Ex Libris 
 C. K. OGDEN 
 
 'la
 
 
 \
 
 THE 
 
 BEAUTIES 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, 
 
 CONSISTING OF 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS SELECTIONS FROM HIS 
 POETICAL WORKS. 
 
 THE ENTIRE POEMS OF 
 
 ADONAIS AND ALASTOR, 
 
 AND 
 
 A REVISED EDITION OF QUEEN MAB 
 
 FREE FROM ALL THE OBJECTIONABLE PASSAGES. 
 WITH 
 
 A BIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 STEPHEN HUNT, TAVISTOCK STREET, 
 
 COVENT GARDEN. 
 1830.
 
 LONDON: 
 
 CHARLES WOOD AND SON, PRINTERS, 
 Poppin's Court, Fleet Street.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Biographical Memoir v 
 
 Miscellaneous Poems : 
 
 Stanzas written in dejection near Naples 1 
 
 The World's Wanderers 3 
 
 Love's Philosophy 3 
 
 Lines " When the Lamp is shattered" 4 
 
 The Past 5 
 
 To 6 
 
 Mutability 6 
 
 To 7 
 
 Death 8 
 
 Lines to an Indian Air 9 
 
 An imitation from, the Arabic 10 
 
 To 10 
 
 Song, " Rarely, rarely contest thou" 11 
 
 Ode to Naples 13 
 
 Mont Blanc 20 
 
 On the Medusa of Leonardo da Pinci 25 v 
 
 The Pine Forest 27 
 
 Political Greatness 31,- 
 
 2000156
 
 iv CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Sonnet 32 
 
 Hymn of Apollo 33 
 
 Hymn of Pan 34 
 
 Song on a faded Violet 35 
 
 Lines to a Critic 36 
 
 GoodNight 37 
 
 S To a Skylark 37 
 
 Time 41 
 
 A Lament 42 
 
 To Night 42 
 
 To the Moon 44 
 
 The waning Moon 44 
 
 Epitaph 44 
 
 Ode to Heaven 45 
 
 An Exhortation 47 
 
 Ode to the West Wind. 48 
 
 An Ode 51 
 
 The Cloud 53 
 
 V' Ode to Liberty 56 
 
 Lines 65 
 
 A Summer Evening Churchyard 66 
 
 Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 67 
 
 Lines to 70 
 
 Mutability 72 
 
 \f Selections from the Revolt of Islam 73 
 
 " Selections from Prometheus Unbound 109 
 
 V Queen Mai 145 
 
 \^Adonais, an Elegy on the Death of John Keats 207 
 
 r, or the Spirit of Solitude 22G
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 
 
 OF 
 
 MR. SHELLEY. 
 
 [The compiler of this Memoir acknowledges himself indebted to 
 Mrs. Shelley and Mr. Leigh Hunt for its chief and best portion.] 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was the eldest son of 
 Sir Timothy Shelley, Bart, of Castle-Goring in Sussex ; 
 and was born at Field Place in that county on the 
 4th of August, 1792. After receiving the usual course 
 of previous instruction, he was sent to Eton at the 
 age of thirteen : he there showed a character of great 
 eccentricity, mixed in none of the amusements natu- 
 ral to his age, and was of a melancholy and reserved 
 disposition. Mr. Shelley began to think at a very early 
 age ; and brought up as he had been in the midst of 
 inconsistencies, among licensed contradictions of all 
 sorts, in short among all those professed demands of 
 what is right and noble, mixed with real inculcations 
 of what is wrong and full of hypocrisy (in all which, 
 unfortunately, high life in this country so greatly 
 abounds), it is not surprising, that with his active and
 
 MI BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 
 
 inquiring mind, he should be led to think deeply upon 
 these anomalies. He saw, that at every step in life, 
 some compromise was expected between a truth, 
 which he was told not to violate, and a colouring and 
 double meaning of it, which forced him upon the vio- 
 lation. 
 
 Mr. Shelley was removed from Eton at an earlier 
 period than usual, and sent to the University of Oxford. 
 This removal was owing to a rigid unconventional te- 
 nacity of character, in relation to what he deemed the 
 reason and justice of things, which is always incon- 
 venient to established authority, and possibly incom- 
 patible with the submission to it, which is deemed in- 
 dispensable in public education. At Oxford his pene- 
 trating, sincere, and inquisitive spirit was found yet 
 more inconvenient. Logic was there put into his 
 hands, and he used it in the most uncompromising 
 manner. The more important the proposition, the 
 more he thought himself bound to investigate it : the 
 greater the demand upon his assent, the less, upon 
 their own principle of reasoning, he thought himself 
 bound to grant it. A short period after he had been 
 at the University, he had the imprudence to attack the 
 commonly received notions of the being of God, and 
 to circulate his opinions, in the shape of a pamphlet, 
 among the dignitaries of the Church. The conse- 
 quence was an obvious one : he was summoned before 
 the heads of the college, and refusing to retract his 
 opinions, but on the contrary preparing to argue 
 them -with the examining masters, was expelled the 
 University. Family dissatisfaction was, in the usual 
 nature of things, consequent upon this manifestation
 
 OF MR. SHELLEY. vii 
 
 of a bent of disposition and waywardness of genius so 
 uncompromising; and in addition to academical dis- 
 countenance, the youthful student had to sustain that 
 of his dearest connections. 
 
 Conceive a young man of Mr. Shelley's character, 
 with no better experience of the kindness and since- 
 rity of those whom he had perplexed, thrown forth 
 into society to form his own judgments and pursue 
 his own career. His way of proceeding was entirely 
 after the fashion of those guileless but vehement 
 hearts, which not being well replied to by their 
 teachers, and finding them hostile to inquiry, add to a 
 natural love of truth all the passionate ardour of a ge- 
 nerous and devoted protection of it. Mr. Shelley had 
 met with Mr. Godwin's " Political Justice ; " and he 
 seemed to breathe, for the first time, in an open and 
 bright atmosphere. He resolved to square all his ac- 
 tions by what he conceived to be the strictest justice, 
 without any consideration for the opinions of those, 
 whose little exercise of that virtue towards himself, 
 ill-fitted them, he thought, for better teachers, and as 
 ill-warranted him in deferring to the opinions of the 
 world whom they guided. That he did some extraor- 
 dinary things in consequence is admitted; that he 
 did many noble ones, and all with sincerity, is well 
 known to his friends, and will be admitted by all 
 sincere persons. Let those who are so fond of ex- 
 posing their own natures, by attributing every depar- 
 ture from ordinary conduct to bad motives, ask them- 
 selves what conduct could be more extraordinary in 
 their eyes, and at the same time less attributable to a 
 bad motive, than the rejection of an estate for the love
 
 viii BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 
 
 of a principle. Yet Mr. Shelley rejected one. He had 
 only to become a yea and nay man in the House of 
 Commons to be one of the richest men in Sussex. He 
 declined it, and lived upon a comparative pittance. Even 
 the fortune that he would ultimately have inherited, 
 as secured to his person, was petty in the comparison. 
 The latitudinarianism and carelessness which he en- 
 tertained towards all those established opinions, which, 
 in his own view of them, appeared unsupported by 
 either truth, justice, or utility, and which were the pro- 
 minent causes of his estrangement from his family, 
 will be regarded with more or less severity according 
 to the temper of the individual sitting in judgment ; 
 but the great sacrifices in a worldly sense made by him, 
 exhibit him as a martyr at least to his own notions of 
 right and wrong. 
 
 At the early age of about seventeen or eighteen 
 Mr. Shelley married a young lady of a similar age, and 
 they separated by mutual consent, after the birth of two 
 children. This unfortunate, ill-adapted, and ill-chosen 
 union, led to an entire alienation from his family, and 
 was one of the events in his eventful life, which per- 
 haps more than all others afflicted his after years with 
 sorrow and dejection. About this period he went 
 abroad, and formed a friendship with Lord Byron, which 
 continued till his death. It was during this his first 
 visit to Italy, that he wrote " Rosalind and Helen " a 
 modern Eclogue, and an Ode to the Eueanean Hills re- 
 plete with pathos and beauty. His earliest works 
 were two novels, which were probably written about 
 the age of fifteen. Queen Mab, which was his first 
 poetical work, was composed at the age of eighteen,
 
 OF Mil. SHELLEY. ix 
 
 and by Lord Byron considered as a poem of great power 
 and imagination. Mr. Shelley never intended Queen 
 Mab for publication, and exceedingly regretted that 
 a reprint of a private copy should have been made by 
 a bookseller some few years ago, as he conceived the 
 crudeness and injudiciousness of some of the senti- 
 ments contained in it, might rather retard than assist 
 the melioration of mankind. 
 
 Mr. Shelley had returned to England, and was re- 
 siding at Bath, when news came to him that his wife 
 had destroyed herself. It was a heavy blow to him, 
 and he never forgot it. For a time it tore his being 
 to pieces ; nor is there a doubt, that however deeply 
 he was accustomed to reason on the nature and causes 
 of evil, and on the steps necessary to be taken for 
 opposing it, he was not without remorse, for having 
 no better exercised his judgment with regard to the 
 choice he had made, and for having given rise to a 
 premature independence of conduct in one unequal to 
 the task. The lady was greatly to be pitied : so was 
 the survivor. Honest .men will not be hindered from 
 doing justice to sincerity wherever they find it, nor 
 be induced to blast the memory of a man of genius 
 and benevolence, for one painful passage in his life. 
 
 On the death of this unfortunate lady, Mr. Shelley 
 married the daughter of Mr. Godwin ; and resided at 
 Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire, where he was 
 a blessing to the poor. His charity though liberal was 
 not weak. He inquired personally into the circum- 
 stances of the petitioners, visited the sick in their 
 beds (for he had gone the round of the hospitals on 
 purpose to be able to practise on occasion), and kept a
 
 x BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 
 
 regular list of industrious poor, whom he assisted with 
 small sums to make up their accounts. At Marlow 
 he wrote the " Revolt of Islam," and published a " Propo- 
 sal for putting Reform to the vote throughout En- 
 gland ; " for which purpose, as an earnest of his sin- 
 cerity, he offered to contribute a hundred pounds. 
 This hundred pounds (which owing to his liberal habits 
 he could very ill spare at the time) he would have done 
 his best to supply by saving and economizing. It was 
 not uncommon with him to give away all his ready 
 money, and be compelled to take a journey on foot or 
 on the top of a stage, no matter during what weather. 
 As an instance of his extraordinary generosity, an ac- 
 quaintance of his, a man of letters, enjoyed from him at 
 that period a pension of a hundred a year ; and he 
 continued to enjoy it until fortune rendered it super- 
 fluous. " But, continues Mr. Leigh Hunt, the princeli- 
 ness of his disposition was seen most in his behaviour 
 to myself, who am proud to relate, that Mr. Shelley 
 once made me a present of fourteen hundred pounds, 
 to extricate me from debt. His last sixpence was ever 
 at my service, had I chosen to share it." It is remark- 
 able, that in a poetical epistle written some years ago, 
 Mr. Shelley, in alluding to his friend's circumstances, 
 which for the second time were then straitened, only 
 makes an affectionate lamentation that he himself is 
 poor, never once hinting that he had already drained 
 his purse for his friend. During his residence at 
 Marlow, the enemies of Mr. Shelley spread a report 
 that he was keeping a seraglio, an opinion which was 
 somewhat strengthened by some peculiar notions 
 which he was known to entertain with regard to mar-
 
 OF MR. SHELLEY. xt 
 
 riage. This keeper of a seraglio, who was in fact ex- 
 tremely different to what his enemies thought him 
 with regard to these matters, and who had no idea of 
 love unconnected with sentiment, passed his days 
 like a hermit. He rose early in the morning, walked 
 and read before breakfast, took that meal sparingly, 
 wrote and studied the greater part of the morning, 
 walked and read again, dined on vegetables (for he 
 took neither meat nor wine) , conversed with his friends, 
 to whom his house was ever open, again walked out, 
 and usually finished with reading to his wife till ten 
 o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily ex- 
 istence. His book was generally Plato or Homer, or 
 one of the Greek tragedians, or the Bible, in which last 
 he took a great, though peculiar, and often admiring 
 interest. One of his favourite parts was the book of 
 Job. The writings attributed to Solomon he thought 
 too Epicurean, in the modern sense of the word. For 
 his Christianity he went to the Epistle of St. James, 
 and to the sermon on the mount by Christ himself, for 
 whose truly divine spirit he entertained the greatest re- 
 verence. There was nothing which embittered his 
 reviewers against him more than the knowledge of 
 this fact, and his refusal to identify their superstitions 
 and worldly use of the Christian doctrines, with the 
 just idea of a great reformer and advocate of the many ; 
 one whom they would have been the first to cry out 
 against had he appeared now. His want of faith in- 
 deed, in one sense, and his exceeding faith in the ex- 
 istence of goodness, and the great doctrine of charity, 
 formed a comment the one on the other, very formi- 
 dable to the less troublesome constructions of the or-
 
 xii BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 
 
 thodox. -About this time application was made by his 
 family to deprive him of the guardianship of his two 
 children, a boy and a girl, upon the ground of alleged 
 sceptical notions : 'the application succeeded. The cir- 
 cumstance deeply affected Mr. Shelley ; so much so, 
 that he never afterwards dared to trust himself with 
 mentioning his children to the friend who stood at his 
 side throughout the business, and who was the dearest 
 friend that he had. But what additional love it gene- 
 rated in him towards our establishments, and their 
 modes of reasoning, the reader may guess. 
 
 From Marlow, Mr. Shelley went with his wife and a 
 new family to Italy, where he lived in his usual quiet 
 and retired manner, and from whence he never re- 
 turned. He there renewed his friendship with Lord 
 Byron, and in concert with his Lordship proposed to 
 set up a work to be entitled the Liberal, in the con- 
 ducting of which Mr. Leigh Hunt was to take a share. 
 For this purpose, Mr. Hunt arrived in Italy, in June, 
 1822, and Mr. Shelley having once more welcomed his 
 friend and family, and seen them comfortably settled 
 at Pisa, set off with Mr. Williams on the night of the 
 7th of July, to return to his own family at Lerici. In 
 a day or two, the voyagers were missed. The after- 
 noon of the 8th had been stormy, with violent squalls 
 from the south west. A night succeeded, broken up 
 with that tremendous thunder and lightning which 
 appals the stoutest seaman in the Mediterranean ; drop- 
 ping its bolts in all directions, more like melted brass 
 or liquid pillars of fire, than any thing we can conceive 
 of lightning in our northern climate. Ou that night 
 they perished. The suspense and anguish of their friends
 
 OF Mil. SHELLEY. xiii 
 
 need not be dwelt on. A dreadful interval took place 
 of more than a week, during which every inquiry and 
 every fond hope were exhausted. " The truth was at 
 last known, a truth, remarks Mrs. Shelley, that made 
 our loved and lovely Italy appear a tomb, its sky a 
 pall. Every heart echoed the deep lament, and my 
 only consolation was in the praise and earnest love 
 that each voice bestowed, and each countenance de- 
 monstrated for him we had lost, not i fondly hope for 
 ever ; his unearthly and elevated nature is a pledge of 
 the continuation of his being, although in an altered 
 form." It having been decided by their friends that 
 their remains should be reduced to ashes by fire, as the 
 readiest mode of conveying them to the places where 
 the deceased would have wished to repose, this pain- 
 ful task was performed under the immediate care of 
 Captain Trelawney. At this distressing ceremony, 
 Lord Byron and Mr. Leigh Hunt were both present, and 
 their feelings on this occasion can be better conceived 
 than described. 
 
 The ashes of Mr. Shelley were conveyed to Rome, 
 and deposited in the Protestant burial ground in that 
 city, near the remains of a child he had lost, and 
 of Mr. Keats. It is the cemetery he speaks of in the 
 preface to his elegy on the death of his young friend, 
 "as calculated to make one in love with death, to think 
 that one should be buried in so sweet a place." The 
 generous reader will be glad to hear, that the remains 
 of Mr. Shelley were attended to their final abode by 
 some of the most respectable English residents in 
 Rome. He was sure to awaken the sympathy of gal- 
 lant and accomplished spirits wherever he went, alive
 
 xiv BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 
 
 or dead. Mr. Shelley, when heditd, was iu his thirtieth 
 year. His figure was tall and slight, and his constitu- 
 tion consumptive. He was subject to violent spas- 
 modic pains, which would sometimes force him to lie 
 on the ground till they were over ; but he had always 
 a kind word to give to those about him, when his 
 pangs allowed him to speak. In his organization, as 
 well as in some other respects, he resembled the Ger- 
 man Poet Schiller. Though weil-turned, his shoulders 
 were bent a little, owing to premature thought and 
 trouble. The same causes had touched his hair with 
 grey ; and though his habits of temperance and exer- 
 cise gave him a remarkable degree of strength, it is not 
 supposed that he could have lived many years. He 
 used to say, that he had lived three times as long as 
 the calendar gave out ; which he would prove between 
 jest and earnest, by some remarks on Time, 
 
 " That would have puzzled that stout Stagyrite." 
 
 Like the Stagyrite's, his voice was high and weak. His 
 eyes were large, and animated with a dash of wildness 
 in them ; his face small but well-shaped, particularly 
 the mouth and chin, the turn of which was very sen- 
 sitive and graceful. His complexion was naturally fair 
 and delicate, with a colour in the cheeks. He had 
 brown hair, which though tinged with grey surmounted 
 his face well, being in considerable quantity, and tend- 
 ing to a curl. His side face upon the whole was defi- 
 cient in strength, and his features would not have told 
 well in a bust ; but when fronting and looking at you 
 attentively, his aspect had a certain seraphical cha- 
 racter, that would have suited a portrait of John the
 
 OF Mil. SHELLEY. xv 
 
 Baptist, or the Angel whom Milton describes as " hold- 
 ing a reed tipped with fire." Nor would the most re- 
 ligious mind, had it known him, have objected to the 
 comparison ; for with all his scepticism, Mr. Shelley's 
 disposition may be truly said to have been any thing 
 but irreligious. The leading feature of his character 
 may be said to have been a natural piety. He was 
 pious towards nature, towards his friends, towards the 
 whole human race, towards the meanest insect of the 
 forest. He did himself an injustice with the public, 
 in using the popular name of the Supreme Being in- 
 considerately. He identified it solely with the most 
 vulgar and tyrannical notions of a God made after the 
 worst human fashion, and did not sufficiently reflect 
 that it was often used by a juster devotion, to express 
 a sense of the great Mover of the Universe. 
 
 Temperament and early circumstances conspired to 
 make him a reformer, at a time of life when few begin 
 to think for themselves ; and it was his misfortune, as 
 far as immediate reputation was concerned, that he was 
 thrown upon society with a precipitancy and vehemence, 
 which rather startled them with fear for themselves, 
 than allowed them to become sensible of the love and 
 zeal that impelled him. He was like a spirit that had 
 darted out of its orb, and found itself in another 
 planet. 
 
 The comparative solitude in which Mr. Shelley lived, 
 was the occasion that he was personally known to few ; 
 and his fearless enthusiasm in the cause, which he 
 considered the most sacred upon earth, the improve- 
 ment of the moral and physical state of mankind, was 
 the chief reason why he, like other illustrious re-
 
 xvi BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR 
 
 formers, was pursued by hatred and calumny. No man 
 was ever more devoted than he to the endeavour of 
 m aking those around him happy ; no man ever pos- 
 sessed friends more unfeignediy attached to him. The 
 ungrateful world did not feel his loss ; and the gap it 
 made seemed to close as quickly over his memory as 
 the murderous sea over his living frame. Hereafter 
 men will lament that his transcendant powers of in- 
 tellect were extinguished before they bestowed upon 
 them their choicest treasures. To his friends his loss 
 is irremediable ; the wise, the brave, the gentle, is gone 
 for ever. He is to them as a bright vision, whose ra- 
 diant track, left behind in the memory, is worth all the 
 realities that society can afford. To see him was to 
 love him, and his presence was alone sufficient to dis- 
 close the falsehood of the tale, which his enemies whis- 
 pered in the ear of the ignorant world. 
 
 His life was spent in the contemplation of nature, in 
 arduous study, or in acts of kindness and affection. 
 He was an elegant scholar and a profound metaphysician. 
 He made his study and reading room of the shadowed 
 copse, the stream, the lake, and the waterfall. Ill 
 health and continual pain preyed upon his powers ; but 
 when in health, his spirits were buoyant and youthful 
 to an extraordinary degree. 
 
 Such was his love for nature, that every page of his 
 poetiy is associated in the minds of his friends with 
 the loveliest scenes of the countries which he visited. 
 "Prometheus Unbound" was written among the de- 
 serted and flower-grown ruins of Rome ; and when he 
 made his home under the Pisan hills, their roofless re- 
 cesses harboured him as he composed the " Witch of
 
 OF MR. SHELLEY. xvii 
 
 tr 
 
 Atlas," "Adonais," and "Hellas." In the wild but 
 beautiful bay of Spezzia, the winds and waves which he 
 loved, became his playmates. His days were chiefly 
 spent on the water : the management of his boat, its 
 alterations and improvements, were his principal occu- 
 pation. At night, when the unclouded moon shone on 
 the calm sea, he often went alone in his little shallop 
 to the rocky caves that bordered it, and sitting beneath 
 their shelter, wrote the " Triumph of Life," the last of 
 his productions. 
 
 Mr. Shelley's poetry is invested with a dazzling 
 and subtle radiance, which blinds the common ob- 
 server with excess of light. Piercing beyond this, 
 we discover that the characteristics of his poeti- 
 cal writings are an exceeding sympathy with the 
 whole universe, material and intellectual ; an ardent 
 desire to benefit his species ; an impatience of the ty- 
 rannies and superstitions that hold them bound ; and 
 a regret that the power of one loving and enthusiastic 
 individual is not proportioned to his will ; nor his good 
 reception with the world at all proportioned to his 
 love. 
 
 In all his writings there is a wonderfully sustained 
 sensibility, and a language lofty and fit for it. He has 
 the art of using the stateliest words and the most 
 learned idioms, without incurring the charge of pe- 
 dantry ; so that passages of more splendid and sono- 
 rous writing are not to be selected from any writer 
 since the time of Milton : and yet when he descends 
 from his ideal worlds, and comes home to us in our 
 humble bowers, and our yearnings after love and affec- 
 tion, he attunes the most natural feelings to a style so
 
 xviii MEMOIR OF MR. SHELLEY. 
 
 proportionate, and withal to a modulation so truly 
 musical, that there is nothing to surpass it in the lyrics 
 of Beaumont and Fletcher. 
 
 His thoughts, desires, and actions, were all regulated 
 by a desire to benefit his species : his mind was ever 
 keenly alive to the injuries and pains inflicted upon 
 human nature ; and it was his constant endeavour to 
 uproot those deep causes of man's misery, which assume 
 in society the forms of superstition, despotism, and 
 slavery. 
 
 The friends whom he loved, may now bid his brave 
 and gentle spirit repose ; for the human beings whom 
 he laboured for, begin to know him. 
 
 The poem of Queen Mab, contained in this volume, 
 has been revised with considerable care ; and all those 
 passages have been omitted, which in the opinion of 
 some sincere friends to the cause believed by Mr. Shelley 
 to be the most sacred -upon earth, are calculated to 
 retard rather than assist the melioration of mankind. 
 The Editor regrets their omission the less, upon reflect- 
 ing that Mr. Shelley himself disapproved of them, as 
 being crude and injudicious, some years after he had 
 written the poem. 
 
 ED.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS. 
 STANZAS 
 
 WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES. 
 
 THE sun is warm, the sky is clear, 
 
 The waves are dancing fast and bright, 
 Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 
 
 The purple noon's transparent light. 
 The breath of the moist earth is light 
 
 Around its unexpanded buds ; 
 Like many a voice of one delight, 
 
 The winds, the birds, the ocean floods, 
 The City's voice itself is soft, like Solitude's. 
 
 I see the Deep's untrampled floor 
 With green and purple seaweeds strown ; 
 
 I see the waves upon the shore, 
 Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown : 
 B
 
 2 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I sit upon the sands alone, 
 The lightning of the noon-tide ocean 
 
 Is flashing round me, and a tone 
 
 Arises from its measured motion, 
 How sweet ! did any heart now share in my emotion. 
 
 Alas ! I have nor hope nor health, 
 
 Nor peace within nor calm around, 
 Nor that content surpassing wealth 
 
 The sage in meditation found, 
 And walked with inward glory crowned 
 
 Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 
 Others I see whom these surround 
 
 Smiling they live and call life pleasure ; 
 To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 
 
 Yet now despair itself is mild, 
 
 Even as the winds and waters are ; 
 I could lie down like a tired child, 
 
 And weep away the life of care 
 Which I have borne and yet must bear, 
 
 Till death like sleep might steal on me, 
 And I might feel in the warm air 
 
 My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
 Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 
 
 Some might lament that I were cold, 
 
 As I, when this sweet day is gone, 
 Which my lost heart, too soon grown old, 
 
 Insults with this untimely moan j
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 They might lament for I am one 
 
 Whom men love not, and yet regret, 
 Unlike this day, which when the sun 
 
 Shall on Its stainless glory set, 
 Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet. 
 
 THE WORLD'S WANDERERS. 
 TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light 
 Speed thee in thy fiery flight, 
 In what cavern of the night 
 Will thy pinions close now ? 
 
 Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey 
 Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, 
 In what depth of night or day 
 Seekest thou repose now ? 
 
 Weary wind, who wanderest 
 Like the world's rejected guest, 
 Hast thou still some secret nest 
 On the tree or billow ? 
 
 LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY. 
 THE fountains mingle with the river, 
 
 And the rivers with the ocean, 
 The winds of heaven mix for ever 
 
 With a sweet emotion ;
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY; 
 
 Nothing in the world is single ; 
 
 All things by a law divine 
 In one another's being mingle 
 
 Why not 1 with thine ? 
 
 See the mountains kiss high heaven, 
 
 And the waves clasp one another ; 
 No sister flower would be forgiven 
 
 If it disdained its brother : 
 And the sunlight clasps the earth, 
 
 And the moonbeams kiss the sea, 
 What are all these kissings worth, 
 
 If thou kiss not me ? 
 
 LINES. 
 
 WHEN the lamp is shattered 
 The light in the dust lies dead 
 
 When the cloud is scattered 
 The rainbow's glory is shed. 
 
 When the lute is broken, 
 Sweet tones are remembered not ; 
 
 When the lips have spoken, 
 Loved accents are soon forgot. 
 
 As music and splendour 
 Survive not the lamp and the lute, 
 
 The heart's echoes render 
 No song when the spirit is mute -.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 No song but sad dirges, 
 Like the wind through a ruined cell, 
 
 Or the mournful surges 
 That ring the dead seaman's knell. 
 
 When hearts have once mingled 
 Love first leaves the well-built nest, 
 
 The weak one is singled 
 To endure what it once possest. 
 
 O, Love ! who bewailest 
 The frailty of all things here, 
 
 Why choose you the frailest 
 For your cradle, your home, and your bier ? 
 
 Its passions will rock th.ee 
 As the storms rock the ravens on high : 
 
 Bright reason will mock thee, 
 Like the sun from a wintry sky. 
 
 From thy nest every rafter 
 Will rot, and thine eagle home 
 
 Leave thee naked to laughter, 
 When leaves fall and cold winds come. 
 
 THE PA 1ST. 
 
 WILT thou forget the happy hours 
 Which we buried in Lovo's sweet bowers, 
 Heaping over their corpses cold 
 Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould ?
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Blossoms which were the joys that fell, 
 And leaves, the hopes that yet remain. 
 
 Forget the dead, the past ? O yet 
 
 There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, 
 
 Memories that make the heart a tomb, 
 
 Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, 
 
 And with ghastly whispers tell, 
 
 That joy, once lost, is pain. 
 
 TO 
 
 Music, when soft voices die, 
 Vibrates in the memory 
 Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 
 Live within the sense they quicken. 
 
 Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, 
 Are heaped for the beloved's bed ; 
 And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 
 Love itself shall slumber on. 
 
 MUTABILITY. 
 
 THE flower that smiles to-day 
 
 To-morrow dies ; 
 All that we wish to stay, 
 
 Tempts and then flies ;
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 What is this world's delight ? 
 Lightning that mocks the night, 
 Brief even as bright. 
 
 Virtue, how frail it is ! 
 
 Friendship too rare ! 
 Love, how it sells poor bliss 
 
 For proud despair ! 
 But we, though soon they fall, 
 Survive their joy, and all 
 Which ours we call. 
 
 Whilst skies are blue and bright, 
 Whilst flowers are gay, 
 
 Whilst eyes that change ere night 
 Make glad the day ; 
 
 Whilst yet the calm hours creep, 
 
 Dream thou and from thy sleep 
 
 Then wake to weep. 
 
 TO 
 
 WHEN passion's trance is overpast, 
 If tenderness and truth could last 
 Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep 
 Some mortal slumber, dark and deep, 
 I should not weep, I should not weep 
 
 It were enough to feel, to see 
 Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 And dream the rest and burn and be 
 The secret food of fires unseen, 
 Couldst thou but be as thou hast been. 
 
 After the slumber of the year 
 The woodland violets re-appear, 
 All things revive in field or grove, 
 And sky and sea, but two, which move, 
 And for all others, life and love. 
 
 DEATH. 
 THEY die the dead return not Misery 
 
 Sits near an open grave and calls them over, 
 A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye 
 
 They are the names of kindred, friend, and lover, 
 Which he so feebly called they all are gone ! 
 Fond wretch, all dead, those vacant names alone, 
 This most familiar scene, my pain 
 These tombs alone remain. 
 
 Misery, my sweetest friend oh ! weep no more ! 
 
 Thou wilt not be consoled I wonder not ! 
 For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's door 
 
 Watch the calm sunset with them, and this spot 
 Was even as bright and calm, but transitory, 
 And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary ; 
 This most familiar scene, my pain 
 These tombs alone remain.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR. 
 
 I ARISE from dreams of thee 
 In the first sweet sleep of night, 
 When the winds are breathing low, 
 And the stars are shining bright : 
 I arise from dreams of thee, 
 And a spirit in my feet 
 Has led me who knows how ? 
 To thy chamber window, sweet ! 
 
 The wandering airs they faint 
 On the dark, the silent stream 
 The champak odours fail 
 Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 
 The nightingale's complaint, 
 It dies upon her heart, 
 As I must on thine, 
 Beloved as thou art ! 
 
 lift me from the grass ! 
 
 1 die, I faint, I fail ! 
 
 Let thy love in kisses rain 
 On ray lips and eyelids pale. 
 My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 
 My heart beats loud and fast, 
 Oh ! press it close to thine again, 
 Where it will break at last.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 FROM THE ARABIC. 
 
 AN IMITATION. 
 
 MY faint spirit was sitting in the light 
 
 Of thy looks, my love ; 
 It panted for thee like the hind at noon 
 
 For the brooks, my love. 
 Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight 
 
 Bore thee far from me ; 
 My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon, 
 
 Did companion thee. 
 
 Ah ! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, 
 
 Or the death they bear, 
 The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove 
 
 With the wings of care ; 
 In the battle, in the darkness, in the need, 
 
 Shall mine cling to thee, 
 Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, 
 
 It may bring to thee. 
 
 TO 
 
 ONE word is too often profaned 
 
 For me to profane it, 
 One feeling too falsely disdained 
 
 For thee to disdain it.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 One hope is too like despair 
 For prudence to smother, 
 
 And Pity from thee more dear, 
 Than that from another. 
 
 I can give not what men call love, 
 
 But wilt thou accept not 
 The worship the heart lifts above 
 
 And the Heavens reject not, 
 The desire of the moth for the star, 
 
 Of the night for the morrow, 
 The devotion to something afar 
 
 From the sphere of our sorrow ? 
 
 SONG. 
 
 RARELY, rarely, comest thou, 
 
 Spirit of delight ! 
 Wherefore hast thou left me now 
 
 Many a day and night ? 
 Many a weary night and day 
 Tis since thou art fled away. 
 
 How shall ever one like me 
 
 Win thee back again ? 
 With the joyous and the free 
 
 Thou wilt scoff at pain. 
 Spirit false ! thou hast forgot 
 All but those who need thee not.
 
 12 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 As a lizard with the shade 
 
 Of a trembling leaf, 
 Thou with sorrow art dismayed"; 
 
 Even the sighs of grief 
 Reproach thee, that thou art not near, 
 And reproach thou wilt not hear. 
 
