Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poems

• A Bridal Song Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The golden gates of Sleep unbar
  Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
  Kindle their image like a star
  In a sea of glassy weather!
  Night, with all thy stars look down,--
  Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,--
  Never smiled the inconstant moon
  On a pair so true.
  
  Let eyes not see their own delight;--
  Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight
  Oft renew.
  
  II.
  
  Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
  Holy stars, permit no wrong!
  And return to wake the sleeper,
  Dawn,—ere it be long!
  O joy! O fear! what will be done
  In the absence of the sun!
  Come along!

• A Dialogue Read Poem Log in to favourite

  DEATH:
  For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave,
  I come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave,
  Where Innocence sleeps 'neath the peace-giving sod,
  And the good cease to tremble at Tyranny's nod;
  I offer a calm habitation to thee,--
  Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?
  
  My mansion is damp, cold silence is there,
  But it lulls in oblivion the fiends of despair;
  Not a groan of regret, not a sigh, not a breath,
  Dares dispute with grim Silence the empire of Death.
  
  I offer a calm habitation to thee,--
  Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?
  
  MORTAL:
  Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks repose,
  It longs in thy cells to embosom its woes,
  It longs in thy cells to deposit its load,
  Where no longer the scorpions of Perfidy goad,--
  Where the phantoms of Prejudice vanish away,
  And Bigotry's bloodhounds lose scent of their prey.
  
  Yet tell me, dark Death, when thine empire is o'er,
  What awaits on Futurity's mist-covered shore?
  
  DEATH:
  Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil
  The shadows that float o'er Eternity's vale;
  Nought waits for the good but a spirit of Love,
  That will hail their blest advent to regions above.
  
  For Love, Mortal, gleams through the gloom of my sway,
  And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray.
  
  Hast thou loved?
  
  --Then depart from these regions of hate,
  And in slumber with me blunt the arrows of fate.
  
  I offer a calm habitation to thee.
  
  --
  Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?
  
  MORTAL:
  Oh! sweet is thy slumber! oh! sweet is the ray
  Which after thy night introduces the day;
  How concealed, how persuasive, self-interest’s breath,
  Though it floats to mine ear from the bosom of Death!
  I hoped that I quite was forgotten by all,
  Yet a lingering friend might be grieved at my fall,
  And duty forbids, though I languish to die,
  When departure might heave Virtue’s breast with a sigh.
  
  O Death! O my friend! snatch this form to thy shrine,
  And I fear, dear destroyer, I shall not repine.

• A Dirge Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Rough wind, that moanest loud
  Grief too sad for song;
  Wild wind, when sullen cloud
  Knells all the night long;
  Sad storm whose tears are vain,
  Bare woods, whose branches strain,
  Deep caves and dreary main,--
  Wail, for the world’s wrong!

• A Fragment: To Music Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Silver key of the fountain of tears,
  Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild;
  Softest grave of a thousand fears,
  Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child,
  Is laid asleep in flowers.
  
  Published in Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition.

• A Hate-Song Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A hater he came and sat by a ditch,
  And he took an old cracked lute;
  And he sang a song which was more of a screech
  'Gainst a woman that was a brute.

• A Lament Read Poem Log in to favourite

  O world! O life! O time!
  On whose last steps I climb,
  Trembling at that where I had stood before;
  When will return the glory of your prime?
  
  No more—Oh, never more!
  
  Out of the day and night
  A joy has taken flight;
  Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
  Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
  No more—Oh, never more!

• A New National Anthem Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  God prosper, speed,and save,
  God raise from England’s grave
  Her murdered Queen!
  Pave with swift victory
  The steps of Liberty,
  Whom Britons own to be
  Immortal Queen.
  
  II.
  
  See, she comes throned on high,
  On swift Eternity!
  God save the Queen!
  Millions on millions wait,
  Firm, rapid, and elate,
  On her majestic state!
  God save the Queen!
  III.
  
  She is Thine own pure soul
  Moulding the mighty whole,--
  God save the Queen!
  She is Thine own deep love
  Rained down from Heaven above,--
  Wherever she rest or move,
  God save our Queen!
  IV.
  
  ‘Wilder her enemies
  In their own dark disguise,--
  God save our Queen!
  All earthly things that dare
  Her sacred name to bear,
  Strip them, as kings are, bare;
  God save the Queen!
  V.
  
  Be her eternal throne
  Built in our hearts alone--
  God save the Queen!
  Let the oppressor hold
  Canopied seats of gold;
  She sits enthroned of old
  O’er our hearts Queen.
  
  VI.
  
  Lips touched by seraphim
  Breathe out the choral hymn
  ‘God save the Queen!’
  Sweet as if angels sang,
  Loud as that trumpet’s clang
  Wakening the world’s dead gang,--
  God save the Queen!

• A Roman's Chamber Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  In the cave which wild weeds cover
  Wait for thine aethereal lover;
  For the pallid moon is waning,
  O'er the spiral cypress hanging
  And the moon no cloud is staining.
  
  II.
  
  It was once a Roman’s chamber,
  Where he kept his darkest revels,
  And the wild weeds twine and clamber;
  It was then a chasm for devils.

• A Serpent-Face Read Poem Log in to favourite

  His face was like a snake's -- wrinkled and loose
  And withered--

• A Summer Evening Churchyard: Lechlade, Gloucestershire Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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, aëreal Pile! whose pinnacles
  Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
  Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,
  Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,
  Around whose lessening and invisible height
  Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
  
  The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
  And, mouldering as they sleep, a 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 I hope, like some inquiring child
  Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
  Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
  That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.
  
  Composed September, 1815.
  
  Published with Alastor, 1816.

• A Tale Of Society As It Is: From Facts, 1811 Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  She was an aged woman; and the years
  Which she had numbered on her toilsome way
  Had bowed her natural powers to decay.
  
  She was an aged woman; yet the ray
  Which faintly glimmered through her starting tears,
  Pressed into light by silent misery,
  Hath soul's imperishable energy.
  
  She was a cripple, and incapable
  To add one mite to gold-fed luxury:
  And therefore did her spirit dimly feel
  That poverty, the crime of tainting stain,
  Would merge her in its depths, never to rise again.
  
  II.
  
  One only son's love had supported her.
  
  She long had struggled with infirmity,
  Lingering to human life-scenes; for to die,
  When fate has spared to rend some mental tie,
  Would many wish, and surely fewer dare.
  
  But, when the tyrant's bloodhounds forced the child
  For his cursed power unhallowed arms to wield--
  Bend to another's will--become a thing
  More senseless than the sword of battlefield--
  Then did she feel keen sorrow's keenest sting;
  And many years had passed ere comfort they would bring.
  
  III.
  
  For seven years did this poor woman live
  In unparticipated solitude.
  
  Thou mightst have seen her in the forest rude
  Picking the scattered remnants of its wood.
  
  If human, thou mightst then have learned to grieve.
  
  The gleanings of precarious charity
  Her scantiness of food did scarce supply.
  
  The proofs of an unspeaking sorrow dwelt
  Within her ghastly hollowness of eye:
  Each arrow of the season's change she felt.
  
  Yet still she groans, ere yet her race were run,
  One only hope: it was—once more to see her son.
  
  IV.
  
  It was an eve of June, when every star
  Spoke peace from Heaven to those on earth that live.
  
  She rested on the moor.
  
  'Twas such an eve
  When first her soul began indeed to grieve:
  Then he was here; now he is very far.
  
  The sweetness of the balmy evening
  A sorrow o'er her aged soul did fling,
  Yet not devoid of rapture’s mingled tear:
  A balm was in the poison of the sting.
  
  This aged sufferer for many a year
  Had never felt such comfort.
  
  She suppressed
  A sigh--and turning round, clasped William to her breast!
  V.
  
  And, though his form was wasted by the woe
  Which tyrants on their victims love to wreak,
  Though his sunk eyeballs and his faded cheek
  Of slavery's violence and scorn did speak,
  Yet did the aged woman's bosom glow.
  
  The vital fire seemed re-illumed within
  By this sweet unexpected welcoming.
  
  Oh, consummation of the fondest hope
  That ever soared on Fancy's wildest wing!
  Oh, tenderness that foundst so sweet a scope!
  Prince who dost pride thee on thy mighty sway,
  When THOU canst feel such love, thou shalt be great as they!
  VI.
  
  Her son, compelled, the country's foes had fought,
  Had bled in battle; and the stern control
  Which ruled his sinews and coerced his soul
  Utterly poisoned life's unmingled bowl,
  And unsubduable evils on him brought.
  
  He was the shadow of the lusty child
  Who, when the time of summer season smiled,
  Did earn for her a meal of honesty,
  And with affectionate discourse beguiled
  The keen attacks of pain and poverty;
  Till Power, as envying her this only joy,
  From her maternal bosom tore the unhappy boy.
  
  VII.
  
  And now cold charity's unwelcome dole
  Was insufficient to support the pair;
  And they would perish rather than would bear
  The law's stern slavery, and the insolent stare
  With which law loves to rend the poor man's soul--
  The bitter scorn, the spirit-sinking noise
  Of heartless mirth which women, men, and boys
  Wake in this scene of legal misery.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Published (from Esdaile manuscript with title as above) by Rossetti, 'Complete Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  ', 1870.
  
  Rossetti's title is 'Mother and Son'.

• A Vision Of The Sea Read Poem Log in to favourite

  'Tis the terror of tempest.
  
  The rags of the sail
  Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale:
  From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,
  And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven,
  She sees the black trunks of the waterspouts spin
  And bend, as if Heaven was ruining in,
  Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass
  As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: they pass
  To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,
  And the waves and the thunders, made silent around,
  Leave the wind to its echo.
  
  The vessel, now tossed
  Through the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost
  In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep
  Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep
  It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale
  Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale,
  Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about;
  While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout
  Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron,
  With splendour and terror the black ship environ,
  Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire
  In fountains spout o’er it.
  
  In many a spire
  The pyramid-billows with white points of brine
  In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine,
  As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea.
  
  The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree,
  While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast
  Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has passed.
  
  The intense thunder-balls which are raining from Heaven
  Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven.
  
  The chinks suck destruction.
  
  The heavy dead hulk
  On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk,
  Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold
  Its corruption around it.
  
  Meanwhile, from the hold,
  One deck is burst up by the waters below,
  And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow
  O’er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other?
  
  Is that all the crew that lie burying each other,
  Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast?
  
  Are those
  Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose,
  In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold;
  (What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold);
  Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank,
  The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank
  Are these all?
  
  Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain
  On the windless expanse of the watery plain,
  Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon,
  And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon,
  Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep,
  Whose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep
  Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn,
  O’er the populous vessel.
  
  And even and morn,
  With their hammocks for coffins the seamen aghast
  Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast
  Down the deep, which closed on them above and around,
  And the sharks and the dogfish their grave-clothes unbound,
  And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down
  From God on their wilderness.
  
  One after one
  The mariners died; on the eve of this day,
  When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array,
  But seven remained.
  
  Six the thunder has smitten,
  And they lie black as mummies on which Time has written
  His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck
  An oak-splinter pierced through his breast and his back,
  And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck.
  
  No more?
  
  At the helm sits a woman more fair
  Than Heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair,
  It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea.
  
  She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee;
  It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder
  Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder
  It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near,
  It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear
  Is outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high,
  The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye,
  While its mother’s is lustreless.
  
  ‘Smile not, my child,
  But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled
  Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be,
  So dreadful since thou must divide it with me!
  Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed,
  Will it rock thee not, infant?
  
  ’Tis beating with dread!
  Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we,
  That when the ship sinks we no longer may be?
  
  What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?
  
  To be after life what we have been before?
  
  Not to touch those sweet hands?
  
  Not to look on those eyes,
  Those lips, and that hair,—all the smiling disguise
  Thou yet wearest, sweet Spirit, which I, day by day,
  Have so long called my child, but which now fades away
  Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?
  
  ’—Lo! the ship
  Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip;
  The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine
  Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne,
  Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry
  Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously,
  And ’tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave,
  Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave,
  Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain,
  Hurried on by the might of the hurricane:
  The hurricane came from the west, and passed on
  By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,
  Transversely dividing the stream of the storm;
  As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form
  Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.
  
  Black as a cormorant the screaming blast,
  Between Ocean and Heaven, like an ocean, passed,
  Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world
  Which, based on the sea and to Heaven upcurled,
  Like columns and walls did surround and sustain
  The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain,
  As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag:
  And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,
  Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed,
  Like the dust of its fall.
  
  on the whirlwind are cast;
  They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and where
  The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air
  Of clear morning the beams of the sunrise flow in,
  Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
  Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
  They encounter, but interpenetrate.
  
  And that breach in the tempest is widening away,
  And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day,
  And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,
  Lulled by the motion and murmurings
  And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea,
  And overhead glorious, but dreadful to see,
  The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,
  Are consuming in sunrise.
  
  The heaped waves behold
  The deep calm of blue Heaven dilating above,
  And, like passions made still by the presence of Love,
  Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide
  Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide
  From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,
  Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with Heaven’s azure smile,
  The wide world of waters is vibrating.
  
  Where
  Is the ship?
  
  On the verge of the wave where it lay
  One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray
  With a sea-snake.
  
  The foam and the smoke of the battle
  Stain the clear air with sunbows; the jar, and the rattle
  Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress
  Of the snake’s adamantine voluminousness;
  And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains
  Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins
  Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash
  As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash
  The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams
  And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean-streams,
  Each sound like a centipede.
  
  Near this commotion,
  A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,
  The fin-winged tomb of the victor.
  
  The other
  Is winning his way from the fate of his brother
  To his own with the speed of despair.
  
  Lo! a boat
  Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought
  Urge on the keen keel,—the brine foams.
  
  At the stern
  Three marksmen stand levelling.
  
  Hot bullets burn
  In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on
  To his refuge and ruin.
  
  One fragment alone,--
  ’Tis dwindling and sinking, ’tis now almost gone,--
  Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.
  
  With her left hand she grasps it impetuously.
  
  With her right she sustains her fair infant.
  
  Death, Fear,
  Love, Beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere,
  Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread
  Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head,
  Like a meteor of light o’er the waters! her child
  Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring; so smiled
  The false deep ere the storm.
  
  Like a sister and brother
  The child and the ocean still smile on each other,
  Whilst—
  Composed at Pisa early in 1820, and published with “Prometheus Unbound” in the same year.
  
  A transcript in Mrs.
  
  Shelley’s handwriting is included in the Harvard manuscript book, where it is dated 'April, 1820.
  
  '

• A Widow Bird Sate Mourning For Her Love Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A widow bird sate mourning for her Love
  Upon a wintry bough;
  The frozen wind crept on above,
  The freezing stream below.
  
  There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
  No flower upon the ground,
  And little motion in the air
  Except the mill-wheel's sound.

• Adonais: An elegy on the Death of John Keats Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  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!"
  II.
  
  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 eyes,
  Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
  She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,
  Rekindled all the fading melodies
  With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
  He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.
  
  III.
  
  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.
  
  IV.
  
  Most musical of mourners, weep again!
  Lament anew, Urania! -He died,
  Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
  Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride,
  The priest, the slave, and the liberticide
  Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
  Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
  Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite
  Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.
  
  V.
  
  Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
  Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
  And happier they their happiness who knew,
  Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
  In which suns perished; others more sublime,
  Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,
  Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
  And some yet live, treading the thorny road
  Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.
  
  VI.
  
  But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished -
  The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
  Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
  And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;
  Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
  Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
  The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew
  Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
  The broken lily lies -the storm is overpast.
  
  VII.
  
  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.
  
  VIII.
  
  He will awake no more, oh, never more! -
  Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
  The shadow of white Death, and at the door
  Invisible Corruption waits to trace
  His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
  The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
  Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
  So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law
  Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.
  
  IX.
  
  O, weep for Adonais! -The quick Dreams,
  The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
  Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
  Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
  The love which was its music, wander not, -
  Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
  But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
  Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
  They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.
  
  X.
  
  And one with trembling hands 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.
  
  XI.
  
  One from a lucid urn of starry dew
  Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;
  Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw
  The wreath upon him, like an anadem,
  Which frozen tears instead of pearls 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.
  
  XII.
  
  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 cold night clips,
  It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.
  
  XIII.
  
  And others came… 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.
  
  XIV.
  
  All he had loved, and moulded into thought,
  From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
  Lamented Adonais.
  
  Morning sought
  Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
  Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
  Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;
  Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
  Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
  And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
  
  XV.
  
  Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless 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.
  
  XVI.
  
  Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
  Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
  Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,
  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: wan they stand and sere
  Amid the faint companions of their youth,
  With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.
  
  XVII.
  
  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!
  XVIII.
  
  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.
  
  XIX.
  
  Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
  A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst
  As it has ever done, with change and motion,
  From the great morning of the world when first
  God dawned on Chaos; in its stream 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.
  
  XX.
  
  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?
  
  -the intense atom glows
  A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.
  
  XXI.
  
  Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
  But for our grief, as if it had not been,
  And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
  Whence are we, and why are we?
  
  of what scene
  The actors or spectators?
  
  Great and mean
  Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
  
  As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
  Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
  Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
  
  XXII.
  
  He will awake no more, oh, never more!
  "Wake thou," cried Misery, "childless Mother, rise
  Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core,
  A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs.
  
  "
  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.
  
  XXIII.
  
  She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs
  Our 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.
  
  XXIV.
  
  Our 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.
  
  XXV.
  
  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.
  
  XXVI.
  
  "'Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
  Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;
  And in my heartless breast and burning brain
  That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
  With food 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!
  XXVII.
  
  "O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
  Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
  Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
  Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
  
  Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then
  Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?
  
  Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
  Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,
  The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.
  
  XXVIII.
  
  "The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
  The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead;
  The vultures to the conqueror's banner true
  Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
  And whose wings rain contagion; -how they fled,
  When, like Apollo, from his golden bow
  The Pythian of the age one arrow sped
  And smiled! -The spoilers tempt no second blow,
  They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.
  
  XXIX.
  
  "The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
  He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
  Is gathered into death without a dawn,
  And the immortal stars awake again;
  So is it in the world of living men:
  A godlike mind soars forth, in its 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.
  
  "
  XXX.
  
  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 Irene sent
  The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,
  And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.
  
  XXXI.
  
  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.
  
  XXXII.
  
  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.
  
  XXXIII.
  
  His head was bound with pansies overblown,
  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-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.
  
  XXXIV.
  
  All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
  Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band
  Who in another's fate now wept his own,
  As in the accents of an unknown land
  He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned
  The Stranger's mien, and murmured: "Who art thou?
  
  "
  He answered not, but with a sudden hand
  Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,
  Which was like Cain's or Christ's -oh! that it should be so!
  XXXV.
  
  What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
  
  Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?
  
  What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed,
  In mockery of monumental stone,
  The heavy heart heaving without a moan?
  
  If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,
  Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,
  Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,
  The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.
  
  XXXVI.
  
  Our Adonais has drunk poison -oh!
  What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
  Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?
  
  The nameless worm would now itself disown:
  It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone
  Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
  But what was howling in one breast alone,
  Silent with expectation of the song,
  Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.
  
  XXXVII.
  
  Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
  Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
  Thou 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.
  
  XXXVIII.
  
  Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
  Far from these carrion kites that scream below;
  He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
  Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now -
  Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
  Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
  A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
  Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
  Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.
  
  XXXIX.
  
  Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep -
  He hath awakened from the dream of life -
  '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 charnel; fear and grief
  Convulse us and consume us day by day,
  And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
  
  XL.
  
  He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
  Envy and calumny and hate and pain,
  And that unrest which men miscall 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.
  
  XLI.
  
  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!
  XLII.
  
  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.
  
  XLIII.
  
  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 Heavens' light.
  
  XLIV.
  
  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.
  
  XLV.
  
  The inheritors of unfulfilled renown
  Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,
  Far in the Unapparent.
  
  Chatterton
  Rose pale, -his solemn agony had not
  Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought
  And as he fell and as he lived and loved
  Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,
  Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:
  Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.
  
  XLVI.
  
  And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,
  But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
  So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
  Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.
  
  "Thou art become as one of us," they cry,
  "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long
  Swung blind in unascended majesty,
  Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song.
  
  Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"
  XLVII.
  
  Who mourns for Adonais?
  
  Oh, come forth,
  Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.
  
  Clasp with thy panting soul the 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.
  
  XLVIII.
  
  Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
  Oh, 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.
  
  XLIX.
  
  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;
  L.
  
  And grey 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.
  
  LI.
  
  Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
  To have outgrown 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?
  
  LII.
  
  The One remains, the many change and pass;
  Heaven's light forever 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!
  Follow where all is fled! -Rome's azure sky,
  Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
  The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
  
  LIII.
  
  Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?
  
  Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
  They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
  A light is passed from the revolving year,
  And man, and woman; and what still is dear
  Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.
  
  The soft sky smiles, -the low wind whispers near:
  'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,
  No more let Life divide what Death can join together.
  
  LIV.
  
  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.
  
  LV.
  
  The breath whose might I have invoked in song
  Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven
  Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
  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.
  
  Adonais was composed at Pisa during the early days of June, 1821, and printed, with the author's name, at Pisa, 'with the types of Didot,'by July 13, 1821.
  
  Part of the impression was sent to the brothers Ollier for sale in London.
  
  An exact reprint of this Pisa edition (a few typographical errors only being corrected) was issued in 1829 by Gee & Bridges, Cambridge, at the instance of Arthur Hallan and Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton).
  
  The poem was included in Galignani's edition of Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, Paris, 1829, and by Mrs.
  
  Shelley in the Poetical Works of 1839.

• Alas! This Is Not What I Thought Life Was Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Alas! this is not what I thought life was.
  
  I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
  Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
  Untouched by suffering, through the rugged glen.
  
  In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
  The hearts of others .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And when
  I went among my kind, with triple brass
  Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
  To bear scorn, fear, and hate, a woful mass!

• Alastor: or, the Spirit of Solitude Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Earth, Ocean, Air, belovèd 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, belovèd brethren, and withdraw
  No portion of your wonted favor now!
  Mother of this unfathomable world!
  Favor 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 bed
  In charnels and on coffins, where black death
  Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
  Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
  Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,
  Thy messenger, to render up the tale
  Of what we are.
  
  In lone and silent hours,
  When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
  Like an inspired and desperate alchemist
  Staking his very life on some dark hope,
  Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
  With my most innocent love, until strange tears,
  Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
  Such magic as compels the charmèd night
  To render up thy charge; and, though ne'er yet
  Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,
  Enough from incommunicable dream,
  And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought,
  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,
  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 passed, have pined
  And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.
  
  The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,
  And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,
  Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.
  
  By solemn vision and bright silver dream
  His infancy was nurtured.
  
  Every sight
  And sound from the vast earth and ambient air
  Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
  
  The fountains of divine philosophy
  Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,
  Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past
  In truth or fable consecrates, he felt
  And knew.
  
  When early youth had passed, he left
  His cold fireside and alienated home
  To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.
  
  Many a wide waste and tangled 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 dark, 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 band 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
  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 Æthiopia 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,
  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 Arabie,
  And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,
  And o'er the aërial 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 veilèd maid
  Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
  
  Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
  Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,
  Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held
  His inmost sense suspended in its web
  Of many-colored woof and shifting hues.
  
  Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,
  And lofty hopes of divine liberty,
  Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
  Herself a poet.
  
  Soon the solemn mood
  Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
  A permeating fire; wild numbers then
  She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
  Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands
  Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
  Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
  The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
  
  The beating of her heart was heard to fill
  The pauses of her music, and her breath
  Tumultuously accorded with those fits
  Of intermitted song.
  
  Sudden she rose,
  As if her heart impatiently endured
  Its bursting burden; at the sound he turned,
  And saw by the warm light of their own life
  Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
  Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
  Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
  Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips
  Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
  
  His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess
  Of love.
  
  He reared his shuddering limbs, and quelled
  His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet
  Her panting bosom:—she drew back awhile,
  Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
  With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
  Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
  
  Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
  Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
  Like a dark flood suspended in its course,
  Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
  
  Roused by the shock, he started from his trance—
  The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
  Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
  The distinct valley and the vacant woods,
  Spread round him where he stood.
  
  Whither have fled
  The hues of heaven that canopied his bower
  Of yesternight?
  
  The sounds that soothed his sleep,
  The mystery and the majesty of Earth,
  The joy, the exultation?
  
  His wan eyes
  Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
  As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
  
  The spirit of sweet human love has sent
  A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
  Her choicest gifts.
  
  He eagerly pursues
  Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
  He overleaps the bounds.
  
  Alas! alas!
  Were limbs and breath and being intertwined
  Thus treacherously?
  
  Lost, lost, forever lost
  In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,
  That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
  Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
  O Sleep?
  
  Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds
  And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake
  Lead only to a black and watery depth,
  While death's blue vault with loathliest vapors hung,
  Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
  Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
  Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?
  
  This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart;
  The insatiate hope which it awakened stung
  His brain even like despair.
  
  While daylight held
  The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
  With his still soul.
  
  At night the passion came,
  Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,
  And shook him from his rest, and led him forth
  Into the darkness.
  
  As an eagle, grasped
  In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast
  Burn with the poison, and precipitates
  Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,
  Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight
  O'er the wide aëry 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
  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 its career; the infant would conceal
  His troubled visage in his mother's robe
  In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,
  To remember their strange light in many a dream
  Of after times; but youthful maidens, taught
  By nature, would interpret half the woe
  That wasted him, would call him with false names
  Brother and friend, would press his pallid hand
  At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path
  Of his departure from their father's door.
  
  At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
  He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
  Of putrid marshes.
  
  A strong impulse urged
  His steps to the sea-shore.
  
  A swan was there,
  Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.
  
  It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings
  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
  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 chafèd 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 ruining on wave, and blast on blast
  Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven
  With dark obliterating course, he sate:
  As if their genii were the ministers
  Appointed to conduct him to the light
  Of those belovèd eyes, the Poet sate,
  Holding the steady helm.
  
  Evening came on;
  The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues
  High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray
  That canopied his path o'er the waste deep;
  Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
  Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
  O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of Day;
  Night followed, clad with stars.
  
  On every side
  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 forever.
  
  —Who shall save?
  
  —
  The boat fled on,—the boiling torrent drove,—
  The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,
  The shattered mountain overhung the sea,
  And faster still, beyond all human speed,
  Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,
  The little boat was driven.
  
  A cavern there
  Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths
  Ingulfed the rushing sea.
  
  The boat fled on
  With unrelaxing speed.
  
  —'Vision and Love!'
  The Poet cried aloud, 'I have beheld
  The path of thy departure.
  
  Sleep and death
  Shall not divide us long.
  
  '
  The boat pursued
  The windings of the cavern.
  
  Daylight shone
  At length upon that gloomy river's flow;
  Now, where the fiercest war among the waves
  Is calm, on the unfathomable stream
  The boat moved slowly.
  
  Where the 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 rose,
  Circling immeasurably fast, and laved
  With alternating dash the gnarlèd roots
  Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms
  In darkness over it.
  
  I' the midst was left,
  Reflecting yet distorting every cloud,
  A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.
  
  Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
  With dizzy swiftness, round and round and round,
  Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,
  Till on the verge of the extremest curve,
  Where through an opening of the rocky bank
  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 naught 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
  Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud
  Gleams, hovering 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 their aëry rocks,
  Mocking its moans, respond and roar forever.
  
  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 immense and knotty arms,
  Embraces the light beech.
  
  The pyramids
  Of the tall cedar overarching frame
  Most solemn domes within, and far below,
  Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
  The ash and the acacia floating hang
  Tremulous and pale.
  
  Like restless 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
  Make network of the dark blue light of day
  And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
  As shapes in the weird clouds.
  
  Soft mossy lawns
  Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
  Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms
  Minute yet beautiful.
  
  One darkest glen
  Sends from its woods of musk-rose twined with jasmine
  A soul-dissolving odor to invite
  To some more lovely mystery.
  
  Through the dell
  Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep
  Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,
  Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well,
  Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,
  Images all the woven boughs above,
  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
  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!
  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 gulfs,
  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 gnarlèd roots of ancient pines
  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 gulfs 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-colored even, and fiery hills
  Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge
  Of the remote horizon.
  
  The near scene,
  In naked and severe simplicity,
  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 forever 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 ethereally pale,
  Rivals the pride of summer.
  
  'T is the haunt
  Of every gentle wind whose breath can teach
  The wilds to love tranquillity.
  
  One step,
  One human step alone, has ever broken
  The stillness of its solitude; one voice
  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 colors of that varying cheek,
  That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.
  
  The dim and hornèd 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
  His brother Death! A rare and regal prey
  He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
  Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
  Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
  Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
  The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.
  
  When on the threshold of the green recess
  The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death
  Was on him.
  
  Yet a little, ere it fled,
  Did he resign his high and holy soul
  To images of the majestic past,
  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,
  Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
  Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,
  Surrendering to their final impulses
  The hovering powers of life.
  
  Hope and Despair,
  The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear
  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,
  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 vapor fed with golden beams
  That ministered on sunlight, ere the west
  Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame—
  No sense, no motion, no divinity—
  A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings
  The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream
  Once fed with many-voicèd waves—a dream
  Of youth, which night and time have quenched forever—
  Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.
  
  Oh, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,
  Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam
  With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale
  From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! Oh, that God,
  Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice
  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 forever,
  Lone as incarnate death! Oh, 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!
  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,
  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 lights 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.
  
  Composed at Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Park, 1815 (autumn).
  
  Note by Mrs.
  
  Shelley: 'Alastor is written in a very different tone from Queen Mab.
  
  In the latter, Shelley poured out all the cherished speculations of his youth -- all the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, censure, and hope, to which the present suffering, and what he considers the proper destiny, of his fellow-creatures, gave birth.
  
  Alastor, on the contrary, contains an individual interest only.
  
  A very few years, with their attendant events, had checked the ardour of Shelley's hopes, though he still thought them well grounded, and that to advance their fulfilment was the noblest task man could achieve.
  
  This is neither the time nor the place to speak of the misfortunes that chequered his life.
  
  It will be sufficient to say that, in all he did, he at the time of doing it believed himself justified to his own conscience; while the various ills of poverty and loss of friends brought home to him the sad realities of life.
  
  Physical suffering had also considerable influence in causing him to turn his eyes inward; inclining him rather to brood over the thoughts and emotions of his own soul than to glance abroad, and to make, as in Queen Mab, the whole universe the object and subject of his song.
  
  In the Spring of 1815 an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a consumption; abscesses were formed on his lungs, and he suffered acute spasms.
  
  suddenly a complete change took place; and, though through life he was a martyr to pain and debility, every symptom of pulmonary disease vanished.
  
  His nerves, which nature had formed sensitive to an unexampled degree, were rendered still more susceptible by the state of his health.
  
  As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the Continent, he went abroad.
  
  He visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and returned to England from Lucerne, by the Reuss and the Rhine.
  
  The river-navigation enchanted him.
  
  In his favourite poem of Thalaba, his imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage.
  
  In the summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopgate Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several months of comparative health and tranquil happiness.
  
  The later summer months were warm and dry.
  
  Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the source of the Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Winsdor to Crickdale.
  
  His beautiful stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade were written on that occasion.
  
  Alastor was composed on his return.
  
  He spent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forest-scenery we find in the poem.
  
  None of Shelley's poems is more characteristic than this.
  
  The solemn spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, the broodings of a poet's heart in solitude -- the mingling of the exulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe inspires with the sad and struggling pangs which human passion imparts -- give a touching interest to the whole.
  
  The death which he had often contemplated during the last months as certain and near he here represented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace.
  
  The versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it is peculiarly melodious.
  
  The poem ought rather to be considered didactic than narrative: it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by the recent anticipation of death.
  
  '

• An Allegory Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  A portal as of shadowy adamant
  Stands yawning on the highway of the life
  Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
  Around it rages an unceasing strife
  Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt
  The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
  Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.
  
  II.
  
  And many pass it by with careless tread,
  Not knowing that a shadowy.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Tracks every traveller even to where the dead
  Wait peacefully for their companion new;
  But others, by more curious humour led,
  Pause to examine;—these are very few,
  And they learn little there, except to know
  That shadows follow them where’er they go.

• An Exhortation Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Chameleons feed on light and air:
  Poets' food is love and fame:
  If in this wide world of care
  Poets could but find the same
  With as little toil as they,
  Would they ever change their hue
  As the light chameleons do,
  Suiting it to every ray
  Twenty times a day?
  
  Poets are on this cold earth,
  As chameleons might be,
  Hidden from their early birth
  In a cave beneath the sea;
  Where light is, chameleons change:
  Where love is not, poets do:
  Fame is love disguised: if few
  Find either, never think it strange
  That poets range.
  
  Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
  A poet's free and heavenly mind:
  If bright chameleons should devour
  Any food but beams and wind,
  They would grow as earthly soon
  As their brother lizards are.
  
  Children of a sunnier star,
  Spirits from beyond the moon,
  O, refuse the boon!
  Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820.
  
  Dated 'Pisa, April, 1820' in Harvard manuscript (Woodberry), but assigned by Mrs.
  
  Shelley to 1819.

• An Ode, Written October, 1819, Before The Spaniards Had Recovered Their Liberty Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Arise, arise, arise!
  There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread;
  Be your wounds like eyes
  To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.
  
  What other grief were it just to pay?
  
  Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they;
  Who said they were slain on the battle day?
  
  Awaken, awaken, awaken!
  The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;
  Be the cold chains shaken
  To the dust where your kindred repose, repose:
  Their bones in the grave will start and move,
  When they hear the voices of those they love,
  Most loud in the holy combat above.
  
  Wave, wave high the banner!
  When Freedom is riding to conquest by:
  Though the slaves that fan her
  Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh.
  
  And ye who attend her imperial car,
  Lift not your hands in the banded war,
  But in her defence whose children ye are.
  
  Glory, glory, glory,
  To those who have greatly suffered and done!
  Never name in story
  Was greater than that which ye shall have won.
  
  Conquerors have conquered their foes alone,
  Whose revenge, pride, and power they have overthrown
  Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.
  
  Bind, bind every brow
  With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine:
  Hide the blood-stains now
  With hues which sweet Nature has made divine:
  Green strength, azure hope, and eternity:
  But let not the pansy among them be;
  Ye were injured, and that means memory.

• And like a Dying Lady, Lean and Pale Read Poem Log in to favourite

  And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
  Who totters forth, wrapp'd 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 East,
  A white and shapeless mass—
  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?
  
  Form:
  aabbcd
  1.
  
  These are among the many short fragments from Shelley's MSS.
  
  published by
  Mary Shelley, the poet's wife, in her editions of 1824 and 1839.
  
  There she entitles
  this poem The Waning Moon.

• And That I Walk Thus Proudly Crowned Withal Read Poem Log in to favourite

  And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal
  Is that 'tis my distinction; if I fall,
  I shall not weep out of the vital day,
  To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay.

• Another Fragment to Music Read Poem Log in to favourite

  No, Music, thou art not the 'food of Love.
  
  '
  Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self,
  Till it becomes all Music murmurs of.
  
  Published in Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition.

• Archy's Song From Charles The First (A Widow Bird Sate Mourning For Her Love) Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Heigho! the lark and the owl!
  One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:
  Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
  Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
  
  'A widow bird sate mourning for her love
  Upon a wintry bough;
  The frozen wind crept on above,
  The freezing stream below.
  
  'There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
  No flower upon the ground,
  And little motion in the air
  Except the mill-wheel's sound.
  
  '

• Arethusa Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Arethusa arose
  From her couch of snows
  In the Acroceraunian mountains,--
  From cloud and from crag,
  With many a jag,
  Shepherding her bright fountains.
  
  She leapt down the rocks,
  With her rainbow locks
  Streaming among the streams;--
  Her steps paved with green
  The downward ravine
  Which slopes to the western gleams;
  And gliding and springing
  She went, ever singing,
  In murmurs as soft as sleep;
  The Earth seemed to love her,
  And Heaven smiled above her,
  As she lingered towards the deep.
  
  II.
  
  Then Alpheus bold,
  On his glacier cold,
  With his trident the mountains strook;
  And opened a chasm
  In the rocks—with the spasm
  All Erymanthus shook.
  
  And the black south wind
  It unsealed behind
  The urns of the silent snow,
  And earthquake and thunder
  Did rend in sunder
  The bars of the springs below.
  
  And the beard and the hair
  Of the River-god were
  Seen through the torrent’s sweep,
  As he followed the light
  Of the fleet nymph’s flight
  To the brink of the Dorian deep.
  
  III.
  
  'Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
  And bid the deep hide me,
  For he grasps me now by the hair!'
  The loud Ocean heard,
  To its blue depth stirred,
  And divided at her prayer;
  And under the water
  The Earth’s white daughter
  Fled like a sunny beam;
  Behind her descended
  Her billows, unblended
  With the brackish Dorian stream:—
  Like a gloomy stain
  On the emerald main
  Alpheus rushed behind,--
  As an eagle pursuing
  A dove to its ruin
  Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
  
  IV.
  
  Under the bowers
  Where the Ocean Powers
  Sit on their pearled thrones;
  Through the coral woods
  Of the weltering floods,
  Over heaps of unvalued stones;
  Through the dim beams
  Which amid the streams
  Weave a network of coloured light;
  And under the caves,
  Where the shadowy waves
  Are as green as the forest’s night:--
  Outspeeding the shark,
  And the sword-fish dark,
  Under the Ocean’s foam,
  And up through the rifts
  Of the mountain clifts
  They passed to their Dorian home.
  
  V.
  
  And now from their fountains
  In Enna’s mountains,
  Down one vale where the morning basks,
  Like friends once parted
  Grown single-hearted,
  They ply their watery tasks.
  
  At sunrise they leap
  From their cradles steep
  In the cave of the shelving hill;
  At noontide they flow
  Through the woods below
  And the meadows of asphodel;
  And at night they sleep
  In the rocking deep
  Beneath the Ortygian shore;--
  Like spirits that lie
  In the azure sky
  When they love but live no more.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824, and dated by her 'Pisa, 1820.
  
  ' There is a fair draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library.

• Art Thou Pale For Weariness Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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?

• Asia: From Prometheus Unbound Read Poem Log in to favourite

  My soul is an enchanted boat,
  Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
  Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
  And thine doth like an angel sit
  Beside a helm conducting it,
  Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
  
  It seems to float ever, for ever,
  Upon that many-winding river,
  Between mountains, woods, abysses,
  A paradise of wildernesses!
  Till, like one in slumber bound,
  Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
  Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:
  Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
  In music's most serene dominions;
  Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
  
  And we sail on, away, afar,
  Without a course, without a star,
  But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;
  Till through Elysian garden islets
  By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
  Where never mortal pinnace glided,
  The boat of my desire is guided:
  Realms where the air we breathe is love,
  Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
  Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.
  
  We have past Age's icy caves,
  And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,
  And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
  Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
  Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
  Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;
  A paradise of vaulted bowers,
  Lit by downward-gazing flowers,
  And watery paths that wind between
  Wildernesses calm and green,
  Peopled by shapes too bright to see,
  And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
  Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!

• Autumn: A Dirge Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
  The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
  And the Year
  On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
  Is lying.
  
  Come, Months, come away,
  From November to May,
  In your saddest array;
  Follow the bier
  Of the dead cold Year,
  And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
  
  II.
  
  The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,
  The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
  For the Year;
  The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone
  To his dwelling;
  Come, Months, come away;
  Put on white, black, and gray;
  Let your light sisters play--
  Ye, follow the bier
  Of the dead cold Year,
  And make her grave green with tear on tear.

• Beauty's Halo Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Thy beauty hangs around thee like
  Splendour around the moon--
  Thy voice, as silver bells that strike
  Upon.
  
  .
  
  .

• Bereavement Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner
  As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier,
  As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
  And drops to perfection's remembrance a tear;
  When floods of despair down his pale cheeks are streaming,
  When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,
  Or, if lulled for a while, soon he starts from his dreaming,
  And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.
  
  II.
  
  Ah! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,
  Or summer succeed to the winter of death?
  
  Rest awhle, hapless victim! and Heaven will save
  The spirit that hath faded away with the breath.
  
  Eternity points, in its amaranth bower
  Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lour,
  Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
  When woe fades away like the mist of the heath.
  
  Bereavement is No.
  
  5 in 'Poems From St.
  
  Irvyne, or, The Rosicrucian'.
  
  Hutchinson's Shelley, 1905, relates that Rossetti put the date of this poem at 1808, but there is also a footnote for the same that dates it 1811.

• Bigotry's Victim Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,
  The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?
  
  When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind
  Repose trust in his footsteps of air?
  
  No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair,
  The monster transfixes his prey,
  On the sand flows his life-blood away;
  Whilst India's rocks to his death-yells reply,
  Protracting the horrible harmony.
  
  II.
  
  Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches,
  Dares fearless to perish defending her brood,
  Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches
  Thirsting--ay, thirsting for blood;
  And demands, like mankind, his brother for food;
  Yet more lenient, more gentle than they;
  For hunger, not glory, the prey
  Must perish.
  
  Revenge does not howl in the dead.
  
  Nor ambition with fame crown the murderer’s head.
  
  III.
  
  Though weak as the lama that bounds on the mountains,
  And endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of air,
  Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains,
  Though a fiercer than tiger is there.
  
  Though, more dreadful than death, it scatters despair,
  Though its shadow eclipses the day,
  And the darkness of deepest dismay
  Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around,
  And lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground.
  
  IV.
  
  They came to the fountain to draw from its stream
  Waves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see;
  They bathed for awhile in its silvery beam,
  Then perished, and perished like me.
  
  For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee;
  The most tenderly loved of my soul
  Are slaves to his hated control.
  
  He pursues me, he blasts me! 'Tis in vain that I fly:--
  What remains, but to curse him,--to curse him and die?
  
  Published (without title) by Hogg, 'Life of Shelley', 1858; dated 1809-10.
  
  The title is Rossetti's (1870).

• Buona Notte Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Good night
  THE.
  
  'Good night, good night!' - How come
  Will the night be good without you?
  
  Don't tell me good night, - that you know,
  The night knows how to be good by itself.
  
  II.
  
  Solinga, dark, gloomy, without hope,
  The night when Lila abandons me;
  For the hearts of those who beat together
  Every night, without saying it, will be good.
  
  III.
  
  How bad good night sounds to us
  With sighs and broken words! -
  The way to have a good night
  And never don't say good night.
  
  I.
  
  'Buona notte, buona notte!'--Come mai
  La notte sara buona senza te?
  
  Non dirmi buona notte,--che tu sai,
  La notte sa star buona da per se.
  
  II.
  
  Solinga, scura, cupa, senza speme,
  La notte quando Lilla m’abbandona;
  Pei cuori chi si batton insieme
  Ogni notte, senza dirla, sara buona.
  
  III.
  
  Come male buona notte ci suona
  Con sospiri e parole interrotte!--
  Il modo di aver la notte buona
  E mai non di dir la buona notte.
  
  Published by Medwin, The Angler in Wales, or Days and Nights of Sportsmen, 1834.
  
  The text is revised by Rossetti from the Boscombe manuscript.

• Charles The First Read Poem Log in to favourite

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE
  King Charles I.
  
  Queen Henrietta.
  
  Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury.
  
  Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.
  
  Lord Cottington.
  
  Lord Weston.
  
  Lord Coventry.
  
  Williams, Bishop of Lincoln.
  
  Secretary Lyttelton.
  
  Juxon.
  
  St.
  
  John.
  
  Archy, the Court Fool.
  
  Hampden.
  
  Pym.
  
  Cromwell.
  
  Cromwell's Daughter.
  
  Sir Harry Vane the younger.
  
  Leighton.
  
  Bastwick.
  
  Prynne.
  
  Gentlemen of the Inns of Court, Citizens, Pursuivants, Marshalsmen, Law Students, Judges, Clerk.
  
  Scene I.
  
  ---The Masque of the Inns of Court.
  
  A Pursuivant.
  
  Place, for the Marshal of the Masque!
  First Citizen.
  
  What thinkest thou of this quaint masque which turns,
  Like morning from the shadow of the night,
  The night to day, and London to a place
  Of peace and joy?
  
  Second Citizen.
  
  And Hell to Heaven.
  
  Eight years are gone,
  And they seem hours, since in this populous street
  I trod on grass made green by summer's rain,
  For the red plague kept state within that palace
  Where now that vanity reigns.
  
  In nine years more
  The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;
  And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven
  That sin and wrongs wound, as an orphan's cry,
  The patience of the great Avenger's ear.
  
  A Youth.
  
  Yet, father, 'tis a happy sight to see,
  Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden
  By God or man;—'tis like the bright procession
  Of skiey visions in a solemn dream
  From which men wake as from a Paradise,
  And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life.
  
  If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?
  
  And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw
  Unseasonable poison from the flowers
  Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?
  
  Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present
  Dark as the future!—.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant Fear,
  And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping
  As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle thoughts
  Waken to worship Him who giveth joys
  With His own gift.
  
  Second Citizen.
  
  How young art thou in this old age of time!
  How green in this gray world?
  
  Canst thou discern
  The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint
  Of change in that stage-scene in which thou art
  Not a spectator but an actor?
  
  or
  Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery]?
  
  The day that dawns in fire will die in storms,
  Even though the noon be calm.
  
  My travel's done,—
  Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found
  My inn of lasting rest; but thou must still
  Be journeying on in this inclement air.
  
  Wrap thy old cloak about thy back;
  Nor leave the broad and plain and beaten road,
  Although no flowers smile on the trodden dust,
  For the violet paths of pleasure.
  
  This Charles the First
  Rose like the equinoctial sun, .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  By vapours, through whose threatening ominous veil
  Darting his altered influence he has gained
  This height of noon—from which he must decline
  Amid the darkness of conflicting storms,
  To dank extinction and to latest night .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  There goes
  The apostate Strafford; he whose titles
  whispered aphorisms
  From Machiavel and Bacon: and, if Judas
  Had been as brazen and as bold as he—
  First Citizen.
  
  That
  Is the Archbishop.
  
  Second Citizen.
  
  Rather say the Pope:
  London will be soon his Rome: he walks
  As if he trod upon the heads of men:
  He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;—
  Beside him moves the Babylonian woman
  Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow,
  Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin,
  Which turns Heaven's milk of mercy to revenge.
  
  Third Citizen
  (lifting up his eyes).
  
  Good Lord! rain it down upon him! .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Amid her ladies walks the papist queen,
  As if her nice feet scorned our English earth.
  
  The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be
  A dog if I might tear her with my teeth!
  There's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,
  Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,
  And others who make base their English breed
  By vile participation of their honours
  With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates.
  
  When lawyers masque 'tis time for honest men
  To strip the vizor from their purposes.
  
  A seasonable time for masquers this!
  When Englishmen and Protestants should sit
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  dust on their dishonoured heads,
  To avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt
  For the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  and foreign overthrow.
  
  The remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort
  Have been abandoned by their faithless allies
  To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer
  Lewis of France,—the Palatinate is lost— Enter Leighton (who has been branded in the face) and Bastwick.
  
  Canst thou be -- art thou?
  
  --
  Leighton.
  
  I was Leighton: what
  I am thou seest.
  
  And yet turn thine eyes,
  And with thy memory look on thy friend's mind,
  Which is unchanged, and where is written deep
  The sentence of my judge.
  
  Third Citizen.
  
  Are these the marks with which
  Laud thinks to improve the image of his Maker
  Stamped on the face of man?
  
  Curses upon him,
  The impious tyrant!
  Second Citizen.
  
  It is said besides
  That lewd and papist drunkards may profane
  The Sabbath with their.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And has permitted that most heathenish custom
  Of dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths
  On May-day.
  
  A man who thus twice crucifies his God
  May well.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  his brother.
  
  —In my mind, friend,
  The root of all this ill is prelacy.
  
  I would cut up the root.
  
  Third Citizen.
  
  And by what means?
  
  Second Citizen.
  
  Smiting each Bishop under the fifth rib.
  
  Third Citizen.
  
  You seem to know the vulnerable place
  Of these same crocodiles.
  
  Second Citizen.
  
  I learnt it in
  Egyptian bondage, sir.
  
  Your worm of Nile
  Betrays not with its flattering tears like they;
  For, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep.
  
  Nor is it half so greedy of men's bodies
  As they of soul and all; nor does it wallow
  In slime as they in simony and lies
  And close lusts of the flesh.
  
  A Marshalsman.
  
  Give place, give place!
  You torch-bearers, advance to the great gate,
  And then attend the Marshal of the Masque
  Into the Royal presence.
  
  A Law Student.
  
  What thinkest thou
  Of this quaint show of ours, my agèd friend?
  
  Even now we see the redness of the torches
  Inflame the night to the eastward, and the clarions
  [Gasp?
  
  ] to us on the wind's wave.
  
  It comes!
  And their sounds, floating hither round the pageant,
  Rouse up the astonished air.
  
  First Citizen.
  
  I will not think but that our country's wounds
  May yet be healed.
  
  The king is just and gracious,
  Though wicked counsels now pervert his will:
  These once cast off—
  Second Citizen.
  
  As adders cast their skins
  And keep their venom, so kings often change;
  Councils and counsellors hang on one another,
  Hiding the loathsome
  Like the base patchwork of a leper's rags.
  
  The Youth.
  
  Oh, still those dissonant thoughts!—List how the music
  Grows on the enchanted air! And see, the torches
  Restlessly flashing, and the crowd divided
  Like waves before an admiral's prow!
  A Marshalsman.
  
  Give place
  To the Marshal of the Masque!
  A Pursuivant.
  
  Room for the King!
  The Youth.
  
  How glorious! See those thronging chariots
  Rolling, like painted clouds before the wind,
  Behind their solemn steeds: how some are shaped
  Like curved sea-shells dyed by the azure depths
  Of Indian seas; some like the new-born moon;
  And some like cars in which the Romans climbed
  (Canopied by Victory's eagle-wings outspread)
  The Capitolian—See how gloriously
  The mettled horses in the torchlight stir
  Their gallant riders, while they check their pride,
  Like shapes of some diviner element
  Than English air, and beings nobler than
  The envious and admiring multitude.
  
  Second Citizen.
  
  Ay, there they are—
  Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees,
  Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm,
  On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows,
  Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan,
  Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart.
  
  These are the lilies glorious as Solomon,
  Who toil not, neither do they spin,—unless
  It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal.
  
  Here is the surfeit which to them who earn
  The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves
  The tithe that will support them till they crawl
  Back to her cold hard bosom.
  
  Here is health
  Followed by grim disease, glory by shame,
  Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want,
  And England's sin by England's punishment.
  
  And, as the effect pursues the cause foregone,
  Lo, giving substance to my words, behold
  At once the sign and the thing signified—
  A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts,
  Horsed upon stumbling jades, carted with dung,
  Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins
  And rotten hiding-holes, to point the moral
  Of this presentment, and bring up the rear
  Of painted pomp with misery!
  The Youth.
  
  'Tis but
  The anti-masque, and serves as discords do
  In sweetest music.
  
  Who would love May flowers
  If they succeeded not to Winter's flaw;
  Or day unchanged by night; or joy itself
  Without the touch of sorrow?
  
  Second Citizen.
  
  I and thou—
  A Marshalsman.
  
  Place, give place!
  Scene II.
  
  —A Chamber in Whitehall.
  
  Enter the King, Queen, Laud, Lord Strafford, Lord Cottington, and other Lords;Archy ; also St.
  
  John, with some Gentlemen of the Inns of Court.
  
  King.
  
  Thanks, gentlemen.
  
  I heartily accept
  This token of your service: your gay masque
  Was performed gallantly.
  
  And it shows well
  When subjects twine such flowers of [observance?
  
  ]
  With the sharp thorns that deck the English crown.
  
  A gentle heart enjoys what it confers,
  Even as it suffers that which it inflicts,
  Though Justice guides the stroke.
  
  Accept my hearty thanks.
  
  Queen.
  
  And gentlemen,
  Call your poor Queen your debtor.
  
  Your quaint pageant
  Rose on me like the figures of past years,
  Treading their still path back to infancy,
  More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer
  The quiet cradle.
  
  I could have almost wept
  To think I was in Paris, where these shows
  Are well devised—such as I was ere yet
  My young heart shared a portion of the burthen,
  The careful weight, of this great monarchy.
  
  There, gentlemen, between the sovereign's pleasure
  And that which it regards, no clamour lifts
  Its proud interposition.
  
  In Paris ribald censurers dare not move
  Their poisonous tongues against these sinless sports;
  And his smile
  Warms those who bask in it, as ours would do
  If.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Take my heart's thanks: add them, gentlemen,
  To those good words which, were he King of France,
  My royal lord would turn to golden deeds.
  
  St.
  
  John.
  
  Madam, the love of Englishmen can make
  The lightest favour of their lawful king
  Outweigh a despot's.
  
  —We humbly take our leaves,
  Enriched by smiles which France can never buy.
  
  [Exeunt St.
  
  John and the Gentlemen of the Inns of Court.
  
  King.
  
  My Lord Archbishop,
  Mark you what spirit sits in St.
  
  John's eyes?
  
  Methinks it is too saucy for this presence.
  
  Archy.
  
  Yes, pray your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated [eye] sees everything upside down, you who are wise will discern the shadow of an idiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting springes to catch woodcocks in haymaking time.
  
  Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes are tempered to the error of his age, and because he is a fool, and by special ordinance of God forbidden ever to see himself as he is, sees now in that deep eye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, and weighing words out between king and subjects.
  
  One scale is full of promises, and the other full of protestations: and then another devil creeps behind the first out of the dark windings [of a] pregnant lawyer's brain, and takes the bandage from the other's eyes, and throws a sword into the left-hand scale, for all the world like my Lord Essex's there.
  
  Strafford.
  
  A rod in pickle for the Fool's back!
  Archy.
  
  Ay, and some are now smiling whose tears will make the brine; for the Fool sees--
  Strafford.
  
  Insolent! You shall have your coat turned and be whipped out of the palace for this.
  
  Archy.
  
  When all the fools are whipped, and all the Protestant writers, while the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch a thief.
  
  If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy would be disgraced in good company.
  
  Let the knaves whip the fools, and all the fools laugh at it.
  
  [Let the] wise and godly slit each other's noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to Bedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic contemplations, and manage the state of England.
  
  Let all the honest men who lie [pinched?
  
  ] up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody of the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them.
  
  Enter Secretary Lyttelton, with papers.
  
  King
  (looking over the papers).
  
  These stiff Scots
  His Grace of Canterbury must take order
  To force under the Church's yoke.
  
  —You, Wentworth,
  Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add
  Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy,
  To what in me were wanting.
  
  —My Lord Weston,
  Look that those merchants draw not without loss
  Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment
  Of shipmoney, take fullest compensation
  For violation of our royal forests,
  Whose limits, from neglect, have been o'ergrown
  With cottages and cornfields.
  
  The uttermost
  Farthing exact from those who claim exemption
  From knighthood: that which once was a reward
  Shall thus be made a punishment, that subjects
  May know how majesty can wear at will
  The rugged mood.
  
  —My Lord of Coventry,
  Lay my command upon the Courts below
  That bail be not accepted for the prisoners
  Under the warrant of the Star Chamber.
  
  The people shall not find the stubbornness
  Of Parliament a cheap or easy method
  Of dealing with their rightful sovereign:
  And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry,
  We will find time and place for fit rebuke.
  
  —
  My Lord of Canterbury.
  
  Archy.
  
  The fool is here.
  
  Laud.
  
  I crave permission of your Majesty
  To order that this insolent fellow be
  Chastised: he mocks the sacred character,
  Scoffs at the state, and--
  King.
  
  What, my Archy?
  
  He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears,
  Yet with a quaint and graceful licence—Prithee
  For this once do not as Prynne would, were he
  Primate of England.
  
  With your Grace's leave,
  He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot
  Hung in his gilded prison from the window
  Of a queen's bower over the public way,
  Blasphemes with a bird's mind:—his words, like arrows
  Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit,
  Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.
  
  —
  (To Archy.
  
  )
  Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence
  Ten minutes in the rain; be it your penance
  To bring news how the world goes there.
  
  [Exit Archy.
  
  Poor Archy!
  He weaves about himself a world of mirth
  Out of the wreck of ours.
  
  Laud.
  
  I take with patience, as my Master did,
  All scoffs permitted from above.
  
  King.
  
  My lord,
  Pray overlook these papers.
  
  Archy's words
  Had wings, but these have talons.
  
  Queen.
  
  And the lion
  That wears them must be tamed.
  
  My dearest lord,
  I see the new-born courage in your eye
  Armed to strike dead the Spirit of the Time,
  Which spurs to rage the many-headed beast.
  
  Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve,
  And it were better thou hadst still remained
  The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs
  The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer;
  And Opportunity, that empty wolf,
  Flies at his throat who falls.
  
  Subdue thy actions
  Even to the disposition of thy purpose,
  And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel;
  And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak,
  Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace,
  And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss,
  As when she keeps the company of rebels,
  Who think that she is Fear.
  
  This do, lest we
  Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle
  In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream
  Out of our worshipped state.
  
  King.
  
  Belovèd friend,
  God is my witness that this weight of power,
  Which He sets me my earthly task to wield.
  
  Under His law, is my delight and pride
  Only because thou lovest that and me.
  
  For a king bears the office of a God
  To all the under world; and to his God
  Alone he must deliver up his trust,
  Unshorn of its permitted attributes.
  
  [It seems] now as the baser elements
  Had mutinied against the golden sun
  That kindles them to harmony and quells
  Their self-destroying rapine.
  
  The wild million
  Strike at the eye that guides them; like as humours
  Of the distempered body that conspire
  Against the spirit of life throned in the heart,—
  And thus become the prey of one another,
  And last of death—
  Strafford.
  
  That which would be ambition in a subject
  Is duty in a sovereign; for on him,
  As on a keystone, hangs the arch of life,
  Whose safety is its strength.
  
  Degree and form,
  And all that makes the age of reasoning man
  More memorable than a beast's, depend on this--
  That Right should fence itself inviolably
  With Power; in which respect the state of England
  From usurpation by the insolent commons
  Cries for reform.
  
  Get treason, and spare treasure.
  
  Fee with coin
  The loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies
  Opposing factions,-- be thyself of none;
  And borrow gold of many, for those who lend
  Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus
  Keep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay,
  Till time, and its coming generations
  Of nights and days unborn, bring some one chance,.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Or war or pestilence or Nature's self,--
  By some distemperature or terrible sign,
  Be as an arbiter betwixt themselves.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Nor let your Majesty
  Doubt here the peril of the unseen event.
  
  How did your brother Kings, coheritors
  In your high interest in the subject earth,
  Rise past such troubles to that height of power
  Where now they sit, and awfully serene
  Smile on the trembling world?
  
  Such popular storms
  Philip the Second of Spain, this Lewis of France,
  And late the German head of many bodies,
  And every petty lord of Italy,
  Quelled or by arts or arms.
  
  Is England poorer
  Or feebler?
  
  or art thou who wield'st her power
  Tamer than they?
  
  or shall this island be--
  [Girdled] by its inviolable waters—
  To the world present and the world to come
  Sole pattern of extinguished monarchy?
  
  Not if thou dost as I would have thee do.
  
  King.
  
  Your words shall be my deeds:
  You speak the image of my thought.
  
  My friend
  (If Kings can have a friend, I call thee so),
  Beyond the large commission which [belongs]
  Under the great seal of the realm, take this:
  And, for some obvious reasons, let there be
  No seal on it, except my kingly word
  And honour as I am a gentleman.
  
  Be -- as thou art within my heart and mind--
  Another self, here and in Ireland:
  Do what thou judgest well, take amplest licence,
  And stick not even at questionable means.
  
  Hear me, Wentworth.
  
  My word is as a wall
  Between thee and this world thine enemy—
  That hates thee, for thou lovest me.
  
  Strafford.
  
  I own
  No friend but thee, no enemies but thine:
  Thy lightest thought is my eternal law.
  
  How weak, how short, is life to pay—
  King.
  
  Peace, peace.
  
  Thou ow'st me nothing yet.
  
  (To Laud.
  
  )
  My lord, what say
  Those papers?
  
  Laud.
  
  Your Majesty has ever interposed,
  In lenity towards your native soil,
  Between the heavy vengeance of the Church
  And Scotland.
  
  Mark the consequence of warming
  This brood of northern vipers in your bosom.
  
  The rabble, instructed no doubt
  By Loudon, Lindsay, Hume, and false Argyll
  (For the waves never menace heaven until
  Scourged by the wind's invisible tyranny),
  Have in the very temple of the Lord
  Done outrage to His chosen ministers.
  
  They scorn the liturgy of the Holy Church,
  Refuse to obey her canons, and deny
  The apostolic power with which the Spirit
  Has filled its elect vessels, even from him
  Who held the keys with power to loose and bind,
  To him who now pleads in this royal presence.
  
  —
  Let ample powers and new instructions be
  Sent to the High Commissioners in Scotland.
  
  To death, imprisonment, and confiscation,
  Add torture, add the ruin of the kindred
  Of the offender, add the brand of infamy,
  Add mutilation: and if this suffice not,
  Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst
  They may lick up that scum of schismatics.
  
  I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring
  What we possess, still prate of Christian peace,
  As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers
  Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong,
  Should be let loose against the innocent sleep
  Of templed cities and the smiling fields,
  For some poor argument of policy
  Which touches our own profit or our pride
  (Where it indeed were Christian charity
  To turn the cheek even to the smiter's hand):
  And, when our great Redeemer, when our God,
  When He who gave, accepted, and retained
  Himself in propitiation of our sins,
  Is scorned in His immediate ministry,
  With hazard of the inestimable loss
  Of all the truth and discipline which is
  Salvation to the extremest generation
  Of men innumerable, they talk of peace!
  Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now:
  For, by that Christ who came to bring a sword,
  Not peace, upon the earth, and gave command
  To His disciples at the Passover
  That each should sell his robe and buy a sword,—
  Once strip that minister of naked wrath,
  And it shall never sleep in peace again
  Till Scotland bend or break.
  
  King.
  
  My Lord Archbishop,
  Do what thou wilt and what thou canst in this.
  
  Thy earthly even as thy heavenly King
  Gives thee large power in his unquiet realm.
  
  But we want money, and my mind misgives me
  That for so great an enterprise, as yet,
  We are unfurnished.
  
  Strafford.
  
  Yet it may not long
  Rest on our wills.
  
  Cottington.
  
  The expenses
  Of gathering shipmoney, and of distraining
  For every petty rate (for we encounter
  A desperate opposition inch by inch
  In every warehouse and on every farm),
  Have swallowed up the gross sum of the imposts;
  So that, though felt as a most grievous scourge
  Upon the land, they stand us in small stead
  As touches the receipt.
  
  Strafford.
  
  'Tis a conclusion
  Most arithmetical: and thence you infer
  Perhaps the assembling of a parliament.
  
  Now, if a man should call his dearest enemies
  To sit in licensed judgement on his life,
  His Majesty might wisely take that course.
  
  [Aside to Cottington.
  
  It is enough to expect from these lean imposts
  That they perform the office of a scourge,
  Without more profit.
  
  (Aloud.
  
  )
  Fines and confiscations,
  And a forced loan from the refractory city,
  Will fill our coffers: and the golden love
  Of loyal gentlemen and noble friends
  For the worshipped father of our common country,
  With contributions from the catholics,
  Will make Rebellion pale in our excess.
  
  Be these the expedients until time and wisdom
  Shall frame a settled state of government.
  
  Laud.
  
  And weak expedients they! Have we not drained
  All, till the.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  which seemed
  A mine exhaustless?
  
  Strafford.
  
  And the love which is,
  If loyal hearts could turn their blood to gold.
  
  Laud.
  
  Both now grow barren: and I speak it not
  As loving parliaments, which, as they have been
  In the right hand of bold bad mighty kings
  The scourges of the bleeding Church, I hate.
  
  Methinks they scarcely can deserve our fear.
  
  Strafford.
  
  Oh! my dear liege, take back the wealth thou gavest:
  With that, take all I held, but as in trust
  For thee, of mine inheritance: leave me but
  This unprovided body for thy service,
  And a mind dedicated to no care
  Except thy safety:-- but assemble not
  A parliament.
  
  Hundreds will bring, like me,
  Their fortunes, as they would their blood, before--
  King.
  
  No! thou who judgest them art but one.
  
  Alas!
  We should be too much out of love with Heaven,
  Did this vile world show many such as thee,
  Thou perfect, just, and honourable man!
  Never shall it be said that Charles of England
  Stripped those he loved for fear of those he scorns;
  Nor will he so much misbecome his throne
  As to impoverish those who most adorn
  And best defend it.
  
  That you urge, dear Strafford,
  Inclines me rather--
  Queen.
  
  To a parliament?
  
  Is this thy firmness?
  
  and thou wilt preside
  Over a knot of .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  censurers,
  To the unswearing of thy best resolves,
  And choose the worst, when the worst comes too soon?
  
  Plight not the worst before the worst must come.
  
  Oh, wilt thou smile whilst our ribald foes,
  Dressed in their own usurped authority,
  Sharpen their tongues on Henrietta's fame?
  
  It is enough! Thou lovest me no more!
  [Weeps.
  
  King.
  
  Oh, Henrietta!
  [They talk apart.
  
  Cottington
  (to Laud).
  
  Money we have none:
  And all the expedients of my Lord of Strafford
  Will scarcely meet the arrears.
  
  Laud.
  
  Without delay
  An army must be sent into the north;
  Followed by a Commission of the Church,
  With amplest power to quench in fire and blood,
  And tears and terror, and the pity of hell,
  The intenser wrath of Heresy.
  
  God will give
  Victory; and victory over Scotland give
  The lion England tamed into our hands.
  
  That will lend power, and power bring gold.
  
  Cottington.
  
  Meanwhile
  We must begin first where your Grace leaves off.
  
  Gold must give power, or—
  Laud.
  
  I am not averse
  From the assembling of a parliament.
  
  Strong actions and smooth words might teach them soon
  The lesson to obey.
  
  And are they not
  A bubble fashioned by the monarch's mouth,
  The birth of one light breath?
  
  If they serve no purpose,
  A word dissolves them.
  
  Strafford.
  
  The engine of parliaments
  Might be deferred until I can bring over
  The Irish regiments: they will serve to assure
  The issue of the war against the Scots.
  
  And, this game won -- which if lost, all is lost--
  Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels,
  And call them, if you will, a parliament.
  
  King.
  
  Oh, be our feet still tardy to shed blood,
  Guilty though it may be! I would still spare
  The stubborn country of my birth, and ward
  From countenances which I loved in youth
  The wrathful Church's lacerating hand.
  
  (To Laud.
  
  )
  Have you o'erlooked the other articles?
  
  [Re-enter Archy.
  
  Laud.
  
  Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane,
  Cromwell, and other rebels of less note,
  Intend to sail with the next favouring wind
  For the Plantations.
  
  Archy.
  
  Where they think to found
  A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play,
  Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.
  
  King.
  
  What's that, sirrah?
  
  Archy.
  
  New devil's politics.
  
  Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths:
  Lucifer was the first republican.
  
  Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three [posts?
  
  ]
  'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,
  Shall sail round the world, and come back again:
  Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull,
  And come back again when the moon is at full:'—
  When, in spite of the Church,
  They will hear homilies of whatever length
  Or form they please.
  
  [Cottington?
  
  ]
  So please your Majesty to sign this order
  For their detention.
  
  Archy.
  
  If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout, rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc.
  
  , and you found these diseases had secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man?
  
  King.
  
  If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely; But in this case --(writing.
  
  )
  Here, my lord, take the warrant, And see it duly executed forthwith.
  
  --
  That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished.
  
  [Exeunt all but King, Queen, and Archy.
  
  Archy.
  
  Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of clergy.
  
  Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud— who would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were impregnable by composition—all impannelled against poor Archy for presenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays.
  
  Queen.
  
  Is the rain over, sirrah?
  
  King.
  
  When it rains
  And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow:
  And therefore never smile till you've done crying.
  
  Archy.
  
  But 'tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky has wept itself serene.
  
  Queen.
  
  What news abroad?
  
  how looks the world this morning?
  
  Archy.
  
  Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers.
  
  There's a rainbow in the sky.
  
  Let your Majesty look at it, for
  'A rainbow in the morning
  Is the shepherd's warning;'
  and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the breath of May pierces like a January blast.
  
  King.
  
  The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and the shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs.
  
  Queen.
  
  But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the deluge are gone, and can return no more.
  
  Archy.
  
  Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies.
  
  -- The rainbow hung over the city with all its shops,.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  and churches, from north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the masonry of heaven— like a balance in which the angel that distributes the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the meanest feet.
  
  Queen.
  
  Who taught you this trash, sirrah?
  
  Archy.
  
  A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt.
  
  --
  But for the rainbow.
  
  It moved as the sun moved, and.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  until the top of the
  Tower.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and
  Lambeth Palace look as dark as a rock before the other.
  
  Methought I saw a crown figured upon one tip, and a mitre on the other.
  
  So, as I had heard treasures were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set off, and at the Tower --
  But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.
  
  King.
  
  Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience.
  
  Archy.
  
  Then conscience is a fool.
  
  —I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap.
  
  I heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.
  
  Queen.
  
  Archy is shrewd and bitter.
  
  Archy.
  
  Like the season, So blow the winds.
  
  —But at the other end of the rainbow, where the gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what think you that I found instead of a mitre?
  
  King.
  
  Vane's wits perhaps.
  
  Archy.
  
  Something as vain.
  
  I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken dishes—the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and the ornament of a worm of worms.
  
  His Grace of Canterbury expects to enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of this ass.
  
  Queen.
  
  Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane
  She place my lute, together with the music
  Mari received last week from Italy,
  In my boudoir, and—
  [Exit Archy.
  
  King.
  
  I'll go in.
  
  Queen.
  
  My beloved lord,
  Have you not noted that the Fool of late
  Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words
  Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?
  
  What can it mean?
  
  I should be loth to think
  Some factious slave had tutored him.
  
  King.
  
  Oh, no!
  He is but Occasion's pupil.
  
  Partly 'tis
  That our minds piece the vacant intervals
  Of his wild words with their own fashioning,—
  As in the imagery of summer clouds,
  Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find
  The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:
  And partly, that the terrors of the time
  Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;
  And in the lightest and the least, may best
  Be seen the current of the coming wind.
  
  Queen.
  
  Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.
  
  Come, I will sing to you; let us go try
  These airs from Italy; and, as we pass
  The gallery, we'll decide where that Correggio
  Shall hang—the Virgin Mother
  With her child, born the King of heaven and earth,
  Whose reign is men's salvation.
  
  And you shall see
  A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,
  Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;
  Liker than any Vandyke ever made,
  A pattern to the unborn age of thee,
  Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy
  A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,
  Did I not think that after we were dead
  Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that
  The cares we waste upon our heavy crown
  Would make it light and glorious as a wreath
  Of Heaven's beams for his dear innocent brow.
  
  King.
  
  Dear Henrietta!
  Scene III.
  
  —The Star Chamber.
  
  Laud, Juxon, Strafford, and others, as Judges.
  
  Prynne as a Prisoner, and thenBastwick.
  
  Laud.
  
  Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick: let the clerk
  Recite his sentence.
  
  Clerk.
  
  'That he pay five thousand
  Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded
  With red-hot iron on the cheek and forehead,
  And be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle
  During the pleasure of the Court.
  
  '
  Laud.
  
  Prisoner,
  If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence
  Should not be put into effect, now speak.
  
  Juxon.
  
  If you have aught to plead in mitigation,
  Speak.
  
  Bastwick.
  
  Thus, my lords.
  
  If, like the prelates, I
  Were an invader of the royal power,
  A public scorner of the word of God,
  Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious,
  Impious in heart and in tyrannic act,
  Void of wit, honesty, and temperance;
  If Satan were my lord, as theirs,—our God
  Pattern of all I should avoid to do;
  Were I an enemy of my God and King
  And of good men, as ye are;—I should merit
  Your fearful state and gilt prosperity,
  Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn
  To cowls and robes of everlasting fire.
  
  But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not
  The only earthly favour ye can yield,
  Or I think worth acceptance at your hands,—
  Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  even as my Master did,
  Until Heaven's kingdom shall descend on earth,
  Or earth be like a shadow in the light
  Of Heaven absorbed—some few tumultuous years
  Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes
  His will whose will is power.
  
  Laud.
  
  Officer, take the prisoner from the bar,
  And be his tongue slit for his insolence.
  
  Bastwick.
  
  While this hand holds a pen—
  Laud.
  
  Be his hands--
  Juxon.
  
  Stop!
  Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak
  No terror, would interpret, being dumb,
  Heaven's thunder to our harm;.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And hands, which now write only their own shame,
  With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away.
  
  Laud.
  
  Much more such 'mercy' among men would be,
  Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge
  Flinch thus from earthly retribution.
  
  I
  Could suffer what I would inflict.
  
  [Exit Bastwick guarded.
  
  Bring up
  The Lord Bishop of Lincoln.
  
  —
  (To Strafford.
  
  )
  Know you not
  That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds
  Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln,
  Were found these scandalous and seditious letters
  Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled?
  
  I speak it not as touching this poor person;
  But of the office which should make it holy,
  Were it as vile as it was ever spotless.
  
  Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes
  His Majesty, if I misinterpret not.
  
  Enter Bishop Williams guarded.
  
  Strafford.
  
  'Twere politic and just that Williams taste
  The bitter fruit of his connection with
  The schismatics.
  
  But you, my Lord Archbishop,
  Who owed your first promotion to his favour,
  Who grew beneath his smile—
  Laud.
  
  Would therefore beg
  The office of his judge from this High Court,—
  That it shall seem, even as it is, that I,
  In my assumption of this sacred robe,
  Have put aside all worldly preference,
  All sense of all distinction of all persons,
  All thoughts but of the service of the Church.
  
  —
  Bishop of Lincoln!
  Williams.
  
  Peace, proud hierarch!
  I know my sentence, and I own it just.
  
  Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve,
  In stretching to the utmost.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Scene IV.
  
  --Hampden, Pym, Cromwell, his Daughter, and young Sir Harry Vane.
  
  Hampden.
  
  England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle,
  Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!
  I held what I inherited in thee
  As pawn for that inheritance of freedom
  Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile:
  How can I call thee England, or my country?
  
  —
  Does the wind hold?
  
  Vane.
  
  The vanes sit steady
  Upon the Abbey towers.
  
  The silver lightnings
  Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke,
  Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air.
  
  Mark too that flock of fleecy-wingèd clouds
  Sailing athwart St.
  
  Margaret's.
  
  Hampden.
  
  Hail, fleet herald
  Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide
  Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,
  Beyond the shot of tyranny,
  Beyond the webs of that swoln spider .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beyond the curses, calumnies, and [lies?
  
  ]
  Of atheist priests! .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And thou
  Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
  Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm,
  Bright as the path to a belovèd home,
  Oh, light us to the isles of the evening land!
  Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer
  Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
  Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions,
  Where Power's poor dupes and victims yet have never
  Propitiated the savage fear of kings
  With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
  Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
  To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns;
  Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo
  Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites
  Wrest man's free worship, from the God who loves,
  To the poor worm who envies us His love!
  Receive, thou young.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  of Paradise,
  These exiles from the old and sinful world!.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
  Dart mitigated influence through their veil
  Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green
  The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;
  This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
  Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
  Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
  Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
  A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.
  
  The boundless universe
  Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul
  That owns no master; while the loathliest ward
  Of this wide prison, England, is a nest
  Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,—
  To which the eagle spirits of the free,
  Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm
  Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,
  Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die
  And cannot be repelled.
  
  Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,
  They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop
  Through palaces and temples thunderproof.
  
  SCENE V
  Archy.
  
  I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the tears shed on its old [roots?
  
  ] as the [wind?
  
  ] plays the song of
  'A widow bird sate mourning
  Upon a wintry bough.
  
  '
  [Sings]
  Heigho! the lark and the owl!
  One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:--
  Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
  Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
  
  'A widow bird sate mourning for her love
  Upon a wintry bough;
  The frozen wind crept on above,
  The freezing stream below.
  
  'There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
  No flower upon the ground,
  And little motion in the air
  Except the mill-wheel's sound.
  
  '
  Charles the First was designed in 1818, begun towards the close of 1819, resumed in January, and finally laid aside by June, 1822.
  
  It was published in part in the Posthumous Poems, 1824, and printed, in its present form (with the addition of some 530 lines), by Mr.
  
  William Michael Rossetti, 1870.
  
  1.
  
  Archy, the court fool of Charles I, is
  both an unacknowledged prophet and, as King Charles claims, a weaver of "a world of mirth out of the wreck of ours.
  
  "

• Chorus from Hellas Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The world's great age begins anew,
  The golden years return,
  The earth doth like a snake renew
  Her winter weeds outworn:
  Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
  Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
  
  A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
  From waves serener far;
  A new Peneus rolls his fountains
  Against the morning star.
  
  Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
  Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
  
  A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
  Fraught with a later prize;
  Another Orpheus sings again,
  And loves, and weeps, and dies.
  
  A new Ulysses leaves once more
  Calypso for his native shore.
  
  Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
  If earth Death's scroll must be!
  Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
  Which dawns upon the free:
  Although a subtler Sphinx renew
  Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
  
  Another Athens shall arise,
  And to remoter time
  Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
  The splendour of its prime;
  And leave, if nought so bright may live,
  All earth can take or Heaven can give.
  
  Saturn and Love their long repose
  Shall burst, more bright and good
  Than all who fell, than One who rose,
  Than many unsubdu'd:
  Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
  But votive tears and symbol flowers.
  
  Oh cease! must hate and death return?
  
  Cease! must men kill and die?
  
  Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
  Of bitter prophecy.
  
  The world is weary of the past,
  Oh might it die or rest at last!
  NOTES
  Form:
  ababcc
  Composition Date:
  1821
  1060.
  
  Written at Pisa in the autumn of 1821 and published in 1822, Hellas
  is a "lyrical drama" treating of the contemporary struggle for freedom in
  Greece and dedicated to Prince Mavrocordato, whom Shelley met in exile at
  Pisa and who had returned to Greece in June 1821 to take part in the revolution
  against the Turks.
  
  Shelley writes in a Preface: "The Persae of Aeschylus
  afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the
  glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe
  parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians.
  
  I have,
  therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  [suggesting]
  the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilization
  and social improvement.
  
  " The action takes place in the palace of the Turkish
  king, where he receives reports on the progress of the war from messengers
  and prophecies of doom from visionary visitors.
  
  The last news, however, is of
  a Turkish victory, to the dismay of the Greek slaves who act as chorus throughout
  the play.
  
  "The final chorus," according to Shelley's note, "is indistinct and
  obscure, as the event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells.
  
  Prophecies
  of wars, and rumours of wars, etc.
  
  , may safely be made by poet or prophet in
  any age, but to anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness
  is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign.
  
  It
  will remind the reader 'magno nec proximus intervallo' of Isaiah and
  Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil which we
  endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of
  society in which the 'lion shall lie down with the lamb,' and 'omnis feret
  omnia tellus.
  
  ' Let these great names be my authority and excuse.
  
  "
  The world's great age: the "annus magnus" at the end of which, according
  to an idea of the ancients, all the heavenly bodies would return to their original
  positions, and when, in consequence, the history of the world would begin to
  repeat itself.
  
  1068.
  
  Peneus: a river in Thessaly.
  
  1070.
  
  Tempe: the vale through which Peneus flows.
  
  1071.
  
  Cyclads: a group of islands in the Aegean.
  
  1072.
  
  Argo: the vessel which bore Jason on his search for the Golden Fleece.
  
  1072-77.
  
  See Virgil, Eclogue IV:
  Another Tiphys shall new seas explore
  ;
  Another Argo land the chiefs upon th'Iberian shore
  ;
  Another Helen other wars create,
  And great Achilles urge the Trojan fate
  (Dryden's translation).
  
  1074.
  
  Orpheus.
  
  For the stories of Orpheus--his entrancing music, the loss of his
  wife Eurydice and his ultimate failure to recover her from the underworld, and
  his death at the hands of Maenads (worshippers of Dionysus)--see Ovid's
  Metamorphoses.
  
  Calypso: a sorceress on whose island Ulysses remained for seven years on
  the way home from Troy to Ithaca.
  
  1080.
  
  Laian rage.
  
  Laius was King of Thebes, father of Oedipus, and head of a
  house whose horrors were a favourite theme of Greek tragedy.
  
  1082.
  
  Sphinx: a monster who sat on the roadside at Thebes and slew all who could
  not solve a riddle it proposed.
  
  1090-93.
  
  Shelley's note reads (in part): "Saturn and Love were among the deities of
  a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness.
  
  All those who
  fell, or the Gods of Greece, Asia and Egypt
  ; the One who rose, or
  Jesus Christ .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ; and the many unsubdued, or the monstrous objects of
  the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of
  America.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  "

• Dark Spirit of the Desart Rude Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Dark Spirit of the desart rude
  That o'er this awful solitude,
  Each tangled and untrodden wood,
  Each dark and silent glen below,
  Where sunlight's gleamings never glow,
  Whilst jetty, musical and still,
  In darkness speeds the mountain rill;
  That o'er yon broken peaks sublime,
  Wild shapes that mock the scythe of time,
  And the pure Ellan's foamy course,
  Wavest thy wand of magic force;
  Art thou yon sooty and fearful fowl
  That flaps its wing o'er the leafless oak
  That o'er the dismal scene doth scowl
  And mocketh music with its croak?
  
  I've sought thee where day's beams decay
  On the peak of the lonely hill,
  I've sought thee where they melt away
  By the wave of the pebbly rill;
  I've strained to catch thy murky form
  Bestride the rapid and gloomy storm;
  Thy red and sullen eyeball's glare
  Has shot, in a dream, thro' the midnight air
  But never did thy shape express
  Such an emphatic gloominess.
  
  And where art thou, O thing of gloom?
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  On Nature's unreviving tomb
  Where sapless, blasted and alone
  She mourns her blooming centuries gone!-
  From the fresh sod the Violets peep,
  The buds have burst their frozen sleep,
  Whilst every green and peopled tree
  Is alive with Earth's sweet melody.
  
  But thou alone art here,
  Thou desolate Oak, whose scathed head
  For ages has never trembled,
  Whose giant trunk dead lichens bind
  Moaningly sighing in the wind,
  With huge loose rocks beneath thee spread,
  Thou, Thou alone art here!
  Remote from every living thing,
  Tree, shrub or grass or flower,
  Thou seemest of this spot the King
  And with a regal power
  Suck like that race all sap away
  And yet upon the spoil decay.

• Death Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  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 calls—they all are gone--
  Fond wretch, all dead! those vacant names alone,
  This most familiar scene, my pain--
  These tombs—alone remain.
  
  II.
  
  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.

• Death In Life Read Poem Log in to favourite

  My head is heavy, my limbs are weary,
  And it is not life that makes me move.

• Death Is Here And Death Is There Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Death is here and death is there,
  Death is busy everywhere,
  All around, within, beneath,
  Above is death—and we are death.
  
  II.
  
  Death has set his mark and seal
  On all we are and all we feel,
  On all we know and all we fear,
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  III.
  
  First our pleasures die—and then
  Our hopes, and then our fears—and when
  These are dead, the debt is due,
  Dust claims dust—and we die too.
  
  IV.
  
  All things that we love and cherish,
  Like ourselves must fade and perish;
  Such is our rude mortal lot--
  Love itself would, did they not.

• Despair Read Poem Log in to favourite

  And canst thou mock mine agony, thus calm
  In cloudless radiance, Queen of silver night?
  
  Can you, ye flow'rets, spread your perfumed balm
  Mid pearly gems of dew that shine so bright?
  
  And you wild winds, thus can you sleep so still
  Whilst throbs the tempest of my breast so high?
  
  Can the fierce night-fiends rest on yonder hill,
  And, in the eternal mansions of the sky,
  Can the directors of the storm in powerless silence lie?
  
  Hark! I hear music on the zephyr’s wing,
  Louder it floats along the unruffled sky;
  Some fairy sure has touched the viewless string--
  Now faint in distant air the murmurs die.
  
  Awhile it stills the tide of agony.
  
  Now--now it loftier swells--again stern woe
  Arises with the awakening melody.
  
  Again fierce torments, such as demons know,
  In bitterer, feller tide, on this torn bosom flow.
  
  Arise ye sightless spirits of the storm,
  Ye unseen minstrels of the aereal song,
  Pour the fierce tide around this lonely form,
  And roll the tempest's wildest swell along.
  
  Dart the red lightning, wing the forked flash,
  Pour from thy cloud-formed hills the thunder’s roar;
  Arouse the whirlwind--and let ocean dash
  In fiercest tumult on the rocking shore,--
  Destroy this life or let earth's fabric be no more.
  
  Yes! every tie that links me here is dead;
  Mysterious Fate, thy mandate I obey,
  Since hope and peace, and joy, for aye are fled,
  I come, terrific power, I come away.
  
  Then o'er this ruined soul let spirits of Hell,
  In triumph, laughing wildly, mock its pain;
  And though with direst pangs mine heart-strings swell,
  I’ll echo back their deadly yells again,
  Cursing the power that ne’er made aught in vain.

• Dirge For The Year Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Orphan Hours, the Year is dead,
  Come and sigh, come and weep!
  Merry Hours, smile instead,
  For the Year is but asleep.
  
  See, it smiles as it is sleeping,
  Mocking your untimely weeping.
  
  II.
  
  As an earthquake rocks a corse
  In its coffin in the clay,
  So White Winter, that rough nurse,
  Rocks the death-cold Year to-day;
  Solemn Hours! wail aloud
  For your mother in her shroud.
  
  III.
  
  As the wild air stirs and sways
  The tree-swung cradle of a child,
  So the breath of these rude days
  Rocks the Year:—be calm and mild,
  Trembling Hours, she will arise
  With new love within her eyes.
  
  IV.
  
  January gray is here,
  Like a sexton by her grave;
  February bears the bier,
  March with grief doth howl and rave,
  And April weeps--but, O ye Hours!
  Follow with May's fairest flowers.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824, and dated January 1, 1821.

• Epigram I: To Stella Read Poem Log in to favourite

  From the Greek of Plato.
  
  Thou wert the morning star among the living,
  Ere thy fair light had fled;--
  Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
  New splendour to the dead.

• Epigram II: Kissing Helena Read Poem Log in to favourite

  From the Greek of Plato.
  
  Kissing Helena, together
  With my kiss, my soul beside it
  Came to my lips, and there I kept it,--
  For the poor thing had wandered thither,
  To follow where the kiss should guide it,
  Oh, cruel I, to intercept it!

• Epigram III: Spirit of Plato Read Poem Log in to favourite

  From the Greek.
  
  Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb?
  
  To what sublime and star-ypaven home
  Floatest thou?
  
  --
  I am the image of swift Plato’s spirit,
  Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit
  His corpse below.

• Epigram IV: Circumstance Read Poem Log in to favourite

  From the Greek.
  
  A man who was about to hang himself,
  Finding a purse, then threw away his rope;
  The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf,
  The halter found; and used it.
  
  So is Hope
  Changed for Despair--one laid upon the shelf,
  We take the other.
  
  Under Heaven’s high cope
  Fortune is God—all you endure and do
  Depends on circumstance as much as you.

• Epipsychidion Read Poem Log in to favourite

  VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V---,
  NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF ---
  L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.
  
  ~Her own words.
  
  My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
  Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning,
  Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
  Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
  Thee to base company (as chance may do),
  Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
  I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
  My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
  And bid them own that thou art beautiful.
  
  EPIPSYCHIDION.
  
  Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,
  Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,
  In my heart's temple I suspend to thee
  These votive wreaths of withered memory.
  
  Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,
  Pourest such music, that it might assuage
  The ruggèd hearts of those who prisoned thee,
  Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;
  This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
  Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!
  But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
  And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
  
  High, spirit-wingèd Heart! who dost for ever
  Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
  Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed
  It over-soared this low and worldly shade,
  Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast
  Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!
  I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,
  Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.
  
  Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
  Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
  All that is insupportable in thee
  Of light, and love, and immortality!
  Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!
  Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!
  Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
  Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!
  Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!
  Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror
  In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
  All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!
  Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
  Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;
  I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song
  All of its much mortality and wrong,
  With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
  From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
  Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:
  Then smile on it, so that it may not die.
  
  I never thought before my death to see
  Youth's vision thus made perfect.
  
  Emily,
  I love thee; though the world by no thin name
  Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.
  
  Would we two had been twins of the same mother!
  Or, that the name my heart lent to another
  Could be a sister's bond for her and thee,
  Blending two beams of one eternity!
  Yet were one lawful and the other true,
  These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due,
  How beyond refuge I am thine.
  
  Ah me!
  I am not thine: I am a part of thee.
  
  Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings
  Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,
  Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style,
  All that thou art.
  
  Art thou not void of guile,
  A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?
  
  A well of sealed and secret happiness,
  Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
  Vanquishing dissonance and gloom?
  
  A Star
  Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone?
  
  A Smile amid dark frowns?
  
  a gentle tone
  Amid rude voices?
  
  a belovèd light?
  
  A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?
  
  A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play
  Make music on, to soothe the roughest day
  And lull fond Grief asleep?
  
  a buried treasure?
  
  A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
  
  A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?
  
  —I measure
  The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,
  And find—alas! mine own infirmity.
  
  She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way,
  And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,
  Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,
  Led into light, life, peace.
  
  An antelope,
  In the suspended impulse of its lightness,
  Were less aethereally light: the brightness
  Of her divinest presence trembles through
  Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
  Embodied in the windless heaven of June
  Amid the splendour-wingèd stars, the Moon
  Burns, inextinguishably beautiful:
  And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
  Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
  Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops
  Of planetary music heard in trance.
  
  In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,
  The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap
  Under the lightnings of the soul—too deep
  For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.
  
  The glory of her being, issuing thence,
  Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade
  Of unentangled intermixture, made
  By Love, of light and motion: one intense
  Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence,
  Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,
  Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing
  With the unintermitted blood, which there
  Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air
  The crimson pulse of living morning quiver,)
  Continuously prolonged, and ending never,
  Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled
  Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world;
  Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.
  
  Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress
  And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress
  The air of her own speed has disentwined,
  The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;
  And in the soul a wild odour is felt,
  Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt
  Into the bosom of a frozen bud.
  
  —
  See where she stands! a mortal shape indued
  With love and life and light and deity,
  And motion which may change but cannot die;
  An image of some bright Eternity;
  A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour
  Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender
  Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love
  Under whose motions life's dull billows move;
  A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning;
  A Vision like incarnate April, warning,
  With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy
  Into his summer grave.
  
  Ah, woe is me!
  What have I dared?
  
  where am I lifted?
  
  how
  Shall I descend, and perish not?
  
  I know
  That Love makes all things equal: I have heard
  By mine own heart this joyous truth averred:
  The spirit of the worm beneath the sod
  In love and worship, blends itself with God.
  
  Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate
  Whose course has been so starless! O too late
  Belovèd! O too soon adored, by me!
  For in the fields of Immortality
  My spirit should at first have worshipped thine,
  A divine presence in a place divine;
  Or should have moved beside it on this earth,
  A shadow of that substance, from its birth;
  But not as now:—I love thee; yes, I feel
  That on the fountain of my heart a seal
  Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright
  For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight.
  
  We—are we not formed, as notes of music are,
  For one another, though dissimilar;
  Such difference without discord, as can make
  Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake
  As trembling leaves in a continuous air?
  
  Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare
  Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.
  
  I never was attached to that great sect,
  Whose doctrine is, that each one should select
  Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
  And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
  To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
  Of modern morals, and the beaten road
  Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,
  Who travel to their home among the dead
  By the broad highway of the world, and so
  With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
  The dreariest and the longest journey go.
  
  True Love in this differs from gold and clay,
  That to divide is not to take away.
  
  Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
  Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
  Imagination! which from earth and sky,
  And from the depths of human fantasy,
  As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
  The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
  Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
  Of its reverberated lightning.
  
  Narrow
  The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
  The life that wears, the spirit that creates
  One object, and one form, and builds thereby
  A sepulchre for its eternity.
  
  Mind from its object differs most in this:
  Evil from good; misery from happiness;
  The baser from the nobler; the impure
  And frail, from what is clear and must endure.
  
  If you divide suffering and dross, you may
  Diminish till it is consumed away;
  If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
  Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
  How much, while any yet remains unshared,
  Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:
  This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw
  The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law
  By which those live, to whom this world of life
  Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
  Tills for the promise of a later birth
  The wilderness of this Elysian earth.
  
  There was a Being whom my spirit oft
  Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
  In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,
  Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
  Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
  Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves
  Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
  Paved her light steps;—on an imagined shore,
  Under the gray beak of some promontory
  She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
  That I beheld her not.
  
  In solitudes
  Her voice came to me through the whispering woods,
  And from the fountains, and the odours deep
  Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep
  Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,
  Breathed but of her to the enamoured air;
  And from the breezes whether low or loud,
  And from the rain of every passing cloud,
  And from the singing of the summer-birds,
  And from all sounds, all silence.
  
  In the words
  Of antique verse and high romance, -- in form,
  Sound, colour -- in whatever checks that Storm
  Which with the shattered present chokes the past;
  And in that best philosophy, whose taste
  Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom
  As glorious as a fiery martyrdom;
  Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.
  
  --
  Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth
  I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,
  And towards the lodestar of my one desire,
  I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight
  Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light,
  When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere
  A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,
  As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.
  
  —
  But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame,
  Passed, like a God throned on a wingèd planet,
  Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,
  Into the dreary cone of our life's shade;
  And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,
  I would have followed, though the grave between
  Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:
  When a voice said:--'O thou of hearts the weakest,
  The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.
  
  '
  Then I—'Where?
  
  '--the world's echo answered 'where?
  
  '
  And in that silence, and in my despair,
  I questioned every tongueless wind that flew
  Over my tower of mourning, if it knew
  Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul;
  And murmured names and spells which have control
  Over the sightless tyrants of our fate;
  But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate
  The night which closed on her; nor uncreate
  That world within this Chaos, mine and me,
  Of which she was the veiled Divinity,
  The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:
  And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear
  And every gentle passion sick to death,
  Feeding my course with expectation's breath,
  Into the wintry forest of our life;
  And struggling through its error with vain strife,
  And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,
  And half bewildered by new forms, I passed,
  Seeking among those untaught foresters
  If I could find one form resembling hers,
  In which she might have masked herself from me.
  
  There,—One, whose voice was venomed melody
  Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers;
  The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,
  Her touch was as electric poison,—flame
  Out of her looks into my vitals came,
  And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
  A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew
  Into the core of my green heart, and lay
  Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray
  O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime
  With ruins of unseasonable time.
  
  In many mortal forms I rashly sought
  The shadow of that idol of my thought.
  
  And some were fair—but beauty dies away:
  Others were wise—but honeyed words betray:
  And One was true—oh! why not true to me?
  
  Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,
  I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,
  Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day
  Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain.
  
  When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again
  Deliverance.
  
  One stood on my path who seemed
  As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed
  As is the Moon, whose changes ever run
  Into themselves, to the eternal Sun;
  The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles,
  Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,
  That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame
  Which ever is transformed, yet still the same,
  And warms not but illumines.
  
  Young and fair
  As the descended Spirit of that sphere,
  She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night
  From its own darkness, until all was bright
  Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,
  And, as a cloud charioted by the wind,
  She led me to a cave in that wild place,
  And sate beside me, with her downward face
  Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon
  Waxing and waning o'er Endymion.
  
  And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,
  And all my being became bright or dim
  As the Moon's image in a summer sea,
  According as she smiled or frowned on me;
  And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:
  Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:—
  For at her silver voice came Death and Life,
  Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,
  Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,
  The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,
  And through the cavern without wings they flew,
  And cried 'Away, he is not of our crew.
  
  '
  I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.
  
  What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,
  Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips
  Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;—
  And how my soul was as a lampless sea,
  And who was then its Tempest; and when She,
  The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost
  Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast
  The moving billows of my being fell
  Into a death of ice, immovable;—
  And then—what earthquakes made it gape and split,
  The white Moon smiling all the while on it,
  These words conceal:—If not, each word would be
  The key of staunchless tears.
  
  Weep not for me!
  At length, into the obscure Forest came
  The Vision I had sought through grief and shame.
  
  Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns
  Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's,
  And from her presence life was radiated
  Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead;
  So that her way was paved, and roofed above
  With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;
  And music from her respiration spread
  Like light,—all other sounds were penetrated
  By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,
  So that the savage winds hung mute around;
  And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair
  Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air:
  Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun,
  When light is changed to love, this glorious One
  Floated into the cavern where I lay,
  And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay
  Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below
  As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow
  I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night
  Was penetrating me with living light:
  I knew it was the Vision veiled from me
  So many years -- that it was Emily.
  
  Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth,
  This world of love, this me; and into birth
  Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart
  Magnetic might into its central heart;
  And lift its billows and its mists, and guide
  By everlasting laws, each wind and tide
  To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;
  And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave
  Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers
  The armies of the rainbow-wingèd showers;
  And, as those married lights, which from the towers
  Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe
  In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;
  And all their many-mingled influence blend,
  If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;—
  So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway
  Govern my sphere of being, night and day!
  Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;
  Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;
  And, through the shadow of the seasons three,
  From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity,
  Light it into the Winter of the tomb,
  Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.
  
  Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,
  Who drew the heart of this frail Universe
  Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion,
  Alternating attraction and repulsion,
  Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;
  Oh, float into our azure heaven again!
  Be there Love's folding-star at thy return;
  The living Sun will feed thee from its urn
  Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn
  In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn
  Will worship thee with incense of calm breath
  And lights and shadows; as the star of Death
  And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild
  Called Hope and Fear—upon the heart are piled
  Their offerings,—of this sacrifice divine
  A World shall be the altar.
  
  Lady mine,
  Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth
  Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth
  Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,
  Will be as of the trees of Paradise.
  
  The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.
  
  To whatsoe'er of dull mortality
  Is mine, remain a vestal sister still;
  To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,
  Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united
  Even as a bride, delighting and delighted.
  
  The hour is come:—the destined Star has risen
  Which shall descend upon a vacant prison.
  
  The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set
  The sentinels—but true Love never yet
  Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:
  Like lightning, with invisible violence
  Piercing its continents; like Heaven's free breath,
  Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,
  Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way
  Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array
  Of arms: more strength has Love than he or they;
  For it can burst his charnel, and make free
  The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,
  The soul in dust and chaos.
  
  Emily,
  A ship is floating in the harbour now,
  A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
  There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
  No keel has ever ploughed that path before;
  The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
  The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
  The merry mariners are bold and free:
  Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
  
  Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
  Is a far Eden of the purple East;
  And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
  And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
  Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
  Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
  
  It is an isle under Ionian skies,
  Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
  And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
  This land would have remained a solitude
  But for some pastoral people native there,
  Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
  Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
  Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.
  
