dear friend I lingered, who to me So late had been restored, beneath the gleams Of the silver stars; and ever in soft dreams Of future love and peace sweet converse lapped Our willing fancies, till the pallid beams Of the last watch-fire fell, and darkness wrapped The waves, and each bright chain of float- ing fire was snapped, II And till we came even to the City’s walt And the great gate. Then, none knew whence or why, Disquiet on the multitudes did fall; And first, one pale and breathless passed us by, And stared and spoke not; then with piercing cry A troop of wild-eyed women — by the shrieks Of their own terror driven, tumultuonsly Hither and thither hurrying with pale cheeks — Hach one from fear unknown a sudden refuge seeks lil Then, rallying cries of treason and of danger Resounded, and—‘ They come! to arms! to arms! The Tyrant is amongst us, and the stranger Comes to enslave us in his name! to arms!’ In vain: for Panic, the pale fiend who charms Strength to forswear her right, those millions swept Like waves before the tempest. Thes alarms Came to me, as to know their cause ] leapt On the gate’s turret, and in rage and grief and scorn I wept ! IV For to the north I saw the town on fire, And its red light made morning pallid now, Which burst over wide Asia;— louder, higher, The yells of victory and the screams of woe I heard approach, and saw the throng below Stream through the gates like foam- wrought waterfalls Fed from a thousand storms — the fear- ful glow Of bombs flares overhead —at intervals The red artillery’s bolt mangling among them falls. Vv And now the horsemen come — and all was done Swifter than I have spoken — I beheld Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun. I rushed among the rout to have repelled That miserable flight — one moment quelled By voice, and looks, and eloquent despair, As if reproach from their own hearts withheld Their steps, they stood; but soon camw pouring there New multitudes, and did those rallies bands o’erbear. vI I strove, as drifted on some cataract By irresistible streams some wretch might strive Who hears its fatal roar; the files com- pact Whelmed me, and from the gate availed to drive With quickening impulse, as each bolt did rive Their ranks with bloodier chasm; inte the plain 92 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Disgorged at length the dead and the alive In one dread mass were parted, and the stain Of blood from mortal steel fell o’er the fields like rain. vil For now the despot’s bloodhounds with their prey, Unarmed and unaware, were gorging deep Their gluttony of death; the loose ar- ra Of heateette o’er the wide fields murder- ing sweep, And with loud laughter for their Tyrant reap A harvest sown with other hopes; the while, Far overhead, ships from Propontis keep A killing rain of fire. When the waves smile As sudden earthquakes light many a vol- cano isle, VII Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread For the carrion fowls of Heaven. i saw the sight — I moved —I lived —as o’er the heaps of dead, Whose stony eyes glared in the morning light, I trod; to me there came no thought of flight, But with loud cries of scorn, which whoso heard That dreaded death felt in his veins the might Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred, And desperation’s hope in many hearts re- curred. IX A band of brothers gathering round me made, Although unarmed, a steadfast front, and, still Retreating, with stern looks beneath the shade Of gathered eyebrows, did the victors fill With doubt even in success; deliberate will Inspired our growing troop; not over. thrown, It gained the shelter of a grassy hill, — And ever still our comrades were hewn down, And their defenceless limbs beneath our footsteps strown. x Immovably we stood; in joy I found Beside me then, firm as a giant pine Among the mountain vapors driven around, The old man whom I loved; his eyes divine With a mild look of courage answered mine, And my young friend was near, and ardently His hand grasped mine a moment; now the line Of war extended, to our rallying ery As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die. XI For ever while the sun was climbing Heaven The horseman hewed our unarmed myriads down Safely, though when by thirst of carnage driven Too near, those slaves were swiftly over- thrown By hundreds leaping on them; flesh and bone Soon made our ghastly ramparts; ther the shaft Of the artillery from the sea was thrown More fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed In pride to hear the wind our screams of torment waft. XII For on one side alone the hill gave shel- ter, So vast that phalanx of unconquered men, And there the living in the blood did welter Of the dead and dying, which in that green glen, CANTO SIXTH 95 Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen Under the feet. Thus was the butchery waged While the sun clomb Heaven’s eastern steep; but, when It ’gan to sink, a fiercer combat raged, For in more doubtful strife the armies were engaged. XIII Within a cave upon the hill were found A bundle of rude pikes, the instrument Of those who war but on their native ground For natural rights; a shout of joyance, sent Even from our hearts, the wide air pierced and rent, As those few arms the bravest and the best Seized, and each sixth, thus armed, did now present A line which covered and sustained the rest, A confident phalanx which the foes on every side invest. XIV That onset turned the foes to flight al- most; But soon they saw their present strength, and knew That coming night would to our resolute host Bring victory; so, dismounting, close they drew Their glittering files, and then the com- bat grew Unequal but most horrible; and ever Our myriads, whom the swift bolt over- threw, Or the red sword, failed like a mountain river Which rushes forth in foam to sink in sands forever. xv Sorrow and shame, to see with their own kind Our human brethren mix, like beasts of blood, To mutual ruin armed by one behind Who sits and scoffs!—that friend so mild and good, Who like its shadow near my youth had stood, Was stabbed!— my old _preserver’s hoary hair, With the flesh clinging to its roots, was strewed Under my feet! I lost all sense or care, And like the rest I grew desperate and unaware. XVI The battle became ghastlier; in the midst I paused, and saw how ugly and how fell, O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd’st For love. The ground in many a little dell Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell Alternate victory and defeat; and there The combatants with rage most horrible Strove, and their eyes started with crack- ing stare, And impotent their tongues they lolled into the air, XVII Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog’s hanging. Want, and Moon-madness, and the pest’s swift Bane, When its shafts smite — while yet its bow is twanging — Have each their mark and sign, some ghastly stain; And this was thine, O War! of hate and pain Thou loathéd slave! I saw all shapes of death, And ministered to many, o’er the plain While carnage in the sunbeam’s warmth did seethe, Till Twilight o’er the east wove her seren- est wreath. XVIII The few who yet survived, resolute and firm, anal me fought. At the decline of ay, Winding above the mountain’s snowy term, New banners shone; they quivered ir the ray 94 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Of the sun’s unseen orb; ere night the array Of fresh troops hemmed us in — of those brave bands I soon survived alone — and now I lay Vanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands felt, and saw on high the glare of falling brands, XIX When on my foes a sudden terror came, And they fled, scattering. —Lo! with reinless speed A black Tartarian horse of giant frame, Comes trampling over the dead; the living bleed Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed, On which, like to an Angel, robed in white, Sate one waving a sword; the hosts re- cede And fly, as through their ranks, with awful might Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift and bright; xX And its path made a solitude. I rose And marked its coming; it relaxed its course As it approached me, and the wind that flows Through night bore accents to mine ear whose force Might create smiles in death. The Tar- tar horse Paused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed, And heard her musical pants, like the sweet source Of waters in the desert, as she said, Mount with me, Laon, now’—I rapidly obeyed. XXI Then, ‘ Away! away!’ she cried, and stretched her sword As ’t were a scourge over the courser’s head, And lightly shook the reins. We spake no word, But like the vapor of the tempest fled Over the plain; her dark hair was dispread Like the pine’s locks upon the lingering blast; Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast, As o’er their glimmering forms the steed’r broad shadow passed. XXII And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust, His strong sides made the torrents rise in spray, And turbulence, as of a whirlwind’s gust, Surrounded us;— and still away, away, Through the desert night we sped, while she alway Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest, Crowned with a marble ruin, in the ray Of the obscure stars gleamed; its rugged breast The steed strained up, and then his impulse did arrest. XXIII A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean: — From that lone ruin, when the steed that panted Paused, might be heard tae murmur of the motion Of waters, as in spots forever haunted By the choicest winds of Heaven which are enchanted To music by the wand of Solitude, That wizard wild,—and the far tents implanted Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood Thence marking the dark shore of Ocean’s curved flood. XXIV One moment these were heard and seer — another Passed; and the two who stood beneath that night Each only heard or saw or felt the other. As from the lofty steed she did alight, cya on from the eyes whose deepest ight CANTO SIXTH 95 Of love and sadness made my lips feel pale With influence strange of mournfullest delight, My own sweet Cythna looked) with joy did quail, And felt her strength in tears of human weakness fail. XXV And for a space in my embrace she rested, Her head on my unquiet heart reposing, While my faint arms her languid frame invested; At length she looked on me, and, half unclosing Her tremulous lips, said, ‘Friend, thy bands were losing The battle, as I stood before the King In bonds. I burst them then, and, swiitly choosing The time, did seize a Tartar’s sword, and spring Upon his horse, and swift as on the whirl- wind’s wing XXVI ‘ Have thou and I been borne beyond pur- suer, And we are here.’ Then, turning to the steed, She pressed the white moon on his front with pure And rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed From the green ruin plucked that he might feed; But I to a stone seat that Maiden led, And, kissing her fair eyes, said, ‘Thou hast need Of rest,’ and I heaped up the courser’s bed In a green mossy nook, with mountain flowers dispread. XXVII Within that ruin, where a shattered portal Looks to the eastern stars — abandoned now By man to be the home of things im- mortal, Memories, like awful ghosts which come and go, Aud must inherit all he builds below When he is gone —a hall stood; o’er whose roof Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow, Clasping its gray rents with a verdurous woof, A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon- proof. XXVIII The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made A natural couch of leaves in that recess, Which seasons none disturbed; but, in the shade Of flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress With their sweet blooms the wintry lone- liness Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars whene’er The wandering wind her nurslings might caress; Whose intertwining fingers ever there Made music wild and soft that tilled the listening air. XXIX We know not where we go, or what sweet dream May pilot us through caverns strange and fair Of far and pathless passion, while the stream Of life our bark doth on its whirlpools bear, Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air; Nor should we seek to know, so the de- votion Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean Of universal life, attuning its commotion. XXX To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapped Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow Of public hope was from our being snapped, Though linkéd years had bound it there. for now 96 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below All thoughts, like light beyond the at- mosphere Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow, Came on us, as we sate in silence there, Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air; — XXXI In silence which doth follow talk that causes The baffled heart to speak witk sighs and tears, When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses Of inexpressive speech;— the youthful years Which we together passed, their hopes and fears, The blood itself which ran within our frames, That likeness of the features which en- dears The thoughts expressed by them, our very names, And all the wingéd hours which speechless memory claims, XXXII Had found a voice; and ere that voice did pass, The night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent A faint and pallid lustre; while the song Of blasts, in which its blue hair quiver- ing bent, Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among; A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit’s tongue. XXXIII The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate, And Cythna’s glowing arms, and the thick ties Of her soft hair which bent with gath- ered weight My neck near hers; her dark and deep- ening eyes, Which, as twin phantoms of one star that lies O’er a dim well move though the star reposes, Swam in our mute and liquid ecstasies; Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses, With their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses. XXXIV The Meteor to its far morass returned. The beating of our veins one interval Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned Within her frame mingle with mine, and fall Around my heart like fire; and over all A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall Two disunited spirits when they leap In union from this earth’s obscure and fading sleep. XXXV Was it one moment that confounded thus All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one Unutterable power, which shielded us Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone Into a wide and wild oblivion Of tumult and of tenderness? or now Had ages, such as make the moon and sun, The seasons, and mankind their changes know, Left fear and time unfelt by us alone be- low ? XXXVI I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps The failing heart in languishment, or limb Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps CANTO SIXTH 97 Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim, In one caress? What is the strong con- trol Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb Where far over the world those vapors roll Which blend two restless frames in one re- posing soul ? XXXVII It is the shadow which doth float unseen, But not unfelt, o’er blind mortality, Whose divine darkness fled not from that green And lone recess, where lapped in peace did lie Our linkéd frames, till, from the chan- ging sky That night and still another day had fled; And then I saw and felt. The moon was high, And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread Under its orb, — loud winds were gather- ing overhead. XXXVII Cythna’s sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon, Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill, And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn O’er her pale bosom; all within was still, And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill The depth of her unfathomable look; And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill The waves contending in its caverns strook, For they foreknew the storm, and the gray ruin shook. XXXIX There we unheeding sate in the com- munion Of interchangéd vows, which, with a rite Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union. Few were the living hearts which could unite Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night With such close sympathies, fur they had sprung From linked youth, and from the gentle might Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long, Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong. XL And such is Nature’s law divine that those Who grow together cannot choose but love, If faith or custom do not interpose, Or common slavery mar what else might move All gentlest thoughts. grove Which shades the springs of Aithiopian Nile, That living tree which, if the arrowy dove Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile, But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sunbeams smile, As in the sacred xXLI And clings to them when darkness may dissever The close caresses of all duller plants Which bloom on the wide earth; — thus we forever Were linked, for love had nursed us in the haunts Where knowledge from its secret source enchants Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing, Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants As the great Nile feeds Egypt, — ever flinging Light on the woven boughs which o’er its waves are swinging. XLII The tones of Cythna’s voice like echoes were Of those far murmuring streams; they rose and fell, 98 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air; And so we sate, until our talk befell Of the late ruin, swift and horrible, And how those seeds of hope might yet be sown, Whose fruit is Evil’s mortal poison. Well, For us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone, But Cythna’s eyes looked faint, and now two days were gone XLII Since she had food. Therefore I did awaken The Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken, Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein, Following me obediently. With pain Of heart so deep and dread that one caress, When lips and heart refuse to part again Till they have told their fill, could scarce express The anguish of her mute and fearful ten- derness, XLIV Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode That willing steed. The tempest and the night, Which gave my path its safety as I rode Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite The darkness and the tumult of their might Borne on all winds. — Far through the streaming rain Floating, at intervals the garments white Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again Came to me on the gust, and soon I reached the plain. XLV I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red Turned on the lightning’s cleft exult- ingly; And when the earth beneath his tame- less tread Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread His nostrils to the blast, and joyously Mock the fierce peal with neighings; — thus we sped O’er the lit plain, and soon I could de- sery Where Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of victory. XLVI There was a desolate village in a wood, Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now scat- tering fed The hungry storm; it was a place of blood, A heap of hearthless walls;— the flames were dead Within those dwellings now, — the life had fled From all those corpses now, — but the wide sky Flooded with lightning was ribbed over- head By the black rafters, and around did lie Women and babes and men, slaughtered confusedly. XLVII Beside the fountain in the market-place Dismounting, I beheld those corpses stare With horny eyes upon each other’s face, And on the earth, and on the vacant air, And upon me, close to the waters where I stooped to slake my thirst; —I shrank to taste, For the salt bitterness of blood was there! But tied the steed beside, and sought in haste If any yet survived amid that ghastly waste. XLVIII No living thing was there beside one woman Whom I found wandering in the streets, and she Was withered from a likeness of aught human Into a fiend, by some strange misery; Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me, CANTO SIXTH 99 And glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed With a loud, long and frantic laugh of glee, And cried, ‘Now, mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed The Plague’s blue kisses— soon millions shall pledge the draught! XLIX ‘My name is Pestilence; this bosom dry Once fed two babes—a sister and a brother; ‘When [ came home, one in the blood did lie Of three death-wounds — the flames had ate the other! Since then I have no longer been a mother, But I am Pestilence; hither and thither I flit about, that I may slay and smother; All lips which I have kissed must surely wither, But Death’s —if thou art he, we ’ll go to work together! L ‘What seek’st thou here? the moonlight comes in flashes; The dew is rising dankly from the dell; °T will moisten her! and thou shalt see the gashes In my sweet boy, now full of worms. But tell First what thou seek’st.’— ‘I seek for food.’ —‘’T is well, Thou shalt have food. Famine, my par- amour, Waits for us at the feast — cruel and fell Is Famine, but he drives not from his door Those whom these lips have kissed, alone. No more, no more!’ LI As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength Of madness, and by many a ruined hearth She led, and over many a corpse. At length We came to a lone hut, where on the earth Which made its floor she in her ghastly mirth, Gathering from all those homes now desolate, Had piled three heaps of loaves, making a dearth Among the dead — round which she set in state A ring of cold, stiff babes; silent and stark they sate. LII She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high Her mad looks to the lightning, and cried, ‘ Eat! Share the great feast — to-morrow we must die!’ And then she spurned the loaves with her pale feet Towards her bloodless guests; — that sight to meet, Mine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she Who loved me did with absent looks defeat Despair, I might have raved in sympa- thy; But now I took the food that woman of- fered me; LI And vainly having with her madness striven If I might win her to return with me, Departed. In the eastern beams of Heaven The lightning now grew pallid, rapidly As by the shore of the tempestuous sea The dark steed bore me; and the moun- tain gray Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see Cythna among the rocks, where she al- way Had sate with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering day. LIV And joy was ours to meet. She was most pale, Famished and wet and weary; so I cast My arms around her, lest her steps should fail As to our home we went,— and, thus embraced, Her full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste 100 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Than e’er the prosperous know; the steed behind . Trod peacefully along the mountain waste; We reached our home ere morning could unbind Night’s latest veil, and on our bridal couch reclined. LV Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom, And sweetest kisses past, we two did share Our peaceful meal; as an autumnal blos- som, Which spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air After cold showers, like rainbows woven there, Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit Mauntled, and in her eyes an atmosphere Of health and hope; and sorrow lan- guished near it, And fear, and all that dark despondence doth inherit. CANTO SEVENTH I So we sate joyous as the morning ray Which fed upon the wrecks of night and storm Now lingering on the winds; light airs did play Among the dewy weeds, the sun was warm, And we sate linked in the inwoven charm Of converse and caresses sweet and deep — Speechless caresses, talk that might dis- arm Time, though he wield the darts of death and sleep, And those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison steep. II I told her of my sufferings and my mad- ness, And how, awakened from that dreamy mood By Liberty’s uprise, the strength of gladness Came to my spirit in my solitude, And all that now I was, while tears pur- sued Each other down her fair and listening cheek Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak, Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake. III She told me a strange tale of strange endurance, Like broken memories of many a heart Woven into one; to which no firm assur- ance, So wild were they, could her own faith impart. She said that not a tear did dare to start From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm, When from all mortal hope she did de- part, Borne by those slaves across the Ocean’s term, And that she reached the port without one fear infirm. Iv One was she among many there, the thralls Of the cold Tyrant’s cruel lust; and they Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls; But she was calm and sad, musing alway On loftiest enterprise, till on a day The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute A wild and sad and spirit-thrilling lay, Like winds that die in wastes — one mo- ment mute The evil thoughts it made which did his breast pollute. Vv Even when he saw her wondrous loveli- ness, One moment to great Nature’s sacred power He bent, and was no longer passionless; But when he bade her to his secret bower Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore CANTO SEVENTH ror Her locks in agony, and her words of flame And mightier looks availed not, then he pore Again his load of slavery, and became A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name. VI She told me what a loathsome agony Is that when selfishness mocks love’s delight, Foul as in dreams, most fearful imagery, To dally with the mowing dead; that night All torture, fear, or horror made seem light Which the soul dreams or knows, and when the day Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight, Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she la Struggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant fled away. VII Her madness was a beam of light, a power Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave, Gestures and looks, such as in whirl- winds bore (Which might not be withstood, whence none could save) All who approached their sphere, like some calm wave Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms be- neath; And sympathy made each attendant slave Fearless and free, and they began to breathe Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath. VIII The King felt pale upon his noon-day throne. At night two slaves he to her chamber sent; One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown : From human shape into an instrument Of all things ill— distorted, bowed and bent; The other was a wretch from infancy Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant But to obey; from the fire isles came he, A diver lean and strong, of Oman’s coral sea. IX They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas, Until upon their path the morning broke; They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze, The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades Shakes with the sleepless surge; the £Ethiop there Wound his long arms around her, and with knees Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her Among the closing waves out of the bound- less air. x ‘ Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain Of morning light into some shadowy wood, He plunged through the green silence of the main, Through many a cavern which the eter- nal flood Had scooped as dark lairs for its monster brood; And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder, And among mightier shadows which pur- sued His heels, he wound; until the dark rocks under He touched a golden chain — a sound arose like thunder, xI ‘A stunning clang of massive bolts re- doubling Beneath the deep—a burst of waters driven As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling: And in that roof of crags a space was riven Through which there shone the emerald beams of heaven, 102 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven, Like sunlight through acacia woods at even, Through which his way the diver having cloven Passed like a spark sent up out of a burn- ing oven. XII © And then,’ she said, ‘he laid me in a cave Above the waters, by that chasm of sea, A fountain round and vast, in which the wave Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpet- ually, Down which, one moment resting, he did flee, Winning the adverse depth; that spacious cell Like an hupaithric temple wide and high, Whose aéry dome is inaccessible, Was pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell. XIII ‘Below, the fountain’s brink was richly paven With the deep’s wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven With mystic legends by no mortal hand, Left there when, thronging to the moon’s command, The gathering waves rent the Hesperian ate Of ae and on such bright floor did stand Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create. XIV ‘The fiend of madness which had made its prey Of my poor heart was lulled to sleep awhile. There was an interval of many a day; And a sea-eagle brought me food the while, Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle, And who to be the jailer had been taught ——, Of that strange dungeon; as a friend whose smile Like light and rest at morn and even is sought That wild bird was to me, till madness misery brought: — XV ‘The misery of a madness slow and creep- ing, Which vide the earth seem fire, the sea seem air, And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair, Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there; And the sea-eagle looked a fiend who bore Thy mangled limbs for food !— thus all things were Transformed into the agony which I wore Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom’s core. XVI ‘Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing, The eagle and the fountain and the air; Another frenzy came — there seemed a being Within me—a strange load my heart did bear, As if some living thing had made its lair Even in the fountains of my life;—a long And wondrous vision wrought from my despair, Then grew, like sweet reality among Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng. XVII ‘Methought I was about to be a mother. Month after month went by, and still I dreamed That we should soon be all to one another, I and my child; and still new pulses seemed To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed There was a babe within — and when the rain Of winter through the rifted cavert streamed, CANTO SEVENTH 103 Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain, ( saw that lovely shape which near my heart had lain. XVUI ‘It was a babe, beautiful from its birth, — It was like thee, dear love! its eyes were thine, Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth It laid its fingers as now rest on mine Thine own, belovéd! —’t was a dream divine; Even to remember how it fled, how swift, How utterly, might make the heart re- pine, — Though ’t was a dream.’ — Then Cythna did uplift Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift — XIX A doubt which would not flee, a tender- ness Of questioning grief, a source of throng- ing tears; Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress She spoke: ‘Yes, in the wilderness of years Her memory aye like a green home ap- pears. She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love, For many months. I had no mortal fears; Methought I felt her lips and breath ap- prove [t was a human thing which to my bosom clove. XX ‘I watched the dawn of her first smiles; and soon When zenith stars were trembling on the wave, ‘ Or when the beams of the invisible moon Or sun from many a prism within the cave Their gem-born shadows to the water gave, Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand, From the swift lights which might that fountain pave, She would mark one, and laugh when, that command Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand. XXI ‘Methought her looks began to talk with me; And no articulate sounds, but something sweet Her lips would frame, — so sweet it could not be That it was meaningless; her touch would meet Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat In response while we slept; and, on a day When I was happiest in that strange re- treat, With heaps of golden shells we two did play — Both infants, weaving wings for time’s per- petual way. XXII ‘Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown Weary with joy —and, tired with our delight, We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down On one fair mother’s bosom: — from that night She fled, — like those illusions clear and bright, Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high Pause ere it wakens tempest; and her flight, Though ’t was the death of brainless fan- tasy, Yet ee my lonesome heart more than all misery. XXII ‘It seemed that in the dreary night the diver Who brought me thither came again, and bore My child away. I saw the waters quiver, When he so swiftly sunk, as once before; Then morning came —it shone even as of yore, But I was changed —the very life was gone 104 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Out of my heart—I wasted more and more, Day after day, and, sitting there alone, Vexed the inconstant waves with my per- petual moan. XXIV ‘IT was no longer mad, and yet methought My breasts were swoln and changed: — in every vein The blood stood still one moment, while that thought Was passing — with a gush of sickening ain It eine’ even to its withered springs again; When my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned From that most strange delusion, which would fain Have waked the dream for which my spirit yearned With more than human love, — then left it unreturned. XXV *So now my reason was restored to me I struggled with that dream, which like a beast Most fierce and beauteous in my mem- or Had made its lair, and on my heart did feast; But all that cave and all its shapes, pos- sessed By thoughts which could not fade, re- newed each one Some smile, some look, some gesture which had blessed Me heretofore; I, sitting there alone, Vexed the inconstant waves with my per- petual moan. XXVI * Time passed, I know not whether months or years; For day, nor night, nor change of seasons made Its note, but thoughts and unavailing tears; And I became at last even as a shade, A smoke, a cloud on which the winds have preyed, Till it be thin as air; until, one even, A Nautilus upon the fountain played, Spreading his azure sail where breath of heaven Descended not, among the waves and whirlpools driven. XXVII ‘And when the Eagle came, that lovely thing, Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat, Fled vear me as for shelter; on slow wing The Eagle hovering o’er his prey did float; ‘But when he saw that I with fear did note His purpose, proffering my own food to him, The eager plumes subsided on his throat — He came where that bright child of sea did swim, And o’er it cast in peace his shadow broad and dim. XXVIII ‘This wakened me, it gave me human strength; And hope, I know not whence or where- fore, rose, But I resumed my ancient powers at length; My spirit felt again like one of those, Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes Of humankind their prey. What was this cave ? Its deep foundation no firm purpose knows Immutable, resistless, strong to save, Like mind while yet it mocks the all-de- vouring grave. XXIX ‘And where was Laon? might my heart be dead, While that far dearer heart could move and be? Or whilst over the earth the pall was spread Which I had sworn to rend? I might be free, Could I but win that friendly bird to me To bring me ropes; and long in vain I sought By intercourse of mutual imagery CANTO SEVENTH TOS Of objects if such aid he could be taught; SAU Sut fruit and flowers and boughs, yet never | ‘Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at ropes he brought. XXX © We live in our own world, and mine was made From glorious fantasies of hope departed; Aye we are darkened with their floating shade, Or cast a lustre on them; time imparted Such power to me —I became fearless- hearted, My eye and voice grew firm, calm was my mind, And piercing, like the morn, now it has darted Its lustre on all hidden things behind Yon dim and fading clouds which load the weary wind. XXXI ‘My mind became the book throngh which I grew Wise in all human wisdom, and its cave, Which like a mine I rifled through and through, To me the keeping of its secrets gave — One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave Whose calm reflects all moving things that are, Necessity, and love, and life, the grave, And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear, Justice, and truth, and time, and the world’s natural sphere. XXXIL * And on the sand would I make signs to range These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought; Clear elemental shapes, whose smallest change A subtler language within language wrought — The key of truths which once were dimly taught In old Crotona; and sweet melodies Of love in that lorn solitude I caught From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes Shone through my sleep, and did that utter- ance harmonize. will, As in a winged chariot, o’er the plain Of crystal youth; and thou wert there to fill My heart with joy, and there we sate again On the gray margin of the glimmering main, Happy as then but wiser far, for we Smiled on the flowery grave in which were lain Fear, Faith and Slavery: and mankind was free, Equal, and pure, and wise, in Wisdom’s prophecy. XXXIV ‘For to my will my fancies were as slaves To do their sweet and subtle minis- tries; And oft from that bright fountain’s shadowy waves They would make human throngs gather and rise To combat with my overflowing eyes And voice made deep with passion; — thus I grew Familiar with the shock and the sur- prise And war of earthly minds, from which I drew The power which has been mine to frame their thoughts anew. XXKV ‘And thus my prison was the populous earth, Where I saw—even as misery dreams of morn Before the east has given its glory birth — Religion’s pomp made desolate by the scorn Of Wisdom’s faintest smile, and thrones uptorn, And dwellings of mild people inter- spersed With undivided fields of ripening corn, And love made free—a hope which we have nursed Even with our blood and tears,— until its glory burst. 106 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM XXXVI ‘ All is not lost! There is some recom- pense For hope whose fountain can be thus pro- found, — Even thronéd Evil’s splendid impotence Girt by its hell of power, the secret sound Of hymns to truth and freedom, the dread bound Of life and death passed fearlessly and well, Dungeons wherein the high resolve is found, Racks which degraded woman’s greatness tell, And what may else be good and irresistible. XXXVII ‘Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that flare In storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet In this dark ruin — such were mine even there; As in its sleep some odorous violet, While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet, Breathes in prophetic dreams of day’s uprise, Or as, ere Scythian frost in fear has met Spring’s messengers descending from the skies, The buds foreknow their life — this hope must ever rise. XXXVIII ‘So years had passed, when sudden earth- quake rent The depth of Ocean, and the cavern cracked With sound, as if the world’s wide con- tinent Had fallen in universal ruin wracked, And through the cleft streamed in one cataract The stifling waters: — when I woke, the flood Whose banded waves that crystal cave had sacked Was ebbing round me, and my bright abode Before me yawned —a chasm desert, and bare, and broad. A XXXIX ‘Above me was the sky, beneath the sea; I stood upon a point of shattered stone, And heard loose rocks rushing tumultu- ously With splash and shock into the deep — anon All ceased, and there was silence wide and lone. I felt that I was free! The Ocean spray Quivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone Around, and in my hair the winds did play Lingering as they pursued their unim- peded way. XL ‘My spirit moved upon the sea like wind Which round some thymy cape will lag and hover, Though it can wake the still cloud, and unbind The strength of tempest. Day was al- most over, When through the fading light I could discover A ship approaching—its white sails were fed With the north wind —its moving shade did cover The twilight deep; the mariners in dread Cast anchor when they saw new rocks around them spread. xXLI ‘ And when they saw one sitting on a crag, They sent a boat to me; the sailors rowed In awe through many a new and fearful Jag Of overhanging rock, through which there flowed The foam of streams that cannot make abode. They came and questioned me, but when they heard My voice, they became silent, and they stood And moved as men in whom new love had stirred Deep thoughts; so to the ship we passed without a word. CANTO EIGHTH 107 CANTO EIGHTH I ‘I sate beside the steersman then, and gazing Upon the west cried, “Spread the sails ! behold ! The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing Over the mountains yet; the City of Gold Yon Cape alone does from the sight with- hold; The stream is fleet —the north breathes steadily Beneath the stars; they tremble with the cold! Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea! — Haste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny !” II ‘The Mariners obeyed; the Captain stood Aloof, and whispering to the Pilot said, “ Alas, alas! I fear we are pursued By wicked ghosts; a Phantom of the Dead, The night before we sailed, came to my bed In dream, like that!” The Pilot then replied, “Tt caunot be — she is a human maid — Her low voice makes you weep — she is some bride, Or daughter of high birth—she can be nought beside.” III ‘We passed the islets, borne by wind and stream, Aud as we sailed the Mariners caine near And thronged around to listen; in the gleam Of the pale moon I stood, as ove whom fear May not attaint, and my calm voice did rear: “Ye are all human — yon broad moon gives light To millions who the self-same likeness wear, Even while 1 speak — beneath this very night, Their thoughts flow on like ours, in sadness or delight. IV ‘« What dream ye ? Your own hands have built an home Even for yourselves on a belovéd shore; For some, fond eyes are pining till they come — How they will greet him when his toils are o’er, And laughing babes rush from the well- known door! Is this your care ? ye toil for your own gooa — Ye feel and think — has some immortal power Such purposes ? or in a human mood Dream ye some Power thus builds for man in solitude? Vv ‘« What is that Power? Ye mock your. selves, and give A human heart to what ye cannot know: As if the cause of life could think and live! °T were as if man’s own works should feel, and show The hopes and fears and thoughts from which they flow, And he be like to them. Lo! Plague is free To waste, Blight, Poison, Earthquake, Hail, and Snow, Disease, and Want, and worse Necessity Of hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny. VI ‘« What is that Power? Some moon- struck sophist stood, Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood The Form he saw and worshipped was his own, His likeness in the world’s vast mirror shown; And ’t were an innocent dream, but that a faith Nursed by fear’s dew of poison grows thereon, And that men say that Power has chosen Death On all who scorn its laws to wreak immorta! wrath, 108 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM VII ‘«“ Men say that they themselves have heard and seen, Or known from others who have known such things, A Shade, « Form, which Earth and Heaven between Wields an invisible rod —that Priests and Kings, Custom, domestic brings Man’s free-born soul beneath the op- pressor’s heel, Are his strong ministers, and that the stings Of death will make the wise his ven- geance feel, Though truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel. sway, ay, all that VIII ‘« And it is said this Power will punish wrong; Yes, add despair to crime, and pain to ain ! And deepest hell, and deathless snakes among, Will bind the wretch on whom is fixed a stain, Which, like a plague, a burden, and a bane, Clung to him while he lived; for love and hate, Virtue and vice, they say, are difference vain — The will of strength is right. This hu- man state Tyrants, that they may rule, with lies thus desolate. IX s« Alas, what strength? Opinion is more frail Than yon dim cloud now fading on the moon Even while we gaze, though it awhile avail To hide the orb of truth — and every throne Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow, rests thereon, One shape of many names: — for this ye plough “he barren waves of Ocean —hence each one Is slave or tyrant; all betray and bow, Command, or kill, or fear, or wreak or suffer woe. x ‘“Tts names are each a sign which mak- eth holy All power — ay, the ghost, the dream, the shade Of power —lust, falsehood, hate, and pride, and folly; The pattern whence all fraud and wrong is made, A law to which mankind has been be- trayed; And human love is as the name well known Of a dear mother whom the murderer laid In bloody grave, and, into darkness thrown, Gathered her wildered babes around him as his own. XI ««O Love, who to the hearts of wander- ing men Art as the calm to Ocean’s weary waves ! Justice, or Truth, or Joy ! those only can From slavery and religion’s labyrinth- caves Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves. To give to all an equal share of good, To track the steps of Freedom, though through graves She pass, to suffer all in patient mood, To weep for crime though stained with thy friend’s dearest blood, XII ese ae the peace of self-contentment’s ot, To own all sympathies, and outrage none, And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought, Until life’s sunny day is quite gone down, To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone, To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe; To live as if to love and live were one, — This is not faith or law, nor those who bow To thrones on Heaven or Earth such destiny may know. CANTO EIGHTH 10g may That love, which none may bind, be free «« But children near their parents tremble to fill now, The world, like light; and evil faith, Because they must obey; one rules grown hoary another, With crime, be quenched and die. — And, as one Power rules both high and Yon promontory low, Even now eclipses the descending So man is made the captive of his brother, moon ! — And Hate is throned on high with Fear his mother Above the Highest; and those fountain- cells, Whence love yet flowed when faith had choked all other, Are darkened — Woman as the bond- slave dwells Of man, a slave; and life is poisoned in its wells. XIV ‘“Man seeks for gold in mines that he may weave A lasting ehain for his own slavery; In fear and restless care that he may live He toils for others who must ever be The joyless thralls of like captivity; He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin; He builds the altar that its idol’s fee May be his very blood; he is pursuing — Oh, blind and willing wretch !— his own obscure undoing. xv «« Woman !—she is his slave, she has become A thing I weep to speak — the child of scorn, The outcast of a desolated home; Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn As calm decks the false Ocean: — well ye know What Woman is, for none of Woman born Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe, Which ever from the oppressed to the op- pressors flow. XVI ‘This need not be; ye might arise, and will That gold should lose its power, and thrones their glory; Dungeons and palaces are transitory — High temples fade like vapor — Man alone Remains, whose will has power when all beside is gone. XVII «Let all be free and equal !— fcom your hearts I feel an echo; through my inmost frame Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate it darts. Whence come ye, friends? Alas, I can- not name All that I read of sorrow, toil and shame On your worn faces; as in legends old Which make immortal the disastrous fame Of conquerors and impostors false and bold, The discord of your hearts I in your looks behold. XVIII «« Whence come ye, friends ? from pour- ing human blood Forth on the earth? or bring ye steel and gold, That kings may dupe and slay the multi- tude ? Or from the famished poor, pale, weak and cold, Bear ye the earnings of their toil ? un- fold! Speak ! are your hands in slaughter’s sanguine hue Stained freshly ? have your hearts in guile grown old ? Know yourselves thus ! ye shall be pure as dew, And I will be a friend and sister unto you. xIX ‘« Disguise it not — we have one human heart — All mortal thoughts confess a common home: 110 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Blush not for what may to thyself impart Stains of inevitable crime; the doom Is this, which has, or may, or must, be- come Thine, and all humankind’s. the spoil Which Time thus marks for the devour- ing tomb — Thou and thy thoughts, and they, and all the toil Wherewith ye twine the rings of life’s per- petual coil. Ye are xX ‘« Disguise it not —ye blush for what ye hate, And Enmity is sister unto Shame; Look on your mind — it is the book of fate — Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name Of misery —all are mirrors of the same; But the dark fiend who with his iron pen, Dipped in scorn’s fiery poison, makes his fame Enduring there, would o’er the heads of men Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den. XXI ©« Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing Of many names, all evil, some divine, Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting; Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwine, Ts wasted, quite, and when it doth repine To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine When Amphisbena some fair bird has tied Soon, o’er the putrid mass he threats on every side. XXII ‘« Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself, Nor hate another’s crime, nor loathe thine own. It is the dark idolatry of self, Which, when our thoughts and actions once are one. Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan; Oh, vacant expiation ! be at rest ! The past is Death’s, the future is thine own; And love and joy can make the foulest breast A paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest. XXIII ‘Speak thou! whence come ye?” — A youth made reply, — “Wearily, wearily o’er the boundless deep We sail; thou readest well the misery Told in these faded eyes, but much doth sleep Within, which there the poor heart loves to keep, Or dare not write on the dishonored brow; Even from our childhood have we learned to steep The bread of slavery in the tears of woe, And never dreamed of hope or refuge un- til now. XXIV ‘«Yes—I must speak — my secret should have perished Even with the heart it wasted, as a brand Fades in the dying flame whose life it cherished, But that no human bosom can withstand Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command Of thy keen eyes: — yes, we are wretched slaves, Who from their wonted loves and native land Are reft, and bear o’er the dividing waves The unregarded prey of calm and happy graves. XXV ‘“ We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest enone the daughters of those mountains one; We drag them there where all thing: best and rarest Are stained and trampled; years have come and gone CANTO NINTH Tit Since, like the ship which bears me, I have known No thought; but now the eyes of one dear maid On mine with light of mutual love have shone — She is my life — I am but as the shade Of her — a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade! — XXVI ‘For she must perish in the Tyrant’s hall — Alas, alas!” — He ceased, and by the sail Sat cowering — but his sobs were heard by all, And still before the Ocean and the gale The ship fled fast till the stars ’gan to fail; And, round me gathered with mute countenance, The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale With toil, the Captain with gray locks whose glance Met mine in restless awe — they stood as in a trance. XXVII ‘« Recede not! pause not now! thou art grown old, But Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth Are children of one mother, even Love — behold ! The eternal stars gaze on us !—is the truth Within your soul? care for your own, or ruth For others’ sufferings? do ye thirst to bear A heart which not the serpent Custom’s tooth May violate ?— be free ! and even here, Swear to be firm till death !” — they cried, “ We swear! we swear!” XXVIII ‘The very darkness shook, as with a blast Of subterranean thunder, at the ery; The hollow shore its thousand echoes cast Into the night, as if the sea and sky And earth rejoiced with new-born liberty, For in that name they swore! Bolts were undrawn, And on the deck with unaccustomed eye The captives gazing stood, and every one Shrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance shone. XXIX ‘They were earth’s young and fair, With eyes the shrines of unawakened purest children, thought, And brows as bright as spring or morn- ing, ere Dark time had there its evil legend wrought In characters of cloud which wither not. The change was like a dream to them; but soon a knew the glory of their altered ot — In the bright wisdom of youth’s breath- less noon, Sweet talk and smiles and sighs all bosoms did attune. XXX ‘But one was mute; her cheeks and lips most fair, Changing their hue like lilies newly blown Beneath a bright acacia’s shadowy hair Waved by the wind amid the sunny noon, Showed that her soul was quivering; and full soon That youth arose, and breathlessly did look On her and me, as for some speechless boon; I smiled, and both their hands in mine I took, And felt a soft delight from what their spirits shook. CANTO NINTH I ‘Tuat night we anchored in a woody bay, And sleep no more around us dared to hover Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away, It shades the couch of some anresting lover F12 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Whose heart is now at rest; thus night passed over In mutual joy; around, a forest grew Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover The waning stars pranked in the waters blue, And trembled in the wind which from the morning flew. II * The joyous mariners and each free maiden Now brought from the deep forest many a bough, With woodland spoil most innocently laden; Soon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow Over the mast and sails; the stern and prow Were ecanopied with blooming boughs; the while On the slant sun’s path o’er the waves we go Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle Doomed to pursue those waves that cannot wease to smile. III *The many ships spotting the dark blue deep With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh, In fear and wonder; and on every steep Thousands did gaze. They heard the startling ery, Like earth’s own voice lifted unconquer- ably To all her children, the unbounded mirth, The glorious joy of thy name — Liberty ! They heard !— As o’er the mountains of the earth from peak to peak leap on the beams of morning’s birth, Iv ‘So from that ery over the boundless hills Sudden was caught one universal sound, Like a volcano’s voice whose thunder fills Remotest skies, — such glorious madness found A path throngh human hearts with stream which drowned Its struggling fears and cares, dark Cus- tom’s brood; They knew not whence it came, but felt around A wide contagion poured — they cailed aloud On Liberty — that name lived on the sunny flood. Vv ‘We reached the port. Alas! from many spirits The wisdom which had waked that cry was fled, Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread, Upon the night’s devouring darkness shed; Yet soon bright day will burst — even like a chasm Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead Which wrap the world; a wide enthusi- asm, To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake’s spasm ! VI ‘I walked through the great City then, but free From shame or fear; those toil-worn mariners And happy maidens did encompass me; And like a subterranean wind that stirs Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears From every human soul a murmur strange Made as I passed; and many wept with tears Of joy and awe, and wingéd thoughts did range, And half-extinguished words which prophe- sied of change. VII ‘For with strong speech I tore the veil that hid Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love, — As one ane from some mountain’s pyra- mi CANTO NINTH 113 Points to the unrisen sun! the shades approve His truth, and flee from every stream and grove. Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill, Wisdom the mail of tried affections wove For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill Thrice steeped in molten steel the uncon- querable will. VIII ‘Some said I was a maniac wild and lost; Some, that I searce had risen from the grave The Prophet’s virgin bride, a heavenly ghost; Some said I was a fiend from my weird cave, Who had stolen human shape, and o’er the wave, The forest, and the mountain, came; some said I was the child of God, sent down to save Woman from bonds and death, and on my head The burden of their sins would frightfully be laid. Ix ‘But soon my human words found sympa- thy In human hearts; the purest and the best, As friend with friend, made common cause with me, And they were few, but resolute; the rest, Ere yet success the enterprise had blessed, Leagued with me in their hearts; their meals, their slumber, Their hourly occupations, were possessed By hopes which I had armed to over- number Those hosts of meaner cares which life’s strong wings encumber. x ‘But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken From their cold, careless, willing slavery, Sought me; one truth their dreary prison has shaken, They looked around, and lo! they be- came free ! Their many tyrants, sitting desolately In slave-deserted halls, could none re, strain; For wrath’s red fire had withered in the eye Whose lightning once was death, — nor fear nor gain Could tempt one captive now to lock an- other’s chain. XI ‘Those who were sent to bind me wept, and felt Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round, Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt In the white furnace; and a visioned swound, A pause of hope and awe, the City bound, Which, like the silence of a tempest’s birth, When in its awful shadow it has wound The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth, Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth. XII ‘ Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky By winds from distant regions meeting there, In the high name of Truth and Liberty Around the City millions gathered were By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair, — Words which the lore of truth in hues of grace Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air Like homeless odors floated, and the name Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame. XIII ‘The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear, The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event — That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer, And whatsoe’er, when Force is impotent, 114 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM To Fraud the sceptre of the world has lent. Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway. Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent To curse the rebels. they For Earthquake, Plague and Want, kneel in the public way. To their gods did XIV ‘And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell, From seats where law is made the slave of wrong, How glorious Athens in her splendor fell, Because her sons were free, — and that among Mankind, the many to the few belong By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity. They said, that age was truth, and that the young Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery, With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free. XV ‘And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips They Freathiedd on the enduring memory Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse. There was one teacher, who necessity Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind, His slave and his avenger aye to be; That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind, And that the will of one was peace, and we Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery — XV1 «« For thus we might avoid the hell here- after.” So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied. Alas, their sway was passed, and tears and laughter Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide; And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow, And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide, Said that the rule of men was over now, And hence the subject world to woman’s will must bow. XVII ‘And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall. In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine As they were wont, nor at the priestly call Left Plague her banquet in the Athiop’s hall, Nor Famine from the rich man’s portal came, Where at her ease she ever preys on all Who throng to kneel for food; nor fear, nor shame, Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope’s newly kindled flame. XVII ‘For gold was as a god whose faith be- an To fade, so that its worshippers were few; And Faith itself, which in the heart of man Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew, Till the Priests stood alone within the fane; The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew, And the cold sneers of calumny were vain The union of the free with discord’s brand to stain. XIX ‘The rest thou knowest.— Lo! we two are bere — We have survived a ruin wide and deep — Strange thoughts are mine. I cannot grieve or fear. Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep I smile, though human love should make me weep. We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow, And I do feel a mighty calmness creep CANTO NINTH IIS Over my heart, which can no longer borrow [ts hues from chance or change, dark chil- dren of to-morrow. XX ‘We know not what will come. Yet, Laon, dearest, Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love; Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest, To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove Within the homeless Future’s wintry Tove; For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem Even with thy breath and blood to live and move, And violence and wrong are as a dream Which rolls from steadfast truth, — an un- returning stream. XXI ‘The blasts of Autumn drive the wingéd seeds Over the earth; next come the snows, and rain, And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train. Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again, Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings; Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, And music on the waves and woods she flings, And love on all that lives, and calm on life- less things. XXII +O Spring, of hope and love and youth and gladness Wind-wingtd emblem! brightest, best and fairest ! Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter’s sadness The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest ? Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest Thy mother’s dying smile, tender and sweet; Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet, Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding sheet. XXIII ‘Virtue and Hope and Love, like light and Heaven, Surround the world. Weare their chosen slaves. Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven Truth’s deathless germs to thought’s re- motest caves ? Lo, Winter comes! — the grief of many graves, The frost of death, the tempest of the sword, The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter’c word, And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred. XXIV ‘The seeds are sleeping in the soil. Mean- while The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey; A Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile Because they cannot speak; and, day by day, The moon of wasting Science wanes away Among her stars, and in that darkness vast The sons of earth to their foul idols pray, And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast A shade of selfish care o’er human looks is east. XXV ‘This is the Winter of the world; ana here We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade, Expiring in the frore and foggy air. Behold ! Spring comes, though we must pass who made The promise of its birth,— even as the shade 116 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Which from our death, as from a moun- tain, flings The future, a broad sunrise; thus ar- rayed As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, From its dark gulf of chains Earth like an eagle springs. XXVI ‘QO dearest love! we shall be dead and cold Before this morn may on the world arise. Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn be- hold ? Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes On thine own heart — it is a Paradise Which everlasting spring has made its own, And while drear winter fills the naked skies, Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh blown, Are there, and weave their sounds and odors into one. XXVII ‘In their own hearts the earnest of the hope Which made them great the good will ever tind; And though some envious shade may interlope Between the effect and it, One comes behind, / Who aye the future to the past will bind — Necessity, whose sightless strength for- ever Evil with evil, good with good, must wind In bands of union, which no power may sever; They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never ! XXVIII ‘The good and mighty of departed ages Are in their graves, the innocent and free, Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages, Who leave the vesture of their majesty To adorn and clothe this naked world; —and we Are like to them — such perish, but they leave All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty, Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive, To be a rule and law to ages that survive. XXIX ‘So be the turf heaped over our remains Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot, Whate’er it be, when in these mingling veins The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought Pass from our being, or be numbered not Among the things that are; let those who come Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought A calm inheritance, a glorious doom, Insult with careless tread our undivided tomb. XXX ‘Our maay thoughts and deeds, our life and love, Our happiness, and all that we have been, Immortally must live and burn and move When we shall be no more; — the world has seen A type of peace; and as some most serene And lovely spot to a poor maniac’s eye — After long years some sweet and moving scene Of youthful hope returning suddenly — Quells his long madness, thus Man shall remember thee. XXXI ‘And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us As worms devour the dead, and near the throne And at the altar most accepted thus Shall sneers and curses be;— what we have done None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known; That record shall remain when they must pass Who built their pride on its oblivion, CANTO TENTH 117 And fame, in human hope which sculp- tured was, Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass. XXXII ‘The while we two, belovéd, must depart, And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair, Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair ; These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there To fade in hideous ruin ; no calm sleep, Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air, Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep In joy;— but senseless death —a ruin dark and deep! XXXIII ‘These are blind fancies. Reason cannot know What sense can neither feel nor thought conceive; There is delusion in the world —and woe, And fear, and pain—we know not whence we live, Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give Their being to each plant, and star, and beast, Or even these thoughts.— Come near me! Ido weave A chain I cannot break — I am possessed With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast. XXXIV “Yes, yes—thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm — Oh, willingly, beloved, would these eyes Might they no more drink being from thy form, Even as to sleep whence we again arise, Close their faint orbs in death. I fear nor prize Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee. Yes, Love when Wisdom fails makes Cythna wise; Darkness and death, if death be true, must be Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed with thee. XXXV ‘ Alas! our thoughts flow on with stream whose waters Return not to their fountain; Earth and Heaven, The Ocean and the Sun, the clouds their daughters, Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even — All that we are or know, is darkly driven Towards one gulf.— Lo! what a change is come Since I first spake — but time shall be for- given, Though it change all but thee!’ She ceased — night’s gloom Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky’s sunless dome. XXXVI Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted To Heaven still spake with solemn glory bright; Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose mo- tions gifted The air they breathed with love, her locks undight; ‘Fair star of life and love,’ I cried, ‘my soul’s delight, Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies ? Oh, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night, Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!’ She turned to me and smiled — that smile was Paradise ! CANTO TENTH I Was there a human spirit in the steed That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone, He broke our linkéd rest ? or do indeed All living things a common nature own, And thought erect an universal throne, Where many shapes one tribute ever bear ? 118 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan To see her sons contend ? and makes she bare fler breast that all in peace its drainless stores may share ? II Ihave heard friendly sounds from many a tongue Which was not human; the lone nightin- gale Has answered me with her most soothing song, Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale The antelopes who flocked for food have spoken With happy sounds and motions that avail Like man’s own speech; and such was now the token Jf waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken. MII Each night that mighty steed bore me abroad, And I returned with food to our retreat, And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed Over the fields had stained the courser’s feet; Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew, — then meet The vulture, and the wild-dog, and the snake, The wolf, and the hyena gray, and eat The dead in horrid truce; their throngs did make Behind the steed a chasm like waves in a ship’s wake. Iv For from the utmost realms of earth came pouring The banded slaves whom every despot sent At that throned traitor’s summons; like the roaring Of fire, whose floods the wild deer cir- cumvent In the scorched pastures of the south, so bent The armies of the leaguéd kings around Their files of steel and flame; the conti- nent Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound, Beneath their feet — the sea shook with their Navies’ sound. Vv From every nation of the earth they came, The multitude of moving heartless things, Whom slaves call men; obediently they came, Like sheep whom from the fold the shep- herd brings To the stall, red with blood; their many kings Led them, thus erring, from their native land — Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings Of Indian breezes lull; and many a band The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea’s sand VI Fertile in prodigies and lies. So there Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill. The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear His Asian shield and bow when, at the will Of Europe’s subtler son, the bolt would kill Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure; But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill, And savage sympathy; those slaves im- pure Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure. vir For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe His countenance in lies; even at the hour When he was snatched from death, then o’er the globe, With secret signs from many a moun- tain tower, With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power Of Kings and Priests, those dark con- spirators, He called; they knew his cause their own, and swore CANTO TENTH 11g Like wolves and serpents to their mu- tual wars Strange truce, with many «a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors. VII Myriads had come — millions were on their way; The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel Of hired assassins, through the public way, Choked with his country’s dead; his foot- steps reel On the fresh blood —he smiles. ‘Ay, now I feel I am a King in truth!’ he said, and took His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook, And scorpions, that his soul on its revenge might look. IX ‘But first, go slay the rebels — why return The victor bands?’ he said, ‘ millions yet live, Of whom the weakest with one word might turn The scales of victory yet; let none sur- vive But those within the walls —each fifth shall give The expiation for his brethren here. Go forth, and waste and kill!’ —‘O king, forgive My speech,’ a soldier answered, ‘ but we fear The spirits of the night, and morn is draw- ing near; xX ‘For we were slaying still without remorse, And now that dreadful chief beneath my hand Defenceless lay, when on a hell-black horse An Angel bright as day, waving a brand Which flashed among the stars, passed.’ — ‘Dost thon stand Parleying with me, thou wretch?’ the king replied; ‘Slaves, bind him to the wheel; and of this band Whoso will drag that woman to his side That scared him thus may burn his dearest foe beside; xI ‘And gold and glory shall be his. Go forth !’ They rushed into the plain. Loud was the roar Of their career; the horsemen shook the earth; The wheeled artillery’s speed the pave- ment tore; The infantry, file after file, did pour Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they slew Among the wasted fields; the sixth saw gore Stream through the City; on the seventh the dew Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew: XII Peace in the desert fields and villages, Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead ! Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries Of victims, to their fiery judgment led, Made pale their voiceless lips who seemed. to dread, Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue Be faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed; Peace in the Tyrant’s palace, where the throng Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song ! XI Day after day the burning Sun rolled on Over the death-polluted land. It came Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone A lamp of autumn, ripening with ity flame The few lone ears of corn; the sky be- came Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast Languished and died; the thirsting air did claim All moisture, and a rotting vapor passed. From the unburied dead, invisible and fast 120 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM XIV First Want, then Plague, came on the beasts; their food Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay. Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood Had lured, or who from regions far awa Had tracked the hosts in festival array, From their dark deserts, gaunt and wasting now Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey; In their green eyes a strange disease did low — They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow. xV The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds In the green woods perished; the insect race Was withered up; the scattered flocks and herds Who had survived the wild beasts’ hun- gry chase Died moaning, each upon the other’s face In helpless agony gazing; round the City All night, the lean hyenas their sad case Like starving infants wailed —a woful ditty; And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity. XVI Amid the aérial minarets on high ‘The #thiopian vultures fluttering fell From their long line of brethren in the sky, Startling the concourse of mankind. Too well These signs the coming mischief did foretell. Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread, Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell, A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread With the quick glance of eyes, like withere ing lightnings shed. XVII Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts Strip its green crown of leaves till all is bare; So on those strange and congregated hosts Came Famine, a swift shadow, and the air Groaned with the burden of a new de- spair; Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter Feeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping there With lidless eyes lie Faith and Plague and Slaughter — A ghastly brood conceived of Lethe’s sullen water. XVUI There was no food; the corn was tram- pled down, The flocks and herds had perished; on the shore The dead and pvtrid fish were ever thrown; The deeps were foodless, and the winds no more Creaked with the weight of birds, but as before Those wingéd things sprang forth, were void of shade; The vines and orchards, autumn’s golden store, Were burned; so that the meanest food was weighed With gold, and avarice died before the god it made. XIX There was no corn — in the wide market- place All loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold; They weighed it in small scales— and many a face Was ares in eager horror then. His go The miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold Through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain; The mother brought her eldest born, controlled CANTO TENTH 121 By instinct blind as love, but turned again XXII And bade her infant suck, and died in Sometimes the living by the dead were silent pain. hid. Near the great fountain in the public ee square, Then fell blue Plague upon the race of Where corpses made a crumbling pyra- man. mid ‘Qh, for the sheathéd steel, so late which Under the sun, was heard one stifled ave prayer Oblivion to the dead when the streets ran With brothers’ blood! Oh, that the earthquake’s grave Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave !” Vain cries — throughout the streets thou- sands pursued Each by his fiery torture howl and rave Or sit in frenzy’s unimagined mood Upon fresh heaps of dead —a ghastly multitude. XXI It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well Was choked with rotting corpses, and became A ealdron of green mist made visible At sunrise. Thither still the myriads came, Seeking to quench the agony of the flame Which raged like poison through their bursting veins; Naked they were from torture, without shame, Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains — Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains. XXII It was not thirst, but madness! Many saw . Their own lean image everywhere — it went A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent, Songht, with a horrid sympathy, to shed Contagion on the sound; and others rent Their matted hair, and cried aloud, ‘ We tread On fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread.’ For life, in the hot silence of the air; And strange *t was ’mid that hideous heap to see Some shrouded in their long and golden hair, As if not dead, but slumbering quietly, Like forms which sculptors carve, then love to agony. XX1V Famine had spared the palace of the King; He rioted in festival the while, He and his guards and Priests; Plague did fling One shadow upon all. Famine can smile On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile Of thankful falsehood, like « courtier but gray, The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile Comes Plague, a loathes alway The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey. wingéd wolf, who XXV So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast, Sheathed in resplendent arms, or loosely dight To luxury, ere the mockery yet had ceased That lingered on his lips, the warrior’s might Was loosened, and a new and ghastlier night In dreams of frenzy lapped his eyes; he fell Headlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate up- right Among the guests, or raving mad did tell Strange truths —a dying seer of dark op- nression’s hell. [22 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM XXVI The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror; That monstrous faith wherewith they ruled mankind Fell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman’s error, On their own hearts; they sought and they could find No refuge — ’t was the blind who led the blind! So, through the desolate streets to the high fane, The many-tongued and endless armies wind In sad procession; each among the train To his own idol lifts his supplications vain. XXVIT ‘O God!’ they cried, ‘we know our secret pride Has scorned thee, and thy worship, and thy name; Secure in human power, we have defied Thy fearful might; we bend in fear and shame Before thy presence; with the dust we claim Kindred; be merciful, O King of Heaven! Most justly have we suffered for thy fame Made dim, but be at length our sins for- given, Ere to despair and death thy worshippers be driven! XXVIII ‘O King of Glory! Thou alone hast power ! Who can resist thy will? who can re- strain Thy wrath when on the guilty thou dost shower The shafts of thy revenge, a blistering rain ? Greatest and best, be merciful again ! Have we not stabbed thine enemies, and made The Earth an altar, and the Heavens a fane, Where thou wert worshipped with their blood, and laid Those hearts in dust which would thy searchless works have weighed ? XXIX ‘Well didst thou loosen on this impious City Thine angels of revenge! recall them now; Thy worshippers abased here kneel for pity, And bind their souls by an immortal vow. We swear by thee — and to our oath do thou Give sanction from thine hell of fiends and flame — That we will kill with fire and torments slow The last of those who mocked thy holy name And scorned the sacred laws thy prophets did proclaim.’ XXX Thus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips Worshipped their own hearts’ image, dim and vast, Scared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse The light of other minds; troubled they passed From the great Temple; fiercely still and fast The ever of the plague among them eu, And they on one another gazed aghast, And through the hosts contention wild befell, As each of his own god the wondrous works did tell. XXXI And Oxomaze, Joshua, and Mahomet, Moses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh, A tumult of strange names, which never met Before, as watchwords of a single woe, Arose; each ragung votary’gan to throw Aloft his arméd hands, and each did howl ‘Our God alone is God!’ and slaughter now Would have gone forth, when from be- neath a cowl A voice came forth which pierced like ice through every soul. CANTO TENTH 123 XXXII *T was an Iberian Priest from whom it came, A zealous man, who led the legioned West, With words which faith and pride had steeped in flame, To quell the unbelievers; a dire guest Even to his friends was he, for in his breast Did hate and guile lie watchful, inter- twined, Twin serpents in one deep and winding nest; He loathed all faith beside his own, and pmed To wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on mankind. XXXII But more he loathed and hated the clear light Of wisdom and free thought, and more did fear, Lest, kindled once, its beams might pierce the night, Even where his Idol stood; for far and near Did many a heart in Europe leap to hear That faith and tyranny were trampled down, — Many a pale victim, doomed for truth to share The murderer’s cell, or see with helpless groan The Priests his children drag for slaves to serve their own. XXXIV He dared not kill the infidels with fire Or steel, in Europe; the slow agonies Of legal torture mocked his keen desire; So he made truce with those who did de- spise The expiation and the sacrifice, That, though detested, Islam’s kindred creed Might crush for him those deadlier ene- mies; For fear of God did in his bosom breed A jealous hate of man, an unreposing need. XXXV * Peace ! Peace !’ he cried, ‘ when we are dead, the Day Of Judgment comes, and all shall surely know Whose God is God; each fearfully shall pay The errors of his faith in endless woe ! But there is sent 4 mortal vengeance now On earth, because an impious race had spurned Him whom we all adore, —a subtle foe, By whom for ye this dread reward was earned, And kingly thrones, which rest on faith, nigh overturned. XXXVI ‘Think ye, because ye weep and kneel and pray, That God will lull the pestilence? It rose Even from beneath his throne, where, many a day, His mercy soothed it to a dark repose; It walks upon the earth to judge his foes, And what art thou and I, that he should deign To curb his ghastly minister, or close The gates of death, ere they receive the twain Who shook with mortal spells his unde- fended reign ? XXXVII ‘ Ay, there is famine in the gulf of hell, Its giant worms of fire forever yawn, — Their lurid eyes are on us! those who fell By the swift shafts of pestilence ere dawn Are in their jaws! they hunger for the spawn Of Satan, their own brethren, who were sent To make our souls their spoil. See, see! they fawn Like dogs, and they will sleep, with lux- ury spent, When those detested hearts their iron fangs have rent ! XXXVIII ‘Our God may then lull Pestilence to sleep. Pile high the pyre of expiation now ! A forest’s spoil of boughs; and on the heap 124 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Pour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow, When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow, A stream of clinging fire, — and fix on high A net of iron, and spread forth below A couch of snakes, and scorpions, and the fry Of centipedes and worms, earth’s hellish progeny ! XXXIX ‘Let Laon and Laone on that pyre, Linked tight with burning brass, perish! — then pray That with this sacrifice the withering ire Of Heaven may be appeased.’ He ceased, and they A space stood silent, as far, far away The echoes of his voice among them died; And he knelt down upon the dust, alway Muttering the curses of his speechless ride, Whilst shame, and fear, and awe, the armies did divide. XL His voice was like a blast that burst the portal Of fabled hell; and as he spake, each one Saw gape beneath the chasms of fire im- mortal, Aud Heaven above seemed cloven, where, on a throne Girt round with storms and shadows, sate alone Their King and Judge. every breast All natural pity then, a fear unknown Before, and with an inward fire possessed They raged like homeless beasts whom burning woods invest. Fear killed in XLI ’T was morn. — At noon the public crier went forth, Proclaiming through the living and the dead, — *The Monarch saith that his great em- pire’s worth Is set on Laon and Laone’s head; He who but one yet living here can lead, Or who the life from both their hearts can wring, Shall be the kingdom’s heir — a glorious meed ! But he who both alive can hither bring The Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal King.’ XLII Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron Was spread above, the fearful couch be- low; It overtopped the towers that did environ That spacious square; for Fear is never slow To build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe; So she scourged forth the maniae mul- titude To rear this pyramid — tottering and slow, Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued By gadflies, they have piled the heath and gums and wood. XLIII Night came, a starless and a moonless loom. Until the dawn, those hosts of many a nation Stood round that pile, as near one lover’s tomb Two gentle sisters mourn their desola- tion; And in the silence of that expectation Was heard on high the reptiles’ hiss and crawl — It was so deep, save when the devastation Of the swift pest with fearful interval, Marking its path with shrieks, among the crowd would fall. XLIV Morn came.— Among those sleepless multitudes, Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine, still Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods The frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill — a and sullen brooks; in silence still, CANTO ELEVENTH 125 The pale survivors stood; ere noon the The visible floor of Heaven, and it was fear she ! Of Hell became a panic, which did kill And, on that night, one without doubt or Like hunger or disease, with whispers dread drear, Came to the fire, and said, ‘Stop, I am As ‘Hush! hark! come they yet ?— Just he! Heaven, thine hour is near!’ XLV And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting The rage they did inspire, some mad in- deed With their own lies. god was waiting To see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed, — And that, till then, the snakes of Hell had need Of human souls; three hundred furnaces Soon blazed through the wide City, where, with speed, Men brought their infidel kindred to ap- pease God’s wrath, and, while they burned, knelt round on quivering knees. They said their XLVI The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke; The winds of eve dispersed those ashes gray. The madness, which these rites had lulled, awoke Again at sunset. Who shall dare to sav The deeds which night and fear brought forth, or weigh In balance just the good and evil there ? He might man’s deep and searchless heart display, And cast a light on those dim labyrinths where Hope near imagined chasms is struggling with despair. XLVII *Tis said a mother dragged three chil-. dren then To those fierce flames which roast the eyes in the head, And laughed, and died; and that unholy men Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead, Looked from their meal. and saw an angel tread Kill me !’— They burned them both with hellish mockery. XLVIII And, one by one, that night, young maidens came, Beauteous and calm, like shapes of living stone Clothed in the light of dreams, and by the flame, Which shrank as overgorged, they laid them down, And sung a low sweet song, of which alone One word was heard, and that was Liberty; And that some kissed their marble feet, with moan Like love, and died, and then that they did die With happy smiles, which sunk in white tranquillity. CANTO ELEVENTH I SHE saw me not — she heard me not — alone Upon the mountain’s dizzy brink she stood; She spake not, breathed not, moved not — there was thrown Over her look the shadow of a mood Which only clothes the heart in solitude, A thonght of voiceless depth; — she stood alone — Above, the Heavens were spread — be- low, the flood Was murmuring in its caves — the wind had blown Her hair apart, through which her eyes and forehead shone. II A cloud was hanging 0o’e1 the western mountains; Before its blue and moveless depth were Aving 126 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Gray mists poured forth from the un- resting fountains Of darkness in the North; the day was dying; Sudden, the sun shone forth — its beams were lying Like boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see, And on the shattered vapors which, defying The power of light im vain, tossed rest- lessly In the red Heaven, like wrecks in a tem- pestuous sea. IIt It was a stream of living beams, whose bank On either side by the cloud’s cleft was made; And where its chasms that flood of glory drank, Its waves gushed forth like fire, and as if swayed By some mute tempest, rolled on her; the shade Of her bright image floated on the river Of liquid light, which then did end and fade — Her radiant shape upon its verge did shiver; Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver. Iv I stood beside her, but she saw me not — She looked upon the sea, and skies, and earth. Rapture and love and admiration wrought A passion deeper far than tears, or mirth, Or speech, or gesture, or whate’er has birth From common joy; speechless feeling That led her there united, and shot forth From her far eyes a light of deep re- vealing, All but her dearest self from my regard concealing. which with the Vv Her lips were parted, and the measured breath Was now heard there; her dark and in- tricate eyes, Orb within orb, deeper than sleep or death, Absorbed the glories of the burning skies, Which, mingling with her heart’s deep ecstasies, Burst from her looks and gestures; and a light Of liquid tenderness, like love, did rise From her whole frame — an atmosphere which quite Arrayed her in its beams, tremulous and soft and bright. VI She would have clasped me to her glow- ing frame; Those warm and odorous lips might soon have shed On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame Which now the cold winds stole; she would have laid Upon my languid heart her dearest head; I might have heard her voice, tender and sweet; Her eyes, mingling with mine, might soon have fed My soul with their own joy. — One mo- ment yet I gazed — we parted then, never again to meet ! vir Never but once to meet on earth again! She heard me as I fled — her eager tone Sunk on my heart, and almost wove a chain Around my will to link it with her own, So that my stern resolve was almost gone. ‘I cannot reach thee! whither dost thou fly ? My steps are faint.— Come back, thou dearest one — Return, ah me! return!’ —the wind passed by On which those accents died, faint, far, and lingeringly. VIII Woe! woe! that moonless midnight! Want and Pest Were horrible, but one more fell doth rear. CANTO ELEVENTH 127 As in a hydra’s swarming lair, its crest Eminent among those victims — even the Fear Of Hell; each girt by the hot atmosphere Of his blind agony, like a scorpion stung By his own rage upon his burning bier Of circling coals of fire. But still there clung One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung: — IX Not death —death was no more refuge or rest; Not life —it was despair to be !— not sleep, For fiends and chasms of fire had dis- possessed All natural dreams; to wake was not to weep, But to gaze, mad and pallid, at the leap To which the Future, like a snaky scourge, Or like some tyrant’s eye which aye doth keep Its withering beam upon his slaves, did urge Their steps; they heard the roar of Hell’s sulphureous surge. x Each of that multitude, alone and lost To sense of outward things, one hope yet knew; As on a foam-girt crag some seaman tossed, Stares at the rising tide, or like the crew Whilst now the ship is splitting through and through; Each, if the tramp of a far steed was heard, Started from sick despair, or if there flew One murmur on the wind, or if some word Which none can gather yet the distant crowd has stirred. XI Why became cheeks, wan with the kiss of death, Paler from hope? they had sustained despair. Why watched those myriads with sus- pended breath Sleepless « second night? they are not here, The victims — and hour by hour, a vision drear, Warm corpses fall upon the clay-cold ead; And even in death their lips are wreathed with fear. The crowd is mute and moveless — over- head Silent Arcturus shines — ha! hear’st thou not the tread XII Of rushing feet ? laughter? the shout, the scream Of triumph not to be contained ? See! hark ! They come, they come! give way! Alas, ye deem Falsely —’t is but a crowd of maniacs stark Driven, like a troop of spectres, through the dark From the choked well, whence a bright death-fire sprung, A lurid earth-star, which dropped many a spark From its blue train, and, spreading widely, clung To their wild hair, like mist the topmost pines among. XII And many, from the crowd collected there, Joined that strange dance in fearful sympathies; There was the silence of a long despair, When the last echo of those terrible cries Came from a distant street, like agonies Stifled afar. — Before the Tyrant’s throne All night his agéd Senate sate, their eyes In stony expectation fixed; when one Sudden before them stood, a Stranger and alone. XIV Dark Priests and haughty Warriors gazed on him With baffled wonder, for a hermit’s vest Concealed his face; but when he spake, his tone 128 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Ere yet the matter did their thoughts arrest — Earnest, benignant, calm, as from a breast Void of all hate or terror — made them start; For as with gentle accents he addressed His speech to them, on each unwilling heart Unusual awe did fall—a spirit-quelling dart. XV *Ye Princes of the Earth, ye sit aghast Amid the ruin which yourselves have made; Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet’s blast, And sprang from sleep !— dark Terror has obeyed Your bidding. Oh, that I, whom ye have made Your foe, could set my. dearest enemy free From pain and fear! but evil casts a shade Which cannot pass so soon, and Hate must be The nurse and parent still of an ill progeny. XVI ‘Ye turn to Heaven for aid in your dis- tress; Alas, that ye, the mighty and the wise, Who, if ye dared, might not aspire to less Than ye conceive of power, should fear the lies Which thou, and thou, didst frame for mysteries To blind your slaves ! consider your own thought — An empty and a cruel sacrifice Ye now prepare for a vain idol wrought Dut of the fears and hate which vain de- sires have brought. XVII ‘Ye seek for happiness —alas the day ! Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold, Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway For which, O willing slaves to Custom old, Severe task- mistress, ye your hearts have sold. Ye seek for peace, and, when ye die, te dream No evil dreams; —all mortal things are cold And senseless then; if aught survive, I deem It must be love and joy, for they immortal seem. XVII ‘Fear not the future, weep not for the past. Oh, could I win your ears to dare be now Glorious, and great, and calm! that ye would cast Into the dust those symbols of your woe, Purple, and gold, and steel! that ye would go Proclaiming to the nations whence ye came That Want and Plague and Fear from slavery flow; And that mankind is free, and that the shame OF royalty and faith is lost in freedom’s fame! xIX ‘If thus ’t is well — if not, I come to say That Laon—’ While the Stranger spoke, among The Council sudden tumult and affray Arose, for many of those warriors young Had on his eloquent accents fed and hung Like bees on mountain-flowers; they knew the truth, And from their thrones in vindication sprung; The men of faith and law then without ruth Drew forth their secret steel, and stabbed each ardent youth. XxX They stabbed them in the back and sneered — a slave, Who stood behind the throne, those corpses drew Each to its bloody, dark and secret grave; And one more daring raised his steel anew To pierce the Stranger: ‘What hast thou to do CANTO TWELFTH 129 With me, poor wretch?’ — Calm, sol- emn and severe, That voice unstrung his sinews, and he threw His dagger on the ground, and, pale with fear, Sate silently —his voice then did the Stranger rear. XXI ‘It doth avail not that I weep for ye — Ye cannot change, since ye are old and gray, And ye have chosen your lot — your fame must be A book of blood, whence in a milder day Men shail learn truth, when ye are wrapped in clay; Now ye shall triumph. I am Laon’s friend, And him to your revenge will I betray, So ye concede one easy boon. Attend ! For now I speak of things which ye can apprehend. XXII ‘There is a People mighty in its youth, A land beyond the Oceans of the West, Where, though with rudest rites, Free- dom and Truth Are worshipped; from a glorious Mo- ther’s breast, Who, since high Athens fell, among the rest Sate like the Queen of Nations, but in woe, By inbred monsters outraged and op- pressed, Turns to her chainless child for succor now, It draws the milk of Power in Wisdom’s fullest flow. XXII ‘That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze Of sunrise gleams when earth is wrapped in gloom; An epitaph of glory for the tomb Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made, Great People! as the sands shalt thou become; Thy growth is swift as morn when night must fade; The multitudinous Earth shall sleep be- neath thy shade. XXIV ‘Yes, in the desert there is built a home For Freedom. Genius is made strong to rear The monuments of man beneath the dome Of a new Heaven; myriads assemble there, Whom the proud lords of man, in rage or fear, Drive from their wasted homes. The boon I pray Is this — that Cythna shall be convoyed there, — Nay, start not at the name — America! And then to you this night Laon will I betray. XXV ‘With me do what ye will. I am your foe !’ The light of such a joy as makes the stare Of hungry snakes like living emeralds low Shone in a hundred human eyes. — ‘Where, where Is Laon? haste! fly! drag him swiftly here ! We grant thy boon.’ — ‘I put no trust in ye, Swear by the Power ye dread.’—* We swear, we swear !’ The Stranger threw his vest back sud- denly, And smiled in gentle pride, and said, ‘Lo! Tam he!’ CANTO TWELFTH I THE transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness Spread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying Upon the winds of fear; from his dull madness 130 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM The starveling waked, and died in joy; the dying, Among the corpses in stark agony lying, Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope Closed their faint eyes; from house to house replying With loud acclaim, the Jiving shook Heaven’s cope, And filled the startled Earth with echoes. Morn did ope II Its pale eyes then; and lo! the long array Of guards in golden arms, and Priests beside, Singing their bloody hymns, whose garbs betray The blackness of the faith it seems to hide; And see the Tyrant’s gem-wrought chariot glide Among the gloomy cowls and glittering spears — A Shape of light is sitting by his side, A child most beautiful. I’ the midst appears Laon —exempt alone from mortal hopes and fears. II His head and feet are bare, his hands are bound Behind with heavy chains, yet none do wreak Their scoffs on him, though myriads throng around; There are no sneers upon his lip which speak That scorn or hate has made him bold; his cheek Resolve has not turned pale; his eyes are mild And calm, and, like the morn about to break, Smile on mankind; his heart seems re- conciled To all things and itself, like a reposing child. IV Tumult was in the soul of all beside, Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but those who saw Their tranquil victim pass felt wonder lide Into their brain, and became calm with awe. — See, the slow pageant near the pile doth draw. A thousand torches in the spacious square, Borne by the ready slaves of ruthless law, Await the signal round; the morning fair Is changed toa dim night by that unnate ural glare. Vv And see! beneath a sun-bright canopy, Upon a platform level with the pile, The anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on high, Girt by the chieftains of the host; all smile In expectation but one child: the while I, Laon, led by mutes, ascend my bier Of fire, and look around ;— each distant isle Is dark in the bright dawn; towers far and near Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmosphere. VI There was such silence through the host as when An earthquake, trampling on some popu- lous town, i Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men Expect the second; all were mute but one, That fairest child, who, bold with love, alone Stood up before the king, without avail, Pleading for Laon’s life — her stifled groan Was heard — she trembled like one aspen pale Among the gloomy pines of a Norwegian vale. VII What were his thoughts linked in the morning sun, Among those reptiles, stingless with delay, Even like a tyrant’s wrath ?— the sig- nal-gun CANTO TWELFTH 13% Roared — hark, again! in that dread pause he lay As in a quiet dream — the slaves obey — A thousand torches drop, —and hark, the last Bursts on that awful silence; far away Millions, with hearts that beat both loud and fast, Watch for the springing flame expectant and aghast. VuI They fly—the torches fall —a ery of fear Has startled the triumphant ! — they recede ! For, ere the cannon’s roar has died, they hear The tramp of hoofs like earthquake, and a steed Dark and gigantic, with the tempest’s speed, Bursts through their ranks; a woman sits thereon, Fairer it seems than aught that earth can breed, Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn, A spirit from the caves of daylight wan- dering gone. Ix All thought it was God’s Angel come to sweep The lingering guilty to their fiery grave; The Tyrant from his throne in dread did leap, — Her Seueeuee bis child from fear did save; Seared by the faith they feigned, each priestly slave Knelt for His mercy whom they served with blood, And, like the refluence of a mighty wave Sucked into the loud sea, the multitude With crushing panic fled in terror’s altered mood. x They pause, they blush, they gaze; a gathering shout Bursts like one sound from the ten thou- sand streams Of a tempestuous sea; that sudden rout One checked who never in his mildest dreams Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams Of his rent heart so hard and cold acreed Had seared with blistering ice; but he misdeems That he is wise whose wounds do only bleed Inly for self, —thus thought the Iberian Priest indeed, XI And others, too, thought he was wise ta see In pain, and fear, and hate, something divine — In love and beauty, no divinity. Now with a bitter smile, whose light did shine Like a fiend’s hope upon his lips and eyne, He said, and the persuasion of that sneer Rallied his trembling comrades —‘* Is it mine To stand alone, when kings and soldiers fear A woman? Heaven has sent its other victim here.’ XII ‘Were it not impious,’ said the King, ‘to break Our holy oath ?? — ‘ Impious to keep it, say !’ Shrieked the exulting Priest : — ‘ Slaves, to the stake Bind her, and on my head the burden lay Of her just torments; at the Judgment ay Will I stand up before the golden throne Of Heaven, and cry, — “To Thee did I betray An infidel! but for me she would have known Another moment’s joy!” the glory be thine own.’ xUI They trembled, but replied not, nor obeyed, Pausing in breathless silence. Cythna sprung From her gigantic steed, who, like a shade 132 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM Chased by the winds, those vacant streets among Fled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung Upon his neck, and kissed his moonéd brow. A piteous sight, that one so fair and young The clasp of such a fearful death should woo With smiles of tender joy as beamed from Cythna now. XIV The warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear From many a tremulous eye, but, like soft dews Which feed spring’s earliest buds, hung gathered there, Frozen by doubt, — alas! they could not choose But weep; for, when her faint limbs did refuse To climb the pyre, upon the mutes she smiled; And with her eloquent gestures, and the hues Of her quick lips, even as a weary child Wins sleep from some fond nurse with its caresses mild, XV She won them, though unwilling, her to bind Near me, among the snakes. When then had fled One soft reproach that was most thrilling kind, She smiled on me, and nothing then we said, But each upon the other’s countenance fed Looks of insatiate love; the mighty veil Which doth divide the living and the dead Was almost rent, the world grew dim and pale — All light in Heaven or Earth beside our love did fail. XVI Yet — yet —one brief relapse, like the last beam Of dying flames, the stainless air around Hung silent and serene —a blood-red gleam Burst upwards, hurling fiercely from the ground The globéd smoke; I heard the mighty sound Of its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean; And, through its chasms I saw, as in a swound, The Tyrant’s child fall without life or motion Before his throne, subdued by some unseen emotion. — XVII And is this death ?— The pyre has dis- appeared, The Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the throng; The flames grow silent — slowly there is heard The music of a breath-suspending song, Which, like the kiss of love when life is young, Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep; With ever-changing notes it floats along, Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap. XVIII The warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand Wakened me then; lo, Cythna sate re- clined Beside me, on the waved and golden sand Of a clear pool, upon a bank o’ertwined With strange and star-bright flowers which to the wind Breathed divine odor; high above was spread The emerald heaven of trees of unknown kind, Whose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead A shadow, which was light, upon the waters shed. XIX And round about sloped many a lawny mountain With incense-bearing forests znd vast caves CANTO TWELFTH Of marble radiance, to that mighty foun- tain; And, where the flood its own bright mar- gin laves, Their echoes talk with its eternal waves, Which from the depths whose jagged caverns breed. Their unreposing strife it lifts and heaves, Till through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed A river deep, which flies with smooth but arrowy speed. xX As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder, A boat approached, borne by the musical air Along the waves which sung and sparkled under Its rapid keel. A wingéd Shape sate there, A child with silver-shining wings, so fair That, as her bark did through the waters glide, The shadow of the lingering waves did wear Light, as from starry beams; from side to side While veering to the wind her plumes the bark did guide. XXxI The boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl, Almost translucent with the light divine Gf her within; the prow and stern did curl, Hornéd on high, like the young moon supine, When o’er dim twilight mountains dark with pine It floats upon the sunset’s sea of beams, Whose golden waves in many a purple line Fade fast, till, borne on sunlight’s ebbing streams, Dilating, on earth’s verge the sunken me- teor gleams. XXII Its keel has struck the sands beside our feet. Then Cythna turned to me, and from her eyes, 133 Which swam with unshed tears, « look more sweet Than happy love, » wild and glad sur- prise, Glanced as she spake: * Ay, this is Para. dise And not a dream, and we are all united ! Lo, that is mine own child, who in the guise Of madness came, like day to one be- nighted In lonesome woods; my heart is now too well requited !” XXIII And then she wept aloud, and in her arms Clasped that bright Shape, less marvel- lously fair Than her own human hues and living charms, Which, as she leaned in passion’s silence there, Breathed warmth on the cold bosom of the air, Which seemed to blush and tremble with delight; The glossy darkness of her streaming hair Fell o’er that snowy child, and wrapped from sight The fond and long embrace which did theix hearts unite. XXIV Then the bright child, the pluméd Seraph, came, And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine, And said, ‘I was disturbed by tremulous shame When once we met, yet knew that I was thine From the same hour in which thy lips divine Kindled a clinging dream within my brain, Which ever waked when I might sleep, to twine Thine image with her memory dear; again We meet, exempted now from mortal fear or pain. XXV ‘When the consuming flames had wrapped ye round, 134 THE REVOLT OF ISLAM The hope which 1 had cherished went away; I fell in agony on the senseless ground, And hid mine eyes in dust, and far astray My mind was gone, when bright, like dawning day, The Spectre of the Plague before me flew, And breathed upon my lips, and seemed to say, “They wait for thee, belovéd !”” — then I knew The death-mark on my breast, and became calm anew. XXVI ‘It was the calm of love—for I was dying. I saw the black and _half-extinguished pyre In its own gray and shrunken ashes lying; The pitchy smoke of the departed fire Still hung in many a hollow dome and spire Above the towers, like night, — beneath whose shade, Awed by the ending of their own desire, The armies stood; a vacancy was made In expectation’s depth, and so they stood dismayed. XXVII * The frightful silence of that altered mood The tortures of the dying clove alone, Till one uprose among the multitude, And said — “ The flood of time is rolling on; We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone To glide in peace down death’s myste- rious stream. Have ye done well ? they moulder, flesh and bone, Who might have made this life’s enven- omed dream A sweeter draught than ye will ever taste, I deem. XXVIII ‘« These perish as the good and great of yore Have perished, and their murderers will repent; Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before Yon smoke has faded from the firma ment, Even for this cause, that ye, who must lament The death of those that made this world so fair, Cannot recall them now; but then is lent To man the wisdom of a high despair, When such can die, and he live on and linger here. XXIX « Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence, From fabled hell as by a charm with- drawn; All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence In pain and fire have unbelievers gone; And ye must sadly turn away, and moan In secret, to his home each one returning; And to long ages shall this hour be known, And slowly shall its memory, ever burn- ing, Fill this dark night of things with an eternal morning. XXX ‘“ For me that world is grown too vaid and cold, Since hope pursues immortal destiny With steps thus slow — therefore shall ye behold How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die; Tell to your children this! ” then suddenly He ae a dagger in his heart, and fell; My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me There came a murmur from the crowd to tell Of deep and mighty change which suddenly befell. XXXI ‘ Then suddenly I stood, a wingéd Thought, Before the immortal Senate, and the seat Of that star-shining Spirit, whence is wrought The strength of its dominion, good and great, The Better Genius of this world’s estate. His realm around one mighty Fane is spread. CANTO TWELFTH 135 Elysian islands bright and fortunate, Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead, Where I am sent to lead!’ These wingéd words she said, XXXII And with the silence of her eloquent smile, Bade us embark in her divine canoe; Then at the helm we took our seat, the while Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue Into the winds’ invisible stream she threw, Sitting beside the prow; like gossamer On the swift breath of morn the vessel flew O’er the bright whirlpools of that foun- tain fair, Whose shores receded fast while we seemed lingering there; XXXIIT Till down that mighty stream dark, calm and fleet, Between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven, Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet, As swift as twinkling beams, had under Heaven From woods and waves wild sounds and odors driven, The boat fled visibly; three nights and days, Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even, We sailed along the winding watery ways Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze. XXXIV A scene of joy and wonder to behold, — That river’s shapes and shadows chang- ing ever, Where the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold Its whirlpools where all hues did spread and quiver; And where melodious falls did burst and shiver Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river; Or, when the moonlight poured a holier day One vast and glittering lake around green islands lay. XXXV Morn, noon and even, that boat of pearl outran The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man, Which flieth forth and cannot make abode; Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode, Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud, The homes of the departed, dimly frowned O’er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round. XXXVI Sometimes between the wide and flow- ering meadows Mile after mile we sailed, and ’t was delight To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows Over the grass; sometimes beneath the night Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep And dark green chasms shades beautiful and white, Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep, Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep. XXXVII And oa as we sailed, our minds were ful Of love and wisdom, which would over- flow In converse wild, and sweet, and won: derful; And in quick smiles whose light would come and go, 136 ROSALIND AND HELEN Like music o’er wide waves, and in the flow Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress; For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know, That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less Survives all mortal change in lasting love- liness. XXXVII Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling Number delightful hours — for through the sky The spheréd lamps of day and night, re- vealing New changes and new glories, rolled on high, Sun, Moon and moonlike lamps, the progeny Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair; On the fourth day, wild as a wind- wrought sea The stream became, and fast and faster bare The spirit-wingéd boat, steadily speeding there. XXXIX Steady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour Tumultuous floods from their ten thou- sand fountains, The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore, Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child Securely fled that rapid stress before, Amid the topmost spray and sunbows wild Wreathed in the silver mist; in joy and pride we smiled. XL The torrent of that wide and raging river Is passed, and our aérial speed suspended. We look behind; a golden mist did quiver When its wild surges with the lake were blended; Our bark hung there, as on a. line sus- pended Between two heavens, — that windless, waveless lake, Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break, And of that azure sea a silent refuge make. XLI Motionless resting on the lake awhile, I saw its marge of snow-bright moun- tains rear Their peaks aloft; I saw each radiant isle; And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere Hung in one hollow sky, did there ap- ear The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound Which issued thence drawn nearer and more near Like the swift moon this glorious earth around, The charméd boat approached, and there its haven found. ROSALIND AND HELEN A MODERN ECLOGUE Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow as early as the summer of 1817, and was suffi- ciently far advanced to lead Shelley to send copy to the publisher just before leaving England in March, 1818; it was finished in August, at the Baths of Lucca, and published in the spring of 1819. Shelley’s original Ad- vertisement to the volume, dated Naples, De- cember 20, 1818, opens with the following : ‘The story of Rosalind and Helen is, un- doubtedly, not an attempt in the highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite profound meditation; and if, by inter- esting the affections and amusing the imagin- ation, it awaken a certain ideal melancholy favorable to the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned myself, as I wrote, to the impulse of the feelings which moulded the conception ROSALIND AND HELEN of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imagin- ations which inspired it.’ The feelings here spoken of ‘ which moulded the conception of the story’ were suggested, in part, by the relation of Mrs. Shelley with a friend of her girlhood, Isabel Baxter, who fell away from her early attachment in consequence of Mrs. Shelley’s flight with Shelley in July, 1814, and was afterward reconciled with her. (Dowden, Life, ii. 130, 131.) Forman (Type Facsimile of the original edition, Shelley Soci- ety’s Publications, Second Series, No. 17, In- troduction) discusses the matter at length, together with the reflection of political events in England possibly to be detected in the poem. Shelley wrote to Peacock, ‘I lay no stress on it one way or the other.’ Mrs. Shelley’s note develops the reason for this indifference : ‘ Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside, till I found it; and, at my ROSALIND AND HELEN RosauinD, HELEN, and her Child. The Shore of the Lake of Como. HELEN Come hither, my sweet Rosalind. ’T is long since thou and I have met; And yet methinks it were unkind Those moments to forget. Come, sit by me. I see thee stand By this lone lake, in this far land, Thy loose hair in the light wind flying, Thy sweet voice to each tone of even United, and thine eyes replying To the hues of yon fair heaven. 10 Come, gentle friend! wilt sit by me ? And be as thou wert wont to be Ere we were disunited ? None doth behold us now; the power That led us forth at this lone hour Will be but ill requited If thou depart in scorn. Oh, come, And talk of our abandoned home ! Remember, this is Italy, And we are exiles. Talk with me 20 Of that our land, whose wilds and floods, Barren and dark although they be, Were dearer than these chestnut woods; Those heathy paths, that inland stream, And the blue mountains, shapes which seem Like wrecks of childhood’s sunny dream; ScENE. 137 request, it was completed. Shelley had no care for any of his poems that did not ema- nate from the depths of his mind, and develop some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never men- tioned Love, but he shed a grace, borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of life, which inasmuch as we rebel against, we err and injure ourselves and others, he promulgated that which he con- sidered an irrefragable truth. In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or insensibility, or mistake. By reverting in his mind to this first principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could disclose the secrets of all hearts, and his delineations of passion and emotion touch the finest chords in our nature. Rosalind and Helen was finished during the summer of 1818, while we were at the Baths of Lucca.’ Which that we have abandoned now, Weighs on the heart like that remorse Which altered friendship leaves. I seek No more our youthful intercourse. 30 That cannot be! Rosalind, speak, Speak tome! Leave me not! When morn did come, When evening fell upon our common home, When for one hour we parted, —do not frown; I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken; But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown, Turn, as ’t were but the memory of me, And not myscornéd self who prayed to thee! ROSALIND Is it a dream, or do I see 49 And hear frail Helen? I would flee Thy tainting touch; but former years Arise, and bring forbidden tears; And my o’erburdened memory Seeks yet its lost repose in thee. I share thy crime. I cannot choose But weep for thee; mine own strange grief But seldom stoops to such relief; Nor ever did I love thee less, Though mourning o’er thy wickedness Even with a sister’s woe. I knew What to the evil world is due, 138 ROSALIND AND HELEN And therefore sternly did refuse To link me with the infamy Of one so lost as Helen. Now, Bewildered by my dire despair, Wondering I blush, and weep that thou Shouldst love me still—thou only !— There, Let us sit on that gray stone Till our mournful talk be done. 60 HELEN Alas! not there; I cannot bear The murmur of this lake to hear. A sound from there, Rosalind dear, Which never yet I heard elsewhere But in our native land, recurs, Even here where now we meet. Too much of suffocating sorrow ! In the dell of yon dark chestnut wood Is a stone seat, a solitude Less like our own. The ghost of peace 70 Will not desert this spot. To-morrow, If thy kind feelings should not cease, We may sit here. It stirs ROSALIND Thou lead, my sweet, And I will follow. HENRY ’T is Fenici’s seat Where you are going? This is not the way, Mamma; it leads behind those trees that grow Close to the little river. HELEN Yes, I know; I was bewildered. Kiss me and be gay, Dear boy; why do you sob? HENRY I do not know; But it might break any one’s heart to see 80 You and the lady cry so bitterly. HELEN It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home, Henry, and play with Lilla till I come. We only cried with joy to see each other; We are quite merry now. Good night. The boy Lifted a sudden look upon his mother, And, in the gleam of forced and hollow 0 Which lightened o’er her face, laughed with the glee Of light and unsuspecting infancy, And whispered in her ear, ‘Bring home with you 99 That sweet strange lady-friend.’ Then off he flew, But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile, Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while, Hiding her face, stood weeping silently. In silence then they took the way Beneath the forest’s solitude. It was a vast and antique wood, Through which they took their way; And the gray shades of evening O’er that green wilderness did fling 100 Still deeper solitude. 5 Pursuing still the path that wound The vast and knotted trees around, Through which slow shades were wander- ing, Toa duce lawny dell they came, To a stone seat beside a spring, O’er which the columned wood did frame A roofless temple, like the fane Where, ere new creeds could faith ob- tain, Man’s early race once knelt beneath — 110 The overhanging deity. O’er this fair fountain hung the sky, Now spangled with rare stars. The snake, The pale snake, that with eager breath Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake, | Is beaming with many a mingled hue, Shed from yon dome’s eternal blue, When he Hoats on that dark and lucid flood In the light of his own loveliness; And the birds, that in the fountain dip 120 Their plumes, with fearless fellowship Above and round him wheel and hover. The fitful wind is heard to stir One solitary leaf on high; The chirping of the grasshopper Fills every pause. There is emotion In all that dwells at noontide here; Then through the intricate wild wood A maze of life and light and motion Is woven. But there is stillness now — 1¢ Gloom, and the trance of Nature now. ROSALIND AND HELEN 139 The snake is in his cave asleep; The birds are on the branches dreaming; Only the shadows creep; Only the glow-worm is gleaming; Only the owls and the nightingales Wake in this dell when daylight fails, And gray shades gather in the woods; And the owls have all fled far away In a merrier glen to hoot and play, 140 For the moon is veiled and sleeping now. The accustomed nightingale still broods On her accustomed bongh, But she is mute; for her false mate Has fled and left her desolate. This silent spot tradition old Had peopled with the spectral dead. For the roots of the speaker’s hair felt cold And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told That a hellish shape at midnight led 150 The ghost of a youth with hoary hair, And sate on the seat beside him there, Till a naked child came wandering by, When the fiend would change to a lady fair ! A fearful tale! the truth was worse; For here a sister and a brother Had solemnized a monstrous curse, Meeting in this fair solitude; For beneath yon very sky, Had they resigned to one another 160 Body and soul. The multitude, Tracking them to the secret wood, Tore limb from limb their innocent child, And stabbed and trampled on its mother; But the youth, for God’s most holy grace, A priest saved to burn in the market-place. Daly at evening Helen came To this lone silent spot, From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow So much of sympathy to borrow 170 As soothed her own dark lot. Duly each evening from her home, With her fair child would Helen come To sit upon that antique seat, While the hues of day were pale; And the bright boy beside her feet Now lay, lifting at intervals His broad blue eyes on her; Now, where some sudden impulse calls, Following. He was a gentle boy 180 And in all gentle sports took joy. Oft in a dry leaf for a boat, With a small feather for a sail, His fancy on that spring would float, If some invisible breeze might stir Its marble calm; and Helen smiled Through tears of awe on the gay child, To think that a boy as fair as he, In years which never more may be, By that same fount, in that same wood, 190 The like sweet fancies had pursued; And that a mother, lost like her, Had mournfully sate watching him. Then all the scene was wont to swim Through the mist of a burning tear. For many months had Helen known This scene; and now she thither turned Her footsteps, not alone. The friend whose falsehood she had mourned Sate with her on that seat of stone. 200 Silent they sate; for evening, And the power its glimpses bring, Had with one awful shadow quelled The passion of their grief. They sate With linkéd hands, for unrepelled Had Helen taken Rosalind’s. Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds The tangled locks of the nightshade’s hair Which is twined in the sultry summer air Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre, Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet, 2-1 And the sound of her heart that ever beat As with sighs and words she breathed on her, Unbind the knots of her friend’s despair, Till her thoughts were free to float and flow; And from her laboring bosom now, Like the bursting of a prisoned flame, The voice of a long-pent sorrow came. ROSALIND I saw the dark earth fall upon The coffin; and I saw the stone 220 Laid over him whom this cold breast Had pillowed to his nightly rest ! Thou knowest not, thou canst not know My agony. Oh! I could not weep. The sources whence such blessings flow Were not to be approached by me ! But I could smile, and I could sleep, Though with a self-accusing heart. In morning’s light, in evening’s gloom, I watched —and would not thence de- part — 23a My husband’s unlamented tomb. My children knew their sire was gone; But when I told them, ‘He is dead, 140 ROSALIND AND HELEN They laughed aloud in frantic glee, They clapped their hands and leaped about, Answering each other’s ecstasy With many a prank and merry shout. But I sate silent and alone, Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed. They laughed, for he was dead; but I 240 Sate with a hard and tearless eye, And with a heart which would deny The secret joy it could not quell, Low muttering o’er his loathéd name; Till from that self-contention came Remorse where sin was none; a hell Which in pure spirits should not dwell. I’ll tell thee truth. He was a man Hard, selfish, loving only gold, Yet full of guile; his pale eyes ran 250 With tears which each some falsehood told, And oft his smooth and bridled tongue Would give the lie to his flushing cheek; He was a coward to the strong; He was a tyrant to the weak, On whom his vengeance he would wreak; For scorn, whose arrows search the heart, From many a stranger’s eye would dart, And on his memory cling, and follow His soul to its home socold and hollow. 260 He was a tyrant to the weak, And we were such, alas the day ! Oft, when my little ones at play Were in youth’s natural lightness gay, Or if they listened to some tale Of travellers, or of fairyland, When the light from the wood-fire’s dying brand Flashed on their faces, —if they heard Or thought they heard upon the stair His footstep, the suspended word 270 Died on my lips; we all grew pale; The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear If it thought it heard its father near; And my two wild boys would near my knee Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully. I'll tell thee truth: I loved another. His name in my ear was ever ringing, His form to my brain was ever clinging; Yet, if some stranger breathed that name, My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast. 280 My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame, My days were dim in the shadow cast By the memory of the same ! Day and night, day and night, He was my breath and life and light, For three short years, which soon were passed. On the fourth, my gentle mother Led me to the shrine, to be His sworn bride eternally. And now we stood on the altar stair, 290 When my father came from a distant land, And with a loud and fearful ery Rushed between us suddenly. I saw the stream of his thin gray hair, I saw his lean and lifted hand, And heard his words —and live! O God! Wherefore do I live ? —‘ Hold, hold!’ He cried, ‘I tell thee ’tis her brother ! Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold; 3oe I am now weak, and pale, and old; We were once dear to one another, I and that corpse! Thou art our child!’ Then with a laugh both long and wild The youth upon the pavement fell. They found him dead! All looked on me, The spasms of my despair to see; But I was calm. I went away; I was elammy-cold like clay. I did not weep; I did not speak; gic But day by day, week after week, I walked about like a corpse alive. Alas! sweet friend, you must believe This heart is stone — it did not break. My father lived a little while, But all might see that he was dying, He smiled with such a woful smile. When he was in the churchyard lying Among the worms, we grew quite poor, So that no one would give us bread; —32c My mother looked at me, and said Faint words of cheer, which only meant That she could die and be content; So I went forth from the same church door To another husband’s bed. And this was he who died at last, When weeks and months and years had assed, Through which I firmly did fulfil My duties, a devoted wife, With the stern step of vanquished will 330 Walking beneath the night of life, ROSALIND AND HELEN 141 Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain Falling forever, pain by pain, The very hope of death’s dear rest; Which, since the heart within my breast Of natural life was dispossessed, Its strange sustainer there had been. When flowers were dead, and grass was green Upon my mother’s grave — that mother Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make 340 My wan eyes glitter for her sake, Was my vowed task, the single care Which once gave life to my despair — When she was a thing that did not stir, And the crawling worms were cradling her To a sleep more deep and so more sweet Than a baby’s rocked on its nurse’s knee, I lived; a living pulse then beat Beneath my heart that awakened me. What was this pulse so warm and free ? 350 Alas! I knew it could not be My own dull blood. ’T was like a thought Of liquid love, that spread and wrought Under my bosom and in my brain, And crept with the blood through every vein, And hour by hour, day after day, The wonder could not charm away But laid in sleep my wakeful pain, Until I knew it was a child, And then I wept. For long, long years 360 These frozen eyes had shed no tears; But now —’t was the season fair and mild When April has wept itself to May; I sate through the sweet sunny day By my window bowered round with leaves, And down my cheeks the quick tears ran Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves, When warm spring showers are passing over. O Helen, none can ever tell The joy it was to weep once more ' 370 I wept to think how hard it were To kill my babe, and take from it The sense of light, and the warm air, And my own fond and tender care, And love and smiles; ere I knew yet That these for it might, as for me, Be the masks of a grinning mockery. And haply, I would dream, ’t were sweet To feed it from my faded breast, Or mark my own heart’s restless beat 380 Rock it to its untroubled rest, And watch the growing soul beneath Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath, Half interrupted by calm sighs, And search the depth of its fair eyes For long departed memories ! And so [I lived till that sweet load Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed The stream of years, and on it bore Two shapes of gladness to my sight; —_ 3g Two other babes, delightful more, In my lost soul’s abandoned night, Than their own country ships may be Sailing towards wrecked mariners Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea. For each, as it came, brought soothing tears; And a loosening warmth, as each one lay Sucking the sullen milk away, About my frozen heart did play, And weaned it, oh, how painfully — 400 As they themselves were weaned each one From that sweet food—even from the thirst Of death, and nothingness, and rest, Strange inmate of a living breast, Which all that I had undergone Of grief and shame, since she who first The gates of that dark refuge closed Came to my sight, and almost burst The seal of that Lethean spring — But these fair shadows interposed. 4rd For all delights are shadows now ! And from my brain to my dull brow The heavy tears gather and flow. I cannot speak — ob, let me weep! The tears which fell from her wan eyes Glimmered among the moonlight dew. Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs Their echoes in the darkness threw. When she grew calm, she thus did keep The tenor of her tale: — He died; gaa I know not how; he was not old, If age be numbered by its years; But he was bowed and bent with fears, Pale with the quenchiless thirst of gold, Which, like fierce fever, left him weak; And his strait lip and bloated cheek Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers; And selfish cares with barren plough, Not age, had lined his narrow brow, And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed 43a Upon the withering life within. {42 ROSALIND AND HELEN Like vipers on some poisonous weed. Whether his ill were death or sin None knew, until he died indeed, And then men owned they were the same. Seven days within my chamber lay That corse, and my babes made holiday. At last, I told them what is death. The eldest, with a kind of shame, Came to my knees with silent breath, 440 And sate awe-stricken at my feet; And soon the others left their play, And sate there too. It is unmeet To shed on the brief flower of youth The withering knowledge of the grave. From me remorse then wrung that truth. I could not bear the joy which gave Too just a response to mine own. In vain. I dared not feign a groan; And in their artless looks I saw, 450 Between the mists of fear and awe, That my own thoughi was theirs; and they Expressed it not in words, but said, Each in its heart, how every day ‘Will pass in happy work and play, Now he is dead and gone away ! After the funeral all our kin Assembled, and the will was read. My friend, I tell thee, evan the dead Have strength, their putrid shrouds within, To blast and torture. Those who live 46: Still fear the living, but a corse Is merciless, and Power doth give To such pale tyrants half the spoil He rends from those who groan and toil, Because they blush not with remorse Among their crawling worms. Behold, I have no child ! my tale grows old With grief, and staggers; let it reach The limits of my feeble speech, 470 And languidly at length recline On the brink of its own grave and mine. Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty Among the fallen on evil days. “T is Crime, and Fear, and Infamy, And houseless Want in frozen ways Wandering ungarmented, and Pain, And, worse than all, that inward stain, foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers Youth’s starlight smile, and makes its tears 480 First like hot gall, then dry forever ! And well thou knowest a mother never Could doom her children to this ill, And well he knew the same. The will Imported that, if e’er again I sought my children to behold, Or in my birthplace did remain Beyond three days, whose hours were told, They should inherit nought; and he, To whom next came their patrimony, — 490 A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold, Aye watched me, as the will was read, With eyes askance, which sought to see The secrets of my agony; And with close lips and anxious brow Stood canvassing still to and fro The chance of my resolve, and all The dead man’s caution just did call; For in that killing lie ’t was said — ‘She is adulterous, and doth hold 500 In secret that the Christian creed Is false, and therefore is much need That I should have a care to save My children from eternal fire.’ Friend, he was sheltered by the grave, And therefore dared to be a liar ! In truth, the Indian on the pyre Of her dead husband, half consumed, As well might there he false as I To those abhorred embraces doomed, 510 Far worse than fire’s brief agony. As to the Christian creed, if true Or false, I never questioned it; I took it as the vulgar do; Nor my vexed soul had leisure yet To doubt the things men say, or deem That they are other than they seem. All present who those crimes did hear, In feigned or actual scorn and fear, Men, women, children, slunk away, 52c Whispering with self-contented pride Which half suspects its own base lie. I spoke to none, nor did abide, But silently I went my way, Nor noticed I where joyously Sate my two younger babes at play In the courtyard through which I passed: But went with footsteps firm and fast Till I came to the brink of the ocean green, And there, a woman with gray hairs, _ 53¢ Who had my mother’s servant been, Kneeling, with many tears and prayers, Made me accept a purse of gold, Half of the earnings she had kept To refuge her when weak and old. ROSALIND AND HELEN 143 With woe, which never sleeps or slept, I wander now. °Tis a vain thought — But on yon Alp, whose snowy head ’Mid the azure air is islanded, (We see it — o’er the flood of cloud, — 540 Which sunrise from its eastern caves Drives, wrinkling into golden waves, Hung with its precipices proud — From that gray stone where first we met) There—now who knows the dead feel nought ? — Should be my grave; for he who yet Is my soul’s soul once said: ‘’T were sweet *Mid stars and lightnings to abide, And winds, and lulling snows that beat With their soft flakes the mountain wide, Where weary meteor lamps repose, 551 And languid storms their pinions close, And all things strong and bright and pure, And ever during, aye endure. Who knows, if one were buried there, But these things might our spirits make, Amid the all-surrounding air, Their own eternity partake ?’ Then ’t was a wild and playful saying At which I laughed or seemed to laugh. 560 They were his words — now heed my pray- ing, And let ‘bern be iny epitaph. Thy memory for a term may be My monument. Wilt remember me ? I know thou wilt; and canst forgive, Whilst in this erring world to live My soul disdained not, that I thought Its lying forms were worthy aught, And much less thee. HELEN Oh, speak not so! But come to me and pour thy woe 570 Into this heart, full though it be, Aye overflowing with its own. I thought that grief had severed me From all beside who weep and groan, Its likeness upon earth to be — Its express image; but thou art More wretched. Sweet, we will not part Henceforth, if death be not division; If so, the dead feel no contrition. But wilt thou hear, since last we parted, 580 All that has left me broken-hearted ? ROSALIND Yes, speak. The faintest stars are scarcely shorn Of their thin beams by that delusive morn Which sinks again in darkness, like the light Of early love, soon lost in iotal night. HELEN Alas! Italian winds are mild, But my bosom is cold — wintry cold; When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves, Soft music, my poor brain is wild, And I am weak like a nursling child, 590 Though my soul with grief is gray and old. ROSALIND Weep not at thine own words, though they must make Me weep. What is thy tale ? HELEN I fear ’t will shake Thy gentle heart with tears. Thou well Rememberest when we met no more; And, though I dwelt with Lionel, That friendless caution pierced me sore With grief; a wound my spirit bore Indignantly — but when he died, With him lay dead both hope and pride. Alas! all hope is buried now. 6or But then men dreamed the aged earth Was laboring in that mighty birth Which many a poet and a sage Has aye foreseen — the happy age When truth and love shall dwell below Among the works and ways of men; Which on this world not power but will Even now is wanting to fulfil. Among mankind what thence befell 610 Of strife, how vain, is known ¢no well; When Liberty’s dear pean fell ’Mid murderous howls. To Lionel, Though of great wealth and lineage high, Yet through those dungeon walls there came Thy thrilling light, O Liberty ! And as the meteor’s midnight flame Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth Flashed on his visionary youth, And filled him, not with love, but faith, 62¢ And hope, and courage mute in death; For love and life in him were twins, Born at one birth. In every other 144 ROSALIND AND HELEN First life, then love, its course begins, Though they be children of one mother; And so through this dark world they fleet Divided, till i death they meet; But he loved all things ever. Then He passed amid the strife of men, And stood at the throne of arméd power Pleading for a world of woe. 631 Secure as one on a rock-built tower O’er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro, *Mid the passions wild of humankind He stood, like a spirit calming them; For, it was said, his words could bind Like music the lulled crowd, and stem That torrent of unquiet dream Which mortals truth and reason deem, But is revenge and fear and pride. 640 Joyous he was; and hope and peace On all who heard him did abide, Raining like dew from his sweet talk, As where the evening star may walk Along the brink of the gloomy seas, Liquid mists of splendor quiver. His very gestures touched to tears The unpersuaded tyrant, never So moved before; his presence stung The torturers with their victim’s pain, 650 And none knew how; and through their ears The subtle witchcraft of his tongue Unlocked the hearts of those who keep Gold, the world’s bond of slavery. Men wondered, and some sneered to see One sow what he could never reap; For he is rich, they said, and young, And might drink from the depths of luxury. If he seeks fame, fame never crowned The champion of a trampled creed; 660 If he seeks power, power is enthroned ’Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil Those who would sit near power must toil; And such, there sitting, all may see. What seeks he? All that others seek He casts away, like a vile weed Which the sea casts unreturningly. That poor and hungry men should break The laws which wreak them toil and scorn We understand; but Lionel, 671 We know, is rich and nobly born. So wondered they; yet all men loved Young Lionel, though few approved; All but the priests, whose hatred fell Like the unseen blight of a smiling day, The withering honey-dew which clings Under the bright green buds of May Whilst they unfold their emerald wings; For he made verses wild and queer 68¢ On the strange creeds priests hold so dear Because they bring them land and gold. Of devils and saints and all such gear He made tales which whoso heard or read Would laugh till he were almost dead. So this grew a proverb: ‘Don’t get old Till Lionel’s Banquet in Hell you hear, And then you will laugh yourself young again.’ So the priests hated him, and he Repaid their hate with cheerful glee. 690 Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died, For public hope grew pale and dim In an altered time and tide, And in its wasting withered him, As a summer flower that blows too soou Droops in the smile of the waning moon, When it scatters through an April night The frozen dews of wrinkling blight. None now hoped more. Gray Power was seated Safely on her ancestral throne; joo And Faith, the Python, undefeated Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on Her foul and wounded train; and men Were trampled and deceived again, And words and shows again could bind The wailing tribes of humankind In scorn and famine. Fire and blood Raged round the raging multitude, To fields remote by tyrants sent To be the scornéd instrument 710 With which they drag from mines of gore The chains their slaves yet ever wore; And in the streets men met each other, And by old altars and in halls, And smiled again at festivals. But each man found in his heart’s brother Cold cheer; for all, though half deceived, The ontworn creeds again believed, And the same round anew began Which the weary world yet ever ran. 720 Many then wept, not tears, but gall, Within their hearts, like drops which fall Wasting the fountain-stone away. And in that dark and evil day Did all desires and thoughts that claim Men’s care — ambition, friendship, fame, Love, hope, though hope was now despair ~ ROSALIND AND HELEN 145 Indue the colors of this change, As from the all-surrounding air 729 The earth takes hues obscure and strange, When storm and earthquake linger there. And so, my friend, it then befell To many, — most to Lionel, Whose hope was like the life of youth Within him, and when dead became A spirit of unresting flame, Which goaded him in his distress Over the world’s vast wilderness. Three years he left his native land, And on the fourth, when he returned, 740 None knew him; he was stricken deep With some disease of mind, and turned Into aught unlike Lionel. On him — on whom, did he pause in sleep, Serenest smiles were wont to keep, And, did he wake, a winged band Of bright Persuasions, which had fed On his sweet lips and liquid eyes, Kept their swift pinions half ontspread To do on men his least command — 750 On him, whom once ’t was paradise Even to behold, now misery lay. In his own heart ’t was merciless — To all things else none may express Its innocence and tenderness. ’T was said that he had refuge sought In love from his unquiet thought In distant lands, and been deceived By some strange show; for there were found, Blotted with tears —as those relieved 760 By their own words are wont to do — These mournful verses on the ground, By all who read them blotted too. ‘How am I changed! my hopes were once like fire; I loved, and I believed that life was love. How am [ lost! on wings of swift desire among Heaven’s winds my spirit once did move. I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire My liquid sleep; I woke, and did approve All Nature to my heart, and thought to make 779 A paradise of earth for one sweet sake. ‘TI love, but I believe in love no more. I feel desire, but hope not. Oh, from sleep Most vainly must my weary brain implore Its long lost flattery now! I wake to wee And sit through the long day gnawing the core Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep — Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure — To my own soul its self-consuming trea- sure.’ He dwelt beside me near the sea; 780 And oft in evening did we meet, When the waves, beneath the starlight, flee O’er the yellow sands with silver feet, And talked. Our talk was sad and sweet, Till slowly from his mien there passed The desolation which it spoke; And smiles —as when the lightuing’s blast Has parched some heaven-delighting oak, The next spring shows leaves pale and rare, But like flowers delicate and fair, 790 On its rent boughs — again arrayed His countenance in tender light; His words grew subtle fire, which made The air his hearers breathed delight; His motions, like the winds, were free, Which bend the bright grass gracefully, Then fade away in circlets faint; And wingéd Hope — on which upborne His soul seemed hovering in his eyes, Like some bright spirit newly born 800 Floating amid the sunny skies — Sprang forth from his rent heart anew. Yet o’er his talk, and looks, and mien, Tempering their loveliness too keen, Past woe its shadow backward threw; Tiil, like an exhalation spread From flowers half drunk with evening dew, They did become infectious — sweet And subtle mists of sense and thought, Which wrapped us soon, when we might meet, 810 Almost from our own looks and aught The wild world holds. And so his mind Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear; For ever now his health declined, Like some frail bark which cannot bear The impulse of an altered wind, Though prosperous; and my heart grew full, 146 ROSALIND AND HELEN *Mid its new joy, of a new care; For his cheek became, not pale, but fair, As rose-o’ershadowed lilies are; 820 And soon his deep and sunny hair, In this alone less beautiful, Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare. The blood in his translucent veins Beat, not like animal life, but love Seemed now its sullen springs to move, When life had failed, and all its pains; And sudden sleep would seize him oft Like death, so calm, — but that a tear, His pointed eye-lashes between, 830 Would gather in the light serene Of smiles whose lustre bright and soft Beneath lay undulating there. His breath was like inconstant flame As eagerly it went and came; And I hung o’er him in his sleep, Till, like an image in the lake Which rains disturb, my tears would break The shadow of that slumber deep. Then he would bid me not to weep, 840 And say, with flattery false yet sweet, That death and he could never meet, If I would never part with him. And so we loved, and did unite All that in us was yet divided; For when he said, that many a rite, By men to bind but once provided, Could not be shared by him and me, Or they would kill bim in their glee, I shuddered, and then laughing said — ‘We will have rites our faith to bind, 85: But our church shall be the starry night, Our altar the grassy earth outspread, And our priest the muttering wind.’ *T was sunset as I spoke. One star Had scarce burst forth, when from afar The ministers of misrule sent Seized upon Lionel, and bore His chained limbs to a dreary tower, In the midst of a city vast and wide. 860 For he, they said, from his mind had bent Against their gods keen blasphemy, For which, though his soul must roasted be In hell’s red lakes immortally, Yet even on earth must he abide The vengeance of their slaves: a trial, I think, men call it. What avail Are prayers and tears, which chase de- nial From the fierce savage nursed in hate ? What the knit soul that pleading and pale 87a Makes wan the quivering cheek whic late It painted with its own delight ? We were divided. As I could, I stilled the tingling of my blood, And followed him in their despite, As a widow follows, pale and wild, The murderers and corse of her only child; And when we came to the prison door, And I prayed to share his dungeon floor With prayers which rarely have been spurned, 880 And when men drove me forth, and I Stared with blank frenzy on the sky, — A farewell look of love he turned, Half calming me; then gazed awhile, As if through that black and massy pile, And through the crowd around him there, And through the dense and murky air, And the thronged streets, he did espy What poets know and prophesy; And said, with voice that made them shiver 890 And clung like music in my brain, And which the mute walls spoke again Prolonging it with deepened strain — ‘Fear not the tyrants shall rule forever, Or the priests of the bloody faith; They stand on the brink of that mighty river, Whose waves they have tainted with death; It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells, Around them it foams, and rages, and swells, And their swords and their sceptres I float- wg see, 00 Like wrecks, in the surge of eternity.’ I dwelt beside the prison gate; And the strange crowd that out and in Passed, some, no doubt, with mine own fate, Might re fretted me with its ceaseless in, But the fever of care was louder within. Soon but too late, in penitence Or fear, his foes released him thence. I saw his thin and languid form, As leaning on the jailor’s arm, gio Whose hardened eyes grew moist the while To meet his mute and faded smile ROSALIND AND HELEN 147 And hear his words of kind farewell, He tottered forth from his damp cell. Many had never wept before, From whom fast tears then gushed and fell; Many will relent no more, Who sobbed like infants then; ay, all Who thronged the prison’s stony hall, The rulers or the slaves of law, 920 Felt with a new surprise and awe That they were human, till strong shame Made them again become the same. The prison bloodhounds, huge and grim, From human looks the infection caught, And fondly crouched and fawned on him; And men have heard the prisoners say, Who in their rotting dungeons lay, That from that hour, throughout one day, The fierce despair and hate which kept 93 Their trampled bosoms almost slept, Where, like twin vultures, they hung feed- ing On each heart’s wound, wide torn and bleeding, — Because their jailors’ rule, they thought, Grew merciful, like a parent’s sway. I know not how, but we were free; And Lionel sate alone with me, As the carriage drove through the streets apace; And we looked upon each other’s face; And the blood in our fingers intertwined 940 Ran like the thoughts of a single mind, As the swift emotions went and came Through the veins of each united frame. So through the long, long streets we passed Of the million-peopled City vast; Which is that desert, where each one Seeks his mate yet is alone, Beloved and sought and mourned of none; Until the clear blue sky was seen, And the grassy meadows bright and green. 950 And then I sunk in his embrace Enclosing there a mighty space Of love; and so we travelled on By woods, and fields of yellow flowers, And towns, and villages, and towers, Day after day of happy hours. It was the azure time of June, When the skies are deep in the stainless noon, And the warm and fitful breezes shake The fresh green leaves of the hedge-row briar ; g60 And there were odors then to make The very breath we did respire A liquid element, whereon Our spirits, like delighted things That walk the air on subtle wings, Floated and mingled far away *Mid the warm winds of the sunny day. And when the evening star came forth Above the curve of the new bent moon, And light and sound ebbed from the earth, 97° Like the tide of the full and the wear sea To the depths of its own tranquillity, Our natures to its own repose Did the earth's breathless sleep attune; Like flowers, which on each other close Their languid leaves when daylight’s gone, We lay, till ew emotions came, Which seemed to make each mortal frame One soul cf interwoven flame, A life in life, a second birth 980 In worlds diviner far than earth; — Which, like two strains of harmony That mingle in the silent sky, Then slowly disunite, passed by And left the tenderness of tears, A soft oblivion of all fears, A sweet sleep: — so we travelled on Till we came to the home of Lionel, Among the mountains wild and lone, Beside the hoary western sea, 99° Which near the verge of the echoing shore The massy forest shadowed o’er. The ancient steward with hair all hoar, As we alighted, wept to see His master changed so fearfully; And the old man’s sobs did waken me From my dream of unremaining gladness; The truth flashed o’er me like quick mad- ness When I looked, and saw that there was death On Lionel. Yet day by day He lived, till fear grew hope and faith, And in my soul I dared to say, Nothing so bright can pass away; Death is dark, and foul, and dull, But he is — oh, how beautiful ! Yet day by day he grew more weak, And his sweet voice, when he might speak, 1000 148 ROSALIND AND HELEN Which ne’er was loud, became more low; And the light which flashed through his waxen cheek Grew faint, as the rose-like hues which flow From sunset o’er the Alpine snow; And death seemed not like death in him, For the spirit of life o’er every limb Lingered, a mist of sense and thought. When the summer wind faint odors brought From mountain flowers, even as it passed, His cheek would change, as the noonday sea Which the dying breeze sweeps fitfully. If but a cloud the sky o’ercast, You might see his color come and go, And the softest strain of music made Sweet smiles, yet sad, arise and fade Amid the dew of his tender eyes; And the breath, with intermitting flow, Made his pale lips quiver and part. You might hear the beatings of his heart, Quick but not strong; and with my tresses When oft he playfully would bind In the bowers of mossy lonelinesses His neck, and win me so to mingle In the sweet depth of woven caresses, And our faint limbs were intertwined, — Alas! the unquiet life did tingle From mine own heart through every vein, Like a captive in dreams of liberty, Who beats the walls of his stony cell. But his, it seemed already free, Like the shadow of fire surrounding me! On my faint eyes and limbs did dwell That spirit as it passed, till soon — 1040 As a frail cloud wandering o’er the moon, Beneath its light invisible, I0O10 1019 1030 Is seen when it folds its gray wings | again To alight on midnight’s dusky plain — I lived and saw, and the gathering soul Passed from beneath that strong control, And I fell on a life which was sick with fear Of all the woe that now I bear. Amid a bloomless myrtle wood, On a green and sea-girt promontory _ 1050 Not far from where we dwelt, there stood, Tn record of a sweet sad story, An altar and a temple bright Circled by steps, and o’er the gate Was sculptured, ‘ To Fidelity; ’ And in the shrine an image sate All veiled; but there was seen the light Of smiles which faintly could express A mingled pain and tenderness Through that ethereal drapery. 1060 The left hand held the head, the right — Beyond the veil, beneath the skin, You might see the nerves quivering within — Was forcing the point of a barbéd dart Into its side-convulsing heart. An unskilled hand, yet one informed With genius, had the marble warmed With that pathetic life. This tale It told: A dog had from the sea, When the tide was raging fearfully, — 1070 Dragged Lionel’s mother, weak and pale, Then died beside her on the sand, And she that temple thence had planned; But it was Lionel’s own hand Had wrought the image. Each new moon That lady did, in this lone fane, The rites of a religion sweet Whose god was in her heart and brain. The seasons’ loveliest flowers were strewn On the marble floor beneath her feet, ro8 And she brought crowns of sea- buds white Whose odor is so sweet and faint, And weeds, like branching chrysolite, Woven in devices fine and quaint; And tears from her brown eyes did stain The altar; need but look upon That dying statue, fair and wan, | If tears should cease, to weep again; And rare Arabian odors came, | Through the myrtle copses, steaming thence From the hissing frankincense, Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam, Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome — 1090 | That ivory dome, whose azure night With golden stars, like heaven, was bright O’er the split cedar’s pointed flame; And the lady’s harp would kindle there The melody of an old air, Softer than sleep; the villagers Mixed their religion up with hers, 110 And, as they listened round, shed tears. One eve he led me to this fane. Daylight on its last pnrple cloud ROSALIND AND HELEN 14y Was lingering gray, and soon her strain The nightingale began; now loud, Climbing in circles the windless sky, Now dying music; suddenly ’T is scattered in a thousand notes; And now to the hushed ear it floats Like field-smells known in infancy, Then, failing, soothes the air again. We sate within that temple lone, Pavilioned round with Parian stone; His mother’s harp stood near, and oft I had awakened music soft Amid its wires; the nightingale Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale. ‘ Now drain the cup,’ said Lionel, ‘Which the poet-bird has crowned so well With the wine of her bright and liquid song ! Heard’st thon not sweet words among That heaven-resounding minstrelsy ? Heard’st thou not that those who die Awake in a world of ecstasy ? That love, when limbs are interwoven, And sleep, when the night of life is cloven, And thought, to the world’s dim bound- aries clinging, And music, when one beloved is singing, Is death ? Let us drain right joyously The cup which the sweet bird fills for me.’ He paused, and to my lips he bent His own; like spirit his words went Through all my limbs with the speed of fire; And his keen eyes, glittering through mine, Filled me with the flame divine Which in their orbs was burning far, Like the light of an unmeasured star In the sky of midnight dark and deep; Yes, ’t was his soul that did inspire 1139 Sounds which my skill could ne’er awaken; And first, I felt my fingers sweep The harp, and a long quivering cry Burst from my lips in symphony; The dusk and solid air was shaken, As swift and swifter the notes came From my touch, that wandered like quick flame, And from my bosom, laboring With some unutterable thing. The awful sound of my own voice made My faint lips tremble; insome mood 1150 Of wordless thought Lionel stood T1190 1120 1130 So pale, that even beside his cheek The snowy column from its shade Caught whiteness; yet his countenance, Raised upward, burned with radiance Of spirit-piercing joy whose light, Like the moon struggling through the night Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break With beams that might not be confined. I paused, but soon his gestures kindled New power, as by the moving wind The waves are lifted; and my song To low soft notes now changed and dwin- dled, And, from the twinkling wires among, My languid fingers drew and flung Circles of life-dissolving sound, Yet faint; in aéry rings they bound My Lionel, who, as every strain Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien Sunk with the sound relaxedly; And slowly now he turned to me, As slowly faded from his face That awful joy; with look serene He was soon drawn to my embrace, And my wild song then died away In murmurs; words I dare not say We mixed, and on his lips mine fed Till they methought felt still and cold. ‘What is it with thee, love?’ I said; No word, no look, no motion ! yes, r18¢ There was a change, but spare to guess, Nor let that moment’s hope be told. I looked, — and knew that he was dead; And fell, as the eagle on the plain Falls when life deserts her brain, And the mortal lightning is veiled again. 1161 117¢ Oh, that I were now dead! but such — Did they not, love, demand too much, Those dying murmurs ? — he forbade. Oh, that I once again were mad ! And yet, dear Rosalind, not so, For I would live to share thy woe. Sweet boy ! did I forget thee too ? Alas, we know not what we do When we speak words. 11ga No memory more Is in my mind of that sea-shore. Madness came on me, and a troop Of misty shapes did seem to sit Beside me, on a vessel’s poop, 1199 And the clear north wind was driving it. Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers, 150 ROSALIND AND HELEN And the stars methought grew unlike ours, And the azure sky and the stormless sea Made me believe that I had died And waked in a world which was to me Drear hell, though heaven to all beside. Then a dead sleep fell on my mind, Whilst animal life many long years Had rescued from a chasm of tears; And, when I woke, I wept to find That the saine lady, bright and wise, With silver locks and quick brown eyes, The mother of my Lionel, Had tended me in my distress, and died some months before. Nor less Wonder, but far more peace and joy, Brought in that hour my lovely boy. For through that trance my soul had well The impress of thy being kept; And if I waked or if I slept, No doubt, though memory faithless be, Thy image ever dwelt on me; And thus, O Lionel, like thee Is our sweet child. "Tis sure most strange I knew not of so great a change As that which gave him birth, who now Is all the solace of my woe. 1210 1220 That Lionel great wealth had left By will to me, and that of all The ready lies of law bereft 1230 My child and me, — might well befall. But let me think not of the scorn Which from the meanest I have borne, When, for my child’s belovéd sake, { mixed with slaves, to vindicate The very laws themselves do make; Let me not say scorn is my fate, Lest I be proud, suffering the same With those who live in deathless fame. She ceased.—‘Lo, where red morning through the woods 1240 Is burning o’er the dew!’ said Rosalind. And with these words they rose, and towards the flood Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves, now wind With equal steps and fingers intertwined. Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies -And with their shadows the clear depths below. And where a little terrace from its bowers Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon flowers 125¢ Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o’er The liquid marble of the windless lake; And where the aged forest’s limbs look hoar Under the leaves which their green gar- ments make, They come. *T is Helen’s home, and clean and white, Like one which tyrants spare on our own land In some such solitude; its casements bright Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun, And even within ’t was scarce like Italy. And when she saw how all things there were planned As in an English home, dim memory Disturbed poor Rosalind; she stood as one Whose mind is where his body cannot 1260 be, Till Helen led her where her child yet slept, And said, ‘ Observe, that brow was Lionel’s, Those lips were his, and so he ever kept One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it. You cannot see his eyes—they are two wells Of liquid love. Let us not wake him yet.’ But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept 1274 A shower of burning tears which fell upon His face, and so his opening lashes shone With tears unlike his own, as he did leap In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep. So Rosalind and Helen lived together Thenceforth — changed in all else, yet friends again, Such as they were, when o’er the mountain heather They wandered in their youth through sun and rain. And after many years, for human things Change even like the ocean and the wind, Her daughter was restored to Rosalind, 1281 And in their circle thence some visitings Of joy ’mid their new calm would inter- vene. A lovely child she was, of looks serene, And nee which o’er things indifferent she JULIAN AND MADDALO 152 The grace and gentleness from whence they came. And Helen’s boy grew with her, and they fed From the same flowers of thought, until each mind Like springs which mingle in one flood became; 1289 And in their union soon their parents saw The shadow of the peace denied to them. And Rosalind — for when the living stem Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall — Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe The pale survivors followed her remains Beyond the region of dissolving rains, Up the cold mountain she was wont to call Her tomb; and on Chiavenna’s precipice They raised a pyramid of lasting ice, Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun, 1300 Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun, The last, when it had sunk; and through the night The charioteers of Arctos wheeléd round Its glittering point, as seen from Helen’s home, Whose sad inhabitants each year would come, With willing steps climbing that rugged height, And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime’s despite, Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light; Such flowers as in the wintry memory bloom I31¢ Of one friend left adorned that frozen tomb. Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould, Whose sufferings too were less, death slow- lier led Into the peace of his dominion cold. She died among her kindred, being old. And know, that if love die not in the dead As in the living, none of mortal kind Are blessed as now Helen and Rosalind. JULIAN AND MADDALO A CONVERSATION The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme, The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring, Are saturated not —nor Love with tears. Julian and Maddalo is the fruit of Shelley’s first visit to Venice in 1818, where he found Byron, and the poem is a reflection of their companionship, Julian standing for Shelley, Maddalo for Byron, and the child being Byron’s daughter, Allegra. It was written in the fall, at Este, and received its last revision in May, 1819, but was not published, notwith- standing some efforts of Shelley to bring it out, until after his death, when it was included in the Posthumous Poems, 1824. Shelley had it in mind to write three other similar poems, laying the scenes at Rome, Florence and Naples, but he did not carry out the plan. He once refers to the tale, or ‘ conversation’ as among ‘ his saddest verses ;’ but his impor- tant comment on it is contained in a letter to Hunt, August 15, 1819: ‘I send you a little poem to give to Ollier for publication, but without my name. Peacock will correct the proofs. I wrote it with the Vircii’s Gallus. idea of offering it to the Examiner, but I find it is too long. It was composed last year at Este; two of the characters you will recog- nize; and the third is also in some degree a painting from nature, but, with respect to time and place, ideal. You will find the little piece, I think, in some degree consistent with your own ideas of the manner in which poetry ought to be written. I have employed a certain familiar style of language to express the actual way in which people talk with each other, whom education and a certain refinement of sentiment have placed above the use of vulgar idioms. I use the word vulgar in its most ex- tensive sense. The vulgarity of rank and fashion is as gross in its way as that of pov- erty, and its cant terms equally expressive of base conceptions, and, therefore, equally unfit for poetry. Not that the familiar style is te be admitted in the treatment of a subject wholly ideal, or in that part of any subject 152 JULIAN AND MADDALO which relates to common life, where the pas- sion, exceeding a certain limit, touches the boundaries of that which is ideal. Strong passion expresses itself in metaphor, borrowed from objects alike remote or near, and casts over all the shadow of its own greatness. But what am I about? If my grandmother sucks eggs, was it I who taught her ? If you would really correct the proof, I need not trouble Peacock, who, I suppose, has enough. Can you take it as a compliment that I prefer to trouble you ? ‘I do not particularly wish this poem to be known as mine; but, at all events, I would not put my name to it. I leave you to judge whether it is best to throw it into the fire, or to publish it. So much for self — self, that burr that will stick to one.’ PREFACE Count Mappato is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen, resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country. But it is his weakness to be proud. He derives, from a comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can con- I RODE one evening with Count Maddalo Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow Of Adria towards Venice. A bare strand Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand, Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, Such as from earth’s embrace the salt ooze breeds, Is this; an uninhabited sea-side, Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried, Abandons; and no other object breaks The waste but one dwarf tree and some few stakes 10 Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes A narrow space of level sand thereon, Where ’t was our wont to ride while day went down. sider worthy of exertion. I say that Mad. dalo is proud, because I can find no other word to express the concentred and impatient feel- ings which consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more gentle, patient and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank and witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of in- toxication ; men are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an inex- pressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different countries. Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind, and the immense improvements of which. by the extinction of certain moral superstitions, human society may be yet sus- ceptible. Without concealing the evil in the world he is forever speculating how good may be made superior. He is a complete infidel and a scoffer at all things reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing out his taunts against religion. What Mad- dalo thinks on these matters is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opin- ions, is conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far this is possible the pious reader will determine. Julian is rather serious. Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his own account, to have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated and amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at length, might be like many other stories of the same kind. The un- connected exclamations of his agony will per- haps be found a sufficient comment for the text of every heart. This ride was my delight. I love all waste And solitary places; where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be; And such was this wide ocean, and this shore More barren than its billows; and yet more Than all, with a remembered friend I love 20 To ride as then I rode;— for the winds drove The living spray along the sunny air Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare, Stripped to their depths by the awakening north; And from the waves sound like delight broke forth Harmonizing with solitude, and sent Into our hearts aérial merriment. JULIAN AND MADDALO 153 So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought, Winging itself with laughter, lingered not, But flew from brain to brain, —such glee was ours, 30 Charged with light memories of remem- bered hours, None slow enough for sadness; till we came Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame. This day had been cheerful but cold, and now The sun was sinking, and the wind also. Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be Talk interrupted with such raillery As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn The thoughts it would extinguish. ’T was forlorn, Yet pleasing; such as once, so poets tell, 4o The devils held within the dales of Hell, Concerning God, freewill and destiny; Of all that earth has been, or yet may be, All that vain men imagine ox believe, Or hope can paint, or suffering may achieve, We descanted; and J (for ever still Is it not wise to make the best of ill?) Argued against despondency, but pride Made my companion take the darker side. The sense that he was greater than his kind 50 Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blin By gazing on its own exceeding light. Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight, Over the horizon of the mountains. Oh, How beautiful is sunset, when the glow Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee, Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy ! hy mountains, seas and vineyards and the towers Of cities they encircle ! — It was ours To stand on thee, beholding it; and then, 60 Just where we had dismounted, the Count’s men Were waiting for us with the gondola. As those who pause on some delightful way Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood Looking upon the evening, and the flood, Which lay between the city and the shore, Paved with the image of the sky. The hoar And aéry Alps towards the north appeared, Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bul- wark reared Between the east and west; and half the sky 7a Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry, Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew Down the steep west into a wondrous hue Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent Among the many-folded hills. They were Those famous Euganean hills, which bear, As seen from Lido through the harbor piles, The likeness of a clump of peakéd isles; 79 And then, as if the earth and sea had been Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen Those mountains towering as from waves of flame Around the vaporous sun, from which there came The inmost purple spirit of light, and made Their very peaks transparent. ‘Ere it fade,’ Said my companion, ‘I will show you soon A better station.’ So, o’er the lagune We glided; and from that funereal bark I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark How from their many isles, in evening’s gleam, Its temples and its palaces did seem Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven. I was about to speak, when — even Now at the point I meant,’ said Maddalo, And tade the gondolieri cease to row. ‘Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.’ I looked, and saw between us and the sun A building on an island, — such a one As age to age might add, for uses vile, 100 A windowless, deformed and dreary pile; And on the top an open tower, where hung A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung; We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue; The broad sun sunk behind it, and it tolled ‘We are In strong and black relief. ‘What we behold Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,’ Said Maddalo; ‘and ever at this hour Those who may cross the water hear that bell. Which calls the maniacs each one from his cell 110 154 To vespers.’—‘As much skill as need to pray In thanks or hope for their dark lot have the To their sear Maker,’ I replied. ‘Oho! You talk as in years past,’ said Maddalo. “Tis strange men change not. You were ever still Among Christ’s flock a perilous infidel, A wolf for the meek lambs — if you can’t swim, Beware of Providence.’ I looked on him, But the gay smile had faded in his eye, — ‘ And such,’ he cried, ‘is our mortality; 120 And this must be the emblem and the sign Of what should be eternal and divine ! And, like that black and dreary bell, the soul, Hung in a heaven-illumined tower, must toll Our thoughts and our desires to meet below Round the rent heart and pray —as mad- men do For what ? they know not, till the night of death, As sunset that strange vision, severeth 128 Our memory from itself, and us from all We sought, and yet were baffled.’ I recall The sense of what he said, although I mar The force of his expressions. The broad star Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill, And the black bell became invisible, And the red tower looked gray, and all between, The churches, ships and palaces were seen Huddled in gloom; into the purple sea The orange hues of heaven sunk silently. We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola Conveyed me to my lodgings by the way. The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim. 141 Ere Maddalo arose, I called on him, And whilst I waited, with his child I played. A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made; A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being, Graceful without design, and unforeseeing, With eyes — oh, speak not of her eyes ! — which seem Twin mirrors of Italian heaven, yet gleam With such deep meaning as we never see But in the human countenance. With me She was a special favorite; I had nursed Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first 152 JULIAN AND MADDALO To this bleak world; and she yet seemed to know On second sight her ancient playfellow, Less changed than she was by six months oz sO; For, after her first shyness was worn out, We sate there, rolling billiard balls about, When the Count entered. Salutations past — ‘The words you spoke last night might well have cast A darkness on my spirit. If man be 160 The passive thing you say, I should not see Much harm in the religions and old saws, (Though I may never own such leaden laws) Which break a teachless nature to the yoke. Mine is another faith.’ Thus much I spoke, And noting he replied not, added: ‘See This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free; She spends a happy time with little care, While we to such sick thoughts subjected are 169 As came on you last night. It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise; we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek, But in our mind? and if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire ?’ ‘Ay, if we were not weak — and we aspire How vainly to be strong !’ said Maddalo; ‘You talk Utopia.’ ‘It remains to know,’ I then rejoined, ‘and those who try may find 180 How strong the chains are which our spirit bind; Brittle perchance asstraw. We are assured Much may be conquered, much may be endured Of what degrades and crushes us. know That we have power over ourselves to do And suffer — what, we know not till we try; But something nobler than to live and die. So taught those kings of old philosophy, Who reigned before religion made mep We blind; And those who suffer with their suffering kind 190 Yet feel this faith religion.’ ‘My dear friend,* , Said Maddalo, ‘ my judgment will not bend JULIAN AND MADDALO 155 To your opinion, though I think you might Make such a system refutation-tight As far as words go. I knew one like you, Who to this city came some months ago, With whom I argued in this sort, and he Is now gone mad,—and so he answered me, — Poor fellow! but if you would like to go, Well visit him, and his wild talk will show 200 How vain are such aspiring theories.’ ‘T hope to prove the induction otherwise, And that a want of that true theory still, Which seeks “ a soul of goodness ” in things ill, Or in himself or others, has thus bowed His being. There are some by nature proud, Who patient in all else demand but this — To love and be beloved with gentleness; And, being scorned, what wonder if they die Some living death? this is not destiny 210 But man’s own wilful ill.’ As thus I spoke, Servants announced the gondola, and we Through the fast-falling rain and high- wrought sea Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands. We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands, Fierce yells and howlings and lamentings keen, And laughter where complaint had merrier been, Moans, shrieks, and curses, and blasphem- ing prayers, 218 Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs Into an old courtyard. I heard on high, Then, fragments of most touching melody, But looking up saw not the singer there. Through the black bars in the tempestuous air I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing, Long iangled locks flung wildly forth, and flowing, Of those who on a sudden were beguiled Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled Hearing sweet sounds. Then I: ‘Methinks there were A cure of these with patience and kind care, 29 If music can thus move. But what is he, Whom we seek here?’ ‘Of his sad history I know but this,’ said Maddalo: ‘he came To Venice a dejected man, and fame Said he was wealthy, or he had been so. Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe; But he was ever talking in such sort As you do—far more sadly; he seemed hurt, Even as a man with his peculiar wrong, To hear but of the oppression of the strong, Or those absurd deceits (I think with you In some respects, you know) which carry through 245 The excellent impostors of this earth When they outface detection. He had worth, Poor fellow ! but a humorist in his way.’ ‘ Alas, what drove him mad?’ ‘I cannot say; A lady came with him from France, and when She left him and returned, he wandered then About yon lonely isles of desert sand Till he grew wild. He had no cash or land Remaining; the police had brought him here; 250 Some fancy took him and he would not bear Removal; so I fitted up for him Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim, And sent him busts and books and urns for flowers, Which had adorned his life in happier hours, And instruments of music. You may guess A stranger could do little more or less For one so gentle and unfortunate; And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight From madmen’s chains, and make this Hell appear 260 A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.’ ‘Nay, this was kind of you; he had no claim, As the world says.’ ‘ None — but the very same Which I on all mankind, were I as he Fallen to such deep reverse. His melody Is interrupted; now we hear the din Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin Let us now visit him; after this strain He ever communes with himself again, 156 JULIAN AND MADDALO And sees nor hears not any.’ Having said These words, we called the keeper, and he led 271 To an apartment opening on the sea. There the poor wretch was sitting mourn- fully Near a piano, his pale fingers twined One with the other, and the ooze and wind Rushed through an open casement, and did sway His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray; His head was leaning on a music-book, And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook; 279 His lips were pressed against a folded leaf, In hue too beautiful for health, and grief Smiled in their motions as they lay apart. As one who wrought from his own fervid heart The eloquence of passion, soon he raised His sad meek face, and eyes lustrous and glazed, And spoke — sometimes as one who wrote, and thought His words might move some heart that heeded not, If sent to distant lands; and then as one Reproaching deeds never to be undone With wondering self-compassion; then his speech 290 Was lost in grief, and then his words came each Unmodulated, cold, expressionless, But that from one jarred accent you might guess It was despair made them so uniform; And all the while the loud and gusty storm Hissed through the window, and we stood behind Stealing his accents from the envious wind Unseen. I yet remember what he said Distinctly ; such impression his words made. ‘Month after month,’ he cried, ‘to bear this load, 300 And, as a jade urged by the whip and goad, To drag life on — which like a heavy chain Lengthens behind with many a link of pain | — And not to speak my grief — oh, not to dare To give a human voice to my despair, But live, and move, and, wretched thing ! smile on As if I never went aside to groan: And wear this mask of falsehood even to those Who are most dear —not for my own re- pose — Alas, no scorn or pain or hate could be 310 So heavy as that falsehood is to me ! But that I cannot bear more altered faces Than needs must be, more changed and cold embraces, More misery, disappointment and mistrust To own me for their father. Would the dust Were covered in upon my body now! That the life ceased to toil within my brow! And then these thoughts would at the least be fled; Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead. ‘What Power delights to torture us? I know 320 That to myself I do not wholly owe What now I suffer, though in part I may. Alas ! none strewed sweet flowers upon the way Where, wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain, My shadow, which will leave me not again. If I have erred, there was no joy in error, But pain and insult and unrest and terror; I have not, as some do, bought penitence With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet of- fence; For then—if love and tenderness and truth 330 Had overlived hope’s momentary youth, My creed should have redeemed me from repenting; But loathéd seorn and outrage unrelenting Met love excited by far other seeming Until the end was gained; as one from dreaming Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state Such as it is — ©O Thou my spirit’s mate ! Who, for thou art compassionate and wise, Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see — 340 My secret groans must be unheard by thee; Thou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood to know Thy lost friend’s incommunicable woe. JULIAN AND MADDALO 137 *Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed In friendship, let me not that name de- grade By placing on your hearts the secret load Which crushes mine todust. There is one road To peace, and that is truth, which follow ye! Love sometimes leads astray to misery. Yet think not, though subdued — and I may well 350 Say that I am subdued —that the full hell Within me would infect the untainted breast Of sacred Nature with its swn unrest; As some perverted beings think to find In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind Which scorn or hate have wounded — oh, how vain ! The dagger heals not, but may rend again ! Believe that I am ever still the same In creed as in resolve; and what may tame My heart must leave the understanding free, 360 Or all would sink in this keen agony; Nor dream that I will join the vulgar cry; Or with my silence sanction tyranny; Or seek a moment’s shelter from my pain In any madness which the world calls gain, Ambition or revenge or thoughts as stern As those which make me what I am; or turn To avarice or misanthropy or lust. Heap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust ! Till then the dungeon may demand its prey, 370 And Poverty and Shame may meet and say, Halting pede me on the public way, “That love-devoted youth is ours; let’s sit Beside him; he may live some six months et.” Or the red scaffold, as our country bends, May ask some willing victim; or ye, friends, May fall under some sorrow, which this heart Or band may share or vanquish or avert; Iam prepared —in truth, with no proud 9. > To do ae ent aught, as when a boy 380 I did devote to justice and to love My nature, worthless now ! — ‘T must remove A veil from my pent mind. ’Tis torn aside ! O pallid as Death’s dedicated bride, Thou am which art sitting by my side, Am I not wan like thee? at the grave’s eall I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball, To greet the ghastly paramour for whom Thou hast deserted me—and made the tomb Thy bridal bed — but I beside your feet 39. Will lie and watch ye from my winding- sheet — Thus — wide-awake though dead —yet stay, oh, stay ! Go not so soon —I know not what I say — Hear but my reasons —I am mad, I fear, My fancy is o’erwrought —thou art not here; Pale art thou, ’tis most true — but thou art gone, Thy work is finished — I am left alone. ‘Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast, Which like a serpent thou envenomest As in repayment of the warmth it lent ? 4oc Didst thou not seek me for thine own con- tent ? Did not thy loveawaken mine? I thought That thou wert she who said “ You kiss me not Ever; I fear you do not love me now ” — In truth I loved even to my overthrow Her who would fain forget these words; but they Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away. ‘You say that I am proud —that when I speak My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break The spirit it expresses.— Never one 410 Humbled himself before, as I have done ! Even the instinctive worm on which we tread Turns, though it wound not— then with prostrate head Sinks in the dust and writhes like me — and dies ? No: wears a living death of agonies ! As the slow shadows of the pointed grass Mark the eternal periods, his pangs pass. 158 JULIAN AND MADDALO Slow, ever-moving, making moments be As mine seem, — each an immortality ! ‘That you had never seen me— never heard 420 My voice, and more than all had ne’er en- dured The deep pollution of my loathed em- brace — That your eyes ne’er had lied love in my face — That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne’er Our hearts had for a moment mingled there To disunite in horror — these were not With thee like some suppressed and hideous thonght Which flits athwart our musings but can find 430 No rest within a pure and gentle mind; Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word, And sear’dst my memory o’er them, — for I heard And can forget not; — they were ministered One after one, those curses. Mix them up Like self-destroying poisons in one cup, And they will make one blessing, which thou ne’er Didst imprecate for on me, — death. ‘It were A cruel punishment for one most cruel, If such can love, to make that love the 440 Of the mind’s hell — hate, scorn, remorse, despair; But me, whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone, Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan For woes which others hear not, and could see The absent with the glance of fantasy, And with the poor and trampled sit and weep, Following the captive to his dungeon deep; Me —who am as a nerve o’er which do creep 449 The else unfelt oppressions of this earth, And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth, When all beside was cold:— that thou on me Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony ! Such curses are from lips once eloquent With love’s too partial praise! Let none relent Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name Henceforth, if an example for the same They seek: — for thou on me look’dst so, and so — And didst speak thus—and thus. I live to show 459 How much men bear and die not ! ‘Thou wilt tell With the grimace of hate how horrible It was to meet my love when thine grew less; Thou wilt admire how I could e’er address Such features to love’s work. ‘This taunt, though true, For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue estowed on me her choicest workmanship) Shall not be thy defence; for since thy lip Met mine first, years long past, — since thine eye kindled With soft fire under mine, —I have not dwindled, Nor changed in mind or body, or in aught But as love changes what it loveth not 47: After long years and many trials. ‘How vain Are words! I thought never to speak again, Not even in secret, not to mine own heart; But from my lips the unwilling accents start, And from my pen the words flow as I write, Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears ; my sight Is dim to see that charactered in vain On this unfeeling leaf, which burns the brain And eats into it, blotting all things fair 480 And wise and good which time had written there. Those who inflict must suffer, for they see The work of their own hearts, and this must be Our chastisement or Tecompense. — O child ! I would that thine were like to be more mild JULIAN AND MADDALO 159 For both our wretched sakes, — for thine the most Who feelest already all that thou hast lost Without the power to wish it thine again; And as slow years pass, a funereal train, Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend 490 Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend No thought on my dead memory ? * Alas, love! Fear me not — against thee I would not move A finger in despite. Do I not live That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve ? I give thee tears for scorn, and love for hate; And that thy lot may be less desolate Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain. 499 Then, when thou speakest of me, never say “ He conld forgive not.” Here I cast away All human passions, all revenge, all pride; I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide Under these words, like embers, every spark Of that which has consumed me. Quick aud dark The grave is yawning —as its roof shall cover My limbs with dust and worms under and over, Solet Oblivion hide this grief — the air Closes upon my accents as despair 509 Upon my heart — let death upon despair !’ He ceased, and overcome leant back awhile; Then rising, with a melancholy smile, Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept, And muttered some familiar name, and we Wept without shame in his society. I think I never was impressed so much; The man who were not must have lacked a touch 518 Of human nature. — Then we lingered not, Although our argument was quite forgot; But, calling the attendants, went to dine At Maddalo’s; yet neither cheer nor wine Could give us spirits, for we talked of him And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim 5 And we agreed his was some dreadful ill Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable, By a dear friend; some deadly change in love Of one vowed deeply, which he dreamed not of; For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot Of falsehood on his mind which flourished not 534 But in the light of all-beholding truth; And having stamped this canker on his youth She had abandoned him — and how much more Might be his woe, we guessed not; he had store Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess From his nice habits and his gentleness; These were now lost—it were a grief indeed If he had changed one unsustaining reed For all that such a man might else adorn. The colors of his mind seemed yet unworn; For the wild language of his grief was high = S41 Such as in measure were called poetry. And I remember one remark which then Maddalo made. He said — ‘ Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song.’ If I had been an unconnected man, I, from this moment, should have formed some plan Never to leave sweet Venice, — for to me It was delight to ride by the lone sea; 550 And then the town is silent — one may write Or read in gondolas by day or night, Having the little brazen lamp alight, Unseen, uninterrupted; books are there, Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair Which were twin-born with poetry, and all We seek in towns, with little to recall Regrets for the green country. I might sit In Maddalo’s great palace, and his wit And subtle talk would cheer the winter night 560 And make me know myself, and the fire- light 160 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND Would flash upon our faces, till the day Might dawn and make me wonder at my stay. But I had friends in London too. The chief Attraction here was that I sought relief From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought Within me — ’t was perhaps an idle thought, But I imagined that if day by day 568 I watched him, and but seldom went away, And studied all the beatings of his heart With zeal, as men study some stubborn art For their own good, and could by patience find An entrance to the caverns of his mind, I might reclaim him from this dark estate. In friendships I had been most fortunate, Yet never saw I one whom I would eall More willingly my friend; and this was all Accomplished not; such dreams of baseless good Oft come and go in crowds and solitude And leave uo trace, — but what I now de- signed 580 Made, for long years, impression on my mind. The following morning, urged by my affairs, I left bright Venice. After many years, And many changes, I returned; the name Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same; But Maddalo was travelling far away Among the mountains of Armenia. His dog was dead. His child had now be- { come 588 A woman; such as it has been my doom To meet with few, a wonder of this earth, Where there is little of transcendent worth, Like one of Shakespeare’s women. Kindly she And with a manner beyond courtesy, Received her father’s friend; and, when I asked. Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked, And told, as she had heard, the mournful tale: ‘That the poor sufferer’s health began to fail Two years from my departure, but that then The lady, who had left him, came again. Her mien had been imperious, but she now Looked meek — perhaps remorse had brought her low. 60x Her coming made him better, and they stayed Together at my father’s — for I played As I remember with the lady’s shawl; I might be six years old — but after all She left him.’ ‘ Why, her heart must have been tough. How did it end?’ ‘And was not this enough ? They met — they parted.’ ‘Child, is there no more ?’ ‘Something within that interval which bore The stamp of why they parted, how they met; 610 Yet if thine aged eyes disdain to wet Those wrinkled cheeks with youth’s re- membered tears, Ask me no more, but let the silent years Be closed and cered over their memory, As yon mute marble where their corpses lie.’ I urged and questioned still; she told me how All happened —but the cold world shall not know. PROMETHEUS UNBOUND A LYRICAL DRAMA IN FOUR ACTS AUDYSNE HEC, AMPHIAR, SUB TERRAM ABDITE? Prometheus Unbound best combines the va- tious elements of Shelley’s genius in their most complete expression, and unites harmoniously his lyrically creative power of imagination and his ‘passion for reforming the world.’ It is the fruit of an outburst of poetic energy un- der the double stimulus of his enthusiastic Greek studies, begun under Peacock’s influ- INTRODUCTORY NOTE 161 ence, and of his delight in the beauty of Italy, whither he had removed for health and rest. It marks his full mastery of his powers. It is, not less than Queen Mab and The Revolt of Islam, a poem of the moral perfection of man ; and, not less than Alastor and Epipsychidion, a poem of spiritual ideality. He was himself in love with it: ‘a poem of a higher character than anything I have yet attempted and per- haps less an imitation of anything that has gone before it,’ he writes to Ollier ; and again, ‘a poem in my best style, whatever that may amount to, . .. the most perfect of my pro- ductions,’ and ‘the best thing I ever wrote ;’ and finally he says, ‘ Prometheus Unbound, I must tell you, is my favorite poem; I charge you, therefore, especially to pet him and feed him with fine ink and good paper... . . I think, if I can judge by its merits, the Prometheus cannot sell beyond twenty copies.’ Nor did he lose his affection for it. Trelawny records him as saying, ‘If that is not durable poetry, tried by the severest test, I do not know what is. It is a lofty subject, not inadequately treated, and should not perish with me.’... ‘My friends say my Prometheus is too wild, ideal, and perplexed with imagery. It may be so. It has no resemblance to the Greek drama. It is original ; and cost me severe mental labor. Authors, like mothers, prefer the children who have given them most trouble.’ The drama was begun in the summer-house of his garden at Este about September, 1818, and the first Act had been finished as early as October 8; it was apparently laid aside, and again taken up at Rome in the spring of 1819, where, under the circumstances described in the preface, the second and third Acts were added, and the work, in its first form, was thus completed by April 6. The fourth Act was an afterthought, and was composed at Florence toward the end of the year. The whole was published, with other poems, in the summer of 1820. The following extracts from Mrs. Shelley’s long and admirable note show the progress of the poem during its composition, the atmo- sphere of its creation, and its general scheme: ‘The first aspect of Italy enchanted Shelley ; it seemed « garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive letters during the first year of his residence in Italy, which, as compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show how truly he appreciated and studied the wonders of nature and art in that divine land. ‘The poetical spirit within him speedily re- vived with all the power and with more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He medi- tated three subjects as the groundwork for lyrical Dramas. One was the story of Tasso: of this a slight fragment of a song of Tasso remains. The other was one founded on the book of Job, which he never abandoned in idea, but of which no trace remains among his papers. The third was the Prometheus Un. bound. The Greek tragedians were now his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Aischylus filled him with wonder‘and delight. The father of Greek tragedy does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and tenderness of Euripides ; the interest on which he founds his dramas is often elevated above human vicis- situdes into the mighty passions and throes of gods and demigods — such fascinated the ab- stract imagination of Shelley. ‘We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that interval. Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither we returned early in March, 1819. During all this time Shelley meditated the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other poems were composed during this interval, and while at the Bagni di Lucea he translated Plato’s Symposium. But though he diversified his studies, his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at Rome, during a bright and beautiful spring, he gave up his whole time to the composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he men- tions in his preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. These are little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He describes them in a letter, with that poetry, and delicacy, and truth of description, which rendered his narrated impressions of scenery of unequalled beauty and interest. ‘ At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several months after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition. ‘The prominent feature of Shelley’s theory of the destiny of the human species was, that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of Christianity ; God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall, ‘«* Brought death into the world and all our woe.” Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these notes to notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man could 162 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell on, was the image of One warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all, even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of hu- manity; a victim full of fortitude and hope, and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of good. Such he had depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim of tyrants. He now took a more idealized image of the same subject. He followed certain classical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator, who, un- able to bring mankind back to primitive inno- cence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind beyond the state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through wis- dom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the Titan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to devour his still-re- newed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known only to Prome- theus ; and the god offered freedom from tor- ture on condition of its being communicated tohim. According to the mythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture and set him free, and Thetis was mar- ried to Peleus the father of Achilles. ‘Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar views. The son, greater than his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and Thetis, was to dethrone Evil and bring back a happier reign than that of Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures centuries of torture, till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the real event, but darkly guessing that some great good to him- self will flow, espouses Thetis. At the moment, the Primal Power of the world drives him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the per- son of Hercules, liberates Humanity, typified in Prometheus, from the tortures generated by evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the Ocean~ ides, is the wife of Prometheus — she was, according to other mythological interpreta- tions, the same as Venus and Nature. When the Benefactor of Mankind is liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her prime, and is united to her husband, the emblem of the human race, in perfect and happy uniou. In the fourth Act, the poet gives further scope to hig imagination, and idealizes the forms of crea- tion, such as we know them, instead of such as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, the mighty Parent, is superseded by the Spirit of the Earth — the guide of our planet through the realms of sky — while his fair and weaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss from the annihilation of Evil in the superior sphere. ‘Shelley develops, more particularly in the lyrics of this drama, his abstruse and imagina- tive theories with regard to the Creation. It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write prose meta- physical essays on the nature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered frag- ments of observations and remarks alone re- main. He considered these philosophical views of mind and nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry. ‘More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible imagery. Shelley loved to idealize the real — to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind.... ‘Through the whole Poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of love ; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the law of the world... . ‘The charm of the Roman climate helped to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty than they had ever worn before ; and as he wandered among the ruins, made one with nature in their decay, or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many passages in the Prometheus which show the intense delight he received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty of poetical description peculiarly his own.’ PREFACE The Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of their national his- tory or mythology, employed in their treatment of it a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves bound to ad- here to the common interpretation or to imitate in story as in title their rivals and predecessors. AUTHOR’S PREFACE 163 Such a system would have amounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their competitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnonian story was exhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as dramas. I have presumed to employ a similar license. The Prometheus Unbound of Aischylus sup- posed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire by the con- summation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and Prome- theus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done no more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of Aiéschylus; an ambition which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject had incited me to cherish, the recollec- tion of the high comparison such an attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being, resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan ; and Prometheus is, in my judgment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambi- tion, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement, which, in the hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. The charac- ter of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former be- cause the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those who consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling it engenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends. This Poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, among the flowery glades and thickets of odor- iferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the spirits even to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama. The imagery which I have employed will be found, in many instances, to have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those external actions by which they are expressed. This is unusual in modern poetry, although Dante and Shakespeare are full of instances of the same kind; Dante indeed more than any other poet, and with greater success. But the Greek poets, as writers to whom no resource of awakening the sympathy of their contemporaries was unknown, were in the habitual use of this power; and itis the study of their works (since a higher merit would probably be denied me) to which I am willing that my readers should impute this singularity. One word is due in candor to the degree in which the study of contemporary writings may have tinged my composition, for such has been a topie of censure with regard to poems far more popular, and indeed more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible that any one, who inhabits the same age with such writers as those who stand in the foremost ranks of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that his language and tone of thought may not have been modified by the study of the pro- ductions of those extraordinary intellects. It is true that, not the spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it has manifested itself, are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual condition of the minds among which they have been produced. Thus a number of writers possess the form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom, it is alleged, they imitate ; because the former is the endowment of the age in which they live, and the latter must be the uncommunicated lightning of their own mind. The peculiar style of intense and comprehen- sive imagery which distinguishes the modern literature of England has not been, asa general power, the product of the imitation of any par- ticular writer. The mass cf expabilities re- mains at every period materially the same: the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change. If England vere divided into forty republics, each equal im population and extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would pro- duce philosophers and poets equal to those whe (if we except Shakespeare) have never been surpassed. We owe the great writers cf the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. We owe Milton to the 364 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND progress and development of the same spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remem- bered, a republican and a bold inquirer into morals and -eiigion. The great writers of our own age are, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unima- gined change in our social condition or the opin- ions which cement it. The cloud of mind is discharging its collected lightning, and the equilibrium between institutions and opinions is now restoring or is about to be restored. As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It ereates, but it creates by combination and re- presentation. Poetieal abstractions are beauti- ful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in Nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought and with the contemporary condition of them. One great poet is a masterpiece of Nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely and as easily de- termine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible uni- verse as exclude from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained, un- natural and ineffectual. A poet is the com- bined product of such internal powers as mod- ify the nature of others, and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers ; he is not one, but both. Every man’s mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of Nature and art; by every word and every sug- gestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness ; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected and in which they compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philoso- phers, painters, sculptors and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape. “here is a similar- ity between Homer and Hesiod, between Ais- chylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Hor- ace, between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions are ar- ranged. If this similarity be the result of imi- tation, I am willing to confess that I have imitated. Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I have what a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms a ‘ passion for reforming the world :’ what passion incited him to write and publish his book he omits to explain. For my part I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon than go to Heaven with Paley and Malthus. But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compo- sitions solely to the direct enforcement of re- form, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence ; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My purpose has hitherto been simply to famil- iarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence ; aware that. until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned princi- ples of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious pas- senger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I purpose, that is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me to be the genuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of injustice and superstition flatter themselves that I should take Aischylus rather than Plato as my model. The having spoken of myself with unaffected freedom will need little apology with the can- did; and let the uncandid consider that they injure me less than their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation. Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and _ instruct others, be they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his attempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccom- plished purpose have been sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the dust of oblivion upon his efforts ; the pile they raise will betray his grave which might otherwise have beer unknown. ACT I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 165 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND DRAMATIS PERSONA PROMETHEUS. ASIA DEmoGorGon. PANTHEA Oceanides. JUPITER. IonE Tue EARTH. THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER. OcEAN. Tue Spirit oF THE Earra. APOLLO. Tue SrirIT OF THE Moon. MERCURY. Srrrits OF THE Hours. HERCULES. Sprrits. Ecxozs. Fauns. FurIEs. ACT I Scrnz, a Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. PRoMETHEUS ts discovered bound to the Precipice. PantHea and Ione are seated at his feet. Time, Night. During the Scene morning slowly breaks. PROMETHEUS Mownarcu of Gods and Demons, and all Spirits But One, who throng those bright and roll- ing worlds Which Thou and I alone of living things Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise, And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, With fear and self-contempt and barren hope; Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate, Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, 10 O’er mine own misery and thy vain re- venge. Three thousand years of sleep-unshe!tered hours, > And moments aye divided by keen pangs Till they seemed years, torture and soli- tude, Scorn and despair—these are mine em- pire: : More glorious far than that which thou surveyest From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty | God ! Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling moun- tain, 22 Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life. Ab me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever ! No change, no pause, no hope! Yet 1 endure. I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt ? I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm, Heaven’s ever-changing shadow, spread below, Have its deaf waves not heard my agony ? Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, forever! 30 The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains Eat with their burning cold into my bones. Heaven’s wingéd hound, polluting from thy lips His beak ¢ poison not his own, tears up My heart; and shapeless sights come wan- dering by, The ghastly people of the realm of dream, Mocking me; and the Earthquake-fiends are charged To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds When the rocks split and close again be- hind; 40 While from their loud abysses howling throng The genii of the storm, urging the rage Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail. And yet to me welcome is day and night, Whether one breaks the hoar-frost of the morn, Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs The leaden-colored east; for then they lead The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom — As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim — Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood 5 oO From these pale feet, which then might trample thee If they disdained not such a prostrate slave, 166 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT 1 Disdain! Ah, no! I pity thee. What ruin Will hunt thee undefended through the wide Heaven! How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror, Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief, Not exultation, for I hate no more, As then ere misery made me wise. The curse Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains, Whose many-voicéd Echoes, through the mist 60 Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell ! Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost, Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air Through which the Sun walks burning without beams ! And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poiséd wings Hung mute and moveless o’er yon hushed abyss, As thunder, louder than your own, made rock The orbéd world! If then my words had power, Though I am changed so that aught evil wish qo Is dead within; although no memory be Of what is hate, let them not lose it now ! What was that curse ? for ye all heard me speak. FIRST VOICE: from the Mountains Thrice three hundred thousand years O’er the earthquake’s couch we stood; Oft, as men convulsed with fears, We trembled in our multitude. SECOND VOICE: from the Springs Thunderbolts had parched our water, We had been stained with bitter blood, And had run mute, ’mid shrieks of slaughter 80 Through a city and a solitude. THIRD VOICE: from the Air I had clothed, since Earth uprose, Its wastes in colors not their own, And oft had my serene repose Been cloven by many a rending groan. FOURTH VOICE: from the Whirlwinds We had soared beneath these mountains Unresting ages; nor had thunder, Nor yon voleano’s flaming fountains, Nor any power above or under Ever made us mute with wonder. R FIRST VOICE But never bowed our snowy crest As at the voice of thine unrest. SECOND VOICE Never such a sound before To the Indian waves we bore. A pilot asleep on the howling sea Leaped up from the deck in agony, And heard, and cried, ‘ Ah, woe is me!’ And died as mad as the wild waves be. THIRD VOICE By such dread words from Earth to Heaven My still realm was never riven; 100 When its wound was closed, there stood Darkness o’er the day like blood. FOURTH VOICE And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin To frozen caves our flight pursuing Made us keep silence — thus — and thus — Though silence is a hell to us. THE EARTH The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills Cried, ‘ Misery !’ then; the hollow Heaven replied, ‘Misery!’ And the Ocean’s purple waves, Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds, 110 And the pale nations heard it, ‘ Misery !’ PROMETHEUS I hear a sound of voices; not the voice Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove, Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me, The Titan? He who made his agony The barrier to your else all-conquering foe 7 O rock-embosomed lawns and snow-fed streams, 120 Now seen athwart frore vapors, deep below, ACT I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 16) Through whose o’ershadowing woods I wandered once With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes; Why scorns the spirit, which informs ye, now To commune with me? me alone who checked, As one who checksa fiend-drawn charioteer, The falsehood and the force of him who reigns Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses: Why answer ye not, still? Brethren! THE EARTH They dare not. 130 PROMETHEUS Who dares? for I would hear that curse again. Ha, what an awful whisper rises up ! Tis scarce like sound; it tingles through the frame As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike. Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice I only know that thou art moving near And love. How cursed I him? THE EARTH How canst thou hear Who knowest not the language of the dead ? PROMETHEUS Thou art a living spirit; speak as they. THE EARTH I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven’s fell King 140 Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain More torturing than the one whereon I roll. Subtle thou art and good; and though the Gods Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God, Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now. PROMETHEUS Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel Faint, like one mingled in entwining loves Yet ’t is not pleasure. THE EARTH No, thou canst not hear; Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known 150 Only to those who die. PROMETHEUS And what art thon, O melancholy Voice ? THE EARTH I am the Earth, Thy mother; she within whose stony veins, To the last fibre of the loftiest tree Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air, Joy ran, as blood within a living frame, When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy ! And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust, 160 And ouralmighty Tyrant with fierce dread Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here. Then — see those million worlds which burn and roll Around us — their inhabitants beheld My spheréd light wane in wide Heaven; the sea Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven’s frown; Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains; Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads 170 Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled. When Plague had fallen on man and beast and worm, And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree; And in the corn, and vines, and meadow. grass, Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry With grief, and the thin air, my breath, was stained 168 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT I With the contagion of a mother’s hate Breathed on her child’s destroyer; ay, I heard Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not, 180 Yet my innumerable seas and streams, Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air, And the inarticulate people of the dead, Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate In secret joy and hope those dreadful words, But dare not speak them PROMETHEUS Venerable mother ! All else who live and suffer take from thee Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds, And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine. But mine own words, I pray, deny me not. 190 THE EARTH They shal! be told. Ere Babylon was dust, The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, Met his own image walking in the gar- den. That apparition, sole of men, he saw. For know there are two worlds of life and death: One that which thou beholdest; but the other Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit The shadows of all forms that think and live, Till death unite them and they part no more; 199 Dreams and the light imaginings of men, And all that faith creates or love desires, Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes. There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade, "Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds, Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and | | Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice beasts; And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom; And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall uite” The curse which all remember. Call at will 2x0 Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter, Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods From all-prolifie Evil, since thy ruin, Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons. Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades, As rainy wind through the abandoned gate Of a fallen palace. PROMETHEUS Mother, let not aught Of that which may be evil pass again My lips, or those of aught resembling me. Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear! aaa IONE My wiugs are folded o’er mine ears; My wings are crosséd o’er mine eyes; Yet through their silver shade appears, And through their lulling plumes arise, A Shape, a throng of sounds. May it be no ill to thee O thou of many wounds ! Near whom, for our sweet sister’s sake, Ever thus we watch and wake. 23e PANTHEA The soand is of whirlwind underground, Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven; The shape is awful, like the sound, Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven. A sceptre of pale gold, To stay steps proud, o’er the slow cloud, His veined hand doth hold. Cruel he looks, but calm and strong, Like one who does, not suffers wrong. PHANTASM OF JUPITER Why have the secret powers of this strange world 240 Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds With wiih our pallid race hold ghastly tal In darkness? And, proud sufferer, whe art thou ? ACT I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 169 PROMETHEUS Tremendous Image! as thou art must be He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear. Although no thought inform thine empty voice. THE EARTH Listen! And though your echoes must be mute, 250 Gray mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs, Prophetic caves, and isle - surrounding streams, Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak. PHANTASM A spirit seizes me and speaks within; It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud. PANTHEA See how he lifts his mighty looks! the Heaven Darkens above. IONE He speaks! Oh, shelter me! PROMETHEUS I see the curse on gestures proud and cold, And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate, And such despair as mocks itself with smiles, 260 Written as on a scroll: yet speak! Oh, speak ! PHANTASM Fiend, I defy thee! with « calm, fixed mind, All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do; Foul tyrant both of Gods and human- kind, One only being shalt thou not sub- due. Rain then thy plagues upon me here, Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear ; And let alternate frost and fire Eat into me, and be thine ire Lightning, and cutting hail, ard legioned forms 270 Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms. Ay, do thy worst ! Thou art omnipotent. O’er all things but thyself I gave thee power, And my own will. chiefs sent To blast mankind, from yon ethere» tower. Let thy malignant spirit move In darkness over those I love; On me and mine I imprecate The utmost torture of thy hate; And thus devote to sleepless agony, 280 This undeclining head while thou must reign on high. Be thy swift mis- But thou, who art the God and Lord: O thou Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe, To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow In fear and worship — all-prevailing foe ! I curse thee ! let a sufferer’s curse Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse; Till thine Infinity shall be A robe of envenomed agony; 289 And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain, To cling like burning gold round thy dis- solving brain! Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse, Ill deeds; then be thou damned, be- holding good; Both infinite as is the universe, And thou, and thy self-torturing soli- tude. An awful image of calm power Though now thou sittest, let the hour Come, when thou must appear to be That which thou art internally; And after many a false and fruitless erime, 300 Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time ! PROMETHEUS Were these my words, O Parent ? THE EARTH They were thine. PROMETHEUS It doth repent me; words are quick and vain; 170 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT I Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine. I wish no living thing to suffer pain. THE EARTH Misery, oh, misery to me, That Jove at length should vanquish thee ! Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea, 308 The Earth’s rent heart shall answer ye ! Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead, Your refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquished ! FIRST ECHO Lies fallen and vanquishéd ! SECOND ECHO Fallen and vanquished ! IONE Fear not: ’t is but some passing spasm, The Titan is unvanquished still. But see, where through the azure chasm Of yon forked and snowy hill, Trampling the slant winds on high With golden-sandalled feet, that glow Under plumes of purple dye, 320 Like rose-ensanguined ivory, A Shape comes now, Stretching on high from his right hand A serpent-cinctured wand. PANTHEA "Tis Jove’s world-wandering herald, Mer- cury. IONE And who are those with hydra tresses And iron wings, that climb the wind, Whom the frowning God represses, — Like vapors steaming up behind, Clanging loud, an endless crowd ? 330 PANTHEA These are Jove’s tempest-walking hounds, ‘Whom he gluts with groans and blood, When charioted on sulphurous cloud He bursts Heaven’s bounds. IONE Are they now led from the thin dead On new pangs to be fed ? PANTHEA The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud. FIRST FURY Ha! I scent life! SECOND FURY Let me but look into his eyes! THIRD FURY The hope of torturing him smells like a heap Of corpses to a death-bird after battle. 34c FIRST FURY Darest thou delay, O Herald ! take cheer, Hounds Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon Should make us food and sport — who can please long The Omnipotent ? MERCURY Back to your towers of iron, And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail, Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon, Chimera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends, Who ministered to Thebes Heaven’s poi- soned wine, 348 Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate: These shall perform your task. FIRST FURY Oh, mercy! mercy! We die with our desire ! drive us not back ! MERCURY Crouch then in silence. Awful Sufferer ! To thee unwilling, most unwillingly I come, by the great Father’s will driven down, To execute a doom of new revenge. Alas ! J pity thee, and hate myself That I can do no more; aye from thy sight Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell, So thy worn form pursues me night and day, Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good, 26¢ ACT I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 171 But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps, That measure and divide the weary years From which there is no refuge, long have taught And long must teach. Even now thy Tor- turer arms With the strange might of unimagined pains The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell, And my commission is to lead them here, Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends People the abyss, and leave them to their task. 370 Be it not so! there is a secret known ‘Lo thee, and to none else of living things, Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven, The fear of which perplexes the Supreme. Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer, And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane, Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart, For benefits and meek submission tame The fiercest and the mightiest. PROMETHEUS Evil minds Change good to their own nature. I gave all 381 He has; and in return he chains me here Years, ages, night and day; whether the un Split my parched skin, or in the moony night The erystal-wingdd snow cling round my hair; Whilst my belovéd race is trampled down By his thought-executing ministers. Such is the tyrant’s recompense. ’T is just. He who is evil can receive no good; And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost, ; He can feel hate, fear, shame; not grati- tude. 391 He but requites me for his own misdeed. Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks With bitter stings the light sleep of Re- venge. Submission thou dost know I cannot try. For what submission but that fatal word, The death-seal of mankind’s captivity, Like the Sicilian’s hair-suspended sword, Which trembles o’er his crown, would he accept, Or could I yield? Which yet I will not ield. 400 Let others flatter Crime where it sits throned In brief Omnipotence; secure are they; For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs, Too much avenged by those who err. I wait, Enduring thus, the retributive hour Which since we spake is even nearer now. But hark, the hell-hounds clamor: fear delay: Behold ! Heaven lowers under thy Futhew’s frown. 409 MERCURY Oh, that we might be spared; I to inflict, And thou to suffer! Once more answer me. Thou knowest not the period of Jove’s power ? PROMETHEUS I know but this, that it must come. MERCURY Alas! Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain! PROMETHEUS They last while Jove must reign; nor more, ner less Do I desire or fear. MERCURY Yet pause, and plunge Into Eternity, where recorded time, Even all that we imagine, age on age, Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind Flags wearily in its unending flight, 420 Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless ; Perchance it has not numbered the slow years Which thou must spend in torture, unre- prieved ? 172 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT PROMETHEUS THIRD FURY Perchance no thought can count them, yet Champion of Heaven's slaves { they pass. PROMETHEUS MERCURY He whom some dreadful voice invokes is [£ thou mightst dwell among the Gods the here, : : : while, Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible Lapped in voluptuous joy ? forms, What and who are ye? Never yet there PROMETHEUS came I would not quit | Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains. Hell MERCURY Alas! { wonder at, yet pity thee. PROMETHEUS Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene, 430 As light in the sun, throned. How vain is talk! Call up the fiends. IONE Oh, sister, look ! White fire Has cloven. to the roots yon huge snow- loaded cedar; How fearfully God’s thunder howls be- hind ! MERCURY I must obey his words and thine. Alas! Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart! PANTHEA See where the child of Heaven, with wingéd feet, Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn. IONE Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes Lest thou behold and die; they come — they come — 440 Blackening the birth of day with countless wings, And hollow underneath, like death. FIRST FURY Prometheus ! SECOND FURY {mmortal Titan ! From the all-miscreative brain of Jove. Whilst I behold such execrable shapes, Methinks I grow like what I contemplate, And laugh and stare in loathsome sym- pathy. 45) FIRST FURY We are the ministers of pain, and fear, And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate, And clinging crime; and. as lean dogs pur- sue Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn, We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live, When the great King betrays them to our will. PROMETHEUS O many fearful natures in one name, I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know The darkness and the clangor of your wings ! 46c But why more hideous than your loathéd selves Gather ye up in legions from the deep ? SECOND FURY We knew not that. Sisters, rejoice, re< joice ! PROMETHEUS Can aught exult in its deformity ? SECOND FURY The beauty of delight makes lovers glad, Gazing on one another: so are we. As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels To gather for her festal crown of flowers The aérial crimson falls, flushing her cheek, ACT I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 173 So from our victim’s destined agony 470 The shade which is our form invests us round; Else we are shapeless as our mother Night. PROMETHEUS I laugh your power, and his who sent you here, To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain. FIRST FURY Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone And nerve from nerve, working like fire within ? PROMETHEUS Pain is my element, as hate is thine; Ye rend me now; I care not. SECOND FURY Dost imagine We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes ? PROMETHEUS I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer, Being evil. Cruel was the power which called 481 You, or aught else so wretched, into light. THIRD FURY Thou think’st we will live through thee, one by one, Like animal life, and though we can obscure not The soul which burns within, that we will dwell Beside it, like a vain loud multitude, Vexing the self-content of wisest men; That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain, And foul desire round thine astonished heart, And blood within thy labyrinthine veins 490 Crawling like agony ? PROMETHEUS Why, ye are thus now; Yet am I king over myself, and rule The torturing and conflicting throngs within, As Jove rules you when Hell grows muti- nous. CHORUS OF FURIES From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth, Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth, Come, come, come ! O ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea, 500 And close upon Shipwreck and Famine’s track Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck; Come, come, come ! Leave the bed, low, cold, and red, Strewed beneath a nation dead; Leave the hatred, as in ashes Fire is left for future burning; It will burst in bloodier flashes When ye stir it, soon returning; Leave the self-contempt implanted sre In young spirits, sense-enchanted, Misery’s yet unkindled fuel; Leave Hell’s secrets half unchanted To the maniac dreamer; cruel More than ye can be with hate Is he with fear. Come, come, come ! We are steaming up from Hell’s wide gate And we burden the blasts of the atmo- sphere, But vainly we toil till ye come here. 520 IONE Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings. PANTHEA These solid mountains quiver with the sound Even as the tremulous air; their shadows make The space within my plumes more black than night. FIRST FURY Your call was as a winged car, Driven on whirlwinds fast and far; It rapt us from red gulfs of war. SECOND FURY From wide cities, famine-wasted: THIRD FURY Groans half heard, and blood untasted; 174 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT I FOURTH FURY Kingly conclaves stern and cold, 530 Where blood with gold is bought and sold; FIFTH FURY From the furnace, white and hot, In which — A FURY Speak not; whisper not; I know all that ye would tell, But to speak might break the spell Which must bend the Invincible, The stern of thought; He yet defies the deepest power of Hell. FURY Tear the veil ! ANOTHER FURY It is torn. CHORUS The pale stars of the morn Shine on a misery, dire to be borne. 540 Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? laugh thee to scorn. Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken’dst for man ? Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever, Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him forever. One came forth of gentle worth, Smiling on the sanguine earth; His words outlived him, like swift poison Withering up truth, peace, and pity. Look ! where round the wide horizon 550 Many a million-peopled city Vomits smoke in the bright air ! Mark that outery of despair ! *T is his mild and gentle ghost Wailing for the faith he kindled. Look again ! the flames almost Toa glow-worm’s lamp have dwindled; The survivors round the embers Gather in dread. Joy, joy, joy! 560 Past ages crowd on thee, but each one re- members, Aud the future is dark, and the present is spread We Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head. SEMICHORUS I Drops of bloody agony flow From his white and quivering brow. Grant a little respite now. See ! a disenchanted nation Springs like day from desolation; To Truth its state is dedicate, And Freedom leads it forth, her mate; A legioned band of linkéd brothers, 57: Whom Love calls children — SEMICHORUS IL Tis another's. See how kindred murder kin ! ’T is the vintage-time for Death and Sin; Blood, like new wine, bubbles within; Till Despair smothers The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win. [All the Furies vanish, except one. 10NE Hark, sister ! what alow yet dreadful groan Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep, And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves. 581 Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him ? PANTHEA Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more. IONE What didst thou see ? PANTHEA A woful sight: a youth With patient looks nailed to a crucifix. IONE What next ? PANTHEA The heaven around, the earth below, Was peopled with thick shapes of humax death, All horrible, and wrought by human hands; And some appeared the work of human hearts, 589 ACT I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 175 For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles; And other sights too foul to speak and live Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear By looking forth; those groans are grief enough. FURY Behold an emblem: those who do endure Deep wrongs for nan, and scorn, and chains, but heap Thousand-fold torment on themselves and him. PROMETHEUS Remit the anguish of that lighted stare; Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears! Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death, 600 So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix, So those pale fingers play not with thy gore. Oh, horrible ! Thy name I will not speak — It hath become a cursz. I see, I see The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just, Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee, Some hunted by foul lies from their heart’s home, An early-chosen, late-lamented home, As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind; Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells; 610 Some — hear I not the multitude laugh loud ? — Impaled in lingering fire; and mighty realms Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles, Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood By the red light of their own burning homes. FURY Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans: Worse things unheard, unseen, remain be- hind. PROMETHEUS Worse ? FURY In each human heart terror survives The ruin it has gorged: the loftiest fear All that they would disdain to think were true. 620 Hypocrisy and custom make their minds The fanes of many a worship, now outworn They dare not devise good for man’s es tate, And yet they know not that they do not dare. The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want; worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom; And all best things are thus confused to ill. Many are strong and rich, and would be just, 620 But live among their suffering fellow-men As if none felt; they know not what they do. PROMETHEUS Thy words are like a cloud of wingéd snakes; And yet I pity those they torture not. FURY Thou pitiest them ? I speak no more ! [ Vanishes. PROMETHEUS Ah woe ! Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, forever ! I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear Thy works within my woe-illuméd mind, Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave. The grave hides all things beautiful and good. I am a God and cannot find it there, 640 Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge, This is defeat, fierce king, not victory. The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul With new endurance, till the hour arrives When they shall be no types of things which are. PANTHEA Alas ! what sawest thou ? 176 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT I PROMETHEUS There are two woes — Te speak and to behold; thou spare me one. Names are there, Nature’s sacred watch- words, they Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry; The nations thronged around, and cried aloud, 650 As with one voice, Truth, Liberty, and Love ! Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven Among them; there was strife, deceit, and fear; Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil. This was the shadow of the truth I saw. THE EARTH I felt thy torture, son, with such mixed Joy As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state I hid ascend those subtle and fair spirits, Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought, 659 And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, Its worlu-surrounding ether; they behold Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass, The future; may they speak comfort to thee ! PANTHEA Look, sister, where a troop of spirits ga- ther, Like flocks of clouds in spring’s delightful weather, Thronging in the blue air ! IONE And see! more come, Like fountain-vapors when the winds are dumb, That climb up the ravine in scattered lines. And hark! is it the music of the pines ? Is it the lake ? Is it the waterfall? 670 PANTHEA 'Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all. CHORUS OF SPIRITS From unremembered ages we Gentle guides and guardians be Of heaven-oppressed mortality; And we breathe, and sicken not, The atmosphere of human thought: Be it dim, and dank, and gray, Like a storm-extinguished day, Travelled o’er by dying gleams: Be it bright as all between 68c Cloudless skies and windless streams, Silent, liquid, and serene ; As the birds within the wind, As the fish within the wave, As the thoughts of man’s own mind Float through all above the grave; We make there our liquid lair, Voyaging cloudlike and unpent Through the boundless element: Thence we bear the prophecy 694 Which begins and ends in thee ! IONE More yet come, one by one; the air around them Looks radiant as the air around a star. FIRST SPIRIT On a battle-truinpet’s blast I fled hither, fast, fast, fast, *Mid the darkness upward east. From the dust of creeds outworn, From the tyrant’s banner torn, Gathering round me, onward borne, There was mingled many acry— — 70 Freedom ! Hope! Death! Victory ! Till they faded through the sky; And one sound above, around, One sound beneath, around, above, Was moving; ’t was the soul of love; *T was the hope, the prophecy, Which begins and ends in thee. SECOND SPIRIT A rainbow’s arch stood on the sea, Which rocked beneath, immovably; And the triumphant storm did flee, 710 Like a conqueror, swift and proud, Begirt with many a captive cloud, A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd, Each by lightning riven in half. I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh. Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff And spread beneath a hell of death oe the white waters. I alit na great ship lightning-split, And speeded ithe on ie ek 72 Of one who gave an enemy His plank, then plunged aside to die. ACT I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 177 THIRD SPIRIT I sat beside a sage’s bed, And the lamp was burning red Near the book where he had fed, When a Dream with plumes of flame To his pillow hovering came, And I knew it was the same Which had kindled long ago Pity, eloquence, and woe; 730 And the world awhile below Wore the shade its lustre made. It has borne me here as fleet As Desire’s lightning feet; I must ride it back ere morrow, Or the sage will wake in sorrow. FOURTH SPIRIT On a poet’s lips I slept Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept; Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 740 But feeds on the aérial kisses Of shapes that haunt thought’s wilder- nesses. He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see what things they be; But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality ! One of these awakened me, 750 And I sped to succor thee. IONE Behold’st thou not two shapes from the east and west Come, as two doves to one belovéd nest, Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air, On swift still wings glide down the at- mosphere ? And, hark! their sweet sad voices! ’tis despair . Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound, PANTHEA Canst thou speak, sister ? all my words are drowned. IONE Their beauty gives me voice. they float : Dn their sustaining wings of skyey grain, 760 See how Orange and azure deepening into gold ! Their soft smiles light the air like a star’s fire. CHORUS OF SPIRITS Hast thou beheld the form of Love ? FIFTH SPIRIT As over wide dominions I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air’s wildernesses, That planet-crested Shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions, Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses. His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed ’t was fading, And hollow Ruin yawned behind; great sages bound in madness, And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding, Gleamed in the night. I wandered o’er, till thou, O King of sadness, 770 Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness. SIXTH SPIRIT Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing: It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air, But treads with killing footstep, and fans with silent wing The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear; Who, soothed to false repose by the fan- ning plumes above And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet, Dream visions of aérial joy, and call the menster, Love, And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet. CHORUS Though Ruin now Love’s shadow be, 78¢ Following him, destroyingly, On Death’s white and wingéd steed, Which the fleetest cannot flee, Trampling down both flower and weed, Man and beast, and foul and fair, Like a tempest through the air; Thou shalt quell this horseman grim, Woundless though in heart or limb. 178 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT II: SC. I PROMETHEUS Spirits ! how know ye this shall be ? CHORUS In the atmosphere we breathe, 790 As buds grow red, when the snow-storms flee, From spring gathering up beneath, Whose mild winds shake the elder-brake, And the wandering herdsmen know That the white-thorn soon will blow: Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace, When they struggle to increase, Are to us as soft winds be To shepherd boys, the prophecy Which begins and ends in thee. 800 IONE Where are the Spirits fled ? PANTHEA Only a sense Remains of them, like the omnipotence Of music, when the inspired voice and lute Languish, ere yet the responses are mute, Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul, Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll. PROMETHEUS How fair these air-born shapes ! and yet I feel Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far, Asia! who, when my being overflowed, 809 Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust. All things are still. Alas! how heavily This quiet morning weighs upon my heart; Though i should dream I could even sleep with grief, If slumber were denied not. I would fain Be what it is my destiny to be, The saviour and the strength of suffering man, Or sink into the original gulf of things. There is no agony, and no solace left; Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more. 820 PANTHEA Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when The shadow of thy spirit falls on her ? PROMETHEUS I said all hope was vain but love; thou lovest. PANTHEA Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white, And Asia waits in that far Indian vale, The scene of her sad exile; rugged once And desolate and frozen, like this ravine; But now invested with fair flowers and herbs, And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow 830 Among the woods and waters, from the ether Of her transforming presence, which would fade If it were mingled not with thine. Fare- well ! ACT II Scene I.— Morning. A lovely Vale in the Indian Caucasus. Asta, alone. ASIA From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended; Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes, And beatings haunt the desolated heart, Which should have learned repose; thou hast descended Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring! O child of many winds! As suddenly Thou comest as the memory of a dream, Which now is sad because it hath been sweet; Like genius, or like joy which riseth up 10 As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds The desert of our life. This is the season, this the day, the hour; At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine, Too long desired, too long delaying, come! How like death-worms the wingless mo- ments crawl! The be of one white star is quivering sti Deep in the orange light of widening morn Beyond the purple mountains; through a chasm ACT II: SQ I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 179 Of wind-divided mist the darker lake 20 Reflects it; now it wanes; it gleams again As the waves fade, and as the burning threads Of woven cloud unravel in pale air; ’T is lost ! and through yon peaks of cloud- like snow The roseate sunlight quivers; hear I not The Molian music of her sea-green plumes Winnowing the crimson dawn ? PANTHEA enters I feel, I see Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears, Like stars half-quenched in mists of silver dew. 29 Belovéd and most beautiful, who wearest The shadow of that soul by which I live, How late thou art! the spheréd sun had climbed The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before The printless air felt thy belated plumes. PANTHEA Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint With the delight of a remembered dream, As are the noontide plumes of summer winds Satiate with sweet flowers. sleep Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm, Before the sacred Titan’s fall and thy 40 Unhappy love had made, through use and ity, Both ive and woe familiar to my heart As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean Within dim bowers of green and purple moss, Our young Ione’s soft and milky arms Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair, While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed I was wont to within The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom: 49 But not as now, since I am made the wind Which fails beneath the music that I bear Of thy most wordless converse; since dis solved Into the sense with which love talks, my rest Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours Too full of care and pain. ASIA Lift up thine eyes, And let me read thy dreain. PANTHEA As I have said, With our sea-sister at bis feet I slept. The mountain mists, condensing at our voice Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes, From the keen ice shielding our linkéd sleep. 6a Then two dreams came. One I remember not. But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night Grew radiant with the glory of that form Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell Like musie which makes giddy the dim brain, Faint with intoxication of keen joy: ‘Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world With loveliness— more fair than aught but her, Whose shadow thou art — lift thine eyes on me.’ 70 I lifted them; the overpowering light Of that immortal shape was shadowed o’er By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs, And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes, Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an at- mosphere Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power, As the warm ether of the morning sun Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wander- ing dew. I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt His presence flow and mingle through my blood 8c Till it became his life, and his grew mine, And I was thus absorbed, until it passed, And like the vapors when the sun sinks down, 180 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT II: SC. I Gathering again in drops upon the pines, And tremulous as they, in the deep night My being was condensed; and as the rays Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died Like footsteps of weak melody; thy name Among the many sounds alone I heard 90 Of what might be articulate; though still I listened through the night when sound was none. Tone wakened then, and said to me: ‘Canst thou divine what troubles me to- night ? I always knew what I desired before, Nor ever found delight to wish in vain. But now I cannot tell thee what I seek; I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet Even to desire ; it is thy sport, false sis- ter; Thou hast discovered some enchantment old, Too Whose spells have stolen my spirit as 1 slept And mingled it with thine; for when just now We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips The sweet air that sustained me; and the warmth Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint, Quivered between our intertwining arms.’ T answered not, for the Eastern star grew ale pale, But fled to thee. ASIA Thou speakest, but thy words Are as the air; I feel them not. Oh, lift Thine eyes. that I may read his written soul ! 210 PANTHEA T lift them, though they droop beneath the load Of that they would express; what canst thou see But thine own fairest shadow imaged there ? ASIA Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, bound- Jess heaven Contracted to two circles underneath Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measure. less, Orb within orb, and line through line in. woven, PANTHEA Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed ? ASIA There is a change; beyond their inmost depth I seea shade, a shape: ’tis He, arrayed 120 In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon. Prometheus, it is thine ! depart not yet! Say not those smiles that we shall meet again Within that bright pavilion which their beams Shall build on the waste world ? The dream is told. What fae is that between us? Its rude air Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard Is wild and quick, yet ’t is a thing of air, For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew 130 Whose stars the noon has quenched not. DREAM Follow! Follow! PANTHEA It is mine other dream. ASIA It disappears. PANTHEA It passes now into my mind. Methought As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds Burst on yon lightning - blasted almond tree; When swift from the white Scythian wil- derness A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost; I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;. But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells Of Hyacinth tell Apollo’s written grief. 140 On, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ! ACT II: SC. I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 181 ASIA As you speak, your words Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep With shapes. Methought among the lawns together We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn, And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains, Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind; And the white dew on the new-bladed grass, Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently; And there was more which I remember nots 150 But on the shadows of the morning clouds, Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written FOLLOW, OH, FOLLOW! as they vanished ys And on each herb, from which Heaven’s dew had fallen, The like was stamped, as with a withering fire; A wind arose among the pines; it shook The clinging music from their boughs, and then Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts, Were heard: OH, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ME ! And then I said, ‘ Panthea, look on me.’ 160 But in the depth of those belovéd eyes Still I saw, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ! ECHO Follow, follow ! PANTHEA The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices, As they were spirit-tongued. ASIA It is some being Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! Ob, list! ECHOES, tnseen Echoes we: listen ! We cannot stay: As dew-stars glisten Then fade away — Child of Ocean ! 170 ASIA Spirits speak. sponses Of their aérial tongues yet sound. Hark ! The liquid re- PANTHEA I hear. ECHOES Oh, follow, follow, As our voice recedeth Through the caverns hollow, Where the forest spreadeth; (More distant) Oh, follow, follow ! Through the caverns hollow, As the song floats thou pursue, Where the wild bee never flew, 18 Through the noontide darkness deep, By the odor-breathing sleep Of faint night-flowers, and the waves At the fountain-lighted caves, While our music, wild and sweet, Mocks thy gently falling feet, Child of Ocean ! ASIA Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint And distant. PANTHEA List ! the strain floats nearer now. ECHOES In the world unknown 190 Sleeps a voice unspoken; By thy step alone Can its rest be broken; Child of Ocean ! ASIA How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind ! ECHOES Ob, follow, follow ! Through the caverns hollow, As the song floats thou pursue, By the woodland noontide dew; By the forests, lakes, and fountains, 200 Through the many-folded mountains; To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms, Where the Earth reposed from spasms, On the day when He and thou Parted, to commingle now; Child of Ocean ! 182 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT Il: SC. II ASIA Sounds overflow the listener’s brain Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in | So sweet, that joy is almost pain. 4s mine, And follow, ere the voices fade away. Scene II.— A Forest intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. Asta and PANTHEA pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock, listening. SEMICHORUS I OF SPIRITS The path through which that lovely twain Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew, And each dark tree that ever grew, Is curtained out from Heaven’s wide blue; Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain, Can pierce its interwoven bowers, Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew, Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze Between the trunks of the hoar trees, 9 Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers Of the green laurel blown anew, And bends, and then fades silently, ‘One frail and fair anemone; ‘Or when some star of many a one ‘That climbs and wanders through steep night, Has found the cleft through which alone Beams fall from high those depths upon, — Ere it is borne away, away, By the swift Heavens that cannot stay, It scatters drops of golden light, 20 Like lines of rain that ne’er unite; And the gloom divine is all around; And underneath is the mossy ground. SEMICHORUS IL ‘There the voluptuous nightingales, Are awake through all the broad noon- day: When sie with bliss or sadness fails, And through the windless ivy-boughs, Sick with sweet love, droops dying away ‘On its mate’s music-panting bosom; Another from the swinging blossom, 30 Watching to catch the languid close Of the last strain, then lifts on high The wings of the weak melody, ‘Till some new strain of feeling bear The song, and all the woods are mute; When there is heard through the dim air ‘The rush of wings, and rising there, Like many 2 lake-surrounded flute, SEMICHORUS I There thuse enchanted eddies play Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw, By Demogorgon’s mighty law, With melting rapture, or sweet awe, Ali spirits on that secret way, As inland boats are driven to Ocean Down streams made strong with mountain- thaw; And first there comes a gentle sound To those in talk or slumber bound, And wakes the destined; soft emo- tion 5¢ Attracts, impels them; those who saw Say from the breathing earth behind There steams a plume-uplifting wind Which drives them on their path, while they Believe their own swift wings and feet The sweet desires within obey; And so they float upon their way, Until, still sweet, but loud and strong, The storm of sound is driven along, Sucked up and hurrying; as they fleet 6. Behind, its gathering billows meet And to the fatal mountain bear Like clouds amid the yielding air. FIRST FAUN Canst fag imagine where those spirits ive Which make such delicate music in the woods ? We haunt within the least frequented caves And closest coverts, and we know these wilds, Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft: Where may they hide themselves ? SECOND FAUN *T is hard to tell; Ihave heard those more skilled in spirits Say, 70 The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools, Are the pavilions where such dwell and float Under the green and golden atmosphere ACT II: SC. III PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 183 Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves; And when these burst, and the thin fiery air, The which they breathed within those lu- cent domes, Ascends to flow like meteors through the night, They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed, 80 And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire Under the waters of the earth again. FIRST FAUN Tf such live thus, have others other lives, Under pink blossoms or within the bells Of meadow flowers or folded violets deep, Or on their dying odors, when they die, Or in the sunlight of the spheréd dew ? SECOND FAUN Ay, many more which we may well divine. But should we stay to speak, noontide would come, And thwart Silenus find his goats un- drawn, And grudge ‘to sing those wise and lovely songs Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old, And Love and the chained Titan’s woful doom, And how he ‘shall be loosed, and make the earth One brotherhood; delightful strains which cheer Our solitary twilights, and which charm To silence the unenvying nightingales. Scene III. — A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains. Asta and PANTHEA. PANTHEA Hither the sound has borne us— to the realm Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal, Like a voleano’s meteor-breathing chasm, Whence the oracular vapor is hurled up Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth, And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy, That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain To deep intoxication; and uplift, Like Menads who cry loud, Evoe ! Evoe! The voice which is contagion to the world. 10 ASIA Fit throne for such a Power! Magnifi- cent ! How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou be The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, Though evil stain its work, and it should be Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, I could fall down and worship that and thee. Even now my heart adoreth. Wonderful ! Look, sister, ere the vapor dim thy brain: Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist, As alake, paving in the morning sky, —2« With azure waves which burst in silver light, Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on Under the curdling winds, and islanding The peak whereon we stand, midway, around, Encinetured by the dark and blooming forests, Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves, And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist; And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains From icy spires of sunlike radiance fling 29 The dawn, as lifted Ocean’s dazzling spray, From some Atlantic islet scattered up, Spangles the wind with lamp-like water- drops. The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ra- vines Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow ! The sun-awakened avalanche ! whose mass, Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth 40 Ts loosened, and the nations echo round, Shaken to their roots, es do the mountains now. 184 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT II: SC. Iv PANTHEA Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking In crimson foam, even at our feet ! it rises As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon Kound foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle. ASIA The fragments of the cloud are scattered up; The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair; Its billows now sweep o’er mine eyes; my brain 4 9 Grows dizzy; I see shapes within the mist. PANTHEA A countenance with beckoning smiles; there burns An azure fire within its golden locks ! Another and another: hark! they speak ! SONG OF SPIRITS To the deep, to the deep, Down, down ! Through the shade of sleep, Through the cloudy strife Of Death and of Life; Through the veil and the bar Of things which seem and are, 60 Even to the steps of the remotest throne, Down, down ! While the sound whirls around, Down, down ! As the fawn draws the hound, As the lightning the vapor, As a weak moth the taper; Death, despair; love, sorrow; Time, both; to-day, to-morrow; As steel obeys the spirit of the stone, 70 Down, down! Through the gray, void abysm, Down, down ! Where the air is no prism, And the moon and stars are not, And the cavern-crags wear not The radiance of Heaven, Nor the gloom to Earth given, Where there is one pervading, one alone, Down, down ! 80 Tn the depth of the deep Down, down! Like veiled lightning asleep, Like the spark nursed in embers, The last look Love remembers, Like a diamond, which shines On the dark wealth of mines, A spell is treasured but for thee alone. Down, down ! We have bound thee, we guide thee; go Down, down! With the bright form beside thee; Resist not the weakness, Such strength is in meekness That the Eternal, the Immortal, Must unloose through life’s portal The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne By that alone. Scenz IV. — The Cave of Demogorcon. Asta and PANTHEA. PANTHEA What veiléd form sits on that ebon throne ? ASIA The veil has fallen. PANTHEA I see a mighty darkness Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom Dart round, as light from the meridian sun, Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb, Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is A living Spirit. DEMOGORGON Ask what thou wouldst know. ASIA What canst thou tell ? DEMOGORGON All things thou dar’st demand. ASIA Who made the living world ? DEMOGORGON God. ASIA ; Who made all That it contains ? thought, passion, reason, will, 10 Imagination ? ACT II: SC. IV PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 185 DEMOGORGON God: Almighty God. ASIA Who made that sense which, when the winds of spring In rarest visitation, or the voice Of one belovéd heard in youth alone, Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers, And leaves this peopled earth a solitude When it returns no more ? DEMOGORGON Merciful God. ASIA And who made terror, madness, crime, re- morse, Which from the links of the great chain of things 20 To every thought within the mind of man Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels Under the load towards the pit of death ; Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate; And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood; Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day ; And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell ? DEMOGORGON He reigns. ASIA Utter his name ; « world pining in pain Asks but his name; curses shall drag him down. 30 DEMOGORGON He reigns. ASIA [ feel, I know it: who ? DEMOGORGON He reigns. ASIA Who reigns? ‘There was the Heaven and Earth at first, And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne Time fell, an envious shadow; such the state Of the earth’s primal spirits beneath his sway, As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves Before the wind or sun has withered them And semivital worms ; but he refused The birthright of their being, knowledge, ower, The skill which wields the elements, the thought 40 Which pierces this dim universe like light, Self-empire, and the majesty of love; For thirst of which they fainted. Ther Prometheus Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter, And with this law alone, ‘Let man be free,’ Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven. To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign; And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man First famine, and then toil, and then dis- ease, 50 Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before, Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove, With alternating shafts of frost and fire, Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves; And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent, And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle Of unreal good, which levied mutual war, So ruining the lair wherein they raged. Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes 59 Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers, Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms, That they might hide with thin and rain- bow wings The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind The disunited tendrils of that vine Which bears the wine of life, the human heart; And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey, Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath 186 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT II: SC. IV The frown of man; and tortured to his will Tron and gold, the slaves and signs of power, And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms 70 Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves. He gave man speech, and speech created thought, Which is the measure of the universe; And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, Which shook, but fell not; and the har- monious mind Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song; And music lifted up the listening spirit Until it walked, exempt from mortal care, Godlike, o’er the clear billows of sweet sound ; And human hands first mimicked and then mocked, 80 With moulded limbs more lovely than its own, The human form, till marble grew divine; And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see Reflected in their race, behold, and perish. He told the hidden power of herbs and springs, And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep. He taught the implicated orbits woven Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun Changes his lair, and by what secret spell The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye go Gazes not on the interlunar sea. He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs, The tempest-wingeéd chariots of the Ocean, And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed The warm winds, and the azure ether shone, And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen. Such, the alleviations of his state, Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs Withering in destined pain; but who rains down 100 Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while Man looks on his creation like a god And sees that it is glorious, drives him on, The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth, The outcast, the abandoned, the alone ? Not Jove: while yet his frown shook heaven ay, when His adversary from adamantine chains Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. De- clare Who is his master? Is he too a slave? DEMOGORGON All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil: 110 Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no. ASIA Whom called’st thou God ? DEMOGORGON I spoke but as ye speak, For Jove is the supreme of living things. ASIA Who is the master of the slave? DEMOGORGON If the abysm Could vomit forth its secrets — but a voice Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless; For what would it avail to bid thee gaze On the revolving world? What to bid speak Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change ? To these All things are subject but eternal Love. 120 ASIA So much I asked before, and my heart gave The response thou hast given; and of such truths Each to itself must be the oracle. One more demand; and do thou answer me As my own soul would answer, did it know That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world: When shall the destined hour arrive ? DEMOGORGON Behold! ASIA The rocks are cloven, and through the pur- ple night I see cars drawn by rainbow-wingéd steeds ¥30 ACT II: SC. Vv PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 187 Which trample the dim winds; in each there stands A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight. Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there, And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars; Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink With eager lips the wind of their own speed, As if the thing they loved fled on before, And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks Stream like a comet’s flashing hair; they all 139 Sweep onward. DEMOGORGON These are the immortal Hours, Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee. ASIA A Spirit with a dreadful countenance Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf. Unlike thy brethren, ghastly Charioteer, Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou bear me? Speak! SPIRIT I am the Shadow of a destiny More dread than is my aspect; ere yon planet Has set, the darkness which ascends with me Shall wrap in lasting night heaven’s kingless throne. 149 ASIA What meanest thou ? PANTHEA That terrible Shadow floats Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke Of earthquake-ruined cities o’er the sea. Io! it ascends the car; the coursers fly Terrified; watch its path among the stars Blackening the night ! ASIA Thus I am answered: strange ! PANTHEA See, near the verge, another chariot stays; An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire, Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim Of delicate strange tracery; the young Spirit That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope; 160 How its soft smiles attract the soul! as light Lures wingéd insects through the lampless air. SPIRIT My coursers are fed with the lightning, They drink of the whirlwind’s stream, And when the red morning is bright’ning They bathe in the fresh sunbeam. They have strength for their swiftness I deem; Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. I desire—and their speed makes night kindle; I fear — they outstrip the typhoon; 170 Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle We encircle the earth and the moon. We shall rest from long labors at noon; Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. Scene V.— The Car pauses within a Cloud on the Top of a snowy Mountain. Asta, Pan- THEA, and the Spirit oF THE Hour. SPIRIT On the brink of the night and the morning My coursers are wont to respire; But the Earth has just whispered a warn- ing That their flight must be swifter than fire; They shall drink the hot speed of desire ! ASIA Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath Would give them swifter speed. SPIRIT Alas ! it could not, PANTHEA O Spirit ! pause, and tell whence is the light Which fills the cloud ? the sun is yet un- Tisen. S 188 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT II: SC. V SPIRIT The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo Is held in heaven by wonder; and the light Which fills this vapor, as the aérial hue Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water, Flows from thy mighty sister. PANTHEA Yes, I feel — ASIA What is it with thee, sister? Thou art pale. PANTHEA How thou art changed ! on thee; I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change Is working in the elements, which suffer Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell 20 That on the day when the clear hyaline Was cloven at thy uprise, and thou didst stand Within a veinéd shell, which floated on Over the calm floor of the crystal sea, Among the Aigean isles, and by the shores Which bear thy name, — love, like the at- mosphere Of the sun’s fire filling the living world, Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven And the deep ocean and the sunless caves And all that dwells within them; till grief cast 30 Eclipse upon the soul from which it came. Sneh art thou now; nor is it I alone, Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen I dare not look one, But the whole world which seeks thy sym- pathy. Hearest thou not sounds i’ the air which speak the love Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not The inanimate winds enamoured of thee ? List ! [Music. ASIA Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his ‘Whose echoes they are; yet all love is sweet, Given or returned. Common as light is love, 40 And its familiar voice wearies not ever. Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air, It makes the reptile equal to the God; They who inspire it most are fortunate, As I am now; but those who feel it most Are happier still, after long sufferings, As I shall soon become. PANTHEA List! Spirits speak. VOICE in the air, singing Life of Life, thy lips enkindle With their love the breath between them; And thy smiles before they dwindle 50 Make the cold air fire; then screen them In those looks, where whoso gazes Faints, entangled in their mazes. Child of Light ! thy limbs are burning Through the vest which seems to hide them; As the radiant lines of morning Through the clouds, ere they divide them; And this atmosphere divinest Shrouds thee wheresoe’er thou shinest. Fair are others; none beholds thee, 60 But thy voice sounds low and tender Like the fairest, for it folds thee From the sight, that liquid splendor, And all feel, yet see thee never, As I feel now, lost forever ! Lamp of Earth ! where’er thou movest Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, And the souls of whom thou lovest Walk upon the winds with lightness, Till they fail, as I am failing, qe Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing ! ASIA My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet sing- ing; And thine doth like an angel sit Beside a helm conducting it, Whilst all the winds with melody are ring- ing. It seems to float ever, forever, Upon that many-winding river, Between mountains, woods, abysses, 8 A paradise of wildernesses ! ACT III: Sc. I PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 189, Till, like one in slumber bound, Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, Into a sea profound of ever-spreading sound, Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions In musiec’s most serene dominions; Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven. And we sail on, away, afar, Without a course, without a star, But, by the instinct of sweet music driven; ge Till through Elysian garden islets By thee most beautiful of pilots, Where never mortal pinuace glided, The boat of my desire is guided; Realms where the air we breathe is love, Which in the winds on the waves doth move, Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above. We have passed Age’s icy caves, And Manhovod’s dark and tossing waves, And Youth’s smooth ocean, smiling to betray; 100 Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee Of shadow-peopled Infancy, Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day; A paradise of vaulted bowers Lit by downward-gazing flowers, And watery paths that wind between Wildernesses calm and green, Peopled by shapes too bright to see, And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee; Which walk upon the sea, and chant melo- diously ! 110 ACT III Scene I.— Heaven. Jopirer on his Throne ; Tuertis and the other Deities assembled. JUPITER YE congregated powers of heaven, who share The glory and the strength of him ye serve, Rejoice ! henceforth I am omnipotent. All else had been subdued to me ; alone The soul of man, like unextinguished fire, Yet burns towards heaven with fierce re- proach, and doubt, And lamentation, and reluctant prayer, Hurling up insurrection, which might make Our antique empire insecure, though built On eldest faith, and hell’s coeval, fear; 10 And though my curses through the pendu- lous air, Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake, And cling to it; though under my wrath’s night It climb the crags of life, step after step, Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet, It yet remains supreme o’er misery, Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall; Even now have I begotten a strange won- der, That fatal child, the terror of the earth, Who waits but till the destined hour ar- rive, 20 Bearing from Demogorgon’s vacant throne The dreadful might of ever-living limbs Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld, To redescend, and trample out the spark. Pour forth heaven’s wine, Idean Gany- mede, And let it fill the dedal cups like fire, And from the flower-inwoven soil divine, Ye all-triumphant harmonies, arise, As dew from earth under the twilight stars. Drink! be the nectar circling through your veins 3a The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods, Till exultation burst in one wide voice Like music from Elysian winds. And thou Ascend beside me, veiléd in the light Of the desire which makes thee one with me, Thetis, bright image of eternity ! When thou didst ery, ‘Insufferable might } God ! spare me! I sustain not the quick flames, The penetrating presence; all my being, Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw 4a Into a dew with poison, is dissolved, Sinking through its foundations,’ — even then Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third Mightier than either, which, unbodied now, 190 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT III: SC. If Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld, Waiting the incarnation, which ascends, (Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon’s throne. Victory ! victory! Feel’st thou not, O world, The earthquake of his chariot thundering up 5° Olympus ? [The Car of the Hour arrives. Drmo- GoRGoN descends and moves towards the Throne of JUPITER. Awful shape, what art thou? Speak ! DEMOGORGON Eternity. Demand no direr name. Descend, and follow me down the abyss. I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn’s child; Mightier than thee; and we must dwell to- gether Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy light- nings not. The tyranny of heaven none may retain, Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee; Yet if thou wilt, as ’t is the destiny Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead, 60 Put forth thy might. JUPITER Detested prodigy ! thus beneath the deep Titanian risons I trample thee ! Even Thou lingerest ? Mercy ! mercy ! No pity, no release, no respite! Oh, That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge, Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge, On Caucasus! he would not doom me thus. Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not The monarch of the world? What then art thou ? 69 No refuge ! no appeal ! Sink with me then, We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin, Even as a vulture and a snake outspent Drop, twisted in inextricable fight, Into a shoreless sea! Let hell unlock Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire, And whelm on them into the bottomless void This desolated world, and thee, and me, The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck Of that for which they combated ! Ai, Ai! The elements obey me not. I sink 80 Dizzily down, ever, forever, down. And, like a cloud, mine enemy above Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai! Scene II. — The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis. OcEan is discovered reclin- ing near the shore; A¥POLLo stands beside him. OcHAN He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conquer- or’s frown ? APOLLO Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars, The terrors of his eye illumined heaven With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts Of the victorious darkness, as he fell; Like the last glare of day’s red agony, Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds, Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep. OCEAN He sunk to the abyss? to the dark void ? 10 APOLLO An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes, Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded By the white lightning, while the ponder- ous hail Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length Prone, and the aérial ice clings over it. OCEAN Henceforth the fields of Heaven-reflecting sea Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood. ACT III: SC. III PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 1gI Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn 20 Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow Round many-peopled continents, and round Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see The floating bark of the light-laden moon With that white star, its sightless pilot’s crest, Borne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea ; Tracking their path no more by blood and groans, And desolation, and the mingled voice 30 Of slavery and command; but by the light Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odors, And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices, That sweetest music, such as spirits love. APOLLO And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse Darkens the sphere I guide. But list, I hear The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit That sits i’ the morning star. OCEAN Thou must away ; Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell. i The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it With azure calm out of the emerald urns Which stand forever full beside my throne. Behold the Nereids under the green sea, Their wavering limbs borne on the wind- like stream, Their white arms lifted o’er their stream- ing hair, With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns, Hastening to grace their mighty sister’s joy. [A sound of waves is heard. It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm. Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell. &POLLO Farewell. 50 Scenz ITI. — Caucasus. Prometuevus, Her- cuuxs, Ions, the Earra, Spreits, Asi, and Panruea, borne in the Car with the Spirit or tHE Hour. Hercunes unbinds Pro- METHEUS, who descends. HERCULES Most glorious among spirits! thus doth strength To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love, And thee, who art the form they animate, Minister like a slave. PROMETHEUS Thy gentle words Are sweeter even than freedom long de- sired And long delayed. Asia, thou light of life, Shadow of beauty unbeheld; and ye, Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain Sweet to remember, through your love and care; Henceforth we will not part. There isa cave, 10 All overgrown with trailing odorous plants, Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers, And paved with veinéd emerald; and a fountain Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound. From its curved roof the mountain’s frozen tears, Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires, Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light; And there is heard the ever-moving air Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds, And bees; and all around are mossy seats, 20 And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass; A simple dwelling, which shall be our own ; Where we will sit and talk of time and change, As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves un- changed. What can hide man from mutability ? And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thon, 192 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT III: SC, III Ione, shalt chant fragments of sea-music, Until I weep, when ye shall smile away The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed. We will entangle buds and flowers and beams 30 Which twinkle on the fountain’s brim, an make Strange combinations out of common things, Like human babes in their brief innocence; And we will search, with looks and words of love, For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last, Our unexhausted spirits; and, like lutes Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind, Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new, From difference sweet where discord can- not be; And hither come, sped on the charméd winds, 40 Which meet from all the points of heaven —as bees From every flower aérial Enna feeds At their known island-homes in Himera — The echoes of the human world, which tell Of the low voice of love, almost unheard, And dove-eyed pity’s murmured pain, and music, Itself the echo of the heart, and all That tempers or improves man’s life, now free; And lovely apparitions, — dim at first, Then radiant, as the mind arising bright 50 From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms Of which these are the phantoms) casts on them The gathered rays which are reality — Shall visit us, the progeny immortal Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy, And arts, though unimagined, yet to be; The wandering voices and the shadows these Of all that man becomes, the mediators Of that best worship, love, by him and us Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow 60 More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind, And, veil by veil, evil and error fall. Such virtue has the cave and place around. [Turning to the Spirit or THE Hour. For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains, Ione, [ Give her that curvéd shell, which Proteus old Made Asia’s nuptial boon, breathing within it A voice to be accomplished, and which thou Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock. IONE Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell. 7o See the pale azure fading into silver Lining it with a soft yet glowing light. Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there ? SPIRIT It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean: Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange. PROMETHEUS Go, borne over the cities of mankind On whirlwind-footed coursers; once again Outspeed the sun around the orbéd world; And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air, Thou breathe into the many-folded shell, Loosening its mighty music; it shall be sr As thunder mingled with clear echoes; then Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave. And thou, O Mother Earth ! — THE EARTH I hear, I feel; Thy lips are on me, and thy touch runs down Even to the adamantine central gloom Along these marble nerves; ’tis life, ’tis joy, And, through my withered, old, and icy frame The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down Circling. Henceforth the many children fair 9° Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants, And creeping forms, and insects rainbow- winged, And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes, ACT III: Sc. III PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 193 Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom, Draining the poison of despair, shall take And interchange sweet nutriment; to me Shall they become like sister-antelopes By one fair dam, snow-white, and swift as wind, Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream. The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float 100 Under the stars like balm; night-folded flowers Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose; And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather Strength for the coming day, and all its Joy; And death shall be the last embrace of her Who takes the life she gave, even as a mo- ther, Folding her child, says, ‘Leave me not again.’ ASIA Oh, mother! wherefore speak the name of death ? Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak, Who die ? THE EARTH It would avail not to reply; 110 Thou art immortal and this tongue is known But to the uncommunicating dead. Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted; and meanwhile In mild variety the seasons mild With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds, And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night, And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun’s All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild, 120 Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even The crag-built deserts of the barren deep, With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers. And thou! there is a cavern where my spirit Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it Became mad too, and built a temple there, And spoke, and were oracular, and lured The erring nations round to mutual war, And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee; 130 Which breath now rises as amongst tall weeds A violet’s exhalation, and it fills With a serener light and crimson air Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around; It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine, And the dark linkéd ivy tangling wild, And budding, blown, or odor-faded blooms Which star the winds with points of col- ored light As they rain through them, and bright golden globes Of fruit suspended in their own green hea- ven, 140 And through their veinéd leaves and amber stems The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls Stand ever mantling with aérial dew, The drink of spirits; and it circles round, Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams, Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine, Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine. Arise! Appear! {A Sprit rises in the likeness of a winged child. Thisis my torch-bearer; Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing On eyes from which he kindled it anew 150 With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine, For such is that within thine own. wayward, And guide this company beyond the peak Of Bacchic Nysa, Menad-haunted moun- tain, And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers, Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying, And up the green ravine, across the vale, Run, 194 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT III: SC. IV Beside the windless and crystalline pool, Where ever lies, on unerasing waves, 160 The image of a temple, built above, Distinct with column, arch, and architrave, And palm-like capital, and overwrought, And populous most with living imagery, Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles Fill the hushed air with everlasting love. It is deserted now, but once it bore Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths Bore to thy honor through the divine gloom The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those 170 Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope Into the grave, across the night of life, As thou hast borne it most triumphantly To this far goal of Time. Depart, fare- well ! Beside that temple is the destined cave. Scense IV.— A Forest. In the background a Cave. Promeruevs, Asia, Panto, Ione, and the Spirit oF THE EartH. IONE Sister, it is not earthly; how it glides Under the leaves ! how on its head there burns A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves, The splendor drops in flakes upon the grass ! Knowest thou it ? PANTHEA It is the delicate spirit That guides the earth through heaven. From afar The populous constellations call that light The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes It floats along the spray of the salt sea, 10 Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud, Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep, Or o’er the mountain tops, or down the rivers, Or through the green waste wilderness, as now, Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned It loved our sister Asia, and it came Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted As one bit by a dipsas, and with her It made its childish confidence, and told her 20 All it had known or seen, for it saw much, Yet idly reasoned what it saw; and called her. For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do Mother, dear mother. THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH, running to ASIA Mother, dearest mother ! May I then talk with thee as I was wont? May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms, After thy looks have made them tired of joy? May I then play beside thee the long noons, When work is none in the bright silent air ? 29 ASIA I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth Can cherish thee unenvied. Speak, I pray; Thy simple talk once solaced, now de- lights. SPIRIT OF THE EARTH Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child Cannot be wise like thee, within this day; And happier too; happier and wiser both. Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms, And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever An hindrance to my walks o’er the green world; And that, among the haunts of human- kind, 40 Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks, Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles, Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance, Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man; And women too, ugliest of all things evil, (Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair. ACT III: SC. IV PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 195 When good and kind, free and sincere like thee) When false or frowning made me sick at heart To pass them, though they slept, and I un- seen. 50 Well, my path lately lay through a great city Into the woody hills surrounding it; A sentinel was sleeping at the gate; When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all; A long, long sound, as it would never end; And all the inhabitants leapt suddenly Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets, Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet 60 The music pealed along. I hid myself Within a fountain in the public square, Where [ lay like the reflex of the moon Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon Those ugly human shapes and visages Of which I spoke as having wrought me ain, Pysbed Hosting through the air, and fading still Toto the winds that scattered them; and those From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms After some foul disguise had fallen, and all 7o Were somewhat changed, and after brie surprise And greetings of delighted wonder, all Went to their sleep again; and when the dawn Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts, Could e’er be beautiful ? yet so they were, And that with little change of shape or hue; All things had put their evil nature off; I cannot tell my joy, when o’er a lake, Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined, eo I saw two azure haleyons clinging down- ward 80 And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries, With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky; So with my thoughts full of these happy changes, We meet again, the happiest change of all. ASIA And never will we part, till thy chaste sister, Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon, Will look on thy more warm and equal light Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow, 89 And love thee. SPIRIT OF THE EARTH What ! as Asia loves Prometheus ? ASIA Peace, wanton! thou art yet not old enough. Think ye by gazing on each other’s eyes To multiply your lovely selves, and fill With spherad fires the interlunar air ? SPIRIT OF THE EARTH Nay, mother, while my sister trims her amp *T is hard I should go darkling. ASIA Listen; look ! The Spirit oF THE Hovr enters PROMETHEUS We feel what thou hast heard and seen; yet speak. SPIRIT OF THE HOUR Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled The abysses of the sky and the wide earth, There was a change; the impalpable thin air Toa And the all-circling sunlight were trans- formed, As if the sense of love, dissolved in them, Had folded itself round the spheréd world. My vision then grew clear, and I could see Into the mysteries of the universe. Dizzy as with delight I floated down; 196 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT III: SC. IV Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes, My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun, Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil, Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire, 110 And where my moonlike car will stand within A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me, And you, fair nymphs, looking the love we feel, — In memory of the tidings it has borne, — Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers, Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone, And open to the bright and liquid sky. Yoked to it by an amphisbenic snake The likeness of those wingéd steeds will mock 120 The flight from which they find repose. Alas, Whither has wandered now my partial tongue When all remains untold which ye would hear ? As I have said, I floated to the earth; It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss To move, to breathe, to be. I wandering went Among the haunts and dwellings of man- kind, And first was disappointed not to see Such mighty change as I had felt within Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked, 130 And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked One with the other even as spirits do — None fawned, none trampled; hate, dis- dain, or fear, Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows No more inscribed, as o’er the gate of hell, ‘ All hope abandon, ye who enter here.’ None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear Gazed on another’s eye of cold command, Until the subject of a tyrant’s will 139 Became, worse fate, the abject of his own, Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death. None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak. None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart The sparks of love and hope till there re- mained Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed, And the wretch crept a vampire among men, Infecting all with his own hideous ill. None talked that common, false, cold, hol- low talk Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes, 150 Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy With such a self-mistrust as has no name. And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind, As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew On the wide earth, passed; gentle, radiant forms, From custom’s evil taint exempt and pure; Speaking the wisdom once they could not think, Looking emotions once they feared to feel, And changed to all which once they dared not be, Yet being now, wade earth like heaven; nor pride, 160 Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame, The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall, Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love. Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and pris- ons, wherein, And beside which, by wretched men were borne Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance, Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes, The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame Which from their unworn obelisks, look forth 170 In triumph o’er the palaces and tombs Of those who were their conquerors; mould- ering round, Those imaged to the pride of kings and priests A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide As is the world it wasted, and are now But an astonishment; even so the tools ACT IV PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 19) And emblems of its last captivity, Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth, Stand, not o’erthrown, but unregarded now. And those foul shapes, —abhorred by god and man, 180 Which, under many a name and many a form Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and ex- ecrable, Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world, And which the nations, panic-stricken, served With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love Dragged to his altars soiled and garland- less, And slain among men’s unreclaiming tears, Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate, — Frown, mouldering fast, o’er their aban- doned shrines. The painted veil, by those who were, called life, 190 Which mimicked, as with colors idly spread, All men believed and hoped, is torn aside; The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man Passionless— no, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them; Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, 200 From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might over- soar_ abies The-toftiest star of unascended\heaven, Pinnae ed dim in the dintensé\inane. ACT IV Scunz — A part of the Forest near the Cave of Prometueus. PanroEa and Ionn are sleeping: they awaken gradually during the Jirst Song. VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS THE pale stars are gone ! For the sun, their swift shepherd To their folds them compelling, In the depths of the dawn, Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee Beyond his blue dwelling, As fawns flee the leopard, But where are ye? A Train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly, singing. Here, oh, here ! We bear the bier 1g Of the father of many a cancelled year! Spectres we Of the dead Hours be; We bear Time to his tomb in eternity. Strew, oh, strew Hair, not yew! Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew Be the faded flowers Of Death’s bare bowers Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours ! 20 Haste, oh, haste ! As shades are chased, Trembling, by day, from heaven’s blue waste, We melt away, Like dissolving spray, From the children of a diviner day, With the lullaby Of winds that die On the bosom of their own harmony ! IONE What dark forms were they ? 3a PANTHBA The past Hours weak and gray, With the spoil which their toil Raked together From the conquest but One could foil. IONE Have they passed ? PANTHEA They have passed; They outspeeded the blast, While ’tis said, they are fled ! IONE Whither, oh, whither ? PANTHEA To the dark, to the past, to tne deaa. 198 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT IV VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS Bright clouds float in heaven, 40 Dew-stars gleam on earth, Waves assemble on ocean, They are gathered and driven By the storm of delight, by the panic of lee ! They shake with emotion, They dance in their mirth. But where are ye ? The pine boughs are singing Old songs with new gladness, The billows and fountains 50 Fresh music are flinging, Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea; The storms mock the mountains With the thunder of gladness, But where are ye ? IONE What charioteers are these ? PANTHEA Where are their chariots ? SEMICHORUS OF HOURS The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth Has drawn back the figured curtain of sleep, Which covered our being and darkened our birth 59 In the deep. A VOICE In the deep ? SEMICHORUS II Oh! below the deep. SEMICHORUS I An hundred ages we had been kept Cradled in visions of hate and care, And each one who waked as his brother slept Found the truth — SEMICHORUS II Worse than his visions were ¢ SEMICHORUS I We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep; We have known the voice of Love in dreams ; We have felt the wand of Power, and leap — SEMICHORUS It As the billows leap in the morning beams ! CHORUS Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze, Pierce with song heaven’s silent light, 70 Enchant the day that too swiftly flees, To check its flight ere the cave of night. Once the hungry Hours were hounds Which chased the day like a bleeding deer, And it limped and stumbled with many wounds Through the nightly dells of the desert year. But now, oh, weave the mystic measure Of music, and dance, and shapes of light, Let the Hours, and the Spirits of might and pleasure, 79 Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite — A VOICE Unite t PANTHEA See, where the Spirits of the human mind, ‘Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach, CHORUS OF SPIRITS We join the throng Of the dance and the song, By the whirlwind of gladness borne along; As the flying-fish leap From the Indian deep And mix with the sea-birds half-asleep. CHORUS OF HOURS Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet, 8% For sandals of lightning are on your feet, And your wings are soft and swift as thought, And your eyes are as love which is veiléd not ? CHORUS OF SPIRITS We come from the mind Of humankind, ACT IV PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 199) Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind ; Now ’t is an ocean Of clear emotion, A heaven of serene and mighty motion. From that deep abyss Of wonder and bliss, 100 Whose caverns are crystal palaces; From those skyey towers Where Thought’s crowned powers Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours ! From the dim recesses Of woven caresses, Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses; From the azure isles, Where sweet Wisdom smiles, 109 Delaying your ships with her siren wiles. From the temples high Of Man’s ear and eye, Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy ; From the murmurings Of the unsealed springs, Where Science bedews his dedal wings. Years after years, Through blood, and tears, And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears, We waded and flew, 120 And the islets were few Where the bud-blighted flowers of happi- ness grew. Our feet now, every palm, Are sandalled with calm, And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm; And, beyond our eyes, The human love lies, Which makes all it gazes on Paradise. CHORUS OF SPIRITS AND HOURS Then weave the web of the mystic mea- sure; From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth, 130 Come, swift Spirits of might and of plea- sure. Fill the dance and the music of mirth, As the waves of a thousand streams rush To an ceaat of splendor and harmony ! CHORUS OF SPIRITS Our spoil is won, Our task is done, We are free to dive, or soar, or run; Beyond and around, Or within the bound 139 Which clips the world with darkness round. We ’1l pass the eyes Of the starry skies Into the hoar deep to colonize; Death, Chaos and Night, From the sound of our flight, Shall flee, like mist from a tempest’s might. And Earth, Air and Light, And the Spirit of Might, Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight; And Love, Thought and Breath, 150 The powers that quell Death, Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath. And our singing shall build In the void’s loose field A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield; We will take our plan From the new world of man, And our work shall be called the Prome- thean. CHORUS OF HOURS Break the dance, and scatter the song; Let some depart, and some remain; 16a SEMICHORUS I We, beyond heaven, are driven along; SEMICHORUS I Us the enchantments of earth retain; SEMICHORUS I Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free, With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea, And a heaven where yet heaven could never be; SEMICHORUS II Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright, Leading the Day, and outspeeding the Night, With the powers of a world of perfect light; 200 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT IV SEMICHORUS I PANTHEA We whirl, singing loud, round the gather- | But see where, through two openings in ing sphere, the forest Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear 170 From its chaos made calm by love, not fear; SEMICHORUS II We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth, And the happy forms of its death and birth Change to the music of our sweet mirth. CHORUS OF HOURS AND SPIRITS Break the dance, and scatter the song; Let some depart, and some remain; Wherever we fly we lead along In leashes, like star-beams, soft yet strong, The clouds that are heavy with love’s sweet rain. 179 PANTHEA Ha! they are gone! IONE Yet feel you no delight From the past sweetness ? PANTHEA As the bare green hill, When some soft cloud vanishes into rain, Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water To the unpavilioned sky ! IONE Even whilst we speak New notes arise. What is that awful sound ? PANTHEA Tis the deep music of the rolling world, Kindling within the strings of the waved air olian modulations. IONE Listen too, How every pause is filled with under-notes, Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones, Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul, 19t As the sharp stars pierce winter’s crystal air And gaze upon themselves within the sea. Which hanging branches overcanopy, And where two runnels of a rivulet, Between the close moss violet-inwoven, Have made their path of melody, like sis- ters Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles, Turning their dear disunion to anisle 200 Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts; Two visions of strange radiance float upon The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound, Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet, Under the ground and through the wind- less air. IONE I see a chariot like that thinnest boat In which the mother of the months is borne By ebbing night into her western cave, When she upsprings from interlunar dreams; 209 O’er which is curved an orb-like canopy Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods, Distinctly seen throngh that dusk airy veil, Regard like shapes in an enchanter’s glass; Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold, Such as the genii of the thunder-storm Pile on the floor of the illumined sea When the sun rushes under it; they roll And move and grow as with an inward wind; Within it sits a winged infant — white Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow, 220 Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost, Its limbs gleam white, through the wind- flowing folds Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl, Its hair is white, the brightness of white light Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens Of liquid darkness, which the Deity Within seems pouring, asa storm is poured From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes, Tempering the cold and radiant air around With fire that is not brightness; in its hand It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point 231 ACT IV A guiding power directs the chariot’s prow Over its wheeled clouds, which as they roll Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds, Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew. PANTHEA And from the other opening in the wood Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony, A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres; Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass Flow, as through empty space, music and light; 240 Ten thousand orbs involving and involved, Purple and azure, white, green and golden, Sphere within sphere; and every space between Peopled with unimaginable shapes, Such “ ghosts dream dwell in the lampless ep; Yet each inter-transpicuous; and they whirl Over each other with a thousand motions, Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning, And with the force of self-destroying swift- ness, Intensely, slowly, solemnly, roll on, 250 Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones, Intelligible words and music wild. With inighty whirl the multitudinous orb Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist Of elemental subtlety, like light; And the wild odor of the forest flowers, The music of the living grass and air, The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams, Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed Seem kneaded into one aérial mass 260 Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself, Pillowed upon its alabaster arms, Like to a child o’erwearied with sweet toil, On its own folded wings and wavy hair The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep, And you can see its little lips are moving, Amid the changing light of their own smiles, Like one who talks of what he loves in dream. IONE Tis only mocking the orb’s harmony. PANTHEA And from a star upon its forehead shoot, 270 Like swords of azure fire or golden spears | PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 201 With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined, Embleming heaven and earth united now, Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought, Filling the abyss with sun-like lightnings, And perpendicular now,and now transverse, Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass Make bare the secrets of the earth’s deep heart; Infinite mine of adamant and gold, 28a Valueless stones, and unimagined gems, And caverns on crystalline columns poised With vegetable silver overspread; Wells of unfathomed fire, and water-springs Whence the great sea even as a child is fed, Whose vapors clothe earth’s monarch mountain-tops With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on And make appear the melancholy ruins Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships; Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears, 290 And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels Of seythéd chariots, and the emblazonry Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts, Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin ! The wrecks beside of many a city vast, Whose population which the earth grew over Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie, Their monstrous works, and uncouth skele- tons, Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes 300 Huddled in gray annihilation, split, Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these, The anatomies of unknown wingéd things, And fishes which were isles of living scale, And serpents, bony chains, twisted around The iron crags, or within heaps of dust To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs Had crushed the iron crags; and over these The jagged alligator, and the might 309 Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores, 202 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT IV And weed-overgrown continents of earth, Increased and multiplied like summer worms On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe Wrapped deluge round it like a cloke, and the Yelled, erage: and were abolished; or some God, Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried, Be not! and like my words they were no more. THE EARTH The joy, the triumph, the delight, the mad- ness ! The boundless, overflowing, bursting glad- ness, 320 The vaporous exultation not to be confined ! Ha! ha! the animation of delight Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind. THE MOON Brother mine, calm wanderer, Happy globe of land and air, Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee, Which penetrates my frozen frame, And passes with the warmth of flame, With love, and odor, and deep melody 330 Through me, through me ! THE EARTH Ha ! ha! the caverns of my hollow moun- tains, My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains, Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter. The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses, And the deep air’s unmeasured wilder- nesses, Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after. They ery aloud as Ido. Sceptred curse, Who all our green and azure universe Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending 340 A solid cloud to rain hot thunder-stones And splinter and knead down my chil- dren’s bones, All I bring forth, to one void mass batter- ing and blending, Until each crag-like tower, and storied column, Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn, My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire, My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom, Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire: How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up 350 By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all; And from beneath, around, within, above, Filling thy void annihilation, love Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball ! THE MOON The snow upon my lifeless mountains Is loosened into living fountains, My solid oceans flow, and sing and shine; A spirit from my heart bursts forth, It clothes with unexpected birth 360 My cold bare bosom. Oh, it must be thine On mine, on mine ! Gazing on thee I feel, I know, Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, And living shapes upon my bosom move; Music is in the sea and air, Wingéd clouds soar here and there Dark with the rain new buds are dream- ing of: ’T is love, all love ! THE EARTH It interpenetrates my granite mass, 370 Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flow- ers; Upon the winds, among the clouds ’tis spread, It wakes a life in the forgotten dead, — They breathe a spirit up from their obscur- est bowers; ACT IV PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 203 And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen Out ee lampless caves of unimagined eing; With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver Thought’s stagnant chaos, unremoved forever, 380 Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-van- quished shadows, fleeing, Leave Man, who was a many-sided mir- ror Which could distort to many a shape of error This true fair world of things, a sea re- flecting love; Which over all his kind, as the sun’s hea- ven Gliding o’er ocean, smooth, serene, and even, Darting from starry depths radiance and life doth move: Leave Man even as a leprous child is left, Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft Of rocks, through which the might of heal- ing springs is poured; 390 Then when it wanders home with rosy smile, Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile It is a spirit, then weeps on her child re- stored: Man, ob, not men! a chain of linkéd thought, Of love and might to be divided not, Compelling the elements with adamantine stress; As the sun rules even with a tyrant’s The unquiet republic of the maze Of planets, struggling fierce towards hea- ven’s free wilderness: Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, - 400 Whose nature is its own divine control, Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea; Familiar acts are beautiful through love; Labor, and pain, and grief, in life’s green grove Sport like tame beasts; none knew how gentle they could be ! His will, with all mean passions, bad delights, ; And selfish cares, its trembling satellites, A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey, Is as a tempest-wingéd ship, whose helm Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm, 410 Forcing life’s wildest shores to own its sov- ereign sway. All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass Of marble and pass — Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear; Language is a perpetual Orphic song, Which rules with dedal harmony a thron Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were. of color his dreams The lightning is his slave; heaven’s ut- most deep Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on! 420 The tempest is his steed, he strides the air; And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, ‘Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.’ THE MOON The shadow of white death has passed From my path in heaven at last, A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep; And through my newly woven bowers, Wander happy paramours, Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep Thy vales more deep. 430 THE EARTH As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold, 204 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND ACT IV And crystalline, till it becomes a wingéd And eae up the vault of the blue Gaiae the noon, and on the sun’s last Hangs ie the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst. THE MOON Thou art folded, thou art lying In the light which is undying Of thine own joy, and heaven’s smile divine; All suns and constellations shower 440 On thee a light, a life, a power, Which doth array thy sphere; thou pour- est thine On mine, on mine ! THE EARTH I spin beneath my pyramid of night Which points into the heavens, dreaming delight, Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep; As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing, Under the shadow of his beauty lying, Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep. THE MOON As in the soft and sweet eclipse, 450 When soul meets soul on lovers’ lips, High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull; So when thy shadow falls on me, Then am I mute and still, by thee Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, Fall, oh, too full! Thon art speeding round the sun, Brightest world of many a one; Green and azure sphere which shinest With a light which is divinest 460 Among all the lamps of Heaven To whom life and light is given; I, thy erystal paramour, Borne beside thee by a power Like the polar Paradise, Magnet-like, of lovers’ eyes; I, a most enamoured maiden, Whose weak brain is overladen With the pleasure of her love, Maniac-like around thee move, 47a Gazing, an insatiate bride, On thy form from every side, Like a Menad round the cup Which Agave lifted up In the weird Cadmean forest. Brother, wheresoe’er thou soarest I must hurry, whirl and follow Through the heavens wide and hollow, Sheltered by the warm embrace Of thy soul from hungry space, 48 Drinking from thy sense and sight Beauty, majesty and might, As a lover or a chameleon Grows like what it looks upon, As a violet’s gentle eye Gazes on the azure sky Until its hue grows like what it bebolds, As a gray and watery mist Glows like solid amethyst Athwart the western mountain it en- folds, 490 When the sunset sleeps Upon its snow. THE EARTH And the weak day weeps That it should be so. O gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight Falls on me like thy clear and tender light Soothing the seaman borne the summer night Through isles forever calm; O gentle Moon, thy ervstal accents pierce The caverns of my pride’s deep universe, 500 Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce Made wounds which need thy balm. PANTHEA I rise as from a bath of sparkling water, A bath of azure light, among dark rocks, Out of the stream of sound. IONE Ah me! sweet sister, The stream of sound has ebbed away from us, And you pretend to rise out of its wave, Because your words fall like the clear soft dew Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph’s limb: and hair. ACT JV PANTHEA Peace, peace ! a mighty Power, which is as darkness, 510 Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky Is showered like night, and from within the air Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up Into the pores of sunlight; the bright visions, Wherein the singing Spirits rode and shone, Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night. IONE There is a sense of words upon mine ear. PANTHEA An universal sound like words: Ob, list ! DEMOGORGON Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul, Sphere of divinest shapes and harmo- nies, 520 Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll The love which paves thy path along the skies: THE EARTH LT hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies. DEMOGORGON Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth With wonder, as it gazes upon thee; Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony: THE MOON I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee. DEMOGORGON Ye kings of suns and stars, Demons and Gods, Ethereal Dominations, who possess Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes Beyond Heaven’s constellated wilder- ness: 530 A VoIcE (from above) Our great Republic hears: we are blessed, and bless. DEMOGORGON Ye happy dead, whom beams of brightest verse PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 205 Are clouds to hide, not colors to portray, Whether your nature is that universe Which once ye saw and suffered — A VOICE FROM BENEATH Or, as they Whom we have left, we change and pass away. DEMOGORGON Ye elemental Genii, who have homes From man’s high mind even to the cen. tral stone 540 Of sullen lead; from Heaven’s star-fretted domes To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on: A CONFUSED VOICE We hear: thy words waken Oblivion. DEMOGORGON Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts and birds, Ye worms and fish; ye living leaves and buds; Lightning and wind; and ye untamable herds, Meteors and mists, which throng air’s solitudes: A VOICE Thy voice to us is wind among still woods. DEMOGORGON Man, who wert once a despot and a slave, A dupe and a deceiver, a decay, 550 A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day: ALL Speak: thy strong words may never pass away. DEMOGORGON This is the day which down the void abysm At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Hea- ven’s despotism, And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep; Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, 206 THE CENCI1 And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs 560 And folds over the world its healing wings. Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endur- ance — These are the seals of that most firm assur- ance Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength; And if, with intirm hand, Eternity, Mother of many acts and hours, should free The serpent that would clasp her with his length, These are the spells by which to reassume An empire o’er the disentangled doom. 56, To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contem- plates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Vic- tory ! THE CENCI A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS The Cenci was Shelley’s first attempt at writ- ing drama, aform of composition for which he had conceived himself to have no talent. It was executed with greater rapidity than any of his earlier works, being begun at Rome by May 14, and finished at Leghorn, August 8, 1819, though as usual Shelley continued to revise it till it left his hands. He printed two hundred and fifty copies at an Italian press, and these were issued in the spring of 1820, at London, as the first edition. A second edition was pub- lished the following year. Shelley desired that the play should be put upon the stage, and had it offered at Covent Garden by Pea- eock, but it was declined on account of the subject. He thought it was written in a way to make it popular, and that the repulsive ele- ment in the story had been eliminated by the delicacy of his treatment. His interest in it lessened after its refusal by the managers ; but their judgment was supported by the unfavor- able impression made by it when it was pri- vately played for the first time under the ae of the Shelley Society, at London, in 1886. Mrs. Shelley’s note, as usual, gives nearly all that is essential to the history of the poem and of Shelley’s interest in it: ‘When in Rome, in 1819, a friend put into our hands the old manuscript account of the story of The Cenci. We visited the Colonna and Doria palaces. where the portraits of Bea- trice were to be found; and her beauty cast the reflection of its own grace over her appall- ing story. Shelley’s imagination became strongly excited, and he urged the subject to me as one fitted for a tragedy. More than ever I felt my incompetence ; but I entreated him to write it instead ; and he began and pro- ceeded swiftly, urged on by intense sympa- thy with the sufferings of the human beings whose passions, so long cold in the tomb, he revived, and gifted with poetic language. This tragedy is the only one of his works that he communicated to me during its progress. We talked over the arrangement of the scenes together. ... ‘ We suffered a severe affliction in Rome by the loss of our eldest child, who was of such beauty and promise as to cause him deservedly to be the idol of our hearts. We left the cap- ital of the world, anxious for a time to escape w spot associated too intimately with his pre- sence and loss. Some friends of ours were residing in the neighborhood of Leghorn, and we took a small house, Villa Valsovano, about half-way between the town and Monte Nero, where we remained during the summer. Our villa was situated in the midst of a podere; the peasants sang as they worked beneath our windows, during the heats of a very hot sea- son, and at night the water-wheel creaked as the process of irrigation went on, and the fire- flies flashed from among the myrtle hedges : — nature was bright, sunshiny, and cheerful, or diversified by storms of a majestic terror, such as we had never before witnessed ‘ At the top of the house there was a sort of terrace. There is often such in Italy, gener- ally roofed. This one was very small, yet not INTRODUCTORY NOTE 204 only roofed but glazed; this Shelley made his study ; it looked out on a wide prospect of fer- tile country, and commanded a view of the near sea. The storms that sometimes varied our day showed themselves most picturesquely as they were driven across the ocean; sometimes the dark lurid clouds dipped towards the waves, and became water spouts, that churned up the waters beneath, as they were chased onward, and scattered by the tempest. At other times the dazzling sunlight and heat made it almost intolerable to every other ; but Shelley basked in both, and his health and spirits revived under their influence. In this airy cell he wrote the principal part of The Cenci. He was making a study of Calderon at the time, reading his best tragedies with an accomplished lady [Mrs. Gisborne] living near us, to whom his letter from Leghorn was addressed during the fol- lowing year. He admired Calderon, both for his poetry and his dramatic genius; but it shows his judgment and originality, that, though greatly struck by his first acquaintance with the Spanish poet, none of his peculiarities crept into the composition of The Cenci; and there is no trace of his new studies, except in that passage to which he himself alludes, as suggested by one in Ei Purgatorio de San Patricio. ‘Shelley wished The Cenci to be acted. He was not a play-goer, being of such fastidious taste that he was easily disgusted by the bad filling up of the inferior parts. While pre- paring for our departure from England, how- ever, he saw Miss O’Neil several times ; she was then in the zenith of her glory, and Shelley was deeply moved by her impersonation of several parts, and by the graceful sweetness, the intense pathos, and sublime vehemence of passion she displayed. She was often in his thoughts as he wrote, and when he had finished, he became anxious that his tragedy should be acted, and receive the advantage of having this accomplished actress to fill the part of the heroine. With this view he wrote the follow- ing letter to a friend (Peacock, July, 1819] in London : — ‘“ The object of the present letter is to ask a favor of you. I have written a tragedy on the subject of astory well known in Italy, and, in my conception, eminently dramatic. I have taken some pains to make my play fit for re- presentation, and those who have already seen it judge favorably. It is written without any of the peculiar feelings and opinions which characterize my other compositions; I having attended simply to the impartial development of such characters as it is probable the persons represented really were, together with the great- est degree of popular effect. to be produced by such a development. I send you a translation of the Xtalian MS. on which my play is founded; the chief subject of which I have touched very delicately; for my principal doubt as te whether it would succeed, as an acting play, hangs entirely on the question, as to whether such a thing as incest in this shape, however treated, would be admitted on the stage. think, however, it will form no objection, con- sidering, first, that the facts are matter of his- tory and, secondly, the peculiar delicacy with which I have treated it. ‘“T am exceedingly interested in the ques- tion of whether this attempt of mine will suc- ceed or no. I am strongly inclined to the affirmative at present; founding my hopes on this, that as a composition it is certainly not inferior to any of the modern plays that have been acted, with the exception of Remorse; that the interest of its plot is incredibly greater and more real, and that there is nothing beyond what the multitude are contented to believe that they can understand, either in imagery, opinion, or sentiment. I wish to preserve a complete incognito, and can trust to you that, whatever else you do, you will at least favor me on this point. Indeed this is essential, deeply essential to its success. After it had been acted, and successfully (could I hope such a thing), I would own it if I pleased, and use the celebrity it might acquire, to my own pur- poses. ‘“ What I want you to do, is to procure for me its presentation at Covent Garden. The principal character, Beatrice, is precisely fitted for Miss O’Neil, and it might even seem written for her, (God forbid that I should ever see her play it —it would tear my nerves to pieces,) and in all respects it is fitted only for Covent Garden. The chief male character I confess I should be very unwilling that any one but Kean should play — that is impossible, and I must be contented with an inferior ac- tor.” ‘The play was accordingly sent to Mr. Harris. He pronounced the subject to be so objectionable that he could not even submit the part to Miss O’Neil for perusal, but ex- pressed his desire that the author would write a tragedy on some other subject, which he would gladly accept. Shelley printed a small edition at Leghorn, to insure its correctness ; as he was much annoyed by the many mistakes that crept into his text, when distance prevented him from correcting the press. ‘Universal approbation soon stamped The Cenci as the best tragedy vf modern times. Writing concerning it, Shelley said : “I have been cautions to avoid the introducing faults of youthfu) composition ; diffuseness, a profu- sion of inapplicable imagery, vagueness. gener. ality, and, as Hamlet says, words. words” 208 THE CENCI There is nothing that is not purely dramatic throughout; and the character of Beatrice, proceeding from vehement struggle to horror, to deadly resolution, and lastly, to the ele- vated dignity of calm suffering, joined to pas- sionate tenderness and pathos, is touched with hues so vivid and so beautiful, that the poet seems to have read intimately the secrets of the noble heart imaged in the lovely counte- nance of the unfortunate girl. The Fifth Act is a masterpiece. It is the finest thing he ever wrote, and may claim proud comparison not only with any contemporary, but preceding poet. The varying feelings of Beatrice are expressed with passionate, heart-reaching elo- quence. Every character has a voice that echoes truth in its tones. It is curious, to one acquainted with the written story, to mark the success with which the poet has inwoven the real incidents of the tragedy into his scenes, and yet, through the power of poetry, has obliterated all that would otherwise have shown too harsh or too hideous in the picture. His success was a double triumph ; and often after he was earnestly entreated to write again in a style that commanded popular favor, while it was not less instinct with truth and genius. But the bent of his mind went the other way ; and even when employed on subjects whose interest depended on character and incident, he would start off in another direction, and leave the delineations of human passion, which he could depict in so able a manner, for fantas- tic creatious of his fancy, or the expression of those opinions and sentiments with regard to human nature ¢nd its destiny, adesire to diffuse which was the master passion of his soul.’ Though Shelley’s references to the drama, in his correspondence, are many, they are rather concerned with the stage-production and publi- eation of it than with criticism. While still warm with its composition he wrote to Peacock, “My work on The Cenci, which was done in two months, was a fine antidote to nervous medicines and kept up, I think, the pain in my side as sticks do a fire. Since then I have ma- terially improved ;’ and in offering the dedica- tion to Leigh Hunt, he says, — ‘ I have written something and finished it, different from any- thing else, and a. new attempt for me; and I mean to dedicate it to you. I should not have done so without your approbation, but I asked your picture Jast night, and it smiled assent. If I did not think it in some degree worthy of you, I would not make vou a public offering of it. I expect to have to write to you soon about it. If Ollier is not turned Christian, Jew, or become infected with the Murrain, he will publish it. Don’t let him be frightened, for it is nothing which by any courtesy of lan- guage can be termed either moral or immoral.’ In letters to Ollier he describes it as * caleu lated to produce a very popular effect,’ ‘ ex. pressly written for theatrical exhibition,’ and ‘written for the multitude.’ He doubtless had in mind, while using these phrases, its re- straint of style, in which it is unique among his longer works, and its freedom from abstract thought and the peculiar imagery in which he delighted. Its failure disappointed him, as it is the only one of his works from which he seems to have expected contemporary and popular success. ‘The Cenct ought to have been popular,’ he writes again to Ollier; and the effect of continued neglect of his writings, in depressing his spirits, is shown in a letter the preceding day to Peacock, —‘ Nothing is more difficult and unwelcome than to write without a confidence of finding readers ; and if my play of The Cenci found none or few, I despair of ever producing anything that shall merit them.’ Byron was ‘loud in censure,’ and Keats was critical, in the very point where criticism was perhaps least needed ; he wrote, acknowledging a gift copy, — ‘ You, I am sure, will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity, and bemore of anartist, and load every rift of your subject with ore. The thought of such discipline must fall like cold chains upon you, who perhaps never sat with your wings furled for six months together. And is not this extraordinary talk for the writer of Endymion, whose mind was like a pack of scattered cards?’ Trelawny records Shelley’s last, and most condensed judgment : ‘In writing The Cenci my object was to see how I could succeed in describing passions I have never felt, and to tell the most dreadful story in pure and refined language. The image of Beatrice haunted me after seeing her portrait. The story is well authenticated, and the details far more horrible than I have painted them. The Cenci isa work of art; it is not colored by my feelings nor obscured by my metaphysics. I don’t think much of it. It gave me less trouble than anything I have written of the same length.’ DEDICATION TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ My pear Frienp,—I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an ab- sence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary efforts. Those writings which I have hitherto pub- lished have been little else than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beau- tiful and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects incidental to youth and im AUTHOR’S PREFACE 209 patience ; they are dreams of what ought to be or may be. The drama which I now pre- sent to you is a sad reality. I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor and am content to paint, with such colors as my own heart furnishes, that which has been. Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, hon- orable, innocent and brave; one of more ex- alted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive and how to con- fer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can receive ; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of purer life and manners, I never knew ; and I had already been fortunate in friendships when your name was added to the list. In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political tyranny and impos- ture which the tenor of your life has illus- trated, and which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us, comforting each other in our task, live and die. All happiness attend you! Your affectionate friend, Percy B. SHELLEY. Rome, May 29, 1819. PREFACE A Manouscrier was communicated to me during my travels in Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one of the noblest and richest families of that city, during the Pontificate of Clement VIIL, in the year 1599. The story is that an old man, having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived at length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of an in- cestuous passion, aggravated by every cireum- stance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common tyrant. The young maiden who was urged to this tremendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror was evidently a most gentle and amiable being, a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and thus vio- lently thwarted from her nature bythe necessity of circumstance and opinion. The deed was quickly discovered, and, in spite of the most earnest prayers made to the Pope by the high- est persons in Rome. the criminals were put to death. The old man had during his life re- peatedly bought his pardon from the Pope for capital crimes of the most enormous and un- speakable kind at the price of a hundred thou- sand crowns; the death therefore of his vic- tims can scarcely be accounted for by the love of justice. The Pope, among other motives for severity, probably felt that whoever killed the Count Cenci deprived his treasury of a certain and copious source of revenue.! Such a story, if told so as to present to the reader all the feelings of those who once acted it, their hopes and fears, their confidences and misgivings, their various interests, passions and opinions, acting upon and with each other yet all conspiring to one tremendous end, would be as a light to make apparent some of the most dark and secret caverns of the human heart. On my arrival at Rome I found that the story of the Cenci was a subject not to be mentioned in Italian society without awaken- ing a deep and breathless interest; and that the feelings of the company never failed to in- cline to a romantic pity for the wrongs and a passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged her who has been mingled two centuries with the common dust. All ranks of people knew the outlines of this his- tory and participated in the overwhelming in- terest which it seems to have the magic of ex- citing in the human heart. 1 had a copy of Guido’s picture of Beatrice which is preserved in the Colonna Palace, and my servant instantly recognized it as the portrait of La Cenci. This national and universal interest which the story produces and has produced for two centuries and among all ranks of people in a great City, where the imagination is kept for- ever active and awake, first suggested to me the conception of its fitness for a dramatic purpose. In fact it is a tragedy which has al- ready received, from its capacity of awakening and sustaining the sympathy of men, appro- bation and success. Nothing remained as I im- agined but to clothe it to the apprehensions of my countrymen in such language and action as would bring it home to their hearts. The deepest and the sublimest tragic compositions, King Lear and the two plays in which the tale of Cidipus is told, were stories which already existed in tradition, as matters of popular belief and interest, before Shakespeare and Sophocles made them familiar to the sympa- thy of all succeeding generations of man- kind. This story of the Cenci is indeed eminently 1 The Papal Government formerly took the most ex- traordinary precautions against the publicity of facts which offer so tragical a demonstration of its own wick- edness and weakness; so that the communication of the MS. had become, until very lately, a matter of some difficulty. 210 THE CENCL fearful and monstrous; anything like a dry exhibition of it on the stage would be insup- portable. The person who would treat such a subject must increase the ideal and diminish the actual horror of the events, so that the pleasure which arises from the poetry which exists in these tempestuous sutferings and crimes may mitigate the pain of the contem- plation of the moral deformity from which they spring. There must also be nothing at- tempted to make the exhibition subservient to what is vulgarly termed a moral purpose. The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama is the teaching the hu- man heart, through its sympathies and antipa- thies, the knowledge of itself ; in proportion to the possession of which knowledge every hu- man being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and kind. If dogmas can do more, it is well: but a drama is no fit place for the enforcement of them. Undoubtedly uo person can be truly dishonored by the act of another; and the fit return to make to the most enormous injuries is kindness and forbearance and a resolution to convert the injurer from his dark passions by peace and love. Revenge, retaliation, atone- ment, are pernicious mistakes. If Beatrice had thought in this manner she would have been wiser and better; but she would never have been a tragic character. The few whom such an exhibition would have interested could never have been sufficiently interested for a dramatic purpose, from the want of finding sympathy in their interest among the mass who surround them. It is in the restless and anatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification ; it is in the superstitious horror with which they contem- plate alike her wrongs and their revenge, — that the dramatic character of what she did and suffered, consists. I have endeavored as nearly as possible to represent the characters as they probably were, and have sought to avoid the error of making them actuated by my own conceptions of right or wrong, false or true: thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the sixteenth century into cold impersonations of my own mind. They are represented as Catholics, and as Catholics deeply tinged with religion. To a Protestant apprehension there will appear something unnatural in the earnest and per- petual sentiment of the relations between God and men which pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. It will especially be startled at the combination of an undoubting persuasion of the truth of the popular religion with a cool and determined perseverance in enormous guilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a cloak to be worn on particular days; or a passport which those who do not wish to berailed at carry with them to exhibit; or a gloomy passion for penetrating the im- penetrable mysteries of our being, which terri- fies its possessor at the darkness of the abyss to the brink of which it has conducted him. Religion coexists, as it were, in the mind of an Italian Catholic, with a faith in that of which all men have the most certain knowledge. It is interwoven with the whole fabric of life. It is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration ; not a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connection with any one vir- tue. The most atrocious villain may be rigidly devout, and without any shock to established faith confess himself to be so. Religion per- vades intensely the whole frame of society, and is, according to the temper of the mind which it inhabits, a passion, a persuasion, an excuse, a refuge; never a check. Cenci himself built a chapel in the court of his Palace, and dedi- cated it to St. Thomas the Apostle, and estab- lished masses for the peace of his soul. Thus in the first scene of the fourth act Lucretia’s design in exposing herself to the consequences of an expostulation with Cenci after having administered the opiate was to induce him by a feigned tale to confess himself before death, this being esteemed by Catholics as essential to salvation; and she only relinquishes her purpose when she perceives that her persever- ance would expose Beatrice to new outrages. I have avoided with great care in writing this play the introduction of what is commonly called mere poetry, and I imagine there will scarcely be found a detached simile or a single isolated description, unless Beatrice’s descrip- tion of the chasm appointed for her father’s murder should be judged to be of that nature. In a dramatic composition the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate one another, the former being reserved simply for the full development and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is thus that the most re- mote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for dramatic purposes when employed ix the illustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low and levels to the apprehension that which is lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness. In other respects I have written more carelessly; that is, without an overfastidious and learned choice of words. In this respect I entirely agree with those modern critics who assert that in order to move men to true sympathy we must use the 1 An idea in this speech was suggested by a most sublime passage in El Purgatorio de San Patricio of Calderon; the only plagiarism which I have intention ally cominitted in the whole piece. ACT It SC. I THE CENCI 211 familiar language of men, and that our great ancestors the ancient English poets are the writers, a study of whom might incite us to do that for our own age which they have done for theirs. But it must be the real language of men in general and not that of any particular class to whose society the writer happens to belong. So much for what I have attempted ; I need not be assured that success is a very different matter; particularly for one whose attention has but newly been awakened to the study of dramatic literature. L endeavored whilst at Rome to observe such monuments of this story as might be accessible toastranger. The portrait of Beatrice at the Colonna Palace is admirable as a work of art ; it was taken by Guido during her confinement in prison. But it is most interesting as a just representation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of Nature. There is a fixed and pale composure upon the features ; she seems sad and stricken down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. Her head is bound with folds of white drapery from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape and fall about her neck. The moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate ; the eyebrows are distinct and arched; the lips have that perma- nent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. Her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their ~ivacity, are swollen with weeping and lustre- THE CENCI DRAMATIS PERSONA Count Francesco CENcI. ANDREA, Servant to Giacomo, 5 CENcI. BERNARDO, his Sons. Nostes. JUDGES. CarRDINAL CAMILLO. Guagps. SERVANTS. Prince CoLonna. Lucretia, Wife of Cencr and Stepmo- SAVELLA, the Pope’s Legate. si ther of ms ena OLIMPIO * EATRICE, his Daugh- Marzio,. \ Assassins. ter. : % ‘The Scene lies principally in Rome, but changes dur- ing the fourth Act to Pretrella, a castle among the Avulian Apennines. Time. During the Pontificate of Clement VIII. ACT I Scunz I,— An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. Enter Count CENcI and CARDINAL Ca- MILLO. OrsINo, a Prelate. CAMILLO Tuat matter of the murder is hushed up Lf you consent to yield his Holiness less, but beautifully tender and serene. In the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which, united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. Bea- trice Cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another ; her nature was simple and profound. The crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and the mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world. The Cenci Palace is of great extent; and, though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy. The Palace is situated in an obscure corner of Rome, near the quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of Mount Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees. There is a court in one part of the Palace (perhaps that in which Cenci built the Chapel to St. Thomas), supported by granite columns and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and built up, according to the ancient Italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of openwork. One of the gates of the Palace formed of immense stones and leading through a passage, dark and lofty and opening into gloomy subterra- nean chambers, struck me particularly. Of the Castle of Petrella, I could obtain no further information than that which is to be found in the manuscript. Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate. It needed all my interest in the conclave To bend him to this point; he said that you Bought perilous impunity with your gold; That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded Enriched the Church, and respited from hell Anerring soul which might repent and live; But that the glory and the interest 10 Of the high throne he fills little consist With making it a daily mart of guilt As manifold and hideous as the deeds Which you scarce hide from men’s re- volted eyes. CENCI The third of my possessions — let it go! Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope Had sent his architect to view the ground, Meaning to build a villa on my vines The next time I compounded with his unele. T little thought he should outwit me so! 20 212 THE CENCI ACT I: SC. I Henceforth no witness —not the lamp — shall see That which the vassal threatened to divulge, Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward. The deed he saw could not have rated bigher Than his most worthless life—it angers me! Respited me from Hell! Devil Respite their souls from Heaven! No doubt Pope Clement, And his most charitable nephews, pray That the Apostle Peter and the saints Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy 30 Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, an length of days Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards Of their revenue. — But much yet remains To which they show no title. So may the CAMILLO Oh, Count Cenci ! So much that thou mightst honorably live And reconcile thyself with thine own heart And with thy God and with the offended world. How hideously look deeds of Inst and blood Through those snow-white and venerable hairs ! Your children should be sitting round you now 40 But that you fear to read upon their looks The shame and misery you have written there. Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter ? Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you. Why is she barred from all society But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs ? Talk with me, Count, — you know I mean you well. I stood beside vonr dark and fiery youth, Watching its bold and bad career, as men 50 Watch meteors, but it vanished not; I marked Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now Do I behold you in dishonored age Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes. Yet I have ever hoped you would amend, And in that hope have saved your life three times. CENCI For which Aldobrandino owes you now My fief beyond the Pincian. Cardinal, One thing, [ pray you, recollect henceforth, And so we shall converse with less re- straint. 60 A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter; He was accustomed to frequent my house; So the next day his wife and daughter came And asked if I had seen him; and I smiled. I think they never saw him any more. CAMILLO Thou execrable man, beware ! CENCI Of thee ? Nay, this is idle. We should know each other. As to my character for what men call crime, Seeing I please my senses as I list, And vindicate that right with force or guile, 70 It is a public matter, and I care not If I discuss it with you. I may speak Alike to you and my own conscious heart, For you give out that you have half re- formed me; Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent, If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt. All men delight in sensual luxury; All men enjoy revenge, and most exult Over the tortures they can never feel, Flattering their secret peace with others’ pain. 8c But I delight in nothing else. I love The sight of agony, and the sense of joy, When this shall be another’s and that mine; And I have no remorse and little fear, Which are, I think, the checks of other men. This mood has grown upon me, until now Any design my captious fancy makes The picture of its wish —and it forms none ACT I: SC. ¢£ THE CENCI 213 But such as men like you would start to know — Is as my natural food and rest debarred 90 Until it be accomplished. CAMILLO Art thou not Most miserable ? CENCI Why miserable ? No. Iam what your theologians call Hardened; which they must be in impu- dence, So to revile a man’s peculiar taste. True, I was happier than I am, while yet Manhood remained to act the thing I thought, — While lust was sweeter than revenge; and now Invention palls. Ay, we must all grow old. And but that there remains a deed to act Whose horror might make sharp an appe- tite IoT Duller than mine —I’d do, —I know not what. When I was young I thought of nothing else But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets. Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees, — And I grew tired; yet, till I killed a foe, And heard his groans, and heard his chil- dren’s groans, Knew I not what delight was else on earth, — Which now delights me little. I the rather Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals — The dry, fixed eyeball, the pale, quivering 1p, IIL Which tell me that the spirit weeps within Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ. I rarely kill the body, which preserves, Like a strong prison, the soul within my power, Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear For hourly pain. CAMILLO Hell’s most abandoned fiend Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt, Speak to his heart as now you speak to me, I thank my God that I believe you not. 120 Enter ANDREA ANDREA ay Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca ould speak with you. CENCI Bid him attend me In the grand saloon. [Exit ANDREA. CAMILLO Farewell; and I will pray Almighty God that thy false, impious words Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee. [Exit Camitye. CENCI The third of my possessions! I must use Close husbandry, or gold, the old man’s sword, Falls from my withered hand. But yester- day There came an order from the Pope to make Fourfold provision for my curséd sons, 130 Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca, Hoping some accident might cut them off, And meaning, if I could, to starve then. there. I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them ! Bernardo and my wife could not be worse If dead and damned. Then, as to Bea- trice — [Looking around him suspiciously. I think they cannot hear me at that door. What if they should? And yet I need not speak, Though the heart triumphs with itself in words. 139 O thou most silent air, that shalt not hear What now I think! Thou pavement which I tread Towards her chamber,—let your echoes talk Of my imperious step, scorning surprise, But not of my intent !— Andrea ! Enter ANDREA ANDREA My Lord ? CENCI Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber This evening: — no, at midnight and alone { Exeunt. 254 THE CENCI ACT 1; SC. IT Scenz II.— A Garden of the Cenci Palace. Enter Beatrice and ORsINo, as in conversa- tion. BEATRICE Pervert not ene” Orsino. You remember where we held That conversation; nay, we see the spot Even from this cypress; two long years are passed Since, on an April midnight, underneath The moonlight ruins of Mount Palatine, I did confess to you my secret mind. ORSINO You said you loved me then. BEATRICE You are a priest. Speak to me not of love. ORSINO I may obtain The dispensation of the Pope to marry. 10 Because I am a priest do you believe Your image, as the hunter some struck deer, Fotlows me not whether I wake or sleep ? BEATRICE As I have said, speak to me not of love; Had you a dispensation, I have not; Nor will I leave this home of misery Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lad To hom T owe lite and these virtucus thoughts, Must suffer what I still have strength to share. Alas, Orsino! All the love that once 20 T felt for you is turned to bitter pain. Ours was a youthful contract, which you first Broke by assuming vows no Pope will loose. And thus I love you still, but holily, Even as a sister or a spixit might; And so I swear a cold fidelity. And it is well perhaps we shall not marry. You have a sly, equivocating vein That suits me not. — Ah, wretched that I am ! Where shall I turn? Even now you look on me 30 As you were not my friend, and as if you Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles Making my true suspicion seem your wrong. Ah, no, forgive me; sorrow makes me seem Sterner than else my nature might have been; LT have a weight of melancholy thoughts, And they forebode,— but what can they forebode Worse than I now endure ? ORSINO All wiil be well, Is the petition yet prepared ? You know My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice; 4c Doubt not but I will use my utmost skill So that the Pope attend to your complaint. BEATRICE Your zeal for all I wish. Ah me, you are cold ! Your utmost skill — speak but one word — (Aside) Alas! Weak and deserted creature that I am, Here I stand bickering with my only friend ! (To Ors1no) This night my father gives a sumptuous feast, Orsino; he has heard some happy news From Salamanca, from my brothers there, And with this outward show of love he mocks 50 His inward hate. ’T is bold hypocrisy, For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths, Which I have heard him pray for on his knees. Great God! that such a father should be mine ! But there is mighty preparation made, And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there, And all the chief nobility of Rome. And he has bidden me and my pale mother Attire ourselves in festival array. 59 Poor lady ! she expects some happy change In his dark spirit from this act; I none. At supper I will give you the petition; Till when — farewell. ORSINO Farewell. (Exit Beatricr I know the Pope Will ne’er absolve me from my priestly vow But by absolving me from the revenue ACT i SC. III THE CENCI 215 Of many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice, I think to win thee at an easier rate. Nor shall he read her eloquent: petition. He might bestow her on some poor relation Of his sixth cousin, as he did her sister, 7. And I should be debarred from all access. Then as to what she suffers from her father, In all this there is much exaggeration. Old men are testy, and will have their way. A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal, And live a free life as to wine or women, And with a peevish temper may return To a dull home, and rate his wife and chil- dren; Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny. I shall be well content if on my conscience There rest no heavier sin than what they suffer Br From the devices of my love —a net rom which she shall escape not. Yet I fear Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze, Whose beams anatomize me, nerve by nerve, And lav me bare, and make me blush to see My hidden thoughts. — Ah, no! a friend- less girl 1s teu . Who clings to me, as to her only hope! were a fool, not less than if a panther 8&5 Were panic-stricken by the antelope’s eye, If she escape me. [ Exit. Sceng III.— A magnificent Hall in the Cenci Palace. A Banquet. Enter CrEnci, Lv- creT1A, Beatrice, Orsino, Camitio, No- BLES. CENCI Welcome, my friends and kinsmen; wel- come ye, Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the church, Whose presence honors onr festivity. I have too long lived like an anchorite, And in my absence from your merry meet- ings An evil a is gone abroad of me; But I do hope that you, my noble friends, When you have shared the entertainment here, And heard the pious cause for which ’tis iven, And we have pledged a health or two to- gether, 10 Will think me flesh and blood as well aa : you > hiss wl Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so, ay But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful. | wun ¥ FIRST GUEST In truth, my Lord, you seem too light of heart, Too sprightly and companionable a man, To act the deeds that rumor pins on you. [To his companion I never saw such blithe and open cheer In any eye! SECOND GUEST Some most desired event, In which we all demand a common joy, Has brought us hither; let us hear it, Count. 20 CENCI It is indeed a most desired event. If when a parent from a parent’s heart Lifts from this earth to the great Father of all A prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep, And when he rises up from dreaming it; One supplication, one desire, one hope, That he would grant a wish for his two sons, Even all that he demands in their regard, And suddenly beyond his dearest hope 29 It is accomplished, he should then rejoice, And call his friends and kinsmen to a feast, And task their love to grace his merri- ment, — Then honor me thus far, for I am he. BEATRICE (to LUCRETIA) Great God! How horrible! some dreadfu! ill Must have befallen my brothers. LUCRETIA Fear not, child, He speaks too frankly. BEATRICE Ah! My blood runs cold. I fear that wicked laughter round his eye, . Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair 216 THE CENCI ACT I: SC. TIL CENGI [The assembly appears confused ; several of Here are the letters brought from Sala- the guests rise. manca. 39 Beatrice, read them to your mother. God! I thank thee! In one night didst thou perform, By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought. My disobedient and rebellious sons Are dead !— Why, dead !— What means this change of cheer ? You hear me not—I tell you they are dead; And they will need no food or raiment more; The tapers that did light them the dark way Are their last cost. The Pope, I think, will not Expect I should maintain them in their coffins. Rejoice with me — my heart is wondrous glad. 50 BEATRICE (LUCRETIA sinks, half fainting ; BEATRICE supports her) It is not true !— Dear Lady, pray look up. Had it been true — there is a God in Hea- ven — He would not live to boast of such a boon. Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is false. CENCI Ay, as the word of God; whom here I call To witness that I speak the sober truth; And whose most favoring providence was shown Even in the manner of their deaths. For Rocco Was kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others, When the church fell and crushed him to a mummy; 60 The rest escaped unhurt. Cristofano Was stabbed in error by a jealous man, Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival, All in the self-same hour of the same night; Which shows that Heaven has special care of me. I beg those friends who love me that they mark The day a feast upon their calendars. It was the twenty-seventh of December. Ay, vead the letters if you doubt my oath. FIRST GUEST Oh, horrible! I will depart. SECOND GUEST And I. THIRD GUEST No, stay ! I do believe it is some jest; though, faith ! *T is mocking us somewhat too solemnly, 72 I think his son has married the Infanta, Or found a mine of gold in El Dorado. Tis but to season some such news; stay, stay ! I see ’t is only raillery by his smile. cencr (filling a bowl of wine, and lifting ut up) O thou bright wine, whose purple splendor leaps And bubbles gayly in this golden bowl Under the lamp-light, as my spirits do, To bear the death of my accurséd sons! 8 Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood, Then would I taste thee like a sacrament, And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell, Who, if a father’s curses, as men say, Climb with swift wings after their chil- dren’s souls, And drag them from the very throne of Heaven, Now triumphs in my triumph ! — But thou art Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine to-night. Here, Andrea! Bear the bowl around. 9 A GUEST (rising) Thon wretch ! Will none among this noble company Check the abandoned villain ? CAMILLO For God’s sake, Let me dismiss the guests! You are in- sane. Some ill will come of this. SECOND GUEST Seize, silence him f ACT I: sc. III THE CENCI 217 FIRST GUEST Princes and kinsmen, at this hideous feast I will! Given at my brothers’ deaths. Two yet THIRD GUEST bs NY : Awa T! His me ches and I, whom if ye save > cENCI (addressing those who rise with a threat- ening gesture) Who moves ? Who speaks ? [Turning to the company. ’T is nothing, Enjoy yourselves. — Beware ! for my re- venge Is as the sealed commission of a king, That kills, and none dare name the mur- derer. [The Banquet is broken up; several of the Guests are departing. BEATRICE I do entreat you, go not, noble guests; 99 What although tyranny and impious hate Stand sheltered by a father’s hoary hair ? What if ’tis he who clothed us in these limbs Who tortures them, and triumphs ? What, if we The desclate and the dead, were his own flesh, His children and his wife, whom he is bound To love and shelter? Shall we therefore find No refuge in this merciless wide world ? Ob, think what deep wrongs must have blotted out First love, then reverence, in a child’s prone mind, Till it thus vanquish shame and fear! Oh, think ! IIo I have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand Which crushed us to the earth, and thought its stroke Was perhaps some paternal chastisement ! Have excused much, doubted; and when no doubt Remained, have sought by patience, love and tears To soften him; and when this could not be, I have knelt down through the long sleep- less nights, And lifted up to God, the father of all, Passionate prayers; and when these were not heard, 119 I have still borne, — until I meet you here, Ye may soon share such merriment again As fathers make over their children’s graves. Ob! Prince Colonna, thou art our near kinsman; Cardinal, thou art the Pope’s chamberlain, Camillo, thou art chief justiciary; Take us away ! cencr (he has been conversing with CAMILLO during the first part of BEATRICE’s speech ; he hears the conclusion, and now advances) I hope my good friends here Will think of their own daughters — or perhaps 130 Of their own throats — before they leud.an ear To this wild girl. BEATRICE (not noticing the words of CENCI) Dare no one look on me ? None answer? Can one tyrant overbear The sense of many best and wisest men ? Or is it that I sue not in some form Of scrupulous law that ye deny my suit ? Oh, God! that I were buried with my brothers ! And that the flowers of this departed spring Were fading on my grave! and that my father Were celebrating now one feast for all! 140 CAMILLO A bitter wish for one so young and gentle. Can we do nothing ? — COLONNA Nothing that I see Count Cenci were a dangerous enemy; Yet I would second any one. A CARDINAL And I. CENCI Retire to your chamber, insolent girl! BEATRICE Retire thou, impious man! Ay, hide thyself Where never eye can look upon thee more ! 218 THE CENCI ACT II: SC. i Wouldst thou have honor and obedience, Who art a torturer? Father, never dream, Though thou mayst overbear this com- pany, 150 But ill must come of ill. Frown not on me! Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looks My brothers’ ghosts should hunt thee from thy seat ! Cover thy face from every living eye, And start if thou but hear a human step; Seek out some dark and silent corner — there Bow thy white head before offended God, And we will kneel around, and fervently Pray that he pity both ourselves and thee. CENCI My friends, I do lament this insane girl 160 Has spoiled the mirth of our festivity. Good night, farewell; I will not make you longer Spectators of our dull domestic quarrels. Another time. — [Exeunt all but Cunct and Buatrice. My brain is swimming round. Give me a bowl of wine! (To Brarrice) Thou painted viper ! Beast that thou art! Fair and yet terri- ble! wes know a gharm s shall make thee meek and tamé, ~~ Now get thee from my sight ! [Zit BEATRICE. Here, Andrea, Fill up this goblet with Greek wine. I said I would not drink this evening, but I must; 170 For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail With thinking what I have decreed to do. (Drinking the wine) Be thou the resolution of quick youth Within my veins, and manhood’s purpose stern, And age’s firm, cold, subtle villainy; As if thou wert indeed my children’s blood Which I did thirst to drink! ~The charm works well. t+ must be done; it shall be done, I swear! [ Exit. ACT II Scens I. — An Apartment in the Cenct Palace Enter Lucretia and BERNARDO. LUCRETIA Weep not, my gentle boy; he struck but me, Who have borne deeper wrongs. In truth, if he Had killed me, he had done a kinder deed. O God Almighty, do thou look upon us, We have no other friend but only thee ! Yet weep not; though I love you as my own, I am not your true mother. BERNARDO Oh, more, more Than ever mother was to any child, That have you been to me! Had he not been My father, do you think that I should weep? 10 LUCRETIA Alas ! poor boy, what else couldst thou have done ! Enter BEATRICE BEATRICE (in a hurried voice) Did he pass this way ? Have you seen him, brother ? Ah;-no! that is his step upon the stairs; *T is nearer now; his hand is on the door; Mother, if I to thee have ever been A duteous child, now save me! Thou, great God, Whose image upon earth a father is, Dost thou indeed abandon me? He comes; The door is opening now; I see his face; 19 He frowns on others, but he smiles on mey |< Even as he did after the feast last night. Enter a Servant Almighty God, how merciful thon art! °Tis but Orsino’s servant. — Well, what news ? SERVANT My master bids me say the Holy Father Has sent back your petition thus unopened. (Giving a paper! ACT II: sc. I THE CENCI 219 And he demands at what hour ’t were secure To visit you again ? LUCRETIA At the Ave Mary. [Exit Servant. So, daughter, our last hope has failed. Ah me, How pale you look! you tremble, and you stand Wrapped in some fixed and fearful medita- tion, 30 As if one thought were overstrong for you; Your eyes have a chill glare; oh, dearest child ! Are you gone mad? If not, pray speak to me. BEATRICE You see I am not mad; I speak to you. LUCRETIA You talked of something that your father did After that dreadful feast? Could it be worse Than when he smiled, and cried, ‘My sons are dead !’ And every one looked in his neighbor’s face To see if others were as white as he ? At the first word he spoke I felt the blood Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance; we when it passed I sat all weak and wild; 4 Whilst you ‘alone stood up, and with strong words -|Checked his unnatural pride; and I could see he devil was rebuked that lives in him. Until this bour thus you have ever stood Between us and your father’s moody wrath Like a protecting presence; your firm mind Has been our only refuge and defence. What can have thus subdued it ? Wet can now Have given you that cold melancholy jock, Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear ? BEATRICE What isit that yousay ? I was just think- ing ’T were better not to struggle any more. Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody; Yet never —oh! before worse comes of it, ’T were wise to die; it ends in that at last. LUCRETIA Oh, talk not so, dear child! once What did your father do or say to you? He stayed not after that accurséd feast 6c One moment in your chamber. — Speak to me. Tell me at. BERNARDO Oh, sister, sister, prithee, speak to us! BEATRICE (speaking very slowly, with a forced calmness) It was one word, mother, one little word; One look, one smile. (Wildly) Oh ! he has trampled me Under his feet, and made the blood stream down My pallid cheeks. And he has given us all Ditch-water, and the fever-stricken flesh Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve, And we have eaten. He has made me look On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust 7c Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs; And I have never yet despaired — but now! What would I say? (Recovering herself) Ah, no! ’tis nothing new. The sufferings we all share have made me wild; He only struck and cursed me as he passed; He said, he looked, he did, —nothing at all Beyond his wont, yet it disordered me. Alas! I am forgetful of my duty; I should preserve my senses for your sake- yA LUCRETIA Nay, Beatrice; have courage, my sweet girl. 80 If any one despairs it should be I, Who loved him once, and now must live with him Till God in pity call for him or me. For you may, like your sister, find some husband, And smile, years hence, with children round your knees: 2 220 THE CENCI ACT II: SC. F Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil Shall be remembered only as adream. BEATRICE Talk not to me, dear Lady, of a husband. Did you not nurse me when my mother died ? Did you not shield me and that dearest boy ? go And had we any other friend but you In infancy, with gentle words and looks, To win our father not to murder us ? And shall I now desert you? May the ghost Of my dead mother plead against my soul, If I abandon her who filled the place She left, with more, even, than a mother’s love ! BERNARDO And I am of my sister’s mind. Indeed I would not leave you in this wretched- ness, Even though the Pope should make me free to live 100 In some blithe place, like others of my age, With sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air. Oh, never think that I will leave you, mo- ther ! LUCRETIA My dear, dear children ! Enter Cenc, suddenly CENCI What! Beatrice here! Come hither ! [She shrinks back, and covers her face. Nay, hide not your face, ’t is fair; Look up! Why, yesternight you dared to look With disobedient insolence upon me, Bending a stern and an ene brow On what I meant; whilst I then sought to hide That which I came to tell you—but in vain. 110 BEATRICE (wildly staggering towards the dour) Oh, that the earth would gape! Hide me, O God $ CENCI Then it was I whose inarticulate words Fell from my lips, and who with tottering steps Fled from your presence, as you now from mine. Stay, I command you! From this day and hour Never again, I think, with fearless eye, And brow superior, and unaltered cheek, And that lip made for tenderness or scorn, Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind; Me least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber! 120 Thou too, loathed image of thy curséd mother, (To Bernarpbo) Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate ! [Ezeunt Beatrice and BERNARDO. (Aside) So much has passed between us as must make Me bold, her fearful.—’T is an awful thing To touch such mischief as I now conceive; So men sit shivering on the dewy bank And try the chill stream with their feet; once in — How the delighted spirit pants for joy ! LUCRETIA (advancing timidly towards him) O husband ! pray forgive poor Beatrice. She meant not any ill. CENCI Nor you perhaps ? Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote 131 Parricide with his alphabet ? nor Giacome? Nor those two most unnatural sons who stirred Enmity up against me with the Pope ? Whom in one night merciful God cut off. Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill. You were not here conspiring ? you said nothing Of how I might be dungeoned as a mad- man; Or be condemned to death for some offence, And you would be the witnesses? This failing, 14c ACT II: SC. II THE CENCI 221 How just it were to hire assassins, or Put sudden poison in my evening drink ? Or smother me when overcome by wine ? Seeing we had no other judge but God, And he had sentenced me, and there were none But you to be the executioners Of his deeree enregistered in heaven ? Oh, no! Yon said not this ? LUCRETIA So help me God, I never thonght the things you charge me with ! 149 CENCI If you dare to speak that wicked lie again, TU kill you. What! it was not by your counsel That Beatrice disturbed the feast last night ? You did not hope to stir some enemies Against me, and escape, and laugh to scorn What every nerve of you now trembles at? You judged that men were bolder than they are; Few dare to stand between their grave and me. LUCRETIA Look not so dreadfully! By my salvation I knew not.aught that Beatrice designed; Nor do I think she designed anything 160 Until she heard you talk of her dead bro- thers. CENCI Blaspheming liar! you «cre damned for this ! But I will take you where you may per- suade The stones you tread on to deliver you; For men shall there be none but those who dare All things— not question that which I command. On Wednesday next I shall set out; you know That savage rock, the Castle of Petrella; *Tis safely walled, and mvated round about; ; : Its dungeons under ground and its thick towers 170 Never told tales; though they have heard and seen What might make dumb things speak. Why do you linger ? Make speediest preparation for the jour. ney ! [Exit Lucretia The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear A busy stir of men about the streets; I see the bright sky through the window panes. It is a garish, broad, and peering day; Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears; And every little corner, nook, and hole, Is penetrated with the insolent light. —_ 180 Come, darkness! Yet, what is the day to me ? And wherefore should I wish for night, who do A deed which shall confound both night and day ? °T is she shall grope through a bewildering mist Of horror; if there bea sun in heaven, She shall not dare to look upon its beams; Nor feel its warmth. Let her, then, wish for night; The act I think shall soon extinguish all For me; I bear a darker, deadlier gloom Than the earth’s shade, or interlunar air, Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud, Ig In which I walk secure and unbeheld Towards my purpose. — Would that it were done ! (Exit. Scene II. — A Chamber in the Vatican. Enter CamILLo and Giacomo, in conversation. CAMILLO There is an obsolete and doubtful law By which you might obtain a bare provision Of food and clothing. GIACOMO Nothing more? Alas! Bare oy be the provision which strict aw Awards, and aged sullen avarice pays. Why did my father not apprentice me To some mechanic trade? I should have then Been trained in no highborn necessities Which I could meet not by my daily toil. The eldest son of a rich nobleman ra 222 THE CENCI ACT IL; SC. If Is heir to all his incapacities; He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you, Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once From thrice-driven beds of down, and deli- cate food, An hundred servants, and six palaces, To that which nature doth indeed re- quire ? — CAMILLO Nay, there is reason in your plea; ’t were hard. GIACOMO *T is hard for a firm man to bear; but I Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth, Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father, Without a bond or witness to the deed; ar And children, who inherit her fine senses, The fairest creatures in this breathing world; And she and they reproach me not. Cardi- nal, Do you not think the Pope will interpose And stretch authority beyond the law ? CAMILLO Though your peculiar case is hard, I know The Pope will not divert the course of law. After that impious feast the other night I spoke with him, and urged him then to check 30 Your father’s cruel hand; he frowned an said ? ‘Children are disobedient, and they sting Their fathers’ hearts to madness and de- spair, Requiting years of care with contumely. I pity the Count Cenci from my heart; His outraged love perhaps awakened hate, And thus he is exasperated to ill. In the great war between the old and young, I, who have white hairs and a tottering body, ‘Will keep at least blameless neutrality.’ 40 Enter ORstno You, my good lord Orsino, heard those words. ORSINO What words ? GIACOMO Alas, repeat them not again ! There then is no redress for me; at least None but that which I may achieve myself, Since I am driven to the brink. — But, say, My innocent sister and my only brother Are dying underneath my father’s eye. The memorable torturers of this land, Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin, Never inflicted on their meanest slave 50 What these endure; shall they have no protection ? CAMILLO Why, if they would petition to the Pope, I see not how he could refuse it; yet He holds it of most dangerous example In aught to weaken the paternal power, }t Being, as ’t were, the shadow of his own. I pray you now excuse me. I have busi- ness That will not bear delay. [Exit Camix1o. GIACOMO But you, Orsino, Have the petition; wherefore not present it ? ORSINO I have presented it, and backed it with 60 My earnest prayers and urgent interest; It was returned unanswered. I doubt not But that the strange and execrable deeds Alleged in it—in truth they might well baffle Any belief —have turned the Pope’s dis- foe pleasure yd Upon the accusers from the criminal. a So I should guess from what Camillo said. 5” lm GIACOMO My friend, that palace-walking devil, Gold, Has whispered silence to His Holiness; And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire. 70 What should we do but strike ourselves to death ? For he who is our murderous persecutor Is shielded by a father’s holy name, Or I would — [Stops abruptly. ORSINO What? Fear not to speak your thought. Words are but holy as the deeds they cover; A priest who has forsworn the God he serves, A judge who makes Truth weep at his de- cree, ACT Ty SC, IT THE CENCI 223 A friend who should weave counsel, as I now, But as the mantle of some selfish guile, A father who is all a tyrant seems,— 80 Were the profaner for his sacred name. GIACOMO Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain Feigns often what it would not; and we trust Imagination with such fantasies As the tongue dares not fashion into words — Which have no words, their horror makes them dim To the mind’s eye. My heart denies itself To think what you demand. ORSINO But a friend’s bosom Is as the inmost cave of our own mind, Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day go And from the all-communicating air. You look what I suspected — GIACOMO Spare me now ! I am as one lost in a midnight wood, Who dares not ask some harmless passen- er The ie across the wilderness, lest he, As my thoughts are, should be —a mur- derer. I know you are my friend, and all I dare Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee. But now my heart is heavy, and would take Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care, 100 Pardon me that I say farewell — farewell ! I would that to my own suspected self I could address a word so full of peace. ORSINO Farewell!—- Be your thoughts better or more bold. [Exit Giacomo. T had disposed the Cardinal Camillo To feed his hope with cold encouragement. It fortunately serves my close designs That ’tis a trick of this same family To analyze their own and other minds. Such self-anatomy shall teach the will 110 Dangerous secrets; for it tempts our powers, Knowing what must be thought, and may be done, Into the depth of darkest purposes. So Cenci fell into the pit; even I, Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself, And made me shrink from what I cannot shun, Show a poor figure to my own esteem, To which I grow half reconciled. Ill do As little mischief as I can; that thought Shall fee the accuser conscience. (After a pause) Now what harm If Cenci should be murdered ?— Yet, if murdered, 121 Wherefore by me? And what if I could take The profit, yet omit the sin and peril In such an action? Of all earthly things I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words; And such is Cenci; and, while Cenci lives, His daughter’s dowry were a secret grave If a priest wins her. — O fair Beatrice ! Would that I loved thee not, or, loving thee, Could but despise danger and gold and all 130 That frowns between my wish and its effect, Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape; Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar, And follows me to the resort of men, And fills my slumber with tumultuons dreams, So whey I wake my blood seems liquid re; And if I strike my damp and dizzy head, My hot palm seorches it; her very name, But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably 140 I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights Till weak imagination half possesses The self-created shadow. Yet much longer Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours. From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo I must work out my own dear purposes. I see, as from a tower, the end of all: Her father dead; her brother bound ta me By a dark secret, surer than the grave; Her mother seared and unexpostulating rs A 224 THE CENCI ACT III: SC. I From the dread manner of her wish achieved; And she !— Once more take courage, my faint heart; What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee ? I have such foresight as assures success. Some unbeheld divinity doth ever, When dread events are near, stir up men’s minds To black suggestions; and he prospers best, Not who becomes the instrument of ill, But who can flatter the dark spirit that makes Its empire and its prey of other hearts 160 Till it become his slave —as I will do. [Exit. ACT III Scene I.— An Apartment in the Cenci Palace. Lucretia ; to her enter BEATRICE. BEATRICE (she enters staggering and speaks idly) wildly ReEaAcH me that handkerchief ! — My brain is hurt; My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me — I see but indistinctly. LUCRETIA My sweet child, You have no wound; ’t is only a cold dew That starts from your dear brow. — Alas, alas ! What has befallen ? BEATRICE How comes this hair undone ? Its wandering strings must be what blind me so, And yet I tied it fast. — Oh, horrible ! The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls Spin round! I see a woman weeping there, 10 And standing calm and motionless, whilst I Slide giddily as the world reels. — My God ! The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood ! The sunshiné on the floor is black! The air Is changed to vapors such as the dead breathe In charnel-pits ! There creeps A clinging, black, contaminating mist About me —’t is substantial, heavy, thick; I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues My fingers and my limbs to one another, 20 And eats into my sinews, and dissolves My flesh to a pollution, poisoning The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life! My God! I never knew what the mad felt Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt! (More wildly) No, lamdead! These putrefying limbs Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul Which would burst forth into the wander- Pah! I am choked! ing air ! (A pause) What hideous thought was that I had even now ? 29 ’T is gone; and yet its burden remains here O’er these dull eyes—upon this weary heart ! O world! O life! O day! O misery ! LUCRETIA What ails thee, my poor child? She an- swers not. Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain, But not its cause; suffering has dried away The source from which it sprung. BEATRICE (frantically) Like Parricide — Misery has killed its father; yet its father Never like mine—O God! what thing am I? LUCRETIA My dearest child, what has your father done ? BEATRICE (doubt/ully) Who art thou, questioner? I have no father. 40 [Aside. She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me, It is a piteous office. (To Lucrett, in a slow, subdued voice) Do you know, I thought I was that wretched Beatrice Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales ACT Til: Sc. I From hall to hall by the entangled hair; At others, pens up naked in damp cells Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story So did I overact in my sick dreams That I imagined — no, it cannot be! 50 Horrible things have been in this wild world, Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange Of good and ill; and worse have been con- ceived Than ever there was found a heart to do. But never fancy imaged such a deed As— (Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself) Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die With fearful expectation, that indeed Thou art not what thou seemest — Mother ! LUCRETIA Oh! My sweet child, know you— BEATRICE Yet speak it not; For then if this be truth, that other too 60 Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth, Linked with each lasting circumstance of life, Never to change, never to pass away. Why soitis. This is the Cenci Palace; Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice. I have talked some wild words, but will no more. Mother, come near me; from this point of time, i am — (Her voice dies away faintly) LUCRETIA Alas ! what has befallen thee, child ? What has thy father done ? BEATRICE What have I done ? Am I not innocent? Is it my crime 7o That one with white hair andimperious brow, Who tortured me from my forgotten years As parents only dare, should call himself My father, yet should be !—Oh, what am I? What name, what place, what memory shall be mine ? What retrospects. outliving even despair ? THE CENCI 225 LUCRETIA He is a violent tyrant, surely, child; We know that death alone can make us free; His death or ours. done Of deadlier outrage or worse injury? 80 Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot But what can he have forth A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine With one another. BEATRICE ’T is the restless life Tortured within them. If I try to speak, I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done; What, yet I know not — something which shall make The thing that I have suffered but a shadow In the dread lightning which avenges it; Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying go The consequence of what it cannot cure. Some such thing is to be endured or done; When I know what, I shall be still and calm, And never anything will move me more. But now ! — O blood, which art my father’s blood, Circling through these contaminated veins, If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth, Could wash away the crime and punish- ment By which I suffer — no, that cannot be! 99 Many might doubt there were a God above Who sees and permits evil, and so die; That faith no agony shall obscure in me. LUCRETIA It must indeed have been some bitter wrong; Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child, Hide not in proud impenetrable grief Thy sufferings from my fear. BEATRICE I hide them not. What are the words which you would have me speak ? I, who can feign no image in my mind Of that which has transformed me; I, whose thought 226 THE CENCI ACT III: SC. I Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up 110 In its own formless horror — of all words, That minister to mortal intercourse, Which wouldst thou hear? for there is none to tell My misery; if another ever knew Aught like to it, she died as I will die, And left it, as I must, without a name. Death, death! our law and our religion call thee A punishment and a reward; oh, which Have I deserved ? LUCRETIA The peace of innocence, Till in your season you be called to heaven. Whate’er you may have suffered, you have done 121 No evil. Death must be the punishment Of crime, or the reward of trampling down The thorns which God has strewed upon the path Which leads to immortality. BEATRICE Ay, death — The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God, Let me not be bewildered while I judge. If I must live day after day, and keep These limbs, the unworthy temple of thy spirit, As a foul den from which what thou abhor- rest 130 May mock thee unavenged — it shall not be! Self-murder — no, that might be no escape, For thy decree yawns like a Hell between Our will and it.—Oh! in this mortal world There is no vindication and no law, Which can adjudge and execute the doom Of that through which I suffer. Enter ORSINO (She approaches him solemnly) Welcome, friend ! I have to tell you that, since last we met, I have endured a wrong so great and strange That neither life nor death can give me rest. 140 Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue. ORSINO And what is he who has thus injured you? BEATRICE The man they call my father; a dread name. ORSINO It cannot be — BEATRICE What it can be, or not, Forbear to think. It is, and it has been; Advise me how it shall not be again. I thought to die; but a religious awe Restrains me, and the dread lest death itself 149 Might be no refuge from the consciousness Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak ! ORSINO Accuse him of the deed, and let the law Avenge thee. BEATRICE Oh, ice-hearted counsellor ! If I could find a word that might make known The crime of my destroyer; and that done, My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret Which cankers my heart’s core; ay, lay all bare So that my ‘unpolluted fame should be Wwe With vilest’ gossips a stale mouthed story; A mock, a byword, an astonishment: — 160 If this were done, which never shall be done, Think of the offender’s gold, his dreaded hate And the strange horror of the accuser’s tale Baffling belief, and overpowering speech; Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapped In hideous hints — Oh, most assured re- dress ! ORSINO You will endure it then ? BEATRICE Endure ! — Orsino, It seems your counsel is small profit. (Turns from him, and speaks half to herself) Ay, All must be suddenly resolved and done. : ACT III sc. 1 THE CENCI 227 What is this undistinguishable mist 170 LUCRETIA Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after How ? shadow, Darkening each other ? ORSINO Should the offender live ? Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by use, His crime, whate’er it is, dreadful no doubt, Thine element; until thou mayest become Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue Of that which thou permittest ? BEATRICE (to herself) Mighty death ! Thou donble-visaged shadow ! only judge ! Rightfullest arbiter ! (She retires, absorbed in thought) LUCRETIA If the lightning Of God has e’er descended to avenge — ORSINO Blaspheme not! His high Providence commits 181 Its glory on this earth and their own wrongs Into the hands of men; if they neglect To punish crime — LUCRETIA But if one, like this wretch, Should mock with gold opinion, law and power ? If there be no appeal to that which makes The guiltiest tremble? if, because our wrongs, For that they are unnatural, strange and monstrous, Exceed all measure of belief? Oh, God! If, for the very reasons which should make Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs ? 191 And we, the victims, bear worse punish- ment Than that appointed for their torturer ? ORSINO Think not But that there is redress where there is wrong, So we be bold enough to seize it. If there were any way to make all sure, I know not — but I think it might be good To— ORSINO Why, his late outrage to Beatrice — For it is such, as I but faintly guess, 199 As makes remorse dishonor, and leaves her Only one duty, how she may avenge; You, but one refuge from ills ill endured; Me, but one counsel — LUCRETIA For we cannot hope That aid, or retribution, or resource Will arise thence, where every other one Might find them with less need. [Brarrics advances. ORSINO Then — BEATRICE Peace, Orsino ! And, honored Lady, while I speak, I pray That you put off, as garments overworn, Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear, And all the fit restraints of daily life, 210 Which have been borne from childhood, but which now Would be a mockery to my holier plea. As I have said, I have endured a wrong, Which, though it be expressionless, is such As asks atonement, both for what is passed, And lest I be reserved, day after day, To load with crimes an overburdened soul, And be — what ye can dream not. I have prayed To God, and I have talked with my own heart, And have unravelled my entangled will, 220 And have at length determined what is right. Art thou my friend, Orsino? False or true ? Pledge thy salvation ere I speak. ORSINO T swear To dedicate my cunning, and my strength, My silence, and whatever else is mine, To thy commands. Boe Who think 228 THE CENCI ACT Ill: SC. I LUCRETIA You think we should devise His death ? BEATRICE And execute what is devised, And suddenly. We must be brief and bold. ORSINO And yet most cautious. LUCRETIA For the jealous laws Would punish us with death andinfamy 230 For that which it became themselves to do. BEATRICE Be cautious as ye may, but prompt. Or- sino, What are the means ? ORSINO I know two dull, fierce outlaws, man’s spirit as a worm’s, and JMan's Spirit a5_ a “worm 's they e Would trample out, for any slight caprice, The meanest or the noblest life. This mood Is marketable here in Rome. What we now want. They sell LUCRETIA To-morrow, before dawn, Cenci will take us to that lonely rock, Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines. 240 If he arrive there — BEATRICE He must not arrive. ORSINO Will it be dark before you reach the tower ? LUCRETIA The sun will scarce be set. BEATRICE But I remember Two miles on this side of the fort the road Crosses a deep ravine; ’t is rough and nar- row, And winds with short turns down the pre- cipice; And in its depth there is a mighty rock, Which has, from unimaginable years, Sustained itself with terror and with toil Over a gulf, and with the agony 250 With which it clings seems slowly coming down; Even as a wretched soul hour after hour Clings to the mass of life; yet, clinging, leans; And, leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss In which it fears to fall; beneath this crag Huge as despair, as if in weariness, The melancholy mountain yawns; below, You hear but see not an impetuous torrent Raging among the caverns, anda bridge Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow, 260 With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag, Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tan- gled hair Is matted in one solid roof of shade By the dark ivy’s twine. At noonday here *T is twilight, and at sunset blackest night. ORSINO Before you reach that bridge make some excuse For spurring on your mules, or loitering Until — BEATRICE What sound is that ? LUCRETIA Hark ! No, it cannot be a servant’s step; It must be Cenci, unexpectedly 270 Returned — make some exeuse for being here. BEATRICE (to ORSINO as she goes out) That step we hear approach must never pass The bridge of which we spoke. [Exeunt Lucretia and BEarrice. ORSINO What shall I do? Cenci must find me here, and I must bear The imperious inquisition of his looks As to what brought me hither; let me mask Mine own in some inane and vacant smile. ACT III: SC. I THE CENCI 229 Enter Giacomo, in a hurried manner How! have you ventured hither? know you then 278 That Cenci is from home ? GIACOMO I sought him here; And now must wait till he returns. ORSINO Great God ! Weigh you the danger of this rashness ? GIACOMO Ay! Does my destroyer know his danger? We Are now no more, as once, parent and child, But man to man; the oppressor to the op- pressed, The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe. e has cast Nature off, which was his shield, And Nature casts him off, who is her ; shame; nd I spurn both. Is ita father’s throat Which I will shake, and say, I ask not gold; J ask not happy years; nor memories —_290 Of tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love; Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more; But only my fair fame; only one hoard Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate Under the penury heaped on me by thee; Or I will — God can understand and pardon, Why should I speak with man ? ORSINO Be calm, dear friend. GIACOMO Well, I will calmly tell you what he did. This old Francesco Cenci, as you know, Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me, And then denied the loan; and left me so In poverty, the which I sought to mend By holding a poor office in the state. 303 It had been promised to me, and already I bought new clothing for my ragged babes, And my wife smiled; and my heart knew repose; When Cenci’s intercession, as I found, Conferred this office on a wretch, whom thus He paid for vilest service. I returned With this ill news, and we sate sad to- gether 31a Solacing our despondency with tears Of such affection and unbroken faith As temper life’s worst bitterness; when he, As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse, Mocking our poverty, and telling us Such was God’s scourge for disobedient sons. And then, that I might strike him dumb with shame, I spoke of my wife’s dowry; but he coined A brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted The sum in secret riot; and he saw 320 My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth. And when I knew the impression he had made, And felt my wife insult with silent scorn My ardent truth, and look averse and cold, I went forth too; but soon returned again; Yet not so soon but that my wife had taught My children her harsh thoughts, and they all cried, ‘Give us clothes, father! Give us better food ! What you in one night squander were enough For months!’ I looked, and saw that home was hell. 330 And to that hell will I return no more, Until mine enemy has rendered up Atonement, or, as he gave life to me, I will, reversing Nature’s law — ORSINO Trust me, The compensation which thou seekest here Will be denied. GIAcomo Then — Are you not my friend 2 Did you not hint at the alternative, Upon the brink of which you see I stand, The other day when we conversed together ? My wron ere then less. That word, parricide> (,, Lt) mun 0 %~gqo anngsbaresiter resolved, Rowe me like fear. ORSINO It must be fear itself, for the bare word Is hollow mockery. Mark how wisest God 230 THE CENCI ACT III: SC. II Draws to ouc point the threads of a just doom, So sanctifying it; what you devise Is, as it were, accomplished. GIACOMO Is he dead ? ORSINO His grave is ready. Know that since we met Cenci has done an outrage to his daughter. GIACOMO What outrage ? ORSINO That she speaks not, but you may Conceive such half conjectures as Ido 350 From her fixed paleness, and the lofty grief Of her stern brow, bent on the idle air, And her severe unmodulated voice, Drowning both tenderness and dread; and last From this; that whilst herstep-mother and I, Bewildered in our horror, talked together With obscure hints, both self-misunder- stood, And darkly guessing, stumbling, in our talk, Over the truth and yet to its revenge, She interrupted us, and with a look 360 Which told, before she spoke it, he must die — GIACOMO It isenough. My doubts are well appeased; There is a higher reason for the act Than mine; there is a holier judge than me, A more unblamed avenger. Beatrice, Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised A living flower, but thou hast pitied it With needless tears! fair sister, thou in whom Men wondered how such loveliness and _wis- om 370 Did not destroy each other! is there made Ravage of thee ? O heart, I ask no more Justification ! Shall I wait, Orsino, Till he return, and stab him at the door? ORSINO Not so; some accident might interpose To rescue him from what is now most sure; And you are unprovided where to fly, How to excuse or to conceal. Nay, listen; All is contrived; success is so assured That — Enter BEATRICE BEATRICE *T is my brother’s voice! You know me not ? 38a GIACOMO My sister, my lost sister ! BEATRICE Lost indeed ! I see Orsino has talked with you, and That you conjecture things too horrible To speak, yet far less than the truth. Now stay not, He might return; yet kiss me; I shall know That then thou hast consented to his death. Farewell, farewell! Let piety to God, Brotherly love, justice and clemency, And all things that make tender hardest hearts, Make thine hard, brother. farewell. Answer not — 390 [Exeunt severally, Scrnz II. — A mean Apartment in Giacomo’s House. G1acomo alone. GIACOMO Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet. (Thunder, and the sound of a storm) What ! can the everlasting elements Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft Of merey-wingéd lightning would not fall On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep; They are now living in unmeaning dreams;& But I must wake, still doubling iF that deed Be just which was most necessary. Oh, Thou unreplenished lamp, whose narrow fire 9 Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge Devouring darkness hovers! thou small flame, Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls, Still flickerest up and down, how very soon Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be ACT III: SC. II THE CENCI 231 As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine; But that no power can fill with vital oil, — That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! ’tis the blood Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold; It is the form that moulded mine that sinks 20 Into the white and yellow spasms of death; It is the soul by which mine was arrayed In God’s immortal likeness which now stands Naked before Heaven’s judgment-seat ! (A bell strikes) One! Two! The hours crawl on; and, when my hairs are white, My son will then perhaps be waiting thus, Tortured between just hate and vain re- morse; Chiding the tardy messenger of news Like those which I expect. I almost wish He be not dead, although my wrongs are great; 30 Yet — ’t is Orsino’s step. Enter ORSINO Speak ! ORSINO I am come To say he has escaped. GIAcoMO Escaped ! ORSINO And safe Within Petrella. He passed by the spot Appointed for the deed an hour too soon. GIACOMO Are we the fools of such contingencies ? And do we waste in blind misgivings thus The hours when weshould act? Then wind and thunder, Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter With which Heaven mocks our weakness ! I henceforth Will ne’er repent of aught designed or done, 40 But my repentance. ORSINO See, the lamp is out. GIACOMO If no remorse is ours when the dim air Has drunk this innocent flame, why should we quail When Cenci’s life, that light by which ill spirits See the worst deeds they prompt, shall sink forever ? No, I am hardened. ORSINO Why, what need of this ? Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse In a just deed? Although our first plan failed, Doubt not but he will soon be laid to rest. But light the lamp; let us not talk i’ the dark. 5a e1acomo (lighting the lamp) And yet, once quenched, I cannot thus re- lume My father’s life; do you not think his ghost Might plead that argument with God ? ORSINO Once gone, You cannot now recall your sister’s peace; Your own extinguished years of youth and hope; Nor your wife’s bitter words; nor all the taunts Which, from the prosperous, weak misfor- tune takes; Nor your dead mother; nor — GIACOMO Oh, speak no more } I am resolved, although this very hand Must quench the life that animated it. 60 ORSINO There is no need of that. know Olimpio, the castellan of Petrella In old Colonna’s time; him whom your father Degraded from his post? And Marzio, That desperate wretch, whom he deprived last year Of a reward of blood, well earned and due ? Listen; you 232 THE CENCI ACT Iv: SC. 1 GIACOMO [ knew Olimpio; and they say he hated Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage His lips grew white only to see him pass. Of Marzio I know nothing. ORSINO Marzio’s hate Matches Olimpio’s. I have sent these men, But in your name, and as at your request, To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia. 73 GIACOMO Only to talk ? ORSINO The moments which even now Pass onward to to-morrow’s midnight hour May memorize their flight with death; ere then They must have talked, and may perhaps have done, And made an end. GIACOMO Listen! What sound is that ? ORSINO The house-dog moans, and the beams crack; nought else. GIACOMO It is my wife complaining in her sleep; 8 I doubt not she is saying bitter things Of me; and all my children round her dreaming That I deny them sustenance. ORSINO Whilst he Who truly took it from them, and who fills Their hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps Lapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly Mocks thee in visions of successful hate Too like the truth of day. GIACOMO If e’er he wakes Again, I will not trust to hireling hands — ORSINO Why, that were well. I must be gone; good night ! ge When next we meet, may all be done ! GIACOMO And all Forgotten! Oh, that I had never been ! [Exeunt, ACT IV Scune I.— An Apartment in the Castle of Pe- trella. Enter CENCI. CENCI SHE comes not; yet I left her even now Vanquished and faint. She knows the penalt; Of her delay; yet what if threats are vain? Am I not now within Petrella’s moat ? Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome? Might I not drag her by the golden hair ? Stamp on her? keep her sleepless till her brain Be overworn ? tame her with chains and famine ? Less would suffice. Yet so to leave un- done What I most seek! No, ’t is her stubborn will, 10 Which, by its own consent, shall stoop as low As that which drags it down. Enter Lucretia Thou loathéd wretch ! Hide thee from my abhorrence; fly, be- gone ! Yet stay! Bid Beatrice come hither. LUCRETIA Ob, Husband ! I pray, for thine own wretched sake, Heed what thou dost. A man who walks like thee Through crimes, and through the danger of his crimes, Each hour may stumble o’er a sudden rave. And thou art old; thy hairs are hoary gray; As thou wouldst save thyself from death and hell, 20 Pity thy daughter; give her to some friend In marriage; so that she may tempt thee not To hatred, or worse thoughts, if worse there be. ACT IV: SC. I THE CENCI 233 CENCI What ! like her sister, who has found a home To mock my hate from with prosperity ? Strange ruin shall destroy both her and thee, And all that yet remain. My death may be Rapid, her destiny outspeeds it. Go, Bid her come hither, and before my mood Be changed, lest I should drag her by the hair. 30 LUCRETIA She sent me to thee, husband. At thy pre- sence She fell, as thou dost know, into a trance; And in that trance she heard a voice which said, ‘Cenci must die! Let him confess him- self ! Even now the accusing Angel waits to hear If God, to punish his enormous crimes, Harden his dying heart !’ CENCI Why — such things are. No doubt divine revealings may be made. ’T is plain I have been favored from above, For when I cursed my sons, they died. — Ay — so. 40 As to the right or wrong, that’s talk. Re- pentance ? Repentance is an easy moment’s work, And more depends on God than me. Well — well — I must give up the greater point, which was To poison and corrupt her soul. (A pause ; Lucretia approaches anxiously, and then shrinks back as he speaks) One, two; Ay — Rocco and Cristofano my curse Strangled; and Giacomo, I think, will find Life a worse Hell than that beyond the grave; Beatrice shall, if there be skill in hate, 49 Die in despair, blaspheming; to Bernardo, He is so innocent, I will bequeathe The memory of these deeds, and make his youth The sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts Shall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb. When all is done, out in the wide Cam- pagna I will pile up my silver and my gold; My costly robes, paintings, and tapestries; My parchments, and all records of my wealth; And make a bonfire in my joy, and leave Of my possessions nothing but my name; 6a Which shall be an inheritance to strip Its wearer bare as infamy. That done, My soul, which is a scourge, will I resign Into the hands of Him who wielded it; Be it for its own punishment or theirs, He will not ask it of me till the lash Be broken in its last and deepest wound; Until its hate be all inflicted, Yet, Lest death outspeed my purpose, let me make 69 Short work and sure. [Going LUCRETIA (stops him) Oh, stay! it was a feint; She had no vision, and she heard no voice. I said it but to awe thee. CENCI That is well. Vile palterer with the sacred truth of God, Be thy soul choked with that blaspheming lie! For Beatrice worse terrors are in store To bend her to my will. LUCRETIA Oh, to what will ? What cruel sufferings more than she has known Canst thou inflict ? CENCI Andrea ! go, call my daughter And if she comes not, tell her that I come. (To Lucretia) What sufferings? I will drag her, step b step, 8c Through infamies unheard of among mex; She shall stand sbelterless in the broad noon Of public scorn, for acts blazoned abroad, One among which shall be — what? canst thou guess ? She shall become (for what she most abhors Shall have a fascination to entrap Her loathing will) to her own conscious self All she appears to others; and when dead, As she shall die unshrived and unforgiven, 234 THE CENCI ACT IV: SC. 2 A rebel to her father and her God, 90 cenct (kneeling) Her corpse shall be abandoned to the God, hounds; Hear me! If this most specious mass of Her name shall be the terror of the earth; flesh, Her spirit shall approach the throne of | Which thou hast made my daughter; this G my blood, od Plague-spotted with my curses. I will make Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin. Enter ANDREA ANDREA The Lady Beatrice — CENCI Speak, pale slave ! what Said she ? ANDREA My Lord, ’t was what she looked; she said, ‘Go tell my father that I see the gulf Of Hell between us two, which he may ., Pass; 99 [ will not.’ [Exit ANDREA. CENCI Go thou quick, Lucretia, Tell her to come; yet let her understand Her coming is consent; and say, moreover, That if she come not I will curse her. [Exit Lucretia. Ha! With what but with a father’s curse doth God Panic-strike arméd victory, and make pale Cities in their prosperity ? The world’s Father Must grant a parent’s prayer against his child, Be he who asks even what men call me. Will not the deaths of her rebellious brothers Awe her before I speak ? for I on them 110 Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came Enter Lucretia Well; what ? Speak, wretch ! LUCRETIA She said, ‘I cannot come; Go tell my father that I see a torrent Of his own blood raging between us.’ This particle of my divided being; Or rather, this my bane and my disease, Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil, Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant 120 To aught good use; if her bright loveliness Was kindled to illumine this dark world; If, nursed by thy selectest dew of love, Such virtues blossom in her as should make The peace of life, I pray thee for my sake, As thou the common God and Father art Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom! Earth, in the name of God, let her food be Poison, until she be encrusted round With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head 130 The blistering drops of the Maremma’s dew Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs To loathéd lameness! All-beholding sun, Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes With thine own blinding beams ! LUCRETIA Peace, peace ! For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words. When high God grants, he punishes such prayers. 138 cENcI (leaping up, and throwing his right hand towards Heaven) He does his will, I mine! This in addition, That if she have a child — LUCRETIA Horrible thought! CENCI That if she ever have a child —and thon, Quick Nature ! I adjure thee by thy God. That thou be fruitful in her, and increase And multiply, fulfilling his command, And my deep imprecation ! — may it be A hideous likeness of herself; that as From a distorting mirror she may see ACT IV: Sc. Il THE CENCI 235 Her image mixed with what she most ab- hors, Smiling upon her from her nursing breast ! And that the child may from its infancy Grow, day by day, more wicked and de- formed, 151 Turning her mother’s love to misery ! And that both she and it may live until It shall repay her care and pain with hate, Or what may else be more unnatural; So he may hunt her through the clamorous scoffs Of ghe loud world to a dishonored grave ! Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come, Before my words are chronicled in heaven. [Exit Lucreria. I do not feel as if I were a man, 160 But like a fiend appointed to chastise The offences of some unremembered world. My blood is running upand down my veins; A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tin- cle; I feela giddy sickness of strange awe; My heart is beating with an expectation Of horrid joy. Enter LUCRETIA What? Speak! LUCRETIA She bids thee curse; And if thy curses, as they cannot do, Could kill her soul — CENCI She would not come. ’T is well, I can do both; first take what I demand, And then extort concession. To thy chamber ! 171 Fly ere I spurn thee; and beware this night That thou cross not my footsteps. It were safer To come between the tiger and his prey. [Exit Lucretia. It must be late; mine eyes grow weary dim With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep. Conscience ! O thou most insolent of lies ! They say that sleep, that healing dew of heaven, Steeps notin balm the foldings of the brain Which thinks thee an impostor. I will go, First to belie thee with an hour of rest, 18: Which will be deep and calm, I feel; and then — O multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake Thine arches with the laughter of their joy ! There shall be lamentation heard in Hea- ven As o’er an angel fallen; and upon Earth All good shall droop and sicken, and ill things Shall, with a spirit of unnatural life, Stir and be quickened — even as I am now. [ Exit. Scene II.— Before the Castle of Petrella. Enter BEATRICE and Lucretia above on the ramparts. BEATRICE They come not yet. LUCRETIA *T is scarce midnight. BEATRICE How slow Behind the course of thought, even sick with speed, Lags leaden-footed Time! LUCRETIA The minutes pass. If he should wake before the deed is done? BEATRICE O mother! he must never wake again. What thou hast said persnades me that our act Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell Out of a human form. LUCRETIA *T is true he spoke Of death and judgment with strange con- fidence For one so wicked; as a man believing 10 In God, yet recking not of good or ill. And yet to die without confession ! — BEATRICE Oh! Believe that Heaven is merciful and just, And will not add our dread necessity To the amount of his offences. Enter Otuwei0 and Marzio below LUCRETIA See, They come. 236 THE CENCI ACT IV: SC. III BEATRICE All mortal things must hasten thus To their dark end. Let us go down. [E£zeunt Lucreria and BEatrice from above. OLIMPIO How feel you to this work ? MARZIO As one who thinks A thousand crowns excellent market price For an old murderer’s life. Your cheeks are pale. 20 OLIMPIO It is the white reflection of your own, Which you call pale. MARZIO 1s that their natural hue ? OLIMPIO Or ’t is my hate, and the deferred desire To wreak it, which extinguishes their blood. MARZIO You are inclined then to this business ? OLIMPIO Ys If one should bribe me with a thousand crowns To kill a serpent which had stung my child, I could not be more willing. Enter Beatrice and Lucretia below Noble ladies ! BEATRICE Are ye resolved ? OLIMPIO Is he asleep ? MARZIO Is all Quiet ? LUCRETIA I mixed an opiate with his drink; He sleeps so soundly — BEATRICE That his death will be But asa change of sin-chastising dreams, 32 A dark continuance of the hell within him, Which God extinguish! But ye are re- solved ? Ye know it is a high and holy deed ? OLIMPIO We are resolved. MARZIO As to the how this act Be warranted, it rests with you. BEATRICE Well, follow ! OLIMPIO Hush ! Hark ! what noise is that ? MARZIO Ha! some one comes! BEATRICE Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate, 40 Which ye left open, swinging to the wind, That enters whistling as in scorn. Come, follow ! And be your steps like mine, light, quick and bold. [Exeunt. Scene III.— An Apartment in the Castle. Enter Beatrice and Lucretia. LUCRETIA They are about it now. BEATRICE Nay, it is done. LUCRETIA T have not heard him groan. BEATRICE He will not groan. LUCRETIA What sound is that ? BEATRICE List ! ’t is the tread of feet About his bed. LUCRETIA My God! If he be now a cold, stiff corpse — ACT IV sc. Of THE CENCI 23% BEATRICE Oh, fear not What may be done, but what is left un- done; The act seals all. Enter OuimPi0 and Marzio Is it accomplished ? MARZIO What ? OLIMPIO Did you not call ? BEATRICE When ? OLIMPIO Now. BEATRICE 4 ask if all is over? ¥ “gh vs wh l- Ww OLIMPIO oa dare not kill an old and sleeping man; | His thin gray hair, his stern and reverent “a brow, 10 At veinéd hands crossed on his heaving breast, ‘And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay, Quelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it. MARZIO But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio, | And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave, | And leave me the reward. And now my | knife ' Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man | Stirred in his sleep, and said, ‘God! hear, oh, hear _ A father’s curse! What, art thou not our father ?’ And then he laughed. I knew it was the host . Of my dead father speaking through tl lips, ‘ And could not kill him. BEATRICE Miserable slaves ! Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man, Found ye the boldness to return to me fe ee With such a deed undone? Base palter- ers ! Cowards and _ traitors ! conscience Which ye would sell for gold and for re< venge Is an equivocation; it sleeps over A thousand daily acts disgracing men; And when a deed, where mercy insults hea~ ven — 30 Why do I talk ? (Snatchiny a dagger from one of them, and raising it) Hadst thou a tongue to say, She murdered her own father, I must do it! But never dream ye shall outlive him long | Why, the very OLIMPIO Stop, for God’s sake ! MARZIO I will go back and kill him. OLIMPIO Give me the weapon, we must do thy will. BEATRICE Take it! Depart! Return! [Exeunt OrimPi0 and Marzio. How pale thou art ! We do but that which ’t were a deadly crime To leave undone. LUCRETIA Would it were done ! BEATRICE Even whilst That doubt is passing through your mind, the world Ts conscious of a change. Darkness and hell Have swallowed up the vapor they sant forth To blacken the sweet light of life. My breath Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood Runs freely through my veins. Hark ! Enter Ourmer1o0 and Marzio He is -— OLIMPIO Dead ! 238 THE CENCI ACT IV: SC, IV MARZIO I break upon your rest. I must speak We strangled him, that there might be no with - blood; Count Cenci; doth he sleep ? his } i’ th And. hia nas Heavy corpse Yh? | LoCRETIA (in a hurried and confused manner) Under the balcony; ’t will seem it fell. BEATRICE (giving them a bag of coin) Here take this gold and hasten to your homes. And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed By that which made me tremble, wear thou this ! 50 (Clothes him in a rich mantle) It was the mantle which my grandfather Wore in his high prosperity, and men Envied his state; so may they envy thine. Thou wert a weapon_in the hand of God To a just use. Live long and thrive! And, mark, Tf thou hast crimes, repent; this deed is none. (A horn is sounded) LUCRETIA Hark, ’tis the castle horn: my God! it sounds Like the last trump. BEATRICE Some tedious guest is coming. LUCRETIA The drawbridge is let down; there is a tramp Of horses in the court; fly, hide your- selves ! 60 [ Exeunt CLunei0 and Marzio. BEATRICE Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest; I searcely need to counterfeit it now; The spirit which doth reign within these limbs Seems strangely undisturbed. I could even sleep Fearless and calm; all ill is surely past. [Exeunt. Scenzr IV. -- Another Apartment inthe Castle. Enter on one side the Legate SAVELLA, intro- duced by a Servant, and on the other Lucrz- TIA and BERNARDO. SAVELLA Lady, my duty to his Holiness Be my excuse that thus unseasonably I think he sleeps; Yet, wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile. He is a wicked and a wrathful man; Should he be roused out of his sleep to- night, Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams, It were not well; indeed it were not well. Wait till day break. (Aside) Oh, I am deadly sick! SAVELLA I grieve thus to distress you, but the Count tr Must answer charges of the gravest im- port, And suddenly; such my commission is. LUCRETIA (with increased agitation) I dare not rouse him, I know none who dare; *T were perilous; you might as safely waken A serpent, or a corpse in which some fiend Were laid to sleep. SAVELLA Lady, my moments here Are counted. JI must rouse him from his sleep, 18 Since none else dare. LUCRETIA (aside) Oh, terror ! oh, despair ! (To BERNARDO) Bernardo, conduct you the Lord Legate to Your father’s chamber. [Exeunt SAVELLA and BERNARDO. Enter BEATRICE BEATRICE ’T is a messenger Come to arrest the culprit who now stands Before the throne of unappealable God. Both Earth and Heaven, consenting arhi- ters, Acquit our deed. ACT IV: SC. IV THE CENCI 239 LUCRETIA BERNARDO Oh, agony of fear ! I know not what to say —my father’s Would that he yet might live! Even now dead. I heard BEATRICE apne TRB iy ar SOLAS ETS) te RISPOR “HS SUSY How, dead! he only sleeps; you mistake, passed brother. They had a warrant for his instant death. All was prepared by unforbidden means, Which we must pay so dearly, having done. Even now they search the tower, and find the body; 3r Now they suspect the truth; now the consult Before they come to tax us with the fact. Oh, horrible, ’t is all discovered ! BEATRICE Mother, What is done wisely is done well. Be bold As thou art just. ’Tis like a traant child, To fear that others know what thou hast done, Even from thine own strong consciousness, and thus Write on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks All thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to thy- self, 40 And fear no other witness but thy fear. For if, as cannot be, some circumstance Should rise in accusation, we can blind Suspicion with such cheap astonishment, Or overbear it with such guiltless pride, As murderers cannot feign. The deed is done, And what may follow now regards not me. I am as universal as the light; Free as the earth-surrounding air; as firm As the world’s centre. Consequence, to me, Oo Is as the wind which strikes the ee) (tock, But shakes it not. (A ery within and tumult) ahs VOICES Murder! Murder! Murder ! Enter BERNARDO and SAVELLA SAVELLA (to his followers) Go, search the castle round; sound the alarm; Look to the gates, that none escape ! BEATRICE What now ? His sleep is very calm, very like death; *T is wonderful how well a tyrant sleeps. He is not dead ? BERNARDO Dead; murdered ! LUCRETIA (with extreme agitation) Oh, no, no ! He is not murdered, though he may be dead; 60 I have alone the keys of those apartments. SAVELLA Ha ! is it so? BEATRICE My Lord, I pray excuse us; We will retire; my mother is not well; She seems quite overcome with this strange horror. [Exeunt Lucretia and BEaTRIcE. SAVELLA Can you suspect who may have murdered him ? BERNARDO I know not what to think. SAVELLA Can you name any Who had an interest in his death ? BERNARDO Alas ! I can name none who had not, and those most Who most lament that such a deed is done; My mother, and my sister, and myself. 70 SAVELLA *T is strange! There were clear marks of violence. I found the old man’s body in the moon- light, Hanging beneath the window of his cham- ber Among the branches of a pine; he could not 240 THE CENCI ACT Iv; sc. I¥ Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped And effortless; ’t is true there was no blood. Favor me, sir—it much imports your house That all should be made clear — to tell the ladies That I request their presence. [Exit Bernaxvo. Enter Guards, bringing in Marzio GUARD We have one. OFFICER My Lord, we found this ruffian and another Lurking among the rocks; there is no doubt 8x But that they are the murderers of Count Cenci; Each had a bag of coin; this fellow wore A gold-inwoven robe, which, shining bright Under the dark rocks to the glimmering moon, Betrayed them to our notice; the other fell Desperately fighting. SAVELLA What does he confess ? OFFICER He keeps firm silence; but these lines found on him 88 May speak. SAVELLA Their language is at least sincere. (Reads) “To tHE Lavy BEATRICE. That the atonement of what my nature sickens to conjecture may soon arrive, I send thee, at thy brother’s desire, those who will speak and do more than I dare write. Thy devoted servant, ORsINO.” Enter Lucretia, BEATRICE, and BERNARDO Knowest thon this writing, lady ? BEATRICE No. SAVELLA Nor thou ? LUCRETIA (her conduct throughout the scene ts marked by extreme agitation) Where was it found? What is it? It should be Orsino’s hand ! horror Which never yet found utterance, but which made Between that hapless child and her dead father A gulf of obscure hatred. It speaks of that strange SAVELLA Is it so, 100 Is it true, Lady, that thy father did Such outrages as to awaken in thee Unfilial hate ? BEATRICE Not hate, ’t was more than hate; This is most true, yet wherefore question me ? SAVELLA There is a deed demanding question done; Thou hast a secret which will answer not. BEATRICE What sayest ? My Lord, your words are bold and rash. SAVELLA I do arrest all present in the name Of the Pope’s Holiness. You must to Rome. 109 LUCRETIA Oh, not to Rome ! indeed we are not guilty. BEATRICE Guilty! who dares talk of guilt? My Lord, I am more innocent of parricide Than is a child born fatherless. mother, Your gentleness and patience are no shield For this keen-judging world, this two- edged lie, Which seems, but is not. man laws, Rather will ye who are their ministers, Bar all access to retribution first, And then, when Heaven doth interpose to do What ye neglect, arming familiar things 120 To the redress of an unwonted crime, Make ye the victims who demanded it Dear What! will hu- ACT IV: SC, IV Culprits? ’Tis ye are culprits! That poor wretch Who stands so pale, and trembling, and amazed, If it be true he murdered Cenci, was A sword in the right hand of justest God. Wherefore should I have wielded it? un- less The crimes which mortal tongue dare never name 128 God therefore scruples to avenge. SAVELLA You own That you desired his death ? BEATRICE It would have been A erime uo less than his, if for one moment That fierce desire had faded in my heart. Tis true I did believe, and hope, and pray, Ay, I even knew—for God is wise and just — That some strange sudden death hung over him. Tis true that this did happen, and most true There was no other rest for me on earth, No other hope in Heaven. Now what of this ? SAVELLA Strange thoughts beget strange deeds; and here are both; 139 I judge thee not. BEATRICE And yet, if you arrest me, You are the judge and executioner Of that which is the life of life; the breath Of accnsation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life Which is a mask withont it. "Tis most false That I am guilty of foul parricide; Although I must rejoice, for justest cause, That other hands have sent my father’s soul To ask the mercy he denied to me. 149 Now leave us free; stain not a noble house With vague surmises of rejected crime; Add to our sufferings and your own neglect No heavier sum; let them have been enough; Leave us the wreck we have. THE CENCI 241 SAVELLA I dare not, Lady. I pray that you prepare yourselves for Rome. There the Pope’s further pleasure will be known, LUCRETIA Oh, not to Rome ! Oh, take us not to Rome ! BEATRICE Why not to Rome, dear mother? There as here Our innocence is as an arméd heel 159 To trample accusation. God is there, As here, and with his shadow ever clothes The innocent, the injured, and the weak; And snch are we. Cheer up, dear Lady ! lean On me; collect your wandering thoughts. My Lord, As soon as you have taken some refresh- ment, And had all such examinations made Upon the spot as may be necessary To the full understanding of this matter, We shall be ready. Mother, will you come ? LUCRETIA Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest 170 Self-accusation from our agony ! Will Giacomo be there ? Orsino ? Marzio ? All present; all confronted; all demanding Each from the other’s countenance the thing Which is in every heart! Oh, misery ! (She faints, and is borne out) SAVELLA She faints; an ill appearance this. BEATRICE My Lord, She knows not yet the uses of the world. She fears that power is as a beast which grasps And loosens not; a snake whose look trans- mutes 170 All things to guilt which is its nutriment. — She cannot know how well the supine slaves Of blind authority read the truth of things When written on a brow of guilelessness; She sees not yet triumphant Innocence Stand at the judgment-seat of mortal man, 242 THE CENCI ACT V: SC. I A judge and an accuser of the wrong Which drags it there. Prepare yourself, my Lord. Our suite will join yours in the court below. [Exeunt. ACT V Scene I.