&r w^wm'l Sociftj)'U^ -rtSE_>^ 1 1 ■>7^ « O L I HELLAS A LYEICAL DEAMA Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2Q08 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/drahellaslyricalOOshelrich Of this Book Three hundred copies have been printed HELLAS A LYEICAL DRAMA BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY A EEPKINT OF THE OEIGINAL EDITION PUBLISHED IN 1822 WITH TEE AUTHORS PROLOGUE AND NOTES BY VARIOUS HANDS By THOMAS J WISE TbR A OF THE UNIVERSITY PUBLISHED FOR THE SHELLEY SOCIETY BY REEYES AND TURNER 196 STRAND 1886 CONTENTS PAOIS Editor's Peeface xi Mfis. Shelley's Note on EgIIos xxvii Dr. Garnett's Note on the Prologue to Eellas xxxiii Prologue to Hellas xxxv Editor's Notes on the Prologue to Hellas xlvii Shelley's List of Errata for Hellas Iv Editor's Additional List of Errata for Hellas Ivi HELLAS A LYRICAL DRAMA— 1822. Dedication to Prince Mavrocordato v Shelley's Preface vii Dramatis Persons 2 Hellas 3 Shelley's Notes on Hellas 55 Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon .... 59 [There is no table of Contents in the original edition of Hellas, ] 102461 EDITOK'S PEEFACE EDITOE'S PEEFACE. With the drama of Hellas we come to the last of Shelley's works published during his lifetime. Whilst engaged upon its composition the poet was residing at Pisa, where, early in 1821, he was introduced by his cousin Med win to Lieutenant Edward Williams — then late of the 8th Dragoons — whose wife, Jane (afterwards Mrs, Hogg), soon became the object of one of the most earnest of his series of platonic attachments. For the husband also Shelley entertained strong feelings of friendship, and it would appear that it is to his inventive faculty that the " Lyrical Drama " is indebted for its name : — "He [Shelley] asked me yesterday" — wrote Williams in his diary ^ — "what name he should fix to the drama ^ The diary here referred to is the journal kept by Williams throughout the period of his residence in Italy in 1821-2. A portion of it was printed by Mrs. Shelley (who described it as *' affording a picture of Shelley's habits during these last months of his life "), in 1840, in the form of a series of foot-notes illustrative of some of the later of her husband's letters (see Essays, Letters from Abroad, d-c, 1840, vol. ii, pp. 345-352 and 356). The remainder was included by Dr. Garnett in an interesting and valuable article entitled " Shelley's Last Days," contributed to The Fortnightly Review, June 1st, 1878, pp. 850-866. These two fragments were subsequently combined by Mr. Buxton Forman, and published by him in his Library Edition of Shelley's Works (vol. viii, pp. 310-325), where the complete Journal forms Part IV. of the Appendix. The following five extracts from the diary in question all relate to Hellas : — " Friday, October 26, [1821].— As a poet Shelley is certainly the most xii EDITOR'S PREFACE. he is engaged with. I proposed Hellas, which he will adopt." The earliest mention of Hellas to be found in its author's published correspondence occurs in a letter addressed to Mr. John Gisborne, and dated Pisa, October 22nd, 1821.1 In it the writer says :— "... I am just finishing a dramatic poem, called Hellas, upon the contest now raging in Greece — a sort of imitation of the Persm of ^schylus, full of lyrical poetry. I try to be what I might have been, but am not successful. I find that (I dare say I shall quote wrong) : — * Den herrlichsten, den sich der Geist empfangt, Driingt immer fremd und fremder Stoff sich an.' " On the 10th of April following, Shelley again wrote to Mr. Gisborne : — ^ '' I have received Hellas, which is prettily printed, and with fewer mistakes than any poem I ever published.^ imaginative of the day, and if he applied himself to human affections he would be the greatest. His greatest fault is ignorance of his own worth. He asked me yesterday what name he should fix to the drama he is now engaged witli. I proposed Hellas, which he will adopt. I mention the circumstance, as I was proud at being asked the question, and more so that the name pleased him. *' Monday, November 5, [1821]. — Shelley read me some passages of his Hellas, which are very fine, &c. '* Tuesday, November 6, [1821]. — Commence writing out for S. a fair copy of his Hellas. *' Saturday, November 10, [1821]. — Finish [writing out] the notes and preface to Hellas. ... If such a poem becomes popular, we may flatter ourselves with having advanced a step towards improvement and perfec- tion in all things, moral and political. '* Wednesday, April 10, [1822]. — S. receives his Hellas." ^ Essays, Letters from Abroad, &c., 1840, vol. ii, p. 334. 2 Ibid. pp. 335-336. ^ Of course this remark applies only to grammatical, metrical, or other important matters, and must not be considered as relating to minor items EDITOR'S PREFACE. xiii Am I to thank you for tlie revision of the press ? or who acted as midwife to this last of my orphans, introducing it to oblivion, and me to my accustomed failure ? 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," &c. The first edition of Hellas, the receipt of a copy of which Shelley acknowledged in the preceding letter, was published by C. and J. Oilier, in the spring of 1822. It is a thin pamphlet, neatly got up, and the following is a transcript of the title-page : — Hellas / A Lyrical Drama / By / Percy B. Shelley / MANTIS EiM' E20AnN 'AmNHN / CEdip. Colou. / Loudou / Charles and James Oilier Vere Street / Bond Street / mdcccxxii. The collation is : — Octavo. Half-title (with imprint on verso: "Printed by S. and R. Bentley, / Dorset Street, London.") pp. i-ii ; Title (with blank verso) pp. iii-iv ; Dedication (To Prince Alexander Mavrocordato, &c. — with blank verso) pp. v- vi ; Preface pp. vii-xi ; Fly-title to Hellas (with Kst of Dramatis Personoe on verso) pp. 1-2 ; Text of Hellas pp. of mere mechanical detail. This is the more certain, since, in the letter (dated April llth, 1822, and at present, I believe, unpublished) which enclosed the List of Errata for Eellas, Shelley speaks of the volume as being **m general more correct than my other books." Of all Shelley's works published during his own lifetime, the quarto Adonais of 1821 is, undoubtedly, the most free from errors of every description ; a superiority doubtless accounted for by the fact of its having been printed at Pisa under the direct supervision of its author. xiv EDITOR'S PREFACE. 3-53 1; Notes ipp. 55-58; and (five eight-line) stanzas Written on Jiearing the News of the / Death of Napoleon, pp. 59-60. Issued in wrappers (which in some examples are drab and in others Hue), with white paper label on side, lettered " Hellas / A / Lyrical Drama / 3s. 6^." In 1877 Mr. H. Buxton Forman printed for private cir- culation an edition of Hellas, edited and annotated by himself. It consists of Half-title, Hellas, with bibliographi- cal note (signed/* H. B. F.") on verso, pp. 1-2 ; Title-page and Dedication as in the original, pp. 3-6 ; pp. 7 to 10 Shelley's Preface ; Fly-title, Hellas, with Dramatis Personam on verso, pp. 11-12 ; pp. 13 to 59 of Text ; and pp. 60 to 64 of Shelley Notes. The verses on Napoleon's death occupy pp. 65-66. Of this edition there were 50 copies on ordinary paper, 25 on Whatman's hand-made paper, and 5 on Vellum. No general title-page is attached to the volume, and — in common with the original — it has no table of Contents. The only other separate edition of Hellas is a French translation (a handsome and boldly-printed volume), the title-page of which reads : — Hellas / Drame Lyrique de Shelley / Traduction / de / Tola Dorian / [woodcut] / Paris / Alphonse Le- merre, Editeur / 27-31, Passage Choiseul, 27-31 / 1884. This book is a quarto, consisting of :— Half-title (with list of works by the translator ^ on verso), 1 At the foot of p. 53 the imprint is repeated thus: — "Printed by S. and R. Bentley. / Dorset Street, Fleet Street, London." 2 The list is as follows : — Du Meme Auteur : EDITOR'S PREFACE. xv pp. i-ii; Title (printed in red and black) as above, pp. iii-iv ; a leaf with quotation from Sophocles on recto, and Personnages du Drame on verso, pp. v-vi ; and pp. 1-84 of Text. Issued in ' vegetable-parchment ' wrappers, with the title-page (again printed in red and black) reproduced on the front. Also lettered up the back : — " Shelley. — Hellas, traduction de Tola Dorian. — Prix : 6 fr." Thus far is a plain statement of the bibliography of Hellas. It will be well, however, to add to it the three following extracts taken from his published letters, in order that we may have before us, in one group, the whole of the recorded utterances of the poet regarding his work. The first is from a letter addressed to Mr. Charles Oilier:— " Pisa, November lltht 1821. " Dear Sir, " I send you the drama of Hellas, relying on your assurance that you will be good enough to pay immediate attention to my literary requests. What little interest this poem may ever excite, depends upon its immediate publi- cation ; I entreat you, therefore, to have the goodness to send the MS. instantly to a printer, and the moment you get a proof despatch it to me by the post. The whole might be sent at once. Lord Byron has his poem sent to him in this manner, and I cannot see that the inferiority in the composition of a poem can affect the powers of a Ode k la statue de Victor Hugo, de Swinburne. Traduction en vers, precedee d'une lettre de Swinburne. Les Cenci, drame de Shelley. Traduction en prose. Preface de Swinburne. En preparation : Le Prometliee delivre, de Shelley. Traduction en prose. Poemes lyriques. (Un Volume.) Les Amours severes, poesies. (Un Volume.) xvi EDITOR'S PREFACE. printer in the matter of despatch, &c. If any passages should alarm you in the notes, you are at liberty to suppress them ; the poem cpntains nothing of a tendency to danger. " Within a few days I may have to write to you on a subject of greater interest. Meanwhile, I rely on your kindness for carrying my present request into immediate eflfect. " Dear Sir, &c. " . . . . The Ode to Napoleon to print at the end." {Shelley Memorials, 1859, p. 160.) The second is from a long and most interesting letter to Mr. John Gisbome : — ** Lerici, June 18th, 1822. " . . . . Hellas too I liked on account of the subject — one always finds some reason or other for liking one's own composition." {The Fortnightly Revieio, June 1st, 1878, p. 862.) The last is from a letter to " C. T., Esq." (Horatio Smith), dated " Pisa, April 11th, 1822 " :— " My dear T — — , [Smith] "I have, as yet, received neither the [Nympho- lept], nor his metaphysical companions — Time, my Lord, has a wallet on his hack, and I suppose he has bagged them by the way. As he has had a good deal of alms for oblivion out of me, I think he might as well have favoured me this once ; I have, indeed, just dropped another mite into his treasury, called Hellas, which I know not how to send to you ; but I dare say, some fury of the Hades of ^ Doubtless the establishment of the ill-fated Liberal. EDITOR'S PREFACE. xvii authors will bring one to Paris. It is a poem written on the Greek cause last summer — a sort of lyrical, dramatic, nondescript piece of business." &c. {Essays, Letters from Abroad, &c., 1840, vol. ii, pp. 341-342.) Like the majority of Shelley's works, Hellas was the result of a sudden inspiration, and was conceived and ex- ecuted whilst its author was labouring under the immediate influence of those events which so powerfully excited