  The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,
  With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
  Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
  And all the winds wandering along the shore
  Undulate with the undulating tide:
  There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
  And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
  As clear as elemental diamond,
  Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
  The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
  (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)
  Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
  Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
  Illumining, with sound that never fails
  Accompany the noonday nightingales;
  And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;
  The light clear element which the isle wears
  Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
  Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
  And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
  And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,
  And dart their arrowy odour through the brain
  Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
  
  And every motion, odour, beam, and tone,
  With that deep music is in unison:
  Which is a soul within the soul—they seem
  Like echoes of an antenatal dream.
  
  —
  It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
  Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
  Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
  Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.
  
  It is a favoured place.
  
  Famine or Blight,
  Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
  Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
  Sail onward far upon their fatal way:
  The wingèd storms, chanting their thunder-psalm
  To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
  Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
  From which its fields and woods ever renew
  Their green and golden immortality.
  
  And from the sea there rise, and from the sky
  There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,
  Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
  Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
  Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
  Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
  Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
  Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
  Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
  An atom of th'Eternal, whose own smile
  Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen
  O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
  Filling their bare and void interstices.
  
  —
  But the chief marvel of the wilderness
  Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
  None of the rustic island-people know:
  'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
  It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
  Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
  Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
  Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,
  An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
  Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
  
  It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
  But, as it were Titanic; in the heart
  Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown
  Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
  Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
  For all the antique and learnèd imagery
  Has been erased, and in the place of it
  The ivy and the wild-vine interknit
  The volumes of their many-twining stems;
  Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
  The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
  Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
  With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
  Or fragments of the day's intense serene;—
  Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
  
  And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
  And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
  To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
  Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
  Read in their smiles, and call reality.
  
  This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed
  Thee to be lady of the solitude.
  
  —
  And I have fitted up some chambers there
  Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
  And level with the living winds, which flow
  Like waves above the living waves below.
  
  —
  I have sent books and music there, and all
  Those instruments with which high Spirits call
  The future from its cradle, and the past
  Out of its grave, and make the present last
  In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,
  Folded within their own eternity.
  
  Our simple life wants little, and true taste
  Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste
  The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,
  Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
  
  The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
  Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit
  Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
  Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
  The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
  Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
  Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.
  
  Be this our home in life, and when years heap
  Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,
  Let us become the overhanging day,
  The living soul of this Elysian isle,
  Conscious, inseparable, one.
  
  Meanwhile
  We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
  Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
  And wander in the meadows, or ascend
  The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
  With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;
  Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
  Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea
  Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,—
  Possessing and possessed by all that is
  Within that calm circumference of bliss,
  And by each other, till to love and live
  Be one:—or, at the noontide hour, arrive
  Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
  The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
  Through which the awakened day can never peep;
  A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
  Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;
  Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
  Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
  
  And we will talk, until thought's melody
  Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
  In words, to live again in looks, which dart
  With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
  Harmonizing silence without a sound.
  
  Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
  And our veins beat together; and our lips
  With other eloquence than words, eclipse
  The soul that burns between them, and the wells
  Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
  The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
  Confused in Passion's golden purity,
  As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
  
  We shall become the same, we shall be one
  Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
  
  One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
  Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
  Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
  Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
  Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
  In one another's substance finding food,
  Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
  To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
  Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
  One hope within two wills, one will beneath
  Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
  One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
  And one annihilation.
  
  Woe is me!
  The wingèd words on which my soul would pierce
  Into the height of Love's rare Universe,
  Are chains of lead around its flight of fire—
  I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
  Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet,
  And say:—'We are the masters of thy slave;
  What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?
  
  "
  Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave,
  All singing loud: 'Love's very pain is sweet,
  But its reward is in the world divine
  Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.
  
  '
  So shall ye live when I am there.
  
  Then haste
  Over the hearts of men, until ye meet
  Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,
  And bid them love each other and be blessed:
  And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
  And come and be my guest,—for I am Love's.
  
  Epipsychidion was composed at Pisa, Jan.
  
  , Feb.
  
  , 1821, and published without the author's name, in the following summer, by C.
  
  & J.
  
  Ollier, London.
  
  The poem was included by Mrs.
  
  Shelley in the Poetical Works, 1839, both edd.

• Epipsychidion (Excerpt) Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Emily,
  A ship is floating in the harbour now,
  A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
  There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
  No keel has ever plough'd that path before;
  The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
  The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
  The merry mariners are bold and free:
  Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
  
  Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
  Is a far Eden of the purple East;
  And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
  And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
  Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
  Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
  
  It is an isle under Ionian skies,
  Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
  And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
  This land would have remain'd a solitude
  But for some pastoral people native there,
  Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
  Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
  Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.
  
  The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,
  With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
  Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
  And all the winds wandering along the shore
  Undulate with the undulating tide:
  There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
  And many a fountain, rivulet and pond,
  As clear as elemental diamond,
  Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
  The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
  (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)
  Pierce into glades, caverns and bowers, and halls
  Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
  Illumining, with sound that never fails
  Accompany the noonday nightingales;
  And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;
  The light clear element which the isle wears
  Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
  Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
  And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
  And from the moss violets and jonquils peep
  And dart their arrowy odour through the brain
  Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
  
  And every motion, odour, beam and tone,
  With that deep music is in unison:
  Which is a soul within the soul--they seem
  Like echoes of an antenatal dream.
  
  It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth and Sea,
  Cradled and hung in clear tranquillity;
  Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
  Wash'd by the soft blue Oceans of young air.
  
  It is a favour'd place.
  
  Famine or Blight,
  Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
  Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
  Sail onward far upon their fatal way:
  The wingèd storms, chanting their thunder-psalm
  To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
  Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
  From which its fields and woods ever renew
  Their green and golden immortality.
  
  And from the sea there rise, and from the sky
  There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,
  Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
  Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
  Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
  Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
  Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
  Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
  Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
  An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile
  Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen
  O'er the gray rocks, blue waves and forests green,
  Filling their bare and void interstices.
  
  But the chief marvel of the wilderness
  Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
  None of the rustic island-people know:
  'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
  It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
  Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
  Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
  Rear'd it, a wonder of that simple time,
  An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
  Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
  
  It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
  But, as it were, Titanic; in the heart
  Of Earth having assum'd its form, then grown
  Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
  Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
  For all the antique and learned imagery
  Has been eras'd, and in the place of it
  The ivy and the wild-vine interknit
  The volumes of their many-twining stems;
  Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
  The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
  Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
  With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
  Or fragments of the day's intense serene;
  Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
  
  And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
  And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
  To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
  Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
  Read in their smiles, and call reality.
  
  This isle and house are mine, and I have vow'd
  Thee to be lady of the solitude.
  
  And I have fitted up some chambers there
  Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
  And level with the living winds, which flow
  Like waves above the living waves below.
  
  I have sent books and music there, and all
  Those instruments with which high Spirits call
  The future from its cradle, and the past
  Out of its grave, and make the present last
  In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,
  Folded within their own eternity.
  
  Our simple life wants little, and true taste
  Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste
  The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,
  Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
  
  The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
  Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit
  Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
  Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
  The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
  Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
  Is measur'd by the pants of their calm sleep.
  
  Be this our home in life, and when years heap
  Their wither'd hours, like leaves, on our decay,
  Let us become the overhanging day,
  The living soul of this Elysian isle,
  Conscious, inseparable, one.
  
  Meanwhile
  We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
  Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
  And wander in the meadows, or ascend
  The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
  With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;
  Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
  Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea,
  Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy--
  Possessing and possess'd by all that is
  Within that calm circumference of bliss,
  And by each other, till to love and live
  Be one: or, at the noontide hour, arrive
  Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
  The moonlight of the expir'd night asleep,
  Through which the awaken'd day can never peep;
  A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
  Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;
  Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
  Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
  
  And we will talk, until thought's melody
  Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
  In words, to live again in looks, which dart
  With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
  Harmonizing silence without a sound.
  
  Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
  And our veins beat together; and our lips
  With other eloquence than words, eclipse
  The soul that burns between them, and the wells
  Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
  The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
  Confus'd in Passion's golden purity,
  As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
  
  We shall become the same, we shall be one
  Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
  
  One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
  Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
  Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
  Touch, mingle, are transfigur'd; ever still
  Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
  In one another's substance finding food,
  Like flames too pure and light and unimbu'd
  To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
  Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
  One hope within two wills, one will beneath
  Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
  One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
  And one annihilation.
  
  Woe is me!
  The winged words on which my soul would pierce
  Into the height of Love's rare Universe,
  Are chains of lead around its flight of fire--
  I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

• Epipsychidion: Passages Of The Poem, Or Connected Therewith Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Here, my dear friend, is a new book for you;
  I have already dedicated two
  To other friends, one female and one male,--
  What you are, is a thing that I must veil;
  What can this be to those who praise or rail?
  
  I never was attached to that great sect
  Whose doctrine is that each one should select
  Out of the world a mistress or a friend,
  And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
  To cold oblivion—though 'tis in the code
  Of modern morals, and the beaten road
  Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread
  Who travel to their home among the dead
  By the broad highway of the world—and so
  With one sad friend, and many a jealous foe,
  The dreariest and the longest journey go.
  
  Free love has this, different from gold and clay,
  That to divide is not to take away.
  
  Like ocean, which the general north wind breaks
  Into ten thousand waves, and each one makes
  A mirror of the moon -- like some great glass,
  Which did distort whatever form might pass,
  Dashed into fragments by a playful child,
  Which then reflects its eyes and forehead mild;
  Giving for one, which it could ne'er express,
  A thousand images of loveliness.
  
  If I were one whom the loud world held wise,
  I should disdain to quote authorities
  In commendation of this kind of love:--
  Why there is first the God in heaven above,
  Who wrote a book called Nature, 'tis to be
  Reviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly;
  And Socrates, the Jesus Christ of Greece,
  And Jesus Christ Himself, did never cease
  To urge all living things to love each other,
  And to forgive their mutual faults, and smother
  The Devil of disunion in their souls.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I love you!-- Listen, O embodied Ray
  Of the great Brightness; I must pass away
  While you remain, and these light words must be
  Tokens by which you may remember me.
  
  Start not—the thing you are is unbetrayed,
  If you are human, and if but the shade
  Of some sublimer spirit .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And as to friend or mistress, 'tis a form;
  Perhaps I wish you were one.
  
  Some declare
  You a familiar spirit, as you are;
  Others with a .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  more inhuman
  Hint that, though not my wife, you are a woman;
  What is the colour of your eyes and hair?
  
  Why, if you were a lady, it were fair
  The world should know—but, as I am afraid,
  The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed;
  And if, as it will be sport to see them stumble
  Over all sorts of scandals, hear them mumble
  Their litany of curses—some guess right,
  And others swear you're a Hermaphrodite;
  Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes,
  Which looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes
  The very soul that the soul is gone
  Which lifted from her limbs the veil of stone.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm,
  A happy and auspicious bird of calm,
  Which rides o'er life's ever tumultuous Ocean;
  A God that broods o'er chaos in commotion;
  A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are,
  Lifts its bold head into the world's frore air,
  And blooms most radiantly when others die,
  Health, hope, and youth, and brief prosperity;
  And with the light and odour of its bloom,
  Shining within the dungeon and the tomb;
  Whose coming is as light and music are
  'Mid dissonance and gloom -- a star
  Which moves not 'mid the moving heavens alone--
  A smile among dark frowns—a gentle tone
  Among rude voices, a belovèd light,
  A solitude, a refuge, a delight.
  
  If I had but a friend! Why, I have three
  Even by my own confession; there may be
  Some more, for what I know, for 'tis my mind
  To call my friends all who are wise and kind,--
  And these, Heaven knows, at best are very few;
  But none can ever be more dear than you.
  
  Why should they be?
  
  My muse has lost her wings,
  Or like a dying swan who soars and sings,
  I should describe you in heroic style,
  But as it is, are you not void of guile?
  
  A lovely soul, formed to be blessed and bless:
  A well of sealed and secret happiness;
  A lute which those whom Love has taught to play
  Make music on to cheer the roughest day,
  And enchant sadness till it sleeps?
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  To the oblivion whither I and thou,
  All loving and all lovely, hasten now
  With steps, ah, too unequal! may we meet
  In one Elysium or one winding-sheet!
  If any should be curious to discover
  Whether to you I am a friend or lover,
  Let them read Shakespeare's sonnets, taking thence
  A whetstone for their dull intelligence
  That tears and will not cut, or let them guess
  How Diotima, the wise prophetess,
  Instructed the instructor, and why he
  Rebuked the infant spirit of melody
  On Agathon's sweet lips, which as he spoke
  Was as the lovely star when morn has broke
  The roof of darkness, in the golden dawn,
  Half-hidden, and yet beautiful.
  
  I'll pawn
  My hopes of Heaven—you know what they are worth--
  That the presumptuous pedagogues of Earth,
  If they could tell the riddle offered here
  Would scorn to be, or being to appear
  What now they seem and are -- but let them chide,
  They have few pleasures in the world beside;
  Perhaps we should be dull were we not chidden,
  Paradise fruits are sweetest when forbidden.
  
  Folly can season Wisdom, Hatred Love.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Farewell, if it can be to say farewell
  To those who .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I will not, as most dedicators do,
  Assure myself and all the world and you,
  That you are faultless -- would to God they were
  Who taunt me with your love! I then should wear
  These heavy chains of life with a light spirit,
  And would to God I were, or even as near it
  As you, dear heart.
  
  Alas! what are we?
  
  Clouds
  Driven by the wind in warring multitudes,
  Which rain into the bosom of the earth,
  And rise again, and in our death and birth,
  And through our restless life, take as from heaven
  Hues which are not our own, but which are given,
  And then withdrawn, and with inconstant glance
  Flash from the spirit to the countenance.
  
  There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God
  Which makes in mortal hearts its brief abode,
  A Pythian exhalation, which inspires
  Love, only love -- a wind which o'er the wires
  Of the soul's giant harp
  There is a mood which language faints beneath;
  You feel it striding, as Almighty Death
  His bloodless steed .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And what is that most brief and bright delight
  Which rushes through the touch and through the sight,
  And stands before the spirit's inmost throne,
  A naked Seraph?
  
  None hath ever known.
  
  Its birth is darkness, and its growth desire;
  Untameable and fleet and fierce as fire,
  Not to be touched but to be felt alone,
  It fills the world with glory -- and is gone.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  It floats with rainbow pinions o'er the stream
  Of life, which flows, like a .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  dream
  Into the light of morning, to the grave
  As to an ocean .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  What is that joy which serene infancy
  Perceives not, as the hours content them by,
  Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys
  The shapes of this new world, in giant toys
  Wrought by the busy .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ever new?
  
  Remembrance borrows Fancy's glass, to show
  These forms more .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  sincere
  Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they were.
  
  When everything familiar seemed to be
  Wonderful, and the immortality
  Of this great world, which all things must inherit,
  Was felt as one with the awakening spirit,
  Unconscious of itself, and of the strange
  Distinctions which in its proceeding change
  It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were
  A desolation .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily,
  For all those exiles from the dull insane
  Who vex this pleasant world with pride and pain,
  For all that band of sister-spirits known
  To one another by a voiceless tone?
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  If day should part us night will mend division
  And if sleep parts us -- we will meet in vision
  And if life parts us -- we will mix in death
  Yielding our mite [?
  
  ] of unreluctant breath
  Death cannot part us -- we must meet again
  In all in nothing in delight in pain:
  How, why or when or where—it matters not
  So that we share an undivided lot .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And we will move possessing and possessed
  Wherever beauty on the earth's bare [?
  
  ] breast
  Lies like the shadow of thy soul -- till we
  Become one being with the world we see .
  
  .
  
  .

• Epitaph Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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.

• Epithalamium Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Another Version Of 'A Bridal Song'.
  
  Night, with all thine eyes look down!
  Darkness shed its holiest dew!
  When ever smiled the inconstant moon
  On a pair so true?
  
  Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,
  Lest eyes see their own delight!
  Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
  Oft renew.
  
  BOYS:
  O joy! O fear! what may be done
  In the absence of the sun?
  
  Come along!
  The golden gates of sleep unbar!
  When strength and beauty meet together,
  Kindles their image like a star
  In a sea of glassy weather.
  
  Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,
  Lest eyes see their own delight!
  Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
  Oft renew.
  
  GIRLS:
  O joy! O fear! what may be done
  In the absence of the sun?
  
  Come along!
  Fairies! sprites! and angels, keep her!
  Holiest powers, permit no wrong!
  And return, to wake the sleeper,
  Dawn, ere it be long.
  
  Hence, swift hour! and quench thy light,
  Lest eyes see their own delight!
  Hence, coy hour! and thy loved flight
  Oft renew.
  
  BOYS AND GIRLS:
  O joy! O fear! what will be done
  In the absence of the sun?
  
  Come along!
  Published by Medwin, Life of Shelley, 1847.

• Epithalamium : Another Version Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Night, with all thine eyes look down!
  Darkness shed its holiest dew!
  When ever smiled the inconstant moon
  On a pair so true?
  
  Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,
  Lest eyes see their own delight!
  Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
  Oft renew.
  
  BOYS:
  O joy! O fear! what may be done
  In the absence of the sun?
  
  Come along!
  The golden gates of sleep unbar!
  When strength and beauty meet together,
  Kindles their image like a star
  In a sea of glassy weather.
  
  Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,
  Lest eyes see their own delight!
  Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight
  Oft renew.
  
  GIRLS:
  O joy! O fear! what may be done
  In the absence of the sun?
  
  Come along!
  Fairies! sprites! and angels, keep her!
  Holiest powers, permit no wrong!
  And return, to wake the sleeper,
  Dawn, ere it be long.
  
  Hence, swift hour! and quench thy light,
  Lest eyes see their own delight!
  Hence, coy hour! and thy loved flight
  Oft renew.
  
  BOYS AND GIRLS:
  O joy! O fear! what will be done
  In the absence of the sun?
  
  Come along!

• Evening. To Harriet Read Poem Log in to favourite

  O thou bright Sun! beneath the dark blue line
  Of western distance that sublime descendest,
  And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,
  Thy million hues to every vapour lendest,
  And, over cobweb lawn and grove and stream
  Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,
  Till calm Earth, with the parting splendour bright,
  Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream;
  What gazer now with astronomic eye
  Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?
  
  Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly
  The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,
  And, turning senseless from thy warm caress,--
  Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness.
  
  Published by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887.
  
  Composed July 31, 1813.

• Evening: Ponte Al Mare, Pisa Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The sun is set; the swallows are asleep;
  The bats are flitting fast in the gray air;
  The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,
  And evening’s breath, wandering here and there
  Over the quivering surface of the stream,
  Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.
  
  II.
  
  There is no dew on the dry grass to-night,
  Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;
  The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;
  And in the inconstant motion of the breeze
  The dust and straws are driven up and down,
  And whirled about the pavement of the town.
  
  III.
  
  Within the surface of the fleeting river
  The wrinkled image of the city lay,
  Immovably unquiet, and forever
  It trembles, but it never fades away;
  Go to the.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  You, being changed, will find it then as now.
  
  IV.
  
  The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut
  By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud,
  Like mountain over mountain huddled--but
  Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,
  And over it a space of watery blue,
  Which the keen evening star is shining through.

• Eyes : A Fragment Read Poem Log in to favourite

  How eloquent are eyes!
  Not the rapt poet's frenzied lay
  When the soul's wildest feelings stray
  Can speak so well as they.
  
  How eloquent are eyes!
  Not music’s most impassioned note
  On which Love’s warmest fervours float
  Like them bids rapture rise.
  
  Love, look thus again,--
  That your look may light a waste of years,
  Darting the beam that conquers cares
  Through the cold shower of tears.
  
  Love, look thus again!

• Faint With Love, The Lady Of The South Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Faint with love, the Lady of the South
  Lay in the paradise of Lebanon
  Under a heaven of cedar boughs: the drouth
  Of love was on her lips; the light was gone
  Out of her eyes--

• Feelings Of A Republican On The Fall Of Bonaparte Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan
  To think that a most unambitious slave,
  Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave
  Of Liberty.
  
  Thou mightst have built thy throne
  Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer
  A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept
  In fragments towards Oblivion.
  
  Massacre,
  For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,
  Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,
  And stifled thee, their minister.
  
  I know
  Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
  That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
  Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
  And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.
  
  Published with Alastor, 1816.

• Fiordispina Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The season was the childhood of sweet June,
  Whose sunny hours from morning until noon
  Went creeping through the day with silent feet,
  Each with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;
  Like the long years of blest Eternity
  Never to be developed.
  
  Joy to thee,
  Fiordispina and thy Cosimo,
  For thou the wonders of the depth canst know
  Of this unfathomable flood of hours,
  Sparkling beneath the heaven which embowers--
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  They were two cousins, almost like to twins,
  Except that from the catalogue of sins
  Nature had rased their love—which could not be
  But by dissevering their nativity.
  
  And so they grew together like two flowers
  Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers
  Lull or awaken in their purple prime,
  Which the same hand will gather—the same clime
  Shake with decay.
  
  This fair day smiles to see
  All those who love—and who e’er loved like thee,
  Fiordispina?
  
  Scarcely Cosimo,
  Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow
  The ardours of a vision which obscure
  The very idol of its portraiture.
  
  He faints, dissolved into a sea of love;
  But thou art as a planet sphered above;
  But thou art Love itself—ruling the motion
  Of his subjected spirit: such emotion
  Must end in sin and sorrow, if sweet May
  Had not brought forth this morn—your wedding-day.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ‘Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew,
  Ye faint-eyed children of the .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Hours,’
  Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers
  Which she had from the breathing--
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  A table near of polished porphyry.
  
  They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye
  That looked on them—a fragrance from the touch
  Whose warmth .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  checked their life; a light such
  As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reprove
  The childish pity that she felt for them,
  And a .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  remorse that from their stem
  She had divided such fair shapes .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  made
  A feeling in the .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  which was a shade
  Of gentle beauty on the flowers: there lay
  All gems that make the earth’s dark bosom gay.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms,
  And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes
  The livery of unremembered snow--
  Violets whose eyes have drunk--
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Fiordispina and her nurse are now
  Upon the steps of the high portico,
  Under the withered arm of Media
  She flings her glowing arm
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  step by step and stair by stair,
  That withered woman, gray and white and brown--
  More like a trunk by lichens overgrown
  Than anything which once could have been human.
  
  And ever as she goes the palsied woman
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  'How slow and painfully you seem to walk,
  Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk.
  
  '
  ‘And well it may,
  Fiordispina, dearest—well-a-day!
  You are hastening to a marriage-bed;
  I to the grave!’—‘And if my love were dead,
  Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie
  Beside him in my shroud as willingly
  As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought.
  
  '
  'Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought
  Not be remembered till it snows in June;
  Such fancies are a music out of tune
  With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night.
  
  What! would you take all beauty and delight
  Back to the Paradise from which you sprung,
  And leave to grosser mortals?
  
  --
  And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet
  And subtle mystery by which spirits meet?
  
  Who knows whether the loving game is played,
  When, once of mortal [vesture] disarrayed,
  The naked soul goes wandering here and there
  Through the wide deserts of Elysian air?
  
  The violet dies not till it’--

• Fragment : What Mary Is When She A Little Smiles Read Poem Log in to favourite

  ADAPTED FROM THE VITA NUOVA OF DANTE.
  
  What Mary is when she a little smiles
  I cannot even tell or call to mind,
  It is a miracle so new, so rare.

• Fragment From The Wandering Jew Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The Elements respect their Maker's seal!
  Still Like the scathed pine tree's height,
  Braving the tempests of the night
  Have I 'scaped the flickering flame.
  
  Like the scathed pine, which a monument stands
  Of faded grandeur, which the brands
  Of the tempest-shaken air
  Have riven on the desolate heath;
  Yet it stands majestic even in death,
  And rears its wild form there.
  
  Published as Shelley's by Medwin, 'Life of Shelley', 1847, 1 page 56

• Fragment Of A Ghost Story Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A shovel of his ashes took
  From the hearth's obscurest nook,
  Muttering mysteries as she went.
  
  Helen and Henry knew that Granny
  Was as much afraid of Ghosts as any,
  And so they followed hard—
  But Helen clung to her brother's arm,
  And her own spasm made her shake.

• Fragment Of A Satire On Satire Read Poem Log in to favourite

  If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains,
  And racks of subtle torture, if the pains
  Of shame, of fiery Hell’s tempestuous wave,
  Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,
  Hurling the damned into the murky air
  While the meek blest sit smiling; if Despair
  And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror
  Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error,
  Are the true secrets of the commonweal
  To make men wise and just;.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And not the sophisms of revenge and fear,
  Bloodier than is revenge.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Then send the priests to every hearth and home
  To preach the burning wrath which is to come,
  In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw
  The frozen tears.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  If Satire’s scourge could wake the slumbering hounds
  Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds,
  The leprous scars of callous Infamy;
  If it could make the present not to be,
  Or charm the dark past never to have been,
  Or turn regret to hope; who that has seen
  What Southey is and was, would not exclaim,
  ‘Lash on!’ .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  be the keen verse dipped in flame;
  Follow his flight with winged words, and urge
  The strokes of the inexorable scourge
  Until the heart be naked, till his soul
  See the contagion’s spots .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  foul;
  And from the mirror of Truth’s sunlike shield,
  From which his Parthian arrow.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Flash on his sight the spectres of the past,
  Until his mind’s eye paint thereon--
  Let scorn like .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  yawn below,
  And rain on him like flakes of fiery snow.
  
  This cannot be, it ought not, evil still--
  Suffering makes suffering, ill must follow ill.
  
  Rough words beget sad thoughts, .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  and, beside,
  Men take a sullen and a stupid pride
  In being all they hate in others’ shame,
  By a perverse antipathy of fame.
  
  ’Tis not worth while to prove, as I could, how
  From the sweet fountains of our Nature flow
  These bitter waters; I will only say,
  If any friend would take Southey some day,
  And tell him, in a country walk alone,
  Softening harsh words with friendship’s gentle tone,
  How incorrect his public conduct is,
  And what men think of it, ’twere not amiss.
  
  Far better than to make innocent ink--
  Published by Edward Dowden, Correspondence of Robert Southey and Caroline Bowles, 1880.

• Fragment Of A Sonnet : To Harriet Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Ever as now with Love and Virtue's glow
  May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,
  Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow
  Which force from mine such quick and warm return.
  
  Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887; dated August 1, 1812.

• Fragment Of A Sonnet. Farewell To North Devon Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Where man's profane and tainting hand
  Nature’s primaeval loveliness has marred,
  And some few souls of the high bliss debarred
  Which else obey her powerful command;
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  mountain piles
  That load in grandeur Cambria's emerald vales.
  
  Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887; dated August, 1812.

• Fragment Of The Elegy On The Death Of Adonis Read Poem Log in to favourite

  From the Greek of Bion.
  
  I mourn Adonis dead—loveliest Adonis--
  Dead, dead Adonis--and the Loves lament.
  
  Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof--
  Wake violet-stoled queen, and weave the crown
  Of Death,--'tis Misery calls,--for he is dead.
  
  The lovely one lies wounded in the mountains,
  His white thigh struck with the white tooth; he scarce
  Yet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony there.
  
  The dark blood wanders o'er his snowy limbs,
  His eyes beneath their lids are lustreless,
  The rose has fled from his wan lips, and there
  That kiss is dead, which Venus gathers yet.
  
  A deep, deep wound Adonis.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  A deeper Venus bears upon her heart.
  
  See, his beloved dogs are gathering round--
  The Oread nymphs are weeping--Aphrodite
  With hair unbound is wandering through the woods,
  'Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled--the thorns pierce
  Her hastening feet and drink her sacred blood.
  
  Bitterly screaming out, she is driven on
  Through the long vales; and her Assyrian boy,
  Her love, her husband, calls--the purple blood
  From his struck thigh stains her white navel now,
  Her bosom, and her neck before like snow.
  
  Alas for Cytherea—the Loves mourn--
  The lovely, the beloved is gone!--and now
  Her sacred beauty vanishes away.
  
  For Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair--
  Alas! her loveliness is dead with him.
  
  The oaks and mountains cry, Ai! ai! Adonis!
  The springs their waters change to tears and weep--
  The flowers are withered up with grief.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Ai! ai! .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Adonis is dead
  Echo resounds .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Adonis dead.
  
  Who will weep not thy dreadful woe.
  
  O Venus?
  
  Soon as she saw and knew the mortal wound
  Of her Adonis—saw the life-blood flow
  From his fair thigh, now wasting,—wailing loud
  She clasped him, and cried .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  'Stay, Adonis!
  Stay, dearest one,.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  and mix my lips with thine--
  Wake yet a while, Adonis—oh, but once,
  That I may kiss thee now for the last time--
  But for as long as one short kiss may live--
  Oh, let thy breath flow from thy dying soul
  Even to my mouth and heart, that I may suck
  That.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  '

• Fragment Of The Elegy On The Death Of Bion Read Poem Log in to favourite

  From the Greek of Moschus.
  
  Ye Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud,--
  Augment your tide, O streams, with fruitless tears,
  For the beloved Bion is no more.
  
  Let every tender herb and plant and flower,
  From each dejected bud and drooping bloom,
  Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath
  Of melancholy sweetness on the wind
  Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush,
  Anemones grow paler for the loss
  Their dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth,
  Utter thy legend now--yet more, dumb flower,
  Than 'Ah! alas!'--thine is no common grief--
  Bion the [sweetest singer] is no more.

• Fragment, Or The Triumph Of Conscience Read Poem Log in to favourite

  'Twas dead of the night when I sate in my dwelling,
  One glimmering lamp was expiring and low,--
  Around the dark tide of the tempest was swelling,
  Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling,
  They bodingly presaged destruction and woe!
  'Twas then that I started, the wild storm was howling,
  Nought was seen, save the lightning that danced on the sky,
  Above me the crash of the thunder was rolling,
  And low, chilling murmurs the blast wafted by.
  
  --
  My heart sank within me, unheeded the jar
  Of the battling clouds on the mountain-tops broke,
  Unheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine ear,
  This heart hard as iron was stranger to fear,
  But conscience in low noiseless whispering spoke.
  
  ’Twas then that her form on the whirlwind uprearing,
  The dark ghost of the murdered Victoria strode,
  Her right hand a blood reeking dagger was bearing,
  She swiftly advanced to my lonesome abode.
  
  --
  I wildly then called on the tempest to bear me!
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .

• Fragment: "Amor Aeternus" Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Wealth and dominion fade into the mass
  Of the great sea of human right and wrong,
  When once from our possession they must pass;
  But love, though misdirected, is among
  The things which are immortal, and surpass
  All that frail stuff which will be--or which was.

• Fragment: "Igniculus Desiderii" Read Poem Log in to favourite

  To thirst and find no fill—to wail and wander
  With short unsteady steps—to pause and ponder--
  To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle
  Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle;
  To nurse the image of unfelt caresses
  Till dim imagination just possesses
  The half-created shadow, then all the night
  Sick.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition.
  
  This fragment is amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian.

• Fragment: A Gentle Story Of Two Lovers Young Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A gentle story of two lovers young,
  Who met in innocence and died in sorrow,
  And of one selfish heart, whose rancour clung
  Like curses on them; are ye slow to borrow
  The lore of truth from such a tale?
  
  Or in this world’s deserted vale,
  Do ye not see a star of gladness
  Pierce the shadows of its sadness,--
  When ye are cold, that love is a light sent
  From Heaven, which none shall quench, to cheer the innocent?

• Fragment: A Wanderer Read Poem Log in to favourite

  He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,
  Through the dim wildernesses of the mind;
  Through desert woods and tracts, which seem
  Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined.

• Fragment: Apostrophe To Silence Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou
  Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged
  Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy
  Are swallowed up—yet spare me, Spirit, pity me,
  Until the sounds I hear become my soul,
  And it has left these faint and weary limbs,
  To track along the lapses of the air
  This wandering melody until it rests
  Among lone mountains in some.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Published by Dr.
  
  Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862.
  
  A transcript by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, given to Charles Cowden Clarke, presents one or two variants.

• Fragment: Follow To The Deep Wood's Weeds Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Follow to the deep wood's weeds,
  Follow to the wild-briar dingle,
  Where we seek to intermingle,
  And the violet tells her tale
  To the odour-scented gale,
  For they two have enough to do
  Of such work as I and you.

• Fragment: Great Spirit Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Great Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought
  Nurtures within its unimagined caves,
  In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind,
  Giving a voice to its mysterious waves--

• Fragment: Home Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys,
  The least of which wronged Memory ever makes
  Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears.

• Fragment: Is It That In Some Brighter Sphere Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Is it that in some brighter sphere
  We part from friends we meet with here?
  
  Or do we see the Future pass
  Over the Present’s dusky glass?
  
  Or what is that that makes us seem
  To patch up fragments of a dream,
  Part of which comes true, and part
  Beats and trembles in the heart?

• Fragment: Love The Universe To-Day Read Poem Log in to favourite

  And who feels discord now or sorrow?
  
  Love is the universe to-day--
  These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,
  Darkening Life's labyrinthine way.

• Fragment: Milton's Spirit Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I dreamed that Milton's spirit rose, and took
  From life's green tree his Uranian lute;
  And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook
  All human things built in contempt of man,--
  And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked,
  Prisons and citadels.
  
  .
  
  .

• Fragment: My Head Is Wild With Weeping Read Poem Log in to favourite

  My head is wild with weeping for a grief
  Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.
  
  I walk into the air (but no relief
  To seek,--or haply, if I sought, to find;
  It came unsought);--to wonder that a chief
  Among men’s spirits should be cold and blind.

• Fragment: Omens Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Hark! the owlet flaps his wings
  In the pathless dell beneath;
  Hark! 'tis the night-raven sings
  Tidings of approaching death.
  
  Published by Medwin, “Shelley Papers”, 1833; dated 1807

• Fragment: Rain Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The gentleness of rain was in the wind.

• Fragment: Satan Broken Loose Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A golden-winged Angel stood
  Before the Eternal Judgement-seat:
  His looks were wild, and Devils' blood
  Stained his dainty hands and feet.
  
  The Father and the Son
  Knew that strife was now begun.
  
  They knew that Satan had broken his chain,
  And with millions of daemons in his train,
  Was ranging over the world again.
  
  Before the Angel had told his tale,
  A sweet and a creeping sound
  Like the rushing of wings was heard around;
  And suddenly the lamps grew pale--
  The lamps, before the Archangels seven,
  That burn continually in Heaven.
  
  Published by Rossetti, Complete Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  , 1870.

• Fragment: Such Hope, As Is The Sick Despair Of Good Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Such hope, as is the sick despair of good,
  Such fear, as is the certainty of ill,
  Such doubt, as is pale Expectation’s food
  Turned while she tastes to poison, when the will
  Is powerless, and the spirit.
  
  .
  
  .

• Fragment: Sufficient Unto The Day Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Is not to-day enough?
  
  Why do I peer
  Into the darkness of the day to come?
  
  Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?
  
  And will the day that follows change thy doom?
  
  Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way;
  And who waits for thee in that cheerless home
  Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return
  Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?

• Fragment: Supposed To Be An Epithalamium Of Francis Ravaillac And Charlotte Corday Read Poem Log in to favourite

  'Tis midnight now--athwart the murky air,
  Dank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam;
  From the dark storm-clouds flashes a fearful glare,
  It shows the bending oak, the roaring stream.
  
  I pondered on the woes of lost mankind,
  I pondered on the ceaseless rage of Kings;
  My rapt soul dwelt upon the ties that bind
  The mazy volume of commingling things,
  When fell and wild misrule to man stern sorrow brings.
  
  I heard a yell--it was not the knell,
  When the blasts on the wild lake sleep,
  That floats on the pause of the summer gale's swell,
  O'er the breast of the waveless deep.
  
  I thought it had been death's accents cold
  That bade me recline on the shore;
  I laid mine hot head on the surge-beaten mould,
  And thought to breathe no more.
  
  But a heavenly sleep
  That did suddenly steep
  In balm my bosom's pain,
  Pervaded my soul,
  And free from control,
  Did mine intellect range again.
  
  Methought enthroned upon a silvery cloud,
  Which floated mid a strange and brilliant light;
  My form upborne by viewless aether rode,
  And spurned the lessening realms of earthly night.
  
  What heavenly notes burst on my ravished ears,
  What beauteous spirits met my dazzled eye!
  Hark! louder swells the music of the spheres,
  More clear the forms of speechless bliss float by,
  And heavenly gestures suit aethereal melody.
  
  But fairer than the spirits of the air,
  More graceful than the Sylph of symmetry,
  Than the enthusiast's fancied love more fair,
  Were the bright forms that swept the azure sky.
  
  Enthroned in roseate light, a heavenly band
  Strewed flowers of bliss that never fade away;
  They welcome virtue to its native land,
  And songs of triumph greet the joyous day
  When endless bliss the woes of fleeting life repay.
  
  Congenial minds will seek their kindred soul,
  E'en though the tide of time has rolled between;
  They mock weak matter's impotent control,
  And seek of endless life the eternal scene.
  
  At death's vain summons THIS will never die,
  In Nature's chaos THIS will not decay--
  These are the bands which closely, warmly, tie
  Thy soul, O Charlotte, 'yond this chain of clay,
  To him who thine must be till time shall fade away.
  
  Yes, Francis! thine was the dear knife that tore
  A tyrant's heart-strings from his guilty breast,
  Thine was the daring at a tyrant's gore,
  To smile in triumph, to contemn the rest;
  And thine, loved glory of thy sex! to tear
  From its base shrine a despot's haughty soul,
  To laugh at sorrow in secure despair,
  To mock, with smiles, life's lingering control,
  And triumph mid the griefs that round thy fate did roll.
  
  Yes! the fierce spirits of the avenging deep
  With endless tortures goad their guilty shades.
  
  I see the lank and ghastly spectres sweep
  Along the burning length of yon arcades;
  And I see Satan stalk athwart the plain;
  He hastes along the burning soil of Hell.
  
  'Welcome, ye despots, to my dark domain,
  With maddening joy mine anguished senses swell
  To welcome to their home the friends I love so well.
  
  '
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Hark! to those notes, how sweet, how thrilling sweet
  They echo to the sound of angels' feet.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Oh haste to the bower where roses are spread,
  For there is prepared thy nuptial bed.
  
  Oh haste--hark! hark!--they're gone.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  CHORUS OF SPIRITS:
  Stay, ye days of contentment and joy,
  Whilst love every care is erasing,
  Stay ye pleasures that never can cloy,
  And ye spirits that can never cease pleasing.
  
  And if any soft passion be near,
  Which mortals, frail mortals, can know,
  Let love shed on the bosom a tear,
  And dissolve the chill ice-drop of woe.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  SYMPHONY
  FRANCIS:
  'Soft, my dearest angel, stay,
  Oh! you suck my soul away;
  Suck on, suck on, I glow, I glow!
  Tides of maddening passion roll,
  And streams of rapture drown my soul.
  
  Now give me one more billing kiss,
  Let your lips now repeat the bliss,
  Endless kisses steal my breath,
  No life can equal such a death.
  
  '
  CHARLOTTE:
  'Oh! yes I will kiss thine eyes so fair,
  And I will clasp thy form;
  Serene is the breath of the balmy air,
  But I think, love, thou feelest me warm
  And I will recline on thy marble neck
  Till I mingle into thee;
  And I will kiss the rose on thy cheek,
  And thou shalt give kisses to me.
  
  For here is no morn to flout our delight,
  Oh! dost thou not joy at this?
  
  And here we may lie an endless night,
  A long, long night of bliss.
  
  '
  Spirits! when raptures move,
  Say what it is to love,
  When passion's tear stands on the cheek,
  When bursts the unconscious sigh;
  And the tremulous lips dare not speak
  What is told by the soul-felt eye.
  
  But what is sweeter to revenge’s ear
  Than the fell tyrant's last expiring yell?
  
  Yes! than love's sweetest blisses 'tis more dear
  To drink the floatings of a despot's knell.
  
  I wake--'tis done--'tis over.

• Fragment: The Lake's Margin Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses
  Track not the steps of him who drinks of it;
  For the light breezes, which for ever fleet
  Around its margin, heap the sand thereon.

• Fragment: The Vine-Shroud Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow
  Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;
  For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below
  The rotting bones of dead antiquity.

• Fragment: There Is A Warm And Gentle Atmosphere Read Poem Log in to favourite

  There is a warm and gentle atmosphere
  About the form of one we love, and thus
  As in a tender mist our spirits are
  Wrapped in the of that which is to us
  The health of life’s own life--

• Fragment: Thoughts Come And Go In Solitude Read Poem Log in to favourite

  My thoughts arise and fade in solitude,
  The verse that would invest them melts away
  Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day:
  How beautiful they were, how firm they stood,
  Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl!

• Fragment: To A Friend Released From Prison Read Poem Log in to favourite

  For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble
  In my faint eyes, and that my heart beat fast
  With feelings which make rapture pain resemble,
  Yet, from thy voice that falsehood starts aghast,
  I thank thee--let the tyrant keep
  His chains and tears, yea, let him weep
  With rage to see thee freshly risen,
  Like strength from slumber, from the prison,
  In which he vainly hoped the soul to bind
  Which on the chains must prey that fetter humankind.

• Fragment: To Byron Read Poem Log in to favourite

  O mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age
  Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm,
  Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage?

• Fragment: To One Singing Read Poem Log in to favourite

  My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim
  Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,
  Far far away into the regions dim
  Of rapture—as a boat, with swift sails winging
  Its way adown some many-winding river,
  Speeds through dark forests o'er the waters swinging.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Dated 1817 by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, and published in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition.
  
  The manuscript original, by which Mr.
  
  Locock has revised and (by one line) enlarged the text, is amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian.
  
  Terza rima.

• Fragment: To The Moon Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Bright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven,
  To whom alone it has been given
  To change and be adored for ever,
  Envy not this dim world, for never
  But once within its shadow grew
  One fair as--

• Fragment: To The People Of England Read Poem Log in to favourite

  PEOPLE of England, ye who toil and groan,
  Who reap the harvests which are not your own,
  Who weave the clothes which your oppressors wear,
  And for your own take the inclement air;
  Who build warm houses .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And are like gods who give them all they have,
  And nurse them from the cradle to the grave .
  
  .
  
  .

• Fragment: Wedded Souls Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I am as a spirit who has dwelt
  Within his heart of hearts, and I have felt
  His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known
  The inmost converse of his soul, the tone
  Unheard but in the silence of his blood,
  When all the pulses in their multitude
  Image the trembling calm of summer seas.
  
  I have unlocked the golden melodies
  Of his deep soul, as with a master-key,
  And loosened them and bathed myself therein--
  Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist
  Clothing his wings with lightning.

• Fragment: What Men Gain Fairly Read Poem Log in to favourite

  What men gain fairly -- that they should possess,
  And children may inherit idleness,
  From him who earns it—This is understood;
  Private injustice may be general good.
  
  But he who gains by base and armed wrong,
  Or guilty fraud, or base compliances,
  May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress
  Is stripped from a convicted thief; and he
  Left in the nakedness of infamy.

• Fragment: Ye Gentle Visitations Of Calm Thought Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Ye gentle visitations of calm thought--
  Moods like the memories of happier earth,
  Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth,
  Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought,--
  But that the clouds depart and stars remain,
  While they remain, and ye, alas, depart!

• Fragment: Yes! All Is Past Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Yes! all is past--swift time has fled away,
  Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind;
  How long will horror nerve this frame of clay?
  
  I’m dead, and lingers yet my soul behind.
  
  Oh! powerful Fate, revoke thy deadly spell,
  And yet that may not ever, ever be,
  Heaven will not smile upon the work of Hell;
  Ah! no, for Heaven cannot smile on me;
  Fate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.
  
  I sought the cold brink of the midnight surge,
  I sighed beneath its wave to hide my woes,
  The rising tempest sung a funeral dirge,
  And on the blast a frightful yell arose.
  
  Wild flew the meteors o'er the maddened main,
  Wilder did grief athwart my bosom glare;
  Stilled was the unearthly howling, and a strain,
  Swelled mid the tumult of the battling air,
  'Twas like a spirit's song, but yet more soft and fair.
  
  I met a maniac—like he was to me,
  I said--'Poor victim, wherefore dost thou roam?
  
  And canst thou not contend with agony,
  That thus at midnight thou dost quit thine home?
  
  '
  'Ah there she sleeps: cold is her bloodless form,
  And I will go to slumber in her grave;
  And then our ghosts, whilst raves the maddened storm,
  Will sweep at midnight o’er the wildered wave;
  Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of pity lave?
  
  '
  'Ah! no, I cannot shed the pitying tear,
  This breast is cold, this heart can feel no more--
  But I can rest me on thy chilling bier,
  Can shriek in horror to the tempest's roar.
  
  '

• Fragments Of An Unfinished Drama Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Scene.
  
  --Before the Cavern of the Indian Enchantress.
  
  The Enchantress comes forth.
  
  Enchantress.
  
  He came like a dream in the dawn of life,
  He fled like a shadow before its noon;
  He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,
  And I wander and wane like the weary moon.
  
  O, sweet Echo, wake,
  And for my sake
  Make answer the while my heart shall break!
  But my heart has a music which Echo's lips,
  Though tender and true, yet can answer not,
  And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse
  Can return not the kiss by his now forgot;
  Sweet lips! he who hath
  On my desolate path
  Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death!
  The Enchantress makes her spell: she is answered by a Spirit.
  
  Spirit.
  
  Within the silent centre of the earth
  My mansion is; where I have lived insphered
  From the beginning, and around my sleep
  Have woven all the wondrous imagery
  Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;
  Infinite depths of unknown elements
  Massed into one impenetrable mask;
  Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins
  Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron.
  
  And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven
  I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds,
  And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns
  In the dark space of interstellar air.
  
  ANOTHER SCENE
  Indian Youth and Lady.
  
  Indian.
  
  And, if my grief should still be dearer to me
  Than all the pleasures in the world beside,
  Why would you lighten it?
  
  —
  Lady.
  
  I offer only
  That which I seek, some human sympathy
  In this mysterious island.
  
  Indian.
  
  Oh! my friend,
  My sister, my beloved!—What do I say?
  
  My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know whether
  I speak to thee or her.
  
  Lady.
  
  Peace, perturbed heart!
  I am to thee only as thou to mine,
  The passing wind which heals the brow at noon,
  And may strike cold into the breast at night,
  Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most,
  Or long soothe could it linger.
  
  Indian.
  
  But you said
  You also loved?
  
  Lady.
  
  Loved! Oh, I love.
  
  Methinks
  This word of love is fit for all the world,
  And that for gentle hearts another name
  Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns.
  
  I have loved.
  
  Indian.
  
  And thou lovest not?
  
  if so,
  Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep.
  
  Lady.
  
  Oh! would that I could claim exemption
  From all the bitterness of that sweet name.
  
  I loved, I love, and when I love no more
  Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair
  To ring the knell of youth.
  
  He stood beside me,
  The embodied vision of the brightest dream,
  Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;
  The shadow of his presence made my world
  A Paradise.
  
  All familiar things he touched,
  All common words he spoke, became to me
  Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.
  
  He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,
  As terrible and lovely as a tempest;
  He came, and went, and left me what I am.
  
  Alas! Why must I think how oft we two
  Have sate together near the river springs,
  Under the green pavilion which the willow
  Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,
  Strewn, by the nurslings that linger there,
  Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,
  While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
  Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,
  Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own?
  
  The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt,
  And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn;
  And on a wintry bough the widowed bird,
  Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves,
  Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow.
  
  I, left like her, and leaving one like her,
  Alike abandoned and abandoning
  (Oh! unlike her in this!) the gentlest youth,
  Whose love had made my sorrows dear to him,
  Even as my sorrow made his love to me!
  Indian.
  
  One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould
  The features of the wretched; and they are
  As like as violet to violet,
  When memory, the ghost, their odours keeps
  Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy.
  
  —
  Proceed.
  
  Lady.
  
  He was a simple innocent boy.
  
  I loved him well, but not as he desired;
  Yet even thus he was content to be:—
  A short content, for I was—
  Indian
  [aside].
  
  God of Heaven!
  From such an islet, such a river-spring—!
  I dare not ask her if there stood upon it
  A pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent,
  With steps to the blue water.
  
  [Aloud.
  
  ]
  It may be
  That Nature masks in life several copies
  Of the same lot, so that the sufferers
  May feel another's sorrow as their own,
  And find in friendship what they lost in love.
  
  That cannot be: yet it is strange that we,
  From the same scene, by the same path to this
  Realm of abandonment -- But speak! your breath—
  Your breath is like soft music, your words are
  The echoes of a voice which on my heart
  Sleeps like a melody of early days.
  
  But as you said--
  Lady.
  
  He was so awful, yet
  So beautiful in mystery and terror,
  Calming me as the loveliness of heaven
  Soothes the unquiet sea:—and yet not so,
  For he seemed stormy, and would often seem
  A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds;
  For such his thoughts, and even his actions were;
  But he was not of them, nor they of him,
  But as they hid his splendour from the earth.
  
  Some said he was a man of blood and peril,
  And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips.
  
  More need was there I should be innocent,
  More need that I should be most true and kind,
  And much more need that there should be found one
  To share remorse and scorn and solitude,
  And all the ills that wait on those who do
  The tasks of ruin in the world of life.
  
  He fled, and I have followed him.
  
  Indian.
  
  Such a one
  Is he who was the winter of my peace.
  
  But, fairest stranger, when didst thou depart
  From the far hills where rise the springs of India?
  
  How didst thou pass the intervening sea?
  
  Lady.
  
  If I be sure I am not dreaming now,
  I should not doubt to say it was a dream.
  
  Methought a star came down from heaven,
  And rested mid the plants of India,
  Which I had given a shelter from the frost
  Within my chamber.
  
  There the meteor lay,
  Panting forth light among the leaves and flowers,
  As if it lived, and was outworn with speed;
  Or that it loved, and passion made the pulse
  Of its bright life throb like an anxious heart,
  Till it diffused itself, and all the chamber
  And walls seemed melted into emerald fire
  That burned not; in the midst of which appeared
  A spirit like a child, and laughed aloud
  A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment
  As made the blood tingle in my warm feet:
  Then bent over a vase, and murmuring
  Low, unintelligible melodies,
  Placed something in the mould like melon-seeds,
  And slowly faded, and in place of it
  A soft hand issued from the veil of fire,
  Holding a cup like a magnolia flower,
  And poured upon the earth within the vase
  The element with which it overflowed,
  Brighter than morning light, and purer than
  The water of the springs of Himalah.
  
  Indian.
  
  You waked not?
  
  Lady.
  
  Not until my dream became
  Like a child's legend on the tideless sand,
  Which the first foam erases half, and half
  Leaves legible.
  
  At length I rose, and went,
  Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought
  To set new cuttings in the empty urns,
  And when I came to that beside the lattice,
  I saw two little dark-green leaves
  Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then
  I half-remembered my forgotten dream.
  
  And day by day, green as a gourd in June,
  The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew
  What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed
  Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded
  With azure mail and streaks of woven silver;
  And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds
  Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel,
  Until the golden eye of the bright flower,
  Through the dark lashes of those veinèd lids,
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  disencumbered of their silent sleep,
  Gazed like a star into the morning light.
  
  Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw
  The pulses
  With which the purple velvet flower was fed
  To overflow, and like a poet's heart
  Changing bright fancy to sweet sentiment,
  Changed half the light to fragrance.
  
  It soon fell,
  And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit
  Left all its treasured beauty.
  
  Day by day
  I nursed the plant, and on the double flute
  Played to it on the sunny winter days
  Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain
  On silent leaves, and sang those words in which
  Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings;
  And I would send tales of forgotten love
  Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs
  Of maids deserted in the olden time,
  And weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom
  Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant,
  So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come,
  And crept abroad into the moonlight air,
  And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon,
  The sun averted less his oblique beam.
  
  Indian.
  
  And the plant died not in the frost?
  
  Lady.
  
  It grew;
  And went out of the lattice which I left
  Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires
  Along the garden and across the lawn,
  And down the slope of moss and through the tufts
  Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o'ergrown
  With simple lichens, and old hoary stones,
  On to the margin of the glassy pool,
  Even to a nook of unblown violets
  And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn,
  Under a pine with ivy overgrown.
  
  And there its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard
  Under the shadows; but when Spring indeed
  Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies
  Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at
  This shape of autumn couched in their recess,
  Then it dilated, and it grew until
  One half lay floating on the fountain wave,
  Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies,
  Kept time
  Among the snowy water-lily buds.
  
  Its shape was such as summer melody
  Of the south wind in spicy vales might give
  To some light cloud bound from the golden dawn
  To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed
  In hue and form that it had been a mirror
  Of all the hues and forms around it and
  Upon it pictured by the sunny beams
  Which, from the bright vibrations of the pool,
  Were thrown upon the rafters and the roof
  Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems
  Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections
  Of every infant flower and star of moss
  And veined leaf in the azure odorous air.
  
  And thus it lay in the Elysian calm
  Of its own beauty, floating on the line
  Which, like a film in purest space, divided
  The heaven beneath the water from the heaven
  Above the clouds; and every day I went
  Watching its growth and wondering;
  And as the day grew hot, methought I saw
  A glassy vapour dancing on the pool,
  And on it little quaint and filmy shapes,
  With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall,
  Like clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from Heaven--
  As if Heaven dawned upon the world of dream--
  When darkness rose on the extinguished day
  Out of the eastern wilderness.
  
  Indian.
  
  I too
  Have found a moment's paradise in sleep
  Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow.
  
  Written at Pisa during the late winter or early spring of 1822.
  
  Note from Mrs.
  
  Shelley: 'The following fragments are part of a Drama undertaken for the amusement of the individuals who composed our intimate society, but left unfinished.
  
  I have preserved a sketch of the story as far as it had been shadowed in the poet's mind.
  
  An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble nature.
  
  She becomes enamoured of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal love, for a while returns her passion; but at length, recalling the memory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, he escapes from the Enchanted Island, and returns to his lady.
  
  His mode of life makes him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island.
  
  '~1839.

• Fragments Supposed To Be Parts Of Otho Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Those whom nor power, nor lying faith, nor toil,
  Nor custom, queen of many slaves, makes blind,
  Have ever grieved that man should be the spoil
  Of his own weakness, and with earnest mind
  Fed hopes of its redemption; these recur
  Chastened by deathful victory now, and find
  Foundations in this foulest age, and stir
  Me whom they cheer to be their minister.
  
  II.
  
  Dark is the realm of grief: but human things
  Those may not know who cannot weep for them.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  III.
  
  Once more descend
  The shadows of my soul upon mankind,
  For to those hearts with which they never blend,
  Thoughts are but shadows which the flashing mind
  From the swift clouds which track its flight of fire,
  Casts on the gloomy world it leaves behind.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Published by Dr.
  
  Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862,--where, however, only the fragment numbered 2 is assigned to Otho.
  
  Forman (1876) connects all three fragments with that projected poem.

• Fragments Written For Hellas Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Fairest of the Destinies,
  Disarray thy dazzling eyes:
  Keener far thy lightnings are
  Than the winged [bolts] thou bearest,
  And the smile thou wearest
  Wraps thee as a star
  Is wrapped in light.
  
  II.
  
  Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn
  From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run,
  Or could the morning shafts of purest light
  Again into the quivers of the Sun
  Be gathered—could one thought from its wild flight
  Return into the temple of the brain
  Without a change, without a stain,--
  Could aught that is, ever again
  Be what it once has ceased to be,
  Greece might again be free!
  III.
  
  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,
  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.

• From Read Poem Log in to favourite

  49
  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;
  50
  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.
  
  51
  Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
  To have outgrown 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?
  
  52
  The One remains, the many change and pass;
  Heaven's light forever 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!
  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.

• From the Arabic, an Imitation Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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.

• From The Greek Of Moschus Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Tan ala tan glaukan otan onemos atrema Balle--k.
  
  t.
  
  l.
  
  When winds that move not its calm surface sweep
  The azure sea, I love the land no more;
  The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep
  Tempt my unquiet mind.
  
  —But when the roar
  Of Ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam
  Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst,
  I turn from the drear aspect to the home
  Of Earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed,
  When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody.
  
  Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea,
  Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot
  Has chosen.
  
  --But I my languid limbs will fling
  Beneath the plane, where the brook’s murmuring
  Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not.

• From The Greek Of Moschus : Pan Loved His Neighbour Echo Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Pan loved his neighbour Echo--but that child
  Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;
  The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild
  The bright nymph Lyda,--and so three went weeping.
  
  As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr,
  The Satyr, Lyda; and so love consumed them.
  
  --
  And thus to each--which was a woful matter--
  To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them;
  For, inasmuch as each might hate the lover,
  Each, loving, so was hated.
  
  --Ye that love not
  Be warned-in thought turn this example over,
  That when ye love, the like return ye prove not.

• From The Original Draft Of The Poem To William Shelley Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The world is now our dwelling-place;
  Where'er the earth one fading trace
  Of what was great and free does keep,
  That is our home!.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race
  Shall our contented exile reap;
  For who that in some happy place
  His own free thoughts can freely chase
  By woods and waves can clothe his face
  In cynic smiles?
  
  Child! we shall weep.
  
  II.
  
  This lament,
  The memory of thy grievous wrong
  Will fade.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  But genius is omnipotent
  To hallow.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Published in Dr.
  
  Garnett's Relics of Shelley, 1862.

• From Vergil's Fourth Georgic Read Poem Log in to favourite

  And the cloven waters like a chasm of mountains
  Stood, and received him in its mighty portal
  And led him through the deep’s untrampled fountains
  He went in wonder through the path immortal
  Of his great Mother and her humid reign
  And groves profaned not by the step of mortal
  Which sounded as he passed, and lakes which rain
  Replenished not girt round by marble caves
  ‘Wildered by the watery motion of the main
  Half ‘wildered he beheld the bursting waves
  Of every stream beneath the mighty earth
  Phasis and Lycus which the .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  sand paves,
  [And] The chasm where old Enipeus has its birth
  And father Tyber and Anienas[?
  
  ] glow
  And whence Caicus, Mysian stream, comes forth
  And rock-resounding Hypanis, and thou
  Eridanus who bearest like empire’s sign
  Two golden horns upon thy taurine brow
  Thou than whom none of the streams divine
  Through garden-fields and meads with fiercer power,
  Burst in their tumult on the purple brine.

• From Vergil's Tenth Eclogue Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Melodious Arethusa, o'er my verse
  Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream:
  Who denies verse to Gallus?
  
  So, when thou
  Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam
  Of Syracusan waters, mayst thou flow
  Unmingled with the bitter Doric dew!
  Begin, and, whilst the goats are browsing now
  The soft leaves, in our way let us pursue
  The melancholy loves of Gallus.
  
  List!
  We sing not to the dead: the wild woods knew
  His sufferings, and their echoes.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Young Naiads,.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  in what far woodlands wild
  Wandered ye when unworthy love possessed
  Your Gallus?
  
  Not where Pindus is up-piled,
  Nor where Parnassus’ sacred mount, nor where
  Aonian Aganippe expands.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim.
  
  The pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus,
  The cold crags of Lycaeus, weep for him;
  And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals,
  Came shaking in his speed the budding wands
  And heavy lilies which he bore: we knew
  Pan the Arcadian.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  'What madness is this, Gallus?
  
  Thy heart's care
  With willing steps pursues another there.
  
  '

• FromThe Arabic: An Imitation Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  My faint spirit was sitting in the light
  Of thy looks, my love;
  It panted for thee like the hind at noon
  For the brooks, my love.
  
  Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight
  Bore thee far from me;
  My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,
  Did companion thee.
  
  II.
  
  Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed
  Or the death they bear,
  The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove
  With the wings of care;
  In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,
  Shall mine cling to thee,
  Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love,
  It may bring to thee.

• Ghasta Or, The Avenging Demon!!! Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Hark! the owlet flaps her wing,
  In the pathless dell beneath,
  Hark! night ravens loudly sing,
  Tidings of despair and death.
  
  --
  Horror covers all the sky,
  Clouds of darkness blot the moon,
  Prepare! for mortal thou must die,
  Prepare to yield thy soul up soon--
  Fierce the tempest raves around,
  Fierce the volleyed lightnings fly,
  Crashing thunder shakes the ground,
  Fire and tumult fill the sky.
  
  —
  Hark! the tolling village bell,
  Tells the hour of midnight come,
  Now can blast the powers of Hell,
  Fiend-like goblins now can roam--
  See! his crest all stained with rain,
  A warrior hastening speeds his way,
  He starts, looks round him, starts again,
  And sighs for the approach of day.
  
  See! his frantic steed he reins,
  See! he lifts his hands on high,
  Implores a respite to his pains,
  From the powers of the sky.
  
  --
  He seeks an Inn, for faint from toil,
  Fatigue had bent his lofty form,
  To rest his wearied limbs awhile,
  Fatigued with wandering and the storm.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Slow the door is opened wide--
  With trackless tread a stranger came,
  His form Majestic, slow his stride,
  He sate, nor spake,--nor told his name--
  Terror blanched the warrior's cheek,
  Cold sweat from his forehead ran,
  In vain his tongue essayed to speak,--
  At last the stranger thus began:
  'Mortal! thou that saw'st the sprite,
  Tell me what I wish to know,
  Or come with me before 'tis light,
  Where cypress trees and mandrakes grow.
  
  'Fierce the avenging Demon's ire,
  Fiercer than the wintry blast,
  Fiercer than the lightning's fire,
  When the hour of twilight's past'--
  The warrior raised his sunken eye.
  
  It met the stranger's sullen scowl,
  'Mortal! Mortal! thou must die,'
  In burning letters chilled his soul.
  
  WARRIOR:
  Stranger! whoso'er you are,
  I feel impelled my tale to tell--
  Horrors stranger shalt thou hear,
  Horrors drear as those of Hell.
  
  O'er my Castle silence reigned,
  Late the night and drear the hour,
  When on the terrace I observed,
  A fleeting shadowy mist to lower.
  
  --
  Light the cloud as summer fog,
  Which transient shuns the morning beam;
  Fleeting as the cloud on bog,
  That hangs or on the mountain stream.
  
  --
  Horror seized my shuddering brain,
  Horror dimmed my starting eye.
  
  In vain I tried to speak,--In vain
  My limbs essayed the spot to fly--
  At last the thin and shadowy form,
  With noiseless, trackless footsteps came,--
  Its light robe floated on the storm,
  Its head was bound with lambent flame.
  
  In chilling voice drear as the breeze
  Which sweeps along th' autumnal ground,
  Which wanders through the leafless trees,
  Or the mandrake's groan which floats around.
  
  'Thou art mine and I am thine,
  'Till the sinking of the world,
  I am thine and thou art mine,
  'Till in ruin death is hurled--
  'Strong the power and dire the fate,
  Which drags me from the depths of Hell,
  Breaks the tomb's eternal gate,
  Where fiendish shapes and dead men yell,
  'Haply I might ne'er have shrank
  From flames that rack the guilty dead,
  Haply I might ne'er have sank
  On pleasure's flowery, thorny bed--
  --'But stay! no more I dare disclose,
  Of the tale I wish to tell,
  On Earth relentless were my woes,
  But fiercer are my pangs in Hell--
  'Now I claim thee as my love,
  Lay aside all chilling fear,
  My affection will I prove,
  Where sheeted ghosts and spectres are!
  'For thou art mine, and I am thine,
  'Till the dreaded judgement day,
  I am thine, and thou art mine--
  Night is past--I must away.
  
  '
  Still I gazed, and still the form
  Pressed upon my aching sight,
  Still I braved the howling storm,
  When the ghost dissolved in night.
  
  --
  Restless, sleepless fled the night,
  Sleepless as a sick man’s bed,
  When he sighs for morning light,
  When he turns his aching head,--
  Slow and painful passed the day.
  
  Melancholy seized my brain,
  Lingering fled the hours away,
  Lingering to a wretch in pain.
  
  --
  At last came night, ah! horrid hour,
  Ah! chilling time that wakes the dead,
  When demons ride the clouds that lower,
  --The phantom sat upon my bed.
  
  In hollow voice, low as the sound
  Which in some charnel makes its moan,
  What floats along the burying ground,
  The phantom claimed me as her own.
  
  Her chilling finger on my head,
  With coldest touch congealed my soul--
  Cold as the finger of the dead,
  Or damps which round a tombstone roll--
  Months are passed in lingering round,
  Every night the spectre comes,
  With thrilling step it shakes the ground,
  With thrilling step it round me roams--
  Stranger! I have told to thee,
  All the tale I have to tell--
  Stranger! canst thou tell to me,
  How to ‘scape the powers of Hell?
  
  --
  STRANGER:
  Warrior! I can ease thy woes,
  Wilt thou, wilt thou, come with me--
  Warrior! I can all disclose,
  Follow, follow, follow me.
  
  Yet the tempest's duskiest wing,
  Its mantle stretches o'er the sky,
  Yet the midnight ravens sing,
  'Mortal! Mortal! thou must die.
  
  '
  At last they saw a river clear,
  That crossed the heathy path they trod,
  The Stranger’s look was wild and drear,
  The firm Earth shook beneath his nod--
  He raised a wand above his head,
  He traced a circle on the plain,
  In a wild verse he called the dead,
  The dead with silent footsteps came.
  
  A burning brilliance on his head,
  Flaming filled the stormy air,
  In a wild verse he called the dead,
  The dead in motley crowd were there.
  
  --
  'Ghasta! Ghasta! come along,
  Bring thy fiendish crowd with thee,
  Quickly raise th' avenging Song,
  Ghasta! Ghasta! come to me.
  
  '
  Horrid shapes in mantles gray,
  Flit athwart the stormy night,
  'Ghasta! Ghasta! come away,
  Come away before 'tis light.
  
  '
  See! the sheeted Ghost they bring,
  Yelling dreadful o’er the heath,
  Hark! the deadly verse they sing,
  Tidings of despair and death!
  The yelling Ghost before him stands,
  See! she rolls her eyes around,
  Now she lifts her bony hands,
  Now her footsteps shake the ground.
  
  STRANGER:
  Phantom of Theresa say,
  Why to earth again you came,
  Quickly speak, I must away!
  Or you must bleach for aye in flame,--
  PHANTOM:
  Mighty one I know thee now,
  Mightiest power of the sky,
  Know thee by thy flaming brow,
  Know thee by thy sparkling eye.
  
  That fire is scorching! Oh! I came,
  From the caverned depth of Hell,
  My fleeting false Rodolph to claim,
  Mighty one! I know thee well.
  
  --
  STRANGER:
  Ghasta! seize yon wandering sprite,
  Drag her to the depth beneath,
  Take her swift, before 'tis light,
  Take her to the cells of death!
  Thou that heardst the trackless dead,
  In the mouldering tomb must lie,
  Mortal! look upon my head,
  Mortal! Mortal! thou must die.
  
  Of glowing flame a cross was there,
  Which threw a light around his form,
  Whilst his lank and raven hair,
  Floated wild upon the storm.
  
  --
  The warrior upwards turned his eyes,
  Gazed upon the cross of fire,
  There sat horror and surprise,
  There sat God’s eternal ire.
  
  --
  A shivering through the Warrior flew,
  Colder than the nightly blast,
  Colder than the evening dew,
  When the hour of twilight’s past.
  
  --
  Thunder shakes th' expansive sky,
  Shakes the bosom of the heath,
  'Mortal! Mortal! thou must die'--
  The warrior sank convulsed in death.
  
  JANUARY, 1810.
  
  The idea of the following tale was taken from a few unconnected German Stanzas.
  
  --The principal Character is evidently the Wandering Jew, and although not mentioned by name, the burning Cross on his forehead undoubtedly alludes to that superstition, so prevalent in the part of Germany called the Black Forest, where this scene is supposed to lie.

• Ginevra Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one
  Who staggers forth into the air and sun
  From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,
  Bewildered, and incapable, and ever
  Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain
  Of usual shapes, till the familiar train
  Of objects and of persons passed like things
  Strange as a dreamer’s mad imaginings,
  Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;
  The vows to which her lips had sworn assent
  Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,
  Deafening the lost intelligence within.
  
  And so she moved under the bridal veil,
  Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,
  And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,
  And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,--
  And of the gold and jewels glittering there
  She scarce felt conscious,--but the weary glare
  Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,
  Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight,
  A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud
  Was less heavenly fair--her face was bowed,
  And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair
  Were mirrored in the polished marble stair
  Which led from the cathedral to the street;
  And ever as she went her light fair feet
  Erased these images.
  
  The bride-maidens who round her thronging came,
  Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,
  Envying the unenviable; and others
  Making the joy which should have been another’s
  Their own by gentle sympathy; and some
  Sighing to think of an unhappy home:
  Some few admiring what can ever lure
  Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure
  Of parents’ smiles for life’s great cheat; a thing
  Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining.
  
  But they are all dispersed--and, lo! she stands
  Looking in idle grief on her white hands,
  Alone within the garden now her own;
  And through the sunny air, with jangling tone,
  The music of the merry marriage-bells,
  Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells;--
  Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams
  That he is dreaming, until slumber seems
  A mockery of itself--when suddenly
  Antonio stood before her, pale as she.
  
  With agony, with sorrow, and with pride,
  He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride,
  And said--‘Is this thy faith?
  
  ’ and then as one
  Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun
  With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise
  And look upon his day of life with eyes
  Which weep in vain that they can dream no more,
  Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore
  To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood
  Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued
  Said--‘Friend, if earthly violence or ill,
  Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will
  Of parents, chance or custom, time or change,
  Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge,
  Or wildered looks, or words, or evil speech,
  With all their stings and venom can impeach
  Our love,--we love not:--if the grave which hides
  The victim from the tyrant, and divides
  The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart
  Imperious inquisition to the heart
  That is another’s, could dissever ours,
  We love not.
  
  ’--‘What! do not the silent hours
  Beckon thee to Gherardi’s bridal bed?
  
  Is not that ring’--a pledge, he would have said,
  Of broken vows, but she with patient look
  The golden circle from her finger took,
  And said--‘Accept this token of my faith,
  The pledge of vows to be absolved by death;
  And I am dead or shall be soon—my knell
  Will mix its music with that merry bell,
  Does it not sound as if they sweetly said
  “We toll a corpse out of the marriage-bed”?
  
  The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn
  Will serve unfaded for my bier—so soon
  That even the dying violet will not die
  Before Ginevra.
  
  ’ The strong fantasy
  Had made her accents weaker and more weak,
  And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,
  And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere
  Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,
  Making her but an image of the thought
  Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought
  News of the terrors of the coming time.
  
  Like an accuser branded with the crime
  He would have cast on a beloved friend,
  Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end
  The pale betrayer—he then with vain repentance
  Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence--
  Antonio stood and would have spoken, when
  The compound voice of women and of men
  Was heard approaching; he retired, while she
  Was led amid the admiring company
  Back to the palace,--and her maidens soon
  Changed her attire for the afternoon,
  And left her at her own request to keep
  An hour of quiet rest:--like one asleep
  With open eyes and folded hands she lay,
  Pale in the light of the declining day.
  
  Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,
  And in the lighted hall the guests are met;
  The beautiful looked lovelier in the light
  Of love, and admiration, and delight
  Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes,
  Kindling a momentary Paradise.
  
  This crowd is safer than the silent wood,
  Where love’s own doubts disturb the solitude;
  On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine
  Falls, and the dew of music more divine
  Tempers the deep emotions of the time
  To spirits cradled in a sunny clime:--
  How many meet, who never yet have met,
  To part too soon, but never to forget.
  
  How many saw the beauty, power and wit
  Of looks and words which ne’er enchanted yet;
  But life’s familiar veil was now withdrawn,
  As the world leaps before an earthquake’s dawn,
  And unprophetic of the coming hours,
  The matin winds from the expanded flowers
  Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken
  The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken
  From every living heart which it possesses,
  Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,
  As if the future and the past were all
  Treasured i’ the instant;--so Gherardi’s hall
  Laughed in the mirth of its lord’s festival,
  Till some one asked--‘Where is the Bride?
  
  ’ And then
  A bridesmaid went,--and ere she came again
  A silence fell upon the guests--a pause
  Of expectation, as when beauty awes
  All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;
  Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;--
  For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew
  The colour from the hearer’s cheeks, and flew
  Louder and swifter round the company;
  And then Gherardi entered with an eye
  Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd
  Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.
  
  They found Ginevra dead! if it be death
  To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,
  With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,
  And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light
  Mocked at the speculation they had owned.
  
  If it be death, when there is felt around
  A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,
  And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair
  From the scalp to the ankles, as it were
  Corruption from the spirit passing forth,
  And giving all it shrouded to the earth,
  And leaving as swift lightning in its flight
  Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night
  Of thought we know thus much of death,—no more
  Than the unborn dream of our life before
  Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.
  
  The marriage feast and its solemnity
  Was turned to funeral pomp--the company,
  With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they
  Who loved the dead went weeping on their way
  Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise
  Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,
  On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,
  Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.
  
  The lamps which, half extinguished in their haste,
  Gleamed few and faint o’er the abandoned feast,
  Showed as it were within the vaulted room
  A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom
  Had passed out of men’s minds into the air.
  
  Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,
  Friends and relations of the dead,--and he,
  A loveless man, accepted torpidly
  The consolation that he wanted not;
  Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.
  
  Their whispers made the solemn silence seem
  More still--some wept,.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Some melted into tears without a sob,
  And some with hearts that might be heard to throb
  Leaned on the table and at intervals
  Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls
  And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came
  Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame
  Of every torch and taper as it swept
  From out the chamber where the women kept;--
  Their tears fell on the dear companion cold
  Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled
  The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,
  And finding Death their penitent had shrived,
  Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon
  A vulture has just feasted to the bone.
  
  And then the mourning women came.
  
  --
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  THE DIRGE.
  
  Old winter was gone
  In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,
  And the spring came down
  From the planet that hovers upon the shore
  Where the sea of sunlight encroaches
  On the limits of wintry night;--
  If the land, and the air, and the sea,
  Rejoice not when spring approaches,
  We did not rejoice in thee,
  Ginevra!
  She is still, she is cold
  On the bridal couch,
  One step to the white deathbed,
  And one to the bier,
  And one to the charnel--and one, oh where?
  
  The dark arrow fled
  In the noon.
  
  Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled,
  The rats in her heart
  Will have made their nest,
  And the worms be alive in her golden hair,
  While the Spirit that guides the sun,
  Sits throned in his flaming chair,
  She shall sleep.

• Good-Night Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Good-night?
  
  ah! no; the hour is ill
  Which severs those it should unite;
  Let us remain together still,
  Then it will be GOOD night.
  
  II.
  
  How can I call the lone night good,
  Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
  
  Be it not said, thought, understood--
  Then it will be--GOOD night.
  
  III.
  
  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.
  
  Published by Leigh Hunt over the signature Sigma, The Literary Pocket-Book, 1822.
  
  It is included in the Harvard manuscript book, and there is a transcript by Shelley in a copy of The Literary Pocket-Book, 1819, presented by him to Miss Sophia Stacey, December 29, 1820.

• Hellas: A Lyrical Drama Read Poem Log in to favourite

  MANTIS EIM ESQLWN AGWNWN
  --Oedip.
  
  Colon.
  
  TO HIS EXCELLENCY PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA THE DRAMA OF HELLAS IS INSCRIBED AS AN IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION, SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP OF THE AUTHOR.
  
  PROLOGUE 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
  Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation
  Is yet withheld, clothèd in which it shall
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  annul
  The fairest of those wandering isles that gem
  The sapphire space of interstellar air,
  That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped
  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 pendent orb
  There lies an antique region, on which fell
  The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn
  Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung
  Temples and cities and immortal forms
  And harmonies of wisdom and of song,
  And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair.
  
  And when the sun of its dominion failed,
  And when the winter of its glory came,
  The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept
  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-wingèd 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.
  
  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.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  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,
  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,
  A seraph-wingèd Victory [arrayed]
  In tempest of the omnipotence of God
  Which sweeps through all things.
  
  From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms
  Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies
  To stamp, as on a wingèd 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, O Father,—as they gather
  The spirit of Thy love which paves for them
  Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere
  Shall be one living Spirit,-- so shall Greece--
  Satan.
  
  Be as all things beneath the empyrean,
  Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,
  Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns?
  
  Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed
  Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn;
  For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor
  The innumerable worlds of golden light
  Which are my empire, and the least of them
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  which thou wouldst redeem from me?
  
  Know'st thou not them my portion?
  
  Or wouldst rekindle the.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  strife
  Which our great Father then did arbitrate
  Which he assigned to his competing sons
  Each his apportioned realm?
  
  Thou Destiny,
  Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence
  Of Him who sends thee forth, whate'er thy task,
  Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine
  Thy trophies, whether Greece again become
  The fountain in the desert whence the earth
  Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength
  To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death
  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 wingèd hounds, Famine and Pestilence,
  Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forkèd snake
  Insatiate Superstition still shall.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover
  Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change
  Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings,
  Convulsing and consuming, and I add
  Three vials of the tears which daemons 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
  Of Christian night rolled back upon the West,
  When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph
  From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Wake, thou Word
  Of God, and from the throne of Destiny
  Even to the utmost limit of thy way
  May Triumph.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Be thou a curse on them whose creed
  Divides and multiplies the most high God.
  
  HELLAS
  DRAMATIS PERSONAE
  Mahmud.
  
  Hassan.
  
  Daood.
  
  Ahasuerus, a Jew.
  
  Chorus of Greek Captive Women.
  
  The Phantom of Mahomet II.
  
  Messengers, Slaves, and Attendants.
  
  Scene, Constantinople.
  
  Time, Sunset.
  
  Scene--A Terrace on the Seraglio.
  
  Mahmud sleeping, an Indian Slave sitting beside his Couch.
  
  Chorus of Greek Captive Women.
  
  We strew these opiate flowers
  On thy restless pillow,—
  They were stripped from Orient bowers,
  By the Indian billow.
  
  Be thy sleep
  Calm and deep,
  Like theirs who fell—not ours who weep!
  Indian.
  
  Away, unlovely dreams!
  Away, false shapes of sleep!
  Be his, as Heaven seems,
  Clear, and bright, and deep!
  Soft as love, and calm as death,
  Sweet as a summer night without a breath.
  
  Chorus.
  
  Sleep, sleep! our song is laden
  With the soul of slumber;
  It was sung by a Samian maiden,
  Whose lover was of the number
  Who now keep
  That calm sleep
  Whence none may wake, where none shall weep.
  
  Indian.
  
  I touch thy temples pale!
  I breathe my soul on thee!
  And could my prayers avail,
  All my joy should be
  Dead, and I would live to weep,
  So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.
  
  Chorus.
  
  Breathe low, low
  The spell of the mighty mistress now!
  When Conscience lulls her sated snake,
  And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake.
  
  Breathe low—low
  The words which, like secret fire, shall flow
  Through the veins of the frozen earth—low, low!
  Semichorus I.
  
  Life may change, but it may fly not;
  Hope may vanish, but can die not;
  Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
  Love repulsed,—but it returneth!
  Semichorus II.
  
  Yet were life a charnel where
  Hope lay coffined with Despair;
  Yet were truth a sacred lie,
  Love were lust—
  Semichorus I.
  
  If Liberty
  Lent not life its soul of light,
  Hope its iris of delight,
  Truth its prophet's robe to wear,
  Love its power to give and bear.
  
  Chorus.
  
  In the great morning of the world,
  The Spirit of God with might unfurled
  The flag of Freedom over Chaos,
  And all its banded anarchs fled,
  Like vultures frighted from Imaus,
  Before an earthquake's tread.
  
  —
  So from Time's tempestuous dawn
  Freedom's splendour burst and shone:—
  Thermopylae and Marathon
  Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted,
  The springing Fire.
  
  —The wingèd glory
  On Philippi half-alighted,
  Like an eagle on a promontory.
  
  Its unwearied wings could fan
  The quenchless ashes of Milan.
  
  [1]
  From age to age, from man to man,
  It lived; and lit from land to land
  Florence, Albion, Switzerland.
  
  Then night fell; and, as from night,
  Reassuming fiery flight,
  From the West swift Freedom came,
  Against the course of Heaven and doom,
  A second sun arrayed in flame,
  To burn, to kindle, to illume.
  
  From far Atlantis its young beams
  Chased the shadows and the dreams.
  
  France, with all her sanguine steams,
  Hid, but quenched it not; again
  Through clouds its shafts of glory rain
  From utmost Germany to Spain.
  
  As an eagle fed with morning
  Scorns the embattled tempest's warning,
  When she seeks her aerie hanging
  In the mountain-cedar's hair,
  And her brood expect the clanging
  Of her wings through the wild air,
  Sick with famine:—Freedom, so
  To what of Greece remaineth now
  Returns; her hoary ruins glow
  Like Orient mountains lost in day;
  Beneath the safety of her wings
  Her renovated nurslings prey,
  And in the naked lightenings
  Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.
  
  Let Freedom leave—where'er she flies,
  A Desert, or a Paradise:
  Let the beautiful and the brave
  Share her glory, or a grave.
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  With the gifts of gladness
  Greece did thy cradle strew;
  Semichorus II.
  
  With the tears of sadness
  Greece did thy shroud bedew!
  Semichorus I.
  
  With an orphan's affection
  She followed thy bier through Time;
  Semichorus II.
  
  And at thy resurrection
  Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!
  Semichorus I.
  
  If Heaven should resume thee,
  To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;
  Semichorus II.
  
  If Hell should entomb thee,
  To Hell shall her high hearts bend.
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  If Annihilation—
  Semichorus II.
  
  Dust let her glories be!
  And a name and a nation
  Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee!
  Indian.
  
  His brow grows darker—breathe not—move not!
  He starts—he shudders—ye that love not,
  With your panting loud and fast,
  Have awakened him at last.
  
  Mahmud
  (starting from his sleep).
  
  Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate!
  What! from a cannonade of three short hours?
  
  'Tis false! that breach towards the Bosphorus
  Cannot be practicable yet—who stirs?
  
  Stand to the match; that when the foe prevails
  One spark may mix in reconciling ruin
  The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower
  Into the gap—wrench off the roof!
  (Enter Hassan.
  
  )
  Ha! what!
  The truth of day lightens upon my dream
  And I am Mahmud still.
  
  Hassan.
  
  Your Sublime Highness
  Is strangely moved.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  The times do cast strange shadows
  On those who watch and who must rule their course,
  Lest they, being first in peril as in glory,
  Be whelmed in the fierce ebb:—and these are of them.
  
  Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me
  As thus from sleep into the troubled day;
  It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea,
  Leaving no figure upon memory's glass.
  
  Would that—no matter.
  
  Thou didst say thou knewest
  A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle
  Of strange and secret and forgotten things.
  
  I bade thee summon him:—'tis said his tribe
  Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.
  
  Hassan.
  
  The Jew of whom I spake is old,—so old
  He seems to have outlived a world's decay;
  The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean
  Seem younger still than he;—his hair and beard
  Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow;
  His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries
  Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct
  With light, and to the soul that quickens them
  Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift
  To the winter wind:—but from his eye looks forth
  A life of unconsumèd thought which pierces
  The Present, and the Past, and the To-come.
  
  Some say that this is he whom the great prophet
  Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery,
  Mocked with the curse of immortality.
  
  Some feign that he is Enoch: others dream
  He was pre-adamite and has survived
  Cycles of generation and of ruin.
  
  The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence
  And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh,
  Deep contemplation, and unwearied study,
  In years outstretched beyond the date of man,
  May have attained to sovereignty and science
  Over those strong and secret things and thoughts
  Which others fear and know not.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  I would talk
  With this old Jew.
  
  Hassan.
  
  Thy will is even now
  Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern
  'Mid the Demonesi, less accessible
  Than thou or God! He who would question him
  Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream
  Of Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles,
  When the young moon is westering as now,
  And evening airs wander upon the wave;
  And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle,
  Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow
  Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water,
  Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud
  'Ahasuerus!' and the caverns round
  Will answer 'Ahasuerus!' If his prayer
  Be granted, a faint meteor will arise
  Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind
  Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest,
  And with the wind a storm of harmony
  Unutterably sweet, and pilot him
  Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:
  Thence at the hour and place and circumstance
  Fit for the matter of their conference
  The Jew appears.
  
  Few dare, and few who dare
  Win the desired communion—but that shout
  Bodes—
  [A shout within.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Evil, doubtless; like all human sounds.
  
  Let me converse with spirits.
  
  Hassan.
  
  That shout again.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  This Jew whom thou hast summoned—
  Hassan.
  
  Will be here—
  Mahmud.
  
  When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked
  He, I, and all things shall compel—enough!
  Silence those mutineers—that drunken crew,
  That crowd about the pilot in the storm.
  
  Ay! strike the foremost shorter by a head!
  They weary me, and I have need of rest.
  
  Kings are like stars—they rise and set, they have
  The worship of the world, but no repose.
  
  [Exeunt severally.
  
  Chorus[2].
  
  Worlds on worlds are rolling ever
  From creation to decay,
  Like the bubbles on a river
  Sparkling, bursting, borne away.
  
  But they are still immortal
  Who, through birth's orient portal
  And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,
  Clothe their unceasing flight
  In the brief dust and light
  Gathered around their chariots as they go;
  New shapes they still may weave,
  New gods, new laws receive,
  Bright or dim are they as the robes they last
  On Death's bare ribs had cast.
  
  A power from the unknown God,
  A Promethean conqueror, came;
  Like a triumphal path he trod
  The thorns of death and shame.
  
  A mortal shape to him
  Was like the vapour dim
  Which the orient planet animates with light;
  Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,
  Like bloodhounds mild and tame,
  Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight;
  The moon of Mahomet
  Arose, and it shall set:
  While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon
  The cross leads generations on.
  
  Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep
  From one whose dreams are Paradise
  Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,
  And Day peers forth with her blank eyes;
  So fleet, so faint, so fair,
  The Powers of earth and air
  Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem:
  Apollo, Pan, and Love,
  And even Olympian Jove
  Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;
  Our hills and seas and streams,
  Dispeopled of their dreams,
  Their watèrs turned to blood, their dew to tears,
  Wailed for the golden years.
  
  Enter Mahmud, Hassan, Daood, and others.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  More gold?
  
  our ancestors bought gold with victory,
  And shall I sell it for defeat?
  
  Daood.
  
  The Janizars
  Clamour for pay.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Go! bid them pay themselves
  With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins
  Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy?
  
  No infidel children to impale on spears?
  
  No hoary priests after that Patriarch[3]
  Who bent the curse against his country's heart,
  Which clove his own at last?
  
  Go! bid them kill,
  Blood is the seed of gold.
  
  Daood.
  
  It has been sown,
  And yet the harvest to the sicklemen
  Is as a grain to each.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Then, take this signet,
  Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie
  The treasures of victorious Solyman,—
  An empire's spoil stored for a day of ruin.
  
  O spirit of my sires! is it not come?
  
  The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep;
  But these, who spread their feast on the red earth,
  Hunger for gold, which fills not.
  
  —See them fed;
  Then, lead them to the rivers of fresh death.
  
  [Exit Daood.
  
  O miserable dawn, after a night
  More glorious than the day which it usurped!
  O faith in God! O power on earth! O word
  Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing wings
  Darkened the thrones and idols of the West,
  Now bright!—For thy sake cursèd be the hour,
  Even as a father by an evil child,
  When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph
  From Caucasus to White Ceraunia!
  Ruin above, and anarchy below;
  Terror without, and treachery within;
  The Chalice of destruction full, and all
  Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares
  To dash it from his lips?
  
  and where is Hope?
  
  Hassan.
  
  The lamp of our dominion still rides high;
  One God is God—Mahomet is His prophet.
  
  Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits
  Of utmost Asia, irresistibly
  Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco's cry;
  But not like them to weep their strength in tears:
  They bear destroying lightning, and their step
  Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm,
  And reign in ruin.
  
  Phrygian Olympus,
  Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen
  With horrent arms; and lofty ships even now,
  Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge,
  Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala
  The convoy of the ever-veering wind.
  
  Samos is drunk with blood;—the Greek has paid
  Brief victory with swift loss and long despair.
  
  The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far,
  When the fierce shout of 'Allah-illa-Allah!'
  Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind
  Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock
  Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm.
  
  So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day!
  If night is mute, yet the returning sun
  Kindles the voices of the morning birds;
  Nor at thy bidding less exultingly
  Than birds rejoicing in the golden day,
  The Anarchies of Africa unleash
  Their tempest-wingèd cities of the sea,
  To speak in thunder to the rebel world.
  
  Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm,
  They sweep the pale Aegean, while the Queen
  Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne,
  Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons
  Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee:
  Russia still hovers, as an eagle might
  Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane
  Hang tangled in inextricable fight,
  To stoop upon the victor;—for she fears
  The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine.
  
  But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave
  Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war
  Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy,
  And howl upon their limits; for they see
  The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover,
  Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood
  Crouch round.
  
  What Anarch wears a crown or mitre,
  Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold,
  Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes?
  
  Our arsenals and our armouries are full;
  Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannon
  Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour
  Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city;
  The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale
  The Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew
  Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth.
  
  Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds,
  Over the hills of Anatolia,
  Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry
  Sweep;—the far flashing of their starry lances
  Reverberates the dying light of day.
  
  We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law;
  But many-headed Insurrection stands
  Divided in itself, and soon must fall.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable:
  Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned
  Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud
  Which leads the rear of the departing day;
  Wan emblem of an empire fading now!
  See how it trembles in the blood-red air,
  And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent
  Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from above,
  One star with insolent and victorious light
  Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams,
  Like arrows through a fainting antelope,
  Strikes its weak from to death.
  
  Hassan.
  
  Even as that moon
  Renews itself—
  Mahmud.
  
  Shall we be not renewed!
  Far other bark than ours were needed now
  To stem the torrent of descending time:
  The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lord
  Stalks through the capitals of armèd kings,
  And spreads his ensign in the wilderness:
  Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls,
  Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust;
  And the inheritors of the earth, like beasts
  When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear
  Cower in their kingly dens—as I do now.
  
  What were Defeat when Victory must appal?
  
  Or Danger, when Security looks pale?
  
  —
  How said the messenger—who, from the fort
  Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle
  Of Bucharest?
  
  —that—
  Hassan.
  
  Ibrahim's scimitar
  Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven,
  To burn before him in the night of battle—
  A light and a destruction.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Ay! the day
  Was ours: but how?
  
  —
  Hassan.
  
  The light Wallachians,
  The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies
  Fled from the glance of our artillery
  Almost before the thunderstone alit.
  
  One half the Grecian army made a bridge
  Of safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead;
  The other—
  Mahmud.
  
  Speak—tremble not.
  
  —
  Hassan.
  
  Islanded
  By victor myriads, formed in hollow square
  With rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back
  The deluge of our foaming cavalry;
  Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines.
  
  Our baffled army trembled like one man
  Before a host, and gave them space; but soon,
  From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed,
  Kneading them down with fire and iron rain:
  Yet none approached; till, like a field of corn
  Under the hook of the swart sickleman,
  The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead,
  Grew weak and few.
  
  —Then said the Pacha, 'Slaves,
  Render yourselves—they have abandoned you—
  What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid?
  
  We grant your lives.
  
  ' 'Grant that which is thine own!'
  Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died!
  Another—'God, and man, and hope abandon me;
  But I to them, and to myself, remain
  Constant:'—he bowed his head, and his heart burst.
  
  A third exclaimed, 'There is a refuge, tyrant,
  Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm
  Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.
  
  '
  Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm,
  The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment
  Among the slain—dead earth upon the earth!
  So these survivors, each by different ways,
  Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable,
  Met in triumphant death; and when our army
  Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame
  Held back the base hyaenas of the battle
  That feed upon the dead and fly the living,
  One rose out of the chaos of the slain:
  And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit
  Of the old saviours of the land we rule
  Had lifted in its anger, wandering by;—
  Or if there burned within the dying man
  Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith
  Creating what it feigned;—I cannot tell—
  But he cried, 'Phantoms of the free, we come!
  Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike
  To dust the citadels of sanguine kings,
  And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts,
  And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew;—
  O ye who float around this clime, and weave
  The garment of the glory which it wears,
  Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped,
  Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;—
  Progenitors of all that yet is great,
  Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept
  In your high ministrations, us, your sons—
  Us first, and the more glorious yet to come!
  And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale
  When the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread,
  The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame,
  Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still
  They crave the relic of Destruction's feast.
  
  The exhalations and the thirsty winds
  Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death;
  Heaven's light is quenched in slaughter: thus, where'er
  Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets,
  The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast
  Of these dead limbs,—upon your streams and mountains,
  Upon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops,
  Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly,
  Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down
  With poisoned light—Famine, and Pestilence,
  And Panic, shall wage war upon our side!
  Nature from all her boundaries is moved
  Against ye: Time has found ye light as foam.
  
  The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake
  Their empire o'er the unborn world of men
  On this one cast;—but ere the die be thrown,
  The renovated genius of our race,
  Proud umpire of the impious game, descends,
  A seraph-wingèd Victory, bestriding
  The tempest of the Omnipotence of God,
  Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom,
  And you to oblivion!'—More he would have said,
  But—
  Mahmud.
  
  Died—as thou shouldst ere thy lips had painted
  Their ruin in the hues of our success.
  
  A rebel's crime, gilt with a rebel's tongue!
  Your heart is Greek, Hassan.
  
  Hassan.
  
  It may be so:
  A spirit not my own wrenched me within,
  And I have spoken words I fear and hate;
  Yet would I die for—
  Mahmud.
  
  Live! oh live! outlive
  Me and this sinking empire.
  
  But the fleet—
  Hassan.
  
  Alas!—
  Mahmud.
  
  The fleet which, like a flock of clouds
  Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner!
  Our wingèd castles from their merchant ships!
  Our myriads before their weak pirate bands!
  Our arms before their chains! our years of empire
  Before their centuries of servile fear!
  Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters!
  They own no more the thunder-bearing banner
  Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed,
  Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master.
  
  Hassan.
  
  Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae saw
  The wreck—
  Mahmud.
  
  The caves of the Icarian isles
  Told each to the other in loud mockery,
  And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes,
  First of the sea-convulsing fight—and, then,—
  Thou darest to speak—senseless are the mountains:
  Interpret thou their voice!
  Hassan.
  
  My presence bore
  A part in that day's shame.
  
  The Grecian fleet
  Bore down at daybreak from the North, and hung
  As multitudinous on the ocean line,
  As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind.
  
  Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men,
  Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle
  Was kindled.
  
  —
  First through the hail of our artillery
  The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail
  Dashed:—ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man
  To man were grappled in the embrace of war,
  Inextricable but by death or victory.
  
  The tempest of the raging fight convulsed
  To its crystàlline depths that stainless sea,
  And shook Heaven's roof of golden morning clouds,
  Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles.
  
  In the brief trances of the artillery
  One cry from the destroyed and the destroyer
  Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped
  The unforeseen event, till the north wind
  Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil
  Of battle-smoke—then victory—victory!
  For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers
  Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon
  The abhorrèd cross glimmered behind, before,
  Among, around us; and that fatal sign
  Dried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts,
  As the sun drinks the dew.
  
  —What more?
  
  We fled!—
  Our noonday path over the sanguine foam
  Was beaconed,—and the glare struck the sun pale,—
  By our consuming transports: the fierce light
  Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red,
  And every countenance blank.
  
  Some ships lay feeding
  The ravening fire, even to the water's level;
  Some were blown up; some, settling heavily,
  Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died
  Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far,
  Even after they were dead.
  
  Nine thousand perished!
  We met the vultures legioned in the air
  Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind;
  They, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks,
  Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched
  Each on the weltering carcase that we loved,
  Like its ill angel or its damnèd soul,
  Riding upon the bosom of the sea.
  
  We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast.
  
  Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea,
  And ravening Famine left his ocean cave
  To dwell with War, with us, and with Despair.
  
  We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,
  And with night, tempest—
  Mahmud.
  
  Cease!
  Enter a Messenger.
  
  Messenger.
  
  Your Sublime Highness,
  That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador,
  Has left the city.
  
  —If the rebel fleet
  Had anchored in the port, had victory
  Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome,
  Panic were tamer.
  
  —Obedience and Mutiny,
  Like giants in contention planet-struck,
  Stand gazing on each other.
  
  —There is peace
  In Stamboul.
  
  —
  Mahmud.
  
  Is the grave not calmer still?
  
  Its ruins shall be mine.
  
  Hassan.
  
  Fear not the Russian:
  The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay
  Against the hunter.
  
  —Cunning, base, and cruel,
  He crouches, watching till the spoil be won,
  And must be paid for his reserve in blood.
  
  After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian
  That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion
  Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields,
  Rivers and seas, like that which we may win,
  But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves!
  Enter second Messenger.
  
  Second Messenger.
  
  Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens,
  Navarin, Artas, Monembasia,
  Corinth, and Thebes are carried by assault,
  And every Islamite who made his dogs
  Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves
  Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood,
  Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death;
  But like a fiery plague breaks out anew
  In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale
  In its own light.
  
  The garrison of Patras
  Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope
  But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant,
  His wishes still are weaker than his fears,
  Or he would sell what faith may yet remain
  From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway;
  And if you buy him not, your treasury
  Is empty even of promises—his own coin.
  
  The freedman of a western poet-chief[4]
  Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels,
  And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont:
  The agèd Ali sits in Yanina
  A crownless metaphor of empire:
  His name, that shadow of his withered might,
  Holds our besieging army like a spell
  In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny;
  He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth
  Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors
  The ruins of the city where he reigned
  Childless and sceptreless.
  
  The Greek has reaped
  The costly harvest his own blood matured,
  Not the sower, Ali—who has bought a truce
  From Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads
  Of Indian gold.
  
  Enter a third Messenger.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  What more?
  
  Third Messenger.
  
  The Christian tribes
  Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness
  Are in revolt;—Damascus, Hems, Aleppo
  Tremble;—the Arab menaces Medina,
  The Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar,
  And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed,
  Who denies homage, claims investiture
  As price of tardy aid.
  
  Persia demands
  The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians
  Refuse their living tribute.
  
  Crete and Cyprus,
  Like mountain-twins that from each other's veins
  Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake-spasm,
  Shake in the general fever.
  
  Through the city,
  Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek,
  And prophesyings horrible and new
  Are heard among the crowd: that sea of men
  Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.
  
  A Dervise, learnèd in the Koran, preaches
  That it is written how the sins of Islam
  Must raise up a destroyer even now.
  
  The Greeks expect a Saviour from the West[5],
  Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory,
  But in the omnipresence of that Spirit
  In which all live and are.
  
  Ominous signs
  Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky:
  One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun;
  It has rained blood; and monstrous births declare
  The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord.
  
  The army encamped upon the Cydaris
  Was roused last night by the alarm of battle,
  And saw two hosts conflicting in the air,
  The shadows doubtless of the unborn time
  Cast on the mirror of the night.
  
  While yet
  The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm
  Which swept the phantoms from among the stars.
  
  At the third watch the Spirit of the Plague
  Was heard abroad flapping among the tents;
  Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead.
  
  The last news from the camp is, that a thousand
  Have sickened, and—
  Enter a fourth Messenger.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow
  Of some untimely rumour, speak!
  Fourth Messenger.
  
