PROLOGUE TO HELLAS PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY NOW FIRST SEPARATELY PRINTED LONDON l'RINTKD FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION 1886 / 67 $ o cv^-J 5»-> <^A/^ PROLOGUE TO HELLAS 27ie issue of this book is limited to Twenty copies. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, FROM THE ORIGINAL PICTURE BY CLINT PROLOGUE TO HELLAS BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY WITH AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY RICHARD GARNETT EDITED AND ANNOTATED BY THOMAS J. WISE LONDON FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION ONLY 1886 CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTORY NOTE , . 11 PROLOGUE TO HELLAS 15 POSTSCRIPT BY DR. GARNETT 29 NOTES 33 INTRODUCTORY NOTE NOTE ON THE PROLOGUE TO HELLAS 1 RICHARD GARNETT. Mrs. Shelley informs us, in her note on the " Prometheus Unbound," that at the time of her husband's arrival in Italy, he meditated the production of three dramas. 2 One of these was the " Prometheus " itself ; the second, a drama on the subject of Tasso's madness ; the third one founded on the Book of Job ; " of which," she adds, " he never abandoned the idea." That this was the case will be apparent from the following newly-discovered fragment, which may have been, as I have on the whole preferred to describe it, an unfinished prologue to " Hellas," or perhaps the original sketch of that work, discarded for the existing more dramatic, but less 12 NOTE ON THE PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. ambitious version, for which the " Persae " of iEschylus evidently supplied the model. It is written in the same book as the original MS. of "Hellas," and so blended with this as to be only separable after very minute examination. Few even of Shelley's rough drafts have proved more difficult to decipher or connect ; numerous chasms will be observed, which, with every diligence, it has proved impossible to fill up; the correct reading of many printed lines is far from certain ; and the imperfection of some passages is such as to have occasioned their entire omission. Nevertheless, I am confident that the unpolished and mutilated remnant will be accepted as a worthy emanation of one of Shelley's sublimest moods, and a noble earnest of what he might have accom- plished could he have executed his original design of founding a drama on the Book of Job. Weak health, variable spirits, above all, the absence of encouragement, must be enumerated as chief among the causes which have deprived our literature of so magnificent a work. PROLOGUE TO HELLAS PBOLOGUE TO HELLAS. HERALD OF ETERNITY. It is the day when all the sons of God Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline The shadow of God, and delegate Of that before whose breath the universe Is as a print of dew. Hierarchs and kings Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation Steaming from earth, conceals the of heaven Which gave it birth, assemble here Before your Father's throne ; the swift decree L6 PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall annul The fairest of those wandering isles that gem The sapphire space of interstellar air, 3 That green and azure sphere, that earth inwrapt Less in the beauty of its tender light Than in an atmosphere of living spirit Which interpenetrating all the it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow Impels the generations To their appointed place, Whilst the high Arbiter Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Sends his decrees veiled in eternal Within the circuit of this pendant orb There lies an antique region, on which fell The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung Temples and cities and immortal forms And harmonies of wisdom and of song, And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair And when the sun of its dominion failed, And when the winter of its glory came, PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. 17 The winds that stript it bare blew on and swept That dew into the utmost wildernesses In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed The unmaternal bosom of the North. Haste, sons of God, for ye beheld, Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished, The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair. A fourth now waits : assemble, sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend, If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld, The unaccomplished destiny. CHORUS. The curtain of the Universe Is rent and shattered, The splendour- winged worlds disperse Like wild doves scattered. Space is roofless and bare, And in the midst a cloudy shrine, Dark amid thrones of light. In the blue glow of hyaline Golden worlds revolve and shine 18 PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. In flight From every point of the Infinite, Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread ; And through thunder and darkness dread Light and music are radiated, And in their pavilioned chariots led By living wings high overhead The giant Powers move, Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. ***** A chaos of light and motion Upon that glassy ocean. ?F ?F $fr $fc ife The senate of the Gods is met, Each in his rank and station set ; There is silence in the spaces — Lo ! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet Start from their places ! ***** CHRIST. Almighty Father ! Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny ***** There are two fountains in which spirits weep When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named, PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. 