his interest, and the feelings which consequently moved him. Lady Shelley's account of the genesis of the drama is a correct and sympathetic one, and I can do no better than reproduce it here. " But the water," writes the poet's daughter-in-law, " was far from engrossing Shelley's thoughts at this time. The south of Europe had awakened from its lethargy into a state of high political excitement, and it seemed as if the age of liberty were dawning in several places. Spain and Naples had been revolutionized in the previous year ; and the northern and central parts of Italy now endea- voured to follow the example. Several insurrectionary movements were attended by temporary success : Tuscany alone, owing to the benevolent rule of its prince, re- mained tranquil; but, in the end, the patriots were crushed beneath the weight of Austrian armies. At the same period, however, a revolution began in a country farther east, which was destined to result, to a certain extent, in success, though Shelley did not live long enough to behold the issue. Greece declared itself independent of Ottoman domination ; and these combined attacks on the general foe filled Shelley with the utmost enthusiasm. Several Greeks were at that time at Pisa ; and amongst them was B xviii EDITOR'S PREFACE. Prince Mavrocordato, to whom Hellas is dedicated. On the first of April [1821], this gentleman called on the Shelleys, and told them that his cousin, Prince Ipsilanti, had issued a proclamation (a copy of which he brought with him), and that Greece thenceforward would be free. The emotions of joy and hope kindled by this intelligence in the mind of the poet produced the lyrical drama of Hellas, of which Shelley records, in his preface, that it was ' written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the author feels with the cause he would celebrate/ Nevertheless, it contains passages of great power, and lyrics of the utmost sweetness." (Shelley Memorials, 1859. pp. 148-149.) Medwin writes regarding the drama : — " Hellas, which had been written during the autumn [of 1821], and sent to England to be printed, I did not see till some months after; but we often discussed the Greek revolution, and he was enthusiastic in his aspirations for her liberty. He would not believe but that the picture drawn by Mr. Hope in his Anastasius of the modern Greeks, was an overcharged one ; though he admitted that a long course of political slavery under their Mahomedan masters, had so demoralised and bastardised the nation, that important changes must be undergone before it could be regenerated ; but of this he entertained no fears. The opening chorus of Hellas is taken from the PHnci]pe Gostante of Calderon, as Shelley pointed out to me ; and the drama an imitation of the Persians of -^schylus. It is, as Shelley says himself, ' full of lyrical poetry,' and, I might add, the most beautiful. The Choruses are wonderfully imaginative, and melodious in their versification, and splendidly exemplify his pecu- EDITOR'S PREFACE. xix liarity of style. Whether Byron's Isles of Greece suggested the closing chorus, I know not. The adoption of the same metre might have been a coincidence. " * A brighter Hellas rears its mountains, From waves serener far,' &c., &c. "What is this glorious hymn but another Isles of Greece ? Indeed, it yields in nothing to Byron's strain ; and the prophecy is such as poets love to dwell upon, and Shelley most of all, — the regeneration of mankind, though clouded with the melancholy foreboding of the horrors that the struggle must cost. It is impossible to tell how much this drama, and the enthusiasm of Shelley, influenced the determination of Byron to devote his energies to the sacred cause. If he was to have died young, he could not have died at a better moment for his fame." (life of Shelley, 1847, vol. ii, pp. 182-184.) Upon the subject of Prince Mavrocordato, Shelley was wont, apparently, to express himself in somewhat flattering terms. In a letter to Peacock (dated " Fisa, March 21st, 1821 "), he wrote :— " We are surrounded here in Pisa by revolutiionary volcanos, which, as yet, give more light than heat; the lava has not yet reached Tuscany. But the news in the papers will tell you far more than it is prudent to say ; and for this once I will observe your rule of political silence. The Austrians wish that the Neapolitans and Piedmontese would do the same. "We have seen a few more people than usual this winter, and have made a very interesting acquaintance with a Greek prince, perfectly acquainted with ancient litera- ture, and full of enthusiasm for the liberties and improve- b2 XX EDITOR'S PREFACE. ment of his country. Mary has been a Greek student several months, and is reading Antigone with our turbaned friend, who, in return, is taught English." To this letter Mrs. Shelley added in a postscript : — " Am I not lucky to have got so good a master ? I have finished the two plays of (Edijms, and am now reading the Antigone. The name of the prince is ' AXe^avhpo^ MavpoKopBaro^. He can read English perfectly well." (Frasers Magazine, March, 1860, pp. 316-317.) To which may be added (from a letter to "Horatio Smith, Esq., Fisa, Sept. Uth, 1821 ") :— " All public attention is now centred on the wonderful revolution in Greece. I dare not, after the events of last winter, hope that slaves can become freemen so cheaply ; yet I know one Greek of the highest qualities, both of courage and conduct, the Prince Mavrocordato, and if the rest be like him, all will go well. — The news of this moment is, that the Russian army has orders to advance," &c. {Essays, Letters from Abroad, <&:e., 1840, vol. ii, p. 331.) Medwin, also, has something to say regarding the Prince : — " Prince Mavrocordato was his [Shelley's] constant visitor ; with him he read the Paradise Lost, and as both were great linguists, the task was rendered the easier. Speakii|g of this, Shelley used to say that in interpreting a foreign tongue, it was a great mutual advantage to know several; for that hence synonyms, which failed in one, could be found in another ; and thus he would often give the exact meaning of a word in Italian, or Spanish, or Latin, or still more frequently in Greek, which he found EDITOR^S PREFACE. xxi I the best medium as regarded the Paradise Lost, — perhaps the most difficult of all poems to explain. Let him who doubts it make the experiment. In return, the prince read with us the Agamemnon^ though Shelley little approved of his emendations, and would not admit that a modern Greek was a better scholiast than an English scholar. He admitted that he might know better the names of plants and flowers, but had no advantage over a foreigner in correcting the faults, or supplying the hiatuses in the text ; the best proof of which was, that with a solitary exception, Mustoxidi, modern Greece has produced no great philologist. Nor could Shelley's ears, accustomed to our pronunciation, endure Mavrocordato's, which the latter contended was the only right one." (Life of Shelley ^ 1847, vol. ii, pp. 40-41.) In my Introduction to the Society's reprint of the first edition of Admiais, I drew attention (see p. 14) to the fact of the three lines of Hellas (p. 5, lines 13-15) : — " In the great morning of the world. The spirit of God with might unfiirl'd The flag of Freedom over Chaos," &c. being an expansion of the thought contained in the two lines of Adonais (stanza xix, lines 4-5) : — " From the great morning of the world when first God dawned on Chaos," &c. This, however, is not the only instance to be found of Shelley's resuscitating an idea and exacting from it a second service. No one, surely, can fail to remember those marvellous and richly-suggestive lines in the first Scene of the second Act of "Prometheus Unhoundy in which Asia, xxii EDITOR'S PREFACE. stimulated by the words of her sister Panthea, recalls and recounts the incidents of her own forgotten dream : — "And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind ; 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 : " &c, — {Prometheus Unbound, 1820, p. 68, lines 17-18 ; and p. 69, lines 1 and 10-12.) There is far more than a mere echo of this in Hellas : — "A wind Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest, ♦ And with the wind a storm of harmony Unutterably sweet, and pilot him Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus : " &c. —{Hellas, 1822, p. 11, lines 12-16.) In connexion with this subject it is interesting to record that Dr. Garnett has traced back to ^schylus the germ of the lines in Hellas (p. 13) : — *' Bevenge and wrong bring forth their kind" &c. At the close of a letter to his wife, dated " Friday y l^th August, 1821," Shelley says : — "We have good rumours of the Greeks here, and a Russian war. I hardly wish the E-ussians to take any part in it. My maxim is with iEschylus : — " * TO dvffcrePes — IJL€Ta fiev trXeiova riKrei, (r€T€pq, 5' eiKora yeuvc^.' " There is a Greek exercise for you. How should slaves produce anything but tyranny, even as the seed produces the plant ? " &c. EDITOR'S PREFACE. xxiii To which Dr. Garnett appends this note : — " ' TO Bva-a6^€<;,' etc. These lines are from the Agamem- non of -^schylus, V. 728-730. They are expanded in the well-known quatrain in Hellas : — " * Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are ; Their den is in the guilty mind, And Conscience feeds them with despair.' " —(Shelley's Letters, edited by Dr. Gamett, 1884, pp. 166 and 249.) Upon Shelley's frequent employment of the character of Ahasuerus it is scarcely needful, in this place, to o£fer any comment, the continued reappearance of the Wandering Jew in Shelleyan Dramatis Persons having already been sufficiently remarked. The transcript of Hellas made by Williams (see ante, p. xii, below), and subsequently revised for press by Shelley himself, is fortunately still extant. It was preserved by the publisher, Mr. Charles Oilier, for whose family it was sold by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson, at pubHc auction, on the 19th of July, 1877. It was purchased for Mr. Frederick Locker-Lampson, in whose possession it still remains, one of the most enviable of "The Kowfant Books." To the textual student the preservation of this manuscript, and the documents which accompanied it, must ever remain cause for sincere congratulation, more than one disputed point having been settled by an examination of their contents. Regarding the present edition of Hellas but very little need be said. It is as exact a reproduction of the first edition of 1822 as it has been found possible — with types xxiv EDITOR'S PREFACE. — to obtain. The volume has been reprinted word for word and line for line, the text being closely and minutely followed in every particular, each * printer's error,' ' dropped letter,' or other peculiarity of the original being carefully perpetuated. In order to make the book as complete and perfect as possible. The Prologue to Hellas (to which a separate series of Notes will be found attached), Mrs. Shelle/s Note on Hellas, and a full list of Errata have been added. Thomas J. Wise. 127, Devonshire Road, holloway, n. MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE ON HELLAS NOTE ON HELLAS BT MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY. 