 Let me set my mournful ditty 
 
 To a merry measure, 
 Thou wilt never come for pity 
 
 Thou wilt come for pleasure, 
 Pity then will cut away 
 Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay. 
 
 I love all that thou lovest, 
 
 Spirit of delight ! 
 The fresh Earth in new leaves drest, 
 
 And the starry night ; 
 Autumn evening, and the morn 
 When the golden mists are born. 
 
 I love snow, and all the forms 
 
 Of the radiant frost ; 
 I love waves, and winds, and storms, 
 
 Every thing almost 
 Which is Nature's, and may be 
 Untainted by man's misery. 
 
 I love tranquil solitude, 
 And such society
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. , 
 
 As is quiet, wise, and good ; 
 
 Between thee and me 
 What difference ? but thou dost possess 
 The things I seek, not love them less. 
 
 I love Love though he has wings 
 
 And like light can flee, 
 But above all other things, 
 Spirit, I love thee 
 Thou art love and life ! O come, 
 Make once more my heart thy home. 
 
 ODE TO NAPLES. 
 
 EPODE I. a. 
 
 I STOOD within the city disinterred, 
 
 And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls 
 Of spirits passing through the streets ; and heard 
 
 The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals 
 
 Thrill through those roofless halls ; 
 The oracular thunder penetrating shook 
 
 The listening soul in my suspended blood ; 
 1 felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke 
 
 I felt, but heard not : through white columns glowed 
 
 The isle-sustaining Ocean flood, 
 A plane of light between two Heavens of azure : 
 
 Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre 
 Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure 
 
 Were to spare Death, had never made erasure ; 
 C
 
 14 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 But every living lineament was clear 
 As in the sculptor's thought ; and there 
 The wreathes of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine, 
 Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow, 
 Seemed only not to move and grow 
 Because the crystal silence of the air 
 
 Weighed on their life ; even as the Power divine 
 Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine. 
 
 EPODE II. . 
 
 Then gentle winds arose 
 
 With many a mingled close 
 
 Of wild jEolian sound and mountain odour keen ; 
 And where the Baian ocean 
 Welters with airlike motion, 
 
 Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, 
 Moving the sea flowers in those purple caves 
 Even as the ever stormless atmosphere 
 
 Floats o'er the Elysian realm, 
 It bore me like an angel, o'er the waves 
 
 Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air 
 No storm can overwhelm ; 
 I sailed, where ever flows 
 Under the calm Serene 
 A spirit of deep emotion 
 From the unknown graves 
 Of the dead kings of Melody. 
 Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm 
 The horizontal aether ; heaven stript bare
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 15 
 
 Its depths over Elysium, where the prow 
 
 Made the invisible water white as snow ; 
 
 From that Typhaean mount, Inarime 
 
 There streamed a s unlike vapour, like the standard 
 
 Of some ethereal host ; 
 
 Whilst from all the coast, 
 
 Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered 
 Over the oracular woods and divine sea 
 Prophesyings which grew articulate 
 They seize me I must speak them be they fate ! 
 
 STROPHE . I. 
 
 Naples ! thou heart of men which ever pantest 
 
 Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven ! 
 Elysian City which to calm enchantest 
 The mutinous air and sea : they round thee, even 
 As sleep round Love, are driven ! 
 Metropolis of a ruined Paradise 
 
 Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained 
 Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice, 
 Which armed Victory offers up unstained 
 To Love, the flower-enchained ! 
 Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, 
 Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free, 
 If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail, 
 Hail, hail, all hail ! 
 
 STRORHE $.11. 
 
 Thou youngest giant birth 
 Which from the groaning earth
 
 16 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Leaps't, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale ! 
 
 Last, of the Intercessors ! 
 
 Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors 
 Pleadest before God's love ! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail, 
 
 Wave thy lightning lance in mirth 
 
 Nor let thy high heart fail, 
 Though from their hundred gates theleagued Oppressors, 
 
 With hurried legions move ! 
 
 Hail, hail, all hail ! 
 
 ANTISTROPHE a. 
 
 What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme 
 
 Freedom and thee ? thy shield is as a mirror 
 To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam 
 
 To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer, 
 
 A new Actaeon's error 
 Shall their' s have been devoured by their own hounds ! 
 
 Be thou like the imperial Basilisk 
 Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds ! 
 
 Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk 
 
 Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk. 
 Fear not, but gaze for freemen mightier grow, 
 And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe ; 
 
 If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail, 
 
 Thou shalt be great all hail ! 
 
 ANTISTROPHE j8. II. 
 
 From Freedom's form divine, 
 From Nature's inmost shrine,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Strip every impious gawd, rend Error veil by veil : 
 
 O'er Ruin desolate, 
 
 O'er Falsehood's fallen state 
 Sit thou sublime, unawed : be the Destroyer pale ! 
 
 And equal laws be thine, 
 
 And winged words let sail, 
 Freighted with truth even from the throne of God : 
 
 That wealth, surviving fate, 
 
 Be thine. All hail ! 
 
 ANTISTROPHE a. y. 
 
 Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling paean 
 
 From land to land re-echoed solemnly, 
 Till silence became music ? From the JEean 
 To the cold Alps, eternal Italy 
 Starts to hear thine ! The Sea 
 Which paves the desart streets of Venice laughs 
 
 In light and music ; widowed Gfenoa wan 
 By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs 
 Murmuring, where is Doria ? Fair Milan, 
 
 Within whose veins long ran 
 The Viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel 
 To bruise his head. The signal and the seal 
 (If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail) 
 Art Thou of all these hopes. O hail ! 
 
 ANTISTROPHE /3. y. 
 
 Florence ! beneath the sun, 
 Of cities fairest one, 
 
 Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation 
 C 3
 
 16 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 From eyes of quenchless hope 
 Rome tears the priestly cope, 
 As ruling once by power, so now by admiration, 
 An athlete stript to run 
 From a remoter station 
 
 For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore : 
 As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, 
 So now may Fraud and Wrong ! O hail ! 
 
 Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forma 
 
 Arrayed against the everliving Gods ? 
 The crash and darkness of a thousand storms 
 Bursting their inaccessible abodes 
 
 Of crags and thunder-clouds ? 
 See ye the banners blazoned to the day 
 
 Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride ? 
 Dissonant threats ki]l Silence far away, 
 The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide 
 
 With iron light is dyed, 
 The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions 
 
 Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating : 
 An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions 
 And lawless slaveries, down the aerial regions 
 Of the white Alps, desolating, 
 Famished wolves that bide no waiting, 
 Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, 
 Trampling our columned cities into dust, 
 
 Their dull and savage lust 
 On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 10 
 
 They come ! The fields they tread look black and hoary 
 With fire from their red feet the streams run gory ! 
 
 EPODE II, /3. 
 
 Great Spirit, deepest Love ! 
 
 Which rulest and dost move 
 All things which live and are, within the Italian shore ; 
 
 Who spreadest heaven around it, 
 
 Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it ; 
 Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor, 
 Spirit of beauty ! at whose soft command 
 The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison 
 
 From the Earth's bosom chill ; 
 O bid those beams be each a blinding brand 
 Of lightning ! bid those showers be dews of poison ! 
 
 Bid the Earth's plenty kill ! 
 
 Bid thy bright Heaven above, 
 
 Whilst light and darkness bound it, 
 
 Be their tomb who planned 
 
 To make it ours and thine ! 
 Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill 
 And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon 
 Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire 
 Be man's high hope and unextinct desire, 
 The instrument to work thy will divine ! 
 Then, clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, 
 
 And frowns and fears from Thee, 
 
 Would not more swiftly flee 
 
 Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. 
 Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be 
 This city of thy worship ever free ! 
 
 MONT BLANC. 
 
 LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. 
 
 The everlasting universe of things 
 
 Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, 
 
 Now dark now glittering now reflecting gloom 
 
 Now lending splendour, where from secret springs 
 
 The source of human thought its tribute brings 
 
 Of waters, with a sound but half its own, 
 
 Such as a feeble brook will oft assume 
 
 In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, 
 
 Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, 
 
 Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river 
 
 Over its rocks carelessly bursts and raves. 
 
 II. 
 
 Thus thou, Ravine of Arve dark, deep Ravine 
 Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale, 
 Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail 
 Fast clouds, shadows, and sunbeams : awful scene, 
 Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down 
 From the ice gulphs that gird his secret throne, 
 Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame 
 Of lightning thro' the tempest j thou dost lie,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. '"-5 
 
 Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, 
 
 Children of elder time, in whose devotion 
 
 The chainless winds still come and ever came 
 
 To drinl< their odours, and their mighty swinging 
 
 To hear an old and solemn harmony : 
 
 Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep 
 
 Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil 
 
 Robes some unsculptured image ; the strange sleep 
 
 Which, when the voices of the desart fail, 
 
 Wraps all in its own deep eternity ; 
 
 Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion 
 
 A loud, lone sound, no other sound can tame ; 
 
 Thou art pervaded ^with that ceaseless motion, 
 
 Thou art the path of that unresting sound 
 
 Dizzy Ravine ! and when I gaze on thee 
 
 I seem as in a trance sublime and strange 
 
 To muse on my own separate phantasy, 
 
 My own, my human mind, which passively 
 
 Now renders and receives fast influencings, 
 
 Holding an unremitting interchange 
 
 With the clear universe of things around ; 
 
 One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings 
 
 Now float above thy darkness, and now rest 
 
 Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, 
 
 Jn the still cave of the witch Poesy, > 
 
 Seeking among the shadows that pass by, 
 
 Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, 
 
 Some phantom, some faint image : till the breast 
 
 From which they fled recals them, thou art there !
 
 22 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Some say that gleams of a remoter world 
 
 Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber, 
 
 And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber 
 
 Of those who wake and live. I look on high ; 
 
 Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled 
 
 The veil of life and death ? or do I lie 
 
 In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep 
 
 Spread far around and inaccessibly 
 
 Its circles ? For the very spirit fails, 
 
 Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep 
 
 That vanishes among the viewless gales ! 
 
 Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky 
 
 Mont Blanc appears, still, snowy, and serene 
 
 Its subject mountains their unearthly forms 
 
 Pile around it, ice and rock ; broad vales between 
 
 Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, 
 
 Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread 
 
 And wind among the accumulated steeps ; 
 
 A desart peopled by the storms alone, 
 
 Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, 
 
 And the wolf tracks her there how hideously 
 
 Its shapes are heaped around ! rude, bare, and high, 
 
 Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. Is this the scene 
 
 Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young 
 
 Ruin ? Were these their toys ? or did a sea 
 
 Of fire envelope once this silent snow ? 
 
 None can reply all seems eternal now.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 23 
 
 The wilderness has a mysterious tongue 
 Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, 
 So solemn, so serene, that man may be 
 But for such faith with nature reconciled ; 
 Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal 
 Larges codes of fraud and woe : not understood 
 By all, but which the wise, and great, and good 
 Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, 
 Ocean, and all the living things that dwell 
 Within the daedal earth ; lightning, and rain, 
 Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, 
 The torpor of the year when feeble dreams 
 Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep 
 Holds every future leaf and flower ; the bound 
 With which from that detested trance they leap ; 
 The works and ways of man, their death and birth, 
 And that of him and all that his may be ; 
 All things that move and breathe with toil and sound 
 Are born and die, revolve, subside and swell. 
 Power dwells apart in its tranquillity 
 Remote, serene, and inaccessible : 
 And this, the naked countenance of earth, 
 On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains, 
 Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep 
 Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far foun- 
 tains, 
 
 Slow rolling on ; there, many a precipice 
 Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
 
 24 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Have piled dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, 
 
 A city of death, distinct with many a tower 
 
 And wall impregnable of beaming ice. 
 
 Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin 
 
 Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky 
 
 Rolls its perpetual stream ; vast pines are strewing 
 
 Its destined path, or in the mangled soil 
 
 Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn 
 
 down 
 
 From yon remotest waste, have overthrown 
 The limits of the dead and living world, 
 Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place 
 Of insects, beasts, and birds becomes its spoil ; 
 Their food and their retreat for ever gone, 
 So much of life and joy is lost. The race 
 Of man flies far in dread : his work and dwelling 
 Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream, 
 And their place is not known. Below, vast caves 
 Shine in the rushing torrent's restless gleam, 
 Which from those secret chasms in tumult swelling 
 Meet in the vale, and one majestic River, 
 The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever 
 Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, 
 Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air. 
 
 V. 
 
 Mont Blanc yet gleams on high -.the power is there, 
 The still and solemn power of many sights 
 And many sounds, and much of life and death. 
 In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, 
 In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 25 
 
 Upon that Mountain ; none beholds them there, 
 
 Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, 
 
 Or the star-beams dart through them : Winds contend 
 
 Silently there, and heap the snow with breath 
 
 Rapid and strong, but silently ! Its home 
 
 The voiceless lightning in these solitudes 
 
 Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods 
 
 Over the snow. The secret strength of things 
 
 Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome 
 
 Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee ! 
 
 And what wert thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, 
 
 If to the human mind's imaginings 
 
 Silence and solitude were vacancy ? 
 
 ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, 
 
 IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY. 
 
 It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky, 
 Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine ; 
 
 Below, far lands are seen tremblingly ; 
 Its horror and its beauty are divine. 
 
 Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie 
 
 Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine, 
 
 Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath, 
 
 The agonies of anguish and of death. 
 
 Yet it is less the horror than the grace 
 
 Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone ; 
 Whereon the lineaments of that dead face 
 D
 
 26 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Are graven, till the characters be grown 
 Into itself, and thought no more can trace ; 
 
 Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown 
 Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain, 
 Which humanize and harmonize the strain. 
 
 And from its head as from one body grow, 
 As [ ] grass out of a watery rock, 
 
 Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow 
 And their long tangles in each other lock, 
 
 And with unending involutions show 
 Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock 
 
 The torture and the death within, and saw 
 
 The solid air with many a ragged jaw. 
 
 And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft 
 Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes ; 
 
 Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft 
 Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise 
 
 Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft, 
 And he comes hastening like a moth that hies 
 
 After a taper ; and the midnight sky 
 
 Flares, a light more dread than obscurity. 
 
 'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror ; 
 
 For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare 
 Kindled by that inextricable error, 
 
 Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air 
 Become a [ ] and evershifting mirror 
 
 Of all the beauty and the terror there
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 27 
 
 A woman's countenance, with serpent locks, 
 Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks. 
 
 THE PINE FOREST, 
 
 OF THE CASCINE, NEAR PISA. 
 
 DEAREST, best, and "brightest, 
 
 Come away, 
 
 To the woods and to the fields ! 
 Dearer than this fairest day, 
 Which like thee to those in sorrow, 
 Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow 
 To the rough year just awake 
 In its cradle in the brake. 
 
 The eldest of the hours of spring, 
 Into the winter wandering, 
 Looks upon the leafless wood ; 
 And the banks all bare and rude 
 Found it seems this halcyon morn, 
 In February's bosom born, 
 Bending from heaven, in azure mirth, 
 Kissed the cold forehead of the earth, 
 And smiled upon the silent sea, 
 And bade the frozen streams be free ; 
 And waked to music all the fountains, 
 And breathed upon the rigid mountains, 
 And made the wintry world appear 
 Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Radiant Sister of the Day, 
 Awake! arise! and come away! 
 To the wild woods and the plains, 
 To the pools where winter rains 
 Image all the roof of leaves, 
 Where the Pine its garland weaves, 
 Sapless, grey, and ivy dun 
 Round stones that never kiss the sun, 
 To the sandhills of the sea 
 Where the earliest violets be. 
 
 Now the last day of many days, 
 All beautiful and bright as thou, 
 The loveliest and the last, is dead, 
 Rise Memory and write its praise, 
 And do thy wonted work and trace 
 The epitaph of glory fled : 
 For the Earth hath changed its face, 
 A frown is on the Heaven's brow. 
 
 We wandered to the Pine Forest 
 That skirts the Ocean's foam, 
 
 The lightest wind was in its nest, 
 The tempest in its home. 
 
 The whispering waves were half asleep, 
 
 The clouds were gone to play, 
 And on the woods, and on the deep, 
 The smiles of Heaven lay.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 29 
 
 It seemed as if the day were one 
 
 Sent from beyond the skies, 
 Which shed to earth above the sun 
 
 A light of Paradise. 
 
 We paused amid the Pines that stood 
 
 The giants of the waste, 
 Tortured by storms to shapes, as rude, 
 
 With stems like serpents interlaced. 
 
 How calm it was the silence there 
 
 By such a chain was bound, 
 That even the busy woodpecker 
 
 Made stiller by her sound 
 
 The inviolable quietness ; 
 
 The breath of peace we drew, 
 With its soft motion made not less 
 
 The calm that round us grew. 
 
 It seemed that from the remotest seat 
 
 Of the white mountain's waste, 
 To the bright flower beneath our feet, 
 
 A magic circle traced ; 
 
 A spirit interfused around, 
 
 A thinking silent life, 
 To momentary peace it bound 
 
 Our mortal Nature's strife. 
 
 D 3
 
 30 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 For still it seemed, the centre of 
 
 The magic circle there, 
 Was one whose being filled with love 
 
 The breathless atmosphere. 
 
 Were not the crocuses that grew 
 
 Under that ilex tree, 
 As beautiful in scent and hue 
 
 As ever -fed the bee ? 
 
 We stood beside the pools that lie 
 
 Under the forest bough, 
 And each seemed to us like a sky 
 
 Gulphed in a world below ; 
 
 A purple firmament of light, 
 Which in the dark earth lay, 
 
 More boundless than the depth of night, 
 And clearer than the day 
 
 In which the massy forests grew, 
 
 As in the upper air, 
 More perfect both in shape and hue 
 
 Than any waving there. 
 
 Like one beloved, the scene had lent 
 
 To the dark water's breast 
 Its every leaf and lineament 
 
 With that clear truth expressed.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 31 
 
 There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn, . 
 
 And through the dark green crowd 
 The white sun twinkling like the dawn 
 
 Under a speckled cloud. 
 
 Sweet views, which in our world above 
 
 Can never well be seen, 
 Were imaged by the water's love 
 
 Of that fair forest green. 
 
 And all was interfused beneath 
 
 Within an Elysium air, 
 An atmosphere without a breath, 
 
 A silence sleeping there. 
 
 Until a wandering wind crept by, 
 
 Like an unwelcome thought, 
 Which from my mind's too faithful eye 
 
 Blots thy bright image out. 
 
 For thou art good and dear and kind, 
 
 The forest ever green, 
 But less of peace in S 's mind, 
 
 Than calm in waters seen. 
 
 POLITICAL GREATNESS, 
 
 NOR happiness, nor majesty, nor fame, 
 
 Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts, 
 
 Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame ;
 
 32 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY, 
 
 Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts, 
 History is but the shadow of their shame, 
 Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts 
 As to oblivion their blind millions fleet, 
 Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery 
 Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit 
 By force or custom ? Man who man would be. 
 Must rule the empire of himself ; in it 
 Must be supreme, establishing his throne 
 On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy 
 Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. 
 
 SONNET. 
 
 ALAS ! good friend, what profit can you see 
 In hating such an hateless thing as me ? 
 There is no sport in hate where all the rage 
 Is on one side. In vain would you assuage 
 Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, 
 In which not even contempt lurks, to beguile 
 Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate. 
 O conquer what you cannot satiate ! 
 For to your passion 1 am far more coy 
 Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy 
 In winter noon. Of your antipathy 
 If I am the Narcissus, you are free 
 To pine into a sound with hating me,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 HYMN OF APOLLO. 
 THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, 
 
 Curtained with star-enwoven tapestries, 
 From the broad moonlight of the sky, 
 
 Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, 
 Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn, 
 Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. 
 
 Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, 
 I walk over the mountains and the waves, 
 
 Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ; 
 My footsteps pave the clouds with fire ; the caves 
 
 Are filled with my bright presence, and the air 
 
 Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. 
 
 The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill 
 Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day ; 
 
 All men who do or even imagine ill 
 Fly me, and from the glory of my ray 
 
 Good minds and open actions take new might, 
 
 Until diminished by the reign of night. 
 
 I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers 
 With their ethereal colours ; the Moon's globe 
 
 And the pure stars in their eternal bowers 
 Are cinctured with my power as with a robe ; 
 
 Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine, 
 
 Are portions of one power, which is mine.
 
 34 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, 
 Then with unwilling steps I wander down 
 
 Into the clouds of the Atlantic even ; 
 For grief that I depart they weep and frown : 
 
 What look is more delightful than the smile 
 
 With which I soothe them from the western isle 
 
 I am the eye with which the Universe ' 
 Beholds itself and knows itself divine ? 
 
 All harmony of instrument or verse, 
 All prophecy, all medicine are mine, 
 
 All light of art or nature ; to my song, 
 
 Victory and praise in their own right belong 
 
 HYMN OF PAN. 
 FROM the forests and highlands 
 
 We come, we come ; 
 From the river-girt islands,. 
 
 Where loud waves are dumb 
 
 Listening to my sweet pipings. 
 The wind in the reeds and the rushes, 
 
 The bees on the bells of thyme, 
 The birds on the myrtle bushes, 
 
 The cicale above in the lime, 
 And the lizards below in the grass, 
 Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was> 
 Listening to my sweet pipings. 
 
 Liquid Peneus was flowing, 
 And all dark Tempe lay
 
 UEAUT1ES OF SHELLEY. 35 
 
 In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing 
 The light of the dying day, 
 
 Speeded by my sweet pipings. 
 The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns, 
 
 And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, 
 To the edge of the moist river lawns, 
 
 And the brink of the dewy caves, 
 And all that did then attend and follow 
 Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, 
 With envy of my sweet pipings. 
 
 I sang of the dancing stars, 
 
 I sang of the daedal Earth, 
 And of Heaven and the giant wars, 
 And Love, and Death, and Birth, 
 And then I changed my pipings, 
 Singing how down the vale of Menalus 
 
 I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed : 
 Gods and men, we are all deluded thus ! 
 
 It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed : 
 All wept, as I think both ye now would, 
 If envy or age had not frozen your blood, 
 At the sorrow of my sweet pipings. 
 
 SONG, 
 
 ON A FADED VIOLET. 
 
 THE odour from the flower is gone, 
 Which like thy kisses breathed on me ; 
 
 The colour from the flower is flown, 
 Which glowed of thee, and only Utec !
 
 36 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, 
 It lies on my abandoned breast, 
 
 And mocks the heart which yet is warm 
 With cold and silent rest. 
 
 I weep my tears revive it not ! 
 
 1 sigh it breathes no more on me ; 
 Its mute and uncomplaining lot 
 
 Is such as mine should be. 
 
 LINES TO A CRITIC. ; -, 
 HONEY from silk-worms who can gather, 
 
 Or silk from the yellow bee ? 
 The grass may grow in winter weather 
 
 As soon as hate in me. 
 
 Hate men who cant, and men who pray, 
 And men who rail like thee : 
 
 An equal passion to repay 
 They are not coy like me. 
 
 Or seek some slave of power and gold, 
 To be thy dear heart's mate ; 
 
 Thy love will move that bigot cold, 
 Sooner than me, thy hate. 
 
 A passion like the one I prove 
 
 Cannot divided be ; 
 1 hate tny want of truth and love i 
 
 It-jw should I then hate thee ?
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 37 
 
 GOOD NIGHT. 
 
 GOOD night ? ahl no ; the hour is ill 
 Which severs those it should unite ; 
 
 Let tis remain together still, 
 Then it will be good night. 
 
 How can I call the lone night good, 
 Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight ? 
 
 Be it not said, thought, understood, 
 Then it will be good night. 
 
 To hearts which near each other move 
 From evening close to morning light, 
 
 The night is good ; because, my love, 
 They never say good night. 
 
 TO A SKYLARK. 
 HAIL to thee, blithe spirit! 
 
 Bird thou never wert, 
 That from heaven, or near it, 
 
 Pourest thy full heart 
 In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 
 
 Higher still and higher 
 
 From the earth thou springest 
 Like a cloud of fire ; 
 
 The blue deep thou wingest, 
 
 And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 
 E
 
 38 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 In the golden lightning 
 
 Of the sunken sun, 
 O'er which clouds are brightening, 
 
 Thou dost float and run ; 
 Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 
 
 The pale purple even 
 
 Melts around thy flight ; 
 Like a star of heaven, 
 
 In the broad day-light 
 Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight. 
 
 Keen as are the arrows 
 
 Of that silver sphere, 
 Whose intense lamp narrows 
 
 In the white dawn clear, 
 Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 
 
 All the earth and air 
 
 With thy voice is loud, 
 As, when night is bare, 
 
 From one lonely cloud 
 
 The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over 
 flowed. 
 
 What thou art we know not ; 
 
 What is most like thee ? 
 From rainbow clouds there flow not 
 
 Drops so bright to see, 
 As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 39 
 
 Like a poet hidden 
 
 In the light of thought, 
 Singing hymns unbidden, 
 
 Till the world is wrought 
 To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not : 
 
 Like a high-born maiden 
 
 In a palace tower, 
 Soothing her love-laden 
 
 Soul in secret hour 
 With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower : 
 
 Like a glow-worm golden 
 
 In a dell of dew, 
 Scattering unbeholden 
 
 Its aerial hue 
 
 Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the 
 view : 
 
 Like a rose embowered 
 
 In its own green leaves, 
 By warm winds deflowered, 
 
 Till the scent it gives 
 
 Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged 
 thieves : 
 
 Sound of vernal showers 
 
 On the twinkling grass, 
 Rain-awakened flowers, 
 
 All that ever was 
 Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass :
 
 40 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Teach us, sprite or bird, 
 
 What sweet thoughts are thine : 
 - I have never heard, 
 
 Praise of love or wine 
 That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 
 
 Chorus Hymenseal, 
 
 Or triumphal chaunt, 
 Matched with thine would be all 
 
 But an empty vaunt, 
 A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 
 
 What objects are the fountains 
 
 Of thy happy strain ? 
 What fields, or waves, or mountains ? 
 
 What shapes of sky or plain ? 
 
 What love of thine own kind ? What ignorance of 
 pain? 
 
 With thy clear keen joyance 
 
 Languor cannot be : 
 Shadow of annoyance 
 
 Never came near thee : 
 Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 
 
 Waking or asleep, 
 
 Thou of death must deem 
 Things more true and deep 
 Than we mortals dream, 
 
 Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal 
 stream ?
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 41 
 
 We look before and after, 
 
 And pine for what is not : 
 Our sincerest laughter 
 
 With some pain is fraught ; 
 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 
 
 Yet if we could scorn 
 
 Hate, and pride, and fear ; 
 If we were things born 
 
 Not to shed a tear, 
 I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 
 
 Better than all measures 
 
 Of delightful sound, 
 Better than all treasures 
 
 That in books are found, 
 Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 
 
 Teach me half the gladness 
 
 That thy brain must know, 
 Such harmonious madness 
 
 From my lips would flow, 
 The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 
 
 TIME. 
 
 UNFATHOMABLE Sea ! whose waves are years, 
 Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe 
 Are brackish with the salt of human tears ! 
 Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow 
 E 3
 
 42 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Claspest the limits of mortality ! 
 And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, 
 Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable share, 
 Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, 
 
 Who shall put forth on thee, 
 
 Unfathomable Sea ? 
 
 A LAMENT. 
 
 OH world ! oh life ! oh time ! 
 On- whose last steps I climb 
 
 Trembling at that where 1 had stood before j 
 When will return the glory of your prime ? 
 
 No more O, aever more ! 
 / 
 
 Out of the day and night 
 A joy has taken flight ; 
 
 Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, 
 Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight 
 No more O, never more ! 
 
 TO NIGHT. 
 Swiftly walk over the western wave, 
 
 Spirit of Night! 
 Out of the misty eastern cave, 
 Where, all the long and lone daylight, 
 Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, 
 Which make thee terrible and drear, 
 
 Swift be thy flight '
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 43 
 
 Wrap thy form in a mantle grey, 
 
 Star-inwrought ! 
 
 Blind with thine hair the eyes of day, 
 Kiss her until she be wearied out, 
 Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, 
 Touching all with thine opiate wand 
 
 Come, long sought ! 
 
 When I arose and saw the dawn, 
 
 I sighed for thee ; 
 
 When light rode high, and the dew was gone, 
 And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, 
 And the weary Day turned to its rest, 
 Lingering like an unloved guest, 
 
 I sighed for thee. 
 
 Thy brother Death came, and cried, 
 
 Wouldst thou me ? 
 Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, 
 
 Murmured like a noon-tide bee, 
 Shall I nestle near thy side ? 
 Wouldst thou me ? And I replied, 
 No, not thee ! 
 
 Death will come when thou art dead, 
 
 Soon, too soon 
 
 Sleep will come when thou art fled j 
 Of- neither would I ask the boon
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 I ask of thee, beloved Night- 
 Swift be thine approaching flight, 
 Come soon, soon ! 
 
 TO THE MOON. 
 
 ART thou pale for weariness 
 Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, 
 
 Wandering companionless 
 Among the stars that have a different birth, 
 And ever changing, like a joyless eye 
 That finds no object worth its constancy ? 
 
 THE WANING MOON. 
 
 AND like a dying lady, lean and pale, 
 
 Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil, 
 Out of her chamber, led by the insane 
 And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, 
 
 The moon arose up in the murky earth, 
 
 A white and shapeless mass. 
 
 EPITAPH. 
 
 THESE are two friends whose lives were undivided, 
 So let their memory be, now they have glided 
 Under the grave ; let not their bones be parted, 
 For their two hearts in life were single hearted.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 ODE TO HEAVEN. 
 
 CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 
 
 First Spirit. 
 
 PALACE-ROOF of cloudless nights ! 
 Paradise of golden lights ! 
 
 Deep, immeasurable, vast, 
 Which art now, and which wert then ! 
 
 Of the present and the past, 
 Of the eternal where and when, 
 
 Presence-chamber, temple, home, 
 
 Ever-canopying dome, 
 
 Of acts and ages yet to come ! 
 
 Glorious shapes have life in thee, 
 Earth, and all earth's company ; 
 
 Living globes which ever throng 
 Thy deep chasms and wildernesses ; 
 
 And green worlds that glide along ; 
 And swift stars with flashing tresses ; 
 
 And icy moons most cold and bright. 
 
 And mighty suns beyond the night, 
 
 Atoms of intensest light. 
 
 Even thy name is as a god, 
 Heaven ! for thou art the abode 
 
 Of that power which is the glass 
 Wherein man his nature sees.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Generations as they pass 
 Worship thee with bended knees. 
 Their unremaining gods and they 
 Like a river roll away : 
 Thou remainest such alway. 
 
 Second Spirit. 
 
 Thou art but the mind's first chamber, 
 
 Round which its young fancies clamber, 
 Like weak insects in a cave, 
 
 Lighted up by stalactites ; 
 But the portal of the grave, 
 
 Where a world of new delights 
 Will make thy best glories seem 
 But a dim and noonday gleam 
 From the shadow of a dream ! 
 
 Third Spirit. 
 
 Peace ! the abyss is wreathed with scorn 
 At your presumption, atom-born ! 
 
 What is heaven ? and what are ye 
 Who its brief expanse inherit ? 
 
 What are suns and spheres which flee 
 With the instinct of that spirit 
 
 Of which ye are but a part ? 
 
 Drops which Nature's mighty heart 
 
 Drives through thinnest veins. Depart ! 
 
 What is heaven ? a globe of dew, 
 Filling in the morning new
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 47 
 
 Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken 
 On an unimagined world : 
 
 Constellated suns unshaken, 
 Orbits measureless, are furled 
 
 In that frail and fading sphere, 
 
 With ten millions gathered there, 
 
 To tremble, gleam, and disappear. 
 
 AN EXHORTATION. 
 
 CAMELIONS feed on light and air : 
 Poets' food is love and fame : 
 
 If in this wide world of care 
 Poets could but find the same 
 
 With as little toil as they, 
 
 Would they ever change their hue 
 As the light camelions do, 
 
 Suiting it to every ray 
 
 Twenty times a-day ? 
 
 Poets are on this cold earth, 
 
 As camelions might be, 
 Hidden from their early birth 
 
 In a cave beneath the sea ; 
 Where light is camelions change ; 
 
 Where love is not, poets do : 
 
 Fame is love disguised : if few 
 Find either, never think it strange 
 That poets range.
 