  One comes
  Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood:
  He stood, he says, on Chelonites'
  Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan
  Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters
  Then trembling in the splendour of the moon,
  When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid
  Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets
  Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer,
  Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams,
  And smoke which strangled every infant wind
  That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air.
  
  At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco
  Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds
  Over the sea-horizon, blotting out
  All objects—save that in the faint moon-glimpse
  He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral
  And two the loftiest of our ships of war,
  With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven,
  Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;
  And the abhorrèd cross—
  Enter an Attendant.
  
  Attendant.
  
  Your Sublime Highness,
  The Jew, who—
  Mahmud.
  
  Could not come more seasonably:
  Bid him attend.
  
  I'll hear no more! too long
  We gaze on danger through the mist of fear,
  And multiply upon our shattered hopes
  The images of ruin.
  
  Come what will!
  To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps
  Set in our path to light us to the edge
  Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught
  Which He inflicts not in whose hand we are.
  
  [Exeunt.
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  Would I were the wingèd cloud
  Of a tempest swift and loud!
  I would scorn
  The smile of morn
  And the wave where the moonrise is born!
  I would leave
  The spirits of eve
  A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave
  From other threads than mine!
  Bask in the deep blue noon divine.
  
  Who would?
  
  Not I.
  
  Semichorus II.
  
  Whither to fly?
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  Where the rocks that gird th'Aegean
  Echo to the battle paean
  Of the free—
  I would flee
  A tempestuous herald of victory!
  My golden rain
  For the Grecian slain
  Should mingle in tears with the bloody main,
  And my solemn thunder-knell
  Should ring to the world the passing-bell
  Of Tyranny!
  Semichorus II.
  
  Ah king! wilt thou chain
  The rack and the rain?
  
  Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane?
  
  The storms are free,
  But we—
  Chorus.
  
  O Slavery! thou frost of the world's prime,
  Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare!
  Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime,
  These brows thy branding garland bear,
  But the free heart, the impassive soul
  Scorn thy control!
  Semichorus I.
  
  Let there be light! said Liberty,
  And like sunrise from the sea,
  Athens arose!—Around her born,
  Shone like mountains in the morn
  Glorious states;—and are they now
  Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?
  
  Semichorus II.
  
  Go,
  Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed
  Persia, as the sand does foam;
  Deluge upon deluge followed,
  Discord, Macedon, and Rome:
  And lastly thou!
  Semichorus I.
  
  Temples and towers,
  Citadels and marts, and they
  Who live and die there, have been ours,
  And may be thine, and must decay;
  But Greece and her foundations are
  Built below the tide of war,
  Based on the crystàlline sea
  Of thought and its eternity;
  Her citizens, imperial spirits,
  Rule the present from the past,
  On all this world of men inherits
  Their seal is set.
  
  Semichorus II.
  
  Hear ye the blast,
  Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls
  From ruin her Titanian walls?
  
  Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones
  Of Slavery?
  
  Argos, Corinth, Crete
  Hear, and from their mountain thrones
  The daemons and the nymphs repeat
  The harmony.
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  I hear! I hear!
  Semichorus II.
  
  The world's eyeless charioteer,
  Destiny, is hurrying by!
  What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds
  Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds?
  
  What eagle-wingèd victory sits
  At her right hand?
  
  what shadow flits
  Before?
  
  what splendour rolls behind?
  
  Ruin and renovation cry
  'Who but We?
  
  '
  Semichorus I.
  
  I hear! I hear!
  The hiss as of a rushing wind,
  The roar as of an ocean foaming,
  The thunder as of earthquake coming.
  
  I hear! I hear!
  The crash as of an empire falling,
  The shrieks as of a people calling
  'Mercy! mercy!'—How they thrill!
  Then a shout of 'kill! kill! kill!'
  And then a small still voice, thus—
  Semichorus II.
  
  For
  Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,
  The foul cubs like their parents are,
  Their den is in the guilty mind,
  And Conscience feeds them with despair.
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  In sacred Athens, near the fane
  Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood:
  Serve not the unknown God in vain,
  But pay that broken shrine again,
  Love for hate and tears for blood.
  
  Enter Mahmud and Ahasuerus.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.
  
  Ahasuerus.
  
  No more!
  Mahmud.
  
  But raised above thy fellow-men
  By thought, as I by power.
  
  Ahasuerus.
  
  Thou sayest so.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Thou art an adept in the difficult lore
  Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest
  The flowers, and thou measurest the stars;
  Thou severest element from element;
  Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees
  The birth of this old world through all its cycles
  Of desolation and of loveliness,
  And when man was not, and how man became
  The monarch and the slave of this low sphere,
  And all its narrow circles—it is much—
  I honour thee, and would be what thou art
  Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour,
  Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,
  Who shall unveil?
  
  Nor thou, nor I, nor any
  Mighty or wise.
  
  I apprehended not
  What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive
  That thou art no interpreter of dreams;
  Thou dost not own that art, device, or God,
  Can make the Future present—let it come!
  Moreover thou disdainest us and ours;
  Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.
  
  Ahasuerus.
  
  Disdain thee?
  
  —not the worm beneath thy feet!
  The Fathomless has care for meaner things
  Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those
  Who would be what they may not, or would seem
  That which they are not.
  
  Sultan! talk no more
  Of thee and me, the Future and the Past;
  But look on that which cannot change—the One,
  The unborn and the undying.
  
  Earth and ocean,
  Space, and the isles of life or light that gem
  The sapphire floods of interstellar air,
  This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,
  With all its cressets of immortal fire,
  Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably
  Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them
  As Calpe the Atlantic clouds—this Whole
  Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,
  With all the silent or tempestuous workings
  By which they have been, are, or cease to be,
  Is but a vision;—all that it inherits
  Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;
  Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less
  The Future and the Past are idle shadows
  Of thought's eternal flight—they have no being:
  Nought is but that which feels itself to be.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  What meanest thou?
  
  Thy words stream like a tempest
  Of dazzling mist within my brain—they shake
  The earth on which I stand, and hang like night
  On Heaven above me.
  
  What can they avail?
  
  They cast on all things surest, brightest, best,
  Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.
  
  Ahasuerus.
  
  Mistake me not! All is contained in each.
  
  Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup
  Is that which has been, or will be, to that
  Which is—the absent to the present.
  
  Thought
  Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,
  Reason, Imagination, cannot die;
  They are, what that which they regard appears,
  The stuff whence mutability can weave
  All that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, worms,
  Empires, and superstitions.
  
  What has thought
  To do with time, or place, or circumstance?
  
  Wouldst thou behold the Future?
  
  —ask and have!
  Knock and it shall be opened—look, and lo!
  The coming age is shadowed on the Past
  As on a glass.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Wild, wilder thoughts convulse
  My spirit—Did not Mahomet the Second
  Win Stamboul?
  
  Ahasuerus.
  
  Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit
  The written fortunes of thy house and faith.
  
  Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell
  How what was born in blood must die.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Thy words
  Have power on me! I see—
  Ahasuerus.
  
  What hearest thou?
  
  Mahmud.
  
  A far whisper—
  Terrible silence.
  
  Ahasuerus.
  
  What succeeds?
  
  Mahmud.
  
  The sound
  As of the assault of an imperial city[6],
  The hiss of inextinguishable fire,
  The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking
  Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,
  The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,
  The clash of wheels, and clang of armèd hoofs,
  And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck
  Of adamantine mountains—the mad blast
  Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,
  The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,
  And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear,
  As of a joyous infant waked and playing
  With its dead mother's breast, and now more loud
  The mingled battle-cry,—ha! hear I not
  'En toutwi nikh!' 'Allah-illa-Allah!'?
  
  Ahasuerus.
  
  The sulphurous mist is raised—thou seest—
  Mahmud.
  
  A chasm,
  As of two mountains, in the wall of Stamboul;
  And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,
  Like giants on the ruins of a world,
  Stand in the light of sunrise.
  
  In the dust
  Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one
  Of regal port has cast himself beneath
  The stream of war.
  
  Another proudly clad
  In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb
  Into the gap, and with his iron mace
  Directs the torrent of that tide of men,
  And seems—he is—Mahomet!
  Ahasuerus.
  
  What thou seest
  Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.
  
  A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that
  Thou call'st reality.
  
  Thou mayst behold
  How cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned,
  Bow their towered crests to mutability.
  
  Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest,
  Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power
  Ebbs to its depths.
  
  —Inheritor of glory,
  Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished
  With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes
  Of that whose birth was but the same.
  
  The Past
  Now stands before thee like an Incarnation
  Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with
  That portion of thyself which was ere thou
  Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death,
  Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion
  Which called it from the uncreated deep,
  Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms
  Of raging death; and draw with mighty will
  The imperial shade hither.
  
  [Exit Ahasuerus.
  
  The Phantom of Mahomet the Second appears.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Approach!
  Phantom.
  
  I come
  Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter
  To take the living than give up the dead;
  Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here.
  
  The heavy fragments of the power which fell
  When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds,
  Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices
  Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose,
  Wailing for glory never to return.
  
  —
  A later Empire nods in its decay:
  The autumn of a greener faith is come,
  And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip
  The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built
  Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below.
  
  The storm is in its branches, and the frost
  Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects
  Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil,
  Ruin on ruin:—Thou art slow, my son;
  The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep
  A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies
  Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou,
  Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life,
  The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now—
  Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears,
  And hopes that sate themselves on dust, and die!—
  Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine.
  
  Islam must fall, but we will reign together
  Over its ruins in the world of death:—
  And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed
  Unfold itself even in the shape of that
  Which gathers birth in its decay.
  
  Woe! woe!
  To the weak people tangled in the grasp
  Of its last spasms.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  Spirit, woe to all!
  Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe
  To the destroyer, woe to the destroyed!
  Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver!
  Woe to the oppressed, and woe to the oppressor!
  Woe both to those that suffer and inflict;
  Those who are born and those who die! but say,
  Imperial shadow of the thing I am,
  When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish
  Her consummation!
  Phantom.
  
  Ask the cold pale Hour,
  Rich in reversion of impending death,
  When he shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs
  Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity—
  The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years,
  Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart
  Over the heads of men, under which burthen
  They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch!
  He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years
  To come, and how in hours of youth renewed
  He will renew lost joys, and—
  Voice without.
  
  Victory! Victory!
  [The Phantom vanishes.
  
  Mahmud.
  
  What sound of the importunate earth has broken
  My mighty trance?
  
  Voice without.
  
  Victory! Victory!
  Mahmud.
  
  Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile
  Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response
  Of hollow weakness! Do I wake and live?
  
  Were there such things, or may the unquiet brain,
  Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew,
  Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear?
  
  It matters not!—for nought we see or dream,
  Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth
  More than it gives or teaches: Come what may,
  The Future must become the Past, and I
  As they were to whom once this present hour,
  This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,
  Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy
  Never to be attained.
  
  —I must rebuke
  This drunkenness of triumph ere it die,
  And dying, bring despair.
  
  Victory! poor slaves!
  Exit Mahmud.
  
  Voice without.
  
  Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks
  Are as a brood of lions in the net
  Round which the kingly hunters of the earth
  Stand smiling.
  
  Anarchs, ye whose daily food
  Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death,
  From Thule to the girdle of the world,
  Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men;
  The cup is foaming with a nation's blood,
  Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!
  Semichorus I.
  
  Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream,
  Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day!
  I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream,
  Perch on the trembling pyramid of night,
  Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay
  In visions of the dawning undelight.
  
  Who shall impede her flight?
  
  Who rob her of her prey?
  
  Voice without.
  
  Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eagles
  Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light.
  
  Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil!
  Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!
  Semichorus II.
  
  Thou voice which art
  The herald of the ill in splendour hid!
  Thou echo of the hollow heart
  Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode
  When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed:
  Oh, bear me to those isles of jaggèd cloud
  Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid
  The momentary oceans of the lightning,
  Or to some toppling promontory proud
  Of solid tempest whose black pyramid,
  Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright'ning
  Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire
  Before their waves expire,
  When heaven and earth are light, and only light
  In the thunder-night!
  Voice without.
  
  Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England,
  And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France,
  Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak.
  
  Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes,
  These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners
  Than Greeks.
  
  Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  Alas! for Liberty!
  If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,
  Or fate, can quell the free!
  Alas! for Virtue, when
  Torments, or contumely, or the sneers
  Of erring judging men
  Can break the heart where it abides.
  
  Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid,
  Can change with its false times and tides,
  Like hope and terror,—
  Alas for Love!
  And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,
  If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror
  Before the dazzled eyes of Error,
  Alas for thee! Image of the Above.
  
  Semichorus II.
  
  Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,
  Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn
  Through many an hostile Anarchy!
  At length they wept aloud, and cried, 'The Sea! the Sea!'
  Through exile, persecution, and despair,
  Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become
  The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb
  Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair:
  But Greece was as a hermit-child,
  Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built
  To woman's growth, by dreams so mild,
  She knew not pain or guilt;
  And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble
  When ye desert the free—
  If Greece must be
  A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,
  And build themselves again impregnably
  In a diviner clime,
  To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,
  Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;
  Let the free possess the Paradise they claim;
  Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed
  With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!
  Semichorus II.
  
  Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,
  Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,
  Our adversity a dream to pass away—
  Their dishonour a remembrance to abide!
  Voice without.
  
  Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends
  The keys of ocean to the Islamite.
  
  —
  Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,
  And British skill directing Othman might,
  Thunder-strike rebel victory.
  
  Oh, keep holy
  This jubilee of unrevengèd blood!
  Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!
  Semichorus I.
  
  Darkness has dawned in the East
  On the noon of time:
  The death-birds descend to their feast
  From the hungry clime.
  
  Let Freedom and Peace flee far
  To a sunnier strand,
  And follow Love's folding-star
  To the Evening land!
  Semichorus II.
  
  The young moon has fed
  Her exhausted horn
  With the sunset's fire:
  The weak day is dead,
  But the night is not born;
  And, like loveliness panting with wild desire
  While it trembles with fear and delight,
  Hesperus flies from awakening night,
  And pants in its beauty and speed with light
  Fast-flashing, soft, and bright.
  
  Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!
  Guide us far, far away,
  To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day
  Thou art hidden
  From waves on which weary Noon
  Faints in her summer swoon,
  Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,
  Around mountains and islands inviolably
  Pranked on the sapphire sea.
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  Through the sunset of hope,
  Like the shapes of a dream,
  What Paradise islands of glory gleam!
  Beneath Heaven's cope,
  Their shadows more clear float by—
  The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,
  The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe
  Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,
  Through the walls of our prison;
  And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!
  Chorus[7].
  
  The world's great age begins anew,
  The golden years return,
  The earth doth like a snake renew
  Her winter weeds outworn:
  Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
  Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
  
  A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
  From waves serener far;
  A new Peneus rolls his fountains
  Against the morning star.
  
  Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
  Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
  
  A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
  Fraught with a later prize;
  Another Orpheus sings again,
  And loves, and weeps, and dies.
  
  A new Ulysses leaves once more
  Calypso for his native shore.
  
  Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
  If earth Death's scroll must be!
  Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
  Which dawns upon the free:
  Although a subtler Sphinx renew
  Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
  
  Another Athens shall arise,
  And to remoter time
  Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
  The splendour of its prime;
  And leave, if nought so bright may live,
  All earth can take or Heaven can give.
  
  Saturn and Love their long repose
  Shall burst[8], more bright and good
  Than all who fell, than One who rose,
  Than many unsubdued:
  Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
  But votive tears and symbol flowers.
  
  Oh, cease! must hate and death return?
  
  Cease! must men kill and die?
  
  Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
  Of bitter prophecy.
  
  The world is weary of the past,
  Oh, might it die or rest at last!
  Hellas was composed at Pisa in the autumn of 1821, and dispatched to London, November 11.
  
  It was published, with the author's name, by C.
  
  & J.
  
  Ollier in the spring of 1822.
  
  A transcript of the poem by Edward Williams is in the Rowfant Library.
  
  Note by Mrs.
  
  Shelley: 'Hellas was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most beautiful.
  
  The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in their versification.
  
  There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:--
  ''But Greece and her foundations are
  Built below the tide of war,
  Based on the crystalline sea
  Of thought and its eternity.
  
  '''

• HERE I sit with my paper… Read Poem Log in to favourite

  HERE I sit with my paper, my pen my ink,
  First of this thing, and that thing,
  and t'other thing think ;
  I Then my thoughts come so pell and
  I mell all into my mind,
  That the sense or the subject I never can find :
  This word is wrong placed, no
  regard to the sense,
  The present and future, instead of
  past tense,
  Then my grammar I want; O dear!
  what a bore,
  I think I shall never attempt to
  write more,
  With patience I then my thoughts
  must arraign,
  Have them all in due order like
  mutes in a train,
  Like them too must wait in due
  patience and thought,
  Or else my fine works will all come
  to nought.
  
  My wit too 's so copious, it flows
  like a river,
  But disperses its waters on black
  and white never ;
  Like smoke it appears independent
  and free,
  But ah luckless smoke! it all passes
  like thee
  Then at length all my patience entirely
  lost,
  My paper and pens in the fire are
  tossed ;
  But come, try again you must
  never despair,
  Our Murray's or Entick's are not
  all so rare,
  Implore their assistance they'll
  come to your aid,
  Perform all your business without
  being paid,
  They'll tell you the present tense,
  future and past,
  Which should come first, and which
  should come last,
  This Murray will do then to Entick
  repair,
  To find out the meaning of any
  word rare.
  
  This they friendly will tell, and
  ne'er make you blush,
  With a jeering look, taunt, or an
  O fie! tush!
  Then straight all your thoughts in
  black and white put,
  Not minding the if's, the be's, and
  the but,
  Then read it all over, see how it
  will run,
  How answers the wit, the retort,
  and the pun,
  Your writings may then with old
  Socrates vie,
  May on the same shelf with Demosthenes
  lie,
  May as Junius be sharp, or as Plato
  be sage,
  The pattern or satire to all of the
  age;
  But stop a mad author I mean not
  to turn,
  Nor with thirst of applause does my
  heated brain burn,
  Sufficient that sense, wit, and grammar
  combined,
  My letters may make some slight
  food for the mind ;
  That my thoughts to my friends I
  may freely impart,
  In all the warm language that flows
  from the heart.
  
  Hark! futurity calls! it loudly
  complains,
  It bids me step forward and just
  hold the reins,
  My excuse shall be humble, and
  faithful, and true,
  Such as I fear can be made but by
  few
  Of writers this age has abundance
  and plenty,
  Three score and a thousand, two
  millions and twenty,
  Three score of them wits who all
  sharply vie,
  To try what odd creature they best
  can belie,
  A thousand are prudes who for
  Charity write,
  And fill up their sheets with spleen,
  envy, and spite,
  One million are bards, who to
  Heaven aspire,
  And stuff their works full of bombast,
  rant, and fire,
  T'other million are wags who in
  Grub-street attend,
  And just like a cobbler the old writings
  mend,
  The twenty are those who for pulpits
  indite,
  And pore over sermons all Saturday
  night.
  
  And now my good friends who
  come after I mean,
  As I ne'er wore a cassock, or dined
  with a dean,
  Or like cobblers at mending I never
  did try,
  Nor with poets in lyrics attempted
  to vie;
  As for prudes these good souls I
  both hate and detest,
  So here I believe the matter must
  rest.
  
  I've heard your complaint my
  answer I've made,
  And since to your calls all the
  tribute I've paid,
  Adieu my good friend ; pray never
  despair,
  But grammar and sense and everything dare,
  Attempt but to write dashing, easy,
  and free,
  Then take out your grammar and
  pay him his fee,
  Be not a coward, shrink not to a
  tense,
  But read it all over and make it
  out sense.
  
  What a tiresome girl! pray soon
  make an end,
  Else my limited patience you'll
  quickly expend.
  
  Well adieu, I no longer your patience
  will try
  So swift to the post now the letter
  shall fly.

• Homer's Hymn To Castor And Pollux Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove,
  Whom the fair-ankled Leda, mixed in love
  With mighty Saturn’s Heaven-obscuring Child,
  On Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild,
  Brought forth in joy: mild Pollux, void of blame,
  And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame.
  
  These are the Powers who earth-born mortals save
  And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave.
  
  When wintry tempests o’er the savage sea
  Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly
  Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow,
  Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow,
  And sacrifice with snow-white lambs,--the wind
  And the huge billow bursting close behind,
  Even then beneath the weltering waters bear
  The staggering ship--they suddenly appear,
  On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky,
  And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity,
  And strew the waves on the white Ocean’s bed,
  Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread
  The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight,
  And plough the quiet sea in safe delight.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Poetical Works, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.

• Homer's Hymn To Minerva Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I sing the glorious Power with azure eyes,
  Athenian Pallas! tameless, chaste, and wise,
  Tritogenia, town-preserving Maid,
  Revered and mighty; from his awful head
  Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike armour dressed,
  Golden, all radiant! wonder strange possessed
  The everlasting Gods that Shape to see,
  Shaking a javelin keen, impetuously
  Rush from the crest of Aegis-bearing Jove;
  Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did move
  Beneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed;
  Earth dreadfully resounded, far and wide;
  And, lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high
  In purple billows, the tide suddenly
  Stood still, and great Hyperion’s son long time
  Checked his swift steeds, till, where she stood sublime,
  Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw
  The arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view.
  
  Child of the Aegis-bearer, hail to thee,
  Nor thine nor others’ praise shall unremembered be.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Poetical Works, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.

• Homer's Hymn To The Earth: Mother Of All Read Poem Log in to favourite

  O universal Mother, who dost keep
  From everlasting thy foundations deep,
  Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee!
  All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea,
  All things that fly, or on the ground divine
  Live, move, and there are nourished—these are thine;
  These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee
  Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree
  Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity!
  The life of mortal men beneath thy sway
  Is held; thy power both gives and takes away!
  Happy are they whom thy mild favours nourish;
  All things unstinted round them grow and flourish.
  
  For them, endures the life-sustaining field
  Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield
  Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled.
  
  Such honoured dwell in cities fair and free,
  The homes of lovely women, prosperously;
  Their sons exult in youth’s new budding gladness,
  And their fresh daughters free from care or sadness,
  With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song,
  On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among,
  Leap round them sporting--such delights by thee
  Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity.
  
  Mother of gods, thou Wife of starry Heaven,
  Farewell! be thou propitious, and be given
  A happy life for this brief melody,
  Nor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Poetical Works, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.

• Homer's Hymn To The Moon Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody,
  Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy
  Sing the wide-winged Moon! Around the earth,
  From her immortal head in Heaven shot forth,
  Far light is scattered—boundless glory springs;
  Where’er she spreads her many-beaming wings
  The lampless air glows round her golden crown.
  
  But when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone
  Under the sea, her beams within abide,
  Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean’s tide,
  Clothing her form in garments glittering far,
  And having yoked to her immortal car
  The beam-invested steeds whose necks on high
  Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky
  A western Crescent, borne impetuously.
  
  Then is made full the circle of her light,
  And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright
  Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then,
  A wonder and a sign to mortal men.
  
  The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power
  Mingled in love and sleep--to whom she bore
  Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare
  Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are.
  
  Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity,
  Fair-haired and favourable! thus with thee
  My song beginning, by its music sweet
  Shall make immortal many a glorious feat
  Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well
  Which minstrels, servants of the Muses, tell.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Poetical Works, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.

• Homer's Hymn To The Sun Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Offspring of Jove, Calliope, once more
  To the bright Sun, thy hymn of music pour;
  Whom to the child of star-clad Heaven and Earth
  Euryphaessa, large-eyed nymph, brought forth;
  Euryphaessa, the famed sister fair
  Of great Hyperion, who to him did bear
  A race of loveliest children; the young Morn,
  Whose arms are like twin roses newly born,
  The fair-haired Moon, and the immortal Sun,
  Who borne by heavenly steeds his race doth run
  Unconquerably, illuming the abodes
  Of mortal Men and the eternal Gods.
  
  Fiercely look forth his awe-inspiring eyes,
  Beneath his golden helmet, whence arise
  And are shot forth afar, clear beams of light;
  His countenance, with radiant glory bright,
  Beneath his graceful locks far shines around,
  And the light vest with which his limbs are bound,
  Of woof aethereal delicately twined,
  Glows in the stream of the uplifting wind.
  
  His rapid steeds soon bear him to the West;
  Where their steep flight his hands divine arrest,
  And the fleet car with yoke of gold, which he
  Sends from bright Heaven beneath the shadowy sea.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Poetical Works, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.

• Homer's Hymn To Venus Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
  Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight
  Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings
  Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things
  That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,
  Or earth, with her maternal ministry,
  Nourish innumerable, thy delight
  All seek .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  O crowned Aphrodite!
  Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell:--
  Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well
  Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame
  Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.
  
  Diana .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  golden-shafted queen,
  Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green
  Of the wild woods, the bow, the.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit
  Of beasts among waste mountains,--such delight
  Is hers, and men who know and do the right.
  
  Nor Saturn’s first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,
  Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,
  Such was the will of aegis-bearing Jove;
  But sternly she refused the ills of Love,
  And by her mighty Father’s head she swore
  An oath not unperformed, that evermore
  A virgin she would live mid deities
  Divine: her father, for such gentle ties
  Renounced, gave glorious gifts--thus in his hall
  She sits and feeds luxuriously.
  
  O’er all
  In every fane, her honours first arise
  From men--the eldest of Divinities.
  
  These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,
  But none beside escape, so well she weaves
  Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods
  Who live secure in their unseen abodes.
  
  She won the soul of him whose fierce delight
  Is thunder--first in glory and in might.
  
  And, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiving,
  With mortal limbs his deathless limbs inweaving,
  Concealed him from his spouse and sister fair,
  Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare.
  
  but in return,
  In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken,
  That by her own enchantments overtaken,
  She might, no more from human union free,
  Burn for a nursling of mortality.
  
  For once amid the assembled Deities,
  The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes
  Shot forth the light of a soft starlight smile,
  And boasting said, that she, secure the while,
  Could bring at Will to the assembled Gods
  The mortal tenants of earth’s dark abodes,
  And mortal offspring from a deathless stem
  She could produce in scorn and spite of them.
  
  Therefore he poured desire into her breast
  Of young Anchises,
  Feeding his herds among the mossy fountains
  Of the wide Ida’s many-folded mountains,--
  Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the love clung
  Like wasting fire her senses wild among.
  
  Published by Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862; dated 1818.
  
  [VERSES 1-55, WITH SOME OMISSIONS.
  
  ]

• Hymn of Apollo Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
  Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries,
  From the broad moonlight of the sky,
  Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,--
  Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn,
  Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.
  
  II.
  
  Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
  I walk over the mountains and the waves,
  Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
  My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves
  Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
  Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.
  
  III.
  
  The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
  Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
  All men who do or even imagine ill
  Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
  Good minds and open actions take new might,
  Until diminished by the reign of Night.
  
  IV.
  
  I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers,
  With their ethereal colors; the Moon's globe,
  And the pure stars in their eternal bowers,
  Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
  Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine,
  Are portions of one power, which is mine.
  
  V.
  
  I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven;
  Then with unwilling steps I wander down
  Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;
  For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
  What look is more delightful than the smile
  With which I soothe them from the western isle?
  
  VI.
  
  I am the eye with which the Universe
  Beholds itself, and knows it is divine;
  All harmony of instrument or verse,
  All prophecy, all medicine, is mine,
  All light of art or nature; - to my song
  Victory and praise in its own right belong.

• Hymn of Pan Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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
  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 the 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 chang'd my pipings,
  Singing how down the vale of Maenalus
  I pursu'd a maiden and clasp'd 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.

• Hymn to Intellectual Beauty Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The awful shadow of some unseen Power
  Floats though 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.
  
  Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
  With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
  Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?
  
  Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
  This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
  
  Ask why the sunlight not 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 utter'd charm might not avail to sever,
  From all we hear and all we see,
  Doubt, chance and mutability.
  
  Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven,
  Or music by the night-wind sent
  Through 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,
  Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,
  Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
  
  Thou messenger of sympathies,
  That wax and wane in lovers' eyes;
  Thou, that to human thought art 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
  Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
  And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
  Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
  
  I call'd 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 shriek'd, and clasp'd my hands in ecstasy!
  
  I vow'd that I would dedicate my powers
  To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
  
  With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
  I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
  Each from his voiceless grave: they have in vision'd bowers
  Of studious zeal or love's delight
  Outwatch'd with me the envious night:
  They know that never joy illum'd my brow
  Unlink'd 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 in its sky,
  Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
  As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
  Thus let thy power, which like the truth
  Of nature on my passive youth
  Descended, to my onward life supply
  Its calm, to one who worships thee,
  And every form containing thee,
  Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
  To fear himself, and love all human kind.

• Hymn To Mercury Read Poem Log in to favourite

  TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF HOMER.
  
  I.
  
  Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove,
  The Herald-child, king of Arcadia
  And all its pastoral hills, whom in sweet love
  Having been interwoven, modest May
  Bore Heaven’s dread Supreme.
  
  An antique grove
  Shadowed the cavern where the lovers lay
  In the deep night, unseen by Gods or Men,
  And white-armed Juno slumbered sweetly then.
  
  II.
  
  Now, when the joy of Jove had its fulfilling,
  And Heaven’s tenth moon chronicled her relief,
  She gave to light a babe all babes excelling,
  A schemer subtle beyond all belief;
  A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing,
  A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief,
  Who ‘mongst the Gods was soon about to thieve,
  And other glorious actions to achieve.
  
  III.
  
  The babe was born at the first peep of day;
  He began playing on the lyre at noon,
  And the same evening did he steal away
  Apollo’s herds;—the fourth day of the moon
  On which him bore the venerable May,
  From her immortal limbs he leaped full soon,
  Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep,
  But out to seek Apollo’s herds would creep.
  
  IV.
  
  Out of the lofty cavern wandering
  He found a tortoise, and cried out--'A treasure!'
  (For Mercury first made the tortoise sing)
  The beast before the portal at his leisure
  The flowery herbage was depasturing,
  Moving his feet in a deliberate measure
  Over the turf.
  
  Jove’s profitable son
  Eying him laughed, and laughing thus begun:--
  V.
  
  ‘A useful godsend are you to me now,
  King of the dance, companion of the feast,
  Lovely in all your nature! Welcome, you
  Excellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain-beast,
  Got you that speckled shell?
  
  Thus much I know,
  You must come home with me and be my guest;
  You will give joy to me, and I will do
  All that is in my power to honour you.
  
  VI.
  
  ‘Better to be at home than out of door,
  So come with me; and though it has been said
  That you alive defend from magic power,
  I know you will sing sweetly when you’re dead.
  
  ’
  Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore,
  Lifting it from the grass on which it fed
  And grasping it in his delighted hold,
  His treasured prize into the cavern old.
  
  VII.
  
  Then scooping with a chisel of gray steel,
  He bored the life and soul out of the beast.
  
  --
  Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal
  Darts through the tumult of a human breast
  Which thronging cares annoy—not swifter wheel
  The flashes of its torture and unrest
  Out of the dizzy eyes—than Maia’s son
  All that he did devise hath featly done.
  
  VIII.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And through the tortoise’s hard stony skin
  At proper distances small holes he made,
  And fastened the cut stems of reeds within,
  And with a piece of leather overlaid
  The open space and fixed the cubits in,
  Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o’er all
  Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical.
  
  IX.
  
  When he had wrought the lovely instrument,
  He tried the chords, and made division meet,
  Preluding with the plectrum, and there went
  Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet
  Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent
  A strain of unpremeditated wit
  Joyous and wild and wanton--such you may
  Hear among revellers on a holiday.
  
  X.
  
  He sung how Jove and May of the bright sandal
  Dallied in love not quite legitimate;
  And his own birth, still scoffing at the scandal,
  And naming his own name, did celebrate;
  His mother’s cave and servant maids he planned all
  In plastic verse, her household stuff and state,
  Perennial pot, trippet, and brazen pan,--
  But singing, he conceived another plan.
  
  XI.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat,
  He in his sacred crib deposited
  The hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet
  Rushed with great leaps up to the mountain’s head,
  Revolving in his mind some subtle feat
  Of thievish craft, such as a swindler might
  Devise in the lone season of dun night.
  
  XII.
  
  Lo! the great Sun under the ocean’s bed has
  Driven steeds and chariot--the child meanwhile strode
  O’er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows,
  Where the immortal oxen of the God
  Are pastured in the flowering unmown meadows,
  And safely stalled in a remote abode.
  
  --
  The archer Argicide, elate and proud,
  Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud.
  
  XIII.
  
  He drove them wandering o’er the sandy way,
  But, being ever mindful of his craft,
  Backward and forward drove he them astray,
  So that the tracks which seemed before, were aft;
  His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray,
  And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft
  Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs,
  And bound them in a lump with withy twigs.
  
  XIV.
  
  And on his feet he tied these sandals light,
  The trail of whose wide leaves might not betray
  His track; and then, a self-sufficing wight,
  Like a man hastening on some distant way,
  He from Pieria’s mountain bent his flight;
  But an old man perceived the infant pass
  Down green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass.
  
  XV.
  
  The old man stood dressing his sunny vine:
  ‘Halloo! old fellow with the crooked shoulder!
  You grub those stumps?
  
  before they will bear wine
  Methinks even you must grow a little older:
  Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine,
  As you would ‘scape what might appal a bolder--
  Seeing, see not--and hearing, hear not--and--
  If you have understanding--understand.
  
  ’
  XVI.
  
  So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast;
  O’er shadowy mountain and resounding dell,
  And flower-paven plains, great Hermes passed;
  Till the black night divine, which favouring fell
  Around his steps, grew gray, and morning fast
  Wakened the world to work, and from her cell
  Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime
  Into her watch-tower just began to climb.
  
  XVII.
  
  Now to Alpheus he had driven all
  The broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun;
  They came unwearied to the lofty stall
  And to the water-troughs which ever run
  Through the fresh fields--and when with rushgrass tall,
  Lotus and all sweet herbage, every one
  Had pastured been, the great God made them move
  Towards the stall in a collected drove.
  
  XVIII.
  
  A mighty pile of wood the God then heaped,
  And having soon conceived the mystery
  Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches stripped
  The bark, and rubbed them in his palms;--on high
  Suddenly forth the burning vapour leaped
  And the divine child saw delightedly.
  
  --
  Mercury first found out for human weal
  Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and steel.
  
  XIX.
  
  And fine dry logs and roots innumerous
  He gathered in a delve upon the ground--
  And kindled them—and instantaneous
  The strength of the fierce flame was breathed around:
  And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus
  Wrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound,
  Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing loud,
  Close to the fire—such might was in the God.
  
  XX.
  
  And on the earth upon their backs he threw
  The panting beasts, and rolled them o’er and o’er,
  And bored their lives out.
  
  Without more ado
  He cut up fat and flesh, and down before
  The fire, on spits of wood he placed the two,
  Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all the gore
  Pursed in the bowels; and while this was done
  He stretched their hides over a craggy stone.
  
  XXI.
  
  We mortals let an ox grow old, and then
  Cut it up after long consideration,--
  But joyous-minded Hermes from the glen
  Drew the fat spoils to the more open station
  Of a flat smooth space, and portioned them; and when
  He had by lot assigned to each a ration
  Of the twelve Gods, his mind became aware
  Of all the joys which in religion are.
  
  XXII.
  
  For the sweet savour of the roasted meat
  Tempted him though immortal.
  
  Natheless
  He checked his haughty will and did not eat,
  Though what it cost him words can scarce express,
  And every wish to put such morsels sweet
  Down his most sacred throat, he did repress;
  But soon within the lofty portalled stall
  He placed the fat and flesh and bones and all.
  
  XXIII.
  
  And every trace of the fresh butchery
  And cooking, the God soon made disappear,
  As if it all had vanished through the sky;
  He burned the hoofs and horns and head and hair,--
  The insatiate fire devoured them hungrily;--
  And when he saw that everything was clear,
  He quenched the coal, and trampled the black dust,
  And in the stream his bloody sandals tossed.
  
  XXIV.
  
  All night he worked in the serene moonshine--
  But when the light of day was spread abroad
  He sought his natal mountain-peaks divine.
  
  On his long wandering, neither Man nor God
  Had met him, since he killed Apollo’s kine,
  Nor house-dog had barked at him on his road;
  Now he obliquely through the keyhole passed,
  Like a thin mist, or an autumnal blast.
  
  XXV.
  
  Right through the temple of the spacious cave
  He went with soft light feet—as if his tread
  Fell not on earth; no sound their falling gave;
  Then to his cradle he crept quick, and spread
  The swaddling-clothes about him; and the knave
  Lay playing with the covering of the bed
  With his left hand about his knees--the right
  Held his beloved tortoise-lyre tight.
  
  XXVI.
  
  There he lay innocent as a new-born child,
  As gossips say; but though he was a God,
  The Goddess, his fair mother, unbeguiled,
  Knew all that he had done being abroad:
  ‘Whence come you, and from what adventure wild,
  You cunning rogue, and where have you abode
  All the long night, clothed in your impudence?
  
  What have you done since you departed hence?
  
  XXVII.
  
  ‘Apollo soon will pass within this gate
  And bind your tender body in a chain
  Inextricably tight, and fast as fate,
  Unless you can delude the God again,
  Even when within his arms--ah, runagate!
  A pretty torment both for Gods and Men
  Your father made when he made you!’--‘Dear mother,’
  Replied sly Hermes, ‘wherefore scold and bother?
  
  XXVIII.
  
  ‘As if I were like other babes as old,
  And understood nothing of what is what;
  And cared at all to hear my mother scold.
  
  I in my subtle brain a scheme have got,
  Which whilst the sacred stars round Heaven are rolled
  Will profit you and me--nor shall our lot
  Be as you counsel, without gifts or food,
  To spend our lives in this obscure abode.
  
  XXIX.
  
  ‘But we will leave this shadow-peopled cave
  And live among the Gods, and pass each day
  In high communion, sharing what they have
  Of profuse wealth and unexhausted prey;
  And from the portion which my father gave
  To Phoebus, I will snatch my share away,
  Which if my father will not--natheless I,
  Who am the king of robbers, can but try.
  
  XXX.
  
  ‘And, if Latona’s son should find me out,
  I’ll countermine him by a deeper plan;
  I’ll pierce the Pythian temple-walls, though stout,
  And sack the fane of everything I can--
  Caldrons and tripods of great worth no doubt,
  Each golden cup and polished brazen pan, 235
  All the wrought tapestries and garments gay.
  
  ’--
  So they together talked;--meanwhile the Day
  XXXI.
  
  Aethereal born arose out of the flood
  Of flowing Ocean, bearing light to men.
  
  Apollo passed toward the sacred wood,
  Which from the inmost depths of its green glen
  Echoes the voice of Neptune,--and there stood
  On the same spot in green Onchestus then
  That same old animal, the vine-dresser,
  Who was employed hedging his vineyard there.
  
  XXXII.
  
  Latona’s glorious Son began:--‘I pray
  Tell, ancient hedger of Onchestus green,
  Whether a drove of kine has passed this way,
  All heifers with crooked horns?
  
  for they have been
  Stolen from the herd in high Pieria,
  Where a black bull was fed apart, between
  Two woody mountains in a neighbouring glen,
  And four fierce dogs watched there, unanimous as men.
  
  XXXIII.
  
  ‘And what is strange, the author of this theft
  Has stolen the fatted heifers every one,
  But the four dogs and the black bull are left:--
  Stolen they were last night at set of sun,
  Of their soft beds and their sweet food bereft.
  
  --
  Now tell me, man born ere the world begun,
  Have you seen any one pass with the cows?
  
  ’--
  To whom the man of overhanging brows:
  XXXIV.
  
  ‘My friend, it would require no common skill
  Justly to speak of everything I see:
  On various purposes of good or ill
  Many pass by my vineyard,--and to me
  ’Tis difficult to know the invisible
  Thoughts, which in all those many minds may be:--
  Thus much alone I certainly can say,
  I tilled these vines till the decline of day,
  XXXV.
  
  ‘And then I thought I saw, but dare not speak
  With certainty of such a wondrous thing,
  A child, who could not have been born a week,
  Those fair-horned cattle closely following,
  And in his hand he held a polished stick:
  And, as on purpose, he walked wavering
  From one side to the other of the road,
  And with his face opposed the steps he trod.
  
  ’
  XXXVI.
  
  Apollo hearing this, passed quickly on--
  No winged omen could have shown more clear
  That the deceiver was his father’s son.
  
  So the God wraps a purple atmosphere
  Around his shoulders, and like fire is gone
  To famous Pylos, seeking his kine there,
  And found their track and his, yet hardly cold,
  And cried—‘What wonder do mine eyes behold!
  XXXVII.
  
  ‘Here are the footsteps of the horned herd
  Turned back towards their fields of asphodel;--
  But THESE are not the tracks of beast or bird,
  Gray wolf, or bear, or lion of the dell,
  Or maned Centaur--sand was never stirred
  By man or woman thus! Inexplicable!
  Who with unwearied feet could e’er impress
  The sand with such enormous vestiges?
  
  XXXVIII.
  
  ‘That was most strange--but this is stranger still!’
  Thus having said, Phoebus impetuously
  Sought high Cyllene’s forest-cinctured hill,
  And the deep cavern where dark shadows lie,
  And where the ambrosial nymph with happy will
  Bore the Saturnian’s love-child, Mercury--
  And a delightful odour from the dew
  Of the hill pastures, at his coming, flew.
  
  XXXIX.
  
  And Phoebus stooped under the craggy roof
  Arched over the dark cavern:--Maia’s child
  Perceived that he came angry, far aloof,
  About the cows of which he had been beguiled;
  And over him the fine and fragrant woof
  Of his ambrosial swaddling-clothes he piled--
  As among fire-brands lies a burning spark
  Covered, beneath the ashes cold and dark.
  
  XL.
  
  There, like an infant who had sucked his fill
  And now was newly washed and put to bed,
  Awake, but courting sleep with weary will,
  And gathered in a lump, hands, feet, and head,
  He lay, and his beloved tortoise still
  He grasped and held under his shoulder-blade.
  
  Phoebus the lovely mountain-goddess knew,
  Not less her subtle, swindling baby, who
  XLI.
  
  Lay swathed in his sly wiles.
  
  Round every crook
  Of the ample cavern, for his kine, Apollo
  Looked sharp; and when he saw them not, he took
  The glittering key, and opened three great hollow
  Recesses in the rock--where many a nook
  Was filled with the sweet food immortals swallow,
  And mighty heaps of silver and of gold
  Were piled within--a wonder to behold!
  XLII.
  
  And white and silver robes, all overwrought
  With cunning workmanship of tracery sweet--
  Except among the Gods there can be nought
  In the wide world to be compared with it.
  
  Latona’s offspring, after having sought
  His herds in every corner, thus did greet
  Great Hermes:--‘Little cradled rogue, declare
  Of my illustrious heifers, where they are!
  XLIII.
  
  ‘Speak quickly! or a quarrel between us
  Must rise, and the event will be, that I
  Shall hurl you into dismal Tartarus,
  In fiery gloom to dwell eternally;
  Nor shall your father nor your mother loose
  The bars of that black dungeon—utterly
  You shall be cast out from the light of day,
  To rule the ghosts of men, unblessed as they.
  
  XLIV.
  
  To whom thus Hermes slily answered:--‘Son
  Of great Latona, what a speech is this!
  Why come you here to ask me what is done
  With the wild oxen which it seems you miss?
  
  I have not seen them, nor from any one
  Have heard a word of the whole business;
  If you should promise an immense reward,
  I could not tell more than you now have heard.
  
  XLV.
  
  ‘An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong,
  And I am but a little new-born thing,
  Who, yet at least, can think of nothing wrong:--
  My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling
  The cradle-clothes about me all day long,--
  Or half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing,
  And to be washed in water clean and warm,
  And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.
  
  XLVI.
  
  ‘O, let not e’er this quarrel be averred!
  The astounded Gods would laugh at you, if e’er
  You should allege a story so absurd
  As that a new-born infant forth could fare
  Out of his home after a savage herd.
  
  I was born yesterday--my small feet are
  Too tender for the roads so hard and rough:--
  And if you think that this is not enough,
  XLVII.
  
  I swear a great oath, by my father’s head,
  That I stole not your cows, and that I know
  Of no one else, who might, or could, or did.
  
  --
  Whatever things cows are, I do not know,
  For I have only heard the name.
  
  ’--This said
  He winked as fast as could be, and his brow
  Was wrinkled, and a whistle loud gave he,
  Like one who hears some strange absurdity.
  
  XLVIII.
  
  Apollo gently smiled and said:--‘Ay, ay,--
  You cunning little rascal, you will bore
  Many a rich man’s house, and your array
  Of thieves will lay their siege before his door,
  Silent as night, in night; and many a day
  In the wild glens rough shepherds will deplore
  That you or yours, having an appetite,
  Met with their cattle, comrade of the night!
  XLIX.
  
  ‘And this among the Gods shall be your gift,
  To be considered as the lord of those
  Who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal, and shop-lift;--
  But now if you would not your last sleep doze;
  Crawl out!’--Thus saying, Phoebus did uplift
  The subtle infant in his swaddling clothes,
  And in his arms, according to his wont,
  A scheme devised the illustrious Argiphont.
  
  L.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And sneezed and shuddered--Phoebus on the grass
  Him threw, and whilst all that he had designed
  He did perform--eager although to pass,
  Apollo darted from his mighty mind
  Towards the subtle babe the following scoff:--
  ‘Do not imagine this will get you off,
  LI.
  
  ‘You little swaddled child of Jove and May!
  And seized him:--‘By this omen I shall trace
  My noble herds, and you shall lead the way.
  
  ’--
  Cyllenian Hermes from the grassy place,
  Like one in earnest haste to get away,
  Rose, and with hands lifted towards his face
  Round both his ears up from his shoulders drew
  His swaddling clothes, and—‘What mean you to do
  LII.
  
  ‘With me, you unkind God?
  
  ’--said Mercury:
  ‘Is it about these cows you tease me so?
  
  I wish the race of cows were perished!--I
  Stole not your cows--I do not even know
  What things cows are.
  
  Alas! I well may sigh
  That since I came into this world of woe,
  I should have ever heard the name of one--
  But I appeal to the Saturnian’s throne.
  
  ’
  LIII.
  
  Thus Phoebus and the vagrant Mercury
  Talked without coming to an explanation,
  With adverse purpose.
  
  As for Phoebus, he
  Sought not revenge, but only information,
  And Hermes tried with lies and roguery
  To cheat Apollo.
  
  --But when no evasion
  Served--for the cunning one his match had found--
  He paced on first over the sandy ground.
  
  LIV.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  He of the Silver Bow the child of Jove
  Followed behind, till to their heavenly Sire
  Came both his children, beautiful as Love,
  And from his equal balance did require
  A judgement in the cause wherein they strove.
  
  O’er odorous Olympus and its snows
  A murmuring tumult as they came arose,--
  LV.
  
  And from the folded depths of the great Hill,
  While Hermes and Apollo reverent stood
  Before Jove’s throne, the indestructible
  Immortals rushed in mighty multitude;
  And whilst their seats in order due they fill,
  The lofty Thunderer in a careless mood
  To Phoebus said:—‘Whence drive you this sweet prey,
  This herald-baby, born but yesterday?
  
  --
  LVI.
  
  ‘A most important subject, trifler, this
  To lay before the Gods!’--‘Nay, Father, nay,
  When you have understood the business,
  Say not that I alone am fond of prey.
  
  I found this little boy in a recess
  Under Cyllene’s mountains far away--
  A manifest and most apparent thief,
  A scandalmonger beyond all belief.
  
  LVII.
  
  ‘I never saw his like either in Heaven
  Or upon earth for knavery or craft:--
  Out of the field my cattle yester-even,
  By the low shore on which the loud sea laughed,
  He right down to the river-ford had driven;
  And mere astonishment would make you daft
  To see the double kind of footsteps strange
  He has impressed wherever he did range.
  
  LVIII.
  
  ‘The cattle’s track on the black dust, full well
  Is evident, as if they went towards
  The place from which they came--that asphodel
  Meadow, in which I feed my many herds,--
  HIS steps were most incomprehensible--
  I know not how I can describe in words
  Those tracks—he could have gone along the sands
  Neither upon his feet nor on his hands;--
  LIX.
  
  ‘He must have had some other stranger mode
  Of moving on: those vestiges immense,
  Far as I traced them on the sandy road,
  Seemed like the trail of oak-toppings:--but thence
  No mark nor track denoting where they trod
  The hard ground gave:—but, working at his fence,
  A mortal hedger saw him as he passed
  To Pylos, with the cows, in fiery haste.
  
  LX.
  
  ‘I found that in the dark he quietly
  Had sacrificed some cows, and before light
  Had thrown the ashes all dispersedly
  About the road—then, still as gloomy night,
  Had crept into his cradle, either eye
  Rubbing, and cogitating some new sleight.
  
  No eagle could have seen him as he lay
  Hid in his cavern from the peering day.
  
  LXI.
  
  ‘I taxed him with the fact, when he averred
  Most solemnly that he did neither see
  Nor even had in any manner heard
  Of my lost cows, whatever things cows be;
  Nor could he tell, though offered a reward,
  Not even who could tell of them to me.
  
  ’
  So speaking, Phoebus sate; and Hermes then
  Addressed the Supreme Lord of Gods and Men:--
  LXII.
  
  ‘Great Father, you know clearly beforehand
  That all which I shall say to you is sooth;
  I am a most veracious person, and
  Totally unacquainted with untruth.
  
  At sunrise Phoebus came, but with no band
  Of Gods to bear him witness, in great wrath,
  To my abode, seeking his heifers there,
  And saying that I must show him where they are,
  LXIII.
  
  ‘Or he would hurl me down the dark abyss.
  
  I know that every Apollonian limb
  Is clothed with speed and might and manliness,
  As a green bank with flowers—but unlike him
  I was born yesterday, and you may guess
  He well knew this when he indulged the whim
  Of bullying a poor little new-born thing
  That slept, and never thought of cow-driving.
  
  LXIV.
  
  ‘Am I like a strong fellow who steals kine?
  
  Believe me, dearest Father--such you are--
  This driving of the herds is none of mine;
  Across my threshold did I wander ne’er,
  So may I thrive! I reverence the divine
  Sun and the Gods, and I love you, and care
  Even for this hard accuser--who must know
  I am as innocent as they or you.
  
  LXV.
  
  ‘I swear by these most gloriously-wrought portals
  (It is, you will allow, an oath of might)
  Through which the multitude of the Immortals
  Pass and repass forever, day and night,
  Devising schemes for the affairs of mortals--
  I am guiltless; and I will requite,
  Although mine enemy be great and strong,
  His cruel threat--do thou defend the young!’
  LXVI.
  
  So speaking, the Cyllenian Argiphont
  Winked, as if now his adversary was fitted:—
  And Jupiter, according to his wont,
  Laughed heartily to hear the subtle-witted
  Infant give such a plausible account,
  And every word a lie.
  
  But he remitted
  Judgement at present—and his exhortation
  Was, to compose the affair by arbitration.
  
  LXVII.
  
  And they by mighty Jupiter were bidden
  To go forth with a single purpose both,
  Neither the other chiding nor yet chidden:
  And Mercury with innocence and truth
  To lead the way, and show where he had hidden
  The mighty heifers.
  
  --Hermes, nothing loth,
  Obeyed the Aegis-bearer’s will—for he
  Is able to persuade all easily.
  
  LXVIII.
  
  These lovely children of Heaven’s highest Lord
  Hastened to Pylos and the pastures wide
  And lofty stalls by the Alphean ford,
  Where wealth in the mute night is multiplied
  With silent growth.
  
  Whilst Hermes drove the herd
  Out of the stony cavern, Phoebus spied
  The hides of those the little babe had slain,
  Stretched on the precipice above the plain.
  
  LXIX.
  
  ‘How was it possible,’ then Phoebus said,
  ‘That you, a little child, born yesterday,
  A thing on mother’s milk and kisses fed,
  Could two prodigious heifers ever flay?
  
  Even I myself may well hereafter dread
  Your prowess, offspring of Cyllenian May,
  When you grow strong and tall.
  
  ’--He spoke, and bound
  Stiff withy bands the infant’s wrists around.
  
  LXX.
  
  He might as well have bound the oxen wild;
  The withy bands, though starkly interknit,
  Fell at the feet of the immortal child,
  Loosened by some device of his quick wit.
  
  Phoebus perceived himself again beguiled,
  And stared—while Hermes sought some hole or pit,
  Looking askance and winking fast as thought,
  Where he might hide himself and not be caught.
  
  LXXI.
  
  Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill
  Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might
  Of winning music, to his mightier will;
  His left hand held the lyre, and in his right
  The plectrum struck the chords—unconquerable
  Up from beneath his hand in circling flight
  The gathering music rose—and sweet as Love
  The penetrating notes did live and move
  LXXII.
  
  Within the heart of great Apollo--he
  Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure.
  
  Close to his side stood harping fearlessly
  The unabashed boy; and to the measure
  Of the sweet lyre, there followed loud and free
  His joyous voice; for he unlocked the treasure
  Of his deep song, illustrating the birth
  Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth:
  LXXIII.
  
  And how to the Immortals every one
  A portion was assigned of all that is;
  But chief Mnemosyne did Maia’s son
  Clothe in the light of his loud melodies;--
  And, as each God was born or had begun,
  He in their order due and fit degrees
  Sung of his birth and being—and did move
  Apollo to unutterable love.
  
  LXXIV.
  
  These words were winged with his swift delight:
  ‘You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you
  Deserve that fifty oxen should requite
  Such minstrelsies as I have heard even now.
  
  Comrade of feasts, little contriving wight,
  One of your secrets I would gladly know,
  Whether the glorious power you now show forth
  Was folded up within you at your birth,
  LXXV.
  
  ‘Or whether mortal taught or God inspired
  The power of unpremeditated song?
  
  Many divinest sounds have I admired,
  The Olympian Gods and mortal men among;
  But such a strain of wondrous, strange, untired,
  And soul-awakening music, sweet and strong,
  Yet did I never hear except from thee,
  Offspring of May, impostor Mercury!
  LXXVI.
  
  ‘What Muse, what skill, what unimagined use,
  What exercise of subtlest art, has given
  Thy songs such power?
  
  --for those who hear may choose
  From three, the choicest of the gifts of Heaven,
  Delight, and love, and sleep,--sweet sleep, whose dews
  Are sweeter than the balmy tears of even:--
  And I, who speak this praise, am that Apollo
  Whom the Olympian Muses ever follow:
  LXXVII.
  
  ‘And their delight is dance, and the blithe noise
  Of song and overflowing poesy;
  And sweet, even as desire, the liquid voice
  Of pipes, that fills the clear air thrillingly;
  But never did my inmost soul rejoice
  In this dear work of youthful revelry
  As now.
  
  I wonder at thee, son of Jove;
  Thy harpings and thy song are soft as love.
  
  LXXVIII.
  
  ‘Now since thou hast, although so very small,
  Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear,--
  And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall,
  Witness between us what I promise here,--
  That I will lead thee to the Olympian Hall,
  Honoured and mighty, with thy mother dear,
  And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee,
  And even at the end will ne’er deceive thee.
  
  ’
  LXXIX.
  
  To whom thus Mercury with prudent speech:--
  ‘Wisely hast thou inquired of my skill:
  I envy thee no thing I know to teach
  Even this day:—for both in word and will
  I would be gentle with thee; thou canst reach
  All things in thy wise spirit, and thy sill
  Is highest in Heaven among the sons of Jove,
  Who loves thee in the fulness of his love.
  
  LXXX.
  
  ‘The Counsellor Supreme has given to thee
  Divinest gifts, out of the amplitude
  Of his profuse exhaustless treasury;
  By thee, ’tis said, the depths are understood
  Of his far voice; by thee the mystery
  Of all oracular fates,—and the dread mood
  Of the diviner is breathed up; even I--
  A child—perceive thy might and majesty.
  
  LXXXI.
  
  ‘Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit
  Can find or teach;--yet since thou wilt, come take
  The lyre--be mine the glory giving it--
  Strike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake
  Thy joyous pleasure out of many a fit
  Of tranced sound--and with fleet fingers make
  Thy liquid-voiced comrade talk with thee,--
  It can talk measured music eloquently.
  
  LXXXII.
  
  ‘Then bear it boldly to the revel loud,
  Love-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state,
  A joy by night or day--for those endowed
  With art and wisdom who interrogate
  It teaches, babbling in delightful mood
  All things which make the spirit most elate,
  Soothing the mind with sweet familiar play,
  Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay.
  
  LXXXIII.
  
  ‘To those who are unskilled in its sweet tongue,
  Though they should question most impetuously
  Its hidden soul, it gossips something wrong--
  Some senseless and impertinent reply.
  
  But thou who art as wise as thou art strong
  Canst compass all that thou desirest.
  
  I
  Present thee with this music-flowing shell,
  Knowing thou canst interrogate it well.
  
  LXXXIV.
  
  ‘And let us two henceforth together feed,
  On this green mountain-slope and pastoral plain,
  The herds in litigation -- they will breed
  Quickly enough to recompense our pain,
  If to the bulls and cows we take good heed;--
  And thou, though somewhat over fond of gain,
  Grudge me not half the profit.
  
  ’—Having spoke,
  The shell he proffered, and Apollo took;
  LXXXV.
  
  And gave him in return the glittering lash,
  Installing him as herdsman;--from the look
  Of Mercury then laughed a joyous flash.
  
  And then Apollo with the plectrum strook
  The chords, and from beneath his hands a crash
  Of mighty sounds rushed up, whose music shook
  The soul with sweetness, and like an adept
  His sweeter voice a just accordance kept.
  
  LXXXVI.
  
  The herd went wandering o’er the divine mead,
  Whilst these most beautiful Sons of Jupiter
  Won their swift way up to the snowy head
  Of white Olympus, with the joyous lyre
  Soothing their journey; and their father dread
  Gathered them both into familiar
  Affection sweet,—and then, and now, and ever,
  Hermes must love Him of the Golden Quiver,
  LXXXVII.
  
  To whom he gave the lyre that sweetly sounded,
  Which skilfully he held and played thereon.
  
  He piped the while, and far and wide rebounded
  The echo of his pipings; every one
  Of the Olympians sat with joy astounded;
  While he conceived another piece of fun,
  One of his old tricks—which the God of Day
  Perceiving, said:—‘I fear thee, Son of May;--
  LXXXVIII.
  
  ‘I fear thee and thy sly chameleon spirit,
  Lest thou should steal my lyre and crooked bow;
  This glory and power thou dost from Jove inherit,
  To teach all craft upon the earth below;
  Thieves love and worship thee—it is thy merit
  To make all mortal business ebb and flow
  By roguery:—now, Hermes, if you dare
  By sacred Styx a mighty oath to swear
  LXXXIX.
  
  ‘That you will never rob me, you will do
  A thing extremely pleasing to my heart.
  
  ’
  Then Mercury swore by the Stygian dew,
  That he would never steal his bow or dart,
  Or lay his hands on what to him was due,
  Or ever would employ his powerful art
  Against his Pythian fane.
  
  Then Phoebus swore
  There was no God or Man whom he loved more.
  
  XC.
  
  ‘And I will give thee as a good-will token,
  The beautiful wand of wealth and happiness;
  A perfect three-leaved rod of gold unbroken,
  Whose magic will thy footsteps ever bless;
  And whatsoever by Jove’s voice is spoken
  Of earthly or divine from its recess,
  It, like a loving soul, to thee will speak,
  And more than this, do thou forbear to seek.
  
  XCI.
  
  ‘For, dearest child, the divinations high
  Which thou requirest, ’tis unlawful ever
  That thou, or any other deity
  Should understand—and vain were the endeavour;
  For they are hidden in Jove’s mind, and I,
  In trust of them, have sworn that I would never
  Betray the counsels of Jove’s inmost will
  To any God—the oath was terrible.
  
  XCII.
  
  ‘Then, golden-wanded brother, ask me not
  To speak the fates by Jupiter designed;
  But be it mine to tell their various lot
  To the unnumbered tribes of human-kind.
  
  Let good to these, and ill to those be wrought
  As I dispense—but he who comes consigned
  By voice and wings of perfect augury
  To my great shrine, shall find avail in me.
  
  XCIII.
  
  ‘Him will I not deceive, but will assist;
  But he who comes relying on such birds
  As chatter vainly, who would strain and twist
  The purpose of the Gods with idle words,
  And deems their knowledge light, he shall have missed
  His road—whilst I among my other hoards
  His gifts deposit.
  
  Yet, O son of May,
  I have another wondrous thing to say.
  
  XCIV.
  
  ‘There are three Fates, three virgin Sisters, who
  Rejoicing in their wind-outspeeding wings,
  Their heads with flour snowed over white and new,
  Sit in a vale round which Parnassus flings
  Its circling skirts—from these I have learned true
  Vaticinations of remotest things.
  
  My father cared not.
  
  Whilst they search out dooms,
  They sit apart and feed on honeycombs.
  
  XCV.
  
  ‘They, having eaten the fresh honey, grow
  Drunk with divine enthusiasm, and utter
  With earnest willingness the truth they know;
  But if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter
  All plausible delusions;--these to you
  I give;--if you inquire, they will not stutter;
  Delight your own soul with them:--any man
  You would instruct may profit if he can.
  
  XCVI.
  
  ‘Take these and the fierce oxen, Maia’s child--
  O’er many a horse and toil-enduring mule,
  O’er jagged-jawed lions, and the wild
  White-tusked boars, o’er all, by field or pool,
  Of cattle which the mighty Mother mild
  Nourishes in her bosom, thou shalt rule--
  Thou dost alone the veil from death uplift--
  Thou givest not—yet this is a great gift.
  
  ’
  XCVII.
  
  Thus King Apollo loved the child of May
  In truth, and Jove covered their love with joy.
  
  Hermes with Gods and Men even from that day
  Mingled, and wrought the latter much annoy,
  And little profit, going far astray
  Through the dun night.
  
  Farewell, delightful Boy,
  Of Jove and Maia sprung,—never by me,
  Nor thou, nor other songs, shall unremembered be
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.
  
  This alone of the “Translations” is included in the Harvard manuscript book.
  
  Fragments of the drafts of this and the other Hymns of Homer exist among the Boscombe manuscripts (Forman).

• I Arise from Dreams of Thee Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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 odors fall
  Like sweet thoughts in a dream,
  The nightingale's complaint,
  It dies upon her heart,
  As I must die on thine,
  O, beloved as thou art!
  O, lift me from the grass!
  I die, I faint, I fall!
  Let thy love in kisses rain
  On my lips and eyelids pale,
  My cheek is cold and white, alas!
  My Heart beats loud and fast
  Oh! press it close to thine again,
  Where it will break at last!

• I Faint, I Perish With My Love! Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I faint, I perish with my love! I grow
  Frail as a cloud whose [splendours] pale
  Under the evening's ever-changing glow:
  I die like mist upon the gale,
  And like a wave under the calm I fail

• I Stood Upon A Heaven-cleaving Turret Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret
  Which overlooked a wide Metropolis--
  And in the temple of my heart my Spirit
  Lay prostrate, and with parted lips did kiss
  The dust of Desolations [altar] hearth--
  And with a voice too faint to falter
  It shook that trembling fane with its weak prayer
  'Twas noon,--the sleeping skies were blue
  The city.
  
  .
  
  .

• I Would Not Be A King Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I would not be a king--enough
  Of woe it is to love;
  The path to power is steep and rough,
  And tempests reign above.
  
  I would not climb the imperial throne;
  ’Tis built on ice which fortune’s sun
  Thaws in the height of noon.
  
  Then farewell, king, yet were I one,
  Care would not come so soon.
  
  Would he and I were far away
  Keeping flocks on Himalay!

• In Horologium Read Poem Log in to favourite

  On the clock
  BETWEEN the marble hills of Leonora
  The lucky machine tells the hours.
  
  With which hands she pressed her two senseless nipples
  Why should I touch with my finger, beloved, wrong?
  
  INTER marmoreas Leonorae pendula colles
  Fortunata mmis Machina dicit horas.
  
  Quas manibus premit ilia duas insensa papillas
  Cur mihi sit digito tangere, amata, nefas?

• Invocation Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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.
  
  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 dressed,
  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,
  Everything almost
  Which is Nature's, and may be
  Untainted by man's misery.
  
  I love tranquil solitude,
  And such society
  As is quiet, wise, and good:
  Between thee and me
  What diff'rence?
  
  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!

• Invocation To Misery Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Come, be happy!—sit near me,
  Shadow-vested Misery:
  Coy, unwilling, silent bride,
  Mourning in thy robe of pride,
  Desolation—deified!
  II.
  
  Come, be happy!—sit near me:
  Sad as I may seem to thee,
  I am happier far than thou,
  Lady, whose imperial brow
  Is endiademed with woe.
  
  III.
  
  Misery! we have known each other,
  Like a sister and a brother
  Living in the same lone home,
  Many years—we must live some
  Hours or ages yet to come.
  
  IV.
  
  ’Tis an evil lot, and yet
  Let us make the best of it;
  If love can live when pleasure dies,
  We two will love, till in our eyes
  This heart’s Hell seem Paradise.
  
  V.
  
  Come, be happy!—lie thee down
  On the fresh grass newly mown,
  Where the Grasshopper doth sing
  Merrily—one joyous thing
  In a world of sorrowing!
  VI.
  
  There our tent shall be the willow,
  And mine arm shall be thy pillow;
  Sounds and odours, sorrowful
  Because they once were sweet, shall lull
  Us to slumber, deep and dull.
  
  VII.
  
  Ha! thy frozen pulses flutter
  With a love thou darest not utter.
  
  Thou art murmuring—thou art weeping—
  Is thine icy bosom leaping
  While my burning heart lies sleeping?
  
  VIII.
  
  Kiss me;—oh! thy lips are cold:
  Round my neck thine arms enfold—
  They are soft, but chill and dead;
  And thy tears upon my head
  Burn like points of frozen lead.
  
  IX.
  
  Hasten to the bridal bed—
  Underneath the grave ’tis spread:
  In darkness may our love be hid,
  Oblivion be our coverlid—
  We may rest, and none forbid.
  
  X.
  
  Clasp me till our hearts be grown
  Like two shadows into one;
  Till this dreadful transport may
  Like a vapour fade away,
  In the sleep that lasts alway.
  
  XI.
  
  We may dream, in that long sleep,
  That we are not those who weep;
  E’en as Pleasure dreams of thee,
  Life-deserting Misery,
  Thou mayst dream of her with me.
  
  XII.
  
  Let us laugh, and make our mirth,
  At the shadows of the earth,
  As dogs bay the moonlight clouds,
  Which, like spectres wrapped in shrouds,
  Pass o’er night in multitudes.
  
  XIII.
  
  All the wide world, beside us,
  Show like multitudinous
  Puppets passing from a scene;
  What but mockery can they mean,
  Where I am—where thou hast been?
  
  Published by Medwin, The Athenaeum, September 8, 1832.
  
  Reprinted (as Misery, a Fragment) by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition.
  
  Our text is that of 1839.
  
  A pencil copy of this poem is amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library.

• Julian and Maddalo : A Conversation Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
  Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
  Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
  Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
  Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
  Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
  Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
  Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
  Abandons; and no other object breaks
  The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
  Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes
  A narrow space of level sand thereon,
  Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
  
  This ride was my delight.
  
  I love all waste
  And solitary places; where we taste
  The pleasure of believing what we see
  Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
  And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
  More barren than its billows; and yet more
  Than all, with a remembered friend I love
  To ride as then I rode;—for the winds drove
  The living spray along the sunny air
  Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
  Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
  And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
  Harmonising with solitude, and sent
  Into our hearts aëreal merriment.
  
  So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought.
  
  Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
  But flew from brain to brain,—such glee was ours.
  
  Charged with light memories of remembered hours.
  
  None slow enough for sadness: till we came
  Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
  
  This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
  The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
  
  Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
  Talk interrupted with such raillery
  As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn
  The thoughts it would extinguish:—'twas forlorn,
  Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell,
  The devils held within the dales of Hell
  Concerning God, freewill and destiny:
  Of all that earth has been or yet may be,
  All that vain men imagine or believe,
  Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve,
  We descanted, and I (for ever still
  Is it not wise to make the best of ill?
  
  )
  Argued against despondency, but pride
  Made my companion take the darker side.
  
  The sense that he was greater than his kind
  Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
  By gazing on its own exceeding light.
  
  Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight,
  Over the horizon of the mountains;—Oh,
  How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
  Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
  Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
  Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers
  Of cities they encircle!—it was ours
  To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,
  Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men
  Were waiting for us with the gondola.
  
  —
  As those who pause on some delightful way
  Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood
  Looking upon the evening, and the flood
  Which lay between the city and the shore.
  
  Paved with the image of the sky .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  the hoar
  And aëry Alps towards the North appeared
  Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared
  Between the East and West; and half the sky
  Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry
  Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
  Down the steep West into a wondrous hue
  Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
  Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent
  Among the many-folded hills: they were
  These famous Euganean hills, which bear,
  As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles,
  The likeness of a clump of peakèd isles—
  And then—as if the Earth and Sea had been
  Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen
  Those mountains towering as from waves of flame
  Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
  The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
  Their very peaks transparent.
  
  'Ere it fade,'
  Said my companion, 'I will show you soon
  A better station'—so, o'er the lagune
  We glided; and from that funereal bark
  I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
  How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,
  Its temples and its palaces did seem
  Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven.
  
  I was about to speak, when—'We are even
  Now at the point I meant,' said Maddalo,
  And bade the gondolieri cease to row.
  
  'Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well
  If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.
  
  '
  I looked, and saw between us and the sun
  A building on an island; such a one
  As age to age might add, for uses vile,
  A windowless, deformed and dreary pile;
  And on the top an open tower, where hung
  A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung;
  We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue:
  The broad sun sunk behind it, and it tolled
  In strong and black relief.
  
  —'What we behold
  Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,'
  Said Maddalo, 'and ever at this hour
  Those who may cross the water, hear that bell
  Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,
  To vespers.
  
  '—'As much skill as need to pray
  In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they
  To their stern maker,' I replied.
  
  'O ho!
  You talk as in years past,' said Maddalo.
  
  ''Tis strange men change not.
  
  You were ever still
  Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel,
  A wolf for the meek lambs—if you can't swim
  Beware of Providence.
  
  ' I looked on him,
  But the gay smile had faded in his eye.
  
  'And such,'—he cried, 'is our mortality.
  
  And this must be the emblem and the sign
  Of what should be eternal and divine!—
  And like that black and dreary bell, the soul,
  Hung in a heaven-illumined tower, must toll
  Our thoughts and our desires to meet below
  Round the rent heart and pray—as madmen do
  For what?
  
  they know not,—till the night of death
  As sunset that strange vision, severeth
  Our memory from itself, and us from all
  We sought and yet were baffled.
  
  ' I recall
  The sense of what he said, although I mar
  The force of his expressions.
  
  The broad star
  Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill,
  And the black bell became invisible,
  And the red tower looked gray, and all between
  The churches, ships and palaces were seen
  Huddled in gloom;—into the purple sea
  The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.
  
  We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola
  Conveyed me to my lodging by the way.
  
  The following morn was rainy, cold and dim:
  Ere Maddalo arose, I called on him,
  And whilst I waited with his child I played;
  A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made,
  A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being,
  Graceful without design and unforeseeing,
  With eyes—Oh speak not of her eyes!—which seem
  Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam
  With such deep meaning, as we never see
  But in the human countenance: with me
  She was a special favourite: I had nursed
  Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first
  To this bleak world; and she yet seemed to know
  On second sight her ancient playfellow,
  Less changed than she was by six months or so;
  For after her first shyness was worn out
  We sate there, rolling billiard balls about,
  When the Count entered.
  
  Salutations past—
  'The word you spoke last night might well have cast
  A darkness on my spirit—if man be
  The passive thing you say, I should not see
  Much harm in the religions and old saws
  (Tho' I may never own such leaden laws)
  Which break a teachless nature to the yoke:
  Mine is another faith'—thus much I spoke
  And noting he replied not, added: 'See
  This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free;
  She spends a happy time with little care,
  While we to such sick thoughts subjected are
  As came on you last night—it is our will
  That thus enchains us to permitted ill—
  We might be otherwise—we might be all
  We dream of happy, high, majestical.
  
  Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek
  But in our mind?
  
  and if we were not weak
  Should we be less in deed than in desire?
  
  '
  'Ay, if we were not weak—and we aspire
  How vainly to be strong!' said Maddalo:
  'You talk Utopia.
  
  ' 'It remains to know,'
  I then rejoined, 'and those who try may find
  How strong the chains are which our spirit bind;
  Brittle perchance as straw .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  We are assured
  Much may be conquered, much may be endured,
  Of what degrades and crushes us.
  
  We know
  That we have power over ourselves to do
  And suffer—what, we know not till we try;
  But something nobler than to live and die—
  So taught those kings of old philosophy
  Who reigned, before Religion made men blind;
  And those who suffer with their suffering kind
  Yet feel their faith, religion.
  
  ' 'My dear friend,'
  Said Maddalo, 'my judgement will not bend
  To your opinion, though I think you might
  Make such a system refutation-tight
  As far as words go.
  
  I knew one like you
  Who to this city came some months ago,
  With whom I argued in this sort, and he
  Is now gone mad,—and so he answered me,—
  Poor fellow! but if you would like to go
  We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show
  How vain are such aspiring theories.
  
  '
  'I hope to prove the induction otherwise,
  And that a want of that true theory, still,
  Which seeks a "soul of goodness" in things ill
  Or in himself or others, has thus bowed
  His being—there are some by nature proud,
  Who patient in all else demand but this—
  To love and be beloved with gentleness;
  And being scorned, what wonder if they die
  Some living death?
  
  this is not destiny
  But man's own wilful ill.
  
  '
  As thus I spoke
  Servants announced the gondola, and we
  Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
  Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands.
  
  We disembarked.
  
  The clap of tortured hands,
  Fierce yells and howlings and lamentings keen,
  And laughter where complaint had merrier been,
  Moans, shrieks, and curses, and blaspheming prayers
  Accosted us.
  
  We climbed the oozy stairs
  Into an old courtyard.
  
  I heard on high,
  Then, fragments of most touching melody,
  But looking up saw not the singer there—
  Through the black bars in the tempestuous air
  I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing,
  Long tangled locks flung wildly forth, and flowing,
  Of those who on a sudden were beguiled
  Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled
  Hearing sweet sounds.
  
  —Then I: 'Methinks there were
  A cure of these with patience and kind care,
  If music can thus move .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  but what is he
  Whom we seek here?
  
  ' 'Of his sad history
  I know but this,' said Maddalo: 'he came
  To Venice a dejected man, and fame
  Said he was wealthy, or he had been so;
  Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe;
  But he was ever talking in such sort
  As you do—far more sadly—he seemed hurt,
  Even as a man with his peculiar wrong,
  To hear but of the oppression of the strong,
  Or those absurd deceits (I think with you
  In some respects, you know) which carry through
  The excellent impostors of this earth
  When they outface detection—he had worth,
  Poor fellow! but a humourist in his way'—
  'Alas, what drove him mad?
  
  ' 'I cannot say:
  A lady came with him from France, and when
  She left him and returned, he wandered then
  About yon lonely isles of desert sand
  Till he grew wild—he had no cash or land
  Remaining,—the police had brought him here—
  Some fancy took him and he would not bear
  Removal; so I fitted up for him
  Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim,
  And sent him busts and books and urns for flowers,
  Which had adorned his life in happier hours,
  And instruments of music—you may guess
  A stranger could do little more or less
  For one so gentle and unfortunate:
  And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight
  From madmen's chains, and make this Hell appear
  A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.
  
  '—
  'Nay, this was kind of you—he had no claim,
  As the world says'—'None—but the very same
  Which I on all mankind were I as he
  Fallen to such deep reverse;—his melody
  Is interrupted—now we hear the din
  Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin;
  Let us now visit him; after this strain
  He ever communes with himself again,
  And sees nor hears not any.
  
  ' Having said
  These words we called the keeper, and he led
  To an apartment opening on the sea—
  There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully
  Near a piano, his pale fingers twined
  One with the other, and the ooze and wind
  Rushed through an open casement, and did sway
  His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray;
  His head was leaning on a music book,
  And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook;
  His lips were pressed against a folded leaf
  In hue too beautiful for health, and grief
  Smiled in their motions as they lay apart—
  As one who wrought from his own fervid heart
  The eloquence of passion, soon he raised
  His sad meek face and eyes lustrous and glazed
  And spoke—sometimes as one who wrote, and thought
  His words might move some heart that heeded not,
  If sent to distant lands: and then as one
  Reproaching deeds never to be undone
  With wondering self-compassion; then his speech
  Was lost in grief, and then his words came each
  Unmodulated, cold, expressionless,—
  But that from one jarred accent you might guess
  It was despair made them so uniform:
  And all the while the loud and gusty storm
  Hissed through the window, and we stood behind
  Stealing his accents from the envious wind
  Unseen.
  
  I yet remember what he said
  Distinctly: such impression his words made.
  
  'Month after month,' he cried, 'to bear this load
  And as a jade urged by the whip and goad
  To drag life on, which like a heavy chain
  Lengthens behind with many a link of pain!—
  And not to speak my grief—O, not to dare
  To give a human voice to my despair,
  But live and move, and, wretched thing! smile on
  As if I never went aside to groan,
  And wear this mask of falsehood even to those
  Who are most dear—not for my own repose—
  Alas! no scorn or pain or hate could be
  So heavy as that falsehood is to me—
  But that I cannot bear more altered faces
  Than needs must be, more changed and cold embraces,
  More misery, disappointment, and mistrust
  To own me for their father .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Would the dust
  Were covered in upon my body now!
  That the life ceased to toil within my brow!
  And then these thoughts would at the least be fled;
  Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead.
  
  'What Power delights to torture us?
  
  I know
  That to myself I do not wholly owe
  What now I suffer, though in part I may.
  
  Alas! none strewed sweet flowers upon the way
  Where wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain
  My shadow, which will leave me not again—
  If I have erred, there was no joy in error,
  But pain and insult and unrest and terror;
  I have not as some do, bought penitence
  With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet offence,
  For then,—if love and tenderness and truth
  Had overlived hope's momentary youth,
  My creed should have redeemed me from repenting;
  But loathèd scorn and outrage unrelenting
  Met love excited by far other seeming
  Until the end was gained .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  as one from dreaming
  Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state
  Such as it is.
  
  —
  'O Thou, my spirit's mate
  Who, for thou art compassionate and wise,
  Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes
  If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see—
  My secret groans must be unheard by thee,
  Thou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood to know
  Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe.
  
  'Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed
  In friendship, let me not that name degrade
  By placing on your hearts the secret load
  Which crushes mine to dust.
  
  There is one road
  To peace and that is truth, which follow ye!
  Love sometimes leads astray to misery.
  
  Yet think not though subdued—and I may well
  Say that I am subdued—that the full Hell
  Within me would infect the untainted breast
  Of sacred nature with its own unrest;
  As some perverted beings think to find
  In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind
  Which scorn or hate have wounded—O how vain!
  The dagger heals not but may rend again .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Believe that I am ever still the same
  In creed as in resolve, and what may tame
  My heart, must leave the understanding free,
  Or all would sink in this keen agony—
  Nor dream that I will join the vulgar cry;
  Or with my silence sanction tyranny;
  Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain
  In any madness which the world calls gain,
  Ambition or revenge or thoughts as stern
  As those which make me what I am; or turn
  To avarice or misanthropy or lust .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Heap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust!
  Till then the dungeon may demand its prey,
  And Poverty and Shame may meet and say—
  Halting beside me on the public way—
  "That love-devoted youth is ours—let's sit
  Beside him—he may live some six months yet.
  
  "
  Or the red scaffold, as our country bends,
  May ask some willing victim, or ye friends
  May fall under some sorrow which this heart
  Or hand may share or vanquish or avert;
  I am prepared—in truth with no proud joy—
  To do or suffer aught, as when a boy
  I did devote to justice and to love
  My nature, worthless now! .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  'I must remove
  A veil from my pent mind.
  
  'Tis torn aside!
  O, pallid as Death's dedicated bride,
  Thou mockery which art sitting by my side,
  Am I not wan like thee?
  
  at the grave's call
  I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball
  To greet the ghastly paramour, for whom
  Thou hast deserted me .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  and made the tomb
  Thy bridal bed .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  But I beside your feet
  Will lie and watch ye from my winding sheet—
  Thus .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  wide awake tho' dead .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  yet stay, O stay!
  Go not so soon—I know not what I say—
  Hear but my reasons .
  
  .
  
  I am mad, I fear,
  My fancy is o'erwrought .
  
  .
  
  thou art not here.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Pale art thou, 'tis most true .
  
  .
  
  but thou art gone,
  Thy work is finished .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I am left alone!—
  'Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast
  Which, like a serpent, thou envenomest
  As in repayment of the warmth it lent?
  
  Didst thou not seek me for thine own content?
  
  Did not thy love awaken mine?
  
  I thought
  That thou wert she who said, "You kiss me not
  Ever, I fear you do not love me now"—
  In truth I loved even to my overthrow
  Her, who would fain forget these words: but they
  Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away.
  
  'You say that I am proud—that when I speak
  My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break
  The spirit it expresses .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Never one
  Humbled himself before, as I have done!
  Even the instinctive worm on which we tread
  Turns, though it wound not—then with prostrate head
  Sinks in the dusk and writhes like me—and dies?
  
  No: wears a living death of agonies!
  As the slow shadows of the pointed grass
  Mark the eternal periods, his pangs pass
  Slow, ever-moving,—making moments be
  As mine seem—each an immortality!
  'That you had never seen me—never heard
  My voice, and more than all had ne'er endured
  The deep pollution of my loathed embrace—
  That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face—
  That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out
  The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root
  With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne'er
  Our hearts had for a moment mingled there
  To disunite in horror—these were not
  With thee, like some suppressed and hideous thought
  Which flits athwart our musings, but can find
  No rest within a pure and gentle mind .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,
  And searedst my memory o'er them,—for I heard
  And can forget not .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  they were ministered
  One after one, those curses.
  
  Mix them up
  Like self-destroying poisons in one cup,
  And they will make one blessing which thou ne'er
  Didst imprecate for, on me,—death.
  
  'It were
  A cruel punishment for one most cruel,
  If such can love, to make that love the fuel
  Of the mind's hell; hate, scorn, remorse, despair:
  But me—whose heart a stranger's tear might wear
  As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone,
  Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
  For woes which others hear not, and could see
  The absent with the glance of phantasy,
  And with the poor and trampled sit and weep,
  Following the captive to his dungeon deep;
  Me—who am as a nerve o'er which do creep
  The else unfelt oppressions of this earth,
  And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,
  When all beside was cold—that thou on me
  Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony—
  Such curses are from lips once eloquent
  With love's too partial praise—let none relent
  Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name
  Henceforth, if an example for the same
  They seek .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  for thou on me lookedst so, and so—
  And didst speak thus .
  
  .
  
  and thus .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I live to show
  How much men bear and die not!
  'Thou wilt tell,
  With the grimace of hate, how horrible
  It was to meet my love when thine grew less;
  Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address
  Such features to love's work .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  this taunt, though true,
  (For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue
  Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship)
  Shall not be thy defence .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  for since thy lip
  Met mine first, years long past, since thine eye kindled
  With soft fire under mine, I have not dwindled
  Nor changed in mind or body, or in aught
  But as love changes what it loveth not
  After long years and many trials.
  
  'How vain
  Are words! I thought never to speak again,
  Not even in secret,—not to my own heart—
  But from my lips the unwilling accents start,
  And from my pen the words flow as I write,
  Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  my sight
  Is dim to see that charactered in vain
  On this unfeeling leaf which burns the brain
  And eats into it .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  blotting all things fair
  And wise and good which time had written there.
  
  'Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
  The work of their own hearts, and this must be
  Our chastisement or recompense—O child!
  I would that thine were like to be more mild
  For both our wretched sakes .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  for thine the most
  Who feelest already all that thou hast lost
  Without the power to wish it thine again;
  And as slow years pass, a funereal train
  Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend
  Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend
  No thought on my dead memory?
  
  'Alas, love!
  Fear me not .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  against thee I would not move
  A finger in despite.
  
  Do I not live
  That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve?
  
  I give thee tears for scorn and love for hate;
  And that thy lot may be less desolate
  Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain
  From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain.
  
  Then, when thou speakest of me, never say
  "He could forgive not.
  
  " Here I cast away
  All human passions, all revenge, all pride;
  I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide
  Under these words, like embers, every spark
  Of that which has consumed me—quick and dark
  The grave is yawning .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  as its roof shall cover
  My limbs with dust and worms under and over
  So let Oblivion hide this grief .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  the air
  Closes upon my accents, as despair
  Upon my heart—let death upon despair!'
  He ceased, and overcome leant back awhile,
  Then rising, with a melancholy smile
  Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept
  A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept
  And muttered some familiar name, and we
  Wept without shame in his society.
  
  I think I never was impressed so much;
  The man who were not, must have lacked a touch
  Of human nature .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  then we lingered not,
  Although our argument was quite forgot,
  But calling the attendants, went to dine
  At Maddalo's; yet neither cheer nor wine
  Could give us spirits, for we talked of him
  And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim;
  And we agreed his was some dreadful ill
  Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable,
  By a dear friend; some deadly change in love
  Of one vowed deeply which he dreamed not of;
  For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot
  Of falsehood on his mind which flourished not
  But in the light of all-beholding truth;
  And having stamped this canker on his youth
  She had abandoned him—and how much more
  Might be his woe, we guessed not—he had store
  Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess
  From his nice habits and his gentleness;
  These were now lost .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  it were a grief indeed
  If he had changed one unsustaining reed
  For all that such a man might else adorn.
  
  The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn;
  For the wild language of his grief was high,
  Such as in measure were called poetry;
  And I remember one remark which then
  Maddalo made.
  
  He said: 'Most wretched men
  Are cradled into poetry by wrong,
  They learn in suffering what they teach in song.
  
  '
  If I had been an unconnected man
  I, from this moment, should have formed some plan
  Never to leave sweet Venice,—for to me
  It was delight to ride by the lone sea;
  And then, the town is silent—one may write
  Or read in gondolas by day or night,
  Having the little brazen lamp alight,
  Unseen, uninterrupted; books are there,
  Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair
  Which were twin-born with poetry, and all
  We seek in towns, with little to recall
  Regrets for the green country.
  
  I might sit
  In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit
  And subtle talk would cheer the winter night
  And make me know myself, and the firelight
  Would flash upon our faces, till the day
  Might dawn and make me wonder at my stay:
  But I had friends in London too: the chief
  Attraction here, was that I sought relief
  From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought
  Within me—'twas perhaps an idle thought—
  But I imagined that if day by day
  I watched him, and but seldom went away,
  And studied all the beatings of his heart
  With zeal, as men study some stubborn art
  For their own good, and could by patience find
  An entrance to the caverns of his mind,
  I might reclaim him from his dark estate:
  In friendships I had been most fortunate—
  Yet never saw I one whom I would call
  More willingly my friend; and this was all
  Accomplished not; such dreams of baseless good
  Oft come and go in crowds or solitude
  And leave no trace—but what I now designed
  Made for long years impression on my mind.
  
  The following morning, urged by my affairs,
  I left bright Venice.
  
  After many years
  And many changes I returned; the name
  Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same;
  But Maddalo was travelling far away
  Among the mountains of Armenia.
  
  His dog was dead.
  
  His child had now become
  A woman; such as it has been my doom
  To meet with few,—a wonder of this earth,
  Where there is little of transcendent worth,—
  Like one of Shakespeare's women: kindly she,
  And, with a manner beyond courtesy,
  Received her father's friend; and when I asked
  Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked,
  And told as she had heard the mournful tale:
  'That the poor sufferer's health began to fail
  Two years from my departure, but that then
  The lady who had left him, came again.
  
  Her mien had been imperious, but she now
  Looked meek—perhaps remorse had brought her low.
  
  Her coming made him better, and they stayed
  Together at my father's—for I played,
  As I remember, with the lady's shawl—
  I might be six years old—but after all
  She left him' .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  'Why, her heart must have been tough:
  How did it end?
  
  ' 'And was not this enough?
  
  They met—they parted'—'Child, is there no more?
  
  '
  'Something within that interval which bore
  The stamp of why they parted, how they met:
  Yet if thine agèd eyes disdain to wet
  Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered tears,
  Ask me no more, but let the silent years
  Be closed and cered over their memory
  As yon mute marble where their corpses lie.
  
  '
  I urged and questioned still, she told me how
  All happened—but the cold world shall not know.
  
  Composed at Este after Shelley's first visit to Venice, 1818 (Autumn); first published in the Posthumous Poems, London, 1824 (ed.
  
  Mrs.
  
  Shelley).
  
  Shelley's original intention had been to print the poem in Leigh Hunt's Examiner; but he changed his mind and, on August 15, 1819, sent the MS.
  
  to Hunt to be published anonymously by Ollier.
  
  This MS.
  
  , found by Mr.
  
  Townshend Mayer, and by him placed in the hands of Mr.
  
  H.
  
  Buxton Forman, C.
  
  B.
  
  , is described by him at length in Mr.
  
  Forman's Library Edition of the poems (vol.
  
  iii.
  
  , p.
  
  107).
  
  The date, 'May, 1819,' affixed to Julian and Maddalo in the P.
  
  P.
  
  , 1824, indicates the time when the text was finally revised by Shelley.
  
  Note by Mrs.
  
  Shelley: 'From the Baths of Lucca, in 1818, Shelley visited Venice; and, circumstances rendering it eligible that we should remain a few weeks in the neighbourhood of that city, he accepted the offer of Lord Byron, who lent him the use of a villa he rented near Este; and he sent for his family from Lucca to join him.
  
  I Capuccini was a villa built on the site of a Capuchin convent, demolished when the French suppressed religious houses; it was situated on the very overhanging brow of a low hill at the foot of a range of higher ones.
  
  The house was cheerful and pleasant; a vine-trellised walk, a pergola, as it is called in Italian, led from the hall-door to a summer-house at the end of the garden, which Shelley made his study, and in which he began the Prometheus; and here also, as he mentions in a letter, he wrote Julian and Maddalo.
  
  A slight ravine, with a road in its depth, divided the garden from the hill, on which stood the ruins of the ancient castle of Este, whose dark massive wall gave forth an echo, and from whose ruined crevices owls and bats flitted forth at night, as the crescent moon sunk behind the black and heavy battlements.
  
  We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the west by the far Apennines, while to the east the horizon was lost in misty distance.
  
  After the picturesque but limited view of mountain, ravine, and chestnutwood, at the Baths of Lucca, there was something infinitely gratifying to the eye in the wide range of prospect commanded by our new abode.

• Letter To Maria Gisborne Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
  In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
  The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves
  His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
  So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,
  Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
  From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought—
  No net of words in garish colours wrought
  To catch the idle buzzers of the day—
  But a soft cell, where when that fades away,
  Memory may clothe in wings my living name
  And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
  Which in those hearts which must remember me
  Grow, making love an immortality.
  
  Whoever should behold me now, I wist,
  Would think I were a mighty mechanist,
  Bent with sublime Archimedean art
  To breathe a soul into the iron heart
  Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,
  Which by the force of figured spells might win
  Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
  For round the walls are hung dread engines, such
  As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch
  Ixion or the Titan:—or the quick
  Wit of that man of God, St.
  
  Dominic,
  To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,
  Or those in philanthropic council met,
  Who thought to pay some interest for the debt
  They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,
  By giving a faint foretaste of damnation
  To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest
  Who made our land an island of the blest,
  When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire
  On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire:—
  With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,
  Which fishers found under the utmost crag
  Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,
  Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles
  Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn
  When the exulting elements in scorn,
  Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay
  Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
  As panthers sleep;—and other strange and dread
  Magical forms the brick floor overspread,—
  Proteus transformed to metal did not make
  More figures, or more strange; nor did he take
  Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
  Or heap himself in such a horrid mass
  Of tin and iron not to be understood;
  And forms of unimaginable wood,
  To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
  Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and groovèd blocks,
  The elements of what will stand the shocks
  Of wave and wind and time.
  
  —Upon the table
  More knacks and quips there be than I am able
  To catalogize in this verse of mine:—
  A pretty bowl of wood—not full of wine,
  But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink
  When at their subterranean toil they swink,
  Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who
  Reply to them in lava—cry halloo!
  And call out to the cities o'er their head,—
  Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,
  Crash through the chinks of earth—and then all quaff
  Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.
  
  This quicksilver no gnome has drunk—within
  The walnut bowl it lies, veinèd and thin,
  In colour like the wake of light that stains
  The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
  The inmost shower of its white fire—the breeze
  Is still—blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas.
  
  And in this bowl of quicksilver—for I
  Yield to the impulse of an infancy
  Outlasting manhood—I have made to float
  A rude idealism of a paper boat:—
  A hollow screw with cogs—Henry will know
  The thing I mean and laugh at me,—if so
  He fears not I should do more mischief.
  
  —Next
  Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,
  With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint
  Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
  
  Then comes a range of mathematical
  Instruments, for plans nautical and statical;
  A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass
  With ink in it;—a china cup that was
  What it will never be again, I think,—
  A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
  The liquor doctors rail at—and which I
  Will quaff in spite of them—and when we die
  We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea,
  And cry out,—'Heads or tails?
  
  ' where'er we be.
  
  Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,
  A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
  Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
  To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims,
  Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
  Of figures,—disentangle them who may.
  
  Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie,
  And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
  
  Near those a most inexplicable thing,
  With lead in the middle—I'm conjecturing
  How to make Henry understand; but no—
  I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
  This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
  Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme.
  
  And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
  Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
  The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
  Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
  The gentle spirit of our meek reviews
  Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
  Ruffling the ocean of their self-content;—
  I sit—and smile or sigh as is my bent,
  But not for them—Libeccio rushes round
  With an inconstant and an idle sound,
  I heed him more than them—the thunder-smoke
  Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
  Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
  The ripe corn under the undulating air
  Undulates like an ocean;—and the vines
  Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines—
  The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
  The empty pauses of the blast;—the hill
  Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
  And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain,
  The interrupted thunder howls; above
  One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
  On the unquiet world;—while such things are,
  How could one worth your friendship heed the war
  Of worms?
  
  the shriek of the world's carrion jays,
  Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
  
  You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,
  In vacant chairs, your absent images,
  And points where once you sat, and now should be
  But are not.
  
  —I demand if ever we
  Shall meet as then we met;—and she replies,
  Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
  'I know the past alone—but summon home
  My sister Hope,—she speaks of all to come.
  
  '
  But I, an old diviner, who knew well
  Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
  Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
  And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
  In citing every passage o'er and o'er
  Of our communion—how on the sea-shore
  We watched the ocean and the sky together,
  Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
  How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,
  And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
  Upon my cheek—and how we often made
  Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed
  The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
  As well it might, were it less firm and clear
  Than ours must ever be;—and how we spun
  A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun
  Of this familiar life, which seems to be
  But is not:—or is but quaint mockery
  Of all we would believe, and sadly blame
  The jarring and inexplicable frame
  Of this wrong world:—and then anatomize
  The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
  Were closed in distant years;—or widely guess
  The issue of the earth's great business,
  When we shall be as we no longer are—
  Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war
  Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;—or how
  You listened to some interrupted flow
  Of visionary rhyme,—in joy and pain
  Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
  With little skill perhaps;—or how we sought
  Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
  Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
  Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
  Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
  Or how I, wisest lady! then endued
  The language of a land which now is free,
  And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
  Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud,
  And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
  'My name is Legion!'—that majestic tongue
  Which Calderon over the desert flung
  Of ages and of nations; and which found
  An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
  Startled oblivion;—thou wert then to me
  As is a nurse—when inarticulately
  A child would talk as its grown parents do.
  
  If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
  If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way,
  Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
  Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast
  Out of the forest of the pathless past
  These recollected pleasures?
  
  You are now
  In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
  At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
  Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more.
  
  Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see
  That which was Godwin,—greater none than he
  Though fallen—and fallen on evil times—to stand
  Among the spirits of our age and land,
  Before the dread tribunal of to come
  The foremost,—while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.
  
  You will see Coleridge—he who sits obscure
  In the exceeding lustre and the pure
  Intense irradiation of a mind,
  Which, with its own internal lightning blind,
  Flags wearily through darkness and despair—
  A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
  A hooded eagle among blinking owls.
  
  —
  You will see Hunt—one of those happy souls
  Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
  This world would smell like what it is—a tomb;
  Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt
  Is still adorned with many a cast from Shout,
  With graceful flowers tastefully placed about;
  And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,
  And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;
  The gifts of the most learned among some dozens
  Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.
  
  And there is he with his eternal puns,
  Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns
  Thundering for money at a poet's door;
  Alas! it is no use to say, 'I'm poor!'
  Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
  Things wiser than were ever read in book,
  Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness.
  
  —
  You will see Hogg,—and I cannot express
  His virtues,—though I know that they are great,
  Because he locks, then barricades the gate
  Within which they inhabit;—of his wit
  And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit.
  
  He is a pearl within an oyster shell,
  One of the richest of the deep;—and there
  Is English Peacock, with his mountain Fair,
  Turned into a Flamingo;—that shy bird
  That gleams i' the Indian air—have you not heard
  When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
  His best friends hear no more of him?
  
  —but you
  Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,
  With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope
  Matched with this cameleopard—his fine wit
  Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
  A strain too learnèd for a shallow age,
  Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page,
  Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,
  Fold itself up for the serener clime
  Of years to come, and find its recompense
  In that just expectation.
  
  —Wit and sense,
  Virtue and human knowledge; all that might
  Make this dull world a business of delight,
  Are all combined in Horace Smith.
  
  —And these,
  With some exceptions, which I need not tease
  Your patience by descanting on,—are all
  You and I know in London.
  
  I recall
  My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.
  
  As water does a sponge, so the moonlight
  Fills the void, hollow, universal air—
  What see you?
  
  —unpavilioned Heaven is fair,
  Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
  Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
  Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep;
  Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep,
  Piloted by the many-wandering blast,
  And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast:—
  All this is beautiful in every land.
  
  —
  But what see you beside?
  
  —a shabby stand
  Of Hackney coaches—a brick house or wall
  Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
  Of our unhappy politics;—or worse—
  A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse
  Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade,
  You must accept in place of serenade—
  Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring
  To Henry, some unutterable thing.
  