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 Constitution, 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 reso- lution 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 imitation, the people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave the cong^ 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 government, beneath whose xxviii MKS. SHELLEY'S NOTE ON HELLAS. 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 reform. 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 countries accustomed to the exercise of the privileges 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 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 Yaccd, were accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes from Shelley : they did not find such for the despair they too generally experienced, founded on contempt for their southern countrymen. MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE ON HELLAS. xxix While the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several Constantinopolitan 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 trea- sures, 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 insurrection in Greece ; but we had no idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of April, 1821, he called on Shelley; bringing the proclamation of his cousin. Prince Ipsilanti, 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 naturally 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 prophesying their success. Hellas was written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to remark 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 a change in English 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 enfranchisement from the Turks. Almost against reason, as it appeared to him, he resolved to believe that XXX MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE ON HELLAS. 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. The chronological order to be observed in the arrangement of the remaining poems, is interrupted here, that his dramas may follow each other consecutively. Hellas was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify Shelley's peculiar style ; as, for instance, the assertion of the intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato : " But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war ; Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity." And again, that philosophical truth, felicitously imaged forth— ** Kevenge and wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are ; Their den is in the guilty mind, And conscience feeds them with despair. " 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 regener- ation of mankind — and that regeneration reflecting back splendour 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. (From : — The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edited by Mrs. Shelley, Royal Octavo edition; Moxon, 1874, <^c., pp. 179-180.) PfiOLOaUE TO HELLAS / NOTE ox THE PROLOGUE TO HELLAS' BY RICHARD GARNETT. Mrs. Shelley informs us, in her note on the Prometheus Unbound, that at the time of her husband's arrival in Italy, he meditated the production of three dramas.^ One of these was the Prometheus itself ; the second, a drama on the subject of Tasso's madness ; the third one founded on the Book of Job ; " of which," she adds, " he never abandoned the idea." That this was the case will be apparent from the following newly-discovered fragment, which may have been, as I have on tSe 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 version, for which the Persae of ^schylus evidently supplied the model. It is written in the same book as the original MS. of Hellas, and so blended with this as to be only separable after very minute examination. Few even of Shelley'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 c xxxiv NOTE ON THE PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. certain ; and the imperfection of some passages is such as to have occasioned their entire omission. Nevertheless, 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 accom- plished could he have executed his original design of founding a drama on the Book of Job. Weak health, variable spirits, above all, the absence of encouragement, must be enumerated as chief among the causes which have deprived our literature of so magnificent a work. Besides the evident imitation of the Book of Job, the re- semblance of the first draft of Hellas to the machinery of Dryden's intended epic is to be noted. "He gives," says Johnson, summarising 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 involving some kind of supernatural agency, and had 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 opposition 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." R. G. CI -I ■'Ou PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. ■M'i^ _i ,y^ JbEEALD of eternity. ,, It is the day when all the sons of God Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss . w-- . Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline * * » * * The shadow of God, and delegate Of that before whose breath the universe Is as a print of dew. Hierarchs and kings Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation Steaming from earth, conceals the of heaven / Which gave it birth, assemble here Before your Father's throne ; the swift decree c2 XXXVl PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation Is yet withheld, clothed 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 inwrapt 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 tr 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 And when the sun of its dominion failed. And when the winter of its glory came, PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. xxxvii The winds that stript it bare blew on and swept \ i/^W^ V. l^f- fid, 44 v^^ That dew into the utmost wildernesses \ ^^^ T^ | In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed , pjT^^^ The unmaternal bosom of the North. Haste, sons of God, for ye beheld, '/ {?-W\A\^ Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished. The stem decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair. A fourth now waits : assemble, sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend, If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld. The unaccomplished destiny. CHORUS. The curtain of the Universe Is rent and shattered, The splendour-winged worlds disperse Like wild doves scattered. Space is roofless and bare. And in the midst a cloudy shrine, Dark amid thrones of light. In the blue glow of hyaline Golden worlds revolve and shine y y xxxviii PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. In flight From every point of the Infinite, Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread ; And through thunder and darkness dread Light and music are radiated, And in their pavilioned chariots led jjo^^ By living wings high overhead The giant Powers move, P/^T \S^ 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 1 Satan, Christ, and Mahomet Start from their places ! r>^A ' i)^ Almighty Father I Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny * * ♦ * * There are two fountains in which spirits weep When mortals err. Discord and Slavery named, PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. xxxix 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 ObHvion's lymph. 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, 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, -^dt^^ Stars of all night — her harmonies and forms, Echoes and shadows of what Love adores In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, Thy irrevocable child : let her descend * A seraph-winged victory [arrayed] ^ In tempest of the omnipotence of God Which sweeps through all things. .^ o/ 2 ''-^ Ic.l ^M-^ # fe-V 1 xl PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies To stamp, as on a winged 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 By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Are stars beneath the dawn She shall arise Victorious as the world arose from Chaos 1 &J^ 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 I Shall be one living Spirit, so shall Greece — tT 1^ \IVq SATAN. 2 Be as all things beneath the empyrean, • Mine ! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny, v J^SX> Kh^- )C Three vials of the tears which demons weep When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death Pass triumphing over the thorns of Ufe, 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. 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 excellence Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine. I — ***** MAHOMET. * * Haste thou and fill the waninof crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. xliii 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 curse on them whose creed Divides and multiphes the most high God. 1821. [The following fragments appear to have been originally written for Hellas.] Fairest of the Destinies, Disarray thy dazzling eyes : Keener far their lightnings are Than the winged [bolts] thou bearest, And the smile thou wearest Wraps thee as a star Is wrapt in light. xliv PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. Could Arethuse to her forsaken um 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 1 A star has fallen upon the earth 'Mid the benighted nations, A quenchless atom of immortal light, A living spark of Night, A cresset 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 Bums, and on course Guides the sphere which is its prison, Like an angelic spirit pent In a form of mortal birth, PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. xlv 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, Euining its chaos — a fierce breath Consuming all its forms of living death. EDITOR'S NOTES ON THE PROLOGUE TO HELLAS (1) A part of this Note was included in the Relics of Shelley i* 1862, p. 3, where the Prologue to Hellas itself origin- ally appeared (pp. 4-13) ] the latter having in that year been "deciphered by Dr. Garnett during the course of his fruit- ful search amongst the Shelley Manuscripts preserved at Boscombe Manor." The remaining portion was first printed in a private volume issued during the present year.f The Relics of Shelley itself is full of most valuable and interest- ing matter given from original and authoritative sources, * Relics of Shelley. / Edited by / RicTmrd Garnett. / London : / Edward Moxon o& Co., Dover Street. / 1862. Sviall octavo, pp. i-xvi, and 1-191. The whole of the fragments in Prose and Verse included in this book, were reprinted in Mr. Buxton Forman's Library Edition of Shelley's "Works ; and the Poetical portions re-appear in all his separate editions of the Poetry. f Prologue to Hellas / By / Percy Bysshe Shelley / With / An Introditctory Note I By I Richard Garnett / Edited and Annotated I By j Thomas J. Wise I London j For Private Distribution only / 1886. Octavo, pp. 1-28. Some copies number pp. 1-36, a Postscript having been added to the book during its passage through the press. In all Twenty copies only were printed. Both varieties have as frontispiece a lithographed portrait of Shelley "from the original picture by Clint." xlviii NOTES ON THE amongst which the Fragrtvents of the Adonais,* The Magic Plant, OvpheuSy Fiordispina, and the Lines tcritten in the Bay of Lerici hold most prominent positions. But the little book contains no pages so attractive, or possessed of such intrinsic worth, as those which place before us the vivid and powerful lines of this marvellous Prologue; the recovery of