 48 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Yet dare not stain with wealth or power 
 A poet's free and heavenly mind : 
 
 If bright camelions should devour 
 Any food but beams and wind, 
 
 They would grow as earthly soon 
 As their brother lizards are. 
 Children of a sunnier star, 
 
 Spirits from beyond the moon, 
 
 O, refuse the boon ! 
 
 ODE TO THE WEST WIND. 
 I. 
 
 O, WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 
 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
 Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
 
 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
 Pestilence-stricken multitudes : O, thou v 
 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 
 
 The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 
 Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
 Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow 
 
 Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 
 (Driving sweet 'buds like flocks to feed in air) 
 With living hues and odours plain and hill :
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 49 
 
 Wild Spirit, which art moving every where ; 
 Destroyer and preserver ; hear, O, hear ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, 
 Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 
 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 
 
 Angels of rain and lightning : there are spread 
 On the blue surface of thine airy surge, 
 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 
 
 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 
 
 Of the horizon to the zenith's height 
 
 The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 
 
 Of the dying year, to which this closing night 
 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 
 Vaulted with all thy congregated might 
 
 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 
 
 Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst : O, hear ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 
 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
 Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams, 
 
 Beside a pumice isle in Baiac's bay, 
 And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
 Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 
 F
 
 50 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 
 
 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! Thou 
 
 For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 
 
 Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 
 The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 
 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 
 
 Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear. 
 And tremble and despoil themselves : O, hear ! 
 
 IV. 
 
 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ; 
 
 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ; 
 
 A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 
 
 The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
 Than thou, O, uncontrollable ! If even 
 I were as in my boyhood, and could be 
 
 The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, 
 
 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 
 
 Scarce seemed a vision ; I would ne'er have striven 
 
 As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
 Oh ! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
 I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 
 
 A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 
 One too like thee : tameless, and swift, and proud.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 51 
 
 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
 What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 
 
 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 
 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, 
 My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 
 
 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 
 Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ; 
 And, by the incantation of this verse, 
 
 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
 Be through my lips to unawakened earth 
 
 The trumpet of a prophecy ! O, wind, 
 
 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? 
 
 AN ODE, 
 [WRITTEN, OCTOBER, 1819, BEFORE THE SPANIARDS 
 
 HAD RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY.] 
 ARISE, arise, arise ! 
 There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread - y 
 
 Be your wounds like eyes 
 To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.
 
 52 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 What other grief were it just to pay ? 
 
 Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they ; 
 
 Who said they were slain on the battle day ? 
 
 Awaken, awaken, awaken ! 
 The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes ; N 
 
 Be the cold chains shaken 
 
 To the dust where your kindred repose, repose : 
 Their bones in the grave will start and move, 
 When they hear the voices of those they love, 
 Most loud in the holy combat above. 
 
 Wave, wave high the banner ! 
 When freedom is riding to conquest by -. 
 
 Though the slaves that fan her 
 Be famine and toil, giving sigh for sigh. 
 And ye who attend her imperial car, 
 Lift not your hands in the banded war, 
 But in her defence whose children ye are. 
 
 Glory, glory, glory, 
 To those who have greatly suffered and done ! 
 
 Never name in story 
 
 Was greater than that which ye shall have won. 
 Conquerors have conquered their foes alone, 
 Whose revenge, pride, and power they have over- 
 thrown : 
 Ride ye, more victorious, over your own. 
 
 Bind, bind every brow 
 With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine -.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 53 
 
 Hide the blood- stains now 
 
 With hues which sweet nature has made divine : 
 Green strength, azure hope, and eternity : 
 But let not the pansy among them be ; 
 Ye were injured, and that means memory. 
 
 THE CLOUD. 
 I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, 
 
 From the seas and the streams ; 
 I bear light shade for the leaves when laid 
 
 In their noon-day dreams. 
 From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 
 
 The sweet bMs every one, ^-Omfa 
 When rocked to rest on their mother's breast, 
 
 As she dances about the sun. 
 I wield the flail of the lashing hail, 
 
 And whiten the green plains under, 
 And then again I dissolve it in rain, 
 
 And laugh as I pass in thunder. 
 I sift the snow on the mountains below, 
 
 And their great pines groan aghast ; 
 And all the night 'tis my pillow white, 
 
 While I sleep in the arms of the blast. 
 Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers, 
 
 Lightning my pilot sits, 
 In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, 
 
 It struggles and howls at fits ; 
 Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion, 
 
 This pilot is guiding me, 
 
 F 3
 
 54 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Lured by the love of the genii that move 
 
 In the depths of the purple sea ; 
 Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, 
 
 Over the lakes and the plains, 
 "Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream, 
 
 The Spirit he loves remains ; 
 And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 
 
 Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 
 
 The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes, 
 
 And his burning plumes outspread, 
 Leaps on the back of my sailing rack, 
 
 When the morning star shines dead. 
 As on the jag of a mountain crag, 
 
 Which an earthquake rocks and swings 
 An eagle alit one moment may sit 
 
 In the light of its golden wings. 
 And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, 
 
 Its ardours of rest and of love, 
 And the crimson pall of eve may fall 
 
 From the depth of heaven above, 
 With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest, 
 
 As still as a brooding dove. 
 
 That orbed maiden with white fire laden, 
 
 Whom mortals call the moon, 
 Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, 
 
 By the midnight breezes strewn ; 
 And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, 
 
 Which only the angels hear,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 55 
 
 May have broken the woof of my tent' s thin roof, 
 
 The stars peep behind her and peer ; 
 And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, 
 
 Like a swarm of golden bees, 
 When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, 
 
 Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, 
 Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, 
 
 Are each paved with the moon and these. 
 
 I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone, 
 
 And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ; 
 The volcanos are dim, and the stars reel and swim,. 
 
 When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. 
 From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape, 
 
 Over a torrent sea, 
 Sunbeam-proof, 1 hang like a roof, 
 
 The mountains its columns be. 
 The triumphal arch through which I march 
 
 With hurricane, fire, and snow, 
 When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,, 
 
 Is the million-coloured bow ; 
 The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove, 
 
 While the moist earth was laughing below. 
 
 I am the daughter of earth and water, 
 
 And the nursling of the sky ; 
 I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores j 
 
 I change, but I cannot die. 
 For after the rain when with never a stain, 
 
 The pavilion of heaven is bare, 
 And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
 
 66 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Build up the blue dome of air, 
 I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, 
 
 And out of the caverns of rain, 
 Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, 
 
 I arise and unbuild it again. 
 
 ODE TO LIBERTY. 
 
 A GLORIOUS people vibrated again 
 
 The lightning of the nations : Liberty 
 From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, 
 
 Scattering contagious fire into the sky, 
 Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, 
 And, in the rapid plumes of song, 
 Clothed itself, sublime and strong ; 
 As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, 
 Hovering in verse o'er its accustomed prey ; 
 Till from its station in the heaven of fame 
 The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it, and the ray 
 
 Of the remotest sphere of living flame 
 Which paves the void was from behind it flung, 
 As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came 
 A voice out of the deep : I will record the same. 
 
 The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth : 
 The burning stars of the abyss were hurled 
 Into the depths of heaven. The daedal earth, 
 
 That island in the ocean of the world, 
 Hung in its cloud. of all-sustaining air: 
 But this divinest universe 
 Was yet a chaos and a curse,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 57 
 
 For thou wert not : but power from worst producing 
 
 worse, 
 The spirit of the beasts was kindled there, 
 
 And of the birds, and of the watery forms, 
 And there was war among them, and despair 
 
 Within them, raging without truce or terms : 
 The bosom of their violated nurse 
 
 Groan'd, for beasts warr'd on beasts, and worms on 
 
 worms, 
 And men on men ; each heart was as a hell of storms* 
 
 Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied 
 
 His generations under the pavilion 
 Of the Sun's throne : palace and pyramid, 
 
 Temple and prison, to many a swarming milliony 
 Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. 
 This human living multitude 
 Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude, 
 For thou wert not ; but o'er the populous solitude, 
 Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves 
 
 Hung tyranny ; beneath, sate deified 
 The sister-pest, congregator of slaves 
 
 Into the shadow of her pinions wide ; 
 Anarchs and priests who feed on gold and blood, 
 Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, 
 Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. 
 
 The nodding promontories, and blue isles, 
 
 And cloud-like mountains, and dividious waves 
 
 Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles 
 Of favouring heaven -. from their enchanted caves
 
 58 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. 
 On the unapprehensive wild 
 The vine, the corn, the olive mild, 
 Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled ; 
 And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea, 
 
 Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, 
 Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, 
 
 Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein 
 Of Parian stone ; and yet a speechless child, 
 Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain 
 Her lidless eyes for thee ; when o'er the yEgean 
 
 Athens arose : a city such as vision 
 
 Builds from the purple crags and silver towers 
 Of battlemented cJ.oud, as in derision 
 
 Of kingliest masonry : the ocean-floors 
 Pave it ; the evening sky pavilions it ; 
 Its portals are inhabited 
 By thunder-zoned winds, each head 
 Within its cloudy wings with sunfire garlanded, 
 A divine work '. Athens diviner yet 
 
 Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will 
 Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set ; 
 
 For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill 
 Peopled with forms that mock the eternal dead 
 In marble immortality, that hill 
 Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. 
 
 Within the surface of Time's fleeting river 
 Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 6< 
 
 Immoveably unquiet, and for ever 
 
 It trembles, but it cannot pass away ! 
 The voices of thy bards and sages thunder 
 With an earth-awakening blast 
 Through the caverns of the past ; 
 Religion veils her eyes ; Oppression shrinks aghast : 
 A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder, 
 
 Which soars where Expectation never flew, 
 Rending the veil of space and time asunder ! 
 
 One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew : 
 One sun illumines heaven ; one spirit vast 
 With life and love makes chaos ever new, 
 As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. 
 
 Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest, 
 
 Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad, 
 She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest 
 
 From that Elysian food was yet unweaned ; 
 And many a deed of terrible uprightness 
 By thy sweet love was sanctified ; 
 And in thy smile, and by thy side, 
 Saintly Camillas lived, and firm Atilius died. 
 But when tears stained thy robe of vestal white- 
 ness, 
 
 And gold prophaned thy capitolian throne, 
 Thou didst desert, with spirit -winged lightness, 
 
 The senate of the tyrants : they sunk prone 
 Slaves of one tyrant : PalatinUs sighed 
 Faint echoes of Ionian song ; that tone 
 Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown.
 
 30 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou ? 
 
 And then the shadow of thy coming fell 
 On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow : 
 
 And many a warrior -peopled citadel, 
 Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, 
 Arose in sacred Italy, 
 Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea 
 Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower -crowned 
 
 majesty ; 
 That multitudinous anarchy did sweep, 
 
 And burst around their walls, like idle foam, 
 Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep 
 
 Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb 
 Dissonant arms ; and Art, which cannot die, 
 With divine wand traced on our earthly home 
 Fit imagery to pave heaven's everlasting dome. 
 
 Thou huntress swifter than the Moon ! thou terror 
 
 Of the world's wolves ! thou bearer of the quiver, 
 Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error, 
 As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever 
 In the calm regions of the orient day ! 
 
 Luther caught thy wakening glance, 
 Like lightning, from his leaden lance 
 Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance 
 In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay ; 
 
 And England's prophets hailed thee as their queen, 
 In songs whose music cannot pass away, 
 
 Though it must flow for ever : not unseen 
 Before the spirit-sighted countenance
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 61 
 
 Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene 
 Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien. 
 
 The eager hours and unreluctant years 
 
 As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood, 
 Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears, 
 
 Darkening each other with their multitude, 
 And cried aloud, Liberty ! Indignation 
 Answered Pity from her cave ; 
 Death grew pale within the grave, 
 And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save ! 
 When like heaven's sun girt by the exhalation 
 
 Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, 
 Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation 
 
 Like shadows : as if day had cloven the skies 
 At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave, 
 Men started, staggering with a glad surprise, 
 Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. 
 
 Thou heaven of earth ! what spells could pall thee then, 
 
 In ominous eclipse ? a thousand years 
 Bred from the slime of deep oppression's den, 
 
 Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears, 
 Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away ; 
 How like Bacchanals of blood 
 Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood 
 Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred brood! 
 When one, like them, but mightier far than they, 
 The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers 
 G
 
 62 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Rose : armies mingled in obscure array, 
 
 Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred 
 bowers 
 
 Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued, 
 Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours, 
 Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral 
 towers. 
 
 England yet sleeps : was she not called of old ? 
 
 Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder 
 Vesuvius wakens jEtna, and the cold 
 
 Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder : 
 O'er the lit waves every jEolian isle 
 From Pithecusa to Pelorus 
 Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus -. 
 They cry, Be dim ; ye lamps of heaven suspended o'er us. 
 Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile 
 
 And they dissolve ; but Spain's were links of steel, 
 Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file. 
 
 Twins of a single destiny ! appeal 
 To the eternal years enthroned before us, 
 In the dim West ; impress us from a seal, 
 All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare 
 conceal. 
 
 Tomb of Arminius ! render up thy dead, 
 
 Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff, 
 
 His soul may stream over the tyrant's head ; 
 Thy victory shall be his epitaph,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. <i3 
 
 Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine, 
 King-deluded Germany, 
 His dead spirit lives in thee. 
 Why do we fear or hope ? thou art already free I 
 And thou, lost Paradise of this divine 
 
 And glorious world ! thou flowery wilderness J 
 Thou island of eternity ! thou shrine 
 
 Where desolation clothed with loveliness, 
 Worships the thing thou wert ! O Italy, 
 Gather thy blood into thy heart ; repress 
 The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces. 
 
 He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever 
 Can be between the cradle and the grave 
 Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour ! 
 
 If on his own high will a willing slave, 
 He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor. 
 What if earth can clothe and feed 
 Amplest millions at their need, 
 
 And power in thought be as the tree within the seed ? 
 O, what if art, an ardent intercessor, 
 
 Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, 
 Cnecks the great mother stooping to caress her, 
 
 And cries : Give me, thy child, dominion 
 Over all height and depth ? if Life can breed 
 New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan 
 Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousand fold for one. 
 
 Come Thou, but lead out of the inmost cave 
 Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star
 
 64 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave, 
 
 Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car 
 Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame ; 
 Comes she not, and come ye not, 
 Rulers of eternal thought, 
 
 To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot ? 
 Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame 
 
 Of what has been, the Hope of what will be ? 
 O, Liberty ! if such could be thy name 
 
 Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee : 
 If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought 
 By blood or tears, have not the wise and free 
 Wept tears, and blood like tears ? The solemn har- 
 mony 
 
 Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing 
 
 To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn ; 
 Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging 
 Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn, 
 Sinks headlong through the aerial golden light 
 On the heavy sounding plain, 
 When the bolt has pierced its brain ; 
 As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain ; 
 As a far taper fades with fading night, 
 
 As a brief insect dies with dying day, 
 My song, its pinions disarrayed of might, 
 
 Drooped ; o'er it closed the echoes far away 
 Of the great voice which did its flight sustain, 
 As waves which lately paved his watery way 
 Hiss round a da-owner's head in their tempestuous play.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 6ft 
 
 LINES. 
 
 THE pale, the cold, and the moony smile 
 Which the meteor beam of a starless night 
 
 Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle, 
 Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light, 
 
 Is the flame of life so fickle and wan 
 
 That flits round our steps till their strength is gone, 
 
 O man ! hold thee on in courage of soul 
 
 Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way, 
 
 And the billows of cloud that around thee roll 
 Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, 
 
 Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free 
 
 To the universe of destiny. 
 
 This world is the nurse of all we know, 
 This world is the mother of all we feel, 
 
 And the coming of death is a fearful blow 
 To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel j 
 
 When all that we know, or feel, or see, 
 
 Shall pass like an unreal mystery. 
 
 The secret things of the grave are there, 
 Where all but this frame must surely be, 
 
 Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear 
 No longer will live to hear or to see 
 
 All that is great and all that is strange 
 
 In the boundless realm of unending change. 
 G 3
 
 66 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death ? 
 
 Who lifteth the veil of what is to come ? 
 Who painteth the shadows that are beneath 
 
 The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb ? 
 Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be 
 With the fears and the love for that which we see ? 
 
 A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD, 
 
 LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 
 
 THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere 
 Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray ; 
 And pallid evening twines its beaming hair 
 In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day : 
 Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men, 
 Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen. 
 
 They breathe their spells towards the departing day, 
 Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea ; 
 Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway, 
 Responding to the charm with its own mystery. 
 The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass 
 Knows not their gentle motions as they pass. 
 
 Thou too, aerial Pile ! whose pinnacles 
 Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire, 
 Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, 
 Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, 
 Around whose lessening and invisible height 
 Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 07 
 
 The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres : 
 
 And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound 
 
 Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, 
 
 Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around, 
 
 And mingling with the still night and mute sky 
 
 Its awful hush is felt inaudibly. 
 
 Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild 
 
 And terrorless as this serenest night : 
 
 Here could 1 hope, like some enquiring child 
 
 Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human 
 
 sight 
 
 Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep 
 That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. 
 
 HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY. 
 
 THE awful shadow of some unseen Power 
 Floats tho' unseen among us ; visiting 
 This various world with as inconstant wing 
 As summer winds that creep from flower to flower ; 
 Like- moonbeams that behind some piny mountain 
 
 shower, 
 
 It visits with inconstant glance 
 Each human heart and countenance ; 
 Like hues and harmonies of evening, 
 
 Like clouds in starlight widely spread, 
 Like memory of music fled, 
 Like aught that for its grace may be 
 Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
 
 66 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY, 
 
 Spirit of BFAUTY, that dost consecrate 
 
 With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon 
 Of human thought or form, where art thou gone ? 
 
 Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, 
 
 This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? 
 Ask why the sunlight not for ever 
 Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river : 
 
 Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown ; 
 Why fear and dream and death and birth 
 Cast on the daylight of this earth 
 Such gloom, why man has such a scope 
 
 For love and hate, despondency and hope ? 
 
 No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 
 To sage or poet these responses given : 
 Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven, 
 Remain the records of their vain endeavour : 
 Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to- 
 
 ever, 
 
 From all we hear and all we see, 
 Doubt, chance, and mutability, 
 Thy light alone, like mists o'er mountains driven, 
 Or music by the night wind sent 
 Thro' strings of some still instrument, 
 Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 
 Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 
 
 Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart 
 And come, for some uncertain moments lent. 
 Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
 
 .BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 69 
 
 Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 
 
 Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. 
 
 Thou messenger of sympathies 
 
 That wax and wane in lover's eyes ; 
 Thou, that to human thought art nourishment, 
 
 Like darkness to a dying flame ! 
 
 Depart not as thy shadow came : 
 
 Depart not, lest the grave should be, 
 Like life and fear, a dark reality. 
 
 While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped 
 Thro" many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin, 
 And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing 
 Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
 I called on poisonous names with which our youth 
 
 is fed : 
 
 I was not heard : I saw them not : 
 When musing deeply on the lot 
 Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing 
 All vital things that wake to bring 
 News of birds and blossoming, 
 Sudden, thy shadow fell on me : 
 I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstacy ! 
 
 I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 
 To thee and thine : have I not kept the vow ? 
 With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now 
 
 I call the phantoms cf a thousand hours 
 
 Each from its voiceless grave : they have in visioned 
 bowers
 
 70 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Of studious zeal or love's delight 
 
 Outwatched with me the envious night : 
 They know that never joy illumed my brow, 
 
 Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free 
 
 This world from its dark slavery, 
 
 That thou, O awful LOVELINESS, 
 Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express. 
 
 The day becomes more solemn and serene 
 When noon is past : there is a harmony 
 In autumn, and a lustre i its sky, 
 Which thro' the summer is not heard or seen, 
 As if it could not be, a if it had not been r 
 
 Thus let thy power, which like the truth 
 
 Of nature on my passive youth 
 Descended, to my onward life supply 
 
 Its calm, to one who warships thee, 
 
 And every form containing thee, 
 
 Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind 
 To fear himself, and love all human kind. 
 
 LINES TO 
 
 O t there are spirits of the air, 
 
 And genii of the evening breeze, 
 And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair 
 
 As star- beams among twilight trees : 
 Such lovely ministers to meet 
 Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 7 
 
 With mountain winds, and babbling springs, 
 
 And moonlight seas, that are the voice 
 Of these inexplicable things 
 Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice 
 When they did answer thee ; but they 
 Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away. 
 
 And thou hast sought in starry eyes 
 
 Beams that were never meant for thine 
 Another's wealth : tame sacrifice 
 
 To a fond faith ! still dost thou pine ? 
 Still dost thou hope that greeting hands, 
 Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands ? 
 
 Ah ! wherefore didst thou build thine hope 
 
 On the false earth's inconstancy ? 
 Did thine own mind afford no scope 
 
 Of love, or moving thoughts to thee ? 
 That natural scenes or human smiles 
 Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles. 
 
 Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled 
 
 Whose falsehood left thee broken hearted ; 
 The glory of the moon is dead; 
 
 Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed 
 Thine own soul still is true to thee, 
 But changed to a foul fiend through misery. 
 
 This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever 
 Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
 
 72 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Dream not to chase ; the mad endeavour 
 
 Would scourge thee to severer pangs. 
 Be as thou art. Thy settled fate, 
 Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. 
 
 MUTABILITY. 
 
 WE are as clouds that veil the midnight moon ; 
 
 How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, 
 Streaking the darkness radiantly ! yet soon 
 
 Night closes round, and they are lost for ever : 
 
 Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings 
 Give various response to each varying blast, 
 
 To whose frail frame no second motion brings 
 One mood or modulation like the last. 
 
 We rest. A dream has power to poison sleep ; 
 
 We rise. One wandering thought pollutes the day ; 
 We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep ; 
 
 Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away: 
 
 It is the same ! For, be it joy or sorrow, 
 
 The path of its departure still is free : 
 Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow ; 
 
 Nought may endure but Mutability.
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 REVOLT OF ISLAM. 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 So now my summer-task is ended, Mary, 
 
 And I return to thee, my own heart's home ; 
 
 As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery, 
 
 Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome > 
 
 Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become 
 
 A star among the stars of mortal night, 
 
 If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom, 
 
 Its doubtful promise thus I would unite 
 
 With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light. 
 
 The toil which stole from thee so many an hour. 
 Is ended, and the fruit is at thy feet ! 
 No longer where the woods to frame a bower 
 With interlaced branches mix and meet, 
 Or where with sound like many voices sweet, 
 B
 
 74 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Water-falls leap among wild islands green, 
 Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat 
 Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen : 
 But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been. 
 
 Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when 
 
 first 
 
 The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass. 
 I do remember well the hour which burst 
 My spirit's sleep : a fresh May-dawn it was, 
 When I walked forth upon the glittering grass, 
 And wept, I knew not why ; until there rose 
 From the near schoolroom, voices, that, alas ! 
 Were but one echo from a world of woes 
 The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes. 
 
 And then I clasped my hands and looked around 
 
 But none was near to mock my streaming eyes, 
 
 Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground 
 
 So without shame, I spake : " I will be wise, 
 
 And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies 
 
 Such power, for I grow weary to behold 
 
 The selfish and the strong still tyrannize 
 
 Without reproach or check." I then controlled 
 
 My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold. 
 
 And from that hour did I with earnest thought 
 Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore, 
 Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught 
 I cared to learn, but from that secret store-
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 75 
 
 Wrought linked armour for my soul, before 
 
 It might walk forth to war among mankind ; 
 
 Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more 
 
 Within me, till there came upon my mind 
 
 A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined. 
 
 Alas, that love should be a blight and snare 
 To those who seek all sympathies in one ! 
 Such once I sought in vain ; then black despair, 
 The shadow of a starless night, was thrown 
 Over the world in which I moved alone : 
 Yet never found I one not false to me, 
 Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone 
 Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be 
 Aught but a lifeless clog, until revived by thee. 
 
 Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart 
 Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain ; 
 How beautiful and calm and free thou wert 
 In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain 
 Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain, 
 And walked as free as light the clouds among, 
 Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain 
 From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung 
 To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long. 
 
 No more alone through the world's wilderness, 
 Although 1 trod the paths of high intent, 
 I journeyed now : no more companionless, 
 Where solitude is like despair, I went.
 
 76 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 There is the wisdom of a stern content 
 
 When Poverty can blight the just and good, 
 
 When Infamy dares mock the innocent, 
 
 And cherished friends turn with the multitude 
 
 To trample : this was ours, and we unshaken stood ', 
 
 Now has descended a serener hour, 
 And with inconstant fortune, friends return ; 
 Tho' suffering leaves the knowledge and the power 
 Which says : Let scorn be not repaid with scorn. 
 And from thy side two gentle babes are born 
 To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we 
 Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn ; 
 And these delights, and thou, have been to me 
 The parents of the Song I consecrate to tbee. 
 
 Is it, that now my inexperienced fingers 
 
 But strike the prelude of a loftier strain ? 
 
 Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers 
 
 Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound again, 
 
 Tho' it might shake the Anarch Custom's reign, 
 
 And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway 
 
 Holier than was Amphion's ? I would faiu 
 
 Reply in hope but I am worn away, 
 
 And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey. 
 
 And what art thou ? I know, but dare not speak : 
 Time may interpret to his silent years. 
 Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek, 
 And in the light thine ample forehead wears.,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 77 
 
 And in thy sweetest smiles, and ill thy tears, 
 And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy 
 Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears : 
 And thro* thine eyes, even in thy soul I see 
 A lamp of vestal fire burning internally. 
 
 They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth, 
 
 Of glorious parents, thou aspiring Child. 
 
 I wonder not for One then left this earth 
 
 Whose life was like a setting planet mild, 
 
 Which clothed thee in the radiance undented 
 
 Of its departing glory ; still her fame 
 
 Shines on thee, thro' the tempests dark and wild 
 
 Which shake these latter days ; and thou canst claim 
 
 The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name. 
 
 One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit, 
 
 Which was the echo of three thousand years ; 
 
 And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it, 
 
 As some lone man who in a desart hears 
 
 The music of his home : unwonted fears 
 
 Fell on the pale oppressors of our race, 
 
 And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares, 
 
 Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space 
 
 Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place* 
 
 Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind ! 
 If there must be no response to my cry 
 If men must rise and stamp with fury blind 
 . On his pure name who loves them, thou and I, 
 H 3
 
 78 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Sweet friend ! can look from our tranquillity 
 Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night, 
 Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by 
 Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's sight, 
 That burn from year to year with unextinguished light. 
 
 A SPIRIT'S TEMPLE. 
 
 And swift and swifter grew the vessel's motion, 
 So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain- 
 Wild music woke me : we had past the ocean 
 Which girds the pole, Nature's remotest reign 
 And we glode fast o'er a pellucid plain 
 Of waters, azure with the noon-tide day. 
 /Ktherial mountains shone around: a Fane 
 Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay- 
 On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away. 
 
 It was a Temple, sudi as mortal hand 
 
 Has never built, nor ecstacy, nor dream, 
 
 Reared in the cities of enchanted land . 
 
 Twas likest Heaven, eve yet day's purple stream 
 
 Ebbs o'er the western forest, while the gleam 
 
 Of the unrwen moon among the clouds 
 
 Is gathering when with many a golden beam 
 
 The thronging constellations rush in crowds, 
 
 Paving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods. 
 
 Like what may be conceived of this vast dome, 
 When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 79 
 
 Genius beholds it rise, his native home, 
 
 Girt by the desarts of the Universe. 
 
 Yet, nor in painting's light, or mightier verse, 
 
 Or sculpture's marble language can invest 
 
 That shape to mortal sense such glooms immerse 
 
 That incommunicable sight, and rest 
 
 Upon the labouring brain and overburthened breast. 
 
 Winding among the lawny islands fair, 
 
 Whose blosmy forests starred the shadowy deep, 
 
 The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair 
 
 Its fretwork in the crystal sea did steep, 
 
 Encircling that vast Fane's aerial heap : 
 
 We disembarked, and thro' a portal wide 
 
 We past whose roof of moonstone carved, did keep 
 
 A glimmering o'er the forms on every side, 
 
 Sculptureslikelife and thought ; immoveable, deep-eyed. 
 
 We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof 
 
 Was diamond, which had drank the lightning's sheen 
 
 In darkness, and now poured it thro* the woof 
 
 Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen 
 
 Its blinding splendour thro' such veil was seen 
 
 That work of subtlest power, divine and rare ; 
 
 Orb above orb, with starry shapes between, 
 
 And horned moons, and meteors strange and fair, 
 
 On night-black columns pois'd one hollow hemisphere ! 
 
 Ten thousand columns in that quivering light 
 Distinct between whose shafts wound far away
 
 80 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The long and labyrinthine aisles more bright 
 With their own radiance than the Heaven of Day ; 
 And on the jasper walls around, there lay 
 Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought, 
 Which did the Spirit's history display ; 
 A tale of passionate change, divinely taught, 
 Which, in their winged dance, unconscious Genii 
 wrought. 
 
 Beneath, there sate on many a sapphire throne, 
 The Great, who had departed from mankind, 
 A mighty Senate ; some, whose white hair shone 
 Like mountain snow, mild, beautiful, and blind. 
 Some, female forms, whose gestures beamed with 
 
 mind; 
 
 And ardent youths, and children bright and fair ; 
 And some had lyres whose strings were intertwined 
 With pale and clinging flames, which ever there 
 Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the crys- 
 tal air. 
 
 EFFECTS OF SUPERSTITION. 
 The land in which 1 lived, by a fell bane 
 Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side, 
 And stabled in our homes, until the chain 
 Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide 
 That blasting curse men had no shame all vied 
 In evil, slave and despot ; fear with lust, 
 Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 81 
 
 Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust, 
 
 Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust. 
 
 Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters, 
 
 And the actherial shapes which are suspended 
 
 Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters, 
 
 The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended 
 
 The colours of the air since first extended 
 
 It cradled the young world, none wandered forth 
 
 To see or feel : a darkness had descended 
 
 On every heart : the light which shews its worth, 
 
 Must among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth. 
 
 This vital world, this home of happy spirits, 
 Was as a dungeon to my blasted kind, 
 All that despair from murdered hope inherits 
 They sought, and in their helpless misery blind, 
 A deeper prison and heavier chains did find, 
 And stronger tyrants : a dark gulph before, 
 The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned ; behind, 
 Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore 
 On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from 
 shore. 
 
 (Jut of that Ocean's wrecks had Guilt and Woe 
 Framed a dark dwelling for their homeless thought, 
 And, starting at the ghosts which to and fro 
 Glide o'er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought 
 The worship thence which they each other taught.
 
 82 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Well might men loathe their life, well might they turn 
 Even to the ills again from which they sought 
 Such refuge after death ! well might they learn 
 To gaze on this fair world with hopeless unconcern ! 
 
 For they all pined in bondage : body and soul, 
 
 Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent 
 
 Before one Power, to which supreme control 
 
 Over their will by their own weakness lent, 
 
 Made all its many names omnipotent ; 
 
 All symbols of things evil, all divine ; 
 
 And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent 
 
 The air from all its fanes, did intertwine 
 
 Imposture's impious toils round each discordant shrine. 
 
 CYTHNA. 
 
 An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes 
 Were loadstars of delight, which drew me home 
 When I might wander forth ; nor did I prize 
 Aught human thing beneath Heaven's mighty dome 
 Beyond this child : so when sad hours were come, 
 And baffled hope like ice still clung to me, 
 Since kin were cold, and friends had now become 
 Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be, 
 Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee. 
 
 What wert thou then ? A child most infantine, 
 Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 83 
 
 In all but its sweet looks and mien divine ; 
 Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage 
 A patient warfare thy young heart did wage, 
 When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought, 
 Some tale, or thine own fancies would engage 
 To overflow with tears, or converse fraught 
 With passion, o'er their depths its fleeting light had 
 wrought. 
 
 She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness, 
 A power, that from its objects scarcely drew 
 One impulse of her being in her lightness 
 Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew, 
 Which wanders thro' the waste air's pathless blue, 
 To nourish some far desart : she did seem 
 Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew, 
 Like the bright shade of some immortal dream 
 Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's 
 dark stream. 
 
 As mine own shadow was this child to me, 
 
 A second self, far dearer and more fair ; 
 
 Which clothed in undissolving radiancy, 
 
 All those steep paths which languor and despair 
 
 Of human things, had made so dark and bare, 
 
 But which I trod alone nor, till bereft 
 
 Of friends, and overcome by lonely care, 
 
 Knew 1 what solace for that loss was left, 
 
 Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.
 