  I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
  Built round dark caverns, even to the root
  Of the living stems that feed them—in whose bowers
  There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
  Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
  Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
  In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance,
  Like wingèd stars the fire-flies flash and glance,
  Pale in the open moonshine, but each one
  Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
  A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
  From the silver regions of the milky way;—
  Afar the Contadino's song is heard,
  Rude, but made sweet by distance—and a bird
  Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet
  I know none else that sings so sweet as it
  At this late hour;—and then all is still—
  Now—Italy or London, which you will!
  Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have
  My house by that time turned into a grave
  Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
  And all the dreams which our tormentors are;
  Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there,
  With everything belonging to them fair!—
  We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;
  And ask one week to make another week
  As like his father, as I'm unlike mine,
  Which is not his fault, as you may divine.
  
  Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
  Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast;
  Custards for supper, and an endless host
  Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
  And other such lady-like luxuries,—
  Feasting on which we will philosophize!
  And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood,
  To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
  
  And then we'll talk;—what shall we talk about?
  
  Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
  Of thought-entangled descant;—as to nerves—
  With cones and parallelograms and curves
  I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
  To bother me—when you are with me there.
  
  And they shall never more sip laudanum,
  From Helicon or Himeros[1];—well, come,
  And in despite of God and of the devil,
  We'll make our friendly philosophic revel
  Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers
  Warn the obscure inevitable hours,
  Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;—
  'To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.
  
  '
  Composed during Shelley's occupation of the Gisbornes' house at Leghorn, July 1820; published in Posthumous Poems, 1824.

• Liberty Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The fiery mountains answer each other;
  Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;
  The tempestuous oceans awake one another,
  And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne,
  When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown.
  
  II.
  
  From a single cloud the lightening flashes,
  Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,
  Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,
  An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound
  Is bellowing underground.
  
  III.
  
  But keener thy gaze than the lightening’s glare,
  And swifter thy step than the earthquake’s tramp;
  Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare
  Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun’s bright lamp
  To thine is a fen-fire damp.
  
  IV.
  
  From billow and mountain and exhalation
  The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;
  From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,
  From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,--
  And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night
  In the van of the morning light.

• Life Rounded With Sleep Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The babe is at peace within the womb;
  The corpse is at rest within the tomb:
  We begin in what we end.

• Lines -- Far, Far Away, O Ye Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Far, far away, O ye
  Halcyons of Memory,
  Seek some far calmer nest
  Than this abandoned breast!
  No news of your false spring
  To my heart’s winter bring,
  Once having gone, in vain
  Ye come again.
  
  II.
  
  Vultures, who build your bowers
  High in the Future’s towers,
  Withered hopes on hopes are spread!
  Dying joys, choked by the dead,
  Will serve your beaks for prey
  Many a day.

• Lines To A Critic Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Honey from silkworms who can gather,
  Or silk from the yellow bee?
  
  The grass may grow in winter weather
  As soon as hate in me.
  
  II.
  
  Hate men who cant, and men who pray,
  And men who rail like thee;
  An equal passion to repay
  They are not coy like me.
  
  III.
  
  Or seek some slave of power and gold
  To be thy dear heart's mate;
  Thy love will move that bigot cold
  Sooner than me, thy hate.
  
  IV.
  
  A passion like the one I prove
  Cannot divided be;
  I hate thy want of truth and love--
  How should I then hate thee?

• Lines To A Reviewer Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Alas, good friend, what profit can you see
  In hating such a 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.
  
  Oh, conquer what you cannot satiate!
  For to your passion I am far more coy
  Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy
  In winter noon.
  
  Of your antipathy
  If I am the Narcissus, you are free
  To pine into a sound with hating me.
  
  Published by Leigh Hunt, The Literary Pocket-Book, 1823.
  
  These lines, and the Sonnet immediately preceding, are signed Sigma in the Literary Pocket-Book.

• Lines Written Among The Euganean Hills Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Many a green isle needs must be
  In the deep wide sea of Misery,
  Or the mariner, worn and wan,
  Never thus could voyage on -
  Day and night, and night and day,
  Drifting on his dreary way,
  With the solid darkness black
  Closing round his vessel's track:
  Whilst above the sunless sky,
  Big with clouds, hangs heavily,
  And behind the tempest fleet
  Hurries on with lightning feet,
  He is ever drifted on
  O'er the unreposing wave
  To the haven of the grave.
  
  What, if there no friends will greet;
  What, if there no heart will meet
  His with love's impatient beat;
  Wander wheresoe'er he may,
  Can he dream before that day
  To find refuge from distress
  In friendship's smile, in love's caress?
  
  Then 'twill wreak him little woe
  Whether such there be or no:
  Senseless is the breast, and cold,
  Which relenting love would fold;
  Bloodless are the veins and chill
  Which the pulse of pain did fill;
  Every little living nerve
  That from bitter words did swerve
  Round the tortured lips and brow,
  Are like sapless leaflets now
  Frozen upon December's bough.
  
  On the beach of a northern sea
  Which tempests shake eternally,
  As once the wretch there lay to sleep,
  Lies a solitary heap,
  One white skull and seven dry bones,
  On the margin of the stones,
  Where a few grey rushes stand,
  Boundaries of the sea and land:
  Nor is heard one voice of wail
  But the sea-mews, as they sail
  O'er the billows of the gale;
  Or the whirlwind up and down
  Howling, like a slaughtered town,
  When a king in glory rides
  Through the pomp and fratricides:
  Those unburied bones around
  There is many a mournful sound;
  There is no lament for him,
  Like a sunless vapour, dim,
  Who once clothed with life and thought
  What now moves nor murmurs not.
  
  Ay, many flowering islands lie
  In the waters of wide Agony:
  To such a one this morn was led,
  My bark by soft winds piloted:
  'Mid the mountains Euganean
  I stood listening to the paean
  With which the legioned rooks did hail
  The sun's uprise majestical;
  Gathering round with wings all hoar,
  Through the dewy mist they soar
  Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
  Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,
  Flecked with fire and azure, lie
  In the unfathomable sky,
  So their plumes of purple grain,
  Starred with drops of golden rain,
  Gleam above the sunlight woods,
  As in silent multitudes
  On the morning's fitful gale
  Through the broken mist they sail,
  And the vapours cloven and gleaming
  Follow, down the dark steep streaming,
  Till all is bright, and clear, and still,
  Round the solitary hill.
  
  Beneath is spread like a green sea
  The waveless plain of Lombardy,
  Bounded by the vaporous air,
  Islanded by cities fair;
  Underneath Day's azure eyes
  Ocean's nursling, Venice, lies,
  A peopled labyrinth of walls,
  Amphitrite's destined halls,
  Which her hoary sire now paves
  With his blue and beaming waves.
  
  Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
  Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
  On the level quivering line
  Of the waters crystalline;
  And before that chasm of light,
  As within a furnace bright,
  Column, tower, and dome, and spire,
  Shine like obelisks of fire,
  Pointing with inconstant motion
  From the altar of dark ocean
  To the sapphire-tinted skies;
  As the flames of sacrifice
  From the marble shrines did rise,
  As to pierce the dome of gold
  Where Apollo spoke of old.
  
  Sea-girt City, thou hast been
  Ocean's child, and then his queen;
  Now is come a darker day,
  And thou soon must be his prey,
  If the power that raised thee here
  Hallow so thy watery bier.
  
  A less drear ruin then than now,
  With thy conquest-branded brow
  Stooping to the slave of slaves
  From thy throne, among the waves
  Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew
  Flies, as once before it flew,
  O'er thine isles depopulate,
  And all is in its ancient state,
  Save where many a palace gate
  With green sea-flowers overgrown
  Like a rock of Ocean's own,
  Topples o'er the abandoned sea
  As the tides change sullenly.
  
  The fisher on his watery way,
  Wandering at the close of day,
  Will spread his sail and seize his oar
  Till he pass the gloomy shore,
  Lest thy dead should, from their sleep
  Bursting o'er the starlight deep,
  Lead a rapid masque of death
  O'er the waters of his path.
  
  Those who alone thy towers behold
  Quivering through aereal gold,
  As I now behold them here,
  Would imagine not they were
  Sepulchres, where human forms,
  Like pollution-nourished worms,
  To the corpse of greatness cling,
  Murdered, and now mouldering:
  But if Freedom should awake
  In her omnipotence and shake
  From the Celtic Anarch's hold
  All the keys of dungeons cold,
  Where a hundred cities lie
  Chained like thee, ingloriously,
  Thou and all thy sister band
  Might adorn this sunny land,
  Twining memories of old time
  With new virtues more sublime;
  If not, perish thou ldering:
  But if Freedom should awake
  In her omnipotence and shake
  From the Celtic Anarch's hold
  All the keys of dungeons cold,
  Where a hundred cities lie
  Chained like thee, ingloriously,
  Thou and all thy sister band
  Might adorn this sunny land,
  Twining memories of old time
  With new virtues more sublime;
  If not, perish thou and they! -
  Clouds which stain truth's rising day
  By her sun consumed away -
  Earth can spare ye; while like flowers,
  In the waste of years and hours,
  From your dust new nations spring
  With more kindly blossoming.
  
  Perish -let there only be
  Floating o'er thy heartless sea
  As the garment of thy sky
  Clothes the world immortally,
  One remembrance, more sublime
  Than the tattered pall of time,
  Which scarce hides thy visage wan; -
  That a tempest-cleaving Swan
  Of the sons of Albion,
  Driven from his ancestral streams
  By the might of evil dreams,
  Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
  Welcomed him with such emotion
  That its joy grew his, and sprung
  From his lips like music flung
  O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
  Chastening terror: -what though yet
  Poesy's unfailing River,
  Which through Albion winds forever
  Lashing with melodious wave
  Many a sacred Poet's grave,
  Mourn its latest nursling fled?
  
  What though thou with all thy dead
  Scarce can for this fame repay
  Aught thine own?
  
  oh, rather say
  Though thy sins and slaveries foul
  Overcloud a sunlike soul?
  
  As the ghost of Homer clings
  Round Scamander's wasting springs;
  As divinest Shakespeare's might
  Fills Avon and the world with light
  Like omniscient power which he
  Imaged 'mid mortality;
  As the love from Petrarch's urn,
  Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
  A quenchless lamp by which the heart
  Sees things unearthly; -so thou art,
  Mighty spirit -so shall be
  The City that did refuge thee.
  
  Lo, the sun floats up the sky
  Like thought-winged Liberty,
  Till the universal light
  Seems to level plain and height;
  From the sea a mist has spread,
  And the beams of morn lie dead
  On the towers of Venice now,
  Like its glory long ago.
  
  By the skirts of that gray cloud
  Many-domed Padua proud
  Stands, a peopled solitude,
  'Mid the harvest-shining plain,
  Where the peasant heaps his grain
  In the garner of his foe,
  And the milk-white oxen slow
  With the purple vintage strain,
  Heaped upon the creaking wain,
  That the brutal Celt may swill
  Drunken sleep with savage will;
  And the sickle to the sword
  Lies unchanged, though many a lord,
  Like a weed whose shade is poison,
  Overgrows this region's foison,
  Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
  To destruction's harvest-home:
  Men must reap the things they sow,
  Force from force must ever flow,
  Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe
  That love or reason cannot change
  The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.
  
  Padua, thou within whose walls
  Those mute guests at festivals,
  Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
  Played at dice for Ezzelin,
  Till Death cried, "I win, I win!"
  And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
  But Death promised, to assuage her,
  That he would petition for
  Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
  When the destined years were o'er,
  Over all between the Po
  And the eastern Alpine snow,
  Under the mighty Austrian.
  
  She smiled so as Sin only can,
  And since that time, ay, long before,
  Both have ruled from shore to shore, -
  That incestuous pair, who follow
  Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
  As Repentance follows Crime,
  And as changes follow Time.
  
  In thine halls the lamp of learning,
  Padua, now no more is burning;
  Like a meteor, whose wild way
  Is lost over the grave of day,
  It gleams betrayed and to betray:
  Once remotest nations came
  To adore that sacred flame,
  When it lit not many a hearth
  On this cold and gloomy earth:
  Now new fires from antique light
  Spring beneath the wide world's might;
  But their spark lies dead in thee,
  Trampled out by Tyranny.
  
  As the Norway woodman quells,
  In the depth of piny dells,
  One light flame among the brakes,
  While the boundless forest shakes,
  And its mighty trunks are torn
  By the fire thus lowly born:
  The spark beneath his feet is dead,
  He starts to see the flames it fed
  Howling through the darkened sky
  With a myriad tongues victoriously,
  And sinks down in fear: so thou,
  O Tyranny, beholdest now
  Light around thee, and thou hearest
  The loud flames ascend, and fearest:
  Grovel on the earth; ay, hide
  In the dust thy purple pride!
  Noon descends around me now:
  'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,
  When a soft and purple mist
  Like a vapourous amethyst,
  Or an air-dissolved star
  Mingling light and fragrance, far
  From the curved horizon's bound
  To the point of Heaven's profound,
  Fills the overflowing sky;
  And the plains that silent lie
  Underneath the leaves unsodden
  Where the infant Frost has trodden
  With his morning-winged feet,
  Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
  And the red and golden vines,
  Piercing with their trellised lines
  The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
  The dun and bladed grass no less,
  Pointing from this hoary tower
  In the windless air; the flower
  Glimmering at my feet; the line
  Of the olive-sandalled Apennine
  In the south dimly islanded;
  And the Alps, whose snows are spread
  High between the clouds and sun;
  And of living things each one;
  And my spirit which so long
  Darkened this swift stream of song, -
  Interpenetrated lie
  By the glory of the sky:
  Be it love, light, harmony,
  Odour, or the soul of all
  Which from Heaven like dew doth fall,
  Or the mind which feeds this verse
  Peopling the lone universe.
  
  Noon descends, and after noon
  Autumn's evening meets me soon,
  Leading the infantine moon,
  And that one star, which to her
  Almost seems to minister
  Half the crimson light she brings
  From the sunset's radiant springs:
  And the soft dreams of the morn
  (Which like winged winds had borne
  To that silent isle, which lies
  Mid remembered agonies,
  The frail bark of this lone being)
  Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
  And its ancient pilot, Pain,
  Sits beside the helm again.
  
  Other flowering isles must be
  In the sea of Life and Agony:
  Other spirits float and flee
  O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,
  On some rock the wild wave wraps,
  With folded wings they waiting sit
  For my bark, to pilot it
  To some calm and blooming cove,
  Where for me, and those I love,
  May a windless bower be built,
  Far from passion, pain, and guilt,
  In a dell mid lawny hills,
  Which the wild sea-murmur fills,
  And soft sunshine, and the sound
  Of old forests echoing round,
  And the light and smell divine
  Of all flowers that breathe and shine:
  We may live so happy there,
  That the Spirits of the Air,
  Envying us, may even entice
  To our healing Paradise
  The polluting multitude;
  But their rage would be subdued
  By that clime divine and calm,
  And the winds whose wings rain balm
  On the uplifted soul, and leaves
  Under which the bright sea heaves;
  While each breathless interval
  In their whisperings musical
  The inspired soul supplies
  With its own deep melodies;
  And the love which heals all strife
  Circling, like the breath of life,
  All things in that sweet abode
  With its own mild brotherhood:
  They, not it, would change; and soon
  Every sprite beneath the moon
  Would repent its envy vain,
  And the earth grow young again.
  
  Composed at Este, October, 1818.
  
  Published with Rosalind and Helen, 1819.
  
  Amongst the late Mr.
  
  Fredk.
  
  Locker-Lampson’s collections at Rowfant there is a manuscript of the lines (167-205) on Byron, interpolated after the completion of the poem.

• Lines Written During The Castlereagh Administration Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Corpses are cold in the tomb;
  Stones on the pavement are dumb;
  Abortions are dead in the womb,
  And their mothers look pale—like the death-white shore
  Of Albion, free no more.
  
  II.
  
  Her sons are as stones in the way--
  They are masses of senseless clay--
  They are trodden, and move not away,--
  The abortion with which SHE travaileth
  Is Liberty, smitten to death.
  
  III.
  
  Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!
  For thy victim is no redresser;
  Thou art sole lord and possessor
  Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions—they pave
  Thy path to the grave.
  
  IV.
  
  Hearest thou the festival din
  Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin,
  And Wealth crying "Havoc!" within?
  
  ’Tis the bacchanal triumph that makes Truth dumb,
  Thine Epithalamium.
  
  V.
  
  Ay, marry thy ghastly wife!
  Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife
  Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life!
  Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant! and Hell be thy guide
  To the bed of the bride!

• Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici Read Poem Log in to favourite

  She left me at the silent time
  When the moon had ceas'd to climb
  The azure path of Heaven's steep,
  And like an albatross asleep,
  Balanc'd on her wings of light,
  Hover'd in the purple night,
  Ere she sought her ocean nest
  In the chambers of the West.
  
  She left me, and I stay'd alone
  Thinking over every tone
  Which, though silent to the ear,
  The enchanted heart could hear,
  Like notes which die when born, but still
  Haunt the echoes of the hill;
  And feeling ever—oh, too much!—
  The soft vibration of her touch,
  As if her gentle hand, even now,
  Lightly trembled on my brow;
  And thus, although she absent were,
  Memory gave me all of her
  That even Fancy dares to claim:
  Her presence had made weak and tame
  All passions, and I lived alone
  In the time which is our own;
  The past and future were forgot,
  As they had been, and would be, not.
  
  But soon, the guardian angel gone,
  The daemon reassum'd his throne
  In my faint heart.
  
  I dare not speak
  My thoughts, but thus disturb'd and weak
  I sat and saw the vessels glide
  Over the ocean bright and wide,
  Like spirit-winged chariots sent
  O'er some serenest element
  For ministrations strange and far,
  As if to some Elysian star
  Sailed for drink to medicine
  Such sweet and bitter pain as mine.
  
  And the wind that wing'd their flight
  From the land came fresh and light,
  And the scent of winged flowers,
  And the coolness of the hours
  Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day,
  Were scatter'd o'er the twinkling bay.
  
  And the fisher with his lamp
  And spear about the low rocks damp
  Crept, and struck the fish which came
  To worship the delusive flame.
  
  Too happy they, whose pleasure sought
  Extinguishes all sense and thought
  Of the regret that pleasure leaves,
  Destroying life alone, not peace!

• Lines Written On Hearing The News Of The Death Of Napoleon Read Poem Log in to favourite

  What! alive and so bold, O Earth?
  
  Art thou not overbold?
  
  What! leapest thou forth as of old
  In the light of thy morning mirth,
  The last of the flock of the starry fold?
  
  Ha! leapest thou forth as of old?
  
  Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled,
  And canst thou move, Napoleon being dead?
  
  How! is not thy quick heart cold?
  
  What spark is alive on thy hearth?
  
  How! is not HIS death-knell knolled?
  
  And livest THOU still, Mother Earth?
  
  Thou wert warming thy fingers old
  O’er the embers covered and cold
  Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled--
  What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead?
  
  'Who has known me of old,' replied Earth,
  'Or who has my story told?
  
  It is thou who art overbold.
  
  '
  And the lightning of scorn laughed forth
  As she sung, 'To my bosom I fold
  All my sons when their knell is knolled,
  And so with living motion all are fed,
  And the quick spring like weeds out of the dead.
  
  'Still alive and still bold,' shouted Earth,
  'I grow bolder and still more bold.
  
  The dead fill me ten thousandfold
  Fuller of speed, and splendour, and mirth.
  
  I was cloudy, and sullen, and cold,
  Like a frozen chaos uprolled,
  Till by the spirit of the mighty dead
  My heart grew warm.
  
  I feed on whom I fed.
  
  'Ay, alive and still bold.
  
  ' muttered Earth,
  'Napoleon's fierce spirit rolled,
  In terror and blood and gold,
  A torrent of ruin to death from his birth.
  
  Leave the millions who follow to mould
  The metal before it be cold;
  And weave into his shame, which like the dead
  Shrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled.
  
  '
  Published with Hellas, 1821.

• Lines: That time is dead for ever, child! Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  That time is dead for ever, child!
  Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!
  We look on the past
  And stare aghast
  At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,
  Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
  To death on life’s dark river.
  
  II.
  
  The stream we gazed on then rolled by;
  Its waves are unreturning;
  But we yet stand
  In a lone land,
  Like tombs to mark the memory
  Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee
  In the light of life’s dim morning.

• Lines: The cold earth slept below Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The cold earth slept below;
  Above the cold sky shone;
  And all around,
  With a chilling sound,
  From caves of ice and fields of snow
  The breath of night like death did flow
  Beneath the sinking moon.
  
  The wintry hedge was black;
  The green grass was not seen;
  The birds did rest
  On the bare thorn’s breast,
  Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
  Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
  Which the frost had made between.
  
  Thine eyes glow’d in the glare
  Of the moon’s dying light;
  As a fen-fire’s beam
  On a sluggish stream
  Gleams dimly—so the moon shone there,
  And it yellow’d the strings of thy tangled hair,
  That shook in the wind of night.
  
  The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
  The wind made thy bosom chill;
  The night did shed
  On thy dear head
  Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
  Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
  Might visit thee at will.

• Lines: We Meet Not As We Parted Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  We meet not as we parted,
  We feel more than all may see;
  My bosom is heavy-hearted,
  And thine full of doubt for me:--
  One moment has bound the free.
  
  II.
  
  That moment is gone for ever,
  Like lightning that flashed and died--
  Like a snowflake upon the river--
  Like a sunbeam upon the tide,
  Which the dark shadows hide.
  
  III.
  
  That moment from time was singled
  As the first of a life of pain;
  The cup of its joy was mingled
  —Delusion too sweet though vain!
  Too sweet to be mine again.
  
  IV.
  
  Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden
  That its life was crushed by you,
  Ye would not have then forbidden
  The death which a heart so true
  Sought in your briny dew.
  
  V.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Methinks too little cost
  For a moment so found, so lost!

• Love Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Why is it said thou canst not live
  In a youthful breast and fair,
  Since thou eternal life canst give,
  Canst bloom for ever there?
  
  Since withering pain no power possessed,
  Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue,
  Nor time's dread victor, death, confessed,
  Though bathed with his poison dew,
  Still thou retain'st unchanging bloom,
  Fixed tranquil, even in the tomb.
  
  And oh! when on the blest, reviving,
  The day-star dawns of love,
  Each energy of soul surviving
  More vivid, soars above,
  Hast thou ne'er felt a rapturous thrill,
  Like June's warm breath, athwart thee fly,
  O'er each idea then to steal,
  When other passions die?
  
  Felt it in some wild noonday dream,
  When sitting by the lonely stream,
  Where Silence says, 'Mine is the dell';
  And not a murmur from the plain,
  And not an echo from the fell,
  Disputes her silent reign.
  
  Published (without title) by Hogg, 'Life of Shelley', 1858; dated 1811.
  
  The title is Rossetti's (1870).

• Love's Philosophy Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The Fountains mingle with the river
  And the rivers with the ocean,
  The winds of heaven mix for ever
  With a sweet emotion;
  Nothing in the world is single,
  All things by a law devine
  In one another's being mingle—
  Why not I with thine?
  
  II.
  
  See the mountains kiss high heaven
  And the waves clasp one another;
  No sister-flower would be forgiven
  If it disdain'd 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?

• Love's Rose Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Hopes, that swell in youthful breasts,
  Live not through the waste of time!
  Love’s rose a host of thorns invests;
  Cold, ungenial is the clime,
  Where its honours blow.
  
  Youth says, ‘The purple flowers are mine,’
  Which die the while they glow.
  
  II.
  
  Dear the boon to Fancy given,
  Retracted whilst it’s granted:
  Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven,
  Although on earth ’tis planted,
  Where its honours blow,
  While by earth’s slaves the leaves are riven
  Which die the while they glow.
  
  III.
  
  Age cannot Love destroy,
  But perfidy can blast the flower,
  Even when in most unwary hour
  It blooms in Fancy’s bower.
  
  Age cannot Love destroy,
  But perfidy can rend the shrine
  In which its vermeil splendours shine.

• Love, Hope, Desire, And Fear Read Poem Log in to favourite

  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And many there were hurt by that strong boy,
  His name, they said, was Pleasure,
  And near him stood, glorious beyond measure
  Four Ladies who possess all empery
  In earth and air and sea,
  Nothing that lives from their award is free.
  
  Their names will I declare to thee,
  Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear,
  And they the regents are
  Of the four elements that frame the heart,
  And each diversely exercised her art
  By force or circumstance or sleight
  To prove her dreadful might
  Upon that poor domain.
  
  Desire presented her [false] glass, and then
  The spirit dwelling there
  Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair
  Within that magic mirror,
  And dazed by that bright error,
  It would have scorned the [shafts] of the avenger
  And death, and penitence, and danger,
  Had not then silent Fear
  Touched with her palsying spear,
  So that as if a frozen torrent
  The blood was curdled in its current;
  It dared not speak, even in look or motion,
  But chained within itself its proud devotion.
  
  Between Desire and Fear thou wert
  A wretched thing, poor heart!
  Sad was his life who bore thee in his breast,
  Wild bird for that weak nest.
  
  Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought,
  And from the very wound of tender thought
  Drew solace, and the pity of sweet eyes
  Gave strength to bear those gentle agonies,
  Surmount the loss, the terror, and the sorrow.
  
  Then Hope approached, she who can borrow
  For poor to-day, from rich tomorrow,
  And Fear withdrew, as night when day
  Descends upon the orient ray,
  And after long and vain endurance
  The poor heart woke to her assurance.
  
  —At one birth these four were born
  With the world’s forgotten morn,
  And from Pleasure still they hold
  All it circles, as of old.
  
  When, as summer lures the swallow,
  Pleasure lures the heart to follow--
  O weak heart of little wit!
  The fair hand that wounded it,
  Seeking, like a panting hare,
  Refuge in the lynx’s lair,
  Love, Desire, Hope, and Fear,
  Ever will be near.
  
  Published by Dr.
  
  Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862.
  
  'A very free translation of Brunetto Latini's Tesoretto, lines 81-154.
  
  '—A.
  
  C.
  
  Bradley.

• Marenghi Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,
  Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,
  Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange
  Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,
  Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn
  Such bitter faith beside Marenghi’s urn.
  
  II.
  
  A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
  A scattered group of ruined dwellings now.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  III.
  
  Another scene are wise Etruria knew
  Its second ruin through internal strife
  And tyrants through the breach of discord threw
  The chain which binds and kills.
  
  As death to life,
  As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)
  So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom’s foison.
  
  IV.
  
  In Pisa’s church a cup of sculptured gold
  Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn:
  A Sacrament more holy ne’er of old
  Etrurians mingled mid the shades forlorn
  Of moon-illumined forests, when.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  V.
  
  And reconciling factions wet their lips
  With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit
  Undarkened by their country’s last eclipse.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  VI.
  
  Was Florence the liberticide?
  
  that band
  Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,
  Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand,
  A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted
  Of many impious faiths—wise, just—do they,
  Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants’ prey?
  
  VII.
  
  O foster-nurse of man’s abandoned glory,
  Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour;
  Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,
  As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:—
  The light-invested angel Poesy
  Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.
  
  VIII.
  
  And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught
  By loftiest meditations; marble knew
  The sculptor’s fearless soul—and as he wrought,
  The grace of his own power and freedom grew.
  
  And more than all, heroic, just, sublime,
  Thou wart among the false.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  was this thy crime?
  
  IX.
  
  Yes; and on Pisa’s marble walls the twine
  Of direst weeds hangs garlanded—the snake
  Inhabits its wrecked palaces;—in thine
  A beast of subtler venom now doth make
  Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,
  And thus thy victim’s fate is as thine own.
  
  X.
  
  The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,
  And love and freedom blossom but to wither;
  And good and ill like vines entangled are,
  So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;--
  Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
  Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi’s sake.
  
  Xa.
  
  [Albert] Marenghi was a Florentine;
  If he had wealth, or children, or a wife
  Or friends, [or farm] or cherished thoughts which twine
  The sights and sounds of home with life’s own life
  Of these he was despoiled and Florence sent.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  XI.
  
  No record of his crime remains in story,
  But if the morning bright as evening shone,
  It was some high and holy deed, by glory
  Pursued into forgetfulness, which won
  From the blind crowd he made secure and free
  The patriot’s meed, toil, death, and infamy.
  
  XII.
  
  For when by sound of trumpet was declared
  A price upon his life, and there was set
  A penalty of blood on all who shared
  So much of water with him as might wet
  His lips, which speech divided not—he went
  Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.
  
  XIII.
  
  Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
  He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold,
  Month after month endured; it was a feast
  Whene’er he found those globes of deep-red gold
  Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,
  Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.
  
  XIV.
  
  And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,
  Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,
  All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,
  And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,
  And where the huge and speckled aloe made,
  Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,--
  XV.
  
  He housed himself.
  
  There is a point of strand
  Near Vado’s tower and town; and on one side
  The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,
  Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide,
  And on the other, creeps eternally,
  Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.
  
  XVI.
  
  Here the earth’s breath is pestilence, and few
  But things whose nature is at war with life--
  Snakes and ill worms—endure its mortal dew.
  
  The trophies of the clime’s victorious strife--
  And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,
  And the wolf’s dark gray scalp who tracked him there.
  
  XVII.
  
  And at the utmost point.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  stood there
  The relics of a reed-inwoven cot, 95
  Thatched with broad flags.
  
  An outlawed murderer
  Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot
  When he was cold.
  
  The birds that were his grave
  Fell dead after their feast in Vado’s wave.
  
  XVIII.
  
  There must have burned within Marenghi’s breast
  That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope,
  (Which to the martyr makes his dungeon.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  More joyous than free heaven’s majestic cope
  To his oppressor), warring with decay,--
  Or he could ne’er have lived years, day by day.
  
  XIX.
  
  Nor was his state so lone as you might think.
  
  He had tamed every newt and snake and toad,
  And every seagull which sailed down to drink
  Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.
  
  And each one, with peculiar talk and play,
  Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.
  
  XX.
  
  And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night
  Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet;
  And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,
  In many entangled figures quaint and sweet
  To some enchanted music they would dance--
  Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.
  
  XXI.
  
  He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed
  The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn;
  And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could read
  Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn
  Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves
  The likeness of the wood’s remembered leaves.
  
  XXII.
  
  And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken--
  While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron
  Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken
  Of mountains and blue isles which did environ
  With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea,--
  And feel .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  liberty.
  
  XXIII.
  
  And in the moonless nights when the dun ocean
  Heaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled,
  Starting from dreams.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Communed with the immeasurable world;
  And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated,
  Till his mind grew like that it contemplated.
  
  XXIV.
  
  His food was the wild fig and strawberry;
  The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast
  Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry
  As from the sea by winter-storms are cast;
  And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found
  Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.
  
  XXV.
  
  And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made
  His solitude less dark.
  
  When memory came
  (For years gone by leave each a deepening shade),
  His spirit basked in its internal flame,--
  As, when the black storm hurries round at night,
  The fisher basks beside his red firelight.
  
  XXVI.
  
  Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,
  Like billows unawakened by the wind,
  Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors,
  Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.
  
  His couch.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  XXVII.
  
  And, when he saw beneath the sunset’s planet
  A black ship walk over the crimson ocean,--
  Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it,
  Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,
  Like the dark ghost of the unburied even
  Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven,--
  XXVIII.
  
  The thought of his own kind who made the soul
  Which sped that winged shape through night and day,--
  The thought of his own country.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  This fragment refers to an event told in Sismondi's Histoire des Republiques Italiennes, which occurred during the war when Florence finally subdued Pisa, and reduced it to a province.
  
  --[MRS.
  
  SHELLEY’S NOTE, 1824.
  
  ]

• Marianne's Dream Read Poem Log in to favourite

  1.
  
  A pale Dream came to a Lady fair,
  And said, A boon, a boon, I pray!
  I know the secrets of the air,
  And things are lost in the glare of day,
  Which I can make the sleeping see,
  If they will put their trust in me.
  
  2.
  
  And thou shalt know of things unknown,
  If thou wilt let me rest between
  The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown
  Over thine eyes so dark and sheen:
  And half in hope, and half in fright,
  The Lady closed her eyes so bright.
  
  3.
  
  At first all deadly shapes were driven
  Tumultuously across her sleep,
  And o’er the vast cope of bending heaven
  All ghastly-visaged clouds did sweep;
  And the Lady ever looked to spy
  If the golden sun shone forth on high.
  
  4.
  
  And as towards the east she turned,
  She saw aloft in the morning air,
  Which now with hues of sunrise burned,
  A great black Anchor rising there;
  And wherever the Lady turned her eyes,
  It hung before her in the skies.
  
  5.
  
  The sky was blue as the summer sea,
  The depths were cloudless overhead,
  The air was calm as it could be,
  There was no sight or sound of dread,
  But that black Anchor floating still
  Over the piny eastern hill.
  
  6.
  
  The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear
  To see that Anchor ever hanging,
  And veiled her eyes; she then did hear
  The sound as of a dim low clanging,
  And looked abroad if she might know
  Was it aught else, or but the flow
  Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro.
  
  7.
  
  There was a mist in the sunless air,
  Which shook as it were with an earthquake’s shock,
  But the very weeds that blossomed there
  Were moveless, and each mighty rock
  Stood on its basis steadfastly;
  The Anchor was seen no more on high.
  
  8.
  
  But piled around, with summits hid
  In lines of cloud at intervals,
  Stood many a mountain pyramid
  Among whose everlasting walls
  Two mighty cities shone, and ever
  Through the red mist their domes did quiver.
  
  9.
  
  On two dread mountains, from whose crest,
  Might seem, the eagle, for her brood,
  Would ne’er have hung her dizzy nest,
  Those tower-encircled cities stood.
  
  A vision strange such towers to see,
  Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously,
  Where human art could never be.
  
  10.
  
  And columns framed of marble white,
  And giant fanes, dome over dome
  Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright
  With workmanship, which could not come
  From touch of mortal instrument,
  Shot o’er the vales, or lustre lent
  From its own shapes magnificent.
  
  11.
  
  But still the Lady heard that clang
  Filling the wide air far away;
  And still the mist whose light did hang
  Among the mountains shook alway,
  So that the Lady’s heart beat fast,
  As half in joy, and half aghast,
  On those high domes her look she cast.
  
  12.
  
  Sudden, from out that city sprung
  A light that made the earth grow red;
  Two flames that each with quivering tongue
  Licked its high domes, and overhead
  Among those mighty towers and fanes
  Dropped fire, as a volcano rains
  Its sulphurous ruin on the plains.
  
  13.
  
  And hark! a rush as if the deep
  Had burst its bonds; she looked behind
  And saw over the western steep
  A raging flood descend, and wind
  Through that wide vale; she felt no fear,
  But said within herself, ’Tis clear
  These towers are Nature’s own, and she
  To save them has sent forth the sea.
  
  14.
  
  And now those raging billows came
  Where that fair Lady sate, and she
  Was borne towards the showering flame
  By the wild waves heaped tumultuously.
  
  And, on a little plank, the flow
  Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro.
  
  15.
  
  The flames were fiercely vomited
  From every tower and every dome,
  And dreary light did widely shed
  O’er that vast flood’s suspended foam,
  Beneath the smoke which hung its night
  On the stained cope of heaven’s light.
  
  16.
  
  The plank whereon that Lady sate
  Was driven through the chasms, about and about,
  Between the peaks so desolate
  Of the drowning mountains, in and out,
  As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails—
  While the flood was filling those hollow vales.
  
  17.
  
  At last her plank an eddy crossed,
  And bore her to the city’s wall,
  Which now the flood had reached almost;
  It might the stoutest heart appal
  To hear the fire roar and hiss
  Through the domes of those mighty palaces.
  
  18.
  
  The eddy whirled her round and round
  Before a gorgeous gate, which stood
  Piercing the clouds of smoke which bound
  Its aery arch with light like blood;
  She looked on that gate of marble clear,
  With wonder that extinguished fear.
  
  19.
  
  For it was filled with sculptures rarest,
  Of forms most beautiful and strange,
  Like nothing human, but the fairest
  Of winged shapes, whose legions range
  Throughout the sleep of those that are,
  Like this same Lady, good and fair.
  
  20.
  
  And as she looked, still lovelier grew
  Those marble forms;—the sculptor sure
  Was a strong spirit, and the hue
  Of his own mind did there endure
  After the touch, whose power had braided
  Such grace, was in some sad change faded.
  
  21.
  
  She looked, the flames were dim, the flood
  Grew tranquil as a woodland river
  Winding through hills in solitude;
  Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver,
  And their fair limbs to float in motion,
  Like weeds unfolding in the ocean.
  
  22.
  
  And their lips moved; one seemed to speak,
  When suddenly the mountains cracked,
  And through the chasm the flood did break
  With an earth-uplifting cataract:
  The statues gave a joyous scream,
  And on its wings the pale thin Dream
  Lifted the Lady from the stream.
  
  23.
  
  The dizzy flight of that phantom pale
  Waked the fair Lady from her sleep,
  And she arose, while from the veil
  Of her dark eyes the Dream did creep,
  And she walked about as one who knew
  That sleep has sights as clear and true
  As any waking eyes can view.
  
  Composed at Marlow, 1817.
  
  Published in Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book, 1819, and reprinted in Posthumous Poems, 1824.

• Matilda Gathering Flowers Read Poem Log in to favourite

  And earnest to explore within—around—
  The divine wood, whose thick green living woof
  Tempered the young day to the sight—I wound
  
  Up the green slope, beneath the forest’s roof,
  With slow, soft steps leaving the mountain’s steep,
  And sought those inmost labyrinths, motion-proof
  
  Against the air, that in that stillness deep
  And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare,
  The slow, soft stroke of a continuous .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  In which the .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  leaves tremblingly were
  All bent towards that part where earliest
  The sacred hill obscures the morning air.
  
  Yet were they not so shaken from the rest,
  But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray,
  Incessantly renewing their blithe quest,
  
  With perfect joy received the early day,
  Singing within the glancing leaves, whose sound
  Kept a low burden to their roundelay,
  
  Such as from bough to bough gathers around
  The pine forest on bleak Chiassi’s shore,
  When Aeolus Sirocco has unbound.
  
  My slow steps had already borne me o’er
  Such space within the antique wood, that I
  Perceived not where I entered any more,—
  
  When, lo! a stream whose little waves went by,
  Bending towards the left through grass that grew
  Upon its bank, impeded suddenly
  
  My going on.
  
  Water of purest hue
  On earth, would appear turbid and impure
  Compared with this, whose unconcealing dew,
  
  Dark, dark, yet clear, moved under the obscure
  Eternal shades, whose interwoven looms
  The rays of moon or sunlight ne’er endure.
  
  I moved not with my feet, but mid the glooms
  Pierced with my charmed eye, contemplating
  The mighty multitude of fresh May blooms
  
  Which starred that night, when, even as a thing
  That suddenly, for blank astonishment,
  Charms every sense, and makes all thought take wing,—
  
  A solitary woman! and she went
  Singing and gathering flower after flower,
  With which her way was painted and besprent.
  
  Bright lady, who, if looks had ever power
  To bear true witness of the heart within,
  Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower
  
  Towards this bank.
  
  I prithee let me win
  This much of thee, to come, that I may hear
  Thy song: like Proserpine, in Enna’s glen,
  
  Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here
  And gathering flowers, as that fair maiden when
  She lost the Spring, and Ceres her more dear.

• May The Limner Read Poem Log in to favourite

  When May is painting with her colours gay
  The landscape sketched by April her sweet twin.
  
  .
  
  .

• Melody To A Scene Of Former Times Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Art thou indeed forever gone,
  Forever, ever, lost to me?
  
  Must this poor bosom beat alone,
  Or beat at all, if not for thee?
  
  Ah! why was love to mortals given,
  To lift them to the height of Heaven,
  Or dash them to the depths of Hell?
  
  Yet I do not reproach thee, dear!
  Ah, no! the agonies that swell
  This panting breast, this frenzied brain,
  Might wake my --'s slumb'ring tear.
  
  Oh! Heaven is witness I did love,
  And Heaven does know I love thee still,
  Does know the fruitless sick’ning thrill,
  When reason's judgement vainly strove
  To blot thee from my memory;
  But which might never, never be.
  
  Oh! I appeal to that blest day
  When passion's wildest ecstasy
  Was coldness to the joys I knew,
  When every sorrow sunk away.
  
  Oh! I had never lived before,
  But now those blisses are no more.
  
  And now I cease to live again,
  I do not blame thee, love; ah, no!
  The breast that feels this anguished woe.
  
  Throbs for thy happiness alone.
  
  Two years of speechless bliss are gone,
  I thank thee, dearest, for the dream.
  
  'Tis night--what faint and distant scream
  Comes on the wild and fitful blast?
  
  It moans for pleasures that are past,
  It moans for days that are gone by.
  
  Oh! lagging hours, how slow you fly!
  I see a dark and lengthened vale,
  The black view closes with the tomb;
  But darker is the lowering gloom
  That shades the intervening dale.
  
  In visioned slumber for awhile
  I seem again to share thy smile,
  I seem to hang upon thy tone.
  
  Again you say, 'Confide in me,
  For I am thine, and thine alone,
  And thine must ever, ever be.
  
  '
  But oh! awak’ning still anew,
  Athwart my enanguished senses flew
  A fiercer, deadlier agony!

• Methought I Was A Billow In The Crowd Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Methought I was a billow in the crowd
  Of common men, that stream without a shore,
  That ocean which at once is deaf and loud;
  That I, a man, stood amid many more
  By a wayside.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  , which the aspect bore
  Of some imperial metropolis,
  Where mighty shapes—pyramid, dome, and tower--
  Gleamed like a pile of crags--

• Mighty Eagle Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Mighty eagle! thou that soarest
  O'er the misty mountain forest,
  And amid the light of morning
  Like a cloud of glory hiest,
  And when night descends defiest
  The embattled tempests’ warning!
  Supposed to be Addressed to William Godwin.

• Mont Blanc: Lines Written In The Vale of Chamouni Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  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 ceaselessly bursts and raves.
  
  II.
  
  Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine--
  Thou many-colour'd, many-voiced vale,
  Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
  Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,
  Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
  From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
  Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
  Of lightning through the tempest;--thou dost lie,
  Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
  Children of elder time, in whose devotion
  The chainless winds still come and ever came
  To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
  To hear—an old and solemn harmony;
  Thine earthly rainbows stretch'd across the sweep
  Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil
  Robes some unsculptur'd image; the strange sleep
  Which when the voices of the desert 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 fantasy,
  My own, my human mind, which passively
  Now renders and receives fast influencings,
  Holding an unremitting interchange
  With the clear universe of things around;
  One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
  Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
  Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
  In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
  Seeking among the shadows that pass by
  Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
  Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
  From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!
  III.
  
  Some say that gleams of a remoter world
  Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber,
  And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
  Of those who wake and live.
  
  —I look on high;
  Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl'd
  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 desert 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 heap'd around! rude, bare, and high,
  Ghastly, and scarr'd, 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 envelop once this silent snow?
  
  None can reply -- all seems eternal now.
  
  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 reconcil'd;
  Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
  Large 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 primeval mountains
  Teach the adverting mind.
  
  The glaciers creep
  Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
  Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice
  Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
  Have pil'd: 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 destin'd path, or in the mangled soil
  Branchless and shatter'd stand; the rocks, drawn down
  From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
  The limits of the dead and living world,
  Never to be reclaim'd.
  
  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 torrents' restless gleam,
  Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
  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
  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 were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
  If to the human mind's imaginings
  Silence and solitude were vacancy?
  
  Composed in Switzerland, July, 1816 (see date below).
  
  Printed at the end of the History of a Six Weeks' Tour published by Shelley in 1817, and reprinted with Posthumous Poems, 1824.
  
  Amongst the Boscombe manuscripts is a draft of this Ode, mainly in pencil, which has been collated by Dr.
  
  Garnett.
  
  1.
  
  In the preface of Mary Shelley's History of a Six Weeks Tour
  (1817), Shelley writes: "the poem was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe\; and, as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untamable
  wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang.
  
  "
  Shelley's prose account of his reaction to the first sight of Mont Blanc is in
  a letter written on July 24 to T.
  
  L.
  
  Peacock.
  
  1-2.
  
  For a prose exposition of what Shelley calls "the intellectual philosophy,"
  see his essay On Life: "I confess that I am one of those who am unable
  to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that
  nothing exists but as it is perceived .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The difference is merely nominal
  between those two classes of thought which are vulgarly distinguished by
  the names of ideas and of external objects.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The existence of distinct
  individual minds .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  is likewise found to be a delusion.
  
  The words, I,
  you, they, are .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  merely marks employed to denote the different
  modifications of the one mind.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  By the word things is to be
  understood any object of thought.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The relations of things remain
  unchanged [in the intellectual philosophy]\; and such is the material of our
  knowledge.
  
  "
  53.
  
  Unfurl'd.
  
  "Rolled back" or merely "furled" is the meaning required by the
  sense of the passage.
  
  "Upfurled" has been suggested as the word Shelley intended.
  
  76-83.
  
  For a related argument see Queen Mab, VI, 197-219.
  
  79.
  
  But for such faith.
  
  A surviving pencil draft of the poem reads "in such
  a faith," which confirms the likelihood that this phrase is intended to mean
  "even with such faith alone," rather than "except for such faith.
  
  "

• Music Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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

• Music And Sweet Poetry Read Poem Log in to favourite

  How sweet it is to sit and read the tales
  Of mighty poets and to hear the while
  Sweet music, which when the attention fails
  Fills the dim pause--

• Mutability Read Poem Log in to favourite

  We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
  How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
  Streaking the darkness radiantly! — yet soon
  Night closes round, and they are lost forever:
  Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
  Give various response to each varying blast,
  To whose frail frame no second motion brings
  One mood or modulation like the last.
  
  We rest.
  
  -- A dream has power to poison sleep;
  We rise.
  
  -- One wandering thought 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.

• Mutability - II. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The flower that smiles to-day
  To-morrow dies;
  All that we wish to stay
  Tempts and then flies.
  
  What is this world’s delight?
  
  Lightning that mocks the night,
  Brief even as bright.
  
  II.
  
  Virtue, how frail it is!
  Friendship how rare!
  Love, how it sells poor bliss
  For proud despair!
  But we, though soon they fall,
  Survive their joy, and all
  Which ours we call.
  
  III.
  
  Whilst skies are blue and bright,
  Whilst flowers are gay,
  Whilst eyes that change ere night
  Make glad the day;
  Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
  Dream thou—and from thy sleep
  Then wake to weep.

• O That A Chariot Of Cloud Were Mine! Read Poem Log in to favourite

  O that a chariot of cloud were mine!
  Of cloud which the wild tempest weaves in air,
  When the moon over the ocean’s line
  Is spreading the locks of her bright gray hair.
  
  O that a chariot of cloud were mine! 5
  I would sail on the waves of the billowy wind
  To the mountain peak and the rocky lake,
  And the.
  
  .
  
  .

• O Thou Immortal Deity Read Poem Log in to favourite

  O thou immortal deity
  Whose throne is in the depth of human thought,
  I do adjure thy power and thee
  By all that man may be, by all that he is not,
  By all that he has been and yet must be!

• Ode To Heaven Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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.
  
  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
  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.
  
  CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF THE ODE TO HEAVEN.
  
  [Published by Mr.
  
  C.
  
  D.
  
  Locock, “Examination”, etc.
  
  , 1903.
  
  ]
  The [living frame which sustains my soul]
  Is [sinking beneath the fierce control]
  Down through the lampless deep of song
  I am drawn and driven along—
  When a Nation screams aloud
  Like an eagle from the cloud
  When a.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  When the night.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Watch the look askance and old—
  See neglect, and falsehood fold.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Published with Prometheus Unbound, 1820.
  
  Dated 'Florence, December, 1819' in Harvard manuscript (Woodberry).
  
  A transcript exists amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library.

• Ode To Liberty Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,
  Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.
  
  --BYRON.
  
  I.
  
  A glorious people vibrated again
  The lightning of the nations: Liberty
  From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain,
  Scattering contagious fire into the sky,
  Gleamed.
  
  My soul spurned the chains of its dismay,
  And in the rapid plumes of song
  Clothed itself, sublime and strong;
  As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
  Hovering inverse o'er its accustomed prey;
  Till from its station in the Heaven of fame
  The Spirit's whirlwind rapped it, and the ray
  Of the remotest sphere of living flame
  Which paves the void was from behind it flung,
  As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came
  A voice out of the deep: I will record the same.
  
  II.
  
  The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth:
  The burning stars of the abyss were hurled
  Into the depths of Heaven.
  
  The 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,
  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
  Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms,
  And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms.
  
  III.
  
  Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied
  His generations under the pavilion
  Of the Sun’s throne: palace and pyramid,
  Temple and prison, to many a swarming million
  Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves.
  
  This human living multitude
  Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,
  For thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude,
  Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,
  Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified
  The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;
  Into the shadow of her pinions wide
  Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood
  Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,
  Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.
  
  IV.
  
  The nodding promontories, and blue isles,
  And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves
  Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles
  Of favouring Heaven: from their enchanted caves
  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 Aegean main.
  
  V.
  
  Athens arose: a city such as vision
  Builds from the purple crags and silver towers
  Of battlemented cloud, as in derision
  Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors
  Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it;
  Its portals are inhabited
  By thunder-zoned winds, each head
  Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire 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.
  
  VI.
  
  Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river
  Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
  Immovably 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.
  
  VII.
  
  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 Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.
  
  But when tears stained thy robe of vestal-whiteness,
  And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne, 100
  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
  VIII.
  
  From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,
  Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,
  Or utmost islet inaccessible,
  Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,
  Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks,
  And every Naiad’s ice-cold urn,
  To talk in echoes sad and stern
  Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?
  
  For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks
  Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep.
  
  What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks
  Were quickly dried?
  
  for thou didst groan, not weep,
  When from its sea of death, to kill and burn,
  The Galilean serpent forth did creep,
  And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.
  
  IX.
  
  A thousand years the Earth cried, 'Where art thou?
  
  '
  And then the shadow of thy coming fell
  On Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow:
  And many a warrior-peopled citadel.
  
  Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep,
  Arose in sacred Italy,
  Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea
  Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;
  That multitudinous anarchy did sweep
  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.
  
  X.
  
  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 forever: not unseen
  Before the spirit-sighted countenance
  Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene
  Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.
  
  XI.
  
  The eager hours and unreluctant years
  As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood.
  
  Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,
  Darkening each other with their 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.
  
  XII.
  
  Thou Heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then
  In ominous eclipse?
  
  a thousand years
  Bred from the slime of deep Oppression’s den.
  
  Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears.
  
  Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away;
  How like Bacchanals of blood
  Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood
  Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly’s mitred brood!
  When one, like them, but mightier far than they,
  The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers,
  Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,
  Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers
  Of serene Heaven.
  
  He, by the past pursued,
  Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,
  Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers.
  
  XIII.
  
  England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?
  
  Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder
  Vesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold
  Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:
  O’er the lit waves every Aeolian isle 185
  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.
  
  XIV.
  
  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,
  Wild Bacchanal of truth’s mysterious wine,
  King-deluded Germany,
  His dead spirit lives in thee.
  
  Why do we fear or hope?
  
  thou art already free!
  And thou, lost Paradise of this divine
  And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness!
  Thou island of eternity! thou shrine
  Where Desolation, clothed with loveliness,
  Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,
  Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress
  The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces.
  
  XV.
  
  Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name
  Of KING into the dust! or write it there,
  So that this blot upon the page of fame
  Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air
  Erases, and the flat sands close behind!
  Ye the oracle have heard:
  Lift the victory-flashing sword.
  
  And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,
  Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
  Into a mass, irrefragably firm,
  The axes and the rods which awe mankind;
  The sound has poison in it, ’tis the sperm
  Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;
  Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,
  To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.
  
  XVI.
  
  Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle
  Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,
  That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle
  Into the hell from which it first was hurled,
  A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;
  Till human thoughts might kneel alone,
  Each before the judgement-throne
  Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown!
  Oh, that the words which make the thoughts obscure
  From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew
  From a white lake blot Heaven’s blue portraiture,
  Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue
  And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,
  Till in the nakedness of false and true
  They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due!
  XVII.
  
  He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever
  Can be between the cradle and the grave
  Crowned him the King of Life.
  
  Oh, 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?
  
  Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,
  Driving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne,
  Checks 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 thousandfold for one!
  XVIII.
  
  Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
  Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star
  Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,
  Wisdom.
  
  I hear the pennons of her car
  Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame;
  Comes she not, and come ye not,
  Rulers of eternal thought,
  To judge, with solemn truth, life’s ill-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 harmony
  XIX.
  
  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 aereal 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 drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.
  
  Composed early in 1820, and published, with Prometheus Unbound, in the same year.
  
  A transcript in Shelley's hand of lines 1-21 is included in the Harvard manuscript book, and amongst the Boscombe manuscripts there is a fragment of a rough draft (Garnett).

• Ode To Naples Read Poem Log in to favourite

  EPODE 1a.
  
  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;
  I 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;
  But every living lineament was clear
  As in the sculptor’s thought; and there
  The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine,
  Like winter leaves o’ergrown by moulded snow,
  Seemed only not to move and grow
  Because the crystal silence of the air
  Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine
  Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.
  
  EPODE 2a.
  
  Then gentle winds arose
  With many a mingled close
  Of wild Aeolian sound, and mountain-odours 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 stripped bare
  Its depth over Elysium, where the prow
  Made the invisible water white as snow;
  From that Typhaean mount, Inarime,
  There streamed a sunbright vapour, like the standard
  Of some aethereal 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 1.
  
  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!
  STROPHE 2.
  
  Thou youngest giant birth
  Which from the groaning earth
  Leap’st, 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 the leagued Oppressors
  With hurried legions move!
  Hail, hail, all hail!
  ANTISTROPHE 1a.
  
  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 theirs have been—devoured by their own hounds!
  Be thou like the imperial Basilisk
  Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!
  Gaze on Oppression, till at that dread risk
  Aghast she pass from the Earth’s disk:
  Fear not, but gaze—for freemen mightier grow,
  And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe:--
  If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail,
  Thou shalt be great—All hail!
  ANTISTROPHE 2a.
  
  From Freedom’s form divine,
  From Nature’s inmost shrine,
  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 1b.
  
  Didst thou not start to hear Spain’s thrilling paean
  From land to land re-echoed solemnly,
  Till silence became music?
  
  From the Aeaean
  To the cold Alps, eternal Italy
  Starts to hear thine! The Sea
  Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs
  In light, and music; widowed Genoa 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 2b.
  
  Florence! beneath the sun,
  Of cities fairest one,
  Blushes within her bower for Freedom’s expectation:
  From eyes of quenchless hope
  Rome tears the priestly cope,
  As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,--
  An athlete stripped to run
  From a remoter station
  For the high prize lost on Philippi’s shore:--
  As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail,
  So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!
  EPODE 1b.
  
  Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
  Arrayed against the ever-living Gods?
  
  The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
  Bursting their inaccessible abodes
  Of crags and thunder-clouds?
  
  See ye the banners blazoned to the day,
  Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride?
  
  Dissonant threats kill Silence far away,
  The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide
  With iron light is dyed;
  The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions
  Like Chaos o’er creation, uncreating;
  An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions
  And lawless slaveries,—down the aereal 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--
  They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary
  With fire—from their red feet the streams run gory!
  EPODE 2b.
  
  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;
  Oh, 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
  Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be
  This city of thy worship ever free!
  The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii and Baiae with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples.
  
  This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.
  
  —SHELLEY’S NOTE.
  
  Composed at San Juliano di Pisa, August 17-25, 1820; published in Posthumous Poems, 1824.
  
  There is a copy, 'for the most part neat and legible,' amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library

• Ode to the West Wind Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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,
  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:
  
  Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
  Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh 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 aëry 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: oh hear!
  
  III
  Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
  The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
  Lull'd by the coil of hiscrystallinestreams,
  
  Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
  And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
  Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
  
  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 gray with fear,
  And tremble and despoil themselves: oh 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 seem'd 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 chain'd and bow'd
  One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
  
  V
  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 wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
  And, by the incantation of this verse,
  
  Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
  Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
  Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
  
  The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
  If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

• Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot The Tyrant Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS
  Translated from the Original Doric
  'Choose Reform or Civil War,
  When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,
  A Consort-Queen shall hunt a King with hogs,
  Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR.
  
  '
  DRAMATIS PERSONAE
  Tyrant Swellfoot, King of Thebes.
  
  Iona Taurina, his Queen.
  
  Mammon, Arch-Priest of Famine.
  
  Purganax Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot.
  
  Dakry Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot.
  
  Laoctonos Wizard, Minister of Swellfoot.
  
  The Gadfly.
  
  The Leech.
  
  The Rat.
  
  Moses, the Sow-gelder.
  
  Solomon, the Porkman.
  
  Zephaniah, Pig-butcher.
  
  The Minotaur.
  
  Chorus of the Swinish Multitude.
  
  Guards, Attendants, Priests, etc.
  
  , etc.
  
  SCENE.
  
  --THEBES
  ACT I.
  
  Scene I.
  
  -- A magnificent Temple, built of thigh-bones and death's-heads, and tiled with scalps.
  
  Over the Altar the statue of Famine, veiled; a number of Boars, Sows, and Sucking-Pigs, crowned with thistle, shamrock, and oak, sitting on the steps, and clinging round the Altar of the Temple.
  
  Enter Swellfoot, in his Royal robes, without perceiving the Pigs.
  
  Swellfoot.
  
  Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine
  These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array [He contemplates himself with satisfaction.
  
  Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch
  Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze,
  And these most sacred nether promontories
  Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these
  Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid,
  (Nor with less toil were their foundations laid)[1],
  Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain,
  That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing!
  Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors,
  Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers,
  Bishops and Deacons, and the entire army
  Of those fat martyrs to the persecution
  Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils,
  Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres
  Of their Eleusis, hail!
  The Swine.
  
  Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!
  Swellfoot.
  
  Ha! what are ye,
  Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies,
  Cling round this sacred shrine?
  
  Swine.
  
  Aigh! aigh! aigh!
  Swellfoot.
  
  What! ye that are
  The very beasts that, offered at her altar
  With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards,
  Ever propitiate her reluctant will
  When taxes are withheld?
  
  Swine.
  
  Ugh! ugh! ugh!
  Swellfoot.
  
  What! ye who grub
  With filthy snouts my red potatoes up
  In Allan's rushy bog?
  
  Who eat the oats
  Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?
  
  Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest
  From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather,
  Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?
  
  The Swine.
  
  —Semichorus I.
  
  The same, alas! the same;
  Though only now the name
  Of Pig remains to me.
  
  Semichorus II.
  
  If 'twere your kingly will
  Us wretched Swine to kill,
  What should we yield to thee?
  
  Swellfoot.
  
  Why, skin and bones, and some few hairs for mortar.
  
  Chorus of Swine.
  
  I have heard your Laureate sing,
  That pity was a royal thing;
  Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs
  Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs,
  Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,
  And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too;
  But now our sties are fallen in, we catch
  The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;
  Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,
  And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;
  Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none
  Has yet been ours since your reign begun.
  
  First Sow.
  
  My Pigs, 'tis in vain to tug.
  
  Second Sow.
  
  I could almost eat my litter.
  
  First Pig.
  
  I suck, but no milk will come from the dug.
  
  Second Pig.
  
  Our skin and our bones would be bitter.
  
  The Boars.
  
  We fight for this rag of greasy rug,
  Though a trough of wash would be fitter.
  
  Semichorus.
  
  Happier Swine were they than we,
  Drowned in the Gadarean sea—
  I wish that pity would drive out the devils,
  Which in your royal bosom hold their revels,
  And sink us in the waves of thy compassion!
  Alas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation!
  Now if your Majesty would have our bristles
  To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons
  With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles,
  In policy—ask else your royal Solons—
  You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw,
  And sties well thatched; besides it is the law!
  Swellfoot.
  
  This is sedition, and rank blasphemy!
  Ho! there, my guards!
  Enter a Guard.
  
  Guard.
  
  Your sacred Majesty.
  
  Swellfoot.
  
  Call in the Jews, Solomon the court porkman,
  Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah
  The hog-butcher.
  
  Guard.
  
  They are in waiting, Sire.
  
  Enter Solomon, Moses, and Zephaniah.
  
  Swellfoot.
  
  Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those Sows [The Pigs run about in consternation.
  
  That load the earth with Pigs; cut close and deep.
  
  Moral restraint I see has no effect,
  Nor prostitution, nor our own example,
  Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison—
  This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine
  Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy—
  Cut close and deep, good Moses.
  
  Moses.
  
  Let your Majesty
  Keep the Boars quiet, else—
  Swellfoot.
  
  Zephaniah, cut
  That fat Hog's throat, the brute seems overfed;
  Seditious hunks! to whine for want of grains.
  
  Zephaniah.
  
  Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy;—
  We shall find pints of hydatids in's liver,
  He has not half an inch of wholesome fat
  Upon his carious ribs—
  Swellfoot.
  
  'Tis all the same,
  He'll serve instead of riot money, when
  Our murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes' streets;
  And January winds, after a day
  Of butchering, will make them relish carrion.
  
  Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump
  The whole kit of them.
  
  Solomon.
  
  Why, your Majesty,
  I could not give—
  Swellfoot.
  
  Kill them out of the way,
  That shall be price enough, and let me hear
  Their everlasting grunts and whines no more!
  [Exeunt, driving in the Swine.
  
  Enter Mammon, the Arch-Priest; and Purganax, Chief of the Council of Wizards.
  
  Purganax.
  
  The future looks as black as death, a cloud,
  Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it—
  The troops grow mutinous—the revenue fails—
  There's something rotten in us—for the level
  Of the State slopes, its very bases topple,
  The boldest turn their backs upon themselves!
  Mammon.
  
  Why what's the matter, my dear fellow, now?
  
  Do the troops mutiny?
  
  —decimate some regiments;
  Does money fail?
  
  —come to my mint—coin paper,
  Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed
  To show his bilious face, go purge himself,
  In emulation of her vestal whiteness.
  
  Purganax.
  
  Oh, would that this were all! The oracle!!
  Mammon.
  
  Why it was I who spoke that oracle,
  And whether I was dead drunk or inspired,
  I cannot well remember; nor, in truth,
  The oracle itself!
  Purganax.
  
  The words went thus:—
  'Boeotia, choose reform or civil war!
  When through the streets, instead of hare with dogs,
  A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs,
  Riding on the Ionian Minotaur.
  
  '
  Mammon.
  
  Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold
  This sad alternative, it must arrive,
  Or not, and so it must now that it has;
  And whether I was urged by grace divine
  Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,
  Which must, as all words must, be false or true,
  It matters not: for the same Power made all,
  Oracle, wine, and me and you—or none—
  'Tis the same thing.
  
  If you knew as much
  Of oracles as I do—
  Purganax.
  
  You arch-priests
  Believe in nothing; if you were to dream
  Of a particular number in the Lottery,
  You would not buy the ticket?
  
  Mammon.
  
  Yet our tickets
  Are seldom blanks.
  
  But what steps have you taken?
  
  For prophecies, when once they get abroad,
  Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends,
  Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue,
  Do the same actions that the virtuous do,
  Contrive their own fulfilment.
  
  This Iona—
  Well—you know what the chaste Pasiphae did,
  Wife to that most religious King of Crete,
  And still how popular the tale is here;
  And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent
  From the free Minotaur.
  
  You know they still
  Call themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate,
  And everything relating to a Bull
  Is popular and respectable in Thebes.
  
  Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules;
  They think their strength consists in eating beef,—
  Now there were danger in the precedent
  If Queen Iona—
  Purganax.
  
  I have taken good care
  That shall not be.
  
  I struck the crust o' the earth
  With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare!
  And from a cavern full of ugly shapes
  I chose a Leech, a Gadfly, and a Rat.
  
  The Gadfly was the same which Juno sent
  To agitate Io[2], and which Ezekiel[3] mentions
  That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains
  Of utmost Aethiopia, to torment
  Mesopotamian Babylon.
  
  The beast
  Has a loud trumpet like the scarabee,
  His crookèd tail is barbed with many stings,
  Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each
  Immedicable; from his convex eyes
  He sees fair things in many hideous shapes,
  And trumpets all his falsehood to the world.
  
  Like other beetles he is fed on dung—
  He has eleven feet with which he crawls,
  Trailing a blistering slime, and this foul beast
  Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits,
  From isle to isle, from city unto city,
  Urging her flight from the far Chersonese
  To fabulous Solyma, and the Aetnean Isle,
  Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso's Rock,
  And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez,
  Aeolia and Elysium, and thy shores,
  Parthenope, which now, alas! are free!
  And through the fortunate Saturnian land,
  Into the darkness of the West.
  
  Mammon.
  
  But if
  This Gadfly should drive Iona hither?
  
  Purganax.
  
  Gods! what an if! but there is my gray Rat:
  So thin with want, he can crawl in and out
  Of any narrow chink and filthy hole,
  And he shall creep into her dressing-room,
  And—
  Mammon.
  
  My dear friend, where are your wits?
  
  as if
  She does not always toast a piece of cheese
  And bait the trap?
  
  and rats, when lean enough
  To crawl through such chinks—
  Purganax.
  
  But my Leech—a leech
  Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings,
  Capaciously expatiative, which make
  His little body like a red balloon,
  As full of blood as that of hydrogen,
  Sucked from men's hearts; insatiably he sucks
  And clings and pulls—a horse-leech, whose deep maw
  The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill,
  And who, till full, will cling for ever.
  
  Mammon.
  
  This
  For Queen Iona would suffice, and less;
  But 'tis the Swinish multitude I fear,
  And in that fear I have—
  Purganax.
  
  Done what?
  
  Mammon.
  
  Disinherited
  My eldest son Chrysaor, because he
  Attended public meetings, and would always
  Stand prating there of commerce, public faith,
  Economy, and unadulterate coin,
  And other topics, ultra-radical;
  And have entailed my estate, called the Fool's Paradise,
  And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills,
  Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina,
  And married her to the gallows[4].
  
  Purganax.
  
  A good match!
  Mammon.
  
  A high connexion, Purganax.
  
  The bridegroom
  Is of a very ancient family,
  Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop,
  And has great influence in both Houses;—oh!
  He makes the fondest husband; nay, too fond,—
  New-married people should not kiss in public;
  But the poor souls love one another so!
  And then my little grandchildren, the gibbets,
  Promising children as you ever saw,—
  The young playing at hanging, the elder learning
  How to hold radicals.
  
  They are well taught too,
  For every gibbet says its catechism
  And reads a select chapter in the Bible
  Before it goes to play.
  
  [A most tremendous humming is heard.
  
  Purganax.
  
  Ha! what do I hear?
  
  Enter the Gadfly.
  
  Mammon.
  
  Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding.
  
  Gadfly.
  
  Hum! hum! hum!
  From the lakes of the Alps, and the cold gray scalps
  Of the mountains, I come!
  Hum! hum! hum!
  From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces
  Of golden Byzantium;
  From the temples divine of old Palestine,
  From Athens and Rome,
  With a ha! and a hum!
  I come! I come!
  All inn-doors and windows
  Were open to me:
  I saw all that sin does,
  Which lamps hardly see
  That burn in the night by the curtained bed,—
  The impudent lamps! for they blushed not red,
  Dinging and singing,
  From slumber I rung her,
  Loud as the clank of an ironmonger;
  Hum! hum! hum!
  Far, far, far!
  With the trump of my lips, and the sting at my hips,
  I drove her—afar!
  Far, far, far!
  From city to city, abandoned of pity,
  A ship without needle or star;—
  Homeless she passed, like a cloud on the blast,
  Seeking peace, finding war;—
  She is here in her car,
  From afar, and afar;—
  Hum! hum!
  I have stung her and wrung her,
  The venom is working;—
  And if you had hung her
  With canting and quirking,
  She could not be deader than she will be soon;—
  I have driven her close to you, under the moon,
  Night and day, hum! hum! ha!
  I have hummed her and drummed her
  From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her,
  Hum! hum! hum!
  Enter the Leech and the Rat.
  
  Leech.
  
  I will suck
  Blood or muck!
  The disease of the state is a plethory,
  Who so fit to reduce it as I?
  
  Rat.
  
  I'll slily seize and
  Let blood from her weasand,—
  Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny,
  With my snaky tail, and my sides so scranny.
  
  Purganax.
  
  Aroint ye! thou unprofitable worm! [To the Leech.
  
  And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell! [To the Gadfly.
  
  To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings,
  And the ox-headed Io—
  Swine
  (within).
  
  Ugh, ugh, ugh!
  Hail! Iona the divine,
  We will be no longer Swine,
  But Bulls with horns and dewlaps.
  
  Rat.
  
  For,
  You know, my lord, the Minotaur—
  Purganax
  (fiercely).
  
  Be silent! get to hell! or I will call
  The cat out of the kitchen.
  
  Well, Lord Mammon,
  This is a pretty business.
  
  [Exit the Rat.
  
  Mammon.
  
  I will go
  And spell some scheme to make it ugly then.
  
  —
  [Exit.
  
  Enter Swellfoot.
  
  Swellfoot.
  
  She is returned! Taurina is in Thebes,
  When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell!
  Oh, Hymen, clothed in yellow jealousy,
  And waving o'er the couch of wedded kings
  The torch of Discord with its fiery hair;
  This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens!
  Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea,
  The very name of wife had conjugal rights;
  Her cursèd image ate, drank, slept with me,
  And in the arms of Adiposa oft
  Her memory has received a husband's—
  [A loud tumult, and cries of 'Iona for ever!—No Swellfoot!'!
  Hark!
  How the Swine cry Iona Taurina;
  I suffer the real presence; Purganax,
  Off with her head!
  Purganax.
  
  But I must first impanel
  A jury of the Pigs.
  
  Swellfoot.
  
  Pack them then.
  
  Purganax.
  
  Or fattening some few in two separate sties,
  And giving them clean straw, tying some bits
  Of ribbon round their legs—giving their Sows
  Some tawdry lace, and bits of lustre glass,
  And their young Boars white and red rags, and tails
  Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers
  Between the ears of the old ones; and when
  They are persuaded, that by the inherent virtue
  Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs,
  Good Lord! they'd rip each other's bellies up,
  Not to say, help us in destroying her.
  
  Swellfoot.
  
  This plan might be tried too;—where's General
  Laoctonos?
  
  Enter Laoctonos and Dakry.
  
  It is my royal pleasure
  That you, Lord General, bring the head and body,
  If separate it would please me better, hither
  Of Queen Iona.
  
  Laoctonos.
  
  That pleasure I well knew,
  And made a charge with those battalions bold,
  Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes,
  Upon the Swine, who in a hollow square
  Enclosed her, and received the first attack
  Like so many rhinoceroses, and then
  Retreating in good order, with bare tusks
  And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe,
  Bore her in triumph to the public sty.
  
  What is still worse, some Sows upon the ground
  Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin,
  And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry,
  'Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!'
  Purganax.
  
  Hark!
  The Swine
  (without).
  
  Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!
  Dakry.
  
  I
  Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower,
  Which overlooks the sty, and made a long
  Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine,
  Of delicacy, mercy, judgement, law,
  Morals, and precedents, and purity,
  Adultery, destitution, and divorce,
  Piety, faith, and state necessity,
  And how I loved the Queen!—and then I wept
  With the pathos of my own eloquence,
  And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which
  Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made
  A slough of blood and brains upon the place,
  Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round
  The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up,
  And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air,
  With dust and stones.
  
  —
  Enter Mammon.
  
  Mammon.
  
  I wonder that gray wizards
  Like you should be so beardless in their schemes;
  It had been but a point of policy
  To keep Iona and the Swine apart.
  
  Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction
  Between two parties who will govern you
  But for my art.
  
  —Behold this BAG! it is
  The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge,
  On which our spies skulked in ovation through
  The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead:
  A bane so much the deadlier fills it now
  As calumny is worse than death,—for here
  The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled,
  Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech,
  In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which
  That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant,
  Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;—
  All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud,
  Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor,
  And over it the Primate of all Hell
  Murmured this pious baptism:—'Be thou called
  The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine:
  That thy contents, on whomsoever poured,
  Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks
  To savage, foul, and fierce deformity.
  
  Let all baptized by thy infernal dew
  Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch!
  No name left out which orthodoxy loves,
  Court Journal or legitimate Review!—
  Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover
  Of other wives and husbands than their own—
  The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps!
  Wither they to a ghastly caricature
  Of what was human!—let not man or beast
  Behold their face with unaverted eyes!
  Or hear their names with ears that tingle not
  With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!'—
  This is a perilous liquor;—good my Lords.
  
  — [Swellfoot approaches to touch the GREEN BAG.
  
  Beware! for God's sake, beware!—if you should break
  The seal, and touch the fatal liquor—
  Purganax.
  
  There,
  Give it to me.
  
  I have been used to handle
  All sorts of poisons.
  
  His dread Majesty
  Only desires to see the colour of it.
  
  Mammon.
  
  Now, with a little common sense, my Lords,
  Only undoing all that has been done
  (Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it),
  Our victory is assured.
  
  We must entice
  Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs
  Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG
  Are the true test of guilt or innocence.
  
  And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her
  To manifest deformity like guilt.
  
  If innocent, she will become transfigured
  Into an angel, such as they say she is;
  And they will see her flying through the air,
  So bright that she will dim the noonday sun;
  Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits.
  
  This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing
  Swine will believe.
  
  I'll wager you will see them
  Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties,
  With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail
  Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps
  Of one another's ears between their teeth,
  To catch the coming hail of comfits in.
  
  You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab,
  Make them a solemn speech to this effect:
  I go to put in readiness the feast
  Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine,
  Where, for more glory, let the ceremony
  Take place of the uglification of the Queen.
  
  Dakry
  (to Swellfoot).
  
  I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience,
  Humbly remind your Majesty that the care
  Of your high office, as Man-milliner
  To red Bellona, should not be deferred.
  
  Purganax.
  
  All part, in happier plight to meet again.
  
  [Exeunt.
  
  END OF THE FIRST ACT.
  
  ACT II
  Scene I.
  
  —The Public Sty.
  
  The Boars in full Assembly.
  
  Enter Purganax.
  
  Purganax.
  
  Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars,
  Ye, by whose patience under public burthens
  The glorious constitution of these sties
  Subsists, and shall subsist.
  
  The Lean-Pig rates
  Grow with the growing populace of Swine,
  The taxes, that true source of Piggishness
  (How can I find a more appropriate term
  To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty,
  And all that fit Boeotia as a nation
  To teach the other nations how to live?
  
  ),
  Increase with Piggishness itself; and still
  Does the revenue, that great spring of all
  The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments,
  Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes,
  Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps,
  All the land's produce will be merged in taxes,
  And the revenue will amount to—nothing!
  The failure of a foreign market for
  Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,
  And such home manufactures, is but partial;
  And, that the population of the Pigs,
  Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw
  And water, is a fact which is—you know—
  That is—it is a state-necessity—
  Temporary, of course.
  
  Those impious Pigs,
  Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn
  The settled Swellfoot system, or to make
  Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions
  Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipped
  Into a loyal and an orthodox whine.
  
  Things being in this happy state, the Queen
  Iona—
  [A loud cry from the Pigs.
  
  She is innocent! most innocent!
  Purganax.
  
  That is the very thing that I was saying,
  Gentlemen Swine; the Queen Iona being
  Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes,
  And the lean Sows and Boars collect about her,
  Wishing to make her think that we believe
  (I mean those more substantial Pigs, who swill
  Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw)
  That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig faction
  Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been
  Your immemorial right, and which I will
  Maintain you in to the last drop of—
  A Boar
  (interrupting him).
  
  What
  Does any one accuse her of?
  
  Purganax.
  
  Why, no one
  Makes any positive accusation;—but
  There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards
  Conceived that it became them to advise
  His Majesty to investigate their truth;—
  Not for his own sake; he could be content
  To let his wife play any pranks she pleased,
  If, by that sufferance, he could please the Pigs;
  But then he fears the morals of the Swine,
  The Sows especially, and what effect
  It might produce upon the purity and
  Religion of the rising generation
  Of Sucking-Pigs, if it could be suspected
  That Queen Iona—
  [A pause.
  
  First Boar.
  
  Well, go on; we long
  To hear what she can possibly have done.
  
  Purganax.
  
  Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull—
  Thus much is known:—the milk-white Bulls that feed
  Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes
  Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews
  Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel
  Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath
  Loading the morning winds until they faint
  With living fragrance, are so beautiful!—
  Well, I say nothing;—but Europa rode
  On such a one from Asia into Crete,
  And the enamoured sea grew calm beneath
  His gliding beauty.
  
  And Pasiphae,
  Iona's grandmother,—but she is innocent!
  And that both you and I, and all assert.
  
  First Boar.
  
  Most innocent!
  Purganax.
  
  Behold this BAG; a bag—
  Second Boar.
  
  Oh! no GREEN BAGS!! Jealousy's eyes are green,
  Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts,
  And verdigris, and—
  Purganax.
  
  Honourable Swine,
  In Piggish souls can prepossessions reign?
  
  Allow me to remind you, grass is green—
  All flesh is grass;—no bacon but is flesh—
  Ye are but bacon.
  
  This divining BAG
  (Which is not green, but only bacon colour)
  Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er
  A woman guilty of—we all know what—
  Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind
  She never can commit the like again.
  
  If innocent, she will turn into an angel,
  And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits
  As she flies up to heaven.
  
  Now, my proposal
  Is to convert her sacred Majesty
  Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do),
  By pouring on her head this mystic water.
  
  [Showing the Bag.
  
  I know that she is innocent; I wish
  Only to prove her so to all the world.
  
  First Boar.
  
  Excellent, just, and noble Purganax.
  
  Second Boar.
  
  How glorious it will be to see her Majesty
  Flying above our heads, her petticoats
  Streaming like—like—like—
  Third Boar.
  
  Anything.
  
  Purganax.
  
  Oh no!
  But like a standard of an admiral's ship,
  Or like the banner of a conquering host,
  Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day,
  Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain;
  Or like a meteor, or a war-steed's mane,
  Or waterfall from a dizzy precipice
  Scattered upon the wind.
  
  First Boar.
  
  Or a cow's tail.
  
  Second Boar.
  
  Or anything, as the learned Boar observed.
  
  Purganax.
  
  Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution,
  That her most sacred Majesty should be
  Invited to attend the feast of Famine,
  And to receive upon her chaste white body
  Dews of Apotheosis from this BAG.
  
  [A great confusion is heard of the Pigs out of Doors, which communicates itself to those within.
  
  During the first Strophe, the doors of the Sty are staved in, and a number of exceedingly leanPigs and Sows and Boars rush in.
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  No! Yes!
  Semichorus II.
  
  Yes! No!
  Semichorus I.
  
  A law!
  Semichorus II.
  
  A flaw!
  Semichorus I.
  
  Porkers, we shall lose our wash,
  Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs!
  First Boar.
  
  Order! order! be not rash!
  Was there ever such a scene, Pigs!
  An old Sow
  (rushing in).
  
  I never saw so fine a dash
  Since I first began to wean Pigs.
  
  Second Boar
  (solemnly).
  
  The Queen will be an angel time enough.
  
  I vote, in form of an amendment, that
  Purganax rub a little of that stuff
  Upon his face.
  
  Purganax
  (his heart is seen to beat through his waistcoat).
  
  Gods! What would ye be at?
  
  Semichorus I.
  
  Purganax has plainly shown a
  Cloven foot and jackdaw feather.
  
  Semichorus II.
  
  I vote Swellfoot and Iona
  Try the magic test together;
  Whenever royal spouses bicker,
  Both should try the magic liquor.
  
  An old Boar
  (aside).
  
  A miserable state is that of Pigs,
  For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs,
  The Swine must bite each other's ear therefore.
  
  An old Sow
  (aside).
  
  A wretched lot Jove has assigned to Swine,
  Squabbling makes Pig-herds hungry, and they dine
  On bacon, and whip Sucking-Pigs the more.
  
  Chorus.
  
  Hog-wash has been ta'en away:
  If the Bull-Queen is divested,
  We shall be in every way
  Hunted, stripped, exposed, molested;
  Let us do whate'er we may,
  That she shall not be arrested.
  
  Queen, we entrench you with walls of brawn,
  And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet:
  Place your most sacred person here.
  
  We pawn
  Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it.
  
  Those who wrong you, wrong us;
  Those who hate you, hate us;
  Those who sting you, sting us;
  Those who bait you, bait us;
  The oracle is now about to be
  Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny;
  Which says: 'Thebes, choose reform or civil war,
  When through your streets, instead of hare with dogs,
  A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs,
  Riding upon the IONIAN MINOTAUR.
  
  '
  Enter Iona Taurina.
  
  Iona Taurina
  (coming forward).
  
  Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady-Pigs,
  The tender heart of every Boar acquits
  Their Queen, of any act incongruous
  With native Piggishness, and she, reposing
  With confidence upon the grunting nation,
  Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all,
  Her innocence, into their Hoggish arms;
  Nor has the expectation been deceived
  Of finding shelter there.
  
  Yet know, great Boars,
  (For such whoever lives among you finds you,
  And so do I), the innocent are proud!
  I have accepted your protection only
  In compliment of your kind love and care,
  Not for necessity.
  
  The innocent
  Are safest there where trials and dangers wait;
  Innocent Queens o'er white-hot ploughshares tread
  Unsinged, and ladies, Erin's laureate sings it[5],
  Decked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still,
  Walked from Killarney to the Giant's Causeway,
  Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry,
  White-boys and Orange-boys, and constables,
  Tithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured!
  Thus I!—
  Lord Purganax, I do commit myself
  Into your custody, and am prepared
  To stand the test, whatever it may be!
  Purganax.
  
  This magnanimity in your sacred Majesty
  Must please the Pigs.
  
  You cannot fail of being
  A heavenly angel.
  
  Smoke your bits of glass,
  Ye loyal Swine, or her transfiguration
  Will blind your wondering eyes.
  
  An old Boar
  (aside).
  
  Take care, my Lord,
  They do not smoke you first.
  
  Purganax.
  
  At the approaching feast
  Of Famine, let the expiation be.
  
  Swine.
  
  Content! content!
  Iona Taurina
  (aside).
  
  I, most content of all,
  Know that my foes even thus prepare their fall!
  [Exeunt omnes.
  
  Scene II.
  
  —The interior of the Temple of Famine.
  
  The statue of the Goddess, a skeleton clothed in parti-coloured rags, seated upon a heap of skulls and loaves intermingled.
  
  A number of exceedingly fat Priests in black garments arrayed on each side, with marrow-bones and cleavers in their hands.
  
  [Solomon, the Court Porkman.
  
  ] A flourish of trumpets.
  
  Enter Mammon as arch-priest, Swellfoot, Dakry, Purganax, Laoctonos, followed by Iona Taurina guarded.
  
  On the other side enter the Swine.
  
  Chorus of Priests, accompanied by the Court Porkman on marrow-bones and cleavers.
  
  Goddess bare, and gaunt, and pale,
  Empress of the world, all hail!
  What though Cretans old called thee
  City-crested Cybele?
  
  We call thee Famine!
  Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming!
  Through thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and lords,
  Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words,
  The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits,
  Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots—
  Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat,
  Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean,
  Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that!
  And let things be as they have ever been;
  At least while we remain thy priests,
  And proclaim thy fasts and feasts.
  
  Through thee the sacred Swellfoot dynasty
  Is based upon a rock amid that sea
  Whose waves are Swine—so let it ever be!
  [Swellfoot, etc.
  
  , seat themselves at a table magnificently covered at the upper end of the Temple.
  
  Attendants pass over the stage with hog-wash in pails.
  
  A number of Pigs, exceedingly lean, follow them licking up the wash.
  
  Mammon.
  
  I fear your sacred Majesty has lost
  The appetite which you were used to have.
  
  Allow me now to recommend this dish—
  A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook,
  Such as is served at the great King's second table.
  
  The price and pains which its ingredients cost
  Might have maintained some dozen families
  A winter or two—not more—so plain a dish
  Could scarcely disagree.
  
  —
  Swellfoot.
  
  After the trial,
  And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps
  I may recover my lost appetite,—
  I feel the gout flying about my stomach—
  Give me a glass of Maraschino punch.
  
  Purganax
  (filling his glass, and standing up).
  
  The glorious Constitution of the Pigs!
  All.
  
  A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three!
  Dakry.
  
  No heel-taps—darken daylights!—
  Laoctonos.
  
  Claret, somehow,
  Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret!
  Swellfoot.
  
  Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment,
  But 'tis his due.
  
  Yes, you have drunk more wine,
  And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes.
  
  [To Purganax.
  
  For God's sake stop the grunting of those Pigs!
  Purganax.
  
  We dare not, Sire, 'tis Famine's privilege.
  
  Chorus of Swine.
  
  Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!
  Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags;
  Thou devil which livest on damning;
  Saint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN BAGS,
  Till in pity and terror thou risest,
  Confounding the schemes of the wisest;
  When thou liftest thy skeleton form,
  When the loaves and the skulls roll about,
  We will greet thee—the voice of a storm
  Would be lost in our terrible shout!
  Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!
  Hail to thee, Empress of Earth!
  When thou risest, dividing possessions;
  When thou risest, uprooting oppressions,
  In the pride of thy ghastly mirth;
  Over palaces, temples, and graves,
  We will rush as thy minister-slaves,
  Trampling behind in thy train,
  Till all be made level again!
  Mammon.
  
  I hear a crackling of the giant bones
  Of the dread image, and in the black pits
  Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames.
  
  These prodigies are oracular, and show
  The presence of the unseen Deity.
  
  Mighty events are hastening to their doom!
  Swellfoot.
  
  I only hear the lean and mutinous Swine
  Grunting about the temple.
  
  Dakry.
  
  In a crisis
  Of such exceeding delicacy, I think
  We ought to put her Majesty, the Queen,
  Upon her trial without delay.
  
  Mammon.
  
  THE BAG
  Is here.
  
  Purganax.
  
  I have rehearsed the entire scene
  With an ox-bladder and some ditchwater,
  On Lady P—-; it cannot fail.
  
  (Taking up the Bag.
  
  )
  Your Majesty [To Swellfoot.
  
  In such a filthy business had better
  Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you.
  
  A spot or two on me would do no harm,
  Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad Genius
  Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell,
  Upon my brow—which would stain all its seas,
  But which those seas could never wash away!
  Iona Taurina.
  
  My Lord, I am ready—nay, I am impatient
  To undergo the test.
  
  [A graceful figure in a semi-transparent veil passes unnoticed through the Temple; the word LIBERTY is seen through the veil, as if it were written in fire upon its forehead.
  
  Its words are almost drowned in the furious grunting of the Pigs, and the business of the trial.
  
  She kneels on the steps of the Altar, and speaks in tones at first faint and low, but which ever become louder and louder.
  
  Mighty Empress! Death's white wife!
  Ghastly mother-in-law of Life!
  By the God who made thee such,
  By the magic of thy touch,
  By the starving and the cramming
  Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine!
  I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude,
  Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood.
  
  The earth did never mean her foison
  For those who crown life's cup with poison
  Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge—
  But for those radiant spirits, who are still
  The standard-bearers in the van of Change.
  
  Be they th'appointed stewards, to fill
  The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age!—
  Remit, O Queen! thy accustomed rage!
  Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low
  Freedom calls Famine,—her eternal foe,
  To brief alliance, hollow truce.
  
  —Rise now!
  [Whilst the Veiled Figure has been chanting this strophe, Mammon, Dakry, Laoctonos, and Swellfoot, have surrounded Iona Taurina, who, with her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes lifted to Heaven, stands, as with saint-like resignation, to wait the issue of the business, in perfect confidence of her innocence.
  
  [Purganax, after unsealing the Green Bag, is gravely about to pour the liquor upon her head, when suddenly the whole expression of her figure and countenance changes; she snatches it from his hand with a loud laugh of triumph, and empties it over Swellfoot and his whole Court, who are instantly changed into a number of filthy and ugly animals, and rush out of the Temple.
  
  The image of Famine then arises with a tremendous sound, the Pigs begin scrambling for the loaves, and are tripped up by the skulls; all those who eat the loaves are turned into Bulls, and arrange themselves quietly behind the altar.
  
  The image of Famine sinks through a chasm in the earth, and a Minotaur rises.
  
  Minotaur.
  
  I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest
  Of all Europa's taurine progeny—
  I am the old traditional Man-Bull;
  And from my ancestors having been Ionian,
  I am called Ion, which, by interpretation,
  Is John; in plain Theban, that is to say,
  My name's John Bull; I am a famous hunter,
  And can leap any gate in all Boeotia,
  Even the palings of the royal park,
  Or double ditch about the new enclosures;
  And if your Majesty will deign to mount me,
  At least till you have hunted down your game,
  I will not throw you.
  
  Iona Taurina.
  
  (During this speech she has been putting on boots and spurs, and a hunting-cap, buckishly cocked on one side, and tucking up her hair, she leaps nimbly on his back.
  
  )
  Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho!
  Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down,
  These stinking foxes, these devouring otters,
  These hares, these wolves, these anything but men.
  
  Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs,
  Now let your noses be as keen as beagles',
  Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries
  More dulcet and symphonious than the bells
  Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday;
  Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music.
  
  Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?
  
  )
  But such as they gave you.
  
  Tallyho! ho!
  Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert,
  Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!
  Full Chorus of Iona and the Swine.
  
  Tallyho! tallyho!
  Through rain, hail, and snow,
  Through brake, gorse, and briar,
  Through fen, flood, and mire,
  We go! we go!
  Tallyho! tallyho!
  Through pond, ditch, and slough,
  Wind them, and find them,
  Like the Devil behind them,
  Tallyho! tallyho!
  [Exeunt, in full cry; Iona driving on the Swine, with the empty Green Bag.
  
  THE END
  'Begun at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 24, 1819; published anonymously by J.
  
  Johnston, Cheapside (imprint C.
  
  F.
  
  Seyfang,) 1820.
  
  On a threat of prosecution the publisher surrendered the whole impression, seven copies -- the total number sold -- excepted.
  
  Oedipus does not appear in the first edition of the Poetical Works, 1839, but it was included by Mrs.
  
  Shelley in the second edition of that year.
  
  ' ~ Hutchinson's Poetical Works of Percy Shelley, 1905.
  
  Note by Mrs.
  
  Shelley: 'In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find it recorded, in August, 1820, Shelley ''begins Swellfoot the Tyrant, suggested by the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano.
  
  '' This was the period of Queen Caroline's landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV.
  
  to get rid of her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the 'Green Bag' on the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that an inquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct.
  
  These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English.
  
  We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano.
  
  A friend came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows: Shelley read to us his Ode to Liberty; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair.
  
  He compared it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus -- and Swellfoot was begun.
  
  When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn.
  
  The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.
  
  '

• On A Faded Violet Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  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 thee!
  II.
  
  A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,
  It lies on my abandoned breast,
  And mocks the heart which yet is warm,
  With cold and silent rest.
  
  III.
  
  I weep,--my tears revive it not!
  I sigh,--it breathes no more on me;
  Its mute and uncomplaining lot
  Is such as mine should be.

• On A Fete At Carlton House: Fragment Read Poem Log in to favourite

  By the mossy brink,
  With me the Prince shall sit and think;
  Shall muse in visioned Regency,
  Rapt in bright dreams of dawning Royalty.

• On An Icicle That Clung To The Grass Of A Grave Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Oh! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes,
  Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair,
  In which the warm current of love never freezes,
  As it rises unmingled with selfishness there,
  Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care,
  Might dissolve the dim icedrop, might bid it arise,
  Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies.
  
  II.
  
  Or where the stern warrior, his country defending,
  Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour,
  Or o'er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending,
  Where patriotism red with his guilt-reeking gore
  Plants Liberty's flag on the slave-peopled shore,
  With victory's cry, with the shout of the free,
  Let it fly, taintless Spirit, to mingle with thee.
  
  III.
  
  For I found the pure gem, when the daybeam returning,
  Ineffectual gleams on the snow-covered plain,
  When to others the wished-for arrival of morning
  Brings relief to long visions of soul-racking pain;
  But regret is an insult—to grieve is in vain:
  And why should we grieve that a spirit so fair
  Seeks Heaven to mix with its own kindred there?
  
  IV.
  
  But still 'twas some Spirit of kindness descending
  To share in the load of mortality's woe,
  Who over thy lowly-built sepulchre bending
  Bade sympathy's tenderest teardrop to flow.
  
  Not for THEE soft compassion celestials did know,
  But if ANGELS can weep, sure MAN may repine,
  May weep in mute grief o'er thy low-laid shrine.
  
  V.
  
  And did I then say, for the altar of glory,
  That the earliest, the loveliest of flowers I'd entwine,
  Though with millions of blood-reeking victims 'twas gory,
  Though the tears of the widow polluted its shrine,
  Though around it the orphans, the fatherless pine?
  
  Oh! Fame, all thy glories I'd yield for a tear
  To shed on the grave of a heart so sincere.
  
  Published (without title) by Hogg, 'Life of Shelley', 1858; dated 1809-10.
  
  The poem, with title as above, is included in the Esdaile manuscript book.

• On Death Read Poem Log in to favourite

  There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
  
  ~ Ecclesiastes.
  
  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 wordly way,
  And the billows of clouds 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 unencompass'd by nerves of steel:
  When all that we know, or feel, or see,
  Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
  
  The secret things of the grave are there,
  Where all but this frame must surely be,
  Though the fine-wrought eye and the 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.
  
  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?
  
  These stanzas occur in the Esdaile MS.
  
  along with others which Shelley intended to print with Queen Mab in 1813; but the text was revised before publication in 1816.

• On Fanny Godwin Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Her voice did quiver as we parted,
  Yet knew I not that heart was broken
  From which it came, and I departed
  Heeding not the words then spoken.
  
  Misery--O Misery,
  This world is all too wide for thee.

• On Keats, Who Desired That On His Tomb Should Be Inscribed-- Read Poem Log in to favourite

  'Here lieth One whose name was writ on water.
  
  But, ere the breath that could erase it blew,
  Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter,
  Death, the immortalizing winter, flew
  Athwart the stream,--and time's printless torrent grew
  A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name
  Of Adonais!

• On Leaving London For Wales Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Hail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered wind
  Which from thy wilds even now methinks I feel,
  Chasing the clouds that roll in wrath behind,
  And tightening the soul's laxest nerves to steel;
  True mountain Liberty alone may heal
  The pain which Custom's obduracies bring,
  And he who dares in fancy even to steal
  One draught from Snowdon's ever sacred spring
  Blots out the unholiest rede of worldly witnessing.
  
  And shall that soul, to selfish peace resigned,
  So soon forget the woe its fellows share?
  
  Can Snowdon's Lethe from the free-born mind
  So soon the page of injured penury tear?
  
  Does this fine mass of human passion dare
  To sleep, unhonouring the patriot’s fall,
  Or life’s sweet load in quietude to bear
  While millions famish even in Luxury’s hall,
  And Tyranny, high raised, stern lowers on all?
  
  No, Cambria! never may thy matchless vales
  A heart so false to hope and virtue shield;
  Nor ever may thy spirit-breathing gales
  Waft freshness to the slaves who dare to yield.
  
  For me!.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  the weapon that I burn to wield
  I seek amid thy rocks to ruin hurled,
  That Reason’s flag may over Freedom’s field,
  Symbol of bloodless victory, wave unfurled,
  A meteor-sign of love effulgent o’er the world.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Do thou, wild Cambria, calm each struggling thought;
  Cast thy sweet veil of rocks and woods between,
  That by the soul to indignation wrought
  Mountains and dells be mingled with the scene;
  Let me forever be what I have been,
  But not forever at my needy door
  Let Misery linger speechless, pale and lean;
  I am the friend of the unfriended poor,--
  Let me not madly stain their righteous cause in gore.
  
  Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887; dated November, 1812.

• On Robert Emmet's Grave Read Poem Log in to favourite

  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  VI.
  
  No trump tells thy virtues—the grave where they rest
  With thy dust shall remain unpolluted by fame,
  Till thy foes, by the world and by fortune caressed,
  Shall pass like a mist from the light of thy name.
  
  VII.
  
  When the storm-cloud that lowers o'er the day-beam is gone,
  Unchanged, unextinguished its life-spring will shine;
  When Erin has ceased with their memory to groan,
  She will smile through the tears of revival on thine.
  
  Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887; dated 1812.

• On The Dark Height of Jura Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling
  Rise on the night-rolling breath of the blast,
  When o’er the dark aether the tempest is swelling,
  And on eddying whirlwind the thunder-peal passed?
  
  II.
  
  For oft have I stood on the dark height of Jura
  Which frowns on the valley that opens beneath;
  Oft have I braved the chill night-tempest's fury,
  Whilst around me, I thought, echoed murmurs of death.
  
  III.
  
  And now, whilst the winds of the mountain are howling,
  O father! thy voice seems to strike on mine ear;
  In air whilst the tide of the night-storm is rolling,
  It breaks on the pause of the elements' jar.
  
  IV.
  
  On the wing of the whirlwind which roars o'er the mountain
  Perhaps rides the ghost of my sire who is dead:
  On the mist of the tempest which hangs o'er the fountain,
  Whilst a wreath of dark vapour encircles his head.
  
  On the Dark, etc.
  
  : without title, 1811; The Father’s Spectre, Rossetti, 1870.

• On The Medusa Of Leonardo da Vinci In The Florentine Gallery Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  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.
  
  II.
  
  Yet it is less the horror than the grace
  Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone,
  Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
  Are graven, till the characters be grown
  Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
  ’Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
  Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
  Which humanize and harmonize the strain.
  
  III.
  
  And from its head as from one body grow,
  As grass out of a watery rock,
  Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
  And their long tangles in each other lock,
  And with unending involutions show
  Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock
  The torture and the death within, and saw
  The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
  
  IV.
  
  And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft
  Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes;
  Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
  Of sense, has flitted with 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.
  
  V.
  
  '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 ever-shifting mirror
  Of all the beauty and the terror there--
  A woman’s countenance, with serpent-locks,
  Gazing in death on Heaven from those wet rocks.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.

• One sung of thee who left the tale untold Read Poem Log in to favourite

  One sung of thee who left the tale untold,
  Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;
  Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,
  Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.
  
  These are among the many short fragments from Shelley's MSS.
  
  published by Mary Shelley, his wife, in her editions of 1824 and 1839.
  
  There she entitles this poem A Tale Untold.

• Orpheus Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A:
  Not far from hence.
  
  From yonder pointed hill,
  Crowned with a ring of oaks, you may behold
  A dark and barren field, through which there flows,
  Sluggish and black, a deep but narrow stream,
  Which the wind ripples not, and the fair moon
  Gazes in vain, and finds no mirror there.
  
  Follow the herbless banks of that strange brook
  Until you pause beside a darksome pond,
  The fountain of this rivulet, whose gush
  Cannot be seen, hid by a rayless night
  That lives beneath the overhanging rock
  That shades the pool—an endless spring of gloom,
  Upon whose edge hovers the tender light,
  Trembling to mingle with its paramour,--
  But, as Syrinx fled Pan, so night flies day,
  Or, with most sullen and regardless hate,
  Refuses stern her heaven-born embrace.
  