which is matter for lasting congratulation amongst the delighted admirers of the poet's wondrous skill. (2) The following is the extract from Mrs. Shelley's Note in question : — "He [Shelley] went directly to Italy, avoiding even *' Paris, and did not make any pause till he arrived at " Milan. ***** The poetical spirit within him speedily "revived with all the power and with more than all the " beauty of his first attempts. He meditated 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.t The other was one founded on the book of * By the courtesy of Dr. Garnett, these Fragments — both of the Poem and of the Preface — were printed in full in the Introduction to the Facsimile Reprint of the first edition (4to, Pisa, 1821) of the Adonais, issued by the Shelley Society {Publications, Second Series, No. 1) in March of the present year. They will be found on pp. 19-22 of that Reprint. t First printed in the Posthumous Poems, 1824, p. 264. When writing this passage, Mrs. Shelley seems to have overlooked another small portion of the projected drama, which has happily been preserved. Part of one scene was included by Dr. Garnett in the Relics of Shelley, pp. 26-27 ; and that much more must have been produced may, I imagine, fairly be concluded from the Poet's own words : — ** I have devoted," he wrote from Milan, April 20, 1818,1 *'this summer * * * to the composition of a tragedy on 1 To this letter Dr. Garnett appends an interesting note which, with his kind consent, I here reproduce : — "A tragedy on the subject of Tasso's madness." One scene and one song for this projected drama have been printed in Shelley's works. The following notes for intended scenes have not hitherto been published : — "Scene where he reads the sonnet which he wrote to PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. xlix "Job, which he never abandoned in idea, but of which no "trace remains among his papers. The third was the ** Prometheus Unbound. The Greek tragedians were now "his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and the "sublime majesty of ^schylus 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 vicissitudes into the mighty " passions and throes of gods and demigods — such fascinated " the abstract imagination of Shelley." (See : — The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited hy Mrs. Shelley. Royal Octavo edition, 1874, (Sec, pp. 125-126.) (3) ** The sapphire space of interstellar air." the subject of Tasso's madness ; which I find upon inspection is, if properly treated, admirably dramatic and poetical." Of course this may mean simply that Shelley had decided upon devoting the summer, then only in its spring, to the purpose named ; and he may afterwards, for reasons of his own, have abandoned the design ; that such was indeed the case Dr. Garnett expresses himself as feeling perfectly convinced. Still the passage is sufl&ciently uncertain in its wording to admit of an indulgence in the belief that the work was proceeded with at some length, and that a far larger portion of the projected drama was produced than the fragments now remaining would alone lead us to suppose. But Shelley was not the only poet to be moved by Tasso's doleful tale. We remember Byron, and what he thought upon the theme, and how he made it immortal in his touching Lament. {The Lament of Tasso. / By Lord Byron. / London : / John Murray, Albemarle- Street. 1817. Octavo^ pp. 1-20.) It was the appearance of Byron's work, thinks Dr. Garnett {Relics of Shelley, p. 26), that induced Shelley to abandon his under- taking ; he being reluctant to enter into apparent competition with a friend, to whose genius his modesty (confirmed by the unanimous voice of his contemporaries) induced him to assign an unmerited pre-eminence over his own. Leonora to herself as composed at the request of another. His disguising himself in the habit of a shepherd, and questioning his sister in that disguise concerning himself, and then unveiling himself." — {Select Letters of I Percy Bysshe Shelley / Edited luith an Introduction By / Richard Garnett / London / Kegan Paul, Trench, cfe Co / mdccclxxxiiii. Small octavo, pp. i-xix, and 1-255. This Note occurs on 2^p. 244-245.) 1 NOTES ON THE Compare with Fragments of an Unfinished Dramas line 27 : — " In the dark space of interstellar air." (Bee :— Shelley's WorJcs, Forman's Edition, 1880. Vol. iii, p. 276. Also Rossetti's Edition, 1885, vol. iii, p. 179.*) (4) ** Let her descend A seraph-winged victory [arrayed] In tempest of the omnipotence of God Which sweeps through all things." Compare with Hellas, 1822, p. 23, lines 10-14:— ** The renovated genius of our race, descends A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom," (5) " Change Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings. Convulsing and consuming," Compare with Adonais xxix, lines 7 and 8 : — " fear and giief Convulse us and consume us day by day," (6) ** Haste thou and fill the waning crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow Of Christian night rolled back upon the West When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow." * The line may also be found on page 209 of the Posthumous Poems, 1824, where the passage of thirteen lines which it closes stands alone under a separate title — Song of a Spirit. Probably the confused state of her husband's note-books — from which a considerable proportion of the Posthumous Poems were gleaned — prevented Mrs. Shelley from immediately detecting the fact that the so-called Song of a Spirit formed in reality an integral portion of the Unfinished Brama. PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. Compare with HellaSy 1822, p. 16, lines 11-19 : — " ! miserable dawn, after a night More glorious than the day which it usurp'd ! 0, faith in God ! 0, power on earth ! 0, word Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing wings Darken'd the thrones and idols of the West, Now bright ! — For thy sake cursed be the hour, Even as. a father by an evil child. When the Orient moon of Islam roll'd in triumph From Caucasus to White Ceraunia ! " T. J. W , \ ERRATA FOR HELLAS SHELLEY'S LIST OF ERRATA FOR HELLAS In one of a number of Shelley's autograph letters (the property of the family of his pubUsher, Mr. Charles Oilier) sold by auction by Messrs. Puttick and Simpson on the 19th of July, 1877, was the following List of Errata for Hellas, drawn up by Shelley himself. In all probabiUty it reached Mr. Ollier's hands too late for pubU- cation, as it was not included in the original edition of 1822. It was first printed by Mr. H. Buxton Forman in his Library Edition of Shelley's Works, vol. iv, p. 572. ERRATA Pages 5, 6, and 7. — The speech of the chorus is divided into three stanzas, the first of which ends at the word Switzerland, the second at the word Spain. Page 24, line 9. — Instead of Repulsed on the icaters, read Repulse is on the loaters ! — (this error is of so much consequence that it would be worth while to cancel the leaf). Page 24, line 15.— For Hold, read Told. Page 31, line 7. — For upon Clelonites, read Chelonite's. Page 33, line 5. — For Bask in the blue noon divine, read Bask in the deep blue noon divine. Page 37, last line. — For Apprehend, read Apprehended. Page 52, line 6.— Make a division between the stanzas. [That is between lines 6 and 7.] EDITOR'S ADDITIONAL LIST OF EKRATA FOR HELLAS The errors notified in the following list were not included by Shelley in the one prepared by him in 1822, and printed on the preceding page. Probably his keen anxiety for the correctness and finish of the verse, pre- vented his detecting and tabulating many of the minor inaccuracies which abound in the text. ADDITIONAL ERRATA Page ix, line 27. — For Anastatius, read Anastasius. Page 2. — To list of Dramatis Personce, add the Phantom of Mahomet the Second. Page 6, line 17. — Insert a full stop after dreams. Page 6, line 23. — For tempests, read tempests. Page 6, line 24. — For aiery, read aerie. Page 7, line 6. — For nurselings^ read nurslings. Page 9, line 3. — For the full stop after course insert a comma. Page 16, line 5. — For Sairocco's^ read Sirocco^ s. [This word occurs again on page 31, line 17, where it is spelt Sirocco — which I take to be correct. Mr. Forman, how- ever, on both occasions spells it Scirocco (Shelley's Wo7'kSy vol. iii, p. 58, line 277, and p. 73, line 630), thus making a second change in the original text, the necessity for which I cannot admit.] Page 18, line 17. — For Wan-emblem, read Wan emblem. Page 19, line 1, — Delete the comma after moon. Page 24, line 3. — For the full stop after banner insert a note of exclamation. ADDITIONAL EREATA. Ivii Page 25, line 15. — For chrystalUne, read crystalline. Page 26, line 6. — Insert a liyphen Sitter pale. Page 26, last line. — For war, read War; and for despair, read Despair. Page 28, line 1. — For can^st, read canst. Page 30, line 5. — 'Fox prophecy ings, vead prophesy ings. Page 32, line 4. — Insert a comma after Highness. Page 33, line 18. — For tyranny, read Tyranny. Page 36, line 12. — For should read Fear (?) [Mr. Rossetti (Shelley's WorJcs, 3 vol. edition, vol. ii, p. 456) appends to this line the following interesting note : — " ' For ' has no rhyme (unless ' are ' and ' despair ' are to be considered such) : it requires to rhyme with ' hear.' From this defect of rhyme, and other considerations, I (following Mr. Fleay) ' used to consider it almost certain that 'Fear' ought to replace ' For ' ; and I gave ' Fear ' in my edition of 1870, without (I think) any remonstrance from other Shelleyites. However, the word in the MS. is ' For,' and Shelley's list of errata leaves this unaltered— so we must needs abide by it."] Page 36, line 13. — For wrong, read Wrong. Page 38, line 13. — Insert a comma after Om. Page 40, line 10.— Insert the numeral 6 between the brackets at end of line. Page 41, line 15, above. — For Ahasueras, read Ahasuerus. Page 43, line 14. — For aiery, read aerie. Vb%q 45, line 16. — Insert a comma after dream. Page 45, line 18.— Insert a comma after may. Page 49, line 1. — For the full stop after clime insert a comma. Page 52, line 7. — For Argos, read Argo. Page 52, line 22. — For the full stop after ^7*me insert a semicolon. Page 53, lines 2-4. — In place of the asterisks read : — more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose. Than many unsubdued : E Iviii ADDITIONAL ERRATA. j Page 53, line 7. — For hate and death, read Hate and Death. Page 55, line 13. — Insert a comma after matter. Page 55, last line. — For and after inflicting, read who, after inflicting. Page 56, line 13, above.— ¥ or priest, resid priests. Page 57, line 6, above. — For is of an Assault, read as of the Assault. Page 57, line 7. — For 1445, read 1453. Page 57, line 21, above. — For Note C), read (J) The Chorus. Page 58, line 3. — After Egypt insert : — The One who rose, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World were amerced of their worship."