 84 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Once she was dear, now she was all I had 
 
 To love in human life this playmate sweet, 
 
 This child of twelve years old so she was made 
 
 My sole associate, and her willing feet 
 
 Wandered with mine where earth and ocean meet, 
 
 Beyond the aerial mountains whose vast cells 
 
 The unreposing billows ever beat, 
 
 Thro' forests wide and old, and lawny dells, 
 
 Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells. 
 
 And warm and light I felt her clasping hand 
 When twined in mine : she followed where I went, 
 Thro' the lone paths of our immortal land. 
 It had no waste, but some memorial lent 
 Which strung me to my toil some monument 
 Vital with mind : then, Cythna by my side, 
 Until the bright and beaming day were spent, 
 Would rest, with looks entreating to abide, 
 Too earnest and too sweet ever to be denied. 
 
 A TRANCE. 
 
 I watched, until the shades of evening wrapt 
 Earth like an exhalation then the bark 
 Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapt. 
 It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark : 
 Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark 
 Its path no more ! I sought to close mine eyes, 
 But like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark ;
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 85 
 
 I would have risen, but ere that I could rise> 
 My parched skin was split with piercing agonies. 
 
 I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever 
 
 Its adamantine links, that I might die : 
 
 O Liberty ! forgive the base endeavour, 
 
 Forgive me, if reserved for victory, 
 
 The Champion of thy faith e'er sought to fly. 
 
 That starry night, with its clear silence, sent 
 
 Tameless resolve which laughed at misery 
 
 Into my soul linked remembrance lent 
 
 To that such power, to me such a severe content. 
 
 To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair 
 And die, 1 questioned not ; nor, though the Sun 
 Its shafts of agony kindling thro' the air 
 Moved over me, nor though in evening dun, 
 Or when the stars their visible courses run, 
 Or morning, the wide universe was spread 
 In dreary calmness round me, did I shun 
 Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead 
 From one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison 
 shed. 
 
 Two days thus passed 1 neither raved nor died 
 Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion's nest 
 Built in mine entrails : I had spurned aside 
 The water-vessel, while despair possest 
 My thoughts, and now no drop remained ! the uprest 
 I
 
 86 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Of the third sun brought hunger but the crust 
 Which had been left, was to my craving breast 
 Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust, 
 And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust, 
 
 My brain began to fail when the fourth morn 
 Burst o'er the golden isles a fearful sleep, 
 Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn 
 Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep 
 With whirlwind swiftness a fall far and deep, 
 A gulph, a void, a sense of senselessness 
 These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep 
 Their watch in some dim enamel's loneliness, 
 A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless ! 
 
 The forms which peopled this terrific trance 
 I well remember like a quire of devils, 
 Around me they involved a giddy dance ; 
 Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels 
 Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels, 
 Foul, ceaseless shadows : thought could not divide 
 The actual world from these entangling evils, 
 Which so bemocked themselves, that 1 descried 
 All shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied. 
 
 The sense of day and night, of false and true, 
 Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst 
 That darkness one, as since that hour I knew, 
 Was not a phantom of the realms accurst, , j
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 87 
 
 Where then my spirit dwelt but of the first 
 
 I know not yet, was it a dream or no. 
 
 But both, tho' not distincter, were immersed 
 
 In hues which, when thro' memory's waste they flow, 
 
 Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now. 
 
 A LIBERATED PEOPLE. 
 
 Lifting the thunder of their acclamation, 
 
 Towards the City then the multitude, 
 
 And 1 among them, went in joy a nation 
 
 Made free by love ; a mighty brotherhood 
 
 Linked by a jealous interchange of good ; 
 
 A glorious pageant, more magnificent 
 
 Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood, 
 
 When they return from carnage, and are sent 
 
 In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement. 
 
 Afar, the city walls were thronged on high, 
 
 And myriads on each giddy turret clung, 
 
 And to each spire far lessening in the sky, 
 
 Bright pennons on the idle winds were hung ; 
 
 As we approached a shout of joyance sprung 
 
 At once from all the crowd, as if the vast 
 
 And peopled Earth its boundless skies among 
 
 The sudden clamour of delight had cast, 
 
 When from before its face some general wreck had past.
 
 88 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Our armies thro' the City's hundred gates 
 
 Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair 
 
 Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits, 
 
 Throng from the mountains when the storms are there ; 
 
 And as we past thro' the calm sunny air 
 
 A thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed, 
 
 The token flowers of truth and freedom fair, 
 
 And fairest hands bound them on many a head, 
 
 Those angels of love's heaven, that over all was spread. 
 
 I trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision : 
 
 Those bloody bands so lately reconciled, 
 
 Were, ever as they went, by the contrition 
 
 Of anger turned to love from ill beguiled, 
 
 And every one on them more gently smiled, 
 
 Because they had done evil : the sweet awe 
 
 Of such mild looks made their own hearts grow mild, 
 
 And did with soft attraction ever draw 
 
 Their spirits to the love of freedom's equal law. 
 
 JUSTICE. 
 
 " What call ye justice? is there one who ne'er 
 In secret thought has wished another's ill ? 
 Are ye all pure ? let those stand forth who hear, 
 And tremble not. Shall they insult and kill, 
 If such they be ? their mild eyes can they fill 
 With the false anger of the hypocrite ? 
 Alas, such were not pure the chastened will
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 89 
 
 Of virtue sees that justice is the light 
 
 Of love, and not revenge, and terror and despite." 
 
 FESTIVAL TO FREEDOM. 
 Twas midnight now, the eve of that great day 
 Whereon the many nations at whose call 
 The chains of earth like mist melted away, 
 Decreed to hold a sacred Festival, 
 A rite to attest the equality of all 
 Who live. So to their homes, to dream or wake 
 All went. The sleepless silence did recal 
 Laone to my thoughts, with hopes that make 
 The flood recede from which their thirst they seek to 
 slake. 
 
 The dawn flowed forth, and from its purple fountains 
 I drank those hopes which make the spirit quail ; 
 As to the plain between the misty mountains 
 And the great City, with a countenance pale 
 I went : it was a sight which might avail 
 To make men weep exulting tears, for whom 
 Now first from human power the reverend veil 
 Was torn, to see Earth from her general womb 
 Pour foiM'th her swarming sons to a fraternal doom ; 
 
 To see, far glancing in the misty morning, 
 The signs of that innumerable host, 
 To hear one sound of many made, the warning 
 Of Earth to Heaven from its free children tost, 
 I 3
 
 90 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY'. 
 
 While the eternal hills, and the sea lost 
 
 In wavering light, and, starring the blue sky, 
 
 The city's myriad spires of gold, almost 
 
 With human joy made mute society, 
 
 Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be. 
 
 To see like some vast island from the Ocean, 
 The Altar of the Federation resu- 
 lts pile i'the midst ; a work, which the devotion 
 Of millions in one night created there, 
 Sudden, as when the moonrise makes appear 
 Strange clouds in the east ; a marble pyramid 
 Distinct with steps : that mighty shape did wear 
 The light of genius ; its still shadow hid 
 Far ships : to know its height the morning mists forbid! 
 
 To hear the restless multitudes forever 
 
 Around the base of that great Altar flow, 
 
 As on some mountain islet burst and shiver 
 
 Atlantic waves ; and solemnly and slow 
 
 As the wind bore that tumult to and fro, 
 
 To feel the dreamlike music, which did swim 
 
 Like beams thro' floating clouds on waves below 
 
 Falling in pauses, from that Altar dim 
 
 As silver sounding tongues breathed an aerial hymn. 
 
 To hear, to see, to live, was on that morn 
 Lethean joy ! so that all those assembled 
 Cast off their memories of the past outworn; 
 Two only bosoms with their own life trembled,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 91 
 
 And mine was one, and we had both dissembled ; 
 
 So with a beating heart I weht, and one, 
 
 Who having much, covets yet more, resembled ; 
 
 A lost and dear possession, which not won, 
 
 He walks in lonely gloom beneath the noonday sun. 
 
 To the great Pyramid I came : its stair 
 
 With female quires was thronged : the loveliest 
 
 Among the free, grouped with its sculptures rare ; 
 
 As I approached, the morning's golden mist, 
 
 Which now the wonder-stricken breezes kist 
 
 With their cold lips, fled, and the summit shone 
 
 Like Athos seen from Samothracia, drest 
 
 In earliest light by vintagers, and one 
 
 Sate there, a female Shape upon an ivory throne. 
 
 A Form most like the imagined habitant 
 
 Of silver exhalations sprung from dawn, 
 
 By winds which feed on sunrise woven, to inchant 
 
 The faiths of men : all mortal eyes were drawn, 
 
 As famished mariners thro' strange seas gone 
 
 Gaze on a burning watch-tower, by the light 
 
 Of those divinest lineaments alone 
 
 With thoughts which none could share, from that fair 
 
 sight 
 
 I turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded her counte- 
 nance bright.
 
 92 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 ODE TO EQUALITY. 
 
 Calm art thou as yon sunset ! swift and strong 
 As new-fledged Eagles, beautiful and young, 
 That float among the blinding beams of morning ; 
 And underneath thy feet writhe Faith, and Folly, 
 Custom, and Hell, and mortal Melancholy 
 Hark ! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning 
 Of thy voice sublime and holy ; 
 Its free spirits here assembled, 
 See thee, feel thee, know thee now, 
 To thy voice their hearts have trembled 
 Like ten thousand clouds which flow 
 With one wide wind as it flies ! - 
 Wisdom ! thy irresistible children rise 
 To hail thee, and the elements they chain 
 And their own will to swell the glory of thy train. 
 
 O Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven ! 
 Mother and soul of all to which is given 
 The light of life, the loveliness of being, 
 Lo ! thou dost re-ascend the human heart, 
 Thy throne of power, almighty as thou wert, 
 In dreams of Poets old grown pale by seeing 
 The shade of thee : now, millions start 
 To feel thy lightnings thro' them burning ; 
 Nature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure, 
 Or Sympathy the sad tears turning 
 To mutual smiles, a drainless treasure,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 9* 
 
 Descends amidst us ; Scorn, and Hate, 
 Revenge and Selfishness are desolate 
 A hundred nations swear that there shall be 
 Pity and Peace and Love, among the good and free ! 
 
 Eldest of things, divine Equality ! 
 Wisdom and Love are but the slaves of thee, 
 The Angels of thy sway, who pour around thee 
 Treasures from all the cells of human thought, 
 And from the Stars, and from the Ocean brought, 
 And the last living heart whose beatings bound thee : 
 The powerful and the wise had sought 
 Thy coming, thou in light descending 
 O'er the wide land which is thine own 
 Like the spring whose breath is blending 
 All blasts of fragrance into one, 
 Comest upon the paths of men ! 
 Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken, 
 And all her children here in glory meet 
 To feed upon thy smiles, and elasp thy sacred feet. 
 
 My brethren we are free ! the plains and mountains,. 
 The grey sea shore, the forests and the fountains, 
 Are haunts of happiest dwellers ; man and woman, 
 Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow 
 From lawless love a solace for their sorrow ; 
 For oft we still must weep, since we are human. 
 A stormy night's serenest morrow, 
 Whose showers are pity's gentle tears, 
 Whose clouds are smiles of those that die
 
 94 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Like infants without hopes or fears, 
 And whose beams are joys that lie 
 In blended hearts, now holds dominion ; 
 The dawn of mind, which upwards on a pinion 
 Borne, swift as sun-rise, far illumines space, 
 And clasps this barren world in its own bright em- 
 brace ! 
 
 My brethren, we are free ! the fruits are glowing 
 
 Beneath the stars, and the night winds are flowing 
 
 O'er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dreaming 
 
 Never again may blood of bird or beast 
 
 Stain with its venomous stream a human feast, 
 
 To the pure skies in accusation steaming, 
 
 Avenging poisons shall have ceased 
 
 To feed disease and fear and madness, 
 
 The dwellers of the earth and air 
 
 Shall throng around our steps in gladness 
 
 Seeking their food or refuge there. 
 Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull, 
 To make this Earth, our home, more beautiful, 
 And Science, and her sister Poesy, 
 Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free ! 
 
 Victory, Victory to the prostrate nations ! 
 Bear witness Night, and ye mute Constellations 
 Who gaze on us from your crystalline cars ! 
 Thoughts have gone forth whose powers can sleep no 
 
 more! 
 Victory ! Victory ! Earth's remotest shore,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 95 
 
 Regions which groan beneath the Antarctic stars, 
 The green lands cradled in the roar 
 
 Of western waves and wildernesses 
 Peopled and vast, which skirt the oceans 
 Where morning dyes her golden tresses, 
 Shall soon partake our high emotions : 
 Kings shall turn pale ! Almighty Fear 
 The Fiend-God, when our charmed name he hear, 
 Shall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes, 
 While Truth with Joy enthroned o'er his lost empire 
 reigns ! 
 
 WAR. 
 
 The battle became ghastlier in the midst 
 
 I paused, and saw, how ugly and how fell 
 
 O Hate ! thou art, even when thy life thou shed'st 
 
 For love. The ground in many a little dell 
 
 Was broken, up and down whose steeps befel 
 
 Alternate victory and defeat, and there 
 
 The combatants with rage most horrible 
 
 Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare, 
 
 And impotent their tongues they lolled into the air, 
 
 Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog's hanging ; 
 Want, and Moon-madness, and the Pest's swift bane 
 When its shafts smite while yet its bow is twanging 
 Have each their mark and sign some ghastly stain ; 
 And this was thine, O War ! of hate and pain
 
 96 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Thou loathed slave. I saw all shapes of death 
 And ministered to many, o'er the plain 
 While carnage in the sun-beam's warmth did seethe, 
 Till twilight o'er the east wove her serenest wreath. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 O LOVE ! who to the hearts of wandering men 
 Art as the calm to Ocean's weary waves ! 
 Justice, or truth, or joy ! thou only can 
 From slavery and religion's labyrinth caves 
 Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves. 
 To give to all an equal share of good, 
 To track the steps of freedom tho' thro' graves 
 She pass, to suffer all in patient mood, 
 To weep for crime, tho' stained with thy friend's dear- 
 est blood. 
 
 To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot, 
 To own all sympathies, and outrage none, 
 And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought, 
 Until life's sunny day is quite gone down, 
 To it and smile with Joy, or, not alone, 
 To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe ; 
 To live, as if to love and live were one, 
 This is true faith and law, and those who bow, 
 To thrones on Heaven or Earth, such destiny might 
 know.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 97 
 
 SLAVERY. 
 
 But children near their parents tremble now, 
 
 Because they must obey one rules another, 
 
 And as one Power rules both high and low, 
 
 So man is made the captive of his brother, 
 
 And Hate is throned on high with Fear her mother, 
 
 Above the Highest and those fountain- cells, 
 
 Whence love yet flowed when faith had choked all 
 
 other, 
 
 Are darkened Woman, as the bond-slave, dwells 
 Of man, a slave ; and life is poisoned in its wells. 
 
 Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave 
 
 A lasting chain for his own slavery ; 
 
 In fear and restless care that he may live 
 
 He toils for others, who must ever be 
 
 The joyless thralls of like captivity ; 
 
 He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin ; 
 
 He builds the altar, that its idol's fee 
 
 May be his very blood ; he is pursuing 
 
 O, blind and willing wretch ! his own obscure undoing. 
 
 Woman ! she is his slave, she has become 
 A thing I weep to speak the child of scorn, 
 The outcast of a desolated home. 
 Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn 
 Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn, 
 As calm decks the false Ocean : well ye know 
 What Woman is, for none of Woman born, 
 K
 
 94 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe, 
 
 Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressors flow. 
 
 This need not be ; ye might arise, and will 
 
 That gold should lose its power, and thrones their 
 
 glory ; 
 
 That love, which none may bind, be free to fill 
 The world, like light ; and evil faith, grown hoary 
 With crime, be quenched and die. Yon promontory 
 Even now eclipses the descending moon ! 
 Dungeons and palaces are transitory 
 High temples fade like vapour Man alone 
 Remains, whose will has power when all beside is 
 
 gone. 
 
 Let all be free and equal ! from your hearts 
 
 I feel an echo ; thro' my inmost frame 
 
 Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts 
 
 Whence come ye, friends ? alas, I cannot name 
 
 All that I read of sorrow, toil, and shame, 
 
 On your worn faces ; as in legends old 
 
 Which make immortal the disastrous fame 
 
 Of conquerors and impostors false and bold, 
 
 The discord of your hearts, I in your looks behold. 
 
 HATE. 
 
 YES, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing 
 Of many names, all evil, some divine, 
 Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting ; 
 Which, when the heart its snaky folds intwine
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 99 
 
 Is wasted quite, and when it cloth repine 
 
 To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside 
 
 It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine 
 
 When Amphisbama some fair bird has tied, 
 
 Soon o'er the putrid mass he threats on every side. 
 
 Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself, 
 Nor hate another's crime, nor loathe thine own. 
 It is the dark idolatry of self, 
 
 Which, when our thoughts and actions once are gone, 
 Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan ; 
 O vacant expiation ! be at rest. 
 The past is Death's, the future is thine own ; 
 And love and joy can make the foulest breast 
 A paradise of flowers, where peace might build her 
 nest. 
 
 THE WORLD'S SPRING. 
 THE blasts of autumn drive the winged seeds 
 Over the earth, next come the snows, and rain, 
 And frosts, and storms, which dreary winter leads 
 Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train ; 
 Behold ! Spring sweeps over the world again, 
 Shedding soft dews from her aetherial wings ; 
 Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain, 
 And music on the waves and woods she flings, 
 And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things. 
 
 O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness 
 Wind-winged emblem ! brightest, best, and fairest 5
 
 100 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Whence contest thou, when, with dark winter's sadness 
 The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest ; 
 Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest 
 Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet ; 
 Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest 
 Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet, 
 Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet. 
 
 Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven, 
 Surround the world. We are their chosen slaves. 
 Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven 
 Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest caves ? 
 Lo, Winter comes ! the grief of many graves, 
 The frost of death, the tempest of the sword, 
 The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves 
 Stagnate like ice at Faith, the inchanter's word, 
 And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred. 
 
 The seeds are sleeping in the soil : meanwhile 
 The tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey, 
 Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile 
 Because they cannot speak ; and, day by day,. 
 The moon of wasting Science wanes away 
 Among her stars, and in that darkness vast 
 The sons of earth to their foul idols pray, 
 And grey Priests triumph, and like blight or blast 
 A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast.. 
 
 This is the winter of the world ; and here 
 We die, even as the winds of Autumn, fade*
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 10! 
 
 Expiring in the frore and foggy air. 
 -Behold ! Spring comes, tho' we must pass, who made 
 The promise of its hirth, even as the shade 
 Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings 
 The future, a broad sunrise ; thus arrayed 
 As with the plumes of overshadowing wings, 
 From its dark gulph of chains, Earth like an eagle 
 springs. 
 
 HOPE. 
 
 O DEAREST love ! we shall be dead and cold 
 Before this morn may on the world arise ; 
 Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold ? 
 Alas ! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes 
 On thine own heart it is a paradise 
 Which everlasting spring has made its own, 
 And while drear Winter fills the naked skies, 
 Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh 
 
 blown, 
 Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one. 
 
 In their own hearts the earnest of the hope 
 Which made them great, the good will ever find ; 
 And tho' some envious shade may interlope" 
 Between the effect and it, one comes behind, 
 Who aye the future to the past will bind 
 Necessity, whose sightless strength forever 
 Evil with evil, good with good must wind 
 K 3
 
 108 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 In bands of union, which no power may sever : 
 They must bring forth their kind, and be divided 
 
 ver! 
 
 The good and mighty of departed ages 
 
 Are in their graves, the innocent and free, 
 
 Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages, 
 
 Who leave the vesture of their majesty 
 
 To adorn and clothe this naked world ; and we- 
 
 Are like to them such perish, but they leave 
 
 All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty, 
 
 Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive 
 
 To be a rule and law to ages that survive. 
 
 So be the turf heaped over our remains 
 
 Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot, 
 
 Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins 
 
 The blood is still, be ours ; let sense and thought 
 
 Pass from our being^ or be numbered not 
 
 Among the things that are ; let those who come* 
 
 Behind, for whom our stedfast will has bought 
 
 A calm inheritance, a glorious doom, 
 
 Insult with careless tread, our undivided tomb. 
 
 Our many thoughts and. deeds, our life and love> 
 Our happiness, and nil that we have been, 
 Immortally must live* and burn and move, 
 When we shall be no more ; the world has seeit 
 A type of poace ; and as some most serene
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 103 
 
 And lovely spot to a poor maniac's eye, 
 After long years, some sweet and moving scene 
 Of youthful hope returning suddenly, 
 Quells his long madness thus man shall remember 
 thee. 
 
 THE PLAGUE.. 
 
 Day after day the burning Sun rolled on 
 Over the death-polluted land it came 
 Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone 
 A lamp of Autumn, ripening with its flame 
 The few lone ears of corn ; the sky became 
 Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast 
 Languished and died, the thirsting air did claim 
 All moisture, and a retting vaponr past 
 From the unburied dead, invisible and fast. 
 
 First Want, then Plague came on the beasts; their 
 
 food 
 
 Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay. 
 Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood 
 Had lured, or who, from regions far away,. 
 Had tracked the hosts in festival array, 
 From their dark desarts ; gaunt and wasting now, 
 Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey : 
 In their green eyes a strange disease did glow, 
 They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow*
 
 104 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The fish were poisoned in the streams ; the birds 
 In the green woods perished ; the insect race 
 Was withered up ; the scattered flocks and herds 
 Who had survived the wild beasts' hungry chace 
 Died moaning, each upon the other's face 
 In helpless agony gazing ; round the City 
 All night, the lean hyaenas their sad case 
 Like starving infants wailed ; a woeful ditty ! 
 And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural 
 pity. 
 
 Amid the aerial minarets on high, 
 The ^Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell 
 From their long line of brethren in the sky, 
 Startling the concourse of mankind. Too well 
 These signs the coming mischief did foretel : 
 Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread 
 Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell, 
 A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread 
 With the quick glance of eyes, like withering light- 
 nings shed. 
 
 Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts 
 Strip its green crown of leaves, till all is bare ; 
 So on those strange and congregated hosts 
 Came Famine, a swift shadow, and the air 
 Groaned with the burthen of a new despair ; 
 Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter 
 .Feeds from her thousand breasts, tho* sleeping there
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 105 
 
 With lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and Slaughter, 
 A ghastly brood ; conceived of Lethe's sullen water. 
 
 There was no food, the corn was trampled down, 
 The flocks and herds had perished ; on the shore 
 The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown ; 
 The deeps were foodless, and the winds, no more 
 Creaked with the weight of birds, but as before 
 Those winged things sprang forth, were void of shade ; 
 The vines and orchards, Autumn's golden/ store, 
 Were burned ; so that the meanest food was weighed 
 With gold, and Avarice died before the god it made. 
 
 There was no corn in the wide market-place 
 
 All loathliest things, even human flesh, was. sold; 
 
 They weighed it in small scales and many a face 
 
 Was fixed in eager horror then. : his gold 
 
 The miser brought, the tender maid, grown bold 
 
 Thro' hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain ; 
 
 The mother brought her eldest born, controlled 
 
 By instinct blind as love, but turned again 
 
 And bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain*. 
 
 Then fell blue Plague, upon the race of man. 
 
 " O, for the sheathed steel, so late which gave 
 
 Oblivion to the dead, when the streets ran, 
 
 With brothers' blood '. O, that the earthquake's grave 
 
 Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave ! " 
 
 Vain cries throughout the streets, thousands pursued 
 
 Each by bis fiery torture howl and rave,
 
 106 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Or sit, in frenzy's unimagined mood, 
 
 Upon fresh heaps of dead ; a ghastly multitude. 
 
 It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well 
 
 Was choked with rotting corpses, and became 
 
 A cauldron of green mist made visible 
 
 At sunrise. Thither still the myriads came, 
 
 Seeking to quench the agony of the flame, 
 
 Which raged like poison thro' their bursting veins ; 
 
 Naked they were from torture, without shame, 
 
 Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains, 
 
 Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains. 
 
 It was not thirst but madness ! many saw 
 
 Their own lean image every where, it went 
 
 A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe 
 
 Of that dread sight to self destruction sent 
 
 Those shrieking victims ; some, ere life was spent, 
 
 Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed 
 
 Contagion on the sound ; and others rent 
 
 Their matted hair, and cried aloud, " We tread 
 
 On fire ! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread." 
 
 Sometimes the living by the dead were hid. 
 Near the great fountain in the public square, 
 Where corpses made a crumbling pyramid 
 Under the sun, was heard one stifled prayer 
 For life, in the hot silence of the air ; 
 And strange 'twas, amid that hideous heap to see 
 Some shrouded in their long and golden hair,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 107 
 
 As if not dead, hat slumbering quietly 
 
 Like forms which sculptors carve, then love to agony. 
 
 Famine had spared the palace of the king : 
 
 He rioted in festival the while, 
 
 He and his guards and priests ; but Plague did fling 
 
 One shadow upon all. Famine can smile 
 
 On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile 
 
 Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier grey, 
 
 The house-dog of the throne ; but many a mile 
 
 Comes Plague, a winged wolf, who loathes alway 
 
 The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey. 
 
 AMERICA. 
 
 There is a People mighty in its youth, 
 A land beyond the Oceans of the West, 
 Where, tho' with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth 
 Are worshipped; from a glorious Mother's breast, 
 Who, since high Athens fell, among the rest 
 Sate like the Queen of Nations, but in woe, \ 
 
 By inbred monsters outraged and oppressed, 
 Turns to her chainless child for succour now, 
 It draws the milk of Power in Wisdom's fullest flow. 
 
 That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze 
 Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume 
 Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze 
 Of sun-rise gleams when Earth is wrapt in gloom ;
 
 108 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 An epitaph of glory for the tomb 
 
 Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made, 
 
 Great People : as the sands shalt thou become ; 
 
 Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade ; 
 
 The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade. 
 
 Yes, in the desart there is built a home 
 
 For Freedom. Genius is made strong to rear 
 
 The monuments of man beneath the dome 
 
 Of a new Heaven ; myriads assemble there, 
 
 Whom the proud lords of man, in rage or fear, 
 
 Drive from their wasted homes : the boon I pray 
 
 Is this, that Cythna shall be convoyed there 
 
 Nay, start not at the name America ! 
 
 And then to you this night Laon will I betray.
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 PROMETHEUS UNBOUND. 
 
 SUFFERINGS OF PROMETHEUS. 
 No change, no pause, no hope ! Yet I endure. 
 I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt ? 
 I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun, 
 Has it not seen ? The Sea, in storm or calm, 
 Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread helow, 
 Have its deaf waves not heard my agony ? 
 Ah me ! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever ! 
 
 The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears 
 Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains 
 Eat with their burning cold into my bones. 
 Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips 
 His beak in poison not his own, tears up 
 My heart ; and shapeless sights come wandering by, 
 L
 
 110 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The ghastly people of the realm of dream, 
 Mocking me : and the Earthquake-fiends are charged 
 To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds 
 When the rocks split-and close again behind: 
 While from their loud abysses howling throng 
 The genii of the storm, urging the rage 
 Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail. 
 
 PROMETHEUS RECALS THE CURSE. 
 
 And yet to me welcome is day and night, 
 
 Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn, 
 
 Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs 
 
 The leaden-coloured east ; for then they lead 
 
 The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom 
 
 Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood 
 
 From these pale feet, which then might trample thee 
 
 If they disdained not such a prostrate slave. 
 
 Disdain ! Ah no ! I pity thee. What ruin 
 
 Will hunt thee undefended thro' the wide Heaven 
 
 How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror, 
 
 Gape like a hell within I I speak in grief, 
 
 Not exultation, for I hate no more, 
 
 As then ere misery made me wise. The curse 
 
 Once breathed on thee I would recal. Ye Mountains, 
 
 Whose many-voiced Echoes, through the mist 
 
 Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell ! 
 
 Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost, 
 
 Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. Ill 
 
 Shuddering thro' India ! Thou serenest Air, 
 Thro' which the Sun walks burning without beams ! 
 And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poised wings 
 Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss, 
 As thunder, louder than your own, made rock 
 The orbed world '. If then my words had power, 
 Though I am changed so that aught evil wish 
 Is dead within ; although no memory be 
 Of what is hate, let them not lose it now ! 
 What was that curse ? for ye all heard me speak. 
 
 THE CURSE. 
 
 PRO. 1 see the curse on gestures proud and cold, 
 And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate, 
 And such despair as mocks itself with smiles, 
 Written as on a scroll : yet speak : Oh, speak ! 
 
 PHANTASM OF JUPITER. 
 Fiend, I defy thee ! with a calm, fixed mind, 
 
 All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do; 
 Foul tyrant both of Gods and Human-kind, 
 
 One only being shalt thou not subdue. 
 Rain then thy plagues upon me here, 
 Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear : 
 And let alternate frost and fire 
 Eat into me, and be thine ire 
 Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms 
 Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.
 
 112 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Aye, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent. 
 O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power,. 
 
 And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent 
 To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower. 
 
 Let thy malignant spirit move 
 
 In darkness over those I love : 
 
 On me and mine I imprecate 
 
 The utmost torture of thy hate ; 
 And thus devote to sleepless agony, 
 This undeclining head while thou must reign on high. 
 
 But thou, who art the God and Lord : O, thou, 
 Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe, 
 
 To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow 
 In fear and worship : all-prevailing foe t 
 
 I curse thee ! let a sufferer's curse 
 
 Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse; 
 
 Till thine Infinity shall be 
 
 A robe of envenomed agony ; 
 And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain, 
 To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain. 
 
 Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse, 
 
 111 deeds, then be thou damned, beholding good , 
 
 Both infinite as is the universe, 
 And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude. 
 
 An awful image of calm power 
 
 Though now thou sittest, let the hour 
 
 Come, when thou must appear to be 
 
 That which thou art internally.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 113 
 
 Ad after many a false and fruitless crime 
 Scorn track thy lagging fall thro' boundless space and 
 time. 
 
 PRO. Were these my words, O Parent ? 
 
 THE EARTH. They were thine. 
 
 PRO. It doth repent me : words are quick and vain -, 
 Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine, 
 I wish no living thing to suffer pain. 
 
 JOVE'S MESSENGER, THE HERALD OF NEW 
 TORTURES. 
 
 MERCURY. Awful Sufferer 
 
 To thee unwilling, most unwillingly 
 I come, by the great Father's will driven down, 
 To execute a doom of new revenge. 
 Alas ! I pity thee, and hate myself 
 That I can do no more : aye from thy sight 
 Returning, for a season, heaven seems hell, 
 So thy worn form pursues me night and day, 
 Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good, 
 But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife 
 Against the Omnipotent ; as yon clear lamps 
 That measure and divide the weary years 
 From which there is no refuge, long have taught 
 And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms- 
 With the strange might of unimagined pains 
 The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell, 
 L 3
 
 114 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 And my commission is to lead them here, 
 Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends 
 People the abyss, and leave them to their task, 
 Be it not so ! there is a secret known 
 To thee, and to none else of living things, 
 Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven, 
 The fear of which perplexes the Supreme : 
 Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his t.hrpne 
 In intercession ; bend thy soul in prayer, 
 And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane, 
 Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart ; 
 For benefits and meek submission tame 
 The fiercest and the mightiest. 
 
 PRO. Evil minds 
 
 Change good to their own nature. I gave all 
 He has ; and in return he chains me here 
 Years, ages, night and day : whether the Sun 
 Split my parched skin, or in the moony night 
 The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair : 
 Whilst my beloved race is trampled down 
 By his thought-executing ministers. 
 Such is the tyrant's recompense : 'tis just : 
 He who is evil can receive no good ; 
 And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost, 
 He can feel hate, fear, shame ; not gratitude : 
 He but requite* me for his own misdeed. 
 Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks. 
 With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge. 
 Submission, thou dost know I cannot try : 
 For what submission but that fatal word,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 115 
 
 The death-seal of mankind's captivity, 
 Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword, 
 Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept, 
 Or could I yield ? Which yet I will not yield. 
 Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned 
 In brief Omnipotence : secure are they : 
 For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down 
 Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs, 
 Too much avenged by those who err. I wait, 
 Enduring thus, the retributive hour 
 Which since we spake is even nearer now. 
 But hark, the hell-hounds clamour : fear delay : 
 Behold ! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frownu 
 MER. Oh, that we might be spared : I to inflict 
 And thou to suffer! Once more answer me : 
 Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power ? 
 PRO. I know but this, that it must come. 
 MER. Alas ! 
 
 Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain ? 
 PRO. They last while Jove must reign: nor more, 
 
 nor less 
 Do I desire or fear. 
 
 MER. Yet pause, and plunge 
 
 Into Eternity, where recorded time, 
 Even all that we imagine, age on age, 
 Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind 
 Flags wearily in its unending flight, L-.m:*/ V 
 
 Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless; 
 Perchance it has not numbered the slow years 
 Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved 3
 
 116 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 PRO. Perchance no thought can count them, yet they 
 pass. 
 
 MER. If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the 
 
 while 
 Lapped in voluptuous joy ? 
 
 PRO. I would not quit 
 
 This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains. 
 
 MER. Alas ! I wonder at, yet pity thee. 
 
 PRO. Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, 
 Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene, 
 As light in the sun, throned : how vain is talk ! 
 Call up the fiends. 
 
 FIRST FURY. Prometheus ! 
 
 SECOND FURY. Immortal Titan ! 
 
 THIRD FURY. Champion of Heaven's slaves ! 
 
 PRO. He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here. 
 Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms, 
 What and who are ye ? Never yet there came 
 Phantasms so foul thro' monster-teeming Hell 
 From the all-miscreative brain of Jove ; 
 Whilst I behold such execrable shapes, 
 Methinks I grow like what I contemplate, 
 And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy. 
 
 FIRST FURY. We are the ministers of pain, and fear, 
 And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate, 
 And clinging crime ; and as lean dogs pursue 
 Thro' wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn, 
 We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live, 
 When the great King betrays them to our will. 
 
 PRO. Oh ! many fearful natures in one name,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 117 
 
 I know ye ; and these lakes and echoes know 
 The darkness and the clangour of your wings. 
 But why more hideous than your loaihed selves 
 Gather ye up in legions from the deep ? 
 
 SECOND FURY. We knew not that : Sisters, rejoice, 
 rejoice ! 
 
 PRO. Can aught exult in its deformity ? 
 
 SECOND FURY. The beauty of delight makes lovers 
 
 glad, 
 
 Gazing on one another : so are we. 
 As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels 
 To gather for her festal crown of flowers 
 The aerial crimson falls, flushing her cheek, 
 So from our victim's destined agony 
 The shade which is our form invests us round, 
 Else we are shapeless as our mother Night. 
 
 PRO. 1 laugh your power, and his who sent you here, 
 To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain. 
 
 FIRST FURY. Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone 
 
 from bone, 
 And nerve from nerve, working like fire within ? 
 
 PRO. Pain is my element, as hate is thine ; 
 Ye rend me now : I care not. 
 
 SECOND FURY. Dost imagine 
 We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes ? 
 
 PRO. I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer, 
 Being evil. Cruel was the power which called 
 You, or aught else so wretched, into light. 
 
 THIRD FURY. Thou think'st we will live thro' thee, 
 one by one,
 
 118 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Like animal life, and tho* we can obscure not 
 The soul which burns within, that we will dwell 
 Beside it, like a vain loud multitude 
 Vexing the self-content of wisest men : 
 That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain, 
 And foul desire round thine astonished heart, 
 And blood within thy labyrinthine veins 
 Crawling like agony. 
 
 PRO. Why, ye are thus now ; 
 Yet am I king over myself, and rule 
 The torturing and conflicting throngs within, 
 As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous. 
 
 CHORUS OF FURIES. 
 
 From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth, 
 Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth, 
 
 Come, come, come ! 
 
 Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth, 
 When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye 
 Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea, 
 And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track. 
 Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck ;. 
 
 Come, come, come ! 
 Leave the bed, low, cold, and red, 
 Strewed beneath a nation dead ; 
 Leave the hatred, as in ashes 
 Fire is left for future burning i
 
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 119 
 
 It will burst in bloodier flashes 
 
 When ye stir it, soon returning : 
 Leave the self-contempt implanted 
 In young spirits, sense enchanted, 
 
 Misery's yet unkindled fuel : 
 Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted 
 
 To the maniac dreamer ; cruel 
 More than ye can be with hate 
 
 Is he with fear. 
 
 Come, come, come ! 
 
 We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate 
 And we burthen the blasts of the atmosphere, 
 But vainly we toil till ye come here. 
 
 FIRST FURY. 
 
 Your call was as a winged car 
 Driven on whirlwinds fast and far; 
 It rapt us from red gulphs of war. 
 
 SECOND FURY. 
 From wide cities, famine-wasted ; 
 
 THIRD FURY. 
 Groans half heard, and blood untasted ; 
 
 FOURTH FURY. 
 
 Kingly conclaves stern and cold, 
 Where blood with gold is bought and sold ;
 
 120 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 FIFTH FURY. 
 
 From the furnace, white and hot, 
 In which 
 
 A FURY. 
 
 Speak not : whisper not : 
 I know all that ye would tell, 
 But to speak might break the spell 
 Which must bend the Invincible, 
 
 The stern of thought ; 
 He yet defies the deepest power of Hell. 
 
 FURY. , 
 Tear the veil ! 
 
 ANOTHER FURY. 
 It is torn. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 The pale stars of the morn 
 Shine on a misery, dire to be borne. 
 Dost thou faint, mighty Titan ? We laugh thee to scorn. 
 Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst 
 
 for man ? 
 
 Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran 
 Those perishing waters ; a thirst of fierce fever, 
 Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever. 
 One came forth of gentle worth 
 Smiling on the sanguine earth ;
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 121 
 
 His words outlived him, like swift poison 
 
 Withering up truth, peace, and pity. 
 Look ! where round the wide horizon 
 
 Many a million-peopled city 
 Vomits smoke in the bright air. 
 Mark that outcry of despair ! 
 Tis his mild and gentle ghost ! 
 
 Wailing for the faith he kindled : 
 Look again, the flames almost 
 
 To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled : 
 The survivors rouud the embers 
 Gather in dread. 
 
 Joy, joy, joy ! 
 
 Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers, 
 And the future is dark, and the present is spread 
 Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head. 
 
 SEMICHORUS I. 
 Drops of bloody agony flow 
 From his white and quivering brow. 
 Grant a little respite now : 
 See a disenchanted nation 
 Springs like day from desolation ; 
 To truth its state is dedicate, 
 And Freedom leads it forth, her mate ; 
 A legioned band of linked brothers 
 Whom love calls children 
 
 M
 
 122 BEAUTIES'OF SHELLEY. 
 
 SEMICHORUS II. 
 
 'Tis another's : 
 
 See how kindred murder kin : 
 Tis the vintage-time for death and sin : 
 Blood, like new wine, bubbles within : 
 
 Till Despair smothers 
 The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win. 
 
 SPIRITS PROPHESY THE REIGN OF LOVE. 
 
 THE EARTH. To cheer thy state 
 
 I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits, 
 Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought, 
 And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind, 
 Its world- surrounding ether : they behold 
 Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass, 
 The future : may they speak comfort to thee ! 
 
 PANTHEA. Look, sister, where a troop of spirits 
 
 gather, 
 
 Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather, 
 Thronging in the blue air ! 
 
 IONE. And see ! more come, 
 
 Like fountain- vapours when the winds are dumb, 
 That climb up the ravine in scattered lines. 
 And, hark ? is it the music of the pines ? 
 Is it the lake ? Is it the waterfall ? 
 PANTHEA. Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 123 
 
 CHORUS OF SPIRITS. 
 From unremembered ages we 
 Gentle guides and guardians be 
 Of heaven-oppressed mortality ; 
 And we breathe, and sicken not, 
 The atmosphere of human thought : 
 Be it dim, and dank, and grey, 
 Like a storm-extinguished day, 
 Travelled o'er by dying gleams ; 
 
 Be it bright as all between 
 Cloudless skies and windless streams, 
 
 Silent, liquid, and serene ; 
 As the birds within the wind, 
 
 As the fish within the wave, 
 As the thoughts of man's own mind 
 
 Float thro' all above the grave ; 
 We make these our liquid lair, 
 Voyaging cloudlike and unpent 
 Thro' the boundless element : 
 Thence we bear the prophecy 
 Which begins and ends in thee ! 
 
 IONE. More yet come, one by one : the air around them 
 Looks radiant as the air around a star. 
 
 FIRST SPIRIT. 
 On a battle-trumpet's blast 
 I fled hither, fast, fast, fast, 
 'Mid the darkness upward cast.
 
 J24 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 From the dust of creeds outworn, 
 From the tyrant's banner torn, 
 Gathering 'round me, onward borne, 
 There was mingled many a cry 
 Freedom ! Hope ! Death ! Victory ! 
 Till they faded thro' the sky ; 
 And one sound, above, around, 
 One sound beneath, around, above, 
 Was moving ; 'twas the soul of love ; 
 'Twas the hope, the prophecy, 
 Which begins and ends in thee. 
 
 SECOND SPIRIT. 
 
 A rainbow's arch stood on the sea, 
 Which rocked beneath, immoveably ; 
 And the triumphant storm did flee, 
 Like a conqueror, swift and proud, 
 Between with many a captive cloud 
 A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd, 
 Each by lightning riven in half : 
 1 heard the thunder hoarsely laugh : 
 Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff 
 And spread beneath a hell of death 
 O'er the white waters. I alit 
 On a great ship lightning-split, 
 And speeded hither on the sigh 
 Of one who gave an enemy 
 His plank, then plunged aside to die.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 125 
 
 THIRD SPIRIT. 
 I sate beside a sage's bed, 
 And the lamp was burning red 
 Near the book where he had fed, 
 When a Dream with plumes of flame, 
 To his pillow hovering came, 
 And I knew it was the same 
 Which had kindled long ago 
 Pity, eloquence, and woe ; 
 And the world awhile below 
 Wore the shade, its lustre made. 
 It has born me here as fleet 
 As Desire's lightning feet : 
 I must ride it back ere morrow, 
 Or the sage will wake in sorrow. 
 
 FOURTH SPIRIT. 
 On a poet's lips I slept 
 Dreaming like a love-adept 
 In the sound his breathing kept ; 
 Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses 
 But feeds on the aerial kisses 
 Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. 
 He will watch from dawn to gloom 
 The lake-reflected sun illume 
 The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, 
 Nor heed nor see, what things they be ; 
 But from these create he can 
 Forms more real than living man, 
 M 3
 
 126 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Nurslings of immortality ! 
 One of these awakened me, 
 And I sped to succour thee. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 Tho' Ruin now Love's shadow be, 
 Following him, destroyingly, 
 
 On Death's white and winged steed, 
 Which the fleetest cannot flee, 
 
 Trampling down both flower and weed, 
 Man and beast, and foul and fair, 
 Like a tempest thro' the air ; 
 Thou shalt quell this horseman grim, 
 Woundless though in heart or limb. 
 
 PRO. Spirits ! how know ye this shall be ? 
 
 CHORUS. 
 In the atmosphere we breathe, 
 
 As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee, 
 From spring gathering up beneath, 
 
 Whose mild winds shake the elder brake, 
 
 And the wandering herdsmen know 
 .1 : That the white- thorn soon will blow : 
 
 Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace, 
 
 When they struggle to increase, 
 Are to as us soft winds be 
 To shepherd boys, the prophecy 
 Which begins and ends in thee-
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 127 
 
 THE UNBINDING OF PROMETHEUS. 
 
 HERCULES. Most glorious among spirits, thus doth 
 
 strength 
 
 To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love, 
 And thee, who art the form they animate, 
 Minister like a slave. 
 
 PRO. Thy gentle words 
 
 Are sweeter even than freedom long desired 
 And long delayed. 
 
 Asia, thou light of life, 
 Shadow of beauty unbeheld : and ye, 
 Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain 
 Sweet to remember, thro' your love and care : 
 Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave, 
 All overgrown with trailing odorous plants, 
 Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers, 
 And paved with veined emerald, and a fountain 
 Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound. 
 From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears, 
 Like snow, or silver, or loiig diamond spires, 
 Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light : 
 And there is heard the ever-moving air, 
 Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds, 
 And bees ; and all around are mossy seats, 
 And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass j 
 A simple dwelling, which shall be our own ; 
 Where we will sit and talk of time and change, 
 As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged. 
 What can hide man from mutability .'
 
 128 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 And if ye sigh, then I will smile ; and thou, 
 
 lone, shalt chaunt fragments of sea -music, 
 
 Until I weep, when ye shall smile away 
 
 The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed. 
 
 We will entangle buds and flowers and beams 
 
 Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make 
 
 Strange combinations out of common things, 
 
 Like human babes in their brief innocence ; 
 
 And we will search, with looks and words of love, 
 
 For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last, 
 
 Our unexhausted spirits ; and like lutes 
 
 Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind, 
 
 Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new, 
 
 From difference sweet where discord cannot be ; 
 
 And hither come, sped on the charmed winds, 
 
 Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees 
 
 From every flower aerial Enna feeds, 
 
 At their known island -homes in Himera, 
 
 The echoes of the human world, which tell 
 
 Of the low voice of love, almost unheard, 
 
 And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music, 
 
 Itself the echo of the heart, and all 
 
 That tempers or improves man's life, now free ; 
 
 And lovely apparitions, dim at first, 
 
 Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright 
 
 From the embrace of beauty, whence the forms 
 
 Of which these are the phantoms, casts on them 
 
 The gathered rays which are reality, 
 
 Shall visit us, the progeny immortal 
 
 Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 129 
 
 And arts, tho' unimagined, yet to be. 
 
 The wandering voices and the shadows these 
 
 Of all that man becomes, the mediators 
 
 Of that best worship love, by him and us 
 
 Given and returned ; swift shapes and sounds, which 
 
 grow 
 
 More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind, 
 And veil by veil, evil and error fall : 
 Such virtue has the cave and place around. 
 For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. lone, 
 Give her that curved shell, which Proteus old 
 Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it 
 A voice to be accomplished, and which thou 
 Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock. 
 
 SPIRIT. It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean : 
 Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange. 
 
 PRO. Go, borne over the cities t>f mankind 
 On whirlwind-footed coursers : once again 
 Outspeed the sun around the orbed world ; 
 And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air, 
 Thou breathe into the many-folded shell, 
 Loosening its mighty music ; it shall be 
 As thunder mingled with clear echoes : then 
 Return ; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave. 
 
 THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE VOICE. 
 
 PRO. We feel what thou hast heard and seen : yet 
 speak.
 
 130 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 SPIRIT OF THE HOUR. Soon as the sound had ceased 
 
 whose thunder filled 
 
 The abysses of the sky and the wide earth, 
 There was a change : the impalpable thin air 
 And the all-circling sunlight were transformed, 
 As if the sense of love dissolved in them 
 Had folded itself round the sphered world. 
 As I have said I floated to the earth : 
 It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss 
 To move, to breathe, to be ; I wandering went 
 Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind, 
 And first was disappointed not to see 
 Such mighty change as I had felt within 
 Expressed in outward things ; but soon I looked, 
 And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked 
 One with the other even as spirits do, 
 None fawned, none trampled ; hate, disdain, or fear, 
 Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows 
 No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, 
 " All hope abandon ye who enter here ; " 
 None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear 
 Gazed on another's eye of cold command, 
 Until the subject of a tyrant's will 
 Became, worse fate, the abject of his own, 
 Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death. 
 None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines 
 Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak ; 
 None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart 
 The sparks of love and hope till there remained 
 Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 131 
 
 And the wretch crept a vampire among men, 
 
 Infecting all with his own hideous ill ; 
 
 None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk 
 
 Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes, 
 
 Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy 
 
 With such a self-mistrust as has no name. 
 
 And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind 
 
 As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew 
 
 On the wide earth, past ; gentle radiant forms, 
 
 From custom's evil taint exempt and pure ; 
 
 Speaking the wisdom once they could not think, 
 
 Looking emotions once they feared to feel, 
 
 And changed to all which once they dared not be, 
 
 Yet being now, made earth like heaven ; nor pride, 
 
 Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame, 
 
 The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall, 
 
 Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love. 
 
 Thrones, altars, judgment seats, and prisons; wherein, 
 
 And beside which, by wretched men were borne 
 
 Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes 
 
 Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance, 
 
 Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes, 
 
 The ghosts of a no more remembered fame, 
 
 Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth 
 
 In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs 
 
 Of those who were their conquerors : mouldering round 
 
 Those imaged to the pride of kings and priests, 
 
 A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide 
 
 As is the world it wasted, and are now
 
 132 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 But an astonishment ; even so the tools 
 
 And emblems of its last captivity, 
 
 Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth, 
 
 Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now. 
 
 And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man, 
 
 Which, under many a name and many a form 
 
 Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execrable, 
 
 Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world ; 
 
 And which the nations, panic-stricken, served 
 
 With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love 
 
 Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless, 
 
 And slain among men's unreclaiming tears, 
 
 Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate, 
 
 Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines : 
 
 The painted veil, by those who were, called life, 
 
 Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread, 
 
 All men believed and hoped, is torn aside ; 
 
 The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains 
 
 Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man 
 
 Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, 
 
 Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king 
 
 Over himself; just, gentle, wise : but man 
 
 Passionless ; no, yet free from guilt or pain, 
 
 Which were, for his will made or suffered them, 
 
 Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like slaves, 
 
 From chance, and death, and mutability, 
 
 The clogs of that which else might oversoar 
 
 The loftiest star of unascended heaven, 
 
 Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 133 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE. 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness ! 
 The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness, 
 The vaporous exultation not to be confined ! 
 Ha ! ha ! the animation of delight 
 Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light, 
 And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind. 
 
 THE MOON. 
 
 Brother mine, calm wanderer, 
 
 Happy globe of land and air, 
 Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee, 
 
 Which penetrates my frozen frame, 
 
 And passes with the warmth of flame, 
 With love, and odour, and deep melody 
 
 Through me, through me ! 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 Ha ! ha ! the caverns of my hollow mountains, 
 My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains 
 Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter. 
 The oceans, and the desarts, and the abysses, 
 And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses, 
 Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after. 
 
 THE MOON. 
 
 The snow upon my lifeless mountains 
 Is loosened into living fountains, 
 N
 
 134 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine : 
 
 A spirit from my heart bursts forth, 
 
 It clothes with unexpected birth 
 My cold bare bosom -. Oh ! it must be thine 
 On mine, on mine '. 
 
 Gazing on thee I feel, I know 
 
 Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow, 
 And living shapes upon my bosom move : 
 
 Music is in the sea and air, 
 
 Winged clouds soar here and there, 
 Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of . 
 Tis love, all love ! 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 It interpenetrates my granite mass, 
 
 Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass, 
 Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers ; 
 
 Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread, 
 
 It wakes a life in the forgotten dead, 
 They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers. 
 
 And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison 
 With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen 
 
 Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being : 
 
 With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver 
 Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever, 
 
 Till hate, and fear, and pain, light- vanquished shadows, 
 fleeing,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 135 
 
 Leave Man, who was a many sided mirror, 
 Which could distort to many a shape of error, 
 
 This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love ; 
 Which over all his kind as the sun's heaven 
 Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even 
 
 Darting from starry depths radiance and light, doth 
 move, 
 
 Leave man, even as a leprous child is left, 
 Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft 
 
 Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs 
 
 is poured ; 
 
 Then when it wanders home with rosy smile, 
 Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile 
 
 It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored* 
 
 Man, oh, not men ! a chain of linked thought, 
 
 Of love and might to be divided not, 
 Compelling the elements with adamantine stress ; 
 
 As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze, 
 
 The unquiet republic of the maze 
 Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wil- 
 derness. 
 
 Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, 
 
 Whose nature is its own divine controul, 
 Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea ; 
 
 Familiar acts are beautiful through love ; 
 
 Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove 
 Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they 
 could be !
 
 136 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 His will, with all mean passions, bad delights, 
 And selfish cares, its trembling satellites, 
 
 A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey, 
 Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm 
 Love rules, through waves which dare not over- 
 whelm, 
 
 Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway. 
 
 All things confess his strength. Through the cold 
 
 mass 
 
 Of marble and of colour his dreams pass ; 
 Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their 
 
 children wear ; 
 
 Language is a perpetual orphic song, 
 Which rules with Daedal harmony a throng 
 Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and 
 
 shapeless were. 
 
 The lightning is his slave ; heaven's utmost deep 
 
 Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep 
 They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on 1 
 
 The tempest is his steed, he strides the air ; 
 
 And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare, 
 Heaven, hast thou secrets ? Man unveils me ; I have 
 none. 
 
 THE MOON. 
 
 Thou art folded, thou art lying 
 In the light which is undying 
 Of thine own joy and heaven's smile divine ;
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 137 
 
 All suns and constellations shower 
 On thee a light, a life, a power 
 Which doth array thy sphere ; thou pourest thine 
 On mine, on mine ! 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 
 I spin beneath my pyramid of night, 
 
 Which points into the heavens dreaming delight, 
 Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep ; 
 
 As a youth lulled in love -dreams faintly sighing, 
 
 Under the shadow of his beauty lying, 
 Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth 
 doth keep. 
 
 THE MOON. 
 
 As in the soft and sweet eclipse, 
 
 When soul meets soul on lovers' lips, 
 High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull j 
 
 So when thy shadow falls on me, 
 
 Then am I mute and still, by thee 
 Covered ; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, 
 
 Full, oh, too full ! 
 
 Thou art speeding round the sun 
 Brightest world of many a one ; 
 Green and azure sphere which shinest 
 With a light which is divinest 
 Among all the lamps of Heaven 
 To whom life and light is given ; 
 N 3
 
 138 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY, 
 
 I, thy crystal paramour 
 Borne beside thee by a power 
 Like the polar Paradise, 
 Magnet-like of lovers' eyes ; 
 1, a most enamoured maiden 
 Whose weak brain is overladen 
 With the pleasure of her love, 
 Maniac-like around thee move 
 Gazing, an insatiate bride, 
 On thy form from every side 
 Like a Maenad, round the cup 
 Which Agave lifted up 
 In the wierd Cadmamn forest. 
 Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest 
 I must hurry, whirl and follow, 
 Through the heavens wide and hollow, 
 Sheltered by the warm embrace 
 Of thy soul from hungry space, 
 Drinking from thy sense and sight 
 Beauty, majesty, and might, 
 As a lover or a cameleon 
 Grows like what it looks upon, 
 As a violet's gentle eye 
 Gazes on the azure sky 
 
 Until its hue grows like what it beholds , 
 Asa grey and watery mist 
 Glows like solid amethyst 
 
 Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, 
 When the sunset sleeps 
 Upon its snow.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 139 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 And the weak day weeps 
 
 That it should be so. 
 
 Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight 
 Falls on me like thy clear and tender light 
 Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night, 
 
 Through isles for ever calm ; 
 Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce 
 The cavens of my pride's deep universe, 
 Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce 
 
 Made wounds which need thy balm. 
 
 A ROCKY PINNACLE. 
 
 ASIA. Fit throne for such a Power ! Magnificent ' 
 How glorious art thou, Earth ! And if thou be 
 The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, 
 Though evil stain its work, and it should be 
 Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, 
 I could fall down and worship that and thee. 
 Even now my heart adoreth : Wonderful ! 
 Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain : 
 Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist, 
 As a lake, paving in the morning sky, 
 With azure waves which burst in silver light, 
 Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on 
 Under the curdling winds, and islanding 
 The peak whereon we stand, midway, around 
 Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,
 
 140 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves, 
 And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist j 
 And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountain* 
 From icy spires of sun -like radiance fling 
 The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray, 
 From some Atlantic islet scattered up, 
 Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops^ 
 The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl 
 Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines 
 Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, 
 Awful as silence- Hark ! the rushing snow ! 
 The sun-awakened avalanche ! whose mass, 
 Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there 
 Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds 
 As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth 
 Is loosened, and the nations echo round, 
 Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now. 
 
 THE WORKS OF PROMETHEUS. 
 PROMETHEUS saw, and waked the legioned hopes 
 Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers, 
 Nepenthe, Moly, fadeless Amaranth, blooms, 
 That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings- 
 The shape of Death ; and Love he sent to bind 
 The disunited tendrils of that vine 
 Which bears the wine of life, the human heart ; 
 And he tamed fire, which, like some beasts of prey, 
 Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath 
 The frown of man j and tortured to his will
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 141 
 
 Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power, 
 
 And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms 
 
 Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves. 
 
 He gave man speech, and speech created thought, 
 
 Which is the measure of the universe } 
 
 And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven, 
 
 Which shook, but fell not ; and the harmonious mind 
 
 Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song ; 
 
 And music lifted up the listening spirit 
 
 Until it walked, exempt from mortal care, 
 
 Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound ; 
 
 And human hands first mimicked and then mocked, 
 
 With moulded limbs more lovely than its own, 
 
 The human form, till marble grew divine ; 
 
 And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see 
 
 Reflected in their race, behold, and perish. 
 
 He told the hidden power of herbs and springs, 
 
 And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep. 
 
 He taught the implicated orbits woven 
 
 Of the wide-wandering stars ; and how the sun 
 
 Changes his lair, and by what secret spell 
 
 The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye 
 
 Gazes not on the interlunar sea : 
 
 He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs, 
 
 The tempest-winged chariots of the Ocean, 
 
 And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then 
 
 Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed 
 
 The warm winds, and the azure aether shone, 
 
 And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.
 
 142 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 THE DECREE OF FATE. 
 
 DEMOGORGON. 
 
 Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul, 
 Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies, 
 Beautiful orb ! gathering as thou dost roll 
 The love which paves thy path along the skies : 
 
 THE EARTH. 
 I hear : 1 am as a drop of dew that dies. 
 
 DEMOGORGON. 
 Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth 
 
 With wonder, as it gaze? upon thee ; 
 Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth 
 
 Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony : 
 
 THE MOON. 
 I hear : I am a leaf shaken by thee ! 
 
 DEMOGORGON. 
 Ye kings of suns and stars, Daemons and Gods, 
 
 jEtherial Dominations, who possess 
 Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes 
 
 Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness : 
 
 A VOICE FROM ABOVE. 
 
 Our great Republic hears, we are blest, and Mess. 
 
 DEMOGORGON. 
 Ye happy dead, whom beams of brightest verse
 
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 143 
 
 Are clouds to hide, not colours to pourtray, 
 Whether your nature is that universe 
 Which once ye saw and suffered 
 
 A VOICE FROM BENEATH. 
 
 Or as they 
 Whom we have left, we change and pass away. 
 
 DEMOGORGON. 
 Ye elemental Genii, who have homes 
 
 From man's high mind even to the central stone 
 Of sullen lead ; from Heaven's star-fretted domes 
 
 To the dull weed some sea- worm battens on : 
 
 A CONFUSED VOICE. 
 We hear : thy words waken Oblivion. 
 
 DEMOGORGON. 
 Spirits, whose homes are flesh -. ye beasts and birds, 
 
 Ye worms, and fish ; ye living leaves and buds ; 
 Lightning and wind ; and ye untameable herds, 
 
 Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes : 
 
 A VOICE. 
 Thy voice to us is wind among still woods. 
 
 DEMOGORGON. 
 Man, who wert once a despot and a slave j 
 
 A dupe and a deceiver ; a decay ; 
 A traveller from the cradle to the grave 
 
 Through the dim night of this immortal day ;
 
 144 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 ALL. 
 Speak : thy strong words may never pass away. 
 
 DEMOGORGON. 
 
 This is the day, which down the void abysm 
 At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism, 
 
 And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep : 
 Love, from its awful throne of patient power 
 In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour 
 
 Of dead endurance, from the slippery, steep, 
 And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs 
 And folds over the world its healing wings. 
 
 Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, 
 These are the seals of that most firm assurance 
 
 Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength ; 
 And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, 
 Mother of many acts and hours, should free 
 
 The serpent that would clasp her with his length ; 
 These are the spells by which to re-assume 
 An empire o'er the disentangled doom. 
 
 To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite ; 
 To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ^ 
 
 To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ; 
 To love, and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
 From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; 
 
 Neither to change, nor flatter, nor repent ; 
 This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
 Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free; 
 This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
 
 QUEEN MAB. 
 
 I. 
 
 How wonderful is Death, 
 Death and his brother Sleep ! 
 One, pale as yonder waning moon 
 
 With lips of lurid blue ; 
 The other, rosy as the morn 
 
 When throned on ocean's wave 
 
 It blushes o'er the world : 
 Yet both so passing wonderful ! 
 
 Hath then the gloomy Power 
 Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres 
 
 Seized on her sinless soul ? 
 
 Must then that peerless form 
 Which love and admiration cannot view 
 Without a beating heart, those azure veins 
 Which steal like streams along a field of snow, 
 O
 
 146 BEAUTIES' OF SHELLEY. 
 
 That lovely outline, which is fair 
 
 As breathing marble, perish ? 
 
 Must putrefaction's breath 
 Leave nothing of this heavenly sight 
 
 But loathsomeness and ruin ? 
 Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, 
 On which the lightest heart might moralize ? 
 Or is it only a sweet slumber 
 
 Stealing o'er sensation, 
 Which the breath of roseate morning 
 
 Chaseth into darkness ? 
 
 Will lanthe wake again, 
 And give that faithful bosom joy 
 Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
 Light, life, and rapture from her smile ? 
 
 Yes ! she will wake again, 
 Although her glowing limbs are motionless, 
 
 And silent those sweet lips, 
 
 Once breathing eloquence 
 That might have soothed a tiger's rage, 
 Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror. 
 
 Her dewy eyes are closed, 
 And on their lids, whose texture fine 
 Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath, 
 
 The baby Sleep is pillowed : 
 
 Her golden tresses shade 
 
 The bosom's stainless pride, 
 Curling like tendrils of the parasite 
 
 Around a marble column.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 147 
 
 Hark ! whence that rushing sound ? 
 
 'Tis like the wondrous strain 
 That round a lonely ruin swelis, 
 Which, wandering on the echoing shore, 
 The enthusiast hears at evening : 
 "f is softer than the west wind's sigh ; 
 'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes 
 Of that strange lyre whose strings 
 The genii of the breezes sweep : 
 
 Those lines of rainbow light 
 
 Are like the moonbeams when they fall 
 Through some cathedral window, but the teints 
 
 Are such as may not find 
 
 Comparison on earth. 
 
 Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen ! 
 
 Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air ; 
 
 Their filmy pennons at her word they furl, 
 
 And stop obedient to the reins of light : 
 These the Queen of Spells drew in, 
 She spread a charm around the spot, ; 
 
 And leaning graceful from the ethereal car, 
 Long did she gaze, and silently, 
 Upon the slumbering maid. 
 
 Oh ! not the visioned poet in his dreams, 
 
 When silvery clouds float through the wildered brain, 
 
 When every sight of lovely, wild, and grand, 
 
 Astonishes, enraptures, elevates, 
 
 When fancy at a glance combines
 
 148 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The wondrous and the beautiful, 
 So bright, so fair, so wild a shape 
 
 Hath ever yet beheld, 
 As that which reined the coursers of the air,. 
 
 And poured the magic of her gaze 
 
 Upon the maiden's sleep. 
 
 The broad and yellow moon 
 Shone dimly through her form 
 
 That form of faultless symmetry ; 
 
 The pearly and pellucid car 
 Moved not the moonlight's line : 
 'Twas not an earthly pageant : 
 
 Those who had looked upon the sight, 
 Passing all human glory, 
 Saw not the yellow moon, 
 Saw not the mortal scene, 
 Heard not the night-wind's rush, 
 Heard not an earthly sound, 
 Saw but the fairy pageant, 
 Heard but the heavenly strains 
 That filled the lonely dwelling. 
 
 The Fairy's frame was slight, yon fibrous clod, 
 That catches but the palest tinge of even, 
 And which the straining eye can hardly seize 
 When melting into eastern twilight's shadow, 
 Were scarce so thin, so slight ; but the fair star 
 That gems the glittering coronet of morn, 
 Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 14 
 
 As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form, 
 Spread a purpureal halo round the scene, 
 
 Yet with an undulating motion, 
 
 Swayed to her outline gracefully. 
 
 From her celestial car, 
 
 The Fairy Queen descended, 
 
 And thrice she waved her wand 
 Circled with wreaths of amaranth : 
 
 Her thin and misty form 
 
 Moved with the moving air, 
 
 And the clear silver tones, 
 
 As thus she spoke, were such 
 As are unheard by all but gifted ear. 
 
 FAIRY. 
 