  On one side of this jagged and shapeless hill
  There is a cave, from which there eddies up
  A pale mist, like aereal gossamer,
  Whose breath destroys all life--awhile it veils
  The rock—then, scattered by the wind, it flies
  Along the stream, or lingers on the clefts,
  Killing the sleepy worms, if aught bide there.
  
  Upon the beetling edge of that dark rock
  There stands a group of cypresses; not such
  As, with a graceful spire and stirring life,
  Pierce the pure heaven of your native vale,
  Whose branches the air plays among, but not
  Disturbs, fearing to spoil their solemn grace;
  But blasted and all wearily they stand,
  One to another clinging; their weak boughs
  Sigh as the wind buffets them, and they shake
  Beneath its blasts—a weatherbeaten crew!
  CHORUS:
  What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint,
  But more melodious than the murmuring wind
  Which through the columns of a temple glides?
  
  A:
  It is the wandering voice of Orpheus’ lyre,
  Borne by the winds, who sigh that their rude king
  Hurries them fast from these air-feeding notes;
  But in their speed they bear along with them
  The waning sound, scattering it like dew
  Upon the startled sense.
  
  CHORUS:
  Does he still sing?
  
  Methought he rashly cast away his harp
  When he had lost Eurydice.
  
  A:
  Ah, no!
  Awhile he paused.
  
  As a poor hunted stag
  A moment shudders on the fearful brink
  Of a swift stream—the cruel hounds press on
  With deafening yell, the arrows glance and wound,--
  He plunges in: so Orpheus, seized and torn
  By the sharp fangs of an insatiate grief,
  Maenad-like waved his lyre in the bright air,
  And wildly shrieked ‘Where she is, it is dark!’
  And then he struck from forth the strings a sound
  Of deep and fearful melody.
  
  Alas!
  In times long past, when fair Eurydice
  With her bright eyes sat listening by his side,
  He gently sang of high and heavenly themes.
  
  As in a brook, fretted with little waves
  By the light airs of spring—each riplet makes
  A many-sided mirror for the sun,
  While it flows musically through green banks,
  Ceaseless and pauseless, ever clear and fresh,
  So flowed his song, reflecting the deep joy
  And tender love that fed those sweetest notes,
  The heavenly offspring of ambrosial food.
  
  But that is past.
  
  Returning from drear Hell,
  He chose a lonely seat of unhewn stone,
  Blackened with lichens, on a herbless plain.
  
  Then from the deep and overflowing spring
  Of his eternal ever-moving grief
  There rose to Heaven a sound of angry song.
  
  ’Tis as a mighty cataract that parts
  Two sister rocks with waters swift and strong,
  And casts itself with horrid roar and din
  Adown a steep; from a perennial source
  It ever flows and falls, and breaks the air
  With loud and fierce, but most harmonious roar,
  And as it falls casts up a vaporous spray
  Which the sun clothes in hues of Iris light.
  
  Thus the tempestuous torrent of his grief
  Is clothed in sweetest sounds and varying words
  Of poesy.
  
  Unlike all human works,
  It never slackens, and through every change
  Wisdom and beauty and the power divine
  Of mighty poesy together dwell,
  Mingling in sweet accord.
  
  As I have seen
  A fierce south blast tear through the darkened sky,
  Driving along a rack of winged clouds,
  Which may not pause, but ever hurry on,
  As their wild shepherd wills them, while the stars,
  Twinkling and dim, peep from between the plumes.
  
  Anon the sky is cleared, and the high dome
  Of serene Heaven, starred with fiery flowers,
  Shuts in the shaken earth; or the still moon
  Swiftly, yet gracefully, begins her walk,
  Rising all bright behind the eastern hills.
  
  I talk of moon, and wind, and stars, and not
  Of song; but, would I echo his high song,
  Nature must lend me words ne’er used before,
  Or I must borrow from her perfect works,
  To picture forth his perfect attributes.
  
  He does no longer sit upon his throne
  Of rock upon a desert herbless plain,
  For the evergreen and knotted ilexes,
  And cypresses that seldom wave their boughs,
  And sea-green olives with their grateful fruit,
  And elms dragging along the twisted vines,
  Which drop their berries as they follow fast,
  And blackthorn bushes with their infant race
  Of blushing rose-blooms; beeches, to lovers dear,
  And weeping willow trees; all swift or slow,
  As their huge boughs or lighter dress permit,
  Have circled in his throne, and Earth herself
  Has sent from her maternal breast a growth
  Of starlike flowers and herbs of odour sweet,
  To pave the temple that his poesy
  Has framed, while near his feet grim lions couch,
  And kids, fearless from love, creep near his lair.
  
  Even the blind worms seem to feel the sound.
  
  The birds are silent, hanging down their heads,
  Perched on the lowest branches of the trees;
  Not even the nightingale intrudes a note
  In rivalry, but all entranced she listens.
  
  Published by Dr.
  
  Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862; revised and enlarged by Rossetti, Complete Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  , 1870.

• Otho Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Thou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be,
  Last of the Romans, though thy memory claim
  From Brutus his own glory--and on thee
  Rests the full splendour of his sacred fame:
  Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail
  Amid his cowering senate with thy name,
  Though thou and he were great--it will avail
  To thine own fame that Otho’s should not fail.
  
  II.
  
  'Twill wrong thee not—thou wouldst, if thou couldst feel,
  Abjure such envious fame--great Otho died
  Like thee--he sanctified his country’s steel,
  At once the tyrant and tyrannicide,
  In his own blood—a deed it was to bring
  Tears from all men—though full of gentle pride,
  Such pride as from impetuous love may spring,
  That will not be refused its offering.

• Ozymandias Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I met a traveller from an antique land,
  Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
  Stand in the desert.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Near them, on the sand,
  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
  And on the pedestal, these words appear:
  My name isOzymandiasOzymandiasPharaoh Rameses II (reigned 1279-1213 BCE).
  
  According to theOED, the statue was once 57 feet tall.
  
  , King of Kings;
  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
  Nothing beside remains.
  
  Round the decay
  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away.
  
  ”

• Passage Of The Apennines Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Listen, listen, Mary mine,
  To the whisper of the Apennine,
  It bursts on the roof like the thunder’s roar,
  Or like the sea on a northern shore,
  Heard in its raging ebb and flow
  By the captives pent in the cave below.
  
  The Apennine in the light of day
  Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
  Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
  But when night comes, a chaos dread
  On the dim starlight then is spread,
  And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,
  Shrouding.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Composed May 4, 1818.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.
  
  There is a copy amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, which supplies the last word of the fragment.

• Pater Omnipotens Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Serene in his unconquerable might
  Endued[,] the Almighty King, his steadfast throne
  Encompassed unapproachably with power
  And darkness and deep solitude an awe
  Stood like a black cloud on some aery cliff
  Embosoming its lightning—in his sight
  Unnumbered glorious spirits trembling stood
  Like slaves before their Lord—prostrate around
  Heaven’s multitudes hymned everlasting praise.
  
  Edited from manuscript Shelley E 4 in the Bodleian Library, and published by Mr.
  
  C.
  
  D.
  
  Locock, Examination etc.
  
  , Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903.
  
  Here placed conjecturally amongst the compositions of 1820, but of uncertain date, and belonging possibly to 1819 or a still earlier year.

• Peter Bell The Third Read Poem Log in to favourite

  BY MICHING MALLECHO, Esq.
  
  Is it a party in a parlour,
  Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,
  Some sipping punch—some sipping tea;
  But, as you by their faces see,
  All silent, and all—damned!
  Peter Bell, by W.
  
  Wordsworth.
  
  Ophelia.
  
  —What means this, my lord?
  
  Hamlet.
  
  —Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief.
  
  ~Shakespeare.
  
  PROLOGUE
  Peter Bells, one, two and three,
  O'er the wide world wandering be.
  
  —
  First, the antenatal Peter,
  Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,
  The so-long-predestined raiment
  Clothed in which to walk his way meant
  The second Peter; whose ambition
  Is to link the proposition,
  As the mean of two extremes—
  (This was learned from Aldric's themes)
  Shielding from the guilt of schism
  The orthodoxal syllogism;
  The First Peter—he who was
  Like the shadow in the glass
  Of the second, yet unripe,
  His substantial antitype.
  
  —
  Then came Peter Bell the Second,
  Who henceforward must be reckoned
  The body of a double soul,
  And that portion of the whole
  Without which the rest would seem
  Ends of a disjointed dream.
  
  —
  And the Third is he who has
  O'er the grave been forced to pass
  To the other side, which is,—
  Go and try else,—just like this.
  
  Peter Bell the First was Peter
  Smugger, milder, softer, neater,
  Like the soul before it is
  Born from that world into this.
  
  The next Peter Bell was he,
  Predevote, like you and me,
  To good or evil as may come;
  His was the severer doom,—
  For he was an evil Cotter,
  And a polygamic Potter.
  
  And the last is Peter Bell,
  Damned since our first parents fell,
  Damned eternally to Hell—
  Surely he deserves it well!
  PART THE FIRST
  DEATH
  And Peter Bell, when he had been
  With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed,
  Grew serious—from his dress and mien
  'Twas very plainly to be seen
  Peter was quite reformed.
  
  His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;
  His accent caught a nasal twang;
  He oiled his hair; there might be heard
  The grace of God in every word
  Which Peter said or sang.
  
  But Peter now grew old, and had
  An ill no doctor could unravel;
  His torments almost drove him mad;—
  Some said it was a fever bad—
  Some swore it was the gravel.
  
  His holy friends then came about,
  And with long preaching and persuasion
  Convinced the patient that, without
  The smallest shadow of a doubt,
  He was predestined to damnation.
  
  They said—'Thy name is Peter Bell;
  Thy skin is of a brimstone hue;
  Alive or dead—ay, sick or well—
  The one God made to rhyme with hell;
  The other, I think, rhymes with you.
  
  '
  Then Peter set up such a yell!—
  The nurse, who with some water gruel
  Was climbing up the stairs, as well
  As her old legs could climb them—fell,
  And broke them both—the fall was cruel.
  
  The Parson from the casement lept
  Into the lake of Windermere—
  And many an eel—though no adept
  In God's right reason for it—kept
  Gnawing his kidneys half a year.
  
  And all the rest rushed through the door,
  And tumbled over one another,
  And broke their skulls.
  
  —Upon the floor
  Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore,
  And cursed his father and his mother;
  And raved of God, and sin, and death,
  Blaspheming like an infidel;
  And said, that with his clenchèd teeth
  He'd seize the earth from underneath,
  And drag it with him down to hell.
  
  As he was speaking came a spasm,
  And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder;
  Like one who sees a strange phantasm
  He lay,—there was a silent chasm
  Between his upper jaw and under.
  
  And yellow death lay on his face;
  And a fixed smile that was not human
  Told, as I understand the case,
  That he was gone to the wrong place:—
  I heard all this from the old woman.
  
  Then there came down from Langdale Pike
  A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail;
  It swept over the mountains like
  An ocean,—and I heard it strike
  The woods and crags of Grasmere vale.
  
  And I saw the black storm come
  Nearer, minute after minute;
  Its thunder made the cataracts dumb;
  With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum,
  It neared as if the Devil was in it.
  
  The Devil was in it:—he had bought
  Peter for half-a-crown; and when
  The storm which bore him vanished, nought
  That in the house that storm had caught
  Was ever seen again.
  
  The gaping neighbours came next day—
  They found all vanished from the shore:
  The Bible, whence he used to pray,
  Half scorched under a hen-coop lay;
  Smashed glass—and nothing more!
  PART THE SECOND
  THE DEVIL
  The Devil, I safely can aver,
  Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;
  Nor is he, as some sages swear,
  A spirit, neither here nor there,
  In nothing—yet in everything.
  
  He is—what we are; for sometimes
  The Devil is a gentleman;
  At others a bard bartering rhymes
  For sack; a statesman spinning crimes;
  A swindler, living as he can;
  A thief, who cometh in the night,
  With whole boots and net pantaloons,
  Like some one whom it were not right
  To mention;—or the luckless wight
  From whom he steals nine silver spoons.
  
  But in this case he did appear
  Like a slop-merchant from Wapping,
  And with smug face, and eye severe,
  On every side did perk and peer
  Till he saw Peter dead or napping.
  
  He had on an upper Benjamin
  (For he was of the driving schism)
  In the which he wrapped his skin
  From the storm he travelled in,
  For fear of rheumatism.
  
  He called the ghost out of the corse;—
  It was exceedingly like Peter,—
  Only its voice was hollow and hoarse—
  It had a queerish look of course—
  Its dress too was a little neater.
  
  The Devil knew not his name and lot;
  Peter knew not that he was Bell:
  Each had an upper stream of thought,
  Which made all seem as it was not;
  Fitting itself to all things well.
  
  Peter thought he had parents dear,
  Brothers, sisters, cousins, cronies,
  In the fens of Lincolnshire;
  He perhaps had found them there
  Had he gone and boldly shown his
  Solemn phiz in his own village;
  Where he thought oft when a boy
  He'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage
  The produce of his neighbour's tillage,
  With marvellous pride and joy.
  
  And the Devil thought he had,
  'Mid the misery and confusion
  Of an unjust war, just made
  A fortune by the gainful trade
  Of giving soldiers rations bad—
  The world is full of strange delusion—
  That he had a mansion planned
  In a square like Grosvenor Square,
  That he was aping fashion, and
  That he now came to Westmoreland
  To see what was romantic there.
  
  And all this, though quite ideal,—
  Ready at a breath to vanish,—
  Was a state not more unreal
  Than the peace he could not feel,
  Or the care he could not banish.
  
  After a little conversation,
  The Devil told Peter, if he chose,
  He'd bring him to the world of fashion
  By giving him a situation
  In his own service—and new clothes.
  
  And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud,
  And after waiting some few days
  For a new livery—dirty yellow
  Turned up with black—the wretched fellow
  Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise.
  
  PART THE THIRD
  HELL
  Hell is a city much like London—
  A populous and a smoky city;
  There are all sorts of people undone,
  And there is little or no fun done;
  Small justice shown, and still less pity.
  
  There is a Castles, and a Canning,
  A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;
  All sorts of caitiff corpses planning
  All sorts of cozening for trepanning
  Corpses less corrupt than they.
  
  There is a —-, who has lost
  His wits, or sold them, none knows which;
  He walks about a double ghost,
  And though as thin as Fraud almost—
  Ever grows more grim and rich.
  
  There is a Chancery Court; a King;
  A manufacturing mob; a set
  Of thieves who by themselves are sent
  Similar thieves to represent;
  An army; and a public debt.
  
  Which last is a scheme of paper money,
  And means—being interpreted—
  'Bees, keep your wax—give us the honey,
  And we will plant, while skies are sunny,
  Flowers, which in winter serve instead.
  
  '
  There is a great talk of revolution—
  And a great chance of despotism—
  German soldiers—camps—confusion—
  Tumults—lotteries—rage—delusion—
  Gin—suicide—and methodism;
  Taxes too, on wine and bread,
  And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,
  From which those patriots pure are fed,
  Who gorge before they reel to bed
  The tenfold essence of all these.
  
  There are mincing women, mewing,
  (Like cats, who amant miserè,)
  Of their own virtue, and pursuing
  Their gentler sisters to that ruin,
  Without which—what were chastity?
  
  Lawyers—judges—old hobnobbers
  Are there—bailiffs—chancellors—
  Bishops—great and little robbers—
  Rhymesters—pamphleteers—stock-jobbers—
  Men of glory in the wars,—
  Things whose trade is, over ladies
  To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper,
  Till all that is divine in woman
  Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,
  Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper.
  
  Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,
  Frowning, preaching—such a riot!
  Each with never-ceasing labour,
  Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour,
  Cheating his own heart of quiet.
  
  And all these meet at levees;—
  Dinners convivial and political;—
  Suppers of epic poets;—teas,
  Where small talk dies in agonies;—
  Breakfasts professional and critical;
  Lunches and snacks so aldermanic
  That one would furnish forth ten dinners,
  Where reigns a Cretan-tonguèd panic,
  Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic
  Should make some losers, and some winners;—
  At conversazioni—balls—
  Conventicles—and drawing-rooms—
  Courts of law—committees—calls
  Of a morning—clubs—book-stalls—
  Churches—masquerades—and tombs.
  
  And this is Hell—and in this smother
  All are damnable and damned;
  Each one damning, damns the other
  They are damned by one another,
  By none other are they damned.
  
  'Tis a lie to say, 'God damns!'
  Where was Heaven's Attorney General
  When they first gave out such flams?
  
  Let there be an end of shams,
  They are mines of poisonous mineral.
  
  Statesmen damn themselves to be
  Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls
  To the auction of a fee;
  Churchmen damn themselves to see
  God's sweet love in burning coals.
  
  The rich are damned, beyond all cure,
  To taunt, and starve, and trample on
  The weak and wretched; and the poor
  Damn their broken hearts to endure
  Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.
  
  Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
  To take,—not means for being blessed,—
  But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
  From which the worms that it doth feed
  Squeeze less than they before possessed.
  
  And some few, like we know who,
  Damned—but God alone knows why—
  To believe their minds are given
  To make this ugly Hell a Heaven;
  In which faith they live and die.
  
  Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
  Each man be he sound or no
  Must indifferently sicken;
  As when day begins to thicken,
  None knows a pigeon from a crow,—
  So good and bad, sane and mad,
  The oppressor and the oppressed;
  Those who weep to see what others
  Smile to inflict upon their brothers;
  Lovers, haters, worst and best;
  All are damned—they breathe an air,
  Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:
  Each pursues what seems most fair,
  Mining like moles, through mind, and there
  Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
  In thronèd state is ever dwelling.
  
  PART THE FOURTH
  SIN
  Lo, Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square,
  A footman in the Devil's service!
  And the misjudging world would swear
  That every man in service there
  To virtue would prefer vice.
  
  But Peter, though now damned, was not
  What Peter was before damnation.
  
  Men oftentimes prepare a lot
  Which ere it finds them, is not what
  Suits with their genuine station.
  
  All things that Peter saw and felt
  Had a peculiar aspect to him;
  And when they came within the belt
  Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
  Like cloud to cloud, into him.
  
  And so the outward world uniting
  To that within him, he became
  Considerably uninviting
  To those who, meditation slighting,
  Were moulded in a different frame.
  
  And he scorned them, and they scorned him;
  And he scorned all they did; and they
  Did all that men of their own trim
  Are wont to do to please their whim,
  Drinking, lying, swearing, play.
  
  Such were his fellow-servants; thus
  His virtue, like our own, was built
  Too much on that indignant fuss
  Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us
  To bully one another's guilt.
  
  He had a mind which was somehow
  At once circumference and centre
  Of all he might or feel or know;
  Nothing went ever out, although
  Something did ever enter.
  
  He had as much imagination
  As a pint-pot;—he never could
  Fancy another situation,
  From which to dart his contemplation,
  Than that wherein he stood.
  
  Yet his was individual mind,
  And new created all he saw
  In a new manner, and refined
  Those new creations, and combined
  Them, by a master-spirit's law.
  
  Thus—though unimaginative—
  An apprehension clear, intense,
  Of his mind's work, had made alive
  The things it wrought on; I believe
  Wakening a sort of thought in sense.
  
  But from the first 'twas Peter's drift
  To be a kind of moral eunuch,
  He touched the hem of Nature's shift,
  Felt faint—and never dared uplift
  The closest, all-concealing tunic.
  
  She laughed the while, with an arch smile,
  And kissed him with a sister's kiss,
  And said—'My best Diogenes,
  I love you well—but, if you please,
  Tempt not again my deepest bliss.
  
  ''Tis you are cold—for I, not coy,
  Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true;
  And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy—
  His errors prove it—knew my joy
  More, learnèd friend, than you.
  
  'Bocca bacciata non perde ventura,
  Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:—
  So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a
  Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a
  Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.
  
  '
  Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe,
  And smoothed his spacious forehead down
  With his broad palm;—'twixt love and fear,
  He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,
  And in his dream sate down.
  
  The Devil was no uncommon creature;
  A leaden-witted thief—just huddled
  Out of the dross and scum of nature;
  A toad-like lump of limb and feature,
  With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.
  
  He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,
  The spirit of evil well may be:
  A drone too base to have a sting;
  Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing,
  And calls lust, luxury.
  
  Now he was quite the kind of wight
  Round whom collect, at a fixed aera,
  Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,—
  Good cheer—and those who come to share it—
  And best East Indian madeira!
  It was his fancy to invite
  Men of science, wit, and learning,
  Who came to lend each other light;
  He proudly thought that his gold's might
  Had set those spirits burning.
  
  And men of learning, science, wit,
  Considered him as you and I
  Think of some rotten tree, and sit
  Lounging and dining under it,
  Exposed to the wide sky.
  
  And all the while, with loose fat smile,
  The willing wretch sat winking there,
  Believing 'twas his power that made
  That jovial scene—and that all paid
  Homage to his unnoticed chair.
  
  Though to be sure this place was Hell;
  He was the Devil—and all they—
  What though the claret circled well,
  And wit, like ocean, rose and fell?
  
  —
  Were damned eternally.
  
  PART THE FIFTH
  GRACE
  Among the guests who often stayed
  Till the Devil's petits-soupers,
  A man there came, fair as a maid,
  And Peter noted what he said,
  Standing behind his master's chair.
  
  He was a mighty poet—and
  A subtle-souled psychologist;
  All things he seemed to understand,
  Of old or new—of sea or land—
  But his own mind—which was a mist.
  
  This was a man who might have turned
  Hell into Heaven—and so in gladness
  A Heaven unto himself have earned;
  But he in shadows undiscerned
  Trusted,—and damned himself to madness.
  
  He spoke of poetry, and how
  'Divine it was—a light—a love—
  A spirit which like wind doth blow
  As it listeth, to and fro;
  A dew rained down from God above;
  'A power which comes and goes like dream,
  And which none can ever trace—
  Heaven's light on earth—Truth's brightest beam.
  
  '
  And when he ceased there lay the gleam
  Of those words upon his face.
  
  Now Peter, when he heard such talk,
  Would, heedless of a broken pate,
  Stand like a man asleep, or balk
  Some wishing guest of knife or fork,
  Or drop and break his master's plate.
  
  At night he oft would start and wake
  Like a lover, and began
  In a wild measure songs to make
  On moor, and glen, and rocky lake,
  And on the heart of man—
  And on the universal sky—
  And the wide earth's bosom green,—
  And the sweet, strange mystery
  Of what beyond these things may lie,
  And yet remain unseen.
  
  For in his thought he visited
  The spots in which, ere dead and damned,
  He his wayward life had led;
  Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed
  Which thus his fancy crammed.
  
  And these obscure remembrances
  Stirred such harmony in Peter,
  That, whensoever he should please,
  He could speak of rocks and trees
  In poetic metre.
  
  For though it was without a sense
  Of memory, yet he remembered well
  Many a ditch and quick-set fence;
  Of lakes he had intelligence,
  He knew something of heath and fell.
  
  He had also dim recollections
  Of pedlars tramping on their rounds;
  Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections
  Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections
  Old parsons make in burying-grounds.
  
  But Peter's verse was clear, and came
  Announcing from the frozen hearth
  Of a cold age, that none might tame
  The soul of that diviner flame
  It augured to the Earth:
  Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,
  Making that green which late was gray,
  Or like the sudden moon, that stains
  Some gloomy chamber's window-panes
  With a broad light like day.
  
  For language was in Peter's hand
  Like clay while he was yet a potter;
  And he made songs for all the land,
  Sweet both to feel and understand,
  As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.
  
  And Mr.
  
  —-, the bookseller,
  Gave twenty pounds for some;—then scorning
  A footman's yellow coat to wear,
  Peter, too proud of heart, I fear,
  Instantly gave the Devil warning.
  
  Whereat the Devil took offence,
  And swore in his soul a great oath then,
  'That for his damned impertinence
  He'd bring him to a proper sense
  Of what was due to gentlemen!'
  PART THE SIXTH
  DAMNATION
  'O that mine enemy had written
  A book!'—cried Job:—a fearful curse,
  If to the Arab, as the Briton,
  'Twas galling to be critic-bitten:—
  The Devil to Peter wished no worse.
  
  When Peter's next new book found vent,
  The Devil to all the first Reviews
  A copy of it slyly sent,
  With five-pound note as compliment,
  And this short notice—'Pray abuse.
  
  '
  Then seriatim, month and quarter,
  Appeared such mad tirades.
  
  —One said—
  'Peter seduced Mrs.
  
  Foy's daughter,
  Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,
  The last thing as he went to bed.
  
  '
  Another—'Let him shave his head!
  Where's Dr.
  
  Willis?
  
  —Or is he joking?
  
  What does the rascal mean or hope,
  No longer imitating Pope,
  In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?
  
  '
  One more, 'Is incest not enough?
  
  And must there be adultery too?
  
  Grace after meat?
  
  Miscreant and Liar!
  Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! Hell-fire
  Is twenty times too good for you.
  
  'By that last book of yours we think
  You've double damned yourself to scorn;
  We warned you whilst yet on the brink
  You stood.
  
  From your black name will shrink
  The babe that is unborn.
  
  '
  All these Reviews the Devil made
  Up in a parcel, which he had
  Safely to Peter's house conveyed.
  
  For carriage, tenpence Peter paid—
  Untied them—read them—went half mad.
  
  'What!' cried he, 'this is my reward
  For nights of thought, and days of toil?
  
  Do poets, but to be abhorred
  By men of whom they never heard,
  Consume their spirits' oil?
  
  'What have I done to them?
  
  —and who
  Is Mrs.
  
  Foy?
  
  'Tis very cruel
  To speak of me and Betty so!
  Adultery! God defend me! Oh!
  I've half a mind to fight a duel.
  
  'Or,' cried he, a grave look collecting,
  'Is it my genius, like the moon,
  Sets those who stand her face inspecting,
  That face within their brain reflecting,
  Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?
  
  '
  For Peter did not know the town,
  But thought, as country readers do,
  For half a guinea or a crown,
  He bought oblivion or renown
  From God's own voice in a review.
  
  All Peter did on this occasion
  Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
  
  It is a dangerous invasion
  When poets criticize; their station
  Is to delight, not pose.
  
  The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair
  For Born's translation of Kant's book;
  A world of words, tail foremost, where
  Right—wrong—false—true—and foul—and fair
  As in a lottery-wheel are shook.
  
  Five thousand crammed octavo pages
  Of German psychologics,—he
  Who his furor verborum assuages
  Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages
  More than will e'er be due to me.
  
  I looked on them nine several days,
  And then I saw that they were bad;
  A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,—
  He never read them;—with amaze
  I found Sir William Drummond had.
  
  When the book came, the Devil sent
  It to P.
  
  Verbovale, Esquire,
  With a brief note of compliment,
  By that night's Carlisle mail.
  
  It went,
  And set his soul on fire.
  
  Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,
  Made him beyond the bottom see
  Of truth's clear well—when I and you, Ma'am,
  Go, as we shall do, subter humum,
  We may know more than he.
  
  Now Peter ran to seed in soul
  Into a walking paradox;
  For he was neither part nor whole,
  Nor good, nor bad—nor knave nor fool;
  —Among the woods and rocks
  Furious he rode, where late he ran,
  Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;
  Turned to a formal puritan,
  A solemn and unsexual man,—
  He half believed White Obi.
  
  This steed in vision he would ride,
  High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
  With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,
  Mocking and mowing by his side—
  A mad-brained goblin for a guide—
  Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.
  
  After these ghastly rides, he came
  Home to his heart, and found from thence
  Much stolen of its accustomed flame;
  His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame
  Of their intelligence.
  
  To Peter's view, all seemed one hue;
  He was no Whig, he was no Tory;
  No Deist and no Christian he;—
  He got so subtle, that to be
  Nothing, was all his glory.
  
  One single point in his belief
  From his organization sprung,
  The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
  Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,
  That 'Happiness is wrong';
  So thought Calvin and Dominic;
  So think their fierce successors, who
  Even now would neither stint nor stick
  Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
  If they might 'do their do.
  
  '
  His morals thus were undermined:—
  The old Peter—the hard, old Potter—
  Was born anew within his mind;
  He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
  As when he tramped beside the Otter.
  
  In the death hues of agony
  Lambently flashing from a fish,
  Now Peter felt amused to see
  Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
  Mixed with a certain hungry wish.
  
  So in his Country's dying face
  He looked—and, lovely as she lay,
  Seeking in vain his last embrace,
  Wailing her own abandoned case,
  With hardened sneer he turned away:
  And coolly to his own soul said;—
  'Do you not think that we might make
  A poem on her when she's dead:—
  Or, no—a thought is in my head—
  Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:
  'My wife wants one.
  
  —Let who will bury
  This mangled corpse! And I and you,
  My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
  As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,—'
  'Ay—and at last desert me too.
  
  '
  And so his Soul would not be gay,
  But moaned within him; like a fawn
  Moaning within a cave, it lay
  Wounded and wasting, day by day,
  Till all its life of life was gone.
  
  As troubled skies stain waters clear,
  The storm in Peter's heart and mind
  Now made his verses dark and queer:
  They were the ghosts of what they were,
  Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.
  
  For he now raved enormous folly,
  Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves,
  'Twould make George Colman melancholy
  To have heard him, like a male Molly,
  Chanting those stupid staves.
  
  Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
  On Peter while he wrote for freedom,
  So soon as in his song they spy
  The folly which soothes tyranny,
  Praise him, for those who feed 'em.
  
  'He was a man, too great to scan;—
  A planet lost in truth's keen rays:—
  His virtue, awful and prodigious;—
  He was the most sublime, religious,
  Pure-minded Poet of these days.
  
  '
  As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
  'Eureka! I have found the way
  To make a better thing of metre
  Than e'er was made by living creature
  Up to this blessèd day.
  
  '
  Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;—
  In one of which he meekly said:
  'May Carnage and Slaughter,
  Thy niece and thy daughter,
  May Rapine and Famine,
  Thy gorge ever cramming,
  Glut thee with living and dead!
  'May Death and Damnation,
  And Consternation,
  Flit up from Hell with pure intent!
  Slash them at Manchester,
  Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester;
  Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.
  
  'Let thy body-guard yeomen
  Hew down babes and women,
  And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!
  When Moloch in Jewry
  Munched children with fury,
  It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent.
  
  '
  PART THE SEVENTH
  DOUBLE DAMNATION
  The Devil now knew his proper cue.
  
  —
  Soon as he read the ode, he drove
  To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's,
  A man of interest in both houses,
  And said:—'For money or for love,
  'Pray find some cure or sinecure;
  To feed from the superfluous taxes
  A friend of ours—a poet—fewer
  Have fluttered tamer to the lure
  Than he.
  
  ' His lordship stands and racks his
  Stupid brains, while one might count
  As many beads as he had boroughs,—
  At length replies; from his mean front,
  Like one who rubs out an account,
  Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:
  'It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
  I can.
  
  I hope I need require
  No pledge from you, that he will stir
  In our affairs;—like Oliver,
  That he'll be worthy of his hire.
  
  '
  These words exchanged, the news sent off
  To Peter, home the Devil hied,—
  Took to his bed; he had no cough,
  No doctor,—meat and drink enough,—
  Yet that same night he died.
  
  The Devil's corpse was leaded down;
  His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,
  Mourning-coaches, many a one,
  Followed his hearse along the town:—
  Where was the Devil himself?
  
  When Peter heard of his promotion,
  His eyes grew like two stars for bliss:
  There was a bow of sleek devotion
  Engendering in his back; each motion
  Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.
  
  He hired a house, bought plate, and made
  A genteel drive up to his door,
  With sifted gravel neatly laid,—
  As if defying all who said,
  Peter was ever poor.
  
  But a disease soon struck into
  The very life and soul of Peter—
  He walked about—slept—had the hue
  Of health upon his cheeks—and few
  Dug better—none a heartier eater.
  
  And yet a strange and horrid curse
  Clung upon Peter, night and day;
  Month after month the thing grew worse,
  And deadlier than in this my verse
  I can find strength to say.
  
  Peter was dull—he was at first
  Dull—oh, so dull—so very dull!
  Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed—
  Still with this dulness was he cursed—
  Dull—beyond all conception—dull.
  
  No one could read his books—no mortal,
  But a few natural friends, would hear him;
  The parson came not near his portal;
  His state was like that of the immortal
  Described by Swift—no man could bear him.
  
  His sister, wife, and children yawned,
  With a long, slow, and drear ennui,
  All human patience far beyond;
  Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned,
  Anywhere else to be.
  
  But in his verse, and in his prose,
  The essence of his dulness was
  Concentred and compressed so close,
  'Twould have made Guatimozin doze
  On his red gridiron of brass.
  
  A printer's boy, folding those pages,
  Fell slumbrously upon one side;
  Like those famed Seven who slept three ages.
  
  To wakeful frenzy's vigil-rages,
  As opiates, were the same applied.
  
  Even the Reviewers who were hired
  To do the work of his reviewing,
  With adamantine nerves, grew tired;—
  Gaping and torpid they retired,
  To dream of what they should be doing.
  
  And worse and worse, the drowsy curse
  Yawned in him, till it grew a pest—
  A wide contagious atmosphere,
  Creeping like cold through all things near;
  A power to infect and to infest.
  
  His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;
  His kitten, late a sportive elf;
  The woods and lakes, so beautiful,
  Of dim stupidity were full,
  All grew dull as Peter's self.
  
  The earth under his feet—the springs,
  Which lived within it a quick life,
  The air, the winds of many wings,
  That fan it with new murmurings,
  Were dead to their harmonious strife.
  
  The birds and beasts within the wood,
  The insects, and each creeping thing,
  Were now a silent multitude;
  Love's work was left unwrought—no brood
  Near Peter's house took wing.
  
  And every neighbouring cottager
  Stupidly yawned upon the other:
  No jackass brayed; no little cur
  Cocked up his ears;—no man would stir
  To save a dying mother.
  
  Yet all from that charmed district went
  But some half-idiot and half-knave,
  Who rather than pay any rent,
  Would live with marvellous content,
  Over his father's grave.
  
  No bailiff dared within that space,
  For fear of the dull charm, to enter;
  A man would bear upon his face,
  For fifteen months in any case,
  The yawn of such a venture.
  
  Seven miles above—below—around—
  This pest of dulness holds its sway;
  A ghastly life without a sound;
  To Peter's soul the spell is bound—
  How should it ever pass away?
  
  'Composed at Florence, October 1819, and forwarded to Hunt (Nov.
  
  2) to be published by C.
  
  & J.
  
  Ollier without the author's name; ultimately printed by Mrs.
  
  Shelley in the second edition of the Poetical Works, 1839.
  
  A skit by John Hamilton Reynolds, Peter Bell, A Lyrical Ballad, had already appeared (April, 1819), a few days before the publication of Wordsworth's Peter Bell, A Tale.
  
  These productions were reviewed in Leigh Hunt's Examiner (April 26, May 3, 1819); and to the entertainment derived from his perusal of Hunt's criticisms the composition of Shelley's Peter Bell the Third is chiefly owing.
  
  ' ~ Hutchinson's Poetical Works of Percy Shelley, 1905.
  
  Note by Mrs.
  
  Shelley: 'In this new edition I have added Peter Bell the Third.
  
  A critique on Wordsworth's Peter Bell reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley exceedingly, and suggested this poem.
  
  I need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of Peter Bell is intended in this poem.
  
  No man ever admired Wordsworth's poetry more; -- he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate its beauties.
  
  This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal.
  
  He conceived the idealism of a poet -- a man of lofty and creative genius -- quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing the beautiful and good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices and pernicious errors; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardour for truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the sources of the moral improvement and happiness of mankind, but false and injurious opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and force were the best allies of purity and virtue.
  
  His idea was that a man gifted, even as transcendently as the author of Peter Bell, with the highest qualities of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be infected with dulness.
  
  This poem was written as a warning -- not as a narration of the reality.
  
  He was unaquainted personally with Wordsworth or with Coleridge (to whom he alludes in the fifth part of the poem), and therefore, I repeat, his poem is purely ideal; -- it contains something of criticism on the compositions of those great poets, but nothing injurious to the men themselves.
  
  No poem contains more of Shelley's peculiar views with regard to the errors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and the pernicious effects of certain opinions on society.
  
  Much of it is beautifully written: and, though, like the burlesque drama of Swellfoot, it must be looked on as a plaything, it has so much merit and poetry -- so much of himself in it -- that it cannot failt to interest greatly, and by right belongs to the world for those whose instruction and benefit it was written.
  
  '

• Poetical Essay Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Extract from Poetical Essay
  Millions to fight compell'd, to fight or die
  In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  When the legal murders swell the lists of pride;
  When glory's views the titled idiot guide

• Prince Athanase Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A FRAGMENT
  PART I
  There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
  Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
  Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
  Which burned within him, withering up his prime
  And goading him, like fiends, from land to land.
  
  Not his the load of any secret crime,
  For nought of ill his heart could understand,
  But pity and wild sorrow for the same;—
  Not his the thirst for glory or command,
  Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame;
  Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,
  And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,
  Had left within his soul their dark unrest:
  Nor what religion fables of the grave
  Feared he,—Philosophy's accepted guest.
  
  For none than he a purer heart could have,
  Or that loved good more for itself alone;
  Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.
  
  What sorrow, strange, and shadowy, and unknown,
  Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?
  
  —
  If with a human sadness he did groan,
  He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
  Just, innocent, with varied learning fed;
  And such a glorious consolation find
  In others' joy, when all their own is dead:
  He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,
  And yet, unlike all others, it is said
  That from such toil he never found relief.
  
  Although a child of fortune and of power,
  Of an ancestral name the orphan chief,
  His soul had wedded Wisdom, and her dower
  Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate
  Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,
  Pitying the tumult of their dark estate.
  
  —
  Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse
  The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate
  Those false opinions which the harsh rich use
  To blind the world they famish for their pride;
  Nor did he hold from any man his dues,
  But, like a steward in honest dealings tried,
  With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise,
  His riches and his cares he did divide.
  
  Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
  What he dared do or think, though men might start,
  He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;
  Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
  And to his many friends—all loved him well—
  Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart,
  If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;
  If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes
  He neither spurned nor hated—though with fell
  And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
  They passed like aimless arrows from his ear—
  Nor did his heart or mind its portal close
  To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere
  May comprehend within its wide array.
  
  What sadness made that vernal spirit sere?
  
  —
  He knew not.
  
  Though his life, day after day,
  Was failing like an unreplenished stream,
  Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay,
  Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam
  Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,
  Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem
  Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;
  And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour,
  Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,
  Were driven within him by some secret power,
  Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,
  Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower
  O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war
  Is levied by the night-contending winds,
  And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;—
  Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends
  Which wake and feed an everliving woe,—
  What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds
  A mirror found,—he knew not—none could know;
  But on whoe'er might question him he turned
  The light of his frank eyes, as if to show
  He knew not of the grief within that burned,
  But asked forbearance with a mournful look;
  Or spoke in words from which none ever learned
  The cause of his disquietude; or shook
  With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
  So that his friends soon rarely undertook
  To stir his secret pain without avail;—
  For all who knew and loved him then perceived
  That there was drawn an adamantine veil
  Between his heart and mind,—both unrelieved
  Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.
  
  Some said that he was mad, others believed
  That memories of an antenatal life
  Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;
  And others said that such mysterious grief
  From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell
  On souls like his, which owned no higher law
  Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible
  By mortal fear or supernatural awe;
  And others,—''Tis the shadow of a dream
  Which the veiled eye of Memory never saw,
  'But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream
  Through shattered mines and caverns underground,
  Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam
  'Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned
  In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure;
  Soon its exhausted waters will have found
  'A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
  O Athanase!—in one so good and great,
  Evil or tumult cannot long endure.
  
  '
  So spake they: idly of another's state
  Babbling vain words and fond philosophy;
  This was their consolation; such debate
  Men held with one another; nor did he,
  Like one who labours with a human woe,
  Decline this talk: as if its theme might be
  Another, not himself, he to and fro
  Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;
  And none but those who loved him best could know
  That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
  His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
  For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit
  Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
  Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
  Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;—
  And so his grief remained—let it remain—untold.
  
  PART II
  FRAGMENT I
  Prince Athanase had one belovèd friend,
  An old, old man, with hair of silver white,
  And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend
  With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light
  Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
  
  He was the last whom superstition's blight
  Had spared in Greece—the blight that cramps and blinds,—
  And in his olive bower at OEnoe
  Had sate from earliest youth.
  
  Like one who finds
  A fertile island in the barren sea,
  One mariner who has survived his mates
  Many a drear month in a great ship—so he
  With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
  Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:—
  'The mind becomes that which it contemplates,'—
  And thus Zonoras, by forever seeing
  Their bright creations, grew like wisest men;
  And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing
  A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
  O sacred Hellas! many weary years
  He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen
  Was grass-grown—and the unremembered tears
  Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,
  Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:—
  And as the lady looked with faithful grief
  From her high lattice o'er the rugged path,
  Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief
  And blighting hope, who with the news of death
  Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,
  She saw between the chestnuts, far beneath,
  An old man toiling up, a weary wight;
  And soon within her hospitable hall
  She saw his white hairs glittering in the light
  Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;
  And his wan visage and his withered mien,
  Yet calm and gentle and majestical.
  
  And Athanase, her child, who must have been
  Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed
  In patient silence.
  
  FRAGMENT II
  Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
  One amaranth glittering on the path of frost,
  When autumn nights have nipped all weaker kinds,
  Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tossed,
  Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled
  From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,
  The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child,
  With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
  And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.
  
  And sweet and subtle talk they evermore,
  The pupil and the master, shared; until,
  Sharing that undiminishable store,
  The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill
  Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran
  His teacher, and did teach with native skill
  Strange truths and new to that experienced man;
  Still they were friends, as few have ever been
  Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span.
  
  So in the caverns of the forest green,
  Or on the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,
  Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen
  By summer woodmen; and when winter's roar
  Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of war,
  The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,
  Hanging upon the peakèd wave afar,
  Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret gleam,
  Piercing the stormy darkness, like a star
  Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam,
  Whilst all the constellations of the sky
  Seemed reeling through the storm .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  They did but seem—
  For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,
  And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing,
  And far o'er southern waves, immovably
  Belted Orion hangs—warm light is flowing
  From the young moon into the sunset's chasm.
  
  —
  'O, summer eve! with power divine, bestowing
  'On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm
  Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness,
  Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm
  'Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madness,
  Were lulled by thee, delightful nightingale,—
  And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness,—
  'And the far sighings of yon piny dale
  Made vocal by some wind we feel not here.
  
  —
  I bear alone what nothing may avail
  'To lighten—a strange load!'—No human ear
  Heard this lament; but o'er the visage wan
  Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere
  Of dark emotion, a swift shadow, ran,
  Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake,
  Glassy and dark.
  
  —And that divine old man
  Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake,
  Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest—
  And with a calm and measured voice he spake,
  And, with a soft and equal pressure, pressed
  That cold lean hand:—'Dost thou remember yet
  When the curved moon then lingering in the west
  'Paused, in yon waves her mighty horns to wet,
  How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea?
  
  'Tis just one year—sure thou dost not forget—
  'Then Plato's words of light in thee and me
  Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east,
  For we had just then read—thy memory
  'Is faithful now—the story of the feast;
  And Agathon and Diotima seemed
  From death and dark forgetfulness released '
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  FRAGMENT III
  And when the old man saw that on the green
  Leaves of his opening .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  a blight had lighted
  He said: 'My friend, one grief alone can wean
  A gentle mind from all that once delighted:—
  Thou lovest, and thy secret heart is laden
  With feelings which should not be unrequited.
  
  '
  And Athanase .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  then smiled, as one o'erladen
  With iron chains might smile to talk(?
  
  ) of bands
  Twined round her lover's neck by some blithe maiden,
  And said .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  FRAGMENT IV
  'Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings
  From slumber, as a spherèd angel's child,
  Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,
  Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
  Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems—
  So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled
  To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,
  The fresh and radiant Earth.
  
  The hoary grove
  Waxed green—and flowers burst forth like starry beams;—
  The grass in the warm sun did start and move,
  And sea-buds burst under the waves serene:—
  How many a one, though none be near to love,
  Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen
  In any mirror—or the spring's young minions,
  The wingèd leaves amid the copses green;—
  How many a spirit then puts on the pinions
  Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,
  And his own steps—and over wide dominions
  Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,
  More fleet than storms—the wide world shrinks below,
  When winter and despondency are past.
  
  FRAGMENT V
  'Twas at this season that Prince Athanase
  Passed the white Alps—those eagle-baffling mountains
  Slept in their shrouds of snow;—beside the ways
  The waterfalls were voiceless—for their fountains
  Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,
  Or by the curdling winds—like brazen wings
  Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow—
  Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung
  And filled with frozen light the chasms below.
  
  Vexed by the blast, the great pines groaned and swung
  Under their load of [snow]—.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Such as the eagle sees, when he dives down
  From the gray deserts of wide air, [beheld]
  [Prince] Athanase; and o'er his mien(?
  
  ) was thrown
  The shadow of that scene, field after field,
  Purple and dim and wide .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  FRAGMENT VI
  Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all
  We can desire, O Love! and happy souls,
  Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,
  Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls
  Thousands who thirst for thine ambrosial dew;—
  Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls
  Investeth it; and when the heavens are blue
  Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair
  The shadow of thy moving wings imbue
  Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear
  Beauty like some light robe;—thou ever soarest
  Among the towers of men, and as soft air
  In spring, which moves the unawakened forest,
  Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
  Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest
  That which from thee they should implore:—the weak
  Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts
  The strong have broken—yet where shall any seek
  A garment whom thou clothest not?
  
  the darts
  Of the keen winter storm, barbèd with frost,
  Which, from the everlasting snow that parts
  The Alps from Heaven, pierce some traveller lost
  In the wide waved interminable snow
  Ungarmented, .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ANOTHER FRAGMENT (A)
  Yes, often when the eyes are cold and dry,
  And the lips calm, the Spirit weeps within
  Tears bitterer than the blood of agony
  Trembling in drops on the discoloured skin
  Of those who love their kind and therefore perish
  In ghastly torture—a sweet medicine
  Of peace and sleep are tears, and quietly
  Them soothe from whose uplifted eyes they fall
  But .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ANOTHER FRAGMENT
  Her hair was brown, her spherèd eyes were brown,
  And in their dark and liquid moisture swam,
  Like the dim orb of the eclipsèd moon;
  Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came
  The light from them, as when tears of delight
  Double the western planet's serene flame.
  
  Written at Marlow in 1817, towards the close of the year; first published in Posthumous Poems, 1824.
  
  Part I is dated by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, 'December, 1817,' the remainder, 'Marlow, 1817.
  
  '  The verses were probably rehandled in Italy during the following year.

• Prometheus Unbound Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Prometheus.
  
  Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
  But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
  Which Thou and I alone of living things
  Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
  Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou
  Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
  And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,
  With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.
  
  Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
  Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,
  O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
  
  Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
  And moments aye divided by keen pangs
  Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
  Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire:—
  More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
  From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!
  Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
  Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
  Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,
  Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
  Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
  
  Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
  
  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 below,
  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 wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips
  His beak in poison not his own, tears up
  My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
  The ghastly people of the realm of dream,
  Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
  To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds
  When the rocks split and close again behind:
  While from their loud abysses howling throng
  The genii of the storm, urging the rage
  Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
  
  And yet to me welcome is day and night,
  Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,
  Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs
  The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead
  The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom
  —As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim—
  Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood
  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 through wide Heaven!
  How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,
  Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,
  Not exultation, for I hate no more,
  As then ere misery made me wise.
  
  The curse
  Once breathed on thee I would recall.
  
  Ye Mountains,
  Whose many-voicèd 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
  Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,
  Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!
  And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisèd wings
  Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,
  As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
  The orbèd 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.

• Queen Mab: Part I. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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,
  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 Ianthe wake again,
  And give that faithful bosom joy
  Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch
  Light, life and rapture, from her smile?
  
  Yes! she will wake again,
  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.
  
  Hark! whence that rushing sound?
  
  'T is like the wondrous strain
  That round a lonely ruin swells,
  Which, wandering on the echoing shore,
  The enthusiast hears at evening;
  'T is softer than the west wind's sigh;
  'T is 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 tints
  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
  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.
  
  'T was not an earthly pageant.
  
  Those, who had looked upon the sight
  Passing all human glory,
  Saw not the yellow moon,
  Saw not the mortal scene,
  Heard not the night-wind's rush,
  Heard not an earthly sound,
  Saw but the fairy pageant,
  Heard but the heavenly strains
  That filled the lonely dwelling.
  
  The Fairy's frame was slight--yon fibrous cloud,
  That catches but the palest tinge of even,
  And which the straining eye can hardly seize
  When melting into eastern twilight's 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,
  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!
  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 Ianthe! 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 chains,
  The icy chains of custom, and have shone
  The day-stars of their age;--Soul of
  Ianthe!
  Awake! arise!'
  Sudden arose
  Ianthe'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 the soul.
  
  The self-same lineaments, the same
  Marks of identity were there;
  Yet, oh, how different! One aspires to Heaven,
  Pants for its sempiternal heritage,
  And, ever changing, ever rising still,
  Wantons in endless being:
  The other, for a time the unwilling sport
  Of circumstance and passion, struggles on;
  Fleets through its sad duration rapidly;
  Then like an useless and worn-out machine,
  Rots, perishes, and passes.
  
  FAIRY
  'Spirit! who hast dived so deep;
  Spirit! who hast soared so high;
  Thou the fearless, thou the mild,
  Accept the boon thy worth hath earned,
  Ascend the car with me!'
  SPIRIT
  'Do I dream?
  
  Is this new feeling
  But a visioned ghost of slumber?
  
  If indeed I am a soul,
  A free, a disembodied soul,
  Speak again to me.
  
  '
  FAIRY
  '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 ecstatic and exulting throb
  Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up
  The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,
  Are unforeseen, unregistered by me;
  And it is yet permitted me to 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 Ianthe'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;
  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.
  
  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 flaming 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 gray 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 color,
  And semicircled with a belt
  Flashing incessant meteors.
  
  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 hornèd like the crescent moon;
  Some shed a mild and silver beam
  Like Hesperus o'er the western sea;
  Some dashed athwart with trains of flame,
  Like worlds to death and ruin driven;
  Some shone like suns, and as the chariot passed,
  Eclipsed all other light.
  
  Spirit of Nature! here—
  In this interminable wilderness
  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!

• Queen Mab: Part II. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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,
  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 ethereal palace could afford.
  
  Yet likest evening's vault, that faëry Hall!
  As Heaven, low resting on the wave, it spread
  Its floors of flashing light,
  Its vast and azure dome,
  Its fertile golden islands
  Floating on a silver sea;
  Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted
  Through clouds of 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,
  With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;
  The light and crimson mists,
  Floating to strains of thrilling melody
  Through that unearthly dwelling,
  Yielded to every movement of the will;
  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,
  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 aërial 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,
  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 risen.
  
  Nile shall pursue his changeless way;
  Those Pyramids shall fall.
  
  Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell
  The spot whereon they stood;
  Their very site shall be forgotten,
  As is their builder's name!
  'Behold yon sterile spot,
  Where now the wandering Arab's tent
  Flaps in the desert blast!
  There once old Salem's haughty fane
  Reared high to heaven its thousand golden domes,
  And in the blushing face of day
  Exposed its shameful glory.
  
  Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed
  The building of that fane; and many a father,
  Worn out with toil and slavery, implored
  The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth
  And spare his children the detested task
  Of piling stone on stone and poisoning
  The choicest days of life
  To soothe a dotard's vanity.
  
  There an inhuman and uncultured race
  Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God;
  They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb
  The unborn child—old age and infancy
  Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms
  Left not a soul to breathe.
  
  Oh! they were fiends!
  But what was he who taught them that the God
  Of Nature and benevolence had given
  A special sanction to the trade of blood?
  
  His name and theirs are fading, and the tales
  Of this barbarian nation, which imposture
  Recites till terror credits, are pursuing
  Itself into forgetfulness.
  
  'Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,
  There is a moral desert now.
  
  The mean and miserable huts,
  The yet more wretched palaces,
  Contrasted with those ancient fanes
  Now crumbling to oblivion,—
  The long and lonely colonnades
  Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,—
  Seem like a well-known tune,
  Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear,
  Remembered now in sadness.
  
  But, oh! how much more changed,
  How gloomier is the contrast
  Of human nature there!
  Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave,
  A coward and a fool, spreads death around—
  Then, shuddering, meets his own.
  
  Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,
  A cowled and hypocritical monk
  Prays, curses and deceives.
  
  'Spirit! ten thousand years
  Have scarcely passed away,
  Since in the waste, where now the savage drinks
  His enemy's blood, and, aping Europe's sons,
  Wakes the unholy song of war,
  Arose a stately city,
  Metropolis of the western continent.
  
  There, now, the mossy column-stone,
  Indented by time's unrelaxing grasp,
  Which once appeared to brave
  All, save its country's ruin,—
  There the wide forest scene,
  Rude in the uncultivated loveliness
  Of gardens long run wild,—
  Seems, to the unwilling sojourner whose steps
  Chance in that desert has delayed,
  Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.
  
  Yet once it was the busiest haunt,
  Whither, as to a common centre, flocked
  Strangers, and ships, and merchandise;
  Once peace and freedom blest
  The cultivated plain;
  But wealth, that curse of man,
  Blighted the bud of its prosperity;
  Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,
  Fled, to return not, until man shall know
  That they alone can give the bliss
  Worthy a soul that claims
  Its kindred with eternity.
  
  'There 's not one atom of yon earth
  But once was living man;
  Nor the minutest drop of rain,
  That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,
  But flowed in human veins;
  And from the burning plains
  Where Libyan monsters yell,
  From the most gloomy glens
  Of Greenland's sunless clime,
  To where the golden fields
  Of fertile England spread
  Their harvest to the day,
  Thou canst not find one spot
  Whereon no city stood.
  
  'How strange is human pride!
  I tell thee that those living things,
  To whom the fragile blade of grass
  That springeth in the morn
  And perisheth ere noon,
  Is an unbounded world;
  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 ecstasy of admiration, felt
  All knowledge of the past revived; the events
  Of old and wondrous times,
  Which dim tradition interruptedly
  Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded
  In just perspective to the view;
  Yet dim from their infinitude.
  
  The Spirit seemed to stand
  High on an isolated pinnacle;
  The flood of ages combating below,
  The depth of the unbounded universe
  Above, and all around
  Nature's unchanging harmony.

• Queen Mab: Part III. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  'Fairy!' the Spirit said,
  And on the Queen of Spells
  Fixed her ethereal eyes,
  'I thank thee.
  
  Thou hast given
  A boon which I will not resign, and taught
  A lesson not to be unlearned.
  
  I know
  The past, and thence I will essay to glean
  A warning for the future, so that man
  May profit by his errors and derive
  Experience from his folly;
  For, when the power of imparting joy
  Is equal to the will, the human soul
  Requires no other heaven.
  
  '
  MAB
  'Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!
  Much yet remains unscanned.
  
  Thou knowest how great is man,
  Thou knowest his imbecility;
  Yet learn thou what he is;
  Yet learn the lofty destiny
  Which restless Time prepares
  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 sentinels in stern and silent ranks
  Encompass it around; the dweller there
  Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not
  The curses of the fatherless, the groans
  Of those who have no friend?
  
  He passes on—
  The King, the wearer of a gilded chain
  That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
  Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave
  Even to the basest appetites—that man
  Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles
  At the deep curses which the destitute
  Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
  Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan
  But for those morsels which his wantonness
  Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save
  All that they love from famine; when he hears
  The tale of horror, to some ready-made face
  Of hypocritical assent he turns,
  Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,
  Flushes his bloated cheek.
  
  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 fagot meets again
  Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,
  Tastes not a sweeter meal.
  
  Behold him now
  Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his 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 forever! Awful death,
  I wish, yet fear to clasp thee!—Not one moment
  Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessèd 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!
  Oh, visit me but once,—but pitying shed
  One drop of balm upon my withered soul!'
  THE FAIRY
  'Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,
  And Peace defileth not her snowy robes
  In such a shed as thine.
  
  Hark! yet he mutters;
  His slumbers are but varied agonies;
  They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.
  
  There needeth not the hell that bigots frame
  To punish those who err; earth in itself
  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.
  
  Stranger yet,
  To those who know not Nature nor deduce
  The future from the present, it may seem,
  That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes
  Of this unnatural being, not one wretch,
  Whose children famish and whose nuptial bed
  Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm
  To dash him from his throne!
  Those gilded flies
  That, basking in the sunshine of a court,
  Fatten on its corruption! what are they?
  
  —
  The drones of the community; they feed
  On the mechanic's labor; the starved hind
  For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield
  Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,
  Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes
  A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,
  Drags out in labor a protracted death
  To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil
  That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.
  
  Whence, thinkest thou, kings and parasites arose?
  
  Whence that unnatural line of drones who heap
  Toil and unvanquishable penury
  On those who build their palaces and bring
  Their daily bread?
  
  —From vice, black loathsome vice;
  From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;
  From all that genders misery, and makes
  Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,
  Revenge, and murder.
  
  —And when reason's voice,
  Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked
  The nations; and mankind perceive that vice
  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
  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.
  
  Ay! 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 appall 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 minds and tremble, the remembrance
  With which the happy spirit contemplates
  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, forever play
  A losing game into each other's hands,
  Whose stakes are vice and misery.
  
  The man
  Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
  
  Power, like a desolating pestilence,
  Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
  Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
  Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
  A mechanized automaton.
  
  When Nero
  High over flaming Rome with savage joy
  Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear
  The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld
  The frightful desolation spread, and felt
  A new-created sense within his soul
  Thrill to the sight and vibrate to the sound,—
  Thinkest thou his grandeur had not overcome
  The force of human kindness?
  
  And when Rome
  With one stern blow hurled not the tyrant down,
  Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood,
  Had not submissive abjectness destroyed
  Nature's suggestions?
  
  Look on yonder earth:
  The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun
  Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,
  Arise in due succession; all things speak
  Peace, harmony and love.
  
  The universe,
  In Nature's silent eloquence, declares
  That all fulfil the works of love and joy,—
  All but the outcast, Man.
  
  He fabricates
  The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth
  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
  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 through Heaven's deep silence lie;
  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;
  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!

• Queen Mab: Part IV. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  '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
  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 pitiless fiend,
  With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;
  The torn deep yawns,—the vessel finds a grave
  Beneath its jagged gulf.
  
  Ah! whence yon glare
  That fires the arch of heaven?
  
  that dark red smoke
  Blotting the silver moon?
  
  The stars are quenched
  In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow
  Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round.
  
  Hark to that roar whose swift and 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
  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 sunset 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 gray 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 scattered 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
  Across thy stainless features; yet fear not;
  This is no unconnected misery,
  Nor stands uncaused and irretrievable.
  
  Man's evil nature, that apology
  Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up
  For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood
  Which desolates the discord-wasted land.
  
  From kings and priests and statesmen war arose,
  Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe,
  Whose grandeur his debasement.
  
  Let the axe
  Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;
  And where its venomed exhalations spread
  Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay
  Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones
  Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,
  A garden shall arise, in loveliness
  Surpassing fabled Eden.
  
  Hath Nature's soul,—
  That formed this world so beautiful, that spread
  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 gulf to glare
  Rent wide beneath his footsteps?
  
  Nature!—no!
  Kings, priests and statesmen 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 priest-led 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 pitiless power! On its wretched frame
  Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe
  Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung
  By morals, law and custom, the pure winds
  Of heaven, that renovate the insect tribes,
  May breathe not.
  
  The untainting light of day
  May visit not its longings.
  
  It is bound
  Ere it 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 comprehends
  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, formed for deeds
  Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing
  To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn
  The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste
  The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield;
  Or he is formed for abjectness and woe,
  To grovel on the dunghill of his fears,
  To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame
  Of natural love in sensualism, to know
  That hour as blest when on his worthless days
  The frozen hand of death shall set its seal,
  Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease.
  
  The one is man that shall hereafter be;
  The other, man as vice has made him now.
  
  'War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
  The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade,
  And to those royal murderers whose mean thrones
  Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,
  The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.
  
  Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround
  Their palaces, participate the crimes
  That force defends and from a nation's rage
  Secures the crown, which all the curses reach
  That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.
  
  These are the hired bravos who defend
  The tyrant's throne—the bullies of his fear;
  These are the sinks and channels of worst vice,
  The refuse of society, the dregs
  Of all that is most vile; their cold hearts blend
  Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,
  All that is mean and villainous with rage
  Which hopelessness of good and self-contempt
  Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth,
  Honor and power, then are sent abroad
  To do their work.
  
  The pestilence that stalks
  In gloomy triumph through some eastern land
  Is less destroying.
  
  They cajole with gold
  And promises of fame the thoughtless youth
  Already crushed with servitude; he knows
  His wretchedness too late, and cherishes
  Repentance for his ruin, when his doom
  Is sealed in gold and blood!
  Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare
  The feet of justice in the toils of law,
  Stand ready to oppress the weaker still,
  And right or wrong will vindicate for gold,
  Sneering at public virtue, which beneath
  Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled where
  Honor sits smiling at the sale of truth.
  
  'Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,
  Without a hope, a passion or a love,
  Who through a life of luxury and lies
  Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,
  Support the system whence their honors flow.
  
  They have three words—well tyrants know their use,
  Well pay them for the loan with usury
  Torn from a bleeding world!—God, Hell and Heaven:
  A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,
  Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage
  Of tameless tigers hungering for blood;
  Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,
  Where poisonous and undying worms prolong
  Eternal misery to those hapless slaves
  Whose life has been a penance for its crimes;
  And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie
  Their human nature, quake, believe and cringe
  Before the mockeries of earthly power.
  
  'These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,
  Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,
  Omnipotent in wickedness; the while
  Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does
  His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend
  Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.
  
  They rise, they fall; one generation comes
  Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe.
  
  It fades, another blossoms; yet behold!
  Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom,
  Withering and cankering deep its passive prime.
  
  He has invented lying words and modes,
  Empty and vain as his own coreless heart;
  Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound,
  To lure the heedless victim to the toils
  Spread round the valley of its paradise.
  
  'Look to thyself, priest, conqueror or prince!
  Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts
  Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,
  With whom thy master was; or thou delight'st
  In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain,
  All misery weighing nothing in the scale
  Against thy short-lived fame; or thou dost load
  With cowardice and crime the groaning land,
  A pomp-fed king.
  
  Look to thy wretched self!
  Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er
  Crawled on the loathing earth?
  
  Are not thy days
  Days of unsatisfying listlessness?
  
  Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er,
  "When will the morning come?
  
  " Is not thy youth
  A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?
  
  Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?
  
  Are not thy views of unregretted death
  Drear, comfortless and horrible?
  
  Thy mind,
  Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame,
  Incapable of judgment, hope or love?
  
  And dost thou wish the errors to survive,
  That bar thee from all sympathies of good,
  After the miserable interest
  Thou hold'st in their protraction?
  
  When the grave
  Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,
  Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth
  To twine its roots around thy coffined clay,
  Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,
  That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die?

• Queen Mab: Part IX. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  '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 forever there!
  Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place
  Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,
  Languor, 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,
  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-wingèd 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, done by her own venomous sting to death,
  She left the moral world without a law,
  No longer fettering passion's fearless wing,
  Nor searing reason with the brand of God.
  
  Then steadily the happy ferment worked;
  Reason was free; and wild though passion went
  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.
  
  '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
  Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers.
  
  How vigorous then the athletic form of age!
  How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!
  Where neither avarice, cunning, pride or care
  Had stamped the seal of gray deformity
  On all the mingling lineaments of time.
  
  How lovely the intrepid front of youth,
  Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;
  Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,
  And elevated will, that journeyed on
  Through life's phantasmal scene in 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,
  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.
  
  It were a sight of awfulness to see
  The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
  So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal,
  Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall!
  A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
  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.
  
  '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 steadfast darkness, and the past
  Fades from our charmèd sight.
  
  My task is done;
  Thy lore is learned.
  
  Earth's wonders are thine own
  With all the fear and all the hope they bring.
  
  My spells are passed; the present now 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, and urge
  The restless wheels of being on their way,
  Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,
  Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal;
  For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense
  Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape
  New modes of passion to its frame may lend;
  Life is its state of action, and the store
  Of all events is aggregated there
  That variegate the eternal universe;
  Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,
  That leads to azure isles and beaming skies
  And happy regions of eternal hope.
  
  Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on.
  
  Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,
  Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,
  Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth
  To feed with kindliest dews its favorite flower,
  That blooms in mossy bank and darksome glens,
  Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.
  
  'Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand,
  So welcome when the tyrant is awake,
  So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns;
  'T is but the voyage of a darksome hour,
  The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.
  
  Death is no foe to virtue; earth has seen
  Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,
  Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there,
  And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.
  
  Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene
  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,
  Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,
  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,
  Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done,
  Unfurled their pinions to the winds of heaven.
  
  The Body and the Soul united then.
  
  A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame;
  Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;
  Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs 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.

• Queen Mab: Part V. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  '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, to spring and die.
  
  Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights
  The fairest feelings of the opening heart,
  Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil
  Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,
  And judgment cease to wage unnatural war
  With passion's unsubduable array.
  
  Twin-sister of Religion, Selfishness!
  Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all
  The wanton horrors of her bloody play;
  Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,
  Shunning the light, and owning not 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,
  Forever 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,
  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 scorn
  All earthly things but virtue.
  
  'Since tyrants by the sale of human life
  Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame
  To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,
  Success has sanctioned to a credulous world
  The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.
  
  His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes
  The despot numbers; from his cabinet
  These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,
  Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,
  Beneath a vulgar master, to perform
  A task of cold and brutal drudgery;—
  Hardened to hope, insensible to fear,
  Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,
  Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,
  That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!
  'The harmony and happiness of man
  Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts
  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
  To mingle with sensation, it destroys,—
  Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self,
  The grovelling hope of interest and gold,
  Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed
  Even by hypocrisy.
  
  And statesmen boast
  Of wealth! The wordy eloquence that lives
  After the ruin of their hearts, can gild
  The bitter poison of a nation's woe;
  Can turn the worship of the servile mob
  To their corrupt and glaring idol, fame,
  From virtue, trampled by its iron tread,—
  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 fireside,
  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,—when his son
  Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion
  Drives his wife raving mad.
  
  But the poor man
  Whose life is misery, and fear and care;
  Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil;
  Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream;
  Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze
  Forever meets, and the proud rich man's eye
  Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene
  Of thousands like himself;—he little heeds
  The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate
  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 passed by,
  Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,
  In unremitting drudgery and care!
  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
  Were only specks of tinsel fixed in heaven
  To light the midnights of his native town!
  'Yet every heart contains perfection's germ.
  
  The wisest of the sages of the earth,
  That ever from the stores of reason drew
  Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone,
  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 eye-beam) 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 about the earth
  That all within it but the virtuous man
  Is venal; gold or fame will surely reach
  The price prefixed by Selfishness to all
  But him of resolute and unchanging will;
  Whom nor the plaudits of a servile crowd,
  Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury,
  Can bribe to yield his elevated soul
  To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield
  With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.
  
  'All things are sold: the very light of heaven
  Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love,
  The smallest and most despicable things
  That lurk in the abysses of the deep,
  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 arms,
  And youth's corrupted impulses prepare
  A life of horror from the blighting bane
  Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs
  From unenjoying sensualism, has filled
  All human life with hydra-headed woes.
  
  'Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs
  Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest
  Sets no great value on his hireling faith;
  A little passing pomp, some servile souls,
  Whom cowardice itself might safely chain
  Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe
  To deck the triumph of their languid zeal,
  Can make him minister to tyranny.
  
  More daring crime requires a loftier meed.
  
  Without a shudder the slave-soldier lends
  His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart,
  When the dread eloquence of dying men,
  Low mingling on the lonely field of fame,
  Assails that nature whose applause he sells
  For the gross blessings of the patriot mob,
  For the vile gratitude of heartless kings,
  And for a cold world's good word,—viler still!
  'There is a nobler glory which survives
  Until our being fades, and, solacing
  All human care, accompanies its change;
  Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom,
  And in the precincts of the palace guides
  Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;
  Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness,
  Even when from power's avenging hand he takes
  Its sweetest, last and noblest title—death;
  —The consciousness of good, which neither gold,
  Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss,
  Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,
  Unalterable will, quenchless desire
  Of universal happiness, the heart
  That beats with it in unison, the brain
  Whose ever-wakeful wisdom toils to change
  Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal.
  
  'This commerce of sincerest virtue needs
  No meditative signs of selfishness,
  No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,
  No balancings of prudence, cold and long;
  In just and equal measure all is weighed,
  One scale contains the sum of human weal,
  And one, the good man's heart.
  
  How vainly seek
  The selfish for that happiness denied
  To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they,
  Who hope for peace amid the storms of care,
  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
  Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul,
  Pining regrets, and vain repentances,
  Disease, disgust and lassitude pervade
  Their valueless and miserable lives.
  
  'But hoary-headed selfishness has felt
  Its death-blow and is tottering to the grave;
  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.
  
  '

• Queen Mab: Part Vi (Excerpts) Read Poem Log in to favourite

  "Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
  Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
  A Spirit of activity and life,
  That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
  That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
  Extinguish'd 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 unpractis'd sense:
  But, active, steadfast and eternal, still
  Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
  Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
  Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
  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 shipwreck'd mariner,
  Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,
  All seems unlink'd contingency and chance,
  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 sunbeam's fleeting glow
  Fulfils its destin'd, though invisible work,
  The universal Spirit guides; nor less,
  When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,
  Has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield,
  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
  Unrecogniz'd 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.
  
  "Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
  Necessity! thou mother of the world!
  Unlike the God of human error, thou
  Requir'st no prayers or praises; the caprice
  Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
  Than do the changeful passions of his breast
  To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,
  Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
  And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride
  His being in the sight of happiness
  That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,
  Beneath whose shade all life is wither'd up,
  And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
  A temple where the vows of happy love
  Are register'd, are equal in thy sight:
  No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
  And favouritism, and worst desire of fame
  Thou know'st not: all that the wide world contains
  Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
  Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,
  Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,
  Because thou hast not human sense,
  Because thou art not human mind.
  
  "Yes! when the sweeping storm of time
  Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruin'd fanes
  And broken altars of the almighty Fiend
  Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood
  Through centuries clotted there has floated down
  The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live
  Unchangeable! A shrine is rais'd to thee,
  Which, nor the tempest-breath of time,
  Nor the interminable flood
  Over earth's slight pageant rolling,
  Availeth to destroy--
  The sensitive extension of the world.
  
  That wondrous and eternal fane,
  Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
  To do the will of strong necessity,
  And life, in multitudinous shapes,
  Still pressing forward where no term can be,
  Like hungry and unresting flame
  Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.
  
  "

• Queen Mab: Part VI. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  All touch, all eye, all ear,
  The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech.
  
  O'er the thin texture of its frame
  The varying periods painted changing glows,
  As on a summer even,
  When soul-enfolding music floats around,
  The stainless mirror of the lake
  Re-images the eastern gloom,
  Mingling convulsively its purple hues
  With sunset's burnished gold.
  
  Then thus the Spirit spoke:
  'It is a wild and miserable world!
  Thorny, and full of care,
  Which every fiend can make his prey at will!
  O Fairy! in the lapse of years,
  Is there no hope in store?
  
  Will yon vast suns roll on
  Interminably, still illuming
  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;
  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! and his affected charity,
  To suit the pressure of the changing times,
  What palpable deceit!—but for thy aid,
  Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,
  Who peoplest earth with demons, hell with men,
  And heaven with slaves!
  'Thou taintest all thou lookest upon!—the stars,
  Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,
  Were gods to the distempered playfulness
  Of thy untutored infancy; the trees,
  The grass, the clouds, the mountains and the sea,
  All living things that walk, swim, creep or fly,
  Were gods; the sun had homage, and the moon
  Her worshipper.
  
  Then thou becamest, a boy,
  More daring in thy frenzies; every shape,
  Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,
  Which from sensation's relics fancy culls;
  The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,
  The genii of the elements, the powers
  That give a shape to Nature's varied works,
  Had life and place in the corrupt belief
  Of thy blind heart; yet still thy youthful hands
  Were pure of human blood.
  
  Then manhood gave
  Its strength and ardor 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.
  
  Awhile thou stood'st
  Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up
  The elements of all that thou didst know;
  The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign,
  The budding of the heaven-breathing trees,
  The eternal orbs that beautify the night,
  The sunrise, and the setting of the moon,
  Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease,
  And all their causes, to an abstract point
  Converging thou didst bend, and called it God!
  The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,
  The merciful, and the avenging God!
  Who, prototype of human misrule, sits
  High in heaven's realm, upon a golden throne,
  Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work,
  Hell, gapes forever for the unhappy slaves
  Of fate, whom he created in his sport
  To triumph in their torments when they fell!
  Earth heard the name; earth trembled as the smoke
  Of his revenge ascended up to heaven,
  Blotting the constellations; and the cries
  Of millions butchered in sweet confidence
  And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds
  Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths
  Sworn in his dreadful name, rung through the land;
  Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,
  And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek
  Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel
  Felt cold in her torn entrails!
  'Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime;
  But age crept on; one God would not suffice
  For senile puerility; thou framedst
  A tale to suit thy dotage and to glut
  Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend
  Thy wickedness had pictured might afford
  A plea for sating the unnatural thirst
  For murder, rapine, violence and crime,
  That still consumed thy being, even when
  Thou heard'st the step of fate; that flames might light
  Thy funeral scene; and the shrill horrent shrieks
  Of parents dying on the pile that burned
  To light their children to thy paths, the roar
  Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries
  Of thine apostles loud commingling there,
  Might sate thine hungry ear
  Even on the bed of death!
  'But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;
  Thou art descending to the darksome grave,
  Unhonored 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;
  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, steadfast and eternal, still
  Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
  Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
  Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
  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—
  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 sunbeam's fleeting glow
  Fulfils its destined though invisible work,
  The universal Spirit guides; nor less
  When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,
  Has led two hosts of dupes to battle-field,
  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.
  
  'Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
  Necessity! thou mother of the world!
  Unlike the God of human error, thou
  Requirest no prayers or praises; the caprice
  Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
  Than do the changeful passions of his breast
  To thy unvarying harmony; the slave,
  Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
  And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride
  His being in the sight of happiness
  That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,
  Beneath whose shade all life is withered up,
  And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
  A temple where the vows of happy love
  Are registered, are equal in thy sight;
  No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
  And favoritism, and worst desire of fame
  Thou knowest not; all that the wide world contains
  Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
  Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,
  Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,
  Because thou hast not human sense,
  Because thou art not human mind.
  
  'Yes! when the sweeping storm of time
  Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes
  And broken altars of the almighty fiend,
  Whose name usurps thy honors, and the blood
  Through centuries clotted there has floated down
  The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live
  Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee,
  Which nor the tempest breath of time,
  Nor the interminable flood
  Over earth's slight pageant rolling,
  Availeth to destroy,—
  The sensitive extension of the world;
  That wondrous and eternal fane,
  Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
  To do the will of strong necessity,
  And life, in multitudinous shapes,
  Still pressing forward where no term can be,
  Like hungry and unresting flame
  Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.
  
  '
  198.
  
  Necessity! thou mother of the world! Shelley annotates this line (in part)
  as follows: "He who asserts the doctrine of Necessity means that, contemplating the events which compose the moral and material universe, he beholds only an immense and uninterrupted chain of causes and effects, no one of which could occupy any other place than it does occupy, or act in any other place than it does act.
  
  The idea of necessity is obtained by our experience of the connection between objects, the uniformity of the operations of nature, the constant conjunction of similar events, and the consequent inference of one from the other.
  
  Mankind are therefore agreed in the admission of necessity, if they admit that these two circumstances take place in voluntary action.
  
  Motive is to voluntary action in the human mind what cause is to effect in the material universe.
  
  The word liberty, as applied to mind, is analogous to the word chance as applied to matter: they spring from an ignorance of the certainty of the conjunction of antecedents and consequents.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Religion is the perception of the relation in which we stand to the principle of the universe.
  
  But if the principle of the universe be not an organic being, the model and prototype of man, the relation between it and human beings is absolutely none.
  
  Without some insight into its will respecting our actions religion is nugatory and vain.
  
  But will is only a mode of animal mind
  ; moral qualities are also such as only a human being can possess
  ; to attribute them to the principle of the universe is to annex to it properties incompatible with any possible definition of its nature.
  
  It is probable
  that the word God was originally only an expression denoting the unknown
  cause of the known events which men perceived in the universe.
  
  By the vulgar
  mistake of a metaphor for a real being, of a word for a thing, it became a man, endowed with human qualities and governing the universe as an earthly
  monarch governs his kingdom.
  
  Their addresses to this imaginary being, indeed,
  are much in the same style as those of subjects to a king.
  
  They acknowledge
  his benevolence, deprecate his anger and supplicate his favour.
  
  "

• Queen Mab: Part VII. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  SPIRIT
  'I was an infant when my mother went
  To see an atheist burned.
  
  She took me there.
  
  The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;
  The multitude was gazing silently;
  And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,
  Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,
  Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth;
  The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;
  His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;
  His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob
  Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.
  
  "Weep not, child!" cried my mother, "for that man
  Has said, There is no God.
  
  "'
  FAIRY
  'There is no God!
  Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed.
  
  Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,
  His ceaseless generations, tell their tale;
  Let every part depending on the chain
  That links it to the whole, point to the hand
  That grasps its term! Let every seed that falls
  In silent eloquence unfold its store
  Of argument; infinity within,
  Infinity without, belie creation;
  The exterminable spirit it contains
  Is Nature's only God; but human pride
  Is skilful to invent most serious names
  To hide its ignorance.
  
  'The name of God
  Has fenced about all crime with holiness,
  Himself the creature of his worshippers,
  Whose names and attributes and passions change,
  Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord,
  Even with the human dupes who build his shrines,
  Still serving o'er the war-polluted world
  For desolation's watchword; whether hosts
  Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on
  Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise
  A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;
  Or countless partners of his power divide
  His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke
  Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,
  Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,
  Horribly massacred, ascend to heaven
  In honor of his name; or, last and worst,
  Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,
  And priests dare babble of a God of peace,
  Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,
  Murdering the while, uprooting every germ
  Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,
  Making the earth a slaughter-house!
  'O Spirit! through the sense
  By which thy inner nature was apprised
  Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,
  And varied reminiscences have waked
  Tablets that never fade;
  All things have been imprinted there,
  The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,
  Even the unshapeliest lineaments
  Of wild and fleeting visions
  Have left a record there
  To testify of earth.
  
  'These are my empire, for to me is given
  The wonders of the human world to keep,
  And fancy's thin creations to endow
  With manner, being and reality;
  Therefore a wondrous phantom from the dreams
  Of human error's dense and purblind faith
  I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.
  
  Ahasuerus, rise!'
  A strange and woe-worn wight
  Arose beside the battlement,
  And stood unmoving there.
  
  His inessential figure cast no shade
  Upon the golden floor;
  His port and mien bore mark of many years,
  And chronicles of untold ancientness
  Were legible within his beamless eye;
  Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;
  Freshness and vigor knit his manly frame;
  The wisdom of old age was mingled there
  With youth's primeval dauntlessness;
  And inexpressible woe,
  Chastened by fearless resignation, gave
  An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.
  
  SPIRIT
  'Is there a God?
  
  '
  AHASUERUS
  'Is there a God!—ay, an almighty God,
  And vengeful as almighty! Once his voice
  Was heard on earth; earth shuddered at the sound;
  The fiery-visaged firmament expressed
  Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned
  To swallow all the dauntless and the good
  That dared to hurl defiance at his throne,
  Girt as it was with power.
  
  None but slaves
  Survived,—cold-blooded slaves, who did the work
  Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls
  No honest indignation ever urged
  To elevated daring, to one deed
  Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.
  
  These slaves built temples for the omnipotent fiend,
  Gorgeous and vast; the costly altars smoked
  With human blood, and hideous pæans rung
  Through all the long-drawn aisles.
  
  A murderer heard
  His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts
  Had raised him to his eminence in power,
  Accomplice of omnipotence in crime
  And confidant of the all-knowing one.
  
  These were Jehovah's words.
  
  '"From an eternity of idleness
  I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth
  From nothing; rested, and created man;
  I placed him in a paradise, and there
  Planted the tree of evil, so that he
  Might eat and perish, and my soul procure
  Wherewith to sate its malice and to turn,
  Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,
  All misery to my fame.
  
  The race of men,
  Chosen to my honor, with impunity
  May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.
  
  Here I command thee hence to lead them on,
  Until with hardened feet their conquering troops
  Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood,
  And make my name be dreaded through the land.
  
  Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe
  Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,
  With every soul on this ungrateful earth,
  Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,—even all
  Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge
  (Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.
  
  "
  'The murderer's brow
  Quivered with horror.
  
  '"God omnipotent,
  Is there no mercy?
  
  must our punishment
  Be endless?
  
  will long ages roll away,
  And see no term?
  
  Oh! wherefore hast thou made
  In mockery and wrath this evil earth?
  
  Mercy becomes the powerful—be but just!
  O God! repent and save!"
  '"One way remains:
  I will beget a son and he shall bear
  The sins of all the world; he shall arise
  In an unnoticed corner of the earth,
  And there shall die upon a cross, and purge
  The universal crime; so that the few
  On whom my grace descends, those who are marked
  As vessels to the honor of their God,
  May credit this strange sacrifice and save
  Their souls alive.
  
  Millions shall live and die,
  Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,
  But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave,
  Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,
  Such as the nurses frighten babes withal;
  These in a gulf of anguish and of flame
  Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,
  Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,
  Even on their beds of torment where they howl,
  My honor and the justice of their doom.
  
  What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts
  Of purity, with radiant genius bright
  Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?
  
  Many are called, but few will I elect.
  
  Do thou my bidding, Moses!"
  'Even the murderer's cheek
  Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips
  Scarce faintly uttered—"O almighty one,
  I tremble and obey!"
  'O Spirit! centuries have set their seal
  On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,
  Since the Incarnate came; humbly he came,
  Veiling his horrible Godhead in the shape
  Of man, scorned by the world, his name unheard
  Save by the rabble of his native town,
  Even as a parish demagogue.
  
  He led
  The crowd; he taught them justice, truth and peace,
  In semblance; but he lit within their souls
  The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword
  He brought on earth to satiate with the blood
  Of truth and freedom his malignant soul
  At length his mortal frame was led to death.
  
  I stood beside him; on the torturing cross
  No pain assailed his unterrestrial sense;
  And yet he groaned.
  
  Indignantly I summed
  The massacres and miseries which his name
  Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried,
  "Go! go!" in mockery.
  
  A smile of godlike malice reillumined
  His fading lineaments.
  
  "I go," he cried,
  "But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth
  Eternally.
  
  " The dampness of the grave
  Bathed my imperishable front.
  
  I fell,
  And long lay tranced upon the charmèd soil.
  
  When I awoke hell burned within my brain
  Which staggered on its seat; for all around
  The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,
  Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them,
  And in their various attitudes of death
  My murdered children's mute and eyeless skulls
  Glared ghastily upon me.
  
  But my soul,
  From sight and sense of the polluting woe
  Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer
  Hell's freedom to the servitude of heaven.
  
  Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began
  My lonely and unending pilgrimage,
  Resolved to wage unweariable war
  With my almighty tyrant and to hurl
  Defiance at his impotence to harm
  Beyond the curse I bore.
  
  The very hand,
  That barred my passage to the peaceful grave,
  Has crushed the earth to misery, and given
  Its empire to the chosen of his slaves.
  
  These I have seen, even from the earliest dawn
  Of weak, unstable and precarious power,
  Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;
  So, when they turned but from the massacre
  Of unoffending infidels to quench
  Their thirst for ruin in the very blood
  That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal
  Froze every human feeling as the wife
  Sheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel,
  Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;
  And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood
  Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,
  Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught, waged,
  Drunk from the wine-press of the Almighty's wrath;
  Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,
  Pointed to victory! When the fray was done,
  No remnant of the exterminated faith
  Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,
  With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,
  That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.
  
  'Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe
  The sword of his revenge, when grace descended,
  Confirming all unnatural impulses,
  To sanctify their desolating deeds;
  And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross
  O'er the unhappy earth; then shone the sun
  On showers of gore from the upflashing steel
  Of safe assassination, and all crime
  Made stingless by the spirits of the Lord,
  And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.
  
  'Spirit! no year of my eventful being
  Has passed unstained by crime and misery,
  Which flows from God's own faith.
  
  I 've marked his slaves
  With tongues, whose lies are venomous, beguile
  The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red
  With murder, feign to stretch the other out
  For brotherhood and peace; and that they now
  Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds
  Are marked with all the narrowness and crime
  That freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise,
  Reason may claim our gratitude, who now,
  Establishing the imperishable throne
  Of truth and stubborn virtue, maketh vain
  The unprevailing malice of my foe,
  Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,
  Adds impotent eternities to pain,
  Whilst keenest disappointment racks his breast
  To see the smiles of peace around them play,
  To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.
  
  'Thus have I stood,—through a wild waste of years
  Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,
  Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,
  Mocking my powerless tyrant's horrible curse
  With stubborn and unalterable will,
  Even as a giant oak, which heaven's fierce flame
  Had scathèd in the wilderness, to stand
  A monument of fadeless ruin there;
  Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves
  The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,
  As in the sunlight's calm it spreads
  Its worn and withered arms on high
  To meet the quiet of a summer's noon.
  
  '
  The Fairy waved her wand;
  Ahasuerus fled
  Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,
  That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove,
  Flee from the morning beam;—
  The matter of which dreams are made
  Not more endowed with actual life
  Than this phantasmal portraiture
  Of wandering human thought.

• Queen Mab: Part VIII. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  THE FAIRY
  'The present and the past thou hast beheld.
  
  It was a desolate sight.
  
  Now, Spirit, learn,
  The secrets of the future--Time!
  Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,
  Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,
  And from the cradles of eternity,
  Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep
  By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,
  Tear thou that gloomy shroud--Spirit, behold
  Thy glorious destiny!'
  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 wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea
  And dies on the creation of its breath,
  And sinks and rises, falls and swells by fits,
  Was the pure stream of feeling
  That sprung from these sweet notes,
  And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies
  With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed.
  
  Joy to the Spirit came--
  Such joy as when a lover sees
  The chosen of his soul in happiness
  And witnesses her peace
  Whose woe to him were bitterer than death;
  Sees her unfaded cheek
  Glow mantling in first luxury of health,
  Thrills with her lovely eyes,
  Which like two stars amid the heaving main
  Sparkle through liquid bliss.
  
  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,
  Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,
  A light-house o'er the wild of dreary waves.
  
  'The habitable earth 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;
  And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles
  Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls
  Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,
  Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet
  To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves
  And melodize with man's blest nature there.
  
  'Those deserts of immeasurable sand,
  Whose age-collected fervors scarce allowed
  A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,
  Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love
  Broke on the sultry silentness alone,
  Now teem with countless rills and shady woods,
  Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;
  And where the startled wilderness beheld
  A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,
  A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs
  The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs,
  Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang--
  Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,
  Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles
  To see a babe before his mother's door,
  Sharing his morning's meal
  With the green and golden basilisk
  That comes to lick his feet.
  
  'Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail
  Has seen above the illimitable plain
  Morning on night and night on morning rise,
  Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread
  Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,
  Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves
  So long have mingled with the gusty wind
  In melancholy loneliness, and swept
  The desert of those ocean solitudes
  But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,
  The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm;
  Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds
  Of kindliest human impulses respond.
  
  Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,
  With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,
  And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss,
  Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,
  Which like a toil-worn laborer leaps to shore
  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 balmy breathings of the wind inhale
  Her virtues and diffuse them all abroad;
  Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,
  Glows in the fruits and mantles on the stream;
  No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,
  Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride
  The foliage of the ever-verdant trees;
  But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,
  And autumn proudly bears her matron grace,
  Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of spring,
  Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit
  Reflects its tint and blushes into love.
  
  'The 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 burden 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,
  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;
  One curse alone was spared—the name of God.
  
  '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
  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 favored clime;
  There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,
  The mimic of surrounding misery,
  The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,
  The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.
  
  'Here now the human being stands 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 store of human weal
  Draws on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise
  In time-destroying infiniteness gift
  With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks
  The unprevailing hoariness of age;
  And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene
  Swift as an unremembered vision, stands
  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 humors in his frame,
  All evil passions and all vain belief,
  Hatred, despair and loathing in his mind,
  The germs of misery, death, disease and crime.
  
  No longer now the 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;
  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.
  
  '

• Remembrance Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Swifter far than summer's flight--
  Swifter far than youth’s delight--
  Swifter far than happy night,
  Art thou come and gone--
  As the earth when leaves are dead,
  As the night when sleep is sped,
  As the heart when joy is fled,
  I am left lone, alone.
  
  II.
  
  The swallow summer comes again--
  The owlet night resumes her reign--
  But the wild-swan youth is fain
  To fly with thee, false as thou.
  
  --
  My heart each day desires the morrow;
  Sleep itself is turned to sorrow;
  Vainly would my winter borrow
  Sunny leaves from any bough.
  
  III.
  
  Lilies for a bridal bed--
  Roses for a matron’s head--
  Violets for a maiden dead--
  Pansies let MY flowers be:
  On the living grave I bear
  Scatter them without a tear--
  Let no friend, however dear,
  Waste one hope, one fear for me.

• Revenge Read Poem Log in to favourite

  'Ah! quit me not yet, for the wind whistles shrill,
  Its blast wanders mournfully over the hill,
  The thunder’s wild voice rattles madly above,
  You will not then, cannot then, leave me my love.
  
  '--
  I must dearest Agnes, the night is far gone--
  I must wander this evening to Strasburg alone,
  I must seek the drear tomb of my ancestors’ bones,
  And must dig their remains from beneath the cold stones.
  
  'For the spirit of Conrad there meets me this night,
  And we quit not the tomb 'till dawn of the light,
  And Conrad's been dead just a month and a day!
  So farewell dearest Agnes for I must away,—
  'He bid me bring with me what most I held dear,
  Or a month from that time should I lie on my bier,
  And I'd sooner resign this false fluttering breath,
  Than my Agnes should dread either danger or death,
  'And I love you to madness my Agnes I love,
  My constant affection this night will I prove,
  This night will I go to the sepulchre's jaw
  Alone will I glut its all conquering maw'--
  'No! no loved Adolphus thy Agnes will share,
  In the tomb all the dangers that wait for you there,
  I fear not the spirit,--I fear not the grave,
  My dearest Adolphus I’d perish to save'--
  'Nay seek not to say that thy love shall not go,
  But spare me those ages of horror and woe,
  For I swear to thee here that I'll perish ere day,
  If you go unattended by Agnes away'--
  The night it was bleak the fierce storm raged around,
  The lightning's blue fire-light flashed on the ground,
  Strange forms seemed to flit,--and howl tidings of fate,
  As Agnes advanced to the sepulchre gate.
  
  --
  The youth struck the portal,--the echoing sound
  Was fearfully rolled midst the tombstones around,
  The blue lightning gleamed o’er the dark chapel spire,
  And tinged were the storm clouds with sulphurous fire.
  
  Still they gazed on the tombstone where Conrad reclined,
  Yet they shrank at the cold chilling blast of the wind,
  When a strange silver brilliance pervaded the scene,
  And a figure advanced—tall in form—fierce in mien.
  
  A mantle encircled his shadowy form,
  As light as a gossamer borne on the storm,
  Celestial terror sat throned in his gaze,
  Like the midnight pestiferous meteor’s blaze.
  
  —
  SPIRIT:
  Thy father, Adolphus! was false, false as hell,
  And Conrad has cause to remember it well,
  He ruined my Mother, despised me his son,
  I quitted the world ere my vengeance was done.
  
  I was nearly expiring--'twas close of the day,--
  A demon advanced to the bed where I lay,
  He gave me the power from whence I was hurled,
  To return to revenge, to return to the world,--
  Now Adolphus I'll seize thy best loved in my arms,
  I'll drag her to Hades all blooming in charms,
  On the black whirlwind’s thundering pinion I'll ride,
  And fierce yelling fiends shall exult o'er thy bride--
  He spoke, and extending his ghastly arms wide,
  Majestic advanced with a swift noiseless stride,
  He clasped the fair Agnes—he raised her on high,
  And cleaving the roof sped his way to the sky--
  All was now silent,--and over the tomb,
  Thicker, deeper, was swiftly extended a gloom,
  Adolphus in horror sank down on the stone,
  And his fleeting soul fled with a harrowing groan.
  
  DECEMBER, 1809

• Rome And Nature Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Rome has fallen, ye see it lying
  Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
  Nature is alone undying.

• Rosalind and Helen: a Modern Eclogue Read Poem Log in to favourite

  ROSALIND, HELEN, and her Child.
  
  SCENE.
  
  The Shore of the Lake of Como.
  
  HELEN
  Come hither, my sweet Rosalind.
  
  'T is long since thou and I have met;
  And yet methinks it were unkind
  Those moments to forget.
  
  Come, sit by me.
  
  I see thee stand
  By this lone lake, in this far land,
  Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
  Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
  United, and thine eyes replying
  To the hues of yon fair heaven.
  
  Come, gentle friend! wilt sit by me?
  
  And be as thou wert wont to be
  Ere we were disunited?
  
  None doth behold us now; the power
  That led us forth at this lone hour
  Will be but ill requited
  If thou depart in scorn.
  
  Oh, come,
  And talk of our abandoned home!
  Remember, this is Italy,
  And we are exiles.
  
  Talk with me
  Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,
  Barren and dark although they be,
  Were dearer than these chestnut woods;
  Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
  And the blue mountains, shapes which seem
  Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream;
  Which that we have abandoned now,
  Weighs on the heart like that remorse
  Which altered friendship leaves.
  
  I seek
  No more our youthful intercourse.
  
  That cannot be! Rosalind, speak,
  Speak to me! Leave me not! When morn did come,
  When evening fell upon our common home,
  When for one hour we parted,—do not frown;
  I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken;
  But turn to me.
  
  Oh! by this cherished token
  Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown,
  Turn, as 't were but the memory of me,
  And not my scornèd self who prayed to thee!
  ROSALIND
  Is it a dream, or do I see
  And hear frail Helen?
  
  I would flee
  Thy tainting touch; but former years
  Arise, and bring forbidden tears;
  And my o'erburdened memory
  Seeks yet its lost repose in thee.
  
  I share thy crime.
  
  I cannot choose
  But weep for thee; mine own strange grief
  But seldom stoops to such relief;
  Nor ever did I love thee less,
  Though mourning o'er thy wickedness
  Even with a sister's woe.
  
  I knew
  What to the evil world is due,
  And therefore sternly did refuse
  To link me with the infamy
  Of one so lost as Helen.
  
  Now,
  Bewildered by my dire despair,
  Wondering I blush, and weep that thou
  Shouldst love me still—thou only!—There,
  Let us sit on that gray stone
  Till our mournful talk be done.
  
  HELEN
  Alas! not there; I cannot bear
  The murmur of this lake to hear.
  
  A sound from there, Rosalind dear,
  Which never yet I heard elsewhere
  But in our native land, recurs,
  Even here where now we meet.
  
  It stirs
  Too much of suffocating sorrow!
  In the dell of yon dark chestnut wood
  Is a stone seat, a solitude
  Less like our own.
  
  The ghost of peace
  Will not desert this spot.
  
  To-morrow,
  If thy kind feelings should not cease,
  We may sit here.
  
  ROSALIND
  Thou lead, my sweet,
  And I will follow.
  
  HENRY
  'T is Fenici's seat
  Where you are going?
  
  This is not the way,
  Mamma; it leads behind those trees that grow
  Close to the little river.
  
  HELEN
  Yes, I know;
  I was bewildered.
  
  Kiss me and be gay,
  Dear boy; why do you sob?
  
  HENRY
  I do not know;
  But it might break any one's heart to see
  You and the lady cry so bitterly.
  
  HELEN
  It is a gentle child, my friend.
  
  Go home,
  Henry, and play with Lilla till I come.
  
  We only cried with joy to see each other;
  We are quite merry now.
  
  Good night.
  
  The boy
  Lifted a sudden look upon his mother,
  And, in the gleam of forced and hollow joy
  Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee
  Of light and unsuspecting infancy,
  And whispered in her ear, 'Bring home with you
  That sweet strange lady-friend.
  
  ' Then off he flew,
  But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile,
  Where the road turned.
  
  Pale Rosalind the while,
  Hiding her face, stood weeping silently.
  
  In silence then they took the way
  Beneath the forest's solitude.
  
  It was a vast and antique wood,
  Through which they took their way;
  And the gray shades of evening
  O'er that green wilderness did fling
  Still deeper solitude.
  
  Pursuing still the path that wound
  The vast and knotted trees around,
  Through which slow shades were wandering,
  To a deep lawny dell they came,
  To a stone seat beside a spring,
  O'er which the columned wood did frame
  A roofless temple, like the fane
  Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,
  Man's early race once knelt beneath
  The overhanging deity.
  
  O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,
  Now spangled with rare stars.
  
  The snake,
  The pale snake, that with eager breath
  Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake,
  Is beaming with many a mingled hue,
  Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,
  When he floats on that dark and lucid flood
  In the light of his own loveliness;
  And the birds, that in the fountain dip
  Their plumes, with fearless fellowship
  Above and round him wheel and hover.
  
  The fitful wind is heard to stir
  One solitary leaf on high;
  The chirping of the grasshopper
  Fills every pause.
  
  There is emotion
  In all that dwells at noontide here;
  Then through the intricate wild wood
  A maze of life and light and motion
  Is woven.
  
  But there is stillness now—
  Gloom, and the trance of Nature now.
  
  The snake is in his cave asleep;
  The birds are on the branches dreaming;
  Only the shadows creep;
  Only the glow-worm is gleaming;
  Only the owls and the nightingales
  Wake in this dell when daylight fails,
  And gray shades gather in the woods;
  And the owls have all fled far away
  In a merrier glen to hoot and play,
  For the moon is veiled and sleeping now.
  
  The accustomed nightingale still broods
  On her accustomed bough,
  But she is mute; for her false mate
  Has fled and left her desolate.
  
  This silent spot tradition old
  Had peopled with the spectral dead.
  
  For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold
  And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told
  That a hellish shape at midnight led
  The ghost of a youth with hoary hair,
  And sate on the seat beside him there,
  Till a naked child came wandering by,
  When the fiend would change to a lady fair!
  A fearful tale! the truth was worse;
  For here a sister and a brother
  Had solemnized a monstrous curse,
  Meeting in this fair solitude;
  For beneath yon very sky,
  Had they resigned to one another
  Body and soul.
  
  The multitude,
  Tracking them to the secret wood,
  Tore limb from limb their innocent child,
  And stabbed and trampled on its mother;
  But the youth, for God's most holy grace,
  A priest saved to burn in the market-place.
  