^ Page 58, line 12. — Cancel very edifying examples, and read : — so edifying an example as their successor. The sublime Miman character of Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a power, who tempted, betrayed, and 2mnished the innocent beings loho were called into existence by his sole will ; and for the period of a thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of meii, haa been 2^ropitiaied with myriads of hecatombs of those who approached the nearest to his innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under every aggravation of atrocity and vaiiety of torture* Page 60. — Insert inverted commas at tlie beginning and end of the second stanza. In addition to tbe above, there is one minute variation which occurs with considerable frequency throughout the book. I allude to the headings placed above the verses allotted to the second Semichorus. These are sometimes printed Semichorus 2nd, and sometimes Semichorus 2d. Mrs. Shelley, Mr. Rossetti, and Mr. Forman all print it Sem,ichorus ii. * In connexion with these two passages, it is only right to state that Mr. Oilier had Shelley's direct permission to make omissions from the Notes. (See a letter from Shelley to Mr. Oilier, given in the Shelley Memorials, 1859. p. 160 The letter is also printed in the Preface to the present volume, ante p. xvi.) In omitting the lines in the sixth stanza of tlie closing Chorus (p. 53, lines 2-4), however, the wary publisher, rendered keen by the memory of former troubles of a kindred nature, doubtless exercised his ownjudgment alone in the matter. T. J. W. HELLAS LYRICAL DRAMA 3s Qd. HELLAS. PRINTED BY S. AND R. BENTLET, DORSET STREET, LONDON. HELLAS A LYRICAL DRAMA BY PERCY B. SHELLEY MANTIS EIM' E20AXiN 'AFflNriN (Edit. Colon. LONDON CHARLES AlTD JAMES OLLIER VERE STREET BOND STREET MDCOCXZII TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO XnE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA, THE DRAMA OF HELLAS IS INSCRIBED AS AN IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP 07 THE AUTHOK. Pisa, November 1st. 1821. PREFACE. The poem of Hellas, written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause he would celebrate. The subject, in its present state, is insusceptible of being treated otherwise than lyrically, and if I have called this poem a drama from the circumstance of its being composed in dialogue, the licence is not greater than that which has been assumed by other poets who have called their productions epics, only because they have been di- vided into twelve or twenty-four books. The Persse of ^schylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended for- bids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and Vlll PREFACE. visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph 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, if recited on the Thespian waggon to an Athenian village at the Dionysiaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. I shall bear -vvdth equanimity any punishment greater than the loss of such a reward Avhich the Aristarchi of the hour may think fit to inflict. The only goat-song Avhich I have yet attempted has, I confess, in spite of the unfavourable nature of the sub- ject, 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 forgiveness 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 account 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 shews of this mortal scene. "We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, PEEFACE. IX our arts, have their root in Greece. But for Greece — Rome, the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropoHs 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 attained to a per- fection in Greece which has impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose very fragments are the despair of modem art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest or imper- ceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the extinction of the race. The modem 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 en- thusiasm, 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 dis- solved. In fact, the Greeks, since the admirable novel of ** Anastatius " 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 com- municated to their fellow-citizens the latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors were the origi- X PKEFACE. nal source. The university of Chios contained before the breaking out of the revolution eight hundred students^ and among them several Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their country with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above all praise. The Enghsh permit their own oppressors to act accord- ing to their natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alHance 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 establishing the inde- pendence of Greece, and in maintaining it both against Russia and the Turk ; — but when was the oppressor gene- rous or just ? The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tran- quil in the enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural and feeble government are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous 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 pinnacled 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 im- pute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and PREFACE. XI that enemy well knows the power and the cunning of its opponents, and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division to wrest the bloody scep- tres from their grasp. 7.0pm CryMcJ >t.af4y^ \y^3dJ\jkt<:^^ HELLAS 'iM^l^' 0. DRAMATIS PERSONS. ^ Mahmud. Hassan Daood. Ahasuerus, a t/em ' ^ ^ . >- - •■iJ\x/<^J^ Chorus of Greek Captive Women. u^t ^^3 Messengers^ Slaves and Attendants, Scene, Constantinople. Time, Sicnset, ^^ HELLAS' ^ A LYEICAL DEAMA /Sfcewe, a Terrace on tJie Seraglio, Mahmud (sleeping)^ an Indian Slave sitting beside his Couch, CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN. We strew these opiate flowers On tLy restless pillow, — ^^A/f^*^ They were stript from Orient bowers.*.^ / / / y ^'^ By the Indian billow. ^ ^ -^ly^ Be thy sleep i ^ Calm and deep, Like their's who fell — not our's who weep ! INDIAN. Away, unlovely dreams ! Away, false shapes of sleep I Be his, as Heaven seems. Clear, and bright, and deep ! \ b2 4 HELLAS. 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, Whose lover was of the number Who now keep "^thj^L. ' That calm sleep i^ WTience none may wake, where none shall weep. INDIAN. I touch thy temples pale ! I breathe my soul on thee ! And could my prayers avail, {ij,> ; -^ All my joy should be ft Dead, and I would live to weep, 'S^ Q . y . . . ^0^> ^^'"~' So thou miofht'st win one hour of quiet sleep. /V^ \^ CHORUS. Breathe low, low ■ ^ ia * The spell of the mighty mistress now I \.yV^ ^ i\^ When Conscience lulls her sated snake, , ((u<' ^ ^"* ■ / And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake. W-^'nT Breathe low — low The words which, like secret fire, shall flow Through the veins of the frozen earth — low, low ! HELLAS. SEMICHORUS 1st. Life may change, but it may fly not ; Hope may vanish, but can die not ; Truth be veil'd, but still it burneth ; I Love repulsed, — but it returneth '. S E M IG]^ O R y S 2d. ^ ^ ^^ life a nhflrnet wl^feTfi"^, , ^ SEJ Yet were life Hope lay coffin'd with Despair ; Yet were truth a sacred lie, Love were lust — >tC^ »^'>>7" ■^ v-L V SEMICHORUS 1st. 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 unfurl'd The flag of Freedom over Chaos, And all its banded anarchs fled, Like vultures frighted from Imaus, Before an earthquake's tread. — So from Time's tempestuous dawn Freedom's splendour burst and shone : — Thermopylae and Marathon iw.r v^>V 6 HELLAS. Cauglit, like mountains beacon-lighted, The springing Fire. — The winged glory On Philippi half-alighted, Like an eagle on a promontory. Its unwearied wings could fan ^Jj^ ^\^ )m^^ The quenchless ashes of Milan. (}) ouP^fUxc^ Olm From age to age, from man to man,(^^.tA>v>ut^ — Vu!C^ > It lived ; and lit from land to land, Florence, Albion, Switzerland. Then night fell ; and, as from night, vS Re-assuming fiery flight. From the West swift .Freedom .came, ,. jyV^ Against the course of Heaven and doom, * Vft^ --*# -^ second sun array'd in flame, V'^ \ Oi^' ^° burji, to kindle, to illume. '^i^^ ^V From far Atlantis its young beams A ' Chased the shadows and the dreams France, with all her sanguine steams, 0^^ 1^ ^' ^^^> ^^^ quench'd it not ; again Jlsy-'' Through clouds its shafts of glory rain From utmost Germany to Spain. As an eagle fed with morning Scorns the embattled tempests warning. When she seeks her aiery hanging t>^" In the mountain-cedar's hair, Y -^^d ^^r brood expect the clanging Of her wings through the wild air, HELLAS. 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 nurselings prey, And in the naked lightnings Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. Let Freedom leave — where'er she flies, A Desart, or a Paradise : Let the beautiful and the brave (X^ ^ -^ Share her glory, or a grav§„,,.«^^ ^ jL/\r^ -^ SEMICHORUS 1st. ^^ ^jk l^" With the gifts of gladness (^Qt^- The times do cast strange shadows^.--''-''''"''*''"'""^ On those who watch and who must rule their course. ^ /%/P^ * Lest they, being first in peril as in glory, , "iAXV^'^i'*^ Be whelmed in the fierce ebb : — and these are of them. ) "7 1 Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me ^ ^ As thus from sleep into the troubled day ; It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, 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 : — 'tis 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 Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow ; His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct 10 HELLAS. With light, and to the soul that quickens them Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift To the winter wind : — but from hi^eye)looks forth A life of unconsumed thought which pierces The present, and the past, and the to-come. ^ s Some say that this is he whom the great prophet CJ^^j Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery Q^J^ Mocked with the curse of immortality. Some feign that he is Enoch : others dream He was pre-adamite and has survived _ -^ Cycles of generation and of ruin. ^ CM*'*'^ 1 'j'jjQ gg^gg^ jj^ truth, by dreadful abstinence And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh. Deep contemplation, and unwearied study, In years outstretch'd beyond the date of man, May have attained to sovereignty and science Over those strong and secret things and thoughts Which others fear and know not. Mahmud. I would talk With this old Jew. 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 1 He who would question him x^- -j^^ HELLAS. il Must^ifalone 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, Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water. Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud Ahasuerus I and the caverns round Will answer Ahasilerus 1 If his prayer Be granted, a faint meteor will arise Lio:htins: him over Marmora, and a wind ,, i -^ .a. ^-^^^ Will rush out of the sighing pine-foresv^ Ci^' ,^j^^ h Ci And with the wind a storm of harmony \-*^''^ , ^ 4'i^.jL^*^"\ ** > Unutterably sweet, and pilot him K ^ u.A'^''^*'^ Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus : \ Thence at the hour and place and circumstance\ ' 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. s^ }"- 12 HELLAS. Mahmud. This Jew whom thou hast summon'd — Hassan. Will be here — Mahmud. When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked He, I, and all things shall compel — enough. Silence those mutineers — that drunken crew, That crowd about the pilot in the storm. Ay ! strike the foremost shorter by a head ! fj^ 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 severally. Chorus. (2) .d-r<^-^x \Si \ Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away. But they are still immortal v y^iy^tf^^l Who, through birth's orient portal P^^jij^ jAnd death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, ^^ X^ ' CJlothe their unceasing flight In tjie brief dust and Hght Gather'd around their chariots as they go ; HELLAS. 