 Stars ! your balmiest influence shed I 
 Elements ! your wrath suspend ! 
 Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds 
 
 That circle thy domain ! 
 Let not a breath be seen to stir 
 Around yon grass-grown ruin's height, 
 Let even the restless gossamer 
 Sleep on the moveless air ! 
 Soul of lanthe ! thou, 
 Judged alone worthy of the envied boon, 
 That waits the good and the sincere ; that waits 
 Those who have struggled, and with resolute will 
 Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the chaina,, 
 O 3
 
 150 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY, 
 
 The icy chains of custom, and have shone 
 The day-stars of their age ; Soul of lanthe I 
 Awake ! arise I 
 
 Sudden arose 
 lanthe's soul ; it stood 
 All beautiful in naked purity, 
 The perfect semblance of its bodily frame. 
 Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, 
 
 Each stain of earthliness 
 Had passed away, it reassumed 
 Its native dignity, and stood 
 Immortal amid ruin. 
 
 Upon the couch the body lay 
 Wrapt in the depth of slumber : 
 Its features were fixed and meaningless, 
 
 Yet animal life was there, 
 And every organ yet performed 
 Its natural functions : 'twas a sight 
 Of wonder to behold the body and soul. 
 The self -same lineaments, the same 
 Marks of identity were there : 
 Yet, oh, how different ! One aspires to Heaven, 
 Pants for its sempiternal heritage, 
 And ever-changing, ever-rising still, 
 
 Wantons in endless being. 
 The other, for a time the unwilling sport 
 Of circumstance and passion, struggles OB j.
 
 BEAUTIES OS SHELLEY. 151 
 
 Fleets through its sad duration rapidly ; 
 Then like an useless and worn-out machine 
 Rots, perishes, and passes. 
 
 Spirit ! who hast dived so deep ; 
 Spirit ! who hast soared so high ; 
 Thou the fearless, thou the mild, 
 Accept the boon thy worth hath earned, 
 Ascend the car with me. 
 
 Do 1 dream ? Is this new feeling 
 But a visioned ghost of slumber ? 
 If indeed I am a soul, 
 A free, a disembodied soul, 
 Speak again to me. 
 
 I am the Fairy MAB : to me 'tis given 
 The wonders of the human world to keep : 
 The secrets of the immeasurable past, 
 In the unfailing consciences of men, 
 Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find : 
 The future, from the causes which arise 
 In each event, I gather : not the sting 
 Which retributive memory implants 
 In the hard bosom of the selfish man ; 
 Nor that extatic and exulting throb 
 Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up 
 The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,
 
 152 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY, 
 
 Are unforeseen, unregistered by me : 
 And it is yet permitted me, ta rend 
 The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit 
 Clothed in its changeless purity, may know 
 How soonest to accomplish the great end 
 For which it hath its being, and may taste 
 That peace, which in the end all life will share. 
 This is the meed of virtue ; happy Soul, 
 Ascend the car with me : 
 
 The chains of earth's immurement 
 
 Fell from lanthe's spirit ; 
 They shrank and brake like bandages of straw 
 Beneath a wakened giant's strength. 
 
 She knew her glorious change, 
 And felt in apprehension uncontrolled 
 
 New raptures opening round : 
 Each day-dream of her mortal life, 
 Each frenzied vision of the slumbers 
 
 That closed each well-spent day, 
 
 Seemed now to meet reality. 
 
 The Fairy and the Soul proceeded j 
 
 The silver clouds disparted ; 
 And as the car of magic they ascended, 
 Again the speechless music swelled, 
 Again the coursers of the air 
 Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen 
 Shaking the beamy reins 
 Bade them pursue their way.
 
 REALTIES OF SHELLEY. 153 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 The night was fair, and countless stars 
 Studded heaven's dark blue vault, 
 
 Just o'er the eastern wave 
 Peeped the first faint smile of morn : 
 The magic car moved on 
 From the celestial hoofs 
 The atmosphere in naming sparkles flew, 
 
 And where the burning wheels 
 Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak, 
 Was traced a line of lightning. 
 Now it flew far above a rock, 
 
 The utmost verge of earth, 
 The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow 
 
 Lowered o'er the silver sea. 
 
 Far, far below the chariot's path, 
 
 Calm as a slumbering babe, 
 
 Tremendous Ocean lay. 
 The mirror of its stillness showed 
 
 The pale and waning stars, 
 
 The chariot's fiery track, 
 
 And the grey light of morn 
 
 Tinging those fleecy clouds 
 
 That canopied the dawn. 
 Seemed it, that the chariot's way 
 Lay through the midst of an immense concave, 
 Radiant with million constellations, tinged 
 
 With shades of infinite colour, 
 
 And semicircled-with a belt 
 
 Flashing incessant meteors.
 
 154 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 
 As they approached their goal 
 The coursers seemed to gather speed ; 
 The sea no longer was distinguished ; earth 
 Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere ; 
 
 The sun's unclouded orb 
 
 Rolled through the black concave ; 
 
 Its rays of rapid light 
 Parted around the chariot's swifter course, 
 And fell, like ocean's feathery spray 
 
 Dashed from the boiling surge 
 
 Before a vessel's prow. 
 
 The magic car moved on. 
 
 Earth's distant orb appeared 
 The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven ; 
 
 Whilst round the chariot's way 
 Innumerable systems rolled, 
 And countless spheres diffused 
 
 An ever-varying glory. 
 It was a sight of wonder : some 
 Were horned like the crescent moon ; 
 Some shed a mild and silver beam 
 Like Hesperus o'er the western sea ; 
 Some dash'd athwart with trains of flame, 
 Like worlds to death and rain driven ; 
 Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed, 
 Eclipsed all other light. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! here ! 
 In this interminable wilderness
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 155 
 
 Of worlds, at whose immensity ( 
 
 Even soaring fancy staggers, 
 Here is thy fitting temple. 
 Yet not the lightest leaf 
 That quivers to the passing breeze 
 Is less instinct with thee : 
 Yet not the meanest worm 
 That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead 
 Less shares thy eternal breath. 
 Spirit of Nature ! thou ! 
 Imperishable as this scene, 
 Here is thy fitting temple. 
 
 II. 
 
 If solitude hath ever led thy steps 
 To the wild ocean's echoing shore, 
 
 And thou hast lingered there, 
 
 Until the sun's broad orb 
 Seemed resting on the burnished wave, 
 
 Thou must have marked the lines 
 Of purple gold, that motionless 
 
 Hung o'er the sinking sphere ; 
 Thou must have marked the billowy clouds 
 Edged with intolerable radiancy, 
 
 Towering like rocks of jet 
 Crowned with a diamond wreath. 
 And yet there is a moment, 
 When the sun's highest point 
 Peeps like a star o'er ocean's western edge. 
 When those far clouds of feathery gold,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Shaded with deepest purple, gleam 
 Like islands on a dark blue sea ; 
 Then has thy fancy soared above the earth, 
 
 And furled its wearied wing 
 
 Within the Fairy's fane. 
 
 Yet not the golden islands 
 Gleaming in yon flood of light, 
 
 Nor the feathery curtains 
 Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch, 
 Nor the burnished ocean waves 
 
 Paving that gorgeous dome, 
 So fair, so wonderful a sight 
 As Mab's etherial palace could afford. 
 Yet likest evening's vault, that faery Hall ! 
 As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread 
 Its floors of flashing light, 
 Its vast and azure dome, 
 Its fertile golden islands 
 Floating on a silver eea ; 
 Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted 
 Through clouds of circumambient darkness, 
 And pearly battlements around 
 Looked o'er the immense of Heaven. 
 
 The magic car no longer moved. 
 
 The Fairy and the Spirit 
 
 Entered the Hall of Spells : 
 
 Those golden clouds 
 That rolled in glittering billows 
 Beneath the azure canopy
 
 BEAUTIES OF^HELLEV. 157 
 
 With the etherial footsteps trembled not ; 
 
 The light and crimson mists, 
 Floating to strains of thrilling melody 
 Through that unearthly dwelling, 
 Yielded to every movement of the will. 
 Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned, 
 And, for the varied bliss that pressed around, 
 Used not the glorious privilege 
 Of virtue and of wisdom. 
 Spirit ! the Fairy said, 
 And pointed to the gorgeous dome, 
 
 This is a wondrous sight 
 And mocks all human grandeur ; 
 But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell 
 In a celestial palace, all resigned 
 To pleasurable impulses, immured 
 Within the prison of itself, the will 
 Of changeless nature would be unfulfilled. 
 Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come ! 
 This is thine high reward : the past shall rise ; 
 Thou shalt behold the present ; I will teach 
 The secrets of the future. 
 
 The Fairy and the Spirit 
 Approached the overhanging battlement. 
 Below lay stretched the universe ! 
 There, far as the remotest line 
 That bounds imagination's flight, 
 
 Countless and unending orbs 
 In mazy motion intermingled, 
 P
 
 158 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Yet still fulfilled immutably 
 Eternal nature's law. 
 Above, below, around 
 The circling systems formed 
 A wilderness of harmony ; 
 Each with undeviating aim, 
 In eloquent silence, through the depths of space 
 Pursued its wondrous way. 
 There was a little light 
 That twinkled in the misty distance : 
 None but a spirit's eye 
 Might ken that rolling orb ; 
 None but a spirit's eye, 
 And in no other place 
 But that celestial dwelling, might behold 
 Each action of this earth's inhabitants. 
 
 But matter, space, and time 
 In those aerial mansions cease to act ; 
 And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps 
 The harvest of its excellence, o'erbounds 
 Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul 
 Fears to attempt the conquest. 
 
 The Fairy pointed to the earth. 
 
 The Spirit's intellectual eye 
 
 Its kindred beings recognized. 
 The thronging thousands, to a passing view, 
 Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens. 
 
 How wonderful ! that even 
 The passions, prejudices, interests,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 1&9 
 
 That sway the meanest being, the weak touch 
 
 That moves the finest nerve, 
 
 And in one human brain 
 Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link 
 In the great chain of nature. 
 
 Behold, the Fairy cried, 
 Palmyra's ruined palaces ! 
 
 Behold ! where grandeur frowned ; 
 
 Behold ! where pleasure smiled ; 
 What now remains ? the memory 
 
 Of senselessness and shame 
 
 What is immortal there ? 
 
 Nothing it stands to tell 
 
 A melancholy tale, to give 
 
 An awful warning ; soon 
 Oblivion will steal silently 
 
 The remnant of its fame. 
 
 Monarchs and conquerors there 
 Proud o'er prostrate millions trod- 
 The earthquakes of the human race ; 
 Like them, forgotten when the ruin 
 
 That marks their shock is past. 
 
 Beside the eternal Nile, 
 
 The Pyramids have i-isen. 
 Nile shall pursue his changeless way ; 
 
 Those pyramids shall fall ; 
 Yea ! not a stone shall stand to tell 
 
 The spot whereon they stood ;
 
 160 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Their very site shall be forgotten, 
 As is their builder's name ! 
 
 Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, 
 There is a moral desart now : 
 The mean and miserable huts, 
 The yet more wretched palaces, 
 Contrasted with those ancient fanes, 
 Now crumbling to oblivion ; 
 The long and lonely colonnades, 
 Through which the ghost of freedom stalks, 
 
 Seem like a well-known tune, 
 Which, in some dear scene we have loved to bear, 
 
 Remembered now in sadness. 
 
 Once peace and freedom blest 
 
 The cultivated plain : 
 
 But wealth, that curse of man, 
 Blighted the bud of its prosperity : 
 Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, 
 Fled, to return not, until man shall know 
 
 That they alone can give the bliss 
 
 Worthy a soul that claims 
 Its kindred with eternity. 
 
 There's scarce one atom of yon earth 
 
 But once was living man ; 
 Nor the minutest drop of rain, 
 That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, 
 
 But flowed in human veins : 
 
 And from the burning plains
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 161 
 
 Where Lybian monsters yell, 
 From the most gloomy glens 
 Of Greenland's sunless clime, 
 To where the golden fields 
 Of fertile England spread 
 Their harvest to the day, 
 Thou canst not find one spot 
 Whereon no city stood. 
 
 How strange is human pride ! 
 1 tell thee that those living things, 
 To whom the fragile blade of grass, 
 
 That springeth in the morn 
 
 And perisheth ere noon, 
 
 Is an unbounded world ; 
 I tell thee that those viewless beings, 
 Whose mansion is the smallest particle 
 Of the impassive atmosphere, 
 Think, feel, and live like man ; 
 That their affections and antipathies, 
 
 Like his, produce the Laws 
 
 Ruling their moral state ; 
 
 And the minutest throb 
 That through their frame diffuses 
 
 The slightest, faintest motion, 
 
 Is fixed and indispensable 
 
 As the majestic laws 
 
 That rule yon rolling orbs. 
 
 The Fairy paused. The Spirit, 
 In extacy of admiration, felt 
 P 3
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 All knowledge of the past revived ; the events 
 
 Of old and wondrous times, 
 Which dim tradition interruptedly 
 Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded 
 
 In just perspective to the view ; 
 
 Yet dim from their infinitude. 
 The Spirit seemed to stand 
 High on an isolated pinnacle j 
 The flood of ages combating below, 
 The depth of the unbounded universe 
 Above, and all around 
 
 Nature's unchanging harmony. 
 
 FAIRY ! the spirit said, 
 And on the Queen of Spells 
 Fixed her ethereal eyes, 
 1 thank thee. Thou hast given 
 A boon which I will not resign, and taught 
 A lesson not to be unlearned. I know 
 The past, and thence I will essay to glean 
 A warning for the future, so that man 
 May profit by his errors, and derive 
 
 Experience from his folly : 
 For, when the power of imparting joy 
 Is equal to the will, the human soul 
 Requires no other heaven. 
 
 Turn thee, surpassing Spirit ! 
 Much yet remains unscanned.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 163 
 
 Thou knowest how great is man, 
 Thou knowest his imbecility : 
 Yet learn thou what he is ; 
 Yet learn the lofty destiny 
 Which restless time prepares 
 For every living soul. 
 
 Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid 
 Yon populous city, rears its thousand towers 
 And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops 
 Of centinels, in stern and silent ranks, 
 Encompass it around : the dweller there 
 Cannot be free and happy ; hearest thou not 
 The curses of the fatherless, the groans 
 Of those who have no friend ? He passes on : 
 The King, the wearer of a gilded chain 
 That binds his soul to abjectness. 
 
 Now to the meal 
 
 Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags 
 His palled, unwilling appetite. If gold, 
 Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled 
 From every clime, could force the loathing sense 
 To overcome satiety, if wealth 
 The spring it draws from poisons not, or vice, 
 Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not 
 Its food to deadliest venom ; then that king* 
 Is happy ; and the peasant who fulfils 
 His unforced task, when he returns at even, 
 And by the blazing faggot meets again
 
 164 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, 
 Tastes not a sweeter meal. 
 
 Behold him now 
 
 Stretched on the gorgeous couch ; his fevered brain 
 Reels dizzily awhile -. But,- ah ! too soon 
 The slumber of intemperance subsides, 
 And conscience, that undying serpent, calls 
 Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task. 
 Listen ! he speaks ! oh ! mark that frenzied eye 
 Oh ! mark that deadly visage. 
 
 KING. 
 
 No cessation ! 
 
 Oh ! must this last for ever ! Awful death, 
 I wish, yet fear to clasp thee ! Not one moment 
 Of dreamless sleep ! O dear and blessed peace ! 
 Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity 
 In penury and dungeons ? wherefore lurkest 
 With danger, death, and solitude ; yet shun'st 
 The palace I have built thee ? Sacred peace I 
 Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed 
 One drop of balm upon my withered soul. 
 
 Vain man ! that palace is the virtuous heart, 
 
 And peace defileth not her snowy robes 
 
 In such a shed as thine. Hark ! yet he mutters j 
 
 His slumbers are but varied agonies, 
 
 They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 165 
 
 There needeth not the hell that bigots frame 
 
 To punish those who err : earth in itself 
 
 Contains at once the evil and the cure ; 
 
 And all-sufficing nature can chastise 
 
 Those who transgress her law, she only knows 
 
 How justly to proportion to the fault 
 
 The punishment it merits. 
 
 Is it strange 
 
 That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe ? 
 Take pleasure in his abjectness and hug 
 The scorpion that consumes him ? Is it strange 
 That placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, 
 Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured 
 Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds 
 Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, 
 His soul asserts not its humanity ? 
 That man's mild nature rises not in war 
 Against a king's employ ? No 'tis not strange. 
 He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts, and lives 
 Just as his father did ; the unconquered powers 
 Of precedent and custom interpose 
 Between a king and virtue. 
 
 Those gilded flies, 
 
 That, basking in the sunshine of a court, 
 Fatten on its corruption what are they ? 
 The drones of the community ; they feed 
 On the mechanic's labour : the starved hind 
 For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield
 
 166 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Its unshared harvests ; and yon squalid form, 
 Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes 
 A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, 
 Drags out in labour a protracted death, 
 To glut their grandeur ; many faint with toil, 
 That few may know the cares and woe of sloth. 
 
 Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose ? 
 
 Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap 
 
 Toil and unvanquishable p enury 
 
 On those who build their palaces, and bring 
 
 Their daily bread ? From ignorance and error, 
 
 From all that genders misery, and makes 
 
 Of earth this thorny wilderness ; from vice, 
 
 Madness, and folly And when reason's voice, 
 
 Loud as the voice of nature, shall have waked 
 The nations ; and mankind perceive that vice 
 Is discord, war, and misery ; that virtue 
 Is peace, and happiness, and harmony ; 
 When man's maturer nature shall disdain 
 The playthings of its childhood ; kingly glare 
 Will lose its power to dazzle ; its authority 
 Will silently pass by ; the gorgeous throne 
 Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, 
 Fast falling to decay ; whilst falsehood's trade 
 Shall be as hateful and unprofitable 
 As that of truth is now. 
 
 Where is the fame 
 Which the vain -glorious mighty of the earth
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLKY. 167 
 
 Seek to eternize ? Oh ! the faintest sound 
 
 From time's light footfall, the minutest wave 
 
 That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing 
 
 The unsubstantial bubble. Aye ! to-day 
 
 Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze 
 
 That flashes desolation, strong the arm 
 
 That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes ! 
 
 That mandate is a thunder-peal that died 
 
 In ages past ; that gaze, a transient flash 
 
 On which the midnight closed ; and on that arm 
 
 The worm has made his meal. 
 
 The virtuous man, 
 
 Who, great in his humility, as kings 
 Are little in their grandeur ; he who leads 
 Invincibly a life of resolute good, 
 And stands amid the silent dungeon-depths 
 More free and fearless than the trembling judge 
 Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove 
 To bind the impassive spirit ; when he falls, 
 His mild eye beams benevolence no more ; 
 Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve ; 
 Sunk reason's simple eloquence that rolled 
 But to appal the guilty. Yes ! the grave 
 Hath quenched that eye, and death's relentless frost 
 Withered that arm : but the unfading fame 
 Which virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb ; 
 The deathless memory of that man, whom kings 
 Call to their mind and tremble ; the remembrance 
 With which the happy spirit contemplates
 
 168 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth, 
 Shall never pass away. 
 
 Nature rejects the monarch, not the man ; 
 The subject, not the citizen : for kings 
 And subjects, mutual foes, for ever play 
 A losing game into each other's hands, 
 Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man 
 Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. 
 Power, like a desolating pestilence, 
 Pollutes whate'er it touches ; and obedience, 
 Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, 
 Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, 
 A mechanized automaton. 
 
 Look on yonder earth : 
 
 The golden harvests spring ; the unfailing sun 
 Sheds light and life ; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, 
 Arise in due succession ; all things speak 
 Peace, harmony, and love. The universe, 
 In nature's silent eloquence, declares 
 That all fulfil the works of love and joy, 
 All but the outcast man. He fabricates 
 The sword that stabs his peace ; he cherisheth 
 The snakes that gnaw his heart ; he raiseth up 
 The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, 
 Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, 
 Lights it the great alone ? Yon silver beams, 
 Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch, 
 Than on the dome of kings ? Is mother earth
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 169 
 
 A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn 
 Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil ; 
 A mother only to those puling babes 
 Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men 
 The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, 
 In self-important childishness, that peace 
 Which men alone appreciate ? 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! no. 
 The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs 
 Alike in every human heart. 
 
 Thou, aye, erectest there 
 Thy throne of power unappealable : 
 Thou art the judge beneath whose nod 
 Man's brief and frail authority 
 
 Is powerless as the wind 
 
 That passeth idly by : 
 Thine the tribunal which surpasseth 
 The show of human justice, 
 
 As God surpasses man. 
 
 Spirit of Nature ! thou 
 Life of interminable multitudes ; 
 
 Soul of those mighty spheres 
 
 Whose changeless paths thro' Heaven's deep silence lie j 
 Soul of that smallest being, 
 The dwelling of whose life 
 Is one faint April sun-gleam ; 
 Man, like these passive things, 
 Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : 
 
 Q
 
 170 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Like theirs, his age of endless peace, 
 Which time is fast maturing 
 Will swiftly, surely come ; 
 And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest, 
 
 Will be without a flaw 
 Marring its perfect symmetry. 
 
 How beautiful this night ! the balmiest sigh, 
 
 Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, 
 
 Were discord to the speaking quietude 
 
 That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, 
 
 Studded with stars unutterably bright, 
 
 Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, 
 
 Seems like a canopy which love had spread 
 
 To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, 
 
 Robed in a garment of untrodden snow ; 
 
 Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, 
 
 So stainless, that their white and glittering spires 
 
 Tinge not the moon's pure beam : yon castled steep, 
 
 Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower 
 
 So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it 
 
 A metaphor of peace ; all form a scene 
 
 Where musing solitude might love to lift 
 
 Her soul above this sphere of earthliness ; 
 
 Where silence undisturbed might watch alone, 
 
 So cold, so bright, so still. 
 
 The orb of day, 
 In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 171 
 
 Sinks sweetly smiling ; not the faintest breath 
 Steals o'er the unruffled deep ; the clouds of eve 
 Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day, 
 And vesper's image on the western main 
 Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes ; 
 Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass, 
 Roll o'er the blackened waters ; the deep roar 
 Of distant thunder mutters awfully ; 
 Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom 
 That shrouds the boiling surge ; the pityless fiend, 
 With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey j 
 The torn deep yawns, the vessel finds a grave 
 Beneath its jagged gulf. 
 
 Ah ! whence yon glare 
 
 That fires the arch of heaven ? that dark red smoke 
 Blotting the silver moon ? The stars are quenched 
 In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow 
 Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round ! 
 Hark to that roar, whose swift and deafening peals 
 In countless echoes through the mountains ring, 
 Startling pale midnight on her starry throne ! 
 Now swells the intermingling din ; the jar 
 Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb ; 
 The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, 
 The ceaseless clangor, and the rush of men 
 Inebriate with rage : loud, and more loud 
 The discord grows ; till pale death shuts the scene, 
 And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws
 
 172 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY, 
 
 His cold and bloody shroud. Of all the men 
 Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, 
 In proud and vigorous health ; of all the hearts 
 That beat with anxious life at sun-set there, 
 How few survive, how few are beating now ! 
 All is deep silence, like the fearful calm 
 That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause ; 
 Save when the frantic wail of widowed love 
 Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan 
 With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay 
 Wrapt round its struggling powers. 
 
 The grey morn 
 
 Dawns on the mournful scene ; the sulphurous smoke 
 Before the icy wind slow rolls away, 
 And the bright beams of frosty morning dance 
 Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood 
 Even to the forest's depth, and scatter'd arms, 
 And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments 
 Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path 
 Of the outsallying victors ; far behind, 
 Black ashes note where their proud city stood. 
 Within yon forest is a gloomy glen 
 Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, 
 Waves o'er a warrior's tomb. 
 
 I see thee shrink, 
 
 Surpassing Spirit ! wert thou human else ? 
 I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet
 
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 173 
 
 Across thy stainless features ; yet fear not ; 
 
 This is no unconnected misery, 
 
 Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. 
 
 Man's evil nature, that apology 
 
 Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up 
 
 For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood 
 
 Which desolates the land. Let but the axe 
 
 Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall ; 
 
 And where its venomed exhalations spread 
 
 Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lie 
 
 (Quenching the serpent's famine, and their hone- 
 
 Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, 
 
 A garden shall arise, in loveliness 
 
 Surpassing fabled Eden. 
 
 Hath Nature's soul,. 
 
 That formed this world so beautiful, that spread 
 Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord 
 Strung to unchanging unison, that gave 
 The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, 
 That yielded to the wanderers of the deep 
 The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, 
 And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust 
 With spirit, thought, and love ; on Man alone, 
 Partial in causeless malice, wantonly 
 Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery ; his soul 
 Blasted with withering curses ; placed afar 
 The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, 
 But serving on the frightful gulph to glare, 
 Rent wide beneath his footsteps ?
 
 174 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Nature! no! 
 
 The dupes of Error blast the human flower 
 Even in its tender bud ; their influence darts 
 Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins 
 Of desolate society. The child, 
 Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, 
 Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts 
 His baby sword even in a hero's mood. 
 This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge 
 Of devastated earth ; whilst specious names, 
 Learnt in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, 
 Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims 
 Bright reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword 
 Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood. 
 Let error's slaves cease to proclaim that man 
 Inherits vice and misery, when force 
 And falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe, 
 Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. 
 
 Ah ! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps 
 From its new tenement, and looks abroad 
 For happiness and sympathy, how stern 
 And desolate a tract is this wide world ! 
 How withered all the buds of natural good ! 
 No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms 
 Of pityless power ! On its wretched frame, 
 Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe 
 Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung 
 By misnamed law and custom, the pure winds 
 Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 175 
 
 May breathe not. The untainting light of day 
 May visit not its longings. It is bound 
 Ere it has life ; yea, all the chains are forged 
 Long ere its being ; all liberty and love 
 And peace is torn from its defencelessness ; 
 Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed 
 To abjectness and bondage ! 
 
 Throughout this varied and eternal world 
 
 Soul is the only element, the block 
 
 That for uncounted ages has remained. 
 
 The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight 
 
 Is active, living spirit. Every grain 
 
 Is sentient both in unity and part, 
 
 And the minutest atom comprehend^ 
 
 A world of loves and hatreds : these beget 
 
 Evil and good : hence truth and falsehood spring : 
 
 Hence will, and thought, and action, all the germs 
 
 Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate, 
 
 That variegate the eternal universe. 
 
 Soul is not more polluted than the beams 
 
 Of heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines 
 
 The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise. 
 
 Man is of soul and body, formedTor deeds 
 
 Of high resolve, on fancy's boldest wing 
 
 To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn 
 
 The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste 
 
 The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield. 
 
 Or is he formed for abjectness and woe, 
 
 To grovel on the dunghill of his fears,
 
 *76 BEAUTIES Of SHELLEY, 
 
 To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame 
 Of natural love in sensualism, to know 
 That hour as blest when- on his worthless day& 
 The frozen hand of death shall set its seal, 
 Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease*. 
 The one is man that shall hereafter be ; 
 The other, man as vice has made him now, 
 
 V, 
 
 Thus do the generations of the earth 
 Go to the grave, and issue from the womb\ 
 Surviving still the imperishable change 
 That renovates the world ; even as the leaves 
 Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year 
 Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped 
 For many seasons there, though, long they choke, 
 Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, 
 All germs of promise. Yet when the tall trees 
 From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, 
 Lie level with the earth to moulder there, 
 They fertilize the land they long deformed, 
 Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs 
 Of youth, integrity, and loveliness, 
 Like that which gave it life, ta spring and die~ 
 Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights 
 The fairest feelings of the opening heart, 
 Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil 
 Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, 
 And judgment cease to wage unnatural was 
 With passion's unsubduable array.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 177 
 
 Sister of Superstition, selfishness ! 
 Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all 
 The wanton horrors of her bloody play ; 
 Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, 
 Shunning the light, and owning not its name, 
 Compelled by its deformity to screen 
 With flimsy veil of justice and of right 
 Its unattractive lineaments, that scare 
 All, save the brood of ignorance : at once 
 The cause and the effect of tyranny ; 
 Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile ; 
 Dead to all love but of its abjectness ; 
 With heart impassive by more noble powers 
 Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame ; 
 Despising its own miserable being, 
 Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall. 
 
 Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange 
 
 Of all that human art or nature yield ; 
 
 Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, 
 
 And natural kindness hasten to supply 
 
 From the full fountain of its boundless love, 
 
 For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now. 
 
 Commerce ! beneath whose poison-breathing shade 
 
 No solitary virtue dares to spring, 
 
 But poverty and wealth with equal hand 
 
 Scatter their withering curses, and unfold 
 
 The doors of premature and violent death, 
 
 To pining famine and full-fed disease, 
 
 To all that shares the lot of human life,
 
 178 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Which poisoned body and soul, scarce drags the chain, 
 
 That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind. 
 
 Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, 
 
 The signet of its all-enslaving power 
 
 Upon a shining ore, and called it gold : 
 
 Before whose image bow the vulgar great, 
 
 The vainly rich, the miserable proud, 
 
 The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings, 
 
 And with blind feelings reverence the power 
 
 That grinds them to the dust of misery. 
 
 But in the temple of their hireling hearts 
 
 Gold is a living god, and rules in scoin 
 
 All earthly things but virtue-. 
 
 Since tyrants, by the sale of human life, 
 Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame 
 To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, 
 Success has sanctioned to a credulous world 
 The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war. 
 
 The harmony and happiness of man 
 
 Yields to the wealth of nations ; that which lift* 
 
 His nature to the heaven of its pride, 
 
 Is bartered for the poison of his soul ; 
 
 The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes, 
 
 Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, 
 
 Withering all passion but of slavish fear, 
 
 Extinguishing all free and generous love 
 
 Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse 
 
 That fancy kindles in the beating heart
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 179 
 
 To mingle with sensation, it destroys, 
 Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, 
 The grovelling hope of interest and gold, 
 Unqualified, uniuingled, unredeemed 
 Even by hypocrisy. 
 
 And statesmen boast 
 
 Of wealth ! the wordy eloquence that lives 
 After the ruin of their hearts, can gild 
 The bitter poison of a nation's woe, 
 Can turn the worship of the servile mob 
 To their corrupt and glaring idol fame, 
 From virtue, trampled by its iron tread, 
 Although its dazzling pedestal be raised 
 Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field, 
 With desolated dwellings smoking round. 
 The man of ease, who, by his warm fire-side, 
 To deeds of charitable intercourse 
 And bare fulfilment of the common laws 
 Of decency and prejudice, confines 
 The struggling nature of his human heart, 
 Is duped by their cold sophistry ; he sheds 
 A passing tear perchance upon the wreck 
 Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door 
 The frightful waves are driven, and his son 
 Is murdered by the tyrant. But the poor man, 
 Whose life is misery, and fear, and care ; 
 Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil ; 
 Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream,
 
 180 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze 
 For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye 
 Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene 
 Of thousands like himself; he little heeds 
 The rhetoric of tyranny ; his hate 
 Is quenchless as his wrongs ; he laughs to scorn 
 The vain and bitter mockery of words, 
 Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, 
 And unrestrained, but by the arm of power, 
 That knows and dreads his enmity. 
 
 The iron rod of penury still compels 
 Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth, 
 And poison, with unprofitable toil, 
 . A life too void of solace to confirm 
 The very chains that bind him to his doom. 
 Nature, impartial in munificence, 
 Has gifted man with all-subduing will. 
 Matter, with all its transitory shapes, 
 Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, 
 That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread. 
 How many a rustic Milton has pass'd by, 
 Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, 
 In unremitting drudgery and care I 
 How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 
 His energies, no longer tameless then, 
 To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail ! 
 How many a Newton, to whose passive ken 
 Those mighty spheres that gem infinity
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 181 
 
 Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in heaven 
 To light the midnights of his native town ! 
 
 Yet every heart contains perfection's germ : 
 The wisest of the eages of the earth, 
 That ever from the stores of reason drew 
 Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, 
 Were but a weak and inexperienced boy, 
 Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued 
 With pure desire and universal love, 
 Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, 
 Untainted passion, elevated will, 
 Which death (who even would linger long in awe 
 Within his noble presence, and beneath 
 His changeless eyebeam), might alone subdue. 
 Him, every slave now dragging through the filth 
 Of some corrupted city his sad life, 
 Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, 
 Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense 
 With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, 
 Or madly rushing through all violent crime, 
 To move the deep stagnation of his soul, 
 Might imitate and equal. 
 