  Duly at evening Helen came
  To this lone silent spot,
  From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow
  So much of sympathy to borrow
  As soothed her own dark lot.
  
  Duly each evening from her home,
  With her fair child would Helen come
  To sit upon that antique seat,
  While the hues of day were pale;
  And the bright boy beside her feet
  Now lay, lifting at intervals
  His broad blue eyes on her;
  Now, where some sudden impulse calls,
  Following.
  
  He was a gentle boy
  And in all gentle sorts took joy.
  
  Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,
  With a small feather for a sail,
  His fancy on that spring would float,
  If some invisible breeze might stir
  Its marble calm; and Helen smiled
  Through tears of awe on the gay child,
  To think that a boy as fair as he,
  In years which never more may be,
  By that same fount, in that same wood,
  The like sweet fancies had pursued;
  And that a mother, lost like her,
  Had mournfully sate watching him.
  
  Then all the scene was wont to swim
  Through the mist of a burning tear.
  
  For many months had Helen known
  This scene; and now she thither turned
  Her footsteps, not alone.
  
  The friend whose falsehood she had mourned
  Sate with her on that seat of stone.
  
  Silent they sate; for evening,
  And the power its glimpses bring,
  Had with one awful shadow quelled
  The passion of their grief.
  
  They sate
  With linkèd hands, for unrepelled
  Had Helen taken Rosalind's.
  
  Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds
  The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair
  Which is twined in the sultry summer air
  Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre,
  Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,
  And the sound of her heart that ever beat
  As with sighs and words she breathed on her,
  Unbind the knots of her friend's despair,
  Till her thoughts were free to float and flow;
  And from her laboring bosom now,
  Like the bursting of a prisoned flame,
  The voice of a long-pent sorrow came.
  
  ROSALIND
  I saw the dark earth fall upon
  The coffin; and I saw the stone
  Laid over him whom this cold breast
  Had pillowed to his nightly rest!
  Thou knowest not, thou canst not know
  My agony.
  
  Oh! I could not weep.
  
  The sources whence such blessings flow
  Were not to be approached by me!
  But I could smile, and I could sleep,
  Though with a self-accusing heart.
  
  In morning's light, in evening's gloom,
  I watched—and would not thence depart—
  My husband's unlamented tomb.
  
  My children knew their sire was gone;
  But when I told them, 'He is dead,'
  They laughed aloud in frantic glee,
  They clapped their hands and leaped about,
  Answering each other's ecstasy
  With many a prank and merry shout.
  
  But I sate silent and alone,
  Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed.
  
  They laughed, for he was dead; but I
  Sate with a hard and tearless eye,
  And with a heart which would deny
  The secret joy it could not quell,
  Low muttering o'er his loathèd name;
  Till from that self-contention came
  Remorse where sin was none; a hell
  Which in pure spirits should not dwell.
  
  I 'll tell thee truth.
  
  He was a man
  Hard, selfish, loving only gold,
  Yet full of guile; his pale eyes ran
  With tears which each some falsehood told,
  And oft his smooth and bridled tongue
  Would give the lie to his flushing cheek;
  He was a coward to the strong;
  He was a tyrant to the weak,
  On whom his vengeance he would wreak;
  For scorn, whose arrows search the heart,
  From many a stranger's eye would dart,
  And on his memory cling, and follow
  His soul to its home so cold and hollow.
  
  He was a tyrant to the weak,
  And we were such, alas the day!
  Oft, when my little ones at play
  Were in youth's natural lightness gay,
  Or if they listened to some tale
  Of travellers, or of fairyland,
  When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand
  Flashed on their faces,—if they heard
  Or thought they heard upon the stair
  His footstep, the suspended word
  Died on my lips; we all grew pale;
  The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear
  If it thought it heard its father near;
  And my two wild boys would near my knee
  Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully.
  
  I 'll tell thee truth: I loved another.
  
  His name in my ear was ever ringing,
  His form to my brain was ever clinging;
  Yet, if some stranger breathed that name,
  My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast.
  
  My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame,
  My days were dim in the shadow cast
  By the memory of the same!
  Day and night, day and night,
  He was my breath and life and light,
  For three short years, which soon were passed.
  
  On the fourth, my gentle mother
  Led me to the shrine, to be
  His sworn bride eternally.
  
  And now we stood on the altar stair,
  When my father came from a distant land,
  And with a loud and fearful cry
  Rushed between us suddenly.
  
  I saw the stream of his thin gray hair,
  I saw his lean and lifted hand,
  And heard his words—and live! O God!
  Wherefore do I live?
  
  —'Hold, hold!'
  He cried, 'I tell thee 't is her brother!
  Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod
  Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold;
  I am now weak, and pale, and old;
  We were once dear to one another,
  I and that corpse! Thou art our child!'
  Then with a laugh both long and wild
  The youth upon the pavement fell.
  
  They found him dead! All looked on me,
  The spasms of my despair to see;
  But I was calm.
  
  I went away;
  I was clammy-cold like clay.
  
  I did not weep; I did not speak;
  But day by day, week after week,
  I walked about like a corpse alive.
  
  Alas! sweet friend, you must believe
  This heart is stone—it did not break.
  
  My father lived a little while,
  But all might see that he was dying,
  He smiled with such a woful smile.
  
  When he was in the churchyard lying
  Among the worms, we grew quite poor,
  So that no one would give us bread;
  My mother looked at me, and said
  Faint words of cheer, which only meant
  That she could die and be content;
  So I went forth from the same church door
  To another husband's bed.
  
  And this was he who died at last,
  When weeks and months and years had passed,
  Through which I firmly did fulfil
  My duties, a devoted wife,
  With the stern step of vanquished will
  Walking beneath the night of life,
  Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain
  Falling forever, pain by pain,
  The very hope of death's dear rest;
  Which, since the heart within my breast
  Of natural life was dispossessed,
  Its strange sustainer there had been.
  
  When flowers were dead, and grass was green
  Upon my mother's grave—that mother
  Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make
  My wan eyes glitter for her sake,
  Was my vowed task, the single care
  Which once gave life to my despair—
  When she was a thing that did not stir,
  And the crawling worms were cradling her
  To a sleep more deep and so more sweet
  Than a baby's rocked on its nurse's knee,
  I lived; a living pulse then beat
  Beneath my heart that awakened me.
  
  What was this pulse so warm and free?
  
  Alas! I knew it could not be
  My own dull blood.
  
  'T was like a thought
  Of liquid love, that spread and wrought
  Under my bosom and in my brain,
  And crept with the blood through every vein,
  And hour by hour, day after day,
  The wonder could not charm away
  But laid in sleep my wakeful pain,
  Until I knew it was a child,
  And then I wept.
  
  For long, long years
  These frozen eyes had shed no tears;
  But now—'t was the season fair and mild
  When April has wept itself to May;
  I sate through the sweet sunny day
  By my window bowered round with leaves,
  And down my cheeks the quick tears ran
  Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves,
  When warm spring showers are passing o'er.
  
  O Helen, none can ever tell
  The joy it was to weep once more!
  I wept to think how hard it were
  To kill my babe, and take from it
  The sense of light, and the warm air,
  And my own fond and tender care,
  And love and smiles; ere I knew yet
  That these for it might, as for me,
  Be the masks of a grinning mockery.
  
  And haply, I would dream, 't were sweet
  To feed it from my faded breast,
  Or mark my own heart's restless beat
  And watch the growing soul beneath
  Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath,
  Half interrupted by calm sighs,
  And search the depth of its fair eyes
  For long departed memories!
  And so I lived till that sweet load
  Was lightened.
  
  Darkly forward flowed
  The stream of years, and on it bore
  Two shapes of gladness to my sight;
  Two other babes, delightful more,
  In my lost soul's abandoned night,
  Than their own country ships may be
  Sailing towards wrecked mariners
  Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea.
  
  For each, as it came, brought soothing tears;
  And a loosening warmth, as each one lay
  Sucking the sullen milk away,
  About my frozen heart did play,
  And weaned it, oh, how painfully—
  As they themselves were weaned each one
  From that sweet food—even from the thirst
  Of death, and nothingness, and rest,
  Strange inmate of a living breast,
  Which all that I had undergone
  Of grief and shame, since she who first
  The gates of that dark refuge closed
  Came to my sight, and almost burst
  The seal of that Lethean spring—
  But these fair shadows interposed.
  
  For all delights are shadows now!
  And from my brain to my dull brow
  The heavy tears gather and flow.
  
  I cannot speak—oh, let me weep!
  The tears which fell from her wan eyes
  Glimmered among the moonlight dew.
  
  Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs
  Their echoes in the darkness threw.
  
  When she grew calm, she thus did keep
  The tenor of her tale:—
  He died;
  I know not how; he was not old,
  If age be numbered by its years;
  But he was bowed and bent with fears,
  Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold,
  Which, like fierce fever, left him weak;
  And his strait lip and bloated cheek
  Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers;
  And selfish cares with barren plough,
  Not age, had lined his narrow brow,
  And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed
  Upon the withering life within,
  Like vipers on some poisonous weed.
  
  Whether his ill were death or sin
  None knew, until he died indeed,
  And then men owned they were the same.
  
  Seven days within my chamber lay
  That corse, and my babes made holiday.
  
  At last, I told them what is death.
  
  The eldest, with a kind of shame,
  Came to my knees with silent breath,
  And sate awe-stricken at my feet;
  And soon the others left their play,
  And sate there too.
  
  It is unmeet
  To shed on the brief flower of youth
  The withering knowledge of the grave.
  
  From me remorse then wrung that truth.
  
  I could not bear the joy which gave
  Too just a response to mine own.
  
  In vain.
  
  I dared not feign a groan;
  And in their artless looks I saw,
  Between the mists of fear and awe,
  That my own thought was theirs; and they
  Expressed it not in words, but said,
  Each in its heart, how every day
  Will pass in happy work and play,
  Now he is dead and gone away!
  After the funeral all our kin
  Assembled, and the will was read.
  
  My friend, I tell thee, even the dead
  Have strength, their putrid shrouds within,
  To blast and torture.
  
  Those who live
  Still fear the living, but a corse
  Is merciless, and Power doth give
  To such pale tyrants half the spoil
  He rends from those who groan and toil,
  Because they blush not with remorse
  Among their crawling worms.
  
  Behold,
  I have no child! my tale grows old
  With grief, and staggers; let it reach
  The limits of my feeble speech,
  And languidly at length recline
  On the brink of its own grave and mine.
  
  Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty
  Among the fallen on evil days.
  
  'T is Crime, and Fear, and Infamy,
  And houseless Want in frozen ways
  Wandering ungarmented, and Pain,
  And, worse than all, that inward stain,
  Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers
  Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears
  First like hot gall, then dry forever!
  And well thou knowest a mother never
  Could doom her children to this ill,
  And well he knew the same.
  
  The will
  Imported that, if e'er again
  I sought my children to behold,
  Or in my birthplace did remain
  Beyond three days, whose hours were told,
  They should inherit nought; and he,
  To whom next came their patrimony,
  A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold,
  Aye watched me, as the will was read,
  With eyes askance, which sought to see
  The secrets of my agony;
  And with close lips and anxious brow
  Stood canvassing still to and fro
  The chance of my resolve, and all
  The dead man's caution just did call;
  For in that killing lie 't was said—
  'She is adulterous, and doth hold
  In secret that the Christian creed
  Is false, and therefore is much need
  That I should have a care to save
  My children from eternal fire.
  
  '
  Friend, he was sheltered by the grave,
  And therefore dared to be a liar!
  In truth, the Indian on the pyre
  Of her dead husband, half consumed,
  As well might there be false as I
  To those abhorred embraces doomed,
  Far worse than fire's brief agony.
  
  As to the Christian creed, if true
  Or false, I never questioned it;
  I took it as the vulgar do;
  Nor my vexed soul had leisure yet
  To doubt the things men say, or deem
  That they are other than they seem.
  
  All present who those crimes did hear,
  In feigned or actual scorn and fear,
  Men, women, children, slunk away,
  Whispering with self-contented pride
  Which half suspects its own base lie.
  
  I spoke to none, nor did abide,
  But silently I went my way,
  Nor noticed I where joyously
  Sate my two younger babes at play
  In the courtyard through which I passed;
  But went with footsteps firm and fast
  Till I came to the brink of the ocean green,
  And there, a woman with gray hairs,
  Who had my mother's servant been,
  Kneeling, with many tears and prayers,
  Made me accept a purse of gold,
  Half of the earnings she had kept
  To refuge her when weak and old.
  
  With woe, which never sleeps or slept,
  I wander now.
  
  'T is a vain thought—
  But on yon Alp, whose snowy head
  'Mid the azure air is islanded,
  (We see it—o'er the flood of cloud,
  Which sunrise from its eastern caves
  Drives, wrinkling into golden waves,
  Hung with its precipices proud—
  From that gray stone where first we met)
  There—now who knows the dead feel nought?
  
  —
  Should be my grave; for he who yet
  Is my soul's soul once said: ''T were sweet
  'Mid stars and lightnings to abide,
  And winds, and lulling snows that beat
  With their soft flakes the mountain wide,
  Where weary meteor lamps repose,
  And languid storms their pinions close,
  And all things strong and bright and pure,
  And ever during, aye endure.
  
  Who knows, if one were buried there,
  But these things might our spirits make,
  Amid the all-surrounding air,
  Their own eternity partake?
  
  '
  Then 't was a wild and playful saying
  At which I laughed or seemed to laugh.
  
  They were his words—now heed my praying,
  And let them be my epitaph.
  
  Thy memory for a term may be
  My monument.
  
  Wilt remember me?
  
  I know thou wilt; and canst forgive,
  Whilst in this erring world to live
  My soul disdained not, that I thought
  Its lying forms were worthy aught,
  And much less thee.
  
  HELEN
  Oh, speak not so!
  But come to me and pour thy woe
  Into this heart, full though it be,
  Aye overflowing with its own.
  
  I thought that grief had severed me
  From all beside who weep and groan,
  Its likeness upon earth to be—
  Its express image; but thou art
  More wretched.
  
  Sweet, we will not part
  Henceforth, if death be not division;
  If so, the dead feel no contrition.
  
  But wilt thou hear, since last we parted,
  All that has left me broken-hearted?
  
  ROSALIND
  Yes, speak.
  
  The faintest stars are scarcely shorn
  Of their thin beams by that delusive morn
  Which sinks again in darkness, like the light
  Of early love, soon lost in total night.
  
  HELEN
  Alas! Italian winds are mild,
  But my bosom is cold—wintry cold;
  When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves,
  Soft music, my poor brain is wild,
  And I am weak like a nursling child,
  Though my soul with grief is gray and old.
  
  ROSALIND
  Weep not at thine own words, though they must make
  Me weep.
  
  What is thy tale?
  
  HELEN
  I fear 't will shake
  Thy gentle heart with tears.
  
  Thou well
  Rememberest when we met no more;
  And, though I dwelt with Lionel,
  That friendless caution pierced me sore
  With grief; a wound my spirit bore
  Indignantly—but when he died,
  With him lay dead both hope and pride.
  
  Alas! all hope is buried now.
  
  But then men dreamed the aged earth
  Was laboring in that mighty birth
  Which many a poet and a sage
  Has aye foreseen—the happy age
  When truth and love shall dwell below
  Among the works and ways of men;
  Which on this world not power but will
  Even now is wanting to fulfil.
  
  Among mankind what thence befell
  Of strife, how vain, is known too well;
  When Liberty's dear pæan fell
  'Mid murderous howls.
  
  To Lionel,
  Though of great wealth and lineage high,
  Yet through those dungeon walls there came
  Thy thrilling light, O Liberty!
  And as the meteor's midnight flame
  Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth
  Flashed on his visionary youth,
  And filled him, not with love, but faith,
  And hope, and courage mute in death;
  For love and life in him were twins,
  Born at one birth.
  
  In every other
  First life, then love, its course begins,
  Though they be children of one mother;
  And so through this dark world they fleet
  Divided, till in death they meet;
  But he loved all things ever.
  
  Then
  He passed amid the strife of men,
  And stood at the throne of armèd power
  Pleading for a world of woe.
  
  Secure as one on a rock-built tower
  O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro,
  'Mid the passions wild of humankind
  He stood, like a spirit calming them;
  For, it was said, his words could bind
  Like music the lulled crowd, and stem
  That torrent of unquiet dream
  Which mortals truth and reason deem,
  But is revenge and fear and pride.
  
  Joyous he was; and hope and peace
  On all who heard him did abide,
  Raining like dew from his sweet talk,
  As where the evening star may walk
  Along the brink of the gloomy seas,
  Liquid mists of splendor quiver.
  
  His very gestures touched to tears
  The unpersuaded tyrant, never
  So moved before; his presence stung
  The torturers with their victim's pain,
  And none knew how; and through their ears
  The subtle witchcraft of his tongue
  Unlocked the hearts of those who keep
  Gold, the world's bond of slavery.
  
  Men wondered, and some sneered to see
  One sow what he could never reap;
  For he is rich, they said, and young,
  And might drink from the depths of luxury.
  
  If he seeks fame, fame never crowned
  The champion of a trampled creed;
  If he seeks power, power is enthroned
  'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed
  Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil
  Those who would sit near power must toil;
  And such, there sitting, all may see.
  
  What seeks he?
  
  All that others seek
  He casts away, like a vile weed
  Which the sea casts unreturningly.
  
  That poor and hungry men should break
  The laws which wreak them toil and scorn
  We understand; but Lionel,
  We know, is rich and nobly born.
  
  So wondered they; yet all men loved
  Young Lionel, though few approved;
  All but the priests, whose hatred fell
  Like the unseen blight of a smiling day,
  The withering honey-dew which clings
  Under the bright green buds of May
  Whilst they unfold their emerald wings;
  For he made verses wild and queer
  On the strange creeds priests hold so dear
  Because they bring them land and gold.
  
  Of devils and saints and all such gear
  He made tales which whoso heard or read
  Would laugh till he were almost dead.
  
  So this grew a proverb: 'Don't get old
  Till Lionel's Banquet in Hell you hear,
  And then you will laugh yourself young again.
  
  '
  So the priests hated him, and he
  Repaid their hate with cheerful glee.
  
  Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died,
  For public hope grew pale and dim
  In an altered time and tide,
  And in its wasting withered him,
  As a summer flower that blows too soon
  Droops in the smile of the waning moon,
  When it scatters through an April night
  The frozen dews of wrinkling blight.
  
  None now hoped more.
  
  Gray Power was seated
  Safely on her ancestral throne;
  And Faith, the Python, undefeated
  Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on
  Her foul and wounded train; and men
  Were trampled and deceived again,
  And words and shows again could bind
  The wailing tribes of humankind
  In scorn and famine.
  
  Fire and blood
  Raged round the raging multitude,
  To fields remote by tyrants sent
  To be the scornèd instrument
  With which they drag from mines of gore
  The chains their slaves yet ever wore;
  And in the streets men met each other,
  And by old altars and in halls,
  And smiled again at festivals.
  
  But each man found in his heart's brother
  Cold cheer; for all, though half deceived,
  The outworn creeds again believed,
  And the same round anew began
  Which the weary world yet ever ran.
  
  Many then wept, not tears, but gall,
  Within their hearts, like drops which fall
  Wasting the fountain-stone away.
  
  And in that dark and evil day
  Did all desires and thoughts that claim
  Men's care—ambition, friendship, fame,
  Love, hope, though hope was now despair—
  Indue the colors of this change,
  As from the all-surrounding air
  The earth takes hues obscure and strange,
  When storm and earthquake linger there.
  
  And so, my friend, it then befell
  To many,—most to Lionel,
  Whose hope was like the life of youth
  Within him, and when dead became
  A spirit of unresting flame,
  Which goaded him in his distress
  Over the world's vast wilderness.
  
  Three years he left his native land,
  And on the fourth, when he returned,
  None knew him; he was stricken deep
  With some disease of mind, and turned
  Into aught unlike Lionel.
  
  On him—on whom, did he pause in sleep,
  Serenest smiles were wont to keep,
  And, did he wake, a wingèd band
  Of bright Persuasions, which had fed
  On his sweet lips and liquid eyes,
  Kept their swift pinions half outspread
  To do on men his least command—
  On him, whom once 't was paradise
  Even to behold, now misery lay.
  
  In his own heart 't was merciless—
  To all things else none may express
  Its innocence and tenderness.
  
  'T was said that he had refuge sought
  In love from his unquiet thought
  In distant lands, and been deceived
  By some strange show; for there were found,
  Blotted with tears—as those relieved
  By their own words are wont to do—
  These mournful verses on the ground,
  By all who read them blotted too.
  
  'How am I changed! my hopes were once like fire;
  I loved, and I believed that life was love.
  
  How am I lost! on wings of swift desire
  Among Heaven's winds my spirit once did move.
  
  I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire
  My liquid sleep; I woke, and did approve
  All Nature to my heart, and thought to make
  A paradise of earth for one sweet sake.
  
  'I love, but I believe in love no more.
  
  I feel desire, but hope not.
  
  Oh, from sleep
  Most vainly must my weary brain implore
  Its long lost flattery now! I wake to weep,
  And sit through the long day gnawing the core
  Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep—
  Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure—
  To my own soul its self-consuming treasure.
  
  '
  He dwelt beside me near the sea;
  And oft in evening did we meet,
  When the waves, beneath the starlight, flee
  O'er the yellow sands with silver feet,
  And talked.
  
  Our talk was sad and sweet,
  Till slowly from his mien there passed
  The desolation which it spoke;
  And smiles—as when the lightning's blast
  Has parched some heaven-delighting oak,
  The next spring shows leaves pale and rare,
  But like flowers delicate and fair,
  On its rent boughs—again arrayed
  His countenance in tender light;
  His words grew subtle fire, which made
  The air his hearers breathed delight;
  His motions, like the winds, were free,
  Which bend the bright grass gracefully,
  Then fade away in circlets faint;
  And wingèd Hope—on which upborne
  His soul seemed hovering in his eyes,
  Like some bright spirit newly born
  Floating amid the sunny skies—
  Sprang forth from his rent heart anew.
  
  Yet o'er his talk, and looks, and mien,
  Tempering their loveliness too keen,
  Past woe its shadow backward threw;
  Till, like an exhalation spread
  From flowers half drunk with evening dew,
  They did become infectious—sweet
  And subtle mists of sense and thought,
  Which wrapped us soon, when we might meet,
  Almost from our own looks and aught
  The wild world holds.
  
  And so his mind
  Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear;
  For ever now his health declined,
  Like some frail bark which cannot bear
  The impulse of an altered wind,
  Though prosperous; and my heart grew full,
  'Mid its new joy, of a new care;
  For his cheek became, not pale, but fair,
  As rose-o'ershadowed lilies are;
  And soon his deep and sunny hair,
  In this alone less beautiful,
  Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare.
  
  The blood in his translucent veins
  Beat, not like animal life, but love
  Seemed now its sullen springs to move,
  When life had failed, and all its pains;
  And sudden sleep would seize him oft
  Like death, so calm,—but that a tear,
  His pointed eye-lashes between,
  Would gather in the light serene
  Of smiles whose lustre bright and soft
  Beneath lay undulating there.
  
  His breath was like inconstant flame
  As eagerly it went and came;
  And I hung o'er him in his sleep,
  Till, like an image in the lake
  Which rains disturb, my tears would break
  The shadow of that slumber deep.
  
  Then he would bid me not to weep,
  And say, with flattery false yet sweet,
  That death and he could never meet,
  If I would never part with him.
  
  And so we loved, and did unite
  All that in us was yet divided;
  For when he said, that many a rite,
  By men to bind but once provided,
  Could not be shared by him and me,
  Or they would kill him in their glee,
  I shuddered, and then laughing said—
  'We will have rites our faith to bind,
  But our church shall be the starry night,
  Our altar the grassy earth outspread,
  And our priest the muttering wind.
  
  '
  'T was sunset as I spoke.
  
  One star
  Had scarce burst forth, when from afar
  The ministers of misrule sent
  Seized upon Lionel, and bore
  His chained limbs to a dreary tower,
  In the midst of a city vast and wide.
  
  For he, they said, from his mind had bent
  Against their gods keen blasphemy,
  For which, though his soul must roasted be
  In hell's red lakes immortally,
  Yet even on earth must he abide
  The vengeance of their slaves: a trial,
  I think, men call it.
  
  What avail
  Are prayers and tears, which chase denial
  From the fierce savage nursed in hate?
  
  What the knit soul that pleading and pale
  Makes wan the quivering cheek which late
  It painted with its own delight?
  
  We were divided.
  
  As I could,
  I stilled the tingling of my blood,
  And followed him in their despite,
  As a widow follows, pale and wild,
  The murderers and corse of her only child;
  And when we came to the prison door,
  And I prayed to share his dungeon floor
  With prayers which rarely have been spurned,
  And when men drove me forth, and I
  Stared with blank frenzy on the sky,—
  A farewell look of love he turned,
  Half calming me; then gazed awhile,
  As if through that black and massy pile,
  And through the crowd around him there,
  And through the dense and murky air,
  And the thronged streets, he did espy
  What poets know and prophesy;
  And said, with voice that made them shiver
  And clung like music in my brain,
  And which the mute walls spoke again
  Prolonging it with deepened strain—
  'Fear not the tyrants shall rule forever,
  Or the priests of the bloody faith;
  They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
  Whose waves they have tainted with death;
  It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
  Around them it foams, and rages, and swells,
  And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
  Like wrecks, in the surge of eternity.
  
  '
  I dwelt beside the prison gate;
  And the strange crowd that out and in
  Passed, some, no doubt, with mine own fate,
  Might have fretted me with its ceaseless din,
  But the fever of care was louder within.
  
  Soon but too late, in penitence
  Or fear, his foes released him thence.
  
  I saw his thin and languid form,
  As leaning on the jailor's arm,
  Whose hardened eyes grew moist the while
  To meet his mute and faded smile
  And hear his words of kind farewell,
  He tottered forth from his damp cell.
  
  Many had never wept before,
  From whom fast tears then gushed and fell;
  Many will relent no more,
  Who sobbed like infants then; ay, all
  Who thronged the prison's stony hall,
  The rulers or the slaves of law,
  Felt with a new surprise and awe
  That they were human, till strong shame
  Made them again become the same.
  
  The prison bloodhounds, huge and grim,
  From human looks the infection caught,
  And fondly crouched and fawned on him;
  And men have heard the prisoners say,
  Who in their rotting dungeons lay,
  That from that hour, throughout one day,
  The fierce despair and hate which kept
  Their trampled bosoms almost slept,
  Where, like twin vultures, they hung feeding
  On each heart's wound, wide torn and bleeding,—
  Because their jailors' rule, they thought,
  Grew merciful, like a parent's sway.
  
  I know not how, but we were free;
  And Lionel sate alone with me,
  As the carriage drove through the streets apace;
  And we looked upon each other's face;
  And the blood in our fingers intertwined
  Ran like the thoughts of a single mind,
  As the swift emotions went and came
  Through the veins of each united frame.
  
  So through the long, long streets we passed
  Of the million-peopled City vast;
  Which is that desert, where each one
  Seeks his mate yet is alone,
  Beloved and sought and mourned of none;
  Until the clear blue sky was seen,
  And the grassy meadows bright and green.
  
  And then I sunk in his embrace
  Enclosing there a mighty space
  Of love; and so we travelled on
  By woods, and fields of yellow flowers,
  And towns, and villages, and towers,
  Day after day of happy hours.
  
  It was the azure time of June,
  When the skies are deep in the stainless noon,
  And the warm and fitful breezes shake
  The fresh green leaves of the hedge-row briar;
  And there were odors then to make
  The very breath we did respire
  A liquid element, whereon
  Our spirits, like delighted things
  That walk the air on subtle wings,
  Floated and mingled far away
  'Mid the warm winds of the sunny day.
  
  And when the evening star came forth
  Above the curve of the new bent moon,
  And light and sound ebbed from the earth,
  Like the tide of the full and the weary sea
  To the depths of its own tranquillity,
  Our natures to its own repose
  Did the earth's breathless sleep attune;
  Like flowers, which on each other close
  Their languid leaves when daylight's gone,
  We lay, till new emotions came,
  Which seemed to make each mortal frame
  One soul of interwoven flame,
  A life in life, a second birth
  In worlds diviner far than earth;—
  Which, like two strains of harmony
  That mingle in the silent sky,
  Then slowly disunite, passed by
  And left the tenderness of tears,
  A soft oblivion of all fears,
  A sweet sleep:—so we travelled on
  Till we came to the home of Lionel,
  Among the mountains wild and lone,
  Beside the hoary western sea,
  Which near the verge of the echoing shore
  The massy forest shadowed o'er.
  
  The ancient steward with hair all hoar,
  As we alighted, wept to see
  His master changed so fearfully;
  And the old man's sobs did waken me
  From my dream of unremaining gladness;
  The truth flashed o'er me like quick madness
  When I looked, and saw that there was death
  On Lionel.
  
  Yet day by day
  He lived, till fear grew hope and faith,
  And in my soul I dared to say,
  Nothing so bright can pass away;
  Death is dark, and foul, and dull,
  But he is—oh, how beautiful!
  Yet day by day he grew more weak,
  And his sweet voice, when he might speak,
  Which ne'er was loud, became more low;
  And the light which flashed through his waxen cheek
  Grew faint, as the rose-like hues which flow
  From sunset o'er the Alpine snow;
  And death seemed not like death in him,
  For the spirit of life o'er every limb
  Lingered, a mist of sense and thought.
  
  When the summer wind faint odors brought
  From mountain flowers, even as it passed,
  His cheek would change, as the noonday sea
  Which the dying breeze sweeps fitfully.
  
  If but a cloud the sky o'ercast,
  You might see his color come and go,
  And the softest strain of music made
  Sweet smiles, yet sad, arise and fade
  Amid the dew of his tender eyes;
  And the breath, with intermitting flow,
  Made his pale lips quiver and part.
  
  You might hear the beatings of his heart,
  Quick but not strong; and with my tresses
  When oft he playfully would bind
  In the bowers of mossy lonelinesses
  His neck, and win me so to mingle
  In the sweet depth of woven caresses,
  And our faint limbs were intertwined,—
  Alas! the unquiet life did tingle
  From mine own heart through every vein,
  Like a captive in dreams of liberty,
  Who beats the walls of his stony cell.
  
  But his, it seemed already free,
  Like the shadow of fire surrounding me!
  On my faint eyes and limbs did dwell
  That spirit as it passed, till soon—
  As a frail cloud wandering o'er the moon,
  Beneath its light invisible,
  Is seen when it folds its gray wings again
  To alight on midnight's dusky plain—
  I lived and saw, and the gathering soul
  Passed from beneath that strong control,
  And I fell on a life which was sick with fear
  Of all the woe that now I bear.
  
  Amid a bloomless myrtle wood,
  On a green and sea-girt promontory
  Not far from where we dwelt, there stood,
  In record of a sweet sad story,
  An altar and a temple bright
  Circled by steps, and o'er the gate
  Was sculptured, 'To Fidelity;'
  And in the shrine an image sate
  All veiled; but there was seen the light
  Of smiles which faintly could express
  A mingled pain and tenderness
  Through that ethereal drapery.
  
  The left hand held the head, the right—
  Beyond the veil, beneath the skin,
  You might see the nerves quivering within—
  Was forcing the point of a barbèd dart
  Into its side-convulsing heart.
  
  An unskilled hand, yet one informed
  With genius, had the marble warmed
  With that pathetic life.
  
  This tale
  It told: A dog had from the sea,
  When the tide was raging fearfully,
  Dragged Lionel's mother, weak and pale,
  Then died beside her on the sand,
  And she that temple thence had planned;
  But it was Lionel's own hand
  Had wrought the image.
  
  Each new moon
  That lady did, in this lone fane,
  The rites of a religion sweet
  Whose god was in her heart and brain.
  
  The seasons' loveliest flowers were strewn
  On the marble floor beneath her feet,
  And she brought crowns of sea-buds white
  Whose odor is so sweet and faint,
  And weeds, like branching chrysolite,
  Woven in devices fine and quaint;
  And tears from her brown eyes did stain
  The altar; need but look upon
  That dying statue, fair and wan,
  If tears should cease, to weep again;
  And rare Arabian odors came,
  Through the myrtle copses, steaming thence
  From the hissing frankincense,
  Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam,
  Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome—
  That ivory dome, whose azure night
  With golden stars, like heaven, was bright
  O'er the split cedar's pointed flame;
  And the lady's harp would kindle there
  The melody of an old air,
  Softer than sleep; the villagers
  Mixed their religion up with hers,
  And, as they listened round, shed tears.
  
  One eve he led me to this fane.
  
  Daylight on its last purple cloud
  Was lingering gray, and soon her strain
  The nightingale began; now loud,
  Climbing in circles the windless sky,
  Now dying music; suddenly
  'T is scattered in a thousand notes;
  And now to the hushed ear it floats
  Like field-smells known in infancy,
  Then, failing, soothes the air again.
  
  We sate within that temple lone,
  Pavilioned round with Parian stone;
  His mother's harp stood near, and oft
  I had awakened music soft
  Amid its wires; the nightingale
  Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale.
  
  'Now drain the cup,' said Lionel,
  'Which the poet-bird has crowned so well
  With the wine of her bright and liquid song!
  Heard'st thou not sweet words among
  That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?
  
  Heard'st thou not that those who die
  Awake in a world of ecstasy?
  
  That love, when limbs are interwoven,
  And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,
  And thought, to the world's dim boundaries clinging,
  And music, when one beloved is singing,
  Is death?
  
  Let us drain right joyously
  The cup which the sweet bird fills for me.
  
  '
  He paused, and to my lips he bent
  His own; like spirit his words went
  Through all my limbs with the speed of fire;
  And his keen eyes, glittering through mine,
  Filled me with the flame divine
  Which in their orbs was burning far,
  Like the light of an unmeasured star
  In the sky of midnight dark and deep;
  Yes, 't was his soul that did inspire
  Sounds which my skill could ne'er awaken;
  And first, I felt my fingers sweep
  The harp, and a long quivering cry
  Burst from my lips in symphony;
  The dusk and solid air was shaken,
  As swift and swifter the notes came
  From my touch, that wandered like quick flame,
  And from my bosom, laboring
  With some unutterable thing.
  
  The awful sound of my own voice made
  My faint lips tremble; in some mood
  Of wordless thought Lionel stood
  So pale, that even beside his cheek
  The snowy column from its shade
  Caught whiteness; yet his countenance,
  Raised upward, burned with radiance
  Of spirit-piercing joy whose light,
  Like the moon struggling through the night
  Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break
  With beams that might not be confined.
  
  I paused, but soon his gestures kindled
  New power, as by the moving wind
  The waves are lifted; and my song
  To low soft notes now changed and dwindled,
  And, from the twinkling wires among,
  My languid fingers drew and flung
  Circles of life-dissolving sound,
  Yet faint; in aëry rings they bound
  My Lionel, who, as every strain
  Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien
  Sunk with the sound relaxedly;
  And slowly now he turned to me,
  As slowly faded from his face
  That awful joy; with look serene
  He was soon drawn to my embrace,
  And my wild song then died away
  In murmurs; words I dare not say
  We mixed, and on his lips mine fed
  Till they methought felt still and cold.
  
  'What is it with thee, love?
  
  ' I said;
  No word, no look, no motion! yes,
  There was a change, but spare to guess,
  Nor let that moment's hope be told.
  
  I looked,—and knew that he was dead;
  And fell, as the eagle on the plain
  Falls when life deserts her brain,
  And the mortal lightning is veiled again.
  
  Oh, that I were now dead! but such—
  Did they not, love, demand too much,
  Those dying murmurs?
  
  —he forbade.
  
  Oh, that I once again were mad!
  And yet, dear Rosalind, not so,
  For I would live to share thy woe.
  
  Sweet boy! did I forget thee too?
  
  Alas, we know not what we do
  When we speak words.
  
  No memory more
  Is in my mind of that sea-shore.
  
  Madness came on me, and a troop
  Of misty shapes did seem to sit
  Beside me, on a vessel's poop,
  And the clear north wind was driving it.
  
  Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers,
  And the stars methought grew unlike ours,
  And the azure sky and the stormless sea
  Made me believe that I had died
  And waked in a world which was to me
  Drear hell, though heaven to all beside.
  
  Then a dead sleep fell on my mind,
  Whilst animal life many long years
  Had rescued from a chasm of tears;
  And, when I woke, I wept to find
  That the same lady, bright and wise,
  With silver locks and quick brown eyes,
  The mother of my Lionel,
  Had tended me in my distress,
  And died some months before.
  
  Nor less
  Wonder, but far more peace and joy,
  Brought in that hour my lovely boy.
  
  For through that trance my soul had well
  The impress of thy being kept;
  And if I waked or if I slept,
  No doubt, though memory faithless be,
  Thy image ever dwelt on me;
  And thus, O Lionel, like thee
  Is our sweet child.
  
  'T is sure most strange
  I knew not of so great a change
  As that which gave him birth, who now
  Is all the solace of my woe.
  
  That Lionel great wealth had left
  By will to me, and that of all
  The ready lies of law bereft
  My child and me,—might well befall.
  
  But let me think not of the scorn
  Which from the meanest I have borne,
  When, for my child's belovèd sake,
  I mixed with slaves, to vindicate
  The very laws themselves do make;
  Let me not say scorn is my fate,
  Lest I be proud, suffering the same
  With those who live in deathless fame.
  
  She ceased.
  
  —'Lo, where red morning through the woods
  Is burning o'er the dew!' said Rosalind.
  
  And with these words they rose, and towards the flood
  Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves, now wind
  With equal steps and fingers intertwined.
  
  Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore
  Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses
  Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies
  And with their shadows the clear depths below,
  And where a little terrace from its bowers
  Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon flowers
  Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er
  The liquid marble of the windless lake;
  And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar
  Under the leaves which their green garments make,
  They come.
  
  'T is Helen's home, and clean and white,
  Like one which tyrants spare on our own land
  In some such solitude; its casements bright
  Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun,
  And even within 't was scarce like Italy.
  
  And when she saw how all things there were planned
  As in an English home, dim memory
  Disturbed poor Rosalind; she stood as one
  Whose mind is where his body cannot be,
  Till Helen led her where her child yet slept,
  And said, 'Observe, that brow was Lionel's,
  Those lips were his, and so he ever kept
  One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it.
  
  You cannot see his eyes—they are two wells
  Of liquid love.
  
  Let us not wake him yet.
  
  '
  But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept
  A shower of burning tears which fell upon
  His face, and so his opening lashes shone
  With tears unlike his own, as he did leap
  In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.
  
  So Rosalind and Helen lived together
  Thenceforth—changed in all else, yet friends again,
  Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather
  They wandered in their youth through sun and rain.
  
  And after many years, for human things
  Change even like the ocean and the wind,
  Her daughter was restored to Rosalind,
  And in their circle thence some visitings
  Of joy 'mid their new calm would intervene.
  
  A lovely child she was, of looks serene,
  And motions which o'er things indifferent shed
  The grace and gentleness from whence they came.
  
  And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed
  From the same flowers of thought, until each mind
  Like springs which mingle in one flood became;
  And in their union soon their parents saw
  The shadow of the peace denied to them.
  
  And Rosalind—for when the living stem
  Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall—
  Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe
  The pale survivors followed her remains
  Beyond the region of dissolving rains,
  Up the cold mountain she was wont to call
  Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice
  They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,
  Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun,
  Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,
  The last, when it had sunk; and through the night
  The charioteers of Arctos wheelèd round
  Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home,
  Whose sad inhabitants each year would come,
  With willing steps climbing that rugged height,
  And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound
  With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's despite,
  Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light;
  Such flowers as in the wintry memory bloom
  Of one friend left adorned that frozen tomb.
  
  Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,
  Whose sufferings too were less, death slowlier led
  Into the peace of his dominion cold.
  
  She died among her kindred, being old.
  
  And know, that if love die not in the dead
  As in the living, none of mortal kind
  Are blessed as now Helen and Rosalind.
  
  Begun at Marlow, 1817 (summer); already in the press, March, 1818; finished at the Baths of Lucca, August, 1818; published with other poems, as the title-piece of a slender volume, by C.
  
  & J.
  
  Ollier, London, 1819 (spring).
  
  Note by Mrs.
  
  Shelley: 'Rosalind and Helen was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside -- till I found it; and, at my request, it was completed.
  
  Shelley had no care for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind and develop some high or abstruse truth.
  
  When he does touch on human life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic.
  
  He never mentioned Love but he shed a grace borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other poet has bestowed, on that passion.
  
  When he spoke of it as the law of life, which inasmuch as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves and others, he promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable truth.
  
  In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or insensibility, or mistake.
  
  By reverting in his mind to this first principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could disclose the secrets of all hearts; and his delineations of passion and emotion touch the finest chords of our nature.
  
  Rosalind and Helen was finished during the summer of 1818, while we were at the baths of Lucca.
  
  '

• Saint Edmond's Eve Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Oh! did you observe the Black Canon pass,
  And did you observe his frown?
  
  He goeth to say the midnight mass,
  In holy St.
  
  Edmond's town.
  
  He goeth to sing the burial chaunt,
  And to lay the wandering sprite,
  Whose shadowy, restless form doth haunt,
  The Abbey's drear aisle this night.
  
  It saith it will not its wailing cease,
  'Till that holy man come near,
  'Till he pour o’er its grave the prayer of peace,
  And sprinkle the hallowed tear.
  
  The Canon's horse is stout and strong
  The road is plain and fair,
  But the Canon slowly wends along,
  And his brow is gloomed with care.
  
  Who is it thus late at the Abbey-gate?
  
  Sullen echoes the portal bell,
  It sounds like the whispering voice of fate,
  It sounds like a funeral knell.
  
  The Canon his faltering knee thrice bowed,
  And his frame was convulsed with fear,
  When a voice was heard distinct and loud,
  'Prepare! for thy hour is near.
  
  '
  He crosses his breast, he mutters a prayer,
  To Heaven he lifts his eye,
  He heeds not the Abbot's gazing stare,
  Nor the dark Monks who murmured by.
  
  Bare-headed he worships the sculptured saints
  That frown on the sacred walls,
  His face it grows pale,--he trembles, he faints,
  At the Abbot’s feet he falls.
  
  And straight the father’s robe he kissed,
  Who cried, 'Grace dwells with thee,
  The spirit will fade like the morning mist,
  At your benedicite.
  
  'Now haste within! the board is spread,
  Keen blows the air, and cold,
  The spectre sleeps in its earthy bed,
  'Till St.
  
  Edmond’s bell hath tolled,--
  'Yet rest your wearied limbs to-night,
  You’ve journeyed many a mile,
  To-morrow lay the wailing sprite,
  That shrieks in the moonlight aisle.
  
  'Oh! faint are my limbs and my bosom is cold,
  Yet to-night must the sprite be laid,
  Yet to-night when the hour of horror's told,
  Must I meet the wandering shade.
  
  'Nor food, nor rest may now delay,--
  For hark! the echoing pile,
  A bell loud shakes!—Oh haste away,
  O lead to the haunted aisle.
  
  '
  The torches slowly move before,
  The cross is raised on high,
  A smile of peace the Canon wore,
  But horror dimmed his eye--
  And now they climb the footworn stair,
  The chapel gates unclose,
  Now each breathed low a fervent prayer,
  And fear each bosom froze--
  Now paused awhile the doubtful band
  And viewed the solemn scene,--
  Full dark the clustered columns stand,
  The moon gleams pale between--
  'Say father, say, what cloisters' gloom
  Conceals the unquiet shade,
  Within what dark unhallowed tomb,
  The corse unblessed was laid.
  
  '
  'Through yonder drear aisle alone it walks,
  And murmurs a mournful plaint,
  Of thee! Black Canon, it wildly talks,
  And call on thy patron saint--
  The pilgrim this night with wondering eyes,
  As he prayed at St.
  
  Edmond's shrine,
  From a black marble tomb hath seen it rise,
  And under yon arch recline.
  
  '--
  ‘Oh! say upon that black marble tomb,
  What memorial sad appears.
  
  '--
  ‘Undistinguished it lies in the chancel's gloom,
  No memorial sad it bears'--
  The Canon his paternoster reads,
  His rosary hung by his side,
  Now swift to the chancel doors he leads,
  And untouched they open wide,
  Resistless, strange sounds his steps impel,
  To approach to the black marble tomb,
  'Oh! enter, Black Canon,' a whisper fell,
  'Oh! enter, thy hour is come.
  
  '
  He paused, told his beads, and the threshold passed.
  
  Oh! horror, the chancel doors close,
  A loud yell was borne on the rising blast,
  And a deep, dying groan arose.
  
  The Monks in amazement shuddering stand,
  They burst through the chancel's gloom,
  From St.
  
  Edmond’s shrine, lo! a skeleton’s hand,
  Points to the black marble tomb.
  
  Lo! deeply engraved, an inscription blood red,
  In characters fresh and clear--
  'The guilty Black Canon of Elmham's dead,
  And his wife lies buried here!'
  In Elmham’s tower he wedded a Nun,
  To St.
  
  Edmond’s his bride he bore,
  On this eve her noviciate here was begun,
  And a Monk’s gray weeds she wore;--
  O! deep was her conscience dyed with guilt,
  Remorse she full oft revealed,
  Her blood by the ruthless Black Canon was spilt,
  And in death her lips he sealed;
  Her spirit to penance this night was doomed,
  'Till the Canon atoned the deed,
  Here together they now shall rest entombed,
  'Till their bodies from dust are freed--
  Hark! a loud peal of thunder shakes the roof,
  Round the altar bright lightnings play,
  Speechless with horror the Monks stand aloof,
  And the storm dies sudden away--
  The inscription was gone! a cross on the ground,
  And a rosary shone through the gloom,
  But never again was the Canon there found,
  Or the Ghost on the black marble tomb.

• Scene From ‘Tasso’ Read Poem Log in to favourite

  MADDALO, A COURTIER.
  
  MALPIGLIO, A POET.
  
  PIGNA, A MINISTER.
  
  ALBANO, AN USHER.
  
  MADDALO:
  No access to the Duke! You have not said
  That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?
  
  PIGNA:
  Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna
  Waits with state papers for his signature?
  
  MALPIGLIO:
  The Lady Leonora cannot know
  That I have written a sonnet to her fame,
  In which I .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Venus and Adonis.
  
  You should not take my gold and serve me not.
  
  ALBANO:
  In truth I told her, and she smiled and said,
  ‘If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,
  Art the Adonis whom I love, and he
  The Erymanthian boar that wounded him.
  
  ’
  O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,
  Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin.
  
  MALPIGLIO:
  The words are twisted in some double sense
  That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.
  
  PIGNA:
  How are the Duke and Duchess occupied?
  
  ALBANO:
  Buried in some strange talk.
  
  The Duke was leaning,
  His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.
  
  The Princess sate within the window-seat,
  And so her face was hid; but on her knee
  Her hands were clasped, veined, and pale as snow,
  And quivering—young Tasso, too, was there.
  
  MADDALO:
  Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven
  Thou drawest down smiles—they did not rain on thee.
  
  MALPIGLIO:
  Would they were parching lightnings for his sake
  On whom they fell!
  Composed, 1818.
  
  Published by Dr.
  
  Garnett, Relics of Shelley, 1862.

• Scenes From The Faust Of Goethe Read Poem Log in to favourite

  SCENE 1.
  
  —PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN.
  
  THE LORD AND THE HOST OF HEAVEN.
  
  ENTER THREE ARCHANGELS.
  
  RAPHAEL:
  The sun makes music as of old
  Amid the rival spheres of Heaven,
  On its predestined circle rolled
  With thunder speed: the Angels even
  Draw strength from gazing on its glance,
  Though none its meaning fathom may:--
  The world’s unwithered countenance
  Is bright as at Creation’s day.
  
  GABRIEL:
  And swift and swift, with rapid lightness,
  The adorned Earth spins silently,
  Alternating Elysian brightness
  With deep and dreadful night; the sea
  Foams in broad billows from the deep
  Up to the rocks, and rocks and Ocean,
  Onward, with spheres which never sleep,
  Are hurried in eternal motion.
  
  MICHAEL:
  And tempests in contention roar
  From land to sea, from sea to land;
  And, raging, weave a chain of power,
  Which girds the earth, as with a band.
  
  --
  A flashing desolation there,
  Flames before the thunder’s way;
  But Thy servants, Lord, revere
  The gentle changes of Thy day.
  
  CHORUS OF THE THREE:
  The Angels draw strength from Thy glance,
  Though no one comprehend Thee may;--
  Thy world’s unwithered countenance
  Is bright as on Creation's day.
  
  The sun sounds, according to ancient custom,
  In the song of emulation of his brother-spheres.
  
  And its fore-written circle
  Fulfils with a step of thunder.
  
  Its countenance gives the Angels strength
  Though no one can fathom it.
  
  The incredible high works
  Are excellent as at the first day.
  
  GABRIEL:
  And swift, and inconceivably swift
  The adornment of earth winds itself round,
  And exchanges Paradise--clearness
  With deep dreadful night.
  
  The sea foams in broad waves
  From its deep bottom, up to the rocks,
  And rocks and sea are torn on together
  In the eternal swift course of the spheres.
  
  MICHAEL:
  And storms roar in emulation
  From sea to land, from land to sea,
  And make, raging, a chain
  Of deepest operation round about.
  
  There flames a flashing destruction
  Before the path of the thunderbolt.
  
  But Thy servants, Lord, revere
  The gentle alternations of Thy day.
  
  CHORUS:
  Thy countenance gives the Angels strength,
  Though none can comprehend Thee:
  And all Thy lofty works
  Are excellent as at the first day.
  
  [ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES.
  
  ]
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  As thou, O Lord, once more art kind enough
  To interest Thyself in our affairs,
  And ask, ‘How goes it with you there below?
  
  ’
  And as indulgently at other times
  Thou tookest not my visits in ill part,
  Thou seest me here once more among Thy household.
  
  Though I should scandalize this company,
  You will excuse me if I do not talk
  In the high style which they think fashionable;
  My pathos certainly would make You laugh too,
  Had You not long since given over laughing.
  
  Nothing know I to say of suns and worlds;
  I observe only how men plague themselves;--
  The little god o’ the world keeps the same stamp,
  As wonderful as on creation’s day:--
  A little better would he live, hadst Thou
  Not given him a glimpse of Heaven’s light
  Which he calls reason, and employs it only
  To live more beastlily than any beast.
  
  With reverence to Your Lordship be it spoken,
  He’s like one of those long-legged grasshoppers,
  Who flits and jumps about, and sings for ever
  The same old song i’ the grass.
  
  There let him lie,
  Burying his nose in every heap of dung.
  
  THE LORD:
  Have you no more to say?
  
  Do you come here
  Always to scold, and cavil, and complain?
  
  Seems nothing ever right to you on earth?
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  No, Lord! I find all there, as ever, bad at best.
  
  Even I am sorry for man’s days of sorrow;
  I could myself almost give up the pleasure
  Of plaguing the poor things.
  
  THE LORD:
  Knowest thou Faust?
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  The Doctor?
  
  THE LORD:
  Ay; My servant Faust.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  In truth
  He serves You in a fashion quite his own;
  And the fool’s meat and drink are not of earth.
  
  His aspirations bear him on so far
  That he is half aware of his own folly,
  For he demands from Heaven its fairest star,
  And from the earth the highest joy it bears,
  Yet all things far, and all things near, are vain
  To calm the deep emotions of his breast.
  
  THE LORD:
  Though he now serves Me in a cloud of error,
  I will soon lead him forth to the clear day.
  
  When trees look green, full well the gardener knows
  That fruits and blooms will deck the coming year.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  What will You bet?
  
  --now am sure of winning--
  Only, observe You give me full permission
  To lead him softly on my path.
  
  THE LORD:
  As long
  As he shall live upon the earth, so long
  Is nothing unto thee forbidden—Man
  Must err till he has ceased to struggle.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Thanks.
  
  And that is all I ask; for willingly
  I never make acquaintance with the dead.
  
  The full fresh cheeks of youth are food for me,
  And if a corpse knocks, I am not at home.
  
  For I am like a cat--I like to play
  A little with the mouse before I eat it.
  
  THE LORD:
  Well, well! it is permitted thee.
  
  Draw thou
  His spirit from its springs; as thou find’st power
  Seize him and lead him on thy downward path;
  And stand ashamed when failure teaches thee
  That a good man, even in his darkest longings,
  Is well aware of the right way.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Well and good.
  
  I am not in much doubt about my bet,
  And if I lose, then ’tis Your turn to crow;
  Enjoy Your triumph then with a full breast.
  
  Ay; dust shall he devour, and that with pleasure,
  Like my old paramour, the famous Snake.
  
  THE LORD:
  Pray come here when it suits you; for I never
  Had much dislike for people of your sort.
  
  And, among all the Spirits who rebelled,
  The knave was ever the least tedious to Me.
  
  The active spirit of man soon sleeps, and soon 100
  He seeks unbroken quiet; therefore I
  Have given him the Devil for a companion,
  Who may provoke him to some sort of work,
  And must create forever.
  
  --But ye, pure
  Children of God, enjoy eternal beauty;--
  Let that which ever operates and lives
  Clasp you within the limits of its love;
  And seize with sweet and melancholy thoughts
  The floating phantoms of its loveliness.
  
  [HEAVEN CLOSES; THE ARCHANGELS EXEUNT.
  
  ]
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  From time to time I visit the old fellow,
  And I take care to keep on good terms with Him.
  
  Civil enough is the same God Almighty,
  To talk so freely with the Devil himself.
  
  SCENE 2.
  
  —MAY-DAY NIGHT.
  
  THE HARTZ MOUNTAIN, A DESOLATE COUNTRY.
  
  FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Would you not like a broomstick?
  
  As for me
  I wish I had a good stout ram to ride;
  For we are still far from the appointed place.
  
  FAUST:
  This knotted staff is help enough for me,
  Whilst I feel fresh upon my legs.
  
  What good
  Is there in making short a pleasant way?
  
  To creep along the labyrinths of the vales,
  And climb those rocks, where ever-babbling springs,
  Precipitate themselves in waterfalls,
  Is the true sport that seasons such a path.
  
  Already Spring kindles the birchen spray,
  And the hoar pines already feel her breath:
  Shall she not work also within our limbs?
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Nothing of such an influence do I feel.
  
  My body is all wintry, and I wish
  The flowers upon our path were frost and snow.
  
  But see how melancholy rises now,
  Dimly uplifting her belated beam,
  The blank unwelcome round of the red moon,
  And gives so bad a light, that every step
  One stumbles ‘gainst some crag.
  
  With your permission,
  I’ll call on Ignis-fatuus to our aid:
  I see one yonder burning jollily.
  
  Halloo, my friend! may I request that you
  Would favour us with your bright company?
  
  Why should you blaze away there to no purpose?
  
  Pray be so good as light us up this way.
  
  IGNIS-FATUUS:
  With reverence be it spoken, I will try
  To overcome the lightness of my nature;
  Our course, you know, is generally zigzag.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Ha, ha! your worship thinks you have to deal
  With men.
  
  Go straight on, in the Devil’s name,
  Or I shall puff your flickering life out.
  
  IGNIS-FATUUS:
  Well,
  I see you are the master of the house;
  I will accommodate myself to you.
  
  Only consider that to-night this mountain
  Is all enchanted, and if Jack-a-lantern
  Shows you his way, though you should miss your own,
  You ought not to be too exact with him.
  
  FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES, AND IGNIS-FATUUS, IN ALTERNATE CHORUS:
  The limits of the sphere of dream,
  The bounds of true and false, are past.
  
  Lead us on, thou wandering Gleam,
  Lead us onward, far and fast,
  To the wide, the desert waste.
  
  But see, how swift advance and shift
  Trees behind trees, row by row,--
  How, clift by clift, rocks bend and lift
  Their frowning foreheads as we go.
  
  The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!
  How they snort, and how they blow!
  Through the mossy sods and stones,
  Stream and streamlet hurry down—
  A rushing throng! A sound of song
  Beneath the vault of Heaven is blown!
  Sweet notes of love, the speaking tones
  Of this bright day, sent down to say
  That Paradise on Earth is known,
  Resound around, beneath, above.
  
  All we hope and all we love
  Finds a voice in this blithe strain,
  Which wakens hill and wood and rill,
  And vibrates far o’er field and vale,
  And which Echo, like the tale
  Of old times, repeats again.
  
  To-whoo! to-whoo! near, nearer now
  The sound of song, the rushing throng!
  Are the screech, the lapwing, and the jay,
  All awake as if ’twere day?
  
  See, with long legs and belly wide,
  A salamander in the brake!
  Every root is like a snake,
  And along the loose hillside,
  With strange contortions through the night,
  Curls, to seize or to affright;
  And, animated, strong, and many,
  They dart forth polypus-antennae,
  To blister with their poison spume
  The wanderer.
  
  Through the dazzling gloom
  The many-coloured mice, that thread
  The dewy turf beneath our tread,
  In troops each other’s motions cross,
  Through the heath and through the moss;
  And, in legions intertangled,
  The fire-flies flit, and swarm, and throng,
  Till all the mountain depths are spangled.
  
  Tell me, shall we go or stay?
  
  Shall we onward?
  
  Come along!
  Everything around is swept
  Forward, onward, far away!
  Trees and masses intercept
  The sight, and wisps on every side
  Are puffed up and multiplied.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Now vigorously seize my skirt, and gain
  This pinnacle of isolated crag.
  
  One may observe with wonder from this point,
  How Mammon glows among the mountains.
  
  FAUST:
  Ay--
  And strangely through the solid depth below
  A melancholy light, like the red dawn,
  Shoots from the lowest gorge of the abyss
  Of mountains, lightning hitherward: there rise
  Pillars of smoke, here clouds float gently by;
  Here the light burns soft as the enkindled air,
  Or the illumined dust of golden flowers;
  And now it glides like tender colours spreading;
  And now bursts forth in fountains from the earth;
  And now it winds, one torrent of broad light,
  Through the far valley with a hundred veins;
  And now once more within that narrow corner
  Masses itself into intensest splendour.
  
  And near us, see, sparks spring out of the ground,
  Like golden sand scattered upon the darkness;
  The pinnacles of that black wall of mountains
  That hems us in are kindled.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Rare: in faith!
  Does not Sir Mammon gloriously illuminate
  His palace for this festival?
  
  --it is
  A pleasure which you had not known before.
  
  I spy the boisterous guests already.
  
  FAUST:
  How
  The children of the wind rage in the air!
  With what fierce strokes they fall upon my neck!
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Cling tightly to the old ribs of the crag.
  
  Beware! for if with them thou warrest
  In their fierce flight towards the wilderness,
  Their breath will sweep thee into dust, and drag
  Thy body to a grave in the abyss.
  
  A cloud thickens the night.
  
  Hark! how the tempest crashes through the forest!
  The owls fly out in strange affright;
  The columns of the evergreen palaces
  Are split and shattered;
  The roots creak, and stretch, and groan;
  And ruinously overthrown,
  The trunks are crushed and shattered
  By the fierce blast’s unconquerable stress.
  
  Over each other crack and crash they all
  In terrible and intertangled fall;
  And through the ruins of the shaken mountain
  The airs hiss and howl--
  It is not the voice of the fountain,
  Nor the wolf in his midnight prowl.
  
  Dost thou not hear?
  
  Strange accents are ringing
  Aloft, afar, anear?
  
  The witches are singing!
  The torrent of a raging wizard song
  Streams the whole mountain along.
  
  CHORUS OF WITCHES:
  The stubble is yellow, the corn is green,
  Now to the Brocken the witches go;
  The mighty multitude here may be seen
  Gathering, wizard and witch, below.
  
  Sir Urian is sitting aloft in the air;
  Hey over stock! and hey over stone!
  'Twixt witches and incubi, what shall be done?
  
  Tell it who dare! tell it who dare!
  A VOICE:
  Upon a sow-swine, whose farrows were nine,
  Old Baubo rideth alone.
  
  CHORUS:
  Honour her, to whom honour is due,
  Old mother Baubo, honour to you!
  An able sow, with old Baubo upon her,
  Is worthy of glory, and worthy of honour!
  The legion of witches is coming behind,
  Darkening the night, and outspeeding the wind--
  A VOICE:
  Which way comest thou?
  
  A VOICE:
  Over Ilsenstein;
  The owl was awake in the white moonshine;
  I saw her at rest in her downy nest,
  And she stared at me with her broad, bright eyne.
  
  VOICES:
  And you may now as well take your course on to Hell,
  Since you ride by so fast on the headlong blast.
  
  A VOICE:
  She dropped poison upon me as I passed.
  
  Here are the wounds--
  CHORUS OF WITCHES:
  Come away! come along!
  The way is wide, the way is long,
  But what is that for a Bedlam throng?
  
  Stick with the prong, and scratch with the broom.
  
  The child in the cradle lies strangled at home,
  And the mother is clapping her hands.
  
  --
  SEMICHORUS OF WIZARDS 1:
  We glide in
  Like snails when the women are all away;
  And from a house once given over to sin
  Woman has a thousand steps to stray.
  
  SEMICHORUS 2:
  A thousand steps must a woman take,
  Where a man but a single spring will make.
  
  VOICES ABOVE:
  Come with us, come with us, from Felsensee.
  
  VOICES BELOW:
  With what joy would we fly through the upper sky!
  We are washed, we are ‘nointed, stark naked are we;
  But our toil and our pain are forever in vain.
  
  BOTH CHORUSES:
  The wind is still, the stars are fled,
  The melancholy moon is dead;
  The magic notes, like spark on spark,
  Drizzle, whistling through the dark.
  
  Come away!
  VOICES BELOW:
  Stay, Oh, stay!
  VOICES ABOVE:
  Out of the crannies of the rocks
  Who calls?
  
  VOICES BELOW:
  Oh, let me join your flocks!
  I, three hundred years have striven
  To catch your skirt and mount to Heaven,--
  And still in vain.
  
  Oh, might I be
  With company akin to me!
  BOTH CHORUSES:
  Some on a ram and some on a prong,
  On poles and on broomsticks we flutter along;
  Forlorn is the wight who can rise not to-night.
  
  A HALF-WITCH BELOW:
  I have been tripping this many an hour:
  Are the others already so far before?
  
  No quiet at home, and no peace abroad!
  And less methinks is found by the road.
  
  CHORUS OF WITCHES:
  Come onward, away! aroint thee, aroint!
  A witch to be strong must anoint--anoint--
  Then every trough will be boat enough;
  With a rag for a sail we can sweep through the sky,
  Who flies not to-night, when means he to fly?
  
  BOTH CHORUSES:
  We cling to the skirt, and we strike on the ground;
  Witch-legions thicken around and around;
  Wizard-swarms cover the heath all over.
  
  [THEY DESCEND.
  
  ]
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  What thronging, dashing, raging, rustling;
  What whispering, babbling, hissing, bustling;
  What glimmering, spurting, stinking, burning,
  As Heaven and Earth were overturning.
  
  There is a true witch element about us;
  Take hold on me, or we shall be divided:--
  Where are you?
  
  FAUST [FROM A DISTANCE]:
  Here!
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  What!
  I must exert my authority in the house.
  
  Place for young Voland! pray make way, good people.
  
  Take hold on me, doctor, an with one step
  Let us escape from this unpleasant crowd:
  They are too mad for people of my sort.
  
  Just there shines a peculiar kind of light--
  Something attracts me in those bushes.
  
  Come
  This way: we shall slip down there in a minute.
  
  FAUST:
  Spirit of Contradiction! Well, lead on--
  ’Twere a wise feat indeed to wander out
  Into the Brocken upon May-day night,
  And then to isolate oneself in scorn,
  Disgusted with the humours of the time.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  See yonder, round a many-coloured flame
  A merry club is huddled altogether:
  Even with such little people as sit there
  One would not be alone.
  
  FAUST:
  Would that I were
  Up yonder in the glow and whirling smoke,
  Where the blind million rush impetuously
  To meet the evil ones; there might I solve
  Many a riddle that torments me.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Yet
  Many a riddle there is tied anew
  Inextricably.
  
  Let the great world rage!
  We will stay here safe in the quiet dwellings.
  
  ’Tis an old custom.
  
  Men have ever built
  Their own small world in the great world of all.
  
  I see young witches naked there, and old ones
  Wisely attired with greater decency.
  
  Be guided now by me, and you shall buy
  A pound of pleasure with a dram of trouble.
  
  I hear them tune their instruments--one must
  Get used to this damned scraping.
  
  Come, I’ll lead you
  Among them; and what there you do and see,
  As a fresh compact ‘twixt us two shall be.
  
  How say you now?
  
  this space is wide enough--
  Look forth, you cannot see the end of it--
  An hundred bonfires burn in rows, and they
  Who throng around them seem innumerable:
  Dancing and drinking, jabbering, making love,
  And cooking, are at work.
  
  Now tell me, friend,
  What is there better in the world than this?
  
  FAUST:
  In introducing us, do you assume
  The character of Wizard or of Devil?
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  In truth, I generally go about
  In strict incognito; and yet one likes
  To wear one’s orders upon gala days.
  
  I have no ribbon at my knee; but here
  At home, the cloven foot is honourable.
  
  See you that snail there?
  
  —she comes creeping up,
  And with her feeling eyes hath smelt out something.
  
  I could not, if I would, mask myself here.
  
  Come now, we’ll go about from fire to fire:
  I’ll be the Pimp, and you shall be the Lover.
  
  [TO SOME OLD WOMEN, WHO ARE SITTING ROUND A HEAP OF GLIMMERING COALS.
  
  ]
  Old gentlewomen, what do you do out here?
  
  You ought to be with the young rioters
  Right in the thickest of the revelry--
  But every one is best content at home.
  
  General.
  
  Who dare confide in right or a just claim?
  
  So much as I had done for them! and now--
  With women and the people ’tis the same,
  Youth will stand foremost ever,--age may go
  To the dark grave unhonoured.
  
  MINISTER:
  Nowadays
  People assert their rights: they go too far; 280
  But as for me, the good old times I praise;
  Then we were all in all--’twas something worth
  One’s while to be in place and wear a star;
  That was indeed the golden age on earth.
  
  PARVENU:
  We too are active, and we did and do
  What we ought not, perhaps; and yet we now
  Will seize, whilst all things are whirled round and round,
  A spoke of Fortune’s wheel, and keep our ground.
  
  AUTHOR:
  Who now can taste a treatise of deep sense
  And ponderous volume?
  
  ’tis impertinence
  To write what none will read, therefore will I
  To please the young and thoughtless people try.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES [WHO AT ONCE APPEARS TO HAVE GROWN VERY OLD]:
  I find the people ripe for the last day,
  Since I last came up to the wizard mountain;
  And as my little cask runs turbid now,
  So is the world drained to the dregs.
  
  PEDLAR-WITCH:
  Look here,
  Gentlemen; do not hurry on so fast;
  And lose the chance of a good pennyworth.
  
  I have a pack full of the choicest wares
  Of every sort, and yet in all my bundle
  Is nothing like what may be found on earth;
  Nothing that in a moment will make rich
  Men and the world with fine malicious mischief--
  There is no dagger drunk with blood; no bowl
  From which consuming poison may be drained
  By innocent and healthy lips; no jewel,
  The price of an abandoned maiden’s shame;
  No sword which cuts the bond it cannot loose,
  Or stabs the wearer’s enemy in the back;
  No--
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Gossip, you know little of these times.
  
  What has been, has been; what is done, is past,
  They shape themselves into the innovations
  They breed, and innovation drags us with it.
  
  The torrent of the crowd sweeps over us:
  You think to impel, and are yourself impelled.
  
  FAUST:
  What is that yonder?
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Mark her well.
  
  It is
  Lilith.
  
  FAUST:
  Who?
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Lilith, the first wife of Adam.
  
  Beware of her fair hair, for she excels
  All women in the magic of her locks;
  And when she winds them round a young man’s neck,
  She will not ever set him free again.
  
  FAUST:
  There sit a girl and an old woman--they
  Seem to be tired with pleasure and with play.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  There is no rest to-night for any one:
  When one dance ends another is begun;
  Come, let us to it.
  
  We shall have rare fun.
  
  [FAUST DANCES AND SINGS WITH A GIRL, AND MEPHISTOPHELES WITH AN OLD WOMAN.
  
  ]
  FAUST:
  I had once a lovely dream
  In which I saw an apple-tree,
  Where two fair apples with their gleam
  To climb and taste attracted me.
  
  THE GIRL:
  She with apples you desired
  From Paradise came long ago:
  With you I feel that if required,
  Such still within my garden grow.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  PROCTO-PHANTASMIST:
  What is this cursed multitude about?
  
  Have we not long since proved to demonstration
  That ghosts move not on ordinary feet?
  
  But these are dancing just like men and women.
  
  THE GIRL:
  What does he want then at our ball?
  
  FAUST:
  Oh! he
  Is far above us all in his conceit:
  Whilst we enjoy, he reasons of enjoyment;
  And any step which in our dance we tread,
  If it be left out of his reckoning,
  Is not to be considered as a step.
  
  There are few things that scandalize him not:
  And when you whirl round in the circle now,
  As he went round the wheel in his old mill,
  He says that you go wrong in all respects,
  Especially if you congratulate him
  Upon the strength of the resemblance.
  
  PROCTO-PHANTASMIST:
  Fly!
  Vanish! Unheard-of impudence! What, still there!
  In this enlightened age too, since you have been
  Proved not to exist!--But this infernal brood
  Will hear no reason and endure no rule.
  
  Are we so wise, and is the POND still haunted?
  
  How long have I been sweeping out this rubbish
  Of superstition, and the world will not
  Come clean with all my pains!--it is a case
  Unheard of!
  THE GIRL:
  Then leave off teasing us so.
  
  PROCTO-PHANTASMIST:
  I tell you, spirits, to your faces now,
  That I should not regret this despotism
  Of spirits, but that mine can wield it not.
  
  To-night I shall make poor work of it,
  Yet I will take a round with you, and hope
  Before my last step in the living dance
  To beat the poet and the devil together.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  At last he will sit down in some foul puddle;
  That is his way of solacing himself;
  Until some leech, diverted with his gravity,
  Cures him of spirits and the spirit together.
  
  [TO FAUST, WHO HAS SECEDED FROM THE DANCE.
  
  ]
  Why do you let that fair girl pass from you,
  Who sung so sweetly to you in the dance?
  
  FAUST:
  A red mouse in the middle of her singing
  Sprung from her mouth.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  That was all right, my friend:
  Be it enough that the mouse was not gray.
  
  Do not disturb your hour of happiness
  With close consideration of such trifles.
  
  FAUST:
  Then saw I--
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  What?
  
  FAUST:
  Seest thou not a pale,
  Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away?
  
  She drags herself now forward with slow steps,
  And seems as if she moved with shackled feet:
  I cannot overcome the thought that she
  Is like poor Margaret.
  
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Let it be--pass on--
  No good can come of it--it is not well
  To meet it—it is an enchanted phantom,
  A lifeless idol; with its numbing look,
  It freezes up the blood of man; and they
  Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone,
  Like those who saw Medusa.
  
  FAUST:
  Oh, too true!
  Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse
  Which no beloved hand has closed, alas!
  That is the breast which Margaret yielded to me--
  Those are the lovely limbs which I enjoyed!
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  It is all magic, poor deluded fool!
  She looks to every one like his first love.
  
  FAUST:
  Oh, what delight! what woe! I cannot turn
  My looks from her sweet piteous countenance.
  
  How strangely does a single blood-red line,
  Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife,
  Adorn her lovely neck!
  MEPHISTOPHELES:
  Ay, she can carry
  Her head under her arm upon occasion;
  Perseus has cut it off for her.
  
  These pleasures
  End in delusion.
  
  —Gain this rising ground,
  It is as airy here as in a.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And if I am not mightily deceived,
  I see a theatre.
  
  —What may this mean?
  
  ATTENDANT:
  Quite a new piece, the last of seven, for ’tis
  The custom now to represent that number.
  
  ’Tis written by a Dilettante, and
  The actors who perform are Dilettanti;
  Excuse me, gentlemen; but I must vanish.
  
  I am a Dilettante curtain-lifter.

• Similes For Two Political Characters of 1819 Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  As from an ancestral oak
  Two empty ravens sound their clarion,
  Yell by yell, and croak by croak,
  When they scent the noonday smoke
  Of fresh human carrion:--
  II.
  
  As two gibbering night-birds flit
  From their bowers of deadly yew
  Through the night to frighten it,
  When the moon is in a fit,
  And the stars are none, or few:--
  III.
  
  As a shark and dog-fish wait
  Under an Atlantic isle,
  For the negro-ship, whose freight
  Is the theme of their debate,
  Wrinkling their red gills the while--
  IV.
  
  Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,
  Two scorpions under one wet stone,
  Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
  Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
  Two vipers tangled into one.

• Sister Rosa: A Ballad Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The death-bell beats!--
  The mountain repeats
  The echoing sound of the knell;
  And the dark Monk now
  Wraps the cowl round his brow,
  As he sits in his lonely cell.
  
  II.
  
  And the cold hand of death
  Chills his shuddering breath,
  As he lists to the fearful lay
  Which the ghosts of the sky,
  As they sweep wildly by,
  Sing to departed day.
  
  And they sing of the hour
  When the stern fates had power
  To resolve Rosa’s form to its clay.
  
  III.
  
  But that hour is past;
  And that hour was the last
  Of peace to the dark Monk’s brain.
  
  Bitter tears, from his eyes, gushed silent and fast;
  And he strove to suppress them in vain.
  
  IV.
  
  Then his fair cross of gold he dashed on the floor,
  When the death-knell struck on his ear.
  
  --
  'Delight is in store
  For her evermore;
  But for me is fate, horror, and fear.
  
  '
  V.
  
  Then his eyes wildly rolled,
  When the death-bell tolled,
  And he raged in terrific woe.
  
  And he stamped on the ground,--
  But when ceased the sound,
  Tears again began to flow.
  
  VI.
  
  And the ice of despair
  Chilled the wild throb of care,
  And he sate in mute agony still;
  Till the night-stars shone through the cloudless air,
  And the pale moonbeam slept on the hill.
  
  VII.
  
  Then he knelt in his cell:--
  And the horrors of hell
  Were delights to his agonized pain,
  And he prayed to God to dissolve the spell,
  Which else must for ever remain.
  
  VIII.
  
  And in fervent pray'r he knelt on the ground,
  Till the abbey bell struck One:
  His feverish blood ran chill at the sound:
  A voice hollow and horrible murmured around--
  'The term of thy penance is done!'
  IX.
  
  Grew dark the night;
  The moonbeam bright
  Waxed faint on the mountain high;
  And, from the black hill,
  Went a voice cold and still,--
  'Monk! thou art free to die.
  
  '
  X.
  
  Then he rose on his feet,
  And his heart loud did beat,
  And his limbs they were palsied with dread;
  Whilst the grave's clammy dew
  O'er his pale forehead grew;
  And he shuddered to sleep with the dead.
  
  XI.
  
  And the wild midnight storm
  Raved around his tall form,
  As he sought the chapel's gloom:
  And the sunk grass did sigh
  To the wind, bleak and high,
  As he searched for the new-made tomb.
  
  XII.
  
  And forms, dark and high,
  Seemed around him to fly,
  And mingle their yells with the blast:
  And on the dark wall
  Half-seen shadows did fall,
  As enhorrored he onward passed.
  
  XIII.
  
  And the storm-fiends wild rave
  O’er the new-made grave,
  And dread shadows linger around.
  
  The Monk called on God his soul to save,
  And, in horror, sank on the ground.
  
  XIV.
  
  Then despair nerved his arm
  To dispel the charm,
  And he burst Rosa's coffin asunder.
  
  And the fierce storm did swell
  More terrific and fell,
  And louder pealed the thunder.
  
  XV.
  
  And laughed, in joy, the fiendish throng,
  Mixed with ghosts of the mouldering dead:
  And their grisly wings, as they floated along,
  Whistled in murmurs dread.
  
  XVI.
  
  And her skeleton form the dead Nun reared
  Which dripped with the chill dew of hell.
  
  In her half-eaten eyeballs two pale flames appeared,
  And triumphant their gleam on the dark Monk glared,
  As he stood within the cell.
  
  XVII.
  
  And her lank hand lay on his shuddering brain;
  But each power was nerved by fear.
  
  --
  'I never, henceforth, may breathe again;
  Death now ends mine anguished pain.
  
  --
  The grave yawns,--we meet there.
  
  '
  XVIII.
  
  And her skeleton lungs did utter the sound,
  So deadly, so lone, and so fell,
  That in long vibrations shuddered the ground;
  And as the stern notes floated around,
  A deep groan was answered from hell.

• Song Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  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.
  
  II.
  
  How shall ever one like me
  Win thee back again?
  
  With the joyous and the free
  Thou wilt scoff at pain.
  
  Spirit false! thou hast forgot
  All but those who need thee not.
  
  III.
  
  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.
  
  IV.
  
  Let me set my mournful ditty
  To a merry measure;
  Thou wilt never come for pity,
  Thou wilt come for pleasure;--
  Pity then will cut away
  Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.
  
  V.
  
  I love all that thou lovest,
  Spirit of Delight!
  The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,
  And the starry night;
  Autumn evening, and the morn
  When the golden mists are born.
  
  VI.
  
  I love snow and all the forms
  Of the radiant frost;
  I love waves, and winds, and storms,
  Everything almost
  Which is Nature's, and may be
  Untainted by man's misery.
  
  VII.
  
  I love tranquil solitude,
  And such society
  As is quiet, wise, and good:--
  Between thee and me
  What diff'rence?
  
  but thou dost possess
  The things I seek, not love them less.
  
  VIII.
  
  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!

• Song For 'Tasso' Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  I loved—alas! our life is love;
  But when we cease to breathe and move
  I do suppose love ceases too.
  
  I thought, but not as now I do,
  Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore,
  Of all that men had thought before.
  
  And all that Nature shows, and more.
  
  II.
  
  And still I love and still I think,
  But strangely, for my heart can drink
  The dregs of such despair, and live,
  And love;.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
  I mix the present with the past,
  And each seems uglier than the last.
  
  III.
  
  Sometimes I see before me flee 15
  A silver spirit’s form, like thee,
  O Leonora, and I sit
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  still watching it,
  Till by the grated casement’s ledge
  It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge
  Breathes o’er the breezy streamlet’s edge.

• Song From The Wandering Jew Read Poem Log in to favourite

  See yon opening flower
  Spreads its fragrance to the blast;
  It fades within an hour,
  Its decay is pale--is fast.
  
  Paler is yon maiden;
  Faster is her heart's decay;
  Deep with sorrow laden,
  She sinks in death away.
  
  Published as Shelley's by Medwin, 'Life of Shelley', 1847, 1 page 58.

• Song Of Proserpine While Gathering Flowers On The Plain Of Enna Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,
  Thou from whose immortal bosom
  Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,
  Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
  Breathe thine influence most divine
  On thine own child, Proserpine.
  
  II.
  
  If with mists of evening dew
  Thou dost nourish these young flowers
  Till they grow, in scent and hue,
  Fairest children of the Hours,
  Breathe thine influence most divine
  On thine own child, Proserpine.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition.
  
  There is a fair draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library.

• Song To The Men Of England Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Men of England, wherefore plough
  For the lords who lay ye low?
  
  Wherefore weave with toil and care
  The rich robes your tyrants wear?
  
  II.
  
  Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
  From the cradle to the grave,
  Those ungrateful drones who would
  Drain your sweat -- nay, drink your blood?
  
  III.
  
  Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
  Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
  That these stingless drones may spoil
  The forced produce of your toil?
  
  IV.
  
  Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
  Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
  
  Or what is it ye buy so dear
  With your pain and with your fear?
  
  V.
  
  The seed ye sow another reaps;
  The wealth ye find another keeps;
  The robes ye weave another wears;
  The arms ye forge another bears.
  
  VI.
  
  Sow seed,-- but let no tyrant reap;
  Find wealth,-- let no imposter heap;
  Weave robes,-- let not the idle wear;
  Forge arms, in your defence to bear.
  
  VII.
  
  Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
  In halls ye deck another dwells.
  
  Why shake the chains ye wrought?
  
  Ye see
  The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
  
  VIII.
  
  With plough and spade and hoe and loom,
  Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
  And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
  England be your sepulchre!

• Song. Cold, Cold Is The Blast When December Is Howling Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,
  Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow,--
  Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling,
  And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low;
  But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee,
  More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee,
  More sad are the tears when their sorrows have moved thee,
  Which mixed with groans anguish and wild madness flow--
  And ah! poor — has felt all this horror,
  Full long the fallen victim contended with fate:
  ‘Till a destitute outcast abandoned to sorrow,
  She sought her babe's food at her ruiner's gate--
  Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer,
  He turned laughing aside from her moans and her prayer,
  She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair,
  Crossed the dark mountain side, though the hour it was late.
  
  'Twas on the wild height of the dark Penmanmawr,
  That the form of the wasted -- reclined;
  She shrieked to the ravens that croaked from afar,
  And she sighed to the gusts of the wild sweeping wind.
  
  --
  I call not yon rocks where the thunder peals rattle,
  I call not yon clouds where the elements battle,
  But thee, cruel -- I call thee unkind!'--
  Then she wreathed in her hair the wild flowers of the mountain,
  And deliriously laughing, a garland entwined,
  She bedewed it with tears, then she hung o'er the fountain,
  And leaving it, cast it a prey to the wind.
  
  'Ah! go,' she exclaimed, 'when the tempest is yelling,
  'Tis unkind to be cast on the sea that is swelling,
  But I left, a pitiless outcast, my dwelling,
  My garments are torn, so they say is my mind--'
  Not long lived --, but over her grave
  Waved the desolate form of a storm-blasted yew,
  Around it no demons or ghosts dare to rave,
  But spirits of peace steep her slumbers in dew.
  
  Then stay thy swift steps mid the dark mountain heather,
  Though chill blow the wind and severe is the weather,
  For perfidy, traveller! cannot bereave her,
  Of the tears, to the tombs of the innocent due.
  
  --
  JULY, 1810.

• Song. Come Harriet! Sweet Is The Hour Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Come Harriet! sweet is the hour,
  Soft Zephyrs breathe gently around,
  The anemone's night-boding flower,
  Has sunk its pale head on the ground.
  
  'Tis thus the world's keenness hath torn,
  Some mild heart that expands to its blast,
  'Tis thus that the wretched forlorn,
  Sinks poor and neglected at last.
  
  --
  The world with its keenness and woe,
  Has no charms or attraction for me,
  Its unkindness with grief has laid low,
  The heart which is faithful to thee.
  
  The high trees that wave past the moon,
  As I walk in their umbrage with you,
  All declare I must part with you soon,
  All bid you a tender adieu!--
  Then Harriet! dearest farewell,
  You and I love, may ne’er meet again;
  These woods and these meadows can tell
  How soft and how sweet was the strain.
  
  --
  APRIL, 1810.

• Song. To -- [Harriet] Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Stern, stern is the voice of fate's fearful command,
  When accents of horror it breathes in our ear,
  Or compels us for aye bid adieu to the land,
  Where exists that loved friend to our bosom so dear,
  'Tis sterner than death o’er the shuddering wretch bending,
  And in skeleton grasp his fell sceptre extending,
  Like the heart-stricken deer to that loved covert wending,
  Which never again to his eyes may appear--
  And ah! he may envy the heart-stricken quarry,
  Who bids to the friend of affection farewell,
  He may envy the bosom so bleeding and gory,
  He may envy the sound of the drear passing knell,
  Not so deep is his grief on his death couch reposing,
  When on the last vision his dim eyes are closing!
  As the outcast whose love-raptured senses are losing,
  The last tones of thy voice on the wild breeze that swell!
  Those tones were so soft, and so sad, that ah! never,
  Can the sound cease to vibrate on Memory’s ear,
  In the stern wreck of Nature for ever and ever,
  The remembrance must live of a friend so sincere.
  
  AUGUST, 1810.

• Song. -- Fierce Roars The Midnight Storm Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Fierce roars the midnight storm
  O'er the wild mountain,
  Dark clouds the night deform,
  Swift rolls the fountain--
  See! o'er yon rocky height,
  Dim mists are flying--
  See by the moon’s pale light,
  Poor Laura's dying!
  Shame and remorse shall howl,
  By her false pillow--
  Fiercer than storms that roll,
  O'er the white billow;
  No hand her eyes to close,
  When life is flying,
  But she will find repose,
  For Laura’s dying!
  Then will I seek my love,
  Then will I cheer her,
  Then my esteem will prove,
  When no friend is near her.
  
  On her grave I will lie,
  When life is parted,
  On her grave I will die,
  For the false hearted.
  
  DECEMBER, 1809.

• Song. Despair Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Ask not the pallid stranger's woe,
  With beating heart and throbbing breast,
  Whose step is faltering, weak, and slow,
  As though the body needed rest.
  
  --
  Whose 'wildered eye no object meets,
  Nor cares to ken a friendly glance,
  With silent grief his bosom beats,--
  Now fixed, as in a deathlike trance.
  
  Who looks around with fearful eye,
  And shuns all converse with man kind,
  As though some one his griefs might spy,
  And soothe them with a kindred mind.
  
  A friend or foe to him the same,
  He looks on each with equal eye;
  The difference lies but in the name,
  To none for comfort can he fly.
  
  --
  'Twas deep despair, and sorrow’s trace,
  To him too keenly given,
  Whose memory, time could not efface--
  His peace was lodged in Heaven.
  
  --
  He looks on all this world bestows,
  The pride and pomp of power,
  As trifles best for pageant shows
  Which vanish in an hour.
  
  When torn is dear affection's tie,
  Sinks the soft heart full low;
  It leaves without a parting sigh,
  All that these realms bestow.
  
  JUNE, 1810.

• Song. Hope Read Poem Log in to favourite

  And said I that all hope was fled,
  That sorrow and despair were mine,
  That each enthusiast wish was dead,
  Had sank beneath pale Misery’s shrine.
  
  --
  Seest thou the sunbeam's yellow glow,
  That robes with liquid streams of light;
  Yon distant Mountain's craggy brow.
  
  And shows the rocks so fair,--so bright--
  Tis thus sweet expectation’s ray,
  In softer view shows distant hours,
  And portrays each succeeding day,
  As dressed in fairer, brighter flowers,--
  The vermeil tinted flowers that blossom;
  Are frozen but to bud anew,
  Then sweet deceiver calm my bosom,
  Although thy visions be not true,--
  Yet true they are,—and I’ll believe,
  Thy whisperings soft of love and peace,
  God never made thee to deceive,
  'Tis sin that bade thy empire cease.
  
  Yet though despair my life should gloom,
  Though horror should around me close,
  With those I love, beyond the tomb,
  Hope shows a balm for all my woes.
  
  AUGUST, 1810.

• Song. Sorrow Read Poem Log in to favourite

  To me this world's a dreary blank,
  All hopes in life are gone and fled,
  My high strung energies are sank,
  And all my blissful hopes lie dead.
  
  --
  The world once smiling to my view,
  Showed scenes of endless bliss and joy;
  The world I then but little knew,
  Ah! little knew how pleasures cloy;
  All then was jocund, all was gay,
  No thought beyond the present hour,
  I danced in pleasure’s fading ray,
  Fading alas! as drooping flower.
  
  Nor do the heedless in the throng,
  One thought beyond the morrow give,
  They court the feast, the dance, the song,
  Nor think how short their time to live.
  
  The heart that bears deep sorrow’s trace,
  What earthly comfort can console,
  It drags a dull and lengthened pace,
  'Till friendly death its woes enroll.
  
  --
  The sunken cheek, the humid eyes,
  E’en better than the tongue can tell;
  In whose sad breast deep sorrow lies,
  Where memory's rankling traces dwell.
  
  --
  The rising tear, the stifled sigh,
  A mind but ill at ease display,
  Like blackening clouds in stormy sky,
  Where fiercely vivid lightnings play.
  
  Thus when souls' energy is dead,
  When sorrow dims each earthly view,
  When every fairy hope is fled,
  We bid ungrateful world adieu.
  
  AUGUST, 1810.

• Song. To [Harriet] Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Ah! sweet is the moonbeam that sleeps on yon fountain,
  And sweet the mild rush of the soft-sighing breeze,
  And sweet is the glimpse of yon dimly-seen mountain,
  'Neath the verdant arcades of yon shadowy trees.
  
  But sweeter than all was thy tone of affection,
  Which scarce seemed to break on the stillness of eve,
  Though the time it is past!--yet the dear recollection,
  For aye in the heart of thy [Percy] must live.
  
  Yet he hears thy dear voice in the summer winds sighing,
  Mild accents of happiness lisp in his ear,
  When the hope-winged moments athwart him are flying,
  And he thinks of the friend to his bosom so dear.
  
  --
  And thou dearest friend in his bosom for ever
  Must reign unalloyed by the fast rolling year,
  He loves thee, and dearest one never, Oh! never
  Canst thou cease to be loved by a heart so sincere.
  
  AUGUST, 1810.

• Song. Translated From The German Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Ah! grasp the dire dagger and couch the fell spear,
  If vengeance and death to thy bosom be dear,
  The dastard shall perish, death’s torment shall prove,
  For fate and revenge are decreed from above.
  
  Ah! where is the hero, whose nerves strung by youth,
  Will defend the firm cause of justice and truth;
  With insatiate desire whose bosom shall swell,
  To give up the oppressor to judgement and Hell--
  For him shall the fair one twine chaplets of bays,
  To him shall each warrior give merited praise,
  And triumphant returned from the clangour of arms,
  He shall find his reward in his loved maiden's charms.
  
  In ecstatic confusion the warrior shall sip,
  The kisses that glow on his love's dewy lip,
  And mutual, eternal, embraces shall prove,
  The rewards of the brave are the transports of love.
  
  OCTOBER, 1809.

• Song. Translated From The Italian Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Oh! what is the gain of restless care,
  And what is ambitious treasure?
  
  And what are the joys that the modish share,
  In their sickly haunts of pleasure?
  
  My husband's repast with delight I spread,
  What though 'tis but rustic fare,
  May each guardian angel protect his shed,
  May contentment and quiet be there.
  
  And may I support my husband's years,
  May I soothe his dying pain,
  And then may I dry my fast falling tears,
  And meet him in Heaven again.
  
  JULY, 1810.

• Sonnet -- Ye Hasten To The Grave! Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,
  Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes
  Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear?
  
  O thou quick heart, which pantest to possess
  All that pale Expectation feigneth fair!
  Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess
  Whence thou didst come, and whither thou must go,
  And all that never yet was known would know--
  Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press,
  With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path,
  Seeking, alike from happiness and woe,
  A refuge in the cavern of gray death?
  
  O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you
  Hope to inherit in the grave below?
  
  Published by Leigh Hunt, The Literary Pocket-Book, 1823.
  
  There is a transcript amongst the Ollier manuscripts, and another in the Harvard manuscript book.

• Sonnet : From The Italian Of Cavalcanti Read Poem Log in to favourite

  GUIDO CAVALCANTI TO DANTE ALIGHIERI:
  Returning from its daily quest, my Spirit
  Changed thoughts and vile in thee doth weep to find:
  It grieves me that thy mild and gentle mind
  Those ample virtues which it did inherit
  Has lost.
  
  Once thou didst loathe the multitude
  Of blind and madding men--I then loved thee--
  I loved thy lofty songs and that sweet mood
  When thou wert faithful to thyself and me
  I dare not now through thy degraded state
  Own the delight thy strains inspire--in vain
  I seek what once thou wert--we cannot meet
  And we were wont.
  
  Again and yet again
  Ponder my words: so the false Spirit shall fly
  And leave to thee thy true integrity.
  
  [Published by Forman (who assigns it to 1815), “Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  ”, 1876.
  
  ]

• Sonnet : From The Italian Of Dante Read Poem Log in to favourite

  DANTE ALIGHIERI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI:
  Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I,
  Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend
  A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly
  With winds at will where’er our thoughts might wend,
  So that no change, nor any evil chance
  Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be,
  That even satiety should still enhance
  Between our hearts their strict community:
  And that the bounteous wizard then would place
  Vanna and Bice and my gentle love,
  Companions of our wandering, and would grace
  With passionate talk, wherever we might rove,
  Our time, and each were as content and free
  As I believe that thou and I should be.

• Sonnet : On Launching Some Bottles Filled With Knowledge Into The Bristol Channel Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Vessels of heavenly medicine! may the breeze
  Auspicious waft your dark green forms to shore;
  Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding roar
  Of the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas;
  And oh! if Liberty e'er deigned to stoop
  From yonder lowly throne her crownless brow,
  Sure she will breathe around your emerald group
  The fairest breezes of her West that blow.
  
  Yes! she will waft ye to some freeborn soul
  Whose eye-beam, kindling as it meets your freight,
  Her heaven-born flame in suffering Earth will light,
  Until its radiance gleams from pole to pole,
  And tyrant-hearts with powerless envy burst
  To see their night of ignorance dispersed.
  
  Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, Life of Shelley, 1887; dated August, 1812.

• Sonnet : To A Balloon Laden With Knowledge Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Bright ball of flame that through the gloom of even
  Silently takest thine aethereal way,
  And with surpassing glory dimm'st each ray
  Twinkling amid the dark blue depths of Heaven,--
  Unlike the fire thou bearest, soon shalt thou
  Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom,
  Whilst that, unquenchable, is doomed to glow
  A watch-light by the patriot's lonely tomb;
  A ray of courage to the oppressed and poor;
  A spark, though gleaming on the hovel’s hearth,
  Which through the tyrant’s gilded domes shall roar;
  A beacon in the darkness of the Earth;
  A sun which, o'er the renovated scene,
  Shall dart like Truth where Falsehood yet has been.
  
  Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887; dated August, 1812.

• Sonnet To Byron Read Poem Log in to favourite

  [I am afraid these verses will not please you, but]
  If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill
  Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair
  The ministration of the thoughts that fill
  The mind which, like a worm whose life may share
  A portion of the unapproachable,
  Marks your creations rise as fast and fair
  As perfect worlds at the Creator’s will.
  
  But such is my regard that nor your power
  To soar above the heights where others [climb],
  Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour
  Cast from the envious future on the time,
  Move one regret for his unhonoured name
  Who dares these words:--the worm beneath the sod
  May lift itself in homage of the God.
  
  Published by Medwin, The Shelley Papers, 1832 (lines 1-7), and Life of Shelley, 1847 (lines 1-9, 12-14).
  
  Revised and completed from the Boscombe manuscript by Rossetti, Complete Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  , 1870.

• Sonnet: England in 1819 Read Poem Log in to favourite

  An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--
  Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
  Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,--
  Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
  But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
  Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
  A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
  An army, which liberticide and prey
  Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--
  Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
  Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
  A Senate,--Time’s worst statute, unrepealed,--
  Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
  Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

• Sonnet: Lift Not The Painted Veil Which Those Who Live Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Lift not the painted veil which those who live
  Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
  And it but mimic all we would believe
  With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear
  And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
  Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
  
  I knew one who had lifted it—he sought,
  For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
  But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
  The world contains, the which he could approve.
  
  Through the unheeding many he did move,
  A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
  Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
  For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.
  
  Our text is that of the Poetical Works, 1839

• Sonnet: Political Greatness Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
  Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
  Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;
  Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,
  History is but the shadow of their shame,
  Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts
  As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
  Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
  Of their own likeness.
  
  What are numbers knit
  By force or custom?
  
  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.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.
  
  There is a transcript, headed Sonnet to the Republic of Benevento, in the Harvard manuscript book.

• St. Irvyne's Tower Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  How swiftly through Heaven's wide expanse
  Bright day's resplendent colours fade!
  How sweetly does the moonbeam's glance
  With silver tint St.
  
  Irvyne's glade!
  II.
  
  No cloud along the spangled air,
  Is borne upon the evening breeze;
  How solemn is the scene! how fair
  The moonbeams rest upon the trees!
  III.
  
  Yon dark gray turret glimmers white,
  Upon it sits the mournful owl;
  Along the stillness of the night,
  Her melancholy shriekings roll.
  
  IV.
  
  But not alone on Irvyne's tower,
  The silver moonbeam pours her ray;
  It gleams upon the ivied bower,
  It dances in the cascade's spray.
  
  V.
  
  'Ah! why do dark’ning shades conceal
  The hour, when man must cease to be?
  
  Why may not human minds unveil
  The dim mists of futurity?
  
  --
  VI.
  
  'The keenness of the world hath torn
  The heart which opens to its blast;
  Despised, neglected, and forlorn,
  Sinks the wretch in death at last.
  
  '

• Stanza Read Poem Log in to favourite

  If I walk in Autumn's even
  While the dead leaves pass,
  If I look on Spring’s soft heaven,--
  Something is not there which was
  Winter's wondrous frost and snow,
  Summer's clouds, where are they now?

• Stanza From A Translation Of The Marseillaise Hymn Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Tremble, Kings despised of man!
  Ye traitors to your Country,
  Tremble! Your parricidal plan
  At length shall meet its destiny.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  We all are soldiers fit to fight,
  But if we sink in glory's night
  Our mother Earth will give ye new
  The brilliant pathway to pursue
  Which leads to Death or Victory.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Published by Forman, "Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  ", 1876; dated 1810.

• Stanza, Written At Bracknell Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;
  Thy gentle words stir poison there;
  Thou hast disturbed the only rest
  That was the portion of despair!
  Subdued to Duty’s hard control,
  I could have borne my wayward lot:
  The chains that bind this ruined soul
  Had cankered then—but crushed it not.

• Stanzas From Calderon's Cisma De Inglaterra Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Hast thou not seen, officious with delight,
  Move through the illumined air about the flower
  The Bee, that fears to drink its purple light,
  Lest danger lurk within that Rose's bower?
  
  Hast thou not marked the moth's enamoured flight
  About the Taper's flame at evening hour;
  ‘Till kindle in that monumental fire
  His sunflower wings their own funereal pyre?
  
  II.
  
  My heart, its wishes trembling to unfold.
  
  Thus round the Rose and Taper hovering came,
  'And Passion’s slave, Distrust, in ashes cold.
  
  Smothered awhile, but could not quench the flame,'--
  Till Love, that grows by disappointment bold,
  And Opportunity, had conquered Shame;
  And like the Bee and Moth, in act to close,
  'I burned my wings, and settled on the Rose.
  
  '
  TRANSLATED BY MEDWIN AND CORRECTED BY SHELLEY.

• Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
  The waves are dancing fast and bright,
  Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
  The purple noon's transparent might,
  The breath of the moist earth is 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.
  
  II.
  