13 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. A power from the unknown God, jQ ^ \ A Promethean conqueror came ; ^^^ ^ fi^ . " ' '^ ^ Like a triumphal path he trod , /jl^Ja The thorns of death^md shame, '/t>e^-^^^^<-'*4^ . A mortal shape to him «i^ (/ik^ep /y^j Was Hke the vapour dim / Which the orient planet animates with light ; Hell, Sin and Slavery came, Like blood-hounds mild and tame. Nor prey d, until their Lord had taken flight ; The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set : While blazon'd 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 Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem : "j-yx^-itJt- * hM of ()jl;^Mjl 14 - HELLAS. Apollo, Pan, and Love, And even Olympian Jove Grew weak, for killing Tnith 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 Mahmud, Hassan, Daood, and others, Mahmud. More gold ? our ancestors bought gold with victory. And shall I sell it for defeat ? Daood. The Janlzars Clamour for pay. Mahmud. Go ! bid them pay themselves -^^[^^ With Christian blood, ! Are there no Grecian virgins j^MjJ^ , Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy ? iL ^^ No infidel children to impale on spears ? ..aa-v"^ ' ^ |» V "No hoary priests after that Patriarch (^) , a /^'V-> Who bent the curse against bis country's heart,"" Whicb clove his own at last ? Go 1 bid them kill, / /Blood is the seed of gold. Daood. It has been sown, HELLAS. 15 And yet the harvest to the sicklemen 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. 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. fS^-^'^^ H {Exit Daood. O ! miserable dawn, after a night More glorious than the day which it usurp'd I O, faith in God ! 0, power on earth ! O, word Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing wings Darken'd the thrones and idols of the West, Now bright ! — For thy sake cursed be the hour. Even as a father by an evil child, When the Orient moon of Islam roll'd in triumph From Caucasus to White Ceraunia I Ruin above, and anarchy below; Terror without, and treachery within ; The ChaHce of destruction full, and all Thirsting to drink ; and who among us dares To dash it from his lips ? and where is Hope ? 16 HELLAS. Hassan. The lamp of our dominion still rides high ; One God is God — Mahomet is his prophet. Four hundred thousand Moslems from the limits Of utmost Asia, irresistibly Throng, like full clouds at the Sairocco's cry ; But not Hke them to weep their strength in tears : They bear destroying lightning, and their step Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm, And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus, Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen With horrent arms ; and lofty ships even now, Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge, Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala The convoy of the ever-veering wind. Samos is drunk with blood ; — the Greek has paid, Brief victory with swift loss and long despair. The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far. When the fierce shout of Allah-ilia- Allah 1 Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm. So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day I If night is mute, yet the returning sun Kindles the voices of the morning birds ; Nor at thy bidding less exultingly HELLAS. 17 Than birds rejoicing in the golden day, The Anarchies of Africa unleash Their tempest-winged cities of the sea, To speak in thunder to the rebel world. Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm, They sweep the pale iEgean, while the Queen S^Wjjw f) - Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne, U Far in the West sits mourning that her sons Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee : ^ ^ fi *^^ Russia still hovers, as an eagle might "x^ /"^ ^jf^ '0 ^ Within a cloud, near which a kite and crand » - . Lv^ Hang tangled in inextricable fight. To stoop upon the victor ; — for she fears 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, Flesh'd with the chase, come up from Italy, And howl upon their limits ; for they see J 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, . ^iamJ^ r Whose friends are fiot thy friends, whose foes thy foes ? Our arsenals and our armories are full ; Our forts defy assault ; ten thousand cannon Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour kr, 4 18 HELLAS. 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 Hke the shadows of the clouds, Over the hills of Anatolia, Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry 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, emblazon'd Upon that shatter d flag of fiery cloud Which leads the rear of the departing day ; Wan-emblem of an empire fading now I See how it trembles in the blood-red air, And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent (jjj* Shrinljs on the horizon's edge, while, from above, JDne star with insolent and victorious light tlovers above its fall, and with keen beams, ^ike arrows through a fainting antelope. Strikes its weak form to death. HELLAS. 19 Hassan. Even as that moon, Renews itself Mahmud. / S'^^Far other bark than our's were needed now ^\^ ^^i> / f*^''^''^ ^ -a To stem the torrent of descending time : j ^^^J ^ The spirit that lifts the slave before his lori\ -«? Ov^ Stalks through the capitals of armed kings, j ^ ^<<^ And spreads his ensign in the wilderness : / ^\\>w-<^ ^^'^■Cr Exults in chains ; and, when the rebel falls^ ^^ fvjp^^^^^^^^^ Cries Hke the blood of Abel from the dast ; And the inheritors of the earth, like beasts , n), U^*"^ When earthquake is unleashed, with ideot fear\ u Cower in their kingly dens — as I do now. 1 ^ [i What were Defeat when Victory must appal ? ^ Or Danger, when Security looks pale ? — How said the messenger — who, from the fort Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle Of Bucharest? — that— y Hassan^^I^' Ibrahim's scymitar Drew with its gleam swift victory from heaven, To bum before him in the night of battle — A light and a destruction. C 2 20 HELLAS. Mahmud. Ay ! the day Was our*s : but how ? Hassan. ^ The light Wallachians, .-, ^0^ \ The Amaut, Servian, and Albanian allies ^' ^ I ^ ' "I 'Fled from the glance of our artillery Almost before the thunderstone alit. , . VOne half the Grecian army made a bridge ^u-V p£ gg^f-Q ^^^ g^Q^y retreat, with Moslem dead; "V ^ -/s The other— Mahmud. ^ Speak — tremble not. — Hassan. Islanded By victor myriads, formed in hollow square With rough and steadfast front, 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, Kneading them down with fire and iron rain : Yet none approached ; till, like a field of com Under the hook of the swart sickleman, The band, intrench'd in mounds of Turkish dead, HELLAS. 21 P^ Grew weak and few. — Then said the Pacha, " Slaves, '/^ ^ Kender yourselves — they have abandoned you — 1 k- Constant :" — he bowed his head, and his heart burst. A third exclaimed, " There is a refuge, tyrant, What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid ? \ "^ We grant your Hves." " Grant that which is thine own !" , - Cried one, and fell Tipon his sword and died ! "«f/* Another — "God, and man, and hope abandon me; But I to them, and to myself, remain Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm, Should'st 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 dishonourable. Met in triymphant death^ and when our army ^\^, Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame, o j Held back the base hyenas of the battle ' /^ ^^ That feed upon the dead and fly the living, >r; ^t> ^ One rose out of the chaos of the slain : And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit Of the old saviours of the land we rule Had Hfted in its anger wandering by ; — Or if there burn'd within the dying man Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith 88 HELLAS. 1,/y Creating what it feign'd ; — I cannot tell — But he cried, "Phantoms of the free, we come 1 ,nP Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike To dust the citadels of sanguine kings. And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew ; — 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 ; — Progenitors of all that yet is great. Ascribe to your bright senate, O 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 crush'd worm rebels beneg,th your tread. The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame. Are overgorged ; but, like oppressors, still They crave the relic of Destruction's feast. The exhalations and the thirsty winds Are sick with blood ; the dew is foul with death ; Heaven's light is quench'd 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 house-tops, HELLAS, 23 Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly, Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down With poison'd light — Famine and Pestilence, 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, descends n A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding , ' ( The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom. 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 : y A spirit not my own wrench'd me within, ^^ *^^ jU-^ M3^ ' \-r\c\ ^ Vin.vA Rr»nlcpr» -wnrrla T ffiar fl.Tifl ha.tft? . 1/ ' fury And I have spoken words I fear and hate ; ^~) e \J ' Yet would I die for— '^;^^-'*>u y , >..^ 24 HELLAS. itli Mahmud. Live ! O live 1 outlive Me and this sinking empire. But the fleet — Hassan. Alas ! Mahmud. The fleet which, like a flock of clouds __ JiX^4,4^ - 1^ Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner. (JlILK I * Our winged-castles from their merchant ships 1 *) f Our myriads before their weak pirate bands ! ^Y>0 /Our arms before their chains ! our ye ars of^ empire ( BeforeJiheir jcenturies of servile fear ! X)eath is awake ! Repuls«2 on the waters, They own no more the thunder-bearing banner Of Mahmud ; but, like hounds of a base breed, Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master. Hassan. Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phange, saw The wreck — Mahmud. The caves of the Icarian isles Hold each to the other in loud mockery. And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes, First of the sea-convulsing fight — and, then, — J G ^^ Thou darest to speak — senseless are the mountains ; Interpret thou their voice 1 -h.-M^'' V"«-;ft^ HELLAS. 25 Hassan. My presence bore A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet _ Bore down at day-break from the North, and hung As multitudinous on the ocean line, As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. 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 To man were grappled in the embrace of war. Inextricable but by death or victory. The tempest of the raging fight convulsed To its chrystalline depths that stainless sea. And shook Heaven's roof of golden morning clouds, Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles. In the brief trances of the artillery One cry from the destroy 'd and the destroyer Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapt 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 26 HELLAS. The abhorred cross glimmered behind, before, Among, around us ; and that fatal sign j Dried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts, As the sun drinks the dew. — What more ? We fled I — Our noonday path over the sanguine foam Was beacon'd, — 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 heavily, Sunk ; and the shrieks of our companions died Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far, ^ ,j^ Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perish'd I y^ We met the vultures legion'd in the air Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind ; They, screaming from their cloudy mountain peaks. Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perch'd Each on the weltering carcase that we loved, ^^ Like its ill angel or its damned soul, Qjt^J^ Riding upon the bosom of the sea. ^•^^X^ We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast. ^ ^ ± Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea, ^ *^ ^ And ravening Famine left his ocean cave p^ r^ To dwell with war, with us, and with despair. HELLAS. tr We met night tliree hours to the west of Patmos, And with night, tempest Mahmud. Cease ! {Enter a Messenger.) Messenger. Your Sublime Highness, That Christian hound, the Muscovite ambassador, Has left the city. — If the rebel fleet Had anchor'd in the port, had victory- Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome, 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. \^^a.7^ 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 ^' '(/^^/^ 28 HELLAS. That which thou can'st not keep, his deserved 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, Aj'tas, Monembasia, Corinth and Thebes are carried by assault, And every Islamite who made his dogs Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves Passed at the edge of the sword : the lust of blood Which made our warriors drunk, is quench'd 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 (9 ^ Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope ^L^ut from the Briton : at once slave and tyrant . y \ His wishes still are weaker than his fears, ^^ \ Or he would sell what faith may yet remain / From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway ; (^ 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 : HELLAS. 2^ The aged Ali sits in Yanina . A crownless metaplior of empire : His name, that shadow of his withered might, Holds our besieging army like a spell In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny ; He, bastion d 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 reap d 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. (Jlnter a third Messenger,) Mahmud. What more ? Third Messenger. The Christian tribes Of Lebanon ai;id the Syrian wilderness ( Are in revolt ; — Damascus, Hems, Aleppo Tremble ;^-the Arab menaces Medina, The Ethiop has intrench'd himself in Sennaar, And keeps the Egjrptian rebel well employed. Who denies homage, claims investiture As price of tardy aid. Persia demands The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians Befuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus, 30 HELLAS. Like mountain-twins tliat from each other's veins Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake spasm, Shake in the general fever. Through the city, Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek, And prophecyings horrible and new Are heard among the crowd : that sea of men Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still. A Dervise, learned 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, f ) Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory, But in the omnipresence of that spirit In which all live and are. Ominous signs Are blazon'd broadly on the noon-day sky : One saw a red cross stamp'd upon the sun ; It has rain'd blood ; and monstrous births declare The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. The army encamp'd upon the Cydaris, Was roused last night by the alarm of battle, And saw two hosts conflicting in the air, The shadows doubtless of the unborn time Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet 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 HELLAS. 31 "Was heard abroad flapping among the tents ; Those who relieved watch found the sentinels 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 rumour, speak ! Fourth Messenger. One comes Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood ; He stood, he says, upon Clelonite's Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters Then trembling in the splendour of the moon, When as the wandering clouds unveil'd or hid Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets Stalk through the night in the horizon's gHmmer, Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams, And smoke which strangled every infant wind That sooth'd the silver clouds through the deep air. At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds Over the sea-horizon, blotting out All objects — save that in the faint moon-glimpse He saw, or dreara'd.he saw, the Turkish admiral S2 HELLAS. 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, reversed ; And the abhorred cross. — {Enter an A ttendant) Attendant. Your Sublime Highness The Jew, who Mahmud. Could not come more seasonably : Bid him attend. I'll hear no more ! too long We gaze on danger through the mist of fear, And multiply upon our shatter'd hopes The images of ruin. Come what will I To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps Set in our path to light us to the edge Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught Which he inflicts not in whose hand we are. [Exeunt. Semichorus 1st. Would I were the winged cloud Of a tempest swift and loud ! I would scorn The smile of mom And the wave where the moon rise is bom I HELLAS. Zt I would leave The spirits of eve A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave From other threads than mine I Bask in the blue noon divine Who would, not I. Semichorus 2nd. Whither to fly ? Semichorus 1st. Where the rocks that gird th' iEgean Echo to the battle paean Of the free — I would flee A tempestuous herald of victory 1 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 1 Semichorus 2nd. Ah king I wilt thou chain /^ (^^M^ ^y^-^ The rack and the rain ? ^ .-. ■ ^ Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane ? The storms are free, But we — D 34 HELLAS. ~% 1^^' Chorus. O Slavery ! thou frost of the world's prime, Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns i 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 ! Semichorus 1st. Let there be light ! said Liberty, And Hke sunrise from the sea, Athens arose ! — Around her born. Shone like mountains in the morn Glorious states ; — and are they now Ashes, wrecks, oblivion ? Semichorus 2nd. Go, Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed Persia, as the sand does foam. Deluge upon deluge follow'd. Discord, Macedon, and Rome : And lastly thou ! Semichorus 1st. Temples and towers. Citadels and marts, and they Who live and die there, have been ours. And may be thine, and must decay ; HELLAS. But Greece and her foundations aro Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity ; Her citizens, imperial spirits, Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set. Semichorus 2nd. 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 thronesi. The dtemons and the nymphs repeat The harmony. Semichorus 1st. I hear 1 I hear ! Semichorus 2nd. The world's eyeless charioteer,^*"'*=^^---. . Destiny, is hurrying by l^ What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds ? What eagle-winged victory sits At her right hand ? what shadow flits D 2 1^ .M 36 HELLAS. Before ? what splendour rolls behind ? Ruin and renovation cry Who but We ? Semichorus 1st. I hear ! I hear I The hiss as of a rushing wind, 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 2d. For Revenge and wrong bring forth their kind, ( The foul cubs like their parents are, I Their den is in the guilty mind. And Conscience feeds them with despair. Semichorus 1st. 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. HELLAS. n {Enter Mahmud and Ahasuerus.) Mahmud. Thou art a man thou sayest even as we. Ahasuerus. No more ! Mahmud. But raised above thy fellow men By thought, as I by power. Ahasuerus. Thou sayest so. ^^'^ y Qy ^"^ Mahmud. ^^ ^ f ^hti^ ^ Thou art an adept in the difficult lore 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 became The monarch and the slave of this low sphere. And all its narrow circles — it is much — I honour thee, and would be what thou art Were I not what I am ; but the unborn hour, Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms, Who shall unveil ? Nor thou, nor I, nor any Mighty or wise. I apprehend not '^:2^, 38 HELLAS. What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive That thou art no interpreter of dreams ; Thou dost not own that art, device, or God, Can make the future present — let it come 1 Moreover thou disdainest us and ours ; Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest. Ahasueeus. \t , Disdain thee ? — not the worm beneath thy feet ! p)"? The Fathomless has care for meaner things >^o 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. Sultan ! talk no 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 gem The sapphire floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilion d upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire, Whose outwall, bastioned 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 ceased to be, Is but a vision ; — all that it inherits HELLAS. 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. Doubt, insecurity, astonishment. Ahasueeus. Mistake me not ! AJl is contained in each. 1 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, Passion, Eeason, Imagination, cannot die ; They are, what that which they regard appears, The stuff whence mutability can weave All that it hath dominion o*er, worlds, worms. Empires, and superstitions. What has thought To do with time, or place, or circumstance ? Would'st thou behold the future ? — ask and have ! ci: \ -fjfl7JJ^j If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror ^ ■ Before the dazzled eyes of Error, Alas for thee ! Image of the Above. A Semichorus 2d. . y Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn, ^ ^"^Led the ten thousand from the limits of the mom ^ l^ Through many an hostile Anarchy ! ^p-^ At length they wept aloud, and cried, " the Sea ! the Sea ! " » yjf Through exile, persecution, and despair, ' Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb iUi HELLAS. 40 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, Victory, blush ! and Empire tremblev/ When ye desert the free — If Greece must be And build themselves again impregnably I ^^y ^ ^ °y ^. A wreck, yet shall its fragments re-assemble, ^ ^^"^^ ^-"--v /"^"^-^^^ >, In a diviner clime. I j ^"^"^^ ^ ^"***^<^ To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime, -Vu n ^^^^^ Which frowns above the idle foam of Time. ; w Semichorus 1st." 1 ^ ^^"^7 ijj^- Let the tyrauts rule the desert they have made ; '^' y ^ Let the free possess the paradise they claim ; j ' t^Ou • Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed / j " With our ruin, our resistance, and our name ! ' Semichorus 2d. Our dead shall be the seed of their decay, ^ Our survivors be the shadow of their pride. Our adversity a dream to pass away— Their dishonour a remembrance to abide ! ^ Voice without. Victory ! Victory ! The bought Briton sends The keys of ocean to the Islamite. — ■-t / I'S •^ ./ 50 HELLAS. Now shall the blazon of the cross be veil'd, And British skill directing Othman might, Thunder-strike rebel victory. O keep holy This jubilee of unrevenged blood — Kill I crush 1 despoil ! Let not a Greek escape ! Semichokus 1st. Darkness has dawn'd 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, ^f\j{ ,j-R And follow Love's folding star f^ K^ To the Evening land ! Semichokus 2d. The young moon has fed \,, ^ i i; Her exhausted horn, V' With the sunset's fire : 1 w^ ^ ^^^ weak day is dead, r-fi^^^y I f_4 But the night is not bom ; And, like loveHness panting with wild desire 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. Thou beacon of love ! thou lamp of the free ! HELLAS. 