19 And with their bitter dew two Destinies Filled each their irrevocable urns ; the third, Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion's lymph, And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds, By this imperial crown of agony, By infamy and solitude and death, For this I underwent, and by the pain Of pity for those who would for me The unremembered joy of a revenge, For this I felt — by Plato's sacred light, Of which my spirit was a burning morrow — By Greece and all she cannot cease to be, Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth, Stars of all night — her harmonies and forms, Echoes and shadows of what Love adores In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, Thy irrevocable child : let her descend 4 A seraph-winged victory [arrayed] In tempest of the omnipotence of God Which sweeps through all things. B 2 20 PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies To stamp, as on a winged serpent's seed, Upon the name of Freedom ; from the storm Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens The solid heart of enterprise ; from all By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Are stars beneath the dawn She shall arise Victorious as the world arose from Chaos ! And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed Their presence in the beauty and the light Of thy first smile, Father, as they gather The spirit of thy love which paves for them Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere Shall be one living Spirit, so shall Greece — SATAN. Be as all things beneath the empyrean, Mine ! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns ? Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed Which pierces thee ! whose throne a chair of scorn ; For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. 21 The innumerable worlds of golden light Which are my empire, and the least of them which thou would' st redeem from me ? Know'st thou not them my portion ? Or wouldst rekindle the strife Which our great Father then did arbitrate When he assigned to his competing sons Each his apportioned realm ? Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er thy task, Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine Thy trophies, whether Greece again become The fountain in the desert whence the earth Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength To suffer, or a gulph of hollow death To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less Than of the Father's ; but lest thou shouldst faint, The winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence, Shall wait on thee, the hundred -forked snake, Insatiate Superstition, still shall The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings, Convulsing and consuming, 5 and I add 22 PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. Three vials of the tears which demons weep When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death Pass triumphing over the thorns of life, Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares, Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates. The first is Anarchy ; when Power and Pleasure, Glory and science and security, On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes. The second Tyranny — CHRIST. Obdurate spirit ! Thou seest but the Past in the To-come. Pride is thy error and thy punishment. Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops Before the Power that wields and kindles them. True greatness asks not space, true excellence Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine. ***** MAHOMET. ***** Haste thou and fill the waning crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. 23 Of Christian night rolled back upon the West When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow. 6 ***** Wake, thou Word Of God, and from the throne of Destiny Even to the utmost limit of thy way May Triumph ***** Be thou a curse on them whose creed Divides and multiplies the most high God. 1821. [The following fragments appear to have been originally written for Hellas."] Fairest of the Destinies, Disarray thy dazzling eyes : Keener far their lightnings are Than the winged [bolts] thou bearest, And the smile thou wearest Wraps thee as a star Is wrapt in light. 24 PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run, Or could the morning shafts of purest light Again into the quivers of the Sun Be gathered — could one thought from its wild flight Return into the temple of the brain Without a change, without a stain, — Could aught that is, ever again Be wdiat it once has ceased to be, Greece might again be free ! A star has fallen upon the earth 'Mid the benighted nations, A quenchless atom of immortal light, A living spark of Night, A cresset shaken from the constellations. Swifter than the thunder fell To the heart of Earth, the well Where its pulses flow and beat, And unextinct in that cold source Burns, and on course Guides the sphere which is its prison, Like an angelic spirit pent In a form of mortal birth, PROLOGUE TO HELLAS. 25 Till, as a spirit half arisen Shatters its charnel, it has rent, In the rapture of its mirth, The thin and painted garment of the Earth. Ruining its chaos — a fierce breath Consuming all its forms of living death. POSTSCRIPT POSTSCRIPT * RICHARD GARNETT Besides the evident imitation of the Book of Job, the resemblance of the first draft of " Hellas " to the machinery of Dry den's intended epic is to be noted. " He gives," says Johnson, summarising Dry den's preface to his trans- lation of Juvenal, "an account of the design which he had once formed to write an epic poem on the actions either of Arthur or the Black Prince. He considered the epic as necessarily involving some kind of supernatural agency, and had imagined a new kind of contest between * This Postscript was not included in the Belies of Shelley volume, where the Introductory Note originally appeared. By the kindness of Dr. Garnett the additional passage is now printed. 30 POSTSCRIPT BY RICHARD GARNETT. the guardian angels of kingdoms, of whom he conceived that each might be represented zealous for his charge without any intended opposition to the purposes of the Supreme Being, of which all created minds must in part be ignorant. "This is the most reasonable scheme of celestial inter- position that ever was formed." K. G. NOTES NOTES. (1) This Note was first printed in the Relics of Shelley* 1862, p. 3, where the Prologue to Hellas itself originally appeared (pp. 4-13); the latter having in that year been "deciphered by Dr. Garnett during the course of his fruit- ful search amongst the Shelley Manuscripts preserved at Boscombe Manor." The volume — Relics of Shelley — is full of most valuable and interesting matter given from original and authoritative sources, amongst which the Fragments of the AdonaiSft The Magic Plant, Orpheus, Fiordispina, and * Relics of Shelley, j Edited by / Richard Garnett. / London : / Edward Moxon