  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:
  I sit upon the sands alone,--
  The lightning of the noontide ocean
  Is flashing round me, and a tone
  Arises from its measured motion,
  How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
  
  III.
  
  Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
  Nor peace within nor calm around,
  Nor that content surpassing wealth
  The sage in meditation found,
  And walked with inward glory crowned--
  Nor fame nor power, nor love, nor leisure,
  Others I see whom these surround--
  Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;--
  To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
  
  IV.
  
  Yet now despair itself is mild,
  Even as the winds and waters are;
  I could lie down like a tired child,
  And weep away the life of care
  Which I have born 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.
  
  V.
  
  Some might lament that I were cold,
  As I, when this sweet day is gone,
  Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
  Insults with this untimely moan;
  They might lament -- for I am one
  Whom men love not,-- and yet regret,
  Unlike this day, which, when the sun
  Shall on its stainless glory set,
  Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824, where it is dated 'December, 1818.
  
  ' A draft of stanza I.
  
  is amongst the Boscombe manuscripts.

• Stanzas. -- April, 1814 Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
  Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even:
  Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
  And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.
  
  Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away!
  Tempt not with one last tear thy friend’s ungentle mood:
  Thy lover’s eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
  Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.
  
  Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;
  Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;
  Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
  And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.
  
  The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:
  The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:
  But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,
  Ere midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace may meet.
  
  The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose,
  For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep:
  Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows;
  Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep.
  
  Thou in the grave shalt rest—yet till the phantoms flee
  Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile,
  Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free
  From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.
  
  Composed at Bracknell, April, 1814.
  
  Published with Alastor, 1816.

• Summer And Winter Read Poem Log in to favourite

  It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
  Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
  When the north wind congregates in crowds
  The floating mountains of the silver clouds
  From the horizon—and the stainless sky
  Opens beyond them like eternity.
  
  All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,
  The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;
  The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
  And the firm foliage of the larger trees.
  
  It was a winter such as when birds die
  In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
  Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
  Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
  A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,
  Among their children, comfortable men
  Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
  Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley in The Keepsake, 1829.
  
  Mr.
  
  C.
  
  W.
  
  Frederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in Mrs.
  
  Shelley’s handwriting.

• The Aziola Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  'Do you not hear the Aziola cry?
  
  Methinks she must be nigh,'
  Said Mary, as we sate
  In dusk, ere stars were lit, or candles brought;
  And I, who thought
  This Aziola was some tedious woman,
  Asked, 'Who is Aziola?
  
  ' How elate
  I felt to know that it was nothing human,
  No mockery of myself to fear or hate:
  And Mary saw my soul,
  And laughed, and said, 'Disquiet yourself not;
  'Tis nothing but a little downy owl.
  
  '
  II.
  
  Sad Aziola! many an eventide
  Thy music I had heard
  By wood and stream, meadow and mountain-side,
  And fields and marshes wide,--
  Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird,
  The soul ever stirred;
  Unlike and far sweeter than them all.
  
  Sad Aziola! from that moment I
  Loved thee and thy sad cry.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley in The Keepsake, 1829.

• The Birth Place of Pleasure Read Poem Log in to favourite

  At the creation of the Earth
  Pleasure, that divinest birth,
  From the soil of Heaven did rise,
  Wrapped in sweet wild melodies--
  Like an exhalation wreathing
  To the sound of air low-breathing
  Through Aeolian pines, which make
  A shade and shelter to the lake
  Whence it rises soft and slow;
  Her life-breathing [limbs] did flow
  In the harmony divine
  Of an ever-lengthening line
  Which enwrapped her perfect form
  With a beauty clear and warm.

• The Boat On The Serchio Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Our boat is asleep on Serchio's stream,
  Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,
  The helm sways idly, hither and thither;
  Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast,
  And the oars, and the sails; but ’tis sleeping fast,
  Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.
  
  The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,
  And the thin white moon lay withering there;
  To tower, and cavern, and rift, and tree,
  The owl and the bat fled drowsily.
  
  Day had kindled the dewy woods,
  And the rocks above and the stream below,
  And the vapours in their multitudes,
  And the Apennine’s shroud of summer snow,
  And clothed with light of aery gold
  The mists in their eastern caves uprolled.
  
  Day had awakened all things that be,
  The lark and the thrush and the swallow free,
  And the milkmaid’s song and the mower’s scythe
  And the matin-bell and the mountain bee:
  Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn,
  Glow-worms went out on the river’s brim,
  Like lamps which a student forgets to trim:
  The beetle forgot to wind his horn,
  The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:
  Like a flock of rooks at a farmer’s gun
  Night’s dreams and terrors, every one,
  Fled from the brains which are their prey
  From the lamp’s death to the morning ray.
  
  All rose to do the task He set to each,
  Who shaped us to His ends and not our own;
  The million rose to learn, and one to teach
  What none yet ever knew or can be known.
  
  And many rose
  Whose woe was such that fear became desire;--
  Melchior and Lionel were not among those;
  They from the throng of men had stepped aside,
  And made their home under the green hill-side.
  
  It was that hill, whose intervening brow
  Screens Lucca from the Pisan’s envious eye,
  Which the circumfluous plain waving below,
  Like a wide lake of green fertility,
  With streams and fields and marshes bare,
  Divides from the far Apennines—which lie
  Islanded in the immeasurable air.
  
  ‘What think you, as she lies in her green cove,
  Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?
  
  ’
  ‘If morning dreams are true, why I should guess
  That she was dreaming of our idleness,
  And of the miles of watery way
  We should have led her by this time of day.
  
  ’--
  ‘Never mind,’ said Lionel,
  ‘Give care to the winds, they can bear it well
  About yon poplar-tops; and see
  The white clouds are driving merrily,
  And the stars we miss this morn will light
  More willingly our return to-night.
  
  --
  How it whistles, Dominic’s long black hair!
  List, my dear fellow; the breeze blows fair:
  Hear how it sings into the air--’
  --‘Of us and of our lazy motions,’
  Impatiently said Melchior,
  ‘If I can guess a boat’s emotions;
  And how we ought, two hours before,
  To have been the devil knows where.
  
  ’
  And then, in such transalpine Tuscan
  As would have killed a Della-Cruscan,
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  So, Lionel according to his art
  Weaving his idle words, Melchior said:
  ‘She dreams that we are not yet out of bed;
  We’ll put a soul into her, and a heart
  Which like a dove chased by a dove shall beat.
  
  ’
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ‘Ay, heave the ballast overboard,
  And stow the eatables in the aft locker.
  
  ’
  ‘Would not this keg be best a little lowered?
  
  ’
  ‘No, now all’s right.
  
  ’ ‘Those bottles of warm tea--
  (Give me some straw)—must be stowed tenderly;
  Such as we used, in summer after six,
  To cram in greatcoat pockets, and to mix
  Hard eggs and radishes and rolls at Eton,
  And, couched on stolen hay in those green harbours
  Farmers called gaps, and we schoolboys called arbours,
  Would feast till eight.
  
  ’
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  With a bottle in one hand,
  As if his very soul were at a stand
  Lionel stood—when Melchior brought him steady:--
  ‘Sit at the helm—fasten this sheet--all ready!’
  The chain is loosed, the sails are spread,
  The living breath is fresh behind,
  As with dews and sunrise fed,
  Comes the laughing morning wind;--
  The sails are full, the boat makes head
  Against the Serchio’s torrent fierce,
  Then flags with intermitting course,
  And hangs upon the wave, and stems
  The tempest of the.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Which fervid from its mountain source
  Shallow, smooth and strong doth come,--
  Swift as fire, tempestuously
  It sweeps into the affrighted sea;
  In morning’s smile its eddies coil,
  Its billows sparkle, toss and boil,
  Torturing all its quiet light
  Into columns fierce and bright.
  
  The Serchio, twisting forth
  Between the marble barriers which it clove
  At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm
  The wave that died the death which lovers love,
  Living in what it sought; as if this spasm
  Had not yet passed, the toppling mountains cling,
  But the clear stream in full enthusiasm
  Pours itself on the plain, then wandering
  Down one clear path of effluence crystalline
  Sends its superfluous waves, that they may fling
  At Arno’s feet tribute of corn and wine;
  Then, through the pestilential deserts wild
  Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted pine,
  It rushes to the Ocean.

• The Cenci : A Tragedy In Five Acts Read Poem Log in to favourite

  DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
  Count Francesco Cenci.
  
  Giacomo, his Son.
  
  Bernardo, his Son.
  
  Cardinal Camillo.
  
  Orsino, a Prelate.
  
  Savella, the Pope's Legate.
  
  Olimpio, Assassin.
  
  Marzio, Assassin.
  
  Andrea, Servant to Cenci.
  
  Nobles, Judges, Guards, Servants.
  
  Lucretia, Wife of Cenci, and Step-mother of his children.
  
  Beatrice, his Daughter.
  
  The Scene lies principally in Rome, but changes during the Fourth Act to Petrella, a castle among the Apulian Apennines.
  
  Time.
  
  During the Pontificate of Clement VIII.
  
  ACT I
  Scene I.
  
  —An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.
  
  Enter Count Cenci, and Cardinal Camillo.
  
  Camillo.
  
  That matter of the murder is hushed up
  If you consent to yield his Holiness
  Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.
  
  —
  It needed all my interest in the conclave
  To bend him to this point: he said that you
  Bought perilous impunity with your gold;
  That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded
  Enriched the Church, and respited from hell
  An erring soul which might repent and live:—
  But that the glory and the interest
  Of the high throne he fills, little consist
  With making it a daily mart of guilt
  As manifold and hideous as the deeds
  Which you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes.
  
  Cenci.
  
  The third of my possessions—let it go!
  Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope
  Had sent his architect to view the ground,
  Meaning to build a villa on my vines
  The next time I compounded with his uncle:
  I little thought he should outwit me so!
  Henceforth no witness—not the lamp—shall see
  That which the vassal threatened to divulge
  Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward.
  
  The deed he saw could not have rated higher
  Than his most worthless life:—it angers me!
  Respited me from Hell!—So may the Devil
  Respite their souls from Heaven.
  
  No doubt Pope Clement,
  And his most charitable nephews, pray
  That the Apostle Peter and the Saints
  Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy
  Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days
  Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards
  Of their revenue.
  
  —But much yet remains
  To which they show no title.
  
  Camillo.
  
  Oh, Count Cenci!
  So much that thou mightst honourably live
  And reconcile thyself with thine own heart
  And with thy God, and with the offended world.
  
  How hideously look deeds of lust and blood
  Through those snow white and venerable hairs!—
  Your children should be sitting round you now,
  But that you fear to read upon their looks
  The shame and misery you have written there.
  
  Where is your wife?
  
  Where is your gentle daughter?
  
  Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else
  Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you.
  
  Why is she barred from all society
  But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs?
  
  Talk with me, Count,—you know I mean you well
  I stood beside your dark and fiery youth
  Watching its bold and bad career, as men
  Watch meteors, but it vanished not—I marked
  Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now
  Do I behold you in dishonoured age
  Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes.
  
  Yet I have ever hoped you would amend,
  And in that hope have saved your life three times.
  
  Cenci.
  
  For which Aldobrandino owes you now
  My fief beyond the Pincian.
  
  —Cardinal,
  One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth,
  And so we shall converse with less restraint.
  
  A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter—
  He was accustomed to frequent my house;
  So the next day his wife and daughter came
  And asked if I had seen him; and I smiled:
  I think they never saw him any more.
  
  Camillo.
  
  Thou execrable man, beware!—
  Cenci.
  
  Of thee?
  
  Nay this is idle:—We should know each other.
  
  As to my character for what men call crime
  Seeing I please my senses as I list,
  And vindicate that right with force or guile,
  It is a public matter, and I care not
  If I discuss it with you.
  
  I may speak
  Alike to you and my own conscious heart—
  For you give out that you have half reformed me,
  Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent
  If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.
  
  All men delight in sensual luxury,
  All men enjoy revenge; and most exult
  Over the tortures they can never feel—
  Flattering their secret peace with others' pain.
  
  But I delight in nothing else.
  
  I love
  The sight of agony, and the sense of joy,
  When this shall be another's, and that mine.
  
  And I have no remorse and little fear,
  Which are, I think, the checks of other men.
  
  This mood has grown upon me, until now
  Any design my captious fancy makes
  The picture of its wish, and it forms none
  But such as men like you would start to know,
  Is as my natural food and rest debarred
  Until it be accomplished.
  
  Camillo.
  
  Art thou not
  Most miserable?
  
  Cenci.
  
  Why, miserable?
  
  —
  No.
  
  —I am what your theologians call
  Hardened;—which they must be in impudence,
  So to revile a man's peculiar taste.
  
  True, I was happier than I am, while yet
  Manhood remained to act the thing I thought;
  While lust was sweeter than revenge; and now
  Invention palls:—Ay, we must all grow old—
  And but that there yet remains a deed to act
  Whose horror might make sharp an appetite
  Duller than mine—I'd do—I know not what.
  
  When I was young I thought of nothing else
  But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets:
  Men, by St.
  
  Thomas! cannot live like bees,
  And I grew tired:—yet, till I killed a foe,
  And heard his groans, and heard his children's groans,
  Knew I not what delight was else on earth,
  Which now delights me little.
  
  I the rather
  Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals,
  The dry fixed eyeball; the pale quivering lip,
  Which tell me that the spirit weeps within
  Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.
  
  I rarely kill the body, which preserves,
  Like a strong prison, the soul within my power,
  Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear
  For hourly pain.
  
  Camillo.
  
  Hell's most abandoned fiend
  Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt,
  Speak to his heart as now you speak to me;
  I thank my God that I believe you not.
  
  Enter Andrea.
  
  Andrea.
  
  My Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca
  Would speak with you.
  
  Cenci.
  
  Bid him attend me in
  The grand saloon.
  
  [Exit Andrea.
  
  Camillo.
  
  Farewell; and I will pray
  Almighty God that thy false, impious words
  Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee.
  
  [Exit Camillo.
  
  Cenci.
  
  The third of my possessions! I must use
  Close husbandry, or gold, the old man's sword,
  Falls from my withered hand.
  
  But yesterday
  There came an order from the Pope to make
  Fourfold provision for my cursèd sons;
  Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca,
  Hoping some accident might cut them off;
  And meaning if I could to starve them there.
  
  I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them!
  Bernardo and my wife could not be worse
  If dead and damned:—then, as to Beatrice— [Looking around him suspiciously.
  
  I think they cannot hear me at that door;
  What if they should?
  
  And yet I need not speak
  Though the heart triumphs with itself in words.
  
  O, thou most silent air, that shalt not hear
  What now I think! Thou, pavement, which I tread
  Towards her chamber,—let your echoes talk
  Of my imperious step scorning surprise,
  But not of my intent!—Andrea!
  [Enter Andrea.
  
  Andrea.
  
  My lord?
  
  Cenci.
  
  Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber
  This evening:—no, at midnight and alone.
  
  [Exeunt.
  
  Scene II.
  
  —A Garden of the Cenci Palace.
  
  EnterBeatrice and Orsino, as in conversation.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Pervert not truth,
  Orsino.
  
  You remember where we held
  That conversation;—nay, we see the spot
  Even from this cypress;—two long years are past
  Since, on an April midnight, underneath
  The moonlight ruins of mount Palatine,
  I did confess to you my secret mind.
  
  Orsino.
  
  You said you loved me then.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  You are a Priest,
  Speak to me not of love.
  
  Orsino.
  
  I may obtain
  The dispensation of the Pope to marry.
  
  Because I am a Priest do you believe
  Your image, as the hunter some struck deer,
  Follows me not whether I wake or sleep?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  As I have said, speak to me not of love;
  Had you a dispensation I have not;
  Nor will I leave this home of misery
  Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady
  To whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts,
  Must suffer what I still have strength to share.
  
  Alas, Orsino! All the love that once
  I felt for you, is turned to bitter pain.
  
  Ours was a youthful contract, which you first
  Broke, by assuming vows no Pope will loose.
  
  And thus I love you still, but holily,
  Even as a sister or a spirit might;
  And so I swear a cold fidelity.
  
  And it is well perhaps we shall not marry.
  
  You have a sly, equivocating vein
  That suits me not.
  
  —Ah, wretched that I am!
  Where shall I turn?
  
  Even now you look on me
  As you were not my friend, and as if you
  Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles
  Making my true suspicion seem your wrong.
  
  Ah, no! forgive me; sorrow makes me seem
  Sterner than else my nature might have been;
  I have a weight of melancholy thoughts,
  And they forbode,—but what can they forbode
  Worse than I now endure?
  
  Orsino.
  
  All will be well.
  
  Is the petition yet prepared?
  
  You know
  My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice;
  Doubt not but I will use my utmost skill
  So that the Pope attend to your complaint.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Your zeal for all I wish;—Ah me, you are cold!
  Your utmost skill .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  speak but one word .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  (aside)
  Alas!
  Weak and deserted creature that I am,
  Here I stand bickering with my only friend! [To Orsino.
  
  This night my father gives a sumptuous feast,
  Orsino; he has heard some happy news
  From Salamanca, from my brothers there,
  And with this outward show of love he mocks
  His inward hate.
  
  'Tis bold hypocrisy,
  For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths,
  Which I have heard him pray for on his knees:
  Great God! that such a father should be mine!
  But there is mighty preparation made,
  And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there,
  And all the chief nobility of Rome.
  
  And he has bidden me and my pale Mother
  Attire ourselves in festival array.
  
  Poor lady! She expects some happy change
  In his dark spirit from this act; I none.
  
  At supper I will give you the petition:
  Till when—farewell.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Farewell.
  
  (Exit Beatrice.
  
  )
  I know the Pope
  Will ne'er absolve me from my priestly vow
  But by absolving me from the revenue
  Of many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice,
  I think to win thee at an easier rate.
  
  Nor shall he read her eloquent petition:
  He might bestow her on some poor relation
  Of his sixth cousin, as he did her sister,
  And I should be debarred from all access.
  
  Then as to what she suffers from her father,
  In all this there is much exaggeration:—
  Old men are testy and will have their way;
  A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal,
  And live a free life as to wine or women,
  And with a peevish temper may return
  To a dull home, and rate his wife and children;
  Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny.
  
  I shall be well content if on my conscience
  There rest no heavier sin than what they suffer
  From the devices of my love—a net
  From which she shall escape not.
  
  Yet I fear
  Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze,
  Whose beams anatomize me nerve by nerve
  And lay me bare, and make me blush to see
  My hidden thoughts.
  
  —Ah, no! A friendless girl
  Who clings to me, as to her only hope:—
  I were a fool, not less than if a panther
  Were panic-stricken by the antelope's eye,
  If she escape me.
  
  [Exit.
  
  Scene III.
  
  —A Magnificent Hall in the Cenci Palace.
  
  A Banquet.
  
  Enter Cenci, Lucretia, Beatrice, Orsino, Camillo, Nobles.
  
  Cenci.
  
  Welcome, my friends and kinsmen; welcome ye,
  Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the church,
  Whose presence honours our festivity.
  
  I have too long lived like an anchorite,
  And in my absence from your merry meetings
  An evil word is gone abroad of me;
  But I do hope that you, my noble friends,
  When you have shared the entertainment here,
  And heard the pious cause for which 'tis given,
  And we have pledged a health or two together,
  Will think me flesh and blood as well as you;
  Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so,
  But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful.
  
  First Guest.
  
  In truth, my Lord, you seem too light of heart,
  Too sprightly and companionable a man,
  To act the deeds that rumour pins on you.
  
  (To his Companion.
  
  )
  I never saw such blithe and open cheer
  In any eye!
  Second Guest.
  
  Some most desired event,
  In which we all demand a common joy,
  Has brought us hither; let us hear it, Count.
  
  Cenci.
  
  It is indeed a most desired event.
  
  If, when a parent from a parent's heart
  Lifts from this earth to the great Father of all
  A prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep,
  And when he rises up from dreaming it;
  One supplication, one desire, one hope,
  That he would grant a wish for his two sons,
  Even all that he demands in their regard—
  And suddenly beyond his dearest hope
  It is accomplished, he should then rejoice,
  And call his friends and kinsmen to a feast,
  And task their love to grace his merriment,—
  Then honour me thus far—for I am he.
  
  Beatrice
  (to Lucretia).
  
  Great God! How horrible! Some dreadful ill
  Must have befallen my brothers.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Fear not, Child,
  He speaks too frankly.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Ah! My blood runs cold.
  
  I fear that wicked laughter round his eye,
  Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair.
  
  Cenci.
  
  Here are the letters brought from Salamanca;
  Beatrice, read them to your mother.
  
  God!
  I thank thee! In one night didst thou perform,
  By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought.
  
  My disobedient and rebellious sons
  Are dead!—Why, dead!—What means this change of cheer?
  
  You hear me not, I tell you they are dead;
  And they will need no food or raiment more:
  The tapers that did light them the dark way
  Are their last cost.
  
  The Pope, I think, will not
  Expect I should maintain them in their coffins.
  
  Rejoice with me—my heart is wondrous glad.
  
  [Lucretia sinks, half fainting; Beatrice supports her.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  It is not true!—Dear lady, pray look up.
  
  Had it been true, there is a God in Heaven,
  He would not live to boast of such a boon.
  
  Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is false.
  
  Cenci.
  
  Ay, as the word of God; whom here I call
  To witness that I speak the sober truth;—
  And whose most favouring Providence was shown
  Even in the manner of their deaths.
  
  For Rocco
  Was kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others,
  When the church fell and crushed him to a mummy,
  The rest escaped unhurt.
  
  Cristofano
  Was stabbed in error by a jealous man,
  Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival;
  All in the self-same hour of the same night;
  Which shows that Heaven has special care of me.
  
  I beg those friends who love me, that they mark
  The day a feast upon their calendars.
  
  It was the twenty-seventh of December:
  Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath.
  
  [The Assembly appears confused; several of the guests rise.
  
  First Guest.
  
  Oh, horrible! I will depart—
  Second Guest.
  
  And I.
  
  —
  Third Guest.
  
  No, stay!
  I do believe it is some jest; though faith!
  'Tis mocking us somewhat too solemnly.
  
  I think his son has married the Infanta,
  Or found a mine of gold in El Dorado;
  'Tis but to season some such news; stay, stay!
  I see 'tis only raillery by his smile.
  
  Cenci
  (filling a bowl of wine, and lifting it up).
  
  Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendour leaps
  And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl
  Under the lamplight, as my spirits do,
  To hear the death of my accursèd sons!
  Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,
  Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,
  And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,
  Who, if a father's curses, as men say,
  Climb with swift wings after their children's souls,
  And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,
  Now triumphs in my triumph!—But thou art
  Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy,
  And I will taste no other wine to-night.
  
  Here, Andrea! Bear the bowl around.
  
  A Guest
  (rising).
  
  Thou wretch!
  Will none among this noble company
  Check the abandoned villain?
  
  Camillo.
  
  For God's sake
  Let me dismiss the guests! You are insane,
  Some ill will come of this.
  
  Second Guest.
  
  Seize, silence him!
  First Guest.
  
  I will!
  Third Guest.
  
  And I!
  Cenci
  (addressing those who rise with a threatening gesture).
  
  Who moves?
  
  Who speaks?
  
  (turning to the Company)
  'tis nothing
  Enjoy yourselves.
  
  —Beware! For my revenge
  Is as the sealed commission of a king
  That kills, and none dare name the murderer.
  
  [The Banquet is broken up; several of the Guests are departing.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  I do entreat you, go not, noble guests;
  What, although tyranny and impious hate
  Stand sheltered by a father's hoary hair?
  
  What, if 'tis he who clothed us in these limbs
  Who tortures them, and triumphs?
  
  What, if we,
  The desolate and the dead, were his own flesh,
  His children and his wife, whom he is bound
  To love and shelter?
  
  Shall we therefore find
  No refuge in this merciless wide world?
  
  O think what deep wrongs must have blotted out
  First love, then reverence in a child's prone mind,
  Till it thus vanquish shame and fear! O think!
  I have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand
  Which crushed us to the earth, and thought its stroke
  Was perhaps some paternal chastisement!
  Have excused much, doubted; and when no doubt
  Remained, have sought by patience, love, and tears
  To soften him, and when this could not be
  I have knelt down through the long sleepless nights
  And lifted up to God, the Father of all,
  Passionate prayers: and when these were not heard
  I have still borne,—until I meet you here,
  Princes and kinsmen, at this hideous feast
  Given at my brothers' deaths.
  
  Two yet remain,
  His wife remains and I, whom if ye save not,
  Ye may soon share such merriment again
  As fathers make over their children's graves.
  
  O Prince Colonna, thou art our near kinsman,
  Cardinal, thou art the Pope's chamberlain,
  Camillo, thou art chief justiciary,
  Take us away!
  Cenci.
  
  (He has been conversing with Camillo during the first part of Beatrice's speech; he hears the conclusion, and now advances.
  
  )
  I hope my good friends here
  Will think of their own daughters—or perhaps
  Of their own throats—before they lend an ear
  To this wild girl.
  
  Beatrice
  (not noticing the words of Cenci).
  
  Dare no one look on me?
  
  None answer?
  
  Can one tyrant overbear
  The sense of many best and wisest men?
  
  Or is it that I sue not in some form
  Of scrupulous law, that ye deny my suit?
  
  O God! That I were buried with my brothers!
  And that the flowers of this departed spring
  Were fading on my grave! And that my father
  Were celebrating now one feast for all!
  Camillo.
  
  A bitter wish for one so young and gentle;
  Can we do nothing?
  
  Colonna.
  
  Nothing that I see.
  
  Count Cenci were a dangerous enemy:
  Yet I would second any one.
  
  A Cardinal.
  
  And I.
  
  Cenci.
  
  Retire to your chamber, insolent girl!
  Beatrice.
  
  Retire thou, impious man! Ay, hide thyself
  Where never eye can look upon thee more!
  Wouldst thou have honour and obedience
  Who art a torturer?
  
  Father, never dream
  Though thou mayst overbear this company,
  But ill must come of ill.
  
  —Frown not on me!
  Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looks
  My brothers' ghosts should hunt thee from thy seat!
  Cover thy face from every living eye,
  And start if thou but hear a human step:
  Seek out some dark and silent corner, there,
  Bow thy white head before offended God,
  And we will kneel around, and fervently
  Pray that he pity both ourselves and thee.
  
  Cenci.
  
  My friends, I do lament this insane girl
  Has spoilt the mirth of our festivity.
  
  Good night, farewell; I will not make you longer
  Spectators of our dull domestic quarrels.
  
  Another time.
  
  —
  [Exeunt all but Cenci and Beatrice.
  
  My brain is swimming round;
  Give me a bowl of wine!
  [To Beatrice.
  
  Thou painted viper!
  Beast that thou art! Fair and yet terrible!
  I know a charm shall make thee meek and tame,
  Now get thee from my sight!
  [Exit Beatrice.
  
  Here, Andrea,
  Fill up this goblet with Greek wine.
  
  I said
  I would not drink this evening; but I must;
  For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail
  With thinking what I have decreed to do.
  
  — [Drinking the wine.
  
  Be thou the resolution of quick youth
  Within my veins, and manhood's purpose stern,
  And age's firm, cold, subtle villainy;
  As if thou wert indeed my children's blood
  Which I did thirst to drink! The charm works well;
  It must be done; it shall be done, I swear!
  [Exit.
  
  END OF THE FIRST ACT.
  
  ACT II
  Scene I.
  
  —An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.
  
  Enter Lucretia and Bernardo.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Weep not, my gentle boy; he struck but me
  Who have borne deeper wrongs.
  
  In truth, if he
  Had killed me, he had done a kinder deed.
  
  O God, Almighty, do Thou look upon us,
  We have no other friend but only Thee!
  Yet weep not; though I love you as my own,
  I am not your true mother.
  
  Bernardo.
  
  O more, more,
  Than ever mother was to any child,
  That have you been to me! Had he not been
  My father, do you think that I should weep!
  Lucretia.
  
  Alas! Poor boy, what else couldst thou have done?
  
  Enter Beatrice.
  
  Beatrice
  (in a hurried voice).
  
  Did he pass this way?
  
  Have you seen him, brother?
  
  Ah, no! that is his step upon the stairs;
  'Tis nearer now; his hand is on the door;
  Mother, if I to thee have ever been
  A duteous child, now save me! Thou, great God,
  Whose image upon earth a father is,
  Dost Thou indeed abandon me?
  
  He comes;
  The door is opening now; I see his face;
  He frowns on others, but he smiles on me,
  Even as he did after the feast last night.
  
  Enter a Servant.
  
  Almighty God, how merciful Thou art!
  'Tis but Orsino's servant.
  
  —Well, what news?
  
  Servant.
  
  My master bids me say, the Holy Father
  Has sent back your petition thus unopened.
  
  [Giving a paper.
  
  And he demands at what hour 'twere secure
  To visit you again?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  At the Ave Mary.
  
  [Exit Servant.
  
  So, daughter, our last hope has failed; Ah me!
  How pale you look; you tremble, and you stand
  Wrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation,
  As if one thought were over strong for you:
  Your eyes have a chill glare; O, dearest child!
  Are you gone mad?
  
  If not, pray speak to me.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  You see I am not mad: I speak to you.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  You talked of something that your father did
  After that dreadful feast?
  
  Could it be worse
  Than when he smiled, and cried, 'My sons are dead!'
  And every one looked in his neighbour's face
  To see if others were as white as he?
  
  At the first word he spoke I felt the blood
  Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance;
  And when it passed I sat all weak and wild;
  Whilst you alone stood up, and with strong words
  Checked his unnatural pride; and I could see
  The devil was rebuked that lives in him.
  
  Until this hour thus have you ever stood
  Between us and your father's moody wrath
  Like a protecting presence: your firm mind
  Has been our only refuge and defence:
  What can have thus subdued it?
  
  What can now
  Have given you that cold melancholy look,
  Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  What is it that you say?
  
  I was just thinking
  'Twere better not to struggle any more.
  
  Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody,
  Yet never—Oh! Before worse comes of it
  'Twere wise to die: it ends in that at last.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Oh, talk not so, dear child! Tell me at once
  What did your father do or say to you?
  
  He stayed not after that accursèd feast
  One moment in your chamber.
  
  —Speak to me.
  
  Bernardo.
  
  Oh, sister, sister, prithee, speak to us!
  Beatrice
  (speaking very slowly with a forced calmness).
  
  It was one word, Mother, one little word;
  One look, one smile.
  
  (Wildly.
  
  )
  Oh! He has trampled me
  Under his feet, and made the blood stream down
  My pallid cheeks.
  
  And he has given us all
  Ditch-water, and the fever-stricken flesh
  Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve,
  And we have eaten.
  
  —He has made me look
  On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust
  Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs,
  And I have never yet despaired—but now!
  What could I say?
  
  [Recovering herself.
  
  Ah, no! 'tis nothing new.
  
  The sufferings we all share have made me wild:
  He only struck and cursed me as he passed;
  He said, he looked, he did;—nothing at all
  Beyond his wont, yet it disordered me.
  
  Alas! I am forgetful of my duty,
  I should preserve my senses for your sake.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Nay, Beatrice; have courage, my sweet girl,
  If any one despairs it should be I
  Who loved him once, and now must live with him
  Till God in pity call for him or me.
  
  For you may, like your sister, find some husband,
  And smile, years hence, with children round your knees;
  Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil
  Shall be remembered only as a dream.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Talk not to me, dear lady, of a husband.
  
  Did you not nurse me when my mother died?
  
  Did you not shield me and that dearest boy?
  
  And had we any other friend but you
  In infancy, with gentle words and looks,
  To win our father not to murder us?
  
  And shall I now desert you?
  
  May the ghost
  Of my dead Mother plead against my soul
  If I abandon her who filled the place
  She left, with more, even, than a mother's love!
  Bernardo.
  
  And I am of my sister's mind.
  
  Indeed
  I would not leave you in this wretchedness,
  Even though the Pope should make me free to live
  In some blithe place, like others of my age,
  With sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air.
  
  Oh, never think that I will leave you, Mother!
  Lucretia.
  
  My dear, dear children!
  Enter Cenci, suddenly.
  
  Cenci.
  
  What, Beatrice here!
  Come hither!
  [She shrinks back, and covers her face.
  
  Nay, hide not your face, 'tis fair;
  Look up! Why, yesternight you dared to look
  With disobedient insolence upon me,
  Bending a stern and an inquiring brow
  On what I meant; whilst I then sought to hide
  That which I came to tell you—but in vain.
  
  Beatrice
  (wildly, staggering towards the door).
  
  O that the earth would gape! Hide me, O God!
  Cenci.
  
  Then it was I whose inarticulate words
  Fell from my lips, and who with tottering steps
  Fled from your presence, as you now from mine.
  
  Stay, I command you—from this day and hour
  Never again, I think, with fearless eye,
  And brow superior, and unaltered cheek,
  And that lip made for tenderness or scorn,
  Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind;
  Me least of all.
  
  Now get thee to thy chamber!
  Thou too, loathed image of thy cursèd mother, [To Bernardo.
  
  Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate! [Exeunt Beatrice and Bernardo.
  
  (Aside.
  
  )
  So much has passed between us as must make
  Me bold, her fearful.
  
  —'Tis an awful thing
  To touch such mischief as I now conceive:
  So men sit shivering on the dewy bank,
  And try the chill stream with their feet; once in .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  How the delighted spirit pants for joy!
  Lucretia
  (advancing timidly towards him).
  
  O husband! Pray forgive poor Beatrice.
  
  She meant not any ill.
  
  Cenci.
  
  Nor you perhaps?
  
  Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote
  Parricide with his alphabet?
  
  Nor Giacomo?
  
  Nor those two most unnatural sons, who stirred
  Enmity up against me with the Pope?
  
  Whom in one night merciful God cut off:
  Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill.
  
  You were not here conspiring?
  
  You said nothing
  Of how I might be dungeoned as a madman;
  Or be condemned to death for some offence,
  And you would be the witnesses?
  
  —This failing,
  How just it were to hire assassins, or
  Put sudden poison in my evening drink?
  
  Or smother me when overcome by wine?
  
  Seeing we had no other judge but God,
  And He had sentenced me, and there were none
  But you to be the executioners
  Of His decree enregistered in Heaven?
  
  Oh, no! You said not this?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  So help me God,
  I never thought the things you charge me with!
  Cenci.
  
  If you dare speak that wicked lie again
  I'll kill you.
  
  What! It was not by your counsel
  That Beatrice disturbed the feast last night?
  
  You did not hope to stir some enemies
  Against me, and escape, and laugh to scorn
  What every nerve of you now trembles at?
  
  You judged that men were bolder than they are;
  Few dare to stand between their grave and me.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Look not so dreadfully! By my salvation
  I knew not aught that Beatrice designed;
  Nor do I think she designed any thing
  Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers.
  
  Cenci.
  
  Blaspheming liar! You are damned for this!
  But I will take you where you may persuade
  The stones you tread on to deliver you:
  For men shall there be none but those who dare
  All things—not question that which I command.
  
  On Wednesday next I shall set out: you know
  That savage rock, the Castle of Petrella:
  'Tis safely walled, and moated round about:
  Its dungeons underground, and its thick towers
  Never told tales; though they have heard and seen
  What might make dumb things speak.
  
  —Why do you linger?
  
  Make speediest preparation for the journey! [Exit Lucretia.
  
  The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear
  A busy stir of men about the streets;
  I see the bright sky through the window panes:
  It is a garish, broad, and peering day;
  Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears,
  And every little corner, nook, and hole
  Is penetrated with the insolent light.
  
  Come darkness! Yet, what is the day to me?
  
  And wherefore should I wish for night, who do
  A deed which shall confound both night and day?
  
  'Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mist
  Of horror: if there be a sun in heaven
  She shall not dare to look upon its beams;
  Nor feel its warmth.
  
  Let her then wish for night;
  The act I think shall soon extinguish all
  For me: I bear a darker deadlier gloom
  Than the earth's shade, or interlunar air,
  Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud,
  In which I walk secure and unbeheld
  Towards my purpose.
  
  —Would that it were done!
  [Exit.
  
  Scene II.
  
  —A Chamber in the Vatican.
  
  Enter Camillo and Giacomo, in conversation.
  
  Camillo.
  
  There is an obsolete and doubtful law
  By which you might obtain a bare provision
  Of food and clothing—
  Giacomo.
  
  Nothing more?
  
  Alas!
  Bare must be the provision which strict law
  Awards, and agèd, sullen avarice pays.
  
  Why did my father not apprentice me
  To some mechanic trade?
  
  I should have then
  Been trained in no highborn necessities
  Which I could meet not by my daily toil.
  
  The eldest son of a rich nobleman
  Is heir to all his incapacities;
  He has wide wants, and narrow powers.
  
  If you,
  Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once
  From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food,
  An hundred servants, and six palaces,
  To that which nature doth indeed require?
  
  —
  Camillo.
  
  Nay, there is reason in your plea; 'twere hard.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  'Tis hard for a firm man to bear: but I
  Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth,
  Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father
  Without a bond or witness to the deed:
  And children, who inherit her fine senses,
  The fairest creatures in this breathing world;
  And she and they reproach me not.
  
  Cardinal,
  Do you not think the Pope would interpose
  And stretch authority beyond the law?
  
  Camillo.
  
  Though your peculiar case is hard, I know
  The Pope will not divert the course of law.
  
  After that impious feast the other night
  I spoke with him, and urged him then to check
  Your father's cruel hand; he frowned and said,
  'Children are disobedient, and they sting
  Their fathers' hearts to madness and despair,
  Requiting years of care with contumely.
  
  I pity the Count Cenci from my heart;
  His outraged love perhaps awakened hate,
  And thus he is exasperated to ill.
  
  In the great war between the old and young
  I, who have white hairs and a tottering body,
  Will keep at least blameless neutrality.
  
  ' Enter Orsino.
  
  You, my good Lord Orsino, heard those words.
  
  Orsino.
  
  What words?
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Alas, repeat them not again!
  There then is no redress for me, at least
  None but that which I may achieve myself,
  Since I am driven to the brink.
  
  —But, say,
  My innocent sister and my only brother
  Are dying underneath my father's eye.
  
  The memorable torturers of this land,
  Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin,
  Never inflicted on the meanest slave
  What these endure; shall they have no protection?
  
  Camillo.
  
  Why, if they would petition to the Pope
  I see not how he could refuse it—yet
  He holds it of most dangerous example
  In aught to weaken the paternal power,
  Being, as 'twere, the shadow of his own.
  
  I pray you now excuse me.
  
  I have business
  That will not bear delay.
  
  [Exit Camillo.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  But you, Orsino,
  Have the petition: wherefore not present it?
  
  Orsino.
  
  I have presented it, and backed it with
  My earnest prayers, and urgent interest;
  It was returned unanswered.
  
  I doubt not
  But that the strange and execrable deeds
  Alleged in it—in truth they might well baffle
  Any belief—have turned the Pope's displeasure
  Upon the accusers from the criminal:
  So I should guess from what Camillo said.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  My friend, that palace-walking devil Gold
  Has whispered silence to his Holiness:
  And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire.
  
  What should we do but strike ourselves to death?
  
  For he who is our murderous persecutor
  Is shielded by a father's holy name,
  Or I would—
  [Stops abruptly.
  
  Orsino.
  
  What?
  
  Fear not to speak your thought.
  
  Words are but holy as the deeds they cover:
  A priest who has forsworn the God he serves;
  A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree;
  A friend who should weave counsel, as I now,
  But as the mantle of some selfish guile;
  A father who is all a tyrant seems,
  Were the profaner for his sacred name.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain
  Feigns often what it would not; and we trust
  Imagination with such phantasies
  As the tongue dares not fashion into words,
  Which have no words, their horror makes them dim
  To the mind's eye.
  
  —My heart denies itself
  To think what you demand.
  
  Orsino.
  
  But a friend's bosom
  Is as the inmost cave of our own mind
  Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day,
  And from the all-communicating air.
  
  You look what I suspected—
  Giacomo.
  
  Spare me now!
  I am as one lost in a midnight wood,
  Who dares not ask some harmless passenger
  The path across the wilderness, lest he,
  As my thoughts are, should be—a murderer.
  
  I know you are my friend, and all I dare
  Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee.
  
  But now my heart is heavy, and would take
  Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care.
  
  Pardon me, that I say farewell—farewell!
  I would that to my own suspected self
  I could address a word so full of peace.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Farewell!—Be your thoughts better or more bold.
  
  [Exit Giacomo.
  
  I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo
  To feed his hope with cold encouragement:
  It fortunately serves my close designs
  That 'tis a trick of this same family
  To analyse their own and other minds.
  
  Such self-anatomy shall teach the will
  Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers,
  Knowing what must be thought, and may be done,
  Into the depth of darkest purposes:
  So Cenci fell into the pit; even I,
  Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself,
  And made me shrink from what I cannot shun,
  Show a poor figure to my own esteem,
  To which I grow half reconciled.
  
  I'll do
  As little mischief as I can; that thought
  Shall fee the accuser conscience.
  
  (After a pause.
  
  )
  Now what harm
  If Cenci should be murdered?
  
  —Yet, if murdered,
  Wherefore by me?
  
  And what if I could take
  The profit, yet omit the sin and peril
  In such an action?
  
  Of all earthly things
  I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words;
  And such is Cenci: and while Cenci lives
  His daughter's dowry were a secret grave
  If a priest wins her.
  
  —Oh, fair Beatrice!
  Would that I loved thee not, or loving thee
  Could but despise danger and gold and all
  That frowns between my wish and its effect,
  Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar,
  And follows me to the resort of men,
  And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams,
  So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire;
  And if I strike my damp and dizzy head
  My hot palm scorches it: her very name,
  But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart
  Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably
  I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights
  Till weak imagination half possesses
  The self-created shadow.
  
  Yet much longer
  Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours:
  From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo
  I must work out my own dear purposes.
  
  I see, as from a tower, the end of all:
  Her father dead; her brother bound to me
  By a dark secret, surer than the grave;
  Her mother scared and unexpostulating
  From the dread manner of her wish achieved:
  And she!—Once more take courage, my faint heart;
  What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee?
  
  I have such foresight as assures success:
  Some unbeheld divinity doth ever,
  When dread events are near, stir up men's minds
  To black suggestions; and he prospers best,
  Not who becomes the instrument of ill,
  But who can flatter the dark spirit, that makes
  Its empire and its prey of other hearts
  Till it become his slave .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  as I will do.
  
  [Exit.
  
  END OF THE SECOND ACT.
  
  ACT III
  Scene I.
  
  —An Apartment in the Cenci Palace.
  
  Lucretia, to her enter Beatrice.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  (She enters staggering, and speaks wildly.
  
  )
  Reach me that handkerchief!—My brain is hurt;
  My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I see but indistinctly .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Lucretia.
  
  My sweet child,
  You have no wound; 'tis only a cold dew
  That starts from your dear brow .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Alas! Alas!
  What has befallen?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  How comes this hair undone?
  
  Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
  And yet I tied it fast.
  
  —O, horrible!
  The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
  Spin round! I see a woman weeping there,
  And standing calm and motionless, whilst I
  Slide giddily as the world reels.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  My God!
  The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!
  The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
  Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe
  In charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps
  A clinging, black, contaminating mist
  About me .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  'tis substantial, heavy, thick,
  I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
  My fingers and my limbs to one another,
  And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
  My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
  The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!
  My God! I never knew what the mad felt
  Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt!
  (More wildly.
  
  )
  No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs
  Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul
  Which would burst forth into the wandering air! (A pause.
  
  )
  What hideous thought was that I had even now?
  
  'Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here
  O'er these dull eyes .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  upon this weary heart!
  O, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!
  Lucretia.
  
  What ails thee, my poor child?
  
  She answers not:
  Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain,
  But not its cause; suffering has dried away
  The source from which it sprung .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice
  (franticly).
  
  Like Parricide .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Misery has killed its father: yet its father
  Never like mine .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  O, God! What thing am I?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  My dearest child, what has your father done?
  
  Beatrice
  (doubtfully).
  
  Who art thou, questioner?
  
  I have no father.
  
  (Aside.
  
  )
  She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,
  It is a piteous office.
  
  [To Lucretia, in a slow, subdued voice.
  
  Do you know
  I thought I was that wretched Beatrice
  Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales
  From hall to hall by the entangled hair;
  At others, pens up naked in damp cells
  Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,
  Till she will eat strange flesh.
  
  This woful story
  So did I overact in my sick dreams,
  That I imagined .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  no, it cannot be!
  Horrible things have been in this wide world,
  Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange
  Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived
  Than ever there was found a heart to do.
  
  But never fancy imaged such a deed
  As .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  [Pauses, suddenly recollecting herself.
  
  Who art thou?
  
  Swear to me, ere I die
  With fearful expectation, that indeed
  Thou art not what thou seemest .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Mother!
  Lucretia.
  
  Oh!
  My sweet child, know you .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Yet speak it not:
  For then if this be truth, that other too
  Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth,
  Linked with each lasting circumstance of life,
  Never to change, never to pass away.
  
  Why so it is.
  
  This is the Cenci Palace;
  Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice.
  
  I have talked some wild words, but will no more.
  
  Mother, come near me: from this point of time,
  I am .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  [Her voice dies away faintly.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Alas! What has befallen thee, child?
  
  What has thy father done?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  What have I done?
  
  Am I not innocent?
  
  Is it my crime
  That one with white hair, and imperious brow,
  Who tortured me from my forgotten years,
  As parents only dare, should call himself
  My father, yet should be!—Oh, what am I?
  
  What name, what place, what memory shall be mine?
  
  What retrospects, outliving even despair?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  He is a violent tyrant, surely, child:
  We know that death alone can make us free;
  His death or ours.
  
  But what can he have done
  Of deadlier outrage or worse injury?
  
  Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth
  A wandering and strange spirit.
  
  Speak to me,
  Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine
  With one another.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  'Tis the restless life
  Tortured within them.
  
  If I try to speak
  I shall go mad.
  
  Ay, something must be done;
  What, yet I know not .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  something which shall make
  The thing that I have suffered but a shadow
  In the dread lightning which avenges it;
  Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying
  The consequence of what it cannot cure.
  
  Some such thing is to be endured or done:
  When I know what, I shall be still and calm,
  And never anything will move me more.
  
  But now!—O blood, which art my father's blood,
  Circling through these contaminated veins,
  If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,
  Could wash away the crime, and punishment
  By which I suffer .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  no, that cannot be!
  Many might doubt there were a God above
  Who sees and permits evil, and so die:
  That faith no agony shall obscure in me.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;
  Yet what, I dare not guess.
  
  Oh, my lost child,
  Hide not in proud impenetrable grief
  Thy sufferings from my fear.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  I hide them not.
  
  What are the words which you would have me speak?
  
  I, who can feign no image in my mind
  Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought
  Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up
  In its own formless horror: of all words,
  That minister to mortal intercourse,
  Which wouldst thou hear?
  
  For there is none to tell
  My misery: if another ever knew
  Aught like to it, she died as I will die,
  And left it, as I must, without a name.
  
  Death! Death! Our law and our religion call thee
  A punishment and a reward .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Oh, which
  Have I deserved?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  The peace of innocence;
  Till in your season you be called to heaven.
  
  Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done
  No evil.
  
  Death must be the punishment
  Of crime, or the reward of trampling down
  The thorns which God has strewed upon the path
  Which leads to immortality.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Ay; death .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The punishment of crime.
  
  I pray thee, God,
  Let me not be bewildered while I judge.
  
  If I must live day after day, and keep
  These limbs, the unworthy temple of Thy spirit,
  As a foul den from which what Thou abhorrest
  May mock Thee, unavenged .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  it shall not be!
  Self-murder .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  no, that might be no escape,
  For Thy decree yawns like a Hell between
  Our will and it:—O! In this mortal world
  There is no vindication and no law
  Which can adjudge and execute the doom
  Of that through which I suffer.
  
  Enter Orsino.
  
  (She approaches him solemnly.
  
  )
  Welcome, Friend!
  I have to tell you that, since last we met,
  I have endured a wrong so great and strange,
  That neither life nor death can give me rest.
  
  Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds
  Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.
  
  Orsino.
  
  And what is he who has thus injured you?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  The man they call my father: a dread name.
  
  Orsino.
  
  It cannot be .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  What it can be, or not,
  Forbear to think.
  
  It is, and it has been;
  Advise me how it shall not be again.
  
  I thought to die; but a religious awe
  Restrains me, and the dread lest death itself
  Might be no refuge from the consciousness
  Of what is yet unexpiated.
  
  Oh, speak!
  Orsino.
  
  Accuse him of the deed, and let the law
  Avenge thee.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Oh, ice-hearted counsellor!
  If I could find a word that might make known
  The crime of my destroyer; and that done,
  My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret
  Which cankers my heart's core; ay, lay all bare
  So that my unpolluted fame should be
  With vilest gossips a stale mouthèd story;
  A mock, a byword, an astonishment:—
  If this were done, which never shall be done,
  Think of the offender's gold, his dreaded hate,
  And the strange horror of the accuser's tale,
  Baffling belief, and overpowering speech;
  Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapped
  In hideous hints .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Oh, most assured redress!
  Orsino.
  
  You will endure it then?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Endure?
  
  —Orsino,
  It seems your counsel is small profit.
  
  [Turns from him, and speaks half to herself.
  
  Ay,
  All must be suddenly resolved and done.
  
  What is this undistinguishable mist
  Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow,
  Darkening each other?
  
  Orsino.
  
  Should the offender live?
  
  Triumph in his misdeed?
  
  and make, by use,
  His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no doubt,
  Thine element; until thou mayst become
  Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue
  Of that which thou permittest?
  
  Beatrice
  (to herself).
  
  Mighty death!
  Thou double-visaged shadow?
  
  Only judge!
  Rightfullest arbiter!
  [She retires absorbed in thought.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  If the lightning
  Of God has e'er descended to avenge .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Orsino.
  
  Blaspheme not! His high Providence commits
  Its glory on this earth, and their own wrongs
  Into the hands of men; if they neglect
  To punish crime .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Lucretia.
  
  But if one, like this wretch,
  Should mock, with gold, opinion, law, and power?
  
  If there be no appeal to that which makes
  The guiltiest tremble?
  
  If because our wrongs,
  For that they are unnatural, strange, and monstrous,
  Exceed all measure of belief?
  
  O God!
  If, for the very reasons which should make
  Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs?
  
  And we, the victims, bear worse punishment
  Than that appointed for their torturer?
  
  Orsino.
  
  Think not
  But that there is redress where there is wrong,
  So we be bold enough to seize it.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  How?
  
  If there were any way to make all sure,
  I know not .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  but I think it might be good
  To .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Orsino.
  
  Why, his late outrage to Beatrice;
  For it is such, as I but faintly guess,
  As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves her
  Only one duty, how she may avenge:
  You, but one refuge from ills ill endured;
  Me, but one counsel .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Lucretia.
  
  For we cannot hope
  That aid, or retribution, or resource
  Will arise thence, where every other one
  Might find them with less need.
  
  [Beatrice advances.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Then .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Peace, Orsino!
  And, honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray,
  That you put off, as garments overworn,
  Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear,
  And all the fit restraints of daily life,
  Which have been borne from childhood, but which now
  Would be a mockery to my holier plea.
  
  As I have said, I have endured a wrong,
  Which, though it be expressionless, is such
  As asks atonement; both for what is past,
  And lest I be reserved, day after day,
  To load with crimes an overburthened soul,
  And be .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  what ye can dream not.
  
  I have prayed
  To God, and I have talked with my own heart,
  And have unravelled my entangled will,
  And have at length determined what is right.
  
  Art thou my friend, Orsino?
  
  False or true?
  
  Pledge thy salvation ere I speak.
  
  Orsino.
  
  I swear
  To dedicate my cunning, and my strength,
  My silence, and whatever else is mine,
  To thy commands.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  You think we should devise
  His death?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  And execute what is devised,
  And suddenly.
  
  We must be brief and bold.
  
  Orsino.
  
  And yet most cautious.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  For the jealous laws
  Would punish us with death and infamy
  For that which it became themselves to do.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Be cautious as ye may, but prompt.
  
  Orsino,
  What are the means?
  
  Orsino.
  
  I know two dull, fierce outlaws,
  Who think man's spirit as a worm's, and they
  Would trample out, for any slight caprice,
  The meanest or the noblest life.
  
  This mood
  Is marketable here in Rome.
  
  They sell
  What we now want.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  To-morrow before dawn,
  Cenci will take us to that lonely rock,
  Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines.
  
  If he arrive there .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  He must not arrive.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Will it be dark before you reach the tower?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  The sun will scarce be set.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  But I remember
  Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
  Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,
  And winds with short turns down the precipice;
  And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
  Which has, from unimaginable years,
  Sustained itself with terror and with toil
  Over a gulf, and with the agony
  With which it clings seems slowly coming down;
  Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,
  Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;
  And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
  In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag
  Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
  The melancholy mountain yawns .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  below,
  You hear but see not an impetuous torrent
  Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
  Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,
  With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
  Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair
  Is matted in one solid roof of shade
  By the dark ivy's twine.
  
  At noonday here
  'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Before you reach that bridge make some excuse
  For spurring on your mules, or loitering
  Until .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  What sound is that?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Hark! No, it cannot be a servant's step
  It must be Cenci, unexpectedly
  Returned .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Make some excuse for being here.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  (To Orsino, as she goes out.
  
  )
  That step we hear approach must never pass
  The bridge of which we spoke.
  
  [Exeunt Lucretia and Beatrice.
  
  Orsino.
  
  What shall I do?
  
  Cenci must find me here, and I must bear
  The imperious inquisition of his looks
  As to what brought me hither: let me mask
  Mine own in some inane and vacant smile.
  
  Enter Giacomo, in a hurried manner.
  
  How! Have you ventured hither?
  
  Know you then
  That Cenci is from home?
  
  Giacomo.
  
  I sought him here;
  And now must wait till he returns.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Great God!
  Weigh you the danger of this rashness?
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Ay!
  Does my destroyer know his danger?
  
  We
  Are now no more, as once, parent and child,
  But man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed;
  The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe:
  He has cast Nature off, which was his shield,
  And Nature casts him off, who is her shame;
  And I spurn both.
  
  Is it a father's throat
  Which I will shake, and say, I ask not gold;
  I ask not happy years; nor memories
  Of tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love;
  Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more;
  But only my fair fame; only one hoard
  Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate,
  Under the penury heaped on me by thee,
  Or I will .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  God can understand and pardon,
  Why should I speak with man?
  
  Orsino.
  
  Be calm, dear friend.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Well, I will calmly tell you what he did.
  
  This old Francesco Cenci, as you know,
  Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me,
  And then denied the loan; and left me so
  In poverty, the which I sought to mend
  By holding a poor office in the state.
  
  It had been promised to me, and already
  I bought new clothing for my raggèd babes,
  And my wife smiled; and my heart knew repose.
  
  When Cenci's intercession, as I found,
  Conferred this office on a wretch, whom thus
  He paid for vilest service.
  
  I returned
  With this ill news, and we sate sad together
  Solacing our despondency with tears
  Of such affection and unbroken faith
  As temper life's worst bitterness; when he,
  As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse,
  Mocking our poverty, and telling us
  Such was God's scourge for disobedient sons.
  
  And then, that I might strike him dumb with shame,
  I spoke of my wife's dowry; but he coined
  A brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted
  The sum in secret riot; and he saw
  My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth.
  
  And when I knew the impression he had made,
  And felt my wife insult with silent scorn
  My ardent truth, and look averse and cold,
  I went forth too: but soon returned again;
  Yet not so soon but that my wife had taught
  My children her harsh thoughts, and they all cried,
  'Give us clothes, father! Give us better food!
  What you in one night squander were enough
  For months!' I looked, and saw that home was hell.
  
  And to that hell will I return no more
  Until mine enemy has rendered up
  Atonement, or, as he gave life to me
  I will, reversing Nature's law .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Orsino.
  
  Trust me,
  The compensation which thou seekest here
  Will be denied.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Then .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Are you not my friend?
  
  Did you not hint at the alternative,
  Upon the brink of which you see I stand,
  The other day when we conversed together?
  
  My wrongs were then less.
  
  That word parricide,
  Although I am resolved, haunts me like fear.
  
  Orsino.
  
  It must be fear itself, for the bare word
  Is hollow mockery.
  
  Mark, how wisest God
  Draws to one point the threads of a just doom,
  So sanctifying it: what you devise
  Is, as it were, accomplished.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Is he dead?
  
  Orsino.
  
  His grave is ready.
  
  Know that since we met
  Cenci has done an outrage to his daughter.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  What outrage?
  
  Orsino.
  
  That she speaks not, but you may
  Conceive such half conjectures as I do,
  From her fixed paleness, and the lofty grief
  Of her stern brow bent on the idle air,
  And her severe unmodulated voice,
  Drowning both tenderness and dread; and last
  From this; that whilst her step-mother and I,
  Bewildered in our horror, talked together
  With obscure hints; both self-misunderstood
  And darkly guessing, stumbling, in our talk,
  Over the truth, and yet to its revenge,
  She interrupted us, and with a look
  Which told before she spoke it, he must die: .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Giacomo.
  
  It is enough.
  
  My doubts are well appeased;
  There is a higher reason for the act
  Than mine; there is a holier judge than me,
  A more unblamed avenger.
  
  Beatrice,
  Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth
  Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised
  A living flower, but thou hast pitied it
  With needless tears! Fair sister, thou in whom
  Men wondered how such loveliness and wisdom
  Did not destroy each other! Is there made
  Ravage of thee?
  
  O, heart, I ask no more
  Justification! Shall I wait, Orsino,
  Till he return, and stab him at the door?
  
  Orsino.
  
  Not so; some accident might interpose
  To rescue him from what is now most sure;
  And you are unprovided where to fly,
  How to excuse or to conceal.
  
  Nay, listen:
  All is contrived; success is so assured
  That .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Enter Beatrice.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  'Tis my brother's voice! You know me not?
  
  Giacomo.
  
  My sister, my lost sister!
  Beatrice.
  
  Lost indeed!
  I see Orsino has talked with you, and
  That you conjecture things too horrible
  To speak, yet far less than the truth.
  
  Now, stay not,
  He might return: yet kiss me; I shall know
  That then thou hast consented to his death.
  
  Farewell, farewell! Let piety to God,
  Brotherly love, justice and clemency,
  And all things that make tender hardest hearts
  Make thine hard, brother.
  
  Answer not .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  farewell.
  
  [Exeunt severally.
  
  Scene II.
  
  —A mean Apartment in Giacomo's House.
  
  Giacomo alone.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  'Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.
  
  [Thunder, and the sound of a storm.
  
  What! can the everlasting elements
  Feel with a worm like man?
  
  If so, the shaft
  Of mercy-wingèd lightning would not fall
  On stones and trees.
  
  My wife and children sleep:
  They are now living in unmeaning dreams:
  But I must wake, still doubting if that deed
  Be just which is most necessary.
  
  O,
  Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire
  Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge
  Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,
  Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls,
  Still flickerest up and down, how very soon,
  Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be
  As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks
  Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:
  But that no power can fill with vital oil
  That broken lamp of flesh.
  
  Ha! 'tis the blood
  Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:
  It is the form that moulded mine that sinks
  Into the white and yellow spasms of death:
  It is the soul by which mine was arrayed
  In God's immortal likeness which now stands
  Naked before Heaven's judgement seat!
  [A bell strikes.
  
  One! Two!
  The hours crawl on; and when my hairs are white,
  My son will then perhaps be waiting thus,
  Tortured between just hate and vain remorse;
  Chiding the tardy messenger of news
  Like those which I expect.
  
  I almost wish
  He be not dead, although my wrongs are great;
  Yet .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  'tis Orsino's step .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Enter Orsino.
  
  Speak!
  Orsino.
  
  I am come
  To say he has escaped.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Escaped!
  Orsino.
  
  And safe
  Within Petrella.
  
  He passed by the spot
  Appointed for the deed an hour too soon.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Are we the fools of such contingencies?
  
  And do we waste in blind misgivings thus
  The hours when we should act?
  
  Then wind and thunder,
  Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter
  With which Heaven mocks our weakness! I henceforth
  Will ne'er repent of aught designed or done
  But my repentance.
  
  Orsino.
  
  See, the lamp is out.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  If no remorse is ours when the dim air
  Has drank this innocent flame, why should we quail
  When Cenci's life, that light by which ill spirits
  See the worst deeds they prompt, shall sink for ever?
  
  No, I am hardened.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Why, what need of this?
  
  Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse
  In a just deed?
  
  Although our first plan failed,
  Doubt not but he will soon be laid to rest.
  
  But light the lamp; let us not talk i' the dark.
  
  Giacomo
  (lighting the lamp).
  
  And yet once quenched I cannot thus relume
  My father's life: do you not think his ghost
  Might plead that argument with God?
  
  Orsino.
  
  Once gone
  You cannot now recall your sister's peace;
  Your own extinguished years of youth and hope;
  Nor your wife's bitter words; nor all the taunts
  Which, from the prosperous, weak misfortune takes;
  Nor your dead mother; nor .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Giacomo.
  
  O, speak no more!
  I am resolved, although this very hand
  Must quench the life that animated it.
  
  Orsino.
  
  There is no need of that.
  
  Listen: you know
  Olimpio, the castellan of Petrella
  In old Colonna's time; him whom your father
  Degraded from his post?
  
  And Marzio,
  That desperate wretch, whom he deprived last year
  Of a reward of blood, well earned and due?
  
  Giacomo.
  
  I knew Olimpio; and they say he hated
  Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage
  His lips grew white only to see him pass.
  
  Of Marzio I know nothing.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Marzio's hate
  Matches Olimpio's.
  
  I have sent these men,
  But in your name, and as at your request,
  To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Only to talk?
  
  Orsino.
  
  The moments which even now
  Pass onward to to-morrow's midnight hour
  May memorize their flight with death: ere then
  They must have talked, and may perhaps have done,
  And made an end .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Listen! What sound is that?
  
  Orsino.
  
  The house-dog moans, and the beams crack: nought else.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  It is my wife complaining in her sleep:
  I doubt not she is saying bitter things
  Of me; and all my children round her dreaming
  That I deny them sustenance.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Whilst he
  Who truly took it from them, and who fills
  Their hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps
  Lapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly
  Mocks thee in visions of successful hate
  Too like the truth of day.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  If e'er he wakes
  Again, I will not trust to hireling hands .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Orsino.
  
  Why, that were well.
  
  I must be gone; good-night.
  
  When next we meet—may all be done!
  Giacomo.
  
  And all
  Forgotten: Oh, that I had never been!
  [Exeunt.
  
  END OF THE THIRD ACT.
  
  ACT IV
  Scene I.
  
  —An Apartment in the Castle of Petrella.
  
  Enter Cenci.
  
  Cenci.
  
  She comes not; yet I left her even now
  Vanquished and faint.
  
  She knows the penalty
  Of her delay: yet what if threats are vain?
  
  Am I not now within Petrella's moat?
  
  Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome?
  
  Might I not drag her by the golden hair?
  
  Stamp on her?
  
  Keep her sleepless till her brain
  Be overworn?
  
  Tame her with chains and famine?
  
  Less would suffice.
  
  Yet so to leave undone
  What I most seek! No, 'tis her stubborn will
  Which by its own consent shall stoop as low
  As that which drags it down.
  
  Enter Lucretia.
  
  Thou loathèd wretch!
  Hide thee from my abhorrence: fly, begone!
  Yet stay! Bid Beatrice come hither.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Oh,
  Husband! I pray for thine own wretched sake
  Heed what thou dost.
  
  A man who walks like thee
  Through crimes, and through the danger of his crimes,
  Each hour may stumble o'er a sudden grave.
  
  And thou art old; thy hairs are hoary gray;
  As thou wouldst save thyself from death and hell,
  Pity thy daughter; give her to some friend
  In marriage: so that she may tempt thee not
  To hatred, or worse thoughts, if worse there be.
  
  Cenci.
  
  What! like her sister who has found a home
  To mock my hate from with prosperity?
  
  Strange ruin shall destroy both her and thee
  And all that yet remain.
  
  My death may be
  Rapid, her destiny outspeeds it.
  
  Go,
  Bid her come hither, and before my mood
  Be changed, lest I should drag her by the hair.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  She sent me to thee, husband.
  
  At thy presence
  She fell, as thou dost know, into a trance;
  And in that trance she heard a voice which said,
  'Cenci must die! Let him confess himself!
  Even now the accusing Angel waits to hear
  If God, to punish his enormous crimes,
  Harden his dying heart!'
  Cenci.
  
  Why—such things are .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  No doubt divine revealings may be made.
  
  'Tis plain I have been favoured from above,
  For when I cursed my sons they died.
  
  —Ay .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  so .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  As to the right or wrong, that's talk .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  repentance .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Repentance is an easy moment's work
  And more depends on God than me.
  
  Well .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  well .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I must give up the greater point, which was
  To poison and corrupt her soul.
  
  [A pause; Lucretia approaches anxiously, and then shrinks back as he speaks.
  
  One, two;
  Ay .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Rocco and Cristofano my curse
  Strangled: and Giacomo, I think, will find
  Life a worse Hell than that beyond the grave:
  Beatrice shall, if there be skill in hate,
  Die in despair, blaspheming: to Bernardo,
  He is so innocent, I will bequeath
  The memory of these deeds, and make his youth
  The sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts
  Shall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb.
  
  When all is done, out in the wide Campagna,
  I will pile up my silver and my gold;
  My costly robes, paintings and tapestries;
  My parchments and all records of my wealth,
  And make a bonfire in my joy, and leave
  Of my possessions nothing but my name;
  Which shall be an inheritance to strip
  Its wearer bare as infamy.
  
  That done,
  My soul, which is a scourge, will I resign
  Into the hands of him who wielded it;
  Be it for its own punishment or theirs,
  He will not ask it of me till the lash
  Be broken in its last and deepest wound;
  Until its hate be all inflicted.
  
  Yet,
  Lest death outspeed my purpose, let me make
  Short work and sure .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  [Going.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  (Stops him.
  
  )
  Oh, stay! It was a feint:
  She had no vision, and she heard no voice.
  
  I said it but to awe thee.
  
  Cenci.
  
  That is well.
  
  Vile palterer with the sacred truth of God,
  Be thy soul choked with that blaspheming lie!
  For Beatrice worse terrors are in store
  To bend her to my will.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Oh! to what will?
  
  What cruel sufferings more than she has known
  Canst thou inflict?
  
  Cenci.
  
  Andrea! Go call my daughter,
  And if she comes not tell her that I come.
  
  What sufferings?
  
  I will drag her, step by step,
  Through infamies unheard of among men:
  She shall stand shelterless in the broad noon
  Of public scorn, for acts blazoned abroad,
  One among which shall be .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  What?
  
  Canst thou guess?
  
  She shall become (for what she most abhors
  Shall have a fascination to entrap
  Her loathing will) to her own conscious self
  All she appears to others; and when dead,
  As she shall die unshrived and unforgiven,
  A rebel to her father and her God,
  Her corpse shall be abandoned to the hounds;
  Her name shall be the terror of the earth;
  Her spirit shall approach the throne of God
  Plague-spotted with my curses.
  
  I will make
  Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin.
  
  Enter Andrea.
  
  Andrea.
  
  The Lady Beatrice .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Cenci.
  
  Speak, pale slave! What
  Said she?
  
  Andrea.
  
  My Lord, 'twas what she looked; she said:
  'Go tell my father that I see the gulf
  Of Hell between us two, which he may pass,
  I will not.
  
  '
  [Exit Andrea.
  
  Cenci.
  
  Go thou quick, Lucretia,
  Tell her to come; yet let her understand
  Her coming is consent: and say, moreover,
  That if she come not I will curse her.
  
  [Exit Lucretia.
  
  Ha!
  With what but with a father's curse doth God
  Panic-strike armèd victory, and make pale
  Cities in their prosperity?
  
  The world's Father
  Must grant a parent's prayer against his child,
  Be he who asks even what men call me.
  
  Will not the deaths of her rebellious brothers
  Awe her before I speak?
  
  For I on them
  Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came.
  
  Enter Lucretia.
  
  Well; what?
  
  Speak, wretch!
  Lucretia.
  
  She said, 'I cannot come;
  Go tell my father that I see a torrent
  Of his own blood raging between us.
  
  '
  Cenci
  (kneeling).
  
  God!
  Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,
  Which Thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,
  This particle of my divided being;
  Or rather, this my bane and my disease,
  Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil
  Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant
  To aught good use; if her bright loveliness
  Was kindled to illumine this dark world;
  If nursed by Thy selectest dew of love
  Such virtues blossom in her as should make
  The peace of life, I pray Thee for my sake,
  As Thou the common God and Father art
  Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!
  Earth, in the name of God, let her food be
  Poison, until she be encrusted round
  With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head
  The blistering drops of the Maremma's dew,
  Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up
  Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs
  To loathèd lameness! All-beholding sun,
  Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes
  With thine own blinding beams!
  Lucretia.
  
  Peace! Peace!
  For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words.
  
  When high God grants He punishes such prayers.
  
  Cenci
  (leaping up, and throwing his right hand towards Heaven).
  
  He does His will, I mine! This in addition,
  That if she have a child .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Horrible thought!
  Cenci.
  
  That if she ever have a child; and thou,
  Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God,
  That thou be fruitful in her, and increase
  And multiply, fulfilling his command,
  And my deep imprecation! May it be
  A hideous likeness of herself, that as
  From a distorting mirror, she may see
  Her image mixed with what she most abhors,
  Smiling upon her from her nursing breast.
  
  And that the child may from its infancy
  Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,
  Turning her mother's love to misery:
  And that both she and it may live until
  It shall repay her care and pain with hate,
  Or what may else be more unnatural.
  
  So he may hunt her through the clamorous scoffs
  Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave.
  
  Shall I revoke this curse?
  
  Go, bid her come,
  Before my words are chronicled in Heaven.
  
  [Exit Lucretia.
  
  I do not feel as if I were a man,
  But like a fiend appointed to chastise
  The offences of some unremembered world.
  
  My blood is running up and down my veins;
  A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:
  I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;
  My heart is beating with an expectation
  Of horrid joy.
  
  Enter Lucretia.
  
  What?
  
  Speak!
  Lucretia.
  
  She bids thee curse;
  And if thy curses, as they cannot do,
  Could kill her soul .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Cenci.
  
  She would not come.
  
  'Tis well,
  I can do both: first take what I demand,
  And then extort concession.
  
  To thy chamber!
  Fly ere I spurn thee: and beware this night
  That thou cross not my footsteps.
  
  It were safer
  To come between the tiger and his prey.
  
  [Exit Lucretia.
  
  It must be late; mine eyes grow weary dim
  With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep.
  
  Conscience! Oh, thou most insolent of lies!
  They say that sleep, that healing dew of Heaven,
  Steeps not in balm the foldings of the brain
  Which thinks thee an impostor.
  
  I will go
  First to belie thee with an hour of rest,
  Which will be deep and calm, I feel: and then .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  O, multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake.
  
  Thine arches with the laughter of their joy!
  There shall be lamentation heard in Heaven
  As o'er an angel fallen; and upon Earth
  All good shall droop and sicken, and ill things
  Shall with a spirit of unnatural life
  Stir and be quickened .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  even as I am now.
  
  [Exit.
  
  Scene II.
  
  —Before the Castle of Petrella.
  
  Enter Beatrice andLucretia above on the Ramparts.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  They come not yet.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  'Tis scarce midnight.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  How slow
  Behind the course of thought, even sick with speed,
  Lags leaden-footed time!
  Lucretia.
  
  The minutes pass .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  If he should wake before the deed is done?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  O, mother! He must never wake again.
  
  What thou hast said persuades me that our act
  Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell
  Out of a human form.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  'Tis true he spoke
  Of death and judgement with strange confidence
  For one so wicked; as a man believing
  In God, yet recking not of good or ill.
  
  And yet to die without confession! .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Oh!
  Believe that Heaven is merciful and just,
  And will not add our dread necessity
  To the amount of his offences.
  
  Enter Olimpio and Marzio, below.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  See,
  They come.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  All mortal things must hasten thus
  To their dark end.
  
  Let us go down.
  
  [Exeunt Lucretia and Beatrice from above.
  
  Olimpio.
  
  How feel you to this work?
  
  Marzio.
  
  As one who thinks
  A thousand crowns excellent market price
  For an old murderer's life.
  
  Your cheeks are pale.
  
  Olimpio.
  
  It is the white reflection of your own,
  Which you call pale.
  
  Marzio.
  
  Is that their natural hue?
  
  Olimpio.
  
  Or 'tis my hate and the deferred desire
  To wreak it, which extinguishes their blood.
  
  Marzio.
  
  You are inclined then to this business?
  
  Olimpio.
  
  Ay.
  
  If one should bribe me with a thousand crowns
  To kill a serpent which had stung my child,
  I could not be more willing.
  
  Enter Beatrice and Lucretia, below.
  
  Noble ladies!
  Beatrice.
  
  Are ye resolved?
  
  Olimpio.
  
  Is he asleep?
  
  Marzio.
  
  Is all
  Quiet?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  I mixed an opiate with his drink:
  He sleeps so soundly .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  That his death will be
  But as a change of sin-chastising dreams,
  A dark continuance of the Hell within him,
  Which God extinguish! But ye are resolved?
  
  Ye know it is a high and holy deed?
  
  Olimpio.
  
  We are resolved.
  
  Marzio.
  
  As to the how this act
  Be warranted, it rests with you.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Well, follow!
  Olimpio.
  
  Hush! Hark! What noise is that?
  
  Marzio.
  
  Ha! some one comes!
  Beatrice.
  
  Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest
  Your baby hearts.
  
  It is the iron gate,
  Which ye left open, swinging to the wind,
  That enters whistling as in scorn.
  
  Come, follow!
  And be your steps like mine, light, quick and bold.
  
  [Exeunt.
  
  Scene III.
  
  —An Apartment in the Castle.
  
  Enter Beatrice and Lucretia.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  They are about it now.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Nay, it is done.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  I have not heard him groan.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  He will not groan.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  What sound is that?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  List! 'tis the tread of feet
  About his bed.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  My God!
  If he be now a cold stiff corpse .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  O, fear not
  What may be done, but what is left undone:
  The act seals all.
  
  Enter Olimpio and Marzio.
  
  Is it accomplished?
  
  Marzio.
  
  What?
  
  Olimpio.
  
  Did you not call?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  When?
  
  Olimpio.
  
  Now.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  I ask if all is over?
  
  Olimpio.
  
  We dare not kill an old and sleeping man;
  His thin gray hair, his stern and reverend brow,
  His veinèd hands crossed on his heaving breast,
  And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay,
  Quelled me.
  
  Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it.
  
  Marzio.
  
  But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio,
  And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave
  And leave me the reward.
  
  And now my knife
  Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man
  Stirred in his sleep, and said, 'God! hear, O, hear,
  A father's curse! What, art Thou not our Father?
  
  '
  And then he laughed.
  
  I knew it was the ghost
  Of my dead father speaking through his lips,
  And could not kill him.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Miserable slaves!
  Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man,
  Found ye the boldness to return to me
  With such a deed undone?
  
  Base palterers!
  Cowards and traitors! Why, the very conscience
  Which ye would sell for gold and for revenge
  Is an equivocation: it sleeps over
  A thousand daily acts disgracing men;
  And when a deed where mercy insults Heaven .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Why do I talk?
  
  [Snatching a dagger from one of them and raising it.
  
  Hadst thou a tongue to say,
  'She murdered her own father!'—I must do it!
  But never dream ye shall outlive him long!
  Olimpio.
  
  Stop, for God's sake!
  Marzio.
  
  I will go back and kill him.
  
  Olimpio.
  
  Give me the weapon.
  
  we must do thy will.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Take it! Depart! Return!
  [Exeunt Olimpio and Marzio.
  
  How pale thou art!
  We do but that which 'twere a deadly crime
  To leave undone.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Would it were done!
  Beatrice.
  
  Even whilst
  That doubt is passing through your mind, the world
  Is conscious of a change.
  
  Darkness and Hell
  Have swallowed up the vapour they sent forth
  To blacken the sweet light of life.
  
  My breath
  Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood
  Runs freely through my veins.
  
  Hark!
  Enter Olimpio and Marzio.
  
  He is .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Olimpio.
  
  Dead!
  Marzio.
  
  We strangled him that there might be no blood;
  And then we threw his heavy corpse i' the garden
  Under the balcony; 'twill seem it fell.
  
  Beatrice
  (giving them a bag of coin).
  
  Here, take this gold, and hasten to your homes.
  
  And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed
  By that which made me tremble, wear thou this! [Clothes him in a rich mantle.
  
  It was the mantle which my grandfather
  Wore in his high prosperity, and men
  Envied his state: so may they envy thine.
  
  Thou wert a weapon in the hand of God
  To a just use.
  
  Live long and thrive! And, mark,
  If thou hast crimes, repent: this deed is none.
  
  [A horn is sounded.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Hark, 'tis the castle horn; my God! it sounds
  Like the last trump.
  
  Beatrice
  Some tedious guest is coming.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  The drawbridge is let down; there is a tramp
  Of horses in the court; fly, hide yourselves!
  [Exeunt Olimpio and Marzio.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest;
  I scarcely need to counterfeit it now:
  The spirit which doth reign within these limbs
  Seems strangely undisturbed.
  
  I could even sleep
  Fearless and calm: all ill is surely past.
  
  [Exeunt.
  
  Scene IV.
  
  —Another Apartment in the Castle.
  
  Enter on one side the Legate Savella, introduced by a Servant, and on the other Lucretia and Bernardo.
  
  Savella.
  
  Lady, my duty to his Holiness
  Be my excuse that thus unseasonably
  I break upon your rest.
  
  I must speak with
  Count Cenci; doth he sleep?
  
  Lucretia
  (in a hurried and confused manner).
  
  I think he sleeps;
  Yet wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile,
  He is a wicked and a wrathful man;
  Should he be roused out of his sleep to-night,
  Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams,
  It were not well; indeed it were not well.
  
  Wait till day break .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  (aside)
  O, I am deadly sick!
  Savella.
  
  I grieve thus to distress you, but the Count
  Must answer charges of the gravest import,
  And suddenly; such my commission is.
  
  Lucretia
  (with increased agitation).
  
  I dare not rouse him: I know none who dare .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  'Twere perilous; .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  you might as safely waken
  A serpent; or a corpse in which some fiend
  Were laid to sleep.
  
  Savella.
  
  Lady, my moments here
  Are counted.
  
  I must rouse him from his sleep,
  Since none else dare.
  
  Lucretia
  (aside).
  
  O, terror! O, despair!
  (To Bernardo.
  
  )
  Bernardo, conduct you the Lord Legate to
  Your father's chamber.
  
  [Exeunt Savella and Bernardo.
  
  Enter Beatrice.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  'Tis a messenger
  Come to arrest the culprit who now stands
  Before the throne of unappealable God.
  
  Both Earth and Heaven, consenting arbiters,
  Acquit our deed.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Oh, agony of fear!
  Would that he yet might live! Even now I heard
  The Legate's followers whisper as they passed
  They had a warrant for his instant death.
  
  All was prepared by unforbidden means
  Which we must pay so dearly, having done.
  
  Even now they search the tower, and find the body;
  Now they suspect the truth; now they consult
  Before they come to tax us with the fact;
  O, horrible, 'tis all discovered!
  Beatrice.
  
  Mother,
  What is done wisely, is done well.
  
  Be bold
  As thou art just.
  
  'Tis like a truant child
  To fear that others know what thou hast done,
  Even from thine own strong consciousness, and thus
  Write on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks
  All thou wouldst hide.
  
  Be faithful to thyself,
  And fear no other witness but thy fear.
  
  For if, as cannot be, some circumstance
  Should rise in accusation, we can blind
  Suspicion with such cheap astonishment,
  Or overbear it with such guiltless pride,
  As murderers cannot feign.
  
  The deed is done,
  And what may follow now regards not me.
  
  I am as universal as the light;
  Free as the earth-surrounding air; as firm
  As the world's centre.
  
  Consequence, to me,
  Is as the wind which strikes the solid rock
  But shakes it not.
  
  [A cry within and tumult.
  
  Voices.
  
  Murder! Murder! Murder!
  Enter Bernardo and Savella.
  
  Savella
  (to his followers).
  
  Go search the castle round; sound the alarm;
  Look to the gates that none escape!
  Beatrice.
  
  What now?
  
  Bernardo.
  
  I know not what to say .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  my father's dead.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  How; dead! he only sleeps; you mistake, brother.
  
  His sleep is very calm, very like death;
  'Tis wonderful how well a tyrant sleeps.
  
  He is not dead?
  
  Bernardo.
  
  Dead; murdered.
  
  Lucretia
  (with extreme agitation).
  
  Oh no, no
  He is not murdered though he may be dead;
  I have alone the keys of those apartments.
  
  Savella.
  
  Ha! Is it so?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  My Lord, I pray excuse us;
  We will retire; my mother is not well:
  She seems quite overcome with this strange horror.
  
  [Exeunt Lucretia and Beatrice.
  
  Savella.
  
  Can you suspect who may have murdered him?
  
  Bernardo.
  
  I know not what to think.
  
  Savella.
  
  Can you name any
  Who had an interest in his death?
  
  Bernardo.
  
  Alas!
  I can name none who had not, and those most
  Who most lament that such a deed is done;
  My mother, and my sister, and myself.
  
  Savella.
  
  'Tis strange! There were clear marks of violence.
  
  I found the old man's body in the moonlight
  Hanging beneath the window of his chamber,
  Among the branches of a pine: he could not
  Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped
  And effortless; 'tis true there was no blood .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Favour me, Sir; it much imports your house
  That all should be made clear; to tell the ladies
  That I request their presence.
  
  [Exit Bernardo.
  
  Enter Guards bringing in Marzio.
  
  Guard.
  
  We have one.
  
  Officer.
  
  My Lord, we found this ruffian and another
  Lurking among the rocks; there is no doubt
  But that they are the murderers of Count Cenci:
  Each had a bag of coin; this fellow wore
  A gold-inwoven robe, which shining bright
  Under the dark rocks to the glimmering moon
  Betrayed them to our notice: the other fell
  Desperately fighting.
  
  Savella.
  
  What does he confess?
  
  Officer.
  
  He keeps firm silence; but these lines found on him
  May speak.
  
  Savella.
  
  Their language is at least sincere.
  
  [Reads.
  
  'To the Lady Beatrice.
  
  'That the atonement of what my nature sickens to conjecture may soon arrive, I send thee, at thy brother's desire, those who will speak and do more than I dare write.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  'Thy devoted servant, Orsino.
  
  '
  Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, and Bernardo.
  
  Knowest thou this writing, Lady?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  No.
  
  Savella.
  
  Nor thou?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  (Her conduct throughout the scene is marked by extreme agitation.
  
  )
  Where was it found?
  
  What is it?
  
  It should be
  Orsino's hand! It speaks of that strange horror
  Which never yet found utterance, but which made
  Between that hapless child and her dead father
  A gulf of obscure hatred.
  
  Savella.
  
  Is it so?
  
  Is it true, Lady, that thy father did
  Such outrages as to awaken in thee
  Unfilial hate?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Not hate, 'twas more than hate:
  This is most true, yet wherefore question me?
  
  Savella.
  
  There is a deed demanding question done;
  Thou hast a secret which will answer not.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  What sayest?
  
  My Lord, your words are bold and rash.
  
  Savella.
  
  I do arrest all present in the name
  Of the Pope's Holiness.
  
  You must to Rome.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  O, not to Rome! Indeed we are not guilty.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Guilty! Who dares talk of guilt?
  
  My Lord,
  I am more innocent of parricide
  Than is a child born fatherless .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Dear mother,
  Your gentleness and patience are no shield
  For this keen-judging world, this two-edged lie,
  Which seems, but is not.
  
  What! will human laws,
  Rather will ye who are their ministers,
  Bar all access to retribution first,
  And then, when Heaven doth interpose to do
  What ye neglect, arming familiar things
  To the redress of an unwonted crime,
  Make ye the victims who demanded it
  Culprits?
  
  'Tis ye are culprits! That poor wretch
  Who stands so pale, and trembling, and amazed,
  If it be true he murdered Cenci, was
  A sword in the right hand of justest God.
  
  Wherefore should I have wielded it?
  
  Unless
  The crimes which mortal tongue dare never name
  God therefore scruples to avenge.
  
  Savella.
  
  You own
  That you desired his death?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  It would have been
  A crime no less than his, if for one moment
  That fierce desire had faded in my heart.
  
  'Tis true I did believe, and hope, and pray,
  Ay, I even knew .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  for God is wise and just,
  That some strange sudden death hung over him.
  
  'Tis true that this did happen, and most true
  There was no other rest for me on earth,
  No other hope in Heaven .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  now what of this?
  
  Savella.
  
  Strange thoughts beget strange deeds; and here are both:
  I judge thee not.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  And yet, if you arrest me,
  You are the judge and executioner
  Of that which is the life of life: the breath
  Of accusation kills an innocent name,
  And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life
  Which is a mask without it.
  
  'Tis most false
  That I am guilty of foul parricide;
  Although I must rejoice, for justest cause,
  That other hands have sent my father's soul
  To ask the mercy he denied to me.
  
  Now leave us free; stain not a noble house
  With vague surmises of rejected crime;
  Add to our sufferings and your own neglect
  No heavier sum: let them have been enough:
  Leave us the wreck we have.
  
  Savella.
  
  I dare not, Lady.
  
  I pray that you prepare yourselves for Rome:
  There the Pope's further pleasure will be known.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  O, not to Rome! O, take us not to Rome!
  Beatrice.
  
  Why not to Rome, dear mother?
  
  There as here
  Our innocence is as an armèd heel
  To trample accusation.
  
  God is there
  As here, and with His shadow ever clothes
  The innocent, the injured and the weak;
  And such are we.
  
  Cheer up, dear Lady, lean
  On me; collect your wandering thoughts.
  
  My Lord,
  As soon as you have taken some refreshment,
  And had all such examinations made
  Upon the spot, as may be necessary
  To the full understanding of this matter,
  We shall be ready.
  
  Mother; will you come?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest
  Self-accusation from our agony!
  Will Giacomo be there?
  
  Orsino?
  
  Marzio?
  
  All present; all confronted; all demanding
  Each from the other's countenance the thing
  Which is in every heart! O, misery!
  [She faints, and is borne out.
  
  Savella.
  
  She faints: an ill appearance this.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  My Lord,
  She knows not yet the uses of the world.
  
  She fears that power is as a beast which grasps
  And loosens not: a snake whose look transmutes
  All things to guilt which is its nutriment.
  
  She cannot know how well the supine slaves
  Of blind authority read the truth of things
  When written on a brow of guilelessness:
  She sees not yet triumphant Innocence
  Stand at the judgement-seat of mortal man,
  A judge and an accuser of the wrong
  Which drags it there.
  
  Prepare yourself, my Lord;
  Our suite will join yours in the court below.
  
  [Exeunt.
  
  END OF THE FOURTH ACT.
  
  ACT V
  Scene I.
  
  —An Apartment in Orsino's Palace.
  
  Enter Orsino and Giacomo.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end?
  
  O, that the vain remorse which must chastise
  Crimes done, had but as loud a voice to warn
  As its keen sting is mortal to avenge!
  O, that the hour when present had cast off
  The mantle of its mystery, and shown
  The ghastly form with which it now returns
  When its scared game is roused, cheering the hounds
  Of conscience to their prey! Alas! Alas!
  It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed,
  To kill an old and hoary-headed father.
  
  Orsino.
  
  It has turned out unluckily, in truth.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  To violate the sacred doors of sleep;
  To cheat kind Nature of the placid death
  Which she prepares for overwearied age;
  To drag from Heaven an unrepentant soul
  Which might have quenched in reconciling prayers
  A life of burning crimes .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Orsino.
  
  You cannot say
  I urged you to the deed.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  O, had I never
  Found in thy smooth and ready countenance
  The mirror of my darkest thoughts; hadst thou
  Never with hints and questions made me look
  Upon the monster of my thought, until
  It grew familiar to desire .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Orsino.
  
  'Tis thus
  Men cast the blame of their unprosperous acts
  Upon the abettors of their own resolve;
  Or anything but their weak, guilty selves.
  
  And yet, confess the truth, it is the peril
  In which you stand that gives you this pale sickness
  Of penitence; confess 'tis fear disguised
  From its own shame that takes the mantle now
  Of thin remorse.
  
  What if we yet were safe?
  
  Giacomo.
  
  How can that be?
  
  Already Beatrice,
  Lucretia and the murderer are in prison.
  
  I doubt not officers are, whilst we speak,
  Sent to arrest us.
  
  Orsino.
  
  I have all prepared
  For instant flight.
  
  We can escape even now,
  So we take fleet occasion by the hair.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Rather expire in tortures, as I may.
  
  What! will you cast by self-accusing flight
  Assured conviction upon Beatrice?
  
  She, who alone in this unnatural work,
  Stands like God's angel ministered upon
  By fiends; avenging such a nameless wrong
  As turns black parricide to piety;
  Whilst we for basest ends .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I fear, Orsino,
  While I consider all your words and looks,
  Comparing them with your proposal now,
  That you must be a villain.
  
  For what end
  Could you engage in such a perilous crime,
  Training me on with hints, and signs, and smiles,
  Even to this gulf?
  
  Thou art no liar?
  
  No,
  Thou art a lie! Traitor and murderer!
  Coward and slave! But, no, defend thyself; [Drawing.
  
  Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue
  Disdains to brand thee with.
  
  Orsino.
  
  Put up your weapon.
  
  Is it the desperation of your fear
  Makes you thus rash and sudden with a friend,
  Now ruined for your sake?
  
  If honest anger
  Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed
  Was but to try you.
  
  As for me, I think,
  Thankless affection led me to this point,
  From which, if my firm temper could repent,
  I cannot now recede.
  
  Even whilst we speak
  The ministers of justice wait below:
  They grant me these brief moments.
  
  Now if you
  Have any word of melancholy comfort
  To speak to your pale wife, 'twere best to pass
  Out at the postern, and avoid them so.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  O, generous friend! How canst thou pardon me?
  
  Would that my life could purchase thine!
  Orsino.
  
  That wish
  Now comes a day too late.
  
  Haste; fare thee well!
  Hear'st thou not steps along the corridor?
  
  [Exit Giacomo.
  
  I'm sorry for it; but the guards are waiting
  At his own gate, and such was my contrivance
  That I might rid me both of him and them.
  
  I thought to act a solemn comedy
  Upon the painted scene of this new world,
  And to attain my own peculiar ends
  By some such plot of mingled good and ill
  As others weave; but there arose a Power
  Which grasped and snapped the threads of my device
  And turned it to a net of ruin .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Ha! [A shout is heard.
  
  Is that my name I hear proclaimed abroad?
  
  But I will pass, wrapped in a vile disguise;
  Rags on my back, and a false innocence
  Upon my face, through the misdeeming crowd
  Which judges by what seems.
  
  'Tis easy then
  For a new name and for a country new,
  And a new life, fashioned on old desires,
  To change the honours of abandoned Rome.
  
  And these must be the masks of that within,
  Which must remain unaltered .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Oh, I fear
  That what is past will never let me rest!
  Why, when none else is conscious, but myself,
  Of my misdeeds, should my own heart's contempt
  Trouble me?
  
  Have I not the power to fly
  My own reproaches?
  
  Shall I be the slave
  Of .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  what?
  
  A word?
  
  which those of this false world
  Employ against each other, not themselves;
  As men wear daggers not for self-offence.
  
  But if I am mistaken, where shall I
  Find the disguise to hide me from myself,
  As now I skulk from every other eye?
  
  [Exit.
  
  Scene II.
  
  —A Hall of Justice.
  
  Camillo, Judges, &c.
  
  , are discovered seated; Marzio is led in.
  
  First Judge.
  
  Accused, do you persist in your denial?
  
  I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty?
  
  I demand who were the participators
  In your offence?
  
  Speak truth and the whole truth.
  
  Marzio.
  
  My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing;
  Olimpio sold the robe to me from which
  You would infer my guilt.
  
  Second Judge.
  
  Away with him!
  First Judge.
  
  Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack's kiss
  Speak false?
  
  Is it so soft a questioner,
  That you would bandy lover's talk with it
  Till it wind out your life and soul?
  
  Away!
  Marzio.
  
  Spare me! O, spare! I will confess.
  
  First Judge.
  
  Then speak.
  
  Marzio.
  
  I strangled him in his sleep.
  
  First Judge.
  
  Who urged you to it?
  
  Marzio.
  
  His own son Giacomo, and the young prelate
  Orsino sent me to Petrella; there
  The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia
  Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I
  And my companion forthwith murdered him.
  
  Now let me die.
  
  First Judge.
  
  This sounds as bad as truth.
  
  Guards, there,
  Lead forth the prisoner!
  Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, and Giacomo, guarded.
  
  Look upon this man;
  When did you see him last?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  We never saw him.
  
  Marzio.
  
  You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  I know thee! How?
  
  where?
  
  when?
  
  Marzio.
  
  You know 'twas I
  Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes
  To kill your father.
  
  When the thing was done
  You clothed me in a robe of woven gold
  And bade me thrive: how I have thriven, you see.
  
  You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia,
  You know that what I speak is true.
  
  [Beatrice advances towards him; he covers his face, and shrinks back.
  
  Oh, dart
  The terrible resentment of those eyes
  On the dead earth! Turn them away from me!
  They wound: 'twas torture forced the truth.
  
  My Lords,
  Having said this let me be led to death.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Poor wretch, I pity thee: yet stay awhile.
  
  Camillo.
  
  Guards, lead him not away.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Cardinal Camillo,
  You have a good repute for gentleness
  And wisdom: can it be that you sit here
  To countenance a wicked farce like this?
  
  When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged
  From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart
  And bade to answer, not as he believes,
  But as those may suspect or do desire
  Whose questions thence suggest their own reply:
  And that in peril of such hideous torments
  As merciful God spares even the damned.
  
  Speak now
  The thing you surely know, which is that you,
  If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel,
  And you were told: 'Confess that you did poison
  Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child
  Who was the lodestar of your life:'—and though
  All see, since his most swift and piteous death,
  That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,
  And all the things hoped for or done therein
  Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief,
  Yet you would say, 'I confess anything:'
  And beg from your tormentors, like that slave,
  The refuge of dishonourable death.
  
  I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert
  My innocence.
  
  Camillo.
  
  (much moved).
  
  What shall we think, my Lords?
  
  Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen
  Which is their fountain.
  
  I would pledge my soul
  That she is guiltless.
  
  Judge.
  
  Yet she must be tortured.
  
  Camillo.
  
  I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew
  (If he now lived he would be just her age;
  His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes
  Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep)
  As that most perfect image of God's love
  That ever came sorrowing upon the earth.
  
  She is as pure as speechless infancy!
  Judge.
  
  Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord,
  If you forbid the rack.
  
  His Holiness
  Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime
  By the severest forms of law; nay even
  To stretch a point against the criminals.
  
  The prisoners stand accused of parricide
  Upon such evidence as justifies
  Torture.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  What evidence?
  
  This man's?
  
  Judge.
  
  Even so.
  
  Beatrice
  (to Marzio).
  
  Come near.
  
  And who art thou thus chosen forth
  Out of the multitude of living men
  To kill the innocent?
  
  Marzio.
  
  I am Marzio,
  Thy father's vassal.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Fix thine eyes on mine;
  Answer to what I ask.
  
  [Turning to the Judges.
  
  I prithee mark
  His countenance: unlike bold calumny
  Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks,
  He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends
  His gaze on the blind earth.
  
  (To Marzio.
  
  )
  What! wilt thou say
  That I did murder my own father?
  
  Marzio.
  
  Oh!
  Spare me! My brain swims round .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I cannot speak .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  It was that horrid torture forced the truth.
  
  Take me away! Let her not look on me!
  I am a guilty miserable wretch;
  I have said all I know; now, let me die!
  Beatrice.
  
  My Lords, if by my nature I had been
  So stern, as to have planned the crime alleged,
  Which your suspicions dictate to this slave,
  And the rack makes him utter, do you think
  I should have left this two-edged instrument
  Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife
  With my own name engraven on the heft,
  Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes,
  For my own death?
  
  That with such horrible need
  For deepest silence, I should have neglected
  So trivial a precaution, as the making
  His tomb the keeper of a secret written
  On a thief's memory?
  
  What is his poor life?
  
  What are a thousand lives?
  
  A parricide
  Had trampled them like dust; and, see, he lives! (Turning to Marzio.
  
  )
  And thou .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Marzio.
  
  Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more!
  That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones,
  Wound worse than torture.
  
  (To the Judges.
  
  I have told it all;
  For pity's sake lead me away to death.
  
  Camillo.
  
  Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice,
  He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf
  From the keen breath of the serenest north.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  O thou who tremblest on the giddy verge
  Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me;
  So mayst thou answer God with less dismay:
  What evil have we done thee?
  
  I, alas!
  Have lived but on this earth a few sad years,
  And so my lot was ordered, that a father
  First turned the moments of awakening life
  To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and then
  Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul;
  And my untainted fame; and even that peace
  Which sleeps within the core of the heart's heart;
  But the wound was not mortal; so my hate
  Became the only worship I could lift
  To our great father, who in pity and love,
  Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off;
  And thus his wrong becomes my accusation;
  And art thou the accuser?
  
  If thou hopest
  Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth:
  Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.
  
  If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path
  Over the trampled laws of God and man,
  Rush not before thy Judge, and say: 'My maker,
  I have done this and more; for there was one
  Who was most pure and innocent on earth;
  And because she endured what never any
  Guilty or innocent endured before:
  Because her wrongs could not be told, not thought;
  Because thy hand at length did rescue her;
  I with my words killed her and all her kin.
  
  '
  Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay
  The reverence living in the minds of men
  Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame!
  Think what it is to strangle infant pity,
  Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,
  Till it become a crime to suffer.
  
  Think
  What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood
  All that which shows like innocence, and is,
  Hear me, great God! I swear, most innocent,
  So that the world lose all discrimination
  Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt,
  And that which now compels thee to reply
  To what I ask: Am I, or am I not
  A parricide?
  
  Marzio.
  
  Thou art not!
  Judge.
  
  What is this?
  
  Marzio.
  
  I here declare those whom I did accuse
  Are innocent.
  
  'Tis I alone am guilty.
  
  Judge.
  
  Drag him away to torments; let them be
  Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds
  Of the heart's inmost cell.
  
  Unbind him not
  Till he confess.
  