51 Guide xis far, far away. To climes where now veil'd by the ardour 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 inviolably Prankt on the sapphire sea. Semichorus 1st. Through the sunset of hope, Like the shapes of a dream. What Paradise islands of gloiy gleam I 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 soHtudes breathe Burst, Hke morning on dream, or like Heaven on death Through the walls of our prison;/^ And Greece, which was dead, is arisen ! \ Chorus. .a.j^CJa 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. B 2 '^< \uJ^^ A lAJ^-^r^^^ -^^ 52 HELLAS. \} A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far ; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning-star. I Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. A loftier Argos cleaves the main, , ^ Fraught with a later prize ; Another Orpheus sings again, t^^ And loves, and weeps, and dies. A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore. O, write no more the tale of Troy, j ^ /h^ ' If earth Death's scroll must be ! '-^^^yJ Nor mix with Laian rage the joy -\ \\^ r\&X^^ ' Which dawns upon the free : Although a subtler Sphinx renew Eiddles of death Thebes never knew. Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies. The splendour of its prime. And leave, if nought so bright may live, AH earth can take or Heaven can give. HELLAS. 63 Saturn and Love their long repose (®) ShaU burst, * r*ri/l/^-- ^^^^ ^^^6Sv>M Q^'^^vv^^i U/v^4^^' 'i7T^>->0i^<:^~' Not gold, nbt olood, their altar dowers But votive tears and symbol flowers. O 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, O might it die or rest at last 1 THE END. Printed by 8. and R. Bentley. Dorset Street, Fleet Street, London. / NOTES. Q) The quenchless ashes of Milan. Milan was the centre of the resistance of the Lombard league against the Austrian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa burnt the city to the ground, but liberty lived in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation from its ruin. See Sismondi's " Histoire des Bepuhliques Italienn^s" a book which has done much towards awakening the Italians to an imitation of their great ancestors. {^) The Chorus, The popular notions of Christianity are represented in this chorus as true in their relation to the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more universal. The first stanza contrasts the immortality of the living and thinking beings which inhabit the planets, and to use a common and in- adequate phrase, clothe themselves in matter with the transience of the noblest manifestations of the external world. The concluding verses indicate a progressive state of more or less exalted existence, according to the degree of perfection which every distinct intelligence may have attained. Let it not be supposed that I mean to dogmatize upon a subject, con- cerning 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 hypothesis 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 56 NOTES. misery of the commission of error, should superadd that of the punishment and the privations consequent upon it, still would remain inexplicable and incredible. That there is a true solution of the riddle, and that in our present 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 condi- tion of that futurity towards which we are all impelled by an in- extinguishable 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 presump- tion that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking being. (^) iVo koary priest after that Patriarch. The Greek Patriarch after having been compelled to fulmi- nate an anathema against the insurgents was put to death by the Turks. Fortunately the Greeks have been taught that they cannot buy security by degradation, and the Turks, though equally cruel, are less cunning 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 politics. (f) lliefreedman of a western poet chief. A Greek who had been Lord Byron'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 unenterprising person. It appears that circumstances make men what they are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation or of greatness whose connexion with our character is determined by events. K T E S. 67 (5) The Greeks expect a Saviowrfrom the West. It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a sea-port near Lacedsemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece. (^) The sound is of an Assault of cm Imperial City, For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1445, See Gibbon's ^'Decline q>ndFalloftJie Roman Empire " yoL 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 conjuror, 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 tempt- ing Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be sup- posed to assume the force of sensations through the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess of pas- sion animating 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 associatians of another's thoughts. Note (7) The final Chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumours of wars, &c. may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to anticipate however darkly a period of regene- ration and happiness is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign. It will remind the reader " mag- no nee proximus intervallo " 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 au- thority and my excuse. 68 NOTES. (^) Saturn and Love their long repose shall hurst. . Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. All those who f ell ^ or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt ; 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 understandings of men in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been in a 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 temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave very edifying examples. The horrors of the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well known. WBITTEN ON HEARING THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON. What ! alive and so bold, oh earth ? Art thou not overbold ? 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 1 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 overbold." 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. 60 ON THE DEATH OF NAPOLEON. « 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 splendour, and mirth, I was cloudy, and sullen, and cold, Like a frozen chaos uproUed, Till by the spirit of the mighty dead My heart grew warm. I feed on whom I fed. Aye, 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 Shrpuds me, the hopes that from his glory fled. Beprinted by Richard Clay & Sons, Bread Street Hill. August, 1886. THE SHELLEY SOCIETY. PUBLICATIONS FOR 1886-7. THE SHELLEY SOCIETY. PUBLICATIONS FOR 1886. The Society's Publications for 1886 will be least the following twelve : — 1. Shelley's Adonais : an Elegy on the Death of John Keats. Pisa, 4to, 1821. A Facsimile Reprint on hand- made Paper ; edited, with a Bibliographical Introduction, by Thomas J. Wise. {Second Edition^ Revised.) Pnce 10s. Boards. [Issued. 2. Shelley's Review of Hogg's novel, "Memoirs of Prince Alexy Haimatoff." Now first reprinted from The Critical Review, Dec. 1814, on hand-made Paper, with an Extract from Prof. Dowden's article, " Some Early Writings of Shelley " {Contemp. Rev., Sept. 1884). Edited, with an Introductory Note, by Thos. J. Wise. {Second Edition, Revised.) Price 2s. 6d. Boards. [Issued, 3. Shelley's Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude; and other Poems. London, fcap. 8vo, 1816. A Facsimile Reprint on hand-made Paper, with a new Preface by Bertram Dobell. {Second Edition, Revised.) Price 6s. Boards. [Issued, 4. Shelley's Hellas, a Lyrical Drama. London, 8vo, 1822. A Facsimile Reprint on hand-made Paper ; together with Shelley's Prologue to Hellas, and Notes by Dr. Garnett and Mary W. Shelley. Edited, with an Introduction, by Thos. J. Wise. Presented by Mr. F. S. Ellis. Price 8s. Boards. [^Issued. 5. Shelley's Epipsychidion. London, 8vo, 1821. Facsimile Reprint on hand-made Paper ; with an Introduction by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, M.A Presented and edited by Mr. R. A. Potts. Price 6s. Boards. [^Issued. 6. Shelley's A ddress to the Irish People. Dublin, 8vo, 1812. A Facsimile Reprint on hand-made Paper ; edited, with an Introduction, by Thos. J. Wise. Pre- sented by Mr. Walter B, Slater. Price 5s. Boards. [Issued. 7. Shelley's Cenci (for the Society's performance in JV[ay), with a prologue by Dr. John Todhunter ; an Introduction and K otes by Harry Buxton Forman and Alfred Forman ; and a Portrait of Beatrice Cenci, Price 2s. Qd. Boards. \_Issued. 8. Shelley's Vindication of Natural Diet. London, 12mo, 1813. A Reprint, 1882, with a Prefatory Note by H. S. Salt and W. E. A. Axon. Presented by Mr. Axon. (^Second Edition.) {^Issued. 9. A Memoir of Shelley, with a fresh Preface, by William Michael Rossetti ; a Portrait of Shelley ; and an engraving of his Tomb, {Second Edition, with Con- tents and a full Index.) [Issued. 6 h. A Letter to Lord Ellenhorougli. 8vo. (Not dated, but ]812.) Reproduced from tlie unique copy of the original in the possession of Sir Percy Shelley. With an Introduction. 6. Proposals for an Association of Philanthrop 8vo. (Not dated, but 1812.) Reproduced, with Introduction, from Sir Percy Shelley's copy of the original. 7. Shelley's Masque of Anarchy, 1832. Edited, with an Introduction, by Sydney E. Preston. Presented by the Editor. 8. A Facsimile of Mr. H. Buxton Forman's copy of Queen Mah, v/ith Shelley's corrections. Edited, with an Introduction, by H. Buxton Fornian. 9. The Shelley Primer, by Mr. H. S. Salt. This will be published by Reeves and Turner early in 1887, and the Society will take a copy for each of its Members. 10. The Shelley Society's Papers, Part I. by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, M.A. ; H. Buxton Forman ; Henry Sweet, MA.; Mathilde Blind; and W. M. Rossetti. Part I, No. 1 (containing the Inaugural Address on "Shelley" delivered to the Society on March 10th last) is now at press. 11. The Shelley Society's Papers, Part II, containing the chief Papers read during 1887. 12. The Shellev Ticiety's Note-Booh, Part II, edited bv the Honorai cretary. "Ser, m The Society's performancp of The Cenci will be repeated, with Mr. H^ m Vezin as the Count, a6d Miss Aim;* ' -^v as Beatrice, early in May 1887 ; and ellas in the autumn of the same year. \ The Committee hope t\ . iome Members will give the Society other Fs iimile Reprints. An estimate of the cost of reproducing all the original editions of Shelley's different works will be given shortly in the Society's Note-Booh. Two or more friends may well join in the gift of book. '