 But mean lust 
 
 Has bound its chains so tight around the earth, 
 That all within it but the virtuous man 
 Is venal : gold or fame will surely reach 
 The price prefixed by selfishness, to all 
 But him of resolute and unchanging will ; 
 R
 
 182 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd, 
 
 Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury, 
 
 Can bribe to yield his elevated soul 
 
 To tyranny or falsehood, though they wield 
 
 With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world. 
 
 All things are sold : the very light of heaven 
 
 Is venal ; earth's unsparing gifts of love, 
 
 The smallest and most despicable things 
 
 That lurk in the abysses of the deep, 
 
 All objects of our life, even life itself, 
 
 And the poor pittance which the laws allow 
 
 Of liberty, the fellowship of man, 
 
 Those duties which his heart of human love 
 
 Should urge him to perform instinctively, 
 
 Are bought and sold as in a public mart 
 
 Of undisguising selfishness, that sets 
 
 On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign. 
 
 Even love is sold ; the solace of all woe 
 
 Is turned to deadliest agony, old age 
 
 Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arras, 
 
 And youth's corrupted impulses prepare 
 
 A life of horror from the blighting bane 
 
 Of commerce ; whilst the pestilence that springs 
 
 From unenjoying sensualism, has filled 
 
 All human life with hydra-headed woes. 
 
 There is a nobler gloj y, which survives 
 
 Until our being fades, and, solacing 
 
 All human care, accompanies its change ;
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom, 
 And, in the precincts of the palace, guides 
 Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime ; 
 Imbues its lineaments with dauntlessness, 
 Even when, from power's avenging hand, it takes 
 Its sweetest, last, and noblest title death ; 
 The consciousness of good, which neither gold, 
 Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss, 
 Can purchase ; but a life of resolute good, 
 Unalterable will, quenchless desire 
 Of universal happiness, the heart 
 That beats with it in unison, the brain, 
 Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change 
 Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal. 
 
 This commerce of sincerest virtue needs 
 No mediative signs of selfishness, 
 No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, 
 No balancings of prudence, cold and long ; 
 tn just and equal measure all is weighed, 
 One scale contains the sum of human weal, 
 And one, the good man's heart. 
 
 How vainly seek 
 
 The selfish for that happiness denied 
 To aught but virtue ! Blind and hardened, they, 
 Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, 
 Who covet power they know not how to use, 
 And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give, 
 Madly they frustrate still their own designs ; 
 And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy
 
 184 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, 
 Pining regrets, and vain repentances, 
 Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade 
 Their valuelesss and miserable lives. 
 
 But hoary-headed selfishness has felt 
 
 Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave : 
 
 A brighter morn awaits the human day, 
 
 When every transfer of earth's natural gifts 
 
 Shall be a commerce of good words and works ; 
 
 When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame, 
 
 The fear of infamy, disease, and woe, 
 
 War with its million horrors, and fierce hell, 
 
 Shall live but in the memory of time, 
 
 Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start, 
 
 Look back, and shudder at his younger years. 
 
 VI. 
 
 All touch, all eye, all ear, 
 The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech. 
 
 O'er the thin texture of its frame, 
 The varying periods painted changing glows, 
 
 As on a summer even, 
 When soul-enfolding music floats around, 
 The stainlesss mirror of the lake 
 Re-images the eastern gloom, 
 Mingling convulsively its purple hues 
 With sunset's burnished gold. 
 
 Then thus the Spirit spoke .- 
 It is a wild and miserable world I
 
 BEAUTIES Of SHELLEY. 185 
 
 Thorny, and full of care, 
 Which every fiend can make his prey at will. 
 O Fairy ! in the lapse of years, 
 Is there no hope in store ? 
 Will yon vast suns roll on 
 Interminably, still illumining 
 The night of so many wretched souls, 
 
 And see no hope for them ? 
 Will not the universal Spirit e'er 
 Revivify this withered limb of Heaven ? 
 
 The Fairy calmly smiled 
 In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope 
 
 Suffused the Spirit's lineaments. 
 Oh ! rest thee tranquil ; chase those fearful doubts, 
 Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul, 
 That sees the chains which bind it to its doom. 
 Yes ! crime and misery are in yonder earth, 
 
 Falsehood, mistake, and lust ! 
 
 But the eternal world 
 Contains at once the evil and the cure. 
 Some eminent in virtue shall start up, 
 
 Even in perversest time : 
 The truths of their pure lips, that never die, 
 Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath 
 
 Of ever- living flame, 
 Until the monster sting itself to death. 
 
 How sweet a scene will earth become ! 
 Of purest spirits, a pure dwelling-place, 
 Symphonious with the planetary spheres, 
 R 3
 
 186 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 When man, with changeless nature coalescing', 
 Will undertake regeneration's work, 
 When its ungenial poles no longer point 
 
 To the red and baleful sun 
 
 That faintly twinkles there. 
 
 Spirit ! on yonder earth 
 Falsehood now triumphs ; deadly power 
 Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth ! 
 
 Madness and misery are there ! 
 The happiest is most wretched ! Yet confide, 
 Until pure health-drops from the cup of joy, 
 Fall like a dew of balm upon the world. 
 Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn, 
 And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, 
 Which nature soon, with recreating hand, 
 Will blot in mercy from the book of earth. 
 How bold the flight of passion's wandering wing, 
 How swift the step of reason's firmer tread, 
 How calm and sweet the victories of life, 
 How terrorless the triumph of the grave ! 
 How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm, 
 Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown ! 
 How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar ! 
 The weight of his exterminating curse, 
 How light ! but for thy aid, Superstition ! 
 Who taintest all thou lookest upon ! the stars, 
 Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, 
 Were gods to the distempered playfulness 
 Of thy untutored infancy ; the trees,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 187 
 
 The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea, 
 
 All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly, 
 
 Were gods : the sun had homage, and the moon 
 
 Her worshipper. Then thou becamest a boy, 
 
 More daring in thy frenzies : eveiy shape, 
 
 Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild, 
 
 Which, from sensation's relics, fancy culls ; 
 
 The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost, 
 
 The genii of the elements, the powers 
 
 That give a shape to nature's varied works, 
 
 Had life and faith in the corrupt belief 
 
 Of thy blind heart : yet still thy youthful hands 
 
 Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave 
 
 Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain ; 
 
 Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, 
 
 Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride : 
 
 Their everlasting and unchanging laws 
 
 Reproached thine ignorance. 
 
 But now contempt is mocking thy grey hairs j 
 
 Thou art descending to the darksome grave, 
 
 Unhonoured and unpitied, but by those 
 
 Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds, 
 
 Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun 
 
 Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night 
 
 That long has lowered above the ruined world. 
 
 Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light, 
 Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused 
 A spirit of activity and life, 
 'That knows no term, cessation, or decay ;
 
 188 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 That fades not when the lamp of earthly life, 
 
 Extinguished in the dampness of the grave, 
 
 Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe 
 
 In the dim newness of its being feels 
 
 The impulses of sublunary things, 
 
 And all is wonder to unpractised sense : 
 
 But, active, stedfast, and eternal, still 
 
 Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,. 
 
 Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves, 
 
 Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease j 
 
 And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly 
 
 Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes 
 
 Its undecaying battlement, presides, 
 
 Apportioning with irresistible law 
 
 The place each spring of its machine shall fill ;, 
 
 So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap 
 
 Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven 
 
 Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords, 
 
 Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner, 
 
 Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock, 
 
 All seems unlinked contingency and chance i 
 
 No atom of this turbulence fulfils 
 
 A vague and unnecessitated task, 
 
 Or acts but as it must and ought to act. 
 
 Even the minutest molecule of light, 
 
 That in an April sun -beam's fleeting glow, 
 
 Fulfils its destined, though invisible work, 
 
 The universal Spirit guides ; nor less, 
 
 When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, 
 
 Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, 
 
 And call the sad work glory, does it rule 
 
 All passions : not a thought, a will, an act, 
 
 No working of the tyrant's moody mind, 
 
 Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast 
 
 Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel, 
 
 Nor the events enchaining every will, 
 
 That from the depths of unrecorded time 
 
 Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass 
 
 Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee, 
 
 Soul of the Universe ! eternal spring 
 
 Of life and death, of happiness and woe, 
 
 Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene 
 
 That floats before our eyes in wavering light, 
 
 Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison, 
 
 Whose chains and massy walls 
 
 We feel, but cannot see. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The present and the past thou hast beheld : 
 It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn 
 
 The secrets of the future. -Time ! 
 Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom, 
 Render thou up thy half -devoured babes, 
 And from the cradles of eternity, 
 Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep 
 By the deep murmuring stream of passing things, 
 Tear thou that gloomy shroud. Spirit, behold 
 Thy glorious destiny !
 
 190 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Joy to the Spirit came. 
 Through the wide rent in Time's eternal veil, 
 Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear ; 
 
 Earth was no longer hell ; 
 Love, freedom, health, had given 
 Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime, 
 
 And all its pulses beat 
 Symphonious to the planetary spheres : 
 
 Then dulcet music swelled 
 Concordant with the life- strings of the soul ; 
 It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there, 
 Catching new life from transitory death. 
 Like the vague sighings of a wind at even, 
 That makes the wavelets of the slumbering sea 
 And dies on the creation of its breath, 
 And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits 
 Was the pure stream of feeling 
 That sprung from these sweet notes, 
 And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies 
 With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. 
 
 Joy to the Spirit came, 
 Such joy as when a lover sees 
 The chosen of his soul in happiness, 
 
 And witnesses her peace 
 Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, 
 
 Sees her unfaded cheek 
 Glow mantling in first luxury of health, 
 
 Thrills with her lovely eyes,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 191 
 
 Which like two stars amid the heaving main 
 Sparkle through liquid bliss. 
 
 Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen : 
 
 I will not call the ghost of ages gone 
 
 To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore ; 
 
 The present now is past, 
 And those events that desolate the earth 
 Have faded from the memory of Time, 
 Who dares not give reality to that 
 Whose being I annul. To me is given 
 The wonders of the human world to keep, 
 Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity 
 Exposes now its treasure ; let the sight 
 Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope. 
 O human Spirit ! spur thee to the goal 
 Where virtue fixes universal peace, 
 And midst the ebb and flow of human things, 
 Shows somewhat stable, somewhat certain still, 
 A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary waves. 
 
 The habitable world is full of bliss ; 
 
 Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled 
 
 By everlasting snow-storms round the poles, 
 
 Where matter dared not vegetate or live, 
 
 But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude 
 
 Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed j 
 
 And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles 
 
 Ruffle the placid ocean- deep that rolls 
 
 Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,
 
 192 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet 
 
 To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves 
 
 And melodize with man's blest nature there. 
 
 Those deserts of immeasurable sand, 
 
 Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed 
 
 A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring, 
 
 Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love 
 
 Broke on the sultry silentness alone, 
 
 Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, 
 
 Corn-fields, and pastures, and white cottages ; 
 
 And where the startled wilderness beheld 
 
 A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood, 
 
 A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs 
 
 The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, 
 
 Whilst shouts and bowlings through the desart rang, 
 
 Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn, 
 
 Offering sweet incense to the sun-rise, smiles 
 
 To see a babe before his mother's door, 
 
 Sharing his morning's meal 
 
 With the green and golden basilisk 
 
 That comes to lick his feet. 
 
 Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail 
 Has seen above the illimitable plain, 
 Morning on night, and night on morning rise, 
 Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread 
 Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea, 
 Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves 
 So long have mingled with the gusty wind
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 193 
 
 In melancholy loneliness, and swept 
 The desart of those ocean solitudes, 
 But vocal to the sea-birds harrowing shriek, 
 The bellowing monster and the rushing storm, 
 Now to the sweet and many mingling sounds 
 Of kindliest human impulses respond. 
 Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem, 
 With lightsome clouds and shining seas between, 
 And fertile rallies resonant with bliss, 
 Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, 
 Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore 
 To meet the kisses of the flowrets there. 
 All things are recreated, and the flame 
 Of consentaneous love inspires all life ; 
 The fertile bosom of the Earth gives suck 
 To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, 
 Rewarding her with their pure perfectness : 
 The balmly breathings of the wind inhale 
 Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad : 
 Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, 
 Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream : 
 No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven, 
 Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride 
 The foliage of the ever-verdant trees ; 
 But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, 
 And autumn proudly bears her matron grace, 
 Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring, 
 Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit 
 Reflects its tint and blushes into love. 
 S
 
 194 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The lion now forgets to thirst for blood : 
 
 There might you see him sporting in the sun 
 
 Beside the dreadless kid ; his claws are sheathed, 
 
 His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made 
 
 His nature as the nature of a lamb. 
 
 Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane 
 
 Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows : 
 
 All bitterness is past ; the cup of joy 
 
 Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim, 
 
 And courts the thirsty lips it fled before. 
 
 But chief, ambiguous man, he that can know 
 
 More misery, and dream more joy than all ; 
 
 Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast 
 
 To mingle with a loftier instinct there, 
 
 Lending their power to pleasure and to pain, 
 
 Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each ; 
 
 Who stands amid the ever-varying world, 
 
 The burthen or the glory of the earth ; 
 
 He chief perceives the change, his being notes 
 
 The gradual renovation, and defines 
 
 Each movement of its progress on his mind. 
 
 Man, where the gloom of the long polar night 
 Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil, 
 Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost 
 Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow, 
 Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night ; 
 His chilled and narrow energies, his heart, 
 Insensible to courage, truth, or love,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 195 
 
 His stunted stature and imbecile frame, 
 Marked him for some abortion of the earth, 
 Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around, 
 Whose habits and enjoyments were his own : 
 His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe, 
 Whose meagre wants but scantily fulfilled, 
 Apprised him ever of the joyless length 
 Which his short being's wretchedness had reached ; 
 His death a pang, which famine, cold, and toil 
 Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark 
 Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought ; 
 All was inflicted here that earth's revenge 
 Could wreak on the infringers of her law. 
 
 Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day 
 
 With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame, 
 
 Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere 
 
 Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed 
 
 Unnatural vegetation, where the land 
 
 Teemed with all earthquake, tempest, and disease, 
 
 Was man a nobler being ; slavery 
 
 Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust ; 
 
 Or he was bartered for the fame of power, 
 
 Which all internal impulses destroying, 
 
 Makes human will an article of trade ; 
 
 Or he was changed with Christians for their gold, 
 
 And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound 
 
 Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work 
 
 Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, 
 
 Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads
 
 196 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The long protracted fulness of their woe ; 
 
 Or he was led to legal butchery, 
 
 To turn to worms beneath that burning sun, 
 
 Where kings first leagued against the rights of men, 
 
 And priests first traded with the name of God. 
 
 Even where the milder zone afforded man 
 
 A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, 
 
 Blighting his being with unnumbered ills, 
 
 Spread like a quenchless fire ; nor truth till late 
 
 Availed to arrest its progress, or create 
 
 That peace which first in bloodless victory waved 
 
 Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime : 
 
 There man was long the train-bearer of slaves, 
 
 The mimic of surrounding misery, 
 
 The jackall of ambition's lion-rage, 
 
 The bloodhound of superstition's hungry zeal. 
 
 Here now the human being stands adorning 
 
 This loveliest earth, with taintless body and mind ; 
 
 Blest from his birth with all bland impulses, 
 
 Which gently in his noble bosom wake 
 
 All kindly passions and all pure desires. 
 
 Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, 
 
 Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal 
 
 Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise 
 
 In time destroying infiniteness, gift 
 
 With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks 
 
 The unprevailing hoariuess of age, 
 
 And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 197 
 
 Swift as an unremembered vision, stands 
 
 Immortal upon earth : no longer now 
 
 He slays the lamb that looks him in the face, 
 
 And horribly devours his mangled flesh, 
 
 Which still avenging nature's broken law, 
 
 Kindled all putrid humours in his frame, 
 
 All evil passions, and all vain belief, 
 
 Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind, 
 
 The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime. 
 
 No longer now the winged habitants, 
 
 That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, 
 
 Flee from the form of man ; but gather round, 
 
 And prune their sunny feathers on the hands 
 
 Which little children stretch in friendly sport 
 
 Towards these dreadless partners of their play. 
 
 All things are void of terror : man has lost 
 
 His terrible prerogative, and stands 
 
 An equal amidst equals : happiness 
 
 And science dawn though late upon the earth ; 
 
 Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame j 
 
 Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, 
 
 Reason and passion cease to combat there ; 
 
 Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extend 
 
 Their all-subduing energies, and wield 
 
 The sceptre of a vast dominion there ; 
 
 Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends 
 
 Its force to the omnipotence of mind, 
 
 Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth 
 
 To decorate its paradise of peace. 
 
 S 3
 
 198 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 O HAPPY Earth ! reality of Heaven ! 
 To which those restless souls that ceaselessly 
 Throng through the human universe, aspire ; 
 Thou consummation of all mortal hope ! 
 Thou glorious prize of blindly working will ! 
 Whose rays diffused throughout all space and time, 
 Verge to one point and blend for ever there : 
 Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place ! 
 Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime, 
 Langour, disease, and ignorance, dare not come : 
 O happy Earth, reality of heaven ! 
 
 Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams, 
 And dim forebodings of thy loveliness 
 Haunting the human heart, have there entwined 
 Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss 
 Where friends and lovers meet to part no more, 
 Thou art the end of all desire and will, 
 The product of all action : and the souls 
 That by the paths of an aspiring change 
 Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, 
 There rest from the eternity of toil 
 That framed the fabric of thy perfectness. 
 
 Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear ; 
 That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride, 
 So long had ruled the world, that nations fell 
 Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY, 199 
 
 That for millenniums had withstood the tide 
 
 Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand 
 
 Across that desert where their stones survived 
 
 The name of him whose pride had heaped them there. 
 
 Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp, 
 
 Was but the mushroom of a summer day, 
 
 That his light-winged footstep pressed to dust. 
 
 Time was the king of earth : all things gave way 
 
 Before him, but the fixed and virtuous will, 
 
 The sacred sympathies of soul and sense, 
 
 That mocked his fury and prepared his fall. 
 
 Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love ; 
 
 Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene, 
 
 Till from its native heaven they rolled away : 
 
 First, crime, triumphant o'er all hope, careered 
 
 Unblushing, undisguising, bold, and strong ; 
 
 Whilst falsehood, tricked in virtue's attributes, 
 
 Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe, 
 
 Till stung by her own venomous sting to death 
 
 She left the moral world without a law, 
 
 No longer fettering passion's fearless wing, 
 
 Nor searing reason with the Bigot's brand. 
 
 Then steadily the happy ferment worked 5 
 
 Reason was free ; and wild though passion went 
 
 Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads.,. 
 
 Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers, 
 
 Yet like the bee returning to her queen, 
 
 She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow, 
 
 Who, meek and sober, kissed the sportive child. 
 
 No longer trembling at the broken rod.
 
 200 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Mild was the slow necessity of death : 
 
 The tranquil Spirit failed beneath its grasp, 
 
 Without a groan, almost without a fear, 
 
 Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 
 
 And full of wonder, full of hope as he. 
 
 The deadly germs of languor and disease 
 
 Died in the human frame, and purity 
 
 Blest with all gifts her earthly worshippers. 
 
 How vigorous then the athletic form of age ! 
 
 How clear its open and unwriukled brow ! 
 
 Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care, 
 
 Had stamped the seal of grey deformity 
 
 On all the mingling lineaments of time. 
 
 How lovely the intrepid front of youth ! 
 
 Which meek- eyed courage decked with freshest grace, 
 
 Courage of soul, that dreaded not a mime, 
 
 And elevated will, that journeyed on 
 
 Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness, 
 
 With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. 
 
 Then, that sweet bondage which is freedom's self, 
 
 And rivets with sensation's softest tie 
 
 The kindred sympathies of human souls, 
 
 Needed no fetters of tyrannic law : 
 
 Those delicate and timid impulses 
 
 In nature's primal modesty arose, 
 
 And with undoubting confidence disclosed 
 
 The growing longings of its dawning love, 
 
 Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity, 
 
 That virtue of the cheaply virtuous,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 201 
 
 Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost. 
 No longer prostitution's venomed bane 
 Poisoned the springs of happiness and life ; 
 Woman and man, in confidence and love, 
 Equal, and free, and pure, together trod 
 The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more 
 Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet. 
 
 Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride 
 The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked 
 Famine's faint groan, and penury's silent tear, 
 A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw 
 Year after year their stones upon the field, 
 Wakening a lonely echo ; and the leaves 
 Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower 
 Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook 
 In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower 
 And whispered strange tales in the whirlwind's ear. 
 
 Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles 
 The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung : 
 Jt were a sight of awfulness to see 
 The works of faith and slavery, so vast, 
 So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal ! 
 Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall. 
 A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death 
 To-day, the breathing marble glows above 
 To decorate its memory, and tongues 
 Are busy of its life : to-morrow worms 
 In silence and in darkness seize their prey.
 
 202 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Within the massy prison's mouldering courts, 
 
 Fearless and free the ruddy children played, 
 
 Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows 
 
 With the green ivy and the red wall-flower, 
 
 That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom ; 
 
 The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron, 
 
 There rusted amid heaps of broken stone 
 
 That mingled slowly with their native earth -. 
 
 There the broad beam of day, which feebly once 
 
 Lighted the cheek of lean captivity 
 
 With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone 
 
 On the pure smiles of infant playfulness : 
 
 No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair 
 
 Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes 
 
 Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds 
 
 And merriment were resonant around. 
 
 These ruins soon left not a wreck behind : 
 Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe, 
 To happier shapes were moulded, and became 
 Ministrant to all blissful impulses : 
 Thus human things were perfected, and earth, 
 Even as a child beneath its mother's love, 
 Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew 
 Fairer and nobler with each passing year. 
 
 Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene 
 Closes in stedfast darkness, and the past 
 Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done : 
 Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 203 
 
 With all the fear and all the hope they bring. 
 My spells are past ; the present now recurs. 
 Ah me ! a pathless wilderness remains 
 Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand. 
 
 Yet human Spirit, bravely hold thy course ; 
 
 Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue 
 
 The gradual paths of an aspiring change : 
 
 For birth, and life, and death, and that strange state 
 
 Before the naked soul has found its home, 
 
 All tend to perfect happiness, urge 
 
 The restless wheels of being on their way, 
 
 Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life, 
 
 Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal : 
 
 For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense 
 
 Of outward shews, whose inexperienced shape 
 
 New modes of passion to its frame may lend ; 
 
 Life is its state of action, and the store 
 
 Of all events is aggregated there 
 
 That variegate the eternal universe ; 
 
 Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom, 
 
 That leads to azure isles and beaming skies 
 
 And happy regions of eternal hope. 
 
 Therefore, O Spirit ! fearlessly bear on ; 
 
 Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, 
 
 Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom, 
 
 Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth, 
 
 To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower, 
 
 That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, 
 
 Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.
 
 204 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand, 
 So welcome when the tyrant is awake, 
 So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns ; 
 Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, 
 The transient gulph-dream of a startling sleep. 
 Death is no foe to virtue : Earth has seen 
 Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, 
 Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there, 
 And presaging the truth of visioned bliss. 
 Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene 
 Of linked and gradual being has confirmed ? 
 Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still, 
 When to the moonlight walk by Henry led, 
 Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death ? 
 And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, 
 Listening supinely to a bigot's creed, 
 Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod, 
 Whose iron thongs are red with human gore ? 
 Never : but bravely bearing on, thy will 
 Is destined an eternal war to wage 
 With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 
 The germs of misery from the human heart. 
 Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe 
 The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, 
 Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, 
 Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease : 
 Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy 
 Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will, 
 When fenced by power and master of the world. 
 Thou art sincere and good ; of resolute mind,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 205 
 
 Free from heart- withering custom's cold controul, 
 Of passion lofty, pure, and unsubdued. 
 Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee, 
 And therefore art thou worthy of the boon 
 Which thou hast now received : virtue shall keep 
 Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, 
 And many days of beaming hope shall bless 
 Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love. 
 Go happy one, and give that bosom joy, 
 Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
 Light, life, and rapture from thy smile. 
 
 The Fairy waves her wand of charm. 
 Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, 
 
 That rolled beside the battlement, 
 Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness. 
 
 Again the enchanted steeds were yoked, 
 
 Again the burning wheels inflame 
 The steep descent of heaven's untrodden way. 
 
 Fast and far the chariot flew : 
 
 The vast and fiery globes that rolled 
 
 Around the Fairy's palace-gate 
 Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared 
 Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs 
 That there attendant on the solar power 
 With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. 
 Earth floated then below : 
 
 The chariot paused a moment there ; 
 
 The Spirit then descended : 
 The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil, 
 
 T
 
 206 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done, 
 Unfurled their pinions to the wind of heaven. 
 
 The body and the soul united then. 
 A gentle start convulsed lanthe's frame : 
 Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed ; 
 Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained : 
 She looked around in wonder and beheld 
 Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, 
 Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love, 
 
 And the bright beaming stars 
 That through the casement shone.
 
 ADONAIS. 
 
 AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS. 
 
 I WEEP for ADONAIS he is dead ! 
 
 O, weep for Adonais ! though our tears 
 
 Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head ! 
 
 And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years 
 
 To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, 
 
 And teach them thine own sorrow ; say with me 
 
 Died Adonais ; till the Future dares 
 
 Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be 
 
 An echo and a light unto eternity ! 
 
 Where wert thou mighty Mother, when he lay, 
 
 When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies 
 
 In darkness ? where was lorn Urania 
 
 When Adonais died ? With veiled eyea, 
 
 'Mid list'ning Echoes, in her Paradise 
 
 She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, 
 
 Rekindled all the fading melodies, 
 
 With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, 
 
 He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.
 
 208 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 O, weep for Adonais he is dead ! 
 
 Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep ! 
 
 Yet wherefore ? Quench within their burning bed 
 
 Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep 
 
 Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep ; 
 
 For he is gone, where all things wise and fair 
 
 Descend; oh, dream not that the amorous Deep 
 
 Will yet restore him to the vital air ; 
 
 Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. 
 
 Most musical of mourners, weep again ! 
 
 Lament anew, Urania! He died, 
 
 Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, 
 
 Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride, 
 
 The priest, the slave, and the liberticide, 
 
 Trampled and mock'd with many a loathed rite 
 
 Of lust and blood ; he went, unterrified, 
 
 Into the gulph of death ; but his clear sprite 
 
 Yet reigns o'er earth ; the third among the sons of light. 
 
 Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
 Not all to that bright station dar'd to climb ; 
 And happier they their happiness who knew, 
 Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time 
 In which suns perished ; others more sublime,, 
 Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, 
 Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime ; 
 And some yet live, treading the thorny road, 
 Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene 
 abode.
 
 BEAUTIES QF SHELLEY. 209 
 
 But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished, 
 
 The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, 
 
 Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, 
 
 And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew ; 
 
 Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
 
 Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, 
 
 The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew 
 
 Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste ; 
 
 The broken lily lies the storm is overpast. I : J . 
 
 To that high Capital, where kingly Death 
 
 Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, 
 
 He came ; and bought, with price of purest breath, 
 
 A grave among the eternal. Come away ! 
 
 Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day 
 
 Is yet his fitting charnel-roof ! while still 
 
 He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay ; 
 
 Awake him not ! surely he takes his fill 
 
 Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. 
 
 He will awake no more, oh, never more ! 
 Within the twilight chamber spreads apace 
 The shadow of white Death, and at the door 
 Invisible Corruption waits to trace 
 His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place ; 
 The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe 
 Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 
 So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law 
 Of mortal change, shall fill the grave which is her 
 maw. 
 
 T3
 
 210 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 O, weep for Adonais ! The quick Dreams, 
 
 The passion-winged Ministers of thought, 
 
 Who were his flocks, whom near the living stream* 
 
 Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught 
 
 The love which was its music, wander not, 
 
 Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, 
 
 But droop there, whence they sprung ; and mourn 
 
 their lot 
 
 Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, 
 They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again. 
 
 And one with trembling hand clasps his cold head, 
 
 And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries ; 
 
 " Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead ; 
 
 " See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 
 
 " Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies 
 
 " A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain." 
 
 Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise ! 
 
 She knew not 'twas her own ; as with no stain 
 
 She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. 
 
 One from a lucid urn of starry devr 
 
 Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them ; 
 
 Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw 
 
 The wreath upon him, like an anadem, 
 
 Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem ; 
 
 Another in her wilful grief would break 
 
 Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem 
 
 A greater loss with one which was more weak ; 
 
 And dull the barbed fire against his frozen, cheek.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 211 
 
 Another Splendour on his mouth alit, 
 That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath 
 Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, 
 And pass into the panting heart beneath 
 With lightning and with music : the damp death 
 Quenched its caress upon his icy lips ; 
 And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath 
 Of moonlight vapour, which the sold night clips, 
 It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its 
 eclipse. 
 
 And others cams, Desires and Adorations, 
 
 Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, 
 
 Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations 
 
 Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies ; 
 
 And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 
 
 And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam 
 
 Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 
 
 Came in slow pomp ; the moving pomp might seem 
 
 Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. 
 
 All he had lov'd, and moulded into thought, 
 
 From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, 
 
 Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 
 
 Her eastern watchtower, and her hair unbound, 
 
 Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, 
 
 Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day ; 
 
 Afar the melancholy thunder nioan'd, 
 
 Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, 
 
 And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
 
 2t2 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, 
 
 And feeds her grief with his remembered lay, 
 
 And will no more reply to winds or fountains, 
 
 Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, 
 
 Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day ; 
 
 Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear 
 
 Than those for whose disdain she pined away 
 
 Into a shadow of all sounds : a drear 
 
 Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. 
 
 Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw 
 
 down 
 
 Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, 
 Or they dead leaves ; since her delight is flown 
 For whom should she have waked the sullen year ? 
 To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear 
 Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both 
 Thou Adonais : wati they stand and sere 
 Amid the drooping comrades of their youth, 
 With dew all turned to tears ; odour, to sighing ruth. 
 
 Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale 
 Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain ; 
 Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale 
 Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain 
 Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, 
 Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, 
 As Albion wails for thee ; the curse of Cain 
 Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, 
 And scared the Angel soul that was its earthly guest !
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 213 
 
 Ah woe is me '. Winter is come and gone, 
 
 But grief returns with the revolving year ; 
 
 The airs and streams renew their joyous tone; 
 
 The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear ; 
 
 Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Season's bier ; 
 
 The amorous birds now pair in every brake, 
 
 And build their mossy homes in field and brere, 
 
 And the green lizard, and the golden snake, 
 
 Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. 
 
 Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean 
 A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst 
 As it has ever done, with change and motion, 
 From the great morning of the world when first 
 God dawned on Chaos ; in its stream immersed 
 The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light ; 
 All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst ; 
 Diffuse themselves ; and spend in love's delight, 
 The beauty and the joy of their renewed might. 
 
 The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender 
 Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath ; 
 Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour 
 Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death 
 And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath ; 
 Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which 
 
 knows 
 
 Be as a sword consumed before the sheath 
 By sightless lightning ? th' intense atom glows 
 A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.
 
 214 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Alas ! that all we loved of him should be, 
 But for our grief, as if it had not been, 
 And grief itself be mortal ! Woe is me ! 
 Whence are we, and why are we ? of what scene 
 The actors or spectators ? Great and mean 
 Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow. 
 As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, 
 Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, 
 Month follow month with woe, and year wake year 
 to sorrow. 
 
 He will awake no more, oh, never more ! 
 " Wake thou," cried Misery, " childless Mother, rise 
 " Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core, 
 " A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs." 
 And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes, 
 And all the Echoes whom their sister's song 
 Had held in holy silence, cried : " Arise ! " 
 Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung, 
 From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung. 
 
 She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs 
 Out of the East, and follows wild and drear 
 The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, 
 Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, 
 Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear 
 So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania ; 
 So saddened round her like an atmosphere 
 Of stormy mist ; so swept her on her way 
 Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 215 
 
 Out of her secret Paradise she sped, 
 
 Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, 
 
 And human hearts, which to her aery tread 
 
 Yielding not, wounded the invisible 
 
 Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell : 
 
 And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they 
 
 Rent the soft Form they never could repel, 
 
 Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, 
 
 Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way. 
 
 In the death chamber for a moment Death 
 Shamed by the presence of that living Might 
 Blushed to annihilation, and the breath 
 Revisited those lips, and life's pale light 
 Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. 
 " Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, 
 " As silent lightning leaves the starless night ! 
 *' Leave me not ! " cried Urania : her distress 
 Roused Death : Death rose and smiled, and met her vain 
 caress. 
 