— An Apartment in Orsino’s Palace. Enter Orstno and Giacomo. GIACOMO Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end ? Oh, that the vain remorse which must chas- tise Crimes done had but as loud a voice to warn As its keen sting is mortal to avenge ! Oh, that the hour when present had cast off The mantle of its mystery, and shown The ghastly form with which it now returns When its scared game is roused, cheering the hounds Of conscience to their prey! Alas, alas ! It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed, 10 To kill an old and hoary-headed father. ORSINO It has turned out unluckily, in truth. GIACOMO To violate the sacred doors of sleep; To cheat kind nature of the placid death Which she prepares for overwearied age; To drag from Heaven an unrepentant soul, Which might have quenched in reconciling prayers A life of burning crimes — ORSINO : You cannot say 4 urged you to the deed. GIACOMO Oh, had I never Found in thy smooth and ready counte- nance 20 The mirror of my darkest thoughts; hads thou Never with hints and questions made me look Upon the monster of my thought, until Jt grew familiar to desire — ORSINO *T is thus Men cast the blame of their unprosperous acts Upon the abettors of their own resolve; Or anything but their weak, guilty selves. And yet, confess the truth, it is the peril In which you stand that gives you this pale sickness Of penitence; confess ’t is fear disguised 30 From its own shame that takes the mantle now Of thin remorse. safe ? What if we yet were GIACOMO How can that be? Already Beatrice, Lucretia and the murderer are in prison. I doubt not officers are, whilst we speak, Sent to arrest us. ORSINO I have all prepared For instant flight. We can escape even now, So we take fleet occasion by the hair. GIACOMO Rather expire in tortures, as I may. What! will you cast by self-accusing flight 40 Assured conviction upon Beatrice ? She who alone, in this unnatural work Stands like God’s angel ministered upon By fiends; avenging such a nameless wrong As turns black parricide to piety; Whilst we for basest ends —I fear, Or- sino, While I consider all your words and looks, Comparing them with your proposal now, That you must be a villain. For what end Could you engage in such a_ perilous crime, 5c Training me on with hints, and signs, and smiles, Even to this gulf? Thou art no liar? 0. Thon art a lie! Traitor and murderer ! Coward and slave! But no — defend thy- self; (Drawing) Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue Disdains to brand thee with. ORSINO Put up your weapon. Is it the desperation of your fear ACT V: SCG. II THE CENCI 243 Makes you thus rash and sudden with a friend, Now ruined for your sake? If honest anger Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed 50 Was but to try you. As for me, I think Thankless affection led me to this point, From which, if my firm temper could re- pent, I cannot now recede. speak, The ministers of justice wait below; They grant me these brief moments. Now, if you Have any word of melancholy comfort To speak to your pale wife, ’t were best to pass Out at the postern, and avoid them so. Even whilst we GIACOMO O generous friend ! how canst thou pardon me? 70 Would that my life could purchase thine ! ORSINO That wish Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well! Hear’st thou not steps along the corridor ? [Exit Giacomo. I’m sorry for it; but the guards are wait- ing At his own gate, and such was my contriv- ance That I might rid me both of him and them. I thought to act a solemn comedy Upon the painted scene of this new world, And to attain my own peculiar ends By some such plot of mingled good and ill 80 As others weave ; but there arose a Power Which grasped and snapped the threads of my device, And turned it to a net of ruin — Ha! (A shout is heard) Is that my name I hear proclaimed abroad ? But I will pass, wrapped in a vile disguise, Rags on my back and a false innocence Upon my face, through the misdeeming crowd, Which judges by what seems. then, For a new name and for a country new. "Tis easy And a new life fashioned on old desires, 9a To change the honors of abandoned Rome. And these must be the masks of that within, Which must remain unaltered. — Oh, I fear That what is past will never let me rest ! Why, when none else is conscious, but myself, Of my misdeeds, should my own heart’s contempt Trouble me? Have I not the power to fly My own reproaches? Skall I be the slave Of—what? A word? which those of this false world Employ against each other, not them- selves, 100 As men wear daggers not for self-offence. But if I am mistaken, where shall I Find the disguise to hide me from myself, As now I skulk from every other eye ? (Exit. Scene II.—A Hall of Justice. Cammmxo, JUDGES, etc., are discovered seated ; MARzio is led in. FIRST JUDGE Accused, do you persist in your denial ? I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty ? I demand who were the participators In your offence. Speak truth, and the whole truth. MARZIO My God! I did not kill him; I know no- thing; Olimpio sold the robe to me from which You would infer my guilt. SECOND JUDGE Away with him ! FIRST JUDGE Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack’s kiss, Speak false? Is itso soft a questioner 4 That you would bandy lover’s talk with it, Till it wind out your life and soul ? Away! MARZIO Spare me! Oh, spare! I will confess. FIRST JUDGE Then speak 244 THE CENCI ACT V: SC. IL MARZIO I strang'ed him in his sleep. FIRST JUDGE Who urged you to it ? MARZIO His own son Giacomo and the young pre- late Orsino sent me to Petrella; there The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I Aad my companion forthwith murdered him. 18 Now let me die. FIRST JUDGE This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there, lead forth the prisoners. Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, and Giacomo, guarded Look upon this man; When did you see him last ? BEATRICE We never saw him. MARZIO You know me too well, Lady Beatrice. BEATRICE I know thee! how ? where ? when? MARZIO You know ’t was I Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes To kill your father. When the thing was done, You clothed me in a robe of woven gold, And bade me thrive; how I have thriven, you see. You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia, You know that what I speak is true. [Beatrice advances towards him; he covers his face, and shrinks back. Oh, dart The terrible resentment of those eves 30 On the dead earth! Turnthem away from me! They wound; *t was torture forced the truth. My Lords, Having said this, let me be led to death. BEATRICE Poor wretch, I pity thee; yet stay awhile. CAMILLO Guards, lead him not away. BEATRICE Cardinal Camillo, You have a good repute for gentleness And wisdom; can it be that you sit here To countenance a wicked farce like this ? When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart 40 And bade to answer, not as he believes, But as those may suspect or do desire Whose questions thence suggest their own reply; And that in peril of such hideous tor. ments As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now The thing you surely know, which is, that ou, If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel, And you were told, ‘Confess that you did poison Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed ebild Who was the lodestar of your life;’ and though 50 All see, since his most swift and piteous death, That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time, And all the things hoped for or done therein, Are changed to you, through your exceed- ing grief, Yet you would say, ‘I confess anything,’ And beg from your tormentors, like that slave, The refuge of dishonorable death. I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert My innocence. CAMILLO (such moved) What shall we think, my Lords? Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen Which is their fountain. my soul That she is guiltless. 60 I would pledge ACT Vi 3c. I THE CENCI 245 JUDGE Yet she must be tortured. CAMILLO { would as soon have tortured mine own nephew (If he now lived, he would be just her age; His hair, too, was her color, and his eyes Like ve in shape, but blue and not so ee As that most perfect image of God’s love That ever came sorrowing upon the earth. She is as pure as speechless infancy ! JUDGE Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord, 7o If you forbid the rack, His Holiness Enjoined us to pursue tis monstrous crime By the severest forms of law; nay, even To stretch a point against the criminals. The prisoners stand accused of parricide Upon such evidence as justifies Torture. BEATRICE What evidence ? This man’s ? JUDGE Even so. BEATRICE (to MARZIO) Come near. And who art thou, thus chosen forth Out of the multitude of living men, To kill the innocent ? MARZIO I am Marzio, 80 Thy father’s vassal. BEATRICE Fix thine eyes on mine; Answer to what I ask. (Turning to the Judges) I prithee mark His countenance; unlike bold calumny, Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks, He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends His gaze on the blind earth. (To Marzo) What! wilt thou say That I did murder my own father ? MARZIO Oh ! Spare me! My brain swims round —I cannot speak — It was that horrid torture forced the truth Take me away! Let her not look on me! Iam a guilty miserable wretch ! 93 I have said all I know, now, let me die! BEATRICE My Lords, if by my nature I had been So stern as to have planned the crime alleged, Which your suspicions dictate to this slave And the rack makes him utter, do you think I should have left this two-edged instru- ment Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife, With my own name engraven on the heft, Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes, For my own death ? that with such horri- ble need 101 For deepest silence I should have neglected So trivial a precaution as the making His tomb the keeper of a secret written On a thief’s memory? What is his poor life ? What are a thousand lives? A parricide Had trampled them like dust; and see, he lives ! (Turning to Marzio) And thou — MARZIO Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more! That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones, 10g Wound worse than torture (To the Judges) I have told it all; For pity’s sake lead me away to death. CAMILLO Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Bea- trice; He shrinks from her regard like autumu’s leaf From the keen breath of the serenes*: north. BEATRICE O thou whe tremblest on the giddy verge Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me: 246 THE CENCI ACT V: SC. II So mayst thou answer God with less dis- may. What evil have we done thee? I, alas! Have lived but on this earth a few sad years, 119 And so my lot was ordered that a father First turned the moments of awakening life To drops, each poisoning youth’s sweet hope; and then Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul, “And my untainted fame; and even that peace Which sleeps within the core of the heart’s heart. Weutd wo 4 But the wound was not_mortaf; so my hate Became the only worship [ could lift “To our great Father, who in pity and love Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut hir off; 129 And thus his wrong becomes my accusa- tion. And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth; Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart If thou hast done murders, made thy life’s ath Over is trampled laws of God and man, Rush not before thy Judge, and say: ‘My Maker, I have done this and more; for there was one Who was most pure and innocent on earth; And because she endured what never any, Guilty or innocent, endured before, 140 Because her wrongs could not be told, nor thought, Because thy hand at length did rescue her, I with my words killed her and all her kin.’ Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay The reverence living in the minds of men Towards our ancient house and stainless fame ! Think what it is to strangle infant pity, Cradled in the belief of guileless looks, Till it become a crime to suffer. Think What ’t is to blot with infamy and blood All that which shows like innocence, and 1s — I5r Hear me, great God ! —I swear, most in- nocent; So that the world lose all discrimination Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt, And that which now compels thee to reply To what I ask: Am I, or am I not A parricide ? MARZIO Thou art not! JUDGE What is this ? MARZIO I here declare those whom I did accuse Are innocent. *Tis I alone am guilty. JUDGE Drag him away to torments; let them be Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds Of the heart’s inmost cell. not Till he confess. Unbind him MARZIO Torture me as ye will; A keener pang has wrung a higher truth From my last breath. She is most inno- cent ! Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me ! I will not give you that fine piece of nature To rend and ruin. [Exit Marzio, guarded. CAMILLO What say ye now, my Lords ? JUDGE Let tortures strain the truth till it be white 16g As snow thrice-sifted by the frozen wind. CAMILLO Yet stained with blood. JUDGE (to BEATRICE) Know you this paper, Lady ? BEATRICE Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he, Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge, What, all in one? Here is Orsino’s name; Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine. What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what. c \ 7 y ACT Vs SC. IIT THE CENCI 247 And therefore on the chance that it may be Some evil, will ye kill us ? Enter an Officer OFFICER Marzio’s dead. JUDGE What did he say ? OFFICER Nothing. As soon as we Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us. 181 As one who baffles a deep adversary; And holding his breath died. JUDGE There remains nothing But to apply the question to those prisoners Who yet remain stubborn. CAMILLO I overrule Further proceedings, and in the behalf Of these most innocent and noble persons Will use my interest with the Holy Father. JUDGE Let the Pope’s pleasure then be done. Meanwhile Conduct these culprits each to separate cells; 190 And be the engines ready; for this night, If the Pope’s resolution be as grave, Pious, and just as once, I’ll wring the truth Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan. [ Exeunt. Scene III. — The Cell of a Prison. BEATRICE is discovered asleep on a couch. Enter BERNARDO BERNARDO How gently slumber rests upon her face, Like the last thoughts of some day sweetly spent, Closing in night and dreams, and so pro- longed. After such torments as she bore last night, How light and soft her breathing comes. Ay me! Methinks that I shall never sleep again. But I must shake the heavenly dew of rest From this sweet folded flower, thus — wake, awake ! What, sister, canst thou sleep ? BEATRICE (awaking) I was just dreaming That we were all in Paradise. Thou knowest 10 This cell seems like a kind of Paradise After our father’s presence. BERNARDO Dear, dear sister, Would that thy dream were not a dream! Oh, God, How shall I tell ? BEATRICE What wouldst thou tell, sweet brother ? BERNARDO Look not so calm and happy, or even whilst I stand considering what I have to say, My heart will break. BEATRICE See now, thou mak’st me weep; How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child, If I were dead. Say what thou hast to say. BERNARDO They have confessed; they could endure no more 2 The tortures — BEATRICE Ha! what was there to confess ? They must have told some weak and wicked lie To flatter their tormentors. said That they were guilty ? O white innocence, That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide Thine awful and serenest countenance From those who know thee not ! Have they Enter JupGE, with Lucretia and Giacomo, guarded Ignoble hearts ! For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least 248 THE CENCI ACT V: SC. III As mortal as the limbs through which they ass, Are centuries of high splendor laid in dust ? 30 And that eternal honor, whieh should live Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame, Changed to a mockery and a byword? What ! Will you give up these bodies to be dragged At horses’ heels, so that our hair should sweep The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd, Who, that they may make our calamity Their worship and their spectacle, will leave The churches and the theatres as void As their own hearts? Shall the light multitude 40 Fling, at their choice, curses or faded pity, Sad funeral flowers to deck aliving corpse, Upon us as we pass to pass away, And leave — what memory of our having been ? Infamy, blood, terror, despair? O thou Who wert a mother to the parentless, Kill not thy child! let not her wrongs kill thee! Brother, lie down with me upon the rack, And let us each be silent as a corpse; It soon will be as soft as any grave. 50 Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear Makes the rack cruel. GIACOMO They will tear the truth Even from thee at last, those cruel pains; For pity’s sake say thou art guilty now. LUCRETIA Oh, speak the truth! Let us all quickly die; And after death, God is our judge, not they; He will have mercy on us. BERNARDO If indeed It can be true, say so, dear sister mine; 58 And then the Pope will surely pardon you, And all be well. JUDGE Confess, or I will warp Your limbs with such keen tortures — BEATRICE Tortures! Turn The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel ! Torture your dog, that he may tell when last He lapped the blood his master shed — not me! My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart, And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul, Which weeps within tears as of burning all To see, in this ill world where none are true, My kindred false to their deserted selves; And with considering all the wretched life Which I have lived, and its now wretched end; 71 And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth To me or mine; and what a tyrant thou art, And what slaves these; and what a world we make, The oppressor and the oppressed — such _ pangs compel My answer. Whatis it thou wouldst with me ? JUDGE Art thou not guilty of thy father’s death ? BEATRICE Or wilt thou rather tax high-judging God That he permitted such an act as that Which I have suffered, and which he be- held; 80 Made it unutterable, and took from it All refuge, all revenge, all consequence, But that which thou hast called my father’s death ? Which is or is not what men call a crime, Which either I have done, or have not done; Say what ye will. I shall deny no more. If ye desire it thus, thus let it be, And so an end of all. Now do your will; No other pains shall force another word. JUDGE She is convicted, but has not confessed. 90 Be it enough. Until their final sentence ACT V: SC. IV THE CENCI 249 Let none have converse with them. You, young Lord, Linger not here ! BEATRICE Oh, tear him not away ! JUDGE Guards! do your duty. BERNARDO (embracing BEATRICE) Oh! would ye divide Body from soul ? OFFICER That is the headsman’s business. (Exeunt all but Lucreria, Beatrice, and Gracomo. GIACOMO Have I confessed ? Is it all over now ? No hope! no refuge! O weak, wicked tongue, Which hast destroyed me, would that thou hadst been Cut ont and thrown to dogs first! To have killed My father first, and then betrayed my sister — 100 Ay, thee! the one thing innocent and pure In this black, guilty world — to that which I So well deserve! ones ! Destitute, helpless; and I — Father ! God ! Canst thon forgive even the unforgiving, When their full hearts break thus, thus ? (Covers his face and weeps) My wite! my little LUCRETIA O my child! To what a dreadful end are we all come ! Why did [ yield 2? Why did I not sustain Those torments ? Oh, that I were all dis- solved Into these fast and unavailing tears, 110 Which flow and feel not ! BEATRICE What ’t was weak to do, ’*T is weaker to lament, once being done; Take cheer! The God who knew my wrong, and made Our speedy act the angel of his wrath, Seems, and but seems, to have abandoned us. Let us not think that we shall die for this. Brother, sit near me; give me your firm hand, You had a manly heart. up! O dearest Lady, put your gentle head Upon my lap, and try to sleep awhile; 20 Your eyes look pale, hollow, and overworn, With heaviness of watching and slow grief. Come, I will sing you some low, sleepy tune, Not cheerful, nor yet sad; some dull old thing, Some outworn and unused monotony, Such as our country gossips sing and spin, Till they almost forget they live. Lie down — So, that will do. Have I forgot the words ? Faith | they are sadder than I thought they were. Bear up! bear SONG False friend, wilt thou smile or weep 130 When my life is laid asleep ? Little cares for a smile or a tear, The clay-cold corpse upon the bier ! Farewell! Heigh-ho! What is this whispers low ? There is a snake in thy smile, my dear; And bitter poison within thy tear. Sweet sleep ! were death like to thee, Or if thou couldst mortal be, I would close these eyes of pain; 140 When to wake? Never again. O World! farewell! Listen to the passing bell ! It says, thou and I must part. With a light and a heavy heart. (The scene closes) ScrnEIV.— A Hall of the Prison. Enter CaMILLo and BERNARDO. CAMILLO The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent. He looked as calm and keen as is the en- gine Which eennee and which kills, exempt it- se From aught that it inflicts; a marble form A rite, a law, a custom; not a man. He frowned, as if to frown had been the trick 250 THE CENCI ACT V: SC. 1V Of his machinery, on the advocates Presenting the defences, which he tore And threw behind, muttering with hoarse, harsh voice — ‘Which among ye defended their old fa- ther 10 Killed in his sleep ?’ then to another — ‘Thou Dost this in virtue of thy place; ’t is well.’ He turned to me then, looking depreca- tion, And said these three words, coldly — ‘ They must die.’ BERNARDO And yet you left him not ? CAMILLO I urged him still; Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong Which prompted your unnatural parent’s death. And he replied — ‘ Paolo Santa Croce Murdered his mother yester evening, And he is fled. Parricide grows so rife, 20 That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs. Authority, and power, and hoary hair Are grown crimes capital. You are my nephew, You come to ask their pardon; stay a mo- ment; Here is their sentence; never see me more Till, to the letter, it be all fulfilled.’ BERNARDO Oh, God, not so! [I did believe indeed That all you said was but sad prepara- tion For happy news. looks To bend the sternest purpose ! knew them, Now I forget them at my dearest need. What think you if I seek him out, and bathe His feet and robe with hot and bitter tears ? Importune him with prayers, vexing his brain With my perpetual cries, until in rage He strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample Oh, there are words and 30 Once I Upon my prostrate head, so that my blood May stain the senseless dust on which he treads, And remorse waken mercy ? Ob, wait till I return ! 39 I will do it ! [Rushes out. CAMILLO Alas, poor boy ! A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray To the deaf sea. Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, and Giacomo, guarded BEATRICE I hardly dare to fear That thou bring’st other news than a just pardon. CAMILLO May God in heaven be less inexorable To the Pope’s prayers than he has been to mine. Here is the sentence and the warrant. BEATRICE (wildly) My God! Can it be possible I have To die so suddenly ? so young to go Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground! so To be nailed down into a narrow place; To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost! How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be — What ? Oh, where am I? Let me not go mad! Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world — The wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world! If all things then should be — my father’s spirit, 60 His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me; The atmosphere and breath of my dead life! If sometimes, as a shape more like him- self, Even the form which tortured me on earth, ACT V: SC. IV Masked in gray hairs and wrinkles, he should come, And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down ! For was he not alone omnipotent On Earth, and ever present ? even though dead, 69 Does not his spirit live in all that breathe, And work for me and mine still the same ruin, Scorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet re- turned To teach the laws of death’s untrodden realm ? Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now, Oh, whither, whither ? LUCRETIA Trust in God’s sweet love, The tender promises of Christ; ere night, Think we shall be in Paradise. BEATRICE ’T is past ! Whatever comes, my heart shall sink no more. And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill; How tedious, false, and cold seem all things! I 80 Have met with much injustice in this world; No difference has been made by God or man, Or any power moulding my wretched lot, ’Twixt good or evil, as regarded me. I am eut off from the only world I know, From light, and life, and love, in youth’s sweet prime. You do well telling me to trust in God; I hope I do trust in him. In whom else Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold. (During the latter speeches Giacomo has re- tired conversing with CAMILLO, who now goes out ; Giacomo advances) GIACOMO Know you not, mother — sister, know you not ? go Bernardo even now is gone to implore The Pope to grant our pardon. THE CENCI 251 LUCRETIA Child, perhaps It will be granted. We may all then live To make these woesa tale for distant years. Ob, what a thought! It gushes to my heart Like the warm blood. BEATRICE Yet both will soon be cold. Oh, trample out that thought !_ Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope; It is the only ill which can find place 99 Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost That it should spare the eldest flower of spring; Plead with awakening earthquake, o’er whose couch Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free; Now stench and blackness yawn, like death. Oh, plead With famine, or wind-walking pestilence, Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man — Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words, In deeds a Cain. No, mother, we must die; Since such is the reward of innocent lives, Such the alleviation of worst wrongs. 1: And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men, Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears To death as to life’s sleep; ’t were just the grave Were some strange joy for us. scure Death, And wind me in thine all-embracing arms ! Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom, And rock me to the sleep from which none wake. Live ye, who live, subject to one another As we were once, who now — Come, ob- BERNARDO rushes in BERNARDO Oh, horrible ! That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer, 121 Even till the heart is vacant and despairs, 252 THE MASK OF ANARCHY Should all be vain ! Are waiting round the doors. The ministers of death I thought I saw Blood on the face of one — what if ’t were fancy ? Soon the heart’s blood of all I love on earth Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off As if ’t were only rain. O life! O world! Cover me! let me be no more! To see That perfect mirror of pure innocence — 130 Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and ‘ood, stvextl to dust! To see thee, Beatrice, Who made all lovely thou didst look upon — Thee, light of life —dead, dark! while I say, sister, To hear I have no sister; and thou, mother, Whose love was as a bond to all our loves — Dead ! the sweet bond broken ! Enter Caminio and Guards They come! Let me Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves Are blighted — white — cold. Say fare- well, before Death chokes that gentle voice! Oh, let me hear 140 You speak ! BEATRICE Farewell, my tender brother. Think Of onr sad fate with gentleness, as now; And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee Thy sorrow’s load. Err not in harsh de- spair, But tears and patience. my child; For thine own sake be constant to the love Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I, Though wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame, One thing more, Lived ever holy and unstained. And though Ill tongues shall wound me, and our com- mon name 150 Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow For men to point at as they pass, do thou Forbear, and never think a thought unkind Of those who perhaps love thee in their graves. fear and pain Farewell ! So mayest thou die as I do; Being subdued. Farewell ! Farewell! BERNARDO I cannot say farewell ! CAMILLO O Lady Beatrice ! BEATRICE Give yourself no unnecessary pain, My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie My girdle for me, and bind up this hair 160 In any simple knot; ay, that does well. And yours I see is coming down. How often Have we done this for one another; now We shall not do it any more. My Lord, We are quite ready. Well—’tis very well. THE MASK OF ANARCHY WRITTEN ON THE OCCASION OF The Mask of Anarchy was composed in the fall of 1819, soon after the Manchester riot of that summer. The Manchester or ‘ Peterloo Massacre,’ as it was called, was occasioned by an attempt to hold a mass meeting on August 9, 1819, at St. Peter’s Field, Man- chester, in behalf of parliamentary reform. It was declared illegal and forbidden by the magistrates, and was in consequence post- poned. It was held August 16, and attended by several thousands. The chief constable was ordered to arrest the ringleaders, and in particular the chairman, Henry Hunt, an agi- ator unconnected with Leigh Hunt. He asked THE MASSACRE AT MANCHESTER military aid, and went accompanied by forty cavalrymen; on the failure of the officer and his escort to penetrate the crowd which sur- rounded them, orders were given three hun- dred hussars to disperse the people; in the charge six persons were killed, twenty or thirty received sabre wounds, and fifty or more were injured in other wavs. Eldon was Lord High Chancellor, Sidmouth. Home Secretary, and Castlereagh, Foreign Secretary ; the gov- ernment supported the authorities and publicly approved their conduct. News of these events reached Shelley while still residing at the Villa Valsovano, near Leghorn, and employed in THE MASK OF ANARCHY 253 revising The Cenci, and ‘roused in him,’ says Mrs. Shelley, ‘ violent emotions of indignation and compassion.’ The nature of these emo- tions is shown in the letter he wrote to Ollier, from whom he heard of the affair: ‘ The same day that your letter came, came the news of the Manchester work, and the torrent of my indignation has not yet done boiling in my veins. I wait anxiously to hear how the coun- try will express its sense of this bloody, mur- derous oppression of its destroyers. ‘“ Some- thing must be done. What, yet I know not.”’ In a similar vein he addressed Peacock, who had forwarded newspaper accounts: ‘Many thanks for your attention in sending the papers which contain the terrible and important news of Manchester. These are, as it were, the dis- tant thunders of the terrible storm which is approaching. The tyrants here, as in the French Revolution, have first shed blood. May their execrable lessons not be learned with equal docility! I still think there will be no coming te close quarters until financial affairs bring the oppressors and the oppressed together. Pray let me have the earliest politi- cal news which you consider of importance at this crisis.’ I As I lay asleep in Italy, There came a voice from over the sea, And with great power it forth led me To walk in the visions of Poesy. II I met Murder on the way — ee He had a mask like Castlereagh;) | Very smooth he looked, yet grim; Seven bloodhounds followed him. III All were fat; and well they might Be in admirable plight, For one by one, and two by two, He tossed them human hearts to chew, Which from his wide cloak he drew. IV Next came Fraud, and he had on, Like Eldon, an ermined gown; His big tears, for he wept well, Turned to mill-stones as they fell; Vv And the little children, who Round his feet played to and fro, Thinking every tear a gem, Had their brains knocked out by them. Shelley sent the poem to Leigh Hunt to be published in The Examiner, but it did not ap- pear. He wrote to Hunt on the subject in November. ‘You do not tell me whether you have re- ceived my lines on the Manchester affair. They are of the exoteric species, and are meant, not. for the Indicator, but the Examiner... . ‘Lhe great thing to do is to hold the balance be- tween popular impatience and tyrannical ob- stinacy; to inculcate with fervor both the right of resistance and the duty of forbearance. You know my principles incite me to take all the good I can get in politics, forever aspiring to something more. Iam one of those whom nothing will fully satisfy, but who are ready to be partially satisfied by all that is practi- cable. We shall see.’ The poem was at last issued, under Hunt’s editorship, in 1832. He assigns, in his preface, as the reason for his failure to publish it when it was written, his own belief that ‘the publie at large had not become sufficiently discern- ing to do justice to the sincerity and kind- heartedness of his spirit, that walked in the flaming robe of verse.’ VI | Clothed with the Bible as with light, And the shadows of the night, | Like Sidmouth, next Hypocrisy On a crocodile rode by. Vil And many more Destructions played In this ghastly masquerade, All disguised, even to the eyes, Like bishops, lawyers, peers or spies. Vill Last came Anarchy; he rode On a white horse splashed with blood; He was pale even to the lips, Like Death in the Apocalypse. IX And he wore a kingly crown; In his grasp a sceptre shone; On his brow this mark I saw — ‘I am Gop, anp Kine, AnD Law!! x With a pace stately aud fast, Over English land he passed, Trampling to a mire of blood The adoring multitude. 254 THE MASK OF ANARCHY XI And a mighty troop around With their trampling shook the ground, Waving each a bloody sword For the service of their Lord. XII And, with glorious triumph, they Rode through England, proud and gay, Drunk as with intoxication Of the wine of desolation. XIII O’er fields and towns, from sea to sea, Passed that Pageant swift and free, Tearing up, and trampling down, Till they came to London town. XIV And each dweller, panic-stricken, Felt his heart with terror sicken, Hearing the tempestuous cry Of the triumph of Anarchy. xv For with pomp to meet him came, Clothed in arms like blood and flame, The hired murderers who did sing, ‘Thou art God, and Law, and King. XVI ‘We have waited, weak and lone, For thy coming, Mighty One ! Our purses are empty, our swords are cold, Give us glory, and blood, and gold.’ XVII Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd, To the earth their pale brows bowed; Like a bad prayer not over loud, Whispering — ‘ Thou art Law and Ged !” XVIII Then all cried with one accord, ‘Thou art King, and God, and Lord; Anarchy, to thee we bow, Be thy name made holy now!’ XIX And Anarchy, the Skeleton, Bowed and grinned to every one, As well as if his education Had cost ten millions to the nation. XX For he knew the palaces Of our kings were rightly his; His the sceptre, crown, and globe, And the gold-inwoven robe. XXI So he sent his slaves before To seize upon the Bank and Tower, And was proceeding with intent To meet his pensioned parliament, XXII When one fled past, a maniac maid, And her name was Hope, she said; But she looked more like Despair, And she cried out in the air: XXIII ‘My father Time is weak and gray With waiting for a better day; See how idiot-like he stands, Fumbling with his palsied hands XXIV ‘He has had child after child, And the dust of death is piled Over every one but me. Misery ! oh, misery !’ XXV Then she lay down in the street, Right before the horses’ feet, Expecting with a patient eye Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy; XXVI When between her and her foes A mist, a light, an image rose, — Small at first, and weak, and frail, Like the vapor of a vale; XXVII Till as clouds grow on the blast, Like tower-crowned giants striding fast. And glare with lightnings as they fly, And speak in thunder to the sky, XXVIII It grew — a Shape arrayed in mail Brighter than the viper’s scale, And upborne on wings whose grain Was as the light of sunny rain. THE MASK OF ANARCHY 235 XXIX On its helm, seen far away, A planet, like the Morning’s, lay; And those plumes its light rained through, Like a shower of crimson dew. XXX With step as soft as wind it passed O’er the heads of men — so fast That they knew the presence there, And looked — but all was empty air. XXXI As flowers beneath May’s footstep waken, As stars from Night’s loose hair are shaken, As waves arise when loud winds call, Thoughts sprung where’er that step did fall. XXXII And the prostrate multitude Looked — and ankle-deep in blood, Hope, that maiden most serene, Was walking with a quiet mien; XXXIII And Anarchy, the ghastly birth, Lay dead earth upon the earth; The Horse of Death, tameless as wind Fled, and with his hoofs did grind To dust the murderers thronged behind. XXXIV A rushing light of clouds and splendor, A sense, awakening and yet tender, Was heard and felt — and at its close These words of joy and fear arose, XXXV As if their own indignant earth, Which gave the sons of England birth, Had felt their blood upon her brow, And shuddering with a mother’s throe XXXVI Had turned every drop of blood, By which her face had been bedewed, To an accent unwithstood, As if her heart cried out aloud: XXXVII ‘ Men of England, heirs of glory, Heroes of unwritten story, Nurslings of one mighty Mother, Hopes of her, and one another: XXXVIII © Rise like lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number; Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you — Ye are many, they are few. XXXIX ‘ What is Freedom ? — Ye can tell That which Slavery is too well, For its very name has grown To an echo of your own. xL ‘°T is to work, and have such pay As just keeps life from day to day In your limbs, as in a cell, For the tyrants’ use to dwell, XLI ‘So that ye for them are made Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade With or without your own will bent Totheir defence and nourishment. XLII ‘’T is to see your children weak With their mothers pine and peak, When the winter winds are bleak — They are dying whilst I speak. XLIII “’T is to hunger for such diet, As the rich man in his riot Casts to the fat dogs that lie Surfeiting beneath his eye. XLIV ©’T is to let the Ghost of Gold Take from toil a thonsand-fold More than e’er its substance could In the tyrannies of old ; XLV ‘Paper coin — that forgery Of the title deeds which ye Hold to something of the worth Of the inheritance of Earth. XLVI ’T is to be a slave in soul, And to hold no strong control Over your own will, but be All that others make of ye. 256 THE MASK OF ANARCHY XLVII ‘And at length when ye complain With a murmur weak and vain, Tis to see the Tyrant’s crew Ride over your wives and you — Blood is on the grass like dew! XLVIII ‘ Then it is to feel revenge, Fiercely thirsting to exchange Blood for blood — and wrong for wrong : Do not thus when ye are strong! XLIX ‘Birds find rest in narrow nest, When weary of their wingéd quest, Beasts find fare in woody lair, When storm and snow are in the air. L * Horses, oxen, have a home, When from daily toil they come ; Household dogs, when the wind roars, Find a home within warm doors. LI * Asses, swine, have litter spread, And with fitting food are fed ; All things have a home but one — Thou, O Englishman, hast none ! LII ‘ This is Slavery; savage men, Or wild beasts within a den, Would endure not as ye do — But such ills they never knew. LII ‘What art thou, Freedom? slaves Answer from their living graves This demand, tyrants would flee Like a dream’s dim imagery. Oh, could LIV ‘Thou art not, as impostors say, A shadow soon to pass away A superstition and a name Echoing from the cave of Fame. LV ‘ For the laborer thou art bread And a comely table spread, From his daily labor come Jn a neat and happy home. LVI | © Thou art clothes, and fire, and food, | For the trampled multitude; No — in countries that are free Such starvation cannot be As in England now we see. LVII ‘To the rich thou art a check; When his foot is on the neck Of his victim, thou dost make That he treads upon a snake. LVIII ‘Thou art Justice — ne’er for gold May thy righteous laws be sold, As laws are in England; thou Shield’st alike both high and low. LIX ‘Thou art Wisdom — freemen never Dream that God will damn forever All who think those things untrue Of which priests make such ado. Lx ‘Thou art Peace — never by thee Would blood and treasure wasted be, As tyrants wasted them, when all Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul. LXI ‘What if English toil and blood Was poured forth, even as a flood ? It availed, O Liberty ! To dim, but not extinguish thee. LXII ‘Thou art Love — the rich have kissed Thy feet, and, like him following Christ, Give their substance to the free And through the rough world follow thee, LXIII * Or turn their wealth to arms, and maxe War for thy belovéd sake On wealth and war and fraud, whence the Drew the power which is their prey. LXIV * Science, Poetry and Thought Are thy lamps; they make the lot Of the dwellers in a cot Such they curse their maker not. THE MASK OF ANARCHY LXV ‘Spirit, Patience, Gentleness, All that can adorn and bless, Art thou —let deeds, not words, express Thine exceeding loveliness. LXVI ‘Let a great Assembly be Of the fearless and the free On some spot of English ground, Where the plains stretch wide around. LXVII ‘ Let the blue sky overhead, The green earth on which ye tread, All that must eternal be, Witness the solemnity. LXVIII ‘From the corners uttermost Of the bounds of English coast; From every hut, village and town, Where those, who live and suffer, moan For others’ misery or their own; LXIxX ‘ From the workhouse and the prison, Where pale as corpses newly risen, Women, children, young and old, Groan for pain, and weep for cold; LXX ‘From the haunts of daily life, Where is waged the daily strife With common wants and common cares, Which sows the human heart with tares; LXXI ‘Lastly, from the palaces Where the murmur of distress Echoes, like the distant sound Of a wind alive, around LXXII ‘Those prison-halls of wealth and fashion, Where some few feel such compassion For those who groan, and toil, and wail, As must make their brethren pale; — LXXITII * Ye who suffer woes untold, Or to feel or to behold Your lost country bought and sold With a price of blood and gold: 257 LXXIV ‘Let a vast assembly ke, And with great solemnity Declare with measured words that ye Are, as God has made ye, free ! LXxXVv ‘Be your strong and simple words | Keen to wound as sharpened swords; | And wide as targes let them be, | With their shade to cover ye. LXXVI ‘Let the tyrants pour around With a quick and startling sound, Like the loosening of a sea, Troops of armed emblazonry. LXXVII ‘Let the charged artillery drive Till the dead air seems alive With the clash of clanging wheels And the tramp of horses’ heels. LXXVIII Let the fixéd bayonet Gleam with sharp desire to wet Its bright point in English blood, Looking keen as one for food. LXXIX ‘Let the horsemen’s scimitars Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars Thirsting to eclipse their burning In a sea of death and mourning. LXXX ‘Stand ye calm and resolute, Like a forest close and mute, With folded arms, and looks which are Weapons of unvanquished war. LXXXI ‘ And let Panic, who outspeeds The career of arméd steeds, Pass, a disregarded shade, Through your phalanx undismayed. LXXXII ‘ Let the laws of your own land, Good or ill, between ye stand, Hand to band, and foot to foot, Arbiters of the dispute: — 258 PETER BELL THE THIRD LXXXIII ‘The old laws of England — they Whose reverend heads with age are gray, Children of a wiser day; And whose solemn voice must be Thine own echo — Liberty ! LXXXIV * On those who first should violate Such sacred heralds in their state Rest the blood that must ensue; And it will not rest on you. LXXXV ‘And if then the tyrauts dare, Let them ride among you there, Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew; What they like, that let them do. LXXXVI * With folded arms and steady eyes, And little fear, and less surprise, Look upon them as they slay, Till their rage has died away. LXXXVII ‘ Then they will return with shame To the place from which they came; And the blood thus shed will speak In hot blushes on their cheek. PETER BELL LXXXVIII ‘Every woman in the land Will point at them as they stand; They will hardly dare to greet Their acquaintance in the street. LXXXIX ‘ And the bold true warriors, Who have hugged Danger in wars, Will turn to those who would be free, Ashamed of such base company. xc ‘ And that slaughter to the Nation Shall steam up like inspiration, Eloquent, oracular; A volcano heard afar. XCI ‘ And these words shall then become Like oppression’s thundered doom, Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again — again — again ! XCII ‘Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number ! Shake your chains to earth, like dew | Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many, they are few !’ aw THE THIRD BY MICHING MALLECHO, ESQ. 1s it a party in a parlor, Crammed just as they on earth were crammed, Some sipping punch — some sipping tea; But, as you y their faces see, All silent, and all —— damned! Peter Bell, by W. WorDsworTH. Ophelia. — What means this, my lord? 5 5 at Hamlet. — Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief. Peter Bell the Third was suggested by some reviews, in The Examiner, of Wordsworth’s Peter Bell and of John Hamilton Reynolds’s satire on Wordsworth of the same title. They amused Shelley, and he wrote the present poem in that vein of fun which seldom appeared in his verse, though it was‘a characteristic trait of his private life. ‘I think Peter not bad in his way,’ wrote Shelley to Ollier, ‘ but perhaps no one will believe in anything in the shape of a joke from me.’ Shelley’s satire is SHAKESPEARE. meant pleasantly enough, as his admiration for Wordsworth’s poetic powers is evident in many ways, and he was careful to change the name Emma to Betty, having inadvertently used the former, — ‘ Emma, I recollect, is the real name of the sister of a great poet who might be mis- taken for Peter.’ Mrs. Shelley in her note states the case frankly and fairly : ‘A critique on Wordsworth’s Peter Bell reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley exceedingly and suggested this poem. I need PETER BELL THE THIRD 259 scarcely observe that nothing personal to the Author of Peter Bell is intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth’s poetry more;—he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate its beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal. He conceived the idealism of a poet —a man of lofty and creative genius — quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing the beautiful and good, to support and propa- gate ignorant prejudices and pernicious errors ; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardor for truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the sources of the moral improve- ment and happiness of mankind ; but false and injurious opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and force were the best allies of purity and virtue. His idea was that a2 man gifted even as transcendently as the Author of Peter Bell, with the highest qualities of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be in- fected with dulness. This poem was written, as a warning — not as a narration of the real- ity. He was unacquainted personally with Wordsworth or with Coleridge (to whom he alludes in the fifth part of the poem), and therefore, I repeat, his poem is purely ideal ; —it contains something of criticism on the compositions of these great poets, but nothing injurious to the men themselves. ‘No poem contains more of Shelley’s peculiar views, with regard to the errors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and of the per- aicious effects of certain opinions on society. Much of it is beautifully written — and though, like the burlesque drama of Swellfoot, it must be looked on as a plaything, it has so much merit and poetry —so much of himself in it, that it cannot fail to interest greatly, and by right belongs to the world for whose instruc- tion and benefit it was written.’ Shelley’s own account of the burlesque is given in a letter to Hunt: ‘Now, I only send you a very heroic poem, which I wish you to give to Ollier, and desire him to print and publish immediately, you being kind enough to take upon yourself the correction of the press — not, however, with my name ; and you must tell Ollier that the author is to be kept asecret, and that I confide in him for this object as I would confide in a physician or lawyer, or any other man whose professional situation renders the betraying of what is en- trusted a dishonor. My motive in this is solely not to prejudge myself in the present moment, as I have only expended a few days in this party squib, and, of course, taken little pains. The verses and language I have let come as they would, and I am about to publish more serious things this winter ; afterwards, that is next year, if the thing should be remembered so long, I have no objection to the author being known, but not now. I should like well enough that it should both go to press and be printed very quickly; as more serious things are on the eve of engaging both the public attention and mine.’ The poem was written at Florence, in the latter part of October, 1819, and sent forward to Hunt at once for publication. It did not appear, however, until twenty years after, when it was included in Mrs. Shelley’s second edition of the collected poems, 1839. DEDICATION TO THOMAS BROWN, ESQ., THE YOUNGER, H. F. Dear Tom, — Allow me to request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges. Although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he sur- passes them in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification of intolerable dulness. You know Mr. Examiner Hunt; well — it was he who presented me to two of the Mr. Bells. My intimacy with the younger Mr. Bell naturally sprung from this introduction to his brothers. And in presenting him to you Ihave the satisfaction of being able to assure you that he is considerably the dullest of the three. There is this particular advantage in an ac- quaintance with any one of the Peter Bells. that, if you know one Peter Bell, you know: three Peter Bells; they are not one, but three;. not three, but one. An awful mystery, which,. after having caused torrents of blood and hav- ing been hymned by groans enough to deafew the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated: to the satisfaction of all parties in the theo- logical world by the nature of Mr. Peter Bell. Peter is a polyhedrie Peter, or a Peter with many sides. He changes colors like a chame- leon and his coat like a snake. He is a Pro- teus of a Peter. He was at first sublime, pathetic, impressive, profound; then dull; then prosy and dull; and now dull — oh, so very dull! it is an ultra-legitimate dulness. You will perceive that it is not necessary to consider Hell and the Devil as supernatural machinery. The whole scene of my epic is in ‘this world which is’ —so Peter informed us before his conversion to White Obi — The world of all of us, and where We find our happiness, or not at all. Let me observe that I have spent six or seven days in composing this sublime piece; 260 PETER BELL THE THIRD the orb of my moon-like genius has made the fourth part of its revolution round the dull earth which you inhabit, driving you mad, while it has retained its calmness and its splendor, and I have been fitting this its last phase ‘to occupy 9 permanent station in the literature of my country.’ Your works, indeed, dear Tom, sell better ; but mine are far superior. The public is no judge; posterity set. all to rights. Allow me to observe that so much has been written of Peter Bell that the present history can be considered only, like the Iliad, as a continuation of that series of cyclic poems which have already been candidates for be- stowing immortality upon, at the same time that they receive it from, his character and adventures. In this point of view I have vio- lated nv rule of syntax in beginning my com- position with a conjunction; the full stop, which closes the poem continued by me, being, like the full stops at the end of the Iliad and Odyssey, a full stop of a very qualified import. PROLOGUE Peter BELLS, one, two and three, O’er the wide world wandering be. First, the antenatal Peter, Wrapped in weeds of the same metre, The so long predestined raiment, Clothed in which to walk his way meant The second Peter ; whose ambition Is to link the proposition, As the mean of two extremes, (This was learned from Aldrich’s themes), Shielding from the guilt of schism The orthodoxal syllogism ; The First Peter — he who was Like the shadow in the glass Of the second, yet unripe, His substantial antitype. ‘Then came Peter Bell the Second, ‘Who henceforward must be reckoned “The body of a double soul, -And that portion of the whole “Without which the rest would seem Ends of a disjointed dream. And the Third is he who has ‘O’er the grave been forced to pass To the other side, which is — Go and try else — just like this. Peter Bell the First was Peter Smugger, milder, softer, neater, Like the soul before it is Born from that world into this, The next Peter Bell was he, Hoping that the immortality which you have given to the Fudges, you will receive from them; and in the firm expectation that when London shall be an habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey shall stand, shapeless and nameless ruins, in the midst of an unpeopled marsh ; when the piers of Water- loo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some transatlantic commentator will be weigh- ing in the seales of some new and now unim- agined system of criticism the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges and their historians, I remain, dear Tom, Yours sincerely, December 1, 1819. Micurye Mauixcuo. P.S.— Pray excuse the date of place; so soon as the profits of the publication come in, I mean to hire lodgings in a more respectable street. Predevote, like you and me, To good or evil, as may come; His was the severer doom, — For he was an evil Cotter, And a polygamic Potter. And the last is Peter Bell, Damned since our first parents fell, Damned eternally to Hell — Surely he deserves it well ! PART THE FIRST DEATH I AND Peter Bell, when he had been With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed, Grew serious — from his dress and mien ’T was very plainly to be seen Peter was quite reformed. It His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down; His accent caught a nasal twang; He oiled his hair; there might be heard The grace of God in every word Which Peter said or sang. Il But Peter now grew old, and had An ill no doctor could unravel: PETER BELL THE THIRD 261 His torments almost drove him mad; Some said it was a fever bad; Some swore it was the gravel. Iv His holy friends then came about, And with long preaching and persnasion Convinced the patient that without The smallest shadow of a doubt He was predestined to damnation. Vv They said —‘ Thy name is Peter Bell; Thy skin is of a brimstone hue; Alive or dead —ay, sick or well — The one God made to rhyme with hell; The other, I think, rhymes with you.’ VI Then Peter set up such a yell ! The nurse, who with some water gruel Was climbing up the stairs, as well As her old legs could climb them — fell, And broke them both —the fall was cruel, VII The Parson from the casement leapt Into the lake of Windermere; And many an eel — though no adept In God’s right reason for it — kept Gnawing his kidneys half a year. VIII And all the rest rushed through the door, And tumbled over one another, And broke their skulls. — Upon the floor Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore, And cursed his father and his mother; IX And raved of God, and sin, and death, Blaspheming like an infidel; And said that with his clenchéd teeth He’d seize the earth from underneath And drag it with him down to hell. x As he was speaking came a spasm And wrenched his gnashing teeth asun- der; Like one who sees a strange phantasm He lay, — there was a silent chasm Betwixt his upper jaw and under. XI And yellow death lay on his face; And a fixed smile that was not human Told, as I understand the case, | That he was gone to the wrong place. I heard all this from the old woman. XII 2 Then there came down from Langdale Pike A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail; It swept over the mountains like An ocean, — and I heard it strike The woods and crags of Grasmere vale. XIII And I saw the black storm come Nearer, minute after minute; Its thunder made the cataracts dumb; With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum, It neared as if the Devil was in it. XIV The Devil was in it; he had bought Peter for half-a~erown; and when The storm which bore him vanished, nought That in the house that storm had caught Was ever seen again. XV The gaping neighbors came next day; They found all vanished from the shore; The Bible, whence he used to pray, Half scorched under a hen-coop lay; Smashed glass —and nothing more ! PART THE SECOND THE DEVIL I Tue Devil, I safely can aver, Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting; Nor is he, as some sages swear, A spirit, neither here nor there, In nothing — yet in everything. II He is — what we are; for sometimes The Devil is a gentleman; At others a bard bartering rhymes For sack; a statesman spinning crimes: A swindler, iiving as he ean; 262 FETER BELL THE THIRD III A thief, who cometh in the night, With whole buvts and net pantaloons, Like some one whom it were not right To mention, — or the luckless wight, From whom he steals nine silver spoons. IV But in this case he did appear Like a slop-merchant from Wapping, And with smug face and eye severe On every side did perk and peer Till he saw Peter dead or napping. Vv He had on an upper Benjamin (For he was of the driving schism) In the which he wrapped his skin From the storm he travelled in, For fear of rheumatism. VI He called the ghost out of the corse, — It was exceedingly like Peter, Only its voice was hollow and hoarse; {t had a queerish look, of course; Its dress tuo was a little neater. VII The Devil knew not his name and lot; Peter knew not that he was Bell; Each had an upper stream of thought, Which made all seem as it was not, Fitting itself to all things well. Vill Peter thought he had parents dear, Brothers, sisters, consins, cronies, In the fens of Lincolnshire; He perhaps had found them there Had he gone and boldly shown his IX Solemn phiz in his own village, Where he thought oft when a boy He’d clomb the orchard walls to pillage The produce of his neighbor’s tillage, With marvellous pride and joy. x And the Devil thought he had, “Mid the misery and confusion Of an unjust war, just made A fortune by the gainful trade Of giving soldiers rations bad— The world is full of strange delusion; xXI That he had a mansion planned In a square like Grosvenor-square, That he was aping fashion, and That he now came to Westmoreland To see what was romantic there. XII And all this, though quite ideal, Ready at a breath to vanish, Was a state not more unreal Than the peace he could not feel, Or the care he could not banish. XIII After a little conversation, The Devil told Peter, if he chose, He ’d bring him to the world of fashion By giving him a situation In his own service — and new clothes. XIV And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud, And after waiting some few days For a new livery — dirty yellow Turned up with black—the wretched fellow Was bowled to Hell in the Devil’s chaise. PART THE THIRD HELL I HEtt is a city much like London — A populous and a smoky city; There are all sorts of people undone, And there is little or no fun done; Small justice shown, and still less pity. II There is a Castles, and a Canning, A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh; All sorts of caitiff corpses planning All sorts of cozening for trepanning Corpses less corrupt than they. Ill There isa , who has lost His wits, or sold them, none knows which; PETER BELL THE THIRD 263 He walks about a double ghost, And, though as thin as Fraud almost, Ever grows more grim and rich. Iv There is a Chancery Court; a King; A manufacturing mob; a set Of thieves who by themselves are sent Similar thieves to represent; An army; and a public debt. Vv Which last is a scheme of paper money, And means — being interpreted — ‘Bees, keep your wax — give us the honey, And we will plant, while skies are sunny, Flowers, which in winter serve instead.’ VI There is great talk of revolution — And a great chance of despotism — German soldiers — camps — confusion — Tumults — lotteries — rage — delusion — Gin — suicide — and methodism; VII Taxes too, on wine and bread, And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese, From which those patriots pure are fed, Who gorge before they reel to bed, The tenfold essence of all these. VIII There are mincing women, mewing (Like cats, who amant miseré) Of their own virtue, and pursuing Their gentler sisters to that ruin Without which — what were chastity ? IX Lawyers — judges — old hobnobbers Are there — bailiffs — chancellors — Bishops — great and little robbers — Rhymesters — pamphleteers — stock-job- bers — Men of glory in the wars; x Things whose trade is, over ladies To lean, and flirt, and stare, and sim- per, Till all that is divine in woman Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman, Crucified ’twixt a smile and whimper; XI Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling, Frowning, preaching — such a riot! Each with never-ceasing labor, Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbor, Cheating his own heart of quiet. XII And all these meet at levees; Dinners convivial and political; Suppers of epic poets; teas, Where small talk dies in agonies; Breakfasts professional and critical; XIII Lunches and snacks so aldermanic That one would furnish forth ten din< ners, Where reigns a Cretan-tonguéd panic, Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic Should make some losers, and some winners; XIV At conversazioni — balls — Conventicles — and drawing-rooms — Courts of law — committees — calls Of a morning — clubs — book-stalls — Churches — masquerades — and tombs xv And this is Hell — and in this smother Are all damnable and damned; Each one, damning, damns the other; They are damned by one another, By none other are they damned. XVI *T is a lie to say, ‘God damns !’ Where was Heaven’s Attorney-General When they first gave out such flams ? Let there be an end of shains; They are mines of poisonous mineral. XVII Statesmen damn themselves to be Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls To the auction of a fee; Churehmen damn themselves to see God’s sweet love in burning coals. XVIII The rich are damned, beyond all cure, To taunt. and starve, and trample on 264 PETER BELL THE THIRD The weak and wretched; and the poor Damn their broken hearts to endure Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan. XIX Sometimes the poor are damned indeed To take, not means for being blessed, But Cobbett’s snuff, revenge; that weed From which the worms that it doth feed Squeeze less than they before pos- sessed. XX And some few, like we know who, Damned — but God alone knows why — To believe their minds are given ‘fo make this ugly Hell a Heaven; In which faith they live and die. XXI Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken, Each man, be he sound or no, Must indifferently sicken; As when day begins to thicken, None knows a pigeon from a crow; XXII So good and bad, sane and mad, The oppressor and the oppressed; Those who weep to see what others Smile to inflict upon their brothers; Lovers, haters, worst and best; XXIII All are damned — they breathe an air, Thick, infected, joy-dispelling; Each pursues what seems most fair, Mining, like moles, through mind, and there Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care In thronéd state is ever dwelling. PART THE FOURTH SIN I Lo, Peter in Hell’s Grosvenor-square, A footman in the Devil’s service ! And the misjudging world would swear That every man in service there To virtue would prefer vice. II But Peter, though now damned, was not What Peter was before damnation. Men oftentimes prepare a lot Which, ere it finds them, is not what Suits with their genuine station. Ill All things that Peter saw and felt Had a peculiar aspect to him ; And when they came within the belt Of his own nature, seemed to melt, Like cloud to cloud, into him. IV And so the outward world uniting To that within him, he became Considerably uninviting To those, who meditation slighting, Were moulded in « different frame. Vv And he scorned them, and they scorned him; And he scorned all they did; and they Did all that men of their own trim Are wont to do to please their whim — Drinking, lying, swearing, play. VI Such were his fellow-servants; thus His virtue, like our own, was built Too much on that indignant fuss Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us To bully one another’s guilt. VII He had a mind which was somehow At once circuinference and centre Of all he might or feel or know; Nothing went ever out, although Something did ever enter. Vil He had as much imagination As a pint-pot;— he never could Fancy another situation, From which to dart his contemplation, Than that wherein he stood. IX Yet his was individual mind, And new-created all he saw In a new manner, and refined PETER BELL 265 THE THIRD Those new creations, and combined Them, by a master-spirit’s law x Thus — though unimaginative — An apprehension clear, intense, Of his mind’s work, had made alive The things it wrought on; I believe Wakening a sort of thought in sense. xI But from the first ’t was Peter’s drift To be a kind of moral eunuch; He touched the hem of Nature’s shift, Felt faint — and never dared uplift The closest, all-concealing tunic. XII She laughed the while, with an arch smile, And kissed him with a sister’s kiss, And said — ‘ My best Diogenes, 1 love you well — but, if you please, Tempt aot again my deepest bliss. XIII ‘’Tis you are cold — for I, not coy, Yield love for love, frank, warm and true; And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy — His errors prove it — knew my joy More, learned friend, than you. XIV ‘ Bocca bacciata non perde ventura Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna: — So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.’ XV Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe, And smoothed his spacious forehead down, With his broad palm; ’twixt love and fear, He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer, And in his dream sate down. XVI The Devil was no uncommon creature; A leaden-witted thief — just huddled Out of the dross and scum of nature; A toad-like lump of limb and feature, With mind, and heart, and fancy mud- dled. XVII He was that heavy, dull, cold thing, The spirit of evil well may be; A drone too base to have a sting; Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing, And calls lust luxury. XVIII Now he was quite the kind of wight Round whom collect, at a fixed era, Venison, turtle, hock, and claret, — Good cheer — and those who come to share it — And best East Indian madeira ! XIX It was his fancy to invite Men of science, wit, and learning, Who came to lend each other light; He proudly thought that his gold’s might Had set those spirits burning. XX And men of learning, science, wit, Considered him as you and I Think of some rotten tree, and sit Lounging and dining under it, Exposed to the wide sky. XXI And all the while, with loose fat smile, The willing wretch sat winking there, Believing ’t was his power that made That jovial scene — and that all paid Homage to his unnoticed chair; XXII Though to be sure this place was Hell; He was the Devil — and all they — What though the claret circled well, And wit, like ocean, rose and fell? — Were damned eternally. PART THE FIFTH GRACE I Amone the guests who often stayed Till the Devil’s petits-soupers, 266 PETER BELL A man there came, fair as a maid, And Peter noted what he said, Standing behind his master’s chair. Il He was a mighty poet —and A subtle-souled psychologist; All things he seemed to understand, Of old or new — of sea or land — But his own mind — which was a mist. Ill This was a man who might have turned Hell into Heaven — and so in gladness A Heaven unto himself have earned; But he in shadows undiscerned Trusted, — and damned himself to mad- ness. Iv He spoke of poetry, and how ‘Divine it was — a light —a love — A spirit which like wind doth blow As it listeth, to and fro; A dew rained down from God above; v ‘A power which comes and goes like dream, And which none can ever trace — Heaven’s light on earth — Truth’s brightest bean.’ And when he ceased there lay the gleam Of those words upon his face. VI Now Peter, when he heard such talk, Would, heedless of a broken pate, Stand like a man asleep, or balk Some wishing guest of knife or fork, Or drop and break his master’s plate. Vil At night he oft would start and wake Like a lover, and began In a wild measure songs to make On moor, and glen, and rocky lake, And on the heart of man, — VII And on the universal sky, And the wide earth’s bosom green, And the sweet, strange mystery J£ what beyond these things may lie, And yet remain unseen. THE THIRD IX For in his thought he visited The spots in which, ere dead and damned, He his wayward life had led; Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed Which thus his fancy crammed. x And these obscure remembrances Stirred such harmony in Peter, That whensoever he should please, He could speak of rocks and trees In poetic metre. xI For though it was without a sense Of memory, yet he remembered well Many a ditch and quick-set fence; Of lakes he had intelligence; He knew something of heath and fell. XII He had also dim recollections Of pedlers tramping on their rounds; Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections Of saws and proverbs; and reflections Old parsons make in burying-grounds. XII But Peter’s verse was clear, and came Announcing from the frozen hearth Of a cold age, that none might tame The soul of that diviner flame It augured to the Earth; XIV Like gentle rains, on the dry plains, Making that green which late was gray, Or like the sudden moon, that stains Some gloomy chamber’s window panes With a broad light like day. xv For language was in Peter’s hand Like clay while he was yet a potter; And he made songs for all the land, Sweet, both to feel and understand, As pipkins late to mountain cotter. XVI And Mr. , the bookseller, Gave twenty pounds for some; — then scorning PETER BELL THE THIRD A footman’s yellow coat to wear, Peter, too proud of heart, I fear, Instantly gave the Devil warning. XVII Whereat the Devil took offence, And swore in his soul a great oath then, ‘That for his damned impertinence, He’d bring him to a proper sense Of what was due to gentlemen !’ PART THE SIXTH DAMNATION I ‘O THAT mine enemy had written A book !’ — cried Job; a fearful curse, If to the Arab, as the Briton, °T was galling to be critic-bitten; The Devil to Peter wished no worse. II When Peter’s next new book found vent, The Devil to all the first Reviews A copy of it slyly sent, With five-pound note as compliment, And this short notice —‘ Pray abuse.’ III Then seriatim, month and quarter, Appeared such mad tirades. One said, — ‘ Peter seduced Mrs. Foy’s daughter, Then drowned the mother in Ullswater The last thing as he went to bed.’ Iv Another — ‘ Let him shave his head ! Where’s Dr. Willis? —Or is he jok- ing ? What does the rascal mean or hope, No longer imitating Pope, In that barbarian Shakespeare poking ?’ Vv One more, ‘ Is incest not enough, And must there be adultery too ? Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar! Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire Is twenty times too good tor you. 264 VI ‘By that last book of yours WE think You’ve double damned yourself to scorn; We warned you whilst yet on the brink You stood. From your black name will shrink The babe that is unborn.’ VII All these Reviews the Devil made Up in a parcel. which he had Safely to Peter’s house conveyed. For carriage, tenpence Peter paid — Untied them — read them — went half- mad. VIII ‘What!’ cried he, ‘ this is my reward For nights of thought, and days of toil ? Do poets, but to be abhorred By men of whom they never heard, Consume their spirits’ oil ? IX “What have I done to them? — and who Is Mrs. Foy? ’T is very cruel To speak of me and Betty so! Adultery ! God defend me! Oh! I’ve half a mind to fight a duel. x ‘Or,’ cried he, a grave look collecting, ‘Is it my genius, like the moon, Sets those who stand her face inspecting, That face within their brain reflecting, Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune ? xI For Peter did not know the town, But thought, as country readers do, For half a guinea or a crown He bought oblivion or renown From God’s own voice in a Review. XII All Peter did on this occasion Was writing some sad stuff in prose. It is a dangerous invasion When poets criticise; their station Ts to delight, not pose. 268 PETER BELL THE THIRD XIII The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair, For Born’s translation of Kant’s book; A world of words, tail foremost, where Right, wrong, false, true, and foul, and fair With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride, Mocking and mowing by his side — A mad-brained goblin for a guide — Over cornfields, gates and hedges. XXI As in a lottery-wheel are shook; After these ghastly rides, he came Home to his heart, and found from XIV thence Much stolen of its accustomed flame; His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame Of their intelligence. Five thousand crammed octavo pages Of German psychologies, — he Who his furor verborum assuages Thereon deserves just seven months’ wages a XXII Mone: seam sel Sip be sine Eo ie To Peter’s view, all seemed one hue; xv He was no whig, he was no tory; I looked on them nine several days, Ne Deist ae ia rae he; And then I saw that they were bad; Nein eae a ooh e A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise, — Obnmng, Was Oh Bis BlOrys He never read them; with amaze an I found Sir William Drummond had. ‘ ne Pahoa ‘ One single point in his belief XVI From his organization sprung, The heart-enrooted faith, the chief Ear in his doctrines’ blighted sheaf, That ‘happiness is wrong.’ When the book came, the Devil sent It to P. Verbovale, Esquire, With a brief note of compliment, By that night’s Carlisle mail. It went, And set his soul on fire — pemen So thought Calvin and Dominic; XVII So think their fierce successors, who Fire, which ex luce prebens fumum Even now would neither stint. nor stick Made him beyond the fe aes Our flesh from off our bones to pick, Of truth’s clear well — when I and you, If they might ‘do their do. Ma’am, Go, as we shall do, subter humum, XXV We may know more than he. His morals thus were undermined ; The old Peter — the hard, old Potter XVIII Was born anew within his mind; Now Peter ran to seed in soul He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined, Into a walking paradox; As when he tramped beside the Otte: For he was neither part nor whole, Nor good, nor bad, nor knave nor fool, — AME Among the woods and rocks. In the death hues of agony Lambently flashing from a fish, XIX Now Peter felt amused to see Furious he rode, where late he ran, Shades like a rainbow’s rise and flee, Lashing and spurring his tame hobby; Mixed with a certain hungry wish. Turned to a formal puritan, A solemn and unsexnal man, — XXVII He half believed White Obi. So in his Country’s dying face He looked — and lovely as she lay, xX Seeking in vain his last embrace, This steed in vision he would ride, Wailing her own abandoned ease, High trotting over nine-inch bridges. With hardened sneer he turned away; PETER BELL THE THIRD 269 XXVIII And coolly to his own soul said, — ‘Do you not think that we might make A poem on her when she’s dead; Or, no —a thought is in my head — Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take; XXIX ‘My wife wants one. Let who will bury This mangled corpse! And I and you, My dearest Soul, will then make merry, As the Prince Regent did with Sherry, — Ay —and at last desert me too.’ XXX And so his soul would not be gay, But moaned within him; like a fawn Moaning within a cave, it lay Wounded and wasting, day by day, Till all its life of life was gone. XXXI As troubled skies stain waters clear, The storm in Peter’s heart and mind Now made his verses dark and queer; They were the ghosts of what they were, Shaking dim grave clothes in the wind. XXXII For he now raved enormous folly, Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, Graves; ’T would make George Colman melancholy To have heard him, like a male Molly, Chanting those stupid staves. and XXXIIT Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse On Peter while he wrote for freedom, So soon as in his song they spy The folly which soothes tyranny, Praise him, for those who feed ’em. XXXIV ‘He was a man, too great to scan; A planet lost in truth’s keen rays; His virtue, awful and prodigious; He was the most sublime, religious, Pure-minded Poet of these days.’ XXXV As soon as he read that, cried Peter, ‘Eureka! I have found the way Tec make a better thing of metre Than e’er was made by living creature Up to this blessed day.’ XXXVI Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil, In one of which he meekly said: ‘May Carnage and Slaughter, Thy niece and thy daughter, May Rapine and Famine, Thy gorge ever cramming, Glut thee with living and dead ! XXXVII ‘May death and damnation, And consternation, Flit up from hell with pure intent ! Slash them at Manchester, Glasgow, Leeds and Chester; Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent. XXXVIIT ‘ Let thy body-guard yeomen Hew down babes and women And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven ; be rent ! When Moloch in Jewry Munehed children with fury, It was thou, Devil, dining with pure in- tent.’ PART THE SEVENTH DOUBLE DAMNATION I Tue Devil now knew his proper cue. Soon as he read the ode, he drove To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse’s, A man of interest in both houses, And said: — ‘ For money or for love, II ‘Pray find some cure or sinecure; To feed from the superfluous taxes, A friend of ours —a poet; fewer Have fluttered tamer to the lure Than he.’ His lordship stands and racks his TIT Stupid brains, while one might count As many beads as he had boroughs, —~ 270 PETER BELL THE THIRD At length replies, from his mean front, Like one who rubs out an account, Smoothing away the unmeaning fur- TOws: Iv ‘It happens fortunately, dear Sir, Ican. I hope I need require No pledge from you that he will stir In our affairs; — like Oliver, That he ’ll be worthy of his hire.’ Vv These words exchanged, the news sent off To Peter, home the Devil hied, — Took to his bed; he had no cough, No doctor, — meat and drink enough, — Yet that same night he died. VI The Devil’s corpse was leaded down; His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf; Mourning-coaches, many a one, Followed his hearse along the town; — Where was the Devil himself ? VII When Peter heard of his promotion, His eyes grew like two stars for bliss; There was a bow of sleek devotion, Engendering in his back; each motion Seemed a Lord’s shoe to kiss. VIII He hired a house, bought plate, and made A genteel drive up to his door, With sifted gravel neatly laid, As if defying all who said, Peter was ever poor. Ix But a disease soon struck into The very life and soul of Peter; He walked about — slept — had the hue Of health upon his cheeks — and few Dug better — none a heartier eater. x And yet a strange and horrid curse Clung upen Peter, night and day; Month after month the thing grew worse, And deadlier than in this my verse I can tind strength to say. xI Peter was dull — he was at first Dull — oh, so dull — so very dull! Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed ~ Still with this dulness was he cursed — Dull — beyond all conception — dull. XII No one could read his books — no mortal, But a few natural friends, would hear him; The parson came not near his portal; His state was like that of the immortal Described by Swift — no man could bear him. XIII His sister, wife, and children yawned, With a long, slow, and drear ennui, All human patience far beyond; Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned Anywhere else to be. XIV But in his verse, and in his prose, The essence of his dulness was Concentred and compressed so close, °T would have made Guatimozin doze On his red gridiron of brass. xV A printer’s boy, folding those pages, Fell slumbrously upon one side, Like those famed seven who slept three ages; To wakeful frenzy’s vigil rages, As opiates, were the same applied. XVI Even the Reviewers who were hired To do the work of his reviewing, With adamantine nerves, grew tired; Gaping and torpid they retired To dream of what they should be do- ing. XVII And worse and worse the drowsy curse Yawned in him, till it grew a pest — A wide contagious atmosphere Creeping like cold through all things near, A power to infect and to infest THE WITCH OF ATLAS 271 XVIII flis servant-maids and dogs grew dull; His kitten, late a sportive elf ; The woods and lakes, so beautiful, Of dim stupidity were full; All grew dullas Peter’s self. XIX The earth under his feet — the springs Which lived within it a quick life, The air, the winds of many wings That fan it with new murmurings, Were dead to their harmonious strife. XX The birds and beasts within the wood, The insects, and each creeping thing, Were now a silent multitude; Love’s work was left unwrought — no brood Near Peter’s house took wing. XXI And every neighboring cottager Stupidly yawned upon the other; THE WITCH The Witch of Atlas was conceived during a solitary walk from the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, to the top of Monte San Pellegrino, August 12, 1820, and was written August 14, 15, and 16. It was sent to Ollier to be pub- lished with Shelley’s name, but was first issued in Mrs. Shelley’s edition of the Posthumous Poems, 1824. Her own note gives all our in- formation concerning it, except Sheliey’s char- acteristic sigh ‘if its merit be measured by the labor which it cost, [it] is worth nothing.’ Mrs. Shelley writes : ‘We spent the summer at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. We made several excur- sions in the neighborhood. The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered pictur- esque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome, intelligent race, and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pelegrino — a mountain of some height, on the top of which No jackass brayed; no little cur : Cocked up his ears; no man would stii To save a dying mother. XXII Yet all from that charmed district went But some half-idiot and half-knave, Who rather than pay any rent Would live with marvellous content Over his father’s grave. XXIII No bailiff dared within that space, For fear of the dull charm, to enter; A man would bear upon his face, For fifteen months in any case, The yawn of such a venture. XXIV Seven miles above — below — around — This pest of dulness holds its sway; A ghastly life without a sound; To Peter's soul the spell is bound — How should it ever pass away ? OF ATLAS there is a chapel, the object, during certain days in the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted, though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude and weakness on his re- turn. During the expedition he conceived the idea and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, The Witch of Atlas. This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes — wildly fanciful, full of brilliant ima- gery, and discarding human interest and pas- sion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested. ‘ The surpassing excellence of The Cenct had made me greatly desire that Shelley should in- erease his popularity, by adopting subjects that would more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the abstract and dreamy spirit of The Witch of Atlas. It was not only that I wished him to acquire popularity as redound- ing to his fame ; but I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers, and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavors. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me on my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was in the right 272 THE WITCH OF ATLAS Shelley did not expect sympathy and approba- tion from the public; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardor that ought to have sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own resources and on the inspiration of his own soul, and wrote because his mind over- flowed, without the hope of being appreciated. T had not the most distant wish that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his lofty aspira- tions for the human race to the low ambition and pride of the many, but I felt sure that if his poems were more addressed to the common feelings of men, his proper rank among the writers of the day would be acknowledged ; and that popularity as a poet would enable his countrymen to do justice to his character and virtues ; which, in those days, it was the mode to attack with the most flagitious calum- nies and insulting abuse. That he felt these things deeply cannot be doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart sometimes in solitude, and he would write a few unfinished verses that showed that he felt the sting. . . . TO MARY ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CON- TAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST I How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review, That you condemn these verses I have written, Becanse they tell no story, false or true! What, though no mice are canght by a young kitten, May it not leap and play as grown cats 9, Till its claws come ? Prithee, for this one time, Content thee with a visionary rhyme. I What hand would crush the silken-wingéd y: The youngest of inconstant April’s min- ions, Because it cannot climb the purest sky, Where the swan sings, amid the sun’s dominions ? Not thine. Thou knowest ’tis its doom to die, ‘I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish, if the chord of sympathy be- tween him and his countrymen were touched. But my persuasions were vain; the mind could not be bent from its natural inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart, and he loved to shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting love and hate and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as borrowed their hues from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine or paly twilight, from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of the woods; which celebrated the singing of the winds among the pines, the flow of a mur- muring stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds which nature creates in her solitudes. These are the materials which form The Witch of Atlas; it is a brilliant congregation of ideas, such as his senses gathered, and his fancy colored, during his rambles in the sunny land he so much loved.’ When day shall hide within her twilight pinions The lucent eyes. and the eternal smile, Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile. ul To thy fair feet a wingéd Vision came, Whose date should have been longer than a day, And o’er thy head did beat its wings for fame, And in thy sight its fading plumes dis- play; The watery bow burned in the evening flame, But the shower fell, the swift sun went his way — And that is dead. Oh, let me not believe That anything of mine is fit to live! IV Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years Considering and retouching Peter Bell; Watering his laurels with the killing tears Of cri dull care, so that their roots to e Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres Of heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers}; this well THE WITCH OF ATLAS 273 May a for Heaven and Earth conspire to oil The over-busy gardener’s blundering toil. Vv My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise Clothes for our grandsons — but matches Peter, Though he took nineteen years, and she three days, In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays, Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress Like King Lear’s ‘looped and windowed raggedness.’ she VI If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow Scorched by Hell’s hyperequatorial cli- mate Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow: A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at; In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello. If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate Can shrive you of that sin, — if sin there be In love, when it becomes idolatry. I BrroreE those cruel Twins, whom at one birth Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, Error and Truth, had hunted from the earth All those bright natures which adorned its prime, And left us nothing to believe in, worth The pains of putting into learnéd rhyme, A Lady-Witch there lived on Atlas’ moun- tain Within « cavern by a secret fountain. II Her mother was one of the Atlantides; The all-beholding Sun had ne’er beholden In his wide voyage o’er continents and seas So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden In the warm shadow of her loveliness; He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden The chamber of gray rock in which she lay; She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away. Il Tis said, she first was changed into a va- por. ; And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit, Like splendor-wingéd moths about a taper, Round the red west when the sun dies in it; And then into a meteor, such as caper On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit; Then, into one of those mysterious stars Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars. IV Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent Her bow beside the folding-star, anc bidden With that bright sign the billows to in- dent The sea-deserted sand — like children chidden, At her command they ever came and went— Since in that cave a dewy splendor hid- den Took shape and motion; with the living form Of this embodied Power the cave grew warm. Vv A lovely lady garmented in light From her own beauty; deep her eyes as are Two openings of unfathomable night Seen through a temple’s cloven roof; her hair Dark; the dim brain whirls dizzy with de- light. Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar, And her low voice was heard like love, and drew All living things towards this wonder new. VI And first the spotted camelopard came, And then the wise and fearless elephant; Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame THE WITCH OF ATLAS 274 Of his own volumes intervolved. All gaunt And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame; They drank before her at her sacred fount; And every beast of beating heart grew bold, Such gentleness and power even to behold. vil The brinded lioness led forth her young, That she might teach thei how they should forego Their inborn thirst of death; the pard un- strung His sinews at her feet, and sought to know, With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue, How he might be as gentle as the doe. The magic circle of her voice and eyes All savage natures did imparadise. VIII And old Silenus, shaking a green stick Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick Cicade are, drunk with the noonday dew; And Dryope and Faunus followed quick, Teasing the god to sing them something new; Till in this cave they found the Lady lone, Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone. Ix And universal Pan, ’t is said, was there; And — though none saw him — through the adamant Of the deep mountains, through the track- less air And through those living spirits, like a want, He passed out of his everlasting lair Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant, And felt that wondrous Lady all alone, — And she felt him upon her emerald throne. x And every nymph of stream and spreading tree, And every shepherdess of Ocean’s flocks, Who drives her white waves over the green sea. And Ocean, with the brine on his gray locks, And quaint Priapus with his company, All came, much wondering how the en- wombéd rocks Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth; Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth. XI The herdsman and the mountain maidens came, And the rnde kings of pastoral Garamant; Their spirits shook within them, as a flame Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt; Pygmies, and Polyplhemes, by manya name, Centaurs and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt Wet clefts, and lumps neither alive nor dead, Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, aud bird-footed. XII For she was beautiful; her beauty made The bright world dim, and everything beside Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade; No thought of living spirit could abide, Which to her looks had ever been betrayed, On any object in the world so wide, On any hope within the circling skies, But on her form, and in her inmost eyes. XIII Which when the Lady knew, she took her spindle And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle The clouds and waves and mountains with; and she As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle In the belated moon, wound skilfully; And with these threads a subtle veil she wove — A shadow for the splendor of her love. XIV The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling Were stored with magic treasures— sounds of air THE WITCH OF ATLAS 275 Which had the power all spirits of com- pelling, Folded in cells of crystal silence there; Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling Will never die — yet ere we are aware, The feeling and the sound are fled and one, And the regret they leave remains alone. XV And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint, Each in its thin sheath like a chrysalis; Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint With the soft burden of intensest bliss It is its work to bear to many a saint Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is, Even Love’s; and others white, green, gray, and black, And of all shapes —and each was at her beck. XVI And odors in a kind of aviary Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, Clipped in a floating net a love-sick Fairy Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept; As bats at the wired window of a dairy, They beat their vans; and each was an adept, When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds, To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds, XVII And liquors clear and sweet, whose health- ful might Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep, And change eternal death into a night Of glorious dreams — or, if eyes needs must weep, Could make their tears all wonder and de- light — She in her crystal vials did closely eep; If men could drink of those clear vials, ’t is said, The living were not envied of the dead. XVIII Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device, The works of some Saturnian Archi- mage, Which taught the expiations at whose price Men from the gods might win that happy age Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice; And which might quench the earth-con- suming rage Of gold and blood, till men should live and move Harmonious as the sacred stars above; XIX And how all things that seem untamable, Not to be checked and not to be confined, Obey the spells of wisdom’s wizard skill; Time, earth and fire, the ocean and the wind, And all their shapes, and man’s imperial will; And other serolls whose writings did un- bind The inmost lore of Love — let the profane Tremble to ask what secrets they contain. XX And wondrous works of substances un- known, To which the enchantment of her father’s power Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone, Were heaped in the recesses of her bower; Carved lamps and chalices, and vials which shone In their own golden beams — each like a flower Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light Under a cypress in a, starless night. XXI At first she lived alone in this wild home, And her own thoughts were each a min- ister, Clothing themselves or with the ocean-foam, Or we the wind, or with the speed of re, To work whatever purposes might come ae Ber mind; such power her mighty ire 276 THE WITCH OF ATLAS Had girt them with, whether to fly or run, Through ali the regions which he shines upon. XXII The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades, Oreads and Naiads with long weedy locks, Offered to do her bidding through the seas, Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks, And far beneath the matted roots of trees, And in the gnarléd heart of stubborn oaks, So they might live forever in the light Of her sweet presence — each a satellite. XXII ‘This may not be,’ the Wizard Maid re- plied; ‘The fountains where the Naiades bedew Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried; The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide; The boundless ocean, like a drop of dew, Will be consumed —the stubborn centre must Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust; XXIV ‘And ye with them will perish one by one. If I must sigh to think that this shall be, If I must weep when the surviving Sun Shall smile on your decay, oh, ask not me To love you till your little race is run; I cannot die as ye must — over me Your leaves shall glance — the streams in which ye dwell Shall be my paths henceforth, and so — farewell !’ XXV She spoke and wept; the dark and azure 1 we Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears, And every little cirelet where they fell Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres And intertangled lines of light; a knell Of sobbing voices came upon her ears From those departing Forms, o’er the se- rene Of the white streams and of the forest green. XXVI All day the Wizard Lady sate aloof, Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity, Under the cavern’s fountain-lighted roof; Or broidering the pictured poesy Of some high tale upon her growing woof, Which the sweet splendor of her smiles could dye In hues outshining Heaven — and ever she Added some grace to the wrought poesy. XXVII While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece Of sandal-wood, rare gums and cinnamon; Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is; Each flame of it is as a precious stone Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this Belongs to each and all who gaze upon; The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand. XXVIII This Lady never slept, but lay in trance All night within the fountain, as in sleep. Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty’s glance; Through the green splendor of the water dee She saw the constellations reel and dance Like fire-flies, and withal did ever keep The tenor of her contemplations calm, With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm. XXIX And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended From the white pinnacles of that cold hill, She passed at dewfall to a space extended, Where, in a lawn of flowering asphodel Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended, There yawned an inextinguishable well Of crimson fire, full even to the brim, And overflowing all the margin trim; XXX Within the which she lay when the fierce war Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor In many a mimic moon and bearded star, THE WITCH OF ATLAS 277 O’er woods and lawns; the serpent heard it flicker In sleep, and, dreaming still, he crept afar; And when the windless snow descended thicker Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came Melt on the surface of the level flame. XXXI She had a boat which some say Vulcan wrought For Venus, as the chariot of her star; But it was found too feeble to be fraught With all the ardors in that sphere which are, And so she sold it, and Apollo bought And gave it to this daughter; from a car Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat Which ever upon mortal stream did float. XXXII And others say, that, when but three hours old The Syst beru Love out of his cradle leapt, And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold, And like a horticultural adept, Stole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould, And sowed it in his mother’s star, and kept Watering it all the summer with sweet dew, And with his wings fanning it as it grew. XXXIIT The plant grew strong and green; the snowy flower Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began To turn the light and dew by inward power To its own substance; woven tracery ran Of light firm texture, ribbed and branch- ing, o’er The solid rind, like a leaf’s veinéd fan, Of which Love scooped this boat, and with soft motion Piloted it round the cireumfluons ocean. XXXIV This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit A living spirit within all its frame, Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. Couched on the fountain, like a panther tame — One of the twain at Evan’s feet that sit — Or as on Vesta’s sceptre a swift flame, Or on blind Homer’s heart a wingéd thought, — In joyous expectation lay the boat. XXXV Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow Together, tempering the repugnant mass With liquid love — all things together grow Through which the harmony of love can pass: And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow, A living Image, which did far surpass In beauty that bright shape of vital stone Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion. XXXVI A sexless thing it was, and in its growth It seemed to have developed no defect Of either sex, yet all the grace of both; In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked; The bosom lightly swelled with its full youth, The countenance was such as might select Some artist that his skill should never die, Imaging forth such perfect purity. XXXVII From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings, Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere, Tipped with the speed of liquid lightnings, Dyed in the ardors of the atmosphere. She led her creature to the boiling springs Where the light boat was moored, and said, ‘ Sit here !’ And pointed to the prow and took her seat Beside the rudder with opposing feet. XXXVIII And down the streams which clove those mountains vast, Around their inland islets, and amid The panther-peopled forests, whose shade east Darkness and odors, and a pleasure hid In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed; By many a star-surrounded pyramid Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky, And caverns yawning round unfathomably 278 THE WITCH OF ATLAS XXXIX The silver noon into that winding dell, With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops, Temperen like golden evening, feebly fell; A green and glowing light, like that which drops From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell, When earth over her face night’s mantle wraps; Between the severed mountains lay on high, Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky. xL And ever as she went, the Image lay With folded wings and unawakened eyes; And o’er its gentle countenance did play The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies, Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay, And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain, They had aroused from that full heart and brain. XLI And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went; Now lingering on the pools, in which abode The calm and darkness of the deep con- tent In which they paused; now o’er the shallow road Of white and dancing waters, all besprent With sand and polished pebbles: mortal boat In such a shallow rapid could not float. XLII And down the earthquaking cataracts, which shiver Their snow-like waters into golden air, Or under chasms unfathomable ever Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear A subterranean portal for the river, It fled — the circling sunbows did upbear Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray, -Lighting it far upon its lampless way. = ” XLIIr And when the Wizard Lady would ascend The labyrinths of some many-winding vale, Which to the inmost mountain upward tend, She called ‘ Hermaphroditus !’ and the pale And heavy hue which slumber could extend Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale A rapid shadow from a slope of grass, Into the darkness of the stream did pass. XLIV And it unfurled its heaven-colored pinions, With stars of fire spotting the stream below, And from above into the Sun’s dominions Flinging a glory, like the golden glow In which Spring clothes her emerald-wingéd minions, All interwoven with fine feathery snow And moonlight splendor of intensest rime With which frost paints the pines in winter time; XLV And then it winnowed the Elysian air, Which ever hung about that lady bright, With its ethereal vans; and _ speeding there, Like a star up the torrent of the night, Or a swift eagle in the morning glare Breasting the whirlwind with impetuons flight, The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings, Clove the fierce streams towards their up- per springs. XLVI The water flashed, like sunlight by the prow Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven; The still air seemed as if its waves did flow In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven The lady’s radiant hair streamed to and fro; Beneath, the billows, striven Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel The swift and steady motion of the keel. having vainly THE WITCH OF ATLAS 279 XLVII LI Or, when the weary moon was in the wane, | On which that Lady played her many Or in the noon of interlunar night, The Lady-Witch. in visions could not chain Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain Its storm-outspeediug wings the Herma- phrodite; She to the Austral waters took her way, Beyond the fabulous Thamandocana, XLVIII Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, Which rain could never bend, or whirl- blast shake, With the Antarctic constellations paven, Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake; There she would build herself a windless haven Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make The bastions of the storm, when through the sky The spirits of the tempest thundered by; XLIX A haven, beneath whose translucent floor The tremulous stars sparkled unfathom- ably, And around which the solid vapors hoar, Based on the level waters, to the sky Lifted their dreadful crags, and, like a shore Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly Hemnmned in, with rifts and precipices gray And hanging crags, many a cove and bay. L And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash Of the wind’s scourge foamed like a wounded thing, And the incessant hail with stony clash Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash Looked like the wreck of some wind- wandering Fragment of inky thunder-smoke — this haven Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven; pranks, Circling the image of a shooting star, Even as a tiger on Hydaspes’ banks Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are, In her light boat; and many quips anc cranks She played upon the water; till the car Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, To journey from the misty east began. LI And then she called out of the hollow tur- rets ' Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion, The armies of her ministering spirits; In mighty legions, million after million, They came, each troop emblazoning its merits On meteor flags; and many a proud pa-~ vilion Of the intertexture of the atmosphere They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere. LITI They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen Of woven exhalations, underlaid With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid With crimson silk; cressets from the serene Hung there, and on the water for her tread A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn, Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon. LIV And on a throne o’erlaid with starlight, caught Upon those wandering isles of aéry dew Which highest shoals of mountain ship- wreck not, She sate, and heard all that had hap- pened new Between the earth and moon since they had brought The last intelligence; and now she grew Pale as that moon lost in the watery night, And now she wept, and now she laughed outright. 280 THE WITCH OF ATLAS LV These were tame pleasures. often climb The steepest ladder of the crudded rack Up to some beakéd cape of cloud sublime, And like Arion on the dolphin’s back Ride singing through the shoreless air; oft-time Following the serpent lightning’s winding track, She ran upon the platforms of the wind, And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar be- She would hind, LVI And sometimes te those streams of upper air, Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round, She would ascend, and win the spirits there To let her join their chorus. Mortals found That on those days the sky was calm and fair, And mystic snatches of harmonious sound Wandered upon the earth where’er she passed, And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last. LVII Bat her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep, To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads Egypt and Zthiopia, from the steep Of utmost Axumé, until he spreads, Like a calm flock of silver-fleecéd sheep, His waters on the plain, — and crested heads Of cities and proud temples gleam amid, And many a vapor-belted pyramid; LVIII By Meris and the Mareotid lakes, Strewn with faint blooms, like bridal- chamber floors, Where naked boys bridling tame water- snakes, Or charioteering ghastly alligators, Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes Of those huge forms — within the brazen doors Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast; LIX And where within the surface of the river The shadows of the massy temples lie, And never are erased — but tremble ever Like things which every cloud can doom to die; Through lotus-paven canals, and whereso- ever The works of man pierced that serenest sky With tombs, and towers, and fanes, — ’t was her delight To wander in the shadow of the night. LX With motion like the spirit of that wind Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet Passed through the peopled haunts of hu- mankind, Scattering sweet visions from her pre- sence sweet; Through fane and palace-court and laby- rinth mined With many a dark and _ subterranean street Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep She passed, observing mortals in their sleep. LXI A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. Here lay two sister-twins in infancy; There a lone youth who in his dreams did weep; Within, two lovers linkéd innocently In their loose locks which over both did creep Like ivy from one stem; and there lay calm Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm. LXII But other troubled forms of sleep she saw, Not to be mirrored in a holy song; Distortions foul of supernatural awe, And pale imaginings of visioned wrong, And all the code of custom’s lawless law THE WITCH OF ATLAS 281 Written upon the brows of old and young; ‘This,’ said the Wizard Maiden, ‘is the strife Which stirs the liquid surface of man’s life.’ LXIII And little did the sight disturb her soul. We, the weak mariners of that wide lake, Where’er its shores extend or billows roll, Our course unpiloted and starless make O’er its wild surface to an unknown goal; But she in the calm depths her way could take Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide, Beneath the weltering of the restless tide. LXIV And she saw princes couched under the glow Of sun-like gems; and round each tem- ple-court In dormitories ranged, row after row, She saw the priests asleep, all of one sort, For all were educated to be so. The peasants in their huts, and in the port The sailors she saw cradled on the waves, And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. LXV And all the forms in which those spirits lay Were to her sight like the diaphanous Veils in which those sweet ladies oft array Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us Only their scorn of all concealment; they Move in the light of their own beauty thus. But these and all now lay with sleep upon them, And little thought a Witch was looking on them. LXVI She all those hnman figures breathing there Beheld as living spirits; to her eyes The naked beanty of the soul lay bare; And often through a rude and worn dis- ise She saw the inner form most bright and fair; And then she had a charm of strange device, Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, Could make that spirit mingle with her own. LXVIL Alas, Aurora! what wouldst thou have given For such a charm, when Tithon became gray ? Or how much, Venus, of thy silver Heaven Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proser- pina Had half (oh! why not all?) the debt for- given Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay To any witch who would have taught you it? The Heliad doth not know its value yet. LXVUlI ’T is said in after times her spirit free Knew what love was, and felt itself alone; But holy Dian could not chaster be Before she stooped to kiss Endymion, Than now this lady — like a sexless bee Tasting all blossoms and confined to none; Among those mortal forms the Wizard- Maiden Passed with an eye serene and heart un- laden. LXIX To those she saw most beautiful, she gave Strange panacea in a crystal bowl; They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, And lived thenceforward as if some con- trol, Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave Of such, when death oppressed the weary sonl, Was as a green and over-arching bower Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. LXX For on the night when they were buried, she Restored the embalmers’ ruining and shook The light out of the funeral lamps, to be A mimic day within that deathy nook; 282 THE WITCH OF ATLAS And she unwound the woven imagery Of second childhood’s swaddling bands, and took The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche, And threw it with contempt into a ditch. LXXI And there the body lay, age after age, Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, Like one asleep in a green hermitage, With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing, And living in its dreams beyond the rage Of death or life, while they were still arraying In liveries ever new the rapid, blind, And fleeting generations of mankind. LXXII And she would write strange dreams upon the brain Of those who were less beautiful, and make All harsh and crooked purposes more vain Than in the desert is the serpent’s wake Which the sand covers; all his evil gain The miser in such dreams would rise and shake Into a beggar’s lap; the lying scribe Would his own lies betray without a bribe. LXXIlI The priests would write an explanation full, Translating hieroglyphics into Greek, How the god Apis really was a bull, And nothing more; and bid the herald stick The same against the temple doors, and pull The old cant down; they licensed all to speak Whate’er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese, By pastoral letters to each diocese. LXXIV The king would dress an ape up in his crown And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat, ».nd on the right hand of the sun-like throne Would place a gaudy wock-bird to re- peat The chatterings of the monkey. Every one Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet Of their great emperor when the morning came, And kissed—alas, how many kiss the same! LXXV The soldiers dreamed that they were black- smiths, and Walked out of quarters in somnambu- lism; Round the red anvils you might see them stand, Like Cyclopses in Vulean’s sooty abysm, Beating their swords to ploughshares; in a band The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism Free through the streets of Memphis, — much, I wis, To the annoyance of king Amasis. LXXVI And timid lovers who had been so coy They hardly knew whether they loved or not, Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet Joy: To the fulfilment of their inmost thought; And when next day the maiden and the boy Met one another, botb, like sinners caught, Blushed at the thing which each believed was done Only in fancy — till the tenth moon shone; LXXVII And then the Witch would let them take no ill; Of many thousand schemes which lovers find The Witch found one, — and so they took their fill Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. Friends who, by practice of some envious skill, Were torn apart —a wide wound, mind from mind — She did unite again with visions clear Of deep affection and of truth sincere. ZEDIPUS TYRANNUS OR SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT 283 LXXVIII These were the pranks she played among the cities Of mortal men, and what she did to sprites And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties To do her will, and show their snbtle slights, I will declare another time; for it is A tale more fit for the weird winter nights Than for these garish summer days, when we Scarcely believe much more than we ean see. GEDIPUS TYRANNUS OR SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC — Choose Reform or Civil War, When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, A Consort-QuEeEn shall hunt a Kine with hogs, Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR. Cidipus Tyrannus, a piece of drollery like Peter Bell, was begun, under the circumstances described in Mrs. Shelley’s Note, August 24, 1819, at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa. It was sent to Horave Smith, who had it pub- lished as a pamphlet without Shelley’s name. It was threatened with prosecution by citizens of the ward, and some steps thereto seem to have been taken; but at the suggestion of Alderman Rothwell the publisher gave up the whole edition, except seven copies, which had been sold, and also told the name of his em- ployer. The secret of the authorship was kept by Horace Smith, who said only that the work had been sent to him from Pisa. The drama was suggested by the affair of Queen Caroline. Of the characters Purganax stands for Lord Castlereagh, Dakry for Lord Eldon, and Laoc- tonos for the Duke of Wellington. Mrs. Shel- ley’s Note completes the history of the poem: ‘In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded in August [24], 1820, ‘‘ Shelley begins Swellfoot the Tyrant, suggested by the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano.” This was the period of Queen Caroline’s landing in Eng- land, and the struggles made by George IV. to get rid of her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the *‘ Green Bag” on the table of the House of Commons, demanding, in the King’s name, that an inquiry should be instituted into his wife’s conduct. These cir- cumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano ; a friend [Mrs. Mason] came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows. Shelley read to us his Ode to Liberty ; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the “chorus of frogs” in the satiric drama of Aristophanes ; and it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous asso- ciation suggesting another, he imagined a polit- ical satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus —and Swellfoot was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed and published anonymously ; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the ‘‘ Society for the Suppression of Vice,” who threatened to pro- secute it, if not immediately withdrawn The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside. ‘ Hesitation of whether it would do honor to Shelley prevented my publishing it at first ; but I cannot bring myself to keep back any- thing he ever wrote, for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race, and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who aspire ta pluck bright truth 284 GEDIPUS TYRANNUS ACT I: SC. I. * *¢ from the pale-faced moon; Or dive into the bottom of the deep, Where fathom-line could never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned ”’ truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in his slightest word, than from the waters of Lethe, which are so eagerly pre- scribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woes. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination, which even may not excite amiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.’ ADVERTISEMENT Tus Tragedy is une of a triad or system of three Plays (an arrangement according to which the Greeks were accustomed to connect their CEDIPUS TYRANNUS DRAMATIS PERSON Tyrant SweELuFoot, King The GapFLy. of Thebes. The Legcn. Iona Taurina, his The Rat. Queen. The Mrnoraur. Mammon, Arch-Priest of Moss, the Sow-gelder. Famine. Sotomon, the Porkman. P Wizards. ZEPHANIAH, Pig-butcher. vy ee | Ministers ; of SWELL- Laocronos J Foor. Chorus of the Swinish Multitude. Guagps, ATTENDANTS, Prizsts, etc., etc. Scene. Thebes. ACT I Scene — A magnificent Temple, built of thigh- bones and death’s-heads, and tiled with scalps. Over the Altar the statue of Famine, veiled ; anumber of boars, sows and sucking-pigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock and oak, sitting on the steps and clinging round the Altar of the Temple. Enter SWELLFOOT, in his royal robes, without perceiving the Pigs. SWELLFOOT {Hou supreme goddess! by whose power divine dramatic representations) elucidating the won- derful and appalling fortunes of the Swellfoot dynasty. It was evidently written by some learned Theban; and, from its characteristic dulness, apparently before the duties on the importation of Attic salt had been repealed by the Beotarchs. The tenderness with which he treats the Pigs proves him to have been a sus Beotie ; possibly Epicuri de grege porcus ; for, as the poet observes, ‘#4 fellow feeling makes us wondrous kind.’ No liberty has been taken with the trans- lation of this remarkable piece of antiquity except the suppressing a seditious and blas- phemous Chorus of the Pigs and Bulls at the last act. The word Hoydipouse (or more properly Cidipus), has been rendered literally Swellfoot without its having been conceived necessary to determine whether a swelling of the hind or the fore feet of the Swinish mon- arch is particularly indicated. Should the remaining portions of this ‘Tra- gedy be found, entitled Swellfoot in Angaria and Charité, the Translator might be tempted to give them to the reading Public. These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array [He contemplates himself with satisfaction. Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch Swells like a sail before a favoring breeze, And these most sacred nether promontories Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these Beotian cheeks, like Egypt’s pyramid, (Nor with less toil were their foundations laid Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain, That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing ! 10 Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Em- perors, Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers, Bishops and deacons, and the entire army Of those fat martyrs to the persecution Of stifling turtle-soup and brandy-devils, Offer their secret vows! thou plenteous Ceres Of their Eleusis, hail ! SWINE High! eigh! eigh! eigh! SWELLFOOT Ha! what are ye, Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies, Cling round this sacred shrine ? ACT I OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT 285 SWINE Aigh! aigh! aigh! SWELLFOOT What ! ye that are The very beasts that, offered at her altar 20 With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards, Ever propitiate her reluctant will When taxes are withheld ? SWINE Ugh! ugh! ugh! SWELLFOOT What! ye who grub With filthy snouts my red potatoes up In Allan’s rushy bog ? who eat the oats Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides ? Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe- leather, Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you ? SEMICHORUS I OF SWINE The same, alas ! the same; 30 Though only now the name Of Pig remains to me. SEMICHORUS I OF SWINE If ’t were your kingly will Us wretched Swine to kill, What should we yield to thee ? SWELLFOOT Why, skin an.] bones, and some few hairs for mortar. CHORUS OF SWINE { have heard your Laureate sing That pity was a royal thing; Under your mighty ancestors we Pigs Were blessed as nightingales on myrtle sprigs 40 Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew. ? And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too; But now our sties are fallen in, we catch The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch; Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch, And then we seek the shelter of a ditch; Hog-wash or grains, or rutabaga, none Has yet been ours since your reign begun. FIRST SOW My Pigs, ’t is in vain to tug. SECOND SOW I could alinost eat my litter. 50 FIRST PIG I suck, but no milk will come from the dug. 3COND PIG Our skin and our bones would be bit- ter. BOARS We fight for this rag of greasy rug, Though a trough of wash would be fit- ter. SEMICHORUS Happier Swine were they than we, Drowned in the Gadarean sea ! I wish that pity would drive out the devils Which in your royal bosom hold their revels, And sink us in the waves of thy compas- sion ! Alas, the Pigs are an unhappy nation! — 60 Now if your Majesty would have our bris- tles To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles, In policy — ask else your royal Solons — You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw, And sties well thatched; besides, it is the law ! SWELLFOOT This is sedition, and rank blasphemy ! Ho! there, my guards! Enter a GUARD GUARD Your sacred Majesty SWELLFOOT Call in the Jews, Solomon the court Pork- may. 286 CEDIPUS TYRANNUS ACT If Moses the Sow-gelder, and Zephaniah 0 The Hog-butcher. GUARD They are in waiting, Sire. Enter Sotomon, Mosss, and ZEPHANIAH SWELLFOOT Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those Sows The Pigs run about tn consternation. ‘That load the earth with Pigs; cut close and deep. Moral restraint I see has no effect, Nor prostitution, nor our own example, Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison. This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy. ‘Cut close and deep, good Moses. MOSES Let your Majesty Keep the Boars quiet, else — SWELLFOOT Zephaniah, cut 8 ‘That fat Hog’s throat, the brute seems overfed ; Seditious hunks! to whine for want of grains ! ZEPHANIAH Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy. We shall find pints of hydatids in’s liver; He has not half an inch of wholesome fat pon his carious ribs — SWELLFOOT ’T is all the same. He ’ll serve instead of riot-money, when ‘Our murmuring troops bivonac in Thebes’ streets; And January winds, after a day ‘Of butchering, will make them relish car- rion. 90 -Now, Solomon, I'l sell you in a lump The whole kit of them. SOLOMON Why, your Majesty, I could not give — SWELLFOOT Kill them out of the way — That shall be price enough; and let me hear Their everlasting grunts and whines no more ! [Exeunt, driving in the Swine. Enter Mammon, the Arch-Priest; and Pur- GANnax, Chief of the Council of Wizards PURGANAX The future looks as black as death; a cloud, Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it. The troops grow mutinous, the revenue fails, There ’s something rotten in us; for the g 5 level 9° Of the state slopes, its very bases topple; The boldest turn their backs upon them selves ! MAMMON Why, what’s the matter, my dear fellow, now ? Do the troops mutiny ?— decimate some regiments. Does money fail? — come to my mint — coin paper, Till gold be at a discount, and, ashamed To show his bilious face, go purge himself, In emulation of her vestal whiteness. PURGANAX Oh, would that this were all! The ora- cle !! MAMMON Why it was I who spoke that oracle, toc And whether I was dead-drurk or inspired I cannot well remember; nor, in truth, The oracle itself ! PURGANAX The words weut thus: ‘Beotia, choose reform or civil war, When throngh thy streets, instead of hare with dogs, A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, Riding on the Ionian Minotaur.’ MAMMON Now if the oracle had ne’er foretold This sad alternative, it must arrive. ACT I OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT 287 Or not, and so it must now that it has; And whether I was urged by grace divine Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words, Which must, as all words must, be false or true, 122 It matters not; for the same power made all, Oracle, wine, and me and you — or none — ’T is the same thing. If you knew as much Of oracles as I do — PURGANAX You arch-priests Believe in nothing; if you were to dream Of a particular number in the lottery, You would not buy the ticket ! MAMMON Yet our tickets Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken ? 130 For prophecies, when once they get abroad, Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends, Or hypocrites, who, from assuming virtue, Do the same actions that the virtuous do, Contrive their own fulfilment. This Iona — Well — you know what the chaste Pasiphaé did, Wife to that most religious King of Crete, And still how popular the tale is here; And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent From the free Minotaur. You know they still 140 Call themselves Bulls, though thus degen- erate; And everything relating to a Bull Is popular and respectable in Thebes; Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules; They think their strength consists in eating beef; Now there were danger in the precedent If Queen Iona — PURGANAX I have taken good care That shall not be. I struck the crust 0’ the earth With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare! And from a cavern full of ugly shapes, 150 I chose a Leech, a Gadfly, and a Rat. The gadfly was the same which Juno sent To agitate Io, and which Ezekiel mentions That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains Of utmost /Mthiopia to torment Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast Has a loud trumpet like the Scarabee; His crookéd tail is barbed with many stings, Each able to make a thousand wounds, aud each Immedicable; from his convex eyes 166 He sees fair things in many hideous shapes, And trumpets all his falsehood to the world. Like other beetles he is fed on dung; He has eleven feet with which he crawls, Trailing a blistering slime; and this foul beast Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits, From isle to isle, from city unto city, Urging her flight from the far Chersonese To fabulous Solyma and the Ztnean Isle, Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso’s Rock, _ 17a And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez, Kolia and Elysium, and thy shores, Parthenope, which now, alas ! are free ! And through the fortunate Saturnian land Into the darkness of the West. MAMMON But if This Gadfly should drive Iona hither ? PURGANAX Gods! what an if! but there is my gray Rat So thin with want he ean crawl in and out Of any narrow chink and filthy hole, 17; And he shall creep into her dressing-room, And — MAMMON My dear friend, where are your wits + as if She does not always toast a piece of cheese, And bait the trap? and rats, when lean enough To crawl through such chinks — PURGANAX But my Leech —a leeck: Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings, Capaciously expatiative, which make His little body like a red balloon, As full of blood as that of hydrogen, 288 CEDIPUS TYRANNUS ACT 1 Sucked from men’s hearts; insatiably he sucks And clings and pulls —a horse-leech whose deep maw 190 The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill, And who, till full, will cling forever. MAMMON This For Queen Iona might suffice, and less; But ’t is the Swinish multitude I fear, And in that fear I have — PURGANAX Done what ? MAMMON Disinherited My eldest son Chrysaor, because he Attended public meetings, and would al- ways Stand prating there of commerce, public faith, Economy, and unadulterate coin, And other topics, ultra-radical; 200 And have entailed my estate, called the Fool’s Paradise, And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills, Upon my accomplished daughter Bankno- tina, And married her to the Gallows. PURGANAX A good match ! MAMMON A high connection, Purganax. The bride- groom Is of a very ancient family, Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop, And has great influence in both Houses. Oh, He makes the fondest husband; nay, too fond — New married people should not kiss in public; 210 But the poor souls love one another so! And then my little grandchildren, the Gibbets, Promising children as you ever saw, — The young playing at hanging, the elder learning How to hold radicals. They are well taught too, For every Gibbet says its catechism, And reads a select chapter in the Bible Before it goes to play. (A most tremendous humming is heard) PURGANAX Ha! what do I hear? Enter the GADFLY MAMMON Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gad- ding. GADFLY Hum, hum, hum! 220 From the lakes of the Alps and the cold gray scalps Of the mountains, I come ! Hum, hum, hum ! From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces Of golden Byzantium; From the temples divine of old Palestine, From Athens and Rome, With a ha! and a hum! I come, I come! All inn-doors and windows 230 Were open to me; I saw all that sin does, Which lamps hardly see That burn in the night by the curtained bed — The impudent lamps! for they blushed not red. Dinging and singing, From slumber I rung her, Loud as the clank of an ironmon- ger; Hun, hum, hum ! Far, far, far, 240 With the trump of my lips and the stiug at my hips, I drove her — afar ! Far, far, far, From city to city, abandoned of pity, A ship without needle or star; Homeless she passed, like a cloud on the blast, ; Seeking peace, finding war; She is here in her car, ACT I OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT 289 From afar, and afar. Hum, hum! 250 I have stung her and wrung her! The venom is working; And if you had hung her With canting and quirking, She could not be deader than she will be soon; T have driven her close to you, under the moon, Night and day, hum, hum, ha! [ have huunmed her and drummed her From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her, Hun, bun, hum ! 260 Enter the Lercw and the Rat LEECH I will suck Blood or muck ! The disease of the state is a plethory, Who so fit to reduce it as I ? RAT I'll slyly seize and Let blood from her weasand, — Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny, With my snaky tail, and my sides so seramny. PURGANAX Aroint ye, thou unprofitable worm 1 (To the LeEcH) And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell, 270 (To the GADFLY) To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings, And the ox-headed Io. SWINE (within) Ugh, ugh, ugh ! Hail, Iona the divine ! We will be no longer Swine, But Bulls with horns and dewlaps. RAT For, You know, my lord, the Minotaur — PURGANAX (fiercely) Be silent ! get to hell! or I will call The cat out of the kitchen. Mammon, This is a pretty business ! Well, Lord [Exit the Rav. MAMMON I will go And spell some scheme to make it ugly then. 280 [Exit. Enter SWELLFOOT SWELLFOOT She is returned! Taurina is in Thebes When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell! O Hymen ! clothed in yellow jealousy And waving o’er the couch of wedded kings The torch of Discord with its fiery hair — This is thy work, thou patron saint of ueens ! Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea, The very name of wife had conjugal rights; Her cursed image ate, drank, slept with me, And in the arms of Adiposa oft 290 Her memory has received a husband’s — (A loud tumult, and cries of ‘Iona FOREVER! — No Swetiroor!’) SWELLFOOT Hark ! How the Swine ery Iona Taurina ! I suffer the real presence. Purganax, Off with her head ! PURGANAX But I must first impanel A jury of the Pigs. SWELLFOOT Pack them then. PURGANAX Or fattening some few in two separate sties, And giving them clean straw, tying some bits Of ribbon round their legs — giving their Sows Some tawdry lace and bits of lustre glass, And their young Boars white and red rags, and tails 307 290 GEDIPUS TYRANNUS ACT 7 Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers Between the ears of the old ones; and when They are persuaded that, by the inherent virtue Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs, Good Lord ! they ’d rip each other’s bellies up, Not to say help us in destroying her. SWELLFOOT This plan might be tried too. General Laoctonos ? Where ’s Enter Laoctonos It is my royal pleasure That you, Lord General, bring the head and body, If separate it would please me better, hither 310 Of Queen Iona. LAOCTONOS That pleasure I well knew, And made a charge with those battalions old, Called, from their dress and grin, the Royal Apes, Upon the Swine, who in a hollow square Enclosed her, and received the first attack Like so many rhinoceroses, and then Retreating in good order, with bare tusks And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe, Bore her in triumph to the public sty. What is still worse, some Sows upon the ground 320 Have given the Ape-guards apples, nuts and gin, g And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry. * Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot !’ PURGANAX Hark. THE SWINE (without) Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot ! Enter DAKRY DAKRY Went to the garret of the Swineherd’s tower, Which overlooks the sty, and made a long Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine, Of delicacy, mercy, judgment, law, Morals, and precedents, and purity, Adultery, destitution, and divorce, 33¢ Piety, faith, and state necessity, And how I loved the Queen! — and then I wept With the pathos of my own eloquence, And every tear turned to a millstone which Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made A slough of blood and brains upon the place, Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round The millstones rolled, ploughing the pave- ment up, And hurling sucking Pigs into the air, With dust and stones. Enter Mammon MAMMON I wonder that gray wizards Like you should be so beardless in their schemes; 342 It had been but a point of policy To keep Iona and the Swine apart. Divide and rule ! but ye have made a junc- tion Between two parties who will govern you, But for my art. — Behold this Bag! it is The poison Bag of that Green Spider huge, On which our spies skulked in ovation through The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead: 349 A bane so much the deadlier fills it now As calumny is worse than death; for here The Gadfly’s venom, fifty times distilled, Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech, In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which That very Rat, who, like the Pontie ty. rant, Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch. All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud, Who is the Devil’s Lord High Chancellor, And over it the Primate of all Hell Murmured this pious baptism: —‘ Be thou called 360 ACT II: SC. I The Green Bag; and this power and grace be thine: That thy contents, on whomsoever poured, Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks To savage, foul, and fierce deformity; Let all baptized by thy infernal dew Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch ! No name left out which orthodoxy loves, Court Journal or legitimate Review ! Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover Of other wives and husbands than their own — 370 The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps ! Wither they to a ghastly caricature Of what was buman!—let not man or beast Behold their face with unaverted eyes, Or hear their names with ears that tingle not With blood of indignation, rage, and shame !” This is a perilous liquor, good my Lords. foe approaches to touch the Green Bag. eware ! for God’s sake, beware ! — if you should break The seal, and touch the fatal liquor — PURGANAX There, I have been used to handle His dread Majesty Give it to me. All sorts of poisons. Only desires to see the color of it. 382 MAMMON Now, with a little common sense, my Lords, Only undoing all that has been done, (Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it) Our victory is assured. We must entice Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs Believe that the contents of the Green Bag Are the true test of guilt or innocence; And that, if she be guilty, ’t will transform her 390 To manifest deformity like guilt; If innocent, she will become transfigured Into an angel, such as they say she is; And they will see her flying through the air. So bright that she will dim the noonday sun, OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT 29! Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits. This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing Swine will believe. I’ll wager you will see them Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties,. With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail 400 Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps Of one another’s ears between their teeth, To catch the coming hail of comfits in. You, Purganax, who have the gift o’ the ‘ab, Make fron a solemn speech to this effect. I go to put in readiness the feast Kept to the honor of our goddess Famine, Where, for more glory, let the ceremony Take place of the uglification of the Queen. DAKRY (to SWELLFOOT) I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience, Humbly remind your Majesty that the care 4IL Of your high office, as Man-milliner Te red Bellona, should not be deferred. PURGANAX All part, in happier plight to meet again. [Hxeunt. ACT II Scene I.— The Public Sty. The Boars in full Assembly. Enter PURGANAX PURGANAX GRANT me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars, Ye, by whose patience under public bur- dens The glorious constitution of these sties Subsists, and shall subsist. The Lean-Pig rates Grow with the growing populace of Swine; The taxes, that true source of Piggishness, (How ean I find a more appropriate term To include religion, morals, peace and plenty, And ail that fit Beeotia as a nation To teach the other nations how to live ?) 10 292 CEDIPUS TYRANNUS ACT II: SC. f Increase with Piggishness itself; and still Does the revenue, that great spring of all The patronage, and pensions, and by-pay- ments, Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes, Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps, - All the land’s produce will be merged in taxes, And the revenue will amount to thing ! The failure of a foreign market for Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings, And such home manufactures, is but par- tial; 20 And, that the population of the Pigs, Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw And water, is a fact which is —you know — That is — it is a state necessity — Temporary, of course. Those impious igs, Who, by Treqatat squeaks, have dared im- pugn The settled Swellfoot system, or to make Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions Inculeated by the arch-priest, have been whipped Into a loyal and an orthodox whine. 30 ings being in this happy state, the Queen ona nho- (A loud cry from the Pigs) She is innocent, most innocent ! PURGANAX That is the very thing that I was saying, Gentlemen Swine; the Queen Jona being Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes, And the lean Sows and Boars collect about her, Wishing to make her think that we believe (I mean those more substantial Pigs who swill Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw) That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig fac- tion 40 Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been Your immemorial right, and which I will Maintain you in to the last drop of — A BOAR (interrupting him) What Does any one accuse her of ? PURGANAX Why, no one Makes any positive accusation; but There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards Conceived that it became them to advise His Majesty to investigate their truth; Not for his own sake; he could be content To let his wife play any pranks she pleased, If, by that sufterance, he could please the Pigs; 51 But then he fears the morals of the Swine, The Sows especially, and what effect It might produce upon the purity and Religion of the rising generation ‘Of sucking Pigs, if it could be suspected That Queen Iona — (A pause) FIRST BOAR Well, go on; we long To hear what she can possibly have done. PURGANAX Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull — Thus much is known: — the wilk-white Bulls that feed 60 Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel _Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath Loading the morning winds until they faint With living fragrance, are so beautiful ! Well, J say nothing; but Europa rode On such a one from Asia into Crete, And the enamoured sea grew calm be- neath His gliding beauty. And Pasiphaé, 70 Iona’s grandmother, but she is inno- cent. ! And that both you and I, and all assert. . FIRST BOAR Most innocent ! PURGANAX Behold this Bag; « Bag — SECOND BOAR Oh! no Green Bags!! Jealousy’s eyes are green, Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts, And verdigris, and — ACT 117 sc. I OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT 293 PURGANAX Honorable Swine, I Piggish souls can prepossessions reign ? Allow me to remind you, grass is green — All flesh is grass; no bacon but is flesh — Ye are but bacon. This divining Bag 80 une is not green, but only bacon color) s filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o’er A woman guilty of — we all know what — Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind She never can commit the like again; If innocent, she will turn into an angel And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits As she flies up to heaven. Now, my pro- posal Is to convert her sacred Majesty 89 Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do) By pouring on her head this mystic water. [Showing the Bag. I know that she is innocent; I wish Only to prove her so to all the world. FIRST BOAR Excellent, just, and noble Purganax ! SECOND BOAR How glorious it will he to see her Majesty Flying above our heads, her petticoats Streaming like — like — like — THIRD BOAR Anything. PURGANAX Oh, no! But like a standard of an admiral’s ship, Or like the banner of a conquering host, Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day, 00 Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain; Or like a meteor, or a war-steed’s mane, Or waterfall from a dizzy precipice Scattered upon the wind. FIRST BOAR Or a cow’s tail, — SECOND BOAR Or anything, as the learned Boar observed. PURGANAX Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution, That her most sacred Majesty should be Invited to attend the feast of Famine, And to receive upon her chaste white body Dews of apotheosis from this Bag. uc [A great confusion is heard, of the Pigs out of Doors, which communicates itself to those within. During the first strophe, the doors of the sty are staved in, and a number of ex- ceedingly lean Pigs and Sows and Boars rush in. SEMICHORUS I No! Yes! SEMICHORUS IL Yes! No! SEMICHORUS I A law! SEMICHORUS IT A flaw! SEMICHORUS I Porkers, we shall lose our wash, Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs! FIRST BOAR Order! order! be not rash ! Was there ever such a scene, Pigs ! AN OLD sow (rushing in) I never saw so fine a dash Since I first began to wean Pigs. 12% SECOND BOAR (solemnly) The Queen will be an angel time enough. I vote, in form of an amendment, that Purganax rub a little of that stuff Upon his face — PURGANAX (his heart ts seen to beat through his waistcoat) Gods! What would ye be at? SEMICHOROS I Purganax has plainly shown a Cloven foot and jackdaw feather. SEMICHORUS II T vote Swellfoot and Iona Try the magic test together; Whenever royal spouses bicker, Both should try the magic liquor. 130 294 CEDIPUS TYRANNUS ACT II: SC. 1 AN OLD BOAR (aside) A miserable state is that of Pigs, For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs, The Swine must bite each other’s ear there- for. AN OLD sow (aside) A wretched lot Jove has assigned to Swine, Squabbling makes Pig-herds hungry, and they dine On bacon, and whip sucking Pigs the more. CHORUS Hog-wash has been ta’en away; If the Bull-Queen is divested, We shall be in every way Hunted, stripped, exposed, molested ; Let us do whate’er we may, 141 That she shall not be arrested. Queen, we entrench you with walls of brawn, And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayo- net. Place your most Sacred Person here. pawn Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it. Those who wrong you, wrong us; Those who hate you, hate us; Those who sting you, sting us; Those who bait you, bait us; 150 The oracle is now about to be Fulfilled by circurnvolving destiny, Which says: ‘Thebes, choose reform or civil war, When through your streets, instead of hare with dogs, A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs, Riding upon the Ionian Minotaur.’ We Enter Iona TAuURINA IONA TAURINA (coming forward) Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady-Pigs, The tender heart of every Boar acquits Their Queen of any act incongruous 159 With native Piggishness, and she reposing With confidence upon the grunting nation, Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all, Her innocence, into their Hoggish arms; Nor has the expectation been deceived. Of finding shelter there. Boars, (For such whoever lives among you finds ou, And sous I) the innocent are proud ! I have accepted your protection only In compliment of your kind love and care, Yet know, great Not for necessity. The innocent 170 Are safest there where trials and dangers wait; Innocent queens o’er white-hot plough- shares tread Unsinged; and ladies, Erin’s laureate sings it. Decked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still Walked from Killarney to the Giant’s Causeway Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeo- manry, White-boys, and Orange-boys, and consta- bles. Tithe-proctors, and excise people, unin- jured ! Thus I! — Lord Purganax, I do commit myself 80 Into your custody, and am prepared To stand the test, whatever it may be ! PURGANAX This magnanimity in your sacred Majesty Must please the Pigs. You cannot fail of being A heavenly angel. glass, Ye loyal Swine, or her transfiguration Will blind your wondering eyes. Smoke your bits of AN OLD BOAR (aside) Take care, my Lord, They do not smoke you first. PURGANAX At the approaching feast: Of Famine let the expiation be. SWINE Content content! IONA TAURINA (aside) I, most content of all, — xg0 Know pa my foes even thus prepare their all! [ Exeunt onnes ACT IL: SC, If OR, SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT 295 Scene II. — The interior of the 4 emple of Fam- ine. The statue of the Goddess, a skeleton clothed in party-colored rags, seated upon a heap of skulls and loaves intermingled. A number of cxceedingly fat Priests in black gar- ments arrayed on each side, with marrow-bones and cleavers in their hands. A flourish of trumpets. Enter Mammon as Arch-priest, SwELLFOOT, Daxry, Purcanax, Laocronos, followed by Iona Taurina guarded. On the other side enter the Swine. CHORUS OF PRIESTS (accompanied by the Court Porkman on marrow-bones and cleavers) Goddess bare, and gaunt, and pale, Empress of the world, all hail ! What though Cretans old called thee City-crested Cybele ? We call thee Famine ! Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming; Through thee, for emperors, kings and priests and lords, Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words, The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits, Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots. ro Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat, Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean, Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that, And let things be as they have ever been; At least while we remain thy priests, And proclaim thy fasts and feasts ! Through thee the sacred Swellfoot dynasty Is based upon a rock amid that sea Whose waves are Swine — so let it ever be ! [Swe Luroor, etc., seat themselves at a table, magnificently covered, at the upper end of the temple. Attendants pass over the stage with hog-wash in pails. A number of Pigs, ex- ceedingly lean, follow them, licking up the wash. MAMMON I fear your sacred Majesty has lost 20 The appetite which you were used to have. Allow me now to recommend this dish — A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook, Such as is served at the great King’s second table. The price and pains which its ingredients cost Might have maintained some dozen families A winter or two—not more—so plain a dish Could scarcely disagree. SWELLFOOT After the trial, And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps I mzy recover my lost appetite. 30 I feel the gout flying about my stomach; Give me a glass of Maraschino punch. PuRGANAX (filling his glass, and standing up’ The glorious constitution of the Pigs ! ALL A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three ! DAKRY No heel-taps — darken day-lights ! LAOCTONOS Claret, somehow, Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret ! SWELLFOOT Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment; But ’tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine, And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes. (To PurGanax) For God’s sake stop the grunting of those PB igs ! 49 PURGANAX We dare not, Sire! ’tis Famine’s privi- lege. : CHORUS OF SWINE Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine ! Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags; Thou devil which livest on damning; Saint of new churches and cant, and Green Bags; Till in pity and terror thou risest, Confounding the schemes of the wisest; When thou liftest thy skeleton form, When the loaves and the skulls roll about, 296 GQEDIPUS TYRANNUS ACT II: SC. II We will greet thee — the voice of a storm Would be lost in our terrible shout! 5: Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine ! Hail to thee, Empress of Earth ! When thou risest, dividing possessions, When thou risest, uprooting oppressions, In the pride of thy ghastly mirth; Over palaces, temples, and graves We will rush as thy minister-slaves, Trampling behind in thy train, Till all be made level again ! 60 MAMMON { hear a crackling of the giant bones Of the dread image, and in the black pits Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames. These prodigies are oracular, and show The presence of the unseen Deity. Mighty events are hastening to their doom ! SWELLFOOT I only hear the lean and mutinous Swine Grunting about the temple. DAKRY In a crisis Of such exceeding delicacy, I think 69 We ought to put her Majesty, the Queen, Upon her trial without delay. MAMMON The Bag Is here. PURGANAX I have rehearsed the entire scene With an ox-bladder and some ditch-water, On Lady P. 5 it cannot fail. [Taking up the Bag. Your Majesty (To SwELLFooT) In such a filthy business had better Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you. A spot or two on me would do no harm; Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad genius Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell, Upon my brow — which would stain all its seas, 80 But which those seas could never wash away! IONA TAURINA My Lord, I am ready —nay, 1 am impa- tient, To undergo the test. [4 graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes unnoticed through the Temple ; the word LiBerry is seen through the veil, as if it were written in fire upon its forehead. Its words are almost drowned in the furious grunting of the Pigs, and the business of the trial. She kneels on the steps of the Altar, and speaks in tones at first faint and low, but which ever be- come louder and louder. LIBERTY Mighty Empress, Death’s white wife, Ghastly mother-in-law of life ! By the God who made thee such, By the magic of thy touch, By the starving and the cramming Of fasts and feasts !— by thy dread self, O Famine ! I charge thee, when thou wake the multi- tude, go Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood. The earth did never mean her foison For those who crown life’s cup with poison Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge; But for those radiant spirits, who are still The standard-bearers in the van of CLange Be they th’ appointed stewards, to fill The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age ! Remit, O Queen ! thy accustomed rage ! Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low 100 Freedom calls Famine, her eternal foe, To brief alliance, hollow truce. — Rise now! [Whilst the veiled figure has been chanting the strophe, Mammon, Daxry, Laoctonos, and SwkLLFoor have surrounded Iona TauRINA, who, with her hands folded on her breast and her eyes lifted to Heaven, stands, as with saint-like resignation, to wait the issue of the business in perfect confidence of her innocence. PuRGANAX, after unsealing the Green Bag, is gravely about to pour the liquor upon her head, when suddenly the whole expression of her Jigure and countenance changes ; she snatches it from his hand with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over SWELLFOOT and his whole Court, who are instantly changed into a number EPIPSYCHIDION 297 of filthy and ugly animals, and rush out of the Temple. The image of Famine then arises with a tremendous sound, the Pigs begin scram- bling for the loaves, and are tripped up by the skulls ; all those who eat the loaves are turned tnto Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly be- hind the altar. The image of Famine sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a MINOTAUR rises. MINOTAUR I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest Of all Europa’s taurine progeny; Tam the old traditional Man-Bull; And from my ancestors having been Ionian I am called Ion, which, by interpretation, Is John; in plain Theban, that is to say, My name’s John Bull; I am a famous hunter, And can leap any gate in all Beotia, — 110 Even the palings of the royal park Or double ditch about the new enclosures; And if your Majesty will deign to mount me, At least till you have hunted down your ame, I will not throw you. IONA TAURINA [During this speech she has been putting on boots and spurs and a hunting-cap, buckishly cocked on one side; and, tucking up her hair, she leaps nimbly on his back. Hoa, hoa ! tally-ho ! tally-hc ! ho! ho! Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down, These stinking foxes, these devouring otters, These hares, these wolves, these anything but men. Hey, for a whipper-in ! my loyal Pigs, 120 Now let your noses be as keen as beagles’, Your steps as swift as greyhounds’, and your cries More dulcet and symphonious than the bells Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday; Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music. Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood ?) But such asthey gaveyou. Tally-ho! ho! Through forest, furze and bog, and den and desert, Pursue the ugly beasts! Tally-hu! ho! FULL CHORUS OF IONA AND THE SWINE Tally-ho! tally-ho ! 132 Through rain, hail, and snow, Through brake, gorse, and briar, Through fen, flood, and mire, We go, we go! Tally-ho! tally-ho ! Through pond, ditch, and slough, Wind them, and find them, Like the Devil behind them ! Tally-ho, tally-ho! [Exeunt, in full cry ; Iona driviny on the Swine, with the empty Green Bag. EPIPSYCHIDION VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY EMILIA V—— NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF —— L’ anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell’ infinito un mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. The noble and unfortunate lady, Emilia V—, who inspired Epipsychidion was Teresa Emilia Viviani, eldest daughter of Count Vivi- ani, a nobleman of Pisa. She had been placed by her family in the neighboring Convent of St. Anna, and there Shelley met her at the be- HER OWN WORDS. ginning of December, 1820, and interested himself in her fortunes. The episode, which is too long for narration in a note, is best de- scribed in Mrs. Marshall’s Life of Mary Woll- stonecraft Shelley. Its personal incidents are unimportant, since they do not enter into the 298 EPIPSYCHIDION substance of the poem, which is ‘ an idealized history’ of Shelley’s spirit. The lady, to whom the verses are addressed, soon lost the enchantment which Shelley’s imagination and sympathy had woven about her, and she ceased to interest him except as an object of compassion. Shelley was fully aware of the mystical nature of the poem, which shows the most spiritual elements of his genius at their point of highest intensity of passion. He wrote to Gisborne: ‘The Epipsychidion is a mystery ; as to real flesh and blood, you know that I do not deal in those articles; you might as well go to a gin-shop for a leg of mutton, as ex- pect anything human or earthly from me ;’ and again, ‘The Epipsychidion I cannot look at; the person whom it celebrates was a cloud in- stead of a Juno, and poor Ixion starts from the centaur that was the offspring of his own em- brace. If you are curious, however, to hear what I am and have been, it will tell you something thereof. It is an idealized history of my life and feelings. I think one is always in love with something or other; the error, and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it, consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, per- haps, eternal.’ i sending it for publication to Ollier, he says: ‘I send you. . and a longer piece, entitled Epipsychidion. . . . The longer poem, I desire, should not be considered as my own; indeed, in a certain sense, it is a production of a portion of me already dead; and in this sense the advertisement is no fiction. It is to be published simply for the esoteric few; and I make its author a secret, to avoid the malig- nity of those who turn sweet food into poison, transforming all they touch into the corruption of their own natures. My wish with respect to it is that it should be printed immediately in the simplest form, and merely one hundred copies: those who are capable of judging and feeling rightly with respect to a composition of so abstruse a nature, certainly do not arrive at that number — among those, at least, who would ever be excited to read an obscure and anonymous production; and it would give me no pleasure that the vulgar should read it. If you have any book-selling reason against pub- lishing so small a number as a hundred, merely, distribute copies among those to whom you think the poetry would afford any pleasure, SwEET Spirit ! sister of that orphan one, Whose empire is the name thou weepest on, In my heart’s temple I suspend to thee These votive wreaths of withered memory. and send me, as soon as you can, a copy by the post.’ The poem was composed at Pisa during the first weeks of 1821, and an edition of one hun- dred copies was published at London the fol- lowing summer. The title means, as Dr. Stop- ford Brooke points out, ‘this soul out of my soul.’ ADVERTISEMENT THE writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realized a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular ; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it than the ideal tinge which it re- ceived from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the Vita Nuova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact his- tory of the circumstances to which it relates ; and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that, gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse denu- dare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento. The present poem appears to have been in- tended by the writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page [below] is almost a literal translation from Dante’s famous Canzone Voi, ch’ intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, etc. The presumptuous application of the conclud- ing lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend : be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning, Of such hard matter dost thou entertain ; Whence, if by misadventure chance should bring Thee to base company (as chance may do) Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again, My last delight! tell them that they are dull, And bid them own that thou art beautiful. Poor captive bird ! who from thy narrow cage Pourest such music that it might assuage The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, EPIPSYCHIDION 299 Were they not deaf to all sweet melody, — This song shall be thy rose; its petals pale Are dead, indeed, my adored nightingale ! But soft and fragrant is the faded blos- som, And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom. 12 High, spirit-wingéd Heart! who dost forever Beat thine unfeeling bars.with vain en- deavor, Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed It over-soared this low and worldly shade, Lie shattered; and thy panting wounded breast Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest ! I weep vain tears; blood would less bitter be Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. 20 Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath that radiant form of Wo- man All that is insupportable in thee Of light, and love, and immortality ! Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse ! Veiled glory of this lampless Universe ! Thou Moon beyond the clouds ! thou living Form Among the Dead! thou Star above the Storm ! Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror ! Thou Harmony of Nature’s art ! thou Mir- ror 30 In whom, as in the splendor of the Sun, All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on! Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow; I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song All of its much mortality and wrong, With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew From the twin lights thy sweet soul dark- ens through, Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy — Then smile on it, so that it may not die. 40 I never thought before my death to see Youth’s vision thus made perfect. Emily, I love thee; though the world by no thin name Will hide that love from its unvalued shame. Would we two had been twins of the same mother ! Or that the name my heart lent to another Could be a sister’s bond for her and thee, Blending two beams of one eternity ! Yet were one lawful and the other true, These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due, 5L How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me! I am not thine — I am a part of thee. Sweet Lamp ! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings; Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style, All that thou art. guile, A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless ? A well of sealed and secret happiness, Whose waters like blithe light and music are, Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? a star 60 Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone ? A smile amid dark frowns ? a gentle tone Amid rude voices ? a beloved light ? A solitude, a refuge, a delight ? A lute, which those whom love has taught to play Make music on, to soothe the roughest day And lull fond grief asleep ? a buried trea- sure ? A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure ? A violet-shronded grave of woe ? — I mea- sure The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, And find — alas! mine own infirmity. 71 Art thou not void of She met me, Stranger, upon life’s rough way, And lured me towards sweet death; as Night by Day, Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift ope, Led into light, life, peace. An aatelope, 300 EPIPSYCHIDION In the suspended impulse of its lightness, Were less ethereally light; the brightness Of her divinest presence trembles through Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew 79 Embodied in the windless heaven of June, Amid the splendor-winged stars, the Moon Burns, inextinguishably beautiful; And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops, Killing the sense with passion, sweet as stops Of planetary music heard in trance. In her mild lights the starry spirits dance, The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap Under the lightnings of the soul— too deep For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. 90 The glory of her being, issuing thence, Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade Of unentangled intermixture, made By Love, of light and motion; one intense Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing, Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glow- ing, With ee hioatitel blood, which there Quivers (as in a fleece of snow-like air The crimson pulse of living morning quiver) 100 Continnously prolonged, and ending never Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled Which penetrates, and clasps and fills the world; Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress, And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress The air of her own speed has disentwined, The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind; And in the soul a wild odor is felt, Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt Into the bosom of a frozen bud. m1 See where she stands! a mortal shape in- dued With love and life and light and deity, And motion which may change but cannot die; An image of some bright Eternity; A shadow of some golden dream; a Splen- dor Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a ten- der Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love, Under whose motions life’s dull billows move; A metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning; 120 A vision like incarnate April, warning, With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy Into his summer grave. Ah! woe is me! What have I dared? where ain I lifted ? how Shall I descend, and perish not? I know That Love makes all things equal; I have heard By mine own heart this joyous truth averred: The spirit of the worm beneath the sod, In love and worship, blends itself with God. Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate 130 Whose course has been so starless! Oh, too late Belovéd! Oh, too soon adored, by me! For in the fields of immortality My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, A divine presence in a place divine; Or should have moved beside it on this earth, A shadow of that substance, from its birth; But not as now. I love thee; yes, I feel That on the fountain of my heart a seal Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright For thee, since in those tears thou hast de- light. Iq! We — are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar; Such difference without discord as make Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake As trembling leaves in a continuous air ? can Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked. EPIPSYCHIDION 301 I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select 150 Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though ’tis in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary foot- steps tread Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go. True Love in this differs from gold and clay, 160 That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding that grows bright Gazing on many truths; tis like thy light, Imagination ! which, from earth and sky, And from the depths of human fantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that con- templates, 170 The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and_ builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity. Mind from its object differs most in this; Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure: If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thonght, Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not 18t How much, while anv yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared. This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth. — 189 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, Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor Paved her light steps. shore, Under the gray beak of some promontory She met me, robed in such exceeding glory That I beheld her not. In solitudes — 200 Her voice came to me through the whis- pering woods, And from the fountains and the odors deep OF flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there, Breathed but of her to the enamoured air; And from the breezes whether low or loud, And from the rain of every passing cloud, And from the singing of the summer-birds, And from all sounds, all silence. In the On an imagined words Of antique verse and high romance, in form, 210 Sound, color, in whatever checks that Storm Which with the shattered present chokes the past, And in that best philosophy, whose taste Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom As glorious as a fiery martyrdom — Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. Then from the caverns of my dreamy youth I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire, And towards the lodestar of my one desire I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight 220 Is as a dead leaf’s in the owlet light, When it would seek in Hesper’s setting sphere A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, 302 EPIPSYCHIDION As if it were a lamp of earthly flame. But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, Passed, like a god throned on a wingéd planet, Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, Into the dreary cone of our life’s shade; And as a man with mighty loss dismayed, I would have followed, though the grave between 230 Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are un- seen; When a voice said: —‘O Thou of hearts the weakest, The phantum is beside thee whom thou seekest.’ Then I—‘ Where ?’ the world’s echo an- swered ‘ Where ?’ And in that silence, and in my despair, I questioned every tongueless wind that flew Over my tower of mourning, if it knew Whither ’t was fled, this soul out of my soul; And murmured names and spells which have control Over the sightless tyrants of our fate; 240 But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate The night which closed on her; nor uncreate That world within this Chaos, mine and me, Of which she was the veiled Divinity, — The world I say of thoughts that wor- shipped her; And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear And every gentle passion sick to death, Feeding my course with expectation’s breath, Into the wintry forest of our life; And struggling through its error with vain strife, 250 And stumbling in my weakness and my haste, And half bewildered by new forms, I passed Seeking aniong those nntanght foresters If I could find one form resembling hers, In which she might have masked herself from me. There, — One whose voice was venomed melod Sate by a well, under blue night-shade bowers; The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers; Her touch was as electric poison, — flame Out of her looks into my vitals came, 260 And from her living cheeks and bosom flew A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew Into the core of my green heart, and lay Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray O’er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime With ruins of unseasonable time. In many mortal forms I rashly sought The shadow of that idol of my thought. And some were fair—but beauty dies away; Others were wise —but honeyed words betray; 270 And one was true —oh! why not true to me ? Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, Wounded and weak and panting; the cold a Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain, When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again Deliverance. seemed As like the glorious shape, which I had dreamed, As is the Moon, whose changes ever run Into themselves, to the eternal Sun; 280 The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Hea- ven’s bright isles, Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles; That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame, Which ever is transformed, yet still the same, And warms not but illumines. fair As the descended Spirit of that sphere, She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night From its own darkness, until all was bright Between the Heaven and Earth of my ealm mind, And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, 290 She led me to a cave in that wild place, And sate beside me, with her downward face Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon Waxing and waning o’er Endymion. One stood on my path who Young and EPIPSYCHIDION 393 And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, And all my being became bright or dim As the Moon’s image in a summer sea, According as she smiled or frowned on me; And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed. Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead; — 300 For at her silver voice came Death and Life, Unmindful each of their accustomed strife, Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother, The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother, And ee the cavern without wings they ew, And cried, ‘ Away ! he is not of our crew.’ I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep. What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips 309 Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse; And how my soul was as a lampless sea, And who was then its Tempest: and when She 2 The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost Crept o’er those waters, till from coast to coast The moving billows of my being fell Into a death of ice, immovable; And then what earthquakes made it gape and split, The white Moon smiling all the while on it ;— These words conceal; if not, each word would be The key of stanchless tears. Weep not for me! 320 At length, into the obscure forest came The Vision I had sought through grief and shame. Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns Flashed from her motion splendor like the Morn’s, And from her presence life was radiated Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead; So that her way was paved and roofed above With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love; And musie from her respiration spread Like light, — all other sounds were pene- trated 330 By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound, So that the savage winds hung mute around; And odors warm and fresh fell from her hair Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air. Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, When light is changed to love, this glorious One Floated into the cavern where I lay, And called my Spirit, and the dreaming ela; Was lifted by the thing that dreamed be- low 339 As smoke by fire, and in her beauty’s glow I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night Was penetrating me with living light; I knew it was the Vision veiled from me So many years — that it was Emily. Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth, This world of love, this me ; and into birth Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart Magnetic might into its central heart; And lift its billows and its mists, and guide By everlasting laws each wind and tide 350 To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave; And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers The armies of the rainbow-wingéd showers; And, as those married lights, which from the towers Of Heaven look forth and fold the wan- dering globe In liquid sleep and splendor, as a robe; And all their many-mingled influence blend, If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end; — So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway, Govern my sphere of being, night and day ! Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might; 362 Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light; And, throngh the shadow of the seasons three, From Spring to Autumn’s sere maturity, Light it into the Winter of the tomb, Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom. Thon too, O Comet, beautiful and fierce, Who drew the heart of this frail Univers: 304 EPIPSYCHIDION Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion, 370 Alternating attraction aud repulsion, Thine went astray, and that was rent in twain; Oh, float into our azure heaven again ! Be there love’s folding-star at thy return; The living Sun will feed thee from its urn Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn Will worship thee with incense of calm breath And lights and shadows, as the star of Death And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild 380 Called Hope and Fear—upon the heart are piled Their offerings, — of this sacrifice divine A World shall be the altar. Lady mine, Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth, Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth, Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes, Will be as of the trees of Paradise. The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. To whatsoe’er of dull mortality Is mine remain a vestal sister still; 390 To the intense, the deep, the imperishable, Not mine, but me, henceforth be thou united Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. The hour is come — the destined Star has risen Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set The sentinels — but true love never yet Was thus constrained; it overleaps all fence; Like lightning, with invisible violence Piercing its continents; like Heaven’s free breath, 400 Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death, Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array Of arms; more strength has Love than he or they; For it can burst his charnel, and make free The limbs in chains, the heart in agony, The soul in dust and chaos. Emily, A ship is floating in the harbor now, A wind is hovering o’er the mountain’s brow; There is a path on the sea’s azure floor — No keel has ever ploughed that path be- fore; 411 The haleyons brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; The merry mariners are bold and free: Say, my heart’s sister, wilt thou sail with me? Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest Is afar Eden of the purple East; And we between her wings will sit, while Night, And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, 420 Treading each other’s heels, unheededly. It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, And, for the harbors 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 Zgean girds this chosen home 430 With ever-changing sound and light and foam Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar; And all the winds wandering along the shore Undulate with the undulating tide; There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide, And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, As clear as elemental diamond, Or serene morning air; and far beyond, The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year) 440 Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls EPIPSYCHIDION 395 Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls Illumining, with sound that never fails Accompany the noonday nightingales; And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; The light clear element which the isle wears Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, 450 And dart their arrowy odor through the brain Till you might faint with that delicious pain. And every motion, odor, beam, and tone, With that deep music is in unison, Which is a soul within the soul; they seem Like echoes of an antenatal dream. It is an isle ’twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, Cradled and hung in clear tranquillity; Bright as that wandering Eden, Lucifer, Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young alr. 460 It is a favored place. Famine or Blight, Pestilence, War, and Earthquake, never light Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they Sail onward far upon their fatal way; The winged storms, chanting their thunder- psalm To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, From which its fields and woods ever renew Their green and golden immortality. And from the sea there rise, and from the sky 479 There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside, Till the isle’s beauty, like a naked bride Glowing at once with love and loveliness, Blushes and trembles at its own excess; Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, An atom of the Eternal, whose own smile Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen, 480 O’er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green, Filling their bare and void interstices. But the chief marvel of the wilderness Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how None of the rustic island-people know; Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height It overtops the woods; but, for delight, Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime Had been invented, in the world’s young prime, Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, 490 And envy of the isles, a pleasure-house Made sacred to his sister and his spuuse. It scarce seems now a wreck of hunan art, But, as it were, Titanic, in the heart Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown Out of the mountains, from the living stone, Lifting itself in caverns light and high; For all the antique and learned imagery Has been erased, and in the place of it The ivy and the wild vine interknit 500 The volumes of their many-twining stems; Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems The lampless halls, and, when they fade, the sky Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery With moonlight patches, or star-atoms keen, Or fragments of the day’s intense serene, Working mosaic on their Parian floors. And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem To sleep in one another’s arms, and dream Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we sit Read in their smiles, and call reality. This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed Thee to be lady of the solitude. And I have fitted up some chambers there Looking towards the golden Eastern air, And level with the living winds, which flow Like waves above the living waves below. I have sent books and music there, and all Those instruments with which high spirits eall 520 The future from its cradle, and the past Out of its grave, and make the present last In thoughts and joys which sleep, but can< not die Folded within their own eternity. Our simple life wants little, and true taste Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste The scene it would adorn, and therefore stil Nature with all her children haunts the hill 406 EPIPSYCHIDION The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance 531 Between the quick bats in their twilight dance; The spotted deer bask in the fresh moon- light Before our gate, and the slow silent night Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. Be this our home in life, and when years hea Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay, Let us become the overhanging day, The living soul of this Elysian isle, 539 Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile We two will rise, and sit, and walk together Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, And wander in the meadows, or ascend The mossy mountains, where the blue hea- vens bend With lightest winds, tv tuuch their para- mour; Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, Under the quick faint kisses of the sea Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy, — Possessing and possessed by all that is 549 Within that calm circumference of bliss, And by each other, till to love and live Be one; or, at the noontide hour, arrive Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep The moonlight of the expired night asleep, Through which the awakened day can never eep; A veil for ae seclusion, close as Night’s, Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights; Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again. 559 And we will talk, until thought’s melody Become too sweet for utterance, and it die In words, to live again in looks, which dart With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, Harmonizing silence without a sound. Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, And our veins beat together; and our lips, With other eloquence than words, eclipse The soul that burns between them; and the wells Which boil under our being’s inmost cells, The fountains of our deepest life, shall be Confused in passion’s golden purity, — 571 As mountain-springs under the morning Sun. We shall become the same, we shall be one Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two ? One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew, Till like two meteors of expanding flame Those spheres instinct with it become the same, Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still Burning, yet ever inccnsumable; In one another’s substance finding food, 580 Like flames too pure and light and unim- bued To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away; One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, And one annihilation. Woe is me! The wingéd words on which my soul] would ierce Into the height of love’s rare Universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire. I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire ! 59t Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sover- eign’s feet, And say:—‘ We are the masters of thy slave; What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine ?’ Then call your sisters fron: Oblivion’s cave, All singing loud: ‘Love’s very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine, Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.’ So shall ye live when i am there. haste Over the hearts of men, until ye meet 600 Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest, And bid them love each other and be Then blessed; And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, — for I am Love’s. AUTHOR’S PREFACE 3°7 ADONAIS AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS *Aornp mpiv pév édapmes evi Coro édos. Nov 5¢ Oaviov, Adumecs Eomepos ev POmevars. Adonais, perhaps the most widely read of the longer poems of Sheiley, owes something of its charm to the fact noted by Mrs. Shelley that much in it ‘seems now more applicable to Shelley himself than to the young and gifted poet whom he mourned.’ The elegy has con- tributed much to the feeling that links these two poets in one memory, though in life they were rather pleasant than intimate friends. Keats died at Rome, February 23, 1821; and Shelley composed the poem between the late days of May and June 11, or at the latest, June 16; it was printed at Pisa, under his own care, by July 13, and copies sent to London for issue there by his publisher. During the period of composition he felt that he was succeeding, and wrote of it as ‘a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better, in point of composition, than anything I have written ;’ and after its completion, he says, ‘The Adonais, in spite of its mysticism, is the least imperfect of my compositions, and, as the image of my regret and honor for poor Keats, I wish it to be so.’ He continued to indulge hopes of its success, as in the case of The Cenci, though on a differ- ent plane, and wrote to Ollier, ‘ 1 am especially curious to hear the fate of Adonais. I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born to an irittartaltty of oblivion ;’ and, shortly after this, to Hunt, —‘ Pray tell me what ef- fect was produced by Adonais. My faculties are shaken to atoms, and torpid. I can write nothing ; and if Adonais had no success and excited no interest, what incentive can I have to write ?’ A month or two later he writes to Gisborne, still strong in his faith in the poem, —‘I know what to think of Adonais, but what to think of those who confound it with the many bad poems of the day, I know not. ... It is absurd in any Review to criticise Adonais, and still more to pretend that the verses are bad.’ His friends praised it, except Byron, who kept silence, perhaps, Shelley says, because he was mentioned in it. Shelley’s let- ter to Severn has a peculiar interest : — ‘I send you the Elegy on poor Keats — and I wish it were better worth your acceptance. You will see, by the preface, that it was writ- ten before I could obtain any particular ac- count of his last moments; all that I still ' know, was communicated to me by a friend : ATO. who had derived his informaticn from Colonel Finch ; I have ventured to express, as I felt, the respect and admiration which your conduct towards him demands. ‘In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats never was, nor ever will be, a popular poet; and the total neglect and obscurity in which the astonishing remnants of his mind still lie, was hardly to be dissipated by a writer, who, however he may differ from Keats in more important qualities, at least resembles him in that accidental one, a want of popu- larity. ‘Thave little hope, therefore, that the poem I send you will excite any attention, nor do I feel assured that a critical notice of his writings would find a single reader. But for these con- siderations, it had been my intention to have collected the remnants of his compositions, and to have published them with a Life and Criticism. Has he left any poems or writings of whatsoever kind, and in whose possession are they ? Perhaps you would oblige me by information on this point.’ PREFACE Pdppaxov Fre, Biwy. mori cdv ordua, hdppwaxov etdes. Tovovrors xeiAeoot woTédpaye, KOUK eyAuKavOn 5 Tis 8& Bpords TroacodTov avasepos, H} Kepdoat Toe *H Sovvar yardorre Td pdpwaxov Expvyev adar ; Moscuus, Epirarg. Bion. Ir is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled prove, at least, that Iam an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years. John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the of 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Ces- tius and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is 1 308 ADONAIS open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place. The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful ; and where cankerworms abound what wonder if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his En- dymion, which appeared in the Quarterly Re- view, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind ; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more can- did critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wan- tonly inflicted. It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or one like Keats’s composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, 4 most base and unprincipled calumniator. to Endymion, was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated with various degrees of complacency and panegyric Paris and Wo- man and a Syrian Tale, and Mrs. Lefanu and Mr. Barrett and Mr. Howard Payne and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a parallel between the Rev. Mr. Mil- man and Lord Byron? What gnat did they I I weep for Adonais — he is dead ! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head ! And thon, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: ‘With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity !’ II Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies strain at here after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adul- tery dares the foremost of these literary pros- titutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Mis- erable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers but used none. The circumstauces of the closing scene of poor Keats’s life were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press. Iam given to understand that the wound which his sensitive spirit had received from the criticism of Endymion was exasperated by the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome and attended in his last illness by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been informed, ‘almost risked his own life, and saérificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend.’ Had I known these circum- stances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble trib- ute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from ‘ such stuff as dreams are made of.’ His conduct is a golden augury of the success of his future career — may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name | In darkness ? where was lorn Urania When Adonais died ? With veiléd eyes, ’Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, Rekindled all the fading melodies, With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death. III Oh, weep tor Adonais — he is dead ! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep ! Yet wherefore ? Quench within their burning bed Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart ep Like his a mute and uncomplaining sleep; ADONAIS 3°09 For ee is gone where all things wise and air Descend. Qh, dream not that the amor- ____ous Deep Will yet restore him to the vital air; Geath feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. Iv Most musical of mourners, weep again ! Lament anew, Urania !— He died, Who was the sire of an immortal strain, Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride The priest, the slave, and the liberticide Trampled and mocked with many a loathéd rite Of iust and blood; he went, unterrified, Inte the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite Yet reigns o’er earth, the third among the sons of light. Domur, 0 Vv Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! Not all to that bright station dared to climb; And happier they their happiness who knew, Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time In which suns perished; others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime; And some yet live, treading the thorny road, Nhich leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode. VI But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished, The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished And fed with true-love tears instead of dew; Most musical of mourners, weep anew! Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, The bloom, whose petals, nipped before they blew, Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste; The broken lily lies —the storm is over- past. VII To that high Capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came; and bought, with price of pur- est breath, A grave among the eternal.— Come away ! Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay; Awake him not! surely he takes his fill Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. Vil He will awake no more, oh, never more ! Within the twilight chamber spreads apace The shadow of white Death, and at the door Invisible Corruption waits to trace His extreme way to her dim dwelling: place; The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface So fair a prey, till darkness and the law Of change shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw. IX Oh, weep for Adonais!— The quick Dreams, The passion-wingéd ministers of thought, Who were his flocks, whom near the liv- ing streams Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught The love which was its music, wander not, — Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again. 310 ADONAIS a Splendors, and Glooms, and glimmering And one with trembling hand clasps his Incarnations cold head, Of hopes and fears, and twilight Fanta- And fans him with her moonlight wings, sies; and cries, And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, «Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by dead; the gleam See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.’ Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise ! She knew not *t was her own;.as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. xI One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them; Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw The wreath upon him, like an anadem, Which frozen tears instead of pearls be- gem; Another in her wilful grief would break Her bow and wingéd reeds, as if to stem A greater loss with one which was more | weak; And dull the barbéd fire against his frozen cheek. XII Another Splendor on his mouth:alit, That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath ‘Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, And pass into the panting heart beneath With lightning and with music; the damp death Quenched its caress upon his icy lips; And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath Of moonlight vapor, which the cold night clips, It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. XIII And others came — Desires and Adora- tions, Wingéd Persuasions and veiled Desti- nies, Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, Came in slow pomp; — the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. XIV All he had loved, and moulded into thought From shape, and hue, and odor, and sweet sound, Lamented Adonais. Morning sought Her eastern watch tower, and her hair unbound, Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, Dimmed the aérial eyes that kindle day; Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay. XV Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless moun- tains, And feeds her grief with his remem- bered lay, And will no more reply to winds or fountains, Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day; Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined awa, Into a shadow of all sounds: —a drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. XVI Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, Or they dead leaves;-since her delight is flown. ADONAIS 311 For whom should she have waked the sullen year ? To Phebus was not Hyacinth so dear, Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both Thou, Adonais; wan they stand and sere Amid the faint companions of their youth, With dew all turned to tears; odor, to sighing ruth. XVII Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale, Mourns not her mate with such melo- dious pain; Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain Light on his head who pierced thy inno- cent breast, And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest ! XVII Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year; The airs and streams renew their joyous tone; The ants, the bees, the swallows, reap- pear; Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier; The amorous birds now pair in every brake, And build their mossy homes in field and brere; And the green lizard and the golden snake, Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. XIX Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean, A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst, As it has ever done, with change and motion, From the great morning of the world when first God dawned on Chaos; in its stream im- mersed, The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light; All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst, Diffuse themselves, and spend in love’s delight The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. XX The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender. Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath; Like incarnations of the stars, when splendor Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath. Nought we know dies. which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning ? the intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched ina most cold repose. Shall that alone XXI Alas ! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me! Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene The actors or spectators? Great and mean Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow. As long as skies are blue and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow. XXII He will awake no more, oh, never more ! ‘Wake thou,’ cried Misery, ‘childless Mother, rise Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core, A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs.’ 312 ADONAIS And all the Dreams that watched Ura- nia’s eyes, And all the Echoes whom their sister’s son Had held in holy silence, cried, ‘ Arise !’ Swift as a Thought by the snake Mem- ory stung, From her ambrosial rest the fading Splen- dor sprung. XXIII She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs Out of the East, and follows wild and drear The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, Had left the Earth a corpse; — sorrow and fear So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania; So saddened round her like an atmo- sphere Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way Even i the mournful place where Adonais ay. XXIV Out of her secret Paradise she sped, Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, And human hearts which, to her airy tread Yielding not, wounded the invisible Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell; And barbéd tonghes, and thoughts more sharp than they, Rent the soft Form they never could repel, Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, : Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. XxXV In the death-chamber for a moment Death, Shamed by the presence of that living Might, Blushed to annihilation, and the breath Revisited those lips, and life’s pale light Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. “Leave me not wild and drear and com- fortless, As silent lightning leaves the starless night ! : Leave me not!’ cried Urania; her dix tress Roused Death; Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. XXVI ‘Stay yet awhile ! speak to me once again; Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; And in my heartless breast and burning brain That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive, With food cof saddest memory kept alive, Now thou art dead, as if it were a part Of thee, my Adonais ! I would give All that I am to be as thou now art ! But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart ! XXVII *O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart Dare the unpastured dragon in his den ? Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear ? Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer. XXVIII ‘The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; The vultures, to the conqueror’s banner true, Who feed where Desolation first has fed, And whose wings rain contagion; — how they fled, When, like Apollo, from his golden bow The Pythian of the age one arrow sped And smiled!—The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low. ADONAIS 313 XXIX ‘The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; He sets, and each ephemeral insect then Is gathered into death without a dawn, And the immortal stars awake again; So is it in the world of living men: A godlike mind soars forth, in its de- light Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light Is it not broken? On the withering flower The killing sun smiles brightly; on a cheek The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. XXXII His head was bound with pansies over- blown, And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; And a light spear topped with a cypress Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit’s aw- cone, ful night.’ Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses 0 grew < Te Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew, Thus z she; and the mountain rds)came, Thei , thei i tl eir s sere, their magic man eg Ais yovae of that crew rent; Se : The Pilgrim of Btapnity, whose tole. a7) ' Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue. XXXI a Umidst others of less note, came one frail 0: & A phantom among nen; ‘companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness, (-Acteon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble steps o’er the world’s wil- derness, And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued, Vie raging hounds, their father and their prey. XXXII A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift — A love in desolation masked; — a Power Girt round with weakness;—it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour; It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, A breaking billow;— even whilst we speak Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart hook the weak hand that grasped it; He came the last, neglected and apart; A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter’s dart. XXXIV All stood aloof, and at his partial moan Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band Who in another’s fate now wept his own, As in the accents of an unknown land He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned The Stranger’s mien, and murmured: ‘Who art thou ?’ He answered not, but with a sudden hand Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s — oh ! that it should be so $ XXXV What softer voice is hushed over the dead ? Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown ? What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed, In mockery of monumental stone, The heavy heart heaving without a moan? If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, Taught, soothed, loved, honored the de parted one, Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs The silence of that heart’s accepted sacri fice. 4 ADONAIS XXXVI Our Adovnais has drunk poison — oh, What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe ? The nameless worm would now itself disown; It felt, yet could escape the magic tone Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong, But what was howling in one breast alone, Silent with expectation of the song, Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. XXXVII Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame ! Live ! fear no heavier chastisement from me Thou moteless blot on a remembered name ! But be thyself, and know thyself to be! And ever at thy season be thou free To spill the venom when thy fangs o’er- flow; Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee; Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow. And likea beaten hound tremble thou shalt my — as now. Sse XXVIII Nor let us weep that our delight is fled Far from these carrion kites that scream below; He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal, which must glow Through time and change, unquenchably the same, Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame. XXXIX Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — He hath awakened from the dream of life — is we, wh st in stor) isi ee ith phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance strike with our spir- it’s knife Invulnerable nothings. We decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, And gold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay. XL He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall de- light, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world’s slow stain Q He ii sane, and now can never mourn’ heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain; Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. XLI He lives, he wakes — tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young Dawn, a ae or Turn all thy (dev) to splendor, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; Ye cavernsand ye forests, cease to moan ! Cease, ve faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air, Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair ! Se ee ih XLII He is made onc with Nature: there is heard His voice in all her music, from the moar ADONAIS 315 Of ponger to the song of night’s sweet ird ; He is a presence to be felt and known In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where’er that Power may move Which has withdrawn hisbeingto itsown; Which wields the world with never-wea- ried love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. XLII He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely; he doth bear His part, while the one Spirit’s plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear, Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear, And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light. XLIV The splendors of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb, And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair. And love and life contend in it for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. XLV The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton Rose pale, — his solemn agony had not Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought And as he fell and as he lived and loved Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, Arose; and Lucan, by his death ap- proved; : Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. XLVI And many more, whose names on earth are dark But whose transmitted effluence cannot die So long as fire outlives the parent spark, Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. ‘Thou art become as one of us,’ they ery; ‘It eas for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascended majesty, Silent alone amid an Heaven of song. Assume thy wingéd throne, thou Vesper of our throng !’ XLVII Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth, Fond wretch ! and know thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy panting soul the pendu- lous Earth; As from a centre, dart thy spirit’s light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Satiate the void circumference; then shrink Even toa point within our day and night; And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. XLVIII Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, Oh, not of him, but of our joy; ’t is nought That ages, empires, and religions, there Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; For such as he can lend, — they borrow not Glory from those who made the world their prey; And he is gathered to the kings of thought 316 Who waged contention with their time’s decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away. XLIX Go thou to Rome,—at once the Para- dise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation’s nakedness, Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, Where, like an infant’s smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread; L And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; And one keen pyramid with wedge sub- lime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned This refuge for his memory, doth stand Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death, Welcoming him we lose with scarce extin- guished breath. LI Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which con- signed Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break it not thou ! too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gali. From the world’s bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is, why fear we to become ? yw A DONAIS Aa LII he One remains, the many change ma pass; é Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s adows fly; Life Tee eaten of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek ! Follow where all is fled ! — Rome’s azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. LIII Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart ? Thy hopes are gone before; from all things here They have departed; thou shouldst now depart ! A light is passed from the revolving year, And man, and woman; and what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. The soft sky smiles, —the low wind whispers near; *T is Adonais calls ! oh, hasten thither, No more let Life divide what Death can join together. lu X \tortiv That Light whose smile kindles the Uni- verse, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove : By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Bums bright or dim, as each are mirrors 0 The fire for which all thirst, now beams \ on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. PROLOGUE 317 LV The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven Far from the shore, far from the trem- bling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and spheréd skies are riven ! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. HELLAS A LYRICAL DRAMA MANTIS ’EIM’ ’EX@AQN ’ALONON Hellas, the last of Shelley’s political poems, was written at Pisa in the fall of 1821, and published the next spring at London by Ollier, who made some omissions in the notes and preface with Shelley’s permission. Edward Williams suggested the title, and was much interested in the poem as it grew. Shelley de- scribes it, during its composition, as ‘a sort of imitation of the Perse of Aischylus, full of lyrical poetry. I try to be what I might have been, but am not successful;’ and in mentioning to Gisborne the accuracy of the proof-reading he says, —‘ Am I to thank you for the revision of the press ? or who acted as midwife to this last of my orphans, introducing it to oblivion, and me to my accustomed fail- ure? May the cause it celebrates be more fortunate than either! Tell me how you like Hellas, and give me your opinion freely. It was written without much care, and in one of those few moments of enthusiasm which now seldom visit me, and which make me pay dear for their visits.’ Mrs. Shelley’s note gives an excellent account of the circumstances amid which it was written, and of its spirit : ‘The south of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at the beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a signal to Italy — secret societies were formed —and when Naples rose to declare the Con- stitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium to the foot of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty, early in 1821, the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at first their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a people long enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa threw off the yoke of the King of Sardinia ; and, as if in playful imita- tion, the people of the little state of Massa and pip. Coton. Carrara gave the congé to their sovereign and set up a republic. ‘Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said that the Austrian minister presented. a list of sixty Carbonari to the grand-duke, urging their imprisonment; and the grand- duke replied, ‘‘I do not know whether these sixty men are Carbonari, but I know if I imprison them, I shall directly have sixty thousand start up.” But though the Tuscans had no desire to disturb the paternal govern- ment, beneath whose shelter they slumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian revolutions with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was warm in every bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the Neapolitans would offer no fit resistance to the regular German troops, and that the overthrow of the Constitution in Naples would act as a decisive blow against all struggles for liberty in Italy. ‘We have seen the rise and progress of re- form. But the Holy Alliance was alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the peaceful triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion of freedom in the south of Europe was the only hope of the liberals, as, if it prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the example. Happily the reverse has proved the fact. The coun- tries accustomed to the exercise of the privi- leges of freemen, to a limited extent, have extended, and are extending these limits. Freedom and knowledge have now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and if it continue thus, we may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have said, in 1821, Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty, looked upon the struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the destinies of the world, probably for centuries to come. The interest he took in the progress 318 HELLAS of affairs was intense. When Genoa declared itself free, his hopes were at their highest. Day after day, he read the bulletins of the Austrian army, and sought eagerly to gather tokens of its defeat. He heard of the revolt of Genoa with emotions of transport. His whole heart and soul were in the triumph of their cause. We were living at Pisa at that time; and several well-informed Italians, at the head of whom we may place the celebrated Vaccd, were accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes from Shelley: they did not find such for the despair they too generally experi- enced, founded on contempt for their southern countrymen. ‘While the fate of the progress of the Aus- trian armies then invading Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him with exultation. We had formed the ac- quaintance at Pisa of several Constantinopol- itan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hospodar of Wallachia, who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the gentleman to whom the drama of Hellas is dedicated. Prince Mavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of his country, which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen. He often intimated the possibility of an insur- rection in Greece; but we had no idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the Ist of April, 1821, he called on Shelley; bringing the proclamation of his cousin, Prince Ipsi- lanti, and, radiant with exultation and delight, declared that henceforth Greece would be free. ‘Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty in Spain and Naples, in two odes, dictated by the warmest enthusiasm ;— he felt himself natu- rally impelled to decorate with poetry the uprise of the descendants of that people, whose works he regarded with deep admiration ; and to adopt the vaticinatory character in prophe- sying their success. Hellas was written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to re- mark how well he overcomes the difficulty of forming a drama out of such scant materials. His prophecies, indeed, came true in their general, not their particular purport. He did not foresee the death of Lord Londonderry, which was to be the epoch of achange in Eng- lish politics, particularly as regarded foreign affairs; nor that the navy of his country would fight for instead of against the Greeks: and by the battle of Navarino secure their enfran- chisement from the Turks. Almost against reason, as it appeared to him, he resolved to believe that Greece would prove triumphant: and in this spirit, auguring ultimate good, yet grieving over the vicissitudes to be endured in the interval, he composed his drama... - ‘ Hellas was among the last of his composi- tions, and is among the most beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melo- dious in their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify Shelley’s peculiar style. ... ‘The conclusion of the last chorus is among the most beautiful of his lyrics; the imagery is distinct and majestic ; the prophecy, such as poets love to dwell upon, the regeneration of mankind —and that regeneration reflecting back splendor on the foregone time, from which it inherits so much of intellectual wealth, and memory of past virtuous deeds, as must render the possession of happiness and peace of tenfold value.’ To HIS EXCELLENCY PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO LATE 8ECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA THE DAMA OF HELLAS 18 INSCRIBED AS /N IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP oF THE AUTHOR Pisa, November , 1821. PREFACE Tue poem of Hellas, written at the sugges- tion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found ‘0 possess any) solely from the in- tense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause he would celebrate. The subject in its present state is insuscep- tible of being treated otherwise than lyrically, and if { have called this poem a drama from the cir umstance of its being composed in dia- logue, the license is not greater than that which has been assumed by other poets who have called their productions epics, only because they have been divided into twelve or twenty- four books. The Perse of Aischylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision c£ the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the deso- lation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lvric pictures and with having wrought upon AUTHOR’S PREFACE 319 the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final tri- umph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilization and social improvement. The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, so inartificial that I doubt whether, i recited on the Thespian wagon to an Athe- nian village at the Dionysiaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment greater than the loss of such a reward which the Aristarchi of the hour may think fit to inflict. The only goat-song which I have yet at- tempted has, I confess, in spite of the unfavor- able nature of the subject, received a greater and a more valuable portion of applause than I expected or than it deserved. Common fame is the only authority which I can allege for the details which form the basis of the poem, and I must trespass upon the for- giveness of my readers for the display of newspaper erudition to which I have been re- duced. Undoubtedly, until the conclusion of the war, it will be impossible to obtain an ac- count of it sufficiently authentic for historical materials ; but poets have their privilege, and it is unquestionable that actions of the most exalted courage have been performed by the Greeks —that they have gained more than one naval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalized by circumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory. The apathy of the rulers of the civilized world to the astonishing circumstance of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their civilization — rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin —is something perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shows of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts, have their root in Greece. But for Greece, Rome, the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors, would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan possess. The human form and the human mind at- tained to a perfection in Greece which has impressed its image on those faultless produc- tions whose very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand chan- nels of manifest or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the ex- tinction of the race. The modern Greek is the descendant of those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our kind, and he inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of conception, their enthusiasm and their courage. If in many instances he is degraded by moral and political slavery to the practice of the basest vices it engenders — and that below the level of ordinary degradation —let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces the worst, and that habits which sub- sist only in relation to a peculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease so soon as that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the admirable novel of Anasta, sius could have been a faithful picture of their manners, have undergone most important changes ; the flower of their youth returning to their country from the universities of Italy, Germany and France have communicated to their fellow-citizens the latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors were the original source. The university of Chios contained before the breaking out of the revo- lution eight hundred students, and among them several Germans and Americans. The muni- ficence and energy of many of the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renova- tion of their country with a spirit and a wis- dom which has few examples, is above all praise. The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, of Christianity and civilization. Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece ; and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other until one or both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in establish- ing the independence of Greece and in main- taining it both against Russia and the Turk; —but when was the oppressor generous or just ? Should the English people ever become free, they will reflect upon the part which those who presume to represent their will have played in the great drama of the revival of liberty, with feelings which it would become them to anticipate. This is the age of the war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and every one of those ringleaders of the privileged gangs of murderers and swindlers, called sovereigns, look to each other for aid against the common enemy, and suspend their mutual jealousies in the presence of a mightier fear. Of this holy alliance all the despots of the earth are virtual members. Buta new race has arisen through- out Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the opinions which are its chains, and she will con- tinue to produce fresh generations to accom- 320 HELLAS plish that destiny which tyrants foresee and dread. The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the enjoyment of a par- tial exemption from the abuses which its un- natural and feeble government are vainly at- tempting to revive. The seed of blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vig- orous race is arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a revolution of Germany to see the tyrants who have pinna- HELLAS DRAMATIS PERSONZ THE PRoLOGUE : — HERALD OF ETERNITY. CurIsT. SaTAn. ManOoMET. Cuorvs. Tue DRAMA : — Maxnmup. Hassan. Daoop. AHASUERUS, a Jew. PHANTOM OF MAHOMET THE SECOND. Cxorvs oF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN. MESSENGERS, SLAVES AND ATTENDANTS. Scenz. Constantinople. Toe. Sunset. PROLOGUE: A FRAGMENT HERALD OF ETERNITY Ir is the day when all the sons of God Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline The shadow of God, and delegate Of that before whose breath the universe Is asa print of dew. Hierarchs and kings Who from your thrones pinnacled on the ast Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom 10 Of mortal thought, which like an exhala- tion Steaming from earth conceals the of heaven Which gave it birth, assemble here Before your Father’s throne; the swift decree Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation cled themselves on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy, when they impute the insurrec- tion in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and that enemy well knows the power and the cunning of its opponents and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and in- evitable division to wrest the bloody sceptres from their grasp. Is yet withheld, clothéd in which it shall annul The fairest of those wandering isles that gem The sapphire space of interstellar air, That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped 20 Less in the beauty of its tender light Than in an atmosphere of living spirit Which interpenetrating all the it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow Impels the generations To their appointed place, Whilst the high Arbiter Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Sends his decrees veiled in eternal . . . 30 Within the circuit of this pendant orb There lies an antique region, on which fell The dews of thought in the world’s golden dawn Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung Temples and cities and immortal forms And harmonies of wisdom and of song, And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And when the sun of its dominion failed, And when the winter of its glory came, The winds that stripped it bare blew on, and swept 40 That dew into the utmost wildernesses In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed The unmaternal bosom of the North. Haste, sons of God, for ye beheld, Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished, The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair. A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God, PROLOGUE 325 To speed, or to prevent, or to suspend, If, as ye dream, such power be not with- held, 50 The unaccomplished destiny. CHORUS The curtain of the Universe Is rent and shattered, The splendor-wingéd worlds disperse Like wild doves scattered. Space is roofless and bare, And in the midst a clondy shrine, Dark amid thrones of light. In the blue glow of hyaline Golden worlds revolve and shine. 60 In flight From every point of the Infinite, Like a thousand dawns on a singlenight, The splendors rise and spread; And through thunder and darkness dread Light and music are radiated, And, in their pavilioned chariots led By living wings high overhead, The giant Powers move, 69 Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. A chaos of light and motion Upon that glassy ocean. The senate of the Gods is met, Each in his rank and station set; There is silence in the spaces — Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet Start from their places ! CHRIST Almighty Father ! Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny There are two fountains in which spirits weep 80 When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named, And with their bitter dew two Destinies Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third, Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion’slymph, And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds, By this imperial crown of agony, By infamy and solitude and death, 9a For this I underwent, and by the pain Of pity for those who would for me The unremembered joy of a revenge, For this I felt — by Plato’s sacred light, Of which my spirit was a burning morrow — By Greece and all she cannot cease to be, Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth, Stars of all night—her harmonies and forms, Echoes and shadows of what Love adores In thee, I do compel thee, send forth F; ‘ate, Too Thy irrevocable child: let her descend A seraph-wingéd victory [arrayed] In tempest of the omnipotence of God Which sweeps through all things. From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies To stamp, as on a wingéd serpent’s seed, Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens The solid heart of enterprise; from all 110 By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Are stars beneath the dawn . . She shall arise Victorious as the world arose from Chaos ! And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed Their presence in the beauty and the light Of thy first smile, O Father, as they gather The spirit of thy love which paves for them Their path o’er the abyss, till every sphere Shall be one living Spirit, so shall Greece — SATAN Be as all things beneath the empyrean 120 Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns ? Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed Which pierces thee ! whose throne a chair of scorn; For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor The innumerable worlds of golden light Which are my empire, and the least of them which thou wonldst redeem from me 7 Know’st thou not them my portion ? 322 HELLAS Or wouldst rekindle the strife? 130 Which our great Father then did arbitrate When he assigned to his competing sons Each his apportioned realm ? Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who sends thee forth, whate’er thy task, Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine Thy trophies, whether Greece again become The fountain in the desert whence the earth Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death 140 To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less Than of the Father’s; but lest thou shouldst faint, The wingéd hounds, Famine and Pestilence, Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forkéd snake, Insatiate Superstition, still shall The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings, Convulsing and consuming, and [add 150 Three vials of the tears which demons weep When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death Pass triumphing over the thorns of life, Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares, ‘Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates. The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure, Glory and science and security, On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes. The second Tyranny — CHRIST Obdurate spirit ! Thou seest but the Past in the To-come. 16: Pride is thy error and thy punishment. Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow- drops Before the Power that wields and kindles them. True greatness asks not space, true excela lence . Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine. MAHOMET Haste thou and fill the waning crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow 170 Of Christian night rolled back upon the West When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow. Wake, thou Word Of God, and from the throne of Destiny Even to the utmost limit of thy way May Triumph : Be thou a cates on thera ehose creed Divides and multiplies the most high God. HELLAS Scent — A Terrace, on the Seraglio. Maumun ening 3 an Indian Slave sitting beside his ‘ouch. CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN We strew these opiate flowers On thy restless pillow; They were stripped from oricnt bowers, By the Indian billow. Be thy sleep Calm and deep, Like theirs who fell — not ours who weep! INDIAN Away, unlovely dreams ! Away, false shapes of sleep ! Be his, as Heaven seems, 14 Clear, and bright, and deep ! Soft as love, and calm as death, Sweet as a summer night without a breath. CHORUS Sleep, sleep! our song is laden With the soul of slumber; It was sung by a Samian maiden, HELLAS 323 Whose lover was of the number Who now keep That calm sleep Whence none may wake, where none shall weep. 20 INDIAN Itouch thy temples pale! I breathe my soul on thee ! And could my prayers avail, Allmy joy should be Dead, and I would live to weep, So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep. CHORUS Breathe low, low, The spell of the mighty mistress now ! When Conscience lulls her sated snake, And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake. 30 Breathe low — low, The words, which, like secret fire, shall flow Through the veins of the frozen earth — low, low! SEMICHORUS I Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed, — but it returneth. SEMICHORUS 1 Yet were life a charnel, where Hope lay coffined with Despair; Yet were truth a sacred lie. 40 Love were lust — SEMICHORUS I If Liberty Lent not life its soul of light, Hope its iris of delight, Truth its prophet’s robe to wear, Love its power to give and bear. CHORUS In the great morning of the world, The spirit of God with might unfurled The flag of Freedom over Chaos, And all its banded anarchs fled, Like vultures frighted from Imaus 50 Before an earthquake’s tread. So from Time’s tempestuous dawn Freedom’s splendor burst and shone; Thermopyle and Marathon Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted, The springing Fire; the wingéd glory On Philippi half-alighted, Like an eagle on a promontory. Its unwearied wings could fan The quenchless ashes of Milan. 60 From age to age, from man to man It lived; and lit from land to land Florence, Albion, Switzerland. Then night fell; and, as from night, Reassuming fiery flight, From the West swift Freedom came, Against the course of heaven and doom, A second sun arrayed in flame, To burn, to kindle, to illume. From far Atlantis its young beams 70 Chased the shadows and the dreams. France, with all her sanguine steams, Hid, but quenched it not; again Through clouds its shafts of glory rain From utmost Germany to Spain. As an eagle fed with morning Scorns the embattled tempest’s warning, When she seeks her aerie hanging In the mountain-cedar’s hair, And her brood expect the clanging — 80 Of her wings through the wild air, Sick with famine; — Freedom so To what of Greece remaineth now Returns; her hoary ruins glow Like orient mountains lost in day; Beneath the safety of her wings Her renovated nurslings play, And in the naked lightnings Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. Let Freedom leave, where’er she flies, ox A desert, or a paradise; Let the beautiful and the brave Share her glory, or a grave, SEMICHORUS I With the gifts of gladness Greece did thy cradle strew; SEMICHORUS II With the tears of sadness Greece did thy shroud bedew; SEMICHORUS I With an orphan’s affection She followed thy bier through time: 324 HELLAS SEMICHORUS IL And at thy resurrection 100 Reappeareth, like thou, sublime ! SEMICHORUS I If Heaven should resume thee, To Heaven shall her spirit ascend; SEMICHORUS IL If Hell should entomb thee, To Hell shall her high hearts bend. SEMICHORUS I If Annihilation — SEMICHORUS II Dust let her glories be; And a name and a nation Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee ! ; INDIAN His brow grows darker — breathe not — move not! 110 He starts — he shudders; ye that love not, With your panting loud and fast Have awakened him at last. MAHMUD (starting from his sleep) Man the Seraglio-guard ! make fast the gate. What! from a cannonade of three short hours ? *Tis false ! that breach towards the Bos- phorus Cannot be practicable yet — who stirs ? Stand tothe match, that, when the foe pre- vails, One spark may mix in reconciling ruin The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower 120 Into the gap — wrench off the roof. Enter Hassan Ha! what! The truth of day lightens upon my dream, And I am Mahmud still. HASSAN Your Sublime Highness Is strangely moved. MAHMUD The times do cast strange shadows On those who watch and who must rule their course, Lest they, being first in peril as in glory, Be whelmed in the fierce ebb: — and these are of them. Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me As thus from sleep into the troubled day; It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, 130 Leaving no figure upon memory’s glass. Would that — no matter. Thou didst say thou knewest A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle Of strange and secret and forgotten things. I bade thee summon him; ’t is said his tribe Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams. HASSAN The Jew of whom I spake is old, so old He seems to have outlived a world’s decay; The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean Seem younger still than he; his hair and beard 140 Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow; His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct With light, and to the soul that quickens them Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift To the winter wind; but from his eye looks forth A life of unconsuméd thought which pierces The present, and the past, and the to- come. Some say that this is he whom the great prophet Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery, Mocked with the curse of immortality. x51 Some feign that he is Enoch; others dream He was pre-adamite, and has survived Cycles of generation and of ruin. The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence, And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh, Deep contemplation, and unwearied study, In years outstretched beyond the date of man, May have attained to sovereignty and sci- ence Over those strong and secret things and thoughts 160 Which others fear and know not. MAHMUD I would talk With this old Jew. HELLAS HASSAN Thy will is even now Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern *Mid the Demonesi, less accessible Than thou or God! He who would ques- tion him Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream Of Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles, When the young moon is westering as now, And evening airs wander upon the wave; And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle, 170 Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow Of its gilt prow within the sapphire water, Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud, Ahasuerus ! and the caverns round Will answer, Ahasuerus! If his prayer Be granted, a faint meteor will arise, Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind Will rush out of the sighing pine forest, And with the wind a storm of harmony Unutterably sweet, and pilot him 180 Through the soft twilight to the Bos- phorus: Thence, at the hour and place and circum- stance Fit for the matter of their conference, The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare Win the desired communion—but that shout Bodes — [A shout within. MAHMUD Evil, doubtless; like all human sounds. Let me converse with spirits. HASSAN That shout again. MAHMUD This Jew whom thou hast summoned — HASSAN Will be here — MAHMUD When the omnipotent hour, to which are yoked He, I, and all things, shall compel — enough. 190 325 Silence those mutineers—that drunken crew That crowd about the pilot in the storm. Ay ! strike the foremost shorter by a head ! They weary me, and I have need of rest. Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose. [Exeunt severaily. CHORUS Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river, Sparkling, bursting, borne away. 200 But they are still immortal Who, through birth’s orient portal And death’s dark chasm hurrying to gnd fro, : Clothe their unceasing flight In the brief dust and light - Gathered around their chariots as they 893 New ‘shapes they still may weave, New gods, new laws receive, Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last On Death’s bare ribs had cast. 210 A power from the unknown God, A Promethean conqueror, came 5 Like a triumphal path he trod The thorns of death and shame. A mortal shape to him Was like the vapor dim Which the orient planet animates with light; Hell, Sin and Slavery came, Like bloodhounds mild and tame, Nor preyed until their lord had taken flight; 220 The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set; While blazoned as on heaven’s immortal] noon The cross leads generations on. Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep From one, whose dreams are Paradise, Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, And day peers forth with her blank eyes; So fleet, so faint, so fair, The Powers of earth and air 23¢ 326 HELLAS Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem; Apollo, Pan, and Love, And even Olympian Jove, Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them; Our hills and seas and streams, Dispeopled of their dreams, Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, Wailed for the golden years. Enter Manmup, Hassan, Daoon, and others MAHMUD More gold ? our ancestors bought gold with victory, 239 And shall I sell it for defeat ? DAOOD The Janizars Clamor for pay. MAHMUD Go, bid them pay themselves With Christian blood! Are there no Gre- cian virgins Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy ? No infidel children to impale on spears ? No hoary priests after that Patriarch Who bent the curse against his country’s heart, Which clove his own at last? Go! bid them kill; Blood is the seed of gold. DAOOD It has been sown, And yet the harvest to the sickle-men 249 Is as a grain to each. MAHMUD Then take this signet. Unlock the seventh chamber, in which lie The treasures of victorious Solyman, An empire’s spoil stored for a day of ruin. O spirit of my sires, is it not come ? The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep; But these, who spread their feast on the red earth, Hunger for gold, which fills not.— See them fed; Then lead them to the rivers of fresh death. [Exit Daoop. Oh, miserable dawn, after a night — ; More glorious than the day which it usurped ! 260 O faith in God! O power onearth! O word Of the great Prophet, whose o’ershadowing wings Darkened the thrones and idols of the West, Now bright !—for thy sake curséd be the hour, Even as a father by an evil child, When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph From Caucasus to white Ceraunia ! Ruin above, and anarchy below; Terror without, and treachery within; The chalice of destruction full, and all 270 Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares To dash it from his lips? and where is Hope ? HASSAN The lamp of our dominion still rides high; One God is God — Mahomet is his Pro- phet. Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits Of utmost Asia, irresistibly Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco’s cry, But not like them to weep their strength in tears; They bear destroying lightning, and their step Wakes earthquake, to consume and over- whelm, 280 And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus, Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen With horrent arms; and lofty ships, even now, Like vapors anchored to a mountain’s edge, Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Seala The convoy of the ever-veering wind. Samos is drunk with blood; the Greek has paid Brief victory with swift loss and long de- spair. The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far When the fierce shout of Allah-illa-Allah Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind, 291 Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock HELLAS 32} Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm. So were the lost Greeks on the Danube’s day ! If night is mute, yet the returning sun Kindles the voices of the morning birds; Nor at thy bidding less exultingly Than birds rejoicing in the golden day The Anarchies of Africa unleash Their tempest-wingéd cities of the sea, 300 To speak in thunder to the rebel world. Like sulphurous clouds half-shattered by the storm, They sweep the pale Agean, while the Queen Of Ocean, bound upon her island throne, Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons, Who frown on Freedom, spare a smile for thee. Russia still hovers, as an eagle might Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane Hang tangled in inextricable fight, To stoop upon the victor; for she fears 310 The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine. But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war, Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy, And howl upon their limits; for they see The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover, Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood Crouch round. What Anarch wears a crown or mitre, Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold, Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes ? 320 Our arsenals and our armories are full; Our forts defy assault; ten thousand can- non Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city; The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale The Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth. Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds, Over the hills of Anatolia, Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry 330 Sweep; the far-flashing of their starry lances Reverberates the dying light of day. We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law; But many-headed Insurrection stands Divided in itself, and soon must fall MAHMUD Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable. Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, em- blazoned Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud Which leads the rear of the departing day. Wan emblem of an empire fading now ,,0 _ See how it trembles in the blood-red air, And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent, Shrinks on the horizon’s edge, while, from above, One star with insolent and victorious light, Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams Like arrows through a fainting antelope, Strikes its weak form to death. HASSAN Even as that moon Renews itself — MAHMUD Shall we be not renewed! Far other bark than ours were needed now To stem the torrent of descending time; 35a The spirit that lifts the slave before his lord Stalks through the capitals of arméd kings, And spreads his ensign in the wilderness; Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls, Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust; And the inheritors of the earth, like beasts When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear Cower in their kingly dens — as I do now. What were Defeat, when Victory must appall ? Or Danger, when Security looks pale? 360 How said the messenger, who from the fort Islanded in the Danube saw the battle Of Bucharest ? that,— 328 HELLAS HASSAN Ibrahim’s scimitar Drew with its gleam swift victory from heaven To burn before him in the night of battle — A light and a destruction. MAHMUD Ay ! the day Was ours; but how? HASSAN The light Wallachians, The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies, Fled from the glance of our artillery Almost before the thunder-stone alit; 370 One half the Grecian army made a bridge Of safe and slow retreat with Moslem dead; The other — MAHMUD Speak — tremble not. HASSAN Islanded By victor myriads formed in hollow square With rough and steadfast frout, and thrice flung back The deluge of our foaming cavalry; Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines. Our baffled army trembled like one man Before a host, and gave them space; but soon From the surrounding hills the batteries blazed, 380 Kneading them down with fire and iron rain. Yet none approached; till, like a field of corn Under the hook of the swart sickle-man, The band, entrenched in mounds of Turk- ish dead, urew weak and few. Then said the Pacha, ‘ Slaves, Render yourselves — they have abandoned you — What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid ? We grant your lives.’ — ‘Grant that which is thine own !’ Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died ! Annther — ‘God, and man, and hope aban- don me; 390 But I to them and to myself remain Constant;’ he bowed his head and his heart burst. A third exclaimed, ‘There is a refuge, tyrant, Where thou darest not pursue; and canst not harm, Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.’ Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm, The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment Among the slain—dead earth upon the earth ! So these survivors, each by different ways, Some strange, all sudden, none dishonor- able, 400 Met in triumphant death; and, when our army Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame Held back the base hyenas of the battle That feed upon the dead and fly the living, One rose out of the chaos of the slain; And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit Of the old saviors of the land we rule Had lifted in its anger, wandering by; Or if there burned within the dying man Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith Creating what it feigned, — I cannot tell; But he cried, ‘ Phantoms of the free, we come ! 412 Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike To dust the citadels of sanguine kings, And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, And these their frost-work diadems like ew; O ye who float around this clime, and weave The garment of the glory which it wears, Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped, Lies sepulchred in monumental thought; 42 Progenitors of all that yet is great, Ascribe to your bright senate, oh, accept In your high ministrations, us, your sons — Us first, and the more glorious yet to come! And ye, weak conquerors! giants, who look pale When the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread — The vultures, and the dogs, your pensioners tame, HELLAS 329 Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still They crave the relic of Destruction’s feast. The exhalations and the thirsty winds 430 Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death; Heaven’s light is quenched in slaughter; thus where’er Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets, The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast Of these dead limbs, — upon your streams and mountains, Upon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops, — Where’er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly, Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down With poisoned light — Famine, and Pesti- lence, 439 And Panic, shall wage war upon our side ! Nature from all her boundaries is moved Against ye; Time has found ye light as foam. The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake Their empire o’er the unborn world of men On this one cast; but ere the die be thrown, The renovated genius of our race, Proud umpire of the impious game, de- scends, A seraph-wingéd Victory, bestriding The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, 450 And you to oblivion!’ — More he would have said, But — MAHMUD Died — as thou shouldst ere thy lips had painted Their ruin in the hues of our success. A rebel’s crime, gilt with a rebel’s tongue ! Your heart is Greek, Hassan. HASSAN It may be so: A spirit not my own wrenched me within, And I have spoken words I fear and hate; Yet would I die for — MAHMUD Live ! oh, live ! outlive Me and this sinking empire. But the fleet — HASSAN Alas ! MAHMUD The fleet which, like a flock of clouds Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner ! 461 Our winged castles from their merchant ships ! Our myriads before their weak pirate bands! Our arms before their chains ! our years of empire Before their centuries of servile fear ! Death is awake! Repulse is on the wa ters; They own no more the thunder-bearing banner Of Mahmud, but, like hounds of « base breed, Gorge from a stranger’s hand, and rend their master. HASSAN Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phane, saw 472 The wreck — MAHMUD The caves of the Icarian isles Told each to the other in loud mockery, And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes, First of the sea-convulsing fight — and then — Thou darest to speak —senseless are the mountains; Interpret thou their voice ! HASSAN My presence bore A part in that day’s shame. The Grecian fleet Bore down at daybreak from the north, and hun As multitudinous on the ocean line As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. 480 Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle Was kindled. First through the hail of our artillery The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail Dashed; ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man 339 HELLAS To man, were grappled in the embrace of war, {nextricable but by death or victory. The tempest of the raging fight convulsed To its crystalline depths that stainless sea, And shook heaven’s roof of golden morn- ing clouds 49r Poised on an hundred azure mountain isles. In the brief trances of the artillery One cry from the destroyed and the de- stroyer Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped The unforeseen event, till the north wind Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil Of battle-smoke — then victory — victory ! For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon The abhorréd cross glimmered behind, be- fore, 50x Among, around us; and that fatal sign Dried with its beams the strength in Mos- lem hearts, As the sun drinks the dew. — What more ? We fled ! Our noonday path over the sanguine foam Was beaconed —and the glare struck the sun pale — By our consuming transports; the fierce light Made all the shadows of our sails blood- red, And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding The ravening fire even to the water’s level: Some were blown up; some, settling heav- ily, grr Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died Upon the wind that bore us fast and far, Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perished ! We met the vultures legioned in the air, Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind; They, screaming from their cloudy moun- tain peaks, Stooped through the sulphurous battle- smoke, and perched Each on the weltering carcass that we loved, Like its ill angel or its damnéd soul, —520 Riding upon the bosom of the sea. We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast. Jey waked the voiceless people of the sea, And ravening Famine left his ocean-cave To dwell with War, with us, and with De« spair. We met night three hours to the west of Patmos, And with night, tempest — MAHMUD Cease ! Enter a Messenger MESSENGER Your Sublime Highness, That Christian hound, the Muscovite am- bassador, Has left the city. If the rebel fleet Had anchored in the port, had victory 53 Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippo- drome, Panic were tamer. Obedience and Mutiny, Like giants in contention planet-struck, Stand gazing on each other. There is peace In Stamboul. MAHMUD Is the grave not calmer still ? Its ruins shall be mine. HASSAN Fear not the Russian; The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay Against the hunter. Cunning, base, and cruel, He crouches, watching till the spoil be won, And must be paid for his reserve in blood. After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian 54r That which thou canst not keep, his de- served portion Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields, Rivers and seas, like that which we may win, But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves ! Enter Second Messenger SECOND MESSENGER Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens, Navarin, Artas, Monembasia, Corinth and Thebes, are carried by as- sault; And every Islamite who made his dogs Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves 550 HELLAS 334 Passed at the edge of the sword; the lust of blood, Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death; But like a fiery plague breaks out anew In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale In its own light. The garrison of Patras Has jee but for ten days, nor is there ope But from the Briton; at once slave and tyrant, His wishes still are weaker than his fears, Or he would sell what faith may yet re- main From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway; 560 And if you buy him not, your treasury Is empty even of promises — his own coin. The freedman of a western poet chief Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels, And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont; The aged Ali sits in Yanina, A crownless metaphor of empire; His name, that shadow of his withered might, Holds our besieging army like a spell In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny; 570 He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors The ruins of the city where he reigned, Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped The costly harvest his own blood matured, Not the sower, Ali— who has bought a truce From Ypsilanti, with ten camel-loads Of Indian gold. Enter a Third Messenger MAHMUD What more ? THIRD MESSENGER The Christian tribes Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness Are in revolt; Damascus, Hems, Aleppo, 580 Tremble; the Arab menaces Medina; The Athiop has entrenched himself in Sen- naar, And keeps the Egyptian rebel well em- ployed, Who denies homage, claims investiture As price of tardy aid. Persia demands The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus, Like mountain-twins that from each other’s veins Catch the volcano fire and earthquake spasm, Shake in the general fever. Through the city, 59 Like birds before a storm, the Santon shriek, And prophesyings horrible and new Are heard among the crowd; that sea ot men Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still. A Dervise, learnéd in the Koran, preaches That it is written how the sins of Islam Must raise up a destroyer even now. The Greeks expect a Saviour from the west, Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory, But in the Omnipresence of that Spirit 600 In which all live and are. Ominous signs Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky; One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun; It has rained blood; and monstrous births declare The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. The army encamped upon the Cydaris Was roused last night by the alarm of bat- tle, And saw two hosts conflicting in the air, — The shadows doubtless of the unborn time Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet 610 The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm Which swept the phantoms from among the stars. At the third watch the Spirit of the Plague Was heard abroad flapping among the tents; Those who relieved watch found the senti- nels dead. The last news from the camp is that a thousand Have sickened, and — Enter a Fourth Messenger MAHMUD And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow Of some untimely rumor, speak ! 332 HELLAS FOURTH MESSENGER Through rough and smooth; nor can we One comes : suffer aught . Fainting with toil, covered with foam and | Which he inflicts not in whose hand we are. blood; [Exeunt. He stood, he says, on Chelonites’ 620 SEMICHORUS I Promontory, which o’erlooks the isles that { Would I were the wingéd cloud groan Of a tempest swift and loud ! Under the Briton’s frown, and all their wa- I would scorn 650 ters The smile of morn, Then trembling in the splendor of the | And the wave where the moonrise is born t moon; I would leave When, as the wandering clouds unveiled or The spirits of eve hid A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave Her boundless light, he saw two adverse From other threads than mine ! fleets Bask in the deep blue noon divine Stalk through the night in the horizon’s Who would, not I. glimmer, Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous SEMICHORUS II gleams, Whither to fly ? And smoke which strangled every infant wind SEMICHORUS I That soothed the silver clouds through the | Where the rocks that gird the Augean 660 deep air. Echo to the battle pean At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco Awoke and drove his flock of thunder- clouds 631 Over the sea-horizon, blotting out All objects — save that in the faint moon- glimpse He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral And two the loftiest of our ships of war With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven, Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, re- versed; And the ahorréd cross — Enter an Attendant ATTENDANT Your Sublime Highness, The Jew, who — MAHMUD Cou‘d not come more seasonably. Bid him attend. Ill hear no more ! too long 640 We gaze on danger through the mist of fear, And multiply upon our shattered hopes The images of ruin. Come what will! To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps Set in our path to light us to the edge Of the free, I would flee, A tempestuous herald of victory ! My golden rain For the Grecian slain Should mingle in tears with the bloody main; And my solemn thunder-knell Should ring to the world the passing-bell Of tyranny! 67¢ SEMICHORUS 1 Ah king! wilt thou chain The rack and the rain ? Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurri- cane ? The storms are free, But we CHORUS O Slavery ! thou frost of the world’s prime, Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare ! Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime, These brows thy branding garland bear; But the free heart, the impassive soul, Scorn thy control ! 687 SEMICHORUS I Let there be light ! said Liberty; And like sunrise from the sea HELLAS 333 Athens arose ! — Around her born, Shone like mountains in the morn Glorious states; — and are they now Ashes, wrecks, oblivion ? SEMICHORUS II Go Where Therme and Asopus swallowed Persia, as the sand does foam; Deluge upon deluge followed, 690 Discord, Macedon, and Rome; And, lastly, thou ! SEMICHORUS I Temples and towers, Citadels and marts, and they Who live and die there, have been ours, And may be thine, and must decay; But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens, imperial spirits, 700 Rule the present from the past; On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set. SEMICHORUS IL Hear ye the blast, Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls From ruin her Titanian walls ? Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones Of Slavery ? Argos, Corinth, Crete, Hear, and from their mountain thrones The demons and the nymphs repeat The harmony. SEMICHORUS I I hear, I hear ! 710 SEMICHORUS II The world’s eyeless charioteer, Destiny, is hurrying by ! What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds ? What eagle-wingéd Victory sits At her right hand ? what Shadow flits Before ? what Splendor rolls behind ? Ruin and Renovation cry, Who but we ? SEMICHORUS I I hear, I hear ! The hiss as of a rushing wind, 720 ‘The roar as of an ocean foaming, The thunder as of earthquake coming. I hear, I hear ! The crash as of an empire falling, The shrieks as of a people calling Mercy ! Mercy ! — How they thrill ! Then a shout of ¢ Kill, kill, kill !” And then a small still voice, thus — SEMICHORUS I For Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind; The foul cubs like their parents are; 730 Their den is in the guilty mind, And Conscience feeds them with despair; SEMICHORUS I In sacred Athens, near the fane Of Wisdom, Pity’s altar stood; Serve not the unknown God in vain, But pay that broken shrine again Love for hate, and tears for blood. Enter Manmup and AHAsUERUS MABMUD Thou art a man, thou sayest, ever as we. AHASUERUS No more! MAHMUD But raised above thy fellow-men By thought, as I by power. AHASUERUS Thou sayest so. MAHMUD Thou art an adept in the difficult lore 741 Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest The flowers, and thou measurest the stars; Thou severest element from element; Thy spirit is present in the past, and sees The birth of this old world through all its cycles Of desolation and of loveliness, And when man was not, and how man bee came The monarch and the slave of this low sphere, And all its narrow circles — it is much. 75 I honor thee, and would be what thou art Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour, 334 HELLAS Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms, Who shallunveil? Jor thou, nor I, nor an Mighty fs wise. I apprehended not What thou hast taught me, but I now per- ceive That thou art no interpreter of dreams; Thou dost not own that art, device, or God, Can make the future present — let it come ! Moreover thou disdainest us and ours! 760 Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest. AHASUERUS Disdain thee ?— not the worm beneath thy feet! The Fathomless has care for meaner things Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those Who would be what they may not, or would seem That which they are not. more Of thee and me, the future and the past; But look on that which cannot change — the One, The unborn and the undying. Earth and Ocean, Space, and the isles of life or light that 770 Sultan ! talk no em The Bapiiica floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire, Whose outwall, bastionéd impregnably Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them As Calpe the Atlantic clouds — this Whole Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers, With all the silent or tempestuous workings By which they have been, are, or cease to be, Is but a vision; all that it inherits 780 Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles, and dreams; Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less The future and the past are idle shadows Of thought’s eternal flight — they have no being; Nought is but that which feels itself to be. MAHMUD What meanest thou? thy words stream like a tempest Of dazzling mist within my brain — they shake The earth on which I stand, and hang like night On Heaven above me. What can they avail ? They cast on all things, surest, brightest, best, — 790 Doubt, insecurity, astonishment. AHASUERUS Mistake me not! All is contained in each. Dodona’s forest. to an acorn’s cup Is that which has been or will be, to that Which is—the absent to the present. Thought Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Pas- sion, Reason, Imagination, cannot die; They are what that which they regard ap- pears, The stuff whence mutability can weave All that it hath dominion o’er — worlds, worms, Empires, and superstitions. thought To do with time, or place, or circumstance ? Wouldst thou behold the future ? — ask and have ! Knock and it shall be opened — look, and lo! The coming age is shadowed on the past As on a glass. 800 What has MAHMUD Wild, wilder thoughts convulse My spirit. Did not Mahomet the Second ‘Win Stamboul ? AHASUERUS Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit The written fortunes of thy house and faith. Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell 810 How what was born in blood must die. MAHMUD Thy words Have power on me! I see— AHASUERUS What hearest thou ? MAHMUD A far whisper — Tevrible silence. HELLAS 335 AHASUERUS What succeeds ? MAHMUD The sound As of the assault of an imperial city, The hiss of inextinguishable fire, The roar of giant cannon; the earth-quak- in Fall of ask bastions and precipitous towers, The shock of crags shot from strange en- ‘inery, The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs 820 And crash of brazen mail, as of the wreck Of adamantine mountains; the mad blast Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds, And shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood, And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, As of a joyous infant waked, and playing With its dead mother’s breast; and now more loud The mingled battle-cry — ha! hear I not °Ev rovre vinn. Allah-illah-Allah ! AHASUERUS The sulphuronus mist is raised — thou seest — MAHMUD A chasm, As of two mountains, in the wall of Stam- boul; 831 And in that ghastly breach the Islamites, Like giants on the ruins of a world, Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one Of regal port has cast himself beneath The stream of war. Another proudly clad In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb Into the gap, and with his iron mace Directs the torrent of that tide of men, 840 And seems — he is — Mahomet ! AHASUERUS What thou seest Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream; A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that Thou call’st reality. Thou mayst behold How cities, on which empire sleeps en- throned, Bow their towered crests to mutability. Poised by the flood, e’en on the height thou holdest, Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power Ebbs to its depths. Inheritor of glory Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished 85a With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past Now stands before thee like an Incarnation Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with That portion of thyself which was ere thou Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death, Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion, Which called it from the uncreated deep, Yon cloud of war with its tempestuous phantoms Of raging death; and draw with mighty will 860 The imperial shade hither. [Exit AHASUERUS. MAHMUD Approach ! PHANTOM I come Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter To take the living than give up the dead; Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here. The heavy fragments of the power which fell When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds, Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices Of strange lament soothe my supreme re- pose, Wailing for glory never to return. A later empire nods in its decay; 87c The autumn of a greener faith is come; And wolfish change, like winter, howls ta strip The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below The storm is in its branches, and the frost Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects Oblivion on oblivion, spoil ou spoil, 1 336 HELLAS Ruin on ruin. Thou art slow, my son; The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep A throne for thee, round which thine em- pire lies 880 Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou, Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life, The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now — Mutinous passions and conflicting fears, And hopes that sate themselves on dust and die, Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine. Islam must fall, but we will reign together Over its ruins in the world of death; And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed Unfold itself even in the shape of that 890 Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! Woe! To the weak people tangled in the grasp Of its last spasms ! MAHMUD Spirit, woe to all ; Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe To the destroyer, woe to the destroyed ! Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver ! Woe to the oppressed, and woe to the op- ressor ! Woe both to those that suffer and inflict; Those who are born, and those who die! But say, Imperial shadow of the thing I am, goo When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish Her consummation ? PHANTOM Ask the cold pale Hour, Rich in reversion of impending death, When he shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity — The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which bur- den They bow themselves unto the grave. Fond wretch ! He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years To come, and how in hours of youth re- newed gir He will renew lost joys, and — VOICE (without) Victory ! victory ! [The Phantom vanishes. MAHMUD What sound of the importunate earth has broken My mighty trance ? VOICE (without) Victory ! victory ! MABMUD Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile Of dying Islam ! sponse Of hollow weakness ! live ? Were there such things ? or may the un- quiet brain, Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Voice which art the re- Do I wake and ew. Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear ? 920 It matters not!—for nought we see or dream, Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth More than it gives or teaches. Come what may, The future must become the past, and I As they were, to whom once this present hour, This gloomy crag of time to which I cling, Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy Never to be attained. — I must rebuke This drunkenness of triumph ere it die, And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves ! 930 [£xit Manon. VOICE (without) Shout in the jubilee of death! the Greeks Are as a brood of lions in the net Round which the kingly hunters of the earth Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, From Thule to the girdle of the world, HELLAS 337 Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men; The cup is foaming with a nation’s blood; Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die ! SEMICHORUS I Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, Salutes the risen sun, pursnes the flying day ! 941 I saw her ghastly as a tyrant’s dream, Perch on the trembling pyramid of night, Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay In visions of the dawning undelight. Who shall impede her flight ? Who rob her of her prey ? VOICE (without) Victory, victory ! Russia’s famished eagles Dare not to prey beneath the crescent’s light. Impale the remnant of the Greeks! de- spoil ! 950 Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust ! SEMICHORUS II Thou voice which art The herald of the ill in splendor hid ! Thou echo of the hollow heart Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode When desolation flashes o’er a world de- stroyed. Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloud Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid 958 The momentary oceans of the lightning; Or to some toppling promontory proud Of solid tempest, whose black pyramid, Riven, overhangs the founts intensely brightning Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire Before their waves expire, When heaven and earth are light, and only light In the thunder-night ! VOICE (without) Victory, victory ! Austria, Russia, England, And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France, Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak. Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes ! 970 These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners Than Greeks. Kill, plunder, burn! let none remain. SEMICHORUS I Alas for Liberty ! If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years, Or fate, can quell the free ! Alas for Virtue ! when Torments, or contumely, or the sneers Of erring judging men Can break the heart where it abides ! Alas ! if Love, whose smile makes this ob- scure world splendid, 980 Can change, with its false times and tides, Like hope and terror — Alas for Love ! And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbe- friended, If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mir- ror Before the dazzled eyes of Error, Alas for thee! Image of the Above! SEMICHORUS II Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn, Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn Through many an hostile Anarchy ! 990 At length they wept aloud and cried, ‘the sea! the sea!’ Through exile, persecution, and despair, Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become, The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb, Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair. But Greece was as a hermit child, Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built To woman’s growth by dreams so mild She knew not pain or guilt; And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble, When ye desert the free ! If Greece must be A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassem- ble, And build themselves again impregnably In a diviner clime, To Amphionic music, on some Cape sub- lime frowns above the idle foam of time. ra00 Which 338 HELLAS SEMICHORUS I Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made; Let the free possess the paradise they claim; Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed 1010 With our ruin, our resistance, and our name ! SEMICHORDS II Our dead shall be the seed of their decay, Our survivors be the shadows of their pride, Our adversity a dream to pass away, — Their dishonor a remembrance to abide ! VOICE (without) Victory ! Victory ! the bought Briton sends The keys of ocean to the Islamite. Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled, And British skill, directing Othman might, Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy 1020 This jubilee of unrevengéd blood ! Kill, crush, despoil! Let not a Greek es- cape ! SEMICHORUS I Darkness has dawned in the East On the noon of time; The death birds descend to their feast, From the hungry clime. Let Freedom and Peace flee far To a sunnier strand, And follow Love’s folding star To the Evening land ! 1030 SEMICHORUS II The young moon has fed Her exhausted horn With the sunset’s fire; The weak day is dead, But the night is not born; And, like loveliness panting with wild de- sire, While it trembles with fear and delight, Hesperus flies from awakening night, And pants in its beauty and speed with light Fast-flashing, soft and bright. 1040 Thou beacon of love ! thou lamp of the free ! Guide us far, far away, To climes where now, veiled by the ardor of day, Thou art hidden From waves on which weary Noon Faints in her summer swoon, Between kingless continents, sinless as Eden, Around mountains and islands inviola- bly Pranked on the sapphire sea. SEMICHORUS I Through the sunset of hope, Like the shapes of a dream, What Paradise islands of glory gleam ! Beneath Heaven’s cope, Their shadows more clear float by; The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky, The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe, Burst like morning on dream, or like Hea- ven on death, Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen ! 1050 CHORUS The world’s great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn; Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. 1060 A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning-star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. 1071 A loftier Argo cleaves the main, Fraught with a later prize; Another Orpheus sings again, And loves, and weeps, and dies. A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore. Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death’s scroll must be ! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free; Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew. Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time EARLY POEMS 339 Beet like sunset to the skies, The splendor of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, All earth can take or Heaven can give. Saturn and Love their long repose __ 1090 Shall burst, more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose, Than many unsubdued; Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, But votive tears and symbol flowers. Oh, cease! must hate and death return ? Cease ! must men kill and die ? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, 1104 Oh, might it die or rest at last! MISCELLANEOUS POEMS EARLY POEMS 1813-1815 The Miscellaneous Poems, with some excep- tions, were published either by Shelley, in his successive volumes, or by Mrs. Shelley, in Posthumous Poems, 1824, and the two editions of 1839. A few first appeared elsewhere and were included in the collected editions by Mrs. Shelley, and stillothers have from time to time found their way to the public. The origi- nal issue of each poem is here stated in the in- troductory note, and its history so far as known is given. By far the greater portion of Shelley’s shorter poems is personal, and many of them are addressed to his friends and companions or those who made up the domestic circle in his wanderings; even those which are most en- tirely poems of nature are, with few exceptions, charged with his moods, and governed by pass- ing circumstances ; as a whole, therefore, they require, for full understanding, intimacy with the events of his private life, and the reader must be referred to the Life of the poet for such a narrative as could not be condensed in- telligibly into brief introductory notes, with respect both to persons and facts. Mrs. Shelley’s biographical notes, however, have been largely used to preface the poems of each year because of their extraordinary truth to the feeling and atmosphere of Shelley's Italian life. The few political poems are sufficiently EVENING TO HARRIET Composed at Bracknell, July 31, 1813, for the birthday (August 1) of Harriet, his first wife, on the completion of her eighteenth year. Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887. explained by reference to current events; in most of these Shelley owes the manner to Coleridge’s example. Tradition has established Queen Mab at the head of Shelley’s mature work, and in accord- ance with it all poems earlier than Queen Mab are included under Juvenilia. A more just sense would have given this honor to Alastor, and have relegated the poems of 1815 to the period of immaturity, to which with all the events relating to them they together with Queen Mab belong. It is, however, not deemed wise to attempt to’ disturb the traditionary arrange- ment at so late a time. The Early Poems mainly relate to Shelley’s domestic history. A few only show his politi- cal interest. Mrs. Shelley describes the sum- mer of 1815 as one of rest, but it was excep- tional, as these years were the most troubled of his life. Her record begins with 1815. ‘He never spent a season more tranquilly than the summer of 1815. He had just recov- ered from a severe pulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near Windsor Forest, and his life was spent under its shades, or on the water; meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at extending his political doctrines ; and attempted so to do by appeals, in prose essays, to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but he had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in England, and that the pen was the only instrument where- with to prepare the way for better things.’ O rHov bright Sun! beneath the dark blue line Of western distance that sublime de- scendest, And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams de- cline, Thy million hues to every vapor lend est, 340 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS And, over cobweb lawn and grove and stream Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light, Till calm Earth, with the parting splen- dor bright, Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream; What gazer now with astronomic eye Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere ? Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear, And, turning senseless from thy warm caress, Pick fiaws in our close-woven happiness. TO IANTHE Elizabeth Ianthe, Shelley’s first child, was born June, 1813. Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887. I Love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake; Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled cheek, Thy tender frame, so eloquently weak, Love in the sternest heart of hate might wake; But more when o’er thy fitful slumber bendin, Thy mother folds thee to her wakeful heart, Whilst love and pity, in her glances blending, All that thy passive eyes can feel im- part: More, when some feeble lineaments of her, Who bore thy weight beneath her spot- less bosom, As with deep love I read thy face, re- cur, — More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blossom; Dearest when most thy tender traits ex- press The image of thy mother’s loveliness. STANZA WRITTEN AT BRACKNELL The stanza apparently refers to Mrs. Boin- yille, from whose house Shelley writes to Hoge, March 16, 1814: ‘I have written nothing but one stanza, which has no meaning, and that I have only written in thought. This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream. which passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing excellence and ex- quisite perfections have no more reality than the color of an autuninal sunset.’ Published by Hogg, Life of Shelley. 1858. Tuy dewy looks sink in my breast; Thy gentle words stir poison there; Thou hast disturbed the only rest That was the portion of despair ! Subdued to Duty’s hard control, I could have borne my wayward lot: The chains that bind this ruined soul Had cankered then — but crushed it not. TO — AAKPYSI AIOIZQ TIOTMON ’ATIOTMON. Mrs. Shelley states that Coleridge is the per~ son addressed: ‘The poem beginning “ Oh, there are spirits in the air” was addressed in: idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew; and at whose character he could only guess imper- fectly, through his writings and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well. He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.’ Dowden questions ‘whether it was not rather addressed in a de- spondent mood by Shelley to his own spirit.’ This suggestion was first advanced by Bertram Dobell, in his reprint of Alastor, and supported by the assent of Rossetti there given; that it- is evrrect is reasonably certain. Published with Alastor, 1816. Ou, there are spirits of the air, And genii of the evening breeze, And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair As star-beams among twilight trees ! Such lovely ministers to meet Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet. With mountain winds, and_ babbling springs, And moonlight seas, that are the voice Of these inexplicable things, Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice~ When they did answer thee; but they Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away. EARLY POEMS 341 And thou hast sought in starry eyes Beams that were never meant for thine, Another’s wealth; — tame sacrifice To a fond faith! still dost thou pine ? Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, Voice, looks or lips, may answer thy de- mands ? Ah, wherefore didst thou build thine hope On the false earth’s inconstancy ? Did thine own mind afford no scope Of love, or moving thoughts to thee, That natural scenes or human smiles Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles ? Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled Whose falsehood left thee broken- hearted; The glory of the moon is dead; Night’s ghost and dreams have now departed; Thine own soul still is true to thee, But changed toa foul fiend through misery. This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever Beside thee like thy shadow hangs, Dream not to chase; — the mad endeavor Would scourge thee to severer pangs. Be as thou art. Thy settled fate, Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. TO — This poem is placed conjecturally by Mrs. Shelley with the poems of 1817; but Dowden suggests that it was addressed to Mary Godwin in June, 1814. Harriet answers as well or better to the situation described. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 2d ed., 1839. Yet look on me—take not thine eyes away, Which feed upon the love within mine own, Which is indeed but the reflected ray Of thine own beauty from my spirit thrown. Yet speak to me—thy voice is as the tone Of my heart’s echo, and I think I hear That thou yet lovest me; yet thou alone Like one before a mirror, without care Of aught but thine own features, imaged there; And yet I wear out life in watching thee; A toil so sweet at times, and thou indeed Art kind when I am sick, and pity me. STANZAS. APRIL, 1814 Described by Dowden as ‘a fragment of transmuted biography ;’ he ascribes Shelley’s mood to his bidding farewell to the Boinvilles on his return to his own home. The incident that occasioned the verses has not been re- corded. It was composed at Bracknell, and published with Alastor, 1816. Away ! the moor is dark beneath the moon, Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even. Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon, And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven. 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 ta solitude. Away, away ! to thy sad and silent home; Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth; Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come, And complicate strange webs of melan- choly mirth. The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall. float around thine head; The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam. beneath thy feet; But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, Ere midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace, may meet The cloud-shadows of midnight possess their own repose, For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep; Some respite to its turbulence unresting. ocean knows; Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves. hath its appointed sleep. 342 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ‘Thou in the grave shalt rest — yet till the phantoms flee, Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile, Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free From the music of two voices, and the light of one sweet smile. TO HARRIET Dowden, who published the poem in Life of Shelley, 1887, describes it as ‘the first of a few [five] short pieces added in Harriet’s hand- writing to the MS. collection of poems pre- pared for publication in the early days of the preceding year.’ It was composed in May, 1814. Tuy look of love has power to calm The stormiest passion of my soul; Thy gentle words are drops of balm In life’s too bitter bowl; No grief is mine, but that alone These choicest blessings I have known. Harriet ! if all who long to live In the warm sunshine of thine eye, That price beyond all pain must give, — Beneath thy scorn to die; Then hear thy chosen own too late His heart most worthy of thy hate. Be thou, then, one among mankind Whose heart is harder not for state, Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind, Amid a world of hate; And by a slight endurance seal A fellow-being’s lasting weal. For pale with anguish is his cheek, His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim, Thy name is struggling ere he speak, Weak is each trembling limb; In mercy let him not endure The misery of a fatal cure. ‘Oh, trust for once no erring guide ! Bid the remorseless feeling flee; ’T is malice, ’tis revenge, ’t is pride, *T is anything but thee; Oh, deign a nobler pride to prove, And pity if thou canst not love. TO MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN Composed in June, 1814, and published by Mrs, Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I MINE eyes were dim with tears unshed; Yes, I was firm — thus wert not thou; My baffled looks did fear yet dread To meet thy looks — I could not know How anxiously they sought to shine With soothing pity upon mine. II To sit and curb the soul’s mute rage Which preys upon itself alone; To curse the life which is the cage Of fettered grief that dares not groan, Hiding from many a careless eye The scornéd load of agony; III Whilst thou alone, then not regarded, The thou alone should be, — To spend years thus, and be rewarded, As thou, sweet love, requited me When none were near — Oh, I did wake From torture for that moment’s sake. IV Upon my heart thy accents sweet Of peace and pity fell like dew On flowers half dead; thy lips did meet Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threv Their soft persuasion on my brain, Charming away its dream of pain. Vv We are not happy, sweet! our state Is strange and full of doubt and fear; More need of words that ills abate; — Reserve or censure come not near Our sacred friendship, lest there be No solace left for thee and me. VI Gentle and good and mild thou art, Nor can I live if thou appear Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart Away from me, or stoop to wear The mask of scorn, although it be To hide the love thou feel’st for me. EARLY POEMS 343 MUTABILITY Published with Alastor, 1816. WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly !— yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost forever: Or like forgotten lyres whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last. We rest —a dream has power to poison sleep; We rise — one wandering thought pol- lutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: It is the same ! — for, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free; Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability. ON DEATH Published with Alastor, 1816. An earlier version is among the Esdaile MSS. in the collec- tion Shelley intended to issue with Queen Mab in 1813, and the poem is the only one preserved by him out of that collection. There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. — EcchEsi- ASTES. TuE pale, the cold, and the moony smile Which the meteor beam of a starless night Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, Ere the dawning of morn’s undoubted light, Is the flame of life so fickle and wan That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. O man ! hold thee on in courage of soul Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, And the billows of cloud that around thee roll Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free To the universe of destiny. This world is the nurse of all we know, This world is the mother of all we feel; And the coming of death is a fearful blow To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel, When all that we know, or feel, or see, Shall pass like an unreal mystery. The secret things of the grave are there, Where all but this frame must surely be, Though the fine-wrought eye and the won- drous ear No longer will live to hear or to see All that is great and all that is strange In the boundless realm of unending change. Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death ? Who lifteth the veil of what is to come ? Who painteth the shadows that are beneath The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb ? Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be With the fears and the love for that which we see ? A SUMMER EVENING CHURCH. YARD LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE Composed September, 1815, while on a voy- age up the Thames with Peacock. Published with Alastor, 1816. TuHE wind has swept from the wide atmo sphere Each vapor that obscured the sunset’s ray; And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day. 344 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. They breathe their spells toward the de- parting day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars and sea; Light, sound and motion own the potent sway, Responding to the charm with its own mystery. The winds are still, or the dry church- tower grass Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. Thou too, aérial Pile, whose pinnacles Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, Around whose lessening and _ invisible height Gather among the stars the clouds of night. The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres; And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrill- ing sound, Half sense, half thought, among the dark- ness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all liv- ing things around; And mingling with the still night and mute sky Its awful hush is felt inaudibly. Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild And terrorless as this serenest night; Here could I hope, like some inquiring child Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. TO WORDSWORTH This poem reflects the contemporary feeling of the radicals toward Wordsworth’s conserva- tive politics, Published with Alastor, 1816. Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know That things depart which never may re- turn; Childhood and youth, love’s first glow, Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee friendship and to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine, Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone de- plore; Thou wert as a lone star whose light did shine On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar; Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude; In honored poverty thy voice did weave Songs consecrate to truth and liberty; — Deserting these, thou leavest me 45 grieve, Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be. FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE Published with Alastor, 1816. I wate thee, fallen tyrant ! I did groan To think that a most unambitious slave, Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne Where it had stood even now: thon didst prefer A frail and bloody pomp which time has swept In fragments towards oblivion. Massa- ere, For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept, Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust, And stifled thee, their minister. I know Too late, since thou and France are in the dust, That Virtue owns a more eternal foe Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, Legal Crime, And bloody Faith, the foulest birth of time. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816 345 LINES This poem apparently refers to the death of Harriet, in November, 1816, and was published by Huntin The Literary Pocket-Book, 1823. Tue cold earth slept below; Above the cold sky shone; Andall around, With a chilling sound, From caves of ice and fields of snow The breath of night like death did flow Beneath the sinking moon. The wintry hedge was black; The green grass was not seen; The birds did rest On the bare thorn’s breast, Whose roots, beside the pathway track, Had bound their folds o’er many a crack Which the frost had made between. Thine eyes glowed in the glare Of the moon’s dying light; As a fen-fire’s beam On a sluggish stream Gleams dimly — so the moon shone there, And it yellowed the strings of thy tangled hair, That shook in the wind of night. The moon made thy lips pale, belovéd; The wind made thy bosom chill; The night did shed On thy dear head Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie Where the bitter breath of the naked sky Might visit thee at wiil. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816 THE SUNSET This poem seems to contain elements of memory as well as of imagination. It was composed at Bishopsgate in the spring, and published in part by Hunt, The Lnterary Pocket-Book, 1823, and entire by Mrs. Shel- ley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. THERE late was One within whose subtle being, As light and wind within some delicate eloud That fades amid the blue noon’s burning sky, Genius oa death contended. None may know The sweetness of the joy which made his breath Fail, like the trances of the summer air, When, with the lady of his love, who then First knew the unreserve of mingled being, He walked along the pathway of a field, Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed over, Id But to the west was open to the sky. There now the sun had sunk; but lines of gold Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points Of the far level grass and nodding flowers, And the old dandelion’s hoary beard, And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay On the brown massy woods; and in the east The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose Between the black trunks of the crowded trees, While the faint stars were gathering over- head. 20 Is it not strange, Isabel,’ said the youth, ‘T never saw the sun? We will walk here To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.’ That night the youth and lady mingled lay In love and sleep; but when the morning came The lady found her lover dead and cold. Let none believe that God in mercy gave That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild, 28 But year by year lived on; in truth I think Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, And that she did not die, but lived to tend Her aged father, were a kind of madness, If madness ’t is to be unlike the world. For but to see her were to read the tale Woven by some subtlest bard to make hard hearts Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief. Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan, Her eyelashes were worn away with tears, Her lips and cheeks were like things dead —so pale; Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins 346 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ye And weak articulations might be seen Day’s ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead lf se Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and ay, Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee ! ‘Iuheritor of more than earth can give, Passionless calm and silence unreproved, — Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep, but rest, And are the uncomplaining things they seem, Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love; Oh, that, like thine, mine epitaph were — Peace !’ 50 This was the only moan she ever made. HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY Composed in Switzerland, where Shelley spent the summer, and conceived, Mrs. Shelley says, during his voyage round the Lake of Ge- neva with Lord Byron. It was published by Haunt, The Examiner, 1817. I Tue awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us, visit- in niece vettbid world with as inconstant wing f As summer winds that creep from flower to flower; Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, It visits with inconstant, glance Each human feart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening, Like clouds in starlight widely spread, Like memory of music fled, Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. II Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, where art thou gone ? Why dost thou pass away, and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? — -—~Ask why the sunlight not forever hs Weaves rainbows o’er yon mountain river; Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown; Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom; why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope. III No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses given; Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost and Heaven, Remain the records of their vain en- deavor — Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, From all we hear and all we see, ~.__Doubt, chance and mutability. Thy light atone, like mist o’ér mountains driven, Or music by the night wind sent Through strings of some still instru- ment, Or moonlight on « midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream. Iv Love, Hope and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart, And come, for some uncertain mo- ments lent. Man were immortal and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. Thou messenger of sympathies That wax and wane in lovers’ eyes! Thou, that to human thought art nourish- ment, Like darkness to a dying flame, Depart not as thy shadow came ! Depart not, lest the grave should e. Like life and fear, a dark reality ! POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816 347 While yet a boy fought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead; [ called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed. I was not heard —I saw them not — When, musing deeply on the lot Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of binds and. blossoming, — Sudden thy shadow fell on me; T shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy ! VI I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine — have I not kept the vow ? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers Of studious zeal or love’s delight Outwatched with me the envious night — They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, — That thou, O awful Loveliness, Wouldst give whate’er these words can- not express. vil The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past; there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life snpply Gts ele! — to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whon, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all humankind. MONT BLANC LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHA- MOUNI ‘The poem,’ Shelley writes, in his Preface to History of a Six Weeks Tour, 1817, where it appeared, ‘ was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to de- scribe ; and, as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untamable wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feel- ings sprang.’ The, ‘opjects’ referred to, Mrs. Shelley notes, were Mont Blanc and ‘its surrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on his way through the Valley of Chamouni.’ I Tue everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark, now glittering, now reflecting loom, Now lending splendor, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters, — with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft assume In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, Where waterfalls around it leap forever, Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves. II Thus thou, Ravine of Arve — dark, deep Ravine — Thou many-colored, many-voicéd vale, Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail Fast cloud-shadows, and sunbeams! awful scene, Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 348 Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame Of lightning through the tempest! thou dost lie, — Thy giant brood of pines around thee cling- ing, 20 Children of elder time, in whose devotion The chainless winds still come and ever came To drink their odors, and their mighty swinging To hear — an old and solemn harmony; Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the swee Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil Robes some unsculptured image; strange sleep Which when the voices of the desert fail Wraps all in its own deep eternity; — Thy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commo- tion — 30 A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame. Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless mo- tion, Thou art the path of that unresting sound, Dizzy Ravine ! and when I gaze on thee, I seem as in a trance sublime and strange To muse on my own separate fantasy, My own, my human mind, which passively Now renders and receives fast influencings, Holding an unremitting interchange With the clear universe of things around; One legion of wild thoughts, whose wan- the dering wings 41 Now float above thy darkness, and now rest, Where that or thor art no unbidden guest, In the still cave of the witch Poesy. Seeking among the shadows that pass by — Ghosts of all things that are — some shade of thee, Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast From which they fled recalls them, thou art there ! III Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep, — that death is slumber, 50 And that its shapes the busy thoughts ou! number Of those who wake and live. I look on high; Has some unknown Omuipotence unfurled The veil of life and death? or do I lie In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Spread far around and inaccessibly Its circles ? for the very spirit fails, Driven like a homeless cloud from steep te steep That vanishes among the viewless gales ! Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, 60 Mont Blane appears, —still, snowy and serene — Its subject mountains their unearthly forms Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread And wind among the accumulated steeps; A desert peopled by the storms alone, Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone, And the wolf tracks her there. How hid- eously Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare and high, 7o Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. — Is this the scenc Where the old Earthquake-demon taught her young Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea Of fire envelop once this silent snow ? None can reply — all seems eternal now. The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Which teaches awful doubt, or faith se mild, So solemn, so serene, that man may be But for such faith with Nature reconciled; Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to re- peal 80 Large codes of fraud and woe; not under- stood By all, but which the wise, and great, and good, Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. Iv The fields, the lakes, the forests and the streams, Ocean, and all the living things that dwell Within the dedal earth, lightning, and rain, Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, The torpor of the year when feeble dreams Visit the hidden buds or dreamless sleep POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817 349 Holds every future leaf and flower, the bound go With which from that detested trance the leap, The sons and ways of man, their death and birth, And that of him and all that his may be, — All things that move and breathe with toil and sound Are born and die, revolve, subside and swell; Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, Remote, serene, and inaccessible; — And this, the naked countenance of earth On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains, Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep, 100 Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, Slow rolling on; there many a precipice Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power Have piled — dome, pyramid and pinnacle, A city of death, distinct with many a tower And wall impregnable of beaming ice; Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin Is there, that from the boundaries of the sk Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing Its destined path, or in the mangled soil Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down 1104 From yon remotest waste, have overthrown The limits of the dead and living world, Never tobe reclaimed. The dwelling-place Of insects, beasts and birds, becomes its spoil, Their food and their retreat forever gone; So much of life and joy is lost. The race Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling Vanish, like smoke before the tempest’s stream, And their place is not known. Below, vast caves 120 Shine in the rushing torrents’ restless gleam, Which from those secret chasms in tumult wellin Meet in the Vale; and one majestic River, The breath and blood of distant lands, for- ever Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, Breathes its swift vapors to the circling air. Vv Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: the power is there, The still and solemn power of many sights And many sounds, and much of life and death. In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, 130 In the lone glare of day, the snows descend Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there, Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, Or the star-beams dart through them; winds contend Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home The voiceless lightning in these solitudes Keeps innocently, and like vapor broods Over the snow. The secret strength of things, Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome 140 Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee ! And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind’s imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy ? POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817 Mrs. Shelley, in her note on the poems cf this year, summarizes Shelley’s life at the time: ‘The very illness that oppressed, and the as- pect of death which had approached so near Shelley, appears to have kindled to yet keener life the spirit of poetry in his heart. The rest- less thoughts kept awake by pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed dur- ing this year. The Revolt of Islam, written and printed, was a great effort — Rosalind and Helen was begun—and the fragments and’ poems I can trace to the same period, show how full of passion and reflection were his sol- itary hours. ‘His readings this year were chiefly Greek. Besides the Hymns of Homer and the Iliad, he read the Dramas of Alschylus and Sopho- cles, the Symposium of Plato, and Arrian’s Historia Indica. In Latin, Apuleius alone is 359 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS named. In English, the Bible was his constant study ; he read a great portion of it aloud in the evening. Among these evening readings, I find also mentioned the Faéry Queen; and other modern works, the production of his con- temporaries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, and Byron. * His life was now spent more in thought than action — he had lost the eager spirit which be- lieved it could achieve what it projected for the benefit of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily life Shelley was far from being a melan- choly man. He was eloquent when philosophy, or politics, or taste were the subjects of con- versation. He was playful —and indulged in the wild spirit that mocked itself and others —not in bitterness, but in sport. The Au- thor of Nightmare Abbey [Peacock] seized on some points of his character and some habits MARIANNE’S DREAM The dream here put into verse was told Shelley by Mrs. Hunt, the ‘Marianne’ of the poem. It was composed at Marlow, and pub- lished by Hunt, The Literary Pocket-Book, 1819. I A PALE dream came to a Lady fair, And said, ‘A boon, a boon, I pray! I know the secrets of the air; And things are lost in the glare of day, Which I can make the sleeping see, If they will put their trust in me. II ¢ And thou shalt know of things unknown, If thou wilt let me rest between The veiny lids whose fringe is thrown Over thine eyes so dark and sheen.’ And half in hope and half in fright The Lady closed her eyes so bright. III At first all deadly shapes were driven Tumultuously across her sleep, And o’er the vast cope of bending heaven All ghastly-visaged clouds did sweep; And the Lady ever looked to spy If the golden sun shone forth on high. IV And, as towards the east she turned, She saw aloft in the morning air, Which now with hues of sunrise burned, 4. great black Anchor rising there; of his life when he painted Scythrop. He was not addicted to “ port or madeira,” but in youth he had read of ‘‘ uminati and Eleutherarchs,” and believed that he possessed the power of operating an immediate change in the minds of men and the state of society. These wild dreams had faded ; sorrow and adversity had struck home; but he struggled with despond.. ency as he did with physical pain. There are few who remember him sailing paper boats, and watching the navigation of his tiny craft with eagerness — or repeating with wild energy The Ancient Mariner, and Southey’s Old Wo- man of Berkeley — but those who do, will re- collect that it was in such, and in the creations of his own fancy, when that was most daring and ideal, that he sheltered himself from the storms and disappointments, the pain and sor- row, that beset his life.’ And, wherever the Lady turned her eyes, It hung before her in the skies. Vv The sky was blue as the summer sea, The depths were cloudless overhead, The air was calm as it could be, There was no sight or sound of dread, But that black Anchor floating still Over the piny eastern hill. VI The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear To see that Anchor ever hanging, And veiled her eyes; she then did hear The sound as of a dim low clanging, And looked abroad if she might know Was it aught else, or but the flow Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro, VII There was a mist in the sunless air, Which shook as it were with an earth quake’s shock, But the very weeds that blossomed there Were moveless, and each mighty rock Stood on its basis steadfastly; The Anchor was seen no more on high, Vi But piled around, with summits hid In lines of cloud at intervals, Stood many a mountain pyramid, Among whose everlasting walls FOEMS WRITTEN IN 1817 353 Two mighty cities shone, and ever Through the red mist their domes did quiver. Ix On two dread mountains, from whose crest Might seem the eagle for her brood Would ne’er have hung her dizzy nest, Those tower-encircled cities stood. A vision strange such towers to see, Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously, Where human art could never be. x And columns framed of marble white, And giant fanes, dome over dome Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright With workmanship, which could not come From touch of mortal instrument, Shot o’er the vales, or lustre lent From its own shapes magnificent. XI But still the Lady heard that clang Filling the wide air far away; And still the mist whose light did hang Among the mountains shook alway; So that the Lady’s heart beat fast, As, half in joy and half aghast, On those high domes her look she cast. XII Sudden from out that city sprung A light that made the earth grow red; Two flames that each with quivering tongue Licked its high domes, and overhead Among those mighty towers and fanes Dropped fire, as a volcano rains Its sulphurous ruin on the plains. XIII And hark ! a rush, as if the deep Had burst its bonds; she looked behind, And saw over the western steep A raging flood descend, and wind Through that wide vale; she felt no fear, But said within herself, ‘’T is clear These towers are Nature’s own, and she To save them has sent forth the sea.’ XIV And now those raging billows came Where that fair Lady sate, and she Was borne towards the showering flame By the wild waves heaped tumultuously; And, on a little plank, the flow Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro. xV The flames were fiercely vomited From every tower and every dome, And dreary light did widely shed O’er that vast flood’s suspended foam, Beneath the smoke which hung its night On the stained cope of heaven’s light. XVI The plank whereon that Lady sate Was driven through the chasms, about and about, Between the peaks so desolate Of the drowning mountains, in and out, As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails — While ae flood was filling those hollow vales. XVII At last her plank an eddy crossed, And bore her to the city’s wall, Which now the flood had reached almost; It might the stoutest heart appall To hear the fire roar and hiss Through the domes of those mighty palaces. XVIII The eddy whirled her round and round Before a gorgeous gate, which stood Piercing the clouds of smoke which bound Its aéry arch with light like blood; She looked on that gate of marble clear With wonder that extinguished fear; XIX For it was filled with sculptures rarest, Of forms most beautiful and strange, Like nothing human, but the fairest Of wingéd shapes, whose legions range Throughout the sleep of those that are, Like this same Lady, good and fair. xX And as she looked, still lovelier grew Those marble forms;— the sculptor sure Was a strong spirit, and the hue Of his own mind did there endure, After the touch, whose power had braided Such grace, was in some sad change faded. 352 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS =< XXI Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but She looked,—the flames were dim, the not forget ! flood Grew tranquil as a woodland river Winding through hills in solitude; Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver, And their fair limbs to float in motion, Like weeds unfolding in the ocean; XXII And their lips moved; one seemed to speak, When suddenly the mountains cracked, And through the chasm the flood did break With an earth-uplifting cataract; The statues gave a joyous scream, And on its wings the pale thin dream Lifted the Lady from the stream. XXIII The dizzy flight of that phantom pale Waked the fair Lady from her sleep, And she arose, while from the veil Of her dark eyes the dream did creep; And she walked about as one who knew That sleep has sights as clear and true As any waking eyes can view. TO CONSTANTIA SINGING This poem was addressed to Miss Clairmont, and the name Constantia was probably due to Shelley’s admiration for the character of Con- stantia Dudley, in Charles Brockden Brown’s Ormond. It was published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I Tus to be lost and thus to sink and die, Perchauce were death indeed !— Con- stantia, turn ! Tn thy oe eyes a power like light doth ie, Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn Between thy lips, are laid to sleep; Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odor it is yet, And from thy touch like fire doth leap. Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet — II A breathless awe, like the swift change Unseen but felt in youthful slumbers, Wild, sweet, but uncomimunicably strange, Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers. The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven By the enchantment of thy strain; And on my shoulders wings are woven To follow its sublime career Beyond the mighty moons that wane Upon the verge of Nature’s utmost sphere, Till the world’s shadowy walls are passed and disappear. III Her voice is hovering o’er my soul —it lingers O’ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings; The blood and life within those snowy fingers Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings. My brain is wild, my breath comes guick — The blood is listening in my frame, And thronging shadows, fast and thick, Fall on my overflowing eyes; My heart is quivering like a flame; As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies, I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies. Iv I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee, Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song Flows on, and fills all things with mel- ody. Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong, On which, like one in trance upborne, Secure o’er rocks and waves I sweep, Rejoicing like a cloud of morn; Now ’tis the breath of summer night, Which, when the starry waters sleep, Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright, Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptue ovs flight. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817 353 TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR The decree which deprived Shelley of the eustody of his children was pronounced in August. Mrs. Shelley writes: ‘His heart, attuned to every kindly affection, was full of burning love for his offspring. No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder chil- dren were torn from him. In his first resent- ment against the Chancellor, on the passing of the decree, he had written a curse, in which there breathes, besides haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father’s love, which eould imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the consequences.’ It was published by Mrs. Shelley, in her first collected edition, 1839. I Tuy country’s curse is on thee, darkest erest Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm Which rends our Priestly Pest ! Masked Resurrection of a buried Form ! Mother’s bosom ! — II Thy country’s curse is on thee! Justice sold Truth trampled, Nature’s landmarks overthrown, And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold, Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction’s throne. III And, whilst that sure slow Angel, which aye stands Watching the beck of Mutability, Delays to execute her high commands, And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee, IV Oh, let a father’s curse be on thy soul, And let a daughter’s hope be on thy tomb; Be both, on thy gray head, a leaden cowl To weigh thee down to thine approach- ing doom ! Vv 1 eurse thee! By a parent’s outraged love, By hopes long cherished and too lately lost, — By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove, By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed ; VI By those infantine smiles of happy light, Which were a fire within a stranger’s hearth, Quenched even when kindled, —in un- timely night, Hiding the promise of a lovely birth; VII By those unpractised accents of young speech, Which he who is a father thought to frame To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach — Thou strike the lyre of mind ! — oh, grief and shame ! VII By all the happy see in children’s growth, That undeveloped flower of budding years — Sweetness and sadness interwoven both, Source of the sweetest hopes and sad- dest fears — IX By all the days under an hireling’s care, Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness, — Oh, wretched ye if ever any were, — Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless ! x By the false cant which on their innocent lips Must hang like poison on an opening bloom, By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb — XI By thy most impicas Hell, and all its terror; By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt Of thine impostures, which must be their error — That sand on which thy crumbling Power is built — 354 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS XII By thy complicity with lust and hate — Thy thirst for tears —thy hunger after old — The ready frauds which ever on thee walt — The servile arts in which thou hast grown old — XIII By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile — By all the arts and snares of thy black den And —for thou canst outweep the croco- dile — By thy false tears — those millstones braining men — XIV By all the hate which checks a father’s love — By all the scorn which kills a father’s care — By those most impious hands which dared remove Nature’s high bounds — by thee —and by despair — XV Yes, the despair which bids a father groan, And ery,‘My children are no longer mine — The blood within those veins may be mine own But, Tyrant, their polluted souls are thine; ’ — XVI I curse thee, though I hate thee not. —O slave ! If thou couldst quench the earth-consum- ing Hell Of which thou art a demon, on thy grave This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well ! TO WILLIAM SHELLEY William Shelley was born at Bishopsgate, January 24, 1816, baptized at St.-Giles-in-the- Fields, March 9, 1818, died at Rome, June 7, 1819. Mrs. Shelley notes: ‘ At one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had said some words that seemed to intimate that Shelley should not be permitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment he feared that our infant son would be torn from us. He did not hesitate to resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon country, fortune, everything, and to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas addressed to this son, whom afterwards we lost at Rome, written under the idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to preserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the sponta- neous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and woes, and was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the uncontrollable emotions of his heart.’ The poem was pub- lished by Mrs. Shelley, in part, in her first col- lected edition, 1839, and entire, in the second, of the same year. I Tue billows on the beach are leaping around it, The bark is weak and frail, The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it Darkly strew the gale. Come with me, thou delightful child, Come with me — though the wave is wild, And the winds are loose, we must not stay, Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away. re They have taken thy brother and sister dear, They have made them unfit for thee; They have withered the smile and dried the tear Which should have been sacred to me. To a blighting faith and a cause of crime They have bound them slaves in youthly prime, And they will curse my name and thee Because we are fearless aud free. nh Come thou, belovéd as thou art; Another sleepeth still Near thy sweet mother’s anxious heart, Which thou with joy shalt fill, — With fairest smiles of wonder thrown On that which is indeed our own, And which in distant lands will be The dearest playmate unto thee. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817 IV Fear not the tyrants will rule forever, Or the priests of the evil faith; They stand on the brink of that raging river Whose waves they have tainted with death. It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells, Around them it foams and rages and swells; And their swords and their sceptres I float- ing see, Like wrecks on the surge of eternity. Vv Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle child ! The rocking of the boat thou fearest, And the cold spray and the clamor wild ? — There sit between us two, thou dear- est — Me and thy mother — well we know The storm at which thou tremblest so, With all its dark and hungry graves, Less cruel than the savage slaves Who hunt us o’er these sheltering waves. VI This nour will in thy memory Be a dream of days forgotten long; We soon shall dwell by the azure sea Of serene and golden Italy, Or Greece, the Mother of the free; And I will teach thine infant tongue To call upon those heroes old In their own language, and will mould Thy growing spirit in the flame Of Grecian lore, that by such name A patriot’s birthright thou mayst claim ! ON FANNY GODWIN Fanny Godwin, half-sister of Mary, com- mitted suicide by taking laudanum, at an inn in Swansea, October 9, 1816. Shelley had re- cently seen her in London. The poem was published by Mrs. Shelley in her first col- Jected edition, 1839. Her voice did quiver as we parted, Yet knew I not that heart was broken From which it came, and I departed Heeding not the words then spoken. Misery — O Misery, This world is all too wide for thee. 355 LINES Composed November 5, and published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I Tuar time is dead forever, child, Drowned, frozen, dead forever ! We look on the past, And stare aghast At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, Of hopes which thou and I beguiled To death on life’s dark river. {I The stream we gazed on then, rolled by; Its waves are uureturning; But we yet stand In a lone land, Like tombs to mark the memory Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee In the light of life’s dim morning. DEATH Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. Tuery die — the dead return not. Misery Sits near an open grave and calls them over, A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye. They are the names of kindred, friend and lover, Which he so feebly calls; they all are gone — Fond wretch, all dead ! those vacant names alone, This most familiar scene, my pain, These tombs, — alone remain. Misery, my sweetest friend, oh, weep no more ! Thou wilt not be consoled —I wonder not ! For I have seen thee from thy dwelling’s door Watch the calm sunset with them, and this spot Was even as bright and calm, but transi- tory, — And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary; This most familiar scene, my pain, These tombs, — alone remain. 356 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS SONNET. — OZYMANDIAS Published by Hunt, The Examiner, 1818. I mer a traveller from an antique land Who said: ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold com- mand, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these life- less things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear — “ My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and de- spair !” Nothing beside remains. Round the de- cay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.’ Near them, on the POEMS WRITTEN IN Mrs. Shelley describes the scenes and char- acter of this first year in Italy at length: ‘I Capuccini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious houses; it was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill at the foot of a range of higher ones. The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk, a pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began the Prometheus ; and here also, as he mentions in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo; a slight ravine, with a road in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient castle of Este, whose dark massive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ruined crevices, owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements. We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the west by the far Apennines, while to the east, the horizon was lost in misty distance. After the picturesque but limited view of mountain, ravine, and chestnut wood LINES TO A CRITIC Published by Hunt, The Liberal, 1823. I Honey from silkworms who car gather, Or silk from the yellow bee ? The grass may grow in winter weather As soon as hate in me. II Hate men who cant, and men who pray, And men who rail like thee; An equal passion to repay They are not coy like me. II Or seek some slave of power and gold, To be thy dear heart’s mate; Thy love will move that bigot cold Sooner than me thy hate. IV A passion like the one I prove Cannot divided be; I hate thy want of truth and love — How should I then hate thee ? 1818 at the baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect commanded by our new abode. ‘ Our first misfortune, of the kind from which we soon suffered even more severely, happened here. Our little girl, an infant in whose small features I fancied that I traced great resem- blance to her father, showed symptoms of suf- fering from the heat of the climate. Teething increased her illness and danger. We were at Este, and when we became alarmed, hastened to Venice for the best advice. When we ar- rived at Fusina, we found that we had for- gotten our passport, and the soldiers on duty attempted to prevent our crossing the laguna; but they could not resist Shelley’s impetuosity at such a moment. We had scarcely arrived at Venice, before life fled from the little suf- ferer, and we returned to Este to weep her oss. ‘ After a few weeks spent in this retreat, which were interspersed by visits to Venice, we proceeded southward. We often hear of persons disappointed by a first visit to Italy. This was not Shelley’s case — the aspect of its POEMS WRITTEN IN — nature, its sunny sky, its majestic storms; of the luxuriant vegetation of the country, and the noble marble-built cities, enchanted him. The sight of the works of art was full [of] enjoyment and wonder; he had not studied pictures or statues before; he now did so with the eye of taste, that referred not to the rules of schools, but to those of nature and truth. The first entrance to Rome opened to him a scene of remains of antique grandeur that far surpassed his expectations; and the unspeakable beauty of Naples and its en- virons added to the impression he received of the transcendent and glorious beauty of Italy. As I have said, he wrote long letters during the first year of our residence in this country, and these, when published, will be the best testimonials of his appreciation of the har- monious and beautiful in art and nature, and his delicate taste in discerning and describing them. ‘Our winter was spent at Naples. Here he wrote the fragments of Marenghi and The Woodman and the Nightingale, which he after- wards threw aside. At this time Shelley suf- fered greatly in health. He put himself under the care of a medical man, who promised great things, and made him endure severe bodily pain, without any good results. Constant and poignant physical suffering exhausted him ; and though he preserved the appearance of cheerfulness, and often greatly enjoyed our wanderings in the environs of Naples, and our SONNET: TO THE NILE This is the sonnet composed in competition with Hunt and Keats, on the same subject February 4. It was published in the St. James Magazine, 1876. Monru after month the gathered rains de- scend Drenching yon secret Mthiopian dells; And from the desert’s ice-girt pinnacles, Where Frost and Heat in strange em- braces blend On Atlas, fields of moist snow half de- pend; Girt there with blasts and meteors, Tem- pest dwells By Nile’s aérial urn, with rapid spells Urging those waters to their mighty end. O’er Egypt’s land of Memory floods are level, And they are thine, O Nile ! —and well thou knowest 1818 357 excursions on its sunny sea, yet many hours were passed when his thoughts, shadowed by illness, became gloomy, and then he escaped to solitude, and in verses, which he hid from fear of wounding me, poured forth morbid but too natural bursts of discontent and sadness. One looks back with unspeakable regret and gnawing remorse to such periods; fanoying that had one been more alive to the nature of his feelings, and more attentive to soothe them, such would not have existed—and yet en- joying, as he appeared to do, every sight or influence of earth or sky, it was difficult to imagine that any melancholy he showed was aught but the effect of the constant pain to which he was a martyr. ‘We lived in utter solitude —and such is often not the nurse of cheerfulness ; for then, at least with those who have been exposed to adversity, the mind broods over its sorrows too intently ; while the society of the enlightened, the witty, and the wise, enables us to forget ourselves by making us the sharers of the thoughts of others, which is a portion of the philosophy of happiness. Shelley never liked society in numbers, it harassed and wearied him; but neither did he like loneliness, and usually when alone sheltered himself against memory and reflection, in a book. But with one or two whom he loved, he gave way to wild and joyous spirits, or in more serious conversation expounded his opinions with vi- vacity and eloquence.’ That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil And fruits and poisons, spring where’er thou flowest. Beware, O Man! for knowledge must to thee Like the great flood to Egypt ever be. PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES Composed May 4, and published by Mrs Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. LisTEN, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennine, It bursts on the roof like the thunder’s roar, Or like the sea on a northern shore, Heard in its raging ebb and flow By the captives pent in the cave below. The Apennine in the light of day Is a mighty mountain dim and gray, Which between the earth and sky doth lay; 358 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS But when night comes, a chaos dread On the dim starlight then is spread, And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm. THE PAST Published by Mrs. Poems, 1824. Shelley, Posthumous Witt thou forget the happy hours Which we buried in Love’s sweet bow- ers, Heaping over their corpses cold Blossoms and leaves instead of mould ? Blossoms which were the joys that fell, And leaves, the hopes that yet re- main. Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it; Memories that make the heart a tomb, Regrets which glide through the spirit’s gloom, And with ghastly whispers tell That joy, once lost, is pain. ON A FADED VIOLET Sent by Shelley, in a letter, to Miss Sophia Stacey, March 7, 1820: ‘I promised you what T cannot perform: a song on singing : — there are only two subjects remaining. I have afew old stanzas on one which, though simple and rude, look as if they were dictated by the heart. — And so — if you tell no one whose they are, you are welcome to them. Pardon these dull verses from one who is dull — but who is aot the less, ever yours, P. B.S.’ It was pub- lished by Hunt, The Literary Pocket-Book, 1821. I Tue odor from the flower is gone, Which like thy kisses breathed on me; The color from the flower is flown, Which glowed of thee, and only thee! II A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, It lies on my abandoned breast, And mocks the heart, which yet is warm, With cold and silent rest. ——o— =? Ill I weep — my tears revive it not; I sigh — it breathes no more on me; Its mute and uncomplaining lot Is such as mine should be. LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS Composed at Este, in October, and possibly revised at Naples the following month. The passage on Byron was inserted after the poem had gone to the printer. It was published with Rosalind and Helen, 1819, and in the Preface Shelley says it ‘ was written after a day’s excursion among those lovely mountains which surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, of Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the introductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst of an Italian sunrise in autumn, on the highest peak of those delightful mountains, 1 can only offer as my excuse, that they were not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would have had more right than any one to complain, that she has not been able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness.’ Many a green isle needs must be In the deep, wide sea of misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on Day and night, and night and day, Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel’s track; Whilst above, the sunless sky, Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 10 And behind, the tempest fleet Hurries on with lightning feet, Riving sail, and cord, and plank, Till the ship has almost drank Death from the o’er-brimming deep, And sinks down, down — like that sleep When the dreamer seems to be Weltering through eternity; And the dim low line before Of a dark and distant shore a0 Still recedes, as ever still, Longing with divided will But no power to seek or shun, He is ever drifted on POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818 359 O’er the unreposing wave To the haven of the grave. What, if there no friends will greet ? What, if there no heart will meet His with love’s impatient beat ? Wander wheresoe’er he may, 30 Can he dream before that day To find refuge from distress In fiiendship’s smile, in love’s caress ? Then ’t will wreak him little woe Whether such there be or no. Senseless is the breast, and cold, Which relenting love would fold; Bloodless are the veins, and chill, Which the pulse of pain did fill; Every little living nerve 40 That from bitter words did swerve Round the tortured lips and brow, Arc like sapless leaflets now Frozen upon December’s bough. On the beach of a northern sea Which tempests shake eternally, As once the wretch there lay to sleep, Lies a solitary heap, One white skull and seven dry bones, On the margin of the stones, 50 Where a few gray rushes stand, Boundaries of the sea and land: Nor is heard one voice of wail But the sea-mews, as they sail O’er the billows of the gale; Or the whirlwind up and down Howling, like a slaughtered town When a king in glory rides Through the pomp of fratricides. Those unburied bones around 60 There is many a mournful sound; There is no lament for him, Like a sunless vapor, dim, Who once clothed with life and thought What now moves nor murmurs not. Ay, many flowering islands lie In the waters of wide Agony. To such a one this morn was led My bark, by soft winds piloted. Mid the mountains Euganean jo I stood listening to the pean With which the legioned rooks did hail The sun’s uprise majestical; Gathering round with wings all hoar, Through the dewy mist they soar Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven Bursts, and then, as clouds of even, Flecked with fire and azure, lie In the unfathomable sky, So their plumes of purple grain, & Starred with drops of golden rain, Gleam above the sunlight woods, As in silent multitudes On the morning’s fitful gale Through the broken mist they sail, And the vapors cloven and gleaming Follow down the dark steep streaming, Till all is bright, and clear, and still, Round the solitary hill. Beneath is spread like a green sea % The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air, Islanded by cities fair. Underneath day’s azure eyes, Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite’s destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo! the sun upsprings behind, 10% Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies; ac As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old. Sun-girt City ! thou hast been Ocean’s child, and then his queen; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier. 12 A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne among the waves, Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew Flies, as once before it flew, O’er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state, Save where many a palace-gate With green sea-flowers overgrown —13¢ 360 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Like a rock of ocean’s own, Topples o’er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day, Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o’er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death 140 O’er the waters of his path. Those who alone thy towers behold Quivering through aérial gold, As I now behold them here, Would imagine not they were Sepulchres, where human forms, Like pollution-nourished worms, To the corpse of greatness cling, Murdered, and now mouldering. But if Freedom should awake 150 In her omnipotence, and shake From the Celtic Anarch’s hold All the keys of dungeons cold, Where a hundred cities lie Chained like thee, ingloriously, Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land, Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime. If not, perish thou and they !— 160 Clouds which stain truth’s rising day By her sun consumed away — Earth can spare ye; while like flowers, In the waste of years and hours, From your dust new nations spring With more kindly blossoming. Perish ! let there only be Floating o’er thy hearthless sea, As the garment of thy sky Clothes the world immortally, 170 One remembrance, more sublime Than the tattered pall of time, Which scarce hides thy visage wan; — That a tempest-cleaving Swan Of the songs of Albion, Driven from his ancestral streams By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee; and Ocean Welcomed him with such emotion That its joy grew his, and sprung 180 From his lips like music flung O’er a mighty thunder-fit, Chastening terror. What though yet Poesy’s unfailing River, Which through Albion winds forever Lashing with melodious wave Many a sacred poet’s grave, Mourn its latest nursling fled ? What though thou with all thy dead Scarce can for this fame repay 198 Aught thine own ? oh, rather say Though thy sins and slaveries foul Overcloud a sun-like soul ? As the ghost of Homer clings Round Scamander’s wasting springs; As divinest Shakespeare’s might Fills Avon and the world with light Like omniscient power which he Imaged ’mid mortality; As the love from Petrarch’s urn 200 Yet amid yon hills doth burn, A quenchless lamp, by which the heart, Sees things unearthly ;— so thou art, Mighty spirit ! so shall be The City that did refuge thee ! Lo, the sun floats up the sky, Like thought-wingéd Liberty, Till the universal light Seems to level plain and height. From tho sea a mist has spread, 250 And the beams of morn lie dead On the towers of Venice now, Like its glory long ago. By the skirts of that gray cloud Many-doméd Padua proud Stands, a peopled solitude, Mid the harvest-shining plain, Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe, and the milk-white oxen slow 220 With the purple vintage strain, Heaped upon the creaking wain, That the brutal Celt may swill Drunken sleep with savage will; And the sickle to the sword Lies unchanged, though many a lord, Like a weed whose shade is poison, Overgrows this region’s foison, Sheaves of whom are ripe to come To destruction’s harvest-home. 230 Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow, Or worse; but ’tis a bitter woe That love or reason canncié change The despot’s rage, the slave’s revenge. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818 361 Padua, thou within whose walls Those mute guests at festivals, Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin, Till Death cried, ‘I win, I win!’ 240 And Sin cursed to lose the wager, But Death promised, to assuage her, That he would petition for Her to be made Vice-Emperor, When the destined years were o’er, Over all between the Po And the eastern Alpine snow, Under the mighty Austrian. Sin smiled so as Sin only can, And since that time, ay, long before, 250 Both have ruled from shore to shore — That incestuous pair, who follow Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As Repentance follows Crime, And as changes follow Time. In thine halls the lamp of learning, Padua, now no more is burning ; Like a meteor whose wild way Is lost over the grave of day, It gleams betrayed and to betray. 260 Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame, When it lit not many a hearth On this cold and gloomy earth; Now new fires from antique light Spring beneath the wide world’s might; But their spark lies dead in thee, Trampled out by tyranny. As the Norway woodman quells, In the depth of piny dells, 270 One light flame among the brakes, While the boundless forest shakes, And its mighty trunks are torn By the fire thus lowly born; — The spark beneath his feet is dead, He starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky With myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear; — so thou, O Tyranny ! beholdest now 280 Light around thee, and thou hearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest. Grovel on the earth! ay, hide In the dust thy purple pride ! Noon descends around me now. °T is the noon of autumn’s glow, When a soft and purple mist, Like a vaporous amethyst, Or an air-dissolvéd star Mingling light and fragrance, far 296 From the curved horizon’s bound To the point of heaven’s profound Fills the overflowing sky. And the plains that silent lie Underneath; the leaves unsodden Where the infant frost has trodden With his morning-wingéd feet, Whose bright print is gleaming yet; And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellised lines 300 The rough, dark-skirted wilderness; The dun and bladed grass no less, Pointing from this hoary tower In the windless air; the flower Glimmering at my feet; the line Of the olive-sandalled Apennine In the south dimly islanded; And the Alps, whose snows are spread High between the clouds and sun; And of living things each one; 310 And my spirit, which so long Darkened this swift stream of song, — Interpenetrated lie By the glory of the sky: Be it love, light, harmony, Odor, or the soul of all Which from heaven like dew doth fall, Or the mind which feeds this verse Peopling the lone universe. Noon descends, and after noon 320 Autumn’s evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon And that one star, which to her Almost seems to minister Half the crimson light she brings From the sunset’s radiant springs; And the soft dreams of the morn (Which like wingéd winds had borne To that silent isle, which lies Mid remembered agonies, 330 The frail bark of this lone being) Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, And its ancient pilot, Pain, Sits beside the helm again. Other flowering isles must be In the sea of life and agony; Other spirits float and flee O’er that gulf: even now, perhaps, On some rock the wild wave wraps, With folding wings they waiting sit 340 For my bark, to pilot it 362 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS To some calin and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, May a windless bower be built, Far from passion, pain, and guilt, In a dell mid lawny hills, Which the wild sea-murniur fills, And soft sunshine, and the sound Of old forests echoing round, And the light and smell divine 350 Of all flowers that breathe and shine. We may live so happy there, That the spirits of the air, Envying us, may even entice To our healing paradise The polluting multitude; But their rage would be subdued By that clime divine and calm, And the winds whose wings rain balm On the uplifted soul, and leaves 360 Under which the bright sea heaves; While each breathless interval In their whisperings musical The inspired soul supplies With its own deep melodies, And the love which heals all strife, Circling, like the breath of life, All things in that sweet abode With its own mild brotherhood. They, not it, would change; and soon 370 Every sprite beneath the moon Would repent its envy vain, And the earth grow young again. INVOCATION TO MISERY Published by Medwin, The Atheneum, 1832. He wove about it a mystery of a lady who followed Shelley to Naples and there died in hopeless love for him. The tale has never been substantiated, but his various biographers take note of it, in connection with his depression at Naples. The poem itself is purely ideal, and such as he might have written at any time. I Come, be happy ! — sit near me, Shadow-vested Misery; Coy, unwilling, silent bride, Mourning in thy robe of pride, Desolation — deified ! II Come, be happy !— sit near me. Sad as I may seem to thee, I am happier far than thou, Lady, whose imperial brow Is endiademed with woe. Ill Misery ! we have known each other, Like a sister and a brother Living in the same lone home, Many years — we must live some Hours or ages yet to come. Iv *T is an evil lot, and yet Let us make the best of it; If love can live when pleasure dies, We two will love, till in our eyes This heart’s Hell seem Paradise. Vv Come, be happy ! — lie thee down On the fresh grass newly mown, Where the grasshopper doth sing Merrily — one joyous thing In a world of sorrowing. vI There our tent shall be the willow, And. mine arm shall be thy pillow; Sounds and odors, sorrowful Because they once were lull Us to slumber, deep and dull. sweet, shall VII Ha ! thy frozen pulses flutter With a love thou darest not utter. Thou art murmuring — thou art weep ing — Is thine icy bosom leaping While my burning heart lies sleeping ? VIII Kiss me; — oh! thy lips are cold; Round my neck thine arms enfold ~ They are soft, but chill and dead; And thy tears upon my head Burn like points of frozen lead- IX Hasten to the bridal bed — Underneath the grave ’tis spread: In darkness may our love be hid, Oblivion be our coverlid — We may rest, and none forbid. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818 363 x Clasp me, till our hearts be grown Like two shadows into one; Till this dreadful transport may Like a vapor fade away In the sleep that lasts alway. xI We may dream, in that long sleep, That we are not those who weep; E’enas Pleasure dreams of thee, Life-deserting Misery, Thou mayst dream of her with me. XII Let us laugh, and make our mirth, At the shadows of the earth, As dogs bay the moonlight clouds, Which, like spectres wrapped in shrouds, Pass o’er night in multitudes. XIII All the wide world beside us Show like multitudinous Puppets passing from a scene; What but mockery can they mean, Where I am —where thou hast been ? STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES This poem, in the same mood as the preced- ing, was composed in December, and published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824, I THE sun is warm, the sky is clear, The waves are dancing fast and bright; Blue isles and snowy mountains wear The purple noon’s transparent might; The breath of the moist earth is ight Around its unexpanded buds; Like many a voice of one delight, The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, The City’s voice itself is soft like Soli- tude’s. II I see the Deep’s untrampled floor With green and purple sea-weeds strown; I see the waves upon the shore, Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown; I sit upon the sands alone — The lightning of the noontide ocean Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion, How sweet ! did any heart now share in my emotion. III Alas ! I have nor hope nor health, Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth The sage in meditation found, And walked with inward glory crowned — Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor lei- sure. Others I see whom these surround — Smiling they live, and call life plea- sure; — To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. Iv Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o’er my dying brain its last mo notony. Vv Some might lament that I were cold, As I when this sweet day is gone, Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, Insults with this untimely moan; They might lament — for I am one Whom men love not, —and yet regret, Unlike this day, which, when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set, Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. SONNET Published by mrs. Shelley, Posthumow Poems, 1824, Lirt not the painted veil which those whe live Call Life; though unreal shapes be pictured there, 364 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS And it but mimic all we would believe With colors idly spread, — behind, lurk Fear And Hope, twin Destinies, who ever weave Their shadows o’er the chasm sightless and drear. I knew one who had lifted it — he sought, For his lost heart was tender, things to love, But found them not, alas! nor was there aught The world contains the which he could ap- prove. Through the unheeding many he did move, A splendor among shadows, a bright blot Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove For truth, and like the Preacher found it not. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819 This was the year of the composition of Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci, The Mask of Anarchy, and Peter Bell The Third. Its his- LINES WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION Published by Medwin, The Athenaum, 1832. I Corpsss are cold in the tomb — Stones on the pavement are dumb — Abortions are dead in the womb, And their mothers look pale, like the death- white shore Of Albion, free no more. II Her sons are as stones in the way — They are masses of senseless clay — They are trodden and move not away — The abortion with which she travaileth Is Liberty, smitten to death III Then trample and dance, thou Op- pressor ! For thy victim is no redresser — Thou art sole lord and possessor Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions — they pave Thy path to the grave. Iv Hearest thou the festival din Of Death and Destruction and Sin, And Wealth crying, Havoc! within? ‘Tis the Bacchanal triumph that makes truth dumb, — Thine Epithalamium. tory has already been given with sufficient fulness under these titles, from Mrs. Shelley’s notes. Vv Ay, marry thy ghastly wife ! Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life; Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant! and Hell be thy guide To the bed of the bride ! SONG TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND This poem, like all the group, is to be ascribed to Shelley’s renewed political excitement ow- ing to the Manchester Massacre. It was pub- lished by Mrs. Shelley, in her first collected edition, 1839. I Men of England, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low ? Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear ? II Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, From the cradle to the grave, Those ungrateful drones who would Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood ? Ill Wherefore, Bees of England, forge Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, That these stingless drones may spoil The forced produce of your toil ? POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819 365 Iv Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm ? Or what is it ye buy so dear With your pain and with your fear ? Vv The seed ye sow, another reaps; The wealth ye find, another keeps; The robes ye weave, another wears; The arms ye forge, another bears. vI Sow seed, — but let no tyrant reap; Find wealth, — let no impostor heap; Weave robes, — let not the idle wear; Forge arms, — in your defence to bear. VII Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; In halls ye deck, another dwells. Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see The steel ye tempered glance on ye. VIII With plough and spade, and hoe and loom, Trace your grave, and build your tomb, And weave your winding-sheet, till fair England be your sepulchre. TO SIDMOUTH AND CASTLE- REAGH Published by Medwin, The Atheneum, 1882. I As from an ancestral oak Two empty ravens sound their clarion, Yell by yell, and croak by croak, When they scent the noonday smoke Of fresh human carrion: — II As two gibbering night-birds flit From their bowers of deadly yew Through the night to frighten it, When the moon is in a fit, And the stars are none, or few: — II As a shark and dog-fish wait, Under an Atlantic isle, For the negro-ship, whose freight Is the theme of their debate, Wrinkling their red gills the while — Iv Are ye, two vultures sick for battle, Two scorpions under one wet stone, Two blcodless wolves whose dry throats rattle, Two crows perched on the murrained cat- tle, Two vipers tangled into one. ENGLAND IN 1819 This sonnet was sent by Shelley to Hunt, November 23, 1819, —‘I don’t expect you to publish it, but you may show it to whom you please.’ It was published by Mrs. Shelley, in her first collected edition, 1839. An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king; Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn — mud from a muddy spring; Rulers, who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop, blind in blood, withont a blow; A people starved and stabbed in the un- tilled field; An army which liberticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield; Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed; A Senate— Time’s worst statute unrepealed, Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may Burst to illumine our tempestuous day. NATIONAL ANTHEM Published by Mrs. Shelley in her second cok lected edition, 1839. I Gop prosper, speed, and save, God raise from England’s gra-e Her murdered Queen ! 366 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Pave with swift victory The steps of Liberty, Whom Britons own to be Immortal Queen. II See, she comes throned on high, On swift Eternity, God save the Queen ! Millions on millions wait Firm, rapid, and elate, On her majestic state ! God save the Queen ! II She is thine own pure soul Moulding the mighty whole, — God save the Queen ! She is thine own deep love Rained down from heaven above, — Wherever she rest or move, God save our Queen ! Iv Wilder her enemies In their own dark disguise, — God save our Queen! All earthly things that dare Her sacred name to bear, Strip them, as kings are, bare; God save the Queen ! Vv Be her eternal throne Built in our hearts alone, — God save the Queen ! Let the oppressor hold Canopied seats of gold; She sits enthroned of old O’er our hearts Queen. VI Lips touched by seraphim Breathe out the choral hymn, — God save the Queen! Sweet as if angels sang, Loud as that trumpet’s clang, Wakening the world’s dead gang, — God save the Queen ! ODE TO HEAVEN Composed as early as December, and pub- lished with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Mrs. Shelley writes as follows: ‘Shelley was a dis- ciple of the immaterial philosophy of Berkeley. This theory gave unity and grandeur to his ideas, while it opened a wide field for his imagination. The creation, such as it was perceived by his mind — a unit in immensity, was slight and narrow compared with the in- terminable forms of thought that might exist beyond, to be perceived perhaps hereafter by his own mind ; all of which are perceptible to other minds that fill the universe, not of space in the material sense, but of infinity in the immaterial one. Such ideas are, in some de- gree, developed in his poem entitled Heaven: and when he makes one of the interlocutors exclaim, ‘Peace! the abyss is wreathed in scorn Of thy presumption, atom-born”’ he expresses his despair of being able to con- ceive, far less express, all of variety, majesty, and. beauty, which is veiled from our imperfect senses in the unknown realm, the mystery of which his poetic vision sought in vain to pene- trate.’ CHORUS OF SPIRITS FIRST SPIRIT Paace-roor of cloudless nights ! Faradise of golden lights ! Deep, immeasurable, vast, Which art now, and which wert then, Of the present and the past, Of the eternal where and when, Presence-chamber, temple, home, Ever-canopying dome Of acts and ages yet to come! Glorious shapes have life in thee, Earth, and all earth’s company; Living globes which ever throng Thy deep chasms and wildernesses; And green worlds that glide along; And swift stars with flashing tresses; And icy moons most cold and bright, And mighty suns beyond the night, Atoms of intensest light. Even thy name is as a god, Heaven ! for thou art the abode Of that power which is the glass Wherein man his nature sees. Generations as they pass Worship thee with bended knees. Their unremaining gods and they Like a river roll away; Thou remainess. such alway. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819 367 SECOND SPIRIT Thou art but the mind’s first chamber, Round which its young fancies clamber, Like weak insects in a cave, Lighted up by stalactites; But the portal of the grave, Where a world of new delights Will make thy best glories seem But a dim and noonday gleam From the shadow of a dream! THIRD SPIRIT Peace ! the abyss is wreathed with scorn At your presumption, atom-born ! What is heaven? and what are ye Who its brief expanse inherit ? What are suns and spheres which flee With the instinct of that Spirit Of which ye are but a part ? Drops which Nature’s mighty heart Drives through thinnest veins. Depart ! What is heaven ? a globe of dew, Filling in the morning new Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken On an unimagined world; Constellated suns unshaken, Orbits measureless, are furled In that frail and fading sphere, With ten millions gathered there, To tremble, gleam, and disappear. AN EXHORTATION Shelley writes to Mrs. Gisborne, May §&, 1820, concerning this poem: ‘ As an excuse for mine and Mary’s incurable stupidity, I send a little thing about poets, which is itself a kind of exeuse for Wordsworth.’ It was pub- lished with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. CBAMELEONS feed on light and air; Poets’ food is love and fame; If in this wide world of care Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they, Would they ever change their hue As the light chameleons do, Suiting it to every ray Twenty times a day ? Pvets are on this cold earth, As chameleons might be, Hidden from their early birth In a cave beneath the sea. Where light is, chameleons change; Where love is not, poets do; Fame is love disguised; if few Find either, never think it strange That poets range. Yet dare not stain with wealth or power A poet’s free and heavenly mind. If bright chameleons should devour Any food but beams and wind, They would grow as earthly soon As their brother lizards are. Children of a sunnier star, Spirits from beyond the moon, Oh, refuse the boon ! ODE TO THE WEST WIND Shelley describes in a note the circumstances under which this ode was composed: ‘ This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapors which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent thunder and light- ning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions. ‘The phenomenon alluded to at the conelu- sion of the third stanza is well known to nat- uralists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce it.’ It was published with Prome theus Unbound, 1820. T O witp West Wind, thou breath of Au- tumn’s being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, «> Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectie red. Pestilence-stricken multitudes : O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low. Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 368 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odors plain and hill: Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere ; Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear! IL Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion, Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head Of some fierce Menad, even from the dim verge Of the horizon to the zenith’s height, The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear! Ill Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, Beside a pumice isle in Baiz’s bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave’s intenser day, All overgrown with azure moss and flow- ers So sweet the sense faints picturing them ! thon For whose path the Atlantic’s level pow- ers Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean know Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear. And tremble and despoil themselves : ob, hear ! IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share ; The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed ! A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. Vv Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumual tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among man- kind ! Be through my lips to unawakened earth POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819 369 The trumpet of 2 prophecy! O Wind, Hf Winter comes, can Spring be far be- hind ? AN ODE WRITTEN OCTOBER, 1819, BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Mrs. Shelley’s note exhibits the state of Shel- ley’s mind in his efforts to arouse and agitate among the people: ‘Shelley loved the people, and respected them as often more virtuous, as always more suffering, and, therefore, more de- serving of sympathy, than the great. He be- lieved that a clash between the two classes of society was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people’s side. He had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted ex- pressly to commemorate their circumstances and wrongs—he wrote a few, but in those days of prosecution for libel they could not be printed. They are not among the best of his productions, a writer being always shackled when he endeavors to write down to the com- prehension of those who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they show his earnestness, and with what heartfelt compassion he went home to the direct point of injury — that oppression is detestable, as being the parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance. Besides these outpourings of com- passion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph — such is the scope of the Ode to the Assertors of Liberty. He sketched also a new version of our national anthem, as addressed to Liberty.’ ARISE, arise, arise ! There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread ! Be your wounds like eyes To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead. What other grief were it just to pay ? Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they ! Who said they were slain on the battle- day ? Awaken, awaken, awaken ! The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes. Be the cold chains shaken To the dust where your kindred repose, repose. Their bones in the grave will start and move When they hear the voices of those they love Most loud in the holy combat above. Wave, wave high the banner, When Freedom is riding to conquest by! Though the slaves that fan her Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh. And ye who attend her imperial car, Lift not your hands in the banded war But in her defence whose children ye are. Glory, glory, glory, To those who have greatly suffered and done ! Never name in story Was greater than that which ye shall have won. Conquerors have conquered their foes alone, Whose revenge, pride, and power, they have overthrown. Ride ye, more victorious, over your own. Bind, bind every brow With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine! Hide the blood-stains now With hues which sweet nature has made divine — Green strength, azure hope, and eternity; But let not the pansy among them be — Ye were injured, and that means memory. ON THE MEDUSA OF _ LEO.- NARDO DA VINCI IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY Composed at Florence, in the latter part of the year, and published by Mrs. Shelley, Post- humous Poems, 1824. I Ir lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine; Below, far lands are seen tremblingly; Its horror and its beauty are divine. Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine, Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, The agonies of anguish and of death. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS II Yet it is less the horror than the grace Which turns the gazer’s spirit into stone, Whereon the lineaments of that dead face Are graven, till the characters be grown Into itself, and thought no more can trace; *T is the melodious hue of beauty thrown Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, Which humanize and harmonize the strain. III And from its head as from one body grow, As grass out of a watery rock, Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow And their long tangles in each other lock And with unending involutions show Their mailéd radiance, as it were to mock The torture and the death within, and saw The solid air with many a ragged jaw. IV And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes; Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft Of sense, has flitted with « mad surprise Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft, And he comes hastening like a moth that hies After a taper; and the midnight sky Flares, a light more dread than obscurity. Vv 'T is the tempestuous loveliness of terror; For from the serpents gleams a brazen lare Kindled by that inextricable error, Which makes a thrilling vapor of the air Become a and ever-shifting mirror Of all the beauty and the terror there — A woman’s countenance, with serpent locks, Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks. THE INDIAN SERENADE This poem, erroneously said to have been composed for Mrs. Williams and ‘ adapted to the celebrated Persian air sung by the Knautech girls, Tazee be tazee no be no,’ was given to Miss Sophia Stacey in 1819. Several versions of it exist. Browning’s account of deciphering one of them is interesting: he writes to Hunt, Octo- ber 6, 1857: ‘ Is it not strange that I should have transcribed for the first time last night the Indian Serenade that, together with some verses of Metastasio, accompanied that book ? [the volume of Keats found in Shelley’s pocket and burned with his body] — that I should have been reserved to tell the present posses- sor of them, to whom they were given by Cap- tain Roberts, what the poem was, and that it had been published ? It is preserved religiously ; but the characters are all but illegible, and I needed a good magnifying-glass to be quite sure of such of them as remain. The end is that I have rescued three or four variations in the reading of that divine little poem — as one reads it, at least, in the Posthumous Poems.’ It was published by Hunt, The Liberal, 1822. T I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright; I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Hath led me — who knows how ? To thy chamber window, sweet ! II The wandering airs, they faint On the dark, the silent stream; The champak odors fail Like sweet thoughts in a dream; The nightingale’s complaint, It dies upon her heart, As I must die on thine, Oh, belovéd as thou art! III Oh, lift me from the grass ! I die! I faint! I fail! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas! My heart beats loud and fast, Oh! press it close to thine again, Where it will break at last. TO SOPHIA Mrs. Shelley describes the lady to whom these lines are addressed, in a letter to Mra POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 371 Gisborne, December 1, 1819: ‘There are some ladies come to this house who knew Shelley’s family: the younger one was entousiasmée to see him. ... The younger lady was a ward of one of Shelley’s uncles. She is lively and unaffected. She sings well for an English débutante and, if she would learn the scales, would sing exceedingly well, for she has a sweet voice.’ Miss Sophia Stacey was a ward of Mr. Parker, of Bath, an uncle by marriage of Shelley. The poem was published by Ros- setti, 1870. I TxHov art fair, and few are fairer Of the nymphs of earth or ocean; They are robes that fit the wearer — Those soft limbs of thine, whose mo- tion Ever falls and shifts and glances As the life within them dances. II Thy deep eyes, a double Planet, Gaze the wisest into madness With soft clear fire; the winds that fan it Are those thoughts of tender gladness Which, like zephyrs on the billow, Make thy gentle soul their pillow. Ill If, whatever face thou paintest In those eyes, grows pale with pleasure, If the fainting soul is faintest When it hears thy harp’s wild measure, POEMS WRITTEN Mrs. Shelley gives in brief passages the ac- count of the various removals of this year, and of Shelley’s general state: ‘There was some- thing in Florence that disagreed excessively with his health, and he suffered far more pain than usual ; so much so that we left it sooner than we intended, and removed to Pisa, where we had some friends, and, above all, where we could consult the celebrated Vacca, as to the cause of Shelley’s sufferings. He, like every other medical man, could only guess at that, and gave little hope of immediate relief ; he enjoined him to abstain from all physicians and medicine, and to leave his complaint to nature. As he had vainly consulted medical men of the highest repute in England, he was easily persuaded to adopt this advice. Pain and ill-health followed him to the end, but the Wonder not that when thou speakest Of the weak my heart is weakest. IV As dew beneath the wind of morning, As the sea which whirlwinds waken, As the birds at thunder’s warning, As aught mute yet deeply shaken, As one who feels an unseen spirit, — Is my heart when thine is near it. LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY Published by Hunt, The Indicator, 1819, I THE fountains mingle with the river, And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In one another’s being mingle: Why not I with thine ? II See the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea: What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me ? IN 1820 residence at Pisa agreed with him better than any other, and there in consequence we re- mained... . ‘We spent the summer at the baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability. We made several excur- sions in the neighborhood. The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered pictur- esque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome, in- telligent race, and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. . . . ‘We then removed to Pisa, and took up our abode there for the winter. The extreme mildness of the climate snited Shelley, and his solitude was enlivened by an intercourse with 372 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS several intimate friends. Chance cast us, strangely enough, on this quiet, half-unpeopled town; but its very peace suited Shelley, — its river, the near mountains, and not distant sea, added to its attractions, and were the objects of many delightful excursions. We feared the south of Italy, and a hotter climate, on account of our child ; our former bereavement inspiring us with terror. We seemed to take root here, and moved little afterwards; often, indeed, THE SENSITIVE PLANT Composed at Pisa, as early as March, and published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Shelley afterward identified Mrs. Williams as ‘the exact antitype of the lady I described in The Sensitive Plant, though this must have been a pure anticipated cognition, as it was written a year before I knew her.’ PART FIRST A SEwsiTIVE Plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of Night. And the Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest. But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want, Ir As the companionless Sensitive Plant. The snowdrop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, And their breath was mixed with fresh odor, sent From the turf, like the voice and the in- strument. Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And narcissi, the fairest among them all, entertaining projects for visiting other parts of Italy, but still delaying. But for our fears on account of our child, I believe we should have wandered over the world, both being passionately fond of travelling. But human life, besides its great unalterable necessities, is ruled by a thousand Liliputian ties, that shackle at the time, although it is difficult to account afterwards for their influence over our destiny.’ Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s re- cess Till they die of their own dear loveli- ness; 20 And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale That the light of its tremulous bells is seen Through their pavilions of tender green; And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, It was felt like an odor within the sense; And the rose like a nymph to the bath ad- dressed, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, 30 Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air The soul of her beauty and love lay bare; And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, As a Menad, its moonlight-colored cup, Till the fiery star, which is its eye, Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky; And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tube-rose, The sweetest flower for scent that blows; And all rare blossoms from every clime Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 4 And on the stream whose inconstant bosom Was pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom, With golden and green light, slanting through Their heaven of many a tangled hne, POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 373 Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, And starry river-buds glimmered by, And around them the soft streain did glide and dance With a motion of sweet sound and radi- ance. And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, Which led through the garden along and across, 50 Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees, — Were a with daisies and delicate ells, As fair as the fabulous asphodels, And flowrets which, drooping as day drooped too, Fell into pavilions white, purple, and blue, To neat the glowworm from the evening ew. And from this undefiled Paradise The flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet 60 Can first lull, and at last must awaken it) When Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem, Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun; For each one was interpenetrated With the light and the odor its neighbor shed, Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear, Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmo- sphere. But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit 70 Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, Received more than all, it loved more than ever, Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver; For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower; Radiance and odor are not its dower; It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full It desires what it has not, the beautiful ! The light winds which from unsustaining wings Shed the music of many murmurings; The beams which dart from many a star 8 Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar; The pluméd insects swift and free, Like golden boats on a sunny sea, Laden with light and odor, which pass Over the gleam of the living grass; The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high, Then wander like spirits among the spheres, Each cloud faint with the fragance it bears; The quivering vapors of dim noontide, — 90 Which like a sea o’er the warm earth glide, In which every sound, and odor, and beam, Move, as reeds in a single stream; — Each and all like ministering angels were For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky. And when evening descended from heaven above, And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love, And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, 100 And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep, And the beasts, and the birds, and the in- sects were drowned In an ocean of dreams without a sound, Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress The light sand which paves it, conscious- ness; yy overhead the sweet nightingale ver sang more sweet as the day might fail, 374 And snatches of its Elysian chant Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensi- tive Plant); — The Sensitive Plant was the earliest — 110 Upgathered into the bosom of rest; A sweet child weary of its delight, The feeblest and yet the favorite, Cradled within the embrace of night. PART SECOND There was a Power in this sweet place, An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream, Was as God is to the starry scheme. A Lady, the wonder of her kind, Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean, Tended the garden from morn to even; And the meteors of that sublunar heaven, Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth, Ir Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth ! She had no companion of mortal race, But her tremulous breath and her flushing face Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes, That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise : As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake, As if yet around her he lingering were, Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. 20 Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed ; You might hear, by the heaving of her breast, That the coming and going of the wind Brought pleasure there and left passion behind. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS And wherever her airy footstep trod, Her trailing hair from the grassy sod Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep, Like « sunny storm o’er the dark green deep. I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet; 30 I doubt not they felt the spirit that came From her glowing fingers through all their frame. She sprinkled bright water from the stream On those that were faint with the sunny beam; And out of the cups of the heavy flowers She emptied the rain of the thunder showers. She lifted their heads with her tender hands, And sustained them with rods and osier- bands; If the flowers had been her own infants, she Could never have nursed them more ten- derly. 40 And all killing insects and gnawing worms, And things of obscene and unlovely forms, She bore in a basket of Indian woof, Into the rough woods far aloof, — In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full, The freshest her gentle hands could pull For the poor banished insects, whose in- tent, Although they did ill, was innocent. But the bee, and the beam-like ephemeris Whose path is the lightning’s, and soft moths that kiss 50 The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she Make her attendant angels be. And many an antenatal tomb, Where butterflies dream of the life to come, She left clinging round the smooth and dark Edge of the odorous cedar bark. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 375 This fairest creature from earliest spring Thus moved through the garden minister- ing All the sweet season of summer tide, And ere the first leaf looked brown — she died ! 60 PART THIRD Three days the flowers of the garden fair, Like stars when the moon is awakened, were, Or the waves of Baiz, ere luminous She floats up through the smoke of Vesu- vius. And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant Felt the sound of the funeral chant, And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low; The weary sound and the heavy breath, And the silent motions of passing death, 10 And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, Sent through the pores of the coffin plank. The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass, Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass; From their sighs the wind caught a mourn- ful tone, And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan. The garden, once fair, became cold and foul, Like the corpse of her who had been its soul Which at first was lovely as if in sleep, Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap 20 To make men tremble who never weep. Swift summer into the autumn flowed, And frost in the mist of the morning rode, Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright, Mocking the spoil of the secret night. The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, Paved the turf and the moss below. The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan. Like the head and the skin of a dying man, And Indian plants, of scent and hue 30 The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, Leaf by leaf, day after day, Were massed into the common clay. And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red, And white with the whiteness of what is dead, Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed ; Their whistling noise made the birds aghast. And the gusty winds waked the wingéd seeds Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds, Till they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem, 4a Which rotted into the earth with them. The water-blooms under the rivulet Fell from the stalks on which they were set; And the eddies drove them here and there, As the winds did those of the upper air. Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks Were bent and tangled across the walks; And the leafless network of parasite bow= ers Massed into ruin, and all sweet flowers. Between the time of the wind and the snow 59 All loathliest weeds began to grow, Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck, Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back. And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, Stretched out its long and hollow shank, And stifled the air till the dead wind stank. And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, Filled the place with a monstrous under- growth, 376 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, saul ue, Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould, Started like mist from the wet ground cold; Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead With a spirit of growth had been animated ! Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum, Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, And at its outlet flags huge as stakes Dammed it up with roots knotted like wa- ter-snakes. And hour by hour, when the air was still, 70 The vapors arose which have strength to At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt. At night they were darkness no star could melt. And unctuous meteors from spray to spray Crept and flitted in broad noonday Unseen; every branch on which they alit By a venomous blight was burned and bit. The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid, Wept, and the tears within each lid 79 Of its folded leaves, which together grew, Were changed to a blight of frozen glue. For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn; The sap shrank to the root through every pore, As blood to a heart that will beat no more. For Winter came; the wind was his whip; One choppy finger was on his lip; He had torn the cataracts from the hills And they clanked at his girdle like mana- cles; His breath was a chain which without a sound The earth, and the air, and the water bounds He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot- throne, By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone. Then the weeds which were forms of living death Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. Their decay and sudden flight from frost Was but like the vanishing of a ghost ! And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant The moles and the dormice died for want; The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air And were caught in the branches naked and bare. ror First there came down a thawing rain, And its dull drops froze on the boughs again; Then there steamed up a freezing dew Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew; And «# northern whirlwind, wandering about Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, Shook the boughs thus laden and heavy and stiff, And snapped them off with his rigid griff. When Winter had gone and Spring came back, 110 The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck; | But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels, Rose like the dead from their ruined char- nels, CONCLUSION Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that Which within its boughs like a spirit sat, Ere its outward form had known decay, Now felt this change, I cannot say. Whether that lady’s gentle mind, No longer with the form combined Which scattered love, as stars do light, 12 Found sadness where it left delight, I dare not guess; but in this life Of error, ignorance and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem, And we the shadows of the dream, It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant, if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery. POEMS WRITTEN IN That garden sweet, that lady fair, 130 And all sweet shapes and odors there, In truth have never passed away : ’T is we, ’t is ours, are changed; not they. For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change : their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure. A VISION OF THE SEA Composed at Pisa as early as April, and pub- lished with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. ’T1s the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale; From the stark night of vapors the dim rain is driven, And, when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from heaven, She sees the black trunks of the water- spouts spin And bend, as if heaven was ruining in, Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass As if ocean had sunk from beneath them; they pass To their graves in the deep with an earth- quake of sound, And the waves and the thunders, made silent around, Leave the wind to its echo. now tossed Through the low trailing rack of the tem- est, is lost In the skirts of the thundercloud; now down the sweep Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale, Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about; While the surf, like « chaos of stars, like a rout Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire- flowing iron, With splendor and terror the black ship environ, 20 Or, like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire, In fountains spout o’er it. Ir many a spire zc The vessel, 1820 377 The pyramid-billows, with white points of brine, In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine, As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea. The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree, While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has passed. The intense thunder-balls which are rain- ing from heaven Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven. The chinks suck destruction. dead hulk On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk, Like a corpse on the clay which is hunger- 30 The heavy ing to fold Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold, One deck is burst up by the waters be- low. And it splits like the ice when the thaw- breezes blow O’er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other ? Is that all the crew that lie burying each other, Like the dead in a breach, round the fore- mast? Are those Twin tigers who burst, when the waters arose, 40 In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold, — (What now makes them tame is what then made them bold) Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank, The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank, — Are these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain On the windless expanse of the watery plain, Where the death-darting sun cast noshadow at noon, And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon, Till a lead-colored fog gathered up from the deep, Whose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep 50 378 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn, O’er the populous vessel. morn, With their hammocks for coffins, the sea- men aghast Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast Down the deep, which closed on them above and around, And the sharks and the dogfish their grave- clothes unbound, And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down From God on their wilderness. one The mariners died; on the eve of this day, When the tempest was gathering in ae array, But seven remained. Six the thunder fae smitten, And they lie black as mummies on which Time has written His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck An oak-splinter pierced through his breast and his back, And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck. No more? At the helm sits a woman more fair Than heaven when, unbinding its star- braided hair, It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea. She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee; It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder Of the air and the sea; with desire and with wonder It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near; It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear Is outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high, The heart-fireof pleasure haskindleditseye, Whilst its mother’s is lustreless: ‘Smile not, my child, But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be, So dreadful since thou must divide it with me! And even and One after Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cra- dle and bed, Will it rock thee not, infant ? ing with dread ! Alas ! ua is life, what is death, what are 8 ’T is beat- That aa the ship sinks we no longer may be ? What ! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more ? To be after life what we have been before ? Not to touch those sweet hands, not to look on those eyes, Those lips, and that hair, all that smiling disguise Thou yet wearest, sweet spirit, which I, day by day, Have so long called my child, but which now fades away Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?’ Lo! the ship Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dips The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry Bursts at once from their vitals tremen- dously, And ’tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave, Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave, Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain, Hurried on by the might of the hurricane. The hurricane came from the west, and passed on 100 By the path of the gate of the eastern sun, Transversely dividing the stream of the storm; As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste. Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, Between ocean and heaven, like an ocean, passed, Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world Which, based on the sea and to heaven up- curled, Like columns and walls did surround and sustain The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain, 110 POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 379 As a flood rends its barriers of mountain- ous crag; And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag, Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed, Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast; They are scattered like foam on the tor- rent; and where The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air Of clear morning the beams of the sunrise flow in, Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline, Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate They encounter, but interpenetrate. 120 And that breach in the tempest is widening away, And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day, And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings, Lulled by the motion and murmurings And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea And overhead glorious, but dreadful to see, The wrecks of the tempest, like vapors of gold, Are consuming in sunrise. waves behold The deep calin of blue heaven dilating The heaped above, And, like passions made still by the pre- sence of Love, 130 Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle, Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with heaven’s azure smile, The wide world of waters is vibrating. Where Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle Stain the clear air with sunbows. The jar, and the rattle 139 Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress Of the snake’s adamantine voluminousness; And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins, Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash The thin winds and soft waves into thun- der; the screams And hissings, crawl fast o’er the smooth ocean-streams, Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean, The fin-wingéd tomb of the victor. The other 150 Is winning his way from the fate of his brother, To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought Urge on the keen keel, — the brine foams. At the stern Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone — ’T is dwindling and sinking, ’t is now almost gone — Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea. With her left hand she grasps it impetu- ously, 160 With her right hand she sustains her fair infant. Death, Fear, Love, Beauty, are mixed in the atmo- sphere, Which trembles and burns with the fervor of dread Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head, Like a meteor of light o’er the waters! her child Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmur- ing; so smiled The false deep ere the storm. Like a sis- ter and brother The child and the ocean still smile on each other, Whilst 380 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS THE CLOUD Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, 10 And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder. I sift the snow on the mountains below, And their great pines groan aghast; And all the night ’tis my pillow white, While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skyey bow- ers, Lightning my pilot sits; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, It struggles and howls at fits; 20 Over earth and ocean with gentle motion, This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move In the depths of the purple sea; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, Over the lakes and the plains, ‘Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, The Spirit he loves remains; And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile, Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 30 The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, When the morning star shines dead; As on the jag of a mountain crag, Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit In the light of its golden wings. And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardors of rest and of love, 40 And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, As still as a brooding dove. That orbéd maiden, with white fire laden, Whom mortals call the Moon, Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor, By the midnight breezes strewn; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, 50 May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, Are each paved with the moon and these. I bind the sun’s throne with a burning zone, And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim, 61 When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, — The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch, through which I march, With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair, Is the million-colored bow; 70 The sphere-fire above its soft colors wove, While the moist earth was laughing below. Iam the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean i: shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when with never a stain The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air, 8c I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 381 Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, [ arise and unbuild it again. TO A SKYLARK Composed at Leghorn, and published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. The occasion is described by Mrs. Shelley: ‘In the spring we spent a week or two near Leghorn, borrowing the house of some friends, who were absent on a journey to England. It was on a beautiful summer evening while wandering among the lanes, whose myrtle hedges were the bowers of the fireflies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark, which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems.’ Harz to thee, blithe Spirit ! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 10 In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun, O’er which clouds are bright’ning, Thou dost float and run; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of heaven In the broad daylight ‘Thou art unseen, — but yet I hear thy shrill delight, 20 Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clear Until we hardly see —we feel that it is there; All the earth and air With thy voice is loud, As when Night is bare From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed. 30 What thou art we know not; What is most like thee ? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Like a Poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: 40 Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hour With musie sweet as love, — which over- flows her bower : Like a glowworm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aérial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view : 50 Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it gives Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy wingéd thieves. Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever was Joyous and clear and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 6c Teach us, Sprite or Bird, What sweet thonghts are thine; I have never heard Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture se divine. 382 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Chorus Hymeneal, Or triumphal chant, Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 7o What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain ? What fields or waves or mountains ? What shapes of sky or plain ? What love of thine own kind? what igno- rance of pain ? With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be; Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee; Thou lovest — but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety. 80 Waking or asleep Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream — Or how could thy notes flow in such a erys- tal stream ? We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 90 Yet if we could scorn Hate and pride and fear; If we were things born Not te shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near- Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 100 Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then — as I am listening now. ODE TO LIBERTY Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820. Shelley sent it to Peacock with permission to insert asterisks in stanzas fifteen and sixteen in case his publisher objected to the expressions there used. Yet Freedom, yet, thy banner torn but flying Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind. Byzon. I A GLoRious people vibrated again The lightning of the Nations; Liberty, From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o’er Spain, Scattering contagious fire into the sky, Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, And in the rapid plumes of song Clothed itself, sublime and strong; As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, Hovering in verse o’er its accustomed saa Peed sr a Till from its station in the Heaven of fame The Spirit’s whirlwind rapt it, and the ray Of the remotest sphere of living flame Which paves the void was from behind it flung, As foam from a ship’s swiftness, when there came A voice out of the deep: I will record the same, II The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth; The burning stars of the abyss were hurled Into the depths of heaven. The dedal earth, That island in the ocean of the world, Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air; But this divinest universe Was yet a chaos and a curse, For thou wert not; but power from worst producing worse, The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, And of the birds, and of the watery forms, And there was war among them, and despair Within them, raging without truce or terms. POEMS WRITTEN IN 383 1820 The bosom of their violated nurse Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms, And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. Il Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied His generations under the pavilion Of the Sun’s throne; palace and pyramid, Temple and prison, to many a swarming million Were as to mountain wolves their ragged caves. This human living multitude Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, For thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude, Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves, Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified The sister-pest, congregator of slaves; Into the shadow of her pinions wide Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. Iv The nodding promontories, and blue isles, And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles Of favoring heaven; from their en- chanted caves Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. On the unapprehensive wild The vine, the corn, the olive mild, Grew savage yet, to human use unrecon- ciled; And, like unfolded flowers beneath the'sea, Like the man’s thought dark in the in- fant’s brain, Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, Art’s deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child, Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain Her lidless eyes for thee; when o’er the #igean main Vv Athens arose; a city such as vision Builds from the purple crags and silver towers Of battlemented cloud, as in derision Of kingliest masonry: the ocean floors Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; Its portals are inhabited By thunder-zonéd winds, each head Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire gar- landed, — A divine work! Athens, diviner yet, Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set; For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead In marble immortality, that hill Which was thine earliest throne and lat- est oracle. VI Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay Immovably unquiet, and forever It trembles, but it cannot pass away ! The voices of thy bards and sages thunder With an earth-awakening blast Through the caverns of the past; Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast. A wingéd sound of joy, and love, and wonder, Which soars where Expectation never flew, Rending the veil of space and time asun- der! One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew; One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast With life and love makes chaos ever new, As Athens doth the world with thy de- light renew. VII Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmean Menad, She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest From that Elysian food was yet un weaned; 384 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS And many a deed of terrible uprightness By thy sweet love was sanctified; And in thy smile, and by thy side, Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died. But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness, And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne, Thou didst desert, with spirit-wingéed lightness, The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone Slaves of one tyrant. Palatinus sighed Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown. Vill From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill, Or piny promontory of the Arctic main, Or utmost islet inaccessible, Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign, Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, And every Naiad’s ice-cold urn, To talk in echoes sad and stern, Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn ? For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks Of the Scald’s dreams, nor haunt the Druid’s sleep. What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep, ‘When from its sea of death, to kill and burn, The Galilean serpent forth did creep, And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. IX A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou ? And then the shadow of thy coming fell On Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow; And many a warrior-peopled citadel, Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, Arose in sacred Italy, Frowning o’er the tempestuous sea Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower- crowned majesty; ‘That multitudinous anarchy did sweep Aud burst around their walls, tke idle foam, Whilst from the human spirit’s deepest deep, Strange ells with love and awe struck dumb Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die, With divine wand traced on our earthly home Fit imagery to pave heaven’s everlasting dome, x Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror Of the world’s wolves! thou bearer of the quiver, Whose sun-like shafts pierce tempest- wingéd Error, As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever In the calm regions of the orient day ! Luther caught thy wakening glance; Like lightning, from his leaden lance Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay; And England’s prophets hailed thee as their queen, In songs whose music cannot pass away, Though it must flow forever; not un- seen Before the spirit-sighted countenance Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene Beyond whose night he saw, with a de- jected mien. XI The eager hours and unreluctant years As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood, Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, Darkening each other with their multi- tude, And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation Answered Pity from her cave; Death grew pale within the grave, And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save! When, like heaven’s sun girt by the ex halation Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, POEMS WRITTEN IN 385 1820 Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies At dreaming midnight o’er the western wave, Men started, staggering with a glad sur- prise, Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. XII Thou heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then, In ominous eclipse ? a thousand years, Bred from the slime of deep oppression’s den, Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away; How like Bacchanals of blood Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood Destruction’s sceptred slaves, and Folly’s mitred brood ! When one, like them, but mightier far than they, The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, Rose; armies mingled in obscure array, Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers Of serene heaven. He, by the past pur- sued, Rests with those dead but unforgotten hours, Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. XIII England yet sleeps: was she not called of old ? Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder Vesuvius wakens @tna, and the cold Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder; O’er the lit waves every AXolian isle From Pithecusa to Pelorus Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus; They ery, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o’er us! Her chains are threads of gold, she need . but smile And they dissolve; but Spain’s were links of steel, Till bit to dust by virtue’s keenest file. Twins of a single destiny ! appeal To the eternal years enthroned before us In the dim West; impress us froma seal, All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal. XIV Tomb of Arminius ! render up thy dead Till, like a standard from a watch-towev’s staff, His soul may stream over the tyrant’s head;. Thy victory shall be his epitaph, Wild Bacchanal of truth’s mysterious wine, King-deluded Germany, His dead spirit lives in thee. Why do we fear or hope ? thou art already free ! And thou, lost Paradise of this divine And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness ! Thou island of eternity ! thou shrine Where desolation clothed with loveli-. ness Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy, Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress: The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces. xv Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name Of King into the dust! or write it there, So that this blot upon the page of fame Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air Erases, and the flat sands close behind ! Ye the oracle have heard. Lift the victory-flashing sword, And cut the snaky knots of this foul gor- dian word, Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind Into a mass, irrefragably firm, The axes and the rods which awe man- kind; The sound has poison in it, ’tis the sperm Of what makes life foul, eankerous, and abhorred; Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term, To set thine arméd heel on this reluctant worm. 386 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS XVI Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle Such lamps within the dome of this dim world, That the pale name of Priest might shrink and dwindle Into the hell from which it first was hurled, A scoff of impious pride from fiends im- pure; Till human thoughts might kneel alone, Each before the judgment-throne Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown ! Oh, that the words which make the thoughts obscure From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew From a white lake blot heaven’s blue portraiture, Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue And frowns and smiles and splendors not their own, Till in the nakedness of false and true They stand before their Lord, each to re- ceive its due. XVII He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever Can be between the cradle and the grave Crowned him the King of Life. Ob, vain endeavor ! If on his own high will, a willing slave, He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor. What if earth can clothe and feed Amplest millions at their need, And power in thought be as the tree within the seed ? Oh, what if Art, an ardent intercessor, Driving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne, Checks the great mother stooping to ca- ress her And cries: ‘Give me, thy child, domin- ion Over all height and depth?’ if Life can breed New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan : Rend of thy. gifts and hers a thousand- fold for one. XVIII Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning- star Beckons the sun from the Eoan wave, Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame; Comes she not, and come ye not, | Rulers of eternal thought, To judge with solemn truth life’s ill-appor- tioned lot ? Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame Of what has been, the Hope of what will be ? O Liberty ! if such could be thy name Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee — If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought By blood or tears, have not the wise and free Wept tears, and blood like tears ? — The solemn harmony XIX Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty sing- in To its sine was suddenly withdrawn; Then as a wild swan, when sublimely wing- in Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn, Sinks headlong through the aérial golden light On the heavy sounding plain, When the bolt has pierced its brain; As summer clouds dissolve unburdened of their rain; As a far taper fades with fading night, As a brief insect dies with dying day, ene My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, Drooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away Of the great voice which did its flight sus- tain ‘As waves which lately paved his watery way Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play. POEMS WRITTEN IN 387 1820 TO Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I Fear thy kisses, gentle maiden, Thou neediest not fear mine; ae is too deeply laden ver to burden thine. I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion, Thou needest not fear mine; Innocent is the heart’s devotion With which I worship thine. ARETHUSA Composed at Pisa, and published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I ARETHUSA arose From her couch of snows In the Acroceraunian mountains, From cloud and from crag, With many a jag, Shepherding her bright fountains. She leapt down the rocks, With her rainbow locks Streaming among the streams; Her steps paved with green The downward ravine Which slopes to the western gleams; And gliding and springing, She went, ever singing, In murmurs as soft as sleep; The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her, As she lingered towards the deep. II Then Alpheus bold, On his glacier cold, With his trident the mountains strook; And opened a chasm In the rocks — with the spasm All Erymanthus shook. And the black south wind It unsealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder Did rend in sunder The bars of the springs below. The beard and the hair Of the River-god were Seen through the torrent’s sweep, As he followed the light Of the fleet nymph’s flight To the brink of the Dorian deep. III ‘Oh, save me! Oh, guide me, And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair!” The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth’s white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream. Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. Iv Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearléd thrones; Through the coral woods Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones; Through the dim beams Which amid the streams Weave a network of colored light; And under the caves, Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest’s night; Outspeeding the shark, And the swordfish dark, Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts They passed to their Dorian home. Vv And now from their fountains In Enna’s mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. 388 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS At sunrise they leap From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; At noontide they flow Through the woods below And the meadows of asphodel; And at night they sleep In the rocking deep Beneath the Ortygian shore, Like spirits that lie In the azure sky When they love but live no more. SONG OF PROSERPINE WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA Published by Mrs. Shelley, in her first col- lected edition, 1839. SacRED Goddess, Mother Earth, Thou from whose immortal bosom Gods, and men, and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine. If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers Till they grow, in scent and hue, Fairest children of the hours, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine. HYMN OF APOLLO This and the following poem were com- posed for insertion in a projected drama of Williams, Midas. It was published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I ‘THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I ie Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries From the broad moonlight of the sky, Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, Waken es when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. It Then I arise, and climbing Heaven’s blue dome, I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam; My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. III The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day; All men who do or even imagine ill Fly me, and from the glory of my ray Good minds and open actions take new might, Until diminished by the reign of night. IV I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers With their ethereal colors; the moon’s globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine Are portions of one power, which is mine. Vv I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, Then with unwilling steps I wander down Into the clouds of the Atlantic even; For grief that I depart they weep and frown. What look is more delightful than the smile With which I soothe them from the western isle ? vI I am the eye with which the Universe Beholds itself, and knows itself divine; All harmony of instrument or verse, All prophecy, all medicine are mine, All light of Art or Nature; — to my song Victory and praise in its own right be long. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 389 HYMN OF PAN Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I From the forests and highlands We come, we come; From the river-girt islands, Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, The bees on the bells of thyme, The birds on the myrtle bushes, The cicale above in the lime, And the lizards below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, Listening my sweet pipings. II Liquid Peneus was flowing, And all dark Tempe lay In Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing The light of the dying day, Speeded by my sweet pipings. The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns, And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did then attend and follow, Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings. TIl I sang of the dancing stars, I sang of the dedal Earth, And of Heaven —and the giant wars, And Love, and Death, and Birth; — And then I changed my pipings, Singing how down the vale of Menalus I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed. Gods and men, we are all deluded thus! It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed. All wept, as I think both ye now would If envy or age had not frozen your blood, At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. THE QUESTION Published by Hunt, The Literary Pocket- Book, 1822. I I pREAMED that, as I wandered by the way, Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, And gentle odors led my steps astray, Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou might- est in dream. II There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets; Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets — (Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth Its mother’s face with heaven - collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears. Ill And in the warm hedge grew lush eglan- tine, Green cowbind and the moonlight-colored May, And cherry blossoms, and white cups, whose wine Was the bright dew yet drained not by the day, And wild roses, and ivy serpentine, With its dark buds and leaves, wander- ing astray; And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold. Iv And nearer to the river’s trembling edge There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white; And starry river buds among the sedge; And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge With moonlight beams of their own watery light; And bulrushes and reeds, of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. 39° MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Vv Methought that of these visionary flowers I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues, which in their natural bowers Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours Within my hand, —and then, elate and gay: I hastened to the spot whence I had come, That I might there present it !—Oh, to whom ? THE TWO SPIRITS AN ALLEGORY Published by Mrs. Shelley, Poems, 1824. Posthumous FIRST SPIRIT O THOU, who plumed with strong desire Wouldst float above the earth, beware ! A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire — Night is coming! Bright are the regions of the air, And among the winds and beams It were delight to wander there — Night is coming ! SECOND SPIRIT The deathless stars are bright above; If I would cross the shade of night, Within my heart is the lamp of love, And that is day ! And the moon will smile with gentle light On my golden plumes where’er they move; The meteors will linger round my flight, And make night day. FIRST SPIRIT But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain ? See, the bounds of the air are shaken — Night is coming ! The red swift clouds of the hurricane Yon declining sun have overtaken; The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain — Night is coming ! SECOND SPIRIT I see the light, and I hear the sound; I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark, With the calm within znd the light around Which makes night day; And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark, Look from thy dull earth, slumber- bound; My moon-like flight thou then mayst mark On high, far away. Some say there is a precipice Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin O’er piles of sncw and chasms of ice Mid Alpine mountains; And that the languid storm pursuing That wingéd shape forever flies Round those hoar branches, aye renewing Its aéry fountains. Some say when nights are dry and clear, And the death-dews sleep on the mo- rass Sweet whispers are heard by the travel- ler, Which make night day; And a silver shape like his early love doth pass, Upborne by her wild and glittering hair, And, when he awakes on the fragrant grass, He finds night day. LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE This letter was written from the house of Mrs. Gisborne, where Shelley had turned the workshop of herson, Mr. Reveley, an engineer, into a study. ‘Mrs. Gisborne,’ writes Mrs. Shelley, ‘had been a friend of my father in her younger days. She was a lady of great accom- plishments, and charming from her frank and affectionate nature. She had the most intense love of knowledge, a delicate and trembling sensibility, and preserved freshness of mind after a life of considerable adversity. As a favorite friend of my father we had sought her with eagerness, and the most open and cordial friendship was established between us.’ Shel- ley also describes her: ‘ Mrs. Gisborne is a suffi- ciently amiable and very accomplished woman ; [she is Sypoxpaticn and afen — how far she may be ¢tAavOpwxn I don’t know, for] she is the antipodes of enthusiasm.’ The poem was published by Mrs. Shelley. Posthumous Poems, 1824. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 391 : Lzeuorn, July 1, 1820. THE spider spreads her webs whether she be In poet’s tower, cellar, or barn, or tree; The silkworm in the dark green mulberry leaves His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves; So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, Sit spinning still round this decaying form, From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought — No net of words in garish colors wrought To catch the idle buzzers of the day — But a soft cell, where when that fades away Memory may clothe in wings my living name II And feed it with the asphodels of fame, Which in those hearts which must remem- ber me Grow, making love an immortality. Whoever should behold me now, I wist, Would think I were a mighty mechanist, Bent with sublime Archimedean art To breathe a soul into the iron heart Of some machine portentous, or strange gin, Which by the force of figured spells might win 20 Its way over the sea, and sport therein; For round the walls are hung dread engines, such As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch Ixion or the Titan, — or the quick Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, To convince Atheist, Turk or Heretic, Or those in philanthropic council met, Who thought to pay some interest for the debt They owed to Jesus Christ for their salva- tion, By giving a faint foretaste of damnation 30 To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser and the rest Who made our land an island of the blest, When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire On Freedom’s hearth, grew dim with Em- ire: — With fnbeceen wheels, with tooth and spike and jag, Which fishers found under the utmost crag Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles, Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn When the exulting elements in scorn, 40 Satiated with destroved destruction, lay Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey, As panthers sleep;—and other strange and dread Magical forms the brick floor overspread — Proteus transformed to metal did not make More figures, or more strange; nor did he take Such shapes of unintelligible brass, Or heap himself in such a horrid mass Of tin and iron, not to be understood, And forms of unimaginable wood 50 To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood; Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and groovéd blocks, — The elements of what will stand the shocks Of wave and wind and time. Upon the table More knacks and quips there be than I am able To catalogize in this verse of mine : — A pretty bowl of wood — not full of wine, But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink When at their subterranean toil they swink, Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who 60 Reply to them in lava — ery halloc! And call out to the cities o’er their head, — Roofs, towers and shrines, the dying and the dead, Crash through the chinks of earth — and then all quaff Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. This quicksilver no gnome has drunk — within The walnut bowl it lies, veinéd and thin, In color like the wake of light that stains The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains The inmost shower of its white fire — the breeze 70 Is still — blue heaven smiles over the pale seas. And in this bowl of quicksilver — for I Yield to the impulse of an infancy Outlasting manhood — I have made to float A rude idealism of a paper boat, — A hollow serew with cogs— Henry will know The thing I mean and laugh at me, if so 392 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS He fears not I should do more mischief. Next Lie bills and calculations much perplexed, With steamboats, frigates, aud machinery quaint 80 Traced over them in blue and yellow paint. Then comes a range of mathematical Instruments, for plans nautical and stati- eal; A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass With ink in it; a china cup that was What it will never be again, I think, A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink The liquor doctors rail at —and which I Will quaff in spite of them — and when we ie We’ll toss up who died first of drinking tea, And cry out, « heads or tails ?’ where’er we be. gt Near that a dusty paint box, some odd hooks, A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books, Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms, To great Laplace from Saunderson and Sims, Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray Of figures, — disentangle them who may. Baron de Tott’s Memoirs beside them lie, And some odd volumes of old chemistry. Near those a most inexplicable thing, — 100 With lead in the middle — I’m conjectur- ing How to make Henry understand; but no— I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo, This secret in the pregnant womb of time, Too vast a matter for so weak arhyme. And here like some weird Archimage sit I, Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery, The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind The gentle spirit of our meek reviews 10 Into a powdery foam of salt abuse, Ruffling the ocean of their self-content; 1 sit — and smile or sigh as is my bent, But not for them; Libeccio rushes round With an inconstant and an idle sound — Iheed him more than them; the thunder- smoke Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare; The ripe corn under the undulating air Undulates like an ocean; and the vines 120 Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines. The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill The empty pauses of the blast; the hill Looks hoary through the white electric rain, And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, The interrupted thunder howls; above One chasm of heaven smiles, like the eye of Love On the unquiet world;— while such things are, How could one worth your friendship heed the war Of worms ? the shriek of the world’s car- rion jays, 130 Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise ? You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees In vacant chairs your absent images, And points where once you sat, and now should be But are not. I demand if ever we Shall meet as then we met; and she re- plies, Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes; ‘I know the past alone —but summon home My sister Hope,—she speaks of all to come.’ But I, an old diviner, who knew well — 140 Every false verse of that sweet oracle, Turned to the sad enchantress once again, And sought a respite from my gentle pain, In citing every passage o’er and o’er Of our communion — how on the seashore We watched the ocean and the sky to- gether, Under the roof of blue Italian weather; How I ran home through last year’s thun- der-storm, And felt the transverse lightning linger warm £49 Upon my cheek; and how we often made Feasts for each other, where good-will out- weighed The frugal luxury of our country cheer, As well it might, were it less firmand clear POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 393 Than ours must ever be; and how we spun A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun Of this familiar life which seems to be But is not — or is but quaint mockery Of all we would believe — and sadly blame The jarring and inexplicable frame 159 Of this wrong world; and then anatomize The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes Were closed in distant years; or widely guess The issue of the earth’s great business, When we shall be as we no longer are, — Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not; — or how You listened to some interrupted flow Of visionary rhyme, — in joy and pain Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain, 169 With little skill perhaps; or how we sought Those deepest wells of passion or of thought Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years, Staining their sacred waters with our tears, — Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed. Or how I, wisest lady ! then indued The language of a land which now is free, And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty, Flits round the tyrant’s sceptre like a cloud, And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud, ‘My name is Legion!’ —that majestic tongue 180 Which Calderon over the desert flung Of ages and of nations, — and which found An echo in our hearts,—and with the sound Startled oblivion; — thou wert then to me As is a nurse — when inarticulately A child would talk as its grown parents do. If living winds the rapid clouds pursue, If hawks chase doves through the ethereal way, Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey, Why should not we rouse with the spirit’s blast 190 Out of the forest of the pathless past These recollected pleasures ? You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see That which was Godwin,— greater none than he Though fallen —and fallen on evil times — to stand Among the spirits of our age and land, Before the dread tribunal of to come —_—200 The foremost, — while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb, You will see Coleridge —he who sits ob- scure In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind, Which, with its own internal lightning blind, Flags wearily through darkness and de- spair — A eloud-encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owls. You will see Hunt — one of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and with- out whom 210 This world would smell like what it is—a tomb; Who is what others seem; his room no doubt Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout, With graceful flowers tastefully placed about, And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung, — The gifts of the most learned among some dozens Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cous- ins. And there is he with his eternal puns, Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns 220 Thundering for money at a poet’s door; Alas! it is no use to say, ‘I’m poor !’ Or oft in graver mood, when he will look Things wiser than were ever read in book, Except in Shakespeare’s wisest tender- ness. — You will see Hogg, — and I cannot express 394 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS His virtues, — though I know that they are great, Because he locks, then barricades the gate Within which they inhabit; of his wit And wisdom youll cry out when you are bit. 230 He is a pearl within an oyster shell, One of the richest of thedeep. And there Is English Peacock, with his mountain fair, Turned into a Flamingo, — that shy bird That gleams i’ the Indian air; — have you not heard When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo, His best friends hear no more of him ? — but you Will see him, and will like him too, I hope, With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope Matched with this camelopard; his fine wit 240 Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it; A strain too learnéd for a shallow age, Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page Which charms the chosen spirits of the time, Fold itself up for the serener clime Of years to come, and find its recompense In that just expectation. Wit and sense, Virtue and human knowledge; all that might Make this dull world a business of de- light, — Are all combined in Horace Smith. And these, 250 With some exceptions, which I need no’ tease Your patience by descanting on, are all You and I know in London. I recall My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night. As water does a sponge, so the moonlight Fills the void, hollow, universal air. What see you ?— unpavilioned heaven is fair Whether the moon, into her chamber gone, Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep; 260 Or whether clouds sail o’er the inverse deep Piloted by the many-wandering blast, And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast: — All this is beautiful in every land. But what see you beside ? — a shabby stand Of Hackney coaches —a brick house or wall Fencing some lonely court, white with the serawl Of our unhappy politics; or worse — A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse Mixed with the watchman’s, partner of her trade, 270 You must accept in place of serenade, — Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring To Henry, some unutterable thing. I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit Built round dark caverns, even to the root Of the living stems that feed them — in whose bowers There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers; Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne 279 In circles quaint and ever changing dance, Like wingéd stars, the fireflies flash and glance, Pale in the open moonshine, but each one Under the dark trees seems a little sun, A meteor tamed, a fixed star gone astray From the silver regions of the milky way; Afar the Contadino’s song is heard, Rude, but made sweet by distance — anda bird Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet I know none else that sings so sweet as it At this late hour;—and then all is still. — Now Italy or London, which you will ! 29: Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have My house by that time turned into a grave Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care And all the dreams which our tormentors are; Oh ! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock and Smith were there, With every thing belonging to them fair! — We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek; And ask one week to make another week As like his father, as I’m unlike mine, 306 Which is not his fault, as you may divine. Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine, POEMS WRITTEN IN — 1820 395 Yet let’s be merry: we ’ll have tea and toast; Custards for supper, and an endless host Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, And other such lady-like luxuries, — Feasting on which we will philosophize ! And we’ll have fires out of the Grand Duke’s wood, To thaw the six weeks’ winter in our blood. And then we ’ll talk; — what shall we talk about ? 310 Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout Of thought-entangled descant; —as to nerves — With cones and parallelograms and curves I’ve sworn to strangle them if once they dare To bother me— when you are with me there. And they shall never more sip laudanum, From Helicon or Himeros; — well, come, And in despite of God and of the devil, We’ll make our friendly philosophic revel Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers 320 Warn the obscure inevitable hours Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew; — ‘To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.’ ODE TO NAPLES The revolutionary uprisings of this year af- fected Shelley as powerfully as the Manchester Riot of 1819, and this poem is the fruit of that fleeting renascence of political hope so often illustrated in his verse. He composed it at the Baths of San Giuliano, August 17-25, and it was published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. Shelley added a note to the poem, as follows: ‘The author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baie with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitu- tional Government at Naples. This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of the animating event.’ EPODE I a I sroop within the city disinterred ; And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard Mountain’s slumberous voice at intervals Thrill through those roofless halls; The oracular thunder penetratiug shook The listening soul in my suspended blood; I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke — I felt, but heard not. columns glowed The Through white The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood, 10 A plane of light between two Heavens of azure: Around me gleamed many a bright sep- ulchre OF whose pure beauty, Time, asif his plea- sure Were to spare Death, had never made erasure; But every living lineament was clear As in the sculptor’s thought; ana there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine, Like winter leaves o’ergrown by moulded snow, Seemed only not to move and grow Because the crystal silence of the air 20 Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine, Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine. EPODE II a Then gentle winds arose, With many a mingled close Of wild olian sound and mountain odor keen; And where the Baian ocean Welters with air-like motion, Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves, 29 Even as the ever stormless atmosphere Floats o’er the Elysian realm, It bore me, like an angel, o’er the waves Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air No storm can overwhelm. I sailed where ever flows Under the calm Serene A spirit of deep emotion 396 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS From the unknown graves Of the dead kings of Melody. Shadowy Aornus darkened o’er the helm 40 The horizontal ether; heaven stripped bare Its depths over Elysium, where the prow Made the invisible water white as snow; From that Typhzan mount, Inarimé, There streamed a sunbright vapor, like the standard Of some ethereal host; Whilst from all the coast, Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered Over the oracular woods and divine sea Prophesyings which grew articulate — 50 They seize me — I must speak them — be they fate ! STROPHE a 1 Naples, thou Heart of men, which ever, pantest Naked, beneath the lidless eye of hea- ven ! Elysian City, which to calm enchantest The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even As sleep round Love, are driven ! Metropolis of a ruined Paradise Long lost, late won, and yet but half re- ained ! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice, Which arméd Victory offers up un- stained 60 To Love, the flower-enchained ! Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free, If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail, — Hail, hail, all hail! STROPHE B 2 Thou youngest giant birth, Which from the groaning earth Leap’st, clothed in armor of impenetrable scale ! Last of the intercessors Who ’gainst the Crowned Trans- gressors Pleadest before God’s love! Wisdom’s mail, Wave thy lightning lance in mirth, Nor let thy high heart fail, 70 Arrayed in Thongh from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors, With hurried legions move ! Hail, hail, all hail! ANTISTROPHE a 1 What though Cimmerian anarchs dare blas- pheme Freedom and thee ? thy shield is as a mirror To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer; 80 A new Actzon’s error Shall theirs have been — devoured by their own hounds ! Be thou like the imperial Basilisk, Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds ! Gaze on oppression, till, at that dread risk Aghast, she pass from the Earth’s disk; Fear not, but gaze — for freemen mightier TOW, And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe. If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail, Thou shalt be great. — All hail! go ANTISTROPHE 8 2 From Freedom's form divine, From Nature’s inmost shrine, Strip every impious gaud, rend Error veil by veil; O’er Ruin desolate, O’er Falsehood’s fallen state, Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale! And equal laws be thine, And wingéd words let sail, Freighted with truth even from the throne of God; That wealth, surviving fate, 100 Be thine. — All hail ! ANTISTROPHE ay Didst thou not start to hear Spain’s thrill- ing pean From land to land reéchoed solemnly. Till silence became music? From the ean To the cold Alps, eternal Italy Starts to hear thine! The Sea POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 397 Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs In light and music; widowed Genoa wan By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs, Murmuring, Whereis Doria ? Fair Milan, Within whose veins long ran rn The viper’s palsying venom, lifts her heel To bruise his head. The signal and the seal (If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail Art thou of all these hopes. — O hail! ANTISTROPHE 8 vy Florence ! beneath the sun, Of cities fairest one, Blushes within her bower for Freedom’s expectation From eyes of quenchless hope Rome tears the priestly cope, —_— 20 As ruling once by power, so now by ad- miration, — An athlete stripped to run From a remoter station For the high prize lost on Philippi’s shore : — As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail ! EPODE I 8 “Jear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms Arrayed against the ever-living Gods ? The crash and darkness of a thousand storms Bursting their inaccessible abodes 130 Of crags and thunder-clouds ? See ye the banners blazoned to the day, Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride ? Dissonant threats kill Silence far away, The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide With iron light is dyed, The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions Like Chaos o’er creation, uncreat- ing; An indeed tribes nourished on strange re- ligions And lawless slaveries, — down the aérial rerions 140 Of the white Alps, desolating, Famished wolves that bide no wait- ing, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, Trampling our columned cities into dust, Their dull and savage lust On Beauty’s corse to sickness satiat- ing — They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary With fire — from their red feet the streams run gory! EPODE ot 8 Great Spirit, deepest Love! Which rulest and dost move 150 All things which live and are, within the Italian shore; Who spreadest heaven around it, Whose woods, rocks, waves, sur- round it; Who sittest in thy star, o’er Ocean’s west- ern floor; Spirit of beauty! at whose soft com- mand The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison From the Earth’s bosom chill; Oh, bid those beams be each a blinding brand Of lightning ! bid those showers be dews of poison ! Bid the Earth’s plenty kill ! x60 Bid thy bright Heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, Be their tomb who planned To make it ours and thine ! Or with thine harmonizing ardors fill And raise thy sons, as o’er the prone hori- zon Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire ! Be man’s high hope and unextinct de- sire The instrument to work thy will divine ! Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, 170 And frowns and fears from Thee, Would not more swiftly flee, Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. — Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be This zity of thy worship, ever free ! 398 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS AUTUMN A DIRGE Published by Mrs. Poems, 1824. Shelley, Posthumous Tue warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying, And the year On the earth, her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying. Come, Months, come away, From November to May, In your saddest array; Follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepul- chre. The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling For the year; The blithe swallows are flown, and the liz- ards each gone To his dwelling; Come, Months, come away, Put on white, black, and gray; Let your light sisters play — Ye, follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear. DEATH Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I DrartH is here, and death is there, Death is busy everywhere, All around, within, beneath, Above, is death — and we are death. Il Death has set his mark and seal On all we are and all we feel, On all we know and all we fear, Ill First our pleasures die — and then Our hopes, and then our fears— and when These are dead, the debt is due, Dust claims dust — and we die too. IV All things that we love and cherish, Like ourselves, must fade and perish; Such is our rude mortal lot — Love itself would, did they not. LIBERTY Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I THE fiery mountains answer each other, Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone; The tempestuous oceans awake one another, And the ice-rocks are shaken round Win- ter’s throne, When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. II From a single cloud the lightning flashes, Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around; Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes, An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound Is bellowing underground. Til But keener thy gaze than the lightning’s lare, And swifter thy step than the earthquake’s tramp; Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun’s bright lamp To thine is a fen-fire damp. Iv From billow and mountain and exhalation The sunlight is darted through vapor and blast; From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation, From city to hamlet, thy dawning is cast, — And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night In the van of the morning light. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820 399 SUMMER AND WINTER epelahed by Mrs. Shelley, The Keepsake, Ir was a bright and cheerful afternoon Towards the end of the sunny month of June, When the north wind congregates in crowds The floating mountains of the silver clouds From the horizon —and the stainless sky Opens beyond them like aternity. All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds, The river, and the cornfields, and the reeds; The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze, And the firm foliage of the larger trees. It was a winter such as when birds die In the deep forests; and the fishes lie Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when Among their children comfortable men Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold: Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old ! THE TOWER OF FAMINE Published by Mrs. Shelley, The Keepsake, 1829. Amrp the desolation of a city, Which was the cradle and ‘s now the grave Of an extinguished people, — so that pity Weeps o’er the shipwrecks of oblivion’s wave, There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave For bread, and gold, and blood; pain, linked to guilt, Agitates the light flame of their hours, Until its vital oil is spent or spilt. There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers And sacred domes, — each marble-ribbéd roof, The brazen-gated temples and the bowers Of solitary wealth; the tempest-proof Pavilions of the dark Italian air Are by its presence dimmed — they stand aloof, And are withdrawn —so that the world is bare; As if a spectre, wrapped in shapeless ter- ror Amid a company of ladies fair Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror Of all their beauty, — and their hair and hue, The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error, Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew. AN ALLEGORY Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I A PORTAL as of shadowy adamant ea yawning on the highway of the ife Which we all tread,a cavern huge and gaunt; Around it rages an unceasing strife Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky. II And many pass it by with careless tread, Not knowing that a shadowy .. . Tracks every traveler even to where the dead Wait peacefully for their companion new; But others, by more curious humor led, Pause to examine; these are very few, And they learn little there, except to know That shadows follow them where’er they go. 400 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS THE WORLD’S WANDERERS Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Speed thee in thy fiery flight, Tn what cavern of the night Will thy pinions close now ? II Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray Pilgrim of heaven’s homeless way, In what depth of night or day Seekest thou repose now ? Ill Weary wind, who wanderest Like the world’s rejected guest, Hast thou still some secret nest On the tree or billow ? SONNET Published by Hunt, The Literary Pocket- Book, 1824. Yr hasten to the grave ! there, Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes Of the idle brain, which the world’s livery wear ? O thou quick heart, which pantest to pos- sess All that pale expectation feigneth fair ! Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest uess Whence thou didst come, and whither thou must go, And all that never yet was known would know, — Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye Tess With such swift feet life’s green and plea- sant path, Seeking alike from happiness and woe A refuge in the cavern of gray death ? OD heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you Hope to inherit in the grave below ? What seek ye LINES TO A REVIEWER Published by Hunt, The Literary Pocket. Book, 1823. Axas! good friend, what profit can you see In hating such a hateless thing as me ? There is no sport in hate when all the rage Is on one side. In vain would you assuage Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, In which not even contempt lurks to beguile Your heart by some faint sympathy of hate. Oh, conquer what you cannot satiate ! For to your passion I am far more coy Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy In winter noon. Of your antipathy If Iam the Narcissus, you are free To pine into a sound with hating me. TIME LONG PAST Published by Rossetti, 1870. I Lixe the ghost of a dear friend dead Is Time long past. A tone which is now forever fled, A hope which is now forever past, A love so sweet it could not last, Was Time long past. II There were sweet dreams in the night Of Time long past. And, was it sadness or delight, Each day a shadow onward cast Which made us wish it yet might last — That Time long past. III There is regret, almost remorse, For Time long past. *T is like a child’s belovéd corse A father watches, till at last Beauty is like remembrance cast From Time long past. BUONA NOTTE Published by Medwin, The Angler in Wales, 1834, Medwin writes in his Life of Shelley: ‘I often asked Shelley if he had never attempted to write, like Matthias, in Italian, and he POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821 401 showed me a sort of serenade which I give asa curiosity,—but proving that he had not made a profound study of the language, which, like Spanish, he had acquired without a grammar, — trusting to his fine ear and memory, rather than to rules.’ I ‘Buona notte, buona notte !’— Come mai La notte sara buona senza te ? Non dirmi buona notte, — ché tu sai, La notte s& star buona da per sé. II Solinga, scura, cupa, senza speme, La notte quando Lilla m’abbandona; Pei cuori chi si batton insieme Ogni notte, senza dirla, sara buona. TI Come male buona notte si suona Con sospiri e parole interrotte |! — Il modo di aver la notte buona E mai non di dir la buona notte. GOOD-NIGHT Published by Hunt, The Literary Pocket Book, 1822. I Goop-n1GHT? ah, no! the hour is ill Which severs those it should unite; Let us remain together still, Then it will be good night. II How can I call the lone night good, Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight 7 Be it not said, thought, understood, Then it will be good night. II To hearts which near each other move From evening close to morning light, The night is good; because, my love, They never say good-night. POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821 Mrs. Shelley gives, as usual, the general scene and atmosphere of the year, which was spent at Pisa or the Baths of San Giuliano: ‘We were not, as our wont had been, alone — friends had gathered round us. Nearly all are dead; and when memory recurs to the past, she wanders among tombs: the genius with all his blighting errors and mighty powers; the com- panion of Shelley’s ocean-wanderings, and the sharer of his fate, than whom no man ever existed more gentle, generous, and fearless; and others, who found in Shelley’s society, and in his great knowledge and warm sympathy, delight, instruction and solace, have joined him beyond the grave.... ‘Shelley’s favorite taste was boating ; when living near the Thames, or by the lake of Geneva, much of his life was spent on the water. On the shore of every lake, or stream, or sea, near which he dwelt, he had a boat moored. He had latterly enjoyed this pleasure again. There are no pleasure-boats on the Arno, and the shallowness of its waters, ex- cept in winter time, when the stream is too turbid and impetuous for boating, rendered it difficult to get any skiff light enough to float. Shelley, however, overcame the difficulty; he, together with a friend, contrived a boat such as the huntsmen carry about with them in the Maremma, to cross the sluggish but deep streams that intersect the forests, a boat of laths and pitched canvas; it held three per- sons, and he was often seen on the Arno in it, to the horror of the Italians, who remonstrated on the danger, and could not understand how any one could take pleasure in an exercise that risked life. “ Ma va per la vita!’ they ex- claimed. I little thought how true their words would prove. He once ventured with a friend [Williams], on the glassy sea of a calm day, down the Arno and round the coast, to Leg- horn, which by keeping close in shore was very practicable. They returned to Pisa by the canal, when, missing the direct cut, they got entangled among weeds, and the boat upset; a wetting was all the harm done except that the intense cold of his drenched clothes made Shelley faint. Once I went down with him to the mouth of the Arno, where the stream, then high and swift, met the tideless sea and dis- turbed its sluggish waters; it was a waste and dreary scene ; the desert sand stretched into a point surrounded by waves that broke idly though perpetually around; it was a scene very similar to Lido, of which he had said, — *“T love all waste And solitary places, where we taste The pleasure of believing what we see Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be; And such was this wide ocean, and this shore More barren than its billows.’’ 402 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ‘Our little boat was of greater use, unac- eompanied by any danger, when we removed to the baths. Some friends [the Williamses]| lived at wae Vilage of agnane, cour miles off, and we went to and fro to see them, in our boat, by the canal, which, fed by tne Serchio, was, shough an artificial, a full and picturesque wtream, making its way under verdant banks, sheltered by trees that dipped their boughs into the murmuring waters. By day, multi- tudes of ephemera darted to and fro on the surface ; at night, the fireflies came out among the shrubs on the banks; the cicale at noonday kept up their hum; the aziola cooed in the quiet evening. It was a pleasant summer, bright in all but Shelley’s health and inconstant spirits; yet he enjoyed himself greatly, and became more and more attached to the part of the country wnere chance appeared to cast us. Sometimes he projected taking a farm, situated on the height of one of the near hills, sur- rounded by chestnut and pine woods, and over- looking a wide extent of country ; or of settling still further in the maritime Apennines, at Massa. Several of his slighter and unfinished poems were inspired by these scenes, and by the companions around us. It is the nature of that poetry, however, which overflows from the DIRGE FOR THE YEAR Composed January 1, and published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I OrpHan hours, the year is dead, Come and sigh, come and weep ! Merry hours, smile instead, For the year is but asleep. See, it smiles as it is sleeping, Mocking your untimely weeping. II As an earthquake rocks a corse In its coffin in the clay, So White Winter, that rough nurse, Rocks the death-cold year to-day; Solemn hours! wail aloud For your mother in her shroud, Ilr As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child, So the breath of these rude days Rocks the year: — be calm and mild, Trembling hours; she will arise With new love within her eyes. soul, oftener to express sorrow and regret than joy ; for it is when oppressed by the weight of life, and away from those he loves that the poet hag recourse tu the sciace oi expression in verse. ‘Still Shelley’s passion was the ocean; and he wished that our summers, instead of being passed among the hills near Pisa, should be spent on the shores of the sea. It was very difficult to find a spot. We shrank from Na- ples from a fear that the heats would disagree with Perey; Leghorn had lost its only attrac- tion, since our friends who had resided there were returned to England; and Monte Nero being the resort of many English, we did not wish to find ourselves in the midst of a colony of chance travellers. No one then thought it possible to reside at Viareggio, which latterly has become a summer resort. The low lands and bad air of Maremma stretch the whole length of the western shores of the Mediter- ranean, till broken bv the rocks and hills of Spezia. It was a vague idea; but Shelley sug. gested an excursion to Spezia, to see whether it would be feasible to spend a summer there. The beauty of the bay enchanted him — we saw no house to suit us— but the notion took root, and many circumstances, enchained as by fatality, occurred to urge him to execute it.’ IV January gray is here, Like a sexton by her grave; February bears the bier, March with grief doth howl and rave, And April weeps — but, O ye hours ! Follow with May’s fairest flowers. TIME Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. UNFATHOMABLE Sea! years, Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears } Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality, And sick of prey, yet howling on for whose waves are more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore; Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable Sea ? POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821 403 FROM THE ARABIC AN IMITATION Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I My faint spirit was sitting in the light Of thy looks, my love; It panted for thee like the hind at noon For the brooks, my love. Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tem- pest’s flight, Bore shee far from me; My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon, Did companion thee. II Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, Or the death they bear, The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove With the wings of care; In the battle, in the darkness, in the need, Shall mine cling to thee, Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, It may bring to thee. SONG Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I RaRE ty, rarely, comest thou, Spirit of Delight ! Wherefore hast thou left me now Many a day and night ? Many a weary night and day °T is since thou art fled away. II How shall ever one like me Win thee back again ? With the joyous and the free Thou wilt scoff at pain. Spirit false ! thou hast forgot All but those who need thee not. I As a lizard with the shade Of a trembling leaf. Thou with sorrow art dismayed; Even the sighs of grief Reproach thee, that thou art not near, And reproach thou wilt not Sear. Iv Let me set my mournful ditty To a merry measure; Thou wilt never come for pity, Thou wilt come for pleasure; Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. Vv T love all that thou lovest, Spirit of Delight ! The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed, And the starry night; Autumn evening, and the morn When the golden mists are born. vI I love snow, and all the forms Of the radiant frost; I love waves, and winds, and storms, Everything almost Which is Nature’s, and may be Untainted by man’s misery. VII I love tranquil solitude, And such society As is quiet, wise, and good; Between thee and me What difference ? but thou dost possess The things I seek, not love them less. VII I love Love — though he has wings, And like light can flee, But above all other things, Spirit, I love thee. Thou art love and life! Oh, come, Make once more my heart thy home. TO NIGHT Published by Mrs. Poems, 1824. Shelley, Posthumou I SwIFTLY walk o’er the western wave. Spirit of Night ! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where all the long and lone daylight 404 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, — Swift be thy flight ! II Wrap thy form in a mantle gray, Star-inwrought ! Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; Kiss her until she be wearied out; Then wander o’er city, and sea, and land, Touching all with thine opiate wand — Come, long-sought ! Tl When I arose and saw the dawn, I sighed for thee; When light rode high, and the dew was gone, And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, And the weary Day turned to his rest, Lingering like an unloved guest, I sighed for thee. Iv Thy brother Death came, and cried, Wouldst thou me ? Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, Murmured like a noontide bee, Shall I nestle near thy side ? Wouldst thou me ? — and I replied, No, not thee ! Vv Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon; Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, belovéd Night, — Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon ! TO— Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory; Odors, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the belovéd’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on. TO— Published by Mrs. Shelley, Poems, 1824. Posthumou I WHEN passion’s trance is overpast, If tenderness and truth could last, Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep Some mortal slumber, dark and deep, I should not weep, I should not weep ! II It were enough to feel, to see Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly, And dream the rest — and burn and be The secret food of fires unseen, Couldst thou but be as thou hast been. Ill After the slumber of the year The woodland violets reappear; All things revive in field or grove, And sky and sea, but two, which move And form all others, life and love. MUTABILITY Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I THE flower that smiles to-day To-morrow dies; All that we wish to stay, Tempts and then flies. What is this world’s delight? Lightning that. mocks the night, Brief even as bright. 8 Virtue, how frail it is! Friendship how rare! Love, how it sells poor bliss For proud despair ! But we, though soon they fall, Survive their joy and all Which ours we call. III Whilst skies are blue and bright, Whilst flowers are gay, Whilst eyes that change ere night Make glad the day, POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821 405 Whilst yet the calm hours creep, Dream thou — and from thy sleep Then wake to weep. LINES Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I Far, far away, O ye Halcyons of Memory, Seek some far calmer nest Than this abandoned breast ! No news of your false spring To my heart’s winter bring; Once having gone, in vain Ye come again. Il Vultures, who build your bowers High in the Future’s towers, Withered hopes on hopes are spread ! Dying joys, choked by the dead, Will serve your beaks for prey Many a day. THE FUGITIVES Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I THE waters are flashing, The white hail is dashing, The lightnings are glancing, The hoar-spray is dancing — Away! The whirlwind is rolling, The thunder is tolling, The forest is swinging, The minster bells ringing — Come away ! The Earth is like Ocean, Wreck-strewn and in motion; Bird, beast, man and worm Have crept out of the storm — Come away ! II 6 Our boat has one sail, And the helmsman is pale; A bold pilot I trow, Who should follow us now,’ — Shouted he; And she cried, ‘ Ply the oar; Put off gayly from shore !’— As she spoke, bolts of death Mixed with hail specked their path O’er the sea. And from isle, tower and rock, The blue beacon cloud broke And though dumb in the blast, The red cannon flashed fast From the lee. II And fear’st thou, and fear’st thou ? And see’st thou, and hear’st thou ? And drive we not free O’er the terrible sea, I and thou ?’ One boat-cloak did cover The loved and the lover; Their blood beats one measure, They murmur proud pleasure Soft and low; While around the lashed Ocean, Like mountains in motion, Is withdrawn and uplifted, Sunk, shattered and shifted To and fro. IV In the court of the fortress Beside the pale portress, Like a bloodhound well beaten The bridegroom stands, eaten By shame; On the topmost watch-turret, As a death-boding spirit, Stands the gray tyrant father: To his voice the mad weather Seems tame; And with curses as wild As e’er clung to child, He devotes to the blast The best, loveliest, and last Of his name ! 406 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS LINES WRITTEN ON HEARING THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON Published with Hellas, 1821. ‘Wuart! alive and so bold, O Earth ? Art thou not over-bold ? What ! leapest thou forth as of old In the light of thy morning mirth, The last of the flock of the starry fold? Ha! leapest thou forth as of old ? Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled, And canst thou move, Napoleon being dead? How ! is not thy quick heart cold ? What spark is alive on thy hearth? How! is not his death-knell knolled ? And livest thou still, Mother Earth ? Thou wert warming thy fingers old O’er the embers covered and cold ‘Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled; ‘What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead? ‘Who has known me of old,’ replied Earth, ‘Or who has my story told? It is thou who art over-bold.’ And the lightning of scorn laughed forth As she sung, ‘To my bosom I fold All my sons when their knell is knolled, And so with living motion all are fed, And the quick spring like weeds out of the dead. ‘Still alive and still bold,’ shouted Earth, ‘I grow bolder, and still more bold. The dead fill me ten thousand-fold Fuller of speed, and splendor, and mirth. I was cloudy, and sullen, and cold, Like a frozen chaos uprolled, Till by the spirit of the mighty dead Myheart grewwarm. I feed onwhom I fed. ‘ Ay, alive and still bold,’ muttered Earth, ‘Napoleon’s fierce spirit rolled, In terror, and blood, and gold, A torrent of ruin to death from his birth. Leave the millions who follow to mould The metal before it be cold; -And weave into his shame, which like the dead ‘Shrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled.’ SONNET POLITICAL GREATNESS Published by Mrs. Poems, 1824. Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame, Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts, Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame; Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts, History is but the shadow of their shame, Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts As to oblivion their blind millions fleet, Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit By force or custom? Manwho man would be Must rule the empire of himself; in it Must be supreme, establishing his throne On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. Shelley, Posthumous A BRIDAL SONG The poem was composed for insertion in a projected play of Williams, The Promise, or a Year, a Month, and a Day. Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I Tue golden gates of sleep unbar: Where strength and beauty, met to- ether, Kindle their image like a star In a sea of glassy weather ! Night, with all thy stars look down; Darkness, weep thy holiest dew; Never smiled the inconstant moon On a pair so true. Let eyes not see their own delight; — Haste, swift hour, and thy flight Oft renew. II Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her! Holy stars, permit no wrong ! And return to wake the sleeper, Dawn, — ere it be long. O joy! O fear! what will be done In the absence of the sun! Come along ! POEMS WRITTEN IN 1821 407 EPITHALAMIUM Published by Medwin, Life of Shelley, 1847. Nieut, with all thine eyes look down ! Darkness, shed its holiest dew ! When ever smiled the inconstant moon On a pair so true ? Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light, Lest eyes see their own delight! Hence, swift hour ! and thy loved flight Oft renew. BOYS O joy! O fear! what may be done In the absence of the sun ? Come along ! The golden gates of sleep unbar ! When strength and beauty meet together, Kindles their image like a star In a sea of glassy weather. Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light, Lest eyes see their own delight ! Hence, swift hour ! and thy loved flight Oft renew. GIRLS U joy ! O fear! what may be done In the absence of the sun ? Come along ! Fairies ! sprites! and angels keep her ! Holiest powers, permit no wrong ! And return, to wake the sleeper, Dawn, ere it be long. Hence, swift hour! and quench thy light, Lest eyes see their own delight ! Hence, coy hour! and thy loved flight Oft renew. BOYS AND GIRLS O joy! O fear! what will be done {n the absence of the sun? Come along! ANOTHER VERSION Published by Rossetti, 1870. BOYS SING Nicut ! with all thine eyes look down! Darkness! weep thy holiest dew! Never smiled the inconstant moon Qn a pair so true. Haste, coy hour! and quench all light, Lest eyes see their own delight ! Haste, swift hour! and thy loved flight Oft renew ! GIRLS sING Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her ! Holy stars ! permit no wrong ! And return to wake the sleeper, Dawn, ere it be long ! O joy ! O fear! there is not one Of us can guess what may be done In the absence of the sun: — Come along ! BOYS Oh, linger long, thou envious eastern lamp In the damp Caves of the deep ! GIRLS Nay, return, Vesper! urge thy lazy car! Swift unbar The gates of Sleep ! CHORUS The golden gate of Sleep unbar, When Strength and Beauty, met to gether, Kindle their image, like a star Ina sea of glassy weather. May the purple mist of love ‘Round them rise, and with them move, . Nourishing each tender gem Which, like flowers, will burst from them. As the fruit is to the tree May their children ever be! EVENING PONTE AL MARE, PISA Published by Poems, 1824. Mrs. Shelley, Posthumoue I THE sun is set; the swallows are asleep; The bats are flitting fast in the gray air; The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep, And evening’s breath, wandering here and there Over the quivering surface of the stream, Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream. 408 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS II There is no dew on the dry grass to-night, Nor damp within the shadow of the trees; The wind is intermitting, dry, and light; And in the inconstant motion of the breeze The dust and straws are driven up and down, And whirled about the pavement of the town. III Within the surface of the fleeting river The wrinkled image of the city lay, Immovably unquiet, and forever It trembles, but it never fades away; Go to the You, being changed, will find it then as now. Iv The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut By darkest barriers of enormous cloud, Like mountain over mountain huddled — but Growing and moving upwards in a crowd, And over it aspace of watery blue, Which the keen evening star is shining through. THE AZIOLA ae by Mrs. Shelley, The Keepsake, 29. I ‘Do you not hear the Aziola cry ? Methinks she must be nigh,’ Said Mary, as we sate In dusk, ere stars were lit, or candles brought; And I, who thought This Aziola was some tedious woman, Asked, ‘ Who is Aziola?’ How elate I felt to know that it was nothing human, No mockery of myself to fear or hate ! And Mary saw my soul, And laughed, and said, ‘ Disquiet yourself not, *T is nothing but a little downy owl.’ IL Sad Aziola! many an eventide Thy music I had heard By wood and stream, meadow and moun tain-side, And fields and marshes wide, — Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird, The soul ever stirred; Unlike and far sweeter than them all. Sad Aziola ! from that moment I Loved thee and thy sad ery. TO — Pablished by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I OnE word is too often profaned For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained For thee to disdain it; One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother, And pity from thee more dear Than that from another. II I can give not what men call love, But wilt thon accept not The worship the heart lifts above And the Heavens reject not, — The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow ? REMEMBRANCE Shelley sent these lines enclosed in a letter to Mrs. Williams: ‘ Dear Jane, —If this mel- ancholy old song suits any of your tunes, or any that humor of the moment may dictate, you are welcome to it. Do not say it is mine to any one, even if you think so; indeed, it is from the torn leaf of a book out of date. How are you to-day, and how is Williams? Tell him that I dreamed of nothing but sailing and fishing up coral. Your ever affectionate P. B.S.’ It was published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. POEMS WRITTEN IN 3821 409 I SwrrTErR faz than summer’s flight, Swifter far than youth’s delight, Swifter far than happy night, Art thou come and gone. As the wood when leaves are shed, As the night when sleep is fled, As the heart when joy is dead, I am left lone, alone. II The swallow summer comes again, The owlet night resumes his reign, But the wild swan youth is fain To fly with thee, false as thou. My heart each day desires the morrow; Sleep itself is turned to sorrow; Vainly would my winter borrow Sunny leaves from any bough. Ill Lilies for a bridal bed, Roses for a matron’s head, Violets for a maiden dead — Pansies let my flowers be; On the living grave I bear, Scatter them without a tear — Let no friend, however dear, Waste one hope, one fear for me. TO EDWARD WILLIAMS Published by Ascham, 1834. I THE serpent is shut out trom paradise. The wounded deer must seek the herb no more In which its heart-cure lies; The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower, Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs Fled in the April hour. I, too, must seldom seek again Near happy friends a mitigated pain. II Of hatred I am proud, — with scorn con- tent; Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown Itself indifferent; But, not to speak of love, pity alone Can break a spirit already more than bent. The miserable one Turns the mind’s poison into food, — Its medicine is tears, — its evil good. Ill Therefore if now I see you seldomer, Dear friends, dear friend! know that 1 only fly Your looks, because they stir Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die. The very comfort that they minister I scarce can bear; yet I, So deeply is the arrow gone, Should quickly perish if it were with- drawn. IV When I return to my cold home, you ask Why I am not as I have ever been. You spoil me for the task Of acting a forced part in life’s dull scene, Of wearing on my brow the idle mask Of author, great or mean, In the world’s earnival. I sought Peace thus, and but in you I found it not. Vv Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot With various flowers, and every one still said, ‘She loves me — loves me not.’ And if this meant a vision long since fled — If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought — If it meant, — but I dread To speak what you may know too well: Still there was truth in the sad oracle. VI The crane o’er seas and forests seeks her home; No bird so wild but has its quiet nest, When it no more would roam; The sleepless billows on the ocean’s breast Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam, And thus at length find rest: 410 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Doubtless there is a place of peace Where my weak heart and all its throbs will cease. VII I asked her, yesterday, if she believed That I had resolution. One who had Would ne’er have thus relieved His heart with words, — but what his judgment bade Would do, and leave the scorner unre- lieved. These verses are too sad To send to you, but that I know, Happy yourself, you feel another’s woe. TO-MORROW Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. Wuere art thou, belovéd To-morrow ? When young and old, and strong and weak, Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow, Thy sweet smiles we ever seek, — In thy place —ah! well-a-day ! We find the thing we fled — To-day. POEMS WRITTEN The last months of Shelley’s life were passed at Pisa and Lerici. The incidents, and the general character of the household with its group of friends, are minutely recorded in LINES Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824» I WHEN the lamp is shattered, The light in the dust lies dead; When the cloud is scattered, The rainbow’s glory is shed; When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not; When the lips have spoken, T.,oved accents are soon forgot. LINES Published by Rossetti, 1870. Ir I walk in Autumn’s even While the dead leaves pass, If I look on Spring’s soft heaven, — Something is not there which was, Winter’s wondrous frost and snow, Summer’s clouds, where are they now ? A LAMENT Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. I O wortp! O life! O time! On whose last steps I climb, Trembling at that where I had stood before; When will return the glory of your prime? No more — oh, never more ! Il Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight; Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more — oh, never more ! IN 1822 Mrs. Shelley’s long note, in Trelawny’s Rec- ords, and in nearly all biographies of later date. A brief narrative is inadequate to tell the story. II As music and splendor Survive not the lamp and the lute, The heart’s echoes render No song when the spirit is mute: — No song but sad dirges, Like the wind through a ruined cell, Or the mournful surges That ring the dead seaman’s knell. III When hearts have once mingled, Love first leaves the well-built nest; POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822 411 The weak one is singled To endure what it once possessed. O Love ! who bewailest The frailty of all things here, Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home, and your bier ? IV Its passions will rock thee, As the storms rock the ravens on high; Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky. From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold winds come. THE MAGNETIC LADY TO HER PATIENT Shelley wrote on this poem, ‘For Jane and Williams only to see.’ Medwin, who published it, The Atheneum, 1832, gives an account of the experiments out of which it grew, in his Shelley Papers: ‘Shelley was a martyr to a most painful complaint, which constantly men- aced to terminate fatally ; and was subject to violent paroxysms which, to his irritable nerves, were each a separate death. I had seen mag- netism practised in India and at Paris, and at his earnest request consented to try its efficacy. Mesmer himself could not have hoped for more complete success. The imposition of my hand on his forehead instantaneously put a stop to the spasm, and threw him into a magnetic sleep, which for want of a better word is called somnambulism. Mrs. Shelley and another lady [Mrs. Williams] were present. The experi- ment was repeated more than once. During his trances I put some questions to him. He always pitched his voice in the same tone as mine. I enquired about his complaint, and its cure—the usual magnetic enquiries. His reply was, “ What would cure me would kill me”... [Shelley answered in Italian.] He improvised also verses in Italian, in which lan- guage he was never known to write poetry.’ Medwin adds, in his Life of Shelley: ‘ After my departure from Pisa he was magnetized by alady, which gave rise to the beautiful stanzas entitled The Magnetic Lady to her Patient, and during which operation he made the same re- ply to an enquiry as to his disease and its cure as he had done to me, — “ What would cure me would kill me.” ... Mrs. Shelley also magnetized him, but soon discontinued the practice, from finding that he got up in his. sleep, and went one night to the window (for- tunately barred), having taken to his old habit of sleep-walking, which I mentioned, in his boyhood and also in London.’ I ‘Stexp, sleep on! forget thy pain; My hand is on thy brow, My spirit on thy brain; My pity on thy heart, poor friend; And from my fingers flow The powers of life, and like a sign, Seal thee from thine hour of woe; And brood on thee, but may not blend With thine. II ‘Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not; But when I think that he Who made and makes my lot As full of flowers, as thine of weeds, Might have been lost like thee; And that a hand which was not mine Might then have charmed his agony As I another’s — my heart bleeds For thine. III ‘Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of The dead and the unborn Forget thy life and love; Forget that thou must wake forever; Forget the world’s dull scorn; Forget lost health, and the divine Feelings which died in youth’s brief morn; And forget me, for I can never Be thine. Iv ‘ Like a cloud big with a May shower, My soul weeps healing rain On thee, thou withered flower; It breathes mute music on thy sleep; Its odor calms thy brain ! Its light within thy gloomy breast Spreads like a second youth again. By mine thy being is to its deep Possessed. Vv ‘The spell isdone. How feel you now ?° ‘Better — quite well,’ replied The sleeper, — ‘ What would do 412 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS You good when suffering and awake ? What cure your head and side ?’ ‘What would cure, that would kill me, Jane; And as I must on earth abide Awhile, yet tempt me not to break My chain.’ TO JANE THE INVITATION Williams, in his Journal, February 2, de- scribes such an excursion: ‘Fine warm day. Jane accompanies Mary and S. to the sea-shore through the Cascine. They return about three.’ The poem was published by Mrs. Shelley, in an earlier form, in Posthumous Poems, 1824, and, as here given, in her second collected edition, 1839. Besr and brightest, come away ! Fairer far than this fair Day, Which, like thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough Year just awake In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring Through the winter wandering, Found it seems the haleyon Morn, To hoar February born. 10 Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kissed the forehead of the Earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, And breathed upon the frozen mountains, And like a prophetess of May Strewed flowers upon the barren way, Making the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. 20 Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs; To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music, lest it should not find An echo in another’s mind, While the touch of Nature’s art Harmonizes heart to heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor: — 30 ‘Tam gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields. Reflection, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. You with the unpaid bill, Despair, — You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, — I will pay you inthe grave, — Death will listen to your stave. Expectation too, be off ! To-day is for itself enough. 4 Hope, in pity mock not Woe With smiles, nor follow where I go; Long having lived on thy sweet food, At length I find one moment’s good After long pain — with all your love, This you never told me of.’ Radiant Sister of the Day, Awake ! arise ! and come away ! To the wild woods and the plains, And the pools where winter rains se Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green, and ivy dun, Round stems that never kiss the sun; Where the lawns and pastures be And the sand-hills of the sea; Where the melting hoar-frost wets The daisy-star that never sets, And wind-flowers and violets, Which yet join not scent to hue, 60 Crown the pale year weak and new: When the night is left behind In the deep east, dun and blind, And the blue noon is over us, And the multitudinous Billows murmur at our feet, Where the earth and ocean meet, And all things seem only one, In the universal sun. THE RECOLLECTION Shelley sent the lines to Mrs. Williams — ‘not to be opened unless you are alone or with Williams.’ I Now the last day of many days, All beautiful and bright as thou, The loveliest and the last, is dead, — Rise, Memory, and write its praise! Up, — to thy wonted work ! come, trace The epitaph of glory fled, For now the Earth has changed its face, A frown is on the Heaven’s brow. II We wandered to the Pine Forest That skirts the Ocean’s foam, POEMS WRITTEN IN The lightest wind was in its nest, The tempest in its home. The whispering waves were half asleep, The clouds were gone to play, And on the bosom of the deep The smile of Heaven lay; It seemed as if the hour were one Sent from beyond the skies, Which scattered from above the sur A light of Paradise. Tl We paused amid the pines that stood The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude As serpents interlaced, And soothed by every azure breath, That under heaven is blown, To harmonies and hues beneath, As tender as its own; Now all the treetops lay asleep, Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep The ocean woods may be. Iv How calm it was !— the silence there By such a chain was bound That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound The inviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew. There seemed, from the remotest seat Of the white mountain waste To the soft flower beneath our feet, A magic circle traced, A spirit interfused around, A thrilling silent life, — To momentary peace it bound Our mortal nature’s strife; And still I felt the centre of The magic circle there Was one fair form that filled with love The lifeless atmosphere. Vv We paused beside the pools that lie Under the forest bough, — Each seemed as ’t were a little sky Gulfed in a world below; A firmament of purple light, Which in the dark earth lay, 1822 413 More boundless than the depth of night, And purer than the day, — In which the lovely forests grew, As in the upper air, More perfect both in shape and hue Than any spreading there. There lay the glade and neighboring lawn, And through the dark green wood The white sun twinkling like the dawn Out of a speckled cloud. Sweet views which in our world above Can never well be seen, Were imaged by the water’s love Of that fair forest green. And all was interfused beneath With an Elysian glow, An atmosphere without a breath, A softer day below. Like one beloved the scene had lent To the dark water’s breast, Its every leaf and lineament With more than truth expressed; Until an envious wind crept by, Like an unwelcome thought, Which from the mind’s too faithful eye Blots one dear image out. Though thou art ever fair and kind, The forests ever green, Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mind, Than calm in waters seen. WITH A GUITAR: TO JANE Shelley originally intended to give a harp te Mrs. Williams, and wrote to Horace Smith with regard to its purchase. The suggestion for the poem is found by Dr. Garnett in the fact that ‘the front portion of the guitar is made of Swiss pine.’ He continues: ‘It is now clear how the poem took shape in Shelley’s mind. The actual thought of the imprisonment of the Spirit of Music in the material of the instru- ment suggested Ariel’s penance in the cloven pine; the identification of himself with Ariel and of Jane Williams with Miranda was the easiest of feats to his brilliant imagination; and hence an allegory of unequalled grace and charm, which could never have existed if the instrument had not been partly made of pine wood. The back, it should be added, is of mahogany, the finger board of ebony, and minor portions, chiefly ornamental, of some wood not identified. It was made by Ferdi- nando Bottari of Pisa in 1816. Having: been religiously preserved since Shelley’s death, it is in as perfect condition as when.made.. The 414 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS strings, it is said, are better than those that are produced now. ‘This guitar is also in a measure the subject of another of Shelley’s most beautiful lyrics, “The keen stars were twinkling.” In a letter dated June 18, 1822, speaking of his cruises “in the evening wind under the summer moon,” he adds, ‘‘ Jane brings her guitar.” There is probably no other relic of a great poet so in- timately associated with the arts of poetry and music, or ever will be, unless Milton’s organ should turn up at a broker’s or some excavat- ing explorer should bring to light the lyre of ‘Sappho.’ The guitar was given to the Bodleian Li- brary by E. W. Silsbee, of Salem, Mass., who bought it of the grandson of Mrs. Williams on condition that it should be so disposed of. The composition of the poem is described by Tre. lawny: ‘The strong light streamed through the opening of the trees. One of the pines, undermined by the water, had fallen into it. Under its lee, and nearly hidden, sat the Poet, gazing on the dark mirror beneath, so lost in his bardish reverie that he did not hear my approach. .. . The day I found Shelley in the pine-forest he was writing verses on a guitar. T picked up a fragment, but could only make out the first two lines. . . . It was a frightful scrawl ; words smeared out with his finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run together “in most admired disorder ;”’ it might have been taken for a sketch of a ‘marsh overrun with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a manifesta- tion of genius.’ The poem was published by Medwin, in two parts, The Atheneum, 1832, and Fraser’s, 1833. ARIEL to Miranda: — Take This slave of Music, for the sake Of him who is the slave of thee; And teach it all the harmony In which thou canst, and only thou, Make the delighted spirit glow, Till joy denies itself again, And, too intense, is turned to pain. For by permission and command Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 10 Poor Ariel sends this silent token Of more than ever can be spoken; Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who From life to life must still pursue Your happiness, — for thus alone Can Ariel ever find his own. From Prospero’s enchanted cell, As the mighty verses tell, To the throne of Naples he Lit you o’er the trackless sea, 2c Flitting on, your prow before, Like a living meteor. When you die, the silent Moon, In her interlunar swoon, Is not sadder in her cell Than deserted Ariel. When you live again on earth, Like an unseen star of birth Ariel guides you o’er the sea Of life from your nativity. 30 Many changes have been run Since Ferdinand and you begun Your course of love, and Ariel still Has tracked your steps and served your will; Now in humbler, happier lot, This is all remembered not; And now, alas ! the poor sprite is Imprisoned, for some fault of his, In a body like a grave. From you, he only dares to crave, 40 For his service and his sorrow, A smile to-day, a song to-morrow. The artist who this idol wrought To echo all harmonious thought, Felled a tree, while on the steep The woods were in their winter sleep, Rocked in that repose divine On the wind-swept Apennine; And dreaming, some of Autumn past, And some of Spring approaching fast, 50 And some of April buds and showers, And some of songs in July bowers, And all of love; and so this tree — Oh, that such our death may be !— Died in sleep, and felt no pain, To live in happier form again: From which, beneath Heaven’s faires! star, The artist wrought this loved guitar, And taught it justly to reply, To all who question skilfully, & In language gentle as thine own; Whispering in enamoured tone Sweet oracles of woods and dells, And summer winds in sylvan cells; For it had learned all harmonies Of the plains and of the skies, Of the forests and the mountains, And the many-voicéd fountains; The clearest echoes of the hills, The softest notes of falling rills, z POEMS WRITTEN IN 1822 41s The melodies of birds and bees, The murmuring of summer seas, And pattering rain, and breathing dew, And airs of evening; and it knew That seldom-heard mysterious sound, Which, driven on its diurnal round, As it floats through boundless day, Our world enkindles on its way. All this it knows, but will not tell To those who cannot question well 80 The spirit that inhabits it; It talks according to the wit Of its companions; and no more Is heard than has been felt before By those who tempt it to betray These secrets of an elder day. But, sweetly as its answers will Flatter hands of perfect skill, It keeps its highest, holiest tone For our belovéd Jane alone. go TO JANE Shelley sent the lines to Mrs. Williams with anote. ‘Isat down to write some words for an ariette which might be profane ; but it was in vain to struggle with the ruling spirit who compelled me to speak of things sacred to yours and to Wilhelm Meister’s indulgence. I commit them to your secrecy and your mercy, and will try to do better another time.’ The poem was published in part by Medwin, The Atheneum, 1832, and complete by Mrs. Shelley in her second collected edition, 1839. I Tue keen stars were twinkling, And the fair moon was rising among them, Dear Jane. The guitar was tinkling, But the notes were not sweet till you sung them Again. II As the moon’s soft splendor O’er the faint cold starlight of heaven Is thrown, So your voice most tender To the strings without soul had then given Its own. III The stars will awaken, Though the moon sleep a full hour later To-night; No leaf will be shaken Whilst the dews of your melody scatter Delight. Iv Though the sound overpowers, Sing again, with your dear voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one. EPITAPH Published by Mrs. Poems, 1824. Shelley, Posthumous THESE are two friends whose lives were undivided ; So let their memory be, now they have glided Under the grave; let not their bones be parted, For their two hearts in life were single- hearted. THE ISLE Published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. THERE was a little lawny islet By anemone and violet, Like mosaic, paven; And its roof was flowers and leaves Which the summer’s breath enweaves, Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze Pierce the pines and tallest trees, Each a gem engraven; — Girt by many an azure wave With which the clouds and mountains pave A lake’s blue chasm. A DIRGE Published by Mrs. Shelley, Poems, 1824. Posthumous Rove wind, that moanest loud Grief too sad for song; Wild wind, when sullen cloud Knells all the night long; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods whose branches strain Deep caves and dreary main, — Wail, for the world’s wrong. 416 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS LINES WRITTEN IN THE BAY OF LERICI Published by Garnett, Macmillan’s, 1862. SHE left me at the silent time When the moon had ceased to climb The azure path of Heaven’s steep, And like an albatross asleep, Balanced on her wings of light, Hovered in the purple night, Ere she sought her ocean nest In the chambers of the West. She left me, and I stayed alone Thinking over every tone 10 Which, though silent to the ear, The enchanted heart could hear, Like notes which die when born, but still Haunt the echoes of the hill; And feeling ever — oh, too much ! — The soft vibration of her touch, As if her gentle hand, even now, Lightly trembled on my brow; And thus, although she absent were, Memory gave me all of her 20 That even Fancy dares to claim: — Her presence had made weak and tame All passions, and I lived alone In the time which is our own; The past and future were forgot, As they had been, and would be, not. But soon, the guardian angel gone, The demon reassumed his throne In my faint heart. I dare not speak My thoughts, but thus disturbed and weak I sat and saw the vessels glide 30 Over the ocean bright and wide, Like spirit-wingéd chariots sent O’er some serenest element For ministrations strange and far; As if to some Elysian star They sailed for drink to medicine Such sweet and bitter pain as mine. And the wind that winged their flight From the land came fresh and light, 40 And the scent of wingéd flowers, And the coolness of the hours Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day, Were scattered o’er the twinkling bay. And the fisher with his lamp And spear about the low rocks damp Crept, and struck the fish which came To worship the delusive flame. Too happy they, whose pleasure sought Extinguishes all sense and thought 5t Of the regret that pleasure leaves, Destroying life alone, not peace ! FRAGMENTS Under Fragments are included, with a few exceptions, incomplete poems, sketches and can- celled passages, and those more inchoate pas- sages which have been recovered from Shelley’s notebooks. The exceptions are the Prologue to Hellas, which has been put with that drama, A Vision of the Sea, published by Shelley with the poems accompanying Prometheus Unbound, and five pieces, To Mary Wollstonecraft God- win, 1814, Death, An Allegory, On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, and Evening, Pisa, which, though lacking a word or a line, are in effect complete. The order of the FRacMENTS is not strictly chronological in the first division, and is altogether arbitrary in the second. The I THE DAMON OF THE WORLD Nec tantum prodere vati, Quantum scire licet. Venit tas omnis in unam Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot secula pectus. Lvoan, Pars. vy. 176-178. : Shelley in his preface to Alastor, where this; yoem was published, says: ‘The Fragment* dates assigned are those generally accepted, but, as a rule, they are conjectural and approx- imate only, not exact. The text is derived from the editions of Mrs. Shelley, the studies of Dr. Garnett in the Boscombe MSS., published by him mainly in Relics of Shelley, 1862, or by Rossetti, 1870, and Rossetti’s own studies both in the same and other MSS. of which the re- sults were given in his edition. A few pieces, originally published elsewhere, were also gath- ered by Rossetti and Forman in their edi- tions, and Forman was enabled to add some- thing more from independent MSS. The date and original publication of each piece are briefly indicated under each poem. entitled The Demon of the World is a detached part of « poem which the author does not in- tend for publication. The metre in which itis composed is that of Samson Agonistes and the Italian pastoral drama, and may be considered as the natural measure into which poetical con- ceptions, expressed in harmonious language, necessarily fall.’ The poem is part of a revi sion of Queen Mab.. FRAGMENTS 414 I How wonderful is Death, Death and his brother Sleep ! One, pale as yonder wan and hornéd moon, With lips of lurid blue; The other, glowing like the vital morn When throned on ocean’s wave It breathes over the world; Yet Beri so passing strange and wonder- ul! Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton, Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres, 10 To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form, Which love and admiration cannot view Without a beating heart, whose azure veins Steal like dark streams along a field of snow, Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed {n light of some sublimest mind, decay ? Nor putrefaction’s breath Leave aught of this pure spectacle But loathsomeness and ruin ? 20 Spare aught but a dark theme, On which the lightest heart might moral- ize? Or is it but that downy-wingéd slumbers Have charmed their nurse, coy Silence, near her lids To watch their own repose ? Will they, when morning’s beam Flows through those wells of light, Seek far from noise and day some western cave, Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds A lulling murmur weave ? — 30 Tanthe doth not sleep The dreamless sleep of death; Nor in her moonlight chamber silently Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb, Or mark her delicate cheek With interchange of hues mock the broad moon, Outwatching weary night, Without assured reward. Her dewy eyes are closed; On their translucent lids, whose texture fine 40 Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below With unapparent fire, The baby Sleep is pillowed; Her golden tresses shade The bosom’s stainless pride, Twining like tendrils of the parasite Around a marble column. Hark ! whence that rushing sound ? ’Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps Around a lonely ruin 50 When west winds sigh and evening waves respond In whispers from the shore: °T is wilder than the unmeasured notes Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves The genii of the breezes sweep. Floating on waves of music and of light The chariot of the Demon of the World Descends in silent power. Its shape reposed within; slight as some cloud | That catches but the palest tinge of day 60 When evening yields to night; Bright as that fibrous woof when stars endue Its transitory robe. Four shapeless shadows bright and beauti- ful Draw that strange car of glory; reins of light Check their unearthly speed; they stop and fold Their wings of braided air. The Demon, leaning from the ethereal car, Gazed on the slumbering maid. Human eye hath ne’er beheld 70 A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful, As that which o’er the maiden’s charméd sleep, Waving a starry wand, Hung like a mist of light. Such sounds as breathed around like odor- ous winds Of wakening spring arose, Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky. ‘Maiden, the world’s supremest spirit Beneath the shadow of her wings Folds all thy memory doth inherit 8e From ruin of divinest things, — Feelings that lure thee to betray, And light of thoughts that pass away 41s MISCELLANEOUS POEMS *For thou hast earned a mighty boon; The truths, which wisest poets see Dimly, thy mind may make its own, Rewarding its own majesty, Entranced in some diviner mood Of self-oblivious solitude. * Custom and Faith and Power thou spurn- est; go From hate and awe thy heart is free; Ardent and pure as day thou burnest, For dark and cold mortality A living light, to cheer it long, The watch-fires of the world among. ‘Therefore from Nature’s inner shrine, Where gods and fiends in worship bend, Majestic spirit, be it thine The flame to seize, the veil to rend, Where the vast snake Eternity 100 In charmed sleep doth ever lie. * All that inspires thy voice of love, Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes, Or through thy frame doth burn or move, Or think or feel, awake, arise ! Spirit, leave for mine and me Earth’s unsubstantial mimicry !’ It ceased, and from the mute and move- less frame A radiant spirit arose, All beautiful in naked purity. 110 Robed in its human hues it did ascend, Disparting as it went the silver clouds It moved towards the car, and took its seat Beside the Demon shape. ‘Obedient to the sweep of aéry song, The mighty ministers Unfurled their prismy wings. The magic car moved on. The night was fair — innumerable stars Studded heaven’s dark blue vault; 120 The eastern wave grew pale With the first smile of morn. The magic car moved on. From the swift sweep of wings The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew; And where the burning wheels Eddied above the mountain’s loftiest peak Was traced a line of lightning. Now far above a rock, the utmost verge Of the wide earth, it flew, — 130 The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow Frowned o’er the silver sea. Far, far belew the chariot’s stormy path, Calm as a slumbering babe, Tremendous ovean lay. Its broad and silent mirror gave to view The pale and waning stars, The chariot’s fiery track, And the gray light of morn Tingeing those fleecy clouds 140 That cradled in their folds the infant dawn. The chariot seemed to fly Through the abyss of an immense coneave, Radiant with million constellations, tinged With shades of infinite color, And semicircled with a belt Flasbing incessant meteors. As they approached their goal, The wingéd shadows seemed to gather speed. The sea no longer was distinguished; earth Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, sus- pended 151 In the black concave of heaven With the sun’s cloudless orb, Whose rays of rapid light Parted around the chariot’s swifter course, And fell like ocean’s feathery spray Dashed from the boiling surge Before a vessel’s prow. The magic car moved on. Earth’s distant orb appeared 160 The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens, Whilst round the chariot’s way Innumerable systems widely rolled, And countless spheres diffused An ever-varying glory. It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned, And like the moon’s argentine crescent hun In the dark dome of heaven; some did shed A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashed 174 Athwart the night with trains of bickering fire, Like spheréd worlds to death and ruin driven ; FRAGMENTS 419 Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passed Bedimmed all other light. Spirit of Nature ! here, In this interminable wilderness Of worlds, at whose involved immensity Even soaring fancy staggers, Here is thy fitting temple ! Yet not the lightest leaf 180 That quivers to the passing breeze Is less instinct with thee; Yet not the meanest worm, That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead, Less shares thy eternal breath. Spirit of Nature! thou, Imperishable as this glorious scene, Here is thy fitting temple ! If solitude hath ever led thy steps To the shore of the immeasurable sea, 190 And thou hast lingered there Until the sun’s broad orb Seemed resting on the fiery line of ocean, . Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold That without motion hang Over the sinking sphere; Thou must have marked the billowy moun- tain clouds, Edged with intolerable radiancy, Towering like rocks of jet Above the burning deep; 200 And yet there is a moment, When the sun’s highest point Peers like a star o’er ocean’s western edge, When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea; Then has thy rapt imagination soared Where in the midst of all existing things The temple of the mightiest Demon stands. Yet not the golden islands That gleam amid yon flood of purple light, Nor the feathery curtains aur That canopy the sun’s resplendent couch, Nor the burnished ocean waves Paving that gorgeous dome, So fair, so wonderful a sight As the eternal temple could afford. The elements of all that human thought Gan frame of lovely or sublime did join To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught Of earth may image forth its majesty. 220 Yet likest evening’s vault that faéry hall; As heaven low resting on the wave it spread Its floors of flashing light, Its vast and azure dome; And on the verge of that obscure abyss, Where crystal battlements o’erhang the gulf Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse Their lustre through its adamantine gates. The magic car no longer moved. The Demon and the Spirit 230 Entered the eternal gates. Those clouds of aéry gold, That slept in glittering billows Beneath the azure canopy, With the ethereal footsteps trembled not; While slight and odorous mists Floated to strains of thrilling melody Through the vast columns and the pearly shrines. The Demon and the Spirit Approached the overhanging battlement. Below lay stretched the boundless uni- verse ! 241 There, far as the remotest line That limits swift imagination’s flight, Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion, Imuuutably fulfilling Eternal Nature’s law. Above, below, around, The circling systems formed A wilderness of harmony — Each with undeviating aim 250 In eloquent silence through the depths of space Pursued its wondrous way. Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy. Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by, Strange things within their belted orbs appear. Like animated frenzies, dimly moved Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes, Thronging round human graves, and o’er the dead Sculpturing records for each memory In verse, such as malignant gods pro- nounce, 26a 420 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS dlasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell Confounded burst in ruin o’er the world; And they did build vast trophies, instru- ments Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold, Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven, Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained With blood, and scrolls of mystic wicked- hess, The sanguine codes of venerable crime. The likeness of a thronéd king came by, When these had passed, bearing upon his brow 271 A threefold crown; his countenance was calm, His eye severe and cold; but his right hand Was charged with bloody coin, and he did naw By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes, A multitudinous throng, around him knelt, With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by, Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame, 280 Which human hearts must feel, while hu- man tongues Tremble to speak ; they did rage horribly, Breathing in self-contempt fierce blas- phemies Against the Demon of the World, and high Hurling their arméd hands where the pure Spirit, Serene and inaccessibly secure, Stood on an isolated pinnacle, The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe Above, and all around 2g0 Necessity’s unchanging harmony. THE DAMON OF THE WORLD This second part of the poem was published by Forman, 1876, from a printed copy of Queen Mab, on which Shelley had made MS. revisions, with a view to republication under the new title. II O Happy Earth ! reality of Heaven ! To which those restless powers that cease- lessly Throng through the aspire | Thou consummation of all mortal hope ! Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will, Whose rays, diffused. throughout all space and time, Verge to one point and blend forever there ! Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place, Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime, Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come ! 10 O happy Earth, reality of Heaven ! human universe Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams, And dim forebodings of thy loveliness Haunting the human heart have there en- twined Those rooted hopes, that the proud Power of Evil Shall not forever on this fairest world Shake pestilence and war, or that his slaves With blasphemy for prayer, and human blood For sacrifice, before his shrine forever In adoration bend, or Erebus 20 With all its banded fiends shall not uprise To overwhelm in envy and revenge The dauntless and the good, who dare to hurl Defiance at his throne, girt though it be With Death’s omnipotence. Thou hast be- held His empire, o’er the present and the past; It was a desolate sight — now gaze on mine, Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time, Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, And from the cradles of eternity, 30 Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep By the deep murmuring stream of passing things, Tear thou that gloomy shroud! Spirit, be hold Thy glorious destiny ! The Spirit saw The vast frame of the renovated world Smile in the lap of Chaos, and the sense FRAGMENTS 421 Of hope through her fine texture did suffuse Such varying glow, as summer evening casts On undulating clouds and deepening lakes. Like the vague sighings of a wind at even, That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea 4t And dies on the creation of its breath, And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits, Was the sweet stream of thought that with mild motion Flowed o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies. The mighty tide of thought had paused awhile, Which from the Demon now like Ocean’s stream Again began to pour. — To me is given The wonders of the human world to keep — Space, matter, time and mind — let the sight 50 Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope. All things are recreated, and the flame Of consentaneous love inspires all life; The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, Rewarding her with their pure perfectness; The balmy breathings of the wind inhale Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad; Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream; 60 No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven, Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride The foliage of the undecaying trees; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace, Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring, Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit Reflects its tint and blushes into love. The habitable earth is full of bliss; Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled 7o By everlasting snowstorms round the poles, Where matter dared nor vegetate nor live, But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude Bound its broad zone of stillness, are un- loosed ; And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand, Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves And melodize with man’s blest nature there. The vast tract of the parched and sandy waste 81 Now teems with countless rills and shad woods, Cornfields and pastures and white cottages; And where the startled wilderness did hear A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood Hymning his victory, or the milder snake Crushing the bones of some frail antelope Within his brazen folds, the dewy lawn, Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles To see a babe before his mother’s door 90 Share with the green and golden basilisk, That comes to lick his feet, his morning’s meal. Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail Has seen above the illimitable plain Morning on night, and night on morning rise, Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea, Where the loud roarings of the tempest- waves So long have mingled with the gusty wind In melancholy loneliness, and swept rot The desert of those ocean solitudes But vocal to the sea-bird’s harrowing shriek, The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm, Now to the sweet and many - mingling sounds Of kindliest human impulses respond; Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem, With lightsome clouds and shining seas between, And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss, Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, Which like a toil-worn laborer leaps to shore 110 To meet the kisses of the flowerets there. Man chief perceives the change ; his being notes The gradual renovation, and defines Each movement of its progress on his mind, 422 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Man, where the gloom of the long polar night Lowered o’er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil, Where scarce the hardest herb that braves the frost Basked in the moonlight’s ineffectual glow, Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night; Nor where the tropics bound the realms of ay 120 With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed Unnatural vegetation, where the land Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease, ‘Was man a nobler being; slavery Had crushed him to his country’s blood- stained dust. Even where the milder zone afforded man A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, 129 Blighting his being with unnumbered ills, Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availed Till late to arrest its progress, or create That peace which first in bloodless victory waved Her snowy standard o’er this favored clime; There man was long the train-bearer of slaves, The mimic of surrounding misery, The jackal of ambition’s lion-rage, The bloodhound of religion’s hungry zeal. Here now the human being stands adorn- in This leveliagt earth with taintless body and mind; 140 Blest from his birth with all bland im- pulses, Which gently in his noble bosom wake All kindly passions and all pure desires. Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pur- suing Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise In time-destroying infiniteness gift With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks The unprevailing hoariness of age; And man, once fleeting o’er the transient scene 150 Swift as an unremembered vision, stands Immortal upon earth; no longer now He slays the beast that sports around his dwelling, And horribly devours its mangled flesh, Or drinks its vital blood, which like a stream Of poison through his fevered veins did flow Feeding a plague that secretly consumed His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief, The germs of misery, death, disease, and erime. 160 No longer now the wingéd habitants, That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, Flee from the form of man; but gather round, And prune their sunny feathers on the hands Which little children stretch in friendly sport Towards these dreadless partners of their lay. All things are void of terror; man has lost His desolating privilege, and stands An equal amidst equals; happiness And science dawn though late upon the earth; 170 Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame; Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, Reason and passion cease to combat there; Whilst mind unfettered o’er the earth ex- tends Its all-subduing energies, and wields The sceptre of a vast dominion there. Mild is the slow necessity of death. The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp, Without a groan, almost without a fear, Resigned in peace to the necessity, 180 Calm as a voyager to some distant land, And full of wonder, full of hope as he. The deadly germs of languor and disease Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts With choicest boons her human worship- pers. How vigorous now the athletic form of age ! FRAGMENTS 423 How clear its open and unwrinkled brow ! Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care, Had stamped the zeal of gray deformity On all the mingling lineaments of time. 190 How lovely the intrepid front of youth! How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy. Within the massy prison’s mouldering courts Fearless and free the ruddy children play, Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows With the green ivy and the red wall-flower, That mock the dungeon’s unavailing gloom; The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, There rust amid the accumulated ruins Now mingling slowly with their native earth; 200 There the broad beam of day, which feebly once Lighted the cheek of lean captivity With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines On the pure smiles of infant playfulness; No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds And merriment are resonant around. The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more The voice that once waked multitudes to war 210 Thundering through all their aisles, but now respond To the death dirge of the melancholy wind. It were a sight of awfulness to see The works of faith and slavery, so vast, So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing, Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall ! A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death To-day, the breathing marble glows above To decorate its memory, and tongues Are busy of its life; to-morrow, worms 220 In silence and in darkness seize their prey. These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind; Their elements, wide scattered o’er the, globe, i To happier shapes are moulded, and be- come Ministrant to all blissful impulses; Thus human things are perfected, and earth, Even as a child beneath its mother’s love, Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows Fairer and nobler with each passing year. Now Time his dusky pennons o’er the scene 234 Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past Fades from our charméd sight. My task is done; Thy lore is learned. LEarth’s wonders are thine own, With all the fear and all the hope they bring. My spells are past; the present now recurs. Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains Yet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand. Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course. Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 239 The gradual paths of an aspiring change. For birth and life and death, and that strange state Before the naked powers, that through the world Wander like winds, have found a human home; All tend to perfect happiness, and urge The restless wheels of being on their way, Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal; For birth but wakes the universal mind, Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow Through the vast world, to individual sense Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape 254 New modes of passion to its frame may lend; Life is its state of action, and the store Of all events is aggregated there That variegate the eternal universe; Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, That leads to azure isles and beaming skies And happy regions of eternal hope. Therefore, O Spirit ! fearlessly bear on. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 424 Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, 260 Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, Yet spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth To feed with kindliest dews its favorite fiower, That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile. Fear not then, Spirit, death’s disrobing hand, So welcome when the tyrant is awake, So welcome when the bigot’s hell-torch flares; ’T is but the voyage of a darksome hour, The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. For what thou art shall perish utterly, But what is thine may never cease to be; Death is no foe to virtue; earth has seen Love’s brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, Mingling with freedom’s fadeless laurels there, And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene Of linked and gradual being has confirmed ? Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires Of mind, as radiant and as pure as thou Have shone upon the paths of men — re- turn 281 Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thou Art destined an eternal war to wage With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot The germs of misery from the human heart. Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, Watching its wanderings as a friend’s disease; Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy 290 Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, When fenced by power and master of the world. Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind, Free from heart-withering custom’s cold control, Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued. Earth’s pride and meanness could not vam uish thee, And therefore art thou worthy of the boon Which thou hast now received; virtue shall keep Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, 299 And many days of beaming hope shall bless Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch Light, life and rapture from thy smile. The Demon called its wingéd ministers. Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, That rolled beside the crystal battlement, Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. The burning wheels inflame The steep descent of Heaven’s untrodden way. gio Fast and far the chariot flew. The mighty globes that rolled Around the gate of the Eternal Fane Lessened by slow degrees, and soon ap- peared Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs, That, ministering on the solar power, With borrowed light, pursued their nar- rower way. Earth floated then below. The chariot paused a moment; The Spirit then descended; 320 And from the earth departing The shadows with swift wings Speeded like thought upon the light of Heaven. The Body and the Soul united then; A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame; Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed; Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs re- mained. She looked around in wonder and beheld Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, Watching her sleep with looks of speech- less love, 336 And the bright beaming stars That through the casement shone. PRINCE ATHANASE Shelley writes in a note: ‘The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal charecter of Athanase. when it strack him that FRAGMENTS — in an attempt at extreme refinement and anal- ysis, his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by the difference.’ Mrs. Shelley adds: ‘The idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was a good deal modelled on Alastor. In the first sketch of the poem, he named it Pandemos and Urania. Athanase seeks through the world the One whom he may love. He meets, in the ship in vhich he is embarked, a lady who appears to aim to embody his ideal of love and beauty. But she proves to be Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus; who, after disappoint- ing his cherished dreams and hopes, deserts him. Athanase, crushed by sorrow, pines and dies. “On his deathbed, the lady who can really reply to his soul comes and kisses his lips.” (The Deathbed of Athanase.) The poet describes her [ii. 155-160]. This slender note is all we have to aid our imagination in shap- ing out the form of the poem, such as its au- thor imagined.’ Date, 1817. Published, Mrs. Shelley, 1824. PART I THERE was a youth, who, as with toil and travel, Had grown quite weak and gray before his time; Nor any could the restless griefs unravel Which burned within him, withering up his prime And goading him, like fiends, from land to land. Not his the load of any secret crime, For nought of ill his heart could understand, But pity and wild sorrow for the same; Not his the thirst for glory or command, Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame; 10 Nor evil joys, which fire the vulgar breast And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame, Had left within his soul their dark unrest; Nor what religion fables of the grave Feared he, — Philosophy’s accepted guest. For none than hea purer heart could have, Or that loved good more for itself alone; Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave. 425 What sorrow strange, and shadowy, and unknown, Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind ? — 20 If with a human sadness he did groan, He had a gentle yet aspiring mind; Just, innocent, with varied learning fed; And such a glorious consolation find In others’ joy, when all their own is dead. He loved, and labored for his kind in grief, And yet, unlike all others, it is said, That from such toil he never found relief. Although a child of fortune and of power, Of an ancestral name the orphan chief, 30 His soul had wedded wisdom, and her dower Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate Apart from men, as in a lonely tower, Pitying the tumult of their dark estate. Yet even in youth did he not e’er abuse The strength of wealth or thought to cone secrate Those false opinions which the harsh rich use To blind the world they famish for their pride; Nor did he hold from any man his dues, But, like a steward in honest dealings tried With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise, 4t His riches and his cares he did divide. Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise; What he dared do or think, though men might start, He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes; Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart, And to his many friends — all loved him well — Whate’er he knew or felt he would impart, If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell; If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes 50 He neither spurned nor hated, though with fell 426 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS And mortal hate their thousand voices | He knew not of the grief within that rose, — burned, They passed like aimless arrows from his | But asked forbearance with a mournful ear; look; 8e Nor did his heart or mind its portal close Or spoke in words from which none ever learned To those, or them, or any whom life’s sphere May comprehend within its wide array. What sadness made that vernal spirit sere ? — He knew not. day, Was failing like an unreplenished stream, Though in his eyes a cloud and burden lay, Though his life, day after Through which his soul, like Vesper’s se- rene beam 61 Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds, Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods; And through his sleep, and o’er each wak- ing hour, Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multi- tudes, Were driven within him by some secret power, Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar, Like lights and sounds from haunted tower to tower O’er castled mountains borne, when tem- pest’s war 70 Is levied by the night-contending winds And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;— Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends Which wake and feed on ever living woe, — What was this grief, which ne’er in other minds A mirror found, he knew not — none could know; But on whoe’er might question him he turned The light of his frank eyes, as if to show The cause of his disquietude; or shook With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale: So that his friends soon rarely undertook To stir his secret pain without avail; For all who knew and loved him then per- ceived That there was drawn an adamantine veil Between his heart and mind, — both unre- lieved Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife. Some said that he was mad; others be- lieved ga That memories of an antenatal life Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell; And others said that such mysterious grief From God’s displeasure, like a darkness, fell On souls like his which owned no higher law Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible By mortal fear or supernatural awe; And others, —‘’Tis the shadow of @ dream Which the veiled eye of memory never saw, ‘But through the soul’s abyss, like some dark stream 100 Through shattered mines and _ caverns underground, Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam ‘Of joy may rise but it is quenched and drowned In the dim whirlpools of this dream ob- scure; Soon its exhausted waters will have found ‘A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure, O Athanase !— in one so good and great, Evil or tumult cannot long endure.’ 108 FRAGMENTS 427 So spake they — idly of another’s state Babbling vain words and fond philosophy; This was their consolation; such debate Men held with one another; nor did he, Like one who labors with a human woe, Decline this talk; as if its theme might be Another, not himself, he to and fro Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit And one but those who loved him best could know That which he knew not, how it galled and bit His weary mind, this converse vain and cold; 119 For like an "eyeless nightmare grief did sit Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold; — And so his grief remained — let it remain — untold. PART II Prince Athanase had one belovéd friend, An old, old man, with hair of silver white, And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend With his wise words, and eyes whose arrowy light Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds. He was the last whom superstition’s blight Had spared in Greece—the blight that cramps and blinds — And in his olive bower at Gnoe Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds A fertile island in the barren sea, 10 One mariner who has survived his mates Many a drear month in a great ship — so he With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet de- bates Of ancient lore there fed his lonely being. ‘The mind becomes that which it contem- plates,’ — And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing Their bright creations, grew like wisest men; And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then, O sacred Hellas ! many weary years 2a He wandered, till the path of Laian’s glen Was grass-grown, and the unremembered tears Were dry in Laian for their honored chief, Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears; And as the lady looked with faithful grief From her high lattice o’er the rugged path, Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief, And blighting hope, who with the news of death Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight, She saw beneath the chestnuts, far be- neath, 3e An old man toiling up, a weary wight; And soon within her hospitable hall She saw his white hairs glittering in the light Of the wood-fire, and round his shoulders fall; And his wan visage and his withered mien Yet calm and gentle and majestical. And Athanase, her child, who must have been Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed In patient silence. Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds One amaranth glittering on the path of frost, When autumn nights have nipped all weaker kinds, Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tem- pest-tossed, Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled From oo pure, nigh overgrown and ost, 428 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Ihe spirit of Prince Athanase, a child, With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild. And sweet and subtle talk they ever- more, The pupil and the master, shared; until, 50 Sharing that undiminishable store, The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran His teacher, and did teach with native skill Strange truths and new to that experienced man; Still they were friends, as few have ever been Who mark the extremes of life’s discord- ant span. So in the caverns of the forest green, Or by the rocks of echoing ocean hoar, Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen 60 By summer woodmen; and when winter’s roar Sounded o’er earth and sea its blast of war, The Balearic fisher, driven from shore, Hanging upon the peaked wave afar, Then saw their lamp from Laian’s turret gleam, Piercing the stormy darkness like a star Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam, Whilst all the constellations of the sky Seemed reeling through the storm. They did but seem — For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by. 7° And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing, And far o’er southern waves, immovably Belted Orion hangs — warm light is flow- ing From the young moon into the sunset’s chasm, ‘O summer eve with power divine, be- stowing ‘On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm Which overflows in notes of liquid glad. ness. Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm ‘Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madness, Were lulled by thee, delightful nightin- ‘ale ! 80 And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness, ‘ And the far sighings of yon piny dale Made vocal by some wind we feel no here, — I bear alone what nothing may avail ‘To lighten —a strange load !’ — No hu- man ear Heard this lament; but o’er the visage wan Of Athanase a ruffling atmosphere Of dark emotion, a swift shadow,, ran, Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake, Glassy and dark. And that divine old man 9° Beheld his mystic friend’s whole being shake, Even where its inmost depths were gloom- iest; And with a calm and measured voice he spake, And with a soft and equal pressure, pressed That cold, lean hand: —‘ Dost thou re- member yet, When the curved moon, then lingering in the west, ‘ Paused in yon waves her mighty horns to wet, How in those beams we walked, half rest- ing on the sea ? *Tis just one year —sure thou dost not forget — ‘Then Plato’s words of light in thee and me 100 Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east; For we had just then read.— thy memory FRAGMENTS 429 ‘Is faithful now — the story of the feast; And Agathon and Diotima seemed From death and dark forgetfulness re- leased.’ *T was at the season when the Earth up- springs From slumber, as a spheréd angel’s child, Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings, Stands up before its mother bright and mild, Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems — 110 So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams, The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove Waxed green, and flowers burst forth like starry beams; The grass in the warm sun did start and move, And sea-buds burst beneath the waves se- rene. How many a one, though none be near to love, Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen In any mirror, or the spring’s young min- ions, The wingéd leaves amid the copses green ! How many a spirit then puts on the pin- 1i0ns 121 Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast, And his own steps, and over wide domin- ions Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast, More fleet than storms — the wide world shrinks below, When winter and despondency are passed ! °T was at this season that Prince Athanase Passed the white Alps; those eagle-baffling mountains Slept in their shrouds of snow; beside the ways The waterfalls were voiceless, for their fountains 13a Were changed to mines of sunless erystal now; Or, by the curdling winds, like brazen wings Which clanged along the mountain’s mar- ble brow, Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung, And filled with frozen light the chasm be- low. Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all We can desire, O Love! and happy souls, Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall, Catch thee, and feed from their o’erflow- ing bowls Thousands who thirst for thy ambrosial dew ! 140 Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls Investest it; and when the heavens are blue Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair The shadow of thy moving wings imbue Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear Beauty like some bright robe; thou ever soarest Among the towers of men, and as soft air In spring, which moves the unawakened forest, Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak, Thou floatest among men, and aye im- plorest 150 That which from thee they should implore; the weak Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts The strong have broken; yet where shall any seek A garment whom thou clothest not ? . ° ® 430 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Her hair was brown, her spheréd eyes were brown, And in their dark and liquid moisture swam, Like the dim orb of the eclipséd moon; Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came The light from them, as when tears of de- light 159 Double the western planet’s serene flame. THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE Date, 1818. Published in part by Mrs. Shel- ley, 1824, and the remainder by Garnett, 1862. A WoopMAN, whose rough heart was out of tune (1 think such hearts yet never came to ood), Hated to hear, under the stars or moon, One nightingale in an interfluous wood Satiate the hungry dark with melody; — And as a vale is watered by a flood, Or as the moonlight fills the open sky Struggling with darkness, as a tuberose Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, 10 The singing of that happy nightingale In this sweet forest, from the golden close Of evening tillthe star of dawn may fail, Was interfused upon the silentness. The folded roses and the violets pale Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness Of the circumfluous waters; every sphere And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, 20 And every wind of the mute atmosphere, And every beast stretched in its rugged cave And every bird lulled on its mossy bough, And every silver moth fresh from the grave ee Which is its cradle;-— ever from below Aspiring like one who loves too fair, toa far, To be consumed within the purest glow Of one serene and unapproachéd star, As if it were a lamp of earthly light, Unconscious as some human lovers are 30 Itself how low, how high beyond all height The heaven where it would perish !— and every form That worshipped in the temple of the night Was awed into delight, and by the charm Girt as with an interminable zone, Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion Out of their dreams; harmony became love In every soul but one. And so this man returned with axe and saw 40 At evening close from killing the tall treen, The soul of whom by nature’s gentle law Was each « wood-nymph, and kept ever green The pavement and the roof of the wild copse, Checkering the sunlight of the blue serene With jagged leaves, and from the forest tops Singiag the winds to sleep, or weeping oft Fast showers of aérial water drops Into their mother’s bosom, sweet and soft, Nature’s pure tears which have no bitter ness; — Around the cradles of the birds aloft They spread themselves into the loveliness Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flow- ers Hang like moist clouds; or, where high branches kiss, Make a green space among the silent bow: ers, Like a vast fane in a metropolis, Surrounded by the columns and the towers FRAGMENTS 43% All overwrought with branch-like traceries In which there is religion — and the mute Persuasion of unkindled melodies, 60 Odors and gleams and murmurs, which the lute Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute, Wakening the leaves and waves ere it has passed To such brief unison as on the brain One tone, which never can recur, has cast, One accent never to return again. . The world is full of Woodmen who expel Love’s gentle Dryads from the haunt of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell. 70 OTHO Date, 1817. Published, in part, by Mrs. Shelley, 1839, first edition, and the remainder by Garnett, 1862. Mrs. Shelley states that the poem was suggested by Tacitus. I Tuovu wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be, Last of the Romans, though thy memory claim From Brutus his own glory, and on thee Rests the full splendor of his sacred fame; Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail Amid his cowering senate with thy name, Though thou and he were great; it will avail To thine own fame that Otho’s should not fail. Iy °T will wrong thee not — thon wouldst, if thon couldst feel, Abjure such envious fame — great Otho died Like thee — he sanctified his country’s steel, At once the tyrant and tyrannicide, In his own blood. A deed it was to bring Tears from all men—though full of gentle pride, Such pride as from impetuous love may spring, : That will not be refused its offering. Ill Dark is the realm of grief: but human things Those may not know who cannot weep for them. TASSO Date, 1818. Published by Garnett, 1862, and the Sone by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. Shelley writes to Peacock regarding the drama: ‘I have devoted this summer, and indeed the next year, to the composition of a tragedy on the subject of Tasso’s madness; which, I find upon inspection, is, if properly treated, admirably dramatic and poetical. But you will say I have no dramatic talent. Very true, in a cer- tain sense; but I have taken the resolution to see what kind of tragedy a person without dramatic talent could write. It shall be better morality than Fazio, and better poetry than Bertram, at least.’ Mappato, a Courtier. MAa.pieuio, a Poet. Prana, a Minister. ALBANO, an Usher. MADDALO No access to the Duke! You have not said That the Count Maddalo would speak with him ? PIGNA Did you inform his Grace that Signo: Pigna Waits with state papers for his signature ? MALPIGLIO The Lady Leonora cannot know That I have written a sonnet to her fame, In whieh I Venus and Adonis. You should not take my gold and serve me not. ALBANO In truth I told her, and she smiled and said. ‘If Iam Venus, thou, coy Poesy, Art the Adonis whom I love, and he The Erymanthian boar that wounded him.’ Oh, trust to me, Signor Malpiglio, Those nods and smiles were favors worth the zechin. 432 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS MALPIGLIO O Leonora, and I sit The words are twisted in some double still watching it, sense Till by the grated casement’s ledge That I reach not; the smiles fell not on | It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge me. Breathes o’er the breezy streamlet’s edge. PIGNA How are the Duke and Duchess occupied ? ALBANO Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning, His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed. The Princess sate within the window-seat, And so her face was hid; but on her knee Her hands were clasped, veinéd, and pale as snow, And quivering — young Tasso, too, was there. MADDALO Thov seest on whorn from thine own wor- shipped heaven Thou drawest down smiles — they did not rain on thee. MALPIGLIO Would they were parching lightnings for his sake On whom they fell! SONG I I loved — alas! our life is love; But when we cease to breathe and move I do suppose love ceases too. I thought, but not as now I do, Keen thoughts and bright of linkéd lore, Of all that men had thought before, And all that nature shows, and more. II And still I love and still I think, But strangely, for my heart can drink The dregs of such despair, and live, And love; And if I think, my thoughts come fast, I mix the present with the past, And each seems uglier than the last. III Sometimes I see before me flee A silver spirit’s form, like thee, MARENGHI Date, 1818. Published in part by Mrs. Shel- ley, 1824, and the remainder by Rossetti, 1870. Mrs. Shelley gives as the source Sismondi, His- totre des Républiques Italiennes. I Let those who pine in pride or in revenge, Or think that ill for ill should be repaid, Or barter wrong for wrong, until the ex- change Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade, Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn Such bitter faith beside Marenghi’s urn. II A massy tower yet overhangs the town, A scattered group of ruined dwellings now. III Another scene ere wise Etruria knew Its second ruin through internal strife, And tyrants through the breach of discord threw The chain which binds and kills. As death to life, As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison So Monarchy succeeds to Freedoin’s foison. IV In Pisa’s church a cup of sculptured gold Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn At sacrament; more holy ne’er of old Etrurians mingled with the shades forlorn Of moon-illumined forests. v And reconciling factions wet their lips With that dread wine, and swear to kee)! each spirit Undarkened by their country’s last eclipse FRAGMENTS 432 VI Was Florence the liberticide ? that band Of free and glorious brothers who had plunted, Like a green isle ’mid Athiopian sand, A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted Of many impious faiths — wise, just —do they, Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants’ prey ? VII O foster-nurse of man’s abandoned glory, Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendor; Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story, As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender. The light-invested angel Poesy Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee. VIII And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught By loftiest meditations; marble knew The sculptor’s fearless soul, and as he wrought, The grace of his own power and freedom grew. And more than all, heroic, just, sublime, Thou wert among the false — was this thy crime ? Ix Yes; and on Pisa’s marble walls the twine Of direst weeds hangs garlanded; the snake Inhabits its wrecked palaces; — in thine A beast of subtler venom now doth make Its lair, and sits amid their glories over- thrown, And thus thy victim’s fate is as thine own. x The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare, And love and freedom blossom but to wither; And good and ill like vines entangled are, So that their grapes may oft be plucked together. Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi’s sake. XI No record of his crime remains in story, But if the morning bright as evening shone, It was some high and holy deed, by glory Pursued into forgetfulness, which won From the blind crowd he made secure and free The patriot’s meed, toil, death, and infamy XII For when by sound of trumpet was declared A price upon his life, and there was set A penalty of blood on ali who shared So much of water with him as might wet His lips, which speech divided not, he went Alone, as you may guess, to banishment. XIII Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast, He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold, Month after month endured; it was a feast Whene’er he found those globes of deep- red gold Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear, Suspended in their emerald atmosphere XIV And in the roofless huts of vast morasses, Deserted by the fever-stricken serf, All overgrown with reeds and long rank Tasses, And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf, And where the huge and speckled aloe made, Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade, XV He housed himself. There is a point of strand Near Vado’s tower and town; and on one side The treacherous marsh divides it from the land, Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide, And on the other creeps eternally, Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea. 434 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS eel And he would watch them, as, like spirits Were the earth’s breath is pestilence, and bright, . few In many entangled figures quaint and But things whose nature is at war with sweet life — To some enchanted music they would Snakes and ill worms — endure its mortal dance — dew. Until they vanished at the first moon- The trophies of the clime’s victorious glance. strife — White bones, and locks of dun and yellow eel hair, He mocked the stars by grouping on each And ringéd horns which buffaloes did weed wear — The summer dewdrops in the golden ‘ dawn; And, ere the hoarfrost vanished, he could XVII wand And at the utmost point stood there The relics of a weed-inwoven cot, Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer Had lived seven days there; the pursuit was hot When he was cold. The birds that were his grave Fell dead upon their feast in Vado’s wave. XVIII There must have lived within Marenghi’s heart That fire, more warm and bright than life or hope, (Which to the martyr makes his dun- geon see More joyous than the heaven’s majestic cope To his oppressor), warring with decay, — Or he could ne’er have lived years, day by day. XIX Nor was his state so lone as you might think. He had tamed every newt and snake and toad, And every seagull which sailed down to drink Those ere the death-mist went abroad. And each one, with peculiar talk and play, Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away. xx And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night Came licking with blue tongues his veinéd feet; Its pictured footprints, as on spots of lawn Its delicate brief touch in silence weaves The likeness of the wood’s remembered leaves. XXII And many afresh Spring morn would he awaken, While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks un- shaken Of mountains and blue isles which did environ With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea, — And feel” liberty. XXIII And in the moonless nights, when the dim ocean Heaved underneath the heaven, . . . Starting from dreams .. . Communed with the immeasurable world; And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated, Till his mind grew like that it contem- plated. XXIV His food was the wild fig and strawberry; The milky pine-nuts which the autumnal blast Shakes into the tall grass; and such small fry As from the sea by winter-storms are cast; And the coarse bulbs of iris flowers hé found Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground. FRAGMENTS 435 AN Look on the west, how beautiful it is And so were kindled powers and thoughts | Vaulted with radiant vapors! The deep which made bliss His solitude less dark. When memory | Of that unutterable light has made came The edges of that clond fade (For years gone by leave each a deepening | Into a hue, like some harmonious thought, shade), Wasting itself on that which it had His spirit basked in its internal flame, — wrought, As, when the black storm hurries round at night The fisher basks beside his red firelight. XXVI Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors, Like billows unawakened by the wind, Slept in Marenghi still; but that all ter- rors, Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind. His couch XXVII And, when he saw beneath the sunset’s planet A black ship walk over the crimson ocean, — Its pennons streaming on the blasts that fan it, Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion, Like the dark ghost of the unburied even Striding across the orange-colored hea- ven, — XXVIII The thought of his own kind who made the soul Which sped that wingéd shape through night and day, — The thought of his own country ... LINES WRITTEN FOR JULIAN AND MADDALO Published by Garnett, 1862, who conjectures the title. Waat think you the dead are ? Why, dust and clay, What should they be ? ’T is the last hour of day. Till it dies and between The light hues of the tender, pure, serene, And infinite tranquillity of heaven. Ay, beautiful ! but when our . Perhaps ‘the only comfort which remains Is the unheeded clanking of my chains, The which I make, and call it melody. LINES WRITTEN FOR PROME-~ THEUS UNBOUND Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1839, first edition. AS a violet’s gentle eye Gazes on the azure sky, Until its hue grows like what it beholds; As a gray and empty mist Lies like solid amethyst Over the western mountain it enfolds, When the sunset sleeps Upon its snow; As a strain of sweetest sound Wraps itself the wind around, Until the voiceless wind be music too; As aught dark, vain and dull, Basking in what is beautiful, Is full of light and love. LINES WRITTEN FOR MONT BLANC Published by Garnett, 1862. THERE is a voice, not understood by all, Sent from these desert-caves. It is tue roar Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call, Plunging into the vale — it is the blast Descending on the pines—the torrents pour. LINES WRITTEN FOR THE IN-- DIAN SERENADE Published by Rossetti, 1870, who conjectures the title. O PiLLow cold and wet with tears ! Thou breathest sleep no more ! 436 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS LINES WRITTEN FOR THE ODE TO LIBERTY Published by Garnett, 1862. WITHIN a cavern of man’s trackless spirit Is throned an Image, so intensely fair That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it Worship, and as they kneel tremble and wear The splendor of its presence, and the light Penetrates their dreamlike frame Till they become charged with the strength of flame. STANZA WRITTEN FOR THE ODE WRITTEN OCTOBER, 1819 Published by Rossetti, The Times. GaTHER, oh, gather, Foeman and friend in leve and peace ! Waves sleep together When the blasts that called them to battle cease. For fangless Power, grown tame and mild, Is at play with Freedom’s fearless child — The dove and the serpent reconciled ! LINES CONNECTED WITH EPI- PSYCHIDION Published in part by Mrs. Shelley, 1839, sec- ond edition, and the remainder by Garnett, 1862. From these lines, and also from other frag- ments, it is to be inferred that a poem, substan- tially Epipsychidion, was in Shelley’s mind before his meeting with Emilia Viviani, and that she was less the inspiration of it than the occasion of the form it took. HERE, my dear friend, is a new book for you; I have already dedicated two To other friends, one female and one male, — What you are is a thing that I must veil; What can this be to those who praise or rail ? I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one should se- lect Out of the world a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend 9 To cold oblivion — though ’t is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary foot. steps tread Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world — and so With one sad friend, and many a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go. Free love has this, different from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Like ocean, which the general north wind breaks Into ten thousand waves, and each one makes 20 A mirror of the moon — like some great lass, g Which did distort whatever form might pass, Dashed into fragments by a playful child, Which then reflects its eyes and forehead mild; Giving for one, which it could ne’er ex- press, A thousand images of loveliness. IfI were one whom the loud world held wise, I should disdain to quote authorities In commendation of this kind of love. Why there is first the God in heaven above, 30 Who wrote a book called Nature — ’t is to be Reviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly; And Socrates, the Jesus Christ of Greece, And Jesus Christ himself did never cease To urge all living things to love each other, And to forgive their mutual faults, and smother The Devil of disunion in their souls. I love you !— Listen, O embodied Ray Of the great Brightness; I must pass away While you remain, and these light words must be 40 Tokens by which you may remember me. Start not—the thing you are is unbe- trayed, If you are human, and if but the shade Of some sublimer Spirit. FRAGMENTS And as to friend or mistress, ’t is a form; Perhaps I wish you were one Some de- clare You a familiar spirit, as you are; Others with a more inhuman Hint that, though not my wife, you are a woman — What is the color of your eyes and hair ? 50 Why, if you were a lady, it were fair The world should know — but, as I am afraid, The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed; And if, as it will be sport to see them stumble Over all sorts of scandals, hear them mumble Their litany of curses — some guess right, And others swear you’re a Hermaphro- dite; Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes, With looks so sweet and gentle that is vexes The very soul that the soul is gone 60 Which lifted from her limbs the veil of stone. It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm, A happy and auspicious bird of calm, Which rides o’er life’s ever tumultuous Ocean; A God that broods o’er chaos in commo- tion; A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are, Lifts its bold head into the world’s frore air, And blooms most radiantly when others die, Health, hope, and youth, and brief pros- perity ; 69 And with the light and odor of its bloom, Shining within the dungeon and the tomb; Whose coming is as light and music are *Mid dissonance and gloom — a star Which moves not ’mid the moving heavens alone — A smile among dark frowns—a gentle tone Among rude voices, a belovéd light, A solitude, a refuge, a delight. If I had but a friend! Why, I have three Even by my own confession; there may be 437 Some more, for what I know, for ’tis my mind 8a To call my friends all who are wise and kind, — And these, Heaven knows, at best are very few; But none can ever be more dear than you. Why should they be? My muse has lost her wings, Or like a dying swan who soars and sings, I should describe you in heroic style, But as it is, are you not void of guile? A lovely soul, formed to be blessed and bless; A well of sealed and secret happiness; A lute which those whom Love has taught to play 9a Make music on to cheer the roughest day, And enchant sadness till it sleeps ? To the oblivion whither I and thou, All loving and all lovely, hasten now With steps, ah, too unequal ! may we meet In one Elysium or one winding sheet ! If any should be curious to discover Whether to you I am a friend or lover, Let them read Shakespeare’s sonnets, tak- ing thence A whetstone for their dull intelligence 100 That tears and will not cut, or let them guess How Diotima, the wise prophetess, Instructed the instructor, and why he Rebuked the infant spirit of melody On Agathon’s sweet lips, which as he spoke Was as the lovely star when morn has broke The roof of darkness, in the golden dawn, Half-hidden, and yet beautiful. I'll pawn My hopes of Heaven— you know what they are worth — That the presumptuous pedagogues of Earth, 110 If they could tell the riddle offered here Would scorn ts be, or, being, to appear What now they seem and are — but let them chide, They have few pleasures in the world beside; Perhaps we should be dull were we not chidden; Paradise fruits are sweetest when forbidden. Folly can season Wisdom, Hatred Love. 438 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Farewell, if it can be to say farewell To those who — I will not, as most dedicators do, 120 Assure myself and all the world and you, That you are faultless — would to God they were Who taunt me with your love! I then should wear These heavy chains of life with a light spirit, And would to God I were, or even as near it As you, dear heart. Alas! what are we? Clouds Driven by the wind in warring multi- tudes, ‘Which rain into the bosom of the earth, And rise again, and in our death and birth, And through our restless life, take as from heaven 130 Hues which are not our own, but which are given, And then withdrawn, and with inconstant glance Flash from the spirit to the countenance. There is a Power, « Love, a Joy, a God, Which makes in mortal hearts its brief abode, A Pythian exhalation, which inspires Love, only love—a wind which o’er the wires ‘Of the soul’s giant harp — There is a mood which language faints be- neath; ‘You feel it striding, as Almighty Death 140 His bloodless steed. And what is that most brief and bright de- light Which rushes through the touch and through the sight, And stands before the spirit’s inmost throne, A naked Seraph? None hathever known. Its birth is darkness, and its growth desire; Untamable and fleet and fierce as fire, Not to be touched but to be felt alone, It fills the world with glory — and is gone. It floats with rainbow pinions o’er the stream 150 Of life, which flows, like a dream Into the light of morning, to the grave As to an ocean. What is that joy which serene infancy Perceives not, as the hours content them > Each ie chain of blossoms, yet enjoys The shapes of this new world, in giaut toys Wrought by the busy ever new ? Remembrance borrows Fancy’s glass, to show These forms more sincere 160 Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they were. When everythirg familiar seemed to be Wonderful, and the immortality Of this great world, which all things must inherit, Was felt as one with the awakening spirit, Unconscious of itself, and of the strange Distinctions which in its proceeding change It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were A desolation. Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily, 176 For all those exiles from the dull insane Who vex this pleasant world with pride and pain, For all that band of sister-spirits known To one another by a voiceless tone ? LINES WRITTEN FOR ADONAIS Published by Garnett, 1862, who furnishes the following note: ‘Several cancelled passages of the Adonais have been met with in Shelley’s notebooks. He appears to have originally framed his conception on a larger scale than he eventually found practicable. The passage in which the contemporary minstrels are intros duced, as mourning for Adonais, would have been considerably extended, and the character- istics of each delineated at some length. It must, however, have occurred to him that the parenthesis would be too long, and would tend to distract the reader’s attention from the main subject. Nothing, therefore, of the original draft was allowed to subsist but the four in- comparable stanzas descriptive of himself. fifth was cancelled, which ran as follows [first fragment]. Several stanzas relating to Byron and Moore are too imperfect for publication. The following refers to the latter [second frag- ment]. Leigh Hunt was thus described [third fragment]. The following lines were also written for the Adonais [remaining frag- ments].’ Forman conjectures that Coleridge is described in the last fragment. FRAGMENTS 439 AND ever as he went he swept a lyre Of unaccustomed shape, and strings Now like the of impetuous fire, Which shakes the forest with its mur- murings, Now like the rush of the aérial wings Of the enamoured wind among the treen, Whispering unimaginable things, And dying on the streams of dew serene, Which feed the unmown meads with ever- during green. And the green Paradise which western waves Embosom in their ever wailing sweep, Talking of freedom to their tongueless caves, Or to the spirits which within them keep A record of the wrongs which, though they sleep, Die not, but dream of retribution, heard His hymns, and echoing them from steep to steep, Kept — And then came one of sweet and earnest looks, Whose soft smiles to his dark and night- like eyes Were as the clear and ever living brooks Are to the obscure fountains whence they rise, Showing how pure they are: a Paradise Of happy truth upon his forehead low Lay, making wisdom lovely, in the guise Of earth-awakening morn upon the brow Of star-deserted heaven, while ocean gleams below. His song, though very sweet, was low and faint, A simple strain — A mighty Phantasm, half concealed In darkness of his own exceeding light, Which clothed his awful presence unre- vealed, Charioted on the night Of thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrys- olite. And like a sudden meteor, which outstrips The splendor-wingéd chariot of the sun, eclipse The armies of the golden stars, each one Pavilioned in its tent of light — all strewn Over the chasms of blue night — LINES WRITTEN FOR HELLAS Published by Garnett, 1862, who conjectures the title. I Farrest of the Destinies, Disarray thy dazzling eyes: Keener far thy lightnings are Than the wingéd [bolts] thou bear- est, And the smile thou wearest Wraps thee as a star Is wrapped in light. II Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run, Or could the morning shafts of purest light Again into the quivers of the Sun Be gathered — could one thought from its wild flight Return into the temple of the brain Without a change, without a stain, — Could aught that is, ever again Be what it once has ceased to be, Greece might again be free ! Til A star has fallen upon the earth ’Mid the benighted nations, A quenchless atom of immortal light, A living spark of Night, A oresset shaken from the constellations Swifter than the thunder fell To the heart of Earth, the well Where its pulses flow and beat, And unextinct in that cold source Burns, and on course Guides the sphere which is its prison, Like an angelic spirit pent In a form of mortal birth, Till, as a spirit half arisen Shatters its charnel, it has rent, In the rapture of its mirth, The thin and painted garment of the Earth, Ruining its chaos — a fierce breath Consuming all its forms of living death. 440 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS THE PINE FOREST OF THE CASCINE NEAR PISA FIRST DRAFT OF ‘TO JANE: THE INVI- TATION, THE RECOLLECTION ’ Date 1821. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. DEaREST, best and brightest, Come away, To the woods and to the fields ! Dearer than this fairest day Which, like thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough Year just awake In its cradle in the brake. The eldest of the hours of Spring, Into the winter wandering, 10 Looks upon the leafless wood; And the banks all bare and rude Found, it seems, this haleyon Morn In February’s bosom born, Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, Kissed the cold forehead of the Earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free; And waked to music all the fountains, And breathed upon the rigid mountains, 20 And made the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. Radiant Sister of the Day, Awake ! arise! and come away ! To the wild woods and the plains, To the pools where winter rains Image all the roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Sapless, gray, and ivy dun Round stems that never kiss the sun— 30 To the sandhills of the sea, Where the earliest violets be. Now the last day of many days, All beautiful and bright as thou, The loveliest and the last, is dead, Rise, Memory, and write its praise ! And do thy wonted work and trace The epitaph of glory fled; For now the Earth has changed its face, A frown is on the Heaven’s brow. 40 ‘We wandered to the Pine Forest That skirts the Ocean’s foam, The lightest wind was in its nest, The tempest in its home. The whispering waves were half asleep, The clouds were gone to play, And on the woods, and on the deep, The smile of Heaven lay. It seemed as if the day were one Sent from beyond the skies, 50 Which shed to earth above the sun A light of Paradise. We paused amid the pines that stood The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude With stems like serpents interlaced How calm it was — the silence there -By such a chain was bound That even the busy woodpecker Made stiller by her sound ¢ The inviolable quietness; The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less The calm that round us grew. It seemed that from the remotest seat Of the white mountain’s waste, To the bright flower beneath our feet, A magic circle traced; — A spirit interfused around, A thinking silent life, I To momentary peace it bound Our mortal nature’s strife; — And still it seemed the centre of The magic circle there, Was one whose being filled with love The breathless atmosphere. Were not the crocuses that grew Under that ilex-tree As beautiful in scent and hue As ever fed the bee ? et We stood beside the pools that lie Under the forest bough, And each seemed like a sky Gulfed in a world below; A purple firmament of light, Which in the dark earth lay, More boundless than the depth of night, And clearer than the day — FRAGMENTS 44t In which the massy forests grew As in the upper air, 90 More perfect both in shape and hue Than any waving there. Like one beloved the scene had lent To the dark water’s breast Its every leaf and lineament With that clear truth expressed; There lay far glades and neighboring lawn, And through the dark green crowd The white sun twinkling like the dawn Under a speckled cloud. 100 Sweet views, which in our world above Can never well be seen, Were imaged by the water’s love Of that fair forest green. And all was interfused beneath Within an Elysium air An atmosphere without a breath, A silence sleeping there. Until a wandering wind crept by, Like an unwelcome thought, 110 Which from my mind’s too faithful eye Blots thy bright image out. For thou art good and dear and kind, The forest ever green, But less of peace in § ’s mind, Than calm in waters seen. ORPHEUS Date, 1820. Published by Garnett, 1862, and revised and enlarged by Rossetti, 1870. Gar- nett adds the following note: ‘No trace of this poem appears in Shelley’s notebooks ; it exists only in a transcript by Mrs. Shelley, who has written, in playful allusion to her toils as an amanuensis, “ Aspetto fin che il diluvio cala, ed allora cerco di posare argine alle sue parole.” ‘‘T await the descent of the flood, and then I en- deavor to embank the words.” From this cir- cumstance, as well as from the internal evi- dence of the piece, I should conjecture that it was an attempt at improvisation. Shelley had several times heard Sgricci, the renowned im- provvisatore, in the winter of 1820, and this may have inspired him with the idea of attempting a similar feat. Assuredly this poem, though zontaining many felicitous passages, hardly at- tains his usual standard, either of thought or expression. It may be a translation from the Italian.’ A Nor far from hence. From yonder pointed hill, Crowned with a ring of oaks, you may be- hold A dark and barren field, through which there flows, Sluggish and black, a deep but narrow stream, Which the wind ripples not, and the fair moon Gazes in vain, and finds no mirror there. Follow the herbless banks of that strange brook Until you pause beside a darksome pond. The fountain of this rivulet, whose gush Cannot be seen, hid by a rayless night 10 That lives beneath the overhanging rock That shades the pool —an endless spring of gloom, Upon whose edge hovers the tender light, Trembling to mingle with its paramour, — But, as Syrinx fled Pan, so night flies day, Or, with most sullen and regardless hate, Refuses stern her heaven-born embrace. On one side of this jagged and shapeless hill There is a cave, from which there eddies up A pale mist, like aérial gossamer, 2a Whose breath destroys all life; awhile it veils The rock; then, scattered by the wind, if flies Along the stream, or lingers on the clefts, Killing the sleepy worms, if aught bide there. Upon the beetling edge of that dark rock There stands a group of cypresses; not such As, with a graceful spire and stirring life, Pierce the pure heaven of your native vale, Whose branches the air plays among, but not 29 Disturbs, fearing to spoil their solemn grace; But blasted and all wearily they stand, One to another clinging; their weak boughs Sigh as the wind buffets them, and they shake Beneath its blasts — a weather-beaten crew! CHORUS What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint, 442 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS But more melodious than the murmuring wind Which through the columns of a temple glides ? A It is the wandering voice of Orpheus’ lyre, Borne by the winds, who sigh that their rude king Hurries them fast from these air-feeding notes; 40 But in their speed they bear along with them The waning sound, scattering it like dew Upon the startled sense. CHORUS Does he still sing ? Methought he rashly cast away his harp When he had Jost Eurydice. A Ah no! Awhile he paused.— As a poor hunted stag A moment shudders on the fearful brink Of a swift stream — the cruel hounds press on With deafening yell, the arrows glance and wound, — He plunges in: so Orpheus, seized and torn 50 By the sharp fangs of an insatiate grief, Menad-like waved his lyre in the bright air, And wildly shrieked, ‘Where she is, it is dark !’ And then he struck from forth the strings a sound Of deep and fearful melody. Alas! In times long past, when fair Eurydice With her bright eyes sat listening by his side, He gently sang of high and heavenly themes. As in a brook, fretted with little waves, By the light airs of spring, each riplet makes 60 A many-sided mirror for the sun, While it flows musically through green banks, Ceaseless and pauseless, ever clear and fresh, So flowed his song, reflecting the deep joy And tender love that fed those sweetest notes, The heavenly offspring of ambrosial food. But that is past. Returning from drear Hell, He chose a lonely seat of unhewn stone, Blackened with lichens, on a herbless plain. Then from the deep and overflowing spring Of his eternal, ever-moving grief 7” There rose to Heaven a sound of angry song *T is as a mighty cataract that parts Two sister rocks with waters swift and strong, And casts itself with horrid roar and din Adown a steep; from a perennial source It ever flows and falls, and breaks the air With loud and fierce, but most harmonious roar, And as it falls casts up a vaporous spray 79 Which the sun clothes in hues of Iris light. Thus the tempestuous torrent of his grief Is clothed in sweetest sounds and varying words Of poesy. Unlike all human works It never slackens, and through every change Wisdom and beauty and the power divine Of mighty poesy together dwell, Mingling in sweet accord. As I have seen A fierce south blast tear through the dark- ened sky, Driving along a rack of wingéd clouds, 9 Which may not pause, but ever hurry on, As their wild shepherd wills them, while the stars, Twinkling and dim, peep from between the plumes. Anon the sky is cleared, and the high dome Of serene Heaven, starred with fiery flow- ers, Shuts in the shaken earth; or the still moon Swiftly, yet gracefully, begins her walk, Rising all bright behind the eastern hills. I talk of moon, and wind, and stars, and not Of song; but, would I echo his high song, Nature must lend me words ne’er used be- fore, 100 Or I must borrow from her perfect works, To picture forth his perfect attributes. He does no longer sit upon his throne Of rock upon a desert herbless plain, For the evergreen and knotted ilexes, And cypresses that seldom wave their boughs, FRAGMENTS 443 And sea-green olives with their grateful fruit, And elms dragging along the twisted vines, Eee their berries as they follow ast, And blackthorn bushes with their infant Trace r10 Of blushing rose blooms; beeches, to lovers dear, And weeping willow trees; all swift or slow, As their huge boughs or lighter dress per- mit, Have ey oa in his throne; and Earth her- sel Has sent from her maternal breast a growth Of starlike flowers and herbs of odors sweet, To pave the temple that his poesy Has framed, while near his feet grim lions couch, And kids, fearless from love, creep near his lair. Even the blind worms seem to feel the sound. 120 The birds are silent, hanging down their heads, Perched on the lowest branches of the trees; Not even the nightingale intrudes a note Iv rivalry, but all entranced she listens. FIORDISPINA Date, 1820. Published in part by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, and the remainder by Garnett, 1862, who adds a note: ‘ Fiordispina and the piece which I have ventured to entitle To His Genius (using the latter word in the sense of daluwv) may be regarded as preliminary, though unconscious studies, for this crowning work [Epipsychidion]. This is indicated by the general similarity among the three, as well as by the fact that very many lines now found in Epipsychidion have been transferred to it from the others. Most of these have been omitted from the poem as now published ; but some instances will be observed in the second, which was probably the earlier in point of date. Fiordispina seems to have been written during the first days of Shelley’s acquaintance with Emilia Viviani, who is also the Ginevra of the poem thus entitled.’ THE season was the childhood of sweet June, Whose sunny hours from morning until noon Went creeping through the day with silent feet, Each with its load of pleasure, slow yet sweet; Like the long years of blest Eternity Never to be developed. Joy to thee, Fiordispina, and thy Cosimo, For thou the wonders of the depth canst know Of this unfathomable flood of hours, Sparkling bencath the heaven which em- bowers — 10 They were two cousins, almost like two twins, Except that from the catalogue of sins Nature had rased their love — which could not be But by dissevering their nativity. And so they grew together like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Lull or awaken in their purple prime, Which the same hand will gather, the same clime Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see All those who love —and who e’er loved like thee, 20 Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo, Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow The ardors of a vision which obscure The very idol of its portraiture. He faints, dissolved into a sea of love; But thou art as a planet sphered above ; But thou art Love itself — ruling the motion Of his subjected spirit; such emotion Must end in sin or sorrow, if sweet May Had not brought forth this morn, your wed- ding-day. 30 ‘Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew, Ye faint-eyed children of the Hours,’ Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers Which she had from the breathing — A table near of polished porphyry. They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye That looked on them, a fragrance from the touch Whose warmth light such checked their life; a 444 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reprove 40 The childish pity that she felt for them, Anda remorse that from their stem She had divided such fair shapes made A feeling in the which was a shade Of gentle beauty on the flowers; there lay All gems that make the earth’s dark bosom ay. sols of rayrtle-buds and lemon-blooms, And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes The livery of unremembered snow — Violets whose eyes have drunk — 50 Fiordispina and her nurse are now Upon the steps of the high portico; Under the withered arm of Media She flings her glowing arm step by step and stair by stair, That withered woman, gray and white and brown — More like a trunk by lichens overgrown Than anything which once could have been human. And ever as she goes the palsied woman ‘How slow and painfully you seem to walk, 60 Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk.’ ‘ And well it may, Fiordispina, dearest — well-a-day ! You are hastening to a marriage-bed; I to the grave!” — <‘ And if my love were dead, Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie Beside him in my shroud as willingly As now in the gay night-dress wrought.’ ‘Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought Not be remembered till it snows in June; 70 Such fancies are a music out of tune With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night. What! would you take all beauty and de- light Back to the Paradise from which you sprung, And leave to grosser mortals ? — And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet And subtle mystery by which spirits meet ? Who knows whether the loving game is played, Lilla When, once of mortal [venture] disarrayed, The naked soul goes wandering here and there 80 Through the wide deserts of Elysian air ? The violet dies not till it? — THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE Date, 1819. Published by Garnett, 1862. At the creation of the Earth Pleasure, that divinest birth, From the soil of Heaven did rise, Wrapped in sweet wild melodies — Like an exhalation wreathing To the sound of air low-breathing Through Aolian pines, which make A shade and shelter to the lake Whence it rises soft and slow; Her life-breathing [limbs] did flow In the harmony divine Of an ever-lengthening line Which enwrapped her perfect form With a beauty clear and warm. LOVE, HOPE, DESIRE, AND FEAR Date, 1821. Published by Garnett, 1862. AND many there were hurt by that strong boy; His San they said, was Pleasure. And near him stood, glorious beyond mea- sure, Four Ladies who possess all empery In earth and air and sea; Nothing that lives from their award is free. Their names will I declare to thee, — Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear; And they the regents are Of the four elements that frame the heart, — 10 And each diversely exercised her art By force or circumstance or sleight To prove her dreadful might Upon that poor domain. Desire presented her [false] glass, and then The spirit dwelling there Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair Within that magic mirror; And, dazed by that bright error, FRAGMENTS It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger, 20 And death, and penitence, and danger, Had not then silent Fear Touched with her palsying spear, — So that, as if a frozen torrent, The blood was curdled in its current; It dared not speak, even in look or motion, But chained within itself its proud devo- tion. Between Desire and Fear thou wert A wretched thing, poor Heart ! Sad was his life who bore thee in his breast, Wild bird for that weak nest. 31 Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought, And from the very wound of tender thought Drew solace, and the pity of sweet eyes Gave strength to bear those gentle agonies, Surmount the loss, the terror, and the sorrow. Then Hope approached, she who can borrow For poor to-day from rich to-morrow; And Fear withdrew, as night when day Descends upon the orient ray; 40 And after long and vain endurance The poor heart woke to her assurance. At one birth these four were born With the world’s forgotten morn, And from Pleasure still they hold All it circles, as of old. When, as summer lures the swallow, Pleasure lures the heart to follow — O weak heart of little wit — The fair hand that wounded it, 50 Seeking, like a panting hare, Refuge in the lynx’s lair, — Love, Desire, Hope, and Fear, Ever will be near. A SATIRE ON SATIRE Date, 1820. Published by Dowden, Corre- spondence of Robert Southey and Caroline Bowles, 1880. Shelley writes to Hunt: ‘1 began once a satire on satire, which I meant to be very severe; it was full of small knives, in the use of which practice would have soon made me very expert.’ IF gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains, And racks of subtle torture, if the pains Of shame, of fiery Hell’s tempestuous wave, Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave. 445 Hurling the damned into the murky air While the meek blest sit smiling; if Despair And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error, Are the true secrets of the commonweai To make men wise and just; . . . 10 And not the sophisms of revenge and fear, Bloodier than is revenge . . . Then send the priests to every hearth and home To preach the burning wrath which is to come, In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw The frozen tears .. . If Satire’s scourge could wake the slum- bering hounds Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds, The leprous scars of callous infamy; If it could make the present not to be, 20 Or charm the dark past never to have been, Or turn regret to hope; who that has seen What Southey is and was, would not ex- elaim, Lash on! in flame; Follow his flight with wingéd words, and urge The strokes of the inexorable scourge Until the heart be naked, till his soul See the contagion’s spots foul: And from the mirror of Truth’s sunlike shield, From which his Parthian arrow .. . 30 Flash on his sight the spectres of the past, Until his mind’s eye paint thereon — Let scorn like yawn beiow, And rain on him like flakes of fiery snow. This cannot be, it ought not, evil still — Suffering makes suffering, ill must follow ° ill. Rough words beget sad thoughts, beside, Men take a sullen and a stupid pride In being all they hate in others’ shame, be the keen verse dipped and, By a perverse antipathy of fame. 40 *T is not worth while to prove, as I could, how From the sweet fountains of our Nature flow These bitter waters; I will only say, If any friend would take Southey some day. 146 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS And tell him, in a country walk alone, Softening harsh words with friendship’s gentle tone, How incorrect his public conduct is, And what men think of it, ’t were not amiss. Far better than to make innocent ink — GINEVRA Date, 1821. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, who gives the source of the story as L’ Osservatore Fiorentino. WILD, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one Who staggers forth into the air and sun From the dark chamber of a mortal fever, Bewildered, and incapable, and ever Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain Of usual shapes, till the familiar train Of objects and of persons passed like things Strange as a dreamer’s mad imaginings, Ginevra from the nuptial altar went; The vows to which her lips had sworn as- sent 10 Rung in her brain still with a jarring din, Deafening the lost intelligence within. And so she moved under the bridal veil, Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale, And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth, And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth, — And of the gold and jewels glittering there She scarce felt conscious, but the weary glare Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light, Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight. A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud ax Was less heavenly fair —her face was bowed, And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair Were mirrored in the polished marble stair Which led from the cathedral to the street; And even as she went her light fair feet Erased these images. The bride-maidens who round her thronging came, Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame, Envying the unenviable; and others 30 Making the joy which should have been another’s Their own by gentle sympathy; and some Sighing to think of a unhappy home; Some few admiring what can ever lure Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure Of parents’ smiles for life’s great cheat; a thing Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining. But they are all dispersed — and lo! she stands Looking in idle grief on her white hands, Alone within the garden now her own; 40 And through the sunny air, with jangling tone, The music of the merry marriage-bells, Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells; — Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams That he is dreaming, until slumber seems A mockery of itself — when suddenly Antonio stood before her, pale as she. With agony, with sorrow, and with pride, He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride, And said—‘Is this thy faith?’ and then as one 50 Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise And look upon his day of life with eyes Which weep in vain that they can dream no more, Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued Said — ‘Friend, if earthly violence or ill, Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will Of parents, chance, or custom, time, or change, 60 Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge, Or wildered looks, or words, or evil speech, With all their stings and venom, can im- peach Our love,— we love not. which hides The victim from the tyrant, and divides The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart Imperious inquisition to the heart If the grave, FRAGMENTS 447 That is another’s, could dissever ours, We love not.’ — ‘ What ! do not the silent hours Beckon thee to Gherardi’s bridal bed? 70 Is not a ring ’ —a pledge, he would have said, Of broken vows, but she with patient look The golden circle from her finger took, And said —‘ Accept this token of my faith, The pledge of vows to be absolved by death; And I am dead or shall be soon —my knell Will mix its music with that merry bell; Does it not sound as if they sweetly said, “We toll a corpse out of the marriage- bed” ? The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn 80 Will serve unfaded for my bier — so soon That even the dying violet will not die Before Ginevra.’ The strong fantasy Had made her accents weaker and more weak, And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek, And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmo- sphere Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear, Making her but an image of the thought, Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought News of the terrors of the coming time. 90 Like an accuser branded with the crime He would have cast on a belovéd friend, Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end The pale betrayer —he then with vain re- pentance Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence — Antonio stood and would have spoken, when The compound voice of women and of men Was heard approaching; he retired, while she Was led amid the admiring company Back to the palace,— and her maidens soon 100 Changed her attire for the afternoon, And left her at her own request to keep An hour of quiet and rest. Like one asleep With open eyes and folded hands she lay, Pale in the light of the declining day. 1 Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set, And in the lighted hall the guests are met; The beautiful looked lovelier in the light Of love, and admiration, and delight, Reflected from a thousand hearts and’ eyes la Kindling a momentary Paradise. This crowd is safer than the silent wood, Where love’s own doubts disturb the soli- tude; On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine Falls, and the dew of music more divine Tempers the deep emotions of the time To spirits cradled in a sunny clime. How many meet, who never yet have met, To part too soon, but never to forget ? How many saw the beauty, power, and wit 120 Of looks and words which ne’er enchanted et! But life’s familiar veil was now withdrawn. As the world leaps before an earthquake’s dawn, And unprophetic of the coming hours The matin winds from the expanded flow- ers Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken From every living heart which it possesses, Through seas and winds, cities and wilder- nesses, As if the future and the past were all 130 Treasured i’ the instant; so Gherardi’s hall Laughed in the mirth of its lord’s festi- val, — Till some one asked, ‘ Where is the Bride ?’ And then A bridesmaid went, and ere she came again A silence fell upon the guests — a pause Of expectation, as when beauty awes All hearts with its approach, though unbe- held; Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled; — For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew The color from the hearer’s cheeks, and flew 140 Louder and swifter round the company; And then Gherardi entered with an eye Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud. 448 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS They found Ginevra dead ! if it be death | To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath, With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white, And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light Mocked at the speculation they had owned; If it be death, when there is felt around 150 A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare, And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair From the scalp to the ankles, as it were Corruption from the spirit passing forth, And giving all it shrouded to the earth, And leaving as swift lightning in its flight Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night Of thought we know thus much of death, — no more Than the unborn dream of our life before Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore. 160 The marriage feast and its solemnity Was turned to funeral pomp; the company, With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor the Who loved the dead went weeping on their way Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise Loosened the strings of pity in all eyes, On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain, Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again. The lamps which, half-extinguished in their haste Gleamed few and faint o’er the abandoned feast, 170 Showed as it were within the vaulted room A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom Had passed ont of men’s minds into the air. Some few yet stood around Gherardi there, Friends and relations of the dead, — and he. A loveless man, accepted torpidly The consolation that he wanted not; Awe in the place of grief within him wrought. Their whispers made the solemn silence seem More still —some wept, 180 Some melted into tears without a sob, And some with hearts that might be heard to throb Leaned on the table, and at intervals Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame Of every torch and taper, as it swept From out the chamber where the women kept; — Their tears fell on the dear companion cold Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled 190 The bell of death, and soon the priests ar- rived, And finding death their penitent had shrived, Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon A vulture has just feasted to the bone. And then the mourning-women came. — THE DIRGE Old winter was gone In his weakness back to the mountains hoar, And the spring came down From the planet that hovers upon the shore Where the sea of sunlight encroaches 200 On the limits of wintry night; — If the land, and the air, and the sea, Rejoice not when spring approaches, We did not rejoice in thee, Ginevra ! She is still, she is cold On the bridal couch. One step to the white death-bed, And one to the bier, And one to the charnel—and one, ch where ? 210 The dark arrow fled In the noon. Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled, The rats in her heart Will have made their nest, And the worms be alive in her golden hair; While the spirit that guides the sun Sits throned in his flaming chair, She shal sleep. FRAGMENTS 449 THE BOAT ON THE SERCHIO Date, 1821. Published in part by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, and the remainder by Rossetti, 1870. Medwin furnishes the note: ‘I have heard Shelley often speak with rapture of the excursions they [Shelley and Williams] made together. The canal fed by the Serchio, of the clearest water, is so rapid that they were obliged to tow the boat up against the current ; but the swift descent, through green banks enamelled with flowers and overhung with trees that mirrored themselves on its glassy surface, gave him a wonderful delight. He has left a record of these trips in a poem en- titled The Boat on the Serchio, and calls Wil- liams and himself Melchior and Lionel.’ Our boat is asleep on Serchio’s stream, Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream, The helm sways idly, hither and thither; Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast, And the oars, and the sails; but ’tis sleeping fast Like a beast, unconscious of its tether. The stars burned out in the pale blue air, And the thin white moon lay withering there; To tower, and cavern, and rift, and tree, The owl and the bat fled drowsily. 10 Day had kindled the dewy woods, And the rocks above and the stream be- low, And the vapors in their multitudes, And the Apennine’s shroud of summer snow, And clothed with light of aéry gold The mists in their eastern caves uprolled. Day had awakened all things that be, — The lark and the thrush and the swallow free, And the milkmaid’s song and mower’s seythe, 19 And the matin-bell and the mountain bee. Fire-flies were quenched on the dewy corn; Glow-worms went out on the river’s brim, Like lamps which a student forgets to trim; The beetle forgot to wind his horn; The crickets were still in the meadow and hill; Like a flock of rooks at a farmer’s gun, Night’s dreams and terrors, every one, Fled from the brains which are their prey From the lamp’s death to the morning ray. All rose to do the task He set to each, 30 Who shaped us to his ends and not our own; The million rose to learn, and one to teach What none yet ever knew or can be known. And many rose Whose woe was such that fear became desire; Melchior and Lionel were not among those; They from the throng of men had stepped aside, And made their home under the green hillside. It was that hill, whose intervening brow Screens Lucca from the Pisan’s envious eye, 40 Which the cireumfluous plain waving be- low, Like a wide lake of green fertility, With streams and fields and marshes bare, Divides from the far Apennines, which lie Islanded in the immeasurable air. ‘What think you, as she lies in her green cove, Out little sleeping boat is dreaming of ? If morning dreams are true, why I should guess That she was dreaming of our idleness, And of the miles of watery way 50 We should have led her by this time of day.’ ‘Never mind,’ said Lionel, ‘Give care to the winds, they can bear it well About yon poplar tops; and see ! The white clouds are driving merrily, And the stars we miss this morn will light More willingly our return to-night. How it whistles, “‘Dominie’s long black hair ! List, my dear fellow, the breeze blows fair; Hear how it sings into the air.” 69 — of us and of our lazy motions,’ Impatiently said Melchior, ‘If I can guess a boat’s emotions; And how we onght, two honrs before, To have been the devil knows where.’ 450 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS And then, in such transalpine Tuscan As would have killed a Della-Cruscan, So, Lionel according to his art Weaving his idle words, Melchior said: ‘She dreams that we are not yet out of bed > 7o We’ll put a soul into her, and a heart Which like a dove chased by a dove shall beat.’ “6 Ay, heave the ballast overboard, And stow the eatables in the aft locker.’ ‘Would not this keg be best a little low- ered ?’ ‘No, now all’s right.’ ‘Those bottles of warm tea — (Give me some straw) — must be stowed tenderly ; Such as we used, in summer after six, To cram in great-coat pockets, and to mix Hard eggs and radishes and rolls at Eton, 80 And, couched on stolen hay iu those green harbors Farmers called gaps, and we schoolboys ealled arbors, Would feast till eight.’ With a bottle in one hand, As if his very soul were at a stand, Lionel stood, when Melchior brought him steady, — * Sit at the helm — fasten this sheet — all ready !’ The chain is loosed, the sails are spread, The living breath is fresh behind, As with dews and sunrise fed go Comes the laughing morning wind. The sails are full, the boat makes head Against the Serchio’s torrent fierce, Then flags with intermitting course, And hangs upon the wave, and stems The tempest of the Which fervid from its mountain source Shallow, smooth, and strong, doth come, — Swift as fire, tempestuously It sweeps into the affrighted sea; 100 In morning’s smile its eddies coil, Its billows sparkle, toss, and boil, Torturing all its quiet light Into columns fierce and bright. The Serchio, twisting forth Between the marble barriers which it clove At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm The wave that died the death which lovers love, Living in what it sought; asif this spasm Had not yet passed, the toppling mountains cling, 110 But the clear stream in full enthusiasm Pours itself on the plain, then wandering, Down one clear path of effluence crystal- line Sends its superfluous waves, that they may flin At Arno’s feet tribute of corn and wine; Then, through the pestilential deserts wild Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted pine, It rushes to the Ocean. THE ZUCCA Date, January, 1822. Published by Mrs. Shelley, 1824. I SUMMER was dead and Autumn was expir- ing, And ‘aint Winter laughed upon the land All cloudlessly and cold; when I, desiring More in this world than any understand, Wept o’er the beauty, which, like sea re- tiring, Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand Of my lorn heart, and o’er the grass and flowers Pale for the falsehood of the flattering hours. Il Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep The instability of all but weeping; And on the earth lulled in her winter sleep I woke, and envied her as she was sleep- ing. Too haney Earth ! over thy face shall creep The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping From unremembered dreams shalt see No death divide thy immortality. Ill I loved — oh, no, I mean not one of ye, Or any earthly one, though ye are dear FRAGMENTS 45t As human heart to human heart may be; wae I loved I know not what — but this low | The Heavens had wept upon it, but the sphere, And all that it contains, contains not thee, Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel every- where. From heaven and earth, and all that in them are Veiled art thou like a star. Iv By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest, Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden; Making divine the loftiest and the lowest, When for a moment thou art not for- bidden To live within the life which thou bestow- est; And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden, Cold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight, Blank as the sun after the birth of night. Vv In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common, In music, and the sweet unconscious tone Of animals, and voices which are human, Meant to express some feelings of their own; {In the soft motions and rare smile of wo- man, In flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh shown Or dying in the autumn, —I the most Adore thee present, or lament thee lost. VI And thus I went lamenting, when I saw A plant upon the river’s margin lie, Like one who loved beyond his nature’s law And in “despair had cast him down to die; Its leaves which had outlived the frost, the thaw Had blighted, like a heart which hatred’s eye . Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true. Earth Had crushed it on her unmaternal breast VIII I bore it to my chamber and I planted It in a vase full of the lightest mould; The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted Fell through the window panes, disrobed of cold, Upon its leaves and flowers; the star which panted In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled Over the horizon’s wave, with looks of light Smiled on it from the threshold of the night. IX The mitigated influences of air And light revived the plant, and from it grew Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair, Full as a cup with the vine’s burning dew, O’erflowed with golden colors; an atmo- sphere Of vital warmth enfolded it anew, And every impulse sent to every part The unbeheld pulsations of its heart. x Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong, Even if the air and sun had smiled not on it; For one wept o’er it all the winter long Tears pure as Heaven’s rain, which fell upon it Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song, Mixed with the stringéd melodies that won it To leave the gentle lips on which it slept, Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept. XI Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers On which he wept, the while the savage storm 452 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Waked by the darkest of December’s hours Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm; The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers, The fish were frozen in the pools, the form Of every summer plant was dead Whilst this LINES Date, 1822. Published by Garnett, 1862. I WE meet not as we parted, We feel more than all may see; My bosom is heavy-hearted, And thine full of doubt for me. One moment has bound the free. II That moment is gone forever, Like lightning that flashed and died, Like a snowflake upon the river, Like a sunbeain upon the tide, Which the dark shadows hide. Ill That moment from time was singled As the first of a life of pain; The cup of its joy was mingled — Delusion too sweet though vain ! Too sweet to be mine again. IV Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden That its life was crushed by you, Ye would not have then forbidden The death which a heart so true Sought in your briny dew. v Methinks too little cost For a moment so found, so iost ! CHARLES THE FIRST Shellev had the subject of Charles the First in mind for a tragedy as early as 1818, and de- sired Mrs. Shelley to attempt it. He had be- gun to think of it for himself in the summer of 1820 and wrote to Medwin: ‘ What think you of my boldness? I mean to write « play, in the spirit of human nature, without prejudice or passion, entitled Charles the First. So van- ity intoxicates people ; but let those few who praise my verses, and in whose approbation I take so much delight, answer for the sin.’ Later, he wrote to Ollier: ‘I doubt about Charles the First ; but, if I do write it, it shall be the birth of severe and high feelings. You are very welcome to it, on the terms you men- tion, and, when once I see and feel that I can write it, it is already written. My thoughts aspire to a production of a far higher char- acter; but the execution of it will require some years. I write what J write chiefly to enquire, by the reception which my writings meet with, how far I am fit for so great a task, or not.’ By the summer of 1821 he had done some shaping-out thought on it, and in September wrote again to Ollier: ‘ Charles the First is conceived, but not born. Unless I am sure of making something good, the play will not be written. Pride, that ruined Satan, will kill Charles the First, for his midwife would be only Jess than him whom thunder has made greater. I am full of great plans; and if I should tell you them, I should add to the list of these riddles.’ He began seriously upon it about January 1, 1822, and wrote to Ollier it would be ready by spring, saying that it ‘ promises to be good, as tragedies go,’ and that it ‘is not colored by the party-spirit of the author;’ to Hunt he confided his hope that it would ‘hold a higher rank than The Cenci as a work of art.’ He apparently soon discontinued the work. and in answer to Hunt wrote, in March: "So you think I can make nothing of Charles the First. Tanto pegjio. Indeed, I have written nothing for this last two months : aslight circumstance gave a new train to my jdeas, and shattered the fragile edifice when half built. What motives have I to write? I had motives, and I thank the God of my own heart they were totally different from those of the other apes of humanity who make mouths in the glass of the time. But what are those motives now? The only inspiration of an ordinarv kind I could de- scend to acknowledge would be the earning £100 for yon; and that it seems I cannot.’ In the same strain he wrote in April to Gisborne: ‘TI have done some of Charles the First ; but al- though the poetry succeeded very well, I can- not seize on the conception of the subject as a whole, and seldom now touch the canvas ;’ and again, in June: ‘I write little now. It is im- possible to compose except under the strong excitement of an assurance of finding sympathy in what you write. Imagine Demosthenes re- citing a Philippic to the waves of the Atlantic. Lord Pyron is in this respect fortunate. He touched the chord to which a million hearts FRAGMENTS 453 responded, and the coarse music which he pro- duced to please them, disciplined him to the perfection to which he now approaches. I do not go on with Charles the First. 1 feel too little certainty of the future, and too little satisfaction with regard to the past to under- take any subject seriously and deeply. I stand, as it were, upon a precipice, which I have ascended with great, and cannot descend without greater peril, and I am content if the heaven above me is calm for the passing mo- ment.’ Medwin adds some details: ‘I must now speak of his Charles the First. He had de- signed to write a tragedy on this ungrateful subject as far back as 1818, and had begun it at the end of the following year, when he asked me to obtain for him that well-known pamphlet, which was in my father’s library — Killing no Murder. He was, however, in lim- ine, diverted at that time to more attractive subjects, and now resumed his abandoned labors, of which he has left a very unsatisfac- tory, though valuable, bozzo. The task seemed to him an irksome one. His progress was slow; one dav he expunged what he had written the day before. He occasionally showed and read to me his MS., which was lined and interlined and interworded. so as to render it almost illegible. The scenes were disconnected, and intended to be interwoven in the tissue of the drama. He did not thus compose The Cenci. He seemed tangled in an inextricable web of difficulties, as to the treat- ment of his subject; and it was clear that he had formed no definite plan in his own mind, how to connect the links of the complicated yarn of events that led to that frightful catas- trophe, or to justify it. . . . Shelley meant to have made the last of King’s fools, Archy, a more than subordinate among his dramatis persone, as Calderon had done in his Cisma de l’Inglaterra, a fool sui generis, who talks in fable, ‘‘ weaving a world of mirth out of the wreck of all around.” . . Other causes, be- sides doubt as to the manner of treating the subject, operated to impede its progress. The ever-growing fastidiousness of his taste had, I have often thought, begun to cramp his genius. The opinion of the world, too, at times shook his confidence in himself. I have often been shown the scenes of this tragedy in which he was engaged ; like the MSS. of Tasso’s Geru- salemme Liberata, in the library at Ferrara, his were larded with word on word, till they were searcely decipherable.’ Mrs. Shelley writes: ‘ Whether the subject proved more difficult than he anticipated, or whether in fact he could not bend his mind away from the broodings and wanderings of thought divested from human interest, which he best loved, I cannot tell; but he pioceeded slowly, and threw it aside for one of the most mystical of his poems. The Triumph of Life, ou which he was employed at the last.’ The fragment was published in part by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, and the remainder by Rossetti, 1870. CHARLES THE FIRST DRAMATIS PERSON Kine Cuarzes I. Juxon. Queen HENRIETTA, St. Jonn. Laup, Archbishop of Canter- Arcny, the Court Fool. bury. HAMPDEN, WentworrtH, Earl of Straf- Pym. ford. CROMWELL. CrRoMWELL’s DAUGHTER. Sm Harry Vane the Lorp CoTrineton. Lorp WEsTon. Lorp Coventry. younger. Wiuiams, Bishop of Lincoln. LeiaHTon. Secretary LyTTELTON. Bastwick. PRYNNE. Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, Citizens, Pursui- vants, Marshalsmen, Law Students, Judges, Clerk. Scrne I. — The Masque of the Inns of Court. A PURSUIVANT Puace for the Marshal of the Masque ! FIRST CITIZEN What thinkest thou of this quaint masque which turns, Like morning from the shadow of the night, The night to day, and London to a place Of peace and joy ? SECOND CITIZEN And Hell to Heaven. Eight years are gone, And they seem hours, since in this populov: street I trod on grass made green by summer's rain; For the red plague kept state within that palace Where now that vanity reigns. years more The roots will blood; And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven That sin and wrongs wound, as an orphan’s In nine 10 be refreshed with civil ery The patience of the great Avenger’s ear. A YOUTH Yet, father, ’t is a happy sight to see, Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden 454 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS By God or man. cession Of skyey visions in a solemn dream From which men wake as from a paradise, And draw new strength to tread the thorns *T is like the bright pro- of life. 20 If God be good, wherefore should this be evil ? And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw Unseasonable poison from the flowers Which bloom so rarely in this barren world ? Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present Dark as the future ! — When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant Fear And open-eyed Conspiracy, lie sleeping As on Hell’s threshold; and all gentle thoughts Waken to worship Him who giveth joys 30 With his own gift. SECOND CITIZEN How young art thou in this old age of time ! How green in this gray world! Canst thou discern The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint Of change in that stage-scene in which thou art Not a spectator but an actor ? or Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery ?] The day that dawns in fire will die in storms, Even though the noon be calm. My travel ’s done, — Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found 40 My inn of lasting rest; but thou must still Be journeying on in this inclement air. Wrap thy old cloak about thy back; Nor leave the broad and plain and beaten road, Although no flowers smile on the trodden dust, For the violet paths of pleasure. Charles the First Rose like the equinoctial sun, . . . By vapors, through whose threatening omi- nous veil Darting his altered influence he has gained This height of noon —from which he must decline 50 This Amid the darkness of conflicting storms, To dank extinction and to latestnight .., There goes The apostate Strafford; he whose titles. . , whispered aphorisms From Machiavel and Bacon; and, if Judas Had been as brazen and as bold ashe... FIRST CITIZEN That Is the Archbishop. SECOND CITIZEN Rather say the Pope: London will be soon his Rome. He walks As if he trod upon the heads of men. 61 He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold, Beside him moves the Babylonian woman Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow, Mitred adulterer ! he is joined in sin, Which turns Heaven’s milk of mercy to revenge. THIRD CITIZEN (lifting up his eyes) Good Lord ! rain it down upon him! ... Amid her ladies walks the papist queen, As if her nice feet scorned our English earth. The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be 70 A dog if I might tear her with my teeth! There’s old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke, Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry, And others who made base their English breed By vile participation of their honors With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apos- tates. When lawyers masque ’t is time for honest men To strip the vizor from their purposes. A seasonable time for masquers this ! When Englishmen and Protestants should sit 80 dust on their dishonored heads, To avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt For the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven and foreign overthrow. The remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort Have been abandoned by their faithless allies FRAGMENTS 455 To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer Lewis of France,—the Palatinate is lost. ... Enter LEIGHTON (who has been branded in the face) and Bastwick Canst thou be —art thou... ? LEIGHTON I was Leighton: what I am thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes, And with thy memory look on thy friend’s mind, gt Which is unchanged, and where is written deep The sentence of my judge. THIRD CITIZEN Are these the marks with which Laud thinks to improve the image of his Maker Stamped on the face of man? upon him, The impious tyrant ! Curses SECOND CITIZEN It is said besides That lewd and papist drunkards may pro- fane The Sabbath with their And has permitted that most heathenish custom Of dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths 100 On May-day. A man who thus twice crucifies his God May well his brother. In my mind, friend, The root of all this ill is prelacy. I would cut up the root. THIRD CITIZEN And by what means ? SECOND CITIZEN Smiting each Bishop under the fifth rib. THIRD CITIZEN You seem to know the vulnerable place Of these same crocodiles. SECOND CITIZEN I learned it in Egyptian bondages, sir. Your worm of Nile Betrays not with its flattering tears like they ; 110 For, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep. Nor is it half so greedy of men’s bodies As they of soul and all; nor does it wallow In slime as they in simony and lies And close lusts of the flesh. A MARSHALSMAN Give place, give place ! You torch-bearers, advance to the great gate And then attend the Marshal of the Masque Into the royal presence. a LAW STUDENT What thinkest thou Of this quaint show of ours, my agéd friend ? Even now we see the redness of the torches Inflame the night to the eastward, and the clarions rat [Gasp ?] to us on the wind’s wave. It comes ! And their sounds, floating hither round the pageant, Rouse up the astonished air. FIRST CITIZEN I will not think but that our country’s wounds May yet be healed. The king is just and gracious, Though wicked counsels now pervert his will. These once cast off — SECOND CITIZEN As adders cast their skins And keep their venom, so kings often change; Counsels and counsellors hang on on another, Tye Hiding the loathsome . . . Like the base patchwork of a leper’s rags. THE YOUTH Oh, still those dissonant thoughts ! — List how the music Grows on the enchanted air! And see, the torches Restlessly flashing, and the crowd divided Like waves before an admiral’s prow ! 456 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS A MARSHALSMAN Give place To the Marshal of the Masque ! A PURSUIVANT Room for the King ! THE YOUTH How glorious! See those thronging char- iots Rolling, like painted clouds before the wind, Behind their solemn steeds: how some are shaped 140 Like curved sea-shells dyed by the azure depths Df Indian seas; some like the new-born moon; And some like cars in which the Romans climbed (Canopied by Victory’s eagle-wings out- spread ) The Capitolian! See how gloriously The mettled horses in the torehlight stir Their gallant riders, while they check their pride, Like shapes of some diviner element Than English air, and beings nobler than The envious and admiring multitude. 150 SECOND CITIZEN Ay, there they are — Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees, Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm, On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows. Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan, Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart. These are the lilies glorious as Solomon, Who toil not, neither do they spin — unless It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal. Here is the surfeit which to them who earn 160 The niggard wages of the earth scarce leaves The tithe that will support them till they crawl Back to her cold, hard bosom. Here is health Followed by grim disease, glory by shame, Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want, And England’s sin by England’s punish- ment. And, as the effect pursues the cause fore. gone, Lo, giving substance to my words, behold At once the sign and the thing signified — A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean out- casts, 170 Horsed upon stumbling jades, carted with dung, Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins And rotten hiding-holes, to point the moral Of this presentment, and bring up the rear Of painted pomp with misery ! THE YOUTH T is but The anti-masque, and serves as discords do In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers If they succeeded not to Winter’s flaw; Or day unchanged by night; or joy itself Without the touch of sorrow ? SECOND CITIZEN Tand thou .. A MARSHALSMAN Place, give place ! 181 Scenz II.— A Chamber in Whitehall. Enter the Kine, QurEN, Laup, Lorpb StraFForp, Lorp Corrineton, and other Lords; Arcuy; also Sr. Jown, with some Gentlemen of the Inns of Court. KING Thanks, gentlemen. I heartily accept This token of your service; your gay masque Was performed gallantly. well When subjects twine such flowers of [ob- servance ? ] With the sharp thorns that deck the Eng- lish crown. A gentle heart enjoys what it confers, Even as it suffers that which it inflicts, Though Justice guides the stroke. Accept my hearty thanks. And it shows QUEEN And, gentlemen, Call your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint pageant xo FRAGMENTS 457 Rose on me like the figures of past years, Treading their still path back to infancy, More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer The quiet cradle. Icould have almost wept To think I was in Paris, where these shows Are well devised — such as I was ere yet My young heart shared a portion of the burden, The careful weight, of this great monarchy. There, gentlemen, between the sovereign’s pleasure And that which it regards, no clamor lifts Its proud interposition. 21 In Paris ribald censurers dare not move Their poisonous tongues against these sin- less sports; And his smile Warms those who bask in it, as ours would do If... Take my heart’s thanks; add them, gentlemen, To those good words which, were he King of France, My royal lord would turn to golden deeds. ST. JOHN Madam, the love of Englishmen can make The lightest favor of their lawful king 30 Outweigh a despot’s. We humbly take our leaves, Enriched by smiles which France can never buy. [Exeunt St. Joun and the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court. KING My Lord Archbishop. Mark you what spirit sits in St. John’s eyes? Methinks it is too saucy for this presence. ARCHY Yes, pray your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated [eye] sees everything upside down, you who are wise will discern the shadow of an idiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting springes to catch woodzocks in haymaking time. Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes are tempered to the error of his age, and because he is a fool, and by spe- cial ordinance of God forbidden ever to see himself as he is, sees now in that deep eye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, and weighing words out between king and sub- jects. One scale is full of promises, and the other full of protestations; and then another devil creeps behind the first out of the dark windings [of a] pregnant law- yer’s brain, and takes the bandage from the other’s eyes, and throws a sword into the left-hand scale, for all the world lik* my Lord Essex’s there. STRAFFORD A rod in pickle for the Fool’s back ! ARCHY Ay, and some are now smiling whose tears will make the brine; for Fool sees... STRAFFORD Insolent! You shall have your coat turned and be whipped out of the palace for this. ARCHY When all the fools are whipped, and all the protestant writers, while the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch a thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy would be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and all the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and godly slit each other’s noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their craft) ; and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to Bedlam, to entreat the mad- men to omit their sublime Platonic contem- plations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest men who lie penned up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody of the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them. Enter Secretary LyTTELTon, with papers KING (looking over the papers) These stiff Scots 80 His Grace of Canterbury must take order To force under the Church’s yoke. — You, Wentworth, Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy, To what in me were wanting. — My Lord Weston, Look that those merchants draw not with- out loss Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment 458 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Of ship-money, take fullest compensation For violation of our royal forests, Whose limits, from neglect, have been o’er- grown With cottages and cornfields. most Farthing exact from those who claim ex- emption From knighthood; that which once was a reward Shall thus be made a punishment, that sub- jects May know how majesty can wear at will The rugged mood.— My Lord of Coven- try, Lay my ree upon the Courts below That bail be not accepted for the prisoners Under the warrant of the Star Chamber. The people shall not find the stubbornness Of Parliament a cheap or easy inethod 101 Of dealing with their rightful sovereign; And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry, We will find time and place for fit re- buke. — My Lord of Canterbury. go The utter- ARCHY The fool is here. LAUD I crave permission of your Majesty To order that this insolent fellow be Chastised; he mocks the sacred character, Scoffs at the state, and — KING What, my Archy ? He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears, Yet with a quaint and graceful license. Prithee IIL For this once do not as Prynne would, were he Primate of England. With your Grace’s leave, He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot Hung in his gilded prison from the win- dow Of a queen’s bower over the public way, Blasphemes with a bird’s mind; his words, like arrows Which know no aim beyond the archer’s wit, Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy. (To ArcHY) Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence 120 Ten minutes in the rain; be it your pen- ance To bring news how the world goes there. — Poor Archy ! [Exit Arcuy. He weaves about himself a world of mirth Out of the wreck of ours. LAUD I take with patience, as my Master did, All scoffs permitted from above. KING My lord, Pray overlook these Archy’s words Had wings, but these have talons. papers. QUEEN And the lion That wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord, 129 I see the new-born courage in thine eye Armed to strike dead the spirit of the time, Which spurs to rage the many-beaded beast. Do thou persist; for, faint but in resolve, And it were better thou hadst still re- mained The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer; And Opportunity, that empty wolf, Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions Even to the disposition of thy purpose, 139 And be that tempered as the Ebro’s steel; And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak, Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace, And not betray thee with a traitor’s kiss, As when she keeps the company of rebels, Who think that she is Fear. This do, lest we Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle In a bright dream, and wake, as from a dream, Out of our worshipped state. KING ; Belovéd friend, God is my witness that this weight of _ . power, Which he sets me my earthly task to wield FRAGMENTS 459 Under his law, is my delight and pride x5: Only because thou lovest that and me. For a king bears the office of a God To all the under world; and to his God Alone he must deliver up his trust, Unshorn of its permitted attributes. ys seems] now as the baser elements ad mutinied against the golden sun That kindles them to harmony, and quells Their self-destroying rapine. The wild million 160 Strike at the eye that guides them; like as humors Of the distempered body that conspire Against the spirit of life throned in the heart, — And thus become the prey of one another, And last of death... . STRAFFORD That which would be ambition in a subject Is duty in a sovereign; for on him, As on a keystone, hangs the arch of life, Whose safety is its strength. Degree and form, And all that makes the age of reasoning man 170 More memorable than a beast’s, depend on this — That Right should fence itself inviolably With power; in which respect the state of England From usurpation by the insolent commons Cries for reform. Get treason, and spare treasure. Fee with coin The loudest murmurers; feed with jealous- ies Opposing factions, — be thyself of none; And borrow gold of many, for those who lend Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus 180 Keep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay, Till time, and its coming generations Of nights and days unborn, bring some one chance, Or war or pestilence or Nature’s self, By some distemperature or terrible sign, Be as an arbiter betwixt themselves. Nor let your Majesty Doubt here the peril of the unseen event. How did your brother kings, coheritors In vour high interest in the subject earth, Rise past such troubles to that height of power 1g! Where now they sit, and awfully serene Smile on the trembling world? Such popular storms Philip the Second of Spain, this Lewis of France, And late the German head of many bodies, And every petty lord of Italy, Quelled or by arts or arms. poorer Or feebler? or art thou who wield’st her power Tamer than they ? or shall this island be — [Girdled] by its inviolable waters— 200 To the world present and the world to come Sole pattern of extinguished monarchy ? Not if thou dost as I would have thee do. Is England KING Your words shall be my deeds; You speak the image of my thought. My friend ms (If kings can have a friend, I call thee so), Beyond ie large commission which [be- longs ?] Under the great seal of the realm, take this: And, for some obvious reasons, let there be No seal on it, except my kingly word 210 And honor as Iam « gentleman. Be—as thou art within my heart and mind — Another self, here and in Ireland: Do what thou judgest well, take amplest license, And stick not even at questionable means. Hear me, Wentworth. My word is as a wall Between thee and this world thine enemy — That hates thee, for thou lovest me. STRAFFCRD I own No friend but thee, no enemies but thine; Thy lightest thought is my eternal law. 220 How weak, how short, is life to pay — KING Peace, peace ! Thou ow’st me nothing yet. — (To Laup) My lord, what say Those papers ? 460 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS LAUD Your Majesty has ever interposed, In lenity towards your native soil, Between the heavy vengeance of the Church And Scotland. Mark the consequence of warming This brood of northern vipers in your bosom, The rabble, instructed no doubt By Loudon, Lindsay, Hume, and false Argyll, 230 (For the waves never menace heaven until Scourged by the wind’s invisible tyranny ) Have in the very temple of the Lord Done outrage to his chosen ministers. They scorn the liturgy of the Holy Church, Refuse to obey her canons, and deny The apostolic power with which the Spirit Has filled its elect vessels, even from him Who held the keys with power to looso and bind To him who mow pleads in this royal pre- sence. — 240 Let ampler powers and new instructions be Sent to the High Commissioners in Scot- land. To death, imprisonment, and confiscation, Add torture, add the ruin of the kindred Of the offender, add the brand of infamy, Add mutilation: and if this suffice not, Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst They may lick up that scum of schismatics. I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring What we possess, still prate of Christian eace; 259 As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers Which play the part of God ’twixt right and wrong, Should be let loose against the innocent sleep Of tengiel cities and the smiling fields, For some poor argument of policy Which touches our own profit or our pride, (Where it indeed were Christian charity To turn the cheek even to the smiter’s ha:.d); And, when our great Redeemer, when our God, When he who gave, accepted, and retained, Himself in propitiation of our sins, 261 Is scorned in his immediate ministry, With hazard of the inestimable loss Of all the truth and discipline which is Salvation to the extremest generation Of men innumerable, they talk of eas ! Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now ! For, by that Christ who came to bring a sword, Not peace, upon the earth, and gave com- mand To his disciples at the passover That each should sell his robe and by « a sword, — Once strip that minister of naked wrath, And it shall never sleep in peace again Till Scotland bend or break. KING My Lord Archbishop, Do what thou wilt and what thou canst in this. Thy earthly even as thy heavenly King Gives thee large power in his unquiet realm. But we want money, and my mind mis. gives me That for so great an enterprise, as yet, We are unfurnished. STRAFFORD Yet it may not long Rest on our wills. COTTINGTON The expenses 281 Of gathering ship-money, and of distraining For every petty rate (for we encounter A desperate opposition inch by inch In every warehouse and on every farm), Have swallowed up the gross sum of the imposts; So that, though felt as a most grievous scourge Upon the land, they stand us in small stead As touches the receipt. STRAFFORD *T is a conclusio.. Most arithmetical: and thence you infer Perhaps the assembling of a parliament. Now, if a man should eall his dearest enemies 291 To sit in licensed judgment on his life, His Majesty might wisely take that course. (Aside to Corrineron) It is enough to expect from these lean im- posts FRAGMENTS 461 That they perform the office of a scourge, Without more profit. (Aloud) Fines and confiscations, And a forced loan from the refractory city, Will fill our coffers; and the golden love Of loyal gentlemen and noble friends 300 For the worshipped father of our common country, With contributions from the Catholics, Will make Rebellion pale in our excess. Be these the expedients until time and wisdom Shall frame a settled state of government. LAUD And weak expedients they! Have we not drained All, till the A mine exhaustless ? which seemed STRAFFORD And the love which is, If loyal hearts could turn their blood to gold. 309 LAUD Both now grow barren; and I speak it not As loving parliaments, which, as they have been In the right hand of bold, bad, mighty kings The seourges of the bleeding Church, I hate. Methinks they scarcely can deserve our fear. STRAFFORD Oh, my dear liege, take back the wealth thou gavest; With that, take all I held, but as in trust For thee, of mine inheritance; leave me but This unprovided body for thy service, And a mind dedicated to no care Except thy safety; but assemble not —_ 320 A parliament. Hundreds will bring, like me Their fortunes, as they would their blood, before — KING No! thou who judgest them art but one. Alas ! We should be toc much out of love with heaven, Did this vile world show many such as thee, Thou perfect just and honorable man ! Never shall it be said that Charles of Eng- land Stripped those ue loved for fear of those he scorns; Nor will he so much misbecome his throne As to impoverish those who most adorn And best defend it. That you urge, deat Strafford, 331 Inclines me rather — QUEEN To a parliament ? Is this thy firmness ? and thou wilt preside Over a knot of censurers, To the unswearing of thy best resolves, And choose the worst, when the worst comes too soon ? Plight not the worst before the worst must come. Oh, wilt thou smile whilst our ribald foes, Dressed in their own usurped authority, Sharpen their tongues on Henrietta’s fame ? It isenough! Thou lovest me no more ! (Weeps) KING Oh, Henrietta ! (They talk apart) COTTINGTON [to LAUD] Money we have none; And all the expedients of my Lord of Strafford 343 Will scarcely meet the arrears. LAUD Without delay An army must be sent into the north; Followed by a Commission of the Church, With amplest power to quench in fire and blood, And tears and terror, and the pity of hell, The intenser wrath of Heresy. God will give Victory; and victory over Scotland give 350 The lion England tamed into our hands. That will lend power, and power bring gold COTTINGTON Meanwhile We must begin first where your Grace leaves off. Gold must give power, or — 462 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS LAUD I am not averse From the assembling of a parliament. Strong actions and smooth words might teach them soon The lesson to obey. And are they not A bubble fashioned by the monarch’s mouth, The birth of one light breath? If they serve no purpose, 360 A word dissolves them. STRAFFORD The engine of parliaments Might be deferred until I can bring over The Irish regiments; they will serve to assure The issue of the war against the Scots. And, this game won — which if lost, all is lost — Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels, And call them, if you will, a parliament. KING Oh, be our feet still tardy tu shed blood, Guilty though it may be! I would still spare 369 The stubborn country of my birth, and ward From countenances which I loved in youth The wrathful Church’s lacerating hand. (To Laup) Have you o’erlooked the other articles ? Reénter ARCHY LAUD Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane, Cromwell, and other rebels of less note, Intend to sail with the next favoring wind For the Plantations. ARCHY Where they think to found A commonwealth like Gonzalo’s in the play, Gynecoceenic and pantisocratic. KING What ’s that, sirrah ? ARCHY New devil’s politics. Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths; Lucifer was the first republican. 382 Will you hear Merlin’s prophecy, how three [posts ?1 ‘In one brainless skull, when the whitee thorn is full, Shall sail round the world, and come back again: Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull, And come back again when the moon is at full: ? — When, in spite of the Church, They will hear homilies of whatever length Or form they please. 390 [corrrnaton ?] So please your Majesty to sign this order For their detention. ARCHY If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout, rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc., and you found these diseases had secretly entered into a con- spiracy to abandon you, should you think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant to dispeople your un- quiet kingdom of man ? KING If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely ; 403 But in this case — (writing) Here, my lord, take the warrant, And see it duly executed forthwith. — That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished. [Exeunt all but Kine, QUEEN, and ArcHY. ARCHY Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without bene- fit of clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud — who would reduce a verdict of ‘guilty, death,’ by famine, if it were impregnable by composition — all im- panelled against poor Archy for presenting oh bitter physic the last day of the holi- ays. QUEEN Is the rain over. sirrah ? FRAGMENTS 463 KING : When it rains And the sun shines, ’t will rain again to- Morrow; 420 And therefore never smile till you ’ve done crying. ARCHY But ’tis all over now; like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky has wept itself serene. QUEEN What news abroad ? how looks the world this morning ? ARCHY Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There’s a rainbow in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for 429 ‘ A rainbow in the morning Is the shepherd’s warning ; ’ and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the breath of May pierces like a January blast. KING The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and the shep- herd, the wolves for the watchdogs. 439 QUEEN But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy; it says that the waters of the deluge are gone, and can return no more. ARCHY Ay, the salt-water one; but that of tears and blood must yet come down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies. — The rainbow hung over the city with all its shops, . .. and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated light- ning pieced by the masonry of heaven — like a balance in which the angel that dis- tributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the meanest feet. QUEEN Who taught you this trash, sirrah ? ARCHY A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt.— But for the rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and... watil the top of the Tower... of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set off, and at the Tower But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered. KING Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience- ARCHY Then conscience is a fool. — I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots; it seemed to me that the very mice were consulting on the manner of her death. QUEEN Archy is shrewd and bitter. ARCHY Like the season, so blow the winds. — But at the other end of the rainbow, where the gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what think you that I found instead of a mitre ? KING Vane’s wits perhaps. ARCHY Something as vain. I saw a gross vapor hovering in a stinking ditch over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken dishes — the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of this ass. QUEEN Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane She place my lute, together with the music 464 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Mari received last week from Italy, In my boudoir, and — [Exit Arcuy. KING I'll go in. QUEEN My belovéd lord, Have you not noted that the Fool of late Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears ? What can it mean? I should be loath to think 500 Some factious slave had tutored him. KING Ob, no! He is but Occasion’s pupil. Partly ’t is That our minds piece the vacant intervals Of his wild words with their own fashion- ing; As in the imagery of summer clouds, Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts; And, partly, that the terrors of the time Are sown by wandering Rumor in all spirits, And in the lightest and the least may best Be seen the current of the coming wind. sx: QUEEN Your brain is overwronght with these deep thoughts. Come, I will sing to you; let us go try These airs from Italy; and, as we pass The gallery, we ’ll decide where that Cor- reggio Shall hang — the Virgin Mother With her child, born the King of heaven and earth, Whose reign is men’s salvation. shall see A cradled miniature of yourself asleep, 519 Stamped on the heart by never-erring love; Liker than any Vandyke ever made, A pattern to the unborn age of thee, Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy A gipgstall times, and now should weep for sorrow, Did I not think that after we were dead Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that And you The cares we waste upon our heavy crown Would make it light and glorious as a wreath Of heaven’s beams for his dear innocent brow. KING Dear Henrietta ! 530 Scene III.— The Star Chamber. Laun, JuxoNn, STRAFFORD, and others, as Judges. PRYNNE, as a Prisoner, and then Bastwicx. LAUD Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick; let the clerk Recite his sentence. CLERK ‘That he pay five thousand Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded With red-hot iron on the cheek and fore- head, And be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle During the pleasure of the Court.’ LAUD Prisoner, If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence Should not be put into effect, now speak. JUXON If you have aught to plead in mitigation, Speak. BASTWICK Thus, my lords. If, like the prelates, I Were an invader of the royal power, 1 A public scorner of the word of God, Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious, Impious in heart and in tyrannic act, Void of wit, honesty and temperance; If Satan were my lord, as theirs, — our God Pattern of all I should avoid to do; Were I an enemy of my God and King And of good men, as ye are;—I should merit Your fearful state and gilt prosperity, 20 Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn To cowls and robes of everlasting fire. But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not The only earthly favor ye can yield, FRAGMENTS 465 Or I think worth acceptance at your hands, — Scorn, mutilation and imprisonment. Even as my Master did, Until Heaven’s kingdom shall descend on earth, Or earth be like a shadow in the light Of Heaven absorbed. Some few tumultu- ous years 30 Will pass, and leave no wreck of what op- poses His will whose will is power. LAUD Officer, take the prisoner from the bar, And be his tongue slit for his insolence. BASTWICK While this hand holds a pen — LAUD Be his hands — JUXON Stop ! Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak No terror, would interpret, being dumb, Heaven’s thunder to our harm;.. . And hands, which now write only their own shame With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away. 40 LAUD Much more such ‘mercy’ among men would be, Did all the ministers of Heaven’s revenge Flinch thus from earthly retribution. I Could suffer what I would inflict. [Exit Bastwick guarded. Bring up The Lord Bishop of Lincoln. — (To StRAFFORD) Know you not That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln, Were found these scandalous and seditious letters 48 Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled ? I speak it not as touching this poor person; But of the office which should make it holy, Were it as vile as it was ever spotless. Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes ; His Majesty, if I misinterpret not. Enter Bishop Wiiu1aMs guarded STRAFFORD °T were politic and just that Williams taste The bitter fruit of his connection with The schismatics. But you, my Lord Arch- bishop, Who owed your first promotion to his favor, Who grew beneath his smile — LAUD Would therefore beg The office of his judge from this High Court, — 6a That it shall seem, even as it is, that I, In my assumption of this sacred robe, Have put aside all worldly preference, All sense of all distinction of all persons, All thoughts but of the service of the Church. — Bishop of Lincolu ! WILLIAMS Peace, proud hierarch t I know my sentence, and I own it just. Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve In stretching to the utmost Scrwe IV. — Hameppen, Pym, CromwEtt, his Daughter, and young Sin Harry VANE. HAMPDEN England, farewell! Thou, who hast been my cradle, Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave! I held what I inherited in thee As pawn for that inheritance of freedom Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler’s smile. How can I call thee England, or my coun- try ?— Does the wind hold ? VANE The vanes sit steady Upon the Abbey towers. The silver light- nings Of the evening star, spite of the city’s smoke, Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air. zc Mark too that fleet of fleecy-wingéd clouds Sailing athwart St. Margaret’s. 466 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS HAMPDEN Hail, fleet herald Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee, Beyond the shot of tyranny, Beyond the webs of that swoln spider . Beyond the curses, calumnies, and [lies ?] Of atheist priests ! And thou Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide At- lantic, 19 Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm, Bright as the path to a belovéd home, Oh, light us to the isles of the evening land ! Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer Of sunset, through the distant mist of years Touched by departing hope, they gleam ! lone regions, Where power’s poor dupes and victims yet have never Propitiated the savage fear of kings With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns; 30 Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites Wrest man’s free worship, from the God who loves, To the poor worm who envies us his love ! Receive, thou young of Paradise, These exiles from the old and sinful world ! This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights Dart mitigated influence through their veil Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth; 40 This vaporous horizon, whose dim round Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea, Repelling invasion from the towers, — Presses upon me like a dungeon’s grate, A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall. The boundless universe Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul That owns no master; while the loathliest ward sacred Of this wide prison, Eugland, is a nest Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops, — 50 To which the eagle spirits of the free, Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storin Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth, Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die And cannot be repelled. Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time, They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop Through palaces and temples thunder- proof. SczenE V ARCHY I’ll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the tears shed on its old [roots ?] as the [wind ?] plays the song of ‘A widow bird sate mourning Upon a wintry bough.’ (Sings) Heigho ! the lark and the owl! One flies the morning, and one lulls the night; Only the nightingale, poor fond soul, Sings like the fool through darkness and light. ‘A widow bird sate mourning for her love io Upon a wintry bough; The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below. ‘There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No flower upon the ground, And little motion in the air Except the mill-wheel’s sound.’ FRAGMENTS OF AN _ UNFIN- ISHED DRAMA Date 1821-22. Published in part by Mrs. Shelley, 1824, and the remainder by Garnett, 1862, and Rossetti, 1870. Mrs. Shelley writes: ‘The following fragments are part of a drama, undertaken for the amusement of the individ- uals who composed our intimate society, but FRAGMENTS 467 left unfinished. I have preserved a sketch of the story, so far as it had been shadowed out in the poet’s mind.’ It is possibly connected with the project of a play oa Trelawny’s career. Garnett gives a note on the portion which he called The Magic Plant. ‘A close scrutiny, however, of one of Shelley’s MS. books has revealed the existence of much more of this piece than has hitherto been suspected to exist. By far the larger portion of this, form- ing an episode complete in itself, is here made public, under the title of The Magic Plant. . - » The little drama of which this charming sport of fancy forms a portion was written at Pisa during the late winter or early spring of 1822. The episode of The Magic Plant was obviously suggested by the pleasure Shelley received from the plants grown indoors in his Pisan dwelling, which he says in a letter writ- ten in January, 1822, “ turn the sunny winter into spring.” See also the poem of The Zucca, composed about the same time.’ {An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble nature. She becomes enamoured of him; and he, in- constant to his mortal love, for a while returns her passion: but at length, recalling the mem- ory of her whom he left, and who laments bis loss, he escapes from the enchanted island, und returns to his lady. His mode of life makes him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to bring him, by a spirit- brewed tempest, back to her island. ] Scens — Before the Cavern of the Indian En- chantress. The ENCHANTREsS comes forth. ENCHANTRESS He came like a dream in the dawn of life, He fled like a shadow before its noon; He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife, And I wander and wane like the weary moon. O sweet Echo, wake, And for my sake Make answer the while my heart shall break ! But my heart has a musie which Echo’s hea nanaise and true, yet can answer And i thadow that moves in the soul’s eclipse 0 Can return not the kiss by his now for- got; Sweet lips ! he who hath On my desolate path Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death ! (The Excnantress makes her spell: she is an- swered by a Spirit) SPIRIT Within the silent centre uf the earth My mansion is; where I have lived in- sphered From the beginning, and around my sleep Have woven all the wondrous imagery Of this dim spot, which -uortals call the world; Infinite depths of unkaown elements 20 Massed into one impenecrable mask; Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron. And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds, And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns In the dark space of interstellar air. . [A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate’s fate, leads, in a mysterious manner, the lady of his love to the Enchanted Isle. She is accom- panied by a youth, who loves the lady, but whose passion she returns only with a sisterly affection. The ensuing scene takes place be- tween them on their arrival at the Isle.] Inpian Yours an” Lapy INDIAN And, if my grief should still be dearer to me Than all the pleasures in the world beside, Why would you lighten it ? — LADY I offer only That which I seek, some human sympathy In this mysterious island. INDIAN Oh, my friend, My sister, my belovéd !— What do I say ? My brain is dizzy, and I scarce kuow whether I speak to thee or her. LADY Peace, perturbed heart § I am to thee only as thou to mine, 468 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS The passing wind which heals the brow at noon And may strike cold into the breast at night, Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most, Or long soothe could it linger. INDIAN But you said You also loved ? LADY Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks This word of love is fit for all the worid, 42 And that for gentle hearts another name Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns. T have loved. INDIAN And thou lovest not ? if so Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep. LADY Oh, would that I could claim exemption From all the bitterness of that sweet name. I loved, I love, and when I love no more Let joys and grief perish, and leave de- spair 50 To ring the knell of youth. He stood be- side me, The embodied vision of the brightest dream, Which like a dawn heralds the day of life; The shadow of his presence made my world A paradise. All familiar things he touched, All common words he spoke, became to me Like forms and sounds of a diviner world. He was as is the sun in his fierce youth, As terrible and lovely as a tempest; 59 He came, and went, and left me what Iam. Alas! Why must I think how oft we two Have sate together near the river springs, Under the green pavilion which the willow Spreads on the floor of the unbroken foun- tain, Strewn, by the nurslings that linger there, ver that islet paved with flowers and moss, — While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, Showered on us, and the dove mourned ip the pine, Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own ? 69 The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt, And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn; And on a wintry bouch the widowed bird, Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves, Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow. I, left l:ke her, and leaving one like her, Alike abandoned and abandoning (Oh!f unlike her in this!) the gentlest outh, Whose love had made my sorrows dear to hin, Even as my sorrow made his love to me! INDIAN One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould 80 The features of the wretched; and they are As like as violet to violet, When memory, the ghost, their odors keeps Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy. — Proceed. LADY He was a simple innocent boy. I loved him well, but not as he desired; Yet even thus he was content to be: — A short content, for I was... INDIAN (aside) God of heaven! From such an islet, such a river-spring ...! I dare not ask her if there stood upon it go A pleasure-dome, surmounted by a cres- cent, With steps to the blue water. (Aloud) It may be That Natura masks in life several copies Of the same lot, so that the sufferers May feel another’s sorrow as their own And find in friendship what they lost ir love. That cannot be: yet it is strange that we, From the same scene, by the same path te this Realm of abandonment ... But speak’ your breath — Your breath is like soft music, your words are 108 The echoes of a voice which on my heart Sleeps like a melody of early days. But as you said — LADY He was so awful, yet So beantiful in mystery and terror, Calming me as the loveliness of heaven Soothes the unquiet sea: — and yet not so, For he seemed stormy, and would often seem FRAGMENTS 469 A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds; For such his thoughts, and even his actions were; 109 But he was not of them, nor they of him, But as they hid his splendor from the earth. Some said he was a man of blood and peril, And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips. More need was there I should be innocent, More need that I should be most true and kind, And much more need that there should be found one To share remorse, and scorn and solitude, And all the ills that wait on those who do The tasks of ruin in the world of life. He fled, and I have followed him. INDIAN Such a one Is he who was the winter of my peace. 121 But, fairest stranger, when didst thou de- part, From the far hills where rise the springs of India ? How didst thou pass the intervening sea ? LADY If I be sure I am not dreaming now, I should not doubt to say it was a dream. Methought a star came down from heaven, And rested mid the plants of India, Which I had given a shelter from the frost Within my chamber. There the meteor lay, 130 Panting forth light among the leaves and flowers, As if it lived, and was outworn with speed; Or that it loved, and passion made the ulse Of its bright life throb like an anxious heart, Till it diffused itself, and all the chamber And walls seemed melted into emerald fire That burned not; in the midst of which appeared A spirit like a child, and langhed aloud A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment As made the blood tingle in my warm feet; 140 Then bent over a vase, and murmuring Low, unintelligible melodies, Placed something in the mould like melon- seeds, And slowy faded, and in place of it A soft hand issned from the veil of fire, Holding a cup like a magnolia flower, And poured upon the earth within the vase The element with which it overflowed, Brighter than morning light and purer than The water of the springs of Himalah. 150 INDIAN You waked not ? LADY Not until my dream became Like a child’s legend on the tideless sand, Which the first foam erases half, and half Leaves legible. At length I rose, and went, Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought To set aew cuttings in the empty urns, And when I came to that beside the lat- tice, I saw two little dark-green leaves Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then 159 I half-remembered my forgotten dream. And day by day, green as a gourd in June, The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed Like emerald snakes, mottled and dia- monded With azure mail and streaks of woven silver; And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel, Until the golden eye of the bright flower Through the dark lashes of those veinéd lids, Disencumbered of their silent sleep, 170 Gazed like a star into the morning light. Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw The pulses With which the purple velvet flower was fed To overflow, and, like a poet’s heart Changing bright fancy to sweet sentiment, Changed half the light to fragrance. It soon fell, And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit Left all its treasured beauty. Day by day IT nursed the plant, and on the double flute Played to it on the sunny winter days 1a 470 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain On silent leaves, and sang those words in which Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings; And I would send tales of forgotten love Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs Of maids deserted in the olden time, And weep like a soft cloud in April’s bosom Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant, So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come, 190 And crept abroad into the moonlight air, And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon, The sun averted less his oblique beam. INDIAN And the plant died not in the frost ? LADY It grew; And went out of the lattice which I left Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires Along the garden and across the lawn, And down the slope of moss and through the tufts Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o’ergrown 199 With simple lichens, and old hoary stones, On to the margin of the glassy pool, Even to a nook of unblown violets And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn, Under a pine with ivy overgrown. And there its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard Under the shadows; but when Spring in- deed Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at This shape of autumn couched in their re- cess, Then it dilated, and it grew until 210 One half lay floating on the fountain wave, Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies, Kept time Among the snowy water-lily buds. Its shape was such as summer melody Of the south wind in spicy vales might ive Tosome light cloud bound from the golden dawn %o fairy isles of evening, and it seemed Qn hue and form that it had been a mirror Of all the hues and forms around it and Upon it pictured by the sunny beams 22; Which, from the bright vibrations of the ool, Were feces upon the rafters and the roof Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections Of every infant flower and star of moss And veined leaf in the azure odorous air. And thus it lay in the Elysian calm Of its own beauty, floating on the line Which, like a film in purest space, divided The heaven beneath the water from the heaven 2ar Above the clouds; and every day I went Watching its growth and wondering; And as the day grew hot, methought I saw A glassy vapor dancing on the pool, And on it little quaint and filmy shapes, With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall, Like clouds of gnats with perfect linea- ments. O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from heaven — As if heaven dawned upon the world of dream —— 240 When darkness rose on the extinguished da: Out of the eastern wilderness. INDIAN I too Have found a moment’s paradise in sleep Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow. THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE The circumstances of this poem are described by Mrs. Shelley in words that should always accompany the verse because of the clearness with which they render the scene of Shelley's last composition: ‘In the wild but beautiful Bay of Spezzia the winds and waves which he loved became his playmates. His days were chiefly spent on the water; the management of his boat, its alterations and improvements, were his principal occupations. At night, when the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he often went alone in his little shallop to the rocky caves that bordered it, and sitting beneath their shelter wrote The Triumph of Life, the last of his productions. The beauty but strangeness of this lonely place, the refined pleasure which he felt in the companionship of a few selected friends, onr entire -equestration FRAGMENTS 472 from the rest of the world, all contributed to render this period of his life one of continued enjoyment. I am convinced that the two months we passed there were the happiest he had ever known... . ‘ At first the fatal boat had not arrived, and was expected with great impatience. On Monday, May 12th, it came. Williams records the long wished for fact in his journal: ‘Cloudy and threatening weather. M. Mag- lian called, and after dinner and while walking with him on the terrace, we discovered a strange sail coming round the point of Porto Venere, which proved at length to be Shelley’s boat. She had left Genoa on Thursday last, but had been driven back by the prevailing bad winds. A Mr. Heslop and two English seamen brought her round, and they speak most highly of her performances. She does indeed excite my sur- prise and admiration. Shelley and I walked to Lerici, and made a stretch off the land to try her; and I find she fetches whatever she looks at. In short, we have now a perfect plaything for the summer.” — It was thus that short-sighted mortals welcomed death, he having disguised his grim form in a pleasing mask! The time of the friends was now spent on the sea; the weather became fine, and our whole party often passed the evenings on the water, when the wind promised pleasant sail- ing. Shelley and Williams made longer ex- cursions; they sailed several times to Massa ; they had engaged one of the seamen who brought her round, a boy, by name Charles Vivian ; and they had not the slightest appre- hension of danger. When the weather was unfavorable, they employed themselves with alterations in the rigging, and by building a boat of canvas and reeds, as light as possible, to have on board the other, for the convenience of landing in waters too shallow for the larger vessel. When Shelley was on board, he had his papers with him; and much of the Tri- umph of Life was written as he sailed or weltered on that sea which was soon to engulf him.’ The fragment was published by Mrs. Shel- ley, 1824; she describes it as ‘in so unfinished a state that I arranged it in its present form with the greatest difficulty.’ Swirt as a spirit hastening to his task Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth Rejoicing in his splendor, and the mask Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth; The smokeless altars of the mountain snows Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth Of light the Ocean’s orison arose, To which the birds tempered their matin lay. All flowers in field or forest, which unclose Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, Swinging their censers in the element, 15 With orient incense lit by the new ray Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air; And, in succession due, did continent, Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise, as the Sun their father rose, to bear Their portion of the toil which he of old Took as his own and then imposed on them. 20 But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem The cone of night, now they were laid asleep Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep Of a green Apennine. Before me fled The night; behind me rose the day; the deep Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head; — When a strange trance over my fancy grew Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread 30 Was so transparent that the scene came through, As clear as when a veil of light is drawn O’er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew That I had felt the freshness of that dawn Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn Under the self-same bough, and heard as there 472 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air. 39 And then a vision on my brain was rolled. As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay, This was the tenor of my waking dream. Methought I sate beside a public way Thick strewn with summer dust; and a great stream Of people there was hurrying to and fro, Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam, — All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know Whither he went, or whence he came, or wh He made one of the multitude, and so Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky 50 One of the million leaves of summer’s bier. Old age and youth, manhood and infancy, Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear; Some flying from the thing they feared, and some Seeking the object of another’s fear; And others, as with steps towards the tomb, Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath; And others mournfully within the gloom Of their own shadow walked, and called it death; And some fled from it as it were a ghost, Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath; 61 But more, with motions which each other crossed, Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw Or birds within the noonday ether lost, Upon that path where flowers never grew, — And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst, Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew Out of their mossy cells forever burst, Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told Of grassy paths and wood-lawns inter- spersed 70 With overarching elms, and caverns cold, And violet banks where sweet dreams brood; but they Pursued their serious folly as of old. And, as I gazed, methought that in the way The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June When the south wind shakes the extin- guished day; And a cold glare, intenser than the noon But icy cold, obscured with blinding light The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon — When on the sunlit limits of the night 80 Her white shell trembles amid crimson air, And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might — Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form Bends in dark ether from her infant’s chair; — So came a chariot on the silent storm Of its own rushing splendor; and a Shape So sate within, as one whom years deform, Beneath a dusky hood and double cape, Crouching within the shadow of a tomb; 90 And o’er what seemed the head a cloud- like crape Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom Tempering the light. Upon the chariot- beam A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume The guidance of that wonder-winged team; The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings Were lost — I heard alone on the air’s soft stream The music of their ever-moving wings. All the four faces of that charioteer 99 Had their eyes banded; little profit brings FRAGMENTS 473 Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun, — Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere Of all that is, has been or will be done; So ill was the car guided — but it passed With solemn speed majestically on. The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast, Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance, And saw, like clouds upon the thunder blast, The million with fierce song and maniac dance 110 Raging around. Such seemed the jubilee As when to greet some conqueror’s ad- vance Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea From senate-house, and forum, and theatre, When upon the free Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear. Nor wanted here the just similitude Of a triumphal pageant, for, where’er The chariot rolled, a captive multitude Was driven; —all those who had grown old in power 120 Or misery; all who had their age subdued By action or by suffering, and whose hour Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe, So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower; All those whose fame or infamy must grow Till the great winter lay the form and name Of this green earth with them forever low; All but the sacred few who could not tame Their spirits to the conquerors, but, as soon As they had touched the world with living flame, 130 Fled back like eagles to their native noon, — : . Or those who put aside the diadem Of earthly thrones or gems... . Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem, Were neither mid the mighty captives seen, Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them, Nor those who went before fierce and ob- scene. The wild dance maddens in the van; and those Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green, Outspeed the chariot, and without repose Mix with each other in tempestuous mea- sure 141 To savage music, wilder as it grows. They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure, Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun Of that fierce spirit whose unholy leisure Was soothed by mischief since the world begun Throw back’ their heads and loose their streaming hair; And, in their dance round her who dims the sun, Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now 150 > Bending within each other’s atmosphere, Kindle invisibly, and, as they glow, Like moths by light attracted and repelled, Oft to their bright destruction come and go: Till, like two clouds into one vale im- pelled That shake the mountains when their light- nings mingle And die in rain, the fiery band which held Their natures, snaps, while the shock still may tingle; — One falls and then another in the path Senseless, nor is the desolation single, 160 Yet ere I can say where, the chariot hath Passed over them — nor other trace I find But as of foam after the ocean’s wrath 474 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Is spent upon the desert shore. Behind, Old men and women foully disarrayed Shake their gray hairs in the insulting wind And follow in the dance, with limbs de- cayed, Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still Farther behind and deeper in the shade. But not the less with impotence of will 170 They wheel, though ghastly shadows inter- pose Round them and round each other, and fulfil Their work, and in the dust from whence they rose Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie And past ‘in these performs what in those. Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry, Half to myself I said —‘And what is this ? Whose shape is that within the car? And why ’— I would have added —‘is all here amiss ? ?— But a voice answered — ‘Life !’—I turned, and knew 180 (O Heaven, have mercy on such wretched- ness !) That what I thought was an old root which grew To strange distortion out of the hillside Was indeed one of those deluded czew; And that the grass, which methought hung so wide And white, was but his thin discolored hair; And that the holes he vainly sought to hide Were or had been eyes: — ‘If thou canst, forbear To join the dance, which I had well for- borne !’ Said the grim Feature (of my thought aware). 190 ‘I will unfold that which to this deep scorn Led me and my companions, and relate The progress of the pageant since the morn. ‘If thirst of knowledge shall not then abate, Follow it thou even to the night; but I Am weary.’ — Then like one who with the weight Of his own words is staggered, wearily He paused ; and ere he could resume, I cried: ‘First, who art thou ?’ —‘ Before thy mem- ory, ‘I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, and died, 200 And if the spark with which Heaven lit m spirit Had been with purer nutriment supplied, ‘Corruption would not now thus much in- herit Of what was once Rousseau, —nor this disguise Stain that which ought to have disdained to wear it; ‘If I have been extinguished, yet there rise A thousand beacons from the spark I bore ’— ‘ And who are those chained to the car?’ ‘The wise, ‘The great, the unforgotten, — they who wore Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, 210 Signs of thought’s empire over thought; their lore ‘Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might Could not repress the mystery within, And, for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night ‘Caught them ere evening.’ ‘Who is he with chin Upon his breast, and hands crossed on his chain ?’ ‘The child of a fierce hour; he sought to win FRAGMENTS 475 ‘The world, and lost all that it did contain Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more Of fame and peace than virtue’s self can gain 220 ‘ Without the opportunity which bore Him on its eagle pinions to the peak From which a thousand climbers have be- fore ‘Fallen, as Napoleon fell.’—I felt my cheek Alter, to see the shadow pass away, Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak That every pigmy kicked it as it lay; And much I grieved to think how power and will In opposition rule our mortal day, And why God made irreconcilable 230 Good and the means of good; and for de- spair I half disdained mine eyes’ desire to fill With the spent vision of the times that were Aud searce have ceased tobe. ‘ Dost thou behold,’ Said my guide, ‘those spoilers spoiled, Vol- taire, ‘Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and Leo- pold, And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage — names which the world thinks always old, 238 ‘For in the battle Life and they did wage, She remained conqueror. I was overcome By my own heart alone, which neither age, ‘Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb, Could temper to its object.’—<‘ Let them pass,’ I cried, ‘the world and its mysterious doom ‘Is not somuch more glorious than it was That I desire to worship those who drew New figures on its false and fragile glass ‘ As the old faded.’ —‘ Figures ever new Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may; We have but thrown, as those before us threw, 250 ‘Our shadows on it as it passed away. But mark how chained to the triumphal chair The mighty phantoms of an elder day; ‘ All that is mortal of great Plato there Expiates the joy and woe his Master knew not; The star that ruled his doom was far too fair, ‘And life, where long that flower of Hea- ven grew not, ‘ Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain, Or age, or sloth, or slavery, conld subdue not. ¢ And near him walk the twain, an. The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion Followed as tame as vulture in a chain. ‘The world was darkened beneath either pinion Of him whom from the flock of conquerors Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion; ‘The other long outlived both woes and wars, Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept The jealous key of truth’s eternal doors, ‘If Bacon’s eagle spirit had not leapt Like lightning out of darkness — he com- pelled 270 The Proteus shape of Nature, as it slept, ‘To wake, and lead him to the caves that held The treasure of the secrets of its reign. See the great bards of elder time, who quelled ‘The passions which they sung, as by their strain May well be known: their living melody Tempers its own contagion to the vein 476 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ‘Of those who are infected with it. I Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain ! 279 And so my words have seeds of misery — ‘Evenas the deeds of others, not as theirs.’ And then he pointed to a company, *Midst whom I quickly recognized the heirs Of Cesar’s crime, from him to Constan- tine; The anarch chiefs, whose force and mur- derous snares Had founded many a sceptre-bearing line, And spread the plague of gold and blood abroad; And Gregory and John, and men divine, Who rose like shadows between man and oa, Till that eclipse, still hanging over heaven, Was worshipped, by the world o’er which they strode, 291 For the true sun it quenched. ‘Their power was given But to destroy,’ replied the leader: — ‘I Am one of those who have created, even ‘Tf it be but a world of agony.’ ‘ Whence camest thou ? and whither goest thou ? How did thy course begin?’ I said, ‘and why ? ‘Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow Of people, and my heart sick of one sad thought — Speak !’—‘ Whence I am, I partly seem to know, 300 ‘And how and by what paths I have been brought To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess. Why this should be, my mind can compass not; ‘Whither the conqueror hurries me, still less. But follow thou, and from spectator turn Actor or victim in this wretchedness; ‘And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn From thee. Now listen:—In the April prime, When all the forest tips began to burn ‘With kindling green, touched by the azure clime 310 Of the young season, I was laid asleep Under a mountain, which from unknown time ‘Had yawned into a cavern, high and deep; And from it came a gentle rivulet, Whose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep ‘Bent the soft grass, and kept forever wet The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove With sounds which whoso hears must needs forget ‘ All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love, Which they had known before that hour of rest. 320 A sleeping mother then would dream not of ‘Her only child who died upon the breast At eventide; a king would mourn no more The crown of which his brows were dispos- sessed ‘ When the sun lingered o’er his ocean floor To gild his rival’s new prosperity; Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore ‘Qils, which, if ills, can find no cure from thee, The thought of which no other sleep will quell, Nor other music blot from memory, — 330 ‘So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell; And whether life bad been before that sleep The heaven which I imagine, or a hell ‘Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep, I know not. I arose, and for a space The scene of woods and waters seemed to keep, FRAGMENTS 47} ‘Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace Of light diviner than the common sun Sheds on the common earth, and all the place © Was filled with magic sounds woven into one 340 Oblivious melody, confusing sense Amid the gliding waves and shadows dun; ‘And, as I looked, the bright omnipre- sence Of morning through the orient cavern flowed, And the sun’s image radiantly intense ‘Burned on the waters of the well that glowed Like gold, and threaded all the forest’s maze With winding paths of emerald fire. There stood ‘ Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze Of his own glory, on the vibrating 350 Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays, *A Shape all light, which with one hand did fling Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn, And the invisible rain did ever sing ‘ A silver music on the mossy lawn; And still before me on the dusky grass, Iris her many-colored scarf had drawn: ‘In her right hand she bore a, crysial glass, Mantling with bright nepenthe; the fierce splendor Fell from her as she moved under the mass 360 “Of the deep cavern, and, with palms so tender Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow, Glided along the river, and did bend her ‘Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow, Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream That whispered with delight to be its pil- low. ‘ As one enamoured is upborne in dream O’er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist, To wondrous music, so this Shape might seem ‘Partly to tread the waves with feet which kissed 3790 The dancing foam; partly to glide along The air which roughened the moist ame- thyst, ‘Or the faint morning beams that fell among The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees; And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song ‘Of leaves and winds and waves and birds and bees And falling drops, moved in a measure new, Yet sweet, as on the summer eveniug breeze ‘ Up from the lake a shape of golden dew Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon, 380 Dances i’ the wind, where never eagle flew; ‘And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune To which they moved, seemed as they moved to blot. The thonghts of him who gazed on them; and soon * All that was seemed as if it had been not; And all the gazer’s mind was strewn be- neath Her feet like embers; and she, thought by thought, ‘ Trampled its sparks into the dust of death, As Day upon the threshold of the east Treads ont the lamps of night, until the breath 396 ‘Of darkness reillumine even the least Of heaven’s living eyes; like day she came, Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased ‘To move, as one between desire and shame Suspended, I said — “If, as it doth seem, Thou comest from the realm without a name, 478 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ‘“ Into this valley of perpetual dream, Show whence I came, and where I am, and why — Pass not away upon the passing stream.” *« Arise and quench thy thirst,” was her reply. 400 And, as a shut lily stricken by the wand Of dewy morning’s vital alchemy, ‘I rose; and, bending at her swect com- mand, Touched with faint lips the cup she raised, And suddenly my brain became as sand ‘Where the first wave had more than half erased The track of deer on desert Labrador, Whilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed, ‘ Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore Until the second bursts; — so on my sight Burst a new Vision, never seen before, 411 ‘And the fair Shape waned in the coming light, As veil by veil the silent splendor drops From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite ‘ Of sunrise, ere it tinge the mountain tops; And as the presence of that fairest planet, Although unseen, is felt by one who hopes ‘That his day’s path may end, as he be- gan it, In that star’s smile whose light is like the scent 419 Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it, * Or the soft note in which his dear lament The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress That turned his weary slumber to con- tent, — ‘So knew I in that light’s severe excess The presence of that Shape which on the stream Moved, as I moved along the wilderness, ‘More dimly than a day-appearing dream, The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep, A light of heaven whose half-extinguished beam ‘Through the sick day, in which we wake to weep, 430 Glimmers, forever sought, forever lost; So did that Shape its obscure tenor keep ‘Beside my path, as silent as a ghost. But the new Vision, and the cold bright car, With solemn speed and stunning music, crossed ‘The forest; and, as if from some dread war Triumphantly returning, the loud million Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star. ‘A moving arch of victory, the vermilion And green and azure plumes of Iris had 44c Built high over her wind-winged pavilion; ‘ And underneath ethereal glory clad ‘The wilderness; and far before her flew The tempest of the splendor, which for- bade ‘Shadow to fall from leaf and stone. The crew Seemed in that light, like atomies to dance Within a sunbeam. Some upon the new ‘Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance The grassy vesture of the desert, played, Forgetful of the chariot’s swift advance; 450 ‘ Others stood gazing, till within the shade Of the great mountain its light left them dim; Others outspeeded it; and others made ‘Circles around it, like the clouds that swim Round the high moon in a bright sea of air; And more did follow, with exulting hymn, ‘The chariot and the captives fettered there; But all like bubbles on an eddying flood Fell into the same track at last, and were ‘Borne onward. I among the multitude Was swept. Me sweetest flowers delayed not long; 461 Me not the shadow nor the solitude; ‘Me not that falling stream’s Lethean song; Me not the phantom of that early Form Which moved upon its motion; but among FRAGMENTS 475 ‘The thickest billows of that living storm I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime Of that cold light, whose airs too soon de- form. ‘ Before the chariot had begun to climb The opposing steep of that mysterious dell, Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme 471 ‘Of him who from the lowest depths of hell, Through every paradise and through all glory, Love led serene, and who returned to tell ‘The words of hate and awe,— the won- drous story How all things are iransfigured except Love; For deaf as is a sea which wrath makes hoary, ‘The world can hear not the sweet notes that move The sphere whose light is melody to lovers, — A wonder worthy of his rhyme. The grove ‘Grew dense with shadows to the inmost covers; 48r The earth was gray with phantoms; and the air Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers ‘A flock of vampire-bats before the glare Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening, Strange night upon some Indian isle. Thus were ‘Phantoms diffused around; and some did fling Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves, Behind them; some like eaglets on the wing ‘Were lost in the white day; others like elves 499 Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes Upon the sunny streams and grassy shelves; ‘And others sate chattering like restless apes On vulgar hands, . . . . Some made a cradle of the ermined capes ‘Of kingly mantles; some across the tiar Of pontiffs sate like vultures; others played Under the crown which girt with empire ‘A baby’s or an idiot’s brow, and made Their nests in it. The oldanatomies 500 Sate hatching their bare broods under the shade ‘Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes To reassume the delegated power, Arrayed in which those worms did mon- archize ‘Who made this earth their charnel. Others more Humble, like falcons, sate upon the fist Of common men, and round their heads did soar; ‘Or like small gnats and flies, as thick as mist On evening marshes, thronged about the brow 509 Of lawyers, statesmen, priest and theorist; ‘And others, snow, On fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair, Fell, and were melted by the youthful like discolored flakes of glow ‘Which they extinguished; and, like tears, they were A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained. In drops of sorrow. I became aware ‘Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained The track in which we moved. After brief space, From every form the beauty slowly waned; ‘From every firmest limb and fairest face The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left 521 The action and the shape without the grace ‘Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft With care; and in those eyes where once hope shone, Desire, like a lioness bereft 480 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS “Of her last cub, glared ere it died; each one Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown ‘In autumn evening from a poplar tree. 529 Each like himself and like each other were At first; but some, distorted, seemed to be ‘Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air; And of this stuff the car’s creative ray Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there, ‘As the sun shapes the clouds. Thus on the way Mask after mask fell from the countenance And form of all; and, long before the day ‘Was old, the joy, which waked like heaven’s glance The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died; And some grew weary of the ghastly dance, ‘And fell, as I have fallen, by the way- side; — 541 Those soonest from whose forms most shadows passed, And least of strength and beauty did abide.’ ¢ Then, what is life ? I cried.? — II MINOR FRAGMENTS These minor fragments have been recovered, often with great difficulty, principally from the Shelley MSS., by successive editors. Their general character is described by Mrs. Shelley : In addition to such poems as have an intelli- gible aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many such in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Shelley’s mind, and desire to trace its workings.’ The titles are, as a rule, those given in previous editions. The dates of composition, often conjectural, and of publication, are affixed. HOME Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys, The least of which wronged Memory ever makes Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears. 1816. Garnett, 1862. FRAGMENT OF A GHOST STORY A SHOVEL of his ashes took From the hearth’s obscurest nook, Muttering mysteries as she went. Helen and Henry knew that Granny Was as much afraid of ghosts as any, And so they followed hard — But Helen clung to her brother’s arm, And her own spasm made her shake. 1816. Garnett, 1862. TO MARY O Mary dear, that you were here! With your brown eyes bright and clear, And your sweet voice, like a bird Singing love to its lone mate In the ivy bower disconsolate; Voice the sweetest ever heard! And your brow more Than the sky Of this azure Italy. Mary dear, come to me scon, I am not well whilst thou art far; As sunset to the sphered moon, As twilight to the western star, Thou, beloved, art to me. O Mary dear, that you were here ! The Castle echo whispers ‘ Here !’ Este, 1818. Mrs. Shelley, 1824, TO MARY This, and the following, probably refer te Mrs. Shelley’s grief for the death of their child, illiam. THE world is dreary, And I am weary Of wandering on without thee, Mary; FRAGMENTS 481 A joy was erewhile In thy voice and thy smile, And ’tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. TO MARY My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone ! Thy form is here indeed —a lovely one — But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road, That leads to Sorrow’s most obscure abode; Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair, where For thine own sake I cannot follow thee. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. TO WILLIAM SHELLEY With what truth may I say — Roma, Roma, Roma, Non é pid come era prima! Mrs. Shelley describes Shelley’s grief for the death of this child: ‘Shelley had suffered severely from the death of our son during this summer. His heart, attuned to every kindly affection, was full of burning love for his off- spring. No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were torn from him. .. . When afterwards this child [Wil- liam] died at Rome, he wrote, apropos of the English burying ground in that city: “ This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the yearnings of a parent’s heart are now pro- phetic ; he is rendered immortal by love, as his memory is by death. My beloved child is bu- tiedhere. I envy death the body far less than the oppressors the minds of those whom they have torn from me. The one can only kill the body, the other crushes the affections.” ’ I My lost William, thou in whom Some bright spirit lived, and did That decaying robe consume Which its lustre faintly hid, — Here its ashes find a tomb; But beneath this pyramid Thou art not —if a thing divine Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine Is thy mother’s grief and mine. II Where art thou, my gentle child ? Let me think thy spirit feeds, With its life intense and mild, The love of living leaves and weeds Among these tombs and ruins wild; Let me think that through low seeds Of sweet flowers and sunny grass Into their hues and scents may pass A portion June, 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1824. LINES WRITTEN FOR THE POEM TO WILLIAM SHELLEY I THE world is now our dwelling-place; Where’er the earth one fading trace Of what was great and free does keep, That is our home ! Mild thoughts of man’s ungentle race Shall our contented exile reap; For who that in some happy place His own free thoughts can freely chase By woods and waves can clothe his face In cynic smiles? Child! we shall weep. Il This lament, The memory of thy grievous wrong Will fade But genius is Omnipotent To hallow 1818. Garnett, 1862. TO WILLIAM SHELLEY Tuy little footsteps on the sands Of a remote and lonely shore; The twinkling of thine infant hands Where now the worm will feed no more Thy mingled look of love and glee When we returned to gaze on thee — 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 183y, Ist ed. TO CONSTANTIA I THE rose that drinks the fountain dew In the pleasant air of noon, Grows pale and blue with altered hue In the gaze of the nightly moon; For the planet of frost, so cold and bright, Makes it wan with her borrowed light. 482 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS II Such is my heart — roses are fair, And that at best a withered blossom; But thy false care did idly wear Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom; And fed with love, like air and dew, Its growth 1817. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, Ist ed. TO EMILIA VIVIANI Medwin writes: ‘Shelley felt deeply the fate of poor Emilia, frequently wrote to her, and received from her in reply bouquets of flowers, in return for one of which he sent her the following exquisite madrigal.’ I Maponna, wherefore hast thou sent to me Sweet-basil and mignonette ? Embleming love and health, which never yet In the same wreath might be. Alas, and they are wet! Is it with thy kisses or thy tears ? For never rain or dew Such fragrance drew From plant or flower — the very doubt en- dears My sadness ever new, The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed for thee. II Send the stars light, but send not love to me In whom love ever made Health like a heap of embers soon to fade. March, 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1824, completed by Garnett, 1862, Forman, 1876. TO— Rossetti conjectures that Byron is addressed. O micHTY mind, in whose deep stream this age Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm, Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage ? 1818. Garnett, 1862. SONNET TO BYRON Medwin writes: ‘What his real opinion of Byron’s powers was may be collected from a sonnet he once showed me, and which the sub. ject of it neversaw. The sentiments accord well with that diffidence of his own powers, that innate modesty which always distinguished him. It begins thus’ o am afraid these verses will not please you, but Ir I esteemed you less, Envy would kill Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and De- spair The ministration of the thoughts that fill The mind which, like a worm whose lifc may share A portion of the unapproachable, Marks your creations rise as fast and fair As perfect worlds at the Creator’s will. But such is my regard that nor your power To soar above the heights where others [climb], Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour Cast from the envious future on the time, Move one regret for his unhonored name Who dares these words: — the worm be- neath the sod May lift itself in homage of the God. 1821. Medwin, 1832, 1847, revised by Ros. setti, 1870. A LOST LEADER My head is wild with weeping for a grief Which is the shadow of a gentle mind. I walk into the air (but no relief To seek, — or haply, if I sought, to find; It came unsought) ; — to wonder that a chief Among men’s spirits should be cold aud blind. 1818. Rossetti, 1870. ON KEATS WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB SHOULD BE INSCRIBED — ‘ HERE lieth One whose name was writ on water !’ But ere the breath that could erase it blew FRAGMENTS 483 Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter, — Death, the immortalizing winter, flew Athwart the stream, and time’s printless torrent grew A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name Of Adonais ! 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, Ist ed. TO — Rossetti conjectures that the lines are ad- dressed to Leigh Hunt; Forman, that they may be a cancelled passage of Rosalind and Helen. For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble In my faint eyes, and that my heart beat fast With feelings which make rapture pain resemble, Yet, from thy voice that falsehood starts aghast, I thank thee —let the tyrant keep His chains and tears, yea let him weep With rage to see thee freshly risen, Like strength from slumber, from the prison, In which he vainly hoped the soul to bind Which on the chains must prey that fetter humankind. 1817. Garnett, 1862. MILTON’S SPIRIT I DREAMED that Milton’s spirit rose, and took From life’s green tree his Uranian lute; And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook All human things built in contempt of man, — And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked, Prisons and citadels. 1820. Rossetti, 1870. ‘MIGHTY EAGLE’ Micuty eagle! thou that soarest O’er the misty mountain forest, And amid the light of morning Like a, cloud of glory hiest, And when night descends defiest The embattled tempests’ warning ! 1817. Forman, 1882. LAUREL ‘Wuat art thou, presumptuous, who pro- fanest The wreath to mighty poets only due, Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest ? Touch not those leaves which for the eternal few Who wander o’er the paradise of fame, In sacred dedication ever grew: One of the crowd thou art without a name,’ ‘ Ah, friend, ’t is the false laurel that I wear. Bright though it seem, it is not the same As that which bound Milton’s immortal hair: Its dew is poison; and the hopes that quicken Under its chilling shade, though seeming fair, Are flowers which die almost before they sicken.’ 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, Ist ed. ‘ONCE MORE DESCEND’ Forman conjectures this and the following to be fragments of Otho. ONCE more descend The shadows of my soul upon mankind; For, to those hearts with which they never blend, Thoughts are but shadows which the flashing mind From the swift clouds, which track its flight of fire, Casts on the gloomy world it leaves behind. 1817. Garnett, 1862. INSPIRATION THOsE whom nor power, nor lying faith, nor toil, Nor custom, queen of many slaves, makes blind, Have ever grieved that man should be the spoil Of his own weakness, and with earnest mind Fed hopes of its redemption; these recur Chastened by deathful victory now, and find Foundations in this foulest age, and stir Me whom they cheer to be their minister. 1817. Garnett, 1862. 484 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND ProrLe of England, ye who toil and groan, Who reap the harvests which are not your own, Who weave the clothes which your op- ptessors wear, And for your own take the inclement air; Who build warm houses. . . And are like gods who give them all they have, And nurse them from the cradle to the grave... 1819. Garnett, 1862. ‘WHAT MEN GAIN FAIRLY Forman joins this with the preceding. Wuat men gain fairly, that they should possess ; And children may inherit idleness, From him who earns it—this is under- stood; Private injustice may be general good. But he who gains by base and armed wrong, Or guilty fraud, or base compliances, May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress Is stripped from a convicted thief, and he Left in the nakedness of infamy. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. ROME Roms has fallen; ye see it lying Heaped in undistinguished ruin: Nature is alone undying. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. TO ITALY As the sunrise to the night, As the north wind to the clouds, As the earthquake’s fiery flight, Ruining mountain solitudes, Everlasting Italy, Be those hopes and fears on thee. 1819. Garnett, 1862. ‘UNRISEN SPLENDOR’ Unrisen splendor of the brightest sun, To rise upon our darkness, if the star Now beckoning thee out of thy misty throne Could thaw the clouds which wage an ob- secure war With thy young brightness ! 1820. Garnett, 1862. TO ZEPHYR Cog, thou awakener of the spirit’s ocean, Zephyr, whom to thy cloud or cave No thought can trace! speed with thy gentle motion ! 1821. Rossetti, 1870. ‘FOLLOW’ Fo.tow to the deep wood’s weeds, Follow to the wild briar dingle, Where we seek to intermingle, And the violet tells her tale To the odor-scented gale, For they two have enough to do Of such work as I and you. 1819. Garnett, 1862. THE RAIN-WIND THE gentleness of rain was in the wind. 1821. Rossetti, 1870. RAIN Tue fitful alternations of the rain, When the chill wind, languid as with pain Of its own heavy moisture, here and there Drives through the gray and beamless at- mosphere. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. ‘WHEN SOFT WINDS’ WEN soft winds and sunny skies With the green earth harmonize, And the young and dewy dawn, Bold as an unhunted fawn, Up the windless heaven is gone, — Laugh — for, ambushed in the day, Clouds and whirlwinds watch their prey. 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. FRAGMENTS 485 THE VINE ®LOURISHING vine, whose kindling clusters glow Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee; For thou dost shroud aruin, and below The rotting bones of dead antiquity. 1818. Rossetti, 1870. THE WANING MOON AND like a dying lady, lean and pale, Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil, Out of her chamber, led by the insane And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, The mood arose up in the murky East, A white and shapeless mass. 1820. Mrs. Shelley, 1824. TO THE MOON Briaut wanderer, fair coquette of heaven, To whom alone it has been given To change and be adored forever, Envy not this dim world, for never But once within its shadow grew One fair as 1822. Garnett, 1862. TO THE MOON I ArT thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, — And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy ? II Thou chosen sister of the spirit, That gazes on thee till in thee it pities. . . 1820. Mrs. Shelley, 1824, completed by Rossetti, 1870. POETRY AND MUSIC How sweet it is to sit and read the tales Of mighty poets, and to hear the while Sweet music, which when the attention fails Fills the dim pause ! 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. ‘A GENTLE STORY’ A GENTLE story of two lovers young, Who met in innocence and died in sor- row, And of one selfish heart, whose rancor clung Like curses on them; are ye slow to borrow The lore of truth from such a tale ? Or in this world’s deserted vale, Do ye not see a star of gladness Pierce the shadows of its sadness, — When ye are cold, that love is a light sent From heaven, which none shall quench, to cheer the innocent ? 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. THE LADY OF THE SOUTH FAIntT with love, the Lady of the South Lay in the paradise of Lebanon Under a heaven of cedar boughs; the drouth Of love was on her lips; the light was gone Out of her eyes. 1821. Rossetti, 1870. THE TALE UNTOLD ONE sung of thee who left the tale untold, Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting; Like empty cups of wrought and dedal old, Whieh mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. WINE OF EGLANTINE I am drunk with the honey wine Of the moon-unfolded eglantine, Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls. The bats, the dormice, and the moles 486 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS Sleep in the walls or under the sward Of the desolate Castle yard; And when ’t is spilt on the summer earth Or its fumes arise among the dew, Their jocund dreams are full of mirth, They gibber their joy in sleep; for few Of the fairies bear those bowls so new ! 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, Ist ed. A ROMAN’S CHAMBER I In the cave which wild weeds cover Wait for thine ethereal lover; For the pallid moon is waning, O’er the spiral cypress hanging, And the moon no cloud is staining. II It was once a Roman’s chamber, — And the wild weeds twine and clamber, Where he kept his darkest revels; It was then a chasm for devils. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. SONG OF THE FURIES WHEN a lover clasps his fairest, Then be our dread sport the rarest. Their caresses were like the chaff In the tempest, and be our laugh His despair — her epitaph ! When a mother clasps a child, Watch till dusty Death has piled His cold ashes on the clay; She has loved it many a day — She remaius, — it fades away. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. ‘THE RUDE WIND IS SINGING’ Tae rude wind is singing The dirge of the music dead; The cold worms are clinging Where kisses were lately fed. 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. BEFORE AND AFTER THE babe is at peace within the womb; The corpse is at rest within the tomb: We begin in what we end. 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. THE SHADOW OF HELL A GOLDEN-WINGED Angel stood Before the Eternal Judgment-seat: His looks were wild, and Devils’ blood Stained his dainty hands and feet. The Father and the Son Knew that strife was now begun. They knew that Satan had broken his chain, And with millions of demons in his train, Was ranging over the world again. Before the Angel had told his tale, A sweet and a creeping sound Like the rushing of wings was heard around; And suddenly the lamps grew pale — The lamps, before the Archangels seven — That burn continually in heaven. 1817. Rossetti, 1870. CONSEQUENCE Tue viewless and invisible Consequence Watches thy goings-out, and comings-in, And .. . hovers o’er thy guilty sleep, Unveiling every new-born deed, and thoughts More ghastly than those deeds. 1820. Rossetti, 1870. A HATE-SONG Rossetti gives the source of this: ‘Mr. Browning has furnished me with this amusing absurdity, retailed to him by Leigh Hunt. It seems that Hunt and Shelley were talking one day (probably in or about 1817) concerning Love-Songs ; and Shelley said that he did n't see why Hate-Songs also should not be written, and that he could do them; and on the spot he improvised these lines of doggerel.’ A Hater he came and sat by a ditch, And he took an old cracked lute; And he sang a song which was more of a screech *Gainst a woman that was a brute. 1817. Rossetti, 1870. A FACE His face was like a snake’s — wrinkled and loose And withered. 1820. Rossetti, 1870. FRAGMENTS 487 THE POET’S LOVER I aM as a spirit who has dwelt Within his heart of hearts, and I have felt His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known The inmost converse of his soul, the tone Unheard but in the silence of his blood, When all the pulses in their multitude Image the trembling calm of summer seas. I have unlocked the golden melodies Of his deep soul, as with a master-key, And loosened them and bathed myself therein — Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist Clothing his wings with lightning. 1819. Garnett, 1862. ‘I WOULD NOT BE A KING’ I wouxp not be a king — enough Of woe it is to love; The path to power is steep and rough, And tempests reign above. I would not climb the imperial throne; Tis built on ice which fortune’s sun Thaws in the height of noon. Then farewell, king, yet were I one, Care would not come so soon. Would he and I were far away Keeping flocks on Himalay ! 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. ‘IS IT THAT IN SOME BRIGHTER SPHERE’ Is it that in some brighter sphere We part from friends we meet with here ? Or do we see the Future pass Over the Present’s dusky glass ? Or what is that that makes us seem To patch up fragments of a dream, Part of which comes true, and part Beats and trembles in the heart ? 1819. Garnett, 1862. TO-DAY AND who feels discord now or sorrow ? Love is the universe to-day; These are the slaves of dim to-morrow, Darkening Life’s labyrinthine way. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1889, 1st ed. LOVE’S ATMOSPHERE THERE is a warm and gentle atmosphere About the form of one we love, and thus As in a tender mist our spirits are Wrapped in the of that which is to us The health of life’s own life. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. TORPOR My head is heavy, my limbs are weary, And it is not life that makes me move. 1820. Garnett, 1862. “WAKE THE SERPENT NOT’ Wake the serpent not — lest he Should not know the way to go; Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping Through the deep grass of the meadow ? Not a bee shall hear him creeping, Not a May-fly shall awaken, From its cradling blue-bell shaken, Not the starlight as he’s sliding Through the grass with silent gliding. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. ‘IS NOT TO-DAY ENOUGH ?? Is not te-day enough? Why do I peer Into the darkness of the day to come ? Is not to-morrow even as yesterday ? And will the day that follows change thy doom ? Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way; And who waits for thee in that cheerless home Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn ? 1819. Garnett, 1862. ‘TO THIRST AND FIND NO FILL’ Mrs. Shelley introduces the fragment thus. ‘ And then again this melancholy trace of the sad thronging thoughts, which were the well whence he drew the idea of Athanase, and 488 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS express the restless, passion-fraught emotions of one whose sensibility, kindled to too intense a life, perpetually preyed upon itself.” For- man conjectures that it is a cancelled passage of Julian and Maddalo. To thirst and find no fill — to wail and wan- der With short uneasy steps—to pause and ponder — To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle; To nurse the image of unfelt caresses Till dim imagination just possesses The half-created shadow. 1817. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. LOVE Mrs. Shelley introduces the fragment thus: ‘In the next page 1 find a calmer sentiment, better fitted to sustain one whose whole being was love.’ WEALTH and dominion fade into the mass Of the great sea of human right and wrong, When once from our possession they must pass; But love, though misdirected, is among The things which are immortal, and sur- pass All that frail stuff which will be — or which was. 1817. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. MUSIC I I pant for the music which is divine, My heart in its thirst is a dying flower ; Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine, Loosen the notes in a silver shower; Like a herbless plain for the gentle rain, I gasp, I faint, till they wake again. II Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound, More, oh, more, — I am thirsting yet; It loosens the serpent which care has bound Upon my heart to stifle it: The dissolving strain through every vein Passes into my heart and brain. III As the scent of a violet withered up, Which grew by the brink of a silver lake, When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup, And mist there was none its thirst to slake — And the violet lay dead while the odor flew On the wings of the wind o’er the waters blue — Iv As one who drinks from a charméd cup Of foaming, and sparkling, and murmur. ing wine, Whom, a mighty enchantress filling up, Invites to love with her kiss divine — 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1824. TO ONE SINGING My spirit like a charméd bark doth swim Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet sing- in Far seer into the regions dim Of rapture —as a boat, with swift sails winging Its way adown some many-winding river. 1817. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, Ist ed. TO MUSIC SILVER key of the fountain of tears, Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild; Softest grave of a thousand fears, Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child, Is laid asleep in flowers. 1817. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. TO MUSIC No, Music, thou art not the ‘food of Love,’ Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self. Till it hecomes all Music murmurs of. 1817. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. FRAGMENTS 489 ‘I FAINT, I PERISH WITH MY LOVE!’ I arnt, I perish with my love! I grow Frail as a cloud whose [splendors] pale Under the evening’s ever-changing glow ; I die like mist upon the gale, And like a wave under the calm I fail. 1821. Rossetti, 1870. TO SILENCE Sitence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and Joy Are swallowed up—yet spare me, Spirit, pity me, Until the sounds I hear become my soul, And it has left these faint and weary limbs, To track along the lapses of the air This wandering melody until it rests Among lone mountains in some . . . 1818. Garnett, 1862. ‘OH, THAT A CHARIOT OF CLOUD WERE MINE!’ On, that a chariot of cloud were mine ! Of cloud which the wild tempest weaves in air, ‘When the moon over the ocean’s line Is spreading the locks of her bright gray hair. Oh, that a chariot of cloud were mine! I would sail on the waves of the billowy wind To the mountain peak and the rocky lake, And the... 1817. Garnett, 1862. ‘THE FIERCE BEASTS’ THE fierce beasts of the woods and wilder- nesses Track not the steps of him who drinks of Its For the light breezes, which forever fleet Around its margin, heap the sand thereon. 1818. Rossetti, 1817. ‘HE WANDERS’ He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, Through the dim wildernesses of the mind; Through desert woods and tracts, which seem Like ocean, homeless, boundless, uncon- fined. 1821. Mrs, Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. THE DESERTS OF SLEEP I wEnT into the deserts of dim sleep — That world which, like an unknown wil- derness, Bounds this with its recesses wide and deep. 1820. Rossetti, 1870. A DREAM Mergovcat I was a billow in the crowd Of common men, that stream without a shore, That ocean which at once is deaf and loud; That I, a man, stood amid many more By a wayside which the aspect bore Of some imperial metropolis, Where mighty shapes — pyramid, dome, and tower — Gleamed like a pile of crags. 1821. Rossetti, 1870. THE HEART’S TOMB AND where is truth? On tombs ? forsuch to thee Has been my heart — and thy dead memory Has Jain from childhood, many a change- ful year, Unchangingly preserved and buried there. 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. HOPE, FEAR, AND DOUBT Sucn hope, as is the sick despair of good, Such fear, as is the certainty of ill, Such doubt, as is pale Expectation’s food Turned while she tastes to poison, when the will Is powerless, and the spirit . . . 1820. Garnett, 1862. 490 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS ‘ALAS! THIS IS NOT WHAT I THOUGHT LIFE WAS’ Mrs. Shelley introduces the fragment thus: ‘That he felt these things | public neglect and calumny] deeply cannot be doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart sometimes in solitude, and he would write a few unfinished verses that showed he felt the sting. Among such I find the following.’ Aas ! this is not what I thought life was. I knew that there were crimes and evil men, Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen. In mine own heart I saw as in a glass The hearts of others And when { went among my kind, with triple brass Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed, To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woful mass ! 1820. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. CROWNED Originally published as the conclusion of ‘ When soft winds and sunny skies.’ Rossetti joins it with Laurel at the end. AND that I walked thus proudly crowned withal Is that ’t is my distinction; if I fall, I shall not weep out of the vital day, To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay. 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1889, 2d ed. ‘GREAT SPIRIT’ Forman conjectures that this and the follow- ing are addressed to Liberty. Great Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought Nurtures within its unimagined caves, In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind, Giving a voice to its mysterious waves. 1821. Rossetti, 1870. ‘O THOU IMMORTAL DEITY’ O THov immortal deity Whose throne is in the depth of human thought, I do adjure thy power and thee By all that man may be, by all that he is not, By all that he has been and yet must be! 1821. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 2d ed. ‘YE GENTLE VISITATIONS’ YE gentle visitations of calm thought, Moods like the memories of happier earth, Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth, Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought, — But that the clouds depart and stars remain, While they remain, and ye, alas, depart J 1819. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, Ist ed. ‘MY THOUGHTS’ My thoughts arise and fade in solitude, The verse that would invest them melts away Like moonlight in the heaven of spread- ing day: How beautiful they were, how firm they stood, Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl ! 1817. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. HYMN TO MERCURY 491 TRANSLATIONS The Translations were published partly by Shelley, with other poems, partly by Mrs. Shelley, and partly by Medwin, Garnett, Ros- setti and Forman from MSS. They were written from 1818 to 1822. Two pieces, hy- pothetically ascribed to Shelley by Forman, HYMN TO MERCURY FROM THE GREEK OF HOMER This remarkable piece of facile rendering from the Homeric Hymn was composed in the summer of 1820. Shelley mentions it in a letter to Peacock, July 20: ‘I am translating, in ottava rima, the Hymn to Mercury of Homer. Of course my stanza precludes a literal transla- tion. My next effort will be that it should be legible — a quality much to be desired in trans- lations.’ It was published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824, I Sinc, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove, The Herald-child, king of Arcadia And all its pastoral hills, whom, in sweet love Having been interwoven, modest May Bore Heaven’s dread Supreme. Anantique grove Shadowed the cavern where the lovers lay In the deep night, unseen by Gods or Men, And white-armed Juno slumbered sweetly then. II Now, when the joy of Jove had its fulfilling, And Heaven’s tenth moon chronicled her relief, She gave to light a babe all babes excelling, A schemer subtle beyond all belief, A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing, A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief, Who ’mongst the Gods was soon about to thieve, And other glorious actions to achieve. III The babe was born at the first peep of day; He began playing on the lyre at noon, The Dinner Party Anticipated, a paraphrase of Horace III. xix., and The Magic Horn from Bronzino, are excluded from the text, there being no substantial evidence that Shelley wrote them. And the same evening did he steal away Apollo’sherds. The fourth day of the moon, On which him bore the venerable May, From her immortal limbs he leaped full soon, Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep, But out toseek Apollo’s herds would creep. IV Out of the lofty cavern wandering He found a tortoise, and cried out —‘A treasure !’ : (For Mercury first made the tortoise sing) The beast before the portal at his leisure The flowery herbage was depasturing, Moving his feet in a deliberate measure Over the turf. Jove’s profitable son Eying him laughed, and laughing thus be- gun: — Vv ‘ A useful godsend are you to me now, King of the dance, companion of the feast, Lovely in all your nature! Welcome, you Excellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain beast, Got you that speckled shell ? Thus much I know, You must come home with me and be my guest; You will give joy to me, and I will do All that is in my power to honor you. VI ‘ Better to be at home than out of door, So come with me; and though it has beer said That you alive defend from magic power, I know you will sing sweetly when you ’re dead.’ Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore, Lifting it from the grass on which it fed And grasping it in his delighted hold, His treasured prize into the cavern old. 492 VII Then, scooping with a chisel of gray steel, He bored the life and soul out of the beast. Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal Darts through the tumult of a human breast Which thronging cares annoy — not swifter wheel The flashes of its torture and unrest Out of the dizzy eyes — than Maia’s son All that he did devise hath featly done. Vill And through the tortoise’s hard stony skin At proper distances small holes he made, And fastened the cut stems of reeds within, And with a piece of leather overlaid The open space and fixed the cubits in, Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o’er all Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmi- cal. IX When he had wrought the lovely instru- ment, He tried the chords, and made division meet, Preluding with the plectrum, and there went Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent A strain of unpremeditated wit Joyous and wild and wanton —such you may Hear among revellers on a holiday. x He sung how Jove and May of the bright sandal Dallied in love not quite legitimate; And his own birth, still scoffing at the scandal And naming his own name, did celebrate; His mother’s cave and servant maids he planned all In plastic verse, her household stuff and state, Perennial pot, trippet, and brazen pan, — But singing, he conceived another plan. TRANSLATIONS XI Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat, He in his sacred crib deposited The hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet Rushed with great leaps up to the moun tain’s head, Revolving in his mind some subtle feat Of thievish craft, such as a swindler might Devise in the lone season of dun night. XII Lo! the great Sun under the ocean’s bed has Driven steeds and chariot. meanwhile strode O’er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows, Where the immortal oxen of the God Are pastured in the flowering unmown meadows And safely stalled in a remote abode. The archer Argicide, elate and proud, Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud. The child XIII He drove them wandering o’er the sandy way, But, being ever mindful of his craft, Backward and forward drove he them astray, So that the tracks which seemed before, were aft; His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray, And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft Of tamarisk and tamarisk-like sprigs, And bound them in a lump with withy twigs. XIV And on his feet he tied these sandals light, The trail of whose wide leaves might not betray His track; and then, a self-sufficing wight, Like a man hastening on some distant way, He from Pieria’s mountain bent his flight; But an old man perceived the infant pass Down green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass. HYMN TO MERCURY 493 XV The old man stood dressing his sunny vine. ‘Halloo! old fellow with the crookéd shoulder ! You grub those stumps? before they will bear wine Methinks even you must grow a little older. Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine, As you would ’scape what might appall a bolder: Seeing, see not — and hearing, hear not — and — If you have understanding, understand.’ XVI So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast; O’er shadowy mountain and resounding dell And flower-paven plains great Hermes passed ; Till the black night divine, which favor- ine fell Around his steps, grew gray, and morning fast Wakened the world to work, and from her cell Sea-strewn the Pallantean Moon sublime Into her watch-tower just began to climb. XVII Now to Alpheus he had driven all The broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun; They came unwearied to the lofty stall And to the water troughs which ever run Through the fresh fields; and when with rushgrass tall, Lotos and all sweet herbage, every one Had pastured been, the great God made them move Towards the stall in a collected drove. XVIII A mighty pile of wood the God then heaped, And, having soon conceived the mystery Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches stripped The bark, and rubbed them in his palms; on high Suddenly forth the burning vapor leaped, And the divine child saw delightedly. Mercury first found out for human weal Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and steel. XIX And fine dry logs and roots innumerous He gathered in a delve upon ground — And kindled them — and instantaneous The strength of the fierce flame was breathed around; And, whilst the might of glorions Vulcan thus Wrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound, Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing the loud, Close to the fire —such might was in the God. XX. And on the earth upon their backs he threw The panting beasts, and rolled them o’er and o’er, And bored their lives out. Without more ado He cut up fat and flesh, and down be- fore The fire on spits of wood he placed the two, Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all the ‘ore Pursed in the bowels; and while this was done He stretched their hides over a craggy stone. XXI We mortals let an ox grow old, and then Cut it up after long consideration, — But joyous-minded Hermes from the glen Drew the fat spoils to the more open station Of a flat smooth space, and portioned them; and when He had by lot assigned to each a ration Of the twelve Gods, his mind became aware Of all the joys which in religion are. XXII For the sweet savor of the roasted meat Tempted him though immortal. Nathe- less He checked his haughty will and did not eat, Though what it cost him words cax scarce express, 494 TRANSLATIONS And every wish to put such morsels sweet Down his most sacred throat he did re- press; But soon within the lofty portaled stall He placed the fat and flesh and bones and all, XXIII And every trace of the fresh butchery And cooking the God soon made disap- pear, As if it all had vanished through the sky; He burned the hoofs and horns and head and hair, — Lhe insatiate fire devoured them hungrily; And, when he saw that everything was clear, He quenched the coals, and trampled the black dust, And in the stream his bloody sandals tossed. XXIV All night he worked in the serene moon- shine. But when the light of day was spread abroad He sought his natal mountain-peaks divine. On his long wandering neither man nor god Had met him, since he killed Apollo’s kine, Nor house-dog had barked at him on his road; Now he obliquely through the key-hole passed, Like a thin mist or an autumnal blast. XXV Right through the temple of the spacious cave He went with soft light feet, as if his tread Fell not on earth; no sound their falling gave; Then to his cradle he crept quick, and spread The swaddling-clothes about him; and the knave Lay playing with the covering of the bed fe With his left hand about his knees — the right Held his belovéd tortoise-lyre tight. XXVI There he lay innocent as a new-born child, As gossips say; but though he was a god, The goddess, his fair mother, unbeguiled Knew all that he had done being abroad. ‘Whence come you, and from what ad- venture wild, You cunning rogue, and where have you abode All the long night, clothed in your impu dence ? What have you done since you departed hence ? XXVII ‘ Apollo soon will pass within this gate And bind your tender body in a chain Inextricably tight, and fast as fate, Unless you can delude the God again, Even when within his arms. Ah, runa: gate ! A pretty torment both for gods and nen Your father made when he made you !’— ‘Dear mother,’ Replied sly Hermes, ‘ wherefore scold and bother ? XXVIII ‘ As if I were like other babes as old, And understood nothing of what is what, And cared at all to hear my mother scold. Tin my subtle brain a scheme have got, Which whilst the sacred stars round Heaven are rolled Will profit you and me; nor shall our lot Be as you counsel, without gifts or food, To spend our lives in this obscure abode. XXIX ‘But we will leave this shadow-peopled cave ee among the Gods, and pass each ay In high communion, sharing what they have Of profuse wealth and unexhausted prey; And from the portion which my father gave To Phebus, I will snatch my share away; Which if my father will not, natheless I, Who am the king of robbers, can but try. HYMN TO MERCURY 495 XXX ‘ And, if Latona’s son shou!d find me out, I’ll countermine him by a deeper plan; I'll pierce the Pythian temple-walls, though stout, And sack the fane of everything I can — Caldrons and tripods of great worth no doubt, Each golden cup and polished brazen pan All the wrought tapestries and garments gay.’ So they together talked. Meanwhile the Day, XXXI Ethereal born, arose out of the flood Of flowing Ocean, bearing light to men. Apollo passed toward the sacred wood, Which from the inmost depths of its green glen Echoes the voice of Neptune; and there stood, On the same spot in green Onchestus then, That same old animal, the vine-dresser, Who was employed hedging his vineyard there. XXXII Latona’s glorious Son began: — ‘I pray Tell, ancient hedger of Onchestus green, Whether a drove of kine has passed this way, All heifers with crooked horns ? for they have been Stolen from the herd in high Pieria, Where a black bull was fed apart, be- tween Two woody mountains in a neighboring glen, And four fierce dogs watched there, unani- mous as men. XXXII «And what is strange, the author of this theft Has stolen the fatted heifers every one, But the four dogs and the black bull are left. Stolen they were last night at set of sun, Of their soft beds and their sweet food be- reft. Now tell me, man born ere the world begun, Have you seen any one pass with the cows ?’” To whom the man of overhanging brows: XXXIV ‘My friend, it would require no common skill Justly to speak of everything I see; On various purposes of good or ill Many pass by my vineyard,—and to me *T is difficult to know the invisible Thoughts, which in all those many minds may be. Thus much alone I certainly can say, I tilled these vines till the decline of day, XXXV ‘And then I thought I saw, but dare not speak With certainty of such a wondrous thing, A child, who could not have been born a week, Those fair-horned cattle closely follow- ing, And in his hand he held a polished stick, And, as on purpose, he walked wavering From one side to the other of the road, And with his face opposed the steps he trod.’ XXXVI Apollo hearing this, passed quickly on — No wingéd omen could have shown more clear That the deceiver was his father’s son. So the God wraps a purple atmosphere Around his shoulders, and like fire is gone To famous Pylos, seeking his kine there, And found their track and his, yet hardly cold, And. cried —‘ What wonder do mine eyes behold ! XXXVIT ‘Here are the footsteps of the hornéd herd Turned back towards their fields of as- phodel; But these are not the tracks of beast or bird, Gray wolf, or bear, or lion of the dell, Or manéd Centaur — sand was never stirred By man or woman thus! Inexplicable! Who with unwearied feet could e’er impress The sand with such enormous vestiges ? 496 XXXVIII ‘That was most strange — but this is stranger still!’ Thus having said, Phebus impetuously Sought high Cyllene’s forest-cintured hill, And the deep cavern where dark shad- ows lie, And where the ambrosial nymph with happy will Bore the Saturnian’s love-child, Mercury; And a delightful odor from the dew Of the hill pastures, at his coming, flew. XXXIX And Phebus stooped under the craggy roof Arched over the dark cavern. Maia’s child Perceived that he came angry, far aloof, About the cows of which he had been beguiled; And over him the fine and fragrant woof Of his ambrosial swaddling clothes he piled, As among firebrands lies a burning spark Covered, beneath the ashes cold and dark. There, like an sien te had sucked his And ae was newly washed, and put tu Gale. ba courting sleep with weary And a ee in a lump, hands, feet, and head, He lay, and his belovéd tortoise still He grasped, and held under his shoulder- blade. Phebus the lovely mountain-goddess knew, Not less her subtle, swindling baby, who XLI Lay swathed in his sly wiles. Round every crook Of the ample cavern for his kine Apollo Looked sharp; and when he saw them not, he took The glittering key, and opened three great hollow Recesses in the rock, where many a nook Was filled with the sweet food immortals swallow; And mighty heaps of silver and of gold Were piled within — a wonder to behold ! TRANSLATIONS XLII And white and silver robes, all overwrought With cunning workmanship of tracery sweet; Except among the Gods there can be nought In the wide world to be compared with it. Latona’s offspring, after having sought His herds in every corner, thus did greet Great Hermes :— ‘Little cradled rogue, declare Of my illustrious heifers, where they are! XLII ‘Speak quickly ! or a quarrel between us Must rise, and the event will be that I Shall hurl you into dismal Tartarus, In fiery gloom to dwell eternally; Nor shall your father nor your mother loose The bars of that black dungeon; utterly You shall be cast out from the light of day, To rule the ghosts of men, unblessed as they.’ XLIV To whom thus Hermes slyly answered: — ‘Son Of great Latona, what a speech is this ! ‘Why come you here to ask me what is done With the wild oxen which it seems you miss ? I have not seen them, nor from any one Have heard a word of the whole business; If you should promise an immense reward, I could not tell more than you now have heard. XLV ‘An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong, And I am but a little new-born thing, Who, yet at least, can think of nothing wrong. My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling The cradle-clothes about me all day long, — Or half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing, And to be washed in water clean and warm, And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm. XLVI ‘Oh, let not e’er this quarrel be averred ! The oe Gods would laugh at you, if e’er HYMN TO MERCURY 497 You should allege a story so absurd As that a new-born infant forth could fare Out of his home after a savage herd. I was born yesterday — my small feet are Too tender for the roads so hard and rough. And if you think that this is not enough, XLVII ‘I swear a great oath, by my father’s head, That I stole not your cows, and that I know Of no one else, who might, or could, or did. Whatever things cows are I do not know, For I have only heard the name.’ This said, He winked as fast as could be, and his brow Was wrinkled, and a whistle loud gave he, Like one who hears some strange absurdity. XLVIII Apollo gently smiled and said: —‘ Aye, aye, — You cunning little rascal, you will bore Many arich man’s house, and your array Of thieves will lay their siege before his door, Silent as night, in night; and many a day In the wild glens rough shepherds will deplore That you or yours, having an appetite, Met with their cattle, comrade of the night ! XLIX sAnd this among the Gods shall be your ift, To be considered as the lord of those Who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal, and shop-lift. But now if you would not your last sleep doze, Craw] ont!’ — Thus saying, Phebus did uplift The subtle infant in his swaddling clothes, And in his arms, according to his wont, Ascheme devised the illustrious Argiphont. L And sneezed and shuddered. Phebus on the grass Him threw ; and whilst all that he had designed He did perform — eager although to pass, Apollo darted from his mighty mind Towards the subtle babe the following scoff: ‘Do not imagine this will get you off, LI “You little swaddled child of Jove and May!’ And seized him : — ‘ By this omen I shall trace My noble herds, and you shall lead the way.’ Cyllenian Hermes from the grassy place, Like one in earnest haste to get away, Rose, and with hands lifted towards his face, Round both his ears up from his shoulders drew His swaddling clothes, and —‘ What mean you to do LII ‘With me, you unkind God ?’ — said Mer- cury: ‘Is it about these cows you tease me so? I wish the race of cows were perished ! —I Stole not your cows — I do not even know What things cows are. Alas! I well may sigh That since I came into this world of woe I should have ever heard the name of one — But I appeal to the Saturnian’s throne.’ LHI Thus Phebus and the vagrant Mercury Talked without coming to an explanation, With adverse purpose. As for Phebus, he Sought not revenge, but only informa- tion, And Hermes tried with lies and roguery To cheat Apollo. But when no evasion Served —for the cunning one his match had found — He paced on first over the sandy ground. LIV He of the Silver Bow the child of Jove Followed behind, till to their heavenly Sire Came both his children, beautiful as Love, And from his equal balance did require A judgment in the cause wherein they strove. O’er odorous Olympus and its snows A murmuring tumult as they came arose, — 498 TRANSLATIONS ENE No mark or track denoting where they And from the folded depths of the great trod Hill, The hard ground gave. But, working at While Hermes and Apollo reverent stood his fence, Before Jove’s throne, the indestructible Immortals rushed in mighty multitude; And whilst their seats in order due they fill, The lofty Thunderer in a careless mood To Phebus said : — ‘Whence drive you this sweet prey, This herald-baby, born but yesterday ? — LVI ‘A most important subject, trifler, this To lay before the Gods !’—‘ Nay, fa- ther, nay, When you have understood the business, Say not that I alone am fond of prey, I found this little boy in a recess Under Cyllene’s mountains far away — A manifest and most apparent thief, A scandal-monger beyond all belief. LVII ‘IT never saw his like either in heaven Or upon earth for knavery or craft. Out of the field my cattle yester-even, By the low shore on which the loud sea laughed, He right down to the river-ford had driven; And mere astonishment would make you daft To see the double kind of footsteps strange He has impressed wherever he did range. LVIIl ‘The cattle’s track on the black dust full well Is evident, as if they went towards The place from which they came — that asphodel Meadow, in which I feed my many herds; His steps were most incomprehensible. I know not how I can describe in words Those tracks; he could have gone along the sands Neither upon his feet nor on his hands; LIX ‘He must have had some other stranger mode Of moving on. Those vestiges immense, Far as I traced them on the sandy road, Seemed like the trail of oak-toppings; but thence A mortal hedger saw him as he passed To Pylos, with the cows, in fiery haste. Lx ‘J found that in the dark he quietly Had sacrificed some cows, and before light Had thrown the ashes all dispersedly About the road; then, still as gloomy night, Had crept into his cradle, either eye Rubbing, and cogitating some new sleight. No eagle could have seen him as he lay Hid in his cavern from the peering day. LXI ‘I taxed him with the fact, when he averred Most solemnly that he did neither see Nor even had in any manner heard Of my lost cows, whatever things cows be; Nor could he tell, though offered a reward, Not even who could tell of them to me.’ So speaking, Phebus sate; and Hermes then Addressed the Supreme Lord of Gods and Men: LXII ‘Great Father, you know clearly before- hand That all which I shall say to you is sooth; I am a most veracious person, and Totally unacquainted with untruth. At sunrise Phebus came, but with no band Of Gods to bear him witness, in great wrath, To my abode, seeking his heifers there, And saying that I must show him where they are, Lx ‘Or he would hurl me down the dark abyss. I know that every Apollonian limb Is clothed with speed and might and man- liness, As a green bank with flowers — but, ux like him, HYMN TO MERCURY 499 I was born yesterday, and you may guess He well knew this when he indulged the whim Of bullying a poor little new-born thing That slept, and never thought of cow-driv- ing. LXIV * Am I likea strong fellow who steals kine ? Believe me, dearest Father — such you are — This driving of the herds is none of mine; Across my threshold did I wander ne’er, So may I thrive! I reverence the divine Sun and the Gods, and I love you, and care Even for this hard accuser — who must know I am as innocent as they or you. LXV +I swear by these most gloriously-wrought portals (It is, you will allow, an oath of might) Through which the multitude of the Im- mortals Pass and repass forever, day and night, Devising schemes for the affairs of mor- tals — That I am guiltless; and I will requite, Although mine enemy be great and strong, His cruel threat — do thou defend the young i” LXVI So speaking, the Cyllenian Argiphont Winked, as if now his adversary was fitted; And Jupiter according to his wont Laughed heartily to hear the subtle- witted Infant give such a plansible account, And every word alie. But he remitted Judgment at present, and his exhortation Was, to compose the affair by arbitration. LXVII And they by mighty Jupiter were bidden To go forth with a single purpose both, Neither the other chiding nor yet chidden; And Mercury with innocence and truth To lead the way, and show where he had hidden The mighty heifers. loath, Hermes, nothing Obeyed the Agis-bearer’s will — for he Is able to persuade all easily. LXVIUI These lovely children of Heaven’s highest Lord Hastened to Pylos and the pastures wide And lofty stalls by the Alphean ford, Where wealtk in the mute night is multi- plied With silent growth. Whilst Hermes drove the herd Out of the stony cavern, Phebus spied The hides of those the little babe had slain, Stretched on the precipice above the plain. LXIX ‘ How was it possible,’ then Phebus said, ‘That you, a little child, born yesterday, A thing on mother’s milk and kisses fed, Could two prodigious heifers ever flay ? Even I myself may well hereafter dread Your prowess, offspring of Cyllenian May, When you grow strong and _ tall.’ spoke, and bound Stiff withy bands the infant’s wrists around. He LXX He might as well have bound the oxen wild; The withy bands, though starkly inter- knit, Fell at the feet of the immortal child, Loosened by some device of his quick wit. Phebus perceived himself again beguiled, And stared, while Hermes sought some hole or pit, be askance and winking fast as thought Where he might hide himself and not be caught. LXxI Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill Subdued the strong Latonian by the might Of winning music to his mightier will; His left hand held the lyre, and in his right The plectrum struck the chords; uncon- querable Up from beneath his hand in circling flight 500 TRANSLATIONS The gathering music rose — and sweet as Love The penetrating notes did live and move LXXII Within the heart of great Apollo. He Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure. Close to his side stood harping fearlessly The unabashéd boy; and to the measure Of the sweet lyre there followed loud and free His joyous voice; for he unlocked the treasure Of his deep song, illustrating the birth Of the bright Gods and the dark desert Earth; LXXIII And how to the Immortals every one A portion was assigned of all that is ; But chief Mnemosyne did Maia’s son Clothe in the light of his loud melodies; And, as each God was born or had begun, He in their order due and tit degrees Sung of his birth and being — and did move Apollo to unutterable love. LXXIV These words were wingéd with his swift delight: «You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you Deserve that fifty oxen should requite Such minstrelsies as I have heard even now. Comrade of feasts, little contriving wight, One of your secrets I would gladly know, Whether the glorious power you now show forth Was folded up within you at your birth, LXXV ‘Or whether mortal tanght or God inspired The power of unpremeditated song ? Many divinest sounds have I admired, The Olympian Gods and mortal men among; But such a strain of wondrous, strange, untired, And soul-awakening music, sweet and strong, Yet did I never hear except from thee, Offspring of May, impostor Mercury ! LXXVI ‘What Muse, what skill, what unimagined use, What exercise of subtlest art, has given Thy songs such power ? —for those wha hear may choose From three, the choicest of the gifts of Heaven, Delight, and love, and sleep — sweet sleep whose dews Are sweeter than the balmy tears of even. And I, who speak this praise, am that Apollo Whom the Olympian Muses ever follow; LXXVII ‘And their delight is dance, and the blithe noise Of song and overflowing poesy; And sweet, even as desire, the liquid voice Of pipes, that fills the clear air thrill- ingly; But never did my inmost soul rejoice In this dear work of youthful revelry, As now. I wonder at thee, son of Jove; Thy harpings and thy song are soft as love, LXXVIII ‘Now since thow hast, although so very small, Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear — And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall, Witness between us what I promise here — That I will lead thee to the Olympian Hall, Honored and mighty, with thy mother dear, And many glorious gifts ia joy will give thee, And even at the end will ne’er deceive thee.’ LXXIX To whom thus Mercury with pruden* speech: ‘ Wisely hast thou inquired of my skill; I envy thee no thing I know to teach Even ie day; for both in word and will T would be gentle with thee; thou canst reach All things in thy wise spirit, and thy sill Is highest in heaven among the sons of Jove, Who loves thee in the fulness of his love. HYMN TO MERCURY gor LXXX ‘The Counsellor Supreme has given to thee Divinest gifts, out of the amplitude Of his profuse, exhaustless treasury ; By thee, ’t is said, the depths are under- stood Of his far voice; by thee the mystery Of all oracular fates, — and the dread mood Of the diviner is breathed up; even I — A ehild— perceive thy might and maj- esty. LXXXI ‘Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit Can find or teach. Yet since thou wilt, come take The lyre —be mine the glory giving it — Strike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake Thy joyous pleasure out of many a fit Of trancéd sound —and with fleet fin- gers make Thy liquid-voicéd comrade thee, — 7+ can talk measured music eloquently. talk with LXXXII ‘Then bear it boldly to the revel loud, Love-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state, A joy by night or day; for those endowed With art and wisdom who interrogate It teaches, babbling in delightful mood All things which make the spirit most elate, Soothing the mind with sweet familiar play, . Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay. LXXXIII ‘To those who are unskilled in its sweet tongue, Though they should question most im- petuously Its hidden soul, it gossips something wrong — Some senseless and impertinent reply. But thou who art as wise as thou art strong : Canst compass all that thou desirest. I Present thee with this music-flowing shell, Knowing thou canst interrogate it well. LXXXIV ‘And let us two henceforth together feed On this green mountain slope and pas- toral plain, The herds in litigation. They will breed Quickly enough to recompense our pain, If to the bulls and cows we take good heed; And thou, though somewhat over fond of gain, Grudge me not half the profit.’ Having spoke, The shell he proffered, and Apollo took; LXXXKV And gave him in return the glittering lash, Installing him as herdsman; from the look Of Mercury then laughed a joyous flash. And then Apollo with the plectrum strook The chords, and from beneath his hands a crash Of mighty sounds rushed up, whose music shook The soul with sweetness, and like an adept His sweeter voice a just accordance kept. LXXXVI The herd went wandering o’er the divine mead, Whilst these most beautiful Sons of Jupiter Won their swift way up to the snowy head Of white Olympus, with the joyous lyre Soothing their journey; and their father dread Gathered them both into familiar Affection sweet,— and then, and now, and ever, Hermes must love Him of the Golden Quiver, LXXXVII To whom he gave the lyre that sweetly sounded, Which skilfully he held and played thereon. He piped the while, and far and wide re- bounded The echo of his pipings, — every one Of the Olympians sat with joy astounded; While he conceived another piece of fun, One of his old tricks — which the God of Day Perceiving, said: —‘I fear thee, Son of May;— 502 LXXXVIII ‘1 fear thee and thy sly chameleon spirit, Lest thou shouldst steal my lyre and erookéd bow; This glory and power thou dost from Jove inherit, To teach all craft upon the earth below; Thieves Jove and worship thee —it is thy merit To make all mortal business ebb and flow By roguery. Now, Hermes, if you dare By saered Styx a mighty oath to swear LXXXIX ‘That you will never rob me, you will do A thing extremely pleasing to my heart.’ ‘Then Mercury sware by the Stygian dew, That he would never steal his bow or dart, Or lay his hands on what to him was due, Or ever would employ his powerful art Against his Pythian fane. Then Phoebus swore ‘There was no God or man whom he [oved more. XC * And I will give thee as a good-will token, The beautiful wand of wealth and happi- ness; A perfect three-leaved rod of gold un- broken, Whose magie will thy footsteps ever bless; And whatsoever by Jove’s voice is spoken Of earthly or divine from its recess, It, like a loving soul, to thee will speak, — And more than this, do thou forbear to seek. XCI ¢ For, dearest child, the divinations high Which thou requirest, ’t is unlawful ever That thou or any other deity Should understand —and vain were the endeavor; For they are hidden in Jove’s mind, and I In trust of them have sworn that I vould never Betray the counsels of Jove’s inmost will To any God — the oath was terrible. XCII ‘Then, golden-wanded brother, ask me not To speak the fates by Jupiter designed; TRANSLATIONS But be it mine to tell their various lot To the unnumbered tribes of humane kind. Let good to these and ill to those be wrought As I dispense. But he, who comes con- signed By voice and wings of perfect augury To my great shrine, shall find avail in me. XCIII ‘Him will I not deceive, but will assist; But he who comes relying on such birds As chatter vainly, who would strain and twist The purpose of the Gods with idle words, And deems their knowledge light, he shall have missed His road — whilst I among my other hoards His gifts deposit. Yet, O son of May, I have another wondrous thing te say. XCIV ‘There are three Fates, three virgin Sisters, who, Rejoicing in their wind-outspeeding wings, Their heads with flour snowed over white and new, Sit in a vale round which Parnassus flings Its circling skirts; from these I have learned true Vaticinations of remotest things. My father cared not. Whilst they search out dooms, They sit apart and feed on honeyeombs. xXCV ‘They, having eaten the fresh honey, grow Drunk with divine enthnsiasm, and utter With earnest willingness the truth they know; But if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter All plausible delusions. These to you I give; if you inquire, they will not stutter. Delight your own sou! with them. man You wenld instruet may profit if he ean. Any HOMER’S HYMN TO VENUS 503 XCVI ‘Take these and the fierce oxen, Maia’s child; O’er many a horse and _ toil-enduring mule, O’er jagged-jawéd lions, and the wild White-tuskéd boars, o’er all, by field or ool, Of éititte which the mighty Mother mild Nourishes in her bosom, thou shalt rule; Thou dost alone the veil from death uplift; Thou givest not — yet this is a great gift.’ XCVII Thus King Apollo loved the child of May In truth, and Jove covered their love with joy. Hermes with Gods and men even from that day Mingled, and wrought the latter much annoy, And little profit, going far astray Through the dun night. Farewell, de- lightful Boy, Of Jove and Maia sprung, — never by me, Nor thou, nor other songs, shall unremem- bered be. HOMER’S HYMN TO VENUS This fragment was written in 1818, and pub- lished by Garnett, 1862. [V. 1-55, with some omissions. ] Muss, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite, Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things That fleet along the air, or whom the sea, Or earth, with her maternal ministry, Nourish innumerable, thy delight All seek O crowned Aphrodite ! Three spirits canst thou not deceive or uell, Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame. Diana, golden-shafted queen, Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows reen Of the wild woods, the bow, the And piercing cries amid the swift pursnit Of beasts among waste mountains, — such delight Is hers, and men who know and do the right. Nor Saturn’s first-born daughter, Vesta chaste, Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last, Such was the will of zgis-bearing Jove; But sternly she refused the ills of Love, And by her mighty father’s head she swore An oath not unperformed, that evermore A virgin she would live ’mid deities Divine; her father, for such gentle ties Renounced, gave glorious gitts; thus in his hall She sits and feeds luxuriously. O’er all In every fane, her honors first arise From men — the eldest of Divinities. These spirits she persuades not, nor de- ceives, But none beside escape, so well she weaves Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods Who live secure in their unseen abodes. She won the soul of him whose fierce de- light Is thunder — first in glory and in might. And, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiv- ing, With mortal limbs his deathless limbs in- weaving, Concealed him from his spouse and sister fair, Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare. but in return, In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken, That, by her own enchantments overtaken, She might, no ore from human union free, Burn for a nursling of mortality. For once, amid the assembled Deities, The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes Shot forth the light of a soft starlight smile, And boasting said, that she, secure the while, Could bring at will to the assembled gods The mortal tenants of earth’s dark abodes, And mortal offspring from a deathless stem She could produce in scorn and spite of them. Therefore he poured desire into her breast Cf young Anchises, 504 TRANSLATIONS Feeding his herds among the mossy foun- tains Of the wide Ida’s many-folded mountains, Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the love elung Like wasting fire her senses wild among. HOMER’S HYMN TO CASTOR AND POLLUX This and the remaining Homeric Hymns were written in 1818, and published by Mrs. Shelley in her second collected edition, 1839. She writes that they ‘may be considered as having received the author’s ultimate correc- tions.’ Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove, Whom the fair-ankled Leda, mixed in love With mighty Saturn’s heaven - obscuring Child, : Dn Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild, Brought forth in joy; mild Pollux void of blame, And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame. These are the Powers who earth-born mor- tals save And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave. When wintry tempests o’er the savage sea Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow, Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow, And sacrifice with snow-white lambs, — the wind And the huge billow bursting close behind Even then beneath the weltering waters bear The staggering ship, —they suddenly ap- ear, On yéllow wings rushing athwart the sky, And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity, And strew the waves on the white ocean’s bed, Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread, ‘The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight, And plough the quiet sea in safe delight. HOMER’S HYMN TO MINERVA I stnc the glorious Power with azure eyes, Athenian Pallas, tameless, chaste, and wise, Tritogenia, town-preserving maid, Revered and mighty; from his awful head Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike armor dressed, Golden, all radiant! wonder strange pos- sessed The everlasting Gods that shape to see, Shaking a javelin keen, impetuonsly Rush from the crest of Aigis-bearing Jove; Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did move Beneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed; Earth dreadfully resounded, far and wide; And, lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high In purple billows, the tide suddenly Stood still, and great Hyperion’s son long time Checked his swift steeds, till where she stood sublime, Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw The arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view. Child of the Agis-bearer, hail to thee, Nor thine nor other’s praise shall unre- membered be. HOMER’S HYMN TO THE SUN OrrsPRING of Jove, Calliope, once more To the bright Sun thy hymn of music pour, ‘Whom to the child of star-clad Heaven and Earth Euryphaéssa, large-eyed nymph, brought forth; Euryphaéssa, the famed sister fair Of great Hyperion, who to him did bear A race of loveliest children; the young Morn, Whose arms are like twin roses newly born, The fair-haired Moon, and the immortal Sun, Who borne by heavenly steeds his race doth run Unconquerably, illuming the abodes Of mortal men and the eternal Gods. Fiercely look forth his awe-inspiring eyes Beneath his golden helmet, whence arise And are shot forth afar clear beams of light; His countenance with radiant glory bright Beneath his graceful locks far shines around, And the light vest with which his Embs are bound, HOMER’S HYMN TO THE EARTH, MOTHER OF ALL 505 Of woof ethereal delicately twined, Glows in the stream of the uplifting wind. His rapid steeds soon bear him to the west, Where their steep flight his hands divine arrest, And the fleet car with yoke of gold, which he Sends from bright heaven beneath the shadowy sea. HOMER’S HYMN TO THE MOON Davucuters of Jove, whose voice is melody, Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy, Sing the wide-wingéd Moon! Around the earth, From her immortal head in Heaven shot forth, Far light is scattered — boundless glory springs; Where’er she spreads her many-beaming wings, The lampless air glows round her golden crown. But when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone Under the sea, her beams within abide, Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean’s tide, Clothing her form in garments glittering far, And having yoked to her immortal car The beam-invested steeds whose necks on high Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky A western Crescent, borne impetuously. Then is made full the circle of her light, And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then, A wonder and a sign to mortal men. The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power Mingled in love and sleep, to whom she bore; Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare Among the Gods whose lives eternal are. Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity, . Fair-haired and favorable! thus with thee, My song beginning, by its music sweet Shall make immortal many a glorious feat Of demigods, — with lovely lips, so well Which minstrels, servants of the Muses, tell. HOMER’S HYMN TO THE EARTH, MOTHER OF ALL O UNIVERSAL Mother, who dost keep From everlasting thy foundations deep, Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee ! All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea, All things that fly, or on the ground divine Live, move, and there are nourished — these are thine; These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity ! The life of mortal men beneath thy sway Is held; thy power both gives and takes away. Happy are they whom thy mild favors nourish; All things unstinted round them grow and flourish. For them endures the life-sustaining field Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled. Such honored dwell in cities fair and free, The homes of lovely women, prosperously ; Their sons exult in youth’s new budding gladness, And their fresh danghters, free from care or sadness, With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song, On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among, Leap round them sporting; such delights by thee Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity. Mother of gods, thou wife of starry Heaven, Farewell! be thou propitious, and be given A happy life for this brief melody, Nor thou nor other songs shall unremem- bered be. 506 TRANSLATIONS THE CYCLOPS; A SATYRIC DRAMA TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF EU- RIPIDES The Cyclops was translated in 1819, and published by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. Shelley read it to Wiiliams, November 5, 1821. He writes of it and the whole sub- ject of translation to Hunt, November, 1819: ‘With respect to translation, even J will not be seduced by it; although the Greek plays, and some of the ideal dramas of Calderon (with which I have lately, and with inexpressible wonder and delight, become acquainted), are perpetually tempting me to throw over their perfect and glowing forms the gray veil of my own words. And you know me too well to sus- pect that I refrain from a belief that what I could substitute for them would deserve the regret which yours would, if suppressed. I have confidence in my moral sense alone; but that is a kind of originality. I have only trans- lated The Cyclops of Euripides, when I could absolutely do nothing else, and the Symposium of Plato, which is the delight and astonishment of all who read it, — I mean the original.’ CHorvus oF SATYRS THE CYCLOPS SILENUS Unysses SILENUS O Baccus, what a world of toil, both now And ere these limbs were overworn with age, Have I endured for thee! First, when thou fled’st The mountain-nymphs who nursed thee, driven afar By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee; Then in the battle of the sons of Earth, When I stood foot by foot close to thy side, No unpropitious fellow-combatant, And, driving through his shield my wingéd spear, Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now, Is it a dream of which I speak to thee ? By Jove it is not, for you have the trophies ! And now I suffer more than all before. For when I heard that Juno had devised A tedious voyage for you, I put to sea With all my children quaint in search of you, And I myself stood on the beakéd prow And fixed the naked mast; and all my boys Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain Made white with foam the green and pur- ple sea. And so we sought you, king. We were sailing Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose, And drove us to this wild Aitnean rock; The one-eyed children of the Ocean God, The man-destroying Cyelopses inhabit, On this wild shore, their soiltary caves, And one of these, named Polypheme, has caught us To be his slaves; and so, for all delight Of Bacchie sports, sweet dance and melody, We keep this lawless giant’s wandering flocks. My sons indeed, on far declivities, Young things themselves, tend on the youngling sheep, But I remain to fill the water casks, Or sweeping the hard floor, or ministering Some impious and abominable meal To the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it! And now I must serape up the littered floor With this great iron rake, so to receive My absent master and his evening sheep In a cave neat and clean. Even now I see My children tending the flocks hitherward. Ha! what is this ? are your Sicinnian mea- sures Even now the same as when with dance and song You brought young Bacchus to Althza’s halls ? CHORUS OF SATYRS STROPHE Where has he of race divine Wandered in the winding rocks? Here the air is calm and fine For the father of the flocks; Here the grass is soft and sweet, And the river-eddies meet In the trough beside the cave, Bright as in their fountain wave. Neither here, nor on the dew Of the lawny uplands feeding ? Oh, you come ! —a stone at you Will I throw to mend your breeding; Get along, you hornéd thing, Wild, seditious, rambling ! THE CYCLOPS 5°7 HPODE An Iacchic melody To the golden Aphrodite Will I lift, as erst did I Seeking her and her delight With the Mznads whose white feet To the music glance and fleet. Bacchus, O beloved, where, Shaking wide thy yellow hair, Wanderest thou alone, afar ? To the one-eyed Cyclops, we, Who by right thy servants are, Minister in misery, In these wretched goat-skins clad, Far from thy delights and thee. SILENUS Be silent, sons; command the slaves to drive The gathered flocks into the rock-roofed cave. CHORUS Go! But what needs this serious haste, O father ? SILENUS I see a Grecian vessel on the coast, And thence the rowers with some general Approaching to this cave. About their necks Hang empty vessels, as they wanted food, And water-flasks. Oh, miserable strangers ! Whence come they that they know not what and who My master is, approaching in ill hour The inhospitable roof of Polypheme, And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroy- ing ? Be die Satyrs, while I ask and hear Whence coming they arrive the Atnean hill. ULYSSES Friends, can you show me some clear water spring, The remedy of our thirst? Will any one Furnish with food seamen in want of it ? Ha! what is this? We seem to be ar- rived At the blithe court of Bacchus. I observe This sportive band of Satyrs near the caves. First let me greet the elder. — Hail! SILENUS Hail thou O Stranger ! tell thy country and thy race. ULYSSES The Ithacan Ulysses and the king Of Cephalonia. SILENUS Ol! I know the man, Wordy and shrewd, the son of Sisyphus. ULYSSES I am the same, but do not rail upon me. SILENUS Whence sailing do you come to Sicily ? ULYSSES From Ilion, and from the Trojan toils. SILENUS How touched you not at your paternal shore ? ULYSSES The strength of tempests bore me here by force. SILENUS The self-same accident occurred to me. ULYSSES Were you then driven here by stress of wea- ther ? SILENUS Following the Pirates who had kidnapped Bacchus. ULYSSES What land is this, and who inhabit it ? SILENUS ABtna, the loftiest peak in Sicily. ULYSSES And are there walls, and tower-surrounded towns ? SILENUS There are not. These lone rocks are bare of men. ULYSSES And who possess the land? the race of beasts ? SILENUS Cyclops, who live in caverns, not in houses. 508 TRANSLATIONS ULYSSES SILENUS Obeying whom? Or is the state popular ? | Cow’s ees is, and store of curdled SILENUS piepliendey na ene Oey sane AREA senegal i oii ee se ULYSSES How live they ? do they sow the corn of Ceres ? SILENUS On milk and cheese, and the flesh of sheep. ULYSSES Have they the Bromian drink from the vine’s stream ? SILENUS Ah, no; they live in an ungracious land. ULYSSES And are they just to strangers ? hospitable ? SILENUS They think the sweetest thing a stranger brings Is his own flesh. ULYSSES What ! do they eat man’s flesh ? SILENUS No one comes here who is not eaten up. ULYSSES The Cyclops now — where is he? Not at home ? SILENUS Absent on Etna, hunting with his dogs. ULYSSES Know’st thou what thou must do to aid us hence ? SILENUS I know not; we will help you all we can. ULYSSES Provide us food, of which we are in want. SILENUS Here is not anything, as I said, but meat. ULYSSES But meat is a sweet remedy for hunger. gain. SILENUS But how much gold will you engage to give? ULYSSES I bring no gold, but Bacchic juice. SILENUS Oh, joy ! *Tis long since these dry lips were wet with wine. ULYSSES Maron, the son of the God, gave it me. SILENUS Whom I have nursed a baby in my arms. ULYSSES The son of Bacchus, for your clearer know- ledge. SILENUS Have you it now ? or is it in the ship? ULYSSES Old man, this skin contains it, which you see. SILENUS Why this would hardly be a mouthful for me. ULYSSES Nay, twice as much as you can draw from thence. SILENUS You speak of a fair fountain, sweet to me. ULYSSES Would you first taste of the unmingled wine ? SILENUS ’T is just; tasting invites the purchaser. ULYSSES Here is the cup, together with the skin. THE CYCLOPS 509 SILENUS SILENUS Pour, that the draught may fillip my re- | The wanton wretch! she was bewitched to membrance. see The many-colored anklets and the chain ULYSSES Of woven gold which girt the neck of See! Paris, And so she left that good man Menelaus. SILENUS Papaiax ! what a sweet smell it has! ULYSSES You see it then ? — SILENUS By Jove, no! but I smell it. ULYSSES Taste, that you may not praise it in words only. SILENUS Great Bacchus calls me forth to dance ! Joy! joy! Babai ! ULYSSES Did it flow sweetly down your throat ? SILENUS So that it tingled to my very nails. ULYSSES And in addition I will give you gold. SILENUS Let gold alone ! only unlock the cask. ULYSSES Bring out some cheeses now, or a young goat. SILENUS That will I do, despising any master. Yes, let me drink one cup, and I will give All that the Cyclops feed upon their moun- tains. CHORUS Ye have taken Troy and laid your hands on Helen ? ULYSSES And utterly destroyed the race of Priam. There should be no more women in the world But such as are reserved for me alone. See, here are sheep, and here are goats, Ulysses, Here are unsparing cheeses of pressed milk; Take them; depart with what good speed ye may; First leaving my reward, the Bacchic dew Of joy-inspiring grapes. ULYSSES Ah me! Alas! What shall we do ? the Cyclops is at hand ! Old man, we perish! whither can we fly ? SILENUS Hide yourselves quick within that hollow rock. ULYSSES °T were perilous to fly into the net. SILENUS The cavern has recesses numberless; Hide yourselves quick. ULYSSES That will I never do! The mighty Troy would be indeed dis- graced If I should fly one man. How many times Have I withstood, with shield immovable, Ten thousand Phrygians! if I needs must die, Yet will I die with glory; if I live, The praise which I have gained will yet remain. SILENUS What, ho ! assistance, comrades, haste as- sistance ! The Cyciors, SineNus, Utysses ; CHorus. CYCLOPS What is this tumult ? Bacchus is not here, Nor tympanies nor brazen castanets. 510 TRANSLATIONS How are my young lambs in the cavern ? Milking Their dams or playing by their sides? And is The new cheese pressed into the bulrush baskets ? Speak ! Ill beat some of you till you rain tears. Look up, not downwards when I speak to you. SILENUS See! I now gape at Jupiter himself; I stare upon Orion and the stars. CYCLOPS Well, is the dinner fitly cooked and laid ? SILENUS All ready, if your throat is ready too. CYCLOPS Are the bowls full of milk besides ? SILENUS O’erbrimming; So you may drink a tunful if you will. CYCLOPS Is it ewe’s milk or cow’s milk, or both mixed ? SILENUS Both, either; only pray don’t swallow me. CYCLOPS By no means. — What is this crowd I see beside the stalls ? Outlaws or thieves? for near my cavern- home, I see my young lambs coupled two by two With willow bands; mixed with my cheeses lie Their implements; and this old fellow here Has his bald head broken with stripes. SILENUS Ah me! I have been beaten till I burn with fever. CYCLOPS By whom? Who laid bis fist upon your head ? SILENUS Those men, because I would not suffer them To steal your goods. CYCLOPS f Did not the rascals know I am a God, sprung from the race of hea- ven ? SILENUS I told them so, but they bore off your things, And ate the cheese in spite of all I said, And carried out the lambs —and said, moreover, They ’d pin you down with a three-cubit collar, And pull your vitals out through your one eye, ochine pot back with stripes, then bind- ing you Throw you as ballast into the ship’s hold, And then deliver you, a slave, to move Enormous rocks, or found a vestibule. cCYCLOPS In truth? Nay, haste, and place in order quickly The cooking knives,and heap upon the hearth, And kindle it, a great faggot of wood. As soon as they are slaughtered, they shall fill My belly, broiling warm from the live coals, Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling caldron. I am quite sick of the wild mountain game; Of stags and lions I have gorged enough, And I grow hungry for the flesh of men. SILENUS Nay, master, something new is very plea- sant After one thing forever, and of late Very few strangers have approached our cave. ULYSSES Hear, Cyclops, a plain tale on the other side. We, wanting to buy food, came from our shi Into the neighborhood of your cave, and here THE CYCLOPS S11 This old Silenus gave us in exchange These lambs for wine, the which he took and drank, And all by mutual compact, without force. There is no word of truth in what he says, For slyly he was selling all your store. SILENUS I? May you perish, wretch — ULYSSES If I speak false ! SILENUS Cyclops, I swear by Neptune who begot thee, By mighty Triton and by Nereus old, Calypso and the glaucous ocean nymphs, The sacred waves and all the race of fishes — Be these the witnesses, my dear sweet master, My darling little Cyclops, that I never Gave any of your stores to these false strangers. If I speak false may those whom most I love, My children, perish wretchedly ! CHORUS There stop! I saw him giving these things to the stran- gers. If I speak false, then may my father perish, But do not thou wrong hospitality. CYCLOPS You lie! I swear that he is juster far Than Rhadamanthus. I trust more in him. But let me ask, whence have ye sailed, O strangers ? Who are you? And what city nourished ye? ULYSSES Our race is Ithacan; having destroyed The town of Troy, the tempests of the sea Have driven us on thy land, O Polypheme. CYCLOPS What, have ye shared in the unenvied spoil Of the false Helen, near Scamander’s stream ? ULYSSES The same, having endured a woful toil. CYCLOPS Oh, basest expedition ! sailed ye not From Greece to Phrygia for one woman’s sake ? ULYSSES °T was the Gods’ work — no mortal was in fault. But, O great offspring of the Ocean-king, We pray thee and admonish thee with free- dom That thou dost spare thy friends who visit thee, And place no impious food within thy jaws. For in the depths of Greece we have up- reared Temples to thy great father, which are all His homes. The sacred bay of Tenarus Remains inviolate, and each dim recess Scooped high on the Malean promontory, And aéry Sunium’s silver-veinéd crag Which divine Pallas keeps unprofaned ever, The Gerastian asylums, and whate’er Within wide Greece our enterprise has kept From Phrygian contumely; and in which You have a common care, for you inhabit The skirts of Grecian land, under the roots Of Adtna and its crags, spotted with fire. Turn then to converse under human laws. Receive us shipwrecked suppliants, and provide Food, clothes, and fire, and hospitable gifts; Nor fixing upon oxen-piercing spits Our limbs, so fill your belly and your jaws. Priam’s wide land has widowed Greece enough; And weapon-wingéd murder heaped to- gether Enough of dead, and wives are husbandless, And ancient women and gray fathers wail Their childless age. If you should roast the rest — And ’tis a bitter feast that you prepare — Where then would any turn? Yet be persuaded ; Forego the lust of your jaw-bone; prefer Pious humanity to wicked will. Many have bought too dear their evil joys. SILENUS Let me advise you, do not spare a morsel Of all his flesh. If you should eat his tongue You would become most eloquent, O Cy- clops. 512 TRANSLATIONS CYCLOPS Weel, ay good fellow, is the wise man’s od; All other things are a pretence and boast. What are my father’s ocean promontories, The sacred rocks whereon he dwells, to me ? Stranger, I laugh to scorn Jove’s thunder- 0. ? I know not that his strength is more than mine. As to the rest I care not. When he pours Rain from above, I have a close pavilion Under this rock, in which I lie supine, Feasting on a roast calf or some wild beast, And drinking pans of milk, and gloriously Emulating the thunder of high heaven. And when the Thracian wind pours down the snow, I wrap my body in the skins of beasts, Kindle a fire, and bid the snow whirl on. The earth, by force, whether it will or no, Bringing forth grass, fattens my flocks and herds, Which, to what other God but to myself And this great belly, first of deities, Should I be bound to sacrifice? I well know The wise man’s only Jupiter is this, To eat and drink during his little day, And give himself nocare. And as for those Who complicate with laws the life of man, I freely give them tears for their reward. I will not cheat my soul of its delight, Or hesitate in dining upon you. And that I may be quit of all demands, These are my hospitable gifts; — fierce fire And yon ancestral caldron, which o’erbub- bling Shall finely cook your miserable flesh. Creep in ! — ULYSSES Ai! ai! Ihave escaped the Trojan toils, I have escaped the sea, and now I fall Under the cruel grasp of one impious man. O Pallas, mistress, Goddess sprung from Jove, Now, now, assist me ! Troy Are these. I totter on the chasms of peril. And thou who inhabitest the thrones Of the bright stars, look, hospitable Jove, Upon this outrage of thy deity, Otherwise be considered as no God! Mightier toils than cHoRus (alone) For your gaping gulf, and your gullet wide The ravin is ready on every side, The limbs of the strangers are cooked and done; There is boiled meat, and roast meat, and meat from the coal, You may chop it, and tear it, and gnash it for fun, An hairy goat’s-skin contains the whole. Let me but escape, and ferry me o’er The stream of your wrath to a safer shore, The Cyclops Attnean is cruel and bold, He murders the strangers That sit on his hearth, And dreads no avengers To rise from the earth. He roasts the men before they are cold, He snatches them broiling from the coal, And from the caldron pulls them whole, And minces their flesh, and gnaws their bone With his curséd teeth, till all be gone. Farewell, foul pavilion: Farewell, rites of dread ! The Cyclops vermilion, With slaughter uncloying, Now feasts on the dead, In the flesh of strangers joying ! ULYSSES O Jupiter! I saw within the cave Horrible things; deeds to be feigned in words, But not to be believed as being done. CHORUS What ! sawest thou the impious Polypheme Feasting upon your loved companions now ? ULYSSES Selecting two, the plumpest of the crowd, He grasped them in his hands. — CHORUS Unhappy man! ULYSSES Soon as we came into this craggy place, Kindling a fire, he cast on the broad hearth The knotty limbs of an enormous oak, Three wagon-loads at least, and then he strewed Upon the ground, beside the red firelight, THE CYCLOPS 513 His couch of pine leaves; and he milked the cows, And, pouring forth the white milk, filled a bowl Three cubits wide and four in depth, as much As would contain ten amphore, and bound it With ivy wreaths; then placed upon the fire A brazen pot to boil, and made red hot The points of spits, not sharpened with the sickle, But with a fruit tree bough, and with the jaws Of axes for Mtnean slaughterings. And when this God-abandoned cook of hell Had made all ready, he seized two of us And killed them in a kind of measured manner; For he flung one against the brazen rivets Of the huge caldron, and seized the other By the foot’s tendon, and knocked out his brains Upon the sharp edge of the craggy stone; Then peeled his flesh with a great cooking- knife And put him down to roast. limbs He chopped into the caldron to be boiled. And I, with the tears raining from my eyes, Stood near the Cyclops, ministering to him; The rest, in the recesses of the cave, Clung to the rock like bats, bloodless with The other’s fear. When he was filled with my companions’ flesh, He threw himself upon the ground and sent A loathsome exhalation from his maw. Then a divine thought came to me. I filled The cup of Maron, and I offered him To taste, and said: — ‘Child of the Ocean God, Behold what drink the vines of Greece pro- duce, The exultation and the joy of Bacchus.’ He, satiated with his unnatural food, — Received it, and at one draught drank it off, And, taking my hand, praised me: — ‘Thou hast given A sweet draught after a sweet meal, dear guest.’ And I perceiving that it pleased him, filled Another cup, well knowing that the wine Would wound him soon and take a sure revenge. And the charm fascinated him, and I Plied him cup after cup, until the drink Had warmed his entrails, and he sang aloud In concert with my wailing fellow-seamen A hideous discord — and the cavern rung. I have stolen out, so that if you will You may achieve my safety and your own. But say, do you desire, or not, to fly This uncompanionable man, and dwell As was your wont among the Grecian Nymphs Within the fanes of your beloved God? Your father there within agrees to it, But he is weak and overcome with wine, And, caught as if with bird-lime by the cup, He claps his wings and crows in doting joy. You who are young, escape with me, and find Bacchus your ancient friend; unsuited he To this rude Cyclops. CHORUS Oh, my dearest friend, That I could see that day, and leave for- ever The impious Cyclops. ULYSSES Listen then what a punishment I have For this fell monster, how secure a flight From your hard servitude. CHORUS Oh, sweeter far Than is the music of an Asian lyre Would be the news of Polypheme de- stroyed. ULYSSES Delighted with the Bacchic drink he goes To call his brother Cyclops, who inhabit A village upon tna not far off. CHORUS I understand, catching him when alone You think by some measure to dispatch him, Or thrust him from the precipice. TRANSLATIONS 514 ULYSSES Oh, no; Nothing of that kind; my device is subtle. CHORUS How then? I heard of old that thou wert wise. ULYSSES I will dissuade him from this plan, by say- ing It were unwise to give the Cyclopses This precious drink, which if enjoyed alone Would make life sweeter for a longer time. When, vanquished by the Bacchic power, he sleeps, There is a trunk of olive wood within, Whose point having made sharp with this good sword I will conceal in fire, and when I see It is alight, will fix it, burning yet, Within the socket of the Cyclops’ eye And melt it out with fire; as when a man Turns by its handle a great auger round, Fitting the framework of a ship with beams, So will I in the Cyclops’ fiery eye Turn round the brand and dry the pupil up CHORUS Joy! Iam mad with joy at your device. ULYSSES And then with you, my friends, and the old man, We’ll load the hollow depth of our black ship And row with double strokes from this dread shore. CHORUS May I, as in libations to a God, Share in the blinding him with the red brand ? I would have some communion in his death, ULYSSES Doubtless; the brand is a great brand to hold CHORUS Oh! I would lift an hundred wagon-loads, If like « wasp’s nest I could scoop the eye out Of the detested Cyclops. ULYSSES Silence now ! Ye know the close device; and when I call, Look ye obey the masters of the craft. I will not save myself and leave behind My comrades in the cave; I might escape, Having got clear from that obscure recess, But ’t were unjust to leave in jeopardy The dear companions who sailed here with me. CHORUS Come ! who is first, that with his hand Will urge down the burning brand Through the lids, and quench and pierce The Cyclops’ eye so fiery fierce ? SEMICHORUS I (Song within) Listen ! listen ! he is coming, A most hideous discord humming. Drunken, museless, awkward, yelling, Far along his rocky dwelling; Let us with some comic spell Teach the yet unteachable. By all means he must be blinded, If my counsel be but minded. SEMICHORUS II Happy those made odorous With the dew which sweet grapes weep, To the village hastening tuaus, Seek the vines that soothe to sleep, Having first embraced thy friend, There in luxury without end, With the strings of yellow hair, Of thy voluptuous leman fair, Shalt sit playing on a bed ! — Speak what door is openéd ? CYCLOPS Ha! ha! ba! I’m full of wine, Heavy with the joy divine, With the young feast oversated; Like a merchant’s vessel freighted To the water’s edge, my crop Is laden to the gullet’s top. The fresh meadow grass of spring Tempts me forth thus wandering To my brothers on the mountains, Who shall share the wine’s sweet fountains, Bring th: e-sk, 9 stranger, bring ! THE CYCLOPS 515 CHORUS ULYSSES One with eyes the fairest But village mirth breeds contests, broils, Cometh from his dwelling; and blows. Some one loves thee, rarest, pe Bright beyond my telling. In a race thou ones ae When I am drunk none shall lay hands on Like some nymph divinest, ak In her caverns dewy; ULYSSES All delights pursue thee, Soon pied flowers, sweet-breathing, Shall thy head be wreathing. ULYSSES Listen, O Cyclops, for I am well skilled In Bacchus, whom I gave thee of to drink. CYCLOPS What sort of God is Bacehus then ac- counted ? ULYSSES The greatest among men for joy of life. CYCLOPS I gulped him down with very great delight. ULYSSES This is a God who never injures men. CYCLOPS How does the God like living in a skin? ULYSSES He is content wherever he is put. CYCLOPS Gods should not have their body in a skin. ULYSSES If he gives joy, what is his skin to you ? CYCLOPS I hate the skin, but love the wine within. ULYSSES Stay here, now drink, and make your spirit glad. CYCLOPS Should I not share this liquor with my brothers ? ULYSSES Keep it yourself, and be more honored so. CYCLOPS L were more useful, giving to my friends. A drunken man is better within doors. CYCLOPS He isa fool, who, drinking, loves not mirth. ULYSSES But he is wise, who drunk remains at home. CYCLOPS What shall I do, Silenus ? Shall I stay ? SILENUS Stay —for what need have you of pot companions ? CYCLOPS Indeed this place is closely carpeted With flowers and grass. SILENUS And in the sun-warm noon *T is sweet to drink. Lie down beside me now, Placing your mighty sides upon the ground. CYCLOPS What do you put the cup behind me for ? SILENUS That no one here may touch it. CYCLOPS Thievish one ! You want to drink. Here place it in the midst. And thou, O stranger, tell how art thou called ? ULYSSES My name is Nobody. What favor now Shall I receive to praise you at your hands ? CYCLOPS I’ll feast on you the last of your compan- ions. ULYSSES You grant your guest a fair reward, O Cy- clops. 516 TRANSLATIONS CYCLOPS CYCLOPS Ha! what is this? Stealing the wine, you | Pour out the wine! rogue ! ULYSSES SILENUS It was this stranger kissing me because T looked so beautiful. CYCLOPS You shall repent For kissing the coy wine that loves you not. SILENUS By Jupiter ! you said that I am fair. CYCLOPS Pour out, and only give me the cup full. SILENUS How is it mixed ? let me observe. CYCLOPS Curse you ! Give it me so. SILENUS Not till I see you wear That coronal, and taste the cup to you. CYCLOPS Thou wily traitor ! SILENUS But the wine is sweet. Ay, you will roar if you are caught in drinking. CYCLOPS See now, my lip is clean and all my beard. SILENUS Now put your elbow oe and drink again. As you see me drink — . . CYCLOPS dow now ? SILENUS Ye Gods, what a delicious gulp ! CYCLOPS Guest, take it. You pour out the wine for me. ULYSSES The wine is well accustomed to my hand. I pour; only be silent, CYCLOPS Silence is a hard task to him who drinks. ULYSSES Take it and drink it off; leave not a dreg. Oh, that the drinker died with his own draught ! CYCLOPS Papai! the vine must be a sapient plant. ULYSSES If you drink much after a mighty feast, Moistening your thirsty maw, you will sleep well; If you leave aught, Bacchus will dry you up. CYCLOPS Ho! ho! I can scarce rise. What pure delight ! The heavens and earth appear to whirl about Confusedly. I see the throne of Jove And the clear congregation of the Gods. Now if the Graces tempted me to kiss I would not, for the loveliest of them all I would not leave this Ganymede. SILENUS Polypheme, Iam the Ganymede of Jupiter. CYCLOPS By Jove you are; I bore you off from Dar- danus. Unyssts and the CHorvs ULYSSES Come, boys of Bacchus, children of high race This man within is folded up in sleep, And soon will vomit flesh from his fell maw; The brand under the shed thrusts out its smoke; No preparation needs, but to burn out The monster’s eye; — but bear yourselves like mes. THE CYCLOPS 517 CHORUS We will have courage like the adamant rock, All things are ready for you here; go in Before our father shall perceive the noise. ULYSSES Vulcan, tnean king! burn out with fire The shining eye of this thy neighboring monster ! And thou, O sleep, nursling of gloomy night, Descend unmixed on this God-hated beast, And suffer not Ulysses and his comrades, Returning from their famous Trojan toils, To perish by this man, who cares not either For God or mortal; or I needs must think That Chance is a supreme divinity, And things divine are subject to her power. CHORUS Soon a crab the throat will seize Of him who feeds upon his guest; Fire will burn his lamp-like eyes In revenge of such a feast ! A great oak stump now is lying In the ashes yet undying. Come, Maron, come ! Raging let him fix the doom, Let him tear the eyelid up Of the Cyclops — that his cup May be evil! Oh, I long to dance and revel With sweet Bromian, long desired, In loved ivy wreaths attired; Leaving this abandoned home — Will the moment ever come ? ULYSSES Be silent, ye wild things! Nay, hold your peace, And keep your lips quite close; dare not to breathe, Or spit, or e’en wink, lest ye wake the mon- ster, — Until his eye be tortured out with fire. OHORUS Nay, we are silent, and we chaw the air. ULYSSES Come now, and lend a hand to the great stake Within — it is delightfully red hot. CHORUS You then command who first should seize the stake To burn the Cyclops’ eye, that all may share In the great enterprise. SEMICHORUS I We are too far; We cannot at this distance from the door Thrust fire into his eye. SEMICHORUS I And we just now Have become lame; cannot move hand or foot. CHORUS The same thing has occurred to us; our ankles Are sprained with standing here, I know not how. ULYSSES What, sprained with standing still ? CHORUS And there is dust Or ashes in our eyes, I know not whence. ULYSSES Cowardly dogs! ye will not aid me then ? CHORUS With pitying my own back and my back« bone, And with not wishing all my teeth knocked out, This cowardice comes of itself. But stay, I know a famous Orphic incantation To make the brand stick of its own accord Into the skull of this one-eyed son of Earth. ULYSSES Of old I knew ye thus by nature; now I know ye better. I will use the aid Of my own comrades. Yet though weak of hand Speak cheerfully, that so ye may awaken The courage of my friends with your blithe words. CHORUS This I will do with peril of my life, And blind you with my exhortations, Cy clops. Hasten and thrust, And parch up to dust, 568 TRANSLATIONS The eye of the beast, Who feeds on his guest ! Burn and blind The #tnean hind ! Scoop and draw, But beware lest he claw Your limbs near his maw. OXCLOPS Ah me! my eyesight is parched up to cin- ders. CHORUS What a sweet pean! sing me that again ! CYCLOPS Ah me! indeed, what woe has fallen upon me! But wretched nothings, think ye not to flee Uut of this rock; I, standing at the outlet, Will bar the way and catch you as you pass. CHORUS What are you roaring out, Cyclops ? CYCLOPS I perish ! cHORUS For you are wicked. CYCLOPS And besides miserable. CHORUS What, did you fall into the fire when drunk? CYCLOPS °T was Nobody destroyed me. CHORUS Why, then no one Can be to blame. CYCLOPS I say ’t was Nobody Who blinded me. CHORUS Why, then you are not blind. CYCLOPS L wish you were as blind as I am. CHORUS Nay, It cannot be that no one made you blind. CYCLOPS You jeer me; where, I ask, is Nobody ? CHORUS Nowhere, O Cyclops. CYCLOPS It was that stranger ruined me. The wretch First gave me wine and then burned out my eye, For wine is strong and hard to struggle with. Have they escaped, or are they yet within ? CHORUS They stand under the darkness of the rock And cling to it. CYCLOPS At my right hand or left ? CHORUS Close on your right. CYCLOPS Where ? CHORUS Near the rock itself, You have them. CYCLOrs Oh, misfortune on misfortune ! I’ve cracked my skull. CHORUS Now they escape you there. CYCLOPS Not there, although you say so. CHORUS Not on that side. CYCLOPS Where then ? CHORUS They creep about you on your left. CYCLOPS Ah! I a mocked! They jeer me in my ills. CHORUS Not there ! he is a little there beyond you. EPIGRAMS FROM THE GREEK 519 CYCLOPS Detested wretch ! where are you ? OLYSSES Far from you I keep with care this body of Ulysses. CYCLOPS What do you say? You proffer a new name, ULYSSES My father named me so; and I have taken A full revenge for your unnatural feast; 1 should have done ill to have burned down Troy And not revenged the murder of my com- rades. CYCLOPS Ai! ai! the ancient oracle is accomplished; It said that I should have my eyesight blinded By you coming from Troy, yet it foretold That you should pay the penalty for this By wandering long over the homeless sea. ULYSSES I bid thee weep — consider what I say; I go towards the shore to drive my ship To mine own land, o’er the Sicilian wave. CYCLOPS Not so, if, whelming you with this huge stone, I can crush you and all your men together. I will descend upon the shore, though blind, Groping my way adown the steep ravine. CHORUS And we, the shipmates of Ulysses now, Will serve our Bacchus all our happy lives. EPIGRAMS FROM THE GREEK I SPIRIT OF PLATO EaGLe ! why soarest thou above that tomb ? To what sublime and star-y-paven nome Floatest thou ? — I am the image of swift Plato’s spirit, Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit His corpse below. Undated. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, ist ed. II CIRCUMSTANCE A MAN who was about to hang himself, Finding a purse, then threw away his rope; The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf, The halter found, and used it. So is Hope Changed for Despair; one laid upon the shelf, We take the other. Under heaven’s high cope Fortune is God; all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you. Undated. Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed. Ill TO STELLA FROM PLATO Medwin describes the composition of this stanza: ‘Plato's epigram on Aster, which Shelley had applied to Keats, happened to be mentioned, and I asked Shelley if he could render it. He took up the pen and impro- vised.’ It was published by Mrs. Shelley in her first collected edition, 1839, as was also the follow- ing. Tsou wert the moruing star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled; Now, having died, thon art as Hesperus giving New splendor to the dead. Iv KISSING HELENA FROM PLATO Kissrne Helena, together With my kiss, my soul beside it Came to my lips, and there T kept it, ~ 520 TRANSLATIONS For the poor thing had wandered thither, To follow where the kiss should guide it, Oh, cruel I, to intercept it! FROM MOSCHUS I Tay GAa trav yAaundy bray dvewos arpéua BaAAH WHEN winds that move not its calm sur- face sweep The azure sea, I love the land no more; The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep Tempt my unquiet mind. But when the roar Of ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst, I turn from the drear aspect to the home Of earth and its deep woods, where, inter- spersed, When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody. Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea, Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot Has chosen. But I my languid limbs will flin Beneath the plane, where the brook’s mur- muring Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not. Undated. Published with Alastor, 1816. II PAN, ECHO, AND THE SATYR Pan loved his neighbor Echo, but that child Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping; The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild The bright nymph Lyda; and so three went weeping. As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr, The Satyr, Lyda; and so love consumed them. And thus to each—which was a woful matter — To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them: For, inasmuch as each might hate the lover, Each, loving, so was hated. — Ye that love not Be warned — in thought turn this example over, That when ye love, the like return ye prove not. Undated. Published by Mrs. Shelley, Post- humous Poems, 1824. III FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF BION YE Dorian woods and waves lament aloud, — Augment your tide, O streams, with fruit- less tears, For the belovéd Bion is no more. Let every tender herb and plant and flower, From each dejected bud and drooping bloom, Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath Of melancholy sweetness on the wind Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush, Anemones grow paler for the loss Their dells have known; and thou, O hya- cinth, Utter thy legend now —yet more, dumb flower, Than ‘ah! alas!’—thine is no common grief — Bion the [sweetest singer] is no more. Undated. Published by Forman, 1876. FROM BION FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF ADONIS I mourn Adonis dead — loveliest Adonis — Dead, dead Adonis —and the Loves la- ment. Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof. Wake, violet-stoléd queen, and weave the crown Of Death —’tis Misery calls —for he is dead ! THE TENTH ECLOGUE 521 The lovely one lies wounded in the mountains, His white thigh struck with the white tooth; he scarce Yet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony there. The dark blood wanders o’er his snowy limbs, His eyes beneath their lids are lustreless, The rose has fled from his wan lips, and there That kiss is dead, which Venus gathers yet. A deep, deep wound Adonis... A deeper Venus bears upon her heart. See, his belovéd dogs are gathering round — The Oread nymphs are weeping. Aphrodite With hair unbound is wandering through the woods, Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled — the thorns pierce Her hastening feet and drink her sacred blood. Bitterly screaming out she is driven on Through the long vales; and her Assyrian boy, Her love, her husband calls. blood From his struck thigh stains her white navel now, Her bosom, and her neck before like snow. The purple Alas for Cytherea! the Loves mourn — The lovely, the beloved is gone !— And now Her sacred beauty vanishes away. For Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair — Alas! her loveliness is dead with him. The oaks and mountains cry, Ai! ai! Adonis ! The springs their waters change to tears and weep — The flowers are withered up with grief... Ai! ai! Adonis is dead Echo resounds Adonis dead. Who will weep not thy dreadful woe, O Venus ? Soon as she saw and knew the mortal wound Of her Adonis — saw the life blood flow From his fair thigh, now wasting, wailing loud She clasped him, and cried ‘Stay Adonis ! Stay, dearest one, — and mix my lips with thine ! Wake yet a while Adonis — oh, but once ! That I may kiss thee now for the last time — But for as long as one short kiss may live ! Oh, let thy breath flow from thy dying soul Even to my mouth and heart, that I may suck That Undated. Published by Forman, 1876. FROM VIRGIL THE TENTH ECLOGUE [V. 1-26] MEtopiovus Arethusa, o’er my verse Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream. Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam Of Syracusan waters, mayst thou flow Unmingled with the bitter Doric dew ! Begin, and, whilst the goats are browsing now The soft leaves, in our way let us pursue The melancholy loves of Gallus. List ! We sing not to the dead; the wild woods knew His sufferings, and their echoes . . . Young Naiads, in what far wood- lands wild Wandered ye when unworthy love pos- sessed Your Gallus ? piled, Nor where Parnassus’ sacred mount, nor where Aonian Aganippe expands The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim. The pine-encircled mountain, Menalus, The cold crags of Lyezeus, weep for him; And Sylvan, crowned with rustic cor- onals, Came shaking in his speed the budding wands And heavy lilies which he bore; we knew Pan the Arcadian. Not where Pindus is up- 522 TRANSLATIONS What madness is this, Gallus? heart’s care With willing steps pursues another there. Undated. Published by Rossetti, 1870. Thy FROM DANTE I ADAPTED FROM A SONNET IN THE VITA NUOVA Forman who published the lines, 1876, vouches for them thus: ‘ These lines . . . are said to have been scratched by Shelley on a window-pane at a house wherein he lodged while staying in London. I have them on the authority of a gentleman whose mother was the proprietress of the house.’ Wuat Mary is when she a little smiles I cannot even tell or call to mind, It is a miracle so new, so rare. II SONNET DANTE ALIGHIERI fo GUIDO CAVALCANTI Guipo, I would that Lappo, thou, and I, Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend A magic ship, whose charméd sails should With sind at will where’er our thoughts might wend, So that no change, nor any evil chance Should mar our joyous voyage, but it might be That even satiety should still enhance Between our hearts their strict community; And that the bounteous wizard then would place Vanna and Bice and my gentle love, Companions of our wandering, and would grace With passionate talk wherever we might rove Our time, and each were as content and free As I believe that thou and I should be. Undated. Published with Alastor, 1816. Ill THE FIRST CANZONE OF THE CONVITO I YE who intelligent the Third Heaven move, Hear the discourse which is within my heart, Which cannot be declared, it seems so new. The Heaven whose course follows your power and art. O gentle creatures that yeare ! medrew, And therefore may I dare to speak to you, Even of the life which now I live, — and et I ie that ye will hear me when I cry, And tell of mine own Heart this novelty; How the lamenting Spirit moans in it, And howa voice there murmurs against her Who came on the refulgence of your sphere. II A sweet Thought, which was once the life witbin This heavy Heart, many a time and oft Went up before our Father’s feet, and there It saw a glorious Lady throned aloft; And its sweet talk of her my soul did win, So that I said, ‘ Thither I too will fare.’ That Thought is fled, and one doth now appear Which tyrannizes me with such fierce stress That my heart trembles — ye may see it leap — And on another Lady bids me keep Mine eyes, and says: ‘Who would have blessedness Let him but look upon that Lady’s eyes; Let him not fear the agony of sighs.’ III This lowly Thought, which once would talk with me Of a bright Seraph sitting crowned on high, Found such a cruel foe it died; and so My Spirit wept — the grief is hot even now — And a“ ‘Alas for me! now swift could lee MATILDA GATHERING FLOWERS 523 That piteous Thought which did my life Iv console !’ And the afflicted one question- | MATILDA GATHERING FLOW- ing ERS Mine eyes, if such a Lady saw they never, PURGATORIO, xxviii. 1-51 And why they would... I said: ‘Beneath those eyes might stand forever He whom regards must kill with .. . To have known their power stood me in little stead; Those eyes have looked on me, and I am dead.’ IV ‘Thou art not dead, but thou hast wan- deréd, Thou Soul of ours, who thyself dost fret,’ A Spirit gentle Love beside me said: ‘For that fair Lady, whom thou dost re- gret, Hath so transformed the life which thou hast led, Thou scornest it, so worthless art thou made. And see how meek, how pitiful, how staid, Yet courteous, in her majesty she is. And still call thou her *‘ Woman” in thy thought; Her whon, if thou thyself deceivest not, Thou wilt behold decked with such loveli- ness, That thou wilt ery: “ [Love] only Lord, lo here Thy handmaiden, do what thou wilt with her.” ’ Vv My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning, Of such hard matter dost thou enter- tain. Whence, if by misadventure chance should bring Thee to base company, as chance may do, Quite unaware of what thou dost con- tain, I prithee comfort thy sweet self again, My last delight; tell them that they are dull, And bid them own that thou art beautiful. Published (i-iv) by Garnett, 1862, with date, 1820; v with Epipsychidion, 1821. Published by Medwin, The Angler in Wales, 1834, and Life of Shelley, 1847, and completed by Garnett, 1862. Medwin describes how he obtained the copy: ‘I had also the advantage of reading Dante with him; he lamented that no adequate translation existed of the Divina Commedia, and though he thought highly of Carey’s work, — with which he said he had for the first time studied the original, praising the fidelity of the version, — it by no means satis- fied him. What he meant by an adequate translation was one in terzu rima ; for, in Shel- ley’s own words, he held it an essential justice to an author to render him in the same form. Lasked him if he had never attempted this, and, looking among his papers, he showed, and gave me to copy, the following fragment from the Purgatorio, which leaves on the mind an inex- tinguishable regret that he had not completed —nay, more, that he did not employ himself in rendering other of the finest passages.’ AND earnest to explore within — around — That divine wood whose thick green living woof Tempered the young day to the sight, I wound Up the green slope, beneath the forest’s roof, With slow soft steps leaving the mountain’s steep; And sought those inmost labyrinths’ motion- proof Against the air, that, in that stillness deep And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare The slow, soft stroke of a continuous... In which the were All bent towards that part where earliest The sacred hill obscures the morning air. leaves tremblingly Yet were they not so shaken from the rest, But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray, Incessantly renewing their blithe quest. 524 TRANSLATIONS With perfect joy received the early day, Singing within the glancing leaves, whose sound Kept a low burden to their roundelay, Such as from bough to bough gathers around The pine forest on bleak Chiassi’s shore, When olus Sirocco has unbound. My slow steps had already borne me o’er Such space within the antique wood that I Perceived not where I entered any more, When, lo! a stream whose little waves went by, Bending towards the left through grass that grew Upon its bank, impeded suddenly My going on. Water of purest hue On earth would appear turbid and impure Compared with this, whose unconcealing dew, Dark, dark, yet clear, moved under the obscure Eternal shades, whose interwoven looms No ray of moon or sunshine would endure. I moved not with my feet, but mid the glooms Pierced with my charmed eye, contemplat- ing The mighty multitude of fresh May blooms That starred that night; when, even as a thing That suddenly, for blank astonishment, Charms every sense, and makes all thought take wing, — A solitary woman! and she went Singing, and gathering flower after flower, With which her way was painted and be- sprent. ‘ Bright lady, who, if looks had ever power To bear true witness of the heart within, Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower ‘Towards this bank. I prithee let me win This much of thee, to come, that I may hear Thy song. Like Proserpine, in Enna’s glen, ‘Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here And gathering flowers, as that fair maiden when She lost the spring, and Ceres her, more dear.’ Vv UGOLINO INFERNO xxxiii, 22-75 TRANSLATED BY MEDWIN AND COR- RECTED BY SHELLEY Medwin describes this joint composition: ‘ At Shelley’s request and with his assistance, I attempted to give the Ugolino, which is valuable to the admirers of Shelley, on ac- count of his numerous corrections, which al- most indeed make it his own.’ The piece was first published in Medwin’s Sketches in Hindoostan with other poems, 1821, and revised in the present form, with Shelley's part in italics, in Life of Shelley, 1847. For- man conjectures that he ascribes less to Shelley than was due. Shelley is said to have com- plained to Mrs. Shelley that Medwin had car- ried off some of his translations. Now had the loophole of that dungeon, still Which bears the name of Famine’s Tower from me, And where ’tis fit that many another will Be doomed to linger in captivity, Shown through its narrow opening in my cell Moon after moon slow waning, when a sleep That of the future burst the veil, in dream Visited me. It was a slumber deep And evil ; for I saw, or I did seem To see that tyrant Lord his revels keep, The leader of the cruel hunt to them, Chasing the wolf and wolf-cubs up thc steep Ascent, that from the Pisan is the screen Of Lucca ; with him Gualandi came, Sismondi, and Lanfranchi, bloodhounds lean, Trained to the sport and eager for the game, Wide ranging in his front ; but soon were seen, Though by so short a course, with spirits tame, SONNET 525 The father and his whelps to flag at once, And then the sharp fangs gored their bosoms deep. Ere morn I roused imyself, and heard my sons, For they were with me, moaning in their sleep, And begging bread. Ah for those darling ones ! Right cruel art thou, if thou dost not weep In thinking of my soul’s sad augury; And if thou weepest not now, weep never more ! They were already waked, as wont drew nigh The allotted hour for food, and in that hour Each drew a presage from his dream. When I Heard locked beneath me of that horrible tower The outlet ; then into their eyes alone I looked to read myself, without a sign Or word. I wept not— turned within to stone. They wept aloud, and little Anselm mine, Said, — ’t was my youngest, dearest little one, — ‘What ails thee, father! why look so at thine ?’ In all that day, and all the following night, I wept not, nor replied; but when to shine Upon the world, not us, came forth the light Of the new sun, and thwart my prison thrown Gleamed through its narrow chink, a dole- ful sight, Three faces, each the reflex of my own, Were imaged by its faint and ghastly ray ; Then J, of either hand unto the bone, Gnawed, in my agony; and thinking they ’T was done from hunger pangs, in their excess, All of a sudden raise themselves, and say, ‘Father ! our woes, so great, were yet the less Would you but eat of us, — ’t was you who clad Our bodies in these weeds of wretchedness, Despoil them.” Not to make their hearts more sad, I hushed myself. close, — Another — still we were all mute. Oh, had The obdurate earth opened to end our woes ! That day is at its The fourth day dawned, and when the new sun shone, Outstretched himself before me as it rose My Gaddo, saying, ‘ Help, father! has” thou none ‘For thine own child —is there no help from thee ?’ He died — there at my feet —and one by one I saw them fall, plainly as you see me. Between the fifth and sixth day, ere ’t was dawn, I found myself blind-groping o’er the three. Three days I called them after they were gone. Famine of grief can get the mastery. SONNET TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF CAVALCANTI GUIDO CAVALCANTI to DANTE ALIGHIERI Published by Forman, 1876, and dated by him 1815. RETURNING from its daily quest, my Spirit Changed thoughts and vile in thee doth weep to find. It grieves me that thy mild and gentle mind Those ample virtues which it did inherit , Has lost. Once thou didst loathe the mul- titude Of blind and madding men; I then loved thee — I loved thy lofty songs and that sweet mood When thou wert faithful to thyself and me. 526 TRANSLATIONS I dare not now through thy degraded state Own the delight thy strains inspire —in vain I seek what once thou wert — we cannot meet As we were wont. Again, and yet again, Ponder my words: so the false Spirit shall fly And leave to thee thy true integrity. SCENES FROM THE MAGICO PRODIGIOSO TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH OF CALDERON Shelley’s acquaintance with Spanish began apparently with reading Calderon in company with Mrs. Gisborne in August, 1819, and under Charles Clairmont’s friendly tutoring in Sep- tember of the same vear. He wrote to Pea- cock in the former month : Shelley (from Leghorn) to Peacock, August 22 (?), 1819: ‘I have been reading Calderon in Spanish [with Mrs. Gisborne]. A kind of Shakespeare is this Calderon; and I have some thoughts, if I find that I cannot do anything better, of translating some of his plays;’ and again in September: ‘Charles Clairmont is now with us on his way to Vienna. He has spent a year or more in Spain, where he has learned Spanish, and I make him read Spanish all day long. It is a most powerful and ex- pressive language, and I have already learned safficient to read with great ease their poet Ualderon. I have read about twelve of his plays. Some of them certainly deserve to be ranked amongst the grandest and most perfect productions of the human mind. He exceeds all modern dramatists, with the exception of Shakespeare, whom he resembles, however, in the depth of thought and subtlety of imagina- tion of his writings, and in the rare power of interweaving delicate and powerful comic traits with the most tragical situations, without diminishing their interest. Irate him far above Beaumont and Fletcher.’ Shelley translated these scenes in March, 1822, and they had not received his final correction. They were pub- lished by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824, Scene I. — Enter Cyprian, dressed as a Stu- dent ; CLaRin and Moscon as poor Scholars, with books. CYPRIAN In the sweet solitude of this calm place, This intricate wild wilderness of trees And flowers and undergrowth of odorous plants, Leave me; the books you brought out of the house To me are ever best society. And while with glorious festival and song, Antioch now celebrates the consecration Of a proud temple to great Jupiter, And bears his image in loud jubilee To its new shrine, I would consume what still Lives of the dying day in studious thought, Far from the throng and turmoil. You, my friends, Go, and enjoy the festival; it will Be worth your pains. You may return for me When the sun seeks its grave among the billows, Which among dim gray clouds on the hori- zon, Dance like white plumes upon a hearse; — and here I shall expect you. MOSCON I cannot bring my mind, Great as my haste to see the festival Certainly is, to leave you, Sir, without Just saying some three or four thousand words. How is it possible that on a day Of such festivity you can be content To come forth to a solitary country With three or four old books, and turn your back On all this mirth ? CLARIN My master’s in the right; There is not anything more tiresome Than a procession day, with troops, and priests, And dances, and all that. MOSCON From first to last, Clarin, you are a temporizing flatterer; You praise not what you feel but what he does. Toadeater ! CLARIN You lie — under a mistake — For this is the most civil sort of lie SCENES FROM THE MAGICO PRODIGIOSO 527 That can be given to a man’s face. I now Say what I think. CYPRIAN Enough, you foolish fellows ! Puffed up with your own doting ignorance, You always take the two sides vf one ques- tion. Now go; and as I said, return for me When night falls, veiling in its shadows wide This glorious fabric of the universe. MOSCON How happens it, although you can main- tain The folly of enjoying festivals, That yet you go there ? CLARIN Nay, the consequence Is clear. Who ever did what he advises Others to do ? — MOScCON Would that my feet were wings, So would I fly to Livia. [ Exit. CLARIN To speak truth, Livia is she who has surprised my heart; But he is more than half way there. — Soho ! Livia, I come; good sport, Livia, Soho ! [ Exit. CYPRIAN Now, since I am alone, let me examine The question which has long disturbed my mind With doubt, since first I read in Plinius The words of mystic import and deep sense In which he defines God. My intellect Can find no God with whom these marks and signs Fitly agree. It is a hidden truth Which I must fathom. (Cyprian reads; the Demon, dressed in a Court dress, enters) DEMON Search even as thou wilt, But thou shalt never find what I can hide. CYPRIAN What noise is that among the boughs? Who moves ? What art thou ? — DEMON "Tis a foreign gentleman. Even from this morning I have lost my way In this wild place; and my pvor horse at last, Quite overcome, has stretched himself upon The enamelled tapestry of this mossy moun- tain, And feeds and rests at the same time. I was Upon my way to Antioch upon business Of some importance, but wrapped up in cares (Who is exempt from this iuheritance ?) I parted from my company, and lost My way, and lost my servants and my com- rades. CYPRIAN ’T is singular that even within the sight Of the high towers of Antioch you could lose Your way. Of all the avenues and green paths OF this wild wood there is not one but leads. As to its centre, to the walls of Antioch; Take which you will you cannot miss your road. DEMON And such is ignorance !_ Even in the sight Of knowledge, it can draw no profit from it. But as it still is early, and as [ Have no acquaintances in Antioch, Being a stranger there, I will even wait The few surviving hours of the day, Until the night shall conquer it. I see, Both by your dress and by the books in which You find delight and company, that you Are a great student ; for my part, I feel Much sympathy with such pursuits. CYPRIAN Have you Studied much ? DEMON No, — and yet I know enough Not to be wholly ignorant. CYPRIAN Pray, Sir, What science may you know ? DEMON Many. 528 TRANSLATIONS CYPRIAN Alas ! Much pains must we expend on one alone, And even then attain it not; but you Have the presumption to assert that you Know many without study. DEMON And with truth. For in the country whence I come the sci- ences Require no learning, — they are known. CYPRIAN Oh, would I were of that bright country ! for in this The more we study, we the more discover Our ignorance. DEMON It is so true, that I Had so much arrogance as to oppose The chair of the most high Professorship, And obtained many votes, and, though I lost, The attempt was still more glorious than the failure Could be dishonorable. If you believe not, Let us refer it to dispute respecting That which you know the best, and al- though I Know not the opinion you maintain, and though It be the true one, I will take the contrary. CYPRIAN The offer gives me pleasure. I am now Debating with myself upon a passage Of Plinius, and my mind is racked with doubt To understand and know who is the God Of whom he speaks. DEMON It is a passage, if I recollect it right, couched in these words: ‘God is one supreme goodness, one pure essence, One substance, and one sense, all sight, all hands.’ CYPRIAN ‘Tis true. DEMON What difficulty find you here ? CYPRIAN I do not recognize among the Gods The God defined by Plinius; if he must Be supreme goodness, even Jupiter Is not supremely good; because we see His deeds are evil, and his attributes Tainted with mortal weakness. In what manner Can supreme goodness be consistent with The passions of humanity ? DEMON The wisdom Of the old world masked with the names of Gods The attributes of Nature and of Man; A sort of popular philosophy. CYPRIAN This reply will not satisfy me, for Such awe is due to the high name of God That ill should never be imputed. Then, Examining the question with more care, It follows that the Gods would always will That which is best, were they supremely good. How then does one will one thing, one an- other ? And that you may not say that I allege Poetical or philosophic learning, Consider the ambiguous responses Of their oracular statues; from two shrines Two armies shall obtain the assurance of One victory. Is it not indisputable That two contending wills can never lead To the same end? And, being opposite, If one be good is not the other evil ? Evil in God is inconceivable; But supreme goodness fails among the Gods Without their union. DEMON I deny your major. These responses are means towards some end Unfathomed by our intellectual beam. They are the work of providence, and more The battle’s loss may profit those who lose Than victory advantage those who win. CYPRIAN That I admit; and yet that God should not (Falsehood is incompatible with deity) Assure the victory; it would be enough SCENES FROM THE MAGICO PRODIGIOSO 529 To have permitted the defeat. If God Be all sight, — God, who had beheld the truth, Would not have given assurance of an end Never to be accomplished; thus, although The Deity may according to his attributes Be well distinguished into persons, yet Even in the minutest circumstance His essence must be one. DEMON To attain the end The affections of the actors in the scene Must have been thus influenced by his voice. CYPRIAN But for a purpose thus subordinate He might have employed Genii, good or evil, — A sort of spirits called so by the learned, Who roam about inspiring good or evil, And from whose influence and existence we May well infer our immortality. Thus God might easily, without descent To a gross falsehood in his proper person, Have moved the affections by this media- tion To the just point. DEMON These trifling contradictions Do not suffice to impugn the unity Of the high Gods; in things of great im- portance They still appear unanimous; consider That glorious fabric, man, — his workman- ship Is stamped with one conception. CYPRIAN Who made man Must have, methinks, the advantage of the others. If they are equal, might they not have risen In opposition to the work, and being All hands, according to our author here, Have still destroyed even as the other made ? If equal in their power, unequal only In opportunity, which of the two Will remain conqueror ? DEMON On impossible And false hypothesis there can be built No argument. Say, what do you infer From this ? CYPRIAN That there must be a mighty God Of supreme goodness and of highest grace, All sight, all hands, all truth, infallible, Without an equal and without a rival, The cause of all things and the effect of nothing, One power, one will, one substance, and one essence, And in whatever persons, one or two, His attributes may be distinguished, one Sovereign power, one solitary essence, One cause of all cause. (They rise) DEMON How can I impugn So clear a consequence ? CYPRIAN Do you regret My victory ? DEMON Who but regrets a check In rivalry of wit? I could reply And urge new difficulties, but will now Depart, for I hear steps of men approach- ing, And it is time that I should now pursue My journey to the city. CYPRIAN Go in peace ! DEMON Remain in peace ! — Since thus it profits him To study, I will wrap his senses up In sweet oblivion of all thought but of A piece of excellent beauty; and, as I Have power given me to wage enmity Against Justina’s soul, I will extract From one effect two vengeances. [Aside and exit. CYPRIAN I never Met a more learnéd person. Let me now Revolve this doubt again with careful mind. [He reads. 530 TRANSLATIONS Fioro and LExio enter LELIO Cyprian | BETO. Although my high respect towards your Here stop. These toppling rocks and tan- person gled boughs, Holds now my sword suspended, thou canst Impenetrable by the noonday beam, not Shall be sole witnesses of what we — FLORO Draw ! If there were words, here is the place for deeds. LELIO Thou needest not instruct me; well I know That in the field the silent tongue of steel Speaks thus, — [They fight CYPRIAN Ha! what is this ? Lelio, — Floro, — Be it enough that Cyprian stands between yon, Although unarmed. LELIO Whence comest thou to stand Between me and my vengeance ? FLORO From what rocks And desert cells ? Enter Moscon and Cuarin MOSCON Run! run! for where we left My master, I now hear the clash of swords. CLARIN I never run to approach things of this sort But only to avoid them. Sir! Cyprian ! sir! CYPRIAN Be silent, fellows! What! two friends who are In blood and fame the eyes and hope of Antioch, One of the noble race of the Colalti, The other son o’ the Governor, adventure And cast away, on some slight cause no doubt, Two lives, the honor of their country ? Restore it to the slumber of the scabbard: Thou knowest more of science than the duel; For when two men of honor take the field, No counsel nor respect can make them friends But one must die in the dispute. FLORO I pray That you depart hence with your people, and Leave us to finish what we have begun Without advantage. CYPRIAN Though you may imagine That I know little of the laws of duel, Which vanity and valor instituted, You are inerror. By my birth I am Held no less than yourselves to know the limits Of honor and of infamy, nor has study Quenched the free spirit which first ordered them; And thus to me, as one well experienced In the false quicksands of the sea of honor, You may refer the merits of the case; And if I should perceive in your relation That either has the right to satisfaction From the other, I give you my word of honor To leave you. LELIO Under this condition then I will relate the cause, and you will cede And must confess the impossibility Of compromise; for the same lady is Beloved by Floro and myself. FLORO It seems Much to me that the light of day should look Upon that idol of my heart — but he — Leave us to fight, according to thy word. CYPRIAN Permit one question further: is the lady Impossible to hope or not ? SCENES FROM THE MAGICO PRODIGIOSO 53! LELIO She is So excellent that if the light of day Should excite Floro’s jealousy, it were Without just cause, for even the light of day Trembles to gaze on her. CYPRIAN Would you for your Part, marry her ? FLORO Such is my confidence. CYPRIAN And you? LELIO Oh! would that I could lift my hope So high, for though she is extremely poor, Her virtue is her dowry. CYPRIAN And if you both Would marry her, is it not weak and vain, Culpable and unworthy, thus beforehand To slur her honor? What would the world say If one should slay the other, and if she Should afterwards espouse the murderer ? [The rivals agree to refer their quarrel to Cr- PRIAN; who in consequence visits JUSTINA, and becomes enamoured of her: she disdains him, and he retires to a solitary seashore. SCENE II CYPRIAN O memory! permit it not That the tyrant of my thought Be another soul that still Holds dominion o’er the will, That would refuse, but can no more, To bend, to tremble, and adore. Vain idolatry !—I saw, And gazing, became blind with error; Weak ambition, which the awe Of her presence bound to terror ! So beautiful she was — and I, Between my love and jealousy, Am so convulsed with hope and fear, Unworthy as it may appear. So bitter is the life I live, ‘ ‘That, hear me, Hell! I now would give To thy most detested spirit My soul, forever to inherit, To suffer punishment and pine, So this woman may be mine. Hear’st thou, Hell! dost thou reject it ? My soul is offered ! DEMON (unseen) I accept it. [Tempest, with thunder and lightning. CYPRIAN What is this ? ye heavens forever pure, At ounce intensely radiant and obscure ! Athwart the ethereal halls The lightning’s arrow and the thunder- balls The day affright, As from the horizon round Burst with earthquake sound In mighty torrents the electric fountains; Clouds quench the sun, and thunder smoke Strangles the air, and fire eclipses heaven. Philosophy, thou caust not even Compel their causes underneath thy yoke; From yonder clouds even to the waves below The fragments of a single ruin choke Imagination’s flight; For, on flakes of surge, like feathers light, The ashes of the desolation, cast Upon the gloomy blast, Tell of the footsteps of the storm; And nearer, see, the melancholy form Of a great ship, the outcast of the sea, Drives miserably ! And it must fly the pity of the port, Or perish, and its last and sole resort Is its own raging enemy. The terror of the thrilling ery Was a fatal prophecy Of coming death, who hovers now Upon that shattered prow, That they who die not may be dying still. And not alone the insane elements Are populous with wide portents, But that sad ship is as a miracle Of sudden ruin, for it drives so fast It seems as if it had arrayed its form With the headlong storm. It strikes — J almost feel the shock — It stumbles on a jagged rock, Sparkles of blood on the white foam are cast. [A Tempest. 532 All exclaim (within) We are all lost ! DEMON (within) Now from this plank will I Pass to the land and thus fulfil my scheme. CYPRIAN As in contempt of the elemental rage A man comes forth in safety, while the ship’s Great form is in a watery eclipse Obliterated from the Ocean’s page, And round its wreck the huge sea-monsters sit, A horrid conclave, and the whistling wave Is heaped over its carcass, like a grave. The Demon enters, as escaped from the sea DEMON (aside) It was essential to my purposes To wake a tumult on the sapphire ocean, That in this unknown form I might at length Wipe out the blot of the discomfiture Sustained upon the mountain, and assail With a new war the soul of Cyprian, Forging the instruments of his destruction Even from his love and from his wis- dom. —O Belovéd earth, dear Mother, in thy bosom I seek a refuge from the monster who Precipitates itself upon me. CYPRIAN Friend, Collect thyself; and be the memory Of thy late suffering, and thy greatest sor- TOW But as a shadow of the past, — for nothing Beneath the circle of the moon but flows And changes, and can never know repose. DEMON And who art thou, before whose feet my fate Has prostrated me ? CYPRIAN One who, moved with pity, Would soothe its stings. DEMON Oh ! that can never be! No solace can my lasting sorrows find. TRANSLATIONS CYPRIAN Wherefore ? DEMON Because my happiness is lost. Yet I lament what has long ceased to be The object of desire or memory, And my life is not life. CYPRIAN Now, since the fury Of this earthquaking hurricane is still, And the crystalline heaven has reassumed Its windless calm so quickly that it seems As if its heavy wrath had been awakened Only to overwhelm that vessel, — speak, Who art thou, and whence comest thou ? DEMON Far more My coming hither cost than thou hast seen Or I can tell. Among my misadventures This shipwreck is the least. Wilt thou hear ? CYPRIAN Speak. DEMON Since thou desirest, I will then unveil Myself to thee; for in myself I am A world of happiness and misery; This I have lost, and that I must lament Forever. In my attributes I stood So high and so heroically great, In lineage so supreme, and with a genius Which penetrated with a glance the world Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit, A king— whom I may call the King of kings, Because all others tremble in their pride Before the terrors of his countenance, In his high palace roofed with brightest. gems Of living light— call them the stars of Heaven — Named me his counsellor. praise Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose In mighty competition to ascend His seat, and place my foot triumphantly Upon his subject thrones. Chastised, I know The depth to which ambition falls; too mad Was the attempt, and yet more mad were. now But the high SCENES FROM THE MAGICO PRODIGIOSO 533 Repentance of the irrevocable deed. Therefore I chose this ruin, with the glory Of not to be subdued, before the shame Of reconciling me with him who reigns By coward cession. Nor was I alone, Nor am [ now, nor shall I be alone; And there was hope, and there may still be hope, For many suffrages among his vassals Hailed me their lord and king, and many still Are mine, and many more perchance shall be. Thus vanquished, though in fact victorious, I left his seat of empire, from mine eye Shooting forth poisonous lightning, while my words With inauspicious thunderings shook Hea- ven, Proclaiming vengeance public as my wrong, And imprecating on his prostrate slaves Rapine, and death, and outrage. Then I sailed Over the mighty fabric of the world, — A pirate ambushed in its pathless sands, A lynx crouched watchfully among its caves And craggy shores; and I have wandered over The expanse of these wide wildernesses In this great ship, whose bulk is now dis- solved In the light breathings of the invisible wind, And which the sea has made a dustless ruin, Seeking ever a mountain, through whose forests I seek a man, whom I must now compel Te keep his word with me. I came ar- rayed In tempest, and, although my power could well Bridle the forest winds in their career, For other causes I forbore to soothe Their fury to Favonian gentleness; I could and would not; (thus I wake in him [ Aside. A love of magic art). Let not this tem- pest, Nor the succeeding calm excite thy wonder; For by my art the sun would turn as pale As his weak sister with unwonted fear; And in my wisdom are the orbs of Hea- ven Written as in a record; I have pierced The flaming circles of their wondrous spheres And know them as thou knowest every corner Of this dim spot. Let it not seem to thee That I boast vainly; wouldst thou that I work A charm over this waste and savage wood, This Babylon of crags and aged trees, Filling its leafy coverts with a borror Thrilling and strange? Iam the friend- less guest Of these wild oaks and pines; and as from thee I have received the hospitality Of this rude place, I ofter thee the fruit Of years of toil in recompense; whate’er Thy wildest dream presented to thy thought As object of desire, that shall be thine. And thenceforth shall so firm an amity *Twixt thee and me be, that neither for- tune, The monstrous phantom which pursues success, That careful miser, that free prodigal, Who ever alternates with changeful hand Evil and good, reproach and fame; nor Time, That lodestar of the ages, to whose beam The winged years speed o’er the intervals Of their unequal revolutions; nor Heaven itself, whose beautiful bright stars Rule and adorn the world, can ever make The least division between thee and me, Since now I find a refuge in thy favor. Scene III. — The Demon tempts Justina, who is a Christian. DEMON Abyss of Hell! I call on thee, Thou wild misrule of thine own anarchy ! From thy prison-house set free The spirits of voluptuous death That with their mighty breath They may destroy a world of virgin thoughts; Let her chaste mind with fancies thick as motes Be peopled from thy shadowy deep, Till her guiltless fantasy Full to overflowing be ! 534 TRANSLATIONS And with sweetest harmony, Let birds, and flowers, and leaves, and all things move To love, only to love. Let nothing meet her eyes But signs of Love’s soft victories; Let nothing meet her ear But sounds of Love’s sweet sorrow, So that from faith no succor she may bor- row, But, guided by my spirit blind And in a magic snare entwined, She may now seek Cyprian. Begin, while I in silence bind My voice, when thy sweet song thou hast began. A VOICE (within) What is the glory far above All else in human life ? ALL Love! love! [While these words are sung, the DEMON goes out at one door, and JusTINA enters at another. THE FIRST VOICE There is no form in which the fire Of love its traces has impressed not. Man lives far more in love’s desire Than by life’s breath, soon possessed not. If all that lives must love or die, All shapes on earth, or sea, or sky, With one consent to Heaven ery That the glory far above All else in life is — ALL Love! O, love! JUSTINA Thou melancholy thought which art So flattering and so sweet, to thee When did I give the liberty Thus to afflict my heart ? What is the cause of this new power Which doth my fevered being move, Momently raging more and more ? What subtle pain is kindled now Which from my heart doth overflow Into my senses ? — ALL’ Love, O, love! JUSTINA ’T is that enamoured nightingale Who gives me the reply; He ever tells the same soft tale Of passion and of constancy To his mate, who, rapt and fond, Listening sits, a bough beyond. Be silent, Nightingale — no more Make me think, in hearing thee Thus tenderly thy love deplore, If a bird can feel his so, What a man would feel for me. And, voluptuous Vine, O thou Who seekest most when least pursuing, — To the trunk thou interlacest Art the verdure which embracest, And the weight which is its ruin, — No more, with green embraces, Vine, Make me think on what thou lovest, — For whilst thus thy boughs entwine, I fear lest thou shouldst teach me, sophist, How arms might be entangled too. Light-enchanted Sunflower, thou Who gazest ever true and tender On the sun’s revolving splendor ! Follow not his faithless glance With thy faded countenance, Nor teach my beating heart to fear, If leaves can mourn without a tear, How eyes must weep! O Nightingale, Cease from thy enamoured tale, — Leafy Vine, unwreathe thy bower, Restiess Sunflower, cease to move, — Or tell me all, what poisonous power Ye use against me — ALL Love! love ! love! JUSTINA It cannot be ! — Whom have I ever loved? Trophies of my oblivion and disdain, Floro and Lelio did I not reject ? And Cyprian ? — (She becomes troubled at the name of Cyprian.) Did I not requite him With such severity that he has fled Where none has ever heard of him again?— Alas! I now begin to fear that this May be the occasion whence desire grows bold, SCENES FROM THE MAGICO PRODIGIOSO 535 As if there were no danger. From the moment That I pronounced to my own listening heart Cyprian is absent, — oh, me miserable ! I know not what I feel ! [More calmly. It must be pity To think that such a man whom all the world Admired should be forgot by all the world, And I the cause. [She again becomes troubled. And yet if it were pity, Floro and Lelio might have equal share, For they are both imprisoned for my sake. [Calmly. Alas ! what reasonings are these ? it is Enough I pity him, and that, in vain, Without this ceremonious subtlety. And, woe is me! I know not where to find him now, Even should I seek him through this wide world. Enter Demon DEMON Follow, and I will lead thee where he is. JUSTINA And who art thou who hast found entrance hither Into my chamber through the doors and locks ? Art thou a monstrous shadow which my madness Has formed in the idle air ? DEMON No. Iam one Called by the thought which tyrannizes thee From his eternal dwelling; who this day Is pledged to bear thee unto Cyprian. JUSTINA So shall thy promise fail. This agony Of passion which afflicts my heart and soul May sweep imagination in its storm; The will is firm. DEMON Already half is done In the imagination of an act. : The sin incurred, the pleasure then remains; Let not the will stop half-way on the road. JUSTINA I will not be discouraged, nor despaix, Although I thought it, and although ’tis true That thought is but a prelude to the deed. Thought is not in my power, but action is. I will not move my foot to follow thee. DEMON But a far mightier wisdom than thine own Exerts itself within thee, with such power Compelling thee to that which it inclines That it shall force thy step; how wilt thou then Resist, Justina ? JUSTINA By wy free-will. DEMON Must force thy will. JUSTINA It is invincible; It were not free if thou hadst power upon it. [He draws, but cannot move her DEMON Come, where a pleasure waits thee. JUSTINA It were bought Too dear. DEMON *T will soothe thy heart to softest peace. JUSTINA ’T is dread captivity. DEMON ’T is joy, ’tis glory. JUSTINA Tis shame, ’tis torment, ’tis despair. DEMON But how Canst thou defend thyself from that or me, If my power drags thee onward ? SUSTINA My defence Consists in God. [He vainly endeavors to force her, and at last ree leases her. 536 TRANSLATIONS DEMON Woman, thou hast subdued me Only by not owning thyself subdued. But since thou thus findest defence in God, I will assume a feignéd form, and thus Make thee a victim of my baffled rage. For I will mask a spirit in thy form Who will betray thy name to infamy, And doubly shall I triumph in thy loss, First by dishonoring thee, and then by turning False pleasure to true ignominy. [ Exit. JUSTINA I Appeal to Heaven against thee; so that Heaven May scatter thy delusions, and the blot Upon my fame vanish in idle thought, Even as flame dies in the envious air, And as the floweret wanes at morning frost, And thou shouldst never— But, alas! to whom Do I still speak ?— Did not a man but now Stand here before me ? — No, I am alone, And yetIsawhim. Is he gone so quickly ? Or can the heated mind engender shapes From its own fear? Some terrible and strange Peril is near. Livia ! — Enter LisanpER and Livia Lisander ! father! lord ! LISANDER Oh, my daughter! What ? LIVIA What ? JUSTINA Saw you A man go forth from my apartment now ?— I scarce contain myself ! LISANDER A man here ! JUSTINA Have you not seen him ? LIVIA No, Lady. JUSTINA I saw him. LISANDER *T is impossible; the doors Which led to this apartment were all locked. LIvia (aside) I dare say it was Moscon whom she saw, For he was locked up in my room. LISANDER It must Have been some image of thy fantasy. Such melancholy as thou feedest is Skilful in forming such in the vain air Out of the motes and atoms of the day. LIVIA My master’s in the right. JUSTINA Oh, would it were Delusion; but I fear some greater ill. I feel as if out of my bleeding bosom My heart was torn in fragments; ay, Some mortal spell is wrought against my frame; So potent was the charm that, had not God Shielded my humble innocence from wrong, I should have sought my sorrow and my shame With willing steps. — Livia, quick, bring my cloak, For I must seek refuge from these extremes Even in the temple of the highest God Where secretly the faithful worship. LIVIA Here. JUSTINA (putting on her cloak) In this, as in a shroud of snow, may I Quench the consuming fire in which I burn, Wasting away ! LISANDER And I will go with thee. LIVIA When I once see them safe out of the house I shall breathe freely. JUSTINA ; So do I confide In thy just favor, Heaven ! LISANDER Let us go. SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE 537 JUSTINA Thine is the cause, great God ! turn for my sake, And for thine own, mercifully to me! STANZAS FROM CALDERON’S CISMA DE INGLATERRA TRANSLATED BY MEDWIN AND COR- RECTED BY SHELLEY Medwin published these stanzas, with Shel- ley’s corrections in italics, in his Life of Shelley, 1847, with the following note: ‘ But we also read a tragedy of Calderon’s which, though it cannot compete with Shakespeare’s Henry the VIII. contains more poetry —the Crsma @’ Inglaterra. Shelley was much struck with the characteristic Fool who plays a part in it, and deals in fables, but more so with the octave stanzas (a strange metre in a drama, to choose) spoken by Carlos, enamorado di Anna Bolena, whom he had met at Paris, during her father’s embassy. So much did Shelley admire these stanzas that he copied them out into one of his letters to Mrs. Gisborne, of the two last of which I append a translation marking in italics the lines corrected by Shelley.’ He had previously published these stanzas with nine others in Sketches in Hindoostan, with Other Poems, 1821. Forman conjectures that Shel- ley codperated with Medwin in the other stanzas, where no credit has been given. Shelley’s letter to Mrs. Gisborne was of the date November 16, 1819: ‘ I have been reading Calderon without you. I have read the Cisma de Inglaterra, the Cabellos de Absalom, and three or four others. These pieces, inferior to those we read, at least to the Principe Con- stante, in the splendor of particular passages, are perhaps superior in their satisfying com- pleteness. . . . I transcribe you a passage from the Cisma de Inglaterra — spoken by “ Carlos, Embaxador de Francia, enamorado de Ana Bolena.” Is there anything in Petrarch finer than the second stanza ?’ I Hast thou not seen, officious with delight, Move through the illumined air about the flower The Bee, that fears to drink its purple light, Lest danger lurk within that Rose’s bower ? Hast thou not marked the moth’s enam- oured flight About the Taper’s flame at evening hour, Till kindle in that monumental fire His sunflower wings their own funereal pyre ¢ Ti My heart, its wishes trembling to unfold, Thus round the Rose and ‘Taper hover- ing came, And Passion’s slave, Distrust, in ashes cold, Smothered awhile, but could not quench the flame, Till Love, that grows by disappointment bold, And Opportunity, had conquered Shame, And like the Bee and Moth, in act to close, I burned my wings, and settled on the Rose.’ SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE These scenes were translated in the spring of 1822, and published, in part, by Hunt, The Liberal, 1822, and entire by Mrs. Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824. The admiration of Shelley for Faust, and his feeling with regard to the translation, are fully shown in two let- ters to Mr. Gisborne, one in January, 1822: ‘We have just got the etchings of Faust, the painter is worthy of Goethe. The meeting of him and Margaret is wonderful. It makes all the pulses of my head beat—those of my heart have been quiet long ago. The transla- tions, both these and in Blackwood, are miser- able. Ask Coleridge if their stupid misintel- ligence of the deep wisdom and harmony of the author does not spur him to action;’ the second, April 10, 1822: ‘I have been reading over and over again Faust, and always with sensations which no other composition excites. It deepens the gloom and augments the rapid- ity of ideas, and would therefore seem to me an unfit study for any person who is a prey te the reproaches of memory, and the delusions of an imagination not to be restrained. And yet the pleasure of sympathizing with emotions known only to few, although they derive their sole charm from despair, and the scorn of the narrow good we can attain in our present state, seems more than to ease the pain which be- longs to them. ... ‘Have you read Calderon’s Magico Prodigi- oso? I find a striking similarity between Faust and this drama, and if I were to ac- knowledge Coleridge’s distinction, should say Goethe was the greatest philosopher, and Cal- deron the greatest poet. Cyprian evidently furnished the germ of Faust, as Faust may furnish the germ of other poems; althongh it is as different from it in structure and plan as 538 TRANSLATIONS the acorn from the oak. I have —imagine my presumption — translated several scenes from both, as the basis of a paper for our journal. T am well content with those from Calderon, which in fact gave me very little trouble ; bat those from Faust —I feel how imperfect a re- presentation, even with all the license I assume to figure to myself how Goethe would have written in English, my words convey. No one but Coleridge is capable of this work. ‘We have seen here a translation of some gcenes, and indeed the most remarkable ones, accompanying those astonishing etchings which have been published in England from a German master. It is not bad——-and faithful enough — but how weak! how incompetent to repre- sent Faust! I have ouly attempted the scenes omitted in this translation, and would send you that of the Walpurgisnacht, if I thought Ollier would piace the postage to my account. What etchings those are! Iam never satiated with looking at them; and, I fear, it is the only sort of translation of which Faust is suscepti- ble. I never perfectly understood the Hartz Mountain scene, until I saw the etching; and then, Margaret in thc summer-house with Faust! The artist makes one envy his happi- ness that he can sketch such things with calm- ness, which I only dared look upon once, and which made my brain swim round only to touch the leaf on the opposite side of which I knew that it was figured. Whether it is that the artist has surpassed Faust, or that the pencil surpasses language in some subjects, I know not, or that I am more affected by a visible image, but the etching certainly excited me far more than the poem it illustrated. Do you remember the fifty-fourth letter of the first part of the Nouvelle Héloise? Goethe, in a subsequent scene, evidently had that letter in his mind, and this etching is an idealism of it. So much for the world of shadows !’ Scene J.— Protogus 1n H#AvEN. The Lord and the Host of Heaven. Archangels. Enter three RAPHAEL THE sun makes music as of old Amid the rival spheres of Heaven, On its predestined circle rolled With thunder speed: the Angels even Draw strength from gazing on its glance, Though none its meaning fathom may; The world’s unwithered countenance Is bright as at creation’s day. GABRIEL And swift and swift, with rapid lightness, The adornéd Earth spins silently, Alternating Elysian brightness With deep and dreadful night; the sea Foams in broad billows from the deep Up to the rocks, and rocks and ocean, Onward, with spheres which never sleep, Are hurried in eternal motion. MICHAEL And tempests in contention roar From land to sea, from sea to land; And, raging, weave a chain of power, Which girds the earth, as with a band. A flashing desolation there Flames before the thunder’s way; But thy servants, Lord, revere The gentle changes of thy day. CHORUS OF THE THREE The Angels draw strength from thy glance, Though no one comprehend thee may; Thy world’s unwithered countenance Is bright as on creation’s day. Enter MEPHISTOPHELES MEPHISTOPHELES As thou, O Lord, once more art kind enough To interest thyself in our affairs, And ask, ‘ How goes it with you there be- low ?’ And as indulgently at other times Thou tookest not my visits in ill part, Thou seest me here once more among thy household. Though I should scandalize this company, You will excuse me if I do not talk In the high style which they think fashion- able; My pathos certainly would make you laugh too, Had you not long since given over laugh- ing. Nothing cone I to say of suns and worlds; I observe only how men plague themselves. The little god o’ the world keeps the same stamp, As wonderful as on creation’s day. A little better would he live, hadst thou Not given him a glimpse of Heaven’s light, Which he calls reason, and employs it only SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE To live more beastlily than any beast. With reverence to your Lordship be it spoken, He’s like one of those long-legged grass- hoppers, Who flits and jumps about, and sings for- ever The same old song i’ the grass. There let him lie, Burying his nose in every heap of dung. THE LORD Have you no more to say? Do you come here Always to scold, and cavil, and complain ? Seems nothing ever right to you on earth ? MEPHISTOPHELES No, Lord! I find all there, as ever, bad at best. Even I am sorry for man’s days of sorrow; I could myself almost give up the pleasure Of plaguing the poor things. THE LORD Knowest thou Faust ? MEPHISTOPHELES The Doctor ? THE LORD Ay; my servant Faust. MEPHISTOPHELES In truth He serves you in a fashion quite his own; And the fool’s meat and drink are not of earth. His aspirations bear him on so far That he is half aware of his own folly, For he demands from Heaven its fairest star, And from the earth the highest joy it bears, Yet all things far, and all things near, are vain To calm the deep emotions of his breast. THE LORD Though he now serves me in a cloud of error, I will soon lead him forth to the clear day. When trees look green, full well the gar- dener knows That fruits and blooms will deck the com- ing year. 539 MEPHISTOPHELES What will you bet ?—now I am sure of winning — Only, observe you give me full permission To lead him softly on my path. THE LORD As long As he shall live upon the earth, so long Is nothing unto thee forbidden. Man Must err till he has ceased to struggle. MEPHISTOPHELES Thanks. And that is all I ask; for willingly I never make acquaintance with the dead. The full fresh cheeks of youth are food for me, And if acorpse knocks, I am not at home. For I am like a cat — I like to play A little with the mouse before I eat it. THE LORD Well, well! it is permitted thee. Draw thou His spirit from its springs; as thou find’st power, Seize him and lead him on thy downward path; And stand ashamed when failure teaches thee That a good man, even in his darkest long- ings 9 Is well aware of the right way. MEPHISTOPHELES Well and good. I am not in much doubt about my bet, And if I lose, then ’t is your turn to crow; Enjoy your triumph then with a full breast. Ay; dust shall he devour, and that with pleasure, Like my old paramour, the famous Snake. THE LORD Pray come here when it suits you; for ] never Had much dislike for people of your sort. And, among all the Spirits who rebelled, The knave was ever the least tedious tu me. The active spirit of man soon sleeps, and soon He seeks unbroken quiet; therefore I Have given him the Devil for a compan ion, 540 TRANSLATIONS Whe may provoke him to some sort of work, And must create forever. — But ye, pure Children of God, enjoy eternal beauty. Let that which ever operates and lives Clasp you within the limits of its love; And seize with sweet and melancholy thoughts The floating phantoms of its loveliness. [Heaven closes ; the Archangels exeunt. MEPHISTOPBHELES From time to time I visit the old fellow, And I take care to keep on good terms with him. Civil enough is this same God Almighty, To talk so freely with the Devil himself. SCENE II MAY-DAY NIGHT Scenz — The Hartz Mountain, a desolate Country FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES MEPHISTOPHELES Would you not like a broomstick? As for me I wish I had a good stout ram to ride; For we are still far from the appointed place. FAUST This knotted staff is help enough for me, Whilst I feel fresh upon my legs. What good Is there in making short a pleasant way ? To creep along the labyrinths of the vales, And climb those rocks, where ever-bab- bling springs Precipitate themselves in waterfalls, Is the true sport that seasons such a path. Already Spring kindles the birchen spray, And the hoar pines already feel her breath. Shall she not work also within our limbs ? MEPHISTOPHELES Nothing of such an influence do I feel. My body is all wintry, and I wish The flowers upon our path were frost and snow. But see how melancholy rises now, Dimly uplifting her belated beam, The blank unwelcome round of the red moon, And gives so bad a light that every step One stumbles ’gainst some crag. With your permission, I'll call an Ignis-fatuus to our aid. I see one yonder burning jollily. Halloo, my friend ! may I request that you Would favor us with your bright company ? Why should you blaze away there to no purpose ? Pray be so good as light us up this way. IGNIS-FATUUS With reverence be it spoken, I will try To overcome the lightness of my nature; Our course, you know, is generally zigzag. MEPHISTOPHELES Ha, ha! your worship thinks you have to deal With men. name, Or I shall puff your flickering life out. Go straight on, in the Devil’s IGNIS-FATUUS Well, I see you are the master of the house; I will accommodate myself to you. Only consider that to-night this mountain Ts all enchanted, and if Jack-a-lantern Shows you his way, though you should miss your own, You ought not to be too exact with him. FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES, and IGNIS-FATUUS, 1% alternate Chorus The limits of the sphere of dream, The bounds of true and false, are passed. Lead us on, thou wandering Gleam, Lead us onward, far and fast, To the wide, the desert waste. But see, how swift advance and shift Trees behind trees, row by row; How, clift by clift, rocks bend and lift Their frowning foreheads as we go. The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho! How they snort, and how they blow! Through the mossy sods and stones, Stream and streamlet hurry down — A rushing throng! A sound of song Beneath the vault of Heaven is blown! SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE 542 Sweet notes of love, the speaking tones Of this bright day, sent down to say That Paradise on Earth is known, Resound around, beneath, above. All we hope and all we love Finds a voice in this blithe strain, Which wakens hill and wood and rill, And vibrates far o’er field and vale, And which Echo, like the tale Of old times, repeats again. To-whoo ! to-whoo! near, nearer now The sound of song, the rushing throng ! Are the screech, the lapwing, and the ays All eoks as if ’t were day ? See, with long legs and belly wide, A salamander in the brake ! Every root is like a snake, And along the loose hillside, With strange contortions through the night, Curls, to seize or to affright; And, animated, strong, and many, They dart forth polypus-antenne, To blister with their poison spume The wanderer. Through the dazzling gloom The many-colored mice, that thread The dewy turf beneath our tread, In troops each other’s motions cross, Through the heath and through the moss; And, in legions intertangled, The fireflies flit,and swarm, and throng, Till all the mountain depths are spangled. Tell me, shall we go or stay ? Shall we onward ? Come along! Everything around is swept Forward, onward, far away ! Trees and masses intercept The sight, and wisps on every side Are puffed up and multiplied. MEPHISTOPHELES Now vigorously seize my skirt, and gain This pinnacle of isolated crag. : One may observe with wonder from this point, : How Mammon glows among the mountains. FAUST Ay— And strangely through the solid depth be- ow A melancholy light, like the red dawn, Shoots from the lowest gorge of the abyss Of mountains, lightning hitherward; there rise Pillars of smoke, here clouds float gently by; Here the light burns soft as the enkindled air, Or the illumined dust of golden flowers; And now it glides like tender colors spread. ing; And won iets forth in fountains from the earth; And now it winds, one torrent of broad light, Through the far valley, with a hundred veins; And now once more within that narrow corner Masses itself into intensest splendor. And near us, see, sparks spring out of the ground, Like golden sand scattered upon the dark- ness; The pinnacles of that black wall of monn- tains That hems us in are kindled. MEPHISTOPHELES Rare, in faith ! Does not Sir Mammon gloriously illumi- nate His palace for this festival — it is A pleasure which you had not known be- fore. I spy the boisterous guests already. FAUST How The children of the wind rage in the air! With what fierce strokes they fall upon my neck ! MEPHISTOPHELES Cling tightly to the old ribs of the crag. Beware ! for if with them thou warrest In their fierce flight towards the wil- derness, Their breath will sweep thee into dust, and drag Thy body to a grave in the abyss. A cloud thickens the night. Hark ! how the tempest crashes through the forest ! The owls fly out in strange affright; The columns of the evergreen palaces 542 TRANSLATIONS Are split and shattered; The roots creak, and stretch, and groan; And ruinously overthrown, The trunks are crushed and shattered By the fierce blast’s unconquerable stress. Over each other crack and crash they all In terrible and intertangled fall ; And through the ruins of the shaken moun- tain The airs hiss and howl. It is not the voice of the fountain, Nor the wolf in his midnight prowl. Dost thou not hear ? Strange accents are ringing Aloft, afar, anear; The witches are singing ! The torrent of a raging wizard song Streams the whole mountain along. CHORUS OF WITCHES The stubble is yellow, the corn is green, Now to the Brocken the witches go; The mighty multitude here may be seen Gathering, wizard and witch, below. Sir Urian is sitting aloft in the air; Hey over stock ! and hey over stone ! °T wixt witches and incubi, what shall be done ? Tell it who dare ! tell it who dare ! A VOICE Upon a sow-swine, whose farrows were nine, Old Baubo rideth alone. CHORUS Honor her, to whom honor is due, Old mother Baubo, honor to you ! An able sow, with old Baubo upon her, Is worthy of glory, and worthy of honor! The legion of witches is coming behind, Darkening the night, and outspeeding the wind — A VOICE Which way comest thou ! A VOICE. Over Ilsenstein; The owl was awake in the white moon- shine; I saw her at rest in her downy nest, And she stared at me with her broad, bright eyne. VOICES And you may now as well take your course on to Hell, Since you ride by so fast on the headlong blast. A VOICE She dropped poison upon me as I passed. Here are the wounds — CHORUS OF WITCHES Come away ! come along ! The way is wide, the way is long, But what is that for a Bedlam throng ? Stick with the prong, and scratch with the broom. The child in the cradle lies strangled at home, And the mother is clapping her hands. — SEMICHORUS I OF WIZARDS We glide in Like snails when the women are all away; And from a house once given over to sin Woman has a thousand steps to stray. SEMICHORUS II A thousand steps must a woman take, Where a man but a single spring will make. VOICES ABOVE Come with us, come with us, from Felsen- see. VOICES BELOW With what joy would we fly through the upper sky ! We are washed, we are ‘nointed, stark naked are we; But our toil and our pain are forever in vain. BOTH CHORUSES The wind is still, the stars are fled, The melancholy moon is dead; The magic notes, like spark on spark, Drizzle, whistling through the dark. Come away ! VOICES BELOW Stay, oh, stay ! VOICES ABOVE Out of the crannies of the rocks, Who calls ? SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE 543 VOICES BELOW Oh, let me join your flocks ! I three hundred years have striven To catch your skirt and mount to Hea- ven, — And still in vain. Of, might I be With company akin to me! BOTH CHORUSES Some on a ram and some on a prong, On poles and on broomsticks we flutter along; Forlorn is the wight who can rise not to- night. 4 HALF-WITCH BELOW I have been tripping this many an hour: Are the others already so far before ? No quiet at home, and no peace abroad ! And less methinks is found by the road. CHORUS OF WITCHES Come onward, away ! aroint thee, aroint ! A witch to be strong must anoint — anoint — Then every trough will be boat enough; With a rag for a sail we can sweep through the sky, — Who flies not to-night, when means he to fly ? BOTH CHORUSES We cling to the skirt, and we strike on the ground; Witch-legions thicken around and around; Wizard-swarms cover the heath all over. [ They descend. MEPHISTOPHELES What thronging, dashing, raging, rustling; What whispering, babbling, hissing, bus- tling; What glimmering, spurting, stinking, burn- ing, : As Heaven and Earth were overturning. There is a true witch element about us; Take hold on me, or we shall be divided: — Where are you ? Faust (from a distance) Here ! MEPHISTOPHELES What ! I must exert my authority in the house. Place for young Voland! pray make way, good people. Take hold on me, doctor, and with one step Let us escape from this unpleasant crowd. They are too mad for people of my sort. Just there shines a peculiar kind of light; Something attracts me in those bushes. Come This way; we shall slip down there in a minute. FAUST Spirit of Contradiction ! Well, lead on — *T were a wise feat indeed to wander out Into the Brocken upon May-day night, And then to isolate one’s self in scorn, | Disgusted with the humors of the time. MEPHISTOPHELES See yonder, round a many-colored flame A merry club is huddled altogether: Even with such little people as sit there One would not be alone. FAUST Would that I were Up yonder in the glow and whirling smoke, Where the blind million rush impetuously To meet the evil ones; there might I solve Many a riddle that torments me ! MEPHISTOPHELES Yet Many a riddle there is tied anew Inextricably. Let the great world rage ! We will stay here safe in the quiet dwell- ings. Tis an aid custom. Men have ever built Their own small world in the great world of all. I see young witches naked there, and old ones Wisely attired with greater decency. Be guided now by me, and you shall buy A pound of pleasure with a dram of trouble. I hear them tune their instruments — one must Get used to this damned scraping. Come, I'll lead you Among them; and what there you do and see, As a fresh compact ’twixt us two shall be. How say you now? this space is wide enough — Look forth, you cannot see the end of it, 544 TRANSLATIONS An hundred bonfires burn in rows, and they Who throng around them seem innumer- able: Dancing and drinking, jabbering, making love, And cooking, are at work. Now tell me, friend, What is there better in the world than this ? FAUST In introducing us, do you assume The character of wizard or of devil ? MEPHISTOPHELES in truth, I generally go about In strict incognito; and yet one likes To wear one’s orders upon gala days. I have no ribbon at my knee; but here At home, the cloven foot is honorable. See you that snail there ?—she comes creeping up, And with her feeling eyes hath smelt out something. I could not, if I would, mask myself here. Come now, we'll go about from fire to fire: I'll be the pimp, and you shall be the lover. (To some Old Women, who are sitting round a heap of glimmering coals) Old gentlewomen, what do you do out here ? You ought to be with the young rioters Right in the thickest of the revelry — But every one is best content at home. GENERAL Who dare confide in right or a just claim ? So much as I had done for them ! and now — With women and the people ’t is the same, Youth will stand foremost ever, — age may go To the dark grave unhonored. MINISTER Nowadays People assert their rights; they go too far; But as for me, the good old times I praise; Then we were all in all, ’t was some- thing worth One’s while to be in place and wear a star; That was indeed the golden age on earth, PARVENU We too are active, and we did and do What we ought not, perhaps; and yet we now Will seize, whilst all things are whirled round and round, A spoke of Fortune’s wheel, and keep our ground. AUTHOR Who now ean taste a treatise of deep sense And ponderous volume ? ’t is impertinence To write what none will read, therefore will I To please the young and thoughtless people try. MEPHISTOPHELES (who at once appears to have grown very old) I find the people ripe for the last day, Since I last came up to the wizard moun- tain; And as my little cask runs turbid now, So is the world drained to the dregs. PEDLAR-WITCH Look here, Gentlemen; do not hurry on so fast And lose the chance of a good pennyworth. I have a pack full of the choicest wares Of every sort, and yet in all my bundle Is nothing like what may be found on earth; Nothing that in a moment will make rich Men and the world with fine malicious mischief. There is no dagger drunk with blood; no bowl From which consuming poison may be drained By innocent and healthy lips; no jewel, The price of an abandoned maiden’s shame; No sword which cuts the bond it cannot loose, stabs the wearer’s enemy in the back; on MEPHISTOPHELES Gossip, you know little of these times. What has been, has been; what is done, is past. They shape themselves into the innovations They breed, and innovation drags us with it. The torrent of the crowd sweeps over us: You think to impel, and are yourself im« pelled. SCENES FROM THE FAUST OF GOETHE 545 FAUST FAUST Who is that yonder ? Oh! he MEPHISTOPHELES Mark her well. It is Lilith. FAUST Who? MEPHISTUPHELES Lilith, the first wife of Adam. Beware of her fair hair, for she excels All women in the magic of her locks; And when she winds them round a young man’s neck, She will not ever set him free again. FAUST There sit a girl and an old woman — they Seem to be tired with pleasure and with play. MEPHISTOPHELES There is no rest to-night for any one: When one dance ends another is begun; Come, let us to it. We shall have rare fun. (Faust dances and sings with a Girl, and MEPHISTOPHELES with an old Woman) FAUST I had once a lovely dream In which I saw an apple-tree, Where two fair apples with their gleam To climb and taste attracted me. THE GIRL She with apples you desired From Paradise came long ago; With joy I feel that, if required, Such still within my garden grow. PROCTO-PHANTASMIST What is this curséd multitude about ? Have we not long since proved to demon- stration That ghosts move not on ordinary feet ? But these are dancing just like men and women. THE GIRL What does he want then at our ball ? Is far above us all in his conceit: Whilst we enjoy, he reasons of enjoyment ; And any step which in our dance we tread, If it be left out of his reckoning, Is not to be considered as a step. There are few things that scandalize him not: And when you whirl round in the circle now, As he went round the wheel in his old mill, He says that you go wrong in all respects, Especially if you congratulate him Upon the strength of the resemblance. PROCTO-PHANTASMIST Fly! Vanish! Unheard of impudence! What, still there ! In this enlightened age, too, since you have been Proved not to exist !— But this infernal brood Will hear no reason and endure no rule. Are we so wise, and is the pond still haunted ? How long have I been sweeping out this rubbish Of superstition, and the world will not Come clean witb all my pains ! — it is a case Unheard of ! TOE GIRL Then leave off teasing us so. PROCTO-PHANTASMIST I tell you, spirits, to your faces now, That I should not regret this despotism Of spirits, but that mine can wield it not. To-night I shall make poor work of it, Yet I will take a round with you, and hope Before my last step in the living dance To beat the poet and the devil together. MEPHISTOPHELES At last he will sit down in some foul pud- e That in his way of solacing himself; Until some leech, diverted with his gravity, Cures him of spirits and the spirit together 546 [To Faust, who has seceded from the dance. Why do you let that fair girl pass from you, Who sung so sweetly to you in the dance ? FAUST A red mouse in the middle of her singing Sprung from her mouth. MEPHISTOPHELES That was all right, my friend: Be it enough that the mouse was not ray. Do not disturb your hour of happiness With close consideration of such trifles. FAUST Then saw I — MEPHISTOPHELES What ? FAUstT Seest thou not a pale, Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away ? She drags herself now forward with slow steps, And seems as if she moved with shackled feet. I cannot overcome the thought that she Is like poor Margaret. MEPHISTOPHELES Let it be — pass on — No good can come of it — it is not well To meet it —it is an enchanted phantom, A lifeless idol; with its numbing look, It freezes up the blood of man; and they Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone, Like those who saw Medusa. JUVENILIA FAUST Oh, too true ! Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse Which no belovéd hand has closed, alas { That is the breast which Margaret yielded to me — Those are the lovely limbs which I en- joyed ! MEPHISTOPHELES It is all magic, poor deluded fool ! She looks to every one like his first love. FAUST Oh, what delight! what woe! I cannot turn My looks from her sweet piteous counte- nance. How strangely does a single blood-red line, Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife, Adorn her lovely neck ! MEPHISTOPHELES Ay, she can carry Her head under her arm upon oceasion; Perseus has cut it off for her. These plea- sures End in delusion. — Gain this rising ground, Itisas airy hereasina... And if Iam not mightily deceived, I see a theatre. — What may tius mean? ATTENDANT Quite a new piece, the last of seven, for *tis The custom now to represent that number. ’T is written by a Dilettante, and The actors who perform are Dilettanti; Excuse me, gentlemen; but I must vanish. Lam a Dilettante cnrtain-lifter. JUVENILIA The Juvenilia were published in part by Shelley, but mainly by Medwin, Rossetti, and Dowden. In this division all verse earlier than VERSES ON A CAT Published by Hogg. Liye of Shelley, 1858, and dated, 1800. Miss Helen Shelley furnished the verses to Mrs. Hogg, with the following note: ‘I have just found the lines which I mentioned; a child’s effusion about some cat, Queen Mab is included, except what is placed under Dountrun, Lost, anD UNPUBLISHED Porms. which evidently had a story, but it must have been before I can remember. It is in Eliza- beth’s handwriting, copied probably later than the composition of the lines, though the hand- writing is unformed. It seems to be a tabby cat, for it has an indistinct brownish-gray coat [there was a painting of a cat on the copy) EPITAPHIUM 547 ... That last expression is, I imagine, still classical at boys’ schools, and it was a favorite one of Bysshe’s, which I remember from a painful fact, that one of my sisters ventured to make use of it, and was punished in some old- fashioned way, which impressed the sentence on my memory.’ I A CAT in distress, Nothing more, nor less; Good folks, I must faithfully tell ye, As I am a sinner, It waits for some dinner To stuff out its own little belly. II You would not easily guess All the modes of distress Which torture the tenants of earth; And the various evils, Which like so many devils, Attend the poor souls from their birth. III Some a living require, And others desire An old fellow out of the way; And which is the best I leave to be guessed, For I cannot pretend to say. Iv One wants society, Another variety, Others a tranquil life; Some want food, Others, as good, Only want a wife. Vv But this poor little cat Only wanted a rat, To stuff out its own little maw; And it were as good Some people had such food, To make them hold their jaw! OMENS Published by Medwin, Shelley Papers, 1833, and dated 1807. He gives it from memory: ‘I remember well the first of his effusions, a very German-like fragment, beginning with . » L think he was then about fifteen.’ In his Life of Shelley, 1847, he ascribes it to Shel- ley’s love of Chatterton: ‘ Chatterton was then one of his great favorites; he enjoyed very much the literary forgery and successful mys- tification of Horace Walpole aud his contem- poraries ; and the Immortal Child’s melancholy and early fate often suggested his own. One of his earliest effusions was a fragment begin- ning — it was indeed almost taken from the pseudo Rowley.’ Harx! the owlet flaps his wings In the pathless dell beneath; Hark! ’tis the night-raven sings Tidings of approaching death. EPITAPHIUM LATIN VERSION OF THE EPITAPH IN GRAY’S ELEGY Published by Medwin, Life of Shelley, 1847, and dated 18U8-9, with this note: ‘That he had certainly arrived at great skill in the art of versification, I think I shall be able to prove by the following specimens I kept among my treasures, which he gave me in 1808 or9. The first is the Epitaph on Gray’s Elegy in a Coun- try Churchyard, probably a school task.’ I Hic sinu fessum caput hospitali Cespitis dormit juvenis ; nec illi Fata ridebant, popularis ille Nescius aure. II Musa non vultu genus arroganti Rusticé natum grege despicata; Et suum tristis puerum notavit Sollicitudo. III Indoles illi bene larga; pectus Veritas sedem sibi vindicavit; Et pari tantis meritis beavit Munere celum. Iv Omne quod mestis habuit miserte Corde largivit, lacrymam; recepit Omne quod celo voluit, fidelis Pectus amici. Vv Longius sed tu fuge curiosus Ceteras laudes fuge suspicari; 548 JUVENILIA Ceteras culpas fuge velle tractas Sede tremenda. VI Spe tremescentes recubant in illa Sede virtutes pariterque culpz, In sui Patris gremio, tremenda Sede Deique. IN HOROLOGIUM Medwin adds, continuing the preceding note : ‘ The second specimen of his versification is of a totally different character, and shows a considerable precocity.’ MacCarthy, Shelley’s Early Life, affords fur- ther light: ‘Something of the precocity is ex- plained, however, and all of the originality re- moved, by a reference to The Oxford Herald of Saturday, September 16, 180¥, where the following English Epigram appears : — On Serine A FrRencH WaTCH ROUND THE Neck or a BravutircL Younc Woman. “Mark what we gain from foreign lands, Time cannot now be said to linger, — Allowed to lay his two rude hands Where others dare not lay a finger.” ‘It is plain that Shelley’s Latin lines are sim- ply a translation of this epigram, which he most probably saw in The Oxford Herald, but may have read in some other paper of the time as I distinctly recollect having met with it else- where when making my researches among the journals of the period.’ InTER marmoreas Leonore pendula colles Fortunata nimis Machina dicit horas. Quas manibus premit illa duas insensa pa- pillas Cur mihi sit digito tangere, amata, nefas ? A DIALOGUE Published by Hogg, Life of Shelley, 1858, and composed 1809. DEATH For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave, I come, careworn tenant of life, from the grave, Where Innocence sleeps ’neath the peace- giving sod, And the good cease to tremble at Tyranny’s nod; I offer a calm habitation to thee, Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me ? My mansion is damp, cold silence is there, But it lulls in oblivion the fiends of de- spair; Not a groan of regret, not a sigh, not a breath, Dares dispute with grim Silence the em- pire of Death. I offer a calm habitation to thee, Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me? MORTAL Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks re- pose; It longs in thy cells to embosom its woes; It longs in thy cells to deposit its load, Where no longer the scorpions of Perfidy goad, Where the phantoms of Prejudice vanish away, And Bigotry’s bloodhounds lose scent of their prey. Yet tell me, dark Death, when thine em- pire is o’er, What awaits on Futurity’s mist-covered shore ? DEATH Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil The shadows that float o’er Eternity’s vale; Nought waits for the good but a spirit of Love That will hail their blessed advent to re- gions above. For Love, Mortal, gleams through the gloom of my sway, And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray. Hast thou loved? — Then depart from these regions of hate, And in slumber with me blunt the arrows of fate. I offer a calm habitation to thee, Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me ? MORTAL Oh! sweet is thy slumber! oh! sweet is the ra Which after thy night introduces the day; TO DEATH 549 How concealed, how persuasive, self-in- terest’s breath, Though it floats to mine ear from the bosom of Death! I hoped that I quite was forgotten by all, Yet a lingering friend might be grieved at my fall, And duty ferbids, though I languish to die, When departure might heave Virtue’s breast with a sigh. Oh, Death! oh, my friend! snatch this form to thy shrine, And I fear, dear destroyer, I shall not re- pine. TO THE MOONBEAM Composed September 23, 1809, and pub- lished by Hogg, Life of Shelley, 1858. He gives a letter from Shelley: ‘There is rhap- sody! Now, I think, after this you ought to send me some poetry.’ I Moonseam, leave the shadowy vale, To bathe this burning brow. Moonbeam, why art thou so pale, As thou walkest o’er the dewy dale, Where humble wild flowers grow ? Is it to mimic me ? But that can never be; For thine orb is bright, And the clouds are light, That at intervals shadow the star-studded night. II Now all is deathy still on earth; Nature’s tired frame reposes; And, ere the golden morning’s birth Its radiant hues discloses, Flies forth its balmy breath. But mine is the midnight of Death, And Nature’s morn To my bosom forlorn Brings but a gloomier night, implants a deadlier thorn. Ill Wretch! Suppress the glare of mad- ness Struggling in thine haggard eye, For the keenest throb of sadness, Pale Despair’s most sickening sigh, Is but to mimic me; And this must ever be, When the twilight of care, And the night of despair, Seem in my breast but joys to the pangs that rankle there. THE SOLITARY Published by Rossetti, 1870, and dated 1810. I Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude To live alone, an isolated thing ? To see the busy beings round thee spring, And care for none; in thy calm solitude, A flower that scarce breathes in the desert rude To Zephyr’s passing wing ? II Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove, Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother’s hate, Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love. He bears a load which nothing can re- move, A killing, withering weight. III He smiles — ’t is sorrow’s deadliest mock- ery; He speaks —the cold words flow not from his soul; He acts like others, drains the genial bowl, — Yet, ae longs — although he fears — to ie; He pants to reach what yet he seems to ‘Ys Dull life’s extremest goal. TO DEATH Composed at Oxford, 1810, and published by Hogg, Life of Shelley, 1858. Dears ! where is thy victory ? To triumph whilst I die, To triumph whilst thine ebon wing Enfolds my shuddering soul ? 55° JUVENILIA O Death ! where is thy sting ? Not when the tides of murder roll, When nations groan that kings may bask in bliss, Death ! canst thou boast a victory such as this — When in his hour of pomp and power His blow the mightiest murderer gave, Mid Nature’s cries the sacrifice Of millions to glut the grave — When sunk the tyrant desolation’s slave, Or Freedom’s life-blood streamed upon thy shrine, — Stern Tyrant, couldst thou boast a victory such as mine ? To know in dissolution’s void That mortals’ baubles sunk decay; That everything, but Love, destroyed Must perish with its kindred clay, — Perish Ambition’s crown, Perish her sceptred sway; From Death’s pale front fades Pride’s fastidious frown; In Death’s damp vault the lurid fires de- cay, That Envy lights at heaven-born Virtue’s beam; That all the cares subside, Which lurk beneath the tide Of life’s unquiet stream; — Yes! this is victory ! And on yon rock, whose dark form glooms the sky, To stretch these pale limbs, when the soul is fled; To baffle the lean passions of their prey; To sleep within the palace of the dead ! Oh! not the King, around whose dazzling throne His countless courtiers mock the words they say, Triumphs amid the bud of glory blown, As Tin this cold bed, and faint expiring groan ! Tremble, ye proud, whose grandeur mocks the woe Which props the column of unnatural state ! You the plainings faint and low, From misery’s tortured soul that flow, Shall usher to your fate. Tremble, ye conquerors, at whose fell com- mand The war-fiend riots o’er a peaceful land ! You desolation’s gory throng Shall bear from victory along To that mysterious strand. LOVE’S ROSE Sent by Shelley to Hogg, in a letter: ‘I transcribe for you a strange medley of mad- dened stuff, which I wrote by the midnight moon last night. [Here follow To a Star and Love’s Rose.] Ohe! jam satis dementia! I hear you exclaim.’ Composed in 1810 or 1811, and published by Hogg, Life of Shelley, 1858. I Hopss, that swell in youthful breasts, Live not through the waste of time ? Love’s rose a host of thorns invests; Cold, ungenial is the clime, Where its honors blow. Youth says, ‘ The purple flowers are mine,’ Which die the while they glow. II Dear the boon to Fancy given, Retracted whilst it’s granted: Sweet the rose which lives in heaven, Although on earth ’t is planted, Where its honors blow, While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven Which die the while they glow. Ill Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can blast the flower, Even when in most unwary hour It blooms in Fancy’s bower. Age cannot Love destroy, But perfidy can rend the shrine In which its vermeil splendors shine. EYES Published by Rossetti, 1870, and dated 1810. How eloquent are eyes ! Not the rapt poet’s frenzied lay When the soul’s wildest feelings stray Can speak so well as they. How eloquent are eyes ! POEMS FROM ST. IRVYNE 551 Not music’s most impassioned note Unheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine On which love’s warmest fervors float ear — Like them bids rapture rise. This heart, hard as iron, is stranger to fear; Love, look thus again, — That your look may light a waste of years, Darting the beam that conquers cares Through the cold shower of tears. Love, look thus again! POEMS FROM ST. IRVYNE, OR THE ROSICRUCIAN Shelley’s romance, St. Irvyne, or the Rosi- crucian, was in MS. by April 1, 1810, and pub- lished about December 18, of that year. Med- win writes : ‘ This work contains several poems, some of which were written a year or two be- fore the date of the Romance. ... Three of them are inthe metre of Walter Scott’s Hel- vellyn, a poem he greatly admired.’ Rossetti ascribes I, III, V, and VI to the year 1808, and II and IV to 1809. I VICTORIA I ‘T was dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling; One glimmering lamp was expiring and low; Around, the dark tide of the tempest was swelling, Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling, — They bodingly presaged destruction and woe. II °T was then that I started!—the wild storm was howling, Nought was seen save the lightning which danced in the sky; Above me the crash of the thunder was rolling, And low, chilling murmurs the blast wafted by. m1 My heart sank within me — unheeded the war Of the battling clouds on the mountain- tops broke; But conscience in low, noiseless whisper- ing spoke, Iv *T was then that, her form on the whirlwind upholding, The ghost of the murdered Victoria strode; In her right hand a shadowy shroud she was holding; She swiftly advanced to my lonesome abode. Vv I wildly then called on the tempest to bear me — II ‘ON THE DARK HEIGHT OF JURA’ I Guosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling Rise on the night-rolling breath of the blast, When o’er the dark ether the tempest is swelling, And on eddying whirlwind the thunder- peal passed ? II For oft have I stood on the dark height of Jura, Which frowns on the valley that opens beneath; Oft have I braved the chill night-tempest’s fury, Whilst ae me, I thought, echoed murmurs of death. Ill And now, whilst the winds of the mountain are howling, O father! thy voice seems to strike on mine ear; In air whilst the tide of the night-storm is rolling, It breaks on the pause of the elements! jar. 552 JUVENILIA Iv On the wing of the whirlwind which roars o’er the mountain Perhaps rides the ghost of my sire who is dead, — On the mist of the tempest which hangs o’er the fountain, Whilst a wreath of dark vapor encircles his head. III SISTER ROSA: A BALLAD I THE death-bell beats ! — The mountain repeats The echoing sound of the knell; And the dark monk now Wraps the cowl round his brow, As he sits in his lonely cell. II And the cold hand of death Chills his shuddering breath, As he lists to the fearful lay, Which the ghosts of the sky, As they sweep wildly by, Sing to departed day. And they sing of the hear When the stern fates had power To resolve Rosa’s form to its clay. Il But that hour is past; And that hour was the last Of peace to the dark monk’s brain; Bitter tears from his eyes gushed silent and fast; And he strove to suppress them in vain. Iv Then his fair cross of gold he dashed on the floor, When the death-knell struck on his ear, — ‘ Delight is in store For her evermore; But for me is fate, horror, and fear.’ Vv Then his eyes wildly rolled, When the death-bell tolled, And he raged in terrific woe; And he stamped on the ground, — But, when ceased the sound, Tears again began to flow. VI And the ice of despair Chilled the wild throb of care, And he sate in mute agony still; Till the night-stars shone through the eloudless air, And the pale moonbeam slept on the hill. VII Then he knelt in his cell, — And the horrors of hell Were delights to his agonized pain; And he prayed to God to dissolve the spell, Which else must forever remain. Vill And in fervent prayer he knelt on the ground, Till the abbey bell struck one; ‘His feverish blood ran chill at the sound; A voice hollow and horrible murmured around, — ‘The term of thy penance is done !’ IX Grew dark the night; The moonbeam bright Waxed faint on the mountain high; And from the black hill Went a voice cold and still, — ‘Monk ! thou art free to die.’ x Then he rose on his feet, And his heart loud did beat, And his limbs they were palsied with dread; Whilst the grave’s clammy dew O’er his pale forehead grew; And he shuddered to sleep with the dead. XI And the wild midnight storm Raved around his tall form, As he sought the chapel’s gloom: And the sunk grass did sigh To the wind, bleak and high, As he searched for the new-made tomb. POEMS FROM ST. IRVYNE 553 XII IV And forms, dark and high, Seemed around him to fly, Sty IEVENES TOWER And mingle their yells with the blast, — I And on the dark wall : Gh - cash Half-seen shadows did fall, How swiftly through heaven’s wide exe As, enhorrored, he onward passed. XIII And the storm-fiends wild rave O’er the new-made grave, And dread shadows linger around; — The Monk called on God his soul to save, And, in horror, sank on the ground. XIV Then despair nerved his arm To dispel the charm, And he burst Rosa’s coffin asunder; And the fierce storm did swell More terrific and fell And louder pealed the thunder. xv And laughed in joy the fiendish throng, Mixed with ghosts of the mouldering dead ; And their grisly wings, as they floated along, Whistled in murmurs dread. XVI And her skeleton form the dead Nun reared, Which dripped with the chill dew of hell; In her half-eaten eyeballs two pale flames appeared, And triumphant their gleam on the dark monk glared, As he stood within the cell. XVII And her lank hand lay on his shuddering brain, But each power was nerved by fear, — ‘I never, henceforth, may breathe again; Death now ends mine anguished pain. The grave yawns, — we meet there.’ XVII And her skeleton lungs did utter the sound, So deadly, so lone and so fell That in long vibrations shuddered the ground; And, as the stern notes floated around, A deep groan was answered from hell. panse Bright day’s resplendent colors fade ! How sweetly does the moonbeam’s glance With silver tint St. Irvyne’s glade ! II No cloud along the spangled air, Is borne upon the evening breeze; How solemn is the scene! how fair The moonbeams rest upon the trees ! Il Yon dark gray turret glimmers white, Upon it sits the mournful owl; Along the stillness of the night Her melancholy shriekings roll. Iv But not alone on Irvyne’s tower The silver moonbeam pours her rays; It gleams upon the ivied bower, It dances in the cascade’s spray. v ‘Ah! why do darkening shades conceal The hour when man must cease to be ? Why may not human minds unveil The dim mists of futurity ? VI ‘ The keenness of the world hath torn The heart which opens to its blast; Despised, neglected, and forlorn, Sinks the wretch in death at last.’ Vv BEREAVEMENT I How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner, . As he bends in still grief o’er the hal- lowed bier, As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner, And drops to perfection’s remembrance a tear; 554 JUVENILIA When floods of despair down his pale cheek are streaming, When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming, Or, if lulled for a while, soon he starts from his dreaming, And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear. II Ah! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave, Or summer succeed to the winter of death ? Rest awhile, hapless victim, and Heaven will save The spirit that faded away with the breath. Eternity points in its amaranth bower, Where no clouds of fate o’er the sweet pros- pect lower, Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower, When woe fades away like the mist of the heath. VI THE DROWNED LOVER T Au! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary, Yet far must the desolate wanderer roam; Though the tempest is stern, and the moun- tain is dreary, She must quit at deep midnight her pitiless home. I see her swift foot dash the dew from the whortle, As she rapidly hastes to the green grove of myrtle; And I hear, as she wraps round her figure the kirtle, ‘Stay thy boat on the lake, — dearest ° Henry, I come.’ II High swelled in her bosom the throb of affection, As lightly her form bounded over the lea, And arose in her mind every dear recollec- tion; ‘I come, dearest Henry, and wait but for thee.’ How sad, when dear hope every sorrow is soothing, When sympathy’s swell the soft bosom is moving, And the mind the mild joys of affection is proving, Is the stern voice of fate that bids hap- piness flee ! 1 Oh ! dark lowered the clouds on that horri- ble eve, And the moon dimly gleamed through the tempested air; Oh! how could fond visions such softness deceive ? Ob! how could false hope rend a bosom so fair ? Thy love’s pallid corse the wild surges are laving, O’er his form the fierce swell of the tem- pest is raving; But fear not, parting spirit; thy goodness is saving, In eternity’s bowers, a seat for thee there. POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS OF MARGARET NICHOLSON; BEING POEMS FOUND AMONGST THE PAPERS OF THAT NOTED FEMALE WHO ATTEMPTED THE LIFE OF THE KING IN 1786, EpiTeD By JOHN FITZVICTOR The Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson was published in November, 1810, at Oxford, probably as a pamphlet. Hogg narrates the origin and history of this volume at length. The material points of his account, are that he found Shelley reading the proofs of some poems which were meant to be pub- lished, and advised him to burlesque them anc issue them as a joke; that this plan was adopted, and the poems, revised by the two friends and ascribed on Hogg’s suggestion to Peg Nicholson, a mad woman, then still living, who had attempted the life of George IIL, were printed at the publishers’ expense and eagerly taken up hy the Oxford collegians. He FOSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS 555 adds that the first poem was not Shelley’s, but was the production of a ‘rhymester of the day’ and had been confided to him. This account is discredited by Dowden and others; the inten- tionally burlesque portion is thought to be con- fined to the Epithalamium in the lines referred to by Shelley below ; ‘the rhymester’ is pre- sumed to be Hogg, and his work not the first poem, but the aforesaid passage of the Epitha- lamium. Shelley throws a dubious light on the matter in a letter to Graham, November 30, 1810: ‘The part of the Epithalamium which you mention (7. e. from the end of Satan’s triumph) is the production of a friend’s mistress; it had been concluded there, but she thought it abrupt and added this ; it is omitted in numbers of the copies — that which I sent to my Mother of course did not contain it. I shall possibly send you the abuse to-day, but I am afraid that they will not insert it. But you mistake; the Epithalamium will make it sell like wildfire, and as the Nephew is kept a profound secret, there can arise no danger from the indelicacy of the Aunt. It sells wonderfully here, and is become the fashionable subject of discussion. . . » Of course to my Father Peg is a profound secret.’ The composition of the verses is described by an eye-witness, whose account is given in Montgomery’s Oxford, quoted by Dowden: ‘ The ease with which Shelley composed many of the stanzas therein contained is truly aston- ishing. When surprised with a proof from the printers on the morning he would frequently atart off his sofa exclaiming that that had been his only bed ; and on being informed that the men were waiting for more copy, he would sit down and write off a few stanzas, and send them to the press without even revising or reading them.’ ADVERTISEMENT The energy and native genius of these Frag- ments must be the only apology which the Editor can make for thus intruding them on the Public Notice. The first I found with no title, and have left it so. It is intimately con- nected with the dearest interests of universal happiness; and much as we may deplore the fatal and enthusiastic tendency which the ideas of this poor female had acquired, we eannot fail to pay the tribute of unequivocal regret to the departed memory of genius, which, had it been rightly organized, would have made that intellect, which has since be- come the victim of frenzy and despair, a most brilliant ornament to society. In case the sale of these Fragments evinces that the Public have any curiosity to be pre- sented with a more copious collection of my unfortunate Aunt’s Poems, I have other papers in my possession, which shall, in that case, be subjected to their notice. It may be supposed they require much arrangement ; but I send the following to the press in the same state in which they came into my possession. WAR AMBITION, power, and avarice, now have hurled Death, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding world. See! on yon heath what countless victims lie! Hark! what loud shrieks ascend through yonder sky ! Tell then the cause, ’tis sure the avenger’s rage Has swept these myriads from life’s crowded stage. Hark to that groan— an anguished hero dies, He shudders in death’s latest agonies; Yet does a fleeting hectic flush his cheek, Yet does his parting breath essay to speak: — *O God ! my wife, my children! Mon- arch, thou For whose support this fainting frame lies low, For whose support in distant lands I bleed, Let his friends’ welfare be the warrior’s meed. He hears me not — ah! no — kings cannot hear, For passion’s voice has dulled their listless ear. To thee, then, mighty God, I lift my moan; Thou wilt not scorn a suppliant’s anguished groan. Oh! now I die — but still is death’s fierce pain — God hears my prayer — we meet, we meet again.’ He spake, reclined him on death’s bloody bed, And with a parting groan his spirit fled. Oppressors of mankind, to you we owe The baleful streams from whence thesu miseries flow: 556 JUVENILIA For you how many a mother weeps her son, Snatched from life’s course ere half his race was run! For you how many a widow drops a tear, (tn silent anguish, on her husband’s bier ! ‘Is it then thine, Almighty Power,’ she cries, ‘Whence tears of endless sorrow dim these eyes ? Is this the system which thy powerful sway, Which else in shapeless chaos sleeping lay, Formed and approved ? —it cannot be — but oh! Forgive me Heaven, my brain is warped by woe. ’Tis not—— he never bade the war-note swell, He never triumphed in the work of hell. Monarchs of earth! thine is the baleful deed, Thine are the crimes for which thy subjects bleed. Ah! when will come the sacred fated time, When man unsullied by his leaders’ crime, Despising wealth, ambition, pomp, and ride, Will stietoh him fearless by his foemen’s side ? Ah! when will come the time, when o’er the plain No more shall death and desolation reign ? When will the sun smile on the bloodless field, And the stern warrior’s arm the sickle wield ? Not whilst some King, in cold ambition’s dreams, Plans for the field of death his plodding schemes; Not whilst for private pique the public fall, And one frail mortal’s mandate governs all, — Swelled with command and mad with diz- zying sway; Who sees unmoved his myriads fade away, Careless who lives or dies—so that he gains Some trivial point for which he took the pains. What then are Kings ?—I see the trem- bling crowd, { hear their fulsome clamors echoed loud: Their stern oppressor pleased appears awhile, But April’s sunshine is a Monarch’s smile. Kings are but dust — the last eventful day Will level all and make them lose their sway; Will dash the sceptre from the Monarch’s hand, And from the warrior’s grasp wrest the ensanguined brand. O Peace, soft Peace, art thou forever gone ? Is thy fair form indeed forever flown? And love and concord hast thou swept away, As if incongruous with thy parted sway ? Alas I fear thou hast, for none appear. Now o’er the palsied earth stalks giant Fear, With War and Woe and Terror in his train; List’ning he pauses on the embattled plain, Then, speeding swiftly o’er the ensanguined heath, Has left the frightful work to hell and death. See! gory Ruin yokes his blood-stained car; He scents the battle’s carnage from afar; Hell and destruction mark his mad ca- reer; He tracks the rapid step of hurrying Fear; Whilst ruined towns and smoking cities tell, That thy work, Monarch, is the work of hell. ‘It is thy work !’ I hear a voice repeat, ‘Shakes the broad basis of thy blood- stained seat; And at the orphan’s sigh, the widow's moan, Totters the fabric cf thy guilt-stained throne — It is thy work, O Monarch.” Now the sound Fainter and fainter yet is borne around; Yet to enthusiast ears the murmurs tell That heaven, indignant at the work of hell, Will soon the cause, the hated cause re- move, Which tears from earth peace, innocence and love. POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS 557 FRAGMENT SUPPOSED TO BE AN EPITHALAMIUM OF FRANCIS RAVAILLAC AND CHARLOTTE CORDAY ’T 1s midnight now — athwart the murky air Dank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam; From the dark storm-clouds flashes a fear- ful glare, It shows the bending oak, the roaring stream. I pondered on the woes of lost mankind, I pondered on the ceaseless rage of kings; My rapt soul dwelt upon the ties that bind The mazy volume of commingling things, When fell and wild misrule to man stern sorrow brings. I heard a yell — it was not the knell, When the blasts on the wild lake sleep, That floats on the pause of the summer gale’s swell O’er the breast of the waveless deep. I thonght it bad been death’s accents cold That bade me recline on the shore; I laid mine hot head on the surge-beaten mould, And thought to breathe no more. But a heavenly sleep That did saddenly steep In balm my bosom’s pain, Pervaded my soul, And free from control Did mine intellect range again. Methought enthroned upon a silvery cloud, Which floated mid a strange and bril- liant light, My form upborne by viewless ether rode, And spurned the lessening realms of earthly night. What heavenly notes burst on my ravished ears, What beauteous spirits met my dazzled eye! Hark! louder swells the music of the spheres, More clear the forms of speechless bliss float by, And heavenly gestures suit ethereal melody. But fairer than the spirits of the air, More graceful than the Sylph of symme- try, Than the. enthusiast’s fancied love more fair, Were the bright forms that swept the azure sky. Enthroned in roseate light, a heavenly band Strewed flowers of bliss that never fade away; They welcome virtue to its native land, And songs of triumph greet the joyous day When endless bliss the woes of fleeting life repay. Congenial minds will seek their kindred soul Hen though the tide of time has rolled between; They mock weak matter’s impotent control, And seek of endless life the eternal scene. At death’s vain summons this will never die, In Nature’s chaos this will not decay. These are the bands which closely, warmly, tie Thy soul, O Charlotte, ’yond this chain of clay, To him who thine must be till time shali fade away. Yes, Francis! thine was the dear knife that tore A tyrant’s heartstrings from his guilty breast; Thine was the daring at a tyrant’s gore To smile in triumph, to contemn the rest; And thine, loved glory of thy sex! to tear From its base shrine a despot’s haughty soul, To laugh at sorrow in secure despair, To mock, with smiles, life’s lingering control, And triumph mid the griefs that round thy fate did roll. Yes! the fierce spirits of the avenging deep With endless tortures guad their guilty shades. 558 JUVENILIA I see the lank and ghastly spectres sweep Along the burning length of yon arcades; And I see Satan stalk athwart the plain — He hastes along the burning soil of hell; ‘Welcome, thou despots, to my dark do- main ! With maddening joy mine anguished senses swell To welcome to their home the friends I love so well.’ Hark ! to those notes, liow sweet, how thrill- ing sweet They echo to the sound of angels’ feet. Oh, haste to the bower where roses are spread, For there is prepared thy nuptial bed. Oh, haste — hark ! hark !— they ’re gone. CHORVS OF SPIRITS Stay, ye days of contentment and joy, Whilst love every care is erasing; Stay, ye pleasures that never can cloy, And ye spirits that can never cease pleasing ! And if any soft passion be near, Which mortals, frail mortals, can know, Let love shed on the bosom a tear, And dissolve the chill ice-drop of woe. SYMPHONY FRANCIS Soft, my dearest angel stay, Oh ! you suck my soul away; Suek on, suck on, I glow, I glow ! Tides of maddening passion roll, And streams of rapture drown my soul. Now give me one more billing kiss, Let your lips now repeat the bliss, Endless kisses steal my breath, No life can equal such a death. CHARLOTTE Oh! yes, I will kiss thine eyes so fair, And I will clasp thy form; Serene is the breath of the balmy air, But I think, love, thou feelest me warm, And I will recline on thy marble neck Till I mingle into thee; And I will kiss the rose on thy cheek, And thou shalt give kisses to me; For here is no morn to flout our delight, Oh! dost thou not joy at this ? And here we may lie an endless night, A long, long night of bliss. Spirits ! when raptures move Say what it is to love, When passion’s tear stands on the cheek, When bursts the unconscious sigh; And the tremulous lips dare not speak What is told by the soul-felt eye. But what is sweeter to revenge’s ear Than the fell tyrant’s last expiring yell ? Yes ! than love’s sweetest blisses ’t is more dear To drink the floatings of a despot’s knell. I wake —’tis done — ’t is o’er. DESPAIR AND canst thou mock mine agony, thus calm In cloudless radiance, Queen of silver night ? Can you, ye flowerets, spread your perfumed balm Mid pearly gems of dew that shine so bright ? And you wild winds, thus can you sleep so still Whilst throbs the tempest of my breast so high ? Can the fierce night-fiends rest on yonder hill, And, in the eternal mansions of the sky, Can the directors of the storm in powerless silence lie ? Hark! I hear music on the zephyr’s wing — Louder it floats along the unruffled sky; Some fairy sure has touched the viewless string — Now faint in distant air the murmurs die. Awhile it stills the tide of agony; Now — now it loftier swells — again stern woe POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS 559 Arises with the awakening melody; I sought the cold brink of the midnight Again fierce torments, such as demons surge; ; know, . I sighed beneath its wave to hide my In ae feller tide, on this torn bosom woes; ow. Arise, ye sightless spirits of the storm, Ye unseen minstrels of the aérial song, Pour the fierce tide around this lonely form, And roll the tempest’s wildest swell along. Dart the red lightning, wing the forkéd flash, Pour from thy cloud-formed hills the thunder’s roar; Arouse the whirlwind — and let ocean dash In fiercest tumult on the rocking shore, — Destroy this life or let earth’s fabric be no more! Yes! every tie that links me here is dead; Mysterious fate, thy mandate I obey! Since hope and peace, and joy, for aye are fled, I come, terrific power, I come away. Then o’er this ruined soul let spirits of hell, In triumph, laughing wildly, mock its pain; And, though with direst pangs mine heart- strings swell, I'll echo back their deadly yells again, Cursing the power that ne’er made aught in vain, FRAGMENT Yes! all is past—swift time has fled away, Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind. How long will horror nerve this frame of clay ? I’m dead, and lingers yet my soul be- hind. Oh! powerful fate, revoke thy deadly spell, And yet that may not ever, ever be, Heaven will not smile upon the work of hell; Ah! no, "for heaven cannot smile on me; Fate, envious fate, has sealed my wayward destiny. The rising tempest sung a funeral dirge, And on the blast a frightful yell arose. Wild flew the meteors o’er the maddened main, Wilder did grief athwart my bosom glare; Stilled was the unearthly howling, and a strain Swelled ’mid the tumult of the battling air, *T was like a spirit’s song, but yet more soft and fair. I met a maniac —like he was to me; I said —‘Poor victim, wherefore dost thou roam ? And canst thou not contend with agony, That thus at midnight thou dost quit thine home ? ’ ‘ Ah, there she sleeps: cold is her bloodless form, And I will go to slumber in her grave; And then our ghosts, whilst raves the mad- dened storm, Will sweep at midnight o’er the wildered wave; Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of pity lave ?’ ‘Ah! no, I cannot shed the pitying tear, This breast is cold, this heart can feel no more; But I can rest me on thy chilling bier, Can shriek in horror to the tempest’s roar.’ THE SPECTRAL HORSEMAN Wuart was the shriek that struck fancy’s ear As it sate on the ruins of time that is past ? Hark! it floats on the fitful blast of the wind, And breathes to the pale moon a funeral sigh. It is the Benshie’s moan on the storm, Or a shivering fiend that, thirsting for sin, Seeks murder and guilt when virtue sleeps, 560 JUVENILIA Winged with the power of some ruthless king, And sweeps o’er the breast of the prostrate plain. It was not a fiend from the regions of hell That poured its low moan on the stillness of night; It was not a ghost of the guilty dead, Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore; But aye at the close of seven years’ end That voice is mixed with the swell of the storm, And aye at the close of seven years’ end, A shapeless shadow that sleeps on the hill Awakens and floats on the mist of the heath. It is not the shade of a murdered man, Who has rushed uncalled to the throne of his God, And howls in the pause of the eddying storm. This voice is low, cold, hollow, and chill; ’T is not heard by the ear, but is felt in the soul. *Tis more frightful far than the death- demon’s scream, Or the laughter of fiends when they howl o’er the corpse Of a man who has sold his soul to hell. It tells the approach of a mystic form, A white courser bears the shadowy sprite; More thin they are than the mists of the mountain, When the clear moonlight sleeps on the waveless lake. More pale his cheek than the snows of Nithona When winter rides on the northern blast, And howls in the midst of the leafless wood. : Yet when the fierce swell of the tempest is raving, And the whirlwinds howl in the caves of Inisfallen, Still secure ’mid the wildest war of the sky, The sibaatboii courser scours the waste, And his rider howls in the thunder’s roar. Q’er him the fierce bolts of avenging heaven Pause, as in fear, to strike his head. The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure; Yet the wildered peasant, that oft passes by, With wonder beholds the blue flash through his form; And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead, The startled passenger shudders to hear, More distinct than the thunder’s wildest roar. Then does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns To eternity, curses the champion of Erin, Moar and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight, And twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the demons; Then in agony roll his death-swimming eyeballs, Though wildered by death, yet never to die ! Then he shakes from his skeleton folds the nightmares, Who, shrieking in agony, seek the couch Of some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain; Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead In horror pause on the fitful gale. They float on the swell of the eddying tempest, And scared seek the caves of gigantic ... Where their thin forms pour unearthly sounds On the blast that sweeps the breast of the lake, And mingles its swell with the moonlight air. MELODY TO A SCENE OF FORMER TIMES Art thou indeed forever gone, Forever, ever, lost to me ? Must this poor bosom beat alone, Or beat at all, if not for thee ? Ah, why was love to mortals given, To lift them to the height of heaven, Or dash them to the depths of hell ? Yet I do not reproach thee, dear! Ah! no, the agonies that swell This panting breast, this frenzied brain, Might wake my ’s slumbering tear. Ob! heaven is witness I did love, And heaven does know I love thee still, — Does know the fruitless sickening thrill, When reason’s judgment vainly strove BIGOTRY’S VICTIM 561 To blot thee from my memory; But which might never, never be. Oh! I appeal to that blest day When passion’s wildest ecstasy Was coldness to the joys I knew, When every sorrow sunk away. Oh! I had never lived before, But now those blisses are no more. And now I cease to live again, I do not blame thee, love; ah no! The breast that feels this anguished woe Throbs for thy happiness alone. Two years of speechless bliss are gone, — I thank thee, dearest, for the dream. ’T is night — what faint and distant scream Comes on the wild and fitful blast ? It moans for pleasures that are past, It moans for days that are gone by, Oh! lagging hours, how slow you fly ! I see a dark and lengthened vale, The black view closes with the tomb; But darker is the lowering gloom That shades the intervening dale. In visioned slumber for awhile I seem again to share thy smile, I seem to hang upon thy tone. Again you say, ‘confide in me, For I am thine, and thine alone. And thine must ever, ever be.’ But oh! awakening still anew, Athwart my enanguished senses flew A fiercer, deadlier agony ! STANZA FROM A TRANSLATION OF THE MAR- SEILLAISE HYMN Sent by Shelley in a letter to Graham. Published by Forman, 1876, and dated 1810. TREMBLE Kings despised of man! Ye traitors to your Country Tremble! Your parricidal plan At length shall meet its destiny . . . We all are soldiers fit to fight But if we sink in glory’s night Our mother Earth will give ye new The brilliant pathway to pursue Which leads to Death or Victory... BIGOTRY’S VICTIM Published by Hogg, Life of Shelley, 1858. Dated in the Esdaile MS. 1809. I Dares the Jama, most fleet of the sons of the wind, The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair ? When the tiger approaches can the fast- fleeting hind Repose trust in his footsteps of air? No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair, The monster transfixes his prey, On the sand flows his life-blood away; Whilst India’s rocks to his death-yells reply, Protracting the horrible harmony. II Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches, Dares fearless to perish defending her brood, Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing ty- rants approaches, Thirsting — ay, thirsting for blood; And demands, like mankind, his brother for food; Yet more lenient, more gentle than they; For hunger, not glory, the prey Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead, Nor ambition with fame crown the mur- derer’s head. SII Though weak as the lama that bounds on the mountains, And endued not with fast-fleeting foot- steps of air, Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains, Though a fiercer than tiger is there. Though more dreadful than death, it scat- ters despair, Though its shadow eclipses the day, And the darkness of deepest dismay Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around, And lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground. Iv They came to the fountain to draw from its stream, Waves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see; 562 JUVENILIA They bathed for a while in its silvery beam, Then perished, and perished like me. For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee; The most tenderly loved of my soul Are slaves to his hated control. He pursues me, he blasts me! "Tis in vain that I fly; — What remains, but to curse him, — to curse him and die ? ON AN ICICLE THAT CLUNG TO THE GRASS OF A GRAVE Sent in a letter to Hogg, January 6, 1811, and published by him, Life of Shelley, 1858. Dated in the Esdaile MS. 1809. I Ox ! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair, In which the warm current of love never freezes, As it rises unmingled with selfishness there, Which, untainted with pride, unpolluted by care, Might dissolve the dim ice-drop, might bid it arise, Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies. II Or where the stern warrior, his country defending, Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour, Or o’er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending, Where patriotism red with his guilt- reeking gore Plants liberty’s flag on the slave-peopled shore, With victory’s cry, with the shout of the free, Let it fly, taintless spirit, to mingle with thee. III For I found the pure gem, when the day- beam returning Ineffectual gleams on the snow-covered vlain, When to others the wished-for arrival of morning Brings relief to long visions of soul- racking pain; But regret is an insult — to grieve is in vain: And why should we grieve that a spirit so fair Seeks Heaven to mix with its own kindred there ? IV But still ’twas some spirit of kindness descending To share in the load of mortality’s woe, Who over thy lowly-built sepulehre bending Bade sympathy’s tenderest tear-drop to flow. Not for thee soft compassion celestials did know, But if angels can weep, sure man may re- pine, May weep in mute grief o’er thy low-iaid shrine. Vv And did I then say, for the altar of glory, That the earliest, the loveliest of flowers I’d entwine, Though with millions of blood-reeking victims ’t was gory, Though the tears of the widow polluted its shrine, Though around it the orphans, the father- less pine ? O Fame, all thy glories I’d yield for a tear To shed on the grave of a heart so sincere. LOVE Sent by Shelley to Hogg in a letter, Lm 2, 1811, and published by him, Life of Shelley, 1858. Way is it said thou canst not live In a youthful breast and fair, Since thou eternal life canst give, Canst bloom forever there ? Since withering pain no power possessed, Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue, Nor time’s dread victor, death, confessed, Though bathéd with his poison dew ? Still thou retainest unchanging bloom, Fixed, tranquil, even in the tomb. A TALE OF SOCIETY AS IT IS 563 And oh! when on the blest, reviving, Lulling the slaves of interest to repose The day-star dawns of love, With that mild, pitying gaze! Ob, { Each energy of soul surviving More vivid soars above, Hast thou ne’er felt a rapturous thrill, Like June’s warm breath, athwart thee Yo O’er each idea then to steal, When other passions die ? Felt it in some wild noonday dream, When sitting by the lonely stream, Where Silence says, Mine is the dell; And not a murmur from the plain, And not an echo from the fell, Disputes her silent reign. ON A FETE AT CARLTON HOUSE FRAGMENT Repeated from memory by Rev. Mr. Grove to Garnett. Published by Rossetti, 1870, and dated 1811. . . . By the mossy brink, With me the Prince shall sit and think; Shall muse in visioned Regency, Rapt in bright dreams of dawning Royalty. TO A STAR Sent by Shelley to Hogg in a letter, and published by him, Life of Shelley, 1858, and dated 1811. SWEET star, which gleaming o’er the dark- some scene Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance flyest, Spanglet of light on evening’s shadowy veil, Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake, Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet Than the expiring morn-star’s paly fires. Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep, And all is hushed, — all, save the voice of Love, Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast Of soft Favonius, which at intervals Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but would look In thy dear beam till every bond of sense Became enamoured — TO MARY, WHO DIED IN THIS OPINION One of several poems suggested by a story told Shelley by Hogg. Shelley sent it to Miss Hitchener, in a letter, November 23, 1811: ‘I transcribe a little poem I found this morning. It was written some time ago; but, as it ap- pears to show what I then thought of eternal life, I send it.’ Published by Rossetti, 1870. I MaIpen, quench the glare of sorrow Struggling in thine haggard eye; Firmness dare to borrow From the wreck of destiny; For the ray morn’s bloom revealing Can never boast so bright an hue As that which mocks concealing, And sheds its loveliest light on you. II Yet is the tie departed Which bound thy lovely soul to bliss ? Has it left thee broken-hearted In a world so cold as this ! Yet, though, fainting fair one, Sorrow’s self thy cup has given, Dream thou "It meet thy dear one, Never more to part, in heaven. Ill Existence would I barter For a dream so dear as thine, And smile to die a martyr On affection’s bloodless shrine. Nor would I change for pleasure That withered hand and ashy cheek, If my heart enshrined a treasure Such as forces thine to break. A TALE OF SOCIETY AS IT 15 FROM FACTS, I8II Sent by SheHey (from Keswick) to Miss Hitchener, in a letter, January 7, 1812: ‘I now send you some poetry ; the subject is not 564 JUVENILIA fictitious. Itis the overflowings of the mind this morning. ... The facts are real; that recorded in the last fragment of a stanzais literally true. The poor man said: ‘‘ None of my family ever came to parish, and I would starve first. I am a poor man; but I could never hold my head up after that.” ’ Pub- lished by Rossetti, 1870. I SHE was an agéd woman; and the years Which she had numbered on her toil- some way Had bowed her natural powers to de- cay. She was an agéd woman; yet the ray Which faintly glimmered through her starting tears, Pressed into light by silent misery, Hath soul’s imperishable energy. She was a cripple, and incapable To add one mite to gold-fed luxury; And therefore did her spirit dimly feel That poverty, the crime of tainting stain, Would merge her in its depths, never to rise again. II One only son’s love had supported her. She long had struggled with infirmity, Lingering to human life-scenes; for to die, When fate has spared to rend some mental tie, ‘Would many wish, and surely fewer dare. But, when the tyrant’s bloodhounds forced the child For his cursed power unhallowed arms to wield — Bend to another’s will— become a thing More senseless than the sword of battle- field — Then did she feel keen sorrow’s keen- est sting; And many years had passed ere comfort they would bring. III For seven years did this poor woman live In unparticipated solitude. Thou mightst have seen her in the for- est rude Picking the scattered remnants of its wood. If human, thou mightst then have learned to grieve. The gleanings of precarious charity Her scantiness of food did scarce sup- ly. The nn of an unspeaking sorrow dwelt Within her ghastly hollowness of eye: Each arrow of the season’s change she felt. Yet still she groans, ere yet her race were run, One only hope: it was — once more to see her son. Iv It was an eve of June, when every star Spoke peace from heaven to those on earth that live. She rested on the moor. an eve When first her soul began indeed to grieve; Then he was there ; now he is very far. The sweetness of the balmy evening A sorrow o’er her agéd soul did fling, Yet not devoid of rapture’s mingled tear; A balm was in the poison of the sting. This agéd sufferer for many a year Had never felt such comfort. She sup- pressed A sigh — and, turning round, clasped Wil- liam to her breast ! °T was such v And, though his form was wasted by the woe Which tyrants on their victims love to wreak, Though his sunk eyeballs and his faded cheek Of slavery’s violence and scorn did speak, Yet did the aged woman’s bosom glow. The vital fire seemed reillumed within By this sweet unexpected welcoming. Oh, consummation of the fondest hope That ever soared on fancy’s wildest wing ! Oh, tenderness that found’st so sweet a scope ! Prince who dost pride thee on thy mighty sway, When thou canst feel such love, thou shalt be great as they ! TO IRELAND 568 vI Her son, compelled, the country’s foes had fought, Had bled in battle; and the stern con- trol Which ruled his sinews and coerced his soul Utterly poisoned life’s unmingled bow], And unsubduable evils on him brought. He was the shadow of the lusty child Who, when the time of summer season smiled, Did earn for her a meal of honesty, And with affectionate discourse beguiled The keen attacks of pain and poverty; Till Power, as envying her this only joy, From her maternal bosom tore the un- happy boy. VII And now cold charity’s unwelcome dole Was insufficient to support the pair; And they would perish rather than would bear The law’sstern slavery, and the insolent stare With which law loves to rend the poor man’s soul — The bitter scorn, the spirit-sinking noise Of heartless mirth which women, men and boys Wake in this scene of legal misery. TO THE REPUBLICANS OF NORTH AMERICA Sent by Shelley to Miss Hitchener in a let- ter February 14, 1812: ‘Have you heard a new republic is set up in Mexico? Ihave just written the following short tribute to its suc- cess. These are merely sent as lineaments in the picture of my mind. On these two topics [Mexico and Ireland] I find that I can some- times write poetry when I feel, such as it is.’ Published by Rossetti, 1870. I BrotHeErs ! between you and me Whirlwinds sweep and billows roar: Yet in spirit oft I see On thy wild and winding shore Freedom’s bloodless banners wave, — Feel the pulses of the brave Unextinguished in the grave, — See them drenched in sacred gore, -:: Catch the warrior’s gasping breath Murmuring ‘ Liberty or death!’ It Shout aloud! Let every slave, Crouching at Corruption’s throne, Start into a man, and brave Racks and chains without a groan; And the castle’s heartless glow, And the hovel’s vice and woe, Fade like gaudy flowers that blow — Weeds that peep, and then are gone; Whilst, from misery’s ashes risen, Love shall burst the captive’s prison. III Cotopaxi! bid the sound Through thy sister mountains ring, Till each valley smile around At the blissful welcoming ! And, O thou stern Ocean deep, Thou whose foamy billows sweep Shores where thousands wake to weep Whilst they curse a villain king, On the winds that fan thy breast Bear thou news of Freedom’s rest ! Iv Can the daystar dawn of love, Where the flag of war unfurled Floats with crimson stain above The fabric of a ruined world ? Never but to vengeance driven When the patriot’s spirit shriven Seeks in death its native heaven ! There, to desolation hurled, Widowed love may watch thy bier, Balm thee with its dying tear. TO IRELAND Sent by Shelley to Miss Hitchener in the same letter as above, and published in part by Rossetti, 1870, and completed by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and Kingsland, Poet- Lore, 1892. I Bear witness, Erin ! when thine injured isle Sees summer on its verdant pastures smile, Its cornfields waving in the winds that swee The billowy surface of thy circling deep ! 566 JUVENILIA Thou tree whose shadow o’er the Atlantic ‘ave Peace, wealth and beauty, to its friendly wave, itr blossoms fade, And blighted are the leaves that cast its shade; Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty fruit, Whose chillness struck a canker to its root. II I could stand Upon thy shores, O Erin, and could count The billows that, in their unceasing swell, Dash on thy beach, and every wave might seem An instrument in Time, the giant’s grasp, To burst the barriers of Eternity. Proceed, thou giant, conquering and to con- uer; March a thy lonely way! The nations fall Beneath thy noiseless footstep; pyramids That for millenniums have defied the blast, And laughed at lightnings, thou dost crush to nought. Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, Is but the fungus of a winter day That thy light footstep presses into dust. Thou art a conqueror, Time; all things give way Before thee but the ‘fixed and virtuous will;’ The sacred sympathy of soul which was When thou wert not, which shall be when thou perishest. ON ROBERT EMMET’S GRAVE Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated 1812. Shelley mentions the poem in a letter to Miss Hitchener, April 18, 1812: ‘T have written some verses on Robert Emmet which you shall see, and which I will insert in my book of poems.’ VI No trump tells thy virtues —the grave where they rest With thy dust shall remain uupolluted by fame, Till thy foes, by the world and by fortune caressed, Shall pass like a mist from the light of thy name. VII When the storm-cloud that lowers o’er the daybeam is gone, Unchanged, unextinguished its life-spring will shine; When Erin has ceased with their memory to groan, She will smile through the tears of re- vival on thine. THE RETROSPECT: CWM ELAN, 1812 Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887. Peacock mentions the place: ‘Cwm Elan House was the seat of Mr. Grove, whom Shelley had visited there before his marriage in 1811. ... Ata subsequent period I stayed a day at Rhayader, for the sake of seeing this spot. It is a scene of singular beauty.’ A SCENE, which wildered fancy viewed In the soul’s coldest solitude, With that same scene when peaceful love Flings rapture’s color o’er the grove, When mountain, meadow, wood and stream With unalloying glory gleam, And to the spirit’s ear and eye Are unison and harmony. The moonlight was my dearer day; Then would I wander far away, And, lingering on the wild brook’s shore To hear its unremitting roar, Would lose in the ideal flow All sense of overwhelming woe; Or at the noiseless noon of night Wouldclimb some heathy mountain’s height, And listen to the mystie sound That stole in fitful gasps around. I joyed to see the streaks of day Above the purple peaks decay, And watch the latest line of light Just mingling with the shades of night; For day with me was time of woe When even tears refused to flow; Then would I stretch my languid frame Beneath the wild woods’ gloomiest shade, And try to quench the ceaseless flame That on my withered vitals preyed ; THE RETROSPECT 567 Would close mine eyes and dream I were On some remote and friendless plain, And long to leave existence there, If with it I might leave the pain That with a finger cold and lean Wrote madness on my withering mien. It was not unrequited love That bade my ’wildered spirit rove; ’T was not the pride disdaining life, That with this mortal world at strife Would yield to the soul’s inward sense, Then groan in human impotence, And weep because it is not given To taste on Earth the peace of Heaven. °T was not that in the narrow sphere Where nature fixed my wayward fate There was no friend or kindred dear Formed to become that spirit’s mate, Which, searching on tired pinion, found Barren and cold repulse around; Oh, no! yet each one sorrow gave New graces to the narrow grave. For broken vows had early quelled The stainless spirit’s vestal flame; Yes ! whilst the faithful bosom swelled, Then the envenomed arrow came, And apathy’s unaltering eye Beamed coldness on the misery; And early I had learned to scorn The chains of clay that bound a soul Panting to seize the wings of morn, And where its vital fires were born To soar, and spurn the cold control Which the vile slaves of earthly night Would twine around its struggling flight. Oh, many were the friends whom fame Had linked with the unmeaning name, Whose magic marked among mankind The casket of my unknown mind, Which hidden from the vulgar glare Imbibed no fleeting radiance there. My darksome spirit sought — it found A friendless solitude around. For who that might undaunted stand, The savior of a sinking land, Would crawl, its ruthless tyrant’s slave, And fatten upon Freedom’s grave, Though doomed with her to perish, where The captive clasps abhorred despair. They could not share the bosom’s feeling, Which, passion’s every throb revealing, Dared force on the world’s notice cold Thoughts of unprofitable mould, Who bask in Custom’s fickle ray, Fit sunshine of such wintry day ! They could not in a twilight walk Weave an impassioned web of talk, Till mysteries the spirits press In wild yet tender awfulness, Then feel within our narrow sphere How little yet how great we are ! But they might shine in courtly glare, Attract the rabble’s cheapest stare, And might command where’er they move A thing that bears the name of love; They might be learned, witty, gay, Foremost in fashion’s gilt array, On Fame’s emblazoned pages shine, Be princes’ friends, but never mine ! Ye jagged peaks that frown sublime, Mocking the blunted scythe of Time, Whence I would watch its lustre pale Steal from the moon o’er yonder vale: Thou rock, whose bosom black and vast, Bared to the stream’s unceasing flow, Ever its giant shade doth cast On the tumultuous surge below: Woods, to whose depths retires to die The wounded echo’s melody, And whither this lone spirit bent The footstep of a wild intent: Meadows! whose green and _ spangled breast These fevered limbs have often pressed, Until the watchful fiend Despair Slept in the soothing coolness there ! Have not your varied beauties seen The sunken eye, the withering mien, Sad traces of the unuttered pain That froze my heart and burned my brain ? How changed since Nature’s summer form Had last the power my grief to charm, Since last ye soothed my spirit’s sadness, Strange chaos of a mingled madness ! Changed !—not the loathsome worm that fed In the dark mansions of the dead Now soaring through the fields of air, And gathering purest nectar there, A butterfly, whose million hues The dazzled eye of wonder views. 568 JUVENILIA Long lingering on a work so strange, Has undergone so bright a change. How do I feel my happiness ? I cannot tell, but they may guess Whose every gloomy feeling gone, Friendship and passion feel alone; Who see mortality’s dull clouds Before affection’s murmur fly, Whilst the mild glances of her eye Pierce the thin veil of flesh that shrouds The spirit’s inmost sanctuary. ‘D thou! whose virtues latest known, First in this heart yet claim’st a throne; Whose downy sceptre still shall share The gentle sway with virtue there; Thou fair in form, and pure in mind, Whose ardent friendship rivets fast The flowery band our fates that bind, Which incorruptible shall last When duty’s hard and cold control Had thawed around the burning soul, — The gloomiest retrospects that bind With crowns of thorn the bleeding mind, The prospects of most doubtful hue That rise on Fancy’s shuddering view, — Are gilt by the reviving ray Which thou hast flung upon my day. FRAGMENT OF A SONNET TO HARRIET Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated August 1, 1812. Ever as now with Love and Virtue’s glow May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn, Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o’erflow Which force from mine such quick and warm return. TO HARRIET Published in part with Notes to Queen Mab, 1813, and completed by Forman, 1876, and Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887 ; dated 1812. Ir is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven More perfectly will give those nameless joys Which throb within the pulses of the bivod And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold, Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits Which mark the bounds of time and of the space When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me, Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven, And Heaven is Earth? —will not thy glowing cheek, Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine, And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame Of my corporeal nature, through the soul Now knit with these fine fibres? I would give The longest and the happiest day that fate Has marked on my existence but to feel One soul-reviving kiss. . . . O thou most dear, *Tis an assurance that this Earth is Hea- ven And Heaven the flower of that untainted seed Which springeth here beneath such love as ours. Harriet ! let death all mortal ties dissolve, But ours shall not be mortal! The cold hand Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds Half frozen now; the frigid intercourse Of common souls lives but a summer’s day; It dies, where it arose, upon this earth. But ours! oh, ’tis the stretch of fancy’s hope To portray its continuance as now, Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when age Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow Which blazing on devotion’s pinnacle Makes virtuous passion supersede the power Of reason; nor when life’s zstival sun To deeper manhood shall have ripened me; Nor when some years have added judg- ment’s store SONNET 569 To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then Shall holy friendship (for what other name May love like ours assume ?), not even then Shall custom so corrupt, or the cold forms Of this desolate world so harden us, As when we think of the dear love that binds Our souls in soft communion, while we know Each other’s thoughts and feelings, can we say Unblushingly a heartless compliment, Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world, Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve That knits our love to virtue. Can those eyes, Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart To purify its purity, e’er bend To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears ? Never, thon second self! Is confidence So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt The mirror even of Truth? Dark flood of Time, Roll as it listeth thee; I measure not By month or moments thy ambiguous course. Another may stand by me on thy brink, And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken, Which pauses at my feet. The sense of love, The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought Prolong my being; if I wake no more, My life more actual living will contain Than some gray veterans of the world’s cold school, Whose listless hours unprofitably roll By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed, Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude, Freedom, Devotedness and Purity ! That life my spirit consecrates to you. SONNET TO A BALLOON LADEN WITH KNOW- LEDGE In August, 1812, at Lynmouth, Shelley amused himself with sending off fire-balloons by air, and boxes and green bottles by water, containing his Declaration of Rights, and Devil’s Walk. Both this and the next poem were published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated 1812. BriecarT ball of flame that through the gloom of even Silently takest thine ethereal way, And with surpassing glory dimm’st each ray Twinkling amid the dark blue depths of Heaven, — Unlike the fire thou bearest, soon shalt thou Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom, Whilst that unquenchable is doomed to glow A watch-light by the patriot’s lonely tomb; A ray of courage to the oppressed and poor; A spark, though gleaming on the hovel’s hearth, Which through the tyrant’s gilded domes shall roar; A beacon in the darkness of the Earth; A sun which, o’er the renovated scene, Shall dart like Truth where Falsehood yet has been. SONNET ON LAUNCHING SOME BOTTLES FILLED WITH KNOWLEDGE INTO THE BRISTOL CHANNEL VessELS of heavenly medicine! may the breeze Auspicious waft your dark green forms to shore; Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding roar Of the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas; And oh! if Liberty e’er deigned to stoop From yonder lowly throne her crownless brow, Sure she will breathe around your emerald group The fairest breezes of her west that blow. Yes! she will waft ye to some freeborn soul Whose eye-beam, kindling as it meets your freight, Her heaven-born flame in Earth will light, suffering JUVENILIA 57° Until its radiance gleams from pole to pole, And tyrant-hearts with powerless envy burst To see their night of ignorance dispersed. THE DEVIL’S WALK A BALLAD Composed at Dublin, 1812, and printed as a broadside. It was unknown until 1871, when Rossetti recovered it from the copy in the Public Record Office where it had been sent with the Declaration of Rights and other pro- perty of Shelley’s supposed by government agents to be treasonable. For circulating it, Shelley’s servant, Daniel Healey, was impris- oned for six months. Shelley sent an earlier draft to Miss Hitchener, January 20, 1812. I Oncr, early.in the morning, Beelzebub arose, With care his sweet person adorning, He put on his Sunday clothes. II He drew on a boot to hide his hoof, He drew on a glove to hide his claw, His horns were concealed by a Bras Cha- peau, And the Devil went forth as natty a Beau As Bond-street ever saw. III He sate him down, in London town, Before earth’s morning ray; With a favorite imp he began to chat, On religion, and scandal, this and that, Until the dawn of day. IV And then to St. James’s court he went, And St. Paul’s Church he took on his way; He was mighty thick with every Saint, Though they were formal and he was gay. v Zhe Devil was an agriculturist, And as bad weeds quickly grow, In looking over his farm, I wist, He would n’t find cause for woe. vI He peeped in each hole, to each chamber stole, His promising live-stock to view; Grinning applause, he just showed them his claws, And they shrunk with affright from his ugly sight, Whose work they delighted to do. Vil Satan poked his red nose into crannies so small One would think that the innocents fair. Poor lambkins ! were just doing nothing at all But settling some dress or arranging some ball. But the Devil saw deeper there. VIII A Priest, at whose elbow the Devil during prayer Sate familiarly, side by side, Declared that, if the tempter were there, His presence he would not abide. Ab! ah! thought Old Nick, that’s a very stale trick, For without the Devil, O favorite of evil, In your carriage you would not ride. IX Satan next saw a brainless King, Whose house was as hot as his own; Many imps in attendance were there on the win | They flapped the pennon and twisted the sting, Close by the very Throne. x Ah, haf thought Satan, the pasture is good, My Cattle will here thrive better than others; They dine on news of human blood, They sup on the groans of the dying and dead, And supperless never will go to bed; Which will make them fat as their brothers. THE DEVIL’S WALK 571 XI fat as the fiends that feed on blood, Fresh and warm from the fields of Spain, Where ruin ploughs her gory way, Where the shoots of earth are nipped in the bud, Where Hell is the Victor’s prey, Its glory the meed of the slain. XII Fat — as the death-birds on Erin’s shore, That glutted themselves in her dearest gore, And flitted round Castlereagh, When they snatched the Patriot’s heart, that his grasp Had torn from its widow’s maniac clasp, And fled at the dawn of day. XU Fat — as the reptiles of the tomb, That riot in corruption’s spoil, That fret their little hour in gloom, And creep, and live the while. XIV Fat as that Prince’s maudlin brain, Which, addled by some gilded toy, Tired, gives his sweetmeat, and again Cries for it, like a humored boy. XV For he is fat, — his waistcoat gay, When strained upon a levee day, Scarce meets across his princely paunch; And pantaloons are like half moons Upon each brawny haunch. XVI How vast his stock of calf! when plenty Had filled his empty head and heart, Enough to satiate foplings twenty, Could make his pantaloon seams start. XVII The Devil (who sometimes is called nature), For men of power provides thus well, Whilst every change and every feature, Their great original can tell. XVIII Satan saw a lawyer a viper slay, That crawled up the leg of his table, It reminded him most marvellously Of the story of Cain and Abel. XIX The wealthy yeoman, as he wanders His fertile fields among, And on his thriving cattle ponders, Counts his sure gains, and hums a song; Thus did the Devil, through earth walk- ing, Hum low a hellish song. KX For they thrive well whose garb of gore Is Satan’s choicest livery, And they thrive well who from the poor Have snatched the bread of penury, And heap the houseless wanderer’s store, On the rank pile of luxury. XXI The Bishops thrive, though they are big; The Lawyers thrive, though they are thin; For every gown, and every wig, Hides the safe thrift of Hell within. XXII Thus pigs were never counted clean, Although they dine on finest corn; And cormorants are sin-like lean, Although they eat from night to morn. XXIII Oh! why is the Father of Hell in such glee, As he grins from ear to ear ? Why does he doff his clothes joyfully, As he skips, and prances, and flaps his wing, As he sidles, leers, and twirls his sting, And dares, as he is, to appear ? XXIV A statesman passed — alone to him, The Devil dare his whole shape uncover, To show each feature, every limb, Secure of an unvhanging lover. XXV At this known sign, a welcome sight, The watchful demons sought their King, And every fiend of the Stygian night, Was in an instant on the wing. XXVI Pale Loyalty, his guilt-steeled brow, With wreaths of gory laurel crowned : 572 JUVENILIA The hell-hounds, Murder, Want and Woe, Forever hungering flocked around; From Spain had Satan sought their food, °T was human woe and human blood ! XXVII Hark ! the earthquake’s crash I hear, — Kings turn pale, and Conquerors start, Ruttians tremble in their fear, For their Satan doth depart. XXVIII This day fiends give to revelry To celebrate their King’s return, And with delight its sire to see Hell’s adamantine limits burn. XXIX But were the Devil’s sight as keen As Reason’s penetrating eye, His sulphurous Majesty I ween, Would find but little cause for joy. XXX For the sons of Reason see That, ere fate consume the Pole, The false Tyrant’s cheek shall be Bloodless as his coward soul. FRAGMENT OF A SONNET FAREWELL TO NORTH DEVON Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated August, 1512. Where man’s profane and tainting hand Nature’s primeval loveliness has marred, And some few souls of the high bliss de- barred Which else obey her powerful command; . mountain piles That load in grandeur Cambria’s emerald vales. ON LEAVING LONDON’ FOR WALES Published by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887, and dated November, 1812. Hal to thee, Cambria! for the unfet- tered wind Which from thy wilds even now methinks I feel, Chasing the clouds that roll in wrath be- hind, And tightening the soul’s laxest nerves to steel; True mountain Liberty alone may heal The pain which Custom’s obduracies bring, And he who dares in fancy even to steal One draught from Snowdon’s ever sacred spring Blots out the unholiest rede of worldly witnessing. And shall that soul, to selfish peace re- signed, So soon forget the woe its fellows share ? Can Snowdon’s Lethe from the freeborn mind So soon the page of injured penury tear ? Does this fine mass of human passion dare To sleep, unhonoring the patriot’s fall, Or life’s sweet load in quietude to bear While millions famish even in Luxury’s hall, And Tyranny high raised stern lowers on all ? No, Cambria! never may thy matchless vales A heart so false to hope and virtue shield; Nor ever may thy spirit-breathing gales Waft freshness to the slaves who dare to yield. For me! . wield I seek amid thy rocks to ruin hurled, That Reason’s flag may over Freedom’s . . the weapon that I burn to field, Symbol of bloodless victory, wave un- furled, A meteor-sign of love effulgent o’er the world. Do thou, wild Cambria, calm each strug- gling thought; Cast thy sweet veil of rocks and woods between, That by the soul to indignation wrought Mountains and dells be mingled with the scene; Let me forever be what I have been, But not forever at my needy door THE WANDERING JEW 573 Let Te luiger speechless, pale and ean; Tam the friend of the unfriended poor, — Let me not madly stain their righteous cause in gore. THE WANDERING JEW’S SOLILOQUY Published by Dobell, 1887. Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He Who dares arrest the wheels of destiny And plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells ? Will not the lightning’s blast destroy my frame ? Will not steel drink the blood-life where it swells ? No—let me hie where dark Destruction dwells, To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair, And taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire Light long Oblivion’s death torch at its flame And calmly mount Annihilation’s pyre. DOUBTFUL, LOST AND Tyrant of Earth ! pale misery’s jackal thou ! Are there no stores of vengeful violent fate Within the magazines of thy fierce hate ? No poison in the clouds to bathe a brow That lowers on thee with desperate con< tempt ? Where is the noonday pestilence that slew The myriad sons of Israel’s favored nation ? Where the destroying minister that flew Pouring the fiery tide of desolation Upon the leagued Assyrian’s attempt ? Where the dark Earthquake demon who ingorged At the dread word Korah’s uneunscious crew ? Or the Angel’s two-edged sword of fire that urged Our primal parents from their bower of bliss (Reared by thine hand) for errors not their own By Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown ? Yes! I would court a ruin such as this, Almighty Tyrant! and give thanks to Thee — Drink deeply — drain the cup of hate — remit this I may die. UNPUBLISHED POEMS VICTOR AND CAZIRE DOUBTFUL POEMS THE WANDERING JEW A poem inMS., entitled The Wandering Jew, was offered by Shelley to Ballantyne & Co. of Edinburgh in the early summer of 1810, and declined by them September 24. It was im- mediately afterward, on September 28, offered by him to Stockdale of London, to whom he ordercd Ballantyne & Co. to send the Ms. ; but, as they delayed or failed to do so, he sent to Stockdale a second MS. which he had re- tained. A poem, thus entitled, was published, as by Shelley, in The Edinburgh Literary Jour- nal, June 27 and July 4, 1829. The editor stated that the MS. was in Shelley’s hand- writing, and had remained for the preceding twenty years in the custody of a literary gentle- man of Edinburgh, to whom Shelley in person had offered it for publication while on a visit to that city. A second version of the same poem was published, as by Shelley, and with Mrs. Shelley’s consent, but without mention of the former publication, in Fraser’s, July, 1831. Lines 435, 443-451, were quoted by Shelley as a motto for chapter viii., and lines 780, 782- 790 for chapter x. of St. Irvyne, 1811. These last lines, and lines 1401-1408, were quoted by Medwin (Life, i. 56, 58), who ascribes them to Shelley, and are given among the Juvenilia by Rossetti, Forman and Dowden. The poem, as it appeared in Fraser’s, appears to have been edited, by omission or alteration or both, and Mrs. Shelley’s statement made below refers ex- clusively to such editing. Three lines are quoted in the Introduction to Fraser’s version, as fol- lows, —‘ There is a pretty, affecting passage at the end of the fourth canto, which we dare say bore reference to the cloud of family mis- fortune in which he [Shelley] was then en veloped : — ‘ “oT is mournful when the deadliest hate Of friends, of fortune, and of fate, Is levelled at one fated head.””’ 574 DOUBTFUL POEMS These lines are also quoted by Medwin (Life, i. 364) as written ‘in his seventeenth year,’ but he does not mention independent authority for them. They do not, however, appear in the poem as given in either version. Such are the facts making for Shelley’s authorship. On the other hand Medwin claims to have written the poem, with aid from Shelley, and ascribes to him a concluding portion, embody- ing speculative opinions, which has never come to light. It is plain that the poem was not printed from Medwin’s MS., which he does not himself seem to have consulted. His memory of the past was at best a confused one, as is shown by the inaccuracy of his Life of the poet; and, when the matter related to his lit- erary partnership with Shelley, as in his trans- lations at Pisa, his recollection of the share of each in their joint work was, one is compelled to think, very feeble indeed. It may, at least, be fairly surmised that more of Shelley's work goes under Medwin’s name than has ever been affirmed. In the present instance Medwin’s assertion of authorship, in which several blun- ders are obvious, is of no more value than other unsupported and loose statements by him, which would certainly be accepted only pro- visionally and with doubt. In view of the facts above, that Shelley twice offered the poem as his own and that it was twice printed from different MSS. without Medwin’s interposition, the claim of afarmore trustworthy writer would be much impaired. If the internal evidence of the poem be appealed to, the opinion that it is substantially Shelley’s work is as much strengthened. The most plausible hypothesis is that Shelley worked with Medwin upon the subject in prose and in the first versification made of the prose; that he then rewrote the whole, confined the poem to the story, and re- served the speculative part, which has never appeared, among those early materials out of which Queen Mab was made and to which, both prose and verse, he referred in saying, that Queen Mab was written in his eighteenth and nineteenth year, or 1809-10; but that The Wandering Jew, as we have it, is substantially the poem offered by him for publication in 1810, and that it was Shelley’s work and not Medwin’s, are statements as well supported by external and internal evidence as can be looked for in such cases. Forman and, thongh with less decision, Dowden reject the porm, and therefore it is here placed in this division. The following documentary account of it is condensed from the Introduction to the reprint in the Shelley Society Publications by Mr. Bertram Dobell, who discovered the Edinburgh 1829 version. Messrs. Ballantyne & Co. (from Edinburgh) to Shelley, September 24, 1810: ‘Sir, — The delay which occurred in our reply to you, re- specting the poem you have obligingly offered us for publication, has arisen from our literary friends and advisers (at least such as we have confidence in) being in the country at this sea- son, as is usual, and the time they have be- stowed on its perusal. ‘We are extremely sorry at length, after the most mature deliberation, to be under the necessity of declining the honor of being the publishers of the present poem; not that we doubt its success, but that it is perhaps better suited to the character and liberal feelings of the English, than the bigoted spirit which yet pervades many cultivated minds in this coun- try. Even Walter Scott is assailed on all hands, at present, by our Scotch spiritual and evangelical magazines and instructors, for hav- ing promulgated atheistical doctrines in The Lady of the Lake. ‘We beg you will have the goodness to advise us how it should be returned, and we think its being consigned to some person in London would be more likely to ensure its safety than addressing it to Horsham.’ Stock- dale’s Budget, 1827. (Hotten’s Shelley, i. 41.) Shelley (from Field Place) to Stockdale, September 28, 1810: ‘Sir, —I sent, before I had the pleasure of knowing you, the MS. of a poem to Messrs. Ballantyne & Co., Edin- burgh ;. they have declined publishing it, with the enclosed letter. I now offer it to you, and depend upon your honor as a gentleman for a fair price for the copyright. It will be sent to you from Edinburgh. The subject is The Wandering Jew. As to its containing atheis- tical principles, I assure you I was wholly un- aware of the fact hinted at. Your good sense will point out the impossibility of inculeat- ing pernicious doctrines in a poem which, as you will see, is so totally abstract from any circumstances which occur under the possible view of mankind.’ Stockdale's Budget, 1827. (Hotten, i. 140.) Shelley (from University College) to Stock- dale, November 14, 1810: ‘I am _ surprised that you have not received The Wandering Jew, and in consequence write to Mr. Ballantyne to mention it; you will, doubtlessly, therefore receive it soon. Stockdale's Budget, 1827. (Hotten, i. 44.) Shelley (from University College) to Stock- dale, November 19, 1810: ‘If you have not got The Wandering Jew from Mr. B.,I1 will send you a MS.copy which I possess.’ (Hot- ten, i. 44.) Shelley (from Oxford) to Stockdale, Decem- ber 2, 1810: ‘ Will you, if you have got two copies of The Waundering Jew, send one of them to me, as I have thought of some correc- THE WANDERING JEW 575 tions which I wish to make ; your opinion on it will likewise much oblige me.’ Stockdale’s Budget, 1827. (Hotten, i. 45.) The Edinburgh Literary Journal, No. 82, June 20, 1829 : — ‘THE POET SHELLEY ‘ There has recently been put into our hands a manuscript volume, which we look upon as one of the most remarkable literary curiosities extant. It is a poem in four cantos, by the late poet Shelley, and entirely written in his own hand. It is entitled The Wandering Jew, and enntains many passages of great power and beauty. It was composed upwards of twenty years ago, and brought by the poet to Edinburgh, which he visited about that period. It has since lain in the custody of a literary gentleman of this town, to whom it was then offered for publica- tion. We have received permission to give our readers a further account of its contents, with some extracts, next Saturday ; and it af- fords us much pleasure to have it in our power to be thus instrumental in rescuing, through the medium of the Literury Journal, from the obscurity to which it might otherwise have been consigned, one of the earliest and most striking of this gifted poet’s productions, the very existence of which has never hitherto been surmised.’ [The poem was published, Nos. 33, 34 (June 27, July 4, 1829), with the following remarks] : — ‘It may possibly have been offered to one or two booksellers, both in London and Edin- burgh, without success, and this may account for the neglect into which the author allowed it to fall, when new cares crowded upon him, and new prospects opened round him. Certain it is, that it has been carefully kept by the literary gentleman to whom he entrusted its perusal when he visited Edinburgh in 1811, and would have been willingly surrendered by him at any subsequent period. had any appli- cation to that effect been made... . ‘Mr. Shelley appears to have some doubts whether to call his poem The Wandering Jew or The Victim of the Eternal Avenger. Both names oceur in the manuscript; but had the work been published, it is to be hoped that he would finally have fixed on the former, the more especially as the poem itself contains very little calculated to give offence to the re- ligious reader. The motto on the title-page is from the 22d chapter of St. John: “ If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? — follow thou me.’ Turning over the leaf, we meet with the following Dedication: “To Sir Francis Burdett, Bart., M. P., in considera- tion of the active virtues by which both his public and private life is so eminently distin- guished, the following poem is inscribed by the Author.” Again turning the leaf, we meet with the — ‘“ PREFACE ‘* The subject of the following Poem is an imaginary personage, noted for the various and contradictory traditions which have prevailed concerning him — the Wandering Jew. Many sage monkish writers have supported the au- thenticity of this fact, the reality of his exist- ence. But as the quoting them would have led me to annotations perfectly uninteresting, although very fashionable, I decline presenting anything to the public but the bare poem, which they will agree with me not to be of sufficient consequence to authorize deep anti- quarian researches on its subject. I might, indeed, have introduced, by anticipating future events, the no less grand, although equally groundless, superstitions of the battle of Ar- mageddon, the personal reign of J C—_, etc.; but I preferred, improbable as the fol- lowing tale may appear, retaining the old method of describing past events: it is cer- tainly more consistent with reason, more inter- esting, even in works of imagination. With respect to the omission of elucidatory notes, I have followed the well-known maxim of ‘ Do unto others as thou wouldest they should do unto thee.’ — January, 1811.” ‘The poem introduced by the above Preface is in four cantos ; and though the octosyllabic verse is the most prominent, it contains a vari- ety of measures, like Sir Walter Scott’s poeti- eal romances. The incidents are simple, and refer rather to an episode in the life of the Wandering Jew, than to any attempt at a full delineation of all his adventures. We shall give an analysis of the plot, and intersperse, as we proceed, some of the most interesting pas- sages of the poem.’ Medwin, Shelley Papers, pp. 7-9: ‘Shortly afterwards we wrote, in conjunction, six or seven cantos on the subject of the Wandering Jew, of which the first four, with the exception of a very few lines, were exclusively mine. It was a thing such as boys usually write, a cento from different favorite authors ; the crucifixion scene altogether a plagiary from a volume of Cambridge Prize Poems. The part which I contributed I have still, and was surprised to find totidem verbis in Fraser’s Magazine... . As might be shown by the last cantos of that poem, which Fraser did not think worth pub- lishing, his [Shelley’s] ideas were, at that time, strange and incomprehensible, mere ele- ments of thought—-images wild, vast and Titanic.’ 576 DOUBTFUL POEMS Medwin, Life, i. 54-57: ‘Shelley, having abandoned prose for poetry, now formed a grand design, a metrical romance on the sub- ject of the Wandering Jew, of which the first three cantos were, with a few additions and alterations, almost entirely mine. It was a sort of thing such as boys usually write, a cento from different favorite authors ; the vision in the third canto taken from Lewis’s Monk, of which, in common with Byron, he was a great admirer; and the crucifixion scene altogether a plagiarism from a volume of Cambridge Prize Poems. The part which I supplied is still in my possession. After seven or eight cantos were perpetrated, Shelley sent them to Campbell for his opinion on their merits, with a view to publication. The author of the Pleasures of Hope returned the MS. with the remark that there were only two good lines in it : — *“ Tt seemed as if an angel’s sigh Had breathed the plaintive symphony.”’ Lines, by the way, savoring strongly of Walter Scott. This criticism of Campbell’s gave a death-blow to our hopes of immortality, and so little regard did Shelley entertain for the roduction, that he left it at his lodgings in dinburgh, where it was disinterred by some correspondent of Fraser’s, and in whose maga- zine, in 1831, four of the cantos appeared. The others he very wisely did not think worth publishing. “It must be confessed that Shelley’s contri- butions to this juvenile attempt were far the THE WANDERING JEW [The passages in italics are from the Edin- burgh version. ] CANTO I ‘Me miserable, which way shall I fly ? Infinite wrath and infinite despair — Which way I fly is hell — myself am hell ; And in this lowest deep a lower deep, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.’ Paradise Lost. Tue brilliant orb of parting day Diffused a rich and mellow ray Above the mountain’s brow ; It tinged the hills with lustrous light, It tinged the promontory’s height, Still sparkling with the snow ; And, as aslant it threw its beam, Tipped with gold the mountain stream That laved the vale below ; Long hung the eye of glory there, And lingered as if loth to leave A scene so lovely and so fair. best, and those, with my MS. before me, I could, were it worth while, point out, though the contrast in the style, and the inconsequence of the opinions on religion, particularly in the last canto, are sufficiently obvious to mark two different hands, and show which passages were his. . . . The finale of The Wandering Jew is also Shelley’s, and proves that thus early he had imbibed opinions which were often the subject of our controversies. We differed also as to the conduct of the poem. It was my wish to follow the German fragment, and put an end to the Wandering Jew—a consummiatiou Shelley would by no means consent to.’ (Mr. Dobell examines the inconsistencies and the precise statements of Medwin at length. ] Fraser’s, July, 1831: ‘An obscure contem- porary has accused us of announcing for pub- lication Shelley’s poem without proper author- ity. We beg to assure him that we have the sanction of Mrs. Shelley. Of[liver] Y[orke].’ The same: ‘ The saportant literary curiosity which the liberality of the gentleman into whose hands it has fallen, enables us now to lay before the public for the first time, in a complete state, was offered for publication by Mr. Shelley when quite a boy.’ Mrs. Shelley, Note on Queen Mab, 1889, i 102: ‘ He wrote also a poem on the subject of Ahasuerus — being led to it by a German Fragment he picked up, dirty and torn, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This fell afterwards into other hands — and was considerably al- tered before it was printed.’ "T were luxury even, there to grieve. So soft the clime, so balm the air, So pure and genial were the skies, In sooth ’t was almost Paradise, For ne’er did the sun’s splendor close On such a picture of repose. All, all was tranquil, all was still, Save when the music of the rill, Or distant waterfall, At intervals broke on the ear, Which Echo’s self was charmed to hear, And ceased her babbling call. With every charm the landscape glowed Which partial Nature’s hand bestowed ; Nor could the mimic hand of art Such beauties or such hues impart. Light clouds in fleeting livery gay Hung, painted in grotesque array, Upon the western sky ; Forgetful of the approaching dawn, The peasants danced upon the lawn, For the vintage time was nigh. How jocund to the tabor’s sound O’er the smooth, trembling turf they bound, In every measure light and free, The very soul of harmony ! THE WANDERING JEW 577 Grace in each attitude, they move, They thrill to amorous ecstasy, Light as the dewdrops of the morn, That hang upon the blossomed thorn, Subdued by the power of resistless Love. Ah! days of innocence, of joy, Of rapture that knows no alloy, Haste on, — ye roseate hours, Free from the world’s tumultuous cares, From pale distrust, from hopes and fears, Baneful concomitants of time, — °T is yours, beneath this favored clime, Your pathway strewn with flowers, Upborne on pleasure’s downy wing, To quaff a long unfading spring, zlnd beat with light and careless step the ground ; The fairest flowers too soon grow sere, Too soon shall tempests blast the year, And sin’s eternal winter reign around. But see, what forms are those, Scarce seen by glimpse of dim twilight, Wandering o’er the mountain’s height ? They swiftly haste to the vale below. One wraps his mantle around his brow, As if to hide his woes ; And as his steed impetuous flies, What strange fire flashes from his eyes! The far-off city’s murmuring sound Was borne on the breeze which floated around ; Noble Padua’s lofty spire Searce glowed with the sunbeam’s latest fire, Yet dashed the travellers on ; Ere night o’er the earth was spread, Full many a mile they must have sped, Ere their destined course was run. Welcome was the moonbeam’s ray, Which slept upon the towers so gray. But, hark! a convent’s vesper bell — It seemed to be a very spell ! The stranger checked his courser’s rein, And listened to the mournful sound ; Listened — and paused — and paused again ; A thrill of pity and of pain Through his inmost soul had passed, While gushed the tear-drops silently and fast. A crowd was at the convent gate, The gate was opened wide ; No longer on his steed he sate, But mingled with the tide. He felt a solemn awe and dread, As he the chapel enteréd Dim was the light from the pale moon beam- ing, As it fell on the saint-cyphered panes, Or, from the western window streaming, Tinged the pillars with varied stains. To the eye of enthusiasm strange forms were gliding In each dusky recess of the aisle ; And indefined shades in succession were strid- ing ne O’er the coignes! of the Gothic pile. The pillars tc the vaulted roof In airy lightness rose ; 1 Buttress or coign of vantage. Macbeth. Now they mount to the rich Gothic ceiling aloof And exquisite tracery disclose. The altar illumined now darts its bright rays, The train passed in brilliant array ; On the shrine Saint Pietro’s rich ornaments blaze, And rival the brilliance of day. Hark !— now the loud organ swells full on the ear — So sweetly mellow, chaste, and clear ; Melting, kindling, raising, firing, Delighting now, and now inspiring, Peal upon peal the music floats ; Now they list still as death to the dying notes ; Whilst the soft voices of the choir, Exalt the soul from base desire, Till it mounts on unearthly pinions free, Dissolved in heavenly ecstasy. Now a dead stillness reigned around, Uninterrupted by a sound ; Save when in deadened response ran The last faint echoes down the aisle, Reverberated through the pile, As within the pale the holy man, With voice devout and saintly look, Slow chanted from the sacred book, Or pious prayers were duly said For spirits of departed dead. With beads and crucifix and hood, Close by his side the abbess stood ; Now her dark penetrating eyes Were raised in suppliance to heaven, And now her bosom heaved with sighs, As if to human weakness given. Her stern, severe, yet beauteous brow Frowned on all who stood below ; And the fire which flashed from her steade gaze, As it turned on the listening crowd its rays, Superior virtue told, — Virtue as pure as heaven's own dew, But which, untainted, never knew To pardon weaker mould. The heart though chaste and cold as snow — °T were faulty to be virtuous so. Not a panes now breathed in the pillarea aisle. The stranger advanced to the altar high — Convulsive was heard a smothered sigh ! Lo! four fair nuns to the altar draw near, With solemn footstep, as the while A fainting novice they bear ; The roses from her cheek are fled But there the lily reigns instead ; Light as a sylph’s, her form confessed Beneath the drapery of her vest, A perfect grace and symmetry ; Her eyes, with rapture formed to move, To melt with tenderness and love, Or beam with sensibility, To Heaven were raised in pious prayer, A silent eloquence of woe ; Now hung the pearly tear-drop there: 578 DOUBTFUL POEMS Sate on her cheek a fixed despair ; And now she beat her bosom bare, As pure as driven snow. Nine graceful novices around Fresh roses strew upon the ground ; In purest white arrayed, Nine spotless vestal virgins shed Sabzean incense o’er the head Of the devoted maid. They dragged her to the alcar’s pale, The traveller leant against the rail, And gazed with eager eye, — His cheek was flushed with sudden glow, On his brow sate a darker shade of woe, As a transient expression fled by. The sympathetic feeling flew Through every breast, from man to man; Confused and open clamors ran — Louder and louder still they grew ; When the abbess waved her hand, A stern resolve was in her eye, And every wild tumultuous cry Was stilled at her command. The abbess made the well-known sign — The novice reached the fatal shrine, And mercy implored from the power divine ; At length she shrieked aloud, She dashed from the supporting nun, Ere the fatal rite was done, And plunged amid the crowd. Confusion reigned throughout the throng — Still the novice fled along, Impelled by frantic fear, When the maddened traveller’s eager grasp In firmest yet in wildest clasp Arrested her career, As fainting from terror she sank on the ground, Her loosened locks floated her fine form around ; The zone which confined her shadowy vest No longer her throbbing bosom pressed, Its animation dead ; No more her feverish pulse beat high, Expression dwelt not in her eye, Her wildered senses fled. Hark! Hark! the demon of the storm ! I see his vast expanding form Blend with the strange and sulphurous glare Of comets through the turbid air. Yes, ’t was his voice, I heard its roar, The wild waves lashed the caverned shore In angry murmurs hoarse and loud, — Higher and higher still they rise ; Red lightnings gleam from every cloud And paint wild shapes upon the skies ; The echoing thunder rolls around, Convulsed with earthquake rocks the ground. The traveller yet undannted stood, He heeded not the roaring flood ; Yet Rosa slept, her bosom bare, Her cheek was deadly pale, The ringlets of her auburn hair Streamed in a lengthened trail, And motionless her seraph form ; Unheard, unheeded raved. the storm ; Whilst, borne on the wing of the gale, The harrowing shriek of the white sea-mew As o’er the midnight surge she flew, — The howlings of the squally blast, As o’er the beetling cliffs it passed, Mingled with the peals on high, That, swelling louder, paket by, — Assailed the traveller’s ear. He heeded not the maddened storm As it pelted against his lofty form; He felt no awe, no fear ; In contrast, like the courser pale + That stalks along Death’s pitchy vale With silent, with gigantic tread, Trampling the dying and the dead. Rising from her deathlike trance, Fair Rosa met the stranger’s glanee + She started from his chilling gaze, — Wild was it as the tempest’s blaze, It shot a lurid gleam of light, A secret spell of sudden dread, A mystic, strange, and harrowing fear, As when the spirits of the dead, Dressed in ideal shapes appear, And hideous glance on human sight ; Searce could Rosa's frame sustain The chill that pressed upon her brain. Anon, that transient spell was o’ér; Dark clouds deform his brow no more, But rapid fled away ; Sweet fascination dwelt around, Mixed with a soft, a silver sound, As soothing to the ravished ear, As what enthusiast lovers hear ; Which seems to steal along the sky, ‘When mountain mists are seen to fly Before the approach of day. He seized on wondering Rosa’s hand, ‘And, ah!’ cried he, ‘ be this the band Shall join us, till this earthly frame Sinks convulsed in bickering flame — When around the demons yell, And drag the sinful wretch to hell, Then, Rosa, will we part — Then fate, and only fate’s decree, Shall tear thy lovely soul from me, And rend thee from my heart. Long has Paulo sought in vain A friend to share his grief ; Never will he seek again, For the wretch has found relief, Till the Prince of Darkness bursts his chain, Till death and desolation reign. Rosa, wilt thou then be mine? Ever fairest, Iam thine!’ He ceased, and on the howling blast, Which wildly round the mountain passed, 1 * Behold a pale horse, and his name that sate upon him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’ — Reve: lation, vi. 8. THE WANDERING JEW 579 Died his accents low ; Yet fiercely howled the midnight storm, As Paulo bent his awful form, And leaned his lofty brow. ROSA ‘Stranger, mystic stranger, rise ; Whence do these tumults fill the skies ? Who conveyed me, say, this night, To this wild and cloud-capped height ? Who art thou? and why am Beneath Heaven’s pitiless canopy ? For the wild winds roar around my head; Lightnings redden the wave ; Was it the power of the mighty dead, Who live beneath the grave ? Or did the Abbess drag me here To make yon swelling surge my bier?’ PAULO ‘Ah, lovely Rosa! cease thy fear, It was thy friend who bore thee here — I, thy friend, till this fabric of earth Sinks in the chaos that gave it birth; Till the meteor-bolt of the God above Shall tear its victim from his love, — That love which must unbroken last, Till the hour of envious fate is past, Till the mighty basements of the sky In bickering hell-flames heated fly. E’en then will I sit on some rocky height, Whilst around lower clouds of eternal night ; E’en then will I loved Rosa save From the yawning abyss of the grave ; Or, into the gulf impetuous hurled If sinks with its latest tenants the world, Then will our souls in union fly Throughout the wide and boundless sky ; Then, free from the ills that envious fate Has heaped upon our mortal state, We ’ll taste ethereal pleasure ; Such as none but thou canst give, Such as none but I receive, — And rapture without measure.’ As thus he spoke, a sudden blaze Of pleasure mingled in his gaze. Ulumined by the dazzling light, He glows with radiant lustre bright ; His features with new glory shine, And sparkle as with beams divine. ‘Strange, awful being,’ Rosa said, ‘ Whenee is this superhuman dread, That harrows up my inmost frame ? Whence does this unknown tingling flame Consume and penetrate my soul ? By turns with fear and love possessed, Tumultuous thoughts swell high my breast ; A thousand wild emotions roll, And mingle their resistless tide ; O’er thee some magic arts preside ; As by the influence of a charm, Lulled into rest, my griefs subside, And, safe in thy protecting arm, I feel no power can do me harm, But the storm raves wildly o’er the sea, — Bear me away! I confide in thee !’ CANTO II ‘TI could a tale unfold, whose slightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from ther spheres: Thy knotted and combinéd locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end, Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.’ Hamlet. Tue horrors of the mighty blast, The lowering tempest clouds, were passed — Had sunk beneath the main ; Light baseless mists were all that fled Above the weary traveller’s head, As he left the spacious plain. Fled were the vapors of the night, Faint streaks of rosy tinted light Were painted on the matin gray ; And as the sun began to rise To pour his animating ray, Glowed with his fire the eastern skies, The distant rocks, the far-off bay, The ocean’s sweet and lovely blue, The mountain’s variegated breast, Blushing with tender tints of dawn, Or with fantastic shadows dressed ; ‘The waving wood, the opening lawn, Rose to existence, waked anew, In colors exquisite of hue ; Their mingled charms Victorio viewed, And lost in admiration stood, From yesternight how changed the scene, When howled the blast o’er the dark cliff’s side And mingled with the maddened roar Of the wild surge that lashed the shore. To-day — scarce heard the whispering breeze, And still and motionless the seas, Scarce heard the murmuring of their tide; All, all is peaceful and serene ; Serenely on Victorio’s breast It breathed a soft and tranquil rest, Which bade each wild emotion cease, And hushed the passions into peace. Along the winding Po he went; His footsteps to the spot were bent Where Paulo dwelt, his wandered friend, For thither did his wishes tend. Noble Victorio’s race was proud, From Cosmo’s blood he came ; To him a wild untutored crowd Of vassals in allegiance bowed, Illustrious was his name ; Yet vassals and wealth he scorned to go Unnoticed with a man of woe ; Gay hope and expectation sate Throned in his eager eye, And, ere he reached the castle gate, The sun had mounted high. Wild was the spot where the castle stood Its towers embosomed deep in wood ; Gigantie cliffs, with craggy steeps, Reared their proud heads on hich. — 580 DOUBTFUL POEMS Their bases were washed by the foaming deeps, Their summits were hid in the sky; From the valley below they excluded the day, \-hat valley ne’er cheered by the sunbeam’s ray ; Nought broke on the silence drear, Save the hungry vultures darting by, Or eagles yelling fearfully, As they bore to the rocks their prey ; Or when the fell wolf ravening prowled, Or the gaunt wild boar fiercely howled His hideous screams on the night’s dull ear. Borne on pleasure’s downy wing, Downy as the breath of spring, Not thus fled Paulo’s hours away, Though brightened by the cheerful day. Friendship or wine, or softer love, The sparkling eye, the foaming bowl, Could with no lasting rapture move, Nor still the tumults of his soul. And yet there was in Rosa’s kiss A momentary thrill of bliss ; Oft the dark clouds of grief would fly Beneath the beams of sympathy ; And love and converse sweet bestow, A transient requiem from woe. — Strange business, and of import vast, On things which long ago were past Drew Paulo oft from home ; Then would a darker, deeper shade, By sorrow traced, his brow o’erspread And o’er his features roam. Oft as they spent the midnight hour, -And heard the wintry wild winds rave Midst the roar and spray of the dashing wave, Was Paulo’s dark brow seen to lower. Then, as the lamp’s uncertain blaze Shed o’er the hall its partial rays, And shadows strange were seen to fall, And glide upon the dusky wall, Would Paulo start with sudden fear. Why then unbidden gushed the tear, As he muttered strange words to the ear? Why frequent heaved the smothered sigh ? Why did he gaze on vacancy, As if some strange form was near ? Then would the fillet of his brow Fierce as a fiery furnace glow, As it burned with red and lambent flame ; Then would cold shuddering seize his frame, As gasping he labored for breath. The strange light of his gorgon eye, As, frenzied and rolling dreadfully, It glared with terrific gleam, Would chill like the spectre gaze of death, As, conjured by feverish dream, He seems o’er the sick man’s couch to stand, And shakes the dread lance in his skeleton hand. But when the paroxysm was o’er, And clouds deformed his brow no more, Would Rosa soothe his tumults dire, Would bid him ealm his grief, Would quench reflection’s rising fire, And give his soul relief, As on his form with pitying eye The ministering angel hung, And wiped the drops of agony, The music of her siren tongue Lulled forcibly his griefs to rest ; Like fleeting visions of the dead, Or midnight dreams, his sorrows fled ; Waked to new life, through all his soul A soft delicious languor stole, And lapped in heavenly ecstasy He sank and fainted on her breast. °T was on an eve, the leaf was sere, Howled the blast round the castle drear, The boding night-bird’s hideous cry Was mingled with the warning sky ; Heard was the distant torrent’s dash, Seen was the lightning’s dark red flash, As it gleamed on the stormy cloud ; Heard was the troubled ocean’s roar, As its wild waves lashed the rocky shore ; The thunder muttered loud, As wilder still the lightnings flew ; Wilder as the tempest blew, More wildly strange their converse grew. They talked of the ghosts of the mighty ead, — If, when the spark of life were fled, They visited this world of woe ? Or, were it but a fantasy, Deceptive to the fonerich: eye, When strange forms flashed upon the sight, And stalked along at the dead of night ? Or if, in the realms above, They still, for mortals left below, Retained the same affection’s glow, In friendship or in love ? — Debating thus, a pensive train, Thought upon thought began to rise ; Her thrilling wild harp Rosa took ; What scunds in softest murmurs broke From the seraphic strings ! Celestials borne on odorous wings Caught the dulcet melodies ; The life-blood ebbed in every vein, As Paulo listen’d to the strain. SONG What sounds are those that float upon the air, As if to bid the fading day farewell, — What form is that so shadowy, yet so fair, Winch Biiges along the rough and pathless e Nightly those sounds swell full upon the breeze, Which seems to sigh as if in sympathy ; They hang amid yon cliff-embosomed trees, Or float in dying cadence through the sky. Now rests that form upon the moonbeam pale, In piteous strains of woe its vesper sings ; ow — now it traverses the silent vale, Borne on transparent ether’s viewless wings. Oft will it rest beside yon abbey’s tower, Which lifts its ivy-mantled mass so higk: THE WANDERING JEW 581 Rears its dari head to meet the storms that ower, And ae the trackless tempests of the sky. That form, the embodied spirit of a maid, Forced by a perjured lover to the grave ; A desperate fate the maddened girl obeyed, And from the dark cliffs plunged into the wave. There the deep murmurs of the restless surge, The mournful shrickings of the white sea- Wy The warring waves, the wild winds, sang her irge, And o’er her bones the dark red coral grew. Yet though that form be sunk beneath the main, Still rests her spirit where its vows were given; Siill fondly visits each loved spot again, And pours its sorrows on the ear of Heaven. That spectre wanders through the abbey dale, And suffers pangs which such a fate must share ; Early her soul sank in death’s darkened vale, And ere long all of us must meet her there. She ceased, and on the listening ear Her pensive accents die So sad they were, so softly clear, Tt seemed as if some angel’s sigh Had breathed the plaintive symphony ; So ravishingly sweet their close, The tones awakened Paulo’s woes ; Oppressive recollections rose, And poured their bitter tide. Absorbed awhile in grief he stood ; At length he seemed as one inspired, His burning fillet blazed with blood — A lambent flame his features fired. ‘The hour is come, the fated hour ; Whence is this new, this unfelt power ? — Yes, I’ve a secret to unfold, And such a tale as ne’er was told, A dreadful, dreadful mystery ! Scenes, at whose retrospect e’en now, Cold drops of anguish on my brow, The icy chill of death I feel: Wrap, Rosa, bride, thy breast in steel, Thy soul with nerves of iron brace, As to your eyes I darkly trace My sad, my cruel destiny. ‘ Victorio, lend your ears, arise, Let us seek the battling skies, . Wild o’er our heads the thunder crashing, And at our feet the wild waves dashing, As tempest, clouds, and billows roll, In gloomy concert with my soul. Rosa, follow me — ; For my soul is joined to thine, ‘And thy being ’s linked to mine — Rosa, list to me.’ CANTO III ‘His form had not yet lost All its original brightness, nor appeared Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Of glory obscured ; but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care Sate on his faded cheek.’ Paradise Lost. PAULO ’T 1s sixteen hundred years ago, Since I came from Israel’s land ; Sixteen hundred years of woe ! — With deep and furrowing hand God’s mark is painted on my head ; Must there remain until the dead Hear the last trump, and leave the tomb, And earth spouts fire from her riven womb. How can I paint that dreadful day, That time of terror and dismay, When, for our sins, a Saviour died, And the meck Lamb was crucified ! As dread that day, when, borne along To slaughter by the insulting throng, Infuriaie for Deicide, I mocked our Saviour, and I cried, ‘Go, go,’ ‘Ah! I will go,’ said he, ‘ Where scenes of endless bliss invite ; To the blest regions of the light I go, but thou shalt here remain — Thou diest not till I come again.’ — E’en now, by horror traced, I see His perforated feet and hands ; The maddened crowd around him stands ; Pierces his side the ruffian spear, Big rolls the bitter anguished tear. Hark, that deep groan! — he dies — he ies, — And breathes, in death’s last agonies, Forgiveness to his enemies. Then was the noonday glory clouded, The sun in pitchy darkness shrouded. Then were strange forms through the darkness gleaming, And the red orb of night on Jerusalem beam- ing; Which faintly, with ensanguined light, Dispersed the thickening shades of night. Convulsed, all nature shook with fear, As if the very end was near ; Earth to her centre trembled ; ; Rent in twain was the temple’s veil ; The graves gave up their dead ; Whilst ghosts and spirits, ghastly pale, Glared hideous on the sight, ||, Seen through the dark and lurid air, As fiends arrayed in light Threw on the scene a frightful glare, And, howling, shrieked with hideous yell — They shrieked in joy, for a Saviour fell ! ?T was then I felt the Almighty’s tre ; Then full on my remembrance came Those words despised, alas! too late ! The horrors of my endless fate 582 DOUBTFUL POEMS Flasned on my soul and shook my frame ; They scorched my breast as with a flame Of unextinguishable fire; , An exquisitely torturing pain Of frenzying anguish fired my brain. 'y keen remorse and anguish driven, I called for vengeance down from Heaven. But, ah! the all-wasting hand of Time Might never wear away my crime! I scarce could draw my fluttering breath — Was it the appalling grasp of death ? I lay entranced, and deemed he shed His dews of poppy o’er my head ; But, though the kindly warmth was dead, The self-inflicted torturing pangs Of conscience lent their scorpion fangs, Still life prolonging after life was fled. Methought what glories met my sight, As burst a sudden blaze of light Illumining the azure skies, — I saw the blessed Saviour rise. But how unlike to him who bled ! Where then his thorn-encircled head ? Where the big drops of agony Which dimmed the lustre of his eye ? Or deathlike hue that overspread The features of that heavenly face ? Gone now was every mortal trace ; His eyes with radiant lustre beamed — His form confessed celestial grace, And with a blaze of glory streamed. Innumerable hosts around, Their brows with wreaths immortal crowned, With amaranthine chaplets bound, As on their wings the cross they bore, Deep dyed in the Redeemer’s gore, Attune their golden harps, and sing Loud hallelujahs to their King. But in an instant from my sight Fled were the visions of delight. Darkness had spread her raven pall ; Dank, lurid darkness covered all. All was as silent as the dead ; I felt a petrifying dread, Which heroomed up my frame; When suddenly a lurid stream Of dark red light, with hideous gleam, Shot like a meteor through the night, And painted Hell upon the skies — The Hell from whence it came. What clouds of sulphur seemed to rise ! What sounds were borne upon the air! The breathings of intense despair — The piteous shrieks — the wails of woe — The screams of torment and of pain— The red-hot rack — the clanking chain ! I gazed upon the gulf below, Till, fainting from excess of fear, My tottering knees refused to bear My odious weight. Isink—I sink! Already had I reached the brink. The fiery waves disparted wide To plunge me in their sulphurous tide ; en, racked by agonizing pain, Istarted into life again. Yet still the impression left behind Was deeply graven on my mind In characters whose inward trace No change or time could ere deface ; A burning cross illumed my brow, T hid it with a fillet gray, But could not hide the wasting woe That wore my wildered soul away, And ate my heart with living fire. I knew it was the avenger’s sway, I felt it was the avenger’s ire! A burden on the face of earth, I cursed the mother who gave me birth ; I cursed myself — my native land. Polluted by repeated crimes I sought in distant foreign climes If change of country could bestow A transient respite from my woe. Vain from myself the attempt to fly, Sole cause of my own misery. Since when, in deathlike trance I lay, Passed, slowly passed, the years away That poured a bitter stream on me ; When once I fondly longed to see Jerusalem, alas ! my native place, Jerusalem — alas! no more in name — No portion of her former fame Had left behind a single trace. Her pomp, her splendor, was no more. Her towers no longer seem to rise To lift their proud heads to the skies, — Fane and monumental bust Long levelled even with the dust. The holy pavements were stained with gore, The place where the sacred temple stood Was crimson-dyed with Jewish blood. Long since my parents had been dead, All my posterity had bled Beneath the dark Crusader’s spear, No friend was left my path to cheer, To shed a few last setting rays Of sunshine on my evening days ! Racked by the tortures of the mind, How have I longed to plunge beneath The mansions of repelling death ! And strove that resting place to find Where earthly sorrows cease ! Oft, when the tempest-fiends engaged, And the warring winds tumultuous raged, Confounding skies with seas, . Then would I rush to the towering height Of the gigantic Teneriffe, Or some precipitous cliff, All in the dead of the silent night. I have cast myself from the mountain’s height. Above was day — below was night ; The substantial clouds that lowered beneath Bore my detestea form ; They whirled it above the volcanic breath And the meteors of the storm ; The torrents of electric flame Scorched to a cinder my fated frame. THE WANDERING JEW 583 Hark to the thunder’s awful crash— Hark to the midnight lightning’s hiss ! At length was heard a sullen dash, Which made the hollow rocks around Rebellow to the awful sound ; The yawning ocean opening wide Received me in its vast abyss, And whelmed me in its foaming tide. Tene my astounded senses fled, Yet did the spark of life remain; Then the wild surges of the main Dashed and left me on the rocky shore. Oh! would that I had waked no more! Vain wish! I lived again to feel Torments more fierce than those of hell ! A tide of keener pain to roll, ind the bruises to enter my inmost soul ! I cast myself in Etna’s womb,! lf haply I might meet my doom In torrents of electric flame ; Thrice happy had I found a grave Mid fierce combustion’s tumults dire, >Mid oceans of voleanic fire Which whirled me in their sulphurous wave, And scorched to a cinder my hated frame, Parched up the blood within my veins, And racked my breast with damning pains, — Then hurled me from the mountain’s entrails dread, With what unutterable woe Even now I feel this bosom glow — I burn —i melt with fervent heat — Again life’s pulses wildly beat — What endless throbbing pains I live to feel ! The elements respect their Maker’s seal, — That seal deep printed on my fated head. Still like the scathéd pine-tree’s height, Braving the tempests of the night, Have I ’scaped the bickering fire. Like the seathéd pine which a monument stands Of faded grandeur, which the brands Of the tempest-shaken air Have riven on the desolate heath, Yet it stands majestic even in death, And rears its wild form there. Thus have I ’seaped the ocean’s roar The red-hot bolt from God’s right hand, The flaming midnight meteor brand, And Etna’s flames of bickering fire. Thus am I doomed by fate to stand, 1 ‘T cast myself from the overhanging summit of the gigantic Teneriffe into the wide weltering ocean. The ¢louds which hung upon its base below, bore up my odious weight ; the foaming billows, swoln by the fury of the northern blast, opened to receive me, and, bury- ing in a vast abyss, at length dashed my almost inani- mate frame against the crags. The bruises entered into my soul, but Lawoke to life andall its torments. I precipitated myself into the crater of Vesuvius; the bickering flames and melted lava vomited me up again, and though I felt the tortures of the damned, though the sulphureous bitumen scorched the blood within my veins, parched up wy flesh and burnt it to a cinder, still did I live to drag the galling chain of existence on. Repeatedly have I exposed myself to the tempestu- ous battling of the elements; the clouds which burst upon my head in crash terrific and exterminating. and A monument of the Eternal’s ire ; Nor can tliis being pass away, Till time shall be no more, I pierce with intellectual eye, Into each hidden mystery ; I penetrate the fertile womb Of nature ; I produce to light The secrets of the teeming earth, nd give air’s unseen embryos birth i ‘The past, the present, and to come, Float in review before my sight ; To me is known the magic spell, » summon e’en the Prince of Hell; Awed by the Cross upon my head, His fiends would obey my mandates dread, To twitight change the blaze of noon And stain with spots of blood the moon — But that an interposing hand Restrains my potent arts, my else supreme command, — He raised his passion-quivering hand, | He loosed the gray encircling band, | A burning Cross was there ; | Its color was like to recent blood, | Deep marked upon his brow it stocd, And spread a lambent glare. | Dimmer grew the taper’s blaze, g- Dazzled by the brighter rays, Whilst Paulo spoke — ’t was dead of night — Fair Rosa shuddered with affright ; Victorio, fearless, had braved death Upon the blood-besprinkled heath ; Had heard, unmoved, the cannon’s roar, Echoing along the Wolga’s shore. When the thunder of battle was swelling, When the birds for their dead prey were yelling, When the ensigns of slaughter were stream- ing, And falehions and bayonets were gleaming, And almost felt death’s chilling hand, Stretched on ensanguined Wolga’s strand, And, careless, scorned for life to ery, Yet now he turned aside his eye, Searce could his death-like terror bear, And owned now what it was to fear. [pauLo] Once a funeral met my aching sight, It blasted my eyes at the dead of night, the flaming thunderbolt, hurled headlong on me ita victim, stunned but not destroyed me. The light- ning, in bickering coruscation, blasted me; and like the scattered [? shattered] oak, which remains a monument of faded grandeur, and outlives the other monarchs of the forest, doomed me to live forever. Nine times did this dagger enter into my heart — the ensan- guined tide of existence followed the repeated plunge; at each stroke, unutterable anguish seized my frame, and every limb was convulsed by the pangs of approach- ing dissolution. The wounds still closed, and still I breathe the hated breath of life.’ Ihave endeavored to deviate as little as possible from the extreme sublimity of idea which the style of the German author, of which this is a translation, so forci bly 1upresses. 584 DOUBTFUL POEMS When the sightless fiends of the tempests rave And hell-birds howl o'er the storm-blackened wave. Nought was seen, save at fits, but the meteor’s glare And the lightnings of God painting hell on the air ; . Nought was heard save the thunder’s wild voice in the sky, ae ; And strange birds who, shrieking, fled dismally ry. °T was then from my head my drenched hair that I tore, And bade my vain dagger’s point drink my life’s gore ; °T was then I fell on the ensanguined earth, And cursed the mother who gave me birth ! My maddened brain could bear no more — Hark! the chilling whirlwind’s roar ; The spirits of the tombless dead Flit around my fated head, — Howl horror and destruction round, As they quaff my blood that stains the ground, And shriek amid their deadly stave, — ‘ Never shalt thou find the grave! Ever shall thy fated soul In life’s protracted torments roll, Till, in latest ruin hurled, And fate’s destruction, sinks the world! Till the dead arise from the yawning ground, To meet their Maker’s last decree, Till angels of vengeance flit around, And loud yelling demons seize on thee !’ Ah! would were come that fated hour, When the clouds of chaos around shall lower ; When this globe calcined by the fury of God Shall sink beneath his wrathful nod ! — As thus he spake, a wilder gaze OE fiend-like horror lit his eye With a most unearthly blaze, As if some phantom-form passed by. At last he stilled the maddening wail Of grief, and thus pursued his tale: — Oft I invoke the fiends of hell, And summon each in dire array — I know they dare not disobey My stern, my powerful spell. Once on a night, when not a breeze Ruffled the surface of the seas, The elements were lulled to rest, And all was calm save my sad breast, — On death resolved — intent, I marked a circle round my form ; About me sacred relics spread, The relics of magicians dead. And potent incantations read — I waited their event. All at once grew dark the night, Mists e Srarthingas hung o’er the pale moon- ight. Strange yells were heard, the boding ery Of the night raven that flitted by, Whilst the silver-wingdd mew, Startled with screams, o’er the dark wave flew. °T was then I seized a magic wand, The wand by an enchanter given, And deep dyed in his heart’s red blood. The crashing thunder pealed aloud ; I saw the portentous meteor’s glare And the lightnings gleam o’er the lurid air ; I raised the wand in my trembling hand, And pointed Hell's mark at the zenith of Hea- ven. A superhuman sound Broke faintly on the listening air ; Like to a silver harp the notes, And yet they were more soft and clear. I wildly strained my eyes around — Again the unknown music floats. Still stood Hell’s mark above my head — In wildest accents I summoned the dead — And through the unsubstantial night It diffused a strange and fiendish light ; Spread its rays to the charnel-house air, And marked mystic forms on the dark vapors there. The winds had ceased — a thick dark smoke From beneath the pavement broke ; Around ambrosia! perfumes breathe A fragrance, grateful to the sense, And bliss, past utterance, dispense. The heavy mists, encircling, wreathe, Disperse, and gradually unfold A youthful female form ;— she rode Upon a rosy-tinted cloud ; Bright streamed her flowing locks of gold; She shone with radiant lustre bright, And blazed with strange and dazzling light ; A diamond coronet decked her brow, Bloomed on her cheek a vermeil glow ; The terrors of her fiery eye Poured forth insufferable day, And shed a wildly lurid ray. A smile upon her features played, But there, too, sate portrayed The inventive malice of a soul Where wild demoniac passions roll; Despair and torment on her brow, Had marked a melancholy woe In dark and deepened shade. Under these hypocritic smiles, Deceitful as the serpent’s wiles, Her hate and malice were concealed ; Whilst on her guilt-confessing face, Conscience the strongly printed trace Of agony betrayed, And all the fallen angel stood revealed. She held a poniard in her hand, The point was tinged by the lightning’s rand ; Tn her left a scroll she bore, Crimsoned deep with human gore ; And, as above my head she stood, Bade me smear it with my blood. She said that when it was my doom That every earthly pang should ceasu, The evening of my mortal woe Would close beneath the vawnin tomb. And, lulled into the arms of death. THE WANDERING JEW (should resign my laboring breath, And in the sightless realms below Enjoy an endless reign of peace. She ceased — O, God, I thank thy grace, Which bade me spurn the deadly scroll ; Uncertain for a while I stood — The dagger’s point was in my blood. Even now I bleed ! —I bleed ! When suddenly what horrors flew, Quick as the lightnings, through my frame ; Flashed on my mind the infernal deed, The deed which would condemn my soul To torments of eternal flame. Drops colder than the cavern dew Quick coursed each other down my face, I labored for my breath ; At length [eried, ‘ Avaunt ! thou fiend of Hell, Avaunt! thou minister of death !’ I east the volume on the ground, Loud shrieked the fiend with piercing yell, And more than mortal jaughter pealed around. The scattered fragments of the storm Floated along the Demon’s form, Dilating till it touched the sky ; The clouds that rolled athwart his eye, Revealed by its terrific ray, Brilliant as the noontide day, Gleamed with a lurid fire ; Red lightnings darted around his head, Thunders hoarse as the groans of the dead Pronounced their Maker’s ire ; A whirlwind rushed impetuous by, Chaos of horror filled the sky ; I sunk convulsed with awe and dread. When I waked the storm was fled. But sounds unholy met my ear, And fiends of hell were flitting near. Here let me pause — here end my tale, My mental powers begin to fail ; At this short retrospect I faint ; Scarce beats my pulse —I lose my breath, I sicken even unto death. Oh! hard would be the task to paint And gift with life past scenes again ; To knit a long and linkless chain, Or strive minutely to relate The varied horrors of my fate. Rosa! I could a tale disclose, So full of horror — full of woes, Such as might blast a demon’s ear, Such as a fiend might shrink to hear — But, no — Here ceased the tale. Convulsed with fear, The tale yet lived in Rosa’s ear — She felt a strange mysterious dread, A chilling awe as of the dead ; Gleamed on her sight the Demon’s form ? Heard she the fury of the storm ? The cries and hideous yells of death ? Tottered the ground her feet beneath ? Was it the fiend before her stood ? Saw she the poniard drop with blood ? All seemed to her distempered. eye A true and sad reality. ° ° ° ° . . ° CANTO IV Odrot, yuvaikas, GAAA Topydvas A€yw* US aire Dopyelourw cixdow TuTots' pédauvas & és To wav BSeAVKTpOTOL’ péyxovar 3 ov mAaroicr pucramacw* €x & dupdtwr AEiBovar dSvapiAy Biav. ARscuyLus, Buimenides, v. 48 ‘ What are ye So withered and so wild in your attire, That look not like th’ inhabitants of earth, And yet are on’t ? — Live you, or are you aught That man may question ?’ Macbeth. Ax! why does man, whom God has sent As the Creation’s ornament, Who stands amid his works confessed The first — the noblest — and the best, Whose vast — whose comprehensive eye, Is bounded only by the sky, O’erlook the charms which Nature yields, The garniture of woods and fields, The sun’s all vivifying light, The glory of the moon by night, And to himself alone a foe, Forget from whom these blessings flow ? And is there not in friendship’s eye, Beaming with tender sympathy, An antidote to every woe ? And cannot woman’s love bestow An heavenly paradise below ? Such joys as these to man are given, And yet you dare to rail at Heaven ; Vainly oppose the Almighty Cause, Transgress His universal laws ; Forfeit the pleasures that await The virtuous in this mortal state ; Question the goodness of the Power on high, In misery live, despairing die. What then is man, how few his days, And heightened by what transient rays; Made up of plans of happiness, Of visionary schemes of bliss ; The varying passions of his mind Inconstant, varying as the wind ; Now hushed to apathetic rest, Now tempested with storms his breast ; Now with the fluctuating tide Sunk low in meanness, swoln with pride ; Thoughtless, or overwhelmed with care, Hoping, or tortured by despair ! The sun had sunk beneath the hill, Soft fell the dew, the scene was still ; All nature hailed the evening’s close. Far more did lovely Rosa bless The twilight of her happiness. Even Paulo blessed the tranquil hour As in the aromatic bower, Or wandering through the olive grove, He told his plaintive tale of love ; But welcome to Victorio’s soul Did the dark clouds of evening roll! But, ah! what means his hurried pace, Those gestures strange, that varying face: Now pale with mingled rage and ire, Now burning with intense desire + 586 DOUBTFUL POEMS That brow where brood the imps of care, That fixed expression of despair, That haste, that laboring tor breath — His soul is madly bent on death. A dark resolve is in his eye, Victorio raves — I hear him ery, ‘Rosa is Paulo’s eternally.’ But whence is that soul-harrowing moan, Deep drawn and half suppressed — A low and melancholy tone, That rose upon the wind ? Victorio wildly gazed around, He cast his eyes upon the ground, He raised them to the spangled air, But all was still — was quiet there. Hence, hence, this superstitious fear ; *T was but the fever of his mind That conjured the ideal sound, To his distempered ear. With rapid step, with frantic haste, He scoured the jong and dreary waste ; And now the gloomy cypress spread Its darkened umbrage o’er his head ; The stately pines above him high Lifted their tall heads to the sky ; Whilst o’er his form, the poisonous yew And melancholy nightshade threw Their baleful deadly dew. At intervals the moon shone clear; Yet, passing o’er her disk, a cloud Would now her silver beauty shroud. The autumnal leaf was parched and sere ; It rustled like a step to fear. The precipice’s battled height Was dimly seen through the mists of night, As Victorio moved along. At length he reached its summit dread The night-wind whistled round his head A wild funereal song. A dying cadence swept around Upon the waste of air ; It scarcely might be called a sound, For stillness yet was there, Save when the roar of the waters below Was wafted by fits to the mountain’s brow. Here for a while Victorio stood Suspended o’er the yawning flood, And gazed upon the gulf beneath. No apprehension paled his cheek, No sighs from his torn bosom break, No terror dimmed his eye. ‘ Welcome, thrice welcome, friendly death,’ In desperate harrowing tone he cried, ‘ Receive me, ocean, to your breast, Hush this ungovernable tide, This troubled sea to rest. Thus do I bury all my grief — This plunge shall give my soul relief, This plunge into eternity !” see him now about to spring Into the watery grave : Hark ! the death angel flaps his wing O’er the blackened wave. Hark ! the night-raven shrieks on high To the breeze which passes on ; Clouds o’ershade the moonlight sky — The deadly work is almost done — When a soft and silver sound, Softer than the fairy song Which floats at midnight hour along The daisy-spangled ground, Was borne upon the wind’s soft swell. Victorio started — ’t was the knell Of some departed soul ; Now on the pinion of the blast, Which o’er the craggy mountain passed, The lengthened murmurs roll — Till, lost in ether, dies awa: The plaintive, melancholy lay. ’T is said congenial sounds have power To dissipate the mists that lower Upon the wretch’s brow — To still the maddening passions’ war — To calm the mind’s impetuous jar — To turn the tide of woe. Victorio shuddered with affright, Swam o’er his eyes thick mists of night ; Even now he was about to sink Into the ocean’s yawning womb, But that the branches of an oak, Which, riven by the lightning’s stroke, O’erhung the precipice’s brink, Preserved him from the billowy tomb ; Quick throbbed his pulse with feverish heat, He wildly started on his feet, And rushed from the mountain’s height. The moon was down, but through the air Wild meteors spread a transient glare ; Borne on the wing of the swelling gale, Above the dark and woody dale, Thick clouds obscured the sky. All was now wrapped in silence drear, Not a whisper broke on the listening ear, Not a murmur floated by, Tn thought’s perplexing labyrinth lost The trackless heath he swiftly crossed. Ah! why did terror blanch his cheek ? Why did his tongue attempt to speak, And fail in the essay ? Through the dark midnight mists an eye, Flashing with crimson brilliancy, Poured on his face its ray. ‘ What sighs ele the midnight air? What mean those breathings of despair ? ’ Thus asked a voice, whose hollow tone Might seem but one funereal moan. Victorio groaned, with faltering breath, ‘IT burn with love, I pant for death !’ Suddenly a meteor’s glare, With brilliant flash illumed the air; Bursting through clouds of sulphurous smoke. As on a Witch’s form it broke, Of hereulean bulk her frame Seemed blasted by the lightning’s flame; Her eyes that flared with lurid light, Were now with bloodshot lustre filled. They blazed like comets through the night, And now thick rheumy gore distilled : THE WANDERING JEW 587 Black as the raven’s plume, her locks Loose streamed upon the pointed rocks ; Wild floated on the hollow gale, Or swept the ground in matted trail; Vile loathsome weeds, whose pitchy fold Were blackened by the fire re Hell, Her shapeless limbs of giant mould Scarce served to hide — as she the while ‘Grinned horribly a ghastly smile,’ And shrieked with demon yell. Terror unmanned Victorio’s mind, His limbs, like lime leaves in the wind, Shook, and his brain in wild dismay Swam — vainly he strove to turn away. ‘Follow me to the mansions of rest,’ The weird female cried ; The life-blood rushed through Victorio’s breast In full and swelling tide. Attractive as the eagle’s gaze, And bright as the meridian blaze, Led by a sanguine stream of light, He followed through the shades of night — Before him his conductress fled, As swift as the ghosts of the dead, When on some dreadful errand they fly, In a thunderblast sweeping the sky. They reached a rock whose beetling height as dimly seen through the clouds of night ; Illumined by the meteor’s blaze, Its wild crags caught the reddened rays And their refracted brilliance threw Around a solitary yew, Which stretched its blasted form on high, Braving the tempests of the sky. As glared the flame, a caverned cell, More pitchy than the shades of hell, Lay open to Victorio’s view. Lost for an instant was his guide ; He rushed into the mountain’s side. At length with deep and harrowing yell She bade him quickly speed, For that ere again had risen the moon °T was fated that there must be done A strange — a deadly deed. Swift as the wind Victorio sped ; Beneath him lay the mangled dead ; Around dank putrefaction’s power Had caused a dim blue mist to lower. Yet an unfixed, a wandering light Dispersed the thickening shades of night ; Yet the weird female’s features dire Gleamed through the lurid yellow air, With a deadly livid fire, ; Whose wild, inconstant, dazzling light Dispelled the tenfold shades of night, Whilst her hideous fiendlike eye, Fixed on her victim with horrid stare, Flamed with more kindled radiancy ; More frightful far than that of Death, When exulting he stalks o’er the battle heath ; Or of the dread prophetic form, Who rides the curled clouds in the storm, And borne upon the tempest’s wings, Death, despair, and horror brings. Strange voices then and shrieks of death Were borne along the trackless heath ; Tottered the ground his steps beneath ; Rustled the blast o’er the dark clitf’s side, And their works unhallowed spirits plied, As they shed their baneful breath. Yet Victorio hastened on — Soon the dire deed will be done. ‘ Mortal,’ the female cried, ‘ this night Shall dissipate thy woe; And, ere return of morning light, The clouds that shade thy brow Like fleeting summer mists shall fly Before the sun that mounts on high, I know the wishes of thy heart — A soothing balm I could impart : Rosa is Paulo’s — can be thine, For the secret power is mine.’ VICTORIO Give me that secret power — Oh! give To me fair Rosa —I will live To bow to thy command. Rosa but mine — and I will fly E’en to the regions of the sky, Will traverse every land. WITCH Calm then those transports and attend, Mortal, to one, who is thy friend -- The charm begins. — An ancient book Of mystic characters she took ; Her loose locks floated on the air; Her eyes were fixed in lifeless stare ; She traced a circle on the floor, Around dank chilling vapors lower; A golden cross on the pavement she threw, *T was tinged with a flame of lambent blue, From which bright scintillations flew ; By it she cursed her Saviour’s soul ; Around strange fiendish laughs did roll, A hollow, wild, and frightful sound, At fits was heard to float around. She uttered then, in accents dread, Some maddening rhyme that wakes the dead, And forces every shivering fiend To her their demon-forms to bend ; At length a wild and piercing shriek, As the dark mists disperse and break, Announced the coming Prince of Hell — His horrid form obscured the cell. Victorio shrunk, unused to shrink, E’en at extremest danger’s brink ; The witch then pointed to the ground, Infernal shadows flitted around And with their Prince were seen to rise; The cavern bellows with their cries, Which, echoing through a thousand caves, Sound like as many tempest waves. Inspired and wrapped in bickering flame, The strange, the awful being stood. Words unpremeditated came In unintelligible flood 588 DOUBTFUL POEMS From her black tumid lips, arrayed In livid fiendish smiles of joy ; Lips, which now dropped with deadly dew And now, extending wide, displayed Projecting teeth of mouldy hue, As with a loud and piercing cry A mystic, harrowing lay she sang ; Along the rocks a death-peal rang ; In accents hollow, deep and drear, They struck upon Victorio’s ear. As ceased the soul-appalling verse, Obedient to its power grew still The hellish shrieks ; the mists disperse ; Satan — a shadeless, hideous beast — In all his horrors stood confessed ! And as his vast proportions fill The lofty cave, his features dire Gleam with a pale and sulphurous fire ; From his fixed glance of deadly hate Even she shrunk back, appalled with dread — For there contempt and malice sate, And from his basiliskine eye Sparks of living fury fly, hich wanted but a being to strike dead. A wilder, a more awful spell Now echoed through the long-drawn cell ; The demon bowed to its mandates dread. ‘ Receive this potent drug,’ he cried, ‘Whoever auaffs its fatal tide, Is mingled with the dead.’ Swept by a rushing sulphurous blast, Which wildly through the cavern passed, The fatal word was borne. The cavern trembled with the sound,! Trembled beneath his feet the ground ; Wich strong convulsions torn, Victorio, shuddering, fell ; But soon awakening from his trance, He east around a fearful glance, Yet gloomy was the cell, Save where a lamp’s uneertain flare Cast a flickering, dying glare. WITCH Receive this dear-earned drug ~ its power Thou, mortal, soon shalt know: This drug shall be thy nuptial dower, This drug shall seal thy woe. Mingle it with Rosa’s wine, Victorio — Rosa then is thine. She spake, and, to confirm the spell, A strange and subterranean sound Reverberated long around Jn dismal echoes — the dark e1l Rocked as in terror — through the sky Hoarse thunders murmured awfully, And, winged with horror, darkness spread Her mantle o’er Victorio’s head. He gazed around with dizzy fear, No fiend, no witch, no cave, was near ; But the blasts of the forest were heard to roar, The wild ocean’s billows to dash on the shore. 1 ‘Death ! Hell trembled at the hideous name and sighed From all its caves, and back resounded death.’ Paradise Lost. The cold winds of Heaven struck chill on his frame ; For the cave had been heated by hell’s black- ening flame, And his hand grasped a casket—the philtre was there ! Sweet is the whispering of the breeze Which scarcely sways yon summer trees ; Sweet is the pale mouun’s pearly beam, Which sleeps upon the silver stream, In slumber cold and still : Sweet those wild notes of harmony, Are wafted from yon hill; Which on the blast that passes by, So low, so thrilling, yet so clear, Which strike enthusiast fancy’s ear, — Which sweep along the moonlight sky, Like notes of heavenly symphony. SONG See yon opening flower Spreads its fragrance to the blast ; It fades within an hour, Its decay is pale, is fast. Paler is yon maiden ; Faster is her heart’s decay ; Deep with sorrow laden, She sinks in death away. ‘Tis the silent dead of night — Hark! hark! what shriek so low yet clear, Breaks on calm rapture’s pensive ear From Lara’s castled height ? °T was Rosa’s death-shriek fell ! What sound is that which rides the blast, As onward its fainter murmurs passed ? *T is Rosa’s funeral knell ! What step is that the ground which shakes ? *T is the step of a wretch, Nature shrinks from his tread ; And beneath their tombs tremble the shudder- ing dead ; And while he speaks the churchyard quakes PAULO Lies she there for the worm to devour, Lies she there till the judgment hour, Is then my Rosa dead ! False fiend! I curse thy futile power ! Over her form will lightnings flash, Over her form will thunders crash, But harmless from my head Will the frerce tempest’s fury fly, Rebounding to its native sky. — Who is the God of Mercy ?— where Enthroned the power to save? Reigns he above the viewless air ? ‘Lives he beneath the grave 2? To him would I lift my suppliant moan, That power should hear ng sero groan;— Is it then Christ's terrific Sire ? Ah! Ihave felt his burning ire, I feel, — I feel it now, — epee mark is fixed on my head, And must there remain in traces dread : LOST POEMS 589 Wild anguish glooms my brow; Oh ! Griefs lice mine that fiercely burn Where is the balm can heal ! here is the monumental urn Can bid to dust this frame return, Or quench the pangs I feel ! As thus he spoke grew dark the sy Hoarse thunders murmured awful ‘yy ‘O Demon! Iam thine!’ he cried. A hollow fiendish voice replied, * Come! for thy doom ts misery,’ THE DINNER PARTY ANTICIPATED: A PARA- PHRASE OF HORACE IIL, 19 This poem was found by Forman among the Hunt MSS. in Mrs. Shelley’s handwriting. It was printed in Hunt’s Companion, March 24, 1828, without the name of the translator. There is no other evidence that it was written by Shelley, and it is rejected by Dowden. THE MAGIC HORSE: TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN OF CRISTOFANO BRONZINO This poem forms a continuous manuscript with that of the preceding, and is also rejected by Dowden. TO THE QUEEN OF MY HEART Published by Medwin, the Shelley Papers, 1833, and by Mrs. Shelley, 1839, 1st ed., and also by Forman and Dowden. Mrs. Shelley omitted it in her second edition, with the fol- lowing note: ‘It was suggested that the poem To the Queen of My Heart was falsely attributed to Shelley; and certainly I find no trace of it among his papers; and, as those of his intimate friends whom I have consulted never heard of it, I omit it.?, The story of the hoax is told in the Eclectic Review, 1851 (ii.), 66 : ‘It is curious to observe the wisdom and penetration of those who have at all mingled in literary society. They read an author, study his peculiarities and style, and imagine they perfectly understand his whole system of thought, and could detect one mistake instantly. But to show that even authors themselves are not always infallible judges, we will relate an anecdote which has never yet been made public, though, having received it from an undoubted source, we ven- ture to vouch for its veracity. Shelley, whose poems many years ago were so much read and admired, necessarily excited much discussion in literary circles. A party of literary men were one evening engaged in canvassing his merits, when one of them declared that he knew the turns of Shelley’s mind so well that amongst a thousand anonymous pieces he would detect his, no matter when published. Mr. James Au- gustus St. John, who was present, not liking the blustering tone of the speaker, remarked that he thought he was mistaken, and that it would, amongst so many, be diffieult to trace the style of Shelley. Every one present, how- ever, sided with his opponent, and agreed that it was perfectly impossible that any one could imitate his style. few days after, a poem, entitled To the Queen of My Heart, appeared in the London Weekly Review, with Shelley’s signature, but written by Mr. St. John himself The same coterie met and discussed the poer brought to their notice, and prided themselve | much upon their discrimination: said they a; once recognized the ‘‘ style of Shelley, could no; be mistaken, his soul breathed through it —i, was himself.’’ And so The Queen of My Hear! was settled to be Shelley’s! and to this day it; is numbered with his poems (see Shelley's Works, edited by Mrs. Shelley, vol. iv. p. 166, It deceived even his wife), and very few are in the secret that it is not actually his. The imi- tation was perfect, and completely deceived every one, much to the discomfiture of all con- cerned.’ LOST POEMS Horsham Publication. Reminiscences of a Newspaper Editor, Fraser’s, June, 1841: ‘It was his [Sir Bysshe Shelley] purse which sup- plied young Bysshe with the means of printing many of his fugitive pieces. These issued fro.n the press of a printer at Horsham named Phil- lips ; and although they were not got up in good style, the expense was much greater than Shel- ley could have afforded, if he had not received assistance from his grandfather.’ No examples are known. An Essay on Love. Shelley (from Keswick) to Godwin, January 16, 1812: ‘I have desired the publications of my early youth to be sent to you. You will perceive that Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne were written prior to my acquaintance with your writings — the Essay on Love, alittle poem, since.’ Hoge, ii. 62. No copy is known. A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things. The Oxford Herald, March 9, 1811: ‘Literature. Just published, Price Two Shil- lings, A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things. And Famine at her bidding wasted wide The Wretched Land, till in the Public way, Promiscuous where the dead and dying lay, Dogs fed on human bones in the open light of day Curse OF KEHAMA By a Gentleman of the University of Oxford. For assisting to maintain in prison Mr. Peter Finnerty, imprisoned fora libel. London: sold by B. Crosby & Co., and all other book-sellers. 1811.’ No copy is known. The following are all the contemporary notices of it. 7 The Weekly Messenger, Dublin, March 7, 1812: ‘Mr. Shelley, commiserating the suffer- ings of our distinguished countryman, Mr. Fin- nerty, whose exertions in the canse of political freedom he much admired, wrote a very bean- tiful poem, the profits of which we understand. from undoubted authority. Mr. Shelley reinittec 59° UNPUBLISHED POEMS to Mr. Finnerty : we have heard they amounted to nearly one hundred pounds.’ acCarthy, Shelley’s Early Life, p. 255. : A Disy, Illustrative of the Times of George the Fourth. ©. Kirkpatrick Sharpe (from Christ Church, Oxford) to —— March 15, 1811: — ‘ Talking of books, we have lately had a lit- erary Sun shine forth upon us here, before whom our former luminaries must hide their dimin- ished heads — a Mr. Shelley, of University Col- lege, who lives upon arsenic, aqua-fortis, half- an-hour’s sleep in the night, and is desperately in love with the memory of Margaret Nicholson. He hath published what he terms the Posthu- mous Poems, printed for the benefit of Mr. Peter Finnerty, which, I am grieved to say, tkough stuffed full of treason, is extremely dull, but the Author is a great genius, and if he be not clapped up in Bedlam or hanged, will cer- tainly prove one of the sweetest swans on the tuneful margin of the Charwell.... Our Apollo next came out with a prose pamphlet in praise of atheism ... and there appeared a monstrous romance in one volume, called St. [rcoyne [sic], or the Rosicrucian. Shelley’s last 2xhibition is a Poem on the State of Public Af- fairs.’ Forman, Shelley Library, pp. 21, 22. From these conflicting statements it appears certain that Shelley printed some poem for the benefit of Finnerty. The profits (£100) may refer to the public subscription made for Fin- nerty to which Shelley was a contributor, See The Satire of 1811, below. Lines on a Féte at Carlton House. C. H. Grove to Miss Helen Shelley, February 25, 1857: ‘I forgot to mention before, that during the early part of the summer which Bysshe spent in town after leaving Oxford the Prince egent gave a splendid féte at Carlton House, in which the novelty was introduced of a stream of water, in imitation of a river, meandering down the middle of a very long table in a tem- porary tent erected in Carlton Gardens. This was much commented upon in the papers, and laughed at by the Opposition. Bysshe also was of the number of those who disapproved of the féte and its accompaniments. He wrote a poem on the subject of about fifty lines, which he published immediately, wherein he apostro- phized the Prince as sitting on the bank of his tiny river: and he amused himself with throw- ing copies into the carriages of persons going to Carlton House after the féte.’ Hogg, ii. 556, 557. No copy of this poem is known, but some lines from it will be found in JuvEniuiA. A burlesque letter from Shelley to Graham, no date, is connected with this poem by Forman, Shelley Library, p. 24, and by Dowden, i. 136, 137, but it seems doubtful whether the Ode, there mentioned, is not the translation of the Marseillaise Hymn, of which one stanza is there ven, Satire: 1811. Shelley (from Field Place) to Boggy, December 20, 1810: ‘I am composing a eitirical poem: I shall print it at Oxford, unless I find on visiting him that R[obinson] is ripe for printing whatever will sell. In case of that he is my man.’ Hogg, i. 143. Thornton Hunt: note on The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, ii. 21: ‘Mr. Rowland Hunter, who first brought Leigh Hunt and his most valued friend personally together. Shelley had brought a manuscript poem, which proved by no means suited to the publishing house in St. Paul’s Churchyard. But Mr. Hunter sent the Pe eee to seek the counsel of Leigh unt. Forman suggests that the manuscript poem offered to Hunter was the same mentioned in the letter to Hose and he conjectures, that a poem entitled ‘ Lines addressed to His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, on his being ap- pointed Regent,’ by Philopatria, Jr., and printed in London by Sherwood, Neely & Jones (later connected with the publication of Laon ana Cythna) 1811, is the missing satire. Dowden ee the coajecture. : MacCarthy (Shelley’s Early Life, 102-106) con- jectures that the Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things is the missing satire. The Creator. Shelley (from the Baths of San Giuliano) to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne June 5, 1821: ‘My unfortunate box! ... If the idea of The Creator had been packed up with them it would have shared the same fate ; and that, I am afraid, has undergone another sort of ship- wreck.’ Mrs. Shelley, Essays and Letters, ii. 294, Mrs. Shelley to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne, June 30, 1821: ‘ The Creator has not yet made himself heard.’ Dowden, ii. 413. Possibly connected with the plans of this sum- mer, vaguely alluded to in letters to Ollier, or with the drama on the Book of Job, and hardly begun. There is no other reference to it, but a familiar quotation of Shelley’s from Tasso, — ‘non ec’ é in mondo chi merita nome di creatore che Dio ed il Poeta,’— (Shelley to Peacock, eet 16, 1818), may be connected with the title. UNPUBLISHED POEMS Shelley to Graham. A poetical epistle de- seribed by Forman (Aldine edition i. xix.), wha ee from it the following lines, referring ta Shelley’s younger brother John. “TI have been With little Jack upon the green — A dear delightful red-faced brute, And setting up a parachute.’ Esdaile Manuscript. A manuscript book containing poems, which Shelley intended to publish simultaneously with Queen Mab, in the possession of his grandson, Mr, Esdaile, is partly described by Dowden. Shelley’s references te this volume are as follows: — Shelley (from Tanyrallt) to Hookham, daneary % 1813: ‘My poems will, I fear, little stand tr: UNPUBLISHED POEMS criticism even of friendship: some of the later ones have the merit of conveying a meaning in every word, and all are faithful pictures of my feelings at the time of writing them. But they are in agreat measure abrupt and obscure — all breathing hatred to government and religion, but I think not too openly for publication. One fault they are indisputably exempt from, that of being a volume of fashionable literature. doubt not but that your friendly hand will clip the wings of my Pegasus considerably.’ Dow- den, i. 344. [Shelley Memorials, pp. 50, 51, omits some parts. | Shelley (from Tanyrallt) to Hookham, Febru- ary 19, 1813: ‘ You will receive it [Queen Mad] with the other poems. I think that the whole should form one volume.’ Shelley Memorials, p. 52. (Hoge, 11, 183, modifies the text. ] Shelley (from Tanyrallt) to Hookham, De- cember 17, 1812: ‘I am also preparing a volume of minor poems, respecting whose publication I shall expect your judgment, both as publisher and friend. A very obvious question would be— Will they sell or not?’ Shelley Memorials, p. 48. Shelley (from Tanyrallt) to Hookham, 7 anu- ary 26, 1813: ‘ Queen Mab... will contain about twenty-eight hundred lines; the other poems contain probably asmuch more.’ Hogg, li. 182. Shelley (from Keswick) to Miss Hitchener, January 26, 1812: ‘I have been busily engaged in the Address to the Irish people, which will be printed as Paine’s works were, and posted on the walls of Dublin. My poems will be rinted there.’ MacCarthy, Shelley’s Early ufe, p. 133. he contents of this volume are described by Dowden, i. 345-349. The poems appear to be as follows: — Dedication: To Harriet. Printed, revised, as the Dedication of Queen Mab. Falsehood and Vice: A_Dialogue. Printed in Shelley’s notes to Queen Mab. On Death (‘ The pale, the cold and the moony smile’). Printed, revised, with Alastor. i The Tombs. Dowden quotes the following mes : — ‘Courage and charity and truth And high devotedness.’ On Robert Emmet’s Grave. Seven stanzas, of which Dowden prints vi., vii. The Retrospect: Cwm Elan, 1812. A poem contrasting the landscape asit appeared then with the same scene the year before. Dowden prints the greater portion. Sonnet: To Harriet, August 1, 1812. Dowden prints four lines. To Harriet. Partly printed (58-69) by Shelley, notes to Queen Mab ; partly (5-13) by Garnett from the Boscombe manuscript, and entire by Dowden. : Sonnet: To a Balloon Laden with Knowledge. Printed by Dowden. i Sonnet : on Launching some Bottles filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel, Printed by Dowden. 59t Sonnet : Farewell to North Devon. Dowden prints six lines. On Leaving London for Wales. Hight stanzas, of which Dowden prints four. A_ Tale of Society as it is from Facts, 1811. Published, except three stanzas, by Rossetti from the Hitchener MS. Marseillaise Hymn, translated. Forman prin the second stanza from Locker-Lampson MS. Henry and Louisa. Dowden, i. 347. A nar- rative poem in two parts, the scene changing from England in the first part to Egypt in the second. Dowden describes the catastrophe as follows: ‘Henry, borne from his lover’s arms by the insane lust of conquest and of glory, is pursued by Louisa, who finds him dying on the bloody sands, and, like Shakespeare’s Juliet, is swift to pursue her beloved through the portals of the grave.’ Shelley notes on this poem: ‘The stanza of this poem is radically that of Spenser although I suffered myself at the time o! writing it to be led into occasional devia- tions. Zeinab and Kathema. A tragedy in six-line stanzas, possibly suggested by Miss Owenson’s novel, The Missionary. Dowden, i. 347-368, de- scribes as follows: ‘From this may have come the suggestion to choose as the heroine of his poem the maiden of Cashmire, borne away from her native home by Christian guile and rapine. Kathema follows his betrothed Zeinab to Eng+ land. bh Moai ints through calm and storm, through night and AY, Unversing in her aim the vessel went, As if some inward spirit ruled her way, And her tense sails were conscious of intent, Till Albion’s cliffs gleamed o’er her plunging bow, And Albion’s river floods bright sparkled round hex prow. But Zeinab had been flung to perish upon the streets by her betrayers, had risen in crime against those who caused her ruin, and had suf- fered death by the vengeance of indiscriminat- ing and pitiless laws. It is a bitter December evening when Kathema, weary with vain search for his beloved, sinks wearily upon the heath. At the moment of his awaking, the winter moonbeams fall upon a dead and naked female form, swinging in chains from a gibbet, while her dark hair tosses in the wind, and ravenous birds of prey ery inthe ear of night. The lover recognizes his Zeinab and is seized with mad- ness; he seales the gibbet, and, twining the chains about his neck, leaps forward “‘ to meet the life tocome.”” Here is romantic ghastliness, as imagined by a boy, in extravagant profusion ; put at heart, each of the two poems is designed less as a piece of romantic art than as an indict ment of widespread evils—the one, a setting forth of the criminal love of glory and conquest ; the other, a setting forth of the cruelty of sen- sual passion and the injustice of formerly ad- ministered laws.’ The Voyage. Dowden, i. 284: ‘A fragment of some three hundred lines . . . It tells, in the irregular unrhymed verse which Shelley adopted 592 VICTOR AND CAZIRE from Thalaba and employed in Queen Mab, ofa sbip returning across the summer sea from her voyage ; and of her company of voyagers, with their various passions and imaginings — two ardent youths who have braved all dangers side by side; the tandsman mean and crafty, who bears across the stainless ocean all the base thoughts and selfish greeds of the city; the sailor returning to his cottage home and wife and babes, but seized at the moment of his dearest hope by minions of the press-gang and hurried away reluctant.’ A Retrospect of Times of Old. Dowden, i. 285: ‘ A rhymed piece having much in common with those earlier pages of Queen Mab, which picture the fall of empires, and celebrate the oblivion that has overtaken the old rulers of men and lords of the earth.’ Soliloquy of the Wandering Jew. Printed by Dobell Dowden, i. 348, further describes the contents: —‘The collection . . . opens with a series of Bee in unrhymed stanzas, the use of which helley had learned from Southey’s early vol- umes. Such lines as those to Liberty : — “* And the spirits of the brave Shall start from every grave, Whilst from her Atlantic throne Freedom sanctifies the groan That fans the glorious fires of its change —” are a direct reminiscence,’ etc. Of other poems unentitled, Dowden prints the following fragments : — I ‘ Consigned to thoughts of holiness And deeds of living love.’ I ‘Then may we hope the consummating hour, Dreadfully, swiftly, sweetly is arriving, When light from darkness, peace from desolation, Bursts unresisted.’ Dowden, i. 346: ‘Having copied his best short pieces, Shelley falls back on [four of] the Oxford poems suggested by the story of Hogg’s friend Mary and on the pieces written in the winter of 1810, 1811, which are strikingly inferior both in form and feeling tothe poems of a later ate. Dowden, Shelley’s Poems, p. 695: ‘Mr. Es- daile’s . contains three poems, To Mary, with an advertisement prefixed, and one To the Lover of Mary. The date of these is November, 1810. They are selected, Shelley says, from many written during three weeks of an en- trancement caused on hearing Mary’s story.’ [See note on To Mary, who died in this Opinion.] Dowden, i. 107: * The piteous story of a cer- tain Mary — a real person, — known in her dis- tress to Hogg, had been related by his friend to Shelley ; it had thrown him into a three weeks’ ‘*entrancement,’’ and formed the occasion of a series of poems, rapidly produced,’ _ February 28, 1805, To St. Irvyne. Dowden, i. 48: ‘I have seen an unpublished poem — six stanzas — of Shelley’s, in Harriet; Shelley’s handwriting, headed ‘‘ February 28, 1805. To St. Irvyne ” —St. Irvyne the name of a place where the writer often sat on ‘‘ the mouldering height’ with ‘‘ his Harriet’ — and having the words ‘‘ To H. Grove”’ subscribed, also in Har- riet Shelley’s handwriting. The poem can hardly have been written in 1805, but the title may refer to some incident of February in that year, which might be viewed as a starting-point in the course of their love. A reference in this poem to Strood, the property of John Com- merell, Esq., hard by Field Place, leads one to suppose that ‘St. Irvyne’’ may have been formed from the name of the proprietor of Hills Place, also close to Field Place, — Lady Irvine.’ The poems, otherwise undefined, which are mentioned by Dowden as existing in ., Pre- sumably the Esdaile, are, A Dialogue, 1809; To the Moonbeam, 1809; The Solitary, 1810; To Death, 1810 (twenty unpublished lines) ; Love’s Rose, 1810; Eyes, 1810 (four unpublished eight- line stanzas); On an Icicle that Clung to the Grass of a Grave, 1809; To the Republicans of North America (one unpublished stanza), 1812; To Ianthe, 1813. These have all been published, except as here noted, and further information regarding them will be found under their titles in the Norss or JUVENILIA. All the poems printed by Dowden from these sources, except such fragments as are quoted above, are placed in this edition under JUVE- NILIA, Ballad. Young Parson Richards; twenty- one four-line stanzas, except the first, which has five lines, in the Harvard MS. To Constantia Singing, an early draft, in which the first stanza of the poem as now printed stands last. Not further described. A poem sent to Peacock from Italy, 1818, in a rough state, and relating to Words- worth. Not further described. ORIGINAL POETRY BY VICTOR AND CAZIRE sm. 8vo, pp. 64 A copy of this volume, previously known only by title, some contemporary notices and the account of it in Stockdale's Budget, was found by the grandson of Charles Henry Grove, the brother of Harriet Grove, Shelley’s cousin, among the family books, and was reprinted under the editorship of Dr. Garnett, London, 1898. The book was printed, in 1810, at, Worth- ing, apparently in an edition of 1500 copies, and. taken up by Stockdale, at Shelley’s request, September 17, of that year. It was noticed b: the Poetical Register, 1810-11, and the Britis: Critic, April, 1811. Tt was written by Shelley (Victor) and his sister Elizabeth (Cazire), and contains seventeen pieces, of which Dr. Garnett ascribes two certainly and one other probably to Elizabeth, ten certainly and two others (if not plagiarisms) to Shelley, and he leaves two un- assigned, The last poem was reprinted as Vic- TORIA in St. Irvyne. He classifies the contents VICTOR AND CAZIRE as follows: ‘1. Familiar poems in the style of Anstey’s ‘‘ Bath Guide,’’ the first two in the volume, already mentioned as by Elizabeth Shelley. 2. A cycle of little poems evidently addressed by Shelley to Harriet Grove in the summer of 1810 (Nos. 3-7, 12,13). 3. Tales of terror and wonder in the style of Monk Lewis (Nos. 14-17). 4. A few miscellaneous pieces (Nos. 8-11).? Stockdale states that he recog- nized one of the pieces as by Monk Lewis, and that on his communicating the fact to Shelley the latter ‘with all the ardor natural to his character expressed the warmest resentment at the imposition practised upon him by his coad- jutor, and entreated me to destroy all the copies, of which about one hundred had been put in 593 circulation.’ Dr. Garnett is unable to identify any poem as by Monk Lewis, and suggests that the plagiarized poem_may be a song on Laura (No. 11). Grasta (No. 16) is the poem men- tioned by Medwin as containing a plagiarism from Chatterton. Of the value of the volume as a whole, Dr. Garnett says: ‘It shows, at all events, that the youthful Shelley could write better verse than can be found in his novels, and that he even then possessed the feeling for melody that is rarely dissociated from more or less of endowment with the poetical faculty. Biographically, it contributes something to illus- trate an obscure period of his life, and strength- ens the belief that his attachment for his fair cousin was more than a passing fancy.’ NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Pagel. QuEEN Mas. The unusual metrical form m which the poem is cast is described by Shelley in a letter to Hogg, February 7, 1813: ‘I have not been able to bring myself to rhyme. The didactic is in blank heroic verse, and the description in blank lyrical measure. an authority is of any weight in support of this singularity, Milton’s Samson Agonistes, the Greek choruses, and (you will laugh) Southey’s Thalaba may be adduced.’ The model of the lyrical portion is, in fact, Tha- laba, the cadences of which are closely repro- duced in general. The motive of the poem, as is shown by the motto prefixed, is Lucretian ; Shelley imagined that in attacking religion he was performing a service to humanity similar to that of the Latin poet in attacking supersti- tion, and also that in his philosophy of nature and necessity he was following in the footsteps of the most illustrious poet who has embodied scientific conceptions in verse. The form of the tale he took from Volney, Les Ruines. The sources of his thought, both with respect to his view of the system of nature and to his reflections on human institutions and their operation on society, are developed with suffi- cient fulness in his own Noress, which have attracted perhaps more attention than the poem they illustrate. These, with a few excep- tions noted in the place of omission, are given below, the text being revised so as not to repro- duce obvious errors; Shelley’s references and extracts, except when he may have meant to paraphrase, have also been corrected ; that is to say, the original editions which he himself probably used have been consulted, and the passages printed as they there occur literally ; thus in the extracts from the Systeme de la Nature par M. Mirabaud, for example, there are many errors, but the text that Shelley had before him has been faithfully transcribed, in all cases. Much of these Norss had been pre- viously published by Shelley. The note, ‘There is no God,’ embodies Shelley’s Oxford tract, The Necessity of Atheism, published at Worthing in 1811; the note, ‘I will beget a Son,’ embodies portions of the Letter to Lord Ellenborough, printed at Barnstable, 1812, and the note, ‘No longer now he slays,’ etc., was published slightly revised as A_ Vindication of Natural Diet, London, 1813. The fragment of Ahasuerus, referred to in the note, ‘ Ahasuerus, rise,’ was picked up by Medwin (Life, i. 57), and is a modified translation of Schubart’s Der Ewige Jude, which appeared in The Ger man Museum, vol. iii, 1802. SHELLEY’s NorEs To QUEEN Mas. I, 242, 243 : — The sun’s unclouded orb Rolled through the black concave. Beyond our atmosphere the sun would ap- pear a rayless orb of tire in the midst of a black eoueave. The equal diffusion of its light on earth is owing to the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere and their reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of vibrations pro- pagated through a subtle medium or of numer- ous minute particles repelled in all directions from the luminous body. Its velocity greatly exceeds that of any substance with which we are acquainted. Observations on the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites have demonstrated that light takes up no more than 8/ 7”’ in passing from the sun to the earth, a distance of 95,000,- 000 miles. Some idea may be gained of the im- mense distance of the fixed stars when it is computed that many years would elapse before light could reach this earth from the nearest of them ; yet in one year light travels 5,422,400,- 000,000 miles, which is a distance 5,707,600 ev greater than that of the sun from the earth, I. 252, 253 : — Whilst round the chariot’s way Innumerable systems rolled. The plurality of worlds—the indefinite im- mensity of the TIniverse —is a most awful sub- ject of contemplation. He who rightly feels its mystery and grandeur is in no danger of seduc- tion from the falsehoods of religious systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is impossible to believe that the Spirit that per- vades this infinite machine begat a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; or is angered at the consequences of that necessity which is a synonym of itself. All that miserable tale of the Devil and Eve and an Intercessor, with the childish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is irreconcilable with the knowledge of the stars. The works of his fingers have borne witness against him. The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably distant from the earth, and they are probably proportionably distant from each other. By a calculation of the velocity of light Sirius is sup- posed to be at least 54,224,000,000,000 miles SHELLEY’S NOTES TO QUEEN MAB 595 from the earth.!_ That which appears only like a thin and silvery cloud streaking the heaven is in effect composed of innumerable clusters of suns, each shining with its own light and illumi- nating numbers of planets that revolve around them. Millions and millions of suns are ranged around us, all attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm, regular and harmonious, all keeping the paths of immutable necessity. IV. 178, 179: — These are the hired bravos who defend ‘The tyrant’s throne. _.To employ murder as a means of justice is an idea which a man of an enlightened mind will not dwell upon with pleasure. To march forth in rank and file, and all the pomp of streamers and trumpets, for the purpose of shooting at our fellowmen as a mark ; to inflict upon them all the variety of wound and anguish ; to leave them weltering in their blood; to wander over the field of desolation, and count the number of the dying and the dead, — are employments which in thesis we may maintain to be neces- sary, but which no good man will contemplate with gratulation and delight. A battle we sup- pose is won:— thus truth is established, thus the cause of justice is confirmed! It surely re- quires no common sagacity to discern the con- nection between this inmense heap of calamities and the assertion of truth or the maintenance of justice. ‘Kings and ministers of state, the real au- thors of the calamity, sit unmolested in their cabinet, while those against whom the fury of the storm is directed are, for the most part, persons who have been trepanned into the ser- vice, or who are dragged unwillingly from their peaceful homes into the field of battle. A sol- dier is a man whose business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the inno- eent martyrs of other men’s iniquities. What- ever may become of the abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being. ‘To these more serious and momentous con- siderations it may be proper to add a recol- lection of the ridiculousness of the military character. Its first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession in- evitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering and self-consequence ; he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but_as he is moved_by his exhibitor.’ — Godwin’s Enquirer, Essay V. I will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly expressive of my abhorrence of despotism and falsehood that I fear lest it never again may be depictured so vividly. This opportunity is per- haps the only one that ever will occur of res- cuing it from oblivion. 1 See Nicholson’s Encyclopedia, art. * Light.’ FALSEHOOD AND VICE A DIALOGUE Wuitst monarchs laughed upon their thrones To hear a famished nation’s groans, And hugged the wealth wrung from the woe That makes its eyes and veins o’erflow, — Those thrones, high built upon the heaps Of bones where frenzied Famine sleeps, Where Slavery wields her scourge of iron, Red with mankind’s unheeded gore, And War’s mad fiends the scene environ, Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar, — There Vice and Falsehood took their stand, High raised above the unhappy land. FALSEHOOD Brother! arise from the dainty fare, Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow A finer feast for thy hungry ear Is the news that I bring of human woe. VICE And, secret one, what hast thou done, To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me? I, whose career through the blasted year Has been tracked by despair and agony. FALSEHOOD What have I done !—I have torn the robe From baby Truth’s unsheltered form, And round the desolated globe Borne safely the bewildering charm ; My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor Have bound the fearless innocent, And streams of fertilizing gore Flow from her bosom’s hideous rent, Which this unfailing dagger gave — I dread that blood! —no more —this day Is ours, though her eternal ray Must shine upon our grave. Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given To thee the robe I stole from heaven, Thy shape of ugliness and fear Had never gained admission here. VICE And know that had I disdained to toil, But sate in my loathsome cave the while, And ne’er to these hateful sons of heaven, GOLD, MONARCHY and MURDER, given» Hadst thou with all thine art essayed One of thy games then to have played, With all thine overweening boast, Falsehood! JI tell thee thou hadst lost ! — Yet wherefore this dispute ? — we tend, Fraternal, to one common end ; In this cold grave beneath my feet Will our hopes, our fears and our labors meet. FALSEHOOD I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth She smothered Reason’s babes in their birth, But dreaded their mother’s eye severe, — So the crocodile slunk off slyly in fear, And loosed her bloodhounds from the den. They started from dreams of slaughtered mer And, by the light of her poison eye, Did her work o’er the wide earth frightfully. The dreadful stench of her torches’ flare, Fed with human fat, polluted the air. The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries Of the many-mingling miseries, 596 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS As on she trod, ascended high And trumpeted my victory ! — Brother, tell what thou hast done. VICE I have extinguished the noonday sun In the carnage-smoke of battles won. Famine, murder, hell and power Were glutted in that glorious hour Which searchless fate had stamped for me With the seal of her security ; For the bloated wretch on yonder throne Commanded the bloody fray to rise ; Like me he joyed at the stifled moan Wrung from a nation’s miseries ; While the snakes, whose slime even him defiled, In ecstasies of malice smiled. They thought ’t was theirs, — but mine the deed! Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed — Ten thousand victims madly bleed. They dream that tyrants goad them there With poisonous war to taint the air. These tyrants, on their beds of thorn, Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame, And with their gains to lift my name Restless they plan from night to morn; I—I doall; without my aid Thy daughter, that relentless maid, Could never o’er a death-bed urge The fury of her venomed scourge. FALSEHOOD Brother, well : —the world is ours ; And whether thou or I have won, The pestilence expectant lours On all beneath yon blasted sun. Our joys, our toils, our honors meet In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet. A short-lived hope, unceasing care, Some heartless scraps of godly prayer, A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep Ere gapes the grave’s unclosing deep, A tyrant’s dream, a coward’s start, The ice that clings to a priestly heart, A judge’s frown, a courtier’s smile, Make the great whole for which we toil. And, brother, whether thou or I Have done the work of misery, It little boots. Thy toil and pain, Without my aid, were more than vain ; And but for thee I ne’er had sate The guardian of heaven’s palace gate. = V. 1,2:— Thus do the generations of the earth Go to the grave and issue from the womb. ‘One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about con- tinually, and the wind returneth again according to his cirenits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.’ Ecclesiastes, i. 4-7. V. 46:— Even as the leaves Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year Has scattered on the forest soil. Otn mep GUAAwY yevey, Toupde Kai avdpar. DvAda. 7a ev 7’ dvewos xauddes yet, aAAa 5€é O TAn TndrcOdwoa pver, Eapos & ervyiverar apn’ “Os avdpav yeven 7 ev pver 7 5 arroAryer. IAIAA. 2’, 146. V. 58: — The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings. Suave, mari magno turbantibus equora ventis, E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem ; Non quia vexari quemquam ’st jucunda voluptas, Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est. Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri Per campos instructa tua sine parte pericli. Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena, Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre Errare atque viam palantis querere vite, Certare ingenio. contendere nobilitate, Noctes atque dies niti preestante labore Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri. O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora ceca! Lucretius, ii. 1-14 V. 93, 94: — And statesmen boast Of wealth ! There is no real wealth but the labor of man. Were the mountains of gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race. In consequence of our con- sideration for the precious metals one man is enabled to heap to himself luxuries at the ex- pense of the necessaries of his neighbor; a sys- tem admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of disease and crime which never fail to charac- terize the two extremes of opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself, as the pro- moter of his country’s prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the manufacture of arti- cles avowedly destitute of use or subservient only to the unhallowed cravings of luxury and ostentation. The nobleman who employs the peasants of his neighborhood in building his palaces, until ‘jam pauca aratro jugera regie moles relinquent,’ flatters himself that he gained the title of a patriot by yielding to the impulses of vanity. The show and pomp of courts adduce the same apology for its continu- ance ; and many a féte has been given, many a woman has eclipsed her beauty by her dress, to benefit the laboring poor and to encourage trade. Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates whilst it palliates the count- less diseases of society? The poor are set to labor,—for what? Not the food for which they famish; not the blankets for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels; not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far more miserable than the meanest savage, op- pressed as he is by all its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its innumer- able benefits assiduously exhibited before him: —no; for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth part of society. oO greater evi- dence is afforded of the wide extended and radical mistakes of civilized man than this SHELLEY’S NOTES TO QUEEN MAB 597 fact: those arts which are essential to his very being are held in the greatest contempt; em- ployments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their usefulness ; 1 the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the exercise of his useless and ridiculous art ; whilst the cul- tivator of the earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through con- tempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which, but for his unceasing exertions, would annihilate the rest of mankind. I will not insult common sense by insisting on the doctrine of the natural equality of man. The question is not concerning its desirableness, but its practicability ; so far asit is practicable, it is desirable. That state of human society which approaches nearer to an equal partition of its benefits and evils should, ceteris paribus, be preferred ; but so long as we conceive that a wanton expenditure of human labor, not for the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass of society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members, is defensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to approximate to the redemption of the hu- man race. Labor is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement; from the former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor, by the inevitable conditions of their respective situations, are precluded. A state which should combine the advantages of both would be subjected to the evils of neither. He that is deticient in firm health or vigorous in- tellect is but halfa man. Hence it follows that to subject the laboring classes to unnecessary labor is wantonly depriving them of any oppor- tunities of intellectual improvement; and that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease, lassitude and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable burden. English reformers exclaim against sinecures, but the true pensoon list is the rent-roll of the landed proprietors. Wealth is a power usurped by the few, to compel the many to labor for their benefit. The laws which support this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity of its victims ; they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against the many who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre- eminence by the loss of all real comfort. ‘= ‘The commodities that substantially contrib- ute to the subsistence of the human species form a very short catalogue ; they demand from us but a slender portion of industry. If these only were produced, and sufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued. If the labor necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among the poor, and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, each man’s share of labor would be light, and his portion of leisure would be ample. There was a time when this leisure would have been 1 See Rousseau, De I’Inégalité parmi les Hommes, note 7. of small comparative value: it is to be hoped that the time will come when it will be applied to the most important purposes. Those hours which are not panned: for the production of the necessaries of life may be devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock of knowledge, the rene our taste, and thus opening to us new and more exquisite sources of enjoyment. ‘It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly and oppression should subsist before a period of cultivated equality could subsist. Savages perhaps would never have been excited to the discovery of truth and the invention of art but by the narrow motives which such a period affords. But surely, after the savage state has ceased and men have set out in the glorious career of discovery and invention, monopoly and oppression cannot be necessary to prevent them trom returning toa state of barbarism.’ — Godwin’s Enquirer, Essay II. See also Political Justice, book VIII., chap. ii. It is a calculation of this admirable author that all the conveniences of civilized life might be produced, if society would divide the labor equally among its members, by each individual ie employed in labor two hours during the ay. V. 112, 113: — or religion Drives his wife raving mad. Tam acquainted with a lady of considerable accomplishments and the mother of a numerous family, whom the Christian religion has goaded. to incurable insanity. A parallel case is, I be- lieve, within the experience of every physician. Nam jam spe homines patriam carosque parentis Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes. Lucretius, iii. 85. V. 189:— Even love is sold. Not even the intercourse of the sexes is ex- empt from the despotism of positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary affections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint ; its very essence is liberty ; it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy nor fear; it is there most pure, perfect and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality and unreserve. How long then ought the sexual connection to last? what law ought to specify the extent of the grievances which should limit its dura- tion? A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other; any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny and the most un- worthy of toleration. How odious an usurpa- tion of the right of private judgment should that law be considered which should make 595 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the incunstancy, the fallibility and capacity for improvement of the human mind! And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable than those of friendship as love is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of the object. The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness and imperfect civilization. The narrow and unenlightened morality of the Christian religion is an aggra- vation of these evils. It is not even until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness is the sole end of the science of ethics as of all other sciences ; and that the fanatical idea of mortifying the flesh for the love of God has been discarded. I have heard, indeed, an ig- norant collegian adduce, in favor of Christian- ity, its hostility to every worldly feeling ! 1 ut if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and disunions ; if the worthi- ness of every action is to be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calcu- lated to produce; then the connection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the comfort of the parties, and is naturally dis- solved when its evils are greater than its bene- fits. There is nothing immoral in this separa- tion. Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. Love is free; to promise forever to love the yame woman is not less absurd than to pro- inise to believe the same creed; such a vow, in both eases, excludes us from all inquiry; The language of the votarist is this. ‘The woman tect love may be infinitely inferior to many others; the creed I now profess may bea mass of errors and absurdities; but I exclude myself from all future information as to the amiability of the one and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and in spite of conviction, to adhere to them.’ Is this the language of deli- cacy and reason? Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth than its belief ? The present system of constraint does no more, in the majority of instances, than make hypocrites or open enemies. Persons of deli- eacy and virtue, unhappily united to one whom they find it impossible to love, spend the love- liest season of their life in unproductive efforts to appear otherwise than they are, for the sake of the feelings of their partner or the welfare of their mutual offspring ; those of less generos- ity and refinement openly avow their disap- pointment, and linger out the remnant of that union, which only death can dissolve, in a state 1 The first Christian emperor made a law by which seduction was punished with death: if the female pleaded her own consent, she also was punished with death ; if the parents endeavored to screen the criminals, they were banished and their estates were confiscated ; the slaves who might be accessory were burned alive, of incurable bickering and hostility. The early education of their children takes its color from the squabbles of the parents; they are nursed in a systematic school ot ill humor, violence, and falsehood. Had they been suffered to part at the moment when indifference rendered their union irksome, they would have been spared many years of misery; they would have con- nected themselves more suitably and would have found that happiness in the society of more congenial partners which is forever denied them by the despotism of marriage. They would have been separately useful and happy members of society, who, whilst united, were miserable, and rendered misanthropical by misery. The conviction that wedlock is indis- soluble holds out the strongest of all tempta- tions to the perverse; they indulge without restraint in acrimony, and all the little tyran- nies of domestic life, when they know that their victim is without appeal. this connection were put on a rational basis, each would be assured that habitual ill temper would termi- nate in separation, and would check this vicious and dangerous propensity. Prostitution is the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors. Women, for no other crime than having followed the dictates of a natural appetite, are driven with fury from the comforts and sympathies of soci- ety. It is less venial than murder; and the punishment which is inflicted on her who de- stroys her child to escape reproach is lighter than the life of agony and disease to which the pro- stitute is irrecoverably doomed. Has a woman obeyed the impulse of unerring Nature? soci- ety declares war against her, pitiless and eter- nal war ; she must be the tame slave, she must make no reprisals; theirs is the right of perse- cution, hers the duty of endurance. She lives a life of infamy ; the loud and bitter laugh of scorn scares her from all return. She dies of long and lingering disease ; yet she is in fault, she is the criminal, she the froward and untam- able child, — and society, forsooth, the pure and virtuous matron, who casts her as an abor- tion from her undefiled bosom ! Society avenges herself on the criminals of her own creation; she is employed in anathematizing the vice tc- day which yesterdav she was the most zealous to teach. Thus is xormed one tenth of the population of London. Meanwhile the evil is twofold. Young men, excluded by the fanati- cal idea of chastity from the society of modest and accomplished women, associate with these vicious and miserable beings, destroying there- by all those exquisite and delicate sensibilities whose existence cold-hearted worldlings have denied; annihilating all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their or forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring of an illegal love were involved in the consequences of the sentence. — Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, vol. ii. p 210. See also, for the hatred of the primitive Chris tians to love and even marriage, p. 269. SHELLEY’S NOTES TO QUEEN MAB 599 body and mind alike crumble into a hideous wreck of humanity ; idiocy and disease become perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations suffer for the bigoted mo- rality of their forefathers. Chastity isa monk- ish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality ; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than halt of the human race to misery that some few may mono- polize according to law. A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage. conceive that from the abolition of mar- riage the fit and natural arrangement of sexual connection would result. I by no means assert that the intercourse would be promiscuous; on the contrary it appears from the relation of parent to child that this union is generally of long duration, and marked above all others with generosity and self-devotion. But this is a subject which it is perhaps premature to dis- euss. That which will result from the aboli- tion of marriage will be natural and right, because choice and change will be exempted trom restraint. In fact, religion and morality, as they now stand, compose a practical code of misery and servitude; the genius of human happiness must tear every leaf from the accursed book of God ere man can read the inscription on his heart. How would Morality, dressed up in stiff stays and finery, start from her own disgusting image, should she look in the mirror of Nature ! VI. 45, 46:— To the red and baleful sun That faintly twinkles there. The north polar star to which the axis of the earth in its present state of obliquity points. It is exceedingly probable from many consider- ations that this obliquity will gradually dimin- ish until the equator coincides with the ecliptic ; the nights and days will then beecme equal on the earth throughout the year, and probably the seasons also. There is no great extrava- gance in presuming that the progress of the perpendicularity of the poles may be as rapid as the progress of intellect ; or that there should be a perfect identity between the moral and hysical improvement of the human species. tis certain that wisdom is not compatible with disease, and that, in the present state of the climates of the earth, health, in the true and comprehensive sense of the word, is out of the reach of civilized man. Astronomy teaches us that the earth is now in its progress, and that the poles are every year becoming more and more erpendicular to the ecliptic. The strong evi- Heties afforded by the history of mythology and geological researches that some event of this na- ture has taken place already affords a strong presumption that this progress is not merely an oscillation, as has been surmised by some late astronomers. Bones of animals peculiar to 1 Laplace, Systéme du Monde. the torrid zone have been found in the north of Siberia and on the banks of the river Ohio. Plants have been found in the fossil state in the interior of Germany, which demand the present climate of Hindostan for their production.? The researches of M. Bailly? establish the ex- istence of a people who inhabited a tract in Tartary 49° north latitude, of greater antiquity than either the Indians, the Chinese, or the Chaldeans, from whom these nations derived their sciences and theology. We find from the testimony of ancient writers that Britain, Ger- many, and France were much colder than at present, and that their great rivers were an- nually frozen over. Astronomy teaches us also that since this period the obliquity of the earth’s position has been considerably dimin- ished. VI. 171-173: — No atom of this turbulence fulfils A vague and unnecessitated task, Or acts but as it must and ought to act. Deux exemples serviront A nous rendre plus sensible le principe qui vient d’étre posé; nous emprunterons l’une du physique et l’autre du moral. Dans un tourbillon de poussiére qu’éléve un vent impétueux, quelque confus qu’il paraisse 4 nos yeux; dans la plus affreuse tempéte ex- citée par des vents opposés qui soulévent les flots, il n’y a pas une seule molécule de pous- siére ou d’eau qui soit placée au hazard, qui n’ait sa cause suffisante pour occuper le lieu of elle se trouve, et qui n’agisse rigoureusement de la manidre dont elle doit agir. Une géo- métre qui connaitrait exactement les différen- tes forces qui agissent dans ces deux cas, et les propriétés des molécules qui sont mues, demon- trerait que d’aprés des causes données, chaque molécule agit précisément comme elle doit agir, et ne peut agir autrement qu’elle ne fait. Dans les convulsions terribles qui agitent quelquefois les sociétés politiques, et qui pro- duisent souvent le renversement d’un empire, iJ n’y a pas une seule action, une seule parole, une seule pensée, une seule volonté, une seule pas sion dans les agens qui concourent & la révolution comme destructeurs ou comme victimes, qui ne soit nécessaire, quin’agisse comme elle doit agir, qui n’opére infalliblement les effets qu’elle doit opérer, suivant la place qu’oceupent ces agens dans ce tourbillon moral. Cela paraitrait évi- dent pour une intelligence qui serait en état de saisir et d’apprécier toutes les actions et ré- actions des esprits et des corps de ceux qui con- tribuent & cette révolution. Systeme de la Nature, vol. i. p. 44. VI. 198: — Necessity, thou mother of the world! He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted 2Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et dw Moral de UV Homme, vol. ii. p. 406. 8 Bailly. Lettres sur les Sciences, & Voltaizo. 600 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS chain of causes and effects, no one of which eould oceupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other place than it does act. The idea of Necessity is obtained by our experience of the connection between objects, the uniform- ity of the operations of Nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and the conse- quent infererce of one from the other. Man- kind are therefore agreed in the admission of Necessity if they admit that these two cireum- stances take place in voluntary action. Motive is to voluntary action in the human mind what cause is to effect in the material universe. The word liberty, as applied to mind, is analogous to the word chance as applied to matter; they spring from an ignorance of the certainty of the conjunction of antecedents and consequents. Every human being is irresistibly impelled to act precisely as he does act; in the eternity which preceded his birth a chain of causes was generated, which, operating under the name of motives, make it impossible that any thought of his mind or any action of his life should be otherwise than it is. Were the doctrine of Necessity false, the human mind would no longer be a legitimate object of science ; from like causes it would be in vain that we should expect like effects; the strongest motive would no longer be paramount over the conduct; all knowledge would be vague and undeterminate ; we could not predict with any certainty that we might not meet as an enemy to-morrow him with whom we have parted in friendship to- night ; the most probable inducements and the clearest reasonings would lose the invariable influence they possess. The contrary of this is demonstrably the fact. Similar cireumstances produce the same unvariable effects. The pre- cise character and motives of any man on any oceasion being given, the moral philosopher could predict his actions with as much certainty as the natural philosopher could predict the effects of the mixture of any particular chemi- cal substances. Why is the aged husbandman more experienced than the young beginner ? Because there is a uniform, undeniable Neces- sity in the operations of the material universe. Why is the old statesman more skilful than the raw politician? Because relying on the neces- sary conjunction of motive and action, he pro- ceeds to produce moral effects by the application of those moral causes which experience has shown to be effectual. Some actions may be found to which we can attach no motives, but these are the effects of causes with which we are unacquainted. Hence the relation which motive bears to voluntary action is that of cause to effect; nor, placed in this point of view, is it, or ever has it been, the subject of popular or philosophical dispute. None but the few fanatics who are engaged in the herculean task of reconciling the justice of their God with the misery of man will longer outrage common sense by the supposition of an event without a cause, a voluntary action without a motive. History, politics, morals, criticisms, all grounds of rea- gonings, all principles of science, alike assume the truth of the doctrine of Necessity. Neo farmer carrying his corn to market doubts the sale of it atthe market price. The,master of a manufactory no more doubts that he can pur- chase the human labor necessary for his pur- poses than that his machinery will act as they have been accustomed to act. But, whilst none have scrupled to admit Necessity as influencing matter, many have dis- puted its dominion over mind. Independently of its militating with the received ideas of the justice of God, it is_by no means obvious to a superficial inquiry. When the mind observes its own operations, it feels no connection of motive and action ; but as we know ‘nothing more of causation than the constant conjunction of ob- jects and the consequent inference of one from the other, as we find that these two circum- stances are universally allowed to have place in voluntary action, we may be easily led to own that they are subjected to the necessity common to all causes.’ The actions of the will have a regular conjunction with circumstances and characters ; motive is to voluntary action what cause is to effect. But the only idea we can form of causation is a constant conjunction of similar objects, and the consequent inference of one from the other; wherever this is the case Necessity is clearly established. The idea of liberty, applied metaphorically to the will, has sprung from a misconception of the meaning of the word power. hat is power? —id quod potest, that which can pro- duce any given effect. To deny power is to say that nothing can or has the power to be or act. In the only true sense of the word power it applies with equal force to the lodestone as to the human will. Do you think these motives, which I shall present, are powerful enough to rouse him ? is a question just as com- mon as, Do you think this lever has the power of raising this weight ? The advocates of free- will assert that the will has the power of re- fusing to be determined by the_ strongest motive ; but the strongest motive is that which, overcoming all others, ultimately prevails ; this assertion therefore amounts to a denial of the will being ultimately determined by that motive which does determine it, which is absurd. But it is equally certain that a man cannot resist the strongest motive as that he cannot overcome a physical impossibility. he doctrine of Necessity tends to introduce a great change into the established notions of morality and utterly to destroy religion. Re- ward and punishment must be considered by the Necessarian merely as motives which he would employ in order to procure the adoption or abandonment of any given line of conduct. Desert, in the present sense of the word, would no longer have any meaning ; and he who should inflict pain upon another for no better reason than that he deserved it would only gratify his revenge under pretence of satisfying justice. It is not enough, says the advocate of free-will that a criminal should be prevented from a re- petition of his crime ; he should feel pain, and SHELLEY’S NOTES TO QUEEN MAB 60r his torments, when justly inflicted, ought pre- eisely to be proportioned to his fault, at utility is morality ; that which is incapable of producing happiness is useless ; and though the crime of Damiens must be condemned, yet the frightful torments which revenge, under the name of justice, inflicted on this unhappy man, cannot be supposed to have augmented, even at the long run, the stock of pleasurable sensation in the world. At the same time the doctrine of Necessity does not in the least diminish our disapprobation of vice. The con- viction which all feel that a viper is a poisonous animal, and that a tiger is constrained by the inevitable condition of his existence to devour men, does not induce us to avoid them less sedulously, or, even more, to hesitate in destroy- ing them; but he would surely be of a hard heart, who, meeting with a serpent on a desert island or in a situation where it was incapable of injury, should wantonly deprive it of exist- ence. A Necessarian is inconsequent to his own principles if he indulges in hatred or contempt ; the compassion which he feels for the criminal is unmixed with a desire of injuring him; he looks with an elevated and dreadless composure upon the links of the universal chain as they pass before his eyes; whilst cowardice, curios- ity and inconsistency only assail him in propor- tion to the feebleness and indistinctness with which he has perceived and rejected the delu- sions of free-will. Religion is the perception of the relation in which we stand to the principle of the universe. But if the principle of the universe be not an organic being, the model and prototype of man, the relation between it and human beings is absolutely none. Without some insight into its will respecting our actions religion is nugatory and vain. But will is only a mode of animal mind; moral qualities also are such as only a human being can possess; to attribute them to the principle of the universe is to annex to it properties incompatible with any possible defi- nition of its nature. It is probable that the word God was originally only an expression denoting the unknown cause of the known events which men perceived in the universe. By the vulgar mistake of a metaphor for a real being, of a word for a thing, it became a man endowed with human qualities and gov- erning the universe as_an earthly monarch governs his kingdom. Their addresses to this imaginary being, indeed, are much in the same style as those of subjects to a king. They acknowledge his benevolence, deprecate his anger and supplicate his favor. But the doctrine of Necessity teaches us that in no ease could any event have happened other- wise than it did happen, and that, if God is the author of good, he is also the author of evil; that, if he is entitled to our gratitude for the one, he is entitled to our hatred for the other ; that, admitting the existence of this hypothetiec being, he is also subjected to the dominion of an jmmutable Necessity. It is plain that the same arguments which prove that God is the author of food, light and life, prove him also to be the author of poison, darkness and death. The wide-wasting earthquake, the storm, the battle and the tyranny are attributable to this hypo- thetic being in the same degree as the fairest forms of Nature, sunshine, liberty and peace. But we are taught by the doctrine of Neces- sity that there is neither good nor evil in the universe otherwise than as the events to which we apply these epithets have relation to our own peculiar mode of being. Still less than with the hypothesis of a God will the doctrine of Necessity accord with the belief of a future state of punishment. God made man such as he is and then damned him for being so; for to say that God was the author of all good, and man the author of all evil, is to say that one man made a straight line and a crooked one, and another man made the incongruity. A Mahometan story, much to the present purpose, is recorded, wherein Adam and Moses are introduced disputing before God in the fol- lowing manner. ‘Thou,’ says Moses, ‘ art Adam, whom God created and animated with the breath of life and caused to be worshipped by the angels, and placed in Paradise, from whence mankind have been expelled for thy fault.’ Whereto Adam answered, ‘Thou art Moses, whom God chose for his apostle and en- trusted with his word by giving thee the tables of the law and whom he vouchsafed to admit to discourse with himself. How many yearg dost thou find the law was written before I was created?’ Says Moses, ‘ Forty.’ ‘ And dost thou not find,’ replied Adam, ‘these words therein, —‘‘ And Adami rebelled against his Lord and transgressed ’??’ Which Moses con- fessing, ‘ Dost thou therefore blame me,’ con- tinued he, ‘for doing that which God wrote of me that I should do, forty years before I was created, nay, for what was decreed concerning me fifty thousand years before the creation of heaven and earth ?’—Sale’s Preliminary Dis- course to the Koran, p. 164. IL. 13:— There is no God! This negation must be understood solely to affect a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit, coeternal with the universe, remains unshaken. A close examination of the validity of the proofs adduced to suppport any proposition is the only secure way of attaining truth, on the advantages of which it is unnecessary to des- cant; our knowledge of the existence of a Diety is a subject of such importance that it cannot be too minutely investigated ; in conse- quence of this conviction we proceed briefly and impartially to examine the proofs which have been adduced. It is necessary first to consider the nature of belief. When a proposition is offered to the mind, it perceives the agreement or disagreement of the ideas of which it is composed. A perception of their agreement is termed belief. Many obstacles frequently prevent this perception from 602 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS being immediate ; these the mind attempts to remove in order that the perception may be dis- tinct. The mind is active in the investigation in order to perfect the state of perception of the relation which the component ideas of the pro- position bear to each, which is passive ; the in- vestigation being confused with the perception has induced many falsely to imagine that the mind is active in belief, — that belief is an act of volition, —in consequence of which it may be regulated by the mind. Pursuing, continu- ing this mistake, they have attached a degree of criminality to disbelief, of which in its uature it is incapable; it is equally incapable of merit, Belief, then, is a passion, the strength of which, like every other passion, is in precise proportion to the degrees of excitement. The degrees of excitement are three. The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind ; consequently their evidence claims the strongest assent. The decision of the mind, founded upon our own experience, derived from these sources, claims the next degree. The experience of others, which addresses itself to the former one, occupies the lowest degree. (A graduated scale, on which should be marked the capabilities of propositions to ap- proach to the test of the senses, would be a just barometer of the belief which ought to be at- tached to them.) Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason; reason is founded on_the evidence of our senses. Every proof may be referred to one of these three divisions. It is to be considered what ar- guments we receive from each of them, which should convince us of the existence of a Deity. 1st. The evidence of the senses. Ifthe Deity should appear to us, if he should convince our senses of his existence, this revelation would necessarily command belief. Those to whom the Deity has thus appeared have the strongest possible conviction of his existence. But the God of theologians is incapable of local visi- bility. 2nd. Reason. It is urged that man knows that whatever is must either have had a begin- ning, or have existed from all eternity ; he also knows that whatever is not eternal must have had a cause. When this reasoning is applied to the universe, it is necessary to prove that it was created ; until that is clearly demonstrated, we may reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. e must prove design be- fore we can infer a designer. The only idea which we can form of causation is derivable from the constant conjunction of objects, and the consequent inference of one from the other. In a case where two propositions are diametri- cally opposite, the mind believes that which is least incomprehensible: it is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits ca- | pable of creating it; if the mind sizks beneath the weight of one, is it an alleviation to increage the intolerability of the burden ? The other argument, which is founded on a man’s knowledge of his own existence, stands thus, A man knows not only that he now is, but that once he was not ; consequently there must have been a cause. But our idea of causa- tion is alone derivable froin the constant con- junction of objects and the consequent infer- ence of one from the other; and, reasoning experimentally, we can only infer from effects causes exactly adequate to those effects. But there certainly is a generative power which is effected by certain instruments; we cannot prove that it is inherent in these instruments; nor is the contrary hypothesis capable of de- monstration. We admit that the generative power is incomprehensible ; but to suppose that the same effect is produced by an eternal, om- niscient, omnipotent being leaves the cause in the same obscurity, but renders it more incom- prehensible. 8rd. Testimony. It is required that testi- mony should not be contrary to reason. The testimony that the Deity convinces the senses of men of his existence can only be admitted by us, if our mind considers it less probable that these men should have been deceived than that the Deity should have appeared to them. Our reason can never admit the testimony of men who not only declare that they were eye-wit- nesses of miracles, but that the Deity was irra- tional; for he commanded that he should be believed, he proposed the highest rewards for faith, eternal punishments for disbelief. We can only command voluntary actions; belief is not an act of volition ; the mind is even passive, or involuntarily active ; from this it is evident that we have no sufficient testimony, or rather that testimony is insufficient to prove the being of a God. It has been before shown that it cannot be deduced from reason. They alone, then, who have been convinced by the evidence of the senses, can believe it. Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the three sources of conviction, the mind cannot believe the existence of a crear tive God; it is also evident that, as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief ; and that they only are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false medium through which their mind views am subject of discussion. Every reflecting min must acknowledge that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity. God is an hypothesis, and, as such, stands in need of proof; the onus probandi rests on the theist. Sir Isaac Newton says: ‘ Hypotheses non fingo, quicquid enim ex phznomenis non deducitur hypothesis vocanda est, et hypothesis vel metaphysicz, vel physic, vel qualitatum oceultarum, seu mechanice, in philosophia lo- cum non habent.’ To all proofs of the exist- ence of a creative God apply this valuable rule. We see a variety of bodies possessing a variety of powers ; we merely know their effects ; we are in a state of ignorance with respect to the¥ SHELLEY’S NOTEs TO QUEEN MAB 603 aasences and causes. These Newton calls the phenomena of things; but the pride of philos- ophy is unwilling to admit its ignorance of their causes. From the phenomena, which are the objects of our senses, we attempt to infer a cause, which we call God, and gratuitously en- dow it with all negative and contradictory qualities. From this hypothesis we invent this general name to conceal our ignorance of causes and essences. ‘he being, called God, by no means answers with the conditions prescribed by Newton; it bears every mark of a veil woven by philosophical conceit to hide the ig- norance of philosophers even from themselves. They borrow the threads of its texture from the anthropomorphism of the vulgar. Words have been used by sophists for the same purposes, from the ‘occult qualities’ of the Peripateties to the effluvium of Boyle and the crinities or nebulce ot Herschel. God is represented as in- finite, eternal, incomprehensible; he is con- tained under every predicate in non that the logie of ignorance could fabricate. Even his worshippers allow that it is impossible to form any idea of him; they exclaim with the French poet, Pour dire ce qu'il est, il faut étre lui-méme. Lord Bacon says, that ‘atheism leaves to man reason, philosophy, natural piety, laws, reputation, and everything that can serve to zonduct him to virtue; but superstition de- atroys all these, and erects itself into a tyranny over the understandings of men: hence atheism never disturbs the government, but renders man more clear-sighted, since he sees nothing beyond the boundaries of the present life.’ Bacon’s Moral Essays. [Here a long passage from Systéme de la Na- ture par M. Mirabaud (Baron d’Holbach), Lon- don, 1781, is omitted by the advice of the general editor. The enlightened and benevolent Pliny thus publicly professes himself an atheist: ‘ Qua- propter efigiem Dei formamque querere im- becillitatis hamane reor. Quisquis est Deus (si modo est alius) et quacunque in parte, totus est sensus, totus est visus, totus auditus, totus an- ime, totus animi, totus sui. . . . Imperfectz vero in homine nature precipua solatia ne deum quidem posse omnia. Namque nee sibi potest mortem consciscere, si velit, quod homini dedit optimum in tantis vite penis: nec mortales sternitate donare, aut revocare defunctos ; nec facere ut qui vixit non vixerit, qui honores ges- sit non gesserit, nullumque habere in preeterita jus preterquam oblivionis, atque (ut facetis quoque argnmentis societas hee cum deo copu- letur) ut bis dena viginta non sint aut multa similiter efficere non posse, per que declaratur Laud dubie nature _potentia idque esse quod Deum vocemus.’ — Plin. Nat. Hist. ii. cap. 7. The consistent Newtonian is necessarily an atheist. See Sir W. Drummond’s Academical Questions. chav. iii. — Sir W. seems to consider the atheism to which it leads, as a sufficient presumption of the falsehood of the system of gravitation; but surely it is more consistent with the good faith of philosophy to admit a deduction from facts than an hypothesis inca- pable of proof, althoughit might militate with the obstinate preconceptions of the mob, Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have been more suited to the modesty of the sceptic and the toleration of the philosopher. ke Omnia enim per Dei potentiam facta sunt. Imo quia Nature potentia nulla est nisi ipsa Dei potentia, certum est nos eatenus Dei poten- tiam non intelligere, quatenus causas naturales ignoramus ; adeoque stulte ad eandem Dei no- tentiam recurritur, quando rei alicujus causam naturalem, hoc est ipsam Dei potentiam, igno- ramus. See. Tract. Theologiro-Pol. cap. i. p. 14 VIL. 67:— Ahasuerus, r'se! ‘ Ahasuerus the Jew crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel. Near two thou- sand years have elapsed since he was first goaded by never-ending restlessness to rove the globe from pole to pole. When our Lord was wearied with the burden of his ponderous cross and wanted to rest before the door of Ahasuerus, the unfeeling wretch drove him away with brutality, he Saviour of mankind staggered, sinking under the heavy load, but uttered no com- plaint. An angel of death appeared before Ahasuerus, and exclaimed indignantly, ‘‘ Bar- barian! thou hast denied rest to the Son of Man; be it denied thee also, until he comes to judge the world.” ‘A black demon, let loose from hell upon Ahasuerus, goads him now from country to country ; he is denied the consolation which death affords and precluded from the rest of the peaceful grave. ‘ Ahasuerus crept forth from the dark cave of Mount Carmel; he shook the dust from his beard, and taking up one of the skulls heaped there hurled it down the eminence ; it rebounded from the earth in shivered atoms. ‘‘ This was my father!’ roared Ahasuerus. Seven more skulls rolled down from rock to rock, while the infuriate Jew, following them with ghastly looks, exclaimed —‘*‘ And these were my wives!’’ He still continued to hurl down skull after skull, roaring in dreadful accents — ‘* And these, and these, and these, were my children! They could die, but I, reprobate wretch, alas! I cannot die! Dreadful beyond conception is the judgment that hangs over me. Jerusalem fell—I crushed the sucking babe, and precipitated myself into the destructive flames. I cursed the Romans — but, alas! alas! the restless curse held me by the hair, — and I could not die! ‘“ Rome, the giantess, fell; I placed myself before the fallen statue ; she fell, and did not 604 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS erush me. Nations sprung up and disappeared. before me; but I remained and did not die. From cloud-encircled cliffs did I precipitate myself into the ocean ; but the foaming billows east me upon the shore, and the burning arrow of existence pierced my cold heart again. I leaped into Etna’s flaming abyss, and roared with the giants for ten long months, polluting with my groans the Mount’s sulphureous mouth ~-ah! ten long months! The volcano fer- mented, and in a fiery stream of lava cast me up. I lay torn by the torture-snakes of hell zmid the glowing cinders, and yet continued to exist. A forest was on fire; I darted on wings of fury and despair into the crackling wood. Fire dropped upon me from the trees, but the flames only singed my limbs ; alas! it could not consume them. I now mixed with the butchers of mankind and piunged in the tempest of the raging battle. I roared defiance to the infuri- ate Gaul, defiance to the victorious German; but arrows and spears rebounded in shivers from my body. The Saracen’s flaming sword broke upon my skull; balls in vain hissed upon me; the lightnings of battle glared harmless around my loins; in vain did the elephant trample on me, in vain the iron hoof of the wrathful steed! The mine, big with destruc- tive power, burst under me, and hurled me high in the air. I fell on heaps of smoking limbs, but was only singed. The giant’s steel club rebounded from my body, the executioner’s hand could not strangle me, the tiger’s tooth could not pierce me, nor would the hungry lion in the circus devour me. I cohabited with poisonous snakes, and pinched the red crest of the dragon. The serpent stung, but could not destroy me. The dragon tormented, but dared not todevour me. I now provoked the fury of tyrants. Isaid to Nero, ‘Thou art a blood- hound !’ Isaid to Christiern, ‘ Thou art a blood- hound!’ Isaid to Muley Ismael, * Thou art a bloodhound!’ The tyrants invented eruel tor- ments, but did not kill me. — Ha! not to be able to die — not to be able to die — not to be permit- ted to rest after the toils of life — to be doomed to be imprisoned forever in the clay-formed dun- geon — to be forever clogged with this worthless body, its load of diseases and infirmities — to be condemned to hold for millenniums that yawning monster Sameness, and Time, that hungry hyena, ever bearing children and ever devouriny again her offspring ! — Ha! not to be ermitted to die! Awful avenger in heaven, ast thou in thine armory of wrath a punish- ment more dreadful ? then let it thunder upon me; command a hurricane to sweep me down to the foot of Carmel that I there may lie ex- tended ; may pant, and writhe, and die !”"’ his fragment is the translation of part of some German work, whose title I have vainly endeavored to discover. I picked it up, dirty and torn, some years ago, in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields. VIL. 135, 136: — I will beget a Son, and he shall bear ‘She sins of all the world. A book is put into our hands when children, called the Bible, the purport of whose history is briefly this. That God made the earth in six days, and there planted a delightful garden, in which he placed the first pair of human beings. In the midst of the garden he planted a tree, whose fruit, although within their reach, they were forbidden to touch, That the Devil, in the shape of a snake, persuaded them to eat of this fruit; in consequence of which God condemned both them and their posterity yet unborn to satisfy his justice by their eternal misery. That four thousand years after these events (the human race in the meanwhile having gone unredeemed to perdition) God engendered with the betrothed wife of a carpenter in Judea (whose virginity was nevertheless uninjured), and begat a Son, whose name was Jesus Christ ‘ and who was crucified and died, in order that no more men might be devoted to hell-fire, he bearing the burden of his Father’s displeasure by proxy. The book states, in addition, that the soul of whoever disbelieves this sacrifice will be burned with everlasting fire. During many ages of misery and darkness this story gained implicit belief ; but at length men arose who suspected that it wasa fable and im: posture, and that Jesus Christ, so far from be- ing a God, was only a man like themselves, But a numerous set of men, who derived and still derive immense emoluments from this opinion in the shape of a popular belief, told the vulgar that if they did not believe in the Bible, they would be damned to all eternity - and burned, imprisoned and poisoned all th unbiassed and unconnected inquirers who occa- sionally arose. They still oppress them, so far as the people, now become more enlightened, will allow. The belief in all that the Bible contains is called Christianity. A Roman governor o: Judea, at the instance of a priest-led mob, crucified a man ealled Jesus eighteen centuries ago. He was a man of pure life, who desired to rescue his countrymen from the tyranny of their barbarous and degrading superstitions. The common fate of all who desire to benefit mankind awaited him. The rabble at the in- stigation of the priests demanded his death, although his very judge made public acknow- ledgment of his innocence. Jesus was sacri- ficed to the honor of that God with whom he was afterwards confounded. It is of importance. therefore, to distinguish between the pretended character of this being as the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and his real charac- ter as a man, who for a vain attempt to reform the world paid the forfeit of his life to that overbearing tyranny which has since so long desolated the universe in his name. Whilst the one is a hypocritical demon, who announces himself as the God of compassion and peace even whilst he stretches forth his blood-red hand with the sword of discord to waste the earth, having confessedly devised this scheme of desolation from eternity ; the other stands . in the foremost list of those true heroes who SHELLEY’S NOTES TO QUEEN MAB 605 lave died in the glorious martyrdom of liberty and have braved torture, contempt and poverty in the cause of suffering humanity. he vulgar, ever in extremes, became per- suaded that the crucifixion of Jesus was a super- natural event. ‘Testimonies of miracles, so fre- quent in unenlightened ages, were not wanting to prove that he was something divine. This belief, rolling through the lapse of ages, met with the reveries of Plato and the reasonings of Aristotle, and acquired force and extent, until the divinity of Jesus became a dogma, which to dispute was death, which to doubt was infamy. hristianity is now the established religion. He who attempts to impugn it must be con- tented to behold murderers and traitors take precedence of him in public opinion; though, if his genius be equal to his courage and assisted. by a peculiar coalition of circumstances, future ages may exalt him to a divinity and persecute others in his name, as he was persecuted in the name of his predecessor in the homage of the world. The same means that have supported every other popular belief have supported Christian- ity. War, imprisonment, assassination and falsehood, deeds of unexampled and incompar- able atrocity, have made it what it is. The blood, shed by the votaries of the God of mercy and peace since the establishment of his religion, would probably suffice to drown all other sectaries now on the habitable globe. We derive from our ancestors a faith thus fos- tered ard supported ; we quarrel, persecute and hate for its maintenance. Even under a goy- ernment which, whilst it infringes the very right of thought and speech, boasts of permitting the liberty of the press, a man is pilloried and im- prisoned because he is a deist, and no one raises his voice in the indignation of outraged human- ity. But it is ever a proof that the falsehood of a proposition is felt by those who use co- ercion, not reasoning, to procure its admission ; and a dispassionate observer would feel himself more powerfully interested in favor of a man who, depending on the truth of his opinions, simply stated his reasons for entertaining them, than in that of his aggressor who, daringly avowing his unwillingness or incapacity to an- swer them by argument, proceeded to repress the energies and break the spirit of their pro- mulgator by that torture and imprisonment whose infliction he could command. Analogy seems to favor the opinion that, as like other systems, Christianity has arisen and augmented, so like them it will decay and per- ish; that, as violence, darkness and deceit, not reasoning and persuasion, have procured its ad- mission among mankind, so, when enthusiasm has subsided, and time, that infallible contro- verter of false opinions, has involved its pre- tended evidences in the darkness of antiquity, it will become obsolete; that Milton’s poem alone will give permanency to the remembrance 1 Since writing this note I have seen reason to suspect that Jesus was an ambitious man who aspired to the throne of Judea. of its absurdities; and that men will laugh as heartily at grace, faith, redemption and original sin, as they now do at the metamorphoses of Jupiter, the miracles of Romish saints, the effi- cacy of witchcraft, and the appearance of de- parted spirits. Had the Christian religion commenced and continued by the mere force of reasoning and persuasion, the preceding analogy would be in- admissible. We should never speculate on the future obsoleteness of a system perfectly con- formable to Nature and reason; it would en- dure so long as they endured; it would bea truth as indisputable as the light of the sun, the criminality of murder, and other facts whose evidence, depending on our organization and relative situations, must remain acknow- ledged as satisfactory so long as man is man. It is an incontrovertible fact, the considera- tion of which ought to repress the hasty con- clusions of credulity or moderate its obsti- nacy in maintaining them, that, had the Jews not been a fanatical race of men, had even the resolution of Pontius Pilate been equal to his candor, the Christian religion never could have prevailed, it could not even have existed ; on so feeble a thread hangs the most cherished opinion of a sixth of the human race! When will the vulgar learn humility ? When will the pride of ignorance blush at having believed be- fore it could comprehend ? Either the Christian religion is true, or it is false ; if true, it comes from God and its au- thenticity can admit of doubt and dispute no further than its omnipotent author is willing to allow. Either the power or the goodness of God is called in question if he leaves those doc- trines most essential to the well being of man in doubt and dispute; the only ones which, since their promulgation, have been the subject of unceasing cavil, the cause of irreconcilable hatred. ‘If God has spoken, why is the uni- verse not convinced ?’ There is this passage in the Christian Serip- tures: ‘Those who obey not God and believe not the Gospel of his Son, shall be punished with everlasting destruction.’ This is the pivot upon which all religions turn; they all assume that it is in our power to believe or not to believe; whereas the mind can only believe that which it thinks true. A human being can only be supposed accountable for those actions which are influenced by his will. But belief is utterly distinct from and unconnected with volition ; it is the apprehension of the agree- ment or disagreement of the ideas that com- pose any proposition. Belief is a passion, or in- voluntary operation of the mind, and, like other passions, its intensity is precisely proportionate to the degrees of excitement. Volition is es- sential to merit or demerit. But the Christian religion attaches the highest possible degrees of merit and demerit to that which is worthy of neither and which is totally unconnected with the peculiar faculty of the mind whose presenec is essential to their being. Christianity was intended to reform the 506 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS world. Had an all-wise Being planned it, uothing is more improbable than that it should have failed ; omniscience would infallibly have foreseen the inutility of a scheme which ex- perience demonstrates, to this age, to have been utterly unsuccessful. Christianity ineulcates the necessity of sup- plicating the Deity. Prayer may be considered under two points of view ; —as an endeavor to change the intentions of God, or as a formal testimony of our obedience. But the former ease supposes that the caprices of a limited in- telligence can occasionally instruct the Creator of the world how to regulate the universe ; and the latter, a certain degree of servility aualo- gous to the loyalty demanded by earthly ty- tants. Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he ean do something better than reason. Christianity, like all other religions, rests upon miracles, prophecies and martyrdoms, o religion ever existed which had not its prophets, its attested miracles, and, above all, crowds of devotees who would bear pa- tiently the most horrible tortures to prove its authenticity. It should appear that in no case ean a discriminating mind subscribe to the genuineness of a miracle. A miracle is an in- fraction of Nature’s law by a supernatural cause ; by a cause acting beyond that eternal circle within which all things are included. God breaks through the law of Nature that he may convince mankind of the truth of that revelation which, in spite of his precautions, has been since its introduction the subject of unceasing schism and cavil. Miracles resolve themselves into the follow- ing question: 1— Whether it is more probable the laws of Nature, hitherto so immutably har- monious, should have undergone violation, or that a man should have told a lie? Whether it is more probable that we are ignorant of the natural cause of an event or that we know the supernatural one? That, in old times, when the powers of Nature were less known than at resent, a certain set of men were themselves eceived or had some hidden motive for de- ceiving others; or that God begat a son who in his legislation, measuring merit by belief, evidenced himself to be totally ignorant of the powers of the human mind — of what is volun- tary, and what is the contrary ? e have many instances of men telling lies ; none of an infraction of Nature’s laws, those laws of whose government alone we have any knowledge or experience. The records of all nations afford innumerable instances of men deceiving others either from vanity or interest, or themselves being deceived by the limited- ness of their views and their ignorance of natu- ral causes ; but where is the accredited case of God having coine uponearth, to give the lie to his own creations ? There would be something truly wonderful in the appearance of a ghost; but the assertion of a child that he saw one as 1See Hume’s Essays, vol. ii. p. 121. he passed through the churchyard is universally admitted to be less miraculous. But even supposing that a man should raise a dead body to life before our eyes, and on this fact rest his claim to being considered the son of God ;— the Humane Society restores drowned persons, and because it makes no mystery of the method it employs its members are not mis- taken for the sons of God. AJl that we havea right to infer from our ignorance of the cause of any event is that we do not know it. Had the Mexicans attended to this simple rule when they heard the cannon of the Spaniards, they would not have considered them as gods. The experiments of modern chemistry would have defied the wisest philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome to have accounted for them on natural principles. An author of strong com- mon sense has observed that ‘a miracle is no miracle at second-hand ; ’ he might have added that a miracle is no miracle in any case; for until we are acquainted with all natural causes we have no reason to imagine others. There remains to be considered another proof of Christianity — Prophecy. A book is written before a certain event, in which this event is foretold ; how could the prophet have fore- known it without inspiration? how could he have been inspired without God ? The greatest stress is laid on the prophecies of Moses and Hosea on the dispersion of the Jews, and that of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. The prophecy of Moses is a collection of every possible cursing and blessing ; and it is so far from being marvellous that the one of disper- sion should have been fulfilled that it would have been more surprising if, out of all these, none should have taken effect. In Deuteronomy, chap. xxviii. v. 64, where Moses explicitly fore- tells the dispersion, he states that they shall there serve gods of wood and stone: ‘ And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from the one end of the earth even unto the other, and there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou nor thy fathers have known, even gods of wood and stone.’ The Jews are at this day remark- ably tenacious of their religion. Moses also declares that they shall be subjected to these curses for disobedience to his ritual: ‘And it shall come to pass if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all the commandments and statutes which I command you this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee.’ Is this the real reason? The third, fourth and fifth chapters of Hosea are a piece of immodest con- fession. The indelicate type might apply in a hundred senses to ahundred things. The fifty- third chapter of Isaiah is more explicit, yet it does not exceed in clearness the oracles of Del- phos. The historical proof that Moses, Isaiah and Hosea did write when they are said to have written, is far from being clear and circumstan- tial. But prophecy requires proof in its character as a miracle; we have no right to suppose that a man foreknew future events from God, until SHELLEY’S NOTES TO QUEEN MAB 607 t+ is demonstrated that he neither could know them by his own exertions, nor that the writings which contain the prediction could possibly have been fabricated after the event pretended to be foretold. It is more probable that writ- ings, pretendimg to divine inspiration, should have been fabricated after the fulfilment of their pretended prediction, than that they should have really been divinely inspired, when we consider that the latter supposition makes God at once the creator of the human mind and ignorant of its primary powers, particularly as we have numberless instances of false religions and forged prophecies of things long past, and no accredited case of God having conversed with men directly or indirectly. It is also pos- sible that the description of an event might have foregone its occurrence: but this is far from be- ing a legitimate proof of a divine revelation, as many men, not pretending to the character of a prophet, have nevertheless, in this sense, pro- phesied. Lord Chesterfield was never yet taken for a prophet, even by a bishop, yet he uttered this remarkable prediction : * ‘The despotic govern- ment of France is screwed up to the highest pitch ; a revolution is fast approaching; that revolution, I am convineed, will be radical and sanguinary.’ This appeared in the letters of the prophet long before the accomplishment of this wonderful prediction. Now, have these particulars come to pass, or have they not ? If they have, how could the Earl have foreknown them without inspiration? If we admit the iruth of the Christian religion on testimony such as this, we must admit, on the same strength of evidence, that God has affixed the highest rewards to belief and the eternal tortures of the never-dying worm to disbelief; both of which have been demonstrated to be involun- tary. The last proof of the Christian religion de- ends on the influence of the Holy Ghost. Phaclogians divide the influence of the Holy Ghost into its ordinary and extraordinary modes of operation. The latter is supposed to be that which inspired the Prophets and Apostles ; and the former to be the grace of God, which sum- marily makes known the truth of his revelation to those whose mind is fitted for its reception by a submissive perusal of his word. Persons convinced in this manner can do anything but account for their conviction, describe the time at which it happened or the manner in which it zame upon them. It is supposed to enter the mind by other channels than those of the senses, and therefore professes to be superior to reason founded on their experience. . Admitting, however, the usefulness or possi- bility of a divine revelation, unless we demolish the foundations of all human knowledge, it is requisite that our reason should previously demonstrate its genuineness; for, before we axtinguish the steady ray of reason and common xense, it is fit that we should discover whether we cannot do without their assistance, whether or no there be any other which may suffice to guide us through the labyrinth of life :1 for, if a man is to be inspired upon all occasions, if he is to be sure of a thing because he is sure, if the ordinary operations of the Spirit are not to be considered very extraordinary modes of demon- stration, if enthusiasm is to usurp the place of proof, and madness that of sanity, all reasoning is superfluous. The Mahometan dies fighting for his prophet, the Indian immolates himself at the chariot-wheels of Brahma, the Hottentot worships an insect, the Negro a bunch of feathers, the Mexican sacrifices human victims ! Their degree of conviction must certainly be very strong; it cannot arise from reasoning, it must from feelings, the reward of their prayers. If each of these should affirm, in opposition to the strongest possible arguments, that inspira- tion carried internal evidence, I fear their in- spired brethren, the orthodox missionaries, would be so uncharitable as to pronounce them obstinate. Miracles cannot be received as testimonies of a disputed fact, because all human testimony has ever been insufficient to establish the pos- sibility of miracles. That which is incapable of proof itself is no proof of anything else. Pro- phecy has also been rejected by the test of reason. Those, then, who have been actually inspired, are the only true believers in the Christian religion. Mox numine viso Virginei tumuere sinus, innuptaque mater Arcano stupuit compleri viscera partu Auctorem paritura suum. Mortalia corda Artificem texere poli, . . . » latuitque sub uno Pectore, qui totum late complectitur orbem. Claudian, Carmen Paschali. Does not so monstrous and disgusting an ab- surdity carry its own infamy and refutation with itself ? VIII. 203-207 : — Him, stiil from hope to hope the bliss pursuing Which from the exhaustless store of human weal Draws on the virtuous mind the thoughts that rise In time-destroying infiniteness gift With self-enshrined eternity, &c. Time is our consciousness of the succession of ideas inourmind. Vivid sensation of either pain or pleasure makes the time seem long, as the common phrase is, because it renders us more acutely conscious of our ideas. Ifa mind be con- scious of an hundred ideas during one minute by the clock, and of two hundred_during another, the latter of these spaces would actually oceupy so much greater extent in the mind as two ex- ceed one in quantity. If, therefore, the human mind by any future improvement of its sensibil- ity should become conscious of an infinite num- ber of ideas in a minute, that minute would be eternity. I do not hence infer that the actual space between the birth and death of a man will ever be prolonged ; but that his sensibility is perfectible, and that the number of ideas 1 See Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding, book iv. chap. xix., on Enthusiasm. 