 " Stay yet a while ! speak to me once again ; 
 
 Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live ; 
 
 And in my heartless breast and burning brain 
 
 That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else survive, 
 
 With food of saddest memory kept alive, 
 
 Now thou art dead, as if it were a part 
 
 Of thee, my Adonais ! I would give 
 
 All that I am to be as thou now art ! 
 
 But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart i
 
 216 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 " O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 
 Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men 
 Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart 
 Dare the unpastured dragon in his den ? 
 Defenceless as thou wert, oh M'here was then 
 Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear ? 
 Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when 
 Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, 
 The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like 
 deer. 
 
 " The herded wolves, bold only to pursue ; 
 
 The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead ; 
 
 The vultures to the conqueror's banner true 
 
 Who feed where Desolation first has fed, 
 
 And whose wings rain contagion ; how they fled, 
 
 When, like Apollo, from his golden bow, 
 
 The Pythian of the age one arrow sped 
 
 And smiled ! The spoilers tempt no second blow, 
 
 They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them as they go. 
 
 " The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn ; 
 
 He sets, and each ephemeral insect then 
 
 Is gathered into death without a dawn, 
 
 And the immortal stars awake again ; 
 
 So is it in the world of living men : 
 
 A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight 
 
 Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when 
 
 It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light 
 
 Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night."
 
 OF SHELLEY. 217 
 
 Thus ceased she : and the mountain shepherds came, 
 
 Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent ; 
 
 The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 
 
 Over his living head like Heaven is bent, 
 
 An early but enduring monument, 
 
 Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song 
 
 In sorrow ; from her wilds lerne sent 
 
 The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, 
 
 And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue. 
 
 'Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, 
 
 A phantom among men ; companionless 
 
 As the last cloud of an expiring storm 
 
 Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess, 
 
 Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, 
 
 Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray 
 
 With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, 
 
 And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, 
 
 Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey. 
 
 A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift 
 A Love in desolation masked ; a Power 
 Girt round with weakness ; it can scarce uplift 
 The weight of the superincumbent hour ; 
 It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
 A breaking billow ; even whilst we speak 
 Is it not broken ? On the withering flower 
 The killing sun smiles brightly : on a cheek 
 The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may 
 break. 
 
 U
 
 218 BEAUTIES OF SHELtEY. 
 
 Hia head was bound with pansies over-blown, 
 And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue ; 
 And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, 
 Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew 
 Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, 
 Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 
 Shook the weak hand that grasped it ; of that crew- 
 He came the last, neglected and apart ; 
 A herd-abandon'd deer, struck by the hunter's dart. 
 
 All stood aloof, and at his partial moan 
 Smiled through their tears ; well knew that gentle band 
 Who in another's fate now wept his own ; 
 As in the accents of an unknown land, 
 He sang new sorrow ; sad Urania scanned 
 The Stranger's mien, and murmured: " Who art thou ?'* 
 He answered not, but with a sudden hand 
 Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, 
 Which was like Cain's or Christ's. Oh J that it shouldi 
 be so! 
 
 What softer voice is bushed over the dead ? 
 
 Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown ? 
 
 What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed, 
 
 In mockery of monumental stone, 
 
 The heavy heart heaving without a moan ? 
 
 If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, 
 
 Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one; 
 
 Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs, 
 
 The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 219 
 
 Our Adonais has drunk poison oh 1 
 
 What deaf and viperous murderer _could crown 
 
 Life's early cup with such a draught of woe ? 
 
 The nameless worm would now itself disown : 
 
 It felt, yet could escape the magic tone 
 
 Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong, 
 
 But what was howling in one breast alone, 
 
 Silent with expectation of the song, 
 
 .Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung. 
 
 Live thou, whose infamy is not thy feme ! 
 
 Live ! fear no heavier chastisement from me, 
 
 Thou noteless blot on a remembered name ! 
 
 But be thyself, and know thyself to be ! 
 
 And ever at thy season be thou free 
 
 To spill the venom, when thy fangs o'erflow : 
 
 Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee ; 
 
 Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, 
 
 And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt as now. 
 
 Nor let ns weep that our delight is fled 
 Far from these carrion kites that scream below $ 
 He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead ; 
 Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now. 
 Oust to the dust ! but the pure spirit shall flow 
 Back to the burning fountain whence it came, 
 A portion of the Eternal, which must glow 
 Through time and change, unquenchably the same, 
 Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of 
 sUame.
 
 220 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep 
 He hath awakened from the dream of life 
 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep 
 With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
 And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife 
 Invulnerable nothings. We decay 
 Like corpses in a enamel ; fear and grief 
 Convulse us and consume us day by day, 
 And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living 
 clay. 
 
 He has outsoared the shadow of our night ; 
 Envy and calumny and hate and pain, 
 And that unrest which men miscall delight, 
 Can touch him not and torture not again ; 
 From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
 He is secure, and now can never mourn 
 A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain ; 
 Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, 
 With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 
 
 He lives, he wakes 'tis Death is dead, not he ; 
 
 Mourn not for Adonais. Thou young Dawn 
 
 Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee 
 
 The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
 
 Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan ! 
 
 Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air 
 
 Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 
 
 O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare 
 
 Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair !
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 221 
 
 He is made one with Nature : there is heard 
 
 His voice in all her music, from the moan 
 
 Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
 
 He is a presence to be felt and known 
 
 In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
 
 Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
 
 Which has withdrawn his being to its own ; 
 
 Which wields the world with never-wearied love, 
 
 Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. 
 
 He is a portion of the loveliness 
 Which once he made more lovely : he doth bear 
 His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress 
 Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there, 
 All new successions to the forms they wear ; 
 Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight 
 To its own likeness, as each mass may bear ; 
 And bursting in its beauty and its might 
 From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's 
 light. 
 
 The splendours of the firmament of time 
 May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not ; 
 Like stars to their appointed height they climb 
 And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
 The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought 
 Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 
 And love and life contend in it, for what 
 Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there 
 And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. 
 U 3 
 
 '
 
 222 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
 
 Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, 
 
 Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 
 
 Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 
 
 Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought 
 
 And as he fell, and as he lived and loved 
 
 Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, 
 
 Arose ; and Lucan, by his death approved : 
 
 Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. 
 
 And many more, whose names on earth are dark, 
 But whose transmitted effluence cannot die 
 So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
 Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
 " Thou art become as one of us," they cry, 
 " It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long 
 Swung blind in una^cended majesty, 
 Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song. 
 Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our 
 throng I " 
 
 Who mourns for Adonais ? oh come forth 
 
 Fond wretch ! and know thyself and him aright. 
 
 Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth ; 
 
 As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light 
 
 Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 
 
 Satiate the void circumference : then shrink 
 
 Even to a point within our day and night ; 
 
 And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink 
 
 When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 223 
 
 Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre 
 O, not of him, but of our joy : 'tis nought 
 That ages, empires, and religions there 
 Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought ; 
 For such as he can lend, they borrow not 
 Glory from those who made the world their prey ; 
 And he is gathered to the kings of thought 
 Who waged contention with their time's decay, 
 And of the past are all that cannot pass away. 
 
 Go thou to Rome, at once the Paradise, 
 
 The grave, the city, and the wilderness ; 
 
 And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, 
 
 And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress 
 
 The bones of Desolation's nakedness, 
 
 Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 
 
 Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, 
 
 Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead, 
 
 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread. 
 
 And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time 
 Feeds like slow fire upon a hoary brand ; 
 And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, 
 Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 
 This refuge for his memory, doth stand 
 Like flame transformed to marble ; and beneath, 
 A field is spread, on which a newer band 
 Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, 
 Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished 
 breath.
 
 224 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Here, pause : these graves are all too young as yet 
 To have out-grown the sorrow which consigned 
 Its charge to each ; and if the seal is set, 
 Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, 
 Break it not thou ! too surely shalt thou find 
 Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, 
 Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind 
 Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. 
 What Adonais is, why fear we to become ? 
 
 The One remains, the many change and pass ; 
 Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly }. 
 Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, 
 Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
 Until Death tramples it to fragments. Die, 
 If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek I 
 Follow where all is fled ! Rome's azure sky, 
 Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak 
 The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak. 
 
 Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart ? 
 Thy hopes are gone before : from all things here 
 They have departed ; thou shouldst now depart ! 
 A light is passed from the revolving year, 
 And man, and woman ; and what still is dear 
 Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. 
 The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near : 
 Tis Adonais calls ! oh, hasten thither, 
 No more let Life divide what Death can join to- 
 gether.
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 225 
 
 That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, 
 That Beauty in which all things work and move, 
 That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse 
 Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love 
 Which through the web of being blindly wove 
 By man and beast and earth and air and sea, 
 Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of 
 The fire for which all thirst ; now beams on me, 
 Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 
 
 The breath whose might I have invoked in song 
 
 Descends on me ; my spirit's bark is driven 
 
 Far from the shore, far from the trembling thi-ong 
 
 Whose sails were never to the tempest given ; 
 
 The massy earth and sphered skies are riven ! 
 
 I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar ; 
 
 Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, 
 
 The soul of Adonais, like a star, 
 
 Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
 
 ALASTOR; 
 
 OR 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE. 
 
 EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood ! 
 
 If our great Mother has imbued my soul 
 
 With aught of natural piety to feel 
 
 Your love, and recompense the boon with mine ; 
 
 If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even, 
 
 With sunset and its gorgeous ministers, 
 
 And solemn midnight's tingling silentness ; 
 
 If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood, 
 
 And winter robing with pure snow and crowns 
 
 Of starry ice the gray grass and bare boughs ; 
 
 If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes 
 
 Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me ; 
 
 If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast 
 
 I consciously have injured, but still loved 
 
 And cherished these my kindred ; then forgive 
 
 This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw 
 
 No portion of your wonted favour now !
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 227 
 
 Mother of this unfathomable world ! 
 Favour my solemn song, for I have loved 
 Thee ever, and thee only ; I have watched 
 Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, 
 And my heart ever gazes on the depth 
 Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my hed 
 In charnels and on coffins, where black death 
 Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, 
 Hoping to still these obstinate questionings 
 Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, 
 Thy messenger, to render up the tale 
 Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, 
 When night makes a wierd sound of its own stillness, 
 Like an inspired and desperate alchymist 
 Staking his very life on some dark hope, 
 Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks 
 With my most innocent love, until strange tears 
 Uniting with those breathless kisses, made 
 Such magic as compels the charmed night 
 
 To render up thy charge : and, though ne'er yet 
 
 Thou hast unveil'd thy inmost sanctuary, 
 
 Enough from incommunicable dream, 
 
 And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought 
 
 Has shone within me, that serenely now 
 
 And moveless as a long-forgotten lyre, 
 
 Suspended in the solitary dome 
 
 Of some mysterious and deserted fane, 
 
 I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain 
 
 May modulate with murmurs of the air, 
 
 And motions of the forests and the sea,
 
 228 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 And voice of living beings, and woven hymns 
 Of night and day, and the deep heart of man. 
 
 There was a Poet whose untimely tomb 
 No human hands with pious reverence reared, 
 But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds 
 Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid 
 
 Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness : 
 
 A lovely youth, no mourning maiden decked 
 With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, 
 The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : 
 Gentle, and brave, and generous, no lorn bard 
 Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh : 
 He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude. 
 Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, 
 And virgins, as unknown he past, have sighed 
 And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. 
 The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, 
 And Silence, too enamoured of that voice, 
 Locks its mute music in her rugged cell. 
 
 By solemn vision and bright silver dream, 
 His infancy was nurtured. Every sight 
 And sound from the vast earth and ambient air, 
 Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. 
 The fountains of divine philosophy 
 Fled not his thirsting lips ; and all of great, 
 Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past 
 In truth or fable consecrates, he felt 
 And knew. When early youth had past, he left
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 His cold fireside and alienated home 
 To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. 
 Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness 
 Has lured his fearless steps ; and he has bought 
 With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, 
 His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps 
 He like her shadow has pursued, where'er 
 The red volcano overcanopies 
 Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice 
 With burning smoke ; or where bitumen lakes, 
 On black bare pointed islets ever beat 
 With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves 
 Rugged and dirk, winding among the springs 
 Of fire and poison, inaccessible 
 To avarice or pride, their starry domes 
 Of diamond and of gold expand above 
 Numberless and immeasurable halls, 
 Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines 
 Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. 
 Nor had that scene of ampler majesty 
 Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven 
 And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims 
 To love and wonder ; he would linger long 
 In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, 
 Until the doves and squirrels would partake 
 From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, 
 Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks ; 
 And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er 
 The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend 
 X
 
 230 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form 
 More graceful than her own. 
 
 His wandering step, 
 Obedient to high thoughts, has visited 
 The awful ruins of the days of old : 
 Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste 
 Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers 
 Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, 
 Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange 
 Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, 
 Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphinx, , 
 
 Dark Ethiopia in her desert hills 
 Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, 
 Stupendous columns, and wild images 
 Of more than man, where marble daemons watch 
 The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men 
 Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, 
 He lingered, poring on memorials 
 Of the world's youth, through the long burning day 
 Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon 
 Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades 
 Suspended he that task, but ever gazed 
 And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind 
 Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw 
 The thrilling secrets of the birth of time. 
 
 Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, 
 Her daily portion, from her father's tent,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 231 
 
 And spread her matting for his couch, and stole 
 From duties and repose to tend his steps : 
 Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe 
 To speak her love : and watched his nightly sleep, 
 Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips 
 Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath 
 Of innocent dreams arose : then, when red morn 
 Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home, 
 Wildered and wan and panting, she returned. 
 
 The Poet wandering on, through Arable 
 And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, 
 And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down 
 Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, 
 In joy and exultation held his way, 
 Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within 
 Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine 
 Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, 
 Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched 
 His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep 
 There came, a dream of hopes that never yet 
 Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid 
 Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. 
 Her voice was like the voice of his own soul 
 Heard in the calm of thought ; its music long, 
 Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held 
 His inmost sense suspended in its web 
 Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues. 
 Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme, 
 And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
 
 234 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms ? 
 This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart, 
 The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung 
 His brain even like despair. 
 
 While day-light held 
 The sky, the Poet kept mute conference 
 With his still soul. At night the passion came, 
 Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, 
 And shook him from his rest, and led him forth 
 Into the darkness As an eagle grasped 
 In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast 
 Burn with the poison, and precipitates 
 Through night and day, tempest and calm and cloud, 
 Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight 
 O'er the wide aery wilderness : thus driven 
 By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, 
 Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, 
 Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, 
 Startling with careless step the moon-light snake, 
 He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, 
 Shedding the mocker)' of its vital hues 
 Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on 
 Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep 
 Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud ; 
 Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs 
 Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind 
 Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, 
 Day after day, a weary waste of hours, 
 Bearing within his life the brooding care
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 235 
 
 That ever fed on its decaying flame. 
 
 And now his limbs were lean ; his scattered hair, 
 
 Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, 
 
 Sung dirges in the wind ; his listless hand 
 
 Hung like dead bone within its withered skin ; 
 
 Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone 
 
 As in a furnace burning secretly 
 
 From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, 
 
 Who ministered with human charity 
 
 His human wants, beheld with wondering awe 
 
 Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, 
 
 Encountering on some dizzy precipice 
 
 That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind 
 
 With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet 
 
 Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused 
 
 In his career. The infant would conceal 
 
 His troubled visage in his mother's robe 
 
 In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, 
 
 To remember their strange light in many a dream, 
 
 Of after-times : but youthful maidens, taught 
 
 By nature, would interpret half the woe 
 
 That wasted him, would call him with false names 
 
 Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand 
 
 At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path 
 
 Of his departure from their father's door. 
 
 At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore 
 He paused, a wide and melancholy waste 
 Of putrid marshes a strong impulse urged 
 His steps to the sea shore. A swan was there
 
 234 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms ? 
 This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart, 
 The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung 
 His brain even like despair. 
 
 While day-light held 
 The sky, the Poet kept mute conference 
 With his still soul. At night the passion came, 
 Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, 
 And shook him from his rest, and led him forth 
 Into the darkness As an eagle grasped 
 In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast 
 Burn with the poison, and precipitates 
 Through night and day, tempest and calm and cloud, 
 Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight 
 O'er the wide aery wilderness : thus driven 
 By the bright shadow of that lovely dream, 
 Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night, 
 Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells, 
 Startling with careless step the moon-light snake, 
 He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight, 
 Shedding the mockery of its vital hues 
 Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on 
 Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep 
 Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud ; 
 Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs 
 Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind 
 Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on, 
 Day after day, a weary waste of hours, 
 Bearing within his life the brooding care
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 235 
 
 That ever fed on its decaying flame. 
 
 And now his limbs were lean ; his scattered hair, 
 
 Sered by the autumn of strange suffering, 
 
 Sung dirges in the wind ; his listless hand 
 
 Hung like dead bone within its withered skin ; 
 
 Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone 
 
 As in a furnace burning secretly 
 
 From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers, 
 
 Who ministered with human charity 
 
 His human wants, beheld with wondering awe 
 
 Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer, 
 
 Encountering on some dizzy precipice 
 
 That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind 
 
 With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet 
 
 Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused 
 
 In his career. The infant would conceal 
 
 His troubled visage in his mother's robe 
 
 In terror at the glare of those wild eyes, 
 
 To remember their strange light in many a dream 
 
 Of after-times : but youthful maidens, taught 
 
 By nature, would interpret half the woe 
 
 That wasted him, would call him with false names 
 
 Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand 
 
 At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path 
 
 Of his departure from their father's door. 
 
 At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore 
 He paused, a wide and melancholy waste 
 Of putrid marshes a strong impulse urged 
 His steps to the sea shore. A swan was there
 
 236 BEAUTIES OF SIJELLEY. 
 
 Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. 
 
 It rose as he approached, and with strong wings 
 
 Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course 
 
 High over the immeasurable main. 
 
 His eyes pursued its flight. " Thou hast a home, 
 
 Beautiful bird ; thou voyagest to thine home, 
 
 Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck 
 
 With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 
 
 Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. 
 
 And what am I that I should linger here, 
 
 With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, 
 
 Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned 
 
 To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers 
 
 In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven 
 
 That echoes not my thoughts ? " A gloomy smile 
 
 Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. 
 
 For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly 
 
 Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, 
 
 Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, 
 
 With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms. 
 
 Startled by his own thoughts he looked around. 
 There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight 
 Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. 
 A little shallop floating near the shore 
 Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze. 
 It had been long abandoned, for its sides 
 Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints 
 Swayed with the undulations of the tide. 
 A restless impulse urged him to embark,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 237 
 
 And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste ; 
 For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves 
 The slimy caverns of the populous deep. 
 
 The day was fair and sunny, sea and sky 
 
 Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind 
 
 Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. 
 
 Following his eager soul, the wanderer 
 
 Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft 
 
 On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, 
 
 And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea 
 
 Like a torn cloud before the hurricane. 
 
 As one that in a silver vision floats 
 
 Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds 
 
 Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly 
 
 Along the dark and ruffled waters fled 
 
 The straining boat. A whirlwind swept it on, 
 
 With fierce gusts and precipitating force, 
 
 Through the white ridges of the chafed sea. 
 
 The waves arose. Higher and higher still 
 
 Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's 
 
 scourge 
 
 Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp. 
 Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war 
 Of wave running on wave, and blast on blast 
 Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven 
 With dark obliterating course, he sate : 
 As if their genii were the ministers 
 Appointed to conduct him to the light
 
 238 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate 
 Holding the steady helm. Evening came on, 
 The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues 
 High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray 
 That canopied Ms path o'er the waste deep ; 
 Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, 
 Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks. 
 O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day ; 
 Night followed, clad with stars. On every side 
 More horribly the multitudinous streams 
 Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war 
 Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock 
 The calm and spangled sky. The little boat 
 Still fled before the storm ; still fled, like foam 
 Down the steep cataract of a wintry river ; 
 Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave ; 
 Now leaving far behind the bursting mass 
 That fell, convulsing ocean. Safely fled 
 As-if that frail and wasted human form, 
 Had been an elemental god. 
 
 At midnight 
 
 The moon arose : and lo ! the ethereal cliffs 
 Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone 
 Among the stars like sunlight, and around 
 Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves 
 Bursting and eddying irresistibly 
 Rage and resound for ever. Who shall save ? 
 The boat fled on, the boiling torrent drove, 
 The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 239 
 
 The shattered mountain overhung the sea, 
 And faster still, beyond all human speed, 
 Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, 
 The little boat was driven. A cavern there 
 Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths 
 Ingulphed the rushing sea. The boat fled on 
 With unrelaxing speed. " Vision and love ! " 
 The Poet cried aloud, " I have beheld 
 The path of thy departure. Sleep and death 
 Shall not divide us long." 
 
 The boat pursued 
 
 The windings of the cavern. Day-light shone 
 At length upon th it gloomy river's flow ; 
 Now, where the fiercest war among the waves 
 Is calm, on the unfathomable stream 
 The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven, 
 Exposed those black depths to the azure sky, 
 Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell 
 Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound 
 That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass 
 Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm ; 
 Stair above stair the eddying waters ro ,e, 
 Circling immeasurably fast, and laved 
 With alternating dash the gnarled roots 
 Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms 
 In darkness over it. I' the midst was left, 
 Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud, 
 A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm. 
 .Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
 
 240 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round, 
 
 Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose, 
 
 Till on the verge of the extremest curve, 
 
 Where, through an opening of the rocky hank, 
 
 The waters overflow, and a smooth spot 
 
 Of glassy quiet mid those battling tides 
 
 Is left, the boat paused shuddering. Shall it sink 
 
 Down the abyss ? Shall the reverting stress 
 
 Of that resistless gulf embosom it ? 
 
 Now shall it fall ? A wandering stream of wind, 
 
 Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail, 
 
 And, lo ! with gentle motion between banks 
 
 Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream, 
 
 Beneath a woven grove, it sails ; and, hark ! 
 
 The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar 
 
 With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods. 
 
 Where the embowering trees recede, and leave 
 
 A little space of green expanse, the cove 
 
 Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers 
 
 Forever gaze on their own drooping eyes, 
 
 Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave * . 
 
 Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task, 
 
 Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind, 
 
 Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay 
 
 Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed 
 
 To deck with their bright hues his withered hair, 
 
 But on his heart its solitude returned, 
 
 And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid 
 
 In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame, 
 
 Had yet performed its ministry : it hung
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 24 
 
 Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud 
 Gleams, hovering 1 ere it vanish, ere the floods 
 Of night close over it. 
 
 The noonday sun 
 
 Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass 
 Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence 
 A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, 
 Scooped in the dark base of those aery rocks 
 Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever. 
 The meeting boughs and implicated leaves 
 Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led 
 By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, 
 He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank, 
 Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark 
 And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, 
 Expanding its immeasurable arms, 
 Embraces the light beech. The pyramids 
 Of the tall cedar overarching, frame 
 Most solemn domes wilhin, and far below, 
 Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, 
 The ash and the acacia floating hang 
 Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed 
 In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, 
 Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around 
 The gray trunks, and as gamesome infants' eyes, 
 With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles, 
 Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love, 
 These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs, 
 Uniting their close union ; the woven leaves 
 Y
 
 242 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Make net-work of the dark blue light of day, 
 
 And the night's noontide clearness, mutable 
 
 As shapes in the wierd clouds. Soft mossy lawns 
 
 Beneath these canopies extend their swells, 
 
 Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed wfah blooms 
 
 Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen 
 
 Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine, 
 
 A soul-dissolving odour, to invite 
 
 To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell, 
 
 Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep 
 
 Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades 
 
 Like vaporous shapes half seen ; beyond, a well, 
 
 Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave, 
 
 Images all the woven boughs above, 
 
 And each depending leaf, and every speck 
 
 Of azure sky, darting between their chasms ; 
 
 Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves 
 
 Its portraiture, but some inconstant star 
 
 Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair, 
 
 Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon, 
 
 Or gorgeous insect floating motionless, 
 
 Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings 
 
 Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon. 
 
 Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld 
 
 Their own wan light through the reflected lines 
 
 Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth 
 
 Of that still fountain ; as the human heart, 
 
 Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, 
 
 Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 243 
 
 The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung 
 
 Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel 
 
 An unaccustomed presence, and the sound 
 
 Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs 
 
 Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed 
 
 To stand beside him clothed in no bright robes 
 
 Of shadowy silver or enshrining light, 
 
 Borrowed from aught the visible world affords 
 
 Of grace, or majesty, or mystery ; 
 
 But undulating woods, and silent well, 
 
 And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom 
 
 Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming 
 
 Held commune with him, as if he and it 
 
 Were all that was, only when his regard 
 
 Was raised by intense pensiveness two eyes, 
 
 Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, 
 And seemed with their serene and azure smiles 
 To beckon him. 
 
 Obedient to the light 
 
 That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing 
 The windings of the dell. The rivulet 
 Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine 
 Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell 
 Among the moss with hollow harmony 
 Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones 
 It danced, like childhood laughing as it went : 
 Then through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, 
 Reflecting every herb and drooping bud 
 That overhung its quietness. " O stream !
 
 244 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Whose source is inaccessibly profound, 
 
 Whither do thy mysterious waters tend ? 
 
 Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, 
 
 Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulphs, 
 
 Thy searchless fountain and invisible course 
 
 Have each their type in me : and the wide sky, 
 
 And measureless ocean may declare as soon 
 
 What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud 
 
 Contains thy waters, as the universe 
 
 Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched 
 
 Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste 
 
 I' the passing wind ! " 
 
 Beside the grassy shore 
 
 Of the small stream he went ; he did impress 
 On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught 
 Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one 
 Roused by some joyous madness from the couch 
 Of fever, he did move : yet, not like him, 
 Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame 
 Of his frail exultation shall be spent, 
 He must descend. With rapid steps he went 
 Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow 
 Of the wild babbling rivulet ; and now 
 The forest's solemn canopies were changed 
 For the uniform and lightsome evening sky. 
 Gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed 
 The struggling brook : tall spires of windlestrae 
 Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, 
 And nought but gnarled trunks of ancient pines,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 245 
 
 Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots 
 
 The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here, 
 
 Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, 
 
 The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin 
 
 And white ; and where irradiate dewy eyes 
 
 Had shone, gleam stony orbs : so from his steps 
 
 Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade 
 
 Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds 
 
 And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued 
 
 The stream, that with a larger volume now 
 
 Rolled through the labyrinthine dell ; and there 
 
 Fretted a path through its descending curves 
 
 With its wintry speed. On every side now rose 
 
 Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms, 
 
 Lifted their black and barren pinnacles 
 
 In the light of evening, and its precipice 
 
 Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, 
 
 'Mid toppling stones, black gulphs, and yawning caves, 
 
 Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues 
 
 To the loud stream. Lo ! Where the pass expands 
 
 Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, 
 
 And seems, with its accumulated crags, 
 
 To overhang the world : for wide expand 
 
 Beneath the wan stars and descending moon 
 
 Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, 
 
 Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom 
 
 Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills 
 
 Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge 
 
 Of the remote horizon, The near scene, 
 
 In naked and severe simplicity, 
 
 Y 3
 
 246 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Made contrast with the universe. A pine, 
 Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy 
 Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast 
 Yielding one only response at each pause, 
 In most familiar cadence, with the howl 
 The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams 
 Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river, 
 Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, 
 Fell into that immeasurable void, 
 Scattering its waters to the passing winds. 
 
 Yet the gray precipice, and solemn pine 
 And torrent, were not all ; one silent nook 
 Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, 
 Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, 
 It overlooked in its serenity 
 The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars. 
 It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile 
 Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped 
 The fissured stones with its entwining arms, 
 And did embower with leaves for ever green, 
 And berries dark, the smooth and even space 
 Of its inviolated floor ; and here 
 The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore, 
 In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay, 
 Red, yellow, or etherially pale, 
 Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt 
 Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach 
 The wilds to love tranquillity. One step, 
 One human step alone, has ever broken
 
 pfiAUTlES OF SHELLEY. 247 
 
 The stillness of its solitude : one voice 
 Alone inspired its echoes ; even that voice 
 Which hither came, floating among the winds, 
 And led the loveliest among human forms 
 To make their wild haunts the depository 
 Of all the grace and beauty that endued 
 Its motions, render up its majesty, 
 Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm, 
 And to the damp leaves and blue cavern-mould, 
 Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss, 
 Commit the colours of that varying cheek, 
 That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes. 
 
 The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured 
 A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge 
 That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist 
 Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank 
 Wan moonlight even to fulness : not a star 
 Shone, not a sound was heard ; the very winds, 
 Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice 
 Slept, clasped in his embrace. O, storm of death ! 
 Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night : 
 And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still 
 Guiding its irresistible career 
 In thy devastating omnipotence, 
 Art King of this frail world, from the red field 
 Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, 
 The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed 
 Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, 
 A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls
 
 248 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 His brother Death. A rare and regal prey 
 He hath prepared, prowling around the world ; 
 Glutted with which thou raay'st repose, and men 
 Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms, 
 Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine 
 The unheeded tribute of a broken heart. 
 
 When on the threshold of the green recess 
 The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death 
 Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, 
 Did he resign his high and holy soul 
 To images of the majestic past, 
 That paused within his passive being now, 
 Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe 
 Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place 
 His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk 
 Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone 
 Reclined his languid head ; his limbs did rest, 
 Diifused and motionless, on the smooth brink 
 Of that obscurest chasm ; and thus he lay, 
 Surrendering to their final impulses 
 The hovering powers of life. Hope and Despair, 
 The torturers, slept : no mortal pain or fear 
 Marred his repose, the influxes of sense, 
 And his own being unalloyed by pain, 
 Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed 
 The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there 
 At peace, and faintly smiling ; his last sight 
 Was the great moon, which o'er the western line 
 Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 249 
 
 With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed 
 
 To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills 
 
 It rests, and still as the divided frame 
 
 Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, 
 
 That ever beat in mystic sympathy 
 
 With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still -. 
 
 And when two lessening points of light alone 
 
 Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp 
 
 Of his faint respiration scarce did stir 
 
 The stagnate night : till the minutest ray 
 
 Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart. 
 
 It paused it fluttered. But when heaven remained 
 
 Utterly black, the murky shades involved 
 
 An image, silent, cold, and motionless, 
 
 As their own voiceless earth and vacant air. 
 
 Even as a vapour fed with golden beams 
 
 That ministered on sunlight, ere the west 
 
 Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame 
 
 No sense, no motion, no divinity 
 
 A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings 
 
 The breath of heaven did wander a bright stream 
 
 Once fed with many-voiced waves a dream 
 
 Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever, 
 
 Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now. 
 
 O, for Medea's wondrous alchymy, 
 Which whereso'er it fell made the earth gleam 
 With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale 
 From vernal blooms, fresh fragrance ! O, that God, 
 Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
 
 260 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 
 
 Which but one living man has drained, who now, 
 
 Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels 
 
 No proud exemption in the blighting curse 
 
 He bears, over the world wanders for ever, 
 
 Lone as incarnate death ! O, that the dream 
 
 Of dark magician in his visioned cave, 
 
 Raking the cinders of a crucible 
 
 For life and power, even when his feeble hand 
 
 Shakes in its last decay, were the true law 
 
 Of this so lovely world ! But thou art fled 
 
 Like some frail exhalation, which the dawn 
 
 Robes in its golden beams, ah ! thou hast fled I 
 
 The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, 
 
 The child of grace and genius. Heartless things 
 
 Are done and said i' the world, and many worms 
 
 And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth 
 
 From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, 
 
 In vesper low or joyous orison, 
 
 Lifts still its solemn voice : but thou art fled 
 
 Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes 
 
 Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee 
 
 Been purest ministers, who are, alas ! 
 
 Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips 
 
 So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes 
 
 That image sleep in death, upon that form 
 
 Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear 
 
 Be shed not even in thought. Nor, when those hues 
 
 Are gone, and those divinest lineaments, 
 
 Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone 
 
 In the frail pauses of this simple strain,
 
 BEAUTIES OF SHELLEY. 251 
 
 Let not high verse, mourning the memory 
 Of that which is no more, or painting's woe, 
 Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery 
 Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence, 
 And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain 
 To weep a loss that turns their light to shade. 
 It is a woe too ' deep for tears,' when all 
 Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit, 
 Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves 
 Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans, 
 The passionate tumult of a clinging hope, 
 But pale despair and cold tranquillity, 
 Nature's vast frame, the web of human things, 
 Birth and the grave, that are not as they were. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CHARLES WOOD AND SON, PRINTERS, 
 Hoppiu's Court, Fleet Street.
 
 University of California 
 
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 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 
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