608 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS which his mind is capable of receiving is in- definite. One man is stretched on the rack dur- ing twelve hours, another sleeps soundly in his bed ; the difference of time perceived by these two persons is immense ; one hardly will believe that half an hour has elapsed, the other could credit that centuries had flown during his agony. Thus the life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is with re- gard to his own feelings longer than that of a miserable priest-ridden slave who dreams out a century of dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business ; the other can slumber over the bright- est moments of his being and is unable to re- member the happiest hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise. Dark flood of time! Roll as it listeth thee — I measure not By months or moments thy ambiguous course. Another may stand by me on the brink And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken That pauses at my feet. The sense of love, The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought, Prolong my being ; if I wake no more, My life more actual living will contain Than some grey veteran’s of the world’s cold school, Whose listless hours unprofitably roll, By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed. See Godwin’s Pol. Jus. vol, i. p. 411 ; — and Con- dorcet, Bsquisse dun Tableau Historique des Progrés de UV Esprit Humain, Epoque ix. VIII. 211, 212 : — No longer now He slays the lamb that looks him in the face. I hold that the deprav’tv of the physical and moral nature of man originated in his unnat- ural habits of life. The origin of man, like that of the universe of wu.ch he is a part, is en- veloped in impenetrable mystery. His genera- tions either had a beginning or they had not. The weight of evidence in favor of each of these suppositions seems tolerably equal; and it is perfectly unimportant to the present argu- ment which is assumed. The language spoken, however, by the mythology of nearly all reli- gions seems to prove that at some distant period man forsook the path of Nature and sacrificed the purity and happiness of his being to unnat- ural appetites. The date of this event seems to have also been that of some great change in the climates of the earth, with which it has an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of evil and entailing apon their posterity the wrath of God and vhe loss of everlasting life, admits of no other ex- planation than the disease and crime that have flowed from unnatural diet. Milton was so well aware of this that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the consequence of his disobe- dience ; — ‘Immediately a place Before his eyes appeared, sad, noisome, dark ; A lazar-house it seem’d, wherein were laid Numbers of all diseased — all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs, Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs, Demouiac frenzy, moping melancholy, And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheume. And how many thousands more might not be added to this frightful catalogue ! The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although universally admitted to be allegorical, has never been satisfactorily ex- plained. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and was chained for this crime to Mount Cau- casus, where a vulture continually devoured his liver, that grew to meet its hunger. Hesiod says that before the time of Prometheus man- kind were exempt from suffering; that they enjoyed a vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, approached like sleep and gently closed their eyes. Again, so general wag this opinion, that Horace, a poet of the Augus: tan age, writes: — Audax omnia perpeti, Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas; Audax Iapeti genus Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit: Post ignem ztheria domo Subductum, macies et nova febrium Terris incubuit cohors, Semotique prius tarda necessitas Lethi corripuit gradum. How plain a language is spoken by all thie Prometheus (who represents the human races effected some great change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary pur- poses ; thus inventing an expedient for screen- ing from his disgust the horrors of the shambles. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite va- riety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and violent death. All vice arose from the ruin of healthful innocence. Tyr- anny, superstition, commerce and inequality were then first known when reason vainly at- tempted to guide the wanderings of exacerbated passion. I conclude this part of the subject with an extract from Mr. Newéon's Defence of Vegetable Regimen, from whom I have borrowed this interpretation of the fable of Prometheus. ‘Making allowance for such transposition of the events of the allegory as time might pro- duce after the important truths were forgotten which this gotten of the ancient mythol was intended to transmit, the drift of the fable appears to be this: — Man at his creation was endowed with the gift of perpetual youth ; that is, he was not formed to be a sickly suffering creature as now we see him, but to enjoy health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom of his parent earth without disease or pain. Pro- metheus first taught the use of animal food’ (primus bovem occidit Prometheus }) ‘ and of fire with which to render it more digestible and 1 Plin. Nat, Hist. lib. vii. sect. 57. SHELLEY’S NOTES TO QUEEN MAB 60g pleasing to the taste. Jupiter, and the rest of the gods, foreseeing the consequences of these inventions, were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the newly formed crea- ture, and left him to experience the sad effects of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of a flesh diet,’ (perhaps of all diet vitiated by culinary preparation) ‘ensued ; water was re- sorted to, and man forfeited the inestimable gift of health which he had received from hea- ven: he became diseased, the partaker of a precarious existence, and no longer descended slowly to his grave.’ ! ‘But just disease to luxury succeeds, And every death its own avenger breeds ; The fury passions from that blood began, And turned on man a fiercer savage — man.’ Man and the animals whom he has infected with his society or depraved by his dominion are alone diseased. The wild hog, the moufion, the bison and the wolf are perfectly exempt from malady and invariably die either from ex- ternal violence or natural old age. But the domestic hog, the sheep, the cow and the dog are subject to an incredible variety of distem- ers; and, like the corrupters of their nature, Ene physicians who thrive upon their miseries. The supereminence of man is like Satan’s, a supereminence of pain; and the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event that by enabling him to communicate his sensations raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps that have been taken are irrevo- eable. The whole of human science is com- prised in one question : How can the advantages of intellect and civilization be reconciled with the liberty and pure pleasures of natural life ? How can we take the benefits and reject the evils of the system which is now interwoven with all the fibres of our being ? — I believe that abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors would in a great measure capacitate us for the solution of this important question. It is true that mental and bodily derange- ment is attributable in part to other deviations from rectitude and Nature than those which concern diet. The mistakes cherished by so- ciety respecting the connection of the sexes, whence the misery and diseases of unsatisfied. celibacy, unenjoying prostitution, and the pre- mature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring : the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities ; the exhalations of chemical processes ; the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel ; the absurd treatment of infants;—all these, and innu- merable other causes, contribute their mite to the mass of human evil. Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugivorous animals in everything and carnivorous in nothing; he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre. A Mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches long, would probably find them alone inefficient to hold even a hare. After every 1 Return to Nature. Cadell, 1811. subterfuge of gluttony the bull must be de- graded into the ox, and the ram into the wether, by an unnatural and inhuman opera- tion, that the flaccid fibre may offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. Let the ad- vocate of animal food force himself to a deci- sive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb with his teeth, and, plunging his head into its vitals, slake his thirst with the steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instincts of Nature that would rise in judgment against it, and say, ‘ Nature formed me for such work as this.’ Then, and then only, would he be consistent. Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless man be one, to the rule fe herbivorous animals having cellulated co- ons. The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in the order and number of his teeth. The ovrang-outang is the most anthropomor- phous of the ape tribe, all of which are strictly frugivorous. There is no other species of ani- mals, which live on different food, in which this analogy exists.2. In many frugivorous ani- mals, the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct than those of man. The resemblance also of the human stomach to that of the orang- outang is greater than to that of any other animal, The intestines are also identical with those of herbivorous animals, which present a larger surface for absorption and have ample and cel- lulated colons. The cecum also, though short, is larger than that of carnivorous animals ; and even here the orang-outang retains its accus- tomed similarity. The structure of the human frame, then, is that of one fitted to a pure vegetable diet, in every essential particular. It is true that the reluctance to abstain from animal food, in those who have been long accustomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of weak minds as to be searcely overcome; but this is far from bringing any argument in its favor. A lamb, which was fed for some time on flesh by a ship’s crew, refused its natural diet at the end of the voyage. There are numerous instances of horses, sheep, oxen and even wood-pigeons having been taught to live upon flesh until they have loathed their natural aliment. Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, ap- ples and other fruit to the flesh of animals, until by the gradual depravation of the diges- tive organs the free use of vegetables has for a time produced serious inconveniences; for a time, 1 say, since there never was an instance wherein a change from spirituous liquors and animal food to vegetables and pure water has 2 Cuvier, Lecons d’Anat. Comp. tom. iii. pp. 169, 373, 448, 465, 480. Rees’s Cyclopedia, article ‘ Man.’ 610 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATION? faied ultimately to invigorate the body by rendering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to restore to the mind that cheerfulness and elasticity which not one in fifty possesses on the present system. A love of strong lig- uors is also with difficulty taught to infants. Almost every one remembers the wry faces which the first glass of port produced. Un- sophisticated instinct is invariably unerring ; but to decide on the fitness of animal food from the perverted appetites which its constrained adoption produces is to make the criminal a judge in his own cause; it is even worse, it is appealing to the infatuated drunkard in a ques- tion of the salubrity of brandy, What is the cause of morbid action in the animal system? Not the air we breathe, for our fellow denizens of Nature breathe the same uninjured; not the water we drink (if remote from the pollutions of man and his inventions 1) for the animals drink it too; not the earth we tread upon; not the unobscured sight of glori- ous Nature, in the wood, the field or the ex- anse of sky and ocean ; nothing that we are or a6 in common with the undiseased inhabitants of the forest. Something then wherein we differ from them: our habit of altering our food by fire so that our appetite is no longer a just criterion for the fitness of its gratification. xcept in children there remain no traces of that instinct which determines, in all other animals, what aliment is natural or otherwise ; and so perfectly obliterated are they in the rea- soning adults of our species that it has become necessary to urge considerations drawn from comparative anatomy to prove that we are naturally frugivorous. Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever the cause of disease shall be discov- ered, the root, from which all vice and misery have so long overshadowed the globe, will lie bare to the axe. All the exertions of man from that moment may be considered as tending to the clear profit of his species. No sane mind in a sane body resolves upon a real crime. Itisa man_ of violent passions, blood-shot eyes and swollen veins, that alone can grasp the knife of murder, The system of a simple diet promises no Utopian advantages. It is no mere reform of legislation, whilst the furious passions and evil propensities of the human heart, in which it had its origin, are still unassuaged. It strikes at the root of all evil and is an experi- ment which may be tried with success, not alone by nations, but by small societies, fam- ilies, and even individuals. In no cases has a retarn to vegetable diet produced the slightest injury; in most it has been attended with changes undeniably beneficial. Should ever a physician be born with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he might trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural habits as clearly as that philosopher has traced 1 The necessity of resorting to some means of purify- ing water, and the disease which arises from its adul- teration in civilized countries, is sufficiently apparent. 2ee Ree Dr. Lambe’s Reports on Cancer. I do not all knowledge to sensation. What prolific sources of disease are not those mineral and vegetable poisons that have been introduced for its extirpation! How many thousands have become murderers and robbers, bigots and ao- mestic tyrants, dissolute and abandoned adven- turers, from the use of fermented liquors, who, had they slaked their thirst only with pure water, would have lived but to diffuse the happiness of their own unperverted feelings! How many groundless opinions and absurd in- stitutions have not received a general sanction from the sottishness and intemperance of indi- viduals! Who will assert that, had the popu- lace of Paris satisfied their hunger at the ever- furnished table of vegetable nature, they would have lent their brutal suffrage to the pro- scription-list of Robespierre? Could a set of men, whose passions were not perverted by un- natural stimuli, look with coolness on an auto da fé? Is it to be believed that a being of gentle feelings, rising from his meal of roots, would take delight m sports of blood? Was Nero a man of temperate life? could you read calm health in his cheek, flushed with ungov- ernable propensities of hatred for the human race ? bia Muley Ismael’s pulse beat evenly, was his skin transparent, did his eyes beam with healthfulness and its invariable concomi- tants, cheerfulness and benignity ? Though history has decided none of these questions, a child could not hesitate to answer in the nega- tive. Surely the bile-suffused cheek of Buona- parte, his wrinkled brow and yellow eye, the ceaseless inquietude of his nervous system, speak no less plainly the character of his un- resting ambition than his murders and his vie- tories. It is impossible, had Buonaparte de- scended from a race of vegetable feeders, that he could have had either the inclination or the ower to ascend the throne of the Bourbons. he desire of tyranny could scarcely be excited in the individual, the power to tyrannize would certainly not be delegated by a society neither frenzied by inebriation nor rendered impotent and irrational by disease. Pregnant indeed with inexhaustible calamity is the renunciation of instinct, as it concerns our physical nature; arithmetic cannot enumerate, nor reason per- haps suspect, the multitudinous sources of disease in civilized life. Even common water, that apparently innoxious pabulum, when cor- rupted by the filth of populous cities, is a deadly and insidious destroyer.” o can wonder that all the inducements held out by God himself in the Bible to virtue should have been vainer than a nurse’s tale, and that those dogmas, by which he has there excited and justified the most ferocious propensities, should have alone been deemed essential, whilst Christians are in the daily practice of all those habits which have infected with disease and crime, not only the reprobate sons, but these favored children assert that the use of water is in itself unnatural, but that the unperverted palate would swallow no liquid? capable of occasioning disease. 2 Lambe’s Reports on Cancer. SHELLEY’S NOTES TO QUEEN MAB — of the common Father’s love! Omnipotence itself could not save them from the conse- quences of this original and universal sin. There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experi- ment has been fairly tried. Debility is gradu- ally converted into strength, disease into health- fulness; madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fettered maniac to the unaccountable irrationalities of ill temper that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerate evenness of temper that alone might offer a certain pledge of the future moral re- formation of society. On a natural system of diet old age would be our last and our only malady; the term of our existence would be protracted; we should enjoy life and no longer preclude others trom the enjoyment of it; all sensational delights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect ; the very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure, such as we now feel it in some few and favored moments of our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merits an ex- erience of six months would set forever at rest. ut it is only among the enlightened and bene- volent that so great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its ulti- mate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is found easier by the short-sighted victims of disease to palliate their torments by medicine than to prevent them by regimen. The vulgar of allranks are invariably sensual and indccile ; yet I cannot but feel myself persuaded that when the benefits of vegetable diet are mathemati- eally proved, when it is as clear that those who live naturally are exempt from premature death as that nine is uot one, the most sottish of man- kind will feel a preference towards a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and painful afe. On the average out of sixty persons four die in three years. Hopes are entertained that, in April, 1814, a statement will be given that sixty persons, all having lived more than three years on vegetables and pnre water, are then in perfect health. More than two years have now elapsed ; not one of them nas died ; no such ex- ample will be found in any sixty persons taken at random. Seventeen persons of all ages (the families of Dr. Lambe and Mr. Newton) have lived for seven years on this diet without a death and almost withont the slightest illness. Surely, when we consider that some of these were infants and one a martyr to asthma now nearly subdued, we may challenge any seven- teen persons taken at random in this city to exhibit a parallel case. Those who may have been excited to question the rectitude of estab- lished habits of diet by these loose remarks should consult Mr. Newton’s luminous and elo- quent essay.} 1 Return te Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen. Cadell, 1811. 618 When these proofs come fairly before the world and are clearly seen by all who under- stand arithmetic, it is scareely possible that abstinence from aliments demonstrably per- nicious should not become universal. In pro- portion to the number of proselytes, so will be the weight of evidence ; and when a thousand persons can be produced, living on vegetables and distilled water, who have to dread no dis- ease but old age, the world will be compelled to regard animal flesh and fermented liquors as slow but certain poisons. The change which would be produced by simpler habits on politi- eal economy is sufficiently remarkable. The monopolizing eater of animal flesh would no longer destroy his constitution by devouring an acre at a meal, and many loaves of bread would cease to contribute to gout, madness and apo- plexy, in the shape of a pint of porter or a dram of gin, when appeasing the long-protracted famine of the hard-working peasant’s hungry babes. The quantity of nutritious vegetable matter consumed in fattening the carcase of an ox would afford ten times the sustenance, unde- raving indeed, and incapable of generating Aisease. if gathered immediately from the bosom of the earth. The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now actually cultivated by men for animals at a delay and waste of ali- ment absolutely incapable of calculation. It is only the wealthy that can, to any great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural craving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater license of the privilege by subjection to supernumerary diseases. Again, the spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great reform, would insensibly become agricultural; com- merce, with all its vice, selfishness and corrup- tion, would gradually decline; more natural habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of political relations would be so far simplified that every individual might feel and understand why he loved his country and took a personal interest in its wel- fare. How would England, for example, de- pend on the eaprices of foreign rulers, if she contained within herself all the necessaries and despised whatever they possessed of the luxu- ries of life? How could they starve her into compliance with their views? Of what con- sequence would it be that they refused to take her woollen manufactures, when large and fer- tile tracts of the island ceased to be allotted to the waste of pasturage? On a natural system of diet, we should require no spices from India; no wines from Portugal, Spain, France or Madeira ; none of those multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every corner of the globe js rifled, and which are the causes of so much individual rivalship, such calamitous and san- guinary national disputes. In the history of modern times the avarice of commercial mono- poly, no less than the ambitica of weak and wicked chiefs, seems to have fomented the uni- versal discord, to have added stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets and indocility to the infatuation of the people. Let it ever be re 612 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS membered that it is the direct influence of com- merce to make the interval between the richest and the poorest man wider and more uncon- querable. Let it be remembered that it is a foe to everything of real worth and excellence in the human character. The odious and dis- gusting aristocracy of wealth is built upon the ruins of all that is good in chivalry or republi- canism, and luxury is the forerunner of a bar- barism scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to realize a state of society, where all the ener- gies of man shall be directed to the production of his solid happiness? Certainly, if this ad- vantage (the object of all political speculation) be in any degree attainable, it is attainable only by a community, which holds out no fac- titious incentives to the avarice and ambition of the few and which is internally organized for the liberty, security and comfort of the many. None must be entrusted with power (and money is the completest species of power) who do not stand pledged to use it exclusively for the gen- eral benefit. But the use of animal flesh and fermented liquors directly militates with this equality of the rights of man. The peasant cannot gratify these fashionable cravings with- out leaving his family to starve. Without disease and war, those sweeping curtailers of population, pasturage would include a waste too great to be afforded. The labor requisite to support a family is far lighter! than is usu- ally supposed. The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for the aristocracy, the army and the manufacturers. The advantage of a reform in diet is ob- viously greater than that of any other. It strikes at the root of the evil. To remedy the abuses of legislation, before we annihilate the propensities by which they are produced, is to suppose that by taking away the effect the cause will cease to operate. But the efficacy of this system depends entirely on the prose- lytism of individuals, and grounds its merits, as a benefit to the community, upon the total change of the dietetic habits in its member. It proceeds securely from a number of particu- lar cases to one that is universal, and has this advantage over the contrary mode, that one error does not invalidate all that has gone be- ore. Let not too much, however, be expected from this system. The healthiest among us is not exempt from hereditary disease. The most symmetrical, athletic, and long-lived is a being inexpressibly inferior to what he would have been, had not the unnatural habits of his ances- tors accumulated for him a certain portion of malady and deformity. In the most perfect specimen of civilized man something is still found wanting by the physiological critic. Can a re- turn to Nature, then, instantaneously eradicate 1]¢ has come under the author’s experience, that some of the workmen on an embankment in North ‘Wales, who, in consequence of the inability of the proprietor to pay them, seldom received their wages, have supported large families by cultivating small spots of sterile ground by moonlight. In the notes to Pratt’s predispositions that have been slowly taking root in the silence of innumerable ages? Indu- bitably not. All that I contend for is, that trom the moment of the relinquishing all un- natural habits no new disease is generated; and that the predisposition to hereditary mala- dies gradually perishes for want of its accus- tomed supply. cases of consumption, can- cer, gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the invariable tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water. Those who may be induced by these remarks to give the vegetable system a fair trial, should, in the first place, date the commencement of their practice from the moment of their convic- tion. All depeuds upon breaking through a ernicious habit resolutely and at once. Dr, 'rotter 2 asserts that no drunkard was ever re formed by gradually relinquishing his dram. Animal flesh in its effects on the human stomach is analogous to a dram. It is similar in the kind, though differing in the degree. of itg operation. The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to expect a temporary diminution of muscular strength. The subtraction of a powerful stimulus will suffice to account for this event. But it is only temporary and is succeeded by an equable capability for exertion far surpassing his former various and fluctu- ating strength. Above all, he will acquire an easiness of breathing, by which such exertion is performed, with a remarkable exemption from that painful and difficult panting now felt by almost every one after hastily climbing an ordinary mountain. He will be equally capable of bodily exertion or mental application after as before his simple meal. He will feel none of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet. Irrita- bility, the direct consequence of exhausting stimuli, would yield to the power of natural and tranquil impulses. He will no longer pine under the lethargy of ennui, that unconquerable weariness of life, more to be dreaded than death itself. He will escape the epidemic mad- ness which broods over its own injurious notions of the Deity and ‘realizes the hell that priests and beldams feign.’ Every man forms as it were his god from his own character; to the divinity of one of simple habits no offering would be more acceptable than the happiness of his creatures. ie would be incapable of hating or persecuting others for the love of God. He will find, moreover, a system of simple diet to be a system of perfect epicurism. e will no longer be incessantly occupied in blunting and destroying those organs from which he ex- pects his gratification. The pleasures of taste to be derived from a dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, turnips, lettuces, with a dessert of apples, goose- berries, strawberries, currants, raspberries, and, in winter, oranges, apples, and pears, is far Poem, Bread or the Poor, is an account of an indus. trious laborer who by working in a small garden before and after his day’s task attained to an enviable state oi independence. 2 See Trotter on The Nervous Temperament. Seece ath aM lt NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 613 greater than is supposed. Those who wait until they can eat this plain fare with the sauce of appetite will scarcely joi with the hypo- critical sensualist at a lord-mayor’s feast, who declaims against the pleasures of the table. Solomon kept a thousand concubines, and owned in despair that all was vanity. The man whose happiness is constituted by the society of one amiable woman would find some difticulty in sympathizing with the disappointment of this venerable debauchee. laddress myself not only to the young en- thusiast, the ardent devotee of truth and virtue, the pure and passionate moralist yet unvitiated by the contagion of the world. He will em- brace a pure system, from its abstract truth, its beauty, its simplicity and its promise of wide-extended benefit ; unless custom has turned poison into food, he will hate the brutal plea- sures of the chase by instinct ; it will be a con- templation full of horror and disappointment to his mind that beings capable of the gentlest and most admirable sympathies should take de- light in the death-pangs and last convulsions of dying animals. The elderly man, whose youth has been poisoned by intemperance, or who has lived with apparent moderation and is afflicted with a variety of painful maladies, would find his account in a beneficial change produced without the risk of poisonous medicines. The mother, to whom the perpetual restlessness of disease and unaccountable deaths incident to her children are the causes of incurable unhappi- ness, would on this diet experience the satisfac- tion of beholding their perpetual healths and natural playfulness.1 The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by diseases that it is dan- gerous to palliate and impossible to cure by medicine. How much longer will man continue to pimp for the gluttony of death, his most in- sidious, implacable and eternal foe ? {Four brief extracts from Plutarch, tpt cap- «opayias, are here omitted, by advice of the general editor. ] Norss anp ILLUSTRATIONS For the sources of QUEEN Map, beyond those indicated in Shelley’s notes, the student should consult the Latin authors; Volney’s Ruins suggested the framework. The text presents few difficulties. Mrs. Shelley made a few changes in the interest of grammar, and Ros- setti increased their number and added other changes in the interest of what he conceived to be Shelley’s sense. Some of these grammatical corrections are unnecessary, and those in the sense are usually arbitrary. The most impor- tant points are the following: 1 See Mr. Newton’s book. His children are the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to con- ceive ; the girls are perfect models for a sculptor ; their dispositions are also the most gentle and conciliating ; ‘he judicious treatment, which they experience in other points, may be a correlative cause of this. Inthe rst five years of their life, of 18,000 children that are born 7500 die of various diseases; and how many more ni those that survive are not rendered miserable by Page 10. Line 151. Rossetti reads As for 0. Page 13. Line 115. Rossetti reads sanctify. Line 140. Dowden accepts ‘Tutin’s conjecture in punctuation, reading a colon after element and deleting the period after remained in the next line. Page 14. Line 176. All editors follow Mrs. Shelley in reading secure. : Page 15. Line 9, The reading of the text is Rossetti’s, the original having a period after promise. ; : Page 18. Line 219. Rossetti reads his for tts. Page 25. Line 56. Rossetti reads Shows. cee 27. Line 182. Rossetti reads Ais for their. Page 28. Line 205. Shelley in quoting the line in his Notss reads Dawns for Draws, which Rossetti adopts. Page 30. Line 139. Rossetti reads future for past. Page 31. ALASTOR. This poem has been examined in a more scholarly way than any other of Shelley’s longer works, Dr. Richard Ackermann having made it in part the subject of an inaugural disserta- tion, Quellen, Vorbilder, Stoffe zu Bhelley’s Poeti- schen Werken, I. Alastor, ete. (Erlangen & Leip- zig, 18490), and Prof, Al. Beljame having transla- ted and edited it, with elaborate notes, Alastor, ou le génie de la solitude (Paris, 1895). Dr. Acker- mann traces the influence of Wordsworth and Coleridge in the special romantic features of the nature-handling, vision element, and what might be called the psychology of the poem ; and also that of Southey and Landor in some of the Oriental coloring and detail of the narra- tive; but, like Brandl in his Life of Coleridge, he pushes the theory of direct obligation too far, inasmuch as what is common in subject- matter and spontaneous to the method of any poetic period or group cannot fairly be regarded as peculiar to the originality of even its earliest members. Professor Beljame does not fall inte this error, and gives illustrative parallelisms of phrase and image merely as such unless the bor- rowing is clear. The versification and diction recall Coleridge and Wordsworth in their most musical blank verse, but except in a few pas- sages (lines 46-49, 482-485, 718-720) the rhythm has distinctly Shelley’s rapid and peculiar mod- ulation. The substance of the poem, however, is variously embedded in Shelley’s literary stud- ies and in his actual observation of nature, while the feeling of the whole is a personal mood. It is customary to regard Shelley’s landscape as unreal ; but, though it is imagina- tive, it contains elements of actuality, tran- scripts of scenes as witnessed by him, to a far maladies not immediately mortal? The quality and quantity of a woman’s milk are materially injured by the use of dead flesh. In an island near Iceland, where no vegetables are to be got, the children invariably die of tetanus before they are three weeks old, and the population is supplied from the mainland.—Sir G. Mackenzie’s History of Iceland. See, also, Emile, chap. i. pp. 53, 54, 56. 614 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS greater extent than has ever been acknow- ledged ; in the present poem, his own river- navigation, his lite m Wales and travels abroad, as well as the forest at Windsor, have left direct traces, as Dr. Ackermann especially re- marks. Shelley himself mentions his opportu- nities for observation as among his qualifications for poetry, in the preface to THe REvoLT oF Istam. The notes that follow ascribe to each commentator what seems tobe hisown. The meaning of the title and its source are given in the head-notes. The motto is from the first chapter of the third book of St. Augustine’s Confessions, and the full text is given by Bel- jame: Veni Carthaginem ; et circumstrepebat me undique sartago flagitiosorum amorum. Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, et secre- tiore indigentia oderam me minus indigentem. Querebam quod amarem, amans amare, et oderam securitatem et viam sine muscipulis. Line 1. Beljame happily compares the invo- eation in Ben Jonson’s Cynthia’s Revels, V. 2, which is identical in structure. The substance, or feeling for nature, is Wordsworthian ; com- Bars for example, Influence of natural objects, ines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, and Lines left upon a Seat ina Yew-Tree. 3. Natural piety, an example of Shelley’s direct borrowings of phrase from Wordsworth (My heart leaps up), of which others occur be- low, — obstinate questionings, line 26 (Ode on In- timations of Immortality, LX. 18, and too deep for tears, line 713 (the same, XI. 17). 13. Ackermann compares Wordsworth, The E rcursion, Il. 41-47, but the humanitarian feel- ing toward animal life belongs to the period, and is a fundamental source of Shelley’s inspi- ration. 20-29. Compare Hymn to INTELLECTUAL Bravry, V. 30. Brandl (Life of Coleridge, 190) compares the situation with Coleridge’s Frost at Midnight, but I can see in the two only a parallelism of the romantic temperament and method. 38. Beljame cites the inscription of the veiled Isis from Volney, Les Ruines: Je suis tout ce quia été, tout ce qui est, tout ce qui sera, et nul mortel n’a levé mon voile. 54. Waste wilderness. Forman quotes Blake for the phrase, and Beljame follows him, but in this as in other instances the attempt to tie Shelley to Blake fails. Had he known Blake’s works he would have shown clearer evidences of it. The present phrase is, of course, Mil- ton’s, Paradise Regained, I. 7. ‘ And Eden raised in the waste wilderness.’ 83. Volcano, Aitna. 85, Bitumen lakes. Beljame identifies these with the Dead Sea, and notes Southey’s descrip- tion of Ait’s bitumen-lake, Thalaba, V. 22. Te seems as likely that Shelley’s sole source is Southey, and that he had no particular local reference. 87-94. Beljame supposes that Shelley here blends in one deseription the marvels of the two isles Antiparos and Milo, one for its stalactite tto, the other for its sulphurous exhalations, The grotto had been recently described by Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, 1806, and Clarke, Travels in Various Countries, etc., 1814, From some such source Shelley may have de- rived the idea, but his poetic description is heightened to the point of fantasy and retains very little of mere geography. Compare Cole- ridge, A Tombless Epitaph, 28-32 ; also line 400, note. 100-106. Ackermann Gebir, IL. 108: * And as he passes on, the little hinds That shake for bristly herds the foodful bough Wonder, stand still, gaze, and trip satisfied ; Pleased more if chestnut, out of prickly husk, Shot from the sandal, roll along the glade.’ 108. The background of the following pas- sage appears to be, as Beljame suggests, Vol- ney’s Les Ruines, from the first four chapters of which he quotes to show a general sympathy, and also analogies of detail. The pilgrim lit- erature, which both Volney and Chateaubri- and (René, also cited, but inconclusively) illus- trate, may well include ALASTOR as among its kindred. 119. The Zodiac’s brazen mystery, the Zodiae of the temple of Denderah in Upper Egypt. Beljame refers to Volney, Les Ruznes, St. note. Itis now inthe Bibliothéque Nationale at Paris. 120. Mute, written just before Champollion’s labors, as Beljame notes. 129. Arab maiden. Ackermann derives the character from Thalaba’s Oneiza, as also the veiléd maid below (line 151), and compares the description of the latter from point to point with that in Thalaba, III. 24, 25. The parallel is somewhat forced, as becomes more evident on examination. The lines 161-162 have as the corresponding passage in Thalaba: ‘Oh! even with such a look as fables say The Mother Ostrich fixes on her egg, Till that intense affection Kindle its light of life, — Even in such deep and breathless tenderness Oneiza’s soul is centred on the youth,’ So, too, in the alleged parallelism for lines 167, 168, and 175, 176, we find in Thalaba ‘ for a brother’s eye Were her long fingers tinged, As when she trimmed the lamp, And through the veins and delicate skm The light shone rosy ;’ that is. as a long note shows, being ‘ tinged with henna’ so as to make the fingers seem in some instances ‘ branches of transparent red coral.’ Shelley’s meaning is far different, and is un- likely to be in any way connected in its origin with a recollection of Southey, in either of these two passages, though in introducing the Arab maiden he would naturally recall Oneiza. The vetied maid is, however, not an Arabian, but the spirit of the ideal. 140-144. The background of the Poet’s wan- dering seems to be found in Arrian’s Expedi- tion of Alexander, and possibly similar passages compares Landor, NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 615 in Quintus Curtius and Dion Cassius. The wit Carmanian waste is the Desert of Kerman; the aérial mountains are the Hindoo Koosh, or Indian Cancasus, where Arrian wrongly places the sources of the Indus and Oxus. 145. The vale of Cashmire, the earthly para- dise of that name, often mentioned in poetry. The particular descriptions given by Shelley, both here in the place of the vision, and later in the glen of the Caspian Caucasus, seem to me to recall the scenery and atmosphere of Miss Owen- son’s (Lady Morgan) The Missionary, a romance ee Shelley read in 1811. See note on line 161. Rossetti reads Himself for Herself in his first edition, and was defended by James Thom- son, but no other editor has adopted the conjec- ture, and Rossetti himself has restored the original reading not without some apologetic protest. 177. Woven wind, the ventum textiiem of the ancients, and also perhaps with a recollection of the transparent veils of Thalaba, VI. 26, note. For the development of the structure of the whole vision here given (lines 149-191) compare the passage in the preface where Shel- ley states the elements of his conception in prose. 204. See note on line 129. This vision is the ALASTOR or evil genius, the spirit of solitude, the embodiment of all the responses to his own na- ture which the Poet lacked through his separa- tion from society, and was sent by ‘the spirit of sweet human love’ to him ‘who had spurned her choicest gifts’ by his self-isolation ; it was sent, as an Avenger, and leads or drives him on in search of its own phantasm till he dies. The folly of devotion to the idealizing faculty apart from human life seems to be the moral of the allegory, which most critics have found a dark one; but the treatment of the Poet is so sympathetic, notwithstanding the latter’s error, and the presentation of the Destroyer in the shape of the visionary maid is so alluring, that the reader forgets the didactic intent of the fable, and sees only an adumbration of the life of Shelley as seen by himself in the clairvoy- ance of genius, and consciously seen by him as a fate which he would avoid by mingling sympa- thetically with the life of men. If, as Dowden says, the poem be ‘in its inmost sense a plead- ing on behalf of human love,’ shown by the fate of those who reject it, it is also not without a tragic sense of the pity of that fate in those in whose life such a rejection is rather the isola- tion of a noble nature and the result less of choice than of temperament and circumstance. Compare Shelley’s comment in the preface. 210. Compare Mschylus, Agamemnon, 415. 211-219. The union of Sleep and Death in Shelley’s poetry is a fixed idea; compare in this poem lines 293, 368. The use of water- reflections as a detail is also constant, and is re- peated pelow no less than five times, lines 385, 408, 459, 470, 501. The tenacity with which Shelley’s mind clings to its images is charac- teristic, and shows intensity of application rather than poverty of material, in a young writer; not only in ALASTOR are there some of his images permanent in his verse, such as Ahasuerus, the serpent, and the boat, but in- stances of pure repetition frequently occur, as above ; compare, below, the alchemist, 31, 682, the bird and snake, 227, 325, the lyre, 42, 667, the cloud, 663, 687. . 219. Conducts, Rossetti thus corrects the ori- ginal reading, conduct, which is, however, re- tained by all other editors. Shelley doubtless wrote conduct, the verb being attracted into the plural by the number of details mentioned in connection with vault; other explanations, on the ground of does understood, in one or another way, are only ingenious excuses; the structure of the group of questions is so continuous that it seems best to make the change. 227, Compare Tae Revorr or Isram, 1. viil.-xiv. 240. Aornos, ‘identified by General Abbott in 1854 as Mount Mahabunn near the right bank of the Indus about sixty miles above its con- fluence with the Cabul,’ Chinnock, Arrian’s Anabasis, 237, note. Petra, identified as the Sogdian rock (Arrian, IV. 18); for the name Beljame quotes Quintus Curtius, VIII. 11; Una erat Petra. 242, Balk, Bactria was the ancient name. 242-244, It was Caracallus who violated the Parthian royal tombs and seattered the dust of the kings to the four winds. Beljame gives the reference Dion Cassius, LXXVIL. 1. 262-267. Ackermann and Beljame trace the detail to Thalaba, VIII. 1 and IX. 17, Shelley having united the two in one image. 272. Chorasmian shore, properly the Aral Sea, but Shelley apparently intends the Caspian Sea. 299. Shallop, the detail is from Thalaba, XI. 31, as Ackermann remarks, as is the general conception of the voyage on the underground river. The opening passage is as follows: ‘ A little boat there lay, Without an oar, without a sail, One only seat it had, one seat.’ Compare also the boat of THE Wircu oF ATLAS. 337-339. Beljame compares the same image in ASummMER Eveninc CHURCHYARD, but it is used most memorably in To Nicut: ‘Bind with thy hair the eyes of Day, Kiss her till she be wearied out.’ 349, Other editors retain the original read- ing of a period after ocean; but Rossetti changed this to a semicolon and dash, whict seems justifiable where no pretence is made 01 reproducing Shelley’s punctuation. 353. Caucasus, the Caspian Caucasus. 376. The cascade, like the underground voy- age, isfrom Thalaba, VII. 6, quoted by Acker. mann: * And lo! where raving o’er a hollow course The ever flowing flood Foams in a thousand whirlpools! Then adown The perforated rock 616 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Plunge the whole waters: so precipitous, So fathomless a fall, That their earth-shaking roar came deadened up Like subterranean thunder.’ Ackermann also recalls the river in Kubla un. 400. The following extracts, from Miss Owen- son’s The Missionary, seem apposite here: ‘Surrounded by those mighty mountains whose summits appear tranquil and luminous above the regions of cloud which float on their brow, whose grotesque forms are brightened by innumerable rills, and dashed by foaming torrents, the valley of Cashmire presented to the wandering eye scenes of picturesque and glowing beauty, whose character varied with each succeeding hour. ... It was evening whenthe missionary reached the base of a lofty mountain, which seemed a monument of the first day of creation. It was a solemn and se- questered spot, where an eternal spring seemed to reign, and which looked like the cradle of infant Nature, when she first awoke in all her primeval bloom of beauty. It was a glen screened by a mighty mass of rocks, over whose pold fantastic forms and variegated hues dashed the silvery foam of the mountain torrent, fling- ing its dewy sprays around. . . . He proceeded through a path which from the long cusa-grass matted over it and the entangled creepers of the parasite plants, seemed to have been rarely if ever explored. The trees, thick and um- brageous, were wedded in their towering branches above his head, and knitted in their spreading roots beneath his feet. The sound of a cascade became his sole guide through the Jeafy labyrinth. He at last reached the pile of rocks whence the torrent flowed, pouring its tributary flood into a broad river. . . . Before the altar appeared a human form, if human it might be called, which stood so bright and so ethereal in its look that it seemed but a tran- sient incorporation of the brilliant mists of the morning ; so light and so aspiring in its atti- tude that it appeared already ascending from the earth it scarcely touched to mingle with its kindred air. The resplendent locks of the seeming sprite were enwreathed with beams, and sparkled with the waters of the holy stream whence it appeared recently to have emerged.’ (Chap. V1.) ‘Not a sound disturbed the mystic silence, save the low murmurs of a gushing spring, which fell with more than mortal music from a mossy cliff, sparkling among the matted roots of over- hanging trees, and gliding, like liquid silver, be- neath the network of the parasite plants. The flowers of the mangosteen gave to the fresh air a balmy fragrance. The mighty rocks of the Pagoda, which rose behind in endless perspec- tive, sealing the heavens, which seemed to re- pose uvon their summits, lent the strong relief of their deep shadows to the softened twilight of the foreground.’ (Chap. XII.) The landscape of the vale of Cashmire as here described is, in effect, the same as that of the glen in ALAsTor. and in the figure of Luxima —— there is something sympathetic, at least, with the veiléd maid of the vision. In Hilarion (the missionary) there is also something sympathetic with the Poet of the poem, as he has rejected love, and now suffers the penalty of a great passion, doomed necessarily to a tragic ecnelu- sion, under influences of solitude and nature. (See chap. [X., where his psychological charac- ter is developed: ‘he resembled the enthusiast of experimental philosophy who shuts out the light and breath of heaven to inhale an arti- ficial atmosphere and enjoy an ideal exist- ence.’) It is interesting to observe also the description of the subterranean cave, with sta. lactite formation, lit by blue subterraneous fire, — the temple ‘ most ancient and celebrated in India, after that of Elephanta’ (chap. XIL.). See, also, for other traces of this romance in Shelley’s work, the notes on THE Revo oF Istam, XII., and Tue InpiAn SERENADE. 421, 422. Beljame quotes from Mrs. Shelley’s Journal, August, 1814, in Dowden’s Life of Shelley, *‘ At Nod [Nouaille ?]— ina noontide of intense heat — whilst our postilion waited, we walked into the forest of pines; it was a scene of enchantment, where every sound and sight contributed to charm. Our mossy seat in the deepest recesses of the wood was inclosed from the world by an impenetrable veil.’ 431-438, Ackermann compares Scott, Rokeby, IV. 3; but there are many forest descriptions in English verse as similar, the original of _all in this style being Milton’s Paradise Lost, IV. 451-454. Ackermann here again seeks the original detail in Thalaba, VI. 22: ‘ And oh! what odours the voluptuous vale Scatters from jasmine bowers, From yon rose wilderness, From clustered henna, and from orange groves That with such perfumes fill the breeze.’ So definite an origin for general properties seems to me most unlikely. 454-456. Beljame compares A SUMMER EveEn- ING CHURCHYARD, V. 5, 6. 479. Spirit, apparently an embodiment of Nature evoked by and reflecting the mood of death-melancholy in the Poet; not the spirit of the vision which he seeks, which is ‘the light that shone within his soul’ (lines 492, 493), but it may also be regarded as a later incarnation of the latter. 502-514. Ackermann compares the very sim- ilar thongh more diffuse passage in Words- worth, The Excursion, III. 967-991. 543-348, Editors and commentators have struggled to extract the precise meaning from these lines, but without establishing any likely emendation. Miss Blind proposes znclosed for disclosed ; Forman suggests amidst precipices for its precipice ; Madox Brown guesses Hid for id; °E.S.’ would read their precipice for its ; Swinburne thinks a verse has been dropped, an an anonymous writer conjectures that the lost verse may be represented by inserting after 547 ‘A cataract descending with wild roar.’ Rossetti, after some ineffeotual wanderinga NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 614 returned to the original text, which Dowden also sustains. The interpretation, however, remains different, Rossetti taking precipice as the sub- ject of disclosed used for disclosed itself, and ‘Dawdon taking which as the subject of dis- closed with gulfs and caves as its object, and its ues obscuring the ravine as parenthetical. rooke also retains the text, and takes its as equivalent to its own. The simplest explana- tion where all are awkward is to consider the elause beginning and its precipice as parallel with the earlier half beginning now rose rocks, and the sense briefly would be: the rocks rose jn the evening light, and also the precipice rose {shadowing the ravine below), disclosed above ia the same light. I take precipice as subject to rose understood and disclosed as a participle ; its is the same as in 542, 543, 7. e., the oud streams in 550. If this is rejected I should pre- fer to take which as the subject of disclosed and precipice as its object. To take precipice as the subiect ef disclosed with gulfs and caves as its object, involves a construction of line 548 so forced as to amount in my mind to impossi- bility. 602-605. Ackermann anes from Mrs. Shel- ley’s Journal (Dowden’s Life of Shelley): * The evening was most beautiful ; the horned moon hung in the light of sunset, which threw a glow of unusual depth of redness above the Bey mountains and the dark deep valleys. . . . The moon becomes yellow, and hangs close to the woody horizon.’ 66:-671. The passage has been somewhat discussed, but Brooke’s note settles the mean- ing easily : ‘ It is quite in Shelley’s manner. . . to go back and bring together his illustrations. Here the poet’s frame is a lute, a bright stream, adream of youth. The lute is still, the stream is dark and dry, the dream is unremembered.’ The practice is common to English poetry from the early days. Compare EpiesycHipi0n, 73-75. 677. The reference is to Ahasuerus, the wan- dering Jew. Compare QuEEN Map. VI. and Shelley’s Norrs on the passage. The char- acter again appears in HELLAS. Page 43. THe Revort or Isiam. The text was made from the sheets of Laon and Cythna by the insertion of 26 cancel-leaves. The copy upon which Shelley worked in recom- posing is described at length by Forman, The Shelley Library, 83-86. The cancelled passages are as follows: Canto IL xxi.1 : T had a little sister whose fair eyes xxv. 2 To love in human life, this sister sweet Canto III. i. 1 : ‘What thoughts had sway over my sister’s slumber i3 As if they did ten thousand years outnumber Canto IV. xxx. 6 ‘And left it vacant —’t was her brother’s face ~ to V. xlvii. 5 Wiad a brotner once, but he is dead ! — Canto VI. xxiv. 8 My own sweet sister looked, with joy did quail, xxxi. 6 The common blood which ran within our frames, xxxix. 6-9 With such close sympathies, for to each other Had high and solemn hopes, the gentle might Of earliest love, and all the thoughts which smother Cold Evil’s power, now linked a sister and a brother. xl.1 And such is Nature’s modesty, that those Canto VIII. iv. 9 Dream ye that God thus builds for man in solitude 7 v. 1. What thenis God? Ye mock yourselves and give vil What then is God? Some moonstruck sophist stood vi. 8, 9 And that men say God has appointed Death On all who scorn his will to wreak immortal wrath. vii. 1-4 Men say they have seen God, and heard from God, Or known from others who have knowu such things, And that his will is all our law, a rod To scourge us into slaves—that Priests and Kinga viii. 1 And it is said, that God will punish wrong ; viii. 3, 4 And his red hell’s undying snakes among Will bind the wretch on whom he fixed a stain xiii. 3, 4 For it is said God rules both high and low, And man is made the captive of his brother ; Canto IX. xiii. 8 To curse the rebels. To their God did they xiv. 6 By God, and Nature, and Necessity. xv. 4-7 There was one teacher, and must ever be, They said, even God, who, the necessity Of rule and wrong had armed against mankind, His slave and his avenger there to be ; xviii. 3-6 And Hell and Awe, which in the heart of man Is od itself; the Priests its downfall knew, As day by day their altars lovelier grew, Till they were left alone within the fane; Canto X. xxii. 9 On fire! Almighty God his hell on earth has spreng| xxvi. 7,8 Of their Almighty God, the armies wind In sad procession : each among the train. xxviii. 1 O God Almighty ! thou alone hast power. xxxi. 1 And Oromaze, and Christ, and Mahomet. xxxii. 1 He was a Christian Priest from whom it came xxxii. 4 To quell the rebel Atheists; a dire guest xxxii. 9 To wreak his fear of God on vengeance on manknid 618 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS xxxiv 5,6 His cradled Idol, and the sacrifice Of God to God’s own wrath — that Islam’s creed XXXxv. 9 And thrones, which rest on faith in God, nigh over- turned. xxxix. 4 Of God may be appeased.’ xl. 5 With storms and shadows girt, sate God, alone, He ceased, and they xliv. 9 As‘hush! hark! Comethey yet? God, God, thine hour is near !? xlv. 8 Men brought their atheist kindred to appease xlvii. 6 The threshold of God’s throne, and it wasshe ! Canto XI. xvi. 1 Ye turn to God for aid in your distress ; xxv. 7 Swear by your dreadful God.’.—‘ We swear, we swear!” Canto XII. x. 9 Truly for self, thus thought that Christian Priest indeed, xi. 9 A woman? God has sent his other victim here. xii. 6-8 Will I stand up before God’s golden throne, And cry, O Lord, to thee did I betray An Atheist ; but for me she would have known xxix. 4 In torment and in fire have Atheists gone ; xxx. 4 How Atheists and Republicans can die. In Tur Revoir or Istam, Shelley unites the landscape and sentiment of ALASTOR with the didactic teaching of QuEEN Mas. In po- litical and social philosophy he shows no intel- lectual advance, though it is noticeable that in the preface he disclaims responsibility for the views which have ‘a dramatic propriety in reference to the character they are designed to elucidate’ and are ‘injurious to the character’ of the ‘ benevolences’ of the Deity, and which he says are ‘ widely different’ from his own; and it should be remarked that his expressions with respect to the immortality of the spirit are per- ceptibly more strong and favorable. It is rather on the poetic side that he shows development ; but here, too, the didactic element seems to me less evenly eloquent than in QuEEN Mas, and the imaginative element less pervaded with charm than in ALAsToR. Medwin says that Shelley told him that Keats and he agreed to attempt a long poem, and that Enpymion and Tue Revoir or Isuam were the fruit of this friendly rivalry. It can hardly be doubted that the deliberate ambition to compose a long work antered into the motive which prompted the ooem. _ The new element which distinguishes 178 Revout or Isuam from its predecessors is the fable, or story, which is made the vehicle of revolutionary doctrine. Shelley asserted that it was free from the intervention of the super- natural, except at the beginning and end; but the machinery and incidents are of the roman- tic school, in the ‘ Gothic’ taste, in which his interest in fiction began, though here oriental: ized in sympathy with the literary taste of a time later than Monk Lewis and the young Seott. The tower-prison, the hermit’s retreat, the cave of Laone with its underground en- trance, the ‘'Tartarean steed,’ are all in the region of romance; the human conduct of the characters —the yielding of the gaolers to the hermit’s voice and looks, the protest of Laon in behalf of his foes and of the tyrant, the devo- tion of the child to the latter, the final surren- der of Laon —are all in the vein of pure moral sentimentality ; and though there are few such puerilities as the ‘small knife’ and the eagle who could not be taught to‘ bring ropes’ (and I should regard the original scheme by which Laon and Laone were made brother and sister merely as a puerility), yet the hold on reality, both in human nature at large and in the sense of the action of life, is of the feeble and tenuous sort that belongs to the fiction of the opening of the century, which gave to Shelley his idea of how and from what materials to construct a tale. Though he uses the Spenserian stanza, and read Spenser continuously while compos- ing, it is only the land of pseudo-romance and not Faéryland that he enters; and, as he is dealing with political and social actualities, one cannot but be aware of an unreality in the movement of the poem, which Spenser himself did not escape when he touched historic ground. Not only the first Canto, in fact, is allegorical ; the whole tale is essentially allegory, and the sole realities in it are moral realities, of which the invincible power of love, its rightful sover- eignty and final victory, is the chief, shown also in reverse as the futility of force in all its forms, tyranny, law, custom, fraud, or crime. The characters are not much more vital than the fable is real, with the exception of Laon, who is a reincarnation of the youth in ALAsTOR (or Shelley’s spirit) touched more with mortal pas- sion and involved in human events; Laone is the double of Laon, set forth somewhat as the spirit of the vision in ALASTOR, but made more actual through the facts of living ; the hermit is the wise old man; the tyrant is the King of QurEEN Maz (a stage tyrant if ever there was one), and the child is merely a pecperty and has no value except for sentimental effect. There are longueurs in the poem, and some of the causes of them are contained in these con- siderations. A moral allegory with but ong lesson, and that a lesson in revolution-mak. ing, would require great powers of verisimili- tude, of invention and of attraction, to maine tain interest through twelve Cantos, and these qualities Tax Revoir or Isiam does not pos sess. The analysis of its construction, in story, NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 61g «acident and character, brings out its least favor- able points ; it has, taken in the mass, great ex- cellences, especially power of description (both of scene and action) which in the best portions ean only be described as splendor of descrip- tion; it has also moral elevation, and enthu- siasm inexhaustible in spontaneity and glow ; and in several of the episodes there is a noble dignity of style. It is, it seems to me, the most uneven, the least completely one, of Shelley’s works; but if on the one hand it has affinities with the crudity of his prose fiction, it also ap- proaches on the other the visions of the PRoME- THEUS UNBOUND; and it contains the moral truth that burnt in his own heart. Page 47. An alexandrine. _ Rossetti points out three: IV. xxvii. 5; VIII. xxvii. 3; 1X. xxxvi. 5. 48. Dedication. The motto is from Chap- man’s Byron’s Conspiracy, LI. i. (end). 49. To Mary. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Shelley’s second wife. Stanza ii. 2. See Head-note for the circum- stances here put into verse. iii. 3 hour, the passage is regarded as auto- biographical, and faithfully represents the at- mosphere of Shelley’s school-days, and his own attitude toward the ‘tyranny’ he then en- countered. Cf. Hymn to InreLiectuaL Braory, V. v. 9 thirst, the mood depicted in ALASTOR. vi. 3 despair, referring to the year before he met with Mary. vii. 5 burst, referring to the elopement of Mary with him, in disregard of his marriage with Harriet. x. 4 referring to his fears of approaching death. 9 Cf. Toe SUNSET, 4. xii. 3. One, Mary Wollstonecraft, the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and many other works, marked by independence and strength of mind, while her Letters to Inlay show deep feeling. A knowledge of her life is indispensable to a true understanding of Mary’s union with Shelley. se 9 Sire, William Godwin, author of Political Justice and many other radical works and novels, from whom Shelley derived in youth much of his revolutionary principles and social views. xiii. 1 One voice, the voice of Truth. ; xiv. 4 his pure name, Shelley means any phi- Janthropist. ; Page 52. Canto I. vi. 8. The image may be from The Ancient Mariner, pt. iii.: but effects of sunset on the sea are frequent in the early poems and are reminiscences of Shelley’s life on the west coast. Cf. below I. xv._2 and QuEENn Mag, ii.4; also, of the moon, PRINCE ATHANASE, LI. 96. J, xxiii. 1. Cf. Anastor, 299, note. I. xxv. 5. The myth here invented by Shelley to typify the conflict of the principles of Good and Evil as shown in man’s social progress is the most imaginative and elaborate presentation of this ancient idea in modern literature. The identification of the Morning Star, changed into the snake, with the Spirit of Good, and of the Ruling Power with Evil, a not unparalleled re- versal of Christian symbolism, anticipates the conception of the relation of Good and Evil in PrRomETHEUS UNBOUND. I. xxxvii. 7. Cf, Auastor, 129, The movas of ALAsTor frequently recur in the poem: €.g., below, xliii., xlv., lvii.; II. x., xi; IV. xxx.; VI. xxviii. I. lii. Cf. QuzEN Mag, ii. 22 et seq. Canto II, The opening stanzas of the Second Canto are characteristic of Shelley’s autobio- graphical idealizations of his youth. Cf. the Dedicatory Stanzas above and the Hymn To InveLLEcTUAL Beauty. IL. xxxvi. 4 half of humankind, women. III. xxvii. 7 old man, the idealized figure of Dr. Lind, who also appears in Prince ATHA- NASE. V. xlix. 5 three shapes, the ‘Giant’ is Equality, the ‘Woman’ is Love, the ‘third Image’ is Wisdom. Cf. below, stanza iii. 1, 2. The following Hymn is to be regarded as the earliest of Shelley’s greater odes, and is the highest lyrical expression that his political and social theories by themselves ever reached. VII. xxxii. 6. The reference is to Pythagoras. VIII. v. et seg. The speech of Laone is the most compact and full statement of Shelley's moral ideas in the time intermediate between QurEN Maxzand Promeruevs Unzounp, with both of which poems it may be closely com- pared; especially the opening passage with QuzEN Maps, ; stanzas xi.-xii. with Pro- METHEUsS Unpounpn, IV. 554-578; and the whole with the same, IIL. iii. 130-204, IX. xxi.-xxv. An anticipation of the ODE To tue West Winp. X. xxxvi. 5. A translation of the famous epigram of Plato. X. xviii. 5 creaked. Cf. Coleridge, This Lime-Tree Bower my Prison, 74 Flew creeking. with note: ‘Some months after I had written this line, it gave me pleasure to observe that Bartram had observed the same circumstance of the Savanna crane. ‘‘ When these birds move their wings in flight, their strokes are slow, moderate and regular, and even when at a considerable distance or high above us, we plainly hear the quill feathers : their shafts and webs upon one another creek as the joints or working of a vessel in a tempestuous sea.”’’ XII. ix. 1. The situation is parallel to that in Miss Owenson’s Missionary (see ALASTOR, 400, note). Hilarion, the priest-lover of Luxima, has been condemned by the Inquisition at Goa and stands at the pile to be burnt. The story continues: ‘In this awful interval, while the presiding officers of death were preparing to pind their victim to the stake, a form scarcely human, darting with the velocity of lightning through the multitude, reached the foot of the pile, and stood before .5in a grand and aspir- ing attitude; the deep red flame of the zlowly kindling fire shone through a transparent dre 620 NOTES aND ILLUSTRATIONS pery which flowed in loose folds from the bosom of the seeming vision, and _ tinged with golden hues those long dishevelled tresses, which streamed like the rays of a meteor on the air; thus bright and aérial as it stood, it looked like a spirit sent from heaven in the awful mo- ment of dissolution to cheer and to convey to the regions of the blessed, the soul which would soon arise pure from the ordeal of earthly suffering. ‘The sudden appearance of the singular phan- tom struck the imagination of the credulous and awed multitude with superstitious wonder. ... Luxima, whose eyes and hands had been hith- erto raised to heaven, while she murmured the Gayatra, pronounced by the Indian women_be- fore their voluntary immolation, now looked wildly round her, and catching a glimpse of the Missionary’s figure, through the waving of the flames, behind which he struggled in the hands of his guards, she shrieked, and in a voice scarcely human, exclaimed, ‘* My beloved, Icome! Brahma receive and eternally unite our spirits!’? She sprang upon the pile.’ The Missionary, ch. xvii. pp. 259, 260. The scene closes with a rising of the people, and the es- cape of the lovers. age 136. Rosauinp aND Heten. This, the least significant of Shelley’s longer poems, was little valued by himself. It is intended as a plea in behalf of natural love against conven- tions, and shows how experience of life might reconcile two friends who had been parted be- eanse one of them had sinned against conven- tion. It contains Shelley’s characteristic pre- possessions, such as the story of Fenici, the incident of brother and sister parted at the altar, and the cruelty of the husband’s last will, and also his characteristic idealizations in the two stages of Lionel’s life, the first in health another Laon, and the second in illness with traces of the ALAsSToR type; the moral senti- mentality of Lionel’s power over the base and wicked and the delineations of febrile passion in one whose spirit only seems vital, are familiar from preceding work ; in the nature description there is nothing novel. Line 229, Rossetti points out the inconsist- ency of this with line 488, Line 272. Rossetti points out the inconsist- eney of this with line 406, Lines 405-410. The passage is defective, and unintelligible. Forman suggests while for which and had forand. Rossetti refers to Peacock’s MS. letter to Ollier noting the imperfection in the proof. Line 764. The poem appears to be a personal lyric of Shelley’s. Line 894. Cf. To WiLiraAM SHELLEY, 1818. Line 1208. Forman conjectures which for whilst and omits had in the next line. The meaning is obvious, and its plainness is little helped by the change. Page 151. Jutian AND Mappato. The poem is the first in this style of verse, which Shelley made his own by the singular felicity of its com- bination of metrical beauty with familiar dic- tion and tone, and it stands by itself by virtue of the fact that his other work of this sort is fragmentary. The monologue of the madman gives evidenoe of dramatic power, and the power of description is matured. For the rest, the poem is most remarkable for the deeply felt pathetic sentiment, the bitterness of suffering in the wounded feelings, which pervades the madman’s words. Mrs. Shelley’s account of where the poem was written is interesting : ‘I Capuccini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious houses ; it was sit uated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill at the foot of a range of higher ones. Tlie house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trel- lised walk, a pergola as it is called in Italian, led from the hall door toa summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began the PROMETHEUS; and here also, as he mentions in » letter, he wrote JULIAN AND MappALo; aslight ravine, with a road in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient castle of Este, whose dark massive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ruined crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements. We looked from the gar- den over the wide plain of Lombardy, bound:d to the west by the far Apennines, while to the east the horizon was lost in misty distance. After the picturesque but limited view of mountain, ravine, and chestnut wood at the Baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely gratifying to the eye in the wide range of pro- spect commanded by our new abode.’ Line 1. Shelley describes his rides with Byron in_a letter to Mrs. Shelley, August 23, 1518: ‘He [Byron] took me in his gondola across the laguna to a long sandy island, which defends Venice from the Adriatic. When we disem- barked, we found his horses waiting for us, and we rode along the sands of the sea, talking. Our conversation consisted in histories of his wounded feelings, and questions as to my af- fairs, and great professions of friendship and regard for me. e said that if he had been in England at the time of the Chancery affair, he would have moved heaven and earth to have prevented such a decision. We talked of liter- ary matters, his Fourth Canto [Childe Harold], which he says is very good, and indeed he re- peated some stanzas of great energy to me.’ Line 40 poets, Milton, Paradise Lost, ii. 559. Line 99. The madhouse is on San Servolo, but Rossetti quotes Browning to the effect that the building described by Shelley was the peni- tentiary on San Clemente. Rossetti declines to decide the point. Line 143 child, Allegra. Page 160. PromEetHEus Ungounp. This poem, as alyrical drama dealing with the myth of Prometheus, has for its principal poetic source the Prometheus of Aischylus. Shelley wrote, ‘It has no resemblance to the Greek drama. It is original;’ and essentialiy the statement is true. The relation of Prometheus NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 621 to Jupiter, as asufferer under tyrann of his love of mankind, the ae of Hee on the mountain side over the sea, the attend- ance of sea nymphs in the chorus, the herald Mercury, the vulture, and the insistence on the violent elements of nature, earthquake, light- ning and whirlwind, in the imagery, are com- mon to both poems; but Shelley by his treat- ment has so modified all these as to recreate them. The ethical motive of Shelley, his alle- gorical meanings, his metaphysical suggestions, the development of the old and introduction of new characters, the conduct of the action, the interludes of pastoral, music and landscape, the use of new imaginary beings neither human nor divine, and the conception of universal na- ture, totally transform the primitive Alschy- Jean myth; and in its place arises the most modern poem of the century by virtue of its being the climax of the Revolution, in imagina- tive literature, devoted to the ideal of demo- eracy asa moral force. The crude Aschylean matter may be easily traced in the following notes in detail. The interpretation of the mod- ern poem is more difficult, and may be studied in the essays of Rossetti in the Shelley Society Publications, Todhunter’s A Study of Shelley, Thomson’s Notes, in the Atheneum, 1881, and Miss Seudder’s Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, as well as in numerous biographies and essays. I am unable to follow these commentators in giving more precise meaning to the characters and the plot than is contained in Shelley’s and Mrs. Shelley’s exposition already cited in the Head-note to the poem, and the preface, sup- lemented by the statements of the text itself. By need may be the ‘Human Mind,’ Ione ‘Hope’ and Panthea ‘Faith,’ and the Semi- choruses of Act II. se. ii. may represent respec- tively the passage of ‘Love and Faith [Asia and Panthea] through the sphere of the Senses ... of the Emotions . .. of the Reason and Will.’ and so on; but that Shelley had any conscious logic of this sort in his poem seems too uncertain to be asserted. The drama is an emanation of his imagination, working out his deepest sentiments and convictions in a form nearer to the power of music than language ever before achieved; it is haunted by the presence of the inexpressible in the heart of its most transcendent imagery; and in all its moods and motions is far from the domain in which the prose of articulated thought is dis- cerned through a veil, of figured phrase. The intellectual skeleton. in any case, even were it discoverable, isnot the soul of the poem. Cer- tain theories of Shelley, as to philosophical problems, are present in the verse; but they eontrol only instinctively, and not by deliberate thought, the structure of character, scene, event, and act. They are noted below. Page 165. Dramatis Persone. Prometheus, the Titan, bound to the icy precipice, suffers this punishment from J oer a ie Geteddnene: of the gift of fire and other benefits to mankind. Supiter is the ‘supreme of living things,’ of whom Prometheus says, I gave all he has,’ and ‘O’er all things but thyself I gave thee power, and my own will.’ Promatheus pos- sesses the secret ‘which may transfer the scep- tre of wide heaven’ from Jupiter, and refuses todivulgeit. The knowledge that the reign of Jupiter will end sustains him in his torture, which has now lasted for many centuries. Asia, a sea nymph, daughter of Oceanus, is the be- loved of Prometheus, and separated from him in India. _Panthea is the messenger between the two; Ione is her companion; both are sis- ters of Asia. Demogorgon is the child of Jupi- ter who overthrows his father, at the appointed time, as Jupiter had dethroned Saturn; the foreknowledge of this is the secret of Prome- theus. The other persons of the drama have little or no part in the action, and are easily comprehended. The obvious allegorical mean- ing of these greater characters can be briefi stated. Prometheus is a type of mankind suf- fering under the oppression of the evil of the world. Jupiter is this incarnate tyranny con- ceived primarily in a broadly political rather than in any moral sense, the ‘one name_of many shapes’ already described in THE ReE- voLt oF Ispam. Asia is, in Mrs Shelley’s words, ‘the same as Venus and Nature,’ or essentially the Aphrodite of Lucretius human- ized. by Sheliey’s imagination and recreated as the life of nature animated by the spirit of love. The separation of Prometheus from Asia dur- ing the reign of Jupiter typifies the discordance between man and nature due to the tyranny of convention, custom, institutions, laws, and all the arbitrary organization of society, —one of the cardinal ideas inherited by Shelley from eighteenth century thought. he fall of Jupi- ter, which is the abolition of human law, is fol- lowed by the triumph of love, in which man and nature are once more in accord ; this accord is presented doubly in the drama as the marriage of Prometheus, and the regeneration of the world in millennial happiness. For the inter- pretation of Demogorgon, Panthea, and the various spirits, see below. The references to Z&schylus are to Paley’s third edition, London, 1870. Page 165. Act I. Scene i. The landscape setting of the Act is schylean, and borrows some details from the Greek, but as mountain scenery it is Alpine and directly studied from nature. Shelley’s Journal, March 26, 1818, gives a special instance of it, describing Les Echelles: ‘The rocks, which cannot be less than a thou- sand feet in perpendicular height, sometimes overhang the road on each side, and almost shut out the sky. The scene is like that described in the Prometheus of AXschylus: vast rifts and caverns in the granite precipices; wintry mountains with ice and snow above; the loud sounds of unseen waters within the caverns, and walls of toppling rocks, only to be sealed as he describes, by the winged chariot of the ocear nymphs.’ I. 2 One, Prometheus. 1.12. Cf, AEschylus, 32, 94. I, 22. Cf. Aischylus, 21. 622 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS I. 23. C£. Aischylus, 98-100. T, 25-29. Cf. AEschylus, 88-92. I. 34, Cf. Aéschylus, 1043. T, 45, 46. Cf. Aischylus, 24, 25. I. 58. The pity of Prometheus for Jupiter and his wish to recall the curse formerly pro- nounced mark the moral transformation of the character from that conceived by Aéschylus. ‘Shis is the point of departure from the ancient myth, which is here left behind. Shelley thus clothes Prometheus with the same ideal previ- ously depicted in Laon, — the spiritual power of bigh-minded and forgiving endurance of wrong, the opposition of love to force, the victory of the higher nature .f man in its own occult and inherent right. It appears to me that this per- fecting of Prometheus through suffering, so that he lays aside his hate of Jupiter for pity, shown in his repentance for the curse and his withdrawal of it, is the initial point of the ac- tion of the drama and marks the appointed time for the overthrow of the tyrant. The ful- filment of the moral ideal in Prometheus is the true cause of the end of the reign of evil, though this is dramatically brought about by the in- strumentality of Demogorgon. In this opening speech, and in the remainder of the drama, it is unnecessary to point out the echoes of English poets. Itis enough to observe generally, once for all, that Milton and Shake- speare have displaced Wordsworth and Cole- ridge as sources of phrase and tone, though they have not entirely excluded them, especially the latter ; just as Plato has displaced Godwin and the eighteenth century philosophers in_ the intellectual sphere, though here again without entirely excluding them. I. 74. The dramatic choruses constructed of responding voices, both in Shelley and in Byron, go back to the witch choruses of Macbeth; but they may be more immediately derived from Coleridge’s Fire, Famine, and Slaughter. I. 182 whisper, the ‘inorganic voice’ of the earth. I. 137 And love, i. e., dost love (Swinburne). Forman conjectures I love ; Rossetti, and Jove. I. 140. Cf. Aischylus, 321. I. 150 tongue, the earth has apparently two voices, that of the dialogue and the ‘inorganic voice’ above, which is the same as ‘the lan- guage of the dead’ above (cf. I. 183) and the pone ‘known only to those who die’ in this ine. I. 165 et seg. Cf. Aischylus, 1064-1070, for parallel imagery ; but the passage recalls espe- cially the sorrow of Demeter after the rape of Persephone and the woes then visited on the earth in the classic myth. I, 192 et seg. Zoroaster. The story is not known to Zoroastrian literature. The concep- tion of the double world of shades and forms, with the reunion of the two after death, seems original with Shelley, suggested by the notion of Plato’s world of ideas. I, 262 et seg. Cf. A’schylus, 1010-1017. I. 289 robe. The reference is to the shirt of Nessus. I. 296. Cf. Aischylus, 936-940. I. 328. The detail is borrowed from the ac- tion of Apollo in Aschylus, Eumenides, 170. The character of Mercury is developed by in- cluding in his mood the pity shown by Hy- phestos in the PRomeTHEUs. The Furies are in character, description, and language, Shel- ley’s creatior. 345, The reterunce is to Dante, Inferno. ix. 354. Cf. Aischylus, 19, 20, 66. 376. Cf. Aischylus, 382, 386. Cf. Aischylus, 1014. 399. The sword of Damocles. 402. Cf. Aischylus, 958-960. 408. Cf, Aischylus, 52, 53. 416, Cf. Aéschylus, 774-779. . 451. The idea is Platonic, and frequent in Shelley. Cf., below, II. iv. 83 and Prince ATHANASE, IT, 2. I. 458. Cf. Aschylus, 218; Tat REvout or Isuam, I. ix.-x., xxi. I. 471. The ethical doctrine that each sin brings its own penalty of necessity, and essen- tially is its own punishment, is involved in the image that the Furies are shapeless in them- selves. I. 484. The intimacy of remorse in the soul is partly indicated by the expressions used. The nature of the suffering brought by sin is most truly conceived and presented in what the Furies say of themselves throughout the scene. The idea, however, is confused by the addition of the element of the evil nature active within the soul and assailing it. The two notions are not incompatible, but the second has little per- tinence to Prometheus here. I. 490. The case illustrated, for example, in Tennyson’s Lucretius. I. 547. The torture of Prometheus, as was indicated by the speeches of the Furies, ceases to be physically rendered, and becomes mental. He is shown two visions of the defeat of good, first the Crucifixion, second, the French Revo- lution; the lesson the Furies draw is the folly of Prometheus in having opened the higher life for man, since it entails the greater misery the more he aspires, and is doomed at each supreme effort to increase rather than alleviate the state of man (ef. I. 595-597). The torture inflicted by the Furies, as well as the description of their methods in the abstract just commented on, gives an ethical reality to them which takes them out of the morals of the ancient world and transforms them into true shapes of modern imagination, I. 592. Cf. Aischylus, 710-712. I. 618. Cf. Aschylus, 759-760. I. 619-632. The state of mankind, as Shelley saw it. described in cold, blunt, hard terms, is the climax and summary of the torture Prome- theus suffers at the last moment ; but his pre- ference to feel such pain rather than be dull to it, and his continuance in faith that it shall end, combined with his lack of hatred or desire for vengeance, signalizes his perfection of soul um der experience. I. 641, Cf. Aischylus, 772. pa ea NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 623 I. 660. Cf. Aischylus, 288, 289. I. 673, The torture-scene (with which, in the physical sense, the drama of Aischylus closes) being now over, the modern drama goes on to develop the regeneration of man, and first in- troduces this counter scene of the consolation of Prometheus by the spirits of the human mind, which inhabit thought; the voices are severally those of Revolution, Self-Sacrifice, Wisdom, and Poetry. I. 712 Between, between arch and sea. I. 766 Shape, Love. 1772: Ct, Plato, Symposium, 195: ‘ For Homer says that the Goddess Calamity is deli- eate, and that her feet are tender. ‘‘ Her feet are soft,”’ he says, ‘‘ for she treads not upon the ground, but makes her path upon the heads of men.’’’ (Shelley’s translation.) The two spirits who sing the passage of Love followed by uin, present in poetical and intense imagery the one comprehensive and symbolic sorrow of the state of man: love is not denied, but its fruits are misery to mankind. The prophecy that ‘ begins and ends’ in Prometheus is that he shall destroy this death that follows in Love’s track, of which the Crucifixion and the Revolu- tion have been taken as the great symbols, but similar ruin pervades all life acted on by love. I. 832. There is here the hint of philosophical idealism which makes nature’s life dependent on man’s consciousness ; nature lives in his ap- prehension of and union with it. Page 178. Act Il. i. Scene. The question of the time of the drama has been much com- mented upon, but to little effect. The scheme which regards the time as twelve hours, from midnight to high noon, is perhaps most satis- factory. The inconsistencies which conflict with such a theory are no greater than are usually to be found in Shelley’s work ; and it is not probable that he considered the matter care- fully. ‘Morning’ at the beginning of this Act is the same as the dawn at the end of the pre- ceding Act ; and the journey of Asia and Pan- thea to the cave of Demogorgon is timeless ; it is dawn when they arrive. The phrase, II. v. 10, ‘The sun will rise not until noon’ is not to be taken literally, but only as an image of the amazement in heaven at the fall of Jupi- ter. Beyond that point the drama has no rela- tion with time whatsoever. The character of Panthea is wholly developed in this Act. She has no being of her own, but is the mystical medium of communication be- tween Prometheus and Asia; to each she is the other. In Act I. 824, she tells Prometheus that she never sleeps ‘ but when the shadow of thy spirit falls on her’ [i. e., herself]. She is ad- dressed by Asia, II. i. 31, as wearing ‘the shadow of that soul [Prometheus] by which I live ;’ she describes how that shadow falls upon her, and is made her being, in the dream, II. j. 71-82; and in her eyes, rather than through her words, Asia would read Prometheus’ ‘soul,’ jl. i. 110, and does behold him as if present, IL. i. 119-126. On the other hand Prometheus én the dream describes her as the shadow of Asia, II, i. 71, ‘ Whose shadow thou art,’ and Panthea asks of Asia, II. i. 113, what she ean see in her eyes except ‘ thine own fairest shadow imaged there.’ Panthea describes the double relation in saying, II. i. 50, that she is ‘made the wind which fails beneath the music that I bear of thy most wordless converse,” and, Il. i. 52, as ‘dissolved into the sense with which love talks;’ and Asia describes Panthea’s words, II. iv. 39, as ‘echoes’ of Prometheus. It has been suggested that Panthea, in these relations, is Faith in the Ideal, but it does not seem to me that there is any so precise mean- ing ; her function is purely emotional, bring- ing into apparent conjunction the disunited lovers. The character of Demogorgon, also, is suffi- ciently developed in this Act for comment. The name has been traced to Lactantius, and occurs in English in Spenser, Faerie Queene, I. v. 22, IV. ii.47, and in Milton, Paradise Lost, II. 965. Shelley clothes it with a new personality. In Act III. i. 52, he describes himself as ‘ eter- nity.’ His dwelling-place, before his ascent and after it, is in the Cave, which is what Shel- ley was accustomed to write of as the ‘caves of unimagined being.’ From it, II. iii. 4, ‘ the oracular vapor is hurled up’ which is the nur- ture of enthusiastic genius, — ‘truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy, that maddening wine of life.’ The spirit that abides there is, in its negative phase, II. iv. 5,‘ ungazed upon and shapeless ;’ it can answer all questions, as in the colloquy with Asia, but a voice is wanting to express the things of eternity, II. iv. 116, ‘the deep truth is imageless,’ and II. iv. 123, ‘of such truths each to itself must be the oracle.’ The conception has points of contact with that of the soul of being in the Hymn To INTELLECTUAL Braury, and with numerous other apprehensions of the divine element in Shelley’s poetry. It is more abstract and gray, in this shape of the genius presiding even over Jupiter’s fate, than usual, because a part of the cosmic idea it embodies is transferred to Asia in this drama, as the being in whom love kindles and through whom creation becomes beautiful ; Demogorgon is thus elemental in the highest degree, lying in a region back even of the great poetic conceptions of Love and Beauty, as well as of apparently Omnipotent Power, in the world of celestial time. To him, as the ultimate of being conceivable by man’s imagination, the concluding chorus of the drama is fitly given. IT. i. 71-87. Cf. Rosatinp AND HELEN, 1028- 046. II. i, 117. Cf. v. 53, note. II. i. 140, written grief, the Ai, Ai, which the Greeks fancied they discerned in the color markings of the hyacinth. Cf. Aponais, xvi. 5, note. II. i. 142. It is noticeable that the first dream belongs to Prometheus, and the second appears to be that of Asia. She recollects the dream, as her own. The double character of Panthea, as the mirror of both lovers, is thus preserved, 1 624 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS II. i. 166. The Echo songs are of course Ariel songs. II. ii. 1. The commentators who describe this chorus as the journey of love and faith through experience, in sense, emotion, will, ete. (see Miss Scudder’s Prometheus Unbound, p. 151), seem to me over-subtle. The sequence from nature to emotion and impassioned thought belongs to many of Shelley’s poems, and is his naturai lyrical form ; in each of these acts, espe- cially I., II., and LV., it is exhibited on the rand seale, but in his minor poems it is usual, he significant part of the chorus is lines 41- 63, where the stream of sound, an image so repeated as to be cardinal in the drama, is in- troduced, here as a symbol of the force impell- ing will (perhaps conceived as desire in love), controlling it. The manner of it, IL, ii. 48-50, is after Plato, as in the Symposium and Phe- drus; the imagery of the boat and the stream is a strange and subtle development of the voy- age images in ALAsToR and Tus Revo.r or Istam. IL, ii. 62 fatal mountain. that at which Asia and Panthea arrive in II. iii. 1. IL. ii. 64. The Fauns are after the character of the Attendant Spirit in Milton’s Comus. IL. ii. 91 songs, ef. Virgil, Eclogues, VI. 31- 42, Such Virgilian echoes are found, though rarely, in Shelley. II. ii. 40. The image is one of the few sub- lime images in English poetry. I. iii, 54. The first and third stanzas de- seribe the Cave of Demogorgon as the place of inereate eternity or absolute being; it is set forth necessarily by negatives, except in the at- tributes of universality and unity in IL. iii. 80. IL. iii. 94 meekness, i. e., the meekness of Prometheus in his mood toward Jupiter, as shown in Act I., and in his whole moral charac- ter as developed at the end of that Act. It is because of this change in Prometheus, as noted above, that now ‘the Eternal, the Immortal’ (Demogorgon) ‘must unloose through life’s ortal that Snake-like Doom’ (the Spirit of the our of Jupiter’s overthrow), ‘by that alone,’ j. e., the inherent moral power of Prometheus’ spiritual state. Itshould be recalled that Pro- metheus is mankind, to get the full force of the lesson enunciated. II. iv. 12. Rossetti and Swinburne conjec- ture that a line is missing. The former corrects when into at ; but this only avoids the difficulty. The sense is plain, and the text must be ac- cepted as corrupt. II. iv. 48. Cf. Aischylus, 232, 233, II. iv. 49 et seg. ‘the speech is based on Atschylus, 205-262, 444-514, but is highly de- veloped, possibly with some obligation to Lu- eretius, Bk. v. IL. iv. 83, Cf. I. 451, note. IL. iv. 146. Cf. I. 471, note. IL. v.20. The story of the birth of Venus. The irradiation of Asia, as the spirit of love filling the world with created beauty (into which complex conception enter so many myth- ological and metaphysical strands from Lu- eretius, Plato, and antique legend) is the high- est point reached by Shelley in rendering the character dramatically, as the lyrics immedi- ately following sre the highest point reached in its lyrical expression. The lines II. iv. 40-47 are the antithesis of I. 619-632, They are the abstract statement of love, as the former of hatred. The lyrics following are a highly im- aginative statement of love and parallel with I, 764-780, II. v. 48. The lyric is an invocation of Asia as ‘the light of life, shadow of beauty unbe- held’ (III. iii. 6) — the spirit presiding in crea- tion, the divine vivida vis, the invisible power making for beauty, through love, in the world of sensible experience. In the first two stanzas Shelley presents the supernal brightness as half revealed in the breath and smile of life, but in- supportable, and again as burning through the beauty of nature, which is an atmosphere about it; but in the third and fourth stanzas he re- turns to its invisibility, as a thing heard lke music, as the source of all beauty of shape and all joy of soul,—but insupportable in these modes of knowledge and experience as in its half-visible forms. II. v. 53. Forman aptly quotes Shelley to Peacock, April 6, 1819: ‘The only inferior part {in the Roman beauties] are the eyes, which, though good and gentle, want the mazy depth of color behind color with which the in- tellectual women of England and Germany entangle the heart in soul-inspiring labyrinths.’ Cf. i. 117; Tue Revowr or Isiam, XII. v. 2. II. v. 72. The following lyric takes up the image of the boat and the stream from II. ii. 41- 63 (ef. note), and elaborates it, the boat being the soul of Asia, driven on the song of the Singer; the Singer and Asia are thus united spiritually in the song and guided musically on the mystic voyage backward through the forms of human life to the soul’s preéxistent eternity (reversing Wordsworth’s Ode on the In- timations of Immortality). Cf. To ConsTantia, SincinG, and To ONE SINGING, p. 488. Page 189. Act III. i. 40. Cf£. Lucan, Phar- salia, ix. 723, IIL. i. 69. Jupiter acknowledges the real supremacy of the moral nature. IIL. i. 72. Cf. Tae Revo. or Isuam, I. vi. et seq. IIL. ii. The scene is idyllic, not only by virtue of the calm classical figures of Apollo and Oceanus, but as containing the first of the mil- lennial descriptions which now recur to the end of the drama. III. ii. 46. Cf. Taz Revoxr or Isuam, II. xxix. 1. III. iii. 10 Cave, the first of the caves which Shelley delighted to depict as refuges from the world. It is to be taken as an Italian element in his verse. Til, iii. 15. The stalactite formations met with in ALASTOR. I. iii. 25 mutability, a constant and charac- teristic word and thought of Shelley. IH. iii, 49-60, This zsthetic theory is purely NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 625 Platonic. Cf. Plato, especially Symposium and Phedrus. Cf. Opr vo Liperry, xvii. 9. III. iii 70 shell. Salt quotes from Hogg: ‘Sir Guyon de Shelley, one of the most famous of the Paladins, carried about with him three conches. . . . When he made the third conch, the golden one, vocal, the law of God was immediately exalted, and the law of the devil annulled and abrogated wherever the po- tent sound reached. Was Shelley thinking of this golden conch when he described, in his great poem, that mystic shell from which is sounded the trumpet-blast of universal free- dom ?’ ILI. iii. 91-93. The sympathy of Shelley with life in its humblest forms was almost Buddhistic in solicitude. Cf. below, III. iv. 36, or THE SENSITIVE Puanv, II, 41. II. iii. 111. Cf, I. 150. Ii. ii. 113. Cf. Sonne, ‘Lift not the painted veil.’ III. iii. 124. The cavern where Prometheus was born, seemingly the same as in III. iii. 10, more developed in the description. III. iii. 171. This line, in connection with 108-110, intimates a greater faith in immortal- ity than any previous passage of Shelley, but it is a shadowy intimation. Cf. IV. 536. The dead, throughout the drama, are described in the pagan spirit, and the lot of man, not exempt even in this millennium from ‘ chance and death and mutability,’ is opposed to the lot of the im- | mortals as at a pagan distance below them — the fate that Lucretius described. III. iv. The Spirit of the Earth now takes the place of the Earth inthe drama. The form it wears is a characteristic Shelleyan concep- tion, belonging to his most unshared ony in creation. Cf. Princk ATHANASE, II. 106, note. III. iv. 54 sound, the shell. III. iv. 76, 77. The ease with which all things ‘ put their evil nature off,’ and the ‘ little change’ the action involved, are both charac- teristic of Shelley’s ethical scheme. Evil was conceived as something that could be laid aside, like a garment, by the will of man. Cf. III. iv. 199, note. IIL. iv. 104, 105. Through the power of love. III. iv. 128 change. Cf. III. iv. 104, 105. III. iv. 172. Rossetti conjectures a comma after conquerors and a period after round. The text of Shelley seems plain without the change. The emblems of Power and Faith stand in the new world unregarded and mouldering memori- als of a dead past, just as the Egyptian monu- ments imaged to a later time than their own a vanished monarchy and religion; the fact that these monuments survived the new race and last into our still later time is an unnecessary and subordinate incident inserted because it ap- ealed to Shelley’simagination. Cf.Swinburne, Woes on the Text of Shelley. : III. iv. 193,197. The ideal here described is anarchistic, but it is also the ultimate of the ideas of freedom, fraternity, and equality, and of the supremacy of that inward moral order which would dispense with those functions of government in which Shelley believed wrong necessarily resides. . IIL. iv.199. The supremacy of the ‘ will’ of man, though less dwelt on in this drama, is conceived in the same way as in THE REVOLT or Isuam, VIII. xvi., the Opr To LiBEerty, V. 10, Sonnet, PourricAL GREATNESS, 11. It is fundamental in Shelley’s beliefs. Page 197. Act IV. This act was, as the Head-note states, an afterthought. It is to be observed that Prometheus, after his release, ceases to be of importance, owing to the fact that his symbolic character as mankind is dropped, and liberated and regenerated society is directly described in the millennial passages. In this Act he does not appear at all, though the true significance of his deed closes the drama. Similarly, Asia disappears. Panthea and Ione are the spectators and act as the chorus, in the Greek sense, to the other partici- pants. The part of the chorus has from the beginning of the drama threatened to over- whelm the part of the actors; here it does so to such an extent that the Act presents the anomaly (in form) of lyrical passages as the main interest, with the chorus, properly speak- ing, in blank verse. The Act has three move- ments: the pean of the Hours, the antiphony of the Earth and the Moon, the Invocation of the Universe by Demogorgon. IV. 24 One, Prometheus. IV. 65-67. These three lines might be taken severally as a summary of the theme of Acts I., IV. 82. A singularly felicitous expression to describe the double aspect of language as sound and color. IV. 186, The harmony of the sphere. IV. 203. The image of the stream of sound is here again introduced. Cf. II. v. 72, note. IV. 210. The image is of ‘the new moon with the old moon in her arms.’ Cf. Ture TriumPH oF LIFE, 79-85. IV. 213 regard, appear. IV. 217. The sunset image accounts for the hrase ‘ebbing’ in 208. Cf. Revoir or sLaM, I. vi. 8, note. IV. 238 sphere, the earth. IV. 247. The intention seems to be to suggest the incessant operation of manifold natural forces and processes in the sphere, each in its own realm. IV. 265, iii, 148, IV. 272. The reference is to Harmodius and Aristogeiton, IV. 281 valueless, above all value. The speech reveals the history of the earth as the revious speech reveals its physical structure. Birelley does not consider the chronology of the spectacle, but merely presents, first, the antique ruins of humanity, and, second, the fossil pri- meval world. IV. 314 blue globe, the world of waters. LV. 376. The construction of this and the fol: lowing stanzas is unusually involved. Jt (Love). This is the same spirit as in III. 626 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS from the preceding stanza, is the subject of has arisen ; sea isin apposition with world (384) ; which (385) refers to love ; Leave (388) repeating Leave in 382, takes up the dropped construction ; and Man (394) similarly repeating Man from 388, introduces a new train of thought. IV. 400, 401. ‘The most compact statement of Shelley’s social ideal, with its spontaneous ethical order of love. IV. 404. The fact that Shelley did not ex- clude toil and suffering from his millennium of society is a cardinal point. Cf. III. iii. 171 note, and III. iii. 201. IV. 406. Cf. III. iii. 199 note. IV. 414. Cf. II. iv. 83 note. IV. 423. The prophecy of scientific progress is apocalyptic in visionary energy. iV. 444, A singular instance of entific imagination in poetry. Cf. pion, 227, Heuuas, I. 943. IV. 493, 494. The lines are given by Ros- setti to the preceding speech, but without prob- ability. Cf. Linss, p. 435. IV. 503. The development of the image of the stream of sound could not go further than in this and the following lines. IV. 536. Cf, ILI. ii. 171 note. IV. 554 Demogorgon. The sudden and com- plete subordination of all the beings of the uni- verse to the idea of the Eternal Principle is accomplished with sublime effect. The drama is thus brought to an end, after its lyrical jubi- lee, by its highest intellectual conception giving utterance to its highest moral command,— Demogorgon, the voice of Eternity, phrasing, in the presence of the listening Universe of all be- ing, the encomium of Prometheus as the type of the soul’s wisdom in action in an evil world leading to the achievement of such regeneration on earth as is possible to a mortal race. IV. 555 EHarth-born’s, Prometheus. IV. 557. Love is here identified with Prome- theus, in whom it reigned and suffered. IV. 565 Eternity. Demogorgon is properly Eternity, but here speaks of Eternity under another conception. IV. 568. ‘he use of the serpent image for the principle of evil is contrary to Shelley’s practice. IV. 570. Cf. Tae Revourt or Iszam, VIII. xi., xii., xxii., where Laone’s speech contains these maxims in a weaker and diffused form ; they constitute Shelley’s persistent ideal, and of them he made Prometheus the type; he here identifies this ideal, which is one of suffering under wrong, with all forms of the good and of power, thereby affirming the supremacy of spir- itual moral order at all times and under all cir- recise sci- \PIPSYCHI- cumstances. Neither Platonic nor Christian faith is more absolute. Page 206. Tur Crncr. The narrative of the events upon which THE CENcr is founded is reprinted in the Centenary Edition, ii. 447- 463, with notes of other accounts. The Shak- sperian echoes, mainly from Lear, Macbeth, and lio, are easily recognizable. The simile from Calderon, mentioned in the Preface, is in Act III. i, 247. The passage in Act IT. ii. 141, recalls the FRAGMENT, page 487, To THIRST AND FIND NO Fint. The text offers no diffi- culty. Criticism of the play has been uniformly appreciative, though it did not succeed when privately acted, May 7, 1886, in London. The action, owing to the difficulty of displaying the story, is weak; the characterization of Cenci and Beatrice is vigorous, and that of Orsino and Giacomo is studied with attention and in- genuity ; the other persons only serve to carry on the scenes. The dignity of the diction, the elevation of the sentiments, and the adherence to Italian contemporary habits of mind as un- derstood by Shelley, are admirable. The total effect is of intense and awful gloom, and the play is more powerful as a whole than in any detail, scene, or act. In it culminates that fascination of horror in Shelley which was as characteristic as his worship of beauty and love, though it is less omnipresent in his poe- try. Page 252, Tue Mask or Anarcuy. Salt refers, for the events giving occasion for this poem, to Martineau, History of the Peace, I. chaps. xvi., xvii. A MS. facsimile of the text in Shelley’s hand was published by the Shelley Society, 1887. Stanzas iv., v. Cf. To tHe Lorp CHANCEI- LOR, xiii. ; and (ipreus Tyrannus, I. 334, Stanza xxviii. 1 Shape. Salt identifies the figure as that of Liberty. Stanza xxx. Cf. Promzeraevus Unsounn, I. 772 note. Stanza xxxv. The doctrine of PROMETHEUS Unsounp and Tue Revott or Isuam. Stanza xlvy. Cf. @ipipus Tyrannus, I. 196 note. Page 258. Perer Bett tHE Turrp. The poem satirizes Wordsworth on the ground of his conservatism in politics and the dulness of much of his poetry. Page 259 Thomas Brown, Esq., the Younger, H. F. The pseudonym under which Moore published The Fudge Family. H. F. is inter- reted by Dr. Garnett as ‘ Historian of the ‘udges ;’ Rossettisuggests Hibernia Filius. The world of all of us, Wordsworth, Prelude, XI. 142. Page 260 ‘to occupy a permanent station.’ Rossetti compares Wordsworth’s preface to Peter Bell. SHELLEY’s NotEs on the poem are as fol- lows : Prologue 36. The vldest scholiasts read — A dodecagamic Potter. This is at once more descriptive and more megalophonous, — but the alliteration of the text had captivated the vulgar ear of the herd of later commentators. I. ii. 3.. To those who have not duly appreci- ated the distinction between Whale and Russia oil, this attribute might rather seem _to belong to the Dandy than the Evangelic. The effect, when to the windward, is indeed so similar, that it requires a subtle naturalist to discrimi- NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 629 nate the animals. They belong, however, to distinct genera. II. viii. 2. One of the attributes in Lin- naus’s description of the Cat. To a similar cause the caterwauling of more than one spe- cies of this genus is to be referred ; — except, indeed, that the poor quadruped is compelled to quarrel with its own pleasures, whilst the biped is supposed only to quarrel with those of others. viii. 5. What would this husk and excuse for a virtue be without its kernel prostitution, or the kernel prostitution without this husk of a virtue? I wonder the women of the town do not form an association, like the Society for the Suppression of Vice, for the support of what may be called the ‘ King, Church, and Consti- tution’ of their order. But this subject is al- most too horrible for a joke. xvi. 1. This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our countrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly asseverating the most enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active Attorney-General than that here alluded to. I, xi. 5 Vox populi, vor det. As Mr. Godwin truly observes of a more famous saying, of some merit as a popular maxim, but totally estitute of philosophical accuracy. xvi. 2. Quasi, Qui valet verba : — i.e. allthe words which have been, are, or may be expended by, for, against, with, or on him. A sufficient proof of the utility of thishistory. Peter’s pro- genitor who selected this name seems to have possessed a pure anticipated cognition of the na- ture and modesty of this ornament of his pos- terity. xxv. 5. A famous river in the New Atlantis of the Dynastophylic Pantisocratists. xxvi. 5. See the description of the beautiful colors produced during the agonizing death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long oem in blank verse [The Excursion, Book III. 559-572] published within a few years. That poem contains curious evidence of the gradual hardening of a strong but circum- scribed sensibility, of the perversion of a pene- trating but panic-stricken understanding. The author might have derived a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these sweet and sublime verses. This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide, Taught both by what she [nature] shows and what con- ceals, Never to blend our pleasure or our pride With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. : {Wordsworth, Hartleap Well, II. xxi.] It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. Cobbett and Peter use the same language for a different purpose: Peter is indeed a sort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than Peter, because he pollutes a holy and now un- conquerable cause with the principles of legiti- mate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one ridiculous and odious. If either Peter XxXviii. 6. or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more indignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied in the moral per- version laid to their charge. Page 260, Proxocus, line 3. Reynolds’s poem, Line 16. Wordsworth’s poem. Line 22. _Shelley’s poem. The three are said to present Peter in the state before, during, and after life. ILI. ii. 1 Castles, identified by Rossetti as a Government spy. Il. xiii. 4 Alemannic, German. IV. ix. The stanza, a striking critical state- ment of the originality of a creator in literature, seems sincerely meant. Cf. also the_praise hidden in the satire of V. vii.-xv.; Toe Wirce or ATLAS, iv.-vi.; the sonnet To Worps- wortH; An ExHORTATION. IV. xiv. 1-2. ‘A mouth kissed loses not charm but renews as doesthe moon.’ Rossetti quotes Shelley to Hunt, 27 September 1819, where Boceaccio is praised and these words re- ferred to. V. i. 3 man, Coleridge. The characteriza- tion is remarkable for one who did not know the poet; it is discriminating and vivid, and not unjust, allowing for the satirical tone. Cf. Lerrer To Magia GISBORNE, 202. VI. xii. The reference is to Wordsworth’s prefaces. I. xv. The reference is to Drummond's Academical Questions, a favorite book of Shelley’s. VI. xxix. 4. Sheridan. VI. xxxvi. 2. Wordsworth, Thanksgiving Ode on the Battle of Waterloo, first version (see Knight’s ed. Poetical Works, Second Ode, iv. 20). VII. iv. 4 Oliver, identified by Forman as a Government. spy ‘prominent in the case of Brandreth, Turner, and Ludlam, whose execu- tion in 1817 inspired Shelley to write The Ad- dress to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte.’ xiv. 4 Guatimozin, son-in-law of Monte- zuma, whom he succeeded as the last Aztec prince. He was tortured by Cortez. Page 271. THe Witcu or Arias. This poem derives its tone from Homer’s Hymn te ‘Mercury, which Shelley had recently translated in the same measure and literary manner. To search for its meaning is like plucking the rose apart; for once, it seems to me, though with. out losing the rich suggestiveness inherent in the workings of his mind, Shelley allowed his genius to play with its habitualimages and tendencies without definite intention, in pure self-enjoy- ment of its own beauty and sweetness. No poem of his is so happy, so free from the mortal strain of life and effort, so disengaged from the wretchedness of men. In the earlier stages one might find analogies with the Hymn ro IntTEL~ LECTUAL BEAuty and guess that Shelley was weaving round the spirit of universal life the rebe of illusion that should render it visible in 628 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS transparency of human form and activity; but as the verse flows on, with the familiar imagery of the boat and its voyage through subterranean caverns and among mountains, and develops the wanderings of the Witch among cities and in the solitudes of far-off nature, it appears to me that Shelley interprets half-consciously the functions of genius, imagination, and_ poetry conceived almost as interdependent existences with only a remote and dreamy relation to hu- man life. The Witch, who cannot die, is in the world of Prometheus and Urania, a semi- divine world separated from the miserable fate of men, though not detached from the know- ledge of their life. I associate the Herma- phrodite of the poem with the undefined figure of the Lines CONNECTED wirH_EpipsycHI- pion. Shelley uses the word ‘Witch’ in a similar connection twice: ‘In the still cave of the witch Poesy,’ Mont Buanc, ii. 33, and ‘the quaint witch, Memory,’ Lerrer To Ma- RIA GISBORNE, 132. The poem most analo- gous with Tam Witcu or Artas is THE SEN- SITIVE Pant; the figure of the Witch, while not less touched with mystery than the Lady of ‘he garden, is more definite ; and the ideality of tue landscape, nowhere in Shelley’s verse so great as here, is superior in the same propor- tion as the expanse of the globe exceeds the limits of the garden. Page 272 To Mary, his wife. Stanza iii. 1 winged Vision, Taz REvoutT oF IsLam. Stanza iv. 2. Cf. Perzr Bet, IV. ix. note. Page 273, stanza ii. Cf. Homer’s Hymn to Memory, i. and Spenser’s Faérie Queene, III. vi. 7. vi, Here, and in the following stanzas, there appear to be reminiscences of Spenser’s Una. ix.5. A variant of the idea of Demogorgon in PromEeTHEUs Ungounp. xi. 2 pastoral Garamant, Fezzan. xi. 8 bosom-eyed, a suggestion associated with Coleridge’s Witch in Christabel. xviii. 2. _ Archimage, Spenser’s magician in the Faérie Queene, I. i. xxv. 7. Cf. stanza i.; the reference is to the belief that the old divinities passed away at the birth of Christ. Cf. HELLas, 225-238 ; Milton, Ode on the Nativity, xix.-xxi. xxxii., xxxiii. Cf. Tae Zucca and Frac- MENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA, 127. xlvii. 8 Thamandocana, Timbuctoo. lvii. 4 Axvumé, Abyssinia. lix. 1-4. A favorite and oft-repeated image of Shelley’s. Cf. ODE To LIBERTY, vi. 1 note. Ixiii. he contrast between the lot of men and that of the immortals is the same as in PromMETHEUs Unpounp. Ixvii. 8 The Heliad, the lady-witch. Page 283, Ciprevs Tyrannus. Salt refers, for the historical basis of this grotesque drama, to Martineau’s History of the Peace, Il. ch. ii. He suggests, besides the identifications men- tioned in the Head-note, that the Leech is taxes, the Gadfly, slander; the Rat, espionage. The Minotaur is, of course, John Bull; Adzposa (I. 290), Rossetti says, was an easily identified titled lady of the time, whose name he allows ‘to sleep.’ The example is rare enough to merit imitation. SHELLEY’s NotzEs on the drama are as fol- ows: I. 8. See Universal History for an account of the number of people who died, and the im- mense consumption of garlic by the wretched Egyptians, who made a sepulchre for the name as well as the bodies of their tyrants. I. 1538. And the Lord whistled for the gad- fly out of Athiopia, and for the bee of Egypt, etc. — Ezekiel. [The proper reference is to Isaiah vii. 18: ‘And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt. and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.’| I, 204, If one should marry a gallows, and beget young gibbets, I never saw one so prone, — Cymbeline. II. 173. Rich and rare were the gems she wore. —See Moore’s Irish Melodies. Page 286, I. 77 arch-priest, perhaps Malthus is meant. 1,101. Rossetti notes that this line was a ‘de facto ytterance of Lord Castlereagh.’ I. 196 Chrysaor. Rossetti notes the allusion to ‘ paper-money discussions.’ Cf. THE Mask or ANARCHY, xlv. T. 334, Cf. Toe Mask or ANARCBY, iv. note. II. 60-66. Shelley writes to Peacock, No- vember 8, 1818: ‘Every here and there one sees people employed in agricultural labors, and the plough, the harrow, or the cart, drawn by long teams of milk-white or dove-colored oxen of immense size and exquisite beauty. This. indeed, might be the country of Pasiphaes.? Cf. Lines WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN Hits, 220 Page 291, Eprpsycurpion. This poem has been edited, with a careful study of it, by Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, in the Shelley So- ciety’s Publications (Second Series, No. 7), 1887, and its sources have been examined by Dr. Richard Ackermann in his Quellen, Vorbilder, Stoffe zu Shelley’s Poetischen Werken, 1890. It represents the outcome of conceptions which had been te in a half-formed state, in Shelley’s mind from the beginning of his true ~oetic career in 1816. They constituted, as it were, the elements of an unwritten poem in a fluid state, and were suddenly precipitated by the accident of his meeting with Emilia Vivi- ani under circumstances that made a romantic appeal to his genius. It is easy to enumerate these elements. The conception of a Spiritual Power which is felt in the loveliness of nature and in the thought of man is set forth in the Hymn To IntreLLEcTUAL Beauty (cf. THE Revo.t or Isuam, VI. xxxviii. 1), and to it Shelley dedicates his powers; the pursuit of this spirit, typified under the form of woman and seen only in vision, is the substance of AXASTOR, am the end is represented as the NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 62g lonely death of the poet. The conception of a youth in whom ‘ genius and death contended’ --a variant of the youth in ALAsTOR — occurs in THE SunsEr, 4, and in the Dedication to Tue Revour or Ista, x. 9, and it is notice- able that the figure is repeated as late as ADo- NAIs, xliv., in nearly identical terms. In THE SUNSET, as in ALAsTOR, the youth dies. A new poem, PrincE ATHANASE, was partly written, in which apparently the same pursuit of the ideal was to be represented ; but the con- duct of the poem was to be complicated by the error of Athanase in mistaking the earthly love for the heavenly love, in consequence of which Shelley first named the poem PANDEMOS AND Urania. The figure of Urania would have appeared at the deathbed of Athanase. The pursuit of the ideal was given a metaphysical form in the prose fragment ON Love. He there describes the ideal self as ‘a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we coudemn or despise; the ideal prototype of everything excellent or lovely that we are capable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man.’ He calls it ‘ asoul within our soul ;’ and he adds, ‘the discovery of its antitype [the responding being] is the invisible and un- attainable point to which Love tends.’ In the absence of this beloved one, nature solaces us (ef. Taz Zucca). Shelley had thus conceived of the ideal, both in its universal and in a par- ticwlar form,—the latter under_the form of woman. In the PromerHeus Unzounp he blended the two in Asia, but not so as to hu- manize her; she remains elemental, Titanic, and divine. He returned to the conception of Prince ATHANASE in Una Favo3a, in which he presents the same subject much Italianized in imagery and tone, and essentially as an auto- biography. The ideas of the pursuit, of the contest for the youth, of his error and recovery, are all present. In the Lines ConnEcTED witH EripsycHipion, beside rejected passages of that poem, there is a dedication (possibly meant for FiorpisPrna) in which Shelley ad- dresses an imaginary and uncertain figure, aptly named ‘his Genius,’ by Dr. Garnett, and in this he develops a statement of free love after Plato’s Symposium, in which all objects of beauty are to be loved in an ascending series as varying and incomplete embodiments of the infinite and eternal beauty. EpIpSYCHIDION resumes these elements and combines them into one poem. The ‘soul within the soul’ of the prose fragment ON Love is figured to have left the poet, and he pursues it and finds it, as if it were ‘ the anti- type’ of the same fragment, in Emily. The Spirit of Beauty and Love, also, the eternal soul of the world, is represented as veiling itself in this form of woman, one of its incarnations ; and communion with it is sought in her. Thus under the form of Emily, Shelley unites these cognate and separable conceptions. The pur- suit of the ideal after the manner of both ALAS- ror and Prince ATHANASE is easily recog- uizable, and the part of Pandemos in the forest of error of Una Favota is plain. The autobi- ographical element of the latter is much more defined and more violently stated, with novel imagery of winter and of the planetary system ; but it remains essentially the conflict, variously stated by Shelley as between ‘ genius and death,’ ‘love and death,’ and ‘life and love,’ over the lost youth. The passage relating to free love is an episode, and stands by itself. The description of the paradise is a late rendering oi that bower of bliss which is a constant element in Shelley’s verse. A poem made up of suck various thoughts and subjects, not naturally consistent, could not fail to present much diff- culty to the reader, as they are incapable of be- ing reduced to intellectual unity, though, as has been said, they are cognate and intimately re- lated matters. If Shelley had in mind the Vita Nuova of Dante (cf. also Shelley’s translation of THE First CANZONE OF THE ConviITo) and would have placed Emily in a relation to his doctrine of love and beauty ina way similar to that which Dante attempted, his intention was infelici- tous ; for the lack of reality is felt too strongly. Emily is, at best, a fiction of thought, and het human personality, where felt, detracts from the power of the poem. It appears to me that a similar unreality, as to fact, belongs to the autobiographical passages. The spiritual his- tory of Shelley’s pursuit of the ideal (the ‘ ideal- ized history of my life and feelings’) is clearly set forth in the poem, and can be verified by the succession of his previous works as above. On the other hand, the personal history of Shelley is obscurely told, at best, and except for the representation of Mary and Emily as the moon and the sun, is incapable of verification. How little essential truth there was in the part ascribed to Emily is well known. The other passages, which have been interpreted as per- sonal, may be similarly touched with tenuity as matters of fact, though correctly represent- ing in allegory the moods of Shelley’s inner life as he remembered them, The memory of a poet, especially if it be touched with pain and remorse, when he allows his eloquence to work in images of sorrow and despair to express what would otherwise remain forever unutterable by his lips, is an entirely untrustworthy witness of fact. Shelley’s self-description has the truth of his poetic consciousness at the time, and its moods are sadly sustained by many passages of his verse ; but to seek precise fact and named individuals as meant by his words is, I believe, futile, and may be misleading. It is only as a poem of the inner life that Epzpsycuipion has its high imaginative interest. In the last move- ment of the poem, the voyage, the isle, and the passion are a mystical symbol of the soul com- muning with the ideal object of its pursuit under images of mortal beauty and love; the possession of the ideal, so far as living man can in any way attain to such consciousness of it, i pictured. The suggestion of Prospero’s isle is very strongly felt, 457, and the mysticism of the intention is plain, as in 410 and 477-479, ™ 630 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS appears to me that the realm of poetry may be the specific underlying thought in the allegory, oetry being to Shelley what the isle of the empest was to Prospero, his kingdom of en- chantment and also the medium through which he had communion with the Eternal Spirit. I associate the imagery, so far as it is descriptive of nature and contains veiled meanings, with the similar passages of ToE WircH oF ATLAS, where to my mind the ways and delights of Ge- nius, Imagination, and Poetry, are the subject of the verse. At all events, the poem, in this sec- tion, is entirely disengaged from the personality of Emily, and of the others, and belongs with such delineations of supersensual being as THE Wircn or ATuas and THe Sensitive PLANT. SHELLEY’s FRAGMENT, On Love. Thou demandest what is love? It is that powerful attraction towards all that we con- ceive, or fear or hope beyond ourselves, when we find within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we ex- perience within ourselves. we reason, we would be understood ; if we imagine, we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within another’s; if we feel, we would that another’s nerves should vibrate to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once and mix and melt into our own, that lips of motionless ice should not reply to lips quiver- ing and_ burning with the heart’s best blood. This is Love. This is the bond and the sanc- tion which connects not only man with man, but with everything which exists. We are born into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness. It is prob- ably in correspondence with this law that the infant drains milk from the bosom of its mo- ther; this propensity develops itself with the development of our nature. We dimly see within our intellectual nature a miniature as it were of our entire self, yet deprived of all that we condemn or despise ; the ideal prototype of everything excellent or lovely that we are ca- pable of conceiving as belonging to the nature of man. Not only the portrait of our external being, but an assemblage of the minutest par- ticles of which our nature is composed ;! a mir- ror whose surface reflects only the forms of purity and brightness; a soul within our soul that describes a circle around its proper para- dise, which pain, and sorrow, and evil dare not overleap. To this we eagerly refer all sensa- tions, thirsting that they should resemble or correspond with it. The discovery of its anti- type; the meeting with an understanding ca- pable of clearly estimating our own; an imagi- nation which should enter into and seize upon the subtle and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and unfold in secret ; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords o 1 These words are ineffectual and metaphorical. Most words are so. No help! two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompani- ment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and of a combination of all these in such proportion as the type within demands ; this is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends ; and to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the faintest shadow of that without the possession of which there is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in solitude, or in that deserted state when we are sur- rounded by human beings, and yet they sympa- thize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, and the waters and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysteri- ous tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. Sterne says that if he were in a desert he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead, man be- comes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives is the mere husk of what once he was. SHELLEY’s Fracment, Una Favowa (Gar- nett’s trans.). here was a youth who travelled through dis- tant lands, seeking throughout the world a lady of whom he was enamoured. And who this lady was, and how this youth became enamoured of her, and how and why the great love he bore her forsook him, are things worthy to be known by every gentle heart. At the dawn of the fifteenth spring of his life, a certain one calling himself Vinee awoke him, saying that one whom he had ofttimes be- held in his dreams abode awaiting him. This Love was accompanied by a great troop of female forms, all veiled in white, and crowned with laurel, ivy, and myrtle, garlanded and in- terwreathed with violets, roses, and_ lilies. They sang with such sweetness that perhaps the harmony of the spheres, to which the stars dance, is not so sweet. d their manners and words were so alluring that the youth was en- ticed, and, arising from his couch, made him- self ready to do all the pleasure of him who called himself Love; at whose behest he fol- lowed him by lonely ways and deserts and cay- erns, until the whole troop arrived at a solitary wood, in a gloomy valley between two most lofty mountains, which valley was planted in the manner of a labyrinth, with pines, cypresses, cedars, and yews, whose shadows begot a mix- ture of delight and sadness. And in this wood the youth for a whole year followed the uncer- tain footsteps of this his companion and guide, as the moon follows the earth, save that there was no change in him, and nourished by the fruit of a certain tree which grew in the midst of the NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 632 labyrinth —a food sweet and bitter at once, which being cold as ice to the lips, appeared fire in the veins. ‘The veiled figures were con- tinually around him, ministers and attendants obedient to his least gesture, and messengers between him and Love, when Love might leave him fora little on his other errands. But these figures, albeit executing his every other com- mand with swiftness, never would unveil them- selves to him, although he anxiously besought them ; one only excepted, whose name was Life, and who had the fame of a potent enchantress. She was tall of person and beautiful, cheerful and easy in her manners, and richly adorned, and, as it seemed from her ready unveiling of herself, she wished well to this youth. But he soon perceived that she was more false than any Siren, for by her counsel Love abandoned him in this savage place, with only the com- pany of these shrouded figures, who, by their obstinately remaining veiled, had always wrought him dread. And none can expound whether these figures were the spectres of his own dead thoughts, or the shadows of the liv- ing thoughts of Love. Then Life, haply ashamed. of her deceit, concealed herself within the cay- ern of a certain sister of hers dwelling there ; and Love, sighing, returned to his third heaven. Searcely had Love departed, when the masked forms, released from his government, unveiled themselves before the astonished youth. And for many days these figures danced around him whithersoever he went, alternately mocking and threatening him ; and in the night while he reposed they defiled in long and slow procession before his couch, each more hideous and terrible than the other. Their horrible aspect and loathsome figure so overcame his heart with sadness that the fair heaven, coy- ered with that shadow, clothed itself in clouds before his eyes ; and he wept so much that the herbs upon his path, fed with tears instead of dew, became pale and bowed like himself. Weary at length of this suffering, he came to the grot of the Sister of Life, herself also an enchantress, and found her sitting before a pale fire of perfumed wood, singing laments sweet in their melancholy, and weaving a white shroud, upon which his name was half wrought, with the obscure and imperfect beginning of a certain other name ; and he besought her to tell him her own, and she said, with a faint but sweet voice, ‘Death.’ And the youth said, ‘O lovely Death, J pray thee to aid me against these hateful phantoms, companions of thy sister, which cease not to torment me.’ And Death com- forted him, and took his hand with a smile, and kissed his brow and cheek, so that every vein thrilled with joy and fear, and made him abide with her in a chamber of her cavern, whither, she said, it was against Destiny that the wicked companions of Life should ever come. The youth continually conversing with Death, and she, like-minded to a sister, caressing him and showing him every courtesy both in deed and word, he quickly became enamoured of her, and Life herself, far less any of her troop, seemed fair to him no longer; and his passion so overcame him that upon his knees he prayed Death to love him as he loved her, and consent to: do his pleasure. But Death said, ‘ Audacious: that thou art, with whose desire has Death ever - complied ? If thou lovedst me not, perchance I might love thee—beloved by thee, I hate thee and I fly thee.’ Thus saying, she went forth from the cavern, and her dusky and: ethereal form was soon lost amid the inter— woven boughs of the forest. From that moment the youth pursued the track of Death ; and so mighty was the love that led him that he had encircled the world and searched through all its regions, and many years were already spent, but sorrows rather than years had blanched his locks and withered the flower of his beauty, when he found himself upon the confines of the very forest from which his wretched wanderings had begun. He cast himself upon the grass and wept for many hours, so blinded by his tears that for much time he did not perceive that not all that bathed his face and his bosom were his own, but that a lady bowed behind him wept for pity of his weeping. And lifting up his eyes he saw_ her, and it seemed to him never to have beheld so glorious a vision, and he doubted much whether she were a human creature. And his love of Death was suddenly changed into hate and sus- picion, for this new love was so potent that it overcame every other thought. This compas- sionate lady at first loved him for mere pity ; but love grew up swiftly with compassion, and she loved for Love’s own sake, no one be- loved by her having need of pity any more. This was the lady in whose quest Love had led the youth through that gloomy labyrinth of error and suffering, haply for that he esteemed him unworthy of so much glory, and perceived him too weak to support such exceeding joy. After having somewhat dried their tears, the twain walked together in that same forest, until Death stood before them, and said, ‘ Whilst, O youth, thou didst love me, I hated thee, and now that thou hatest me, I love thee, and wish so well to thee and thy bride that in my king- dom, which thou mayest call Paradise, I have set apart a chosen spot, where ye may securely fulfil your happy loves.’ And the lady, of- fended, and perchance somewhat jealous by reason of the past love of her spouse, turnea her back upon Death, saying within herself, ‘What would this lover of my husband who comes here to trouble us?’ and cried, ‘ Life! Life!’ and Life came, with a gay visage. crowned with a rainbow, and clad in a variou! mantle of chameleon skin; and Death went away weeping, and departing said with a sweet voice, ‘ Ye mistrust me, but I forgive ye, and await ye where ye needs must come, for I dwell with Love and Eternity, with whom the souls whose love is everlasting must hold communion ; then will ye perceive whether I have deserved our distrust. Meanwhile I commend ye to Life; and, sister mine, I beseech thee, by the love of that Death with whom thou wert twin 632 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS born, not to employ thy customary arts against these lovers, but content thee with the tribute thou hast already received of sighs and tears, which are thy wealth.’ The youth, mindful of how great evil she had wrought him in that wood, mistrustea Life; but the lady, although she doubted, yet being jealous of Death, ... Page 297. Epresycuipion. L’anima, the soul that loves, projects itself beyond creation, and creates for itself in the infinite a world all its own, very different from this obscure and fearful gulf. Page 298 ADVERTISEMENT, gran vergogna the passage, not quite accurately quoted, is from Dante’s Vita Nuova, xxv.: ‘It would be a great disgrace to him who should rhyme any- thing under the garb of a figure or of rhetorical coloring, if afterward, being asked, he should not be able to denude his words of this garb, in such wise that they should have a true mean- ing.’ (Norton’s trans.) Depication. Cf. Lines CONNECTED WITH Epipsycuiwi0n, p. 436, line 1. Voi, Dante, Convito, Trattato Secondo (cf. Shelley’s trans., p. 522). ‘Ye who intelligent the third heaven move,’ i. e., the angelic beings who guide the sphere c* Venus, or love. The lines translated below, My Song, are lines 53-61 of the Canzone. Page 298, line J. spirit, Emilia; orphan one, ary. Line 2 name, Shelley. Line 4 withered memory. The reference is +o the autobiographical character of the poem. Line 5 captive bird. The suggestion is given by the confinement of Emilia in the convent; but the poem, wherever it touches the fact of life and the person of Emilia, tends immediately to escape into the free world of poetry, as here the idea of the captive bird leads at once to Shelley’s imaging his relation as that of the rose to the nightingale, but a rose without mor- tal life or passion, a dead and thornless rose ; and, directly, in lines 13-18, the image of the bird and the cage loses touch with Emilia and becomes the metaphor for the spirit: in the body. Line 21 Seraph. In this invocation, through its succession of characteristic images that Shelley uses to symbolize the eternal Loveliness, nothing is present in the verse except the gen- eral symbolization of the Ideal under the form of woman, as in Dante’s Beatrice. Emilia’s personality does not color the conceptions, but rather the conceptions give life to her. Shelley’s source is his lifelong idea of the Eternal Love- liness, not now new-found in Plato or Dante, though possibly quickened by his recent reading of the latter, and tonched in some details by reminiscences of it. Ackermann compares with lines 21-24 Vita Nuova, xix. 43-44 (Norton’s trans.) : ‘Love saith concerning her: ‘* How can it be That mortal thing be thus adorned and pure? ” ? shi. 7,8: “Who so doth shine that through her splendid light The pilgrim spirit upon her doth gaze.’ Convito, iii. 59-60: Her aspect overcomes our intelligence as the sun’s ray weak vision. Such parellelism is slight, and less than that with Shelley’s earlier expression of the same conception in the image of Asia, whom line 26 especially recalls. : ines 30-32, Ackermann compares Vita Nuova, xxi. 1, 2 (Norton’s trans.), * Within her eyes my lady beareth Love, So that whom she regards is gentle made.’ Line 35. The verse returns momentarily to Emilia as a weeping and sympathetic figure, life-like through the description of her eyes, in line 38, and, except for the second series o: images, 56, 69, remains near her in thought to line 72. Line 42 Youth’s vision, the vision of ALAs- TOR. Line 44 its unvalued shame. that Shelley is indifferent to. Line 46 name, spouse, cf. 130. Line 49 one, the second ; other, the wish ex- pressed in line 45. Line 50 names, sister and snouse. Line 57. The second series of images deals rather with human aspects of ideal love as the first dealt rather with the visible aspects of ideal beauty, Line 68, wingless, i. e., without the power to fly away, and hence lasting. Line 71. The infirmity lies in the fact that Shelley has a double subject, mortal and eternal, Emily and the ideal vision, and nowhere in the poem does he really fuse them into oneas Dante did in Beatrice. Line 72 She, the figure here ideally de- scribed is the type given in lines 25-32, more particularized in vision. At the beginning of the passage, there isa similar absence of per- sonality, and the imacery and idea are reminis- cent of the vision of ALAsToR and the descrip- tion of Asia; and only in line 112 does the verse suggest the living figure of Emily, and then only momentarily, the imagery immediately soaring away from her. Line _75 light, life, peace, refer severally to ay, Spring, Sorrow, by a usage common to English verse. anes 78, 79, Cf. for the gradual development and illustration of the image, constant in Shel- ley, AuAstor, 161-177, THe Revoir or Is- tam, I. lvii.. PRometHEus Unpounp, II. i, 70-79, IL. v. 26. Lines 83-85. Ackermann compares Vita Nuova, xxi. 9,10; xxvi. 12-14; Convito, iii. 5-8, 41-48. The parallelism is slight, that of the second passage being nighest : ‘And from her countenance there seems to move A spirit sweet and in Love’s very guise, Who to the soul, in going, sayeth: Sigh!’ (Norton’s trans.) It is true that the word translated countenance is /abbia, used (says the comment) for Saccia, voito. Lines 87-90. Cf. PromeTHEvs Unsounn, IL v. 53, note. ‘fhe contempt NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 633 Lines 91-100. An expansion of line 78. The description attempts too great subtlety. The ee, issues from the eyes under an aspect of light and motion, blended yet separately per- ceived, and diffuses itself (as it were) over and through the countenance and form, seen in flow- ing outlines that pass into the blood-warmed cheeks and fingers, and finally lose the eye that follows in the vision of that supreme beauty which is hardly to be supported by mortal sight. The passage is built up of three elements, ap- parently: the function of the eye (as in the older Italian poets) as the gateway of the soul; the function of the physical loveliness of the body as the revelation of tbe soul that ani- mates it ; the function of all particular beauty, whether of soul or body, or as here inaxticatle blended, to lead the mind back to the Eternal Beauty. Line 105. The description here becomes more purely human, preparing for line 112, which must be taken as a direct recurrence to Emily, the ‘mortal shape;’ but as the intervening images of lines 109-111 exceed true human description, so the series of images that follow, lines 115-123, apply to the idealized pressnige of beauty rather than to any ‘ mortal shape. Line 117 the third sphere, that of Venus, Cf£., above, p. 298, Voi, note. Line 130. Cf.line 50, The interval from this point to line 189 is of the nature of an interrup- tion or excursus, in which Shelley presents and defends his doctrine of freedom in love as it had come to take on a form of Platonic phi- losophy in his mind. Emily is directly ad- dressed, as one loved by him. Line 137 substance, her spirit. Line 148 Beacon, place a warning light upon. Line 149. Cf. LinEs CONNECTED WITH Epi- PSYCHIDION, p. 436. Line 169. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 210-211. Line 190. The poem here makes a new be- ginning, and from here to line 344 is ‘the idealized history’ of Shelley’s life and feelings, Being, the vision of ALAsToR, and also the ‘awful shadow of some unseen power,’ of the Hymw to Inre.ctectuaL Beauty. Lines 211, 212. In whatever outlives death, and is immortal in the works of art. Line 228 cone, cf. PromETHEUS UNBOUND, . 444. Line 236. Cf. prose fragment On Love. Line 238 thas soul out of my soul, Shelley’s translation of the title of the poem, cf. line 455. Tt goes back to the fragment On Love, where are the phrases, ‘a miniature, as it were, of our entire self,’ ‘a soul within our own soul,’ the ‘ antitype,’ ete. Lines 239, 240. Cf. Hymn to IyrELLecruaL Beauty, V. Line 249. Cf. Una Favowa. ; Line 256. Venus Pandemos. | incline to this interpretation becanse PANcEMUS AND URA- wia was one of the titles of Prince ATHANASE, which was one of Shelley’s early treatments of the generic theme of this poem. Line 267, i. e., he sought the realization of the ideal in living persons. The identification of such persons in the three lines following has been attempted by Ackermann and others but unsatisfactorily. Line 272. Cf, ADonalIs, xxxi, 8-9. Line 277 One, Mary Shelley. Line 301. Cf. Una Favona. Line 308-320. The elucidation of the passage as autobiography is futile. The character of the Maniac in JutiaN AND MappaALo, and the mysterious lady of Naples in the life of Shelley (et. InvocaTIoN TO MisERY, note), have been referred to by commentators ; but what reality there was in either is unknown. Line 345 Twin Spheres, i. e., Mary and aang as the Moon and Sun, Shelley being the- arth. Line 368 Comet, the third person, who is to- be made the Evening Star, after the analogy uf eS Sun, Moon, and Earth, is not to be identi- ed, Line 388. The last movement of the poem here begins. Cf. Lines wrirrEN AMONG THE Evucanran Hirts, 335-373, and PromMETHEUS Unsounn, ILI. iii. Line 592. Cf. Dante, Vita Nuova, XII, Bal- lata, 35-40. Line 595. Cf. Dante, Vita Nuova, XXXIL., Canzone, 71-74. Line 601. Cf. Dante, Sonetto, II. 9 (Shelley’s trans. p. 522). Marina is Mary, Vanna, Jane Williams, Primus, Edward Williams. Page 407. Aponais. This poem has been edited, with elaborate notes and other matter, by Rossetti (Clarendon Press, 1891), and its sources have been studied by Dr. Richard Ackermann, Quellen, Vorbilder, Sioffe zu Shel- ley’s Poetischen Werken, 1890. Rossetti refers also to Lt.-Col. Hime’s Greek Materials of Shel- ley’s Adonais, 1888, a volume I have never seen. Aponais is based upon Bion’s Lament for Adonais and Moschus’ Lament for Bion, very much as PROMETHEUS UNBOUND is based upon ARschylus’ Prometheus : that is to say, the Greek material, while recognizable in many details, is so modified by Shelley’s treatment as to be recreated. The result is an original modern poem. The obligation is, as in the PRomE- THEUS UnsounD, most felt in the earlier part of the work, and finally the poem takes leave of the Greek imagery and spirit, and in the manner of Spenser and Milton ends in the affirmation of the eternal blessedness of the spirit lost in the radiance of heavenly being. From Bion the picture of Aphrodite’s mourn- ing, accompanied by the weeping Loves, is trans- formed into Urania’s mourning, accompanied by the Dreams; from Moschus the picture of the lamenting Satyrs, Priapi, Fanes, Fairies, Echo, nightingales, sea-birds, and others, is trans formed into the sorrow of the Desires, Adora- tions, Persuasions, the elements, Echo, the sea- gon, the flowers, the nightingale and the eagle. From Moschus, also, the contrast of the life of the year with that of man, and the ascribing of the death to poison, and from Bion, the suffere 634 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS ing of Urania on her journey, the kiss and the ascribing of the death to the ‘dragon in his den’ are derived, though these elements are originally treated, expanded, and varied. In Stanza xxviil., with the introduction of the circumstances and persons of the time, the con- temporary element begins; the mourning of the idealized figures of the poets continues it ; the curse upon the destroyer follows ; and the final raovement of the poem, its pan of im- mortality, commencing at Stanza xxxix., is in the purely modern spirit, an overflow of Shelley’s eloquence in his most characteristic phrases and ideas,—the best sustained, the most condensed, the most charged with purely spiritual passion in personal form, of any of his poems of hunger for eternity. The develop- ment of the poem, beginning with the poignancy of human grief rendered through images of beauty and the saddening of the things of earthly life however lovely, and then changing by subtle interpretations of the spirit evoking its own eternal nature in brooding over the dead form of what it loved, and ending at last in the triumphant reversion of its initial grief into joy in the presence of the eternal life fore- tasted in fixed faith and enduring love even here, —this is the classic form of Christian elegy. Aponals, as a work of art, effects this evolution of life out of death, with more un- consciousness, greater unity and steadfast ten- dency, with passion more spontaneous and irresistible, with melody more plaintive, elo- quence more sweet and springing, imagination more comprehensive and sublime, than any other English elegy. It is artificial only to those whose minds are not yet familiarized with the language of imagery, — those to whom the gods of Greece speak an unknown tongue; it is cold only to those who confound personal grief with that universal sorrow for youthful death which has been the burden of elegy from the first ; it is dark with metaphysics only to those who have not yet caught a single ray from the spirit of Plato. What particular mode of being Shelley had in mind as the lot of mankind hereafter is a matter of small concern. He used, here, the imagery of both the theory of pantheism and of personal immortality, apparently with in- difference, though with a natural poetic clinging to the latter, as a thing of the concrete. The essential interest he felt was rather in the fact than the mode. Further statements, as to this, are given below; but it would, I think, be wrong to interpret ADONAIS as a pantheistic poem in any narrow, definite, or dogmatic sense. ‘o my mind individuality survives in Shelley’s conception of the eternal life here, as it does in the other illustrations he has given of his faith, —.say, for example, in the Epresycurmion. Page 307. orro, Plato. Cf. Shelley’s translation To STELLA, p. 519. Preracr, Moschus, 111-114. ‘Poison came, Bion, to thy mouth — thou didst know poison. To such lips as thine did it come and was not sweetened? What mortal was so cruel that could mix poison for thee, or who could give thee the venom that heard iby vous ? Surely, he had no music in his soul’ (Lang’s trans.). Twenty-fourth year. Keats was twenty-five at his death, which occurred February 23, 182%. Quarterly Review, April, 1818. The rupture of the blood vessel described below was in no way due to the effect of this criticism on Keats’ spirits. Calumniator. Shelley refers to Milman, but he was mistaken in thinking him his unknown assailant. Lavished his fortune. The reference is to the family relations of Keats, and is apparently un- deserved. [The references to Bion and Moschus are te Meineke’s edition, Berlin, 1856. Page 308. Stanzai.1. Cf. ii.1. Cf. Milton, Lycidas, 50. i. 3 Urania. Aphrodite Urania, though bor- rowing some elements from the conception of the Muse Urania. ii. 7. Cf. Moschus, 53, iii. 6, 7. Cf. Bion, 55, 96, iv. 1. Cf, Moschus, 70. iv. 2 He, Milton. iv. 9. ‘Homer was the first and Dante the second epic poet. ... Milton was the third epic poet.’ EFENSE OF POETRY. v.3. The humbler poets. vi. 3. The reference is to Keats’ Isabella. vii. 1 Capital. Rome. vii. 7, Cf. Bion, 71. viii. 5 His extreme way to her dim dwelling- place. The dissolution of the body. viii. 6 Hunger. Corruption. ix.1 Dreams. Poems. x. 1,2. Cf. Bion, 85. xi.1,2. Cf. Bion, 83, 84. xi. 3-8. Cf. Bion, 80-82. n xii. 5 death, the dampness of death upon his ps. xili. Cf. Moschus, 26-29. xiv. 3-6, The image is of a clouded dawn. Cf. xli. 6, 7. xv. 6-9. Cf. Moschus, 30, 31. xvi. 1-3. Cf. Moschus, 31, 32. xvi. 5-6. Cf. Moschus, 6, 7, 32. xvii.1. Cf. Moschus, 38-48, 87-93. Sister, the reference is to Keats’ Ode to the Night- ingale, xvii. 5. A reminiscence of Milton’s Areopa- gitica. xviii. Cf. Moschus, 101-106. xxi. 6 lends what life must borrow. Reality is beyond the grave, the eternal substance, and mortal life derives its apparent reality from it, and is its shadow only. xxii. 2. Cf. Shelley’s translation of Bion, p. 520, where he introduces this phrase from his own invention. xxii. 8. A thought of pain roused by mem- ory. xxiv. Cf. Bion, 21, 22, 65, and Plato, Sym- postum, 195; the stanza is blended of the three sources, xxv. 3-5. Death ceased and life came back to the body, or with less vital imagery in ion, 1, NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 635 line 9, ‘Death rose and smiled’— the reani- mation of the body being only a phantom of e. xxvi. Cf. Bion, 43-53. In line 9 the turn given to the thought of Bion is singular, and in fact the words sound like an anticipation of the closing mood of the poem, and adirect ex- pression of Shelley’s own sadness. xxvii. 1. Cf. Bion, 60, 61. xxvii. 6 shield, the reference is to Perseus. xxviit. 7 Pythian, Byron. The reference is to his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. xxix. The inferior contemporaries of genius share its mortal day of life, but being ephemeral, they are forgotten in death, as insects cease at sunset, while genius lives on as a star of im- mortal fame. The imagery is mixed. xxx.2 magic mantles, the reference is to Prospero. xxx. 3 Pilgrim, Byron. xxx. § lyrist, Moore. xxxi. 1 one, Shelley. xxxili. Cf. REMEMBRANCE, ili. 4. xxxiv. 4 unknown land, England. xxxiv. 8,9. Branded like Cain’s and ensan- guined like Christ’s. xxxv. 6 He, Leigh Hunt. xxxvi. 1-9. Cf. Moschus, 111-114. xxxvi. 6 prelude, i. e., what Keats had sung was but the prelude to the real song that death silenced. xxxvili. 4. A reminiscence of Milton’s Para- dise Lost, iv. 829. With this stanza the poem begins the pean of immortality which closes it, in harmony with the tradition of Milton and Spenser. Shelley resumes again the mood which had received such repeated and various illustra- tion in his verse, and finally in EpresycHIpIon, and presents the opposition of Life to Death as the shadow to the substance, the night to the day, and declares the absorption of the soul of Keats into the Spiritual Power whose_mani- festations in our knowledge are Life, Beauty, and Love. Of the state of the dead, as in- dividuals, he refrains from speaking, as he had refrained from the time of THE SunsET, leay- ing it in uncertainty ; of the permanence of the spirit in the eternal world he once more and for the last time speaks with passionate conviction, both as the infinite of being in original creative activity and as the hope, faith, and home of the human soul. xl, Ackermann compares Spenser, The Shep- heardes Calendar, xi. The resemblance is great ; and so, in the case of other passages from this lament, the parallelism is clear; but I do not believe that the poem of Spenser was in. Shel- ley’s mind except secondarily through Milton’s echoes of it in Lycidas. Vit : xlii. The pantheistic suggestion in this and the following stanzas is strong; but it cannot be held that Shelley commits himself definitely to the theory of pantheism here any more than to the theory of individual immortality in xlv. and elsewhere. In xlii. 1-5 Shelley appears to have in mind the immortality of Keats through his poetry, which in interpreting Nature has mingled with it, and become in a sense a part of it (ef. Coleridge, The Nightingale, 30-38) to the apprehension of the mind that has been fed upon his music and imagination; and from this conception the passage is easy for Shelley to restate the idea in the higher and abstract terms of a union of Keats with the operant might of that power ‘ which has withdrawn his being to its own,’ the same, of course, with ‘the burning fountain’ of xxxviii. xliii. The stanza is a repetition of the pre- ceding ; lines 1,2 being identical with lines 1-5 in the former stanza, and lines 2-9 being identi- eal with lines 6-9 of the former. The process of the operation of the ‘One Spirit’ is explained, —namely, that it revealsitself according to the nature of its medium. The union of the soul of Keats primarily with the Eternal Spirit, and secondarily with Nature, through which that Spirit is revealed, is clearly affirmed; but the loss of individuality is not affirmed, but on the contrary the suggestion of it remains in xlii. 2, xliv. 8, and is at once developed, with no sense of inconsistency, in xly., xlvi. and is still felt as an element of the verse to the last line of the poem. The fact seems to be, as stated above, that Shelley used the imagery of pantheism and of personal immortality indiffer- ently to express his faith in the continuance of the soul under unknown conditions of ex- istence. xliv.7 The conflict of ‘life and love’ for the youth is familiar to Shelley’s thought from the first. Cf. Epipsycuipion, note. xlv. 1. Those whom early death overtaok before the accomplishment of their genius, of - whom the three named are types. xlvi. 3. Cf. Lines on THE EvuGANEAN Hits, 269. : xlvi. 9. The reference is to Plato’s epigram. Cf. Shelley’s trans. p. 519. xlvii. The germ of this stanza may, perhaps, , be found in Coleridge’s Ode to France, V 18-20: * Yet while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea and air, Possessing all things with intensest love.’ Ho. The idea of the stanza seems to lie in the oppo- sition between the insignificance of the individ- ual and the infinity of his powers of compre- hension and sympathy, which is, perhaps, the more obvious interpretation. It may be, how- ever, that Shelley here indicates a way of ap- proaching before death the mystical union which is in his thoughts; the idea would then be, — shoot thy being through the universe, and then, still comprehending all things in thy spirit, gather the universe back into thy individuality as a mortal in time, and standing thus at the utmost limit of earthly being, on the brink of eternity, fear lest at the moment of such exalta- tion thou shouldst sink in despair with a heavy heart, as Shelley so often represents such fail- ure at the climax of emotion, in the Eprpsy- CHIDION, the PROMETHEUS UnpounD, the ODE to LIBERTY, and elsewhere. 636 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS xlviii. 8-9. Cf. Epresycumpron, 209-212. xlix. 7 slope, the Roman cemetery. Ct. Pre- FACE, pp. 3U7, 308. Shelley also describes it in a letter to Peacock, December 22, 1818: ‘ The English burying-place is a green slope near the walls, under the pyramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery 1 ever beheld. Tosee thesun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the whisper- ing of the wind among the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mosily of women and young people who were buried there, one might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and obliv- io} n. 1,3. The tomb of Cestius. li. 3-5, Inquire not into another’s grief. There may be an obscure reference to the fact that Shelley’s child, William, was buried there. lii, The opposition of the permanent to the transitory, of the ever shining light to the sha- dows of earthly life, of the ‘ white radiance of Eternity’ to the prismatic colors of its ‘ por tions’ in time; Death asthe Liberator and Re- storer of the soul to true being, whose glory transcends its revelation in nature and the forms of art, — over these cardinal convictions of his poetry, long familiarized to his imagina- tion, Shelley throws for the last time, the veil of words. lili. The poem here becomes purely personal, and after the self-portraiture of this stanza, rises with vital lyric passion to its outburst of min- gled worship, prophecy, and aspiration driving through the gulf of death on the verge of eternal hfe, liv. The clearest, most comprehensive and most condensed expression of Shelley’s concep- tion of the infinite and its preseuce and operation in this life. liv. 5-7. Cf. xliii. 5-8. ' Iw. 1 breath, the Infinite. lv. 4. The reference to his own troubled rareer is clear. lv. 9 Beacons, lights homeward, Page 317. Henxas. The sources of this ‘drama have been studied by Dr. Richard Ackermann in his Quedlen, Vorbilder, Stoffe zu Shelley's Poetischen Werken, 1890. HE.uAs is “based on Alschylus’ Perse, so far as its struc- - ture is concerned, and is indebted to that drama ‘for some details. As in his other borrowings from the Greek, however, Shelley recreated the material into an original modern poem. In this instance, owing perhaps to the historical char- acter of its main matter, he departs less from his model, and does not develop the work at its close into ‘something new and strange,’ as in the PromETHEUs Unzounp and Aponais. He introduces, on the lips of the Wandering Jew, a metaphysical theory of existence, but does not evolve it to further issues of thought or im- agination, and at the end he takes leave of the actual Greece and sings a hymn of the millen. nial land after the famous eclogue of Virgil. These are the two principal points in which he varies from the Alschylean model, unless the opening after Calderon be also included. In the first instance Shelley apparently re- turned to his projected drama on the Book of Job, and adapting this idea to the situation of Greece attempted to blend the two subjects, The Prologue, rescued from his note-books by Dr, Garnett, represents this scheme. In it Christ appears as the genius presiding over the better tate of mankind, concentrating under his power as the incarnating spirit of civiliza- tion all those ideas of Freedom, Love, and so- cial good which were dearest to Shelley ; Satan similarly presides over their opposites, slavery, hatred, wrong in all its forms ; and these two ‘mighty opposites’ are conceived, seemingly, after the analogy of the angelic intelligences animating and guiding the spheres, as each the spirit of his own orb of energy. Dr. Garnett cites, appositely, a passage from Johnson on Dryden, dealing with a similar idea; but it is not shown, nor does it seem to me at all likely, that Shelley knew the passage. Very little of the drama in this form was written, and Shel- ley abandoned it for the less ambitious shape in which Hetuas was created. The majesty of the persons, the grandeur of the conception, opening fresh avenues for poetic originality un- tried in any literature, and the loftiness of the execution in the few score lines he wrote, con- vince me that, had Shelley been equal to the task, this work would have far surpassed all his other poetry, including the PromEraEus Uxzounp, in sublime and novel power. And after long familiarity with his works I may perhaps be pardoned for owning that his fac- ulty of creative imagination seems to me to ex- ceed immeasurably tis ability to execute con- ception. The weakness under which he so often describes himself as sinking was the weight of power, — of arapid and intense creative faeulty, as intellectual as it was imaginative, as eon- erete in operation as it was universal in inten- | tion, as rich in multitude as in unity, and con- | stituting a power of genius beyond | strength to sustain, both physically and artis+ } tically. He, for some reason, did not go on to is mortal this new task ; and in the Hetzas he wrote, which derives its strength from his enthusiasm for freedom in practical struggle and his unfail- ing dream of good for man, there are, I think, signs of the lassitude of his power in the unus- ual way in which he leans not only on Aischy- lus, but on Shakspere, Virgil, and others; in the repetition beyond his wont of ideas and im- ages of his own former svorks, and in the use of accustomed phrases in his diction. The drama is, it is true, an improvisation, and as such, rap- idly done, and naturally it is ‘studded in these ways with reminiseeunes of others and of him- self in style and mo‘cter ; but, charged as it is with the love of libe rty, the adoration of ancient Greece, and the bope of peace, and instinct as its choruses are with haunting melody of that NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 637 strange sort where music seems to outvalue the words as a means of expression of the mood, yet one feels in it a wearied pulse, though the pulse still of one of ‘the sons of light.’ SHELLEY’s Notes on HELLAS. Line 60. Milan was the centre of the resist- ‘ance of the Lombard league against the Aus- trian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa burned the city to the ground, b .t liberty lived in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation from its ruin. See Sismondi’s Histoire des Républiques Italiennes, .a book which has done much towards awaken- ing the Italians to an imitation of their great ancestors. Line 197. The popular notions of Chris- tianity are represented in this chorus as true in their relation to the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will su- persede, without ouster iis their merits in a relation more universal. The first stanza con- trasts the immortality of the living and think- ing beings which inhabit the planets, and to use acommon and inadequate phrase, clothe them- selves in matter, with the transience of the no- blest manifestations of the external world. The concluding verses indicate a progressive ‘state of more or less exalted existence, accord- ing to the degree of perfection which every dis- tinct intelligence may have attained. Let it not be supposed that I mean to dogmatize upon a subject concerning which all men are equally ignorant, or that I think the Gordian knot of the origin of evil can be disentangled by that or any similar assertions. The received hypo- thesis of a Being, resembling men in the moral attributes of his nature, having called us out of non-existence, and after inflicting on us the misery of the commission of error, should su- peradd that of the punishment and the priva- tions consequent upon it, still would remain inexplicable and incredible. That there is a true solution of the riddle, and that in our pre- sept state that solution is unattainable by us, are propositions which may be regarded as equally certain : meanwhile, as it is the province of the poet to attach himself to those ideas which exalt and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to have conjectured the condition of that futurity towards which we are all impelled by an inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until better arguments can be produced than sophisms which disgrace the cause, this desire itself must remain the strongest and the only presumption that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking being. : Line 245. The Greek Patriarch, after having been compelled to fulminate an anathema against the insurgents, was put to death by the ‘urks. Fortunately the Greeks have been taught that they cannot buy security by degradation, and the Turks, though equally cruel, are less cun- ning than the smooth-faced tyrants of Europe. ‘As to the anathema, his Holiness might as well have thrown his mitre at Mount Athos for any effect that it produced. The chiefs of the Greeks are almost all men of comprehension and enlightened views on religion and_poli- ties. Line 563. A Greek who had been Lord By- ron’s servant commands the insurgents in Attica. ‘This Greek, Lord Byron informs me, though a poet and an enthusiastic patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and unenterpris- ing person. It appears that circumstances make men what they are, and that we all contain the germ of adegree of degradation or of greatness whose connection with our character is deter- mined by events. Line 598. It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near Lacedemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, but the preval- ence of such a rumor strongly marks the state of Bi ageee enthusiasrz in Greece. ine $15. For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, see Gibbon’s Dedline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. xii. p. 223, The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjurer, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through the confusion of thought with the ob- jects of thought, and the excess of passion ani- mating the creations of imagination. It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a degree by any one who should have made himself master of the secret associations of another’s thoughts. Line 1060. The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumors of wars, ete., may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to anticipate, however darkly, a period of regeneration and happiness is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign. It will remind the reader ‘magno nec proximo inter- vallo’ of Isaiah and Virgil, whose ardent spirits, overleaping the actual reign of evil which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of society in which the ‘lion shall lie down with the lamb,’ and ‘omnis feret omnia tellus.’ Let these great names be my authority and my excuse. Line 1090. Saturn and Love were among ihe deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt ; the One who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World were amerced of their wor- ship ; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America, certainly have reigned over the un- derstandings of men in conjunction or in suc- cession, during periods in which all we know of 638 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS evil has been ina state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the arts, perpetually increasing activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said, that as far as tem- perance and chastity are concerned, they gave so edifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a power who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were called into exist- ence by his sole will; and for the period of a thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of men has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who ap- proached the nearest to his innocence and wis- dom, sacrificed under every aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well known. Page 317. Hextias. The motto is the one which Shelley asked Peacock to have placed on two seals, ‘one smaller and the other hand- somer ; the device a dove with outspread wings, and this motto round it.’ Page 318. Dspication. Mavrocordato, a member of Shelley’s Pisan circle of friends, of whom Shelley repeatedly wrote with enthu- siam. He read Antigone with Mary, and the Agamemnon and Paradise Lost with Shelley. REFACE. Goat-song, THE CENCI. Page 320. Protocur. Dr. Garnett’s note, on first publishing this fragment, gives all needed information about it. ‘Mrs. Shelley informs us, in her Note on the Prometheus Un- bound, that at the time of her husband’s arrival in Italy, he meditated the production of three dramas. One of these was the Prometheus it- self ; the second, a drama on the subject of Tasso’s madness; the third, one founded on the Book of Job; ‘‘of which,” she adds, ‘the never abandoned the idea.’’ That this was the ease will be apparent from the following newly- discovered fragment, which may have been, as I have on the whole preferred to describe it, an unfinished Prologue to Hellas, or perhaps the original sketch of that work, discarded for the existing more dramatic, but less ambitious ver- sion, for which the Perse of Aischylus evi- dently supplied the model. It is written in the same bvok as the original MS. of Hellas, and so blended with this as to be only separable after a very minute examination. Few even of Shel- ley’s rough drafts have proved more difficult to decipher or connect ; numerous chasms will be observed which, with every diligence, it has proved impossible to fill up ; the correct reading of many printed lines is far from certain ; and the imperfection of some passages is such as to have occasioned their entire omission. Never- theless, I am confident that the unpolished and mutilated remnant will be accepted as a worthy emanation of one of Shelley’s sublimest moods, and a noble earnest of what he might have accomplished, could he have executed his sriginal design of founding a drama on the Book of Job. Weak health, variable spirits, and, above all, the absence of encouragement, must be enumerated as chief among the causes which have deprived our literature of so mag- nificent a work. ‘ Besides the evident imitation of the Book of Job, the resemblance of the first draft of Hellas to the machinery of Dryden’s intended epic is to be noted. ‘‘ He gives,’’ says Johnson, sum- marizing Dryden’s preface to his translation of Juvenal, ‘‘an account of the design which he had once formed to write an epic poem on the actions either of Arthur or the Black Prince. He considered the epic as necessarily involvin some kind of supernatural agency, and Kad imagined a new kind of contest between the guardian angels of kingdoms, of which he conceived that each might be represented zealous for his charge without any intended op- position to the purposes of the Supreme Being, of which all created minds must in part be ignorant. ‘**This is the most reasonable scheme of celestial interposition that ever was formed.”’’ The references to Aischylus below are to Paley’s third edition, London, 1870.] Page 320. PRoLOGUE. Line 69 giant Powers, cf, Dr. Garnett’s note above. Line 87 Aurora, Greece. Line 99. Cf. Eprpsycuipion, note. Line 107. The familiar image of THe Rx- vout oF Iszam, I. Line 139. The doctrine of the Furies in Pro- METHEUS UNBOUND. Line 146. A reminiscence of Lucretius, I. 64. Page 322. Chorus. Cf. Calderon, El Principe Constante, I. Line 46. Cf, ADonals, xix. 4, Line 56. Cf. Aischylus, Agamemnon, 272. Line 70 Atlantis, America. Line 95 thy, Freedom’s. Line 128, Cf. Alschylus, Perse, 178. Line 133, Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew. Line 177. Cf. PromernEvs Unsowunn, II. i. 156. Line 189. A reminiscence of PromEeTHEus Unsounp, III. i. Line 192. Cf. Plato, Republic, VI. Line 195. Cf. Bacon, Essays, Of Empire. Line 209. The theory here stated is the or- dinary belief of transmigration. Line 211 A_power, Christ. Line 224, The reference is to the Cross of Constantine. Line 230, Cf. Milton, Ode on the Nativity, xix.-xxi. Line 266. Cf. ProLoauE, 172. Line 303 Queen, England. Line 307. Cf. Aischylus, Perse, 207-212, Line 373. Cf. Atschylus, Perse, 449 et seq. Line 447. Cf. PRoLoGuE, 101, Line 476. Ct. Hischylus, Perse, 355-432, espe- cially line 486 with 410, 494 with 408, 503 with 393, 505 with 420, Line 587. Cf. Ong to Liserry, xiii. 3-7. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 639 Line 591. Santons, a sect of enthusiasts in- spired by divine love and regarded as saints. Line 696, The main metaphysical idea of the poem, the primacy of thought and its sole real- ity, begins here. Line 701. Cf, PROLOGUE, 9. Line 711. Cf. Proxogug, 121, Line 729. Cf. Aischylus, Agamemnon, 734-735. Shelley quotes the passage in a letter to his wife, August 10, 1821. Lines 767-806 The speech develops the philo- sophical theory alluded to above, line 696, and is variously reminiscent of Shakspere (as are coer passages of the drama) in style and dic- ion. Line 771. Cf. Protogug, 19. Lines 814-841. Cf. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch, 68. Line 852-854. Cf. PROLOGUE, 161. Line 860. The Phantom is possibly suggested by the figure of Darius in the Perse. The pas- sage has analogies with PromerHrvus Un- sounn, I. Line 906. The familiar image from Plato, Symposium, 195. Line 925. Cf. Tas Cenct, III. i. 247, and note. Line 948. Cf. PromerHEus Unsounp, IV. 444, Line 985. The reference is to the Shield of Arthur, Spenser, Faérie Queene, Bk. I. passim. Line 989. The Retreat of the Ten Thousand under Xenophon, told in the Anabasis. Line 1030 Evening land. Here and in the fol- lowing lines, America appears to furnish the elements of the idealized new age, which soon changes imaginatively into a glorification of a newly arisen ideal Greece. Line 1060 Chorus. Cf. Virgil, Eclogues, iv. and Byron’s Isles of Greece. Page 340. To —. Turn, V. i. note. 342. To Mary WoLisToNECRAFT GopwIN, i. 3 fear, Rossetti suggests yearn to amend a plainly corrupt passage. 344. To Worpsworts, ef. Peter BELn THE THIRD, IV. ix. note. 345. Lines. If the poem refers to Harriet it is dated a year too early. 345. THe Sunser, line 4. Cf. EpresycHi- DION, note. Line 22, Forman conjectures I never saw the sunrise ? we will wake, substituting a melodra- matic for a natural effect. 346. Hymn To InretiecruaL Beauty, ef. Eprpsycurpion, note. Mrs. Shelley’s note is as follows: ‘He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. The Hymn to Intellectual Beauty was conceived during his voyage round the Lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage by reading the Nouvelle Héloise for the first time. The reading it on the very spot where the scenes are jaid, added to the interest ; and he was at once surprised and charmed by the passionate elo- quence and earnest enthralling interest that pervades this work. There was something in Cf. PETER BELL THE the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self, and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley’s own disposition ; and, though differing in many of the views, and shocked by others, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating an delightful.’ Ackermann refers toSpenser’s Hymns as a source, but with- out plausibility. Cf. THe Zucca. Stanzai.1. Cf. Tar Revotrr or Isxam, VI. Xxxviii. 1. Stanza iv. 1. Self-esteem, the use of Self-esteem and Self-contempt as measures of happiness and misery is constant from the earliest verse to Aponals, and is characteristic of his moral ideal. Cf. PromerHeus Unsounp, passim. Stanzav. Cf. Tue Revour or Istam, DEn- CATION, iii.-v. Stanza vii. 12. The line is, perhaps, the sim- plest and noblest statement of Shelley’s ideal of his own life. Page 347. Monr Buanc,i. The metaphysi- cal intention of the symbol should be remem- bered as a part of the entire poem and as dif- ferentiating its scope from that of Coleridge on the same subject. Line 79. But for such faith, the Boscombe MS. reads In such a faith, which yields the onty intelligible meaning. The faith of Shelley’s poetic age in the power of nature over human life could hardly find more startling statement than in the next two lines. Line 96. This is an anticipation of the con~ ception imaginatively defined in Demogorgon (cf, lines 189-141 below). This poem and the preceding Hymn are forerunners of the main lines of thought in the PromerHevus Un- OUND. Page 352. To Constantia. The poem, as a whole, is a forerunner of PromerHEus Un- BOUND, in its imagery of music as a power of motion in stanza iv., and in its diction (e. g. ili. 2) as well as in its lyrical rapture. The remi- niscences of Plato and Lucretius in stanza ii, 7 and 11 are obvious. In the Harvard MS. the last stanza is first, but this may represent rather the order of composition than of true arrange- ment ; certainly it belongs last, as it is the cli- max of emotion. Page 353. To rHe Lorp CHANCELLOR, i. 4. The star-chamber. iv. 3 cowl, cf. Dante, Inferno, XXIII. xvi. 1. The close of the curse is character- istic of Shelley’s moral ideal. In a similar way he brings his political odes, several of which are odes of agitation, such as ODE WRITTEN OcToBER, 1819, and the OpE ro NaP.Es to an end in counsels of love, forgiveness, and brother- hood after thestorm of execration or of incite- ment had been exhausted in the earlier part. Page 354. To Wiviiam SHELLEY. Mrs. Shelley adds to her note: ‘ When afterward this child died at Rome, he wrote, apropos of the English burying-ground in that city, *‘ This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the yearnings of a parent’s heart are now pro- phetic; he is rendered immortal by love as kis memory is by death. My beloved child lier 640 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS buried here. I envy death tne body far less than the oppressors the minds of those whom they have tornfromme. The one can kill only the body, the other crushes the affections.’’’ Stanzaiv. Cf. RosaLinp AND HELEN, 894- 901. Page 358, On A Faprep Vioxter. Cf. To Sopu1a, Head-note. Stanzai. In the later edition of Mrs. Shel- ley this stanza reads: The colour from the flower is gone Which like thy sweet eyes smiled on me; The odour from the flower is flown Which breathed of thee and only thee. Tn the next stanza she also reads withered for | shrivelled. Her version is sustained by the Ox- ford MS. described by Zupitza. he text given is that of Hunt, 1821, Mrs. Shelley, 1824, and of the MS, as described by Rossetti. Page 358. LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE Ev- GANEAN HILzs. Line 175 songs. Forman conjectures sons, which destroys the highly imaginative unity of the figure and substitutes a mere mixed meta- phor therefor. Byron is referred to. Line 220. Cf. Geprpus Tyrannus, II. 60. Line 319. Cf. Taz Revoir or Iszam, II. xxx, 2. Line 344. Cf. EprpsycHrpion, note. Page 362. Invocation To MisEry. The story referred to in the Head-note was first told by Medwin. He writes, ‘Had she [Mrs. Shel- ley] been able to disentangle the threads of the mystery, she would have attributed his feelings to more than purely physical causes. Among the verses which she had probably never seen till they appeared in print was the Invocation to Misery, an idea taken from Shakespeare — making love to Misery, betokening his soul lacerated to rawness by the tragic event above detailed —the death of his unknown adorer.’ Life, i. 330, 331. He refers to a story, previ- ously told by him in The Angler in. Wales, ii. 194, related by Shelley to him and Byron, that ‘the night before his departure from London in 1814 [1816], he received a visit from a mar- ried lady, young, handsome, and of noble con- | nections, and whose disappearance from the | of fashion, in which she moved, may | furnish to those curious in such inquiries a clue | and he goes on to deseribe | how, in spite of Shelley’s entreaty and unknown | world to her identity ;’ to him, this lady followed him to the continent, kept near him, and at Naples, in this year, met him, told her wandering devotion, and there died (Life, i. 324-329). Medwin ascribes to this incident the next poem, and also the lines ON A Fapep VioLetT. Rossetti (i. 90) says he is ‘assured on good authority’ that Medwin’s connecting Misery with these events is ‘not correct.’ Lady Shelley says: ‘ Of this strange narrative it will be sufficient to say here that not the slightest allusion to it is to be found in any of the family documents’ (Shel- | ley Memorials, p. ig Rossetti connects with the story Shelley’s letter to Peacock, May, 1820, in which he refers to his health as affected ‘by certain moral causes,’ and also his letter to Ollier, December 15, 1819, in which he ex- presses his intention to ‘write three other poems [besides JULIAN AND MAppDALO] the scenes of which will be laid at Rome, Florence, and Naples, but the subjects of which will be all drawn from dreadful or beautiful realities, as that of thiswas.’ Miss Clairmont asserted that she knew the lady’s name and had seen her. At Naples there died a little girl who was tosome extent in Shelley’s charge, and of whom he wrote with feeling. Dowden (ii. 252, 253) suggests some connection between the two inci- dents. Page 367. OpE vo tHE Wesr Winp. Cf. Tue Revout or Istam, IX. xxi.-xxv. 369. An OpE. Cf. Stanza, p. 436, and To THE LorD CHANCELLOR, xvi. 1, note. 370. Tue Inpian SERENADE. The most important variations of the text are ii. 3, and the champak’s, iii. 7, press it to thine own again: and iii. 8, must break, from the Browning MS. ii. 3. ‘The buchampaca, the flower of the dawn, whose vestal buds blow with the sun’s first ray, and fade and die beneath his meridian beam, leaving only their odour to survive their transient blooms.’ Miss Owenson, The Mission- ary, ch. vi. p. 59; ef. also ch. vii. pp. 75, 76, and ALAsTOR, 400, note. Page 371. Lovr’s Paitosoppy. A MS. sent to Miss Stacey December 29, 1520, gives two interesting variations: i. 7, In one spirit meet and ; ii. 7, What is all this sweet work worth. These readings are adopted by Forman and Dowden. Other variations exist. Page 376. Tue Sensitive Pxant, III. 66. The first edition, 1820, inserts the following: Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake, Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake, Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, Infecting the winds that wander by. The stanza is cancelled in the Harvard MS. and omitted by Mrs. Shelley, 1839. It is included by Rossetti and Forman. Page 381. ToASxyutark. The interesting Harvard MS. of this poem may be found in fac- simile in the Harvard University Library Bibli- ographieal Contributions, No. 35. Two emenda- tions have been suggested ; the transference of the semicolon, line 8, to the end of the previous line ; and embodied for unbodied, line 15, Neither has been adopted by editors. Page 382. Ops To Linerry. The poem is in the mood of PromerHEeus Unsounn, of which it is reminiscent. ii. 6, Cf. PromerHevus Unzounn, II. iv. 49. v.10. Cf. PrometHeus Unsounn, III. iv. 199, note. vi. 1-4. Cf. Evenine: Ponte au Marg, Pisa, iii. 1-4. vii. 2, Shelley’s note: ‘See the Bacche of Euripides.’ vill. 14. The Galilean serpent, Christianity in its medieval forms. xii. 10 Anarch, Napoleon. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS 641 xiii. 3-7. Cf, Heunas, I. 587. xiii, 12-15 Twins, England and Spain; West, America ; Impress . . , conceal, the sense may be, impress us with your past which time cannot conceal. The passage is variously ex- lained by Swinburne, Forman, and Rossetti. he suggested emendation of us for us, is not of itself sufficient to clarify the construction or meaning, but is possibly correct. Any ex- planation of the text appears unsatisfactory. xvii. 9 intercessor. Cf. PRomperHEus Un- Bounp, III. iii. 49-60; Opz To Napuzs, 69, The idea is suggested by Plato’s theories in the Phedrus and Symposium; and is much de- veloped by Shelley. Cf. PRINCE ATHANASE, II. 106-118, note. _ Page 387. ARETHUSA. This and the follow- ing poem were written to be inserted in a drama entitled Proserpine, as the Hymns to Apollo and Pan were similarly written for a drama called Midas. Both dramas were the work of Williams. Zupitza describes the MSS. of these at length, with extracts, in Arch’v f r das Stu- dium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, Band xciv. Heft 1. Il. 8. The reading unsealed for concealed is given by Zupitza as that of the Oxford MS.; he interprets the passage ‘ the wind unsealed in the rear the urns of the snow,’ 7t being pleonas- tie, and the urns meaning the snow-springs. Page 388. Sone oF PROSERPINE, cf. ARE- THUSA, note. Page 388. Hymn or APOLLO, cf. ARETHUSA, note. Stanza vi. G its for their is given by Zupitza as the reading of the Oxford MS. Page 389. Hymn or Pan, cf. ARETHUSA, note, Stanza i. 5,12. Zupitza gives listening my_ for listening to my, as the reading of the Oxford MS. Stanzas ii., ii. Cf. Virgil, Helogucs, vi. Page 388. Tur QuEsTION, ii. 7, et. Coleridge To a Young Friend, 37, ‘the rock’s collecte tears.’ The reading heaven-collected, Mrs. Shel- ley, 1524, adopted by Forman, is improbable in view of the citation, while the text is supported by the first issue of Hunt and the Harvard and Ollier MSS. Page 390. Lerrer To MARrA GISBORNE. Line 75. The boat and the hollow screw are the same. 2 : Line 77 Henry, Mr. Reveley, Mrs. Gisborne’s son. Line 130. ‘The Libecchio here howls like a chorus of fiends all day.’ Shelley to Peacock, July 12, 1820. ; Line 185. Mrs. Gisborne read Calderon with gi 195. C£. Tre, 7. as 202, Cf. Perer Bec. THe Tarp, V. i, 8, note. ine 226 Hogg, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, opined friend, and biographer of his Oxford mle 233 Peacock, Thomas Love Peacock, the novelist. The play on the name in the next line 1s obvious. Line 250 Horace Smith, perhaps the wisest and best friend Shelley had. : Line 313. Shelley’s note : ‘’Inepos, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some slight, shade of difference, a synonym of ove. Page 395. OpE to Napxes. The Oxford MS. is fully described by Zupitza. SHELLEY’s NoreEs: Line 1. Pompeii. Line 39, Homer and Virgil. Line 104, Alza, the island of Circe. . Line 112. The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti, tyrants of Milan. Line 45, Zupitza gives sunbright for sunlit as the reading of the Oxford MS. Line 69, Cf. OpE to Lingrry, xvii. 9, note. Line 109. Cf. HELxAs, Shelley’s notes, line 69. Page 401. Goop-nicur. A version known as the Stacey MS. is followed by Rossetti. It varies from the text as follows: i. 1, Good-night? no, love! the night is ill ii. 1, How were the night without thee good ui. 1, The hearts that on each other beat 3, Have nights as good as they are sweet 4, But never say good-night This version is poetically inferior, and may or may not represent Shelley’s final choice for publication. The matter being uncertain, it seems best to retain the better form, especially as it is the one that has grown familiar, and is well supported by the authority of the Harvard MS. as well as by the first editors, Hunt and Mrs. Shelley. Page 403. From roe Arasic. Medwin gives Hamilton’s Antar as the source of these lines, but the passage has not been identified. Page 403. To Nicut,.i. 1 o’er, the reading is from the Harvard MS. ii. 3, The image is familiar in Shelley’s verse. Cf, ALASTOR, 337, note. Page 406. SonnET. Entitled in the Harvard MS., Sonnet to THE ReEpuBLIC oF BeEnr- VENTO. Page 407. ANOTHER Version. From the Trelawny MS., of Williams’s play. Page 407. Evenine: Ponts au Marg, Pisa. iv. 2. The Boscombe MS, reads cinereous for enormous, and is followed by Rossetti, Forman, and Dowden. Page 408. REMEMBRANCE. Another version, known as the Trelawny MS., gives the follow- ing variations : i, 2, 3, transpose. 5-7, ‘As the earth when leaves are dead, As the night when sleep is sped, As the heart when joy is fled 8, alone, alone. ii. 2, her. 5, My heart to-day desires to-morrow. ji. 4, Sadder flowers find for me. 8, a hope, a fear. The text follows the Houghton MS., a copy written on a fly-leaf of Apowats by Shelley. Page 409. To Epwarp WizuiAms. Rossetti 642 tts NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS gives the following letter from Shelley to Wil- ‘ams: ‘My dear Williams: Looking over the port- folio in which my friend used to keep his verses, and in which those I sent you the other day were found, I have lit upon these; which, as they are too dismal for me to keep, I send you. It any of the stanzas should please you, you may read them to Jane, but to no one else. And yet, on second thoughts, I had rather you would not. Yours ever affectionately, P. B.S.’ Wiliams notes in his journal, Saturday, Jan- uary 26, 1822: ‘S. sent us some beautiful but too melancholy lines (‘‘ The Serpent is shut out from Paradise’’).? Byron named Shelley the Serpent. Page 415. Tuer Isuz. Garnett conjectures that this poem was intended for the Frac- MENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA. Page 415. A Dirce, 6 strain, Rossetti’s emen- dation for stain. given by all editors. Page 416. Lines WRITTEN IN THE Bay or Lericri. The lines were written during the last weeks of Shelley’s life, perhaps, as Garnett con- jectures, about May 1, the last time that Shel- ley was at Lerici at the time of the full moon. Page 424. Princkr Armanase. Cf. Hpr- PSYCHIDION, note. II. 2. Cf. Tae Revour or Isuam, II. xxvii. 7, note. II. 15. Cf. Promerurus Unsounp, I. 451, note. II. 103, story of the feast, the Symposium. II. 106-113. ‘This is the original germ of the Spirit of the Earth in PRoMETHEUS UNBOUND, not perhaps without some indebtedness to Cole- ridge, Ode on the Departing Year, iv. The same passage may also have been not without influ- ence on Shelley’s idea of the ‘intereessors’ (cf. PromerHeus UnsounnD, III. iii. 49-60; Ope ro NApLEs, 69; ODE To LisEeRTY, xvii. 9, note), and of the guardian angels of the PROLOGUE TO HeE.tas. Shelley. however, entirely recreates the image in these several instances, and shows his highest original power in so doing. TI. 118. Cf. Shelley, On Love, under Err- PSYCHIDION, note. Page 431. Tasso. Garnett gives from the Boscombe MS. Shelley’s notes for intended scenes of this drama: ‘Scene when he reads the sonnet which he wrote to Leonora to her- self as composed at the request of another. His disguising himself in the habit of a shep- herd, and questioning his sister in that disguise concerning himself, and then unveiling himself.’ Page 432. Rossetti identifies the passage in Sismondi (Paris, 1826), vii. 142-143. Page 435. LinES WRITTEN FOR PROME- rHEUS Uwnsounp. Cf. PromrerHeus Un- BouND, IV. iv. 493. Page 436. LinEsS WRITTEN FoR EpipsycHi- pion. Cf. Epresycuipion, note. Page 438, ings WRITTEN FoR ADONAIS. Rossetti suggests, rightly, I think, that the first fragment refers to Moore, the lyre being the Irish harp, and he transposes the first and sec- ond fragments. In the latter green Paradise is Ireland. In the last fragment Rossetti is ur able to find any human Beare, and in this he also appears to be right. Page 446, GinEVRA. Garnett identified the source as L’Osservatore Fiorentino _sugli edifizt della sua Patria, 1821, p. 119._ In the story Ginevra revives. Cf. Hunt, A Legend of Flor- ence. Page 449, Toe Boat oN THE SERCHIO, line 30. Cf, Taz Triumen oF Lirs, 18. Line 40. Cf. TRaNsLATIONS FROM DanTE, - 13, Page 450. Tur Zucca. Cf. EprpsycHmion, note, and FracGMENTs oF AN UNFINISHED Drama, 127. Page 452. CHARLES THE First. The Head- notes contain the history of the fragment. Page 466. FracmMENnTs oF AN UNFINISHED Drama. This poem is the most characteristic example of the last manner of Shelley in verse. It is shot through with reminiscences of his own work and with those of the poets he had long used as familiar masters and guides; the sentiment is as before ; the material is not dif- ferent; but over all, and pervading all, is a new charm, original, pure, and_delicate, which makes the verse a new kind in English. Page 470. Tae Triumpu oF Lirs. This ea the last work of Shelley, is obviously talian in suggestion and manner, and is ob- scure to the ordinary reader. It isa pure and mystical allegory, in which Shelley has blended many elements of his intellectual culture under an imaginative artistic form of the Renaissance rarely modernized. The meaning, however, is not obscure to one who will let his mind dwell on and penetrate the imagery, after becomin: familiarized with Shelley’s previous works. few notes only, and those of an obvious kind, can be given'here. Line 103 that, the charioteer. Line 133. The sense is broken. Line 190 grim Feature. Cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, x. 279. Line 255. Socrates: because he did not love. Tine 261. Alexander and Aristotle. Line 283. The Roman Emperors. Line 290. The Papacy. Line 352. The last and most mystical of the eternal beings of Shelley’s phantasy. Line 422. Mrs. Shelley’s note: ‘ The favorite song, Stanco di pascolar le ecorelli, is a Brescian national air.’ Line 472 him, Dante. Page 480. Minor Fragments. The avail- able information regarding these poems is given in the Head-notes. Page 491. Transtations. The Head-notes contain the records of these compositions. The text of THe CycLors has been examined by Swinburne, Essays and Studies, 201-211. In ScENES FROM THE Faust oF GOETHE, a slight correction, joy for you, ii. 333 (p. 545), is made in accordance with Zupitza’s suggestion. Page 546. Juventu1A. The Head-notes in- elude all that is known of the history of these pieces. INDEX OF FIRST LINES {including the first lines of independent songs contained in the longer poems and dramas.] A cat in distress, 547. A gentle story of two lovers young, 485. A glorious people vibrated again, 382. A golden-wingéd Angel stood, 486. A Hater he came and sat by a ditch, 486. A man who was about to hang himself, 519. A mighty Phantasm, half concealed, 439. A pale dream came to a Lady fair, 350. A portal as of shadowy adamant, 399. A scene, which wildered fancy viewed, 566. A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew, 372. A shovel of his ashes took, 480. A peta whose rough heart was out of tune, 0 Ah! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary, 554, Alas! good friend, what profit can you see, 400. Alas! this is not what I thought life was, 490. Ambition, power, and avarice now have hurled, 555. Amid the desolation of a city, 399. And canst thou mock mine agony, thus calm, 558. And earnest to explore within — around, 523. And ever as he went he swept a lyre, 439. And like a dying lady, lean and pale, 485. And many there were hurt by that strong boy, 444, And Peter Bell, when he had been, 260. And that I walked thus proudly crowned withal, 490, And the green Paradise which western waves, 439, And then came one of sweet and earnest looks, 3 439. And where is truth ? On tombs? for such to thee, 489. And who feels discord now or sorrow ? 487. An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king, 365 Arethusa arose, 387. Ariel to Miranda : — Take, 414. Arise, arise, arise! 369. Art thou indeed forever gone, 760. Art thou pale for weariness, 485. As a violet’s gentle eye, 435. As from an ancestral oak, 365. As I lay asleep in Italy, 253. As the sunrise to the night, 484. At the creation of the Earth, <44. Away | the moor is dark beneath the moon, 341. Bear witness, Erin! when thine injured isle, 565 Bolire those cruel Twins, whom at one birth, Best and brightest, come away ! 412. Bright ball of flame that through the gloom ot even, 569. Bright wanderer, fair coquette of heaven, 485, Brothers ! between you and me, 565. ‘ Buona notte, buona notte !’ — Come mai, 401. By the mossy brink, 563. ae art thou as yon sunset ! swift and strong, Chameleons feed on light and air, 367. Come, be happy ! — sit near me, 362. Come hither, my sweet Rosalind, 137. Come, thou awakener of the spirit’s ocean, 484. Corpses are cold in the tomb, 364. Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind, 561, Dark flood of time ! 608. Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude, 549. Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody, 505. Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys, 480. Dearest, best and brightest, 440. Death is here, and death is there, 398. Death! where is thy victory? 549. ‘Do you not hear the Aziola ery ? 408. Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb ? 519, Earth, Ocean, Air, belovéd brotherhood ! 33. Echoes we: listen! 181. ee as now with Love and Virtue’s glow, 568. Faint with love, the Lady of the South, 485. Fairest of the Destinies, 439, False friend, wilt thou smile or weep, 249. Far, far away, O ye, 405. Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow, 485. Follow to the deep wood’s weeds, 484. For me, my friend, if not that tears did trem- ble, 483. For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave, 548. From the forests and highlands, 389. Gather, oh, gather, 436. Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling, 551. God prosper, speed, and save, 365. Good-night ? ah, no! the hour is ill, 404, 044 INDEX OF FIRST LINES Great Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought, 490. Guido, I would that Lappo, thou, and I, 522. Hail to thee, blithe Spirit ! 381. Hail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered wind, 572, Hark ! the owlet flaps his wings, 547. Hast thou not seen, officious with delight, 537. He came like a dream in the dawn of life, 467. He tell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror’s frown, 190, Heigho! the lark and the owl! 466. ‘Here lieth One whose name was writ on water!’ 482. ar my dear friend, is a new book for you, Here, oh, here! 197. Her voice did quiver as we parted, 355. He wanders, like a day-appearing dream, 489. Hic sinu fessum caput hospitali, 547. His face was like a snake’s—wrinkled and loose, 486. Honey from silkworms who ean gather, 356. Hopes, that swell in youthful breasts, 550. How eloquent are eyes! 550. How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten, 272. Hon stern are the woes of the desolate mourner, 553. How sweet it is to sit and read the tales, 485, Hoy. swiftly through heaven’s wide expanse, BB: How ‘wonderful is Death, 3, 417. [ am as a spirit who has dwelt, 487. [am drunk with the honey wine, 485. L arise from dreams of thee, 370 I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, 380. I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, 389. I Geaned that Milton’s spirit rose, and took, 453. I faint, I perish with my love! I grow, 489. I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden, 387. T had once a lovely dream, 545. I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan, 344, I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake, 340, I loved —alas! our life is love, 432. I met a traveller from an antique land, 356. I mourn Adonis dead — loveliest Adonis, 520. I pant for the music which is divine, 488. I rode one evening with Count Maddalo, 152. I sing the glorious Power with azure eyes, 504. I stood within the city disinterred, 395. I weep for Adonais — he is dead! 308. J went into the deserts of dim sleep, 489. I would not be a king — enough, 487. If gibbets, axes, contiscations, chains, 445. If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill, 482. Uf I walk in Autumn’s even, 410. Inter marmoreas Leonore pendula colles, 548. In the eave which wild weeds cover, 486, In the sweet solitude of this calm place, 526. Is it that in some brighter sphere, 487, Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He, 573. Js not to-day enough? Why do I peer, 487. It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven, 568. It is the day when all the sons of God, 320, It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, 369. It was a bright and cheerful afternoon, 399, Kissing Helena, together, 519. Let those who pine in pride or in revenge, 432. Life of Life, thy lips enkindle, 188. Lift not the painted veil which those who live, Like ‘the ghost of a dear friend dead, 400. Listen, listen, Mary mine, 357. Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me, 482. Maiden, quench the glare of sorrow, 563, Many a green isle needs must be, 358. Melodious Arethusa, o’er my verse, 521. Men of England, wherefore plough, 364. Methought I was a billow in the crowd, 489. Mighty eagle! thou that soarest, 483. Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed, 342, Monarch of Gods and Demons, and all Spirits, 165. Mouth after month the gathered rains descend, 357. Moonbeam, leave the shadowy vale, 549. Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite, 503. Music, when soft voices die, 404. My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, 1. My faint spirit was sitting in the light, 403. My head is heavy, my limbs are weary, 487. My head is wild with weeping for a grief, 482. My lost William, thou in whom, 481, My Song, I fear that thon wilt find but few, 298. My spirit like a charméd bark doth swim, 483. My thoughts arise and fade in solitude, 490. Night, with all thine eyes look down! 407, No access to the Duke! You have not said, 431 No Music, thou art not the ‘food of Love,’ 488 No trump tells thy virtues— the grave where they rest, 566. Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame, 406. nae far from hence. From yunder pointed hill, es Now had the loophole of that dungeon, still, 524. Now the last day of many days, 412. O Bacchus, what a world of toil, both now, 506. O happy Earth ! reality of Heaven! 420. O Mary dear, that you were here, 480, oO mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age, 0 pillow cold and wet with tears ! 435. O ew bright Sun! beneath the dark blue line, 9. O thou immortal deity, 490. O thou, who plumed with strong desire, 390. O universal Mother, who dost keep, 505. O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 367, O world ! O life! O time! 410. Offspring of Jove, Calliope, once more, 504. INDEX OF FIRST LINES Oh, follow, follow, 181. Oh! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes, 562. Oh, that a chariot of cloud were mine! 489, Oh, there are spirits of the air, 340 Old winter was gone, 448. Once, early in the morning, 570. Once more descend, 483. One sung of thee who left the tale untold, 485. One word is too often profaned, 408. Orphan hours, the year is dead, 402. Our boat is asleep on Serchio’s stream, 449. Palace-roof of cloudless nights, 366. Pan loved his neighbor Echo, but that child, 520. People of England, ye who toil and groan, 484. Peter Bells, one, two and three, 260. Place for the Marshal of the Masque! 453. Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know, 344. Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 403, Returning from its daily quest, my Spirit, 525. Rome has fallen ; ye see it lying, 484. Rough wind, that moanest loud, 415. Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth, 388. She left me at the silent time, 416. She was an aged woman; and the years, 564. Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou, 489. Silver key of the fountain of tears, 488. Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove, 491. ‘Sleep, sleep on! forget thy pain, 411. So now my summer-task is ended, Mary, 49. Such hope, as is the sick despair of good, 489. Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring, Sweet Spirit ! sister of that orphan one, 298. Sweet star, which gleaming o’er the darksome scene, 563. Swift as a spirit hastening to his task, 471. Swifter far than summer’s flight, 409. Swiftly walk o’er the western wave, 403. Tell me, thou star, whose wings of light, 400. That matter of the murder is hushed up, 211. That time is dead forever, child, 355. The awful shadow of some unseen Power, 346. The babe is at peace within the womb, 486. The billows on the beach are leaping around it, 354, The brilliant orb of parting day, 576. The cold earth slept below, 345. The colour from the flower is gone, 640. The curtain of the Universe, 321. The death-bell beats! 552. The everlasting universe of things, 347. The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses, 489, The fiery mountains answer each other, 398, The fitful alternations of the rain, 484. The flower that smiles to-day, 404. The fountains mingle with the river, 371. The gentleness of rain was in the wind, 484. The golden gates of sleep nnbar, 406. The keen stars were twinkling, 415. 545 The odor from the flower is gone, 358. The pale, the cold, and the moony smile, 348, The rose that drinks the fountain dew, 481. The rude wind is singing, 486. The season was the childhood of sweet June, 443, The serpent is shut out from paradise, 409. __ The sleepless Hours who watch me as [I lie, 38 The spider spreads her webs whether she be, 301, The sun is set; the swallows are asleep, 407. The sun is warm, the sky is clear, 363. The sun makes music as of old, 538. The viewless and invisible Consequence, 486. The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wail- ing, 398. The waters are flashing, 405. tg aed has swept from the wide atmosphere, The world is dreary, 480. | The world is now our dwelling-place, 481. There is a voice, not understood by all, 435. | There is a warm and gentle atmosphere, 487. ee late was One within whose subtle being, 45. There was a little lawny islet, 415. There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel, 425. These are two friends whose lives were undi- vided, 415. They die — the dead return not. Misery, 355. ‘those whom nor power, nor lying faith, nor toil, 483, Thou art fair, and few are fairer, 371. Thou supreme goddess ! by whose power divine, 284 Thou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be, Thou wert the morning star among the living, 519, Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die, 352. Thy country’s curse is on thee, darkest crest, 353. Thy dewy looks sink in my breast, 340, Thy little footsteps on the sands, 481. Thy look of love has power to calm, 342. -T is midnight now — athwart the murky air, 55 7. ’Tisthe terror of tempest. The rags of the sail, 377. To the deep, to the deep, 184. To thirst and find no fill — to wail and wander, 48 8. Tremble Kings despised of man! 561. ’T was dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling, 551. Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years, 402, Unrisen splendor of the brightest sun, 484, Vessels of heavenly medicine ! may the breeze, 569. Wake the serpent not — lest he, 487. Wealth and dominion fade into the mass, 488. 646 INDEX OF FIRST LINES we are as clouds that veil the midnight moon, 43 We meet not as we parted, 452. We strew these opiate flowers, 322. What ! alive and so bold, O Earth, 406. ‘What art thou, presumptuous, who profanest, 483. What is the glory far above, 534. What Mary is when she a little smiles, 522. What men gain fairly, that they should possess, 484. What sounds are those that float upon the air, 580. What think you the dead are? 435, What veiléd form sits on that ebon throne? 184. we was the shriek that struck fancy’s ear, Whe, a lover clasps his fairest, 486. When passion’s trance is overpast, 404, When soft winds and sunny skies, 484. When the lamp is shattered, 410. When a last hope of trampled France had a When winds that move not its calm surface sweep, 520. Where art thou, pelovéd To-morrow ? 410. Where man’s profane and tainting hand, 572. Winks monarchs laughed upon their thrones, Whose is the love that, gleaming through the world, 2. Why is it said thou canst not live, 562. Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one, 446. Wilt thou forget the happy hours, 358. Within a cavern of man’s trackless spirit, 436. Ye Dorian woods and waves lament aloud, 520, Ye gentle visitations of calm thought, 490. Ye hasten tothe grave! What seek ye there, 400. Ye who intelligent the Third Heaven move, 522, Ye ae -eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove, Yes! all is past —swift time has fled away, Yet look on me — take not thine eyes away, 341. INDEX OF TITLES [The titles of major works and of general divisions are set in sMALL CAPITALS.) Aponats, 307. Adonais, Lines written for, 438. eee Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of, "elas this is not what I thought life was,’ ALASTOR, 31. Allegory, An, 399. Apennines, Passage of the, 357. Apollo, Hymn of, 388. Arabic, From the, 403. Arethusa, 387. Autumn ; a Dirge, 398. Aziola, The, 408. Balloon laden with Knowledge, Sonnet to a, 569 Before and After, 486. Bereavement, 553. Bigotry’s Victim, 561. Bion, Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of, 520. Bion, Translation from; a Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Adonis, 520. Birth of Pleasure, The, 444. Boat on the Serchio, The, 449. Bonaparte, Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of, 344. Bridal Song, A, 406. Buona Notte, 400. Byron, Sonnet to, 482. Calderon, Scenes from the Magico Prodigioso of, 526. Stanzas from the Cisma de Inglaterra of, 537. Carlton House, On a Féte at, 563. Castlereagh Administration, Lines written dur- ing the, 364. Castlereagh, To Sidmouth and, 365. Castor and Pollux, Hymn to, 504. Cat, Verses on a, 546. Cavaleanti, Guido, to Dante Alighieri, 525. Crnct, THE, 206. Chamouni, Lines written in the Vale of, 347. Charles the First, 452. Circumstance, 519. Cisma de Inglaterra, Stanzas from, 537. Cloud, The, 380. Consequence, 486. Constantia, To, 481. Constantia singing, To, 352. Convito, The First Canzone of the, 522. Corday, Charlotte, Fragment supposed to be the Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillae and, 557. Critic, Lines to a, 356. Crowned, 490. Cyclops, The: A Satyric Drama, 506. Demon of the World, The, 416. Dante Alighieri to Guido Cavalcanti, 522. Dante, Translations from, 522-525. oo (‘ Death is here, and death is there”), 8. Death (‘They die—the dead return not, Misery ’), 355. Death, On (‘ The pale, the cold and the moony smile ’), 343. Death, To (‘ Death! where is thy victory ’), 549, Deserts of Sleep, The, 489. Despair, 558. Devil’s Walk, The, 570. Dialogue, A, 548. Dirge, A (‘Rough wind, that moanest loud’), 415 Dirge for the year, 402. Dirge from Ginevra, The, 448, Doustrut Porms, 573. Dream, A, 489. Drowned Lover, The, 554. Earty Poems, 339, Earth, Mother of All, Hymn to the, 505. : Elegy on the Death of Adonis, Fragment ot the, 520. Elegy on the Death of Bion, Fragment of the, 520, Elegy on the Death of John Keats, An, 307, Emmet’s, Robert, Grave, On, 566. England in 1819, 365. England, Song to the Men of, 364. England, To the People of, 484. Epigrams from the Greek, 519. HEE SECEIDION; 297; Lines connected with, 4 6. Epitaph (‘These are two friends whose lives were undivided ’), 415. Epitaphium, Latin Version of the Epitaph in Gray’s Elegy, 547. Epithalamium, 407; another version, 407. Euganean Hills, Lines written among the, 358. Euripides, Translation of The Cyclops of, 506. Evening: Ponte al Mare, Pisa, 407. Evening: To Harriet, 339. Exhortation, An, 367. Eyes, 550, Face, A, 486. Faded Violet, On a, 358. Falsehood and Vice, 595. Farewell to North Devon, 572 Faust, Scenes from, 537 640 INDEX OF TITLES Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bona- parte, Féte at ‘Cention House, On a, 563. PureeEiaas * Follow,’ 48: Ho 416. Fragment of a Ghost Story, 480. Fragment of a Sonnet; Devon, 572. Fragment of a Sonnet ; To Harriet, 568. Fragment of an Unfinished Drama, 466. Bragment of the Elegy on the Death of Adonis, Braginent of the Fegy on the Death of Bion, Fragment supposed to be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Corday, 557. Fragment (‘ Yes! all is past — swift time has fled away’), 559. From the Arabic: An Imitation, 403. Fugitives, The, 405. Furies, Song of the, 486. Gentle Story, A, 485. Ghost Story, F ragment of a, 480, Ginevra, 446. Gisborne, Maria, Letter to, 390. Godwin, Fanny, On in, 355. Godwin, Mary iy ouisicnadathy To, 842, Goethe, Scenes from the Faust of, 537. Good-Night, 401. Gray’ 8 Elegy, Latin Version of the Epitaph in, . Crt Spirit,’ 490. Harriet * * * * * , To, 2. Harriet, To: Fragment of a Sonnet, 568. Harriet, To (‘It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven’), 568. Harriet, To (‘O thou bright Sun! beneath the dark blue line »), 339. Harriet, To (‘ Thy look of love has power to ealm , 342, Hate-Song, A, 486. ‘He wanders,’ £89, Heart’s Tomb, The, 489. Heaven, Ode to, 366. He tas, 317; Lines written for, 439, Home, 480. Homer, Translations from the Greek of, 491, 503, 504, 505, Hope, Fear, and Doubt, 489. Horologiam, In, 548. Hymn ‘Apollo's, 388. Pan’s, 380. To Castor and Pollux, 504, To Intellectual Beauty, 246. To Mercury, 491. To Minerva, 504. To the Farth, Mother of All, 505. To the Moon, 505, To the Sun, 504. To Venus, 503. *I faint, I perish with my love,’ 489, ’T would not be a king,’ 487. Farewell to North | Tanthe, To, 340. as that clung to the Grass of a Grave, Onan, 562 In Horologium, 54 Indian Serenade, The, 370; Lines written for, 435. Inspiration, 483. Intellectual Beauty, Hymn to, 346, Invitation, The ; Jane, 412. Invocation to Misery, 362. Ireland, To, 565. “Ts it that in some brighter sphere,’ 487, ‘Ts not neaey enough 487, Isle, The, 4 Italy, To, ae Taney To (‘The keen stars were twinkling’), Jane, To; The Invitation, The Recollection, 412; First Draft of, 440. Jane, To: With a Guitar, 413. JULIAN AND Mappato, 151; Lines written for, 435. JUVENILIA, 546. Keats, John, An Elegy on the Death of, 307. Keats, On, 482. Kissing ‘Helena, 519. Lady of the Bepthy, The, 485. Lament, A, 410. Laurel, ‘483. Lerici, "Lines written in the Bay of, 416. Letter to Maria Gisborne, 390, Liberty, 398. Tabet, Ode to, 382 ; Lines written for, 436. Lines connected with Epipsychidion, 436. ‘ar, far away, O ye,’ 405. . If l T walk in Autumn’s even,’ 410. ‘That time is dead forever, child, ” 855. ‘The cold earth slept below,’ 345. To a Critic, 356. To a Reviewer, 400. ‘ We meet not as we parted,’ 452. ‘ When the lamp is shattered,’ 410. Written among the Enganean Hills, 358, Written during the Castlereagh Adminise tration, 364. Written for Adonais, 438. Written for Hellas, 439. Written for Julian’ and Maddalo, 435. Written for Mont Blane, 435. Written for Prometheus Unbound, 435. Written for the Indian perenade, 435, Written for the Ode to Liberty, 436. ‘Watton for the poem to William Shelley, Written in the Bay of Lerici, 416, Written in the Vale of Chamonni, 347. Written on hearing the news of the death of Napoleon, 406. Lord Chancellor, To the, 353, Lost Leader, A, 4: Love OW Wealth ei dominion fade into the mass’) ae ¢ ‘hy i is it said thou canst not live’), INDEX OF TITLES 649 Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear, 444. Love’s Atmosphere, 487. Love’s Philosophy, 371, Love’s Rase, 550, Magico Prodigioso, Scenes from the, 526. Magnetic Lady to her Patient, The, 411. Marenghi, 432. Marianne’s Dream, 350, Marseillaise Hymn, Stanza from a Translation of the, 561. Mary , To, 49, a To (‘O Mary dear, that you were here’), Mary, To (‘My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone’), 481. Mary, To (‘ The world is dreary’), 480. Mary, To, upon her objecting to ‘ The Witch of Atlas,’ 272. Mary, To, who died in this Opinion, 563. Mask oF ANARCHY, , 252, Matilda gathering Flowers, 523. Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, On the, 369, Melody to a Scene of Former Times, 560, Mercury, Hymn to, 491. ‘Mighty Eagle,’ 483. Milton’s Spirit, 483. Minerva, Hymn to, 504. Mrynor Fragments, 480, Misery, Invocation to, 362. Mont Piano : Lines written in the Vale of Cha- mouni, 347 ; Lines written for, 435. Moon, Hymn to the, 505. Moon, To the (‘ Art thou pale for weariness ’), 485. Moon, To the (‘ Bright wanderer, fair coquette of heaven’), 485. Moonbeam, To the, 549. Moschus, Translations from the Greek of, 620, Music (‘I pant for the music which is divine ’), Music, To (‘ No, Musie, thou art not the ‘‘ food of Love”’’), 488. Music, To (‘Silver key of the fountain of tears’), 488. f Mutability (‘ The flower that smiles to-day ’), 404, 04, Mutability (‘We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ’), 343. ’ My thoughts,’ 490. Naples, Ode to, 395. Napoleon, Lines written on hearing the news of the death of, 406. National Anthem, 365. Nicholson, Margaret, Posthumors Fragments of, 554. Night, To, 403. Nile, To the ; Sonnet, 357. *O thou immortal deity,’ 490. Odes : — To Heaven, 366. : 3 To Liberty, 382; Lines written tor the, 436. To Naples, 395. To the West Wind, 367. ; Written October, 1819, before the Spaniards had recovered their liberty, 369; Stanza written for, 436. Cipirus Tyrannus, 283, ‘Oh, that a chariot of cloud were mine,’ 489. Omens, 547. On a Faded Violet, 358. On a Féte at Carlton House, 563. On an Icicle that clung to the Grass of a. Grave, On Death (‘ The pale, the cold, and the moony smile’), 343, On Fanny Godwin, 355. On Keats, 482. On launching some Bottles filled with Know ledge into the Bristol Channel, 569. On leaving London for Wales, 572. On Robert Emmet’s Grave, 566. ‘On the Dark Height of Jura,’ 551. On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, 369. ‘Once more descend,’ 483. One Singing, To, 488. Orpheus, 441. Otho, 431. Ozymandias, 356, Pan, Echo, and the Satyr, 520. Pan, Hymn of, 389. Passage of the Apennines, 357. Past, The, 358. Prter Bey roe Tarrp, 258. Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa, The, 446 Plato, Spirit of, 519. Plato, Translations from the Greek of, 519. PoEMS WRITTEN IN 1816, 345, PoEMs WRITTEN IN 1817, 349. PoEMS WRITTEN IN 1818, 356. PoEMS WRITTEN IN 1819, 364. PoEMS WRITTEN IN 1820, 371. PoEMS WRITTEN IN 1821, 401. PoEMS WRITTEN IN 1822, 410, Poetry and Musie, 485. Poet’s Lover, The, 487. Political Greatness, 405. Ponte al Mare, Pisa, 407. Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nichol- son, 554, Prince Athanase, 424. PrometHeus Unsounp, 160; Lines written for, 435. Proserpine, Song of, while gathering flowers on the Plain of Enna, 388. QurENn Map, 1. Question, The, 389. Rain, 484, Rain-Wind, The, 48%. Ravaillac, Francis, Fragment supposed to be the Epithalamium of, and Charlotte Corday, 557. Recollection, The: To Jane, 412. Remembrance, 408. Republicans of North America, To the, 565. Retrospect, The: Cwm Elan, 1812, 566. Reviewer, Lines to a, 400. Revottr or Isiam, Tue, 43, 650 INDEX OF TITLES Roman’s Chamber, A, 486. Rome, 484. RosaLinD AND HELEN, 136. Rosicrucian, The, Poems from, 551. St. Irvyne, Poems from, 551. St. Irvyne’s Tower, 553. Satire on Satire, A, 445. Scene of Former Times, Melody to a, 560. Sensitive Plant, The, oes Shadow of Hell, The, 48 Shelley, William, To (' NS lost William, thou in whom ’) Shelley, William, To(‘ The billows on the beach are leaping around it »), 354, Shelley, William, To (* Thy little footsteps on the sands’), 481 Sidmouth and Cl tlacaaaie, To, 365. Silence, To, 489. Sister Rosa: a Ballad, 552, Skylark, To a, 381 Society, A Tale of, as it Is, 563. sores The, 549. Pere al 406. *Calm’ art nee as yon sunset! swift and irony, * False tiend, wilt thou smile or weep,’ 249. * Furies,’ 486. Hate-Song, A, 486 ‘ Heigho! the lark ae the owl,’ 466. ‘ Here, oh, here!’ ‘T loved — alas ! a Tite is love,’ 432. ‘ Life of Life, thy lips enkindle,’ 188, Proserpine’s, while gathering flowers on the Plain of Enna, 388 ‘Rarely, rarely, comest thou,’ 403. Spirits, 184. To the Men of England, 364. * What sounds are those that float upon the air,’ 580, Sonnets : — pevaleaay Guido, to Dante Alighieri, 525. Dante Alighieri to Guido Cavaleanti, 522. Evening: To Harriet, 339. Farewell to North Devon: 572. Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte, 344. : oe not the painted veil which those who ive, On launching some Bottles filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel, 569. Ozymandias, 356. Political Greatness, 405. To a Balloon laden with Knowledge, 569. To Byron, 482. To Harriet: a Fragment, 568, To Ianthe, 340. To the Nile, 357. To Wordsworth, 344, “Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,’ 400. Sophia, To, 370. - Spectral Horomia, The, 559. Spirit of Plato, 51 GPrIRiT oF eon Tue, 31. a Fragment, bates in ait il, 1814. Brom a Transiation of the Marseillaise Hymn, Written a Pada 340. Written for the Ode, written October, 1819, 43 6. Written in dejection near Naples, 363. Star, To a, 563. Stella, To, 519. Summer and Winter, 399. Summer Evening Churchyard, A, 343. Sun, Hymn to 9 the, 504, Sunset, The, 34 SWELLEOOT ra Tyrant, 283, Tale of Society as it a A, 563. Tale Untold, The, 48 Tasso, 431. Tenth Eclogue from Virgil, The, 521. ‘ The fierce beasts,’ 489. ‘The rude wind is ‘singing,’ 486, Time, 402. Time Long Past, 400. To— (‘For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble‘), 483. To— C T fear thy kisses, gentle maiden wi 387. To —— (‘ Music, when soft voices die’), 40 To—(‘O miguby mind, in whose deep Pesala this age »), 482 To—(‘ Oh, there are spirits of the air’), 340. To—(‘ One word i is too often profaned’), 408. To—— (‘ When passion’s trance is overpast’), 04, To— ie Yet look on me — take not thine eyes away’), Toa ateee iaden with Knowledge, 569. To a Skylark, To a Star, ° To Constantia, 481, To Constantia singing, 35: To Death (‘ Death ! ae is thy victory °), 549. To Edward Williams, 409, To Emilia Viviani, as To Harriet * * * * *, 2, To Harriet : Fragment of a Sonnet, 568. To Harriet f tua is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven’), 568 To Harriet (‘ O thou aaptiaht Sun! beneath the dark blue line’), 33: To Harriet (‘ Thy look af love has power to calm ’), 342. To Ianthe, 340. To Treland, 565. To Italy, 484, To Jane; The Invitation, The Recollection, 412; First Draft of, 44 Ns Jane (‘ The keen ee were twinkling’), 415 To Jane: With a Guitar, 413. To Mary —— — , 49. To Mary (‘ My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone *), 481. To a Macy: (‘O Mary dear, that you were here’), To Mary (‘ The world is drear *), 480. ae on her objecting to ‘ The Witch of At- INDEX OF TITLES O5% To Mary, who died in this Opinion, 563. To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, 342. To Music 1 No, Music, thou art not the ‘ food of Love’’’), 488. a oe e Silver key of the fountain of tears ’), to Nicht, 403. To One Singing, 4: To Sidmouth and Caieah 365. To Silence, 489, ‘Lo Sophia, 370. To Stella, 519. To the Lord Chancellor, 353. To the Men of England, 364. — Moon (‘ Art thou pale from weariness ’), To the Moon (‘ Bright wanderer, fair coquette of heaven’), 485. To the Moonbeam, 549. To the People of England, 484. To the Republicans of North America, 565. ‘To thirst and find no fill,’ 487. To eat wel Shelley (‘ My lost William, thou in w. To William Shelley (‘ The billows on the beach are leaping arg it’), 354; Lines written for the poem, 48 To William Shalley (‘ Thy little footsteps on the sands’), 481. To Wordsworth, 344. To Zephyr, 484. To-day, 487. To-morrow, 410. Torpor, 487. Tower of Famine, The, 399. TRANSLATIONS, 491. Translations : — From Bion, 520. From Calderon, 526, 537, From Cavaleanti, 525. From Dante, 522-525. From Euripides, 506, From Goethe, 537. From Homer, 491, 503, 504, 505. From Moschus, 520. From Plato, 519. \ From Virgil, 521. S Triumph of Life, The, 470. Two Spirits, The, 390. Ugolino, 524. Unfinished Drama, Fragments of an, 466. ‘ Unrisen Splendor,’ 484. Venus, Hymn to, 503. Verses on a Cat, 546. Victoria, 551. Vine, The, 485. Vir ‘gil, Translation of the Tenth Eclogue of, 521. Vision of the Sea, A, 377. Vita Nuova, Ada’ ted from a Sonnet in the, 52%. Viviani, Emilia, To, 482, ‘Wake the serpent not,’ 487. Wandering Jew, The, 576. Wandering Jew’s Sollleany, The, 573, Waning Moon, The, 485. War, 555. West Wind, Ode to the, 367. ‘ What men gain fairly,’ 484. ‘ When soft winds,’ 484. ‘ When winds that move not its calm suriac2 sweep,’ 520 Williams, To ‘Edward, 409, Wine of Eglantine, 485, Witcs or Attias, THE, 271. With a Guitar : To Jane, 413. Woodman and the Nightingale, The, 439. Wordsworth, To, 344. World’s Wanderers, The, 400, ‘Ye gentle visikabions, 490. Year, Dirge for the, 402. Zephyr, To, 484. Zucea, The, 450,