  Marzio.
  
  Torture me as ye will:
  A keener pang has wrung a higher truth
  From my last breath.
  
  She is most innocent!
  Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me;
  I will not give you that fine piece of nature
  To rend and ruin.
  
  [Exit Marzio, guarded.
  
  Camillo.
  
  What say ye now, my Lords?
  
  Judge.
  
  Let tortures strain the truth till it be white
  As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind.
  
  Camillo.
  
  Yet stained with blood.
  
  Judge
  (to Beatrice).
  
  Know you this paper, Lady?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Entrap me not with questions.
  
  Who stands here
  As my accuser?
  
  Ha! wilt thou be he,
  Who art my judge?
  
  Accuser, witness, judge,
  What, all in one?
  
  Here is Orsino's name;
  Where is Orsino?
  
  Let his eye meet mine.
  
  What means this scrawl?
  
  Alas! ye know not what,
  And therefore on the chance that it may be
  Some evil, will ye kill us?
  
  Enter an Officer.
  
  Officer.
  
  Marzio's dead.
  
  Judge.
  
  What did he say?
  
  Officer.
  
  Nothing.
  
  As soon as we
  Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us,
  As one who baffles a deep adversary;
  And holding his breath, died.
  
  Judge.
  
  There remains nothing
  But to apply the question to those prisoners,
  Who yet remain stubborn.
  
  Camillo.
  
  I overrule
  Further proceedings, and in the behalf
  Of these most innocent and noble persons
  Will use my interest with the Holy Father.
  
  Judge.
  
  Let the Pope's pleasure then be done.
  
  Meanwhile
  Conduct these culprits each to separate cells;
  And be the engines ready: for this night
  If the Pope's resolution be as grave,
  Pious, and just as once, I'll wring the truth
  Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan.
  
  [Exeunt.
  
  Scene III.
  
  —The Cell of a Prison.
  
  Beatrice is discovered asleep on a couch.
  
  Enter Bernardo.
  
  Bernardo.
  
  How gently slumber rests upon her face,
  Like the last thoughts of some day sweetly spent
  Closing in night and dreams, and so prolonged.
  
  After such torments as she bore last night,
  How light and soft her breathing comes.
  
  Ay me!
  Methinks that I shall never sleep again.
  
  But I must shake the heavenly dew of rest
  From this sweet folded flower, thus .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  wake! awake!
  What, sister, canst thou sleep?
  
  Beatrice
  (awaking).
  
  I was just dreaming
  That we were all in Paradise.
  
  Thou knowest
  This cell seems like a kind of Paradise
  After our father's presence.
  
  Bernardo.
  
  Dear, dear sister,
  Would that thy dream were not a dream! O God!
  How shall I tell?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  What wouldst thou tell, sweet brother?
  
  Bernardo.
  
  Look not so calm and happy, or even whilst
  I stand considering what I have to say
  My heart will break.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  See now, thou mak'st me weep:
  How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child,
  If I were dead.
  
  Say what thou hast to say.
  
  Bernardo.
  
  They have confessed; they could endure no more
  The tortures .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Ha! What was there to confess?
  
  They must have told some weak and wicked lie
  To flatter their tormentors.
  
  Have they said
  That they were guilty?
  
  O white innocence,
  That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide
  Thine awful and serenest countenance
  From those who know thee not!
  Enter Judge with Lucretia and Giacomo, guarded.
  
  Ignoble hearts!
  For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least
  As mortal as the limbs through which they pass,
  Are centuries of high splendour laid in dust?
  
  And that eternal honour which should live
  Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame,
  Changed to a mockery and a byword?
  
  What!
  Will you give up these bodies to be dragged
  At horses' heels, so that our hair should sweep
  The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd,
  Who, that they may make our calamity
  Their worship and their spectacle, will leave
  The churches and the theatres as void
  As their own hearts?
  
  Shall the light multitude
  Fling, at their choice, curses or faded pity,
  Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse,
  Upon us as we pass to pass away,
  And leave .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  what memory of our having been?
  
  Infamy, blood, terror, despair?
  
  O thou,
  Who wert a mother to the parentless,
  Kill not thy child! Let not her wrongs kill thee!
  Brother, lie down with me upon the rack,
  And let us each be silent as a corpse;
  It soon will be as soft as any grave.
  
  'Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear
  Makes the rack cruel.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  They will tear the truth
  Even from thee at last, those cruel pains:
  For pity's sake say thou art guilty now.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Oh, speak the truth! Let us all quickly die;
  And after death, God is our judge, not they;
  He will have mercy on us.
  
  Bernardo.
  
  If indeed
  It can be true, say so, dear sister mine;
  And then the Pope will surely pardon you,
  And all be well.
  
  Judge.
  
  Confess, or I will warp
  Your limbs with such keen tortures .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Tortures! Turn
  The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel!
  Torture your dog, that he may tell when last
  He lapped the blood his master shed .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  not me!
  My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart,
  And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul,
  Which weeps within tears as of burning gall
  To see, in this ill world where none are true,
  My kindred false to their deserted selves.
  
  And with considering all the wretched life
  Which I have lived, and its now wretched end,
  And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth
  To me or mine; and what a tyrant thou art,
  And what slaves these; and what a world we make,
  The oppressor and the oppressed .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  such pangs compel
  My answer.
  
  What is it thou wouldst with me?
  
  Judge.
  
  Art thou not guilty of thy father's death?
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Or wilt thou rather tax high-judging God
  That He permitted such an act as that
  Which I have suffered, and which He beheld;
  Made it unutterable, and took from it
  All refuge, all revenge, all consequence,
  But that which thou hast called my father's death?
  
  Which is or is not what men call a crime,
  Which either I have done, or have not done;
  Say what ye will.
  
  I shall deny no more.
  
  If ye desire it thus, thus let it be,
  And so an end of all.
  
  Now do your will;
  No other pains shall force another word.
  
  Judge.
  
  She is convicted, but has not confessed.
  
  Be it enough.
  
  Until their final sentence
  Let none have converse with them.
  
  You, young Lord,
  Linger not here!
  Beatrice.
  
  Oh, tear him not away!
  Judge.
  
  Guards, do your duty.
  
  Bernardo
  (embracing Beatrice).
  
  Oh! would ye divide
  Body from soul?
  
  Officer.
  
  That is the headsman's business.
  
  [Exeunt all but Lucretia, Beatrice, and Giacomo.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Have I confessed?
  
  Is it all over now?
  
  No hope! No refuge! O weak, wicked tongue
  Which hast destroyed me, would that thou hadst been
  Cut out and thrown to dogs first! To have killed
  My father first, and then betrayed my sister;
  Ay, thee! the one thing innocent and pure
  In this black guilty world, to that which I
  So well deserve! My wife! my little ones!
  Destitute, helpless, and I .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Father! God!
  Canst Thou forgive even the unforgiving,
  When their full hearts break thus, thus! .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  [Covers his face and weeps.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  O my child!
  To what a dreadful end are we all come!
  Why did I yield?
  
  Why did I not sustain
  Those torments?
  
  Oh, that I were all dissolved
  Into these fast and unavailing tears,
  Which flow and feel not!
  Beatrice.
  
  What 'twas weak to do,
  'Tis weaker to lament, once being done;
  Take cheer! The God who knew my wrong, and made
  Our speedy act the angel of His wrath,
  Seems, and but seems, to have abandoned us.
  
  Let us not think that we shall die for this.
  
  Brother, sit near me; give me your firm hand,
  You had a manly heart.
  
  Bear up! Bear up!
  O dearest Lady, put your gentle head
  Upon my lap, and try to sleep awhile:
  Your eyes look pale, hollow and overworn,
  With heaviness of watching and slow grief.
  
  Come, I will sing you some low, sleepy tune,
  Not cheerful, nor yet sad; some dull old thing,
  Some outworn and unused monotony,
  Such as our country gossips sing and spin,
  Till they almost forget they live: lie down!
  So, that will do.
  
  Have I forgot the words?
  
  Faith! They are sadder than I thought they were.
  
  SONG
  False friend, wilt thou smile or weep
  When my life is laid asleep?
  
  Little cares for a smile or a tear,
  The clay-cold corpse upon the bier!
  Farewell! Heigho!
  What is this whispers low?
  
  There is a snake in thy smile, my dear;
  And bitter poison within thy tear.
  
  Sweet sleep, were death like to thee,
  Or if thou couldst mortal be,
  I would close these eyes of pain;
  When to wake?
  
  Never again.
  
  O World! Farewell!
  Listen to the passing bell!
  It says, thou and I must part,
  With a light and a heavy heart.
  
  [The scene closes.
  
  Scene IV.
  
  —A Hall of the Prison.
  
  Enter Camillo and Bernardo.
  
  Camillo.
  
  The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent.
  
  He looked as calm and keen as is the engine
  Which tortures and which kills, exempt itself
  From aught that it inflicts; a marble form,
  A rite, a law, a custom: not a man.
  
  He frowned, as if to frown had been the trick
  Of his machinery, on the advocates
  Presenting the defences, which he tore
  And threw behind, muttering with hoarse, harsh voice:
  'Which among ye defended their old father
  Killed in his sleep?
  
  ' Then to another: 'Thou
  Dost this in virtue of thy place; 'tis well.
  
  '
  He turned to me then, looking deprecation,
  And said these three words, coldly: 'They must die.
  
  '
  Bernardo.
  
  And yet you left him not?
  
  Camillo.
  
  I urged him still;
  Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong
  Which prompted your unnatural parent's death.
  
  And he replied: 'Paolo Santa Croce
  Murdered his mother yester evening,
  And he is fled.
  
  Parricide grows so rife
  That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young
  Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs.
  
  Authority, and power, and hoary hair
  Are grown crimes capital.
  
  You are my nephew,
  You come to ask their pardon; stay a moment;
  Here is their sentence; never see me more
  Till, to the letter, it be all fulfilled.
  
  '
  Bernardo.
  
  O God, not so! I did believe indeed
  That all you said was but sad preparation
  For happy news.
  
  Oh, there are words and looks
  To bend the sternest purpose! Once I knew them,
  Now I forget them at my dearest need.
  
  What think you if I seek him out, and bathe
  His feet and robe with hot and bitter tears?
  
  Importune him with prayers, vexing his brain
  With my perpetual cries, until in rage
  He strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample
  Upon my prostrate head, so that my blood
  May stain the senseless dust on which he treads,
  And remorse waken mercy?
  
  I will do it!
  Oh, wait till I return!
  [Rushes out.
  
  Camillo.
  
  Alas! poor boy!
  A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray
  To the deaf sea.
  
  Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, and Giacomo, guarded.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  I hardly dare to fear
  That thou bring'st other news than a just pardon.
  
  Camillo.
  
  May God in heaven be less inexorable
  To the Pope's prayers, than he has been to mine.
  
  Here is the sentence and the warrant.
  
  Beatrice
  (wildly).
  
  O
  My God! Can it be possible I have
  To die so suddenly?
  
  So young to go
  Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
  To be nailed down into a narrow place;
  To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
  Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
  Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost—
  How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  What?
  
  Oh, where am I?
  
  Let me not go mad!
  Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
  No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;
  The wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
  If all things then should be .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  my father's spirit,
  His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;
  The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!
  If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,
  Even the form which tortured me on earth,
  Masked in gray hairs and wrinkles, he should come
  And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix
  His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!
  For was he not alone omnipotent
  On Earth, and ever present?
  
  Even though dead,
  Does not his spirit live in all that breathe,
  And work for me and mine still the same ruin,
  Scorn, pain, despair?
  
  Who ever yet returned
  To teach the laws of Death's untrodden realm?
  
  Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now,
  Oh, whither, whither?
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Trust in God's sweet love,
  The tender promises of Christ: ere night,
  Think, we shall be in Paradise.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  'Tis past!
  Whatever comes my heart shall sink no more.
  
  And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill:
  How tedious, false and cold seem all things.
  
  I
  Have met with much injustice in this world;
  No difference has been made by God or man,
  Or any power moulding my wretched lot,
  'Twixt good or evil, as regarded me.
  
  I am cut off from the only world I know,
  From light, and life, and love, in youth's sweet prime.
  
  You do well telling me to trust in God,
  I hope I do trust in Him.
  
  In whom else
  Can any trust?
  
  And yet my heart is cold.
  
  [During the latter speeches Giacomo has retired conversing with Camillo, who now goes out; Giacomo advances.
  
  Giacomo.
  
  Know you not, Mother .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Sister, know you not?
  
  Bernardo even now is gone to implore
  The Pope to grant our pardon.
  
  Lucretia.
  
  Child, perhaps
  It will be granted.
  
  We may all then live
  To make these woes a tale for distant years:
  Oh, what a thought! It gushes to my heart
  Like the warm blood.
  
  Beatrice.
  
  Yet both will soon be cold.
  
  Oh, trample out that thought! Worse than despair,
  Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope:
  It is the only ill which can find place
  Upon the giddy, sharp and narrow hour
  Tottering beneath us.
  
  Plead with the swift frost
  That it should spare the eldest flower of spring:
  Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch
  Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free;
  Now stench and blackness yawn, like death.
  
  Oh, plead
  With famine, or wind-walking Pestilence,
  Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man!
  Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words,
  In deeds a Cain.
  
  No, Mother, we must die:
  Since such is the reward of innocent lives;
  Such the alleviation of worst wrongs.
  
  And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men,
  Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears
  To death as to life's sleep; 'twere just the grave
  Were some strange joy for us.
  
  Come, obscure Death,
  And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!
  Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,
  And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.
  
  Live ye, who live, subject to one another
  As we were once, who now .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Bernardo rushes in.
  
  Bernardo.
  
  Oh, horrible!
  That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer,
  Even till the heart is vacant and despairs,
  Should all be vain! The ministers of death
  Are waiting round the doors.
  
  I thought I saw
  Blood on the face of one .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  What if 'twere fancy?
  
  Soon the heart's blood of all I love on earth
  Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off
  As if 'twere only rain.
  
  O life! O world!
  Cover me! let me be no more! To see
  That perfect mirror of pure innocence
  Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,
  Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,
  Who made all lovely thou didst look upon .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Thee, light of life .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  dead, dark! while I say, sister,
  To hear I have no sister; and thou, Mother,
  Whose love was as a bond to all our loves .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Dead! The sweet bond broken!
  Enter Camillo and Guards.
  
  They come! Let me
  Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves
  Are blighted .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  white .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  cold.
  
  Say farewell, before
  Death chokes that gentle voice! Oh, let me hear
  You speak!
  Beatrice.
  
  Farewell, my tender brother.
  
  Think
  Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now:
  And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee
  Thy sorrow's load.
  
  Err not in harsh despair,
  But tears and patience.
  
  One thing more, my child:
  For thine own sake be constant to the love
  Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,
  Though wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame,
  Lived ever holy and unstained.
  
  And though
  Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name
  Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow
  For men to point at as they pass, do thou
  Forbear, and never think a thought unkind
  Of those, who perhaps love thee in their graves.
  
  So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain
  Being subdued.
  
  Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
  Bernardo.
  
  I cannot say, farewell!
  Camillo.
  
  Oh, Lady Beatrice!
  Beatrice.
  
  Give yourself no unnecessary pain,
  My dear Lord Cardinal.
  
  Here, Mother, tie
  My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
  In any simple knot; ay, that does well.
  
  And yours I see is coming down.
  
  How often
  Have we done this for one another; now
  We shall not do it any more.
  
  My Lord,
  We are quite ready.
  
  Well, 'tis very well.
  
  THE END
  Composed at Rome and near Leghorn (Villa Valsovano), May - August 8, 1819; published 1820 (spring) by C.
  
  & J.
  
  Ollier, London.
  
  This edition of 250 copies was printed in Italy 'because,' writes Shelley to Peacock, Sept.
  
  21, 1819, 'it costs, with all duties and freightage, about half what it would cost in London.
  
  '

• The Cloud Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
  From the seas and the streams;
  I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
  In their noonday dreams.
  
  From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
  The sweet buds every one,
  When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
  As she dances about the sun.
  
  I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
  And whiten the green plains under,
  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,
  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 aëry nest,
  As still as a brooding dove.
  
  That orbèd 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,
  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 calm the rivers, lakes, and seas,
  Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
  Are each paved with the moon and these.
  
  I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,
  And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;
  The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
  When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
  
  From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
  Over a torrent sea,
  Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
  The mountains its columns be.
  
  The triumphal arch through which I march
  With hurricane, fire, and snow,
  When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
  Is the million-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;
  I change, but I cannot die.
  
  For after the rain when with never a stain
  The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
  And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
  Build up the blue dome of air,
  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.

• The Cyclops Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A SATYRIC DRAMA TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF EURIPIDES.
  
  SILENUS.
  
  ULYSSES.
  
  CHORUS OF SATYRS.
  
  THE CYCLOPS.
  
  SILENUS:
  O Bacchus, what a world of toil, both now
  And ere these limbs were overworn with age,
  Have I endured for thee! First, when thou fled’st
  The mountain-nymphs who nursed thee, driven afar
  By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee;
  Then in the battle of the Sons of Earth,
  When I stood foot by foot close to thy side,
  No unpropitious fellow-combatant,
  And, driving through his shield my winged spear,
  Slew vast Enceladus.
  
  Consider now,
  Is it a dream of which I speak to thee?
  
  By Jove it is not, for you have the trophies!
  And now I suffer more than all before.
  
  For when I heard that Juno had devised
  A tedious voyage for you, I put to sea
  With all my children quaint in search of you,
  And I myself stood on the beaked prow
  And fixed the naked mast; and all my boys
  Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain
  Made white with foam the green and purple sea,--
  And so we sought you, king.
  
  We were sailing
  Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose,
  And drove us to this waste Aetnean rock;
  The one-eyed children of the Ocean God,
  The man-destroying Cyclopses, inhabit,
  On this wild shore, their solitary caves,
  And one of these, named Polypheme.
  
  has caught us
  To be his slaves; and so, for all delight
  Of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody,
  We keep this lawless giant’s wandering flocks.
  
  My sons indeed on far declivities,
  Young things themselves, tend on the youngling sheep,
  But I remain to fill the water-casks,
  Or sweeping the hard floor, or ministering
  Some impious and abominable meal
  To the fell Cyclops.
  
  I am wearied of it!
  And now I must scrape up the littered floor
  With this great iron rake, so to receive
  My absent master and his evening sheep
  In a cave neat and clean.
  
  Even now I see
  My children tending the flocks hitherward.
  
  Ha! what is this?
  
  are your Sicinnian measures
  Even now the same, as when with dance and song
  You brought young Bacchus to Althaea’s halls?
  
  CHORUS OF SATYRS:
  STROPHE:
  Where has he of race divine
  Wandered in the winding rocks?
  
  Here the air is calm and fine
  For the father of the flocks;--
  Here the grass is soft and sweet,
  And the river-eddies meet
  In the trough beside the cave,
  Bright as in their fountain wave.
  
  --
  Neither here, nor on the dew
  Of the lawny uplands feeding?
  
  Oh, you come!—a stone at you
  Will I throw to mend your breeding;--
  Get along, you horned thing,
  Wild, seditious, rambling!
  EPODE:
  An Iacchic melody
  To the golden Aphrodite
  Will I lift, as erst did I
  Seeking her and her delight
  With the Maenads, whose white feet
  To the music glance and fleet.
  
  Bacchus, O beloved, where,
  Shaking wide thy yellow hair,
  Wanderest thou alone, afar?
  
  To the one-eyed Cyclops, we,
  Who by right thy servants are,
  Minister in misery,
  In these wretched goat-skins clad,
  Far from thy delights and thee.
  
  SILENUS:
  Be silent, sons; command the slaves to drive
  The gathered flocks into the rock-roofed cave.
  
  CHORUS:
  Go! But what needs this serious haste, O father?
  
  SILENUS:
  I see a Grecian vessel on the coast,
  And thence the rowers with some general
  Approaching to this cave.
  
  —About their necks
  Hang empty vessels, as they wanted food,
  And water-flasks.
  
  —Oh, miserable strangers!
  Whence come they, that they know not what and who
  My master is, approaching in ill hour
  The inhospitable roof of Polypheme,
  And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroying?
  
  Be silent, Satyrs, while I ask and hear 85
  Whence coming, they arrive the Aetnean hill.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Friends, can you show me some clear water-spring,
  The remedy of our thirst?
  
  Will any one
  Furnish with food seamen in want of it?
  
  Ha! what is this?
  
  We seem to be arrived
  At the blithe court of Bacchus.
  
  I observe
  This sportive band of Satyrs near the caves.
  
  First let me greet the elder.
  
  --Hail!
  SILENUS:
  Hail thou,
  O Stranger! tell thy country and thy race.
  
  ULYSSES:
  The Ithacan Ulysses and the king
  Of Cephalonia.
  
  SILENUS:
  Oh! I know the man,
  Wordy and shrewd, the son of Sisyphus.
  
  ULYSSES:
  I am the same, but do not rail upon me.
  
  --
  SILENUS:
  Whence sailing do you come to Sicily?
  
  ULYSSES:
  From Ilion, and from the Trojan toils.
  
  SILENUS:
  How, touched you not at your paternal shore?
  
  ULYSSES:
  The strength of tempests bore me here by force.
  
  SILENUS:
  The self-same accident occurred to me.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Were you then driven here by stress of weather?
  
  SILENUS:
  Following the Pirates who had kidnapped Bacchus.
  
  ULYSSES:
  What land is this, and who inhabit it?
  
  --
  SILENUS:
  Aetna, the loftiest peak in Sicily.
  
  ULYSSES:
  And are there walls, and tower-surrounded towns?
  
  SILENUS:
  There are not.
  
  --These lone rocks are bare of men.
  
  ULYSSES:
  And who possess the land?
  
  the race of beasts?
  
  SILENUS:
  Cyclops, who live in caverns, not in houses.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Obeying whom?
  
  Or is the state popular?
  
  SILENUS:
  Shepherds: no one obeys any in aught.
  
  ULYSSES:
  How live they?
  
  do they sow the corn of Ceres?
  
  SILENUS:
  On milk and cheese, and on the flesh of sheep.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Have they the Bromian drink from the vine’s stream?
  
  SILENUS:
  Ah! no; they live in an ungracious land.
  
  ULYSSES:
  And are they just to strangers?
  
  —hospitable?
  
  SILENUS:
  They think the sweetest thing a stranger brings
  Is his own flesh.
  
  ULYSSES:
  What! do they eat man’s flesh?
  
  SILENUS:
  No one comes here who is not eaten up.
  
  ULYSSES:
  The Cyclops now--where is he?
  
  Not at home?
  
  SILENUS:
  Absent on Aetna, hunting with his dogs.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Know’st thou what thou must do to aid us hence?
  
  SILENUS:
  I know not: we will help you all we can.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Provide us food, of which we are in want.
  
  SILENUS:
  Here is not anything, as I said, but meat.
  
  ULYSSES:
  But meat is a sweet remedy for hunger.
  
  SILENUS:
  Cow’s milk there is, and store of curdled cheese.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Bring out:--I would see all before I bargain.
  
  SILENUS:
  But how much gold will you engage to give?
  
  ULYSSES:
  I bring no gold, but Bacchic juice.
  
  SILENUS:
  Oh, joy!
  Tis long since these dry lips were wet with wine.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Maron, the son of the God, gave it me.
  
  SILENUS:
  Whom I have nursed a baby in my arms.
  
  ULYSSES:
  The son of Bacchus, for your clearer knowledge.
  
  SILENUS:
  Have you it now?
  
  —or is it in the ship?
  
  ULYSSES:
  Old man, this skin contains it, which you see.
  
  SILENUS:
  Why, this would hardly be a mouthful for me.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Nay, twice as much as you can draw from thence.
  
  SILENUS:
  You speak of a fair fountain, sweet to me.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Would you first taste of the unmingled wine?
  
  SILENUS:
  ’Tis just—tasting invites the purchaser.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Here is the cup, together with the skin.
  
  SILENUS:
  Pour: that the draught may fillip my remembrance.
  
  ULYSSES:
  See!
  SILENUS:
  Papaiapax! what a sweet smell it has!
  ULYSSES:
  You see it then?
  
  --
  SILENUS:
  By Jove, no! but I smell it.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Taste, that you may not praise it in words only.
  
  SILENUS:
  Babai! Great Bacchus calls me forth to dance!
  Joy! joy!
  ULYSSES:
  Did it flow sweetly down your throat?
  
  SILENUS:
  So that it tingled to my very nails.
  
  ULYSSES:
  And in addition I will give you gold.
  
  SILENUS:
  Let gold alone! only unlock the cask.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Bring out some cheeses now, or a young goat.
  
  SILENUS:
  That will I do, despising any master.
  
  Yes, let me drink one cup, and I will give
  All that the Cyclops feed upon their mountains.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  CHORUS:
  Ye have taken Troy and laid your hands on Helen?
  
  ULYSSES:
  And utterly destroyed the race of Priam.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  SILENUS:
  The wanton wretch! she was bewitched to see
  The many-coloured anklets and the chain
  Of woven gold which girt the neck of Paris,
  And so she left that good man Menelaus.
  
  There should be no more women in the world
  But such as are reserved for me alone.
  
  --
  See, here are sheep, and here are goats, Ulysses,
  Here are unsparing cheeses of pressed milk;
  Take them; depart with what good speed ye may;
  First leaving my reward, the Bacchic dew
  Of joy-inspiring grapes.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Ah me! Alas!
  What shall we do?
  
  the Cyclops is at hand!
  Old man, we perish! whither can we fly?
  
  SILENUS:
  Hide yourselves quick within that hollow rock.
  
  ULYSSES:
  ’Twere perilous to fly into the net.
  
  SILENUS:
  The cavern has recesses numberless;
  Hide yourselves quick.
  
  ULYSSES:
  That will I never do!
  The mighty Troy would be indeed disgraced
  If I should fly one man.
  
  How many times
  Have I withstood, with shield immovable.
  
  Ten thousand Phrygians!—if I needs must die,
  Yet will I die with glory;--if I live,
  The praise which I have gained will yet remain.
  
  SILENUS:
  What, ho! assistance, comrades, haste, assistance!
  [THE CYCLOPS, SILENUS, ULYSSES; CHORUS.
  
  ]
  CYCLOPS:
  What is this tumult?
  
  Bacchus is not here,
  Nor tympanies nor brazen castanets.
  
  How are my young lambs in the cavern?
  
  Milking
  Their dams or playing by their sides?
  
  And is
  The new cheese pressed into the bulrush baskets?
  
  Speak! I’ll beat some of you till you rain tears--
  Look up, not downwards when I speak to you.
  
  SILENUS:
  See! I now gape at Jupiter himself;
  I stare upon Orion and the stars.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Well, is the dinner fitly cooked and laid?
  
  SILENUS:
  All ready, if your throat is ready too.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Are the bowls full of milk besides?
  
  SILENUS:
  O’er-brimming;
  So you may drink a tunful if you will.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Is it ewe’s milk or cow’s milk, or both mixed?
  
  --
  SILENUS:
  Both, either; only pray don’t swallow me.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  By no means.
  
  --
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  What is this crowd I see beside the stalls?
  
  Outlaws or thieves?
  
  for near my cavern-home
  I see my young lambs coupled two by two
  With willow bands; mixed with my cheeses lie
  Their implements; and this old fellow here
  Has his bald head broken with stripes.
  
  SILENUS:
  Ah me!
  I have been beaten till I burn with fever.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  By whom?
  
  Who laid his fist upon your head?
  
  SILENUS:
  Those men, because I would not suffer them
  To steal your goods.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Did not the rascals know
  I am a God, sprung from the race of Heaven?
  
  SILENUS:
  I told them so, but they bore off your things,
  And ate the cheese in spite of all I said,
  And carried out the lambs—and said, moreover,
  They’d pin you down with a three-cubit collar,
  And pull your vitals out through your one eye,
  Furrow your back with stripes, then, binding you,
  Throw you as ballast into the ship’s hold,
  And then deliver you, a slave, to move
  Enormous rocks, or found a vestibule.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  In truth?
  
  Nay, haste, and place in order quickly
  The cooking-knives, and heap upon the hearth,
  And kindle it, a great faggot of wood.
  
  --
  As soon as they are slaughtered, they shall fill
  My belly, broiling warm from the live coals,
  Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling caldron.
  
  I am quite sick of the wild mountain game;
  Of stags and lions I have gorged enough,
  And I grow hungry for the flesh of men.
  
  SILENUS:
  Nay, master, something new is very pleasant
  After one thing forever, and of late
  Very few strangers have approached our cave.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Hear, Cyclops, a plain tale on the other side.
  
  We, wanting to buy food, came from our ship
  Into the neighbourhood of your cave, and here
  This old Silenus gave us in exchange
  These lambs for wine, the which he took and drank,
  And all by mutual compact, without force.
  
  There is no word of truth in what he says,
  For slyly he was selling all your store.
  
  SILENUS:
  I?
  
  May you perish, wretch--
  ULYSSES:
  If I speak false!
  SILENUS:
  Cyclops, I swear by Neptune who begot thee,
  By mighty Triton and by Nereus old,
  Calypso and the glaucous Ocean Nymphs,
  The sacred waves and all the race of fishes--
  Be these the witnesses, my dear sweet master,
  My darling little Cyclops, that I never
  Gave any of your stores to these false strangers;--
  If I speak false may those whom most I love,
  My children, perish wretchedly!
  CHORUS:
  There stop!
  I saw him giving these things to the strangers.
  
  If I speak false, then may my father perish,
  But do not thou wrong hospitality.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  You lie! I swear that he is juster far
  Than Rhadamanthus--I trust more in him.
  
  But let me ask, whence have ye sailed, O strangers?
  
  Who are you?
  
  And what city nourished ye?
  
  ULYSSES:
  Our race is Ithacan--having destroyed
  The town of Troy, the tempests of the sea
  Have driven us on thy land, O Polypheme.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  What, have ye shared in the unenvied spoil
  Of the false Helen, near Scamander’s stream?
  
  ULYSSES:
  The same, having endured a woful toil.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Oh, basest expedition! sailed ye not
  From Greece to Phrygia for one woman’s sake?
  
  ULYSSES:
  ’Twas the Gods’ work—no mortal was in fault.
  
  But, O great Offspring of the Ocean-King,
  We pray thee and admonish thee with freedom,
  That thou dost spare thy friends who visit thee,
  And place no impious food within thy jaws.
  
  For in the depths of Greece we have upreared
  Temples to thy great Father, which are all
  His homes.
  
  The sacred bay of Taenarus
  Remains inviolate, and each dim recess
  Scooped high on the Malean promontory,
  And aery Sunium’s silver-veined crag,
  Which divine Pallas keeps unprofaned ever,
  The Gerastian asylums, and whate’er
  Within wide Greece our enterprise has kept
  From Phrygian contumely; and in which
  You have a common care, for you inhabit
  The skirts of Grecian land, under the roots
  Of Aetna and its crags, spotted with fire.
  
  Turn then to converse under human laws,
  Receive us shipwrecked suppliants, and provide
  Food, clothes, and fire, and hospitable gifts;
  Nor fixing upon oxen-piercing spits
  Our limbs, so fill your belly and your jaws.
  
  Priam’s wide land has widowed Greece enough;
  And weapon-winged murder leaped together
  Enough of dead, and wives are husbandless,
  And ancient women and gray fathers wail
  Their childless age;—if you should roast the rest--
  And ’tis a bitter feast that you prepare--
  Where then would any turn?
  
  Yet be persuaded;
  Forgo the lust of your jaw-bone; prefer
  Pious humanity to wicked will:
  Many have bought too dear their evil joys.
  
  SILENUS:
  Let me advise you, do not spare a morsel
  Of all his flesh.
  
  If you should eat his tongue
  You would become most eloquent, O Cyclops.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Wealth, my good fellow, is the wise man’s God,
  All other things are a pretence and boast.
  
  What are my father’s ocean promontories,
  The sacred rocks whereon he dwells, to me?
  
  Stranger, I laugh to scorn Jove’s thunderbolt,
  I know not that his strength is more than mine.
  
  As to the rest I care not.
  
  —When he pours
  Rain from above, I have a close pavilion
  Under this rock, in which I lie supine,
  Feasting on a roast calf or some wild beast,
  And drinking pans of milk, and gloriously
  Emulating the thunder of high Heaven.
  
  And when the Thracian wind pours down the snow,
  I wrap my body in the skins of beasts,
  Kindle a fire, and bid the snow whirl on.
  
  The earth, by force, whether it will or no,
  Bringing forth grass, fattens my flocks and herds,
  Which, to what other God but to myself
  And this great belly, first of deities,
  Should I be bound to sacrifice?
  
  I well know
  The wise man’s only Jupiter is this,
  To eat and drink during his little day,
  And give himself no care.
  
  And as for those
  Who complicate with laws the life of man,
  I freely give them tears for their reward.
  
  I will not cheat my soul of its delight,
  Or hesitate in dining upon you:--
  And that I may be quit of all demands,
  These are my hospitable gifts;—fierce fire
  And yon ancestral caldron, which o’er-bubbling
  Shall finely cook your miserable flesh.
  
  Creep in!--
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ULYSSES:
  Ai! ai! I have escaped the Trojan toils,
  I have escaped the sea, and now I fall
  Under the cruel grasp of one impious man.
  
  O Pallas, Mistress, Goddess, sprung from Jove,
  Now, now, assist me! Mightier toils than Troy
  Are these;—I totter on the chasms of peril;--
  And thou who inhabitest the thrones
  Of the bright stars, look, hospitable Jove,
  Upon this outrage of thy deity,
  Otherwise be considered as no God!
  CHORUS (ALONE):
  For your gaping gulf and your gullet wide,
  The ravin is ready on every side,
  The limbs of the strangers are cooked and done;
  There is boiled meat, and roast meat, and meat from the coal,
  You may chop it, and tear it, and gnash it for fun,
  An hairy goat’s-skin contains the whole.
  
  Let me but escape, and ferry me o’er
  The stream of your wrath to a safer shore.
  
  The Cyclops Aetnean is cruel and bold,
  He murders the strangers
  That sit on his hearth,
  And dreads no avengers
  To rise from the earth.
  
  He roasts the men before they are cold,
  He snatches them broiling from the coal,
  And from the caldron pulls them whole,
  And minces their flesh and gnaws their bone
  With his cursed teeth, till all be gone.
  
  Farewell, foul pavilion:
  Farewell, rites of dread!
  The Cyclops vermilion,
  With slaughter uncloying,
  Now feasts on the dead,
  In the flesh of strangers joying!
  ULYSSES:
  O Jupiter! I saw within the cave
  Horrible things; deeds to be feigned in words,
  But not to be believed as being done.
  
  CHORUS:
  What! sawest thou the impious Polypheme
  Feasting upon your loved companions now?
  
  ULYSSES:
  Selecting two, the plumpest of the crowd,
  He grasped them in his hands.
  
  --
  CHORUS:
  Unhappy man!
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ULYSSES:
  Soon as we came into this craggy place,
  Kindling a fire, he cast on the broad hearth
  The knotty limbs of an enormous oak,
  Three waggon-loads at least, and then he strewed
  Upon the ground, beside the red firelight,
  His couch of pine-leaves; and he milked the cows,
  And pouring forth the white milk, filled a bowl
  Three cubits wide and four in depth, as much
  As would contain ten amphorae, and bound it
  With ivy wreaths; then placed upon the fire
  A brazen pot to boil, and made red hot
  The points of spits, not sharpened with the sickle
  But with a fruit tree bough, and with the jaws
  Of axes for Aetnean slaughterings.
  
  And when this God-abandoned Cook of Hell
  Had made all ready, he seized two of us
  And killed them in a kind of measured manner;
  For he flung one against the brazen rivets
  Of the huge caldron, and seized the other
  By the foot’s tendon, and knocked out his brains
  Upon the sharp edge of the craggy stone:
  Then peeled his flesh with a great cooking-knife
  And put him down to roast.
  
  The other’s limbs
  He chopped into the caldron to be boiled.
  
  And I, with the tears raining from my eyes,
  Stood near the Cyclops, ministering to him;
  The rest, in the recesses of the cave,
  Clung to the rock like bats, bloodless with fear.
  
  When he was filled with my companions’ flesh,
  He threw himself upon the ground and sent
  A loathsome exhalation from his maw.
  
  Then a divine thought came to me.
  
  I filled
  The cup of Maron, and I offered him
  To taste, and said:—‘Child of the Ocean God,
  Behold what drink the vines of Greece produce,
  The exultation and the joy of Bacchus.
  
  ’
  He, satiated with his unnatural food,
  Received it, and at one draught drank it off,
  And taking my hand, praised me:—‘Thou hast given
  A sweet draught after a sweet meal, dear guest.
  
  ’
  And I, perceiving that it pleased him, filled
  Another cup, well knowing that the wine
  Would wound him soon and take a sure revenge.
  
  And the charm fascinated him, and I
  Plied him cup after cup, until the drink
  Had warmed his entrails, and he sang aloud
  In concert with my wailing fellow-seamen
  A hideous discord—and the cavern rung.
  
  I have stolen out, so that if you will
  You may achieve my safety and your own.
  
  But say, do you desire, or not, to fly
  This uncompanionable man, and dwell
  As was your wont among the Grecian Nymphs
  Within the fanes of your beloved God?
  
  Your father there within agrees to it,
  But he is weak and overcome with wine,
  And caught as if with bird-lime by the cup,
  He claps his wings and crows in doting joy.
  
  You who are young escape with me, and find
  Bacchus your ancient friend; unsuited he
  To this rude Cyclops.
  
  CHORUS:
  Oh my dearest friend,
  That I could see that day, and leave for ever
  The impious Cyclops.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ULYSSES:
  Listen then what a punishment I have
  For this fell monster, how secure a flight
  From your hard servitude.
  
  CHORUS:
  O sweeter far
  Than is the music of an Asian lyre
  Would be the news of Polypheme destroyed.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Delighted with the Bacchic drink he goes
  To call his brother Cyclops--who inhabit
  A village upon Aetna not far off.
  
  CHORUS:
  I understand, catching him when alone
  You think by some measure to dispatch him,
  Or thrust him from the precipice.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Oh no;
  Nothing of that kind; my device is subtle.
  
  CHORUS:
  How then?
  
  I heard of old that thou wert wise.
  
  ULYSSES:
  I will dissuade him from this plan, by saying
  It were unwise to give the Cyclopses
  This precious drink, which if enjoyed alone
  Would make life sweeter for a longer time.
  
  When, vanquished by the Bacchic power, he sleeps,
  There is a trunk of olive wood within,
  Whose point having made sharp with this good sword
  I will conceal in fire, and when I see
  It is alight, will fix it, burning yet,
  Within the socket of the Cyclops’ eye
  And melt it out with fire—as when a man
  Turns by its handle a great auger round,
  Fitting the framework of a ship with beams,
  So will I, in the Cyclops’ fiery eye
  Turn round the brand and dry the pupil up.
  
  CHORUS:
  Joy! I am mad with joy at your device.
  
  ULYSSES:
  And then with you, my friends, and the old man,
  We’ll load the hollow depth of our black ship,
  And row with double strokes from this dread shore.
  
  CHORUS:
  May I, as in libations to a God,
  Share in the blinding him with the red brand?
  
  I would have some communion in his death.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Doubtless: the brand is a great brand to hold.
  
  CHORUS:
  Oh! I would lift an hundred waggon-loads,
  If like a wasp’s nest I could scoop the eye out
  Of the detested Cyclops.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Silence now!
  Ye know the close device—and when I call,
  Look ye obey the masters of the craft.
  
  I will not save myself and leave behind
  My comrades in the cave: I might escape,
  Having got clear from that obscure recess,
  But ’twere unjust to leave in jeopardy
  The dear companions who sailed here with me.
  
  CHORUS:
  Come! who is first, that with his hand
  Will urge down the burning brand
  Through the lids, and quench and pierce
  The Cyclops’ eye so fiery fierce?
  
  SEMICHORUS 1 [SONG WITHIN]:
  Listen! listen! he is coming,
  A most hideous discord humming.
  
  Drunken, museless, awkward, yelling,
  Far along his rocky dwelling;
  Let us with some comic spell
  Teach the yet unteachable.
  
  By all means he must be blinded,
  If my counsel be but minded.
  
  SEMICHORUS 2:
  Happy thou made odorous
  With the dew which sweet grapes weep,
  To the village hastening thus,
  Seek the vines that soothe to sleep;
  Having first embraced thy friend,
  Thou in luxury without end,
  With the strings of yellow hair,
  Of thy voluptuous leman fair,
  Shalt sit playing on a bed!--
  Speak! what door is opened?
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Ha! ha! ha! I’m full of wine,
  Heavy with the joy divine,
  With the young feast oversated;
  Like a merchant’s vessel freighted
  To the water’s edge, my crop
  Is laden to the gullet’s top.
  
  The fresh meadow grass of spring
  Tempts me forth thus wandering
  To my brothers on the mountains,
  Who shall share the wine’s sweet fountains.
  
  Bring the cask, O stranger, bring!
  CHORUS:
  One with eyes the fairest
  Cometh from his dwelling;
  Some one loves thee, rarest
  Bright beyond my telling.
  
  In thy grace thou shinest
  Like some nymph divinest
  In her caverns dewy:--
  All delights pursue thee,
  Soon pied flowers, sweet-breathing,
  Shall thy head be wreathing.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Listen, O Cyclops, for I am well skilled
  In Bacchus, whom I gave thee of to drink.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  What sort of God is Bacchus then accounted?
  
  ULYSSES:
  The greatest among men for joy of life.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  I gulped him down with very great delight.
  
  ULYSSES:
  This is a God who never injures men.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  How does the God like living in a skin?
  
  ULYSSES:
  He is content wherever he is put.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Gods should not have their body in a skin.
  
  ULYSSES:
  If he gives joy, what is his skin to you?
  
  CYCLOPS:
  I hate the skin, but love the wine within.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Stay here now: drink, and make your spirit glad.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Should I not share this liquor with my brothers?
  
  ULYSSES:
  Keep it yourself, and be more honoured so.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  I were more useful, giving to my friends.
  
  ULYSSES:
  But village mirth breeds contests, broils, and blows.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  When I am drunk none shall lay hands on me.
  
  --
  ULYSSES:
  A drunken man is better within doors.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  He is a fool, who drinking, loves not mirth.
  
  ULYSSES:
  But he is wise, who drunk, remains at home.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  What shall I do, Silenus?
  
  Shall I stay?
  
  SILENUS:
  Stay—for what need have you of pot companions?
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Indeed this place is closely carpeted
  With flowers and grass.
  
  SILENUS:
  And in the sun-warm noon
  ’Tis sweet to drink.
  
  Lie down beside me now,
  Placing your mighty sides upon the ground.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  What do you put the cup behind me for?
  
  SILENUS:
  That no one here may touch it.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Thievish One!
  You want to drink;--here place it in the midst.
  
  And thou, O stranger, tell how art thou called?
  
  ULYSSES:
  My name is Nobody.
  
  What favour now
  Shall I receive to praise you at your hands?
  
  CYCLOPS:
  I’ll feast on you the last of your companions.
  
  ULYSSES:
  You grant your guest a fair reward, O Cyclops.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Ha! what is this?
  
  Stealing the wine, you rogue!
  SILENUS:
  It was this stranger kissing me because
  I looked so beautiful.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  You shall repent
  For kissing the coy wine that loves you not.
  
  SILENUS:
  By Jupiter! you said that I am fair.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Pour out, and only give me the cup full.
  
  SILENUS:
  How is it mixed?
  
  let me observe.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Curse you!
  Give it me so.
  
  SILENUS:
  Not till I see you wear
  That coronal, and taste the cup to you.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Thou wily traitor!
  SILENUS:
  But the wine is sweet.
  
  Ay, you will roar if you are caught in drinking.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  See now, my lip is clean and all my beard.
  
  SILENUS:
  Now put your elbow right and drink again.
  
  As you see me drink--.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  CYCLOPS:
  How now?
  
  SILENUS:
  Ye Gods, what a delicious gulp!
  CYCLOPS:
  Guest, take it;--you pour out the wine for me.
  
  ULYSSES:
  The wine is well accustomed to my hand.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Pour out the wine!
  ULYSSES:
  I pour; only be silent.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Silence is a hard task to him who drinks.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Take it and drink it off; leave not a dreg.
  
  Oh that the drinker died with his own draught!
  CYCLOPS:
  Papai! the vine must be a sapient plant.
  
  ULYSSES:
  If you drink much after a mighty feast,
  Moistening your thirsty maw, you will sleep well;
  If you leave aught, Bacchus will dry you up.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Ho! ho! I can scarce rise.
  
  What pure delight!
  The heavens and earth appear to whirl about
  Confusedly.
  
  I see the throne of Jove
  And the clear congregation of the Gods.
  
  Now if the Graces tempted me to kiss
  I would not—for the loveliest of them all
  I would not leave this Ganymede.
  
  SILENUS:
  Polypheme,
  I am the Ganymede of Jupiter.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  By Jove, you are; I bore you off from Dardanus.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  [ULYSSES AND THE CHORUS.
  
  ]
  ULYSSES:
  Come, boys of Bacchus, children of high race,
  This man within is folded up in sleep,
  And soon will vomit flesh from his fell maw;
  The brand under the shed thrusts out its smoke,
  No preparation needs, but to burn out
  The monster’s eye;—but bear yourselves like men.
  
  CHORUS:
  We will have courage like the adamant rock,
  All things are ready for you here; go in,
  Before our father shall perceive the noise.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Vulcan, Aetnean king! burn out with fire
  The shining eye of this thy neighbouring monster!
  And thou, O Sleep, nursling of gloomy Night,
  Descend unmixed on this God-hated beast,
  And suffer not Ulysses and his comrades,
  Returning from their famous Trojan toils,
  To perish by this man, who cares not either
  For God or mortal; or I needs must think
  That Chance is a supreme divinity,
  And things divine are subject to her power.
  
  CHORUS:
  Soon a crab the throat will seize
  Of him who feeds upon his guest,
  Fire will burn his lamp-like eyes
  In revenge of such a feast!
  A great oak stump now is lying
  In the ashes yet undying.
  
  Come, Maron, come!
  Raging let him fix the doom,
  Let him tear the eyelid up
  Of the Cyclops—that his cup
  May be evil!
  Oh! I long to dance and revel
  With sweet Bromian, long desired,
  In loved ivy wreaths attired;
  Leaving this abandoned home--
  Will the moment ever come?
  
  ULYSSES:
  Be silent, ye wild things! Nay, hold your peace,
  And keep your lips quite close; dare not to breathe,
  Or spit, or e’en wink, lest ye wake the monster,
  Until his eye be tortured out with fire.
  
  CHORUS:
  Nay, we are silent, and we chaw the air.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Come now, and lend a hand to the great stake
  Within—it is delightfully red hot.
  
  CHORUS:
  You then command who first should seize the stake
  To burn the Cyclops’ eye, that all may share
  In the great enterprise.
  
  SEMICHORUS 1:
  We are too far;
  We cannot at this distance from the door
  Thrust fire into his eye.
  
  SEMICHORUS 2:
  And we just now
  Have become lame! cannot move hand or foot.
  
  CHORUS:
  The same thing has occurred to us,--our ankles
  Are sprained with standing here, I know not how.
  
  ULYSSES:
  What, sprained with standing still?
  
  CHORUS:
  And there is dust
  Or ashes in our eyes, I know not whence.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Cowardly dogs! ye will not aid me then?
  
  CHORUS:
  With pitying my own back and my back-bone,
  And with not wishing all my teeth knocked out,
  This cowardice comes of itself—but stay,
  I know a famous Orphic incantation
  To make the brand stick of its own accord
  Into the skull of this one-eyed son of Earth.
  
  ULYSSES:
  Of old I knew ye thus by nature; now
  I know ye better.
  
  —I will use the aid
  Of my own comrades.
  
  Yet though weak of hand
  Speak cheerfully, that so ye may awaken
  The courage of my friends with your blithe words.
  
  CHORUS:
  This I will do with peril of my life,
  And blind you with my exhortations, Cyclops.
  
  Hasten and thrust,
  And parch up to dust,
  The eye of the beast
  Who feeds on his guest.
  
  Burn and blind
  The Aetnean hind!
  Scoop and draw,
  But beware lest he claw
  Your limbs near his maw.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Ah me! my eyesight is parched up to cinders.
  
  CHORUS:
  What a sweet paean! sing me that again!
  CYCLOPS:
  Ah me! indeed, what woe has fallen upon me!
  But, wretched nothings, think ye not to flee
  Out of this rock; I, standing at the outlet,
  Will bar the way and catch you as you pass.
  
  CHORUS:
  What are you roaring out, Cyclops?
  
  CYCLOPS:
  I perish!
  CHORUS:
  For you are wicked.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  And besides miserable.
  
  CHORUS:
  What, did you fall into the fire when drunk?
  
  CYCLOPS:
  ’Twas Nobody destroyed me.
  
  CHORUS:
  Why then no one
  Can be to blame.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  I say ’twas Nobody
  Who blinded me.
  
  CHORUS:
  Why then you are not blind.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  I wish you were as blind as I am.
  
  CHORUS:
  Nay,
  It cannot be that no one made you blind.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  You jeer me; where, I ask, is Nobody?
  
  CHORUS:
  Nowhere, O Cyclops.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  It was that stranger ruined me:--the wretch
  First gave me wine and then burned out my eye,
  For wine is strong and hard to struggle with.
  
  Have they escaped, or are they yet within?
  
  CHORUS:
  They stand under the darkness of the rock
  And cling to it.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  At my right hand or left?
  
  CHORUS:
  Close on your right.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Where?
  
  CHORUS:
  Near the rock itself.
  
  You have them.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Oh, misfortune on misfortune!
  I’ve cracked my skull.
  
  CHORUS:
  Now they escape you--there.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Not there, although you say so.
  
  CHORUS:
  Not on that side.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Where then?
  
  CHORUS:
  They creep about you on your left.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Ah! I am mocked! They jeer me in my ills.
  
  CHORUS:
  Not there! he is a little there beyond you.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Detested wretch! where are you?
  
  ULYSSES:
  Far from you
  I keep with care this body of Ulysses.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  What do you say?
  
  You proffer a new name.
  
  ULYSSES:
  My father named me so; and I have taken
  A full revenge for your unnatural feast;
  I should have done ill to have burned down Troy
  And not revenged the murder of my comrades.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Ai! ai! the ancient oracle is accomplished;
  It said that I should have my eyesight blinded
  By your coming from Troy, yet it foretold
  That you should pay the penalty for this
  By wandering long over the homeless sea.
  
  ULYSSES:
  I bid thee weep—consider what I say;
  I go towards the shore to drive my ship
  To mine own land, o’er the Sicilian wave.
  
  CYCLOPS:
  Not so, if, whelming you with this huge stone,
  I can crush you and all your men together;
  I will descend upon the shore, though blind,
  Groping my way adown the steep ravine.
  
  CHORUS:
  And we, the shipmates of Ulysses now,
  Will serve our Bacchus all our happy lives.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; dated 1819.
  
  Amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian there is a copy, 'practically complete,' which has been collated by Mr.
  
  C.
  
  D.
  
  Locock.
  
  See “Examination”, etc.
  
  , 1903, pages 64-70.
  
  'Though legible throughout, and comparatively free from corrections, it has the appearance of being a first draft' (Locock).

• The Daemon Of The World Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A FRAGMENT
  PART I
  Nec tantum prodere vati,
  Quantum scire licet.
  
  Venit aetas omnis in unam
  Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.
  
  Lucan,
  Phars
  .
  
  v.
  
  176.
  
  How wonderful is Death,
  Death and his brother Sleep!
  One pale as yonder wan and hornèd moon,
  With lips of lurid blue,
  The other glowing like the vital morn,
  When throned on ocean's wave
  It breathes over the world:
  Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!
  Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,
  Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,
  To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne
  Cast that fair prey?
  
  Must that divinest form,
  Which love and admiration cannot view
  Without a beating heart, whose azure veins
  Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,
  Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed
  In light of some sublimest mind, decay?
  
  Nor putrefaction's breath
  Leave aught of this pure spectacle
  But loathsomeness and ruin?
  
  —
  Spare aught but a dark theme,
  On which the lightest heart might moralize?
  
  Or is it but that downy-wingèd slumbers
  Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids
  To watch their own repose?
  
  Will they, when morning's beam
  Flows through those wells of light,
  Seek far from noise and day some western cave,
  Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds
  A lulling murmur weave?
  
  —
  Ianthe doth not sleep
  The dreamless sleep of death:
  Nor in her moonlight chamber silently
  Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,
  Or mark her delicate cheek
  With interchange of hues mock the broad moon.
  
  Outwatching weary night,
  Without assured reward.
  
  Her dewy eyes are closed;
  On their translucent lids, whose texture fine
  Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below
  With unapparent fire,
  The baby Sleep is pillowed:
  Her golden tresses shade
  The bosom's stainless pride,
  Twining like tendrils of the parasite
  Around a marble column.
  
  Hark! whence that rushing sound?
  
  'Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps
  Around a lonely ruin
  When west winds sigh and evening waves respond
  In whispers from the shore:
  'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes
  Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves
  The genii of the breezes sweep.
  
  Floating on waves of music and of light,
  The chariot of the Daemon of the World
  Descends in silent power:
  Its shape reposed within: slight as some cloud
  That catches but the palest tinge of day
  When evening yields to night,
  Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indue
  Its transitory robe.
  
  Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful
  Draw that strange car of glory, reins of light
  Check their unearthly speed; they stop and fold
  Their wings of braided air:
  The Daemon leaning from the ethereal car
  Gazed on the slumbering maid.
  
  Human eye hath ne'er beheld
  A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,
  As that which o'er the maiden's charmèd sleep
  Waving a starry wand,
  Hung like a mist of light.
  
  Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds
  Of wakening spring arose,
  Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky.
  
  Maiden, the world's supremest spirit
  Beneath the shadow of her wings
  Folds all thy memory doth inherit
  From ruin of divinest things,
  Feelings that lure thee to betray,
  And light of thoughts that pass away.
  
  For thou hast earned a mighty boon,
  The truths which wisest poets see
  Dimly, thy mind may make its own,
  Rewarding its own majesty,
  Entranced in some diviner mood
  Of self-oblivious solitude.
  
  Custom, and Faith, and Power thou spurnest;
  From hate and awe thy heart is free;
  Ardent and pure as day thou burnest,
  For dark and cold mortality
  A living light, to cheer it long,
  The watch-fires of the world among.
  
  Therefore from nature's inner shrine,
  Where gods and fiends in worship bend,
  Majestic spirit, be it thine
  The flame to seize, the veil to rend,
  Where the vast snake Eternity
  In charmèd sleep doth ever lie.
  
  All that inspires thy voice of love,
  Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes,
  Or through thy frame doth burn or move,
  Or think or feel, awake, arise!
  Spirit, leave for mine and me
  Earth's unsubstantial mimicry!
  It ceased, and from the mute and moveless frame
  A radiant spirit arose,
  All beautiful in naked purity.
  
  Robed in its human hues it did ascend,
  Disparting as it went the silver clouds,
  It moved towards the car, and took its seat
  Beside the Daemon shape.
  
  Obedient to the sweep of aëry song,
  The mighty ministers
  Unfurled their prismy wings.
  
  The magic car moved on;
  The night was fair, innumerable stars
  Studded heaven's dark blue vault;
  The eastern wave grew pale
  With the first smile of morn.
  
  The magic car moved on.
  
  From the swift sweep of wings
  The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew;
  And where the burning wheels
  Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak
  Was traced a line of lightning.
  
  Now far above a rock the utmost verge
  Of the wide earth it flew,
  The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow
  Frowned o'er the silver sea.
  
  Far, far below the chariot's stormy path,
  Calm as a slumbering babe,
  Tremendous ocean lay.
  
  Its broad and silent mirror gave to view
  The pale and waning stars,
  The chariot's fiery track,
  And the grey light of morn
  Tingeing those fleecy clouds
  That cradled in their folds the infant dawn.
  
  The chariot seemed to fly
  Through the abyss of an immense concave,
  Radiant with million constellations, tinged
  With shades of infinite colour,
  And semicircled with a belt
  Flashing incessant meteors.
  
  As they approached their goal,
  The wingèd shadows seemed to gather speed.
  
  The sea no longer was distinguished; earth
  Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, suspended
  In the black concave of heaven
  With the sun's cloudless orb,
  Whose rays of rapid light
  Parted around the chariot's swifter course,
  And fell like ocean's feathery spray
  Dashed from the boiling surge
  Before a vessel's prow.
  
  The magic car moved on.
  
  Earth's distant orb appeared
  The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens,
  Whilst round the chariot's way
  Innumerable systems widely rolled,
  And countless spheres diffused
  An ever varying glory.
  
  It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned.
  
  And like the moon's argentine crescent hung
  In the dark dome of heaven; some did shed
  A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea
  Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashed
  Athwart the night with trains of bickering fire,
  Like spherèd worlds to death and ruin driven;
  Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passed
  Bedimmed all other light.
  
  Spirit of Nature! here
  In this interminable wilderness
  Of worlds, at whose involved immensity
  Even soaring fancy staggers,
  Here is thy fitting temple.
  
  Yet not the lightest leaf
  That quivers to the passing breeze
  Is less instinct with thee,—
  Yet not the meanest worm,
  That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,
  Less shares thy eternal breath.
  
  Spirit of Nature! thou
  Imperishable as this glorious scene,
  Here is thy fitting temple.
  
  If solitude hath ever led thy steps
  To the shore of the immeasurable sea,
  And thou hast lingered there
  Until the sun's broad orb
  Seemed resting on the fiery line of ocean,
  Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold
  That without motion hang
  Over the sinking sphere:
  Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds,
  Edged with intolerable radiancy,
  Towering like rocks of jet
  Above the burning deep:
  And yet there is a moment
  When the sun's highest point
  Peers like a star o'er ocean's western edge,
  When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam
  Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea:
  Then has thy rapt imagination soared
  Where in the midst of all existing things
  The temple of the mightiest Daemon stands.
  
  Yet not the golden islands
  That gleam amid yon flood of purple light,
  Nor the feathery curtains
  That canopy the sun's resplendent couch,
  Nor the burnished ocean waves
  Paving that gorgeous dome,
  So fair, so wonderful a sight
  As the eternal temple could afford.
  
  The elements of all that human thought
  Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join
  To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught
  Of earth may image forth its majesty.
  
  Yet likest evening's vault that faëry hall,
  As heaven low resting on the wave it spread
  Its floors of flashing light,
  Its vast and azure dome;
  And on the verge of that obscure abyss
  Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf
  Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse
  Their lustre through its adamantine gates.
  
  The magic car no longer moved;
  The Daemon and the Spirit
  Entered the eternal gates.
  
  Those clouds of aëry gold
  That slept in glittering billows
  Beneath the azure canopy,
  With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;
  While slight and odorous mists
  Floated to strains of thrilling melody
  Through the vast columns and the pearly shrines.
  
  The Daemon and the Spirit
  Approached the overhanging battlement,
  Below lay stretched the boundless universe!
  There, far as the remotest line
  That limits swift imagination's flight,
  Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,
  Immutably fulfilling
  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.
  
  —
  Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.
  
  Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,
  Strange things within their belted orbs appear.
  
  Like animated frenzies, dimly moved
  Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,
  Thronging round human graves, and o'er the dead
  Sculpturing records for each memory
  In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,
  Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell
  Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world:
  And they did build vast trophies, instruments
  Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold,
  Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls
  With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,
  Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained
  With blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,
  The sanguine codes of venerable crime.
  
  The likeness of a thronèd king came by,
  When these had passed, bearing upon his brow
  A threefold crown; his countenance was calm,
  His eye severe and cold; but his right hand
  Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw
  By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart
  Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,
  A multitudinous throng, around him knelt,
  With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks
  Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by.
  
  Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,
  Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues
  Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly,
  Breathing in self-contempt fierce blasphemies
  Against the Daemon of the World, and high
  Hurling their armèd hands where the pure Spirit,
  Serene and inaccessibly secure,
  Stood on an isolated pinnacle,
  The flood of ages combating below,
  The depth of the unbounded universe
  Above, and all around
  Necessity's unchanging harmony.
  
  PART II
  O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!
  To which those restless powers 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,
  Languor, 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, that the proud Power of Evil
  Shall not for ever on this fairest world
  Shake pestilence and war, or that his slaves
  With blasphemy for prayer, and human blood
  For sacrifice, before his shrine for ever
  In adoration bend, or Erebus
  With all its banded fiends shall not uprise
  To overwhelm in envy and revenge
  The dauntless and the good, who dare to hurl
  Defiance at his throne, girt tho' it be
  With Death's omnipotence.
  
  Thou hast beheld
  His empire, o'er the present and the past;
  It was a desolate sight—now gaze on mine,
  Futurity.
  
  Thou hoary giant Time,
  Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,—
  And from the cradles of eternity,
  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!
  The Spirit saw
  The vast frame of the renovated world
  Smile in the lap of Chaos, and the sense
  Of hope thro' her fine texture did suffuse
  Such varying glow, as summer evening casts
  On undulating clouds and deepening lakes.
  
  Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,
  That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea
  And dies on the creation of its breath,
  And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits,
  Was the sweet stream of thought that with wild motion
  Flowed o'er the Spirit's human sympathies.
  
  The mighty tide of thought had paused awhile,
  Which from the Daemon now like Ocean's stream
  Again began to pour.
  
  —
  To me is given
  The wonders of the human world to keep—
  Space, matter, time and mind—let the sight
  Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.
  
  All things are recreated, and the flame
  Of consentaneous love inspires all life:
  The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck
  To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,
  Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:
  The balmy breathings of the wind inhale
  Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:
  Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,
  Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream;
  No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,
  Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride
  The foliage of the undecaying trees;
  But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,
  And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,
  Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,
  Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit
  Reflects its tint and blushes into love.
  
  The habitable earth is full of bliss;
  Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled
  By everlasting snow-storms round the poles,
  Where matter dared not vegetate nor live,
  But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude
  Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;
  And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles
  Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls
  Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,
  Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet
  To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves
  And melodise with man's blest nature there.
  
  The vast tract of the parched and sandy waste
  Now teems with countless rills and shady woods,
  Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages;
  And where the startled wilderness did hear
  A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,
  Hymning his victory, or the milder snake
  Crushing the bones of some frail antelope
  Within his brazen folds—the dewy lawn,
  Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles
  To see a babe before his mother's door,
  Share with the green and golden basilisk
  That comes to lick his feet, his morning's meal.
  
  Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail
  Has seen, above the illimitable plain,
  Morning on night and night on morning rise,
  Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread
  Its shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea,
  Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves
  So long have mingled with the gusty wind
  In melancholy loneliness, and swept
  The desert of those ocean solitudes,
  But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,
  The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm.
  
  Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds
  Of kindliest human impulses respond:
  Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,
  With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,
  And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss,
  Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,
  Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,
  To meet the kisses of the flowerets there.
  
  Man chief perceives the change, his being notes
  The gradual renovation, and defines
  Each movement of its progress on his mind.
  
  Man, where the gloom of the long polar night
  Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,
  Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost
  Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,
  Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night:
  Nor where the tropics bound the realms of 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.
  
  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 availed
  Till late 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 jackal of ambition's lion-rage,
  The bloodhound of religion'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
  Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise
  In time-destroying infiniteness gift
  With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks
  The unprevailing hoariness of age,
  And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene
  Swift as an unremembered vision, stands
  Immortal upon earth: no longer now
  He slays the beast that sports around his dwelling
  And horribly devours its mangled flesh,
  Or drinks its vital blood, which like a stream
  Of poison thro' his fevered veins did flow
  Feeding a plague that secretly consumed
  His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind
  Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief,
  The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.
  
  No longer now the wingèd 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 desolating privilege, and stands
  An equal amidst equals: happiness
  And science dawn though late upon the earth;
  Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;
  Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,
  Reason and passion cease to combat there;
  Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends
  Its all-subduing energies, and wields
  The sceptre of a vast dominion there.
  
  Mild is the slow necessity of death:
  The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,
  Without a groan, almost without a fear,
  Resigned in peace to the necessity,
  Calm as a voyager to some distant land,
  And full of wonder, full of hope as he.
  
  The deadly germs of languor and disease
  Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts
  With choicest boons her human worshippers.
  
  How vigorous now the athletic form of age!
  How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!
  Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care,
  Had stamped the seal of grey deformity
  On all the mingling lineaments of time.
  
  How lovely the intrepid front of youth!
  How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.
  
  Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,
  Fearless and free the ruddy children play,
  Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows
  With the green ivy and the red wall-flower,
  That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;
  The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,
  There rust amid the accumulated ruins
  Now mingling slowly with their native earth:
  There the broad beam of day, which feebly once
  Lighted the cheek of lean captivity
  With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines
  On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:
  No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair
  Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes
  Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds
  And merriment are resonant around.
  
  The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more
  The voice that once waked multitudes to war
  Thundering thro' all their aisles: but now respond
  To the death dirge of the melancholy wind:
  It were a sight of awfulness to see
  The works of faith and slavery, so vast,
  So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!
  Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall.
  
  A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death
  To-day, the breathing marble glows above
  To decorate its memory, and tongues
  Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms
  In silence and in darkness seize their prey.
  
  These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind:
  Their elements, wide-scattered o'er the globe,
  To happier shapes are moulded, and become
  Ministrant to all blissful impulses:
  Thus human things are perfected, and earth,
  Even as a child beneath its mother's love,
  Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows
  Fairer and nobler with each passing year.
  
  Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene
  Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past
  Fades from our charmèd sight.
  
  My task is done:
  Thy lore is learned.
  
  Earth's wonders are thine own.
  
  With all the fear and all the hope they bring.
  
  My spells are past: the present now recurs.
  
  Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains
  Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.
  
  Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,
  Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue
  The gradual paths of an aspiring change:
  For birth and life and death, and that strange state
  Before the naked powers that thro' the world
  Wander like winds have found a human home,
  All tend to perfect happiness, and urge
  The restless wheels of being on their way,
  Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,
  Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:
  For birth but wakes the universal mind
  Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow
  Thro' the vast world, to individual sense
  Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape
  New modes of passion to its frame may lend;
  Life is its state of action, and the store
  Of all events is aggregated there
  That variegate the eternal universe;
  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 green wood with its sunny smile.
  
  Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand,
  So welcome when the tyrant is awake,
  So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch flares;
  'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,
  The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.
  
  For what thou art shall perish utterly,
  But what is thine may never cease to be;
  Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seen
  Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,
  Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there,
  And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.
  
  Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene
  Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?
  
  Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires
  Of mind as radiant and as pure as thou,
  Have shone upon the paths of men—return,
  Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thou
  Art destined an eternal war to wage
  With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot
  The germs of misery from the human heart.
  
  Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe
  The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,
  Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,
  Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease:
  Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy
  Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,
  When fenced by power and master of the world.
  
  Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,
  Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,
  Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.
  
  Earth's pride and meanness could not 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 Daemon called its wingèd ministers.
  
  Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,
  That rolled beside the crystal battlement,
  Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.
  
  The burning wheels inflame
  The steep descent of Heaven's untrodden way.
  
  Fast and far the chariot flew:
  The mighty globes that rolled
  Around the gate of the Eternal Fane
  Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared
  Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs
  That ministering on the solar power
  With borrowed light pursued their narrower way.
  
  Earth floated then below:
  The chariot paused a moment;
  The Spirit then descended:
  And from the earth departing
  The shadows with swift wings
  Speeded like thought upon the light of Heaven.
  
  The Body and the Soul united then,
  A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame:
  Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;
  Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs 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.

• The Death Knell Is Ringing Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The death knell is ringing
  The raven is singing
  The earth worm is creeping
  The mourners are weeping
  Ding dong, bell--

• The Deserts Of Dim Sleep Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I went into the deserts of dim sleep--
  That world which, like an unknown wilderness,
  Bounds this with its recesses wide and deep--

• The Devil's Walk. A Ballad Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Once, early in the morning, Beelzebub arose,
  With care his sweet person adorning,
  He put on his Sunday clothes.
  
  II.
  
  He drew on a boot to hide his hoof,
  He drew on a glove to hide his claw,
  His horns were concealed by a Bras Chapeau,
  And the Devil went forth as natty a Beau
  As Bond-street ever saw.
  
  III.
  
  He sate him down, in London town,
  Before earth's morning ray;
  With a favourite imp he began to chat,
  On religion, and scandal, this and that,
  Until the dawn of day.
  
  IV.
  
  And then to St.
  
  James's Court he went,
  And St.
  
  Paul’s Church he took on his way;
  He was mighty thick with every Saint,
  Though they were formal and he was gay.
  
  V.
  
  The Devil was an agriculturist,
  And as bad weeds quickly grow,
  In looking over his farm, I wist,
  He wouldn't find cause for woe.
  
  VI.
  
  He peeped in each hole, to each chamber stole,
  His promising live-stock to view;
  Grinning applause, he just showed them his claws,
  And they shrunk with affright from his ugly sight,
  Whose work they delighted to do.
  
  VII.
  
  Satan poked his red nose into crannies so small
  One would think that the innocents fair,
  Poor lambkins! were just doing nothing at all
  But settling some dress or arranging some ball,
  But the Devil saw deeper there.
  
  VIII.
  
  A Priest, at whose elbow the Devil during prayer
  Sate familiarly, side by side,
  Declared that, if the Tempter were there,
  His presence he would not abide.
  
  Ah! ah! thought Old Nick, that's a very stale trick,
  For without the Devil, O favourite of Evil,
  In your carriage you would not ride.
  
  IX.
  
  Satan next saw a brainless King,
  Whose house was as hot as his own;
  Many Imps in attendance were there on the wing,
  They flapped the pennon and twisted the sting,
  Close by the very Throne.
  
  X.
  
  Ah! ah! thought Satan, the pasture is good,
  My Cattle will here thrive better than others;
  They dine on news of human blood,
  They sup on the groans of the dying and dead,
  And supperless never will go to bed;
  Which will make them fat as their brothers.
  
  XI.
  
  Fat as the Fiends that feed on blood,
  Fresh and warm from the fields of Spain,
  Where Ruin ploughs her gory way,
  Where the shoots of earth are nipped in the bud,
  Where Hell is the Victor's prey,
  Its glory the meed of the slain.
  
  XII.
  
  Fat--as the Death-birds on Erin's shore,
  That glutted themselves in her dearest gore,
  And flitted round Castlereagh,
  When they snatched the Patriot's heart, that HIS grasp
  Had torn from its widow's maniac clasp,
  --And fled at the dawn of day.
  
  XIII.
  
  Fat--as the Reptiles of the tomb,
  That riot in corruption's spoil,
  That fret their little hour in gloom,
  And creep, and live the while.
  
  XIV.
  
  Fat as that Prince's maudlin brain,
  Which, addled by some gilded toy,
  Tired, gives his sweetmeat, and again
  Cries for it, like a humoured boy.
  
  XV.
  
  For he is fat,--his waistcoat gay,
  When strained upon a levee day,
  Scarce meets across his princely paunch;
  And pantaloons are like half-moons
  Upon each brawny haunch.
  
  XVI.
  
  How vast his stock of calf! when plenty
  Had filled his empty head and heart,
  Enough to satiate foplings twenty,
  Could make his pantaloon seams start.
  
  XVII.
  
  The Devil (who sometimes is called Nature),
  For men of power provides thus well,
  Whilst every change and every feature,
  Their great original can tell.
  
  XVIII.
  
  Satan saw a lawyer a viper slay,
  That crawled up the leg of his table,
  It reminded him most marvellously
  Of the story of Cain and Abel.
  
  IXX.
  
  The wealthy yeoman, as he wanders
  His fertile fields among,
  And on his thriving cattle ponders,
  Counts his sure gains, and hums a song;
  Thus did the Devil, through earth walking,
  Hum low a hellish song.
  
  XX.
  
  For they thrive well whose garb of gore
  Is Satan’s choicest livery,
  And they thrive well who from the poor
  Have snatched the bread of penury,
  And heap the houseless wanderer’s store
  On the rank pile of luxury.
  
  XXI.
  
  The Bishops thrive, though they are big;
  The Lawyers thrive, though they are thin;
  For every gown, and every wig,
  Hides the safe thrift of Hell within.
  
  XXII.
  
  Thus pigs were never counted clean,
  Although they dine on finest corn;
  And cormorants are sin-like lean,
  Although they eat from night to morn.
  
  XXIII.
  
  Oh! why is the Father of Hell in such glee,
  As he grins from ear to ear?
  
  Why does he doff his clothes joyfully,
  As he skips, and prances, and flaps his wing,
  As he sidles, leers, and twirls his sting,
  And dares, as he is, to appear?
  
  XXIV.
  
  A statesman passed--alone to him,
  The Devil dare his whole shape uncover,
  To show each feature, every limb,
  Secure of an unchanging lover.
  
  XXV.
  
  At this known sign, a welcome sight,
  The watchful demons sought their King,
  And every Fiend of the Stygian night,
  Was in an instant on the wing.
  
  XXVI.
  
  Pale Loyalty, his guilt-steeled brow,
  With wreaths of gory laurel crowned:
  The hell-hounds, Murder, Want and Woe,
  Forever hungering, flocked around;
  From Spain had Satan sought their food,
  'Twas human woe and human blood!
  XXVII.
  
  Hark! the earthquake's crash I hear,--
  Kings turn pale, and Conquerors start,
  Ruffians tremble in their fear,
  For their Satan doth depart.
  
  XXVIII.
  
  This day Fiends give to revelry
  To celebrate their King's return,
  And with delight its Sire to see
  Hell's adamantine limits burn.
  
  XXIX.
  
  But were the Devil's sight as keen
  As Reason's penetrating eye,
  His sulphurous Majesty I ween,
  Would find but little cause for joy.
  
  XXX.
  
  For the sons of Reason see
  That, ere fate consume the Pole,
  The false Tyrant's cheek shall be
  Bloodless as his coward soul.
  
  Published as a broadside by Shelley, 1812

• The Drowned Lover Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Ah! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary,
  Yet far must the desolate wanderer roam;
  Though the tempest is stern, and the mountain is dreary,
  She must quit at deep midnight her pitiless home.
  
  I see her swift foot dash the dew from the whortle,
  As she rapidly hastes to the green grove of myrtle;
  And I hear, as she wraps round her figure the kirtle,
  'Stay thy boat on the lake,--dearest Henry, I come.
  
  '
  II.
  
  High swelled in her bosom the throb of affection,
  As lightly her form bounded over the lea,
  And arose in her mind every dear recollection;
  'I come, dearest Henry, and wait but for thee.
  
  '
  How sad, when dear hope every sorrow is soothing,
  When sympathy's swell the soft bosom is moving,
  And the mind the mild joys of affection is proving,
  Is the stern voice of fate that bids happiness flee!
  III.
  
  Oh! dark lowered the clouds on that horrible eve,
  And the moon dimly gleamed through the tempested air;
  Oh! how could fond visions such softness deceive?
  
  Oh! how could false hope rend, a bosom so fair?
  
  Thy love's pallid corse the wild surges are laving,
  O'er his form the fierce swell of the tempest is raving;
  But, fear not, parting spirit; thy goodness is saving,
  In eternity's bowers, a seat for thee there.
  
  The Drowned Lover: Song.
  
  1811; The Lake-Storm, Rossetti, 1870.

• The False Laurel And The True Read Poem Log in to favourite

  'What art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest
  The wreath to mighty poets only due,
  Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest?
  
  Touch not those leaves which for the eternal few
  Who wander o'er the Paradise of fame,
  In sacred dedication ever grew:
  One of the crowd thou art without a name.
  
  '
  'Ah, friend, 'tis the false laurel that I wear;
  Bright though it seem, it is not the same
  As that which bound Milton’s immortal hair;
  Its dew is poison; and the hopes that quicken
  Under its chilling shade, though seeming fair,
  Are flowers which die almost before they sicken.
  
  '

• The First Canzone Of The Convito Read Poem Log in to favourite

  FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE.
  
  I.
  
  Ye who intelligent the Third Heaven move,
  Hear the discourse which is within my heart,
  Which cannot be declared, it seems so new.
  
  The Heaven whose course follows your power and art,
  Oh, gentle creatures that ye are! me drew,
  And therefore may I dare to speak to you,
  Even of the life which now I live--and yet
  I pray that ye will hear me when I cry,
  And tell of mine own heart this novelty;
  How the lamenting Spirit moans in it, 10
  And how a voice there murmurs against her
  Who came on the refulgence of your sphere.
  
  II.
  
  A sweet Thought, which was once the life within
  This heavy heart, man a time and oft
  Went up before our Father’s feet, and there
  It saw a glorious Lady throned aloft;
  And its sweet talk of her my soul did win,
  So that I said, ‘Thither I too will fare.
  
  ’
  That Thought is fled, and one doth now appear
  Which tyrannizes me with such fierce stress,
  That my heart trembles--ye may see it leap--
  And on another Lady bids me keep
  Mine eyes, and says--Who would have blessedness
  Let him but look upon that Lady’s eyes,
  Let him not fear the agony of sighs.
  
  III.
  
  This lowly Thought, which once would talk with me
  Of a bright seraph sitting crowned on high,
  Found such a cruel foe it died, and so
  My Spirit wept, the grief is hot even now--
  And said, Alas for me! how swift could flee
  That piteous Thought which did my life console!
  And the afflicted one .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  questioning
  Mine eyes, if such a Lady saw they never,
  And why they would.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I said: ‘Beneath those eyes might stand for ever
  He whom .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  regards must kill with.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  To have known their power stood me in little stead,
  Those eyes have looked on me, and I am dead.
  
  ’
  IV.
  
  ‘Thou art not dead, but thou hast wandered,
  Thou Soul of ours, who thyself dost fret,’
  A Spirit of gentle Love beside me said;
  For that fair Lady, whom thou dost regret,
  Hath so transformed the life which thou hast led,
  Thou scornest it, so worthless art thou made.
  
  And see how meek, how pitiful, how staid,
  Yet courteous, in her majesty she is.
  
  And still call thou her Woman in thy thought;
  Her whom, if thou thyself deceivest not,
  Thou wilt behold decked with such loveliness,
  That thou wilt cry [Love] only Lord, lo! here
  Thy handmaiden, do what thou wilt with her.
  
  V.
  
  My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
  Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning
  Of such hard matter dost thou entertain.
  
  Whence, if by misadventure chance should bring
  Thee to base company, as chance may do,
  Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
  I prithee comfort thy sweet self again,
  My last delight; tell them that they are dull,
  And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

• The Fitful Alternations of the Rain Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The fitful alternations of the rain,
  When the chill wind, languid as with pain
  Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
  Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.

• The Fugitives Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The waters are flashing,
  The white hail is dashing,
  The lightnings are glancing,
  The hoar-spray is dancing—
  Away!
  The whirlwind is rolling,
  The thunder is tolling,
  The forest is swinging,
  The minster bells ringing--
  Come away!
  The Earth is like Ocean,
  Wreck-strewn and in motion:
  Bird, beast, man and worm
  Have crept out of the storm--
  Come away!
  II.
  
  'Our boat has one sail
  And the helmsman is pale;--
  A bold pilot I trow,
  Who should follow us now,'--
  Shouted he--
  And she cried: 'Ply the oar!
  Put off gaily from shore!'--
  As she spoke, bolts of death
  Mixed with hail, specked their path
  O’er the sea.
  
  And from isle, tower and rock,
  The blue beacon-cloud broke,
  And though dumb in the blast,
  The red cannon flashed fast
  From the lee.
  
  III.
  
  And 'Fear'st thou?
  
  ' and 'Fear'st thou?
  
  '
  And Seest thou?
  
  ' and 'Hear'st thou?
  
  '
  And 'Drive we not free
  O'er the terrible sea,
  I and thou?
  
  '
  One boat-cloak did cover
  The loved and the lover--
  Their blood beats one measure,
  They murmur proud pleasure
  Soft and low;--
  While around the lashed Ocean,
  Like mountains in motion,
  Is withdrawn and uplifted,
  Sunk, shattered and shifted
  To and fro.
  
  IV.
  
  In the court of the fortress
  Beside the pale portress,
  Like a bloodhound well beaten
  The bridegroom stands, eaten
  By shame;
  On the topmost watch-turret,
  As a death-boding spirit
  Stands the gray tyrant father,
  To his voice the mad weather
  Seems tame;
  And with curses as wild
  As e’er clung to child,
  He devotes to the blast,
  The best, loveliest and last
  Of his name!

• The Indian Serenade Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I arise from dreams of thee
  In the first sweet sleep of night,
  When the winds are breathing low,
  And the stars are shining bright:
  I arise from dreams of thee,
  And a spirit in my feet
  Hath led me—who knows how?
  
  To thy chamber window, Sweet!
  
  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,
  Oh, belovèd as thou art!
  
  Oh lift me from the grass!
  I die! I faint! I fail!
  Let thy love in kisses rain
  On my lips and eyelids pale.
  
  My cheek is cold and white, alas!
  My heart beats loud and fast;—
  Oh! press it to thine own again,
  Where it will break at last.

• The Irishman's Song Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The stars may dissolve, and the fountain of light
  May sink into ne'er ending chaos and night,
  Our mansions must fall, and earth vanish away,
  But thy courage O Erin! may never decay.
  
  See! the wide wasting ruin extends all around,
  Our ancestors' dwellings lie sunk on the ground,
  Our foes ride in triumph throughout our domains,
  And our mightiest heroes lie stretched on the plains.
  
  Ah! dead is the harp which was wont to give pleasure,
  Ah! sunk is our sweet country's rapturous measure,
  But the war note is waked, and the clangour of spears,
  The dread yell of Sloghan yet sounds in our ears.
  
  Ah! where are the heroes! triumphant in death,
  Convulsed they recline on the blood sprinkled heath,
  Or the yelling ghosts ride on the blast that sweeps by,
  And 'my countrymen! vengeance!' incessantly cry.
  
  OCTOBER, 1809

• The Isle Read Poem Log in to favourite

  There was a little lawny islet
  By anemone and violet,
  Like mosaic, paven:
  And its roof was flowers and leaves
  Which the summer’s breath enweaves,
  Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze
  Pierce the pines and tallest trees,
  Each a gem engraven;--
  Girt by many an azure wave
  With which the clouds and mountains pave
  A lake's blue chasm.

• The Magnetic Lady To Her Patient Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  'Sleep, sleep on! forget thy pain;
  My hand is on thy brow,
  My spirit on thy brain;
  My pity on thy heart, poor friend;
  And from my fingers flow
  The powers of life, and like a sign,
  Seal thee from thine hour of woe;
  And brood on thee, but may not blend
  With thine.
  
  II.
  
  'Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not;
  But when I think that he
  Who made and makes my lot
  As full of flowers as thine of weeds,
  Might have been lost like thee;
  And that a hand which was not mine
  Might then have charmed his agony
  As I another's--my heart bleeds
  For thine.
  
  III.
  
  'Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of
  The dead and the unborn
  Forget thy life and love;
  Forget that thou must wake forever;
  Forget the world's dull scorn;
  Forget lost health, and the divine
  Feelings which died in youth's brief morn;
  And forget me, for I can never
  Be thine.
  
  IV.
  
  'Like a cloud big with a May shower,
  My soul weeps healing rain
  On thee, thou withered flower!
  It breathes mute music on thy sleep
  Its odour calms thy brain!
  Its light within thy gloomy breast
  Spreads like a second youth again.
  
  By mine thy being is to its deep
  Possessed.
  
  V.
  
  'The spell is done.
  
  How feel you now?
  
  '
  'Better—Quite well,' replied
  The sleeper.
  
  --'What would do
  You good when suffering and awake?
  
  What cure your head and side?
  
  --'
  ‘What would cure, that would kill me, Jane:
  And as I must on earth abide
  Awhile, yet tempt me not to break
  My chain.
  
  '

• The Mask Of Anarchy Read Poem Log in to favourite

  WRITTEN ON THE OCCASION OF THE MASSACRE AT MANCHESTER
  I.
  
  As I lay asleep in Italy
  There came a voice from over the Sea,
  And with great power it forth led me
  To walk in the visions of Poesy.
  
  II.
  
  I met Murder on the way—
  He had a mask like Castlereagh—
  Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
  Seven blood-hounds followed him:
  III.
  
  All were fat; and well they might
  Be in admirable plight,
  For one by one, and two by two,
  He tossed them human hearts to chew
  Which from his wide cloak he drew.
  
  IV.
  
  Next came Fraud, and he had on,
  Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
  His big tears, for he wept well,
  Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
  
  V.
  
  And the little children, who
  Round his feet played to and fro,
  Thinking every tear a gem,
  Had their brains knocked out by them.
  
  VI.
  
  Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
  And the shadows of the night,
  Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
  On a crocodile rode by.
  
  VII.
  
  And many more Destructions played
  In this ghastly masquerade,
  All disguised, even to the eyes,
  Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.
  
  VIII.
  
  Last came Anarchy: he rode
  On a white horse, splashed with blood;
  He was pale even to the lips,
  Like Death in the Apocalypse.
  
  IX.
  
  And he wore a kingly crown;
  And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
  On his brow this mark I saw—
  'I am God, and King, and Law!'
  X.
  
  With a pace stately and fast,
  Over English land he passed,
  Trampling to a mire of blood
  The adoring multitude.
  
  XI.
  
  And a mighty troop around,
  With their trampling shook the ground,
  Waving each a bloody sword,
  For the service of their Lord.
  
  XII.
  
  And with glorious triumph, they
  Rode through England proud and gay,
  Drunk as with intoxication
  Of the wine of desolation.
  
  XIII.
  
  O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea,
  Passed the Pageant swift and free,
  Tearing up, and trampling down;
  Till they came to London town.
  
  XIV.
  
  And each dweller, panic-stricken,
  Felt his heart with terror sicken
  Hearing the tempestuous cry
  Of the triumph of Anarchy.
  
  XV.
  
  For with pomp to meet him came,
  Clothed in arms like blood and flame,
  The hired murderers, who did sing
  'Thou art God, and Law, and King.
  
  XVI.
  
  'We have waited, weak and lone
  For thy coming, Mighty One!
  Our purses are empty, our swords are cold,
  Give us glory, and blood, and gold.
  
  '
  XVII.
  
  Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,
  To the earth their pale brows bowed;
  Like a bad prayer not over loud,
  Whispering—'Thou art Law and God.
  
  '—
  XVIII.
  
  Then all cried with one accord,
  'Thou art King, and God, and Lord;
  Anarchy, to thee we bow,
  Be thy name made holy now!'
  XIX.
  
  And Anarchy, the Skeleton,
  Bowed and grinned to every one,
  As well as if his education
  Had cost ten millions to the nation.
  
  XX.
  
  For he knew the Palaces
  Of our Kings were rightly his;
  His the sceptre, crown, and globe,
  And the gold-inwoven robe.
  
  XXI.
  
  So he sent his slaves before
  To seize upon the Bank and Tower,
  And was proceeding with intent
  To meet his pensioned Parliament
  XXII.
  
  When one fled past, a maniac maid,
  And her name was Hope, she said:
  But she looked more like Despair,
  And she cried out in the air:
  XXIII.
  
  'My father Time is weak and gray
  With waiting for a better day;
  See how idiot-like he stands,
  Fumbling with his palsied hands!
  XXIV.
  
  'He has had child after child,
  And the dust of death is piled
  Over every one but me—
  Misery, oh, Misery!'
  XXV.
  
  Then she lay down in the street,
  Right before the horses' feet,
  Expecting, with a patient eye,
  Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy.
  
  XXVI.
  
  When between her and her foes
  A mist, a light, an image rose,
  Small at first, and weak, and frail
  Like the vapour of a vale:
  XXVII.
  
  Till as clouds grow on the blast,
  Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,
  And glare with lightnings as they fly,
  And speak in thunder to the sky,
  XXVIII.
  
  It grew—a Shape arrayed in mail
  Brighter than the viper's scale,
  And upborne on wings whose grain
  Was as the light of sunny rain.
  
  XXIX.
  
  On its helm, seen far away,
  A planet, like the Morning's, lay;
  And those plumes its light rained through
  Like a shower of crimson dew.
  
  XXX.
  
  With step as soft as wind it passed
  O'er the heads of men—so fast
  That they knew the presence there,
  And looked,—but all was empty air.
  
  XXXI.
  
  As flowers beneath May's footstep waken,
  As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken,
  As waves arise when loud winds call,
  Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall.
  
  XXXII.
  
  And the prostrate multitude
  Looked-and ankle-deep in blood,
  Hope, that maiden most serene,
  Was walking with a quiet mien:
  XXXIII.
  
  And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,
  Lay dead earth upon the earth;
  The Horse of Death tameless as wind
  Fled, and with his hoofs did grind
  To dust the murderers thronged behind.
  
  XXXIV.
  
  A rushing light of clouds and splendour,
  A sense awakening and yet tender
  Was heard and felt—and at its close
  These words of joy and fear arose
  XXXV.
  
  As if their own indignant Earth
  Which gave the sons of England birth
  Had felt their blood upon her brow,
  And shuddering with a mother's throe
  XXXVI.
  
  Had turnèd every drop of blood
  By which her face had been bedewed
  To an accent unwithstood,—
  As if her heart had cried aloud:
  XXXVII.
  
  'Men of England, heirs of Glory,
  Heroes of unwritten story,
  Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
  Hopes of her, and one another;
  XXXVIII.
  
  'Rise like Lions after slumber
  In unvanquishable number,
  Shake your chains to earth like dew
  Which in sleep had fallen on you—
  Ye are many—they are few.
  
  XXXIX.
  
  'What is Freedom?
  
  —ye can tell
  That which slavery is, too well—
  For its very name has grown
  To an echo of your own.
  
  XL.
  
  ''Tis to work and have such pay
  As just keeps life from day to day
  In your limbs, as in a cell
  For the tyrants' use to dwell,
  XLI.
  
  'So that ye for them are made
  Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,
  With or without your own will bent
  To their defence and nourishment.
  
  XLII.
  
  ''Tis to see your children weak
  With their mothers pine and peak,
  When the winter winds are bleak,—
  They are dying whilst I speak.
  
  XLIII.
  
  ''Tis to hunger for such diet
  As the rich man in his riot
  Casts to the fat dogs that lie
  Surfeiting beneath his eye;
  XLIV.
  
  ''Tis to let the Ghost of Gold
  Take from Toil a thousandfold
  More than e'er its substance could
  In the tyrannies of old.
  
  XLV.
  
  'Paper coin—that forgery
  Of the title-deeds, which ye
  Hold to something of the worth
  Of the inheritance of Earth.
  
  XLVI.
  
  ''Tis to be a slave in soul
  And to hold no strong control
  Over your own wills, but be
  All that others make of ye.
  
  XLVII.
  
  'And at length when ye complain
  With a murmur weak and vain
  'Tis to see the Tyrant's crew
  Ride over your wives and you—
  Blood is on the grass like dew.
  
  XLVIII.
  
  'Then it is to feel revenge
  Fiercely thirsting to exchange
  Blood for blood—and wrong for wrong—
  Do not thus when ye are strong.
  
  XLIX.
  
  'Birds find rest, in narrow nest
  When weary of their wingèd quest;
  Beasts find fare, in woody lair
  When storm and snow are in the air[1].
  
  L.
  
  'Asses, swine, have litter spread
  And with fitting food are fed;
  All things have a home but one—
  Thou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!
  LI.
  
  'This is Slavery—savage men,
  Or wild beasts within a den
  Would endure not as ye do—
  But such ills they never knew.
  
  LII.
  
  'What art thou Freedom?
  
  O! could slaves
  Answer from their living graves
  This demand—tyrants would flee
  Like a dream's dim imagery:
  LIII.
  
  'Thou art not, as impostors say,
  A shadow soon to pass away,
  A superstition, and a name
  Echoing from the cave of Fame.
  
  LIV.
  
  'For the labourer thou art bread,
  And a comely table spread
  From his daily labour come
  In a neat and happy home.
  
  LV.
  
  'Thou art clothes, and fire, and food
  For the trampled multitude—
  No—in countries that are free
  Such starvation cannot be
  As in England now we see.
  
  LVI.
  
  'To the rich thou art a check,
  When his foot is on the neck
  Of his victim, thou dost make
  That he treads upon a snake.
  
  LVII.
  
  'Thou art Justice—ne'er for gold
  May thy righteous laws be sold
  As laws are in England—thou
  Shield'st alike the high and low.
  
  LVIII.
  
  'Thou art Wisdom—Freemen never
  Dream that God will damn for ever
  All who think those things untrue
  Of which Priests make such ado.
  
  LIX.
  
  'Thou art Peace—never by thee
  Would blood and treasure wasted be
  As tyrants wasted them, when all
  Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.
  
  LX.
  
  'What if English toil and blood
  Was poured forth, even as a flood?
  
  It availed, Oh, Liberty,
  To dim, but not extinguish thee.
  
  LXI.
  
  'Thou art Love—the rich have kissed
  Thy feet, and like him following Christ,
  Give their substance to the free
  And through the rough world follow thee,
  LXII.
  
  'Or turn their wealth to arms, and make
  War for thy belovèd sake
  On wealth, and war, and fraud—whence they
  Drew the power which is their prey.
  
  LXIII.
  
  'Science, Poetry, and Thought
  Are thy lamps; they make the lot
  Of the dwellers in a cot
  So serene, they curse it not.
  
  LXIV.
  
  'Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,
  All that can adorn and bless
  Art thou—let deeds, not words, express
  Thine exceeding loveliness.
  
  LXV.
  
  'Let a great Assembly be
  Of the fearless and the free
  On some spot of English ground
  Where the plains stretch wide around.
  
  LXVI.
  
  'Let the blue sky overhead,
  The green earth on which ye tread,
  All that must eternal be
  Witness the solemnity.
  
  LXVII.
  
  'From the corners uttermost
  Of the bounds of English coast;
  From every hut, village, and town
  Where those who live and suffer moan
  For others' misery or their own[2],
  LXVIII.
  
  'From the workhouse and the prison
  Where pale as corpses newly risen,
  Women, children, young and old
  Groan for pain, and weep for cold—
  LXIX.
  
  'From the haunts of daily life
  Where is waged the daily strife
  With common wants and common cares
  Which sows the human heart with tares—
  LXX.
  
  'Lastly from the palaces
  Where the murmur of distress
  Echoes, like the distant sound
  Of a wind alive around
  LXXI.
  
  'Those prison halls of wealth and fashion,
  Where some few feel such compassion
  For those who groan, and toil, and wail
  As must make their brethren pale—
  LXXII.
  
  'Ye who suffer woes untold,
  Or to feel, or to behold
  Your lost country bought and sold
  With a price of blood and gold—
  LXXIII.
  
  'Let a vast assembly be,
  And with great solemnity
  Declare with measured words that ye
  Are, as God has made ye, free—
  LXXIV.
  
  'Be your strong and simple words
  Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
  And wide as targes let them be,
  With their shade to cover ye.
  
  LXXV.
  
  'Let the tyrants pour around
  With a quick and startling sound,
  Like the loosening of a sea,
  Troops of armed emblazonry.
  
  LXXVI.
  
  'Let the charged artillery drive
  Till the dead air seems alive
  With the clash of clanging wheels,
  And the tramp of horses' heels.
  
  LXXVII.
  
  'Let the fixèd bayonet
  Gleam with sharp desire to wet
  Its bright point in English blood
  Looking keen as one for food.
  
  LXXVIII.
  
  'Let the horsemen's scimitars
  Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
  Thirsting to eclipse their burning
  In a sea of death and mourning.
  
  LXXIX.
  
  'Stand ye calm and resolute,
  Like a forest close and mute,
  With folded arms and looks which are
  Weapons of unvanquished war,
  LXXX.
  
  'And let Panic, who outspeeds
  The career of armèd steeds
  Pass, a disregarded shade
  Through your phalanx undismayed.
  
  LXXXI.
  
  'Let the laws of your own land,
  Good or ill, between ye stand
  Hand to hand, and foot to foot,
  Arbiters of the dispute,
  LXXXII.
  
  'The old laws of England—they
  Whose reverend heads with age are gray,
  Children of a wiser day;
  And whose solemn voice must be
  Thine own echo—Liberty!
  LXXXIII.
  
  'On those who first should violate
  Such sacred heralds in their state
  Rest the blood that must ensue,
  And it will not rest on you.
  
  LXXXIV.
  
  'And if then the tyrants dare
  Let them ride among you there,
  Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew,—
  What they like, that let them do.
  
  LXXXV.
  
  'With folded arms and steady eyes,
  And little fear, and less surprise,
  Look upon them as they slay
  Till their rage has died away.
  
  LXXXVI.
  
  'Then they will return with shame
  To the place from which they came,
  And the blood thus shed will speak
  In hot blushes on their cheek.
  
  LXXXVII.
  
  'Every woman in the land
  Will point at them as they stand—
  They will hardly dare to greet
  Their acquaintance in the street.
  
  LXXXVIII.
  
  'And the bold, true warriors
  Who have hugged Danger in wars
  Will turn to those who would be free,
  Ashamed of such base company.
  
  'And that slaughter to the Nation
  Shall steam up like inspiration,
  Eloquent, oracular;
  A volcano heard afar.
  
  LXXXIX.
  
  'And these words shall then become
  Like Oppression's thundered doom
  Ringing through each heart and brain,
  Heard again—again—again—
  XC.
  
  'Rise like Lions after slumber
  In unvanquishable number—
  Shake your chains to earth like dew
  Which in sleep had fallen on you—
  Ye are many—they are few.
  
  '
  ''Composed at the Villa Valsovano near Leghorn -- or possibly later, during Shelley's sojourn at Florence -- in the autumn of 1819, shortly after the Peterloo riot at Manchester, August 16; edited with Preface by Leigh Hunt, and published under the poet's name by Edward Moxon, 1832 (Bradbury & Evans, printers).
  
  Two MSS.
  
  are extant: a transcript by Mrs.
  
  Shelley with Shelley's autograph corrections, known as the 'Hunt MS.
  
  '; and an earlier draft, not quite complete, in the poet's handwriting, presented by Mrs.
  
  Shelley to (Sir) John Bowring in 1826, and now in the possession of Mr.
  
  Thomas J.
  
  Wise (the 'Wise MS.
  
  ').
  
  '' this note taken from the Oxford Edition, Hutchinson's Poetical Works of Percy Shelley, 1905.

• The Past Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Wilt thou forget the happy hours
  Which we buried in Love’s sweet bowers,
  Heaping over their corpses cold
  Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?
  
  Blossoms which were the joys that fell,
  And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.
  
  II.
  
  Forget the dead, the past?
  
  Oh, yet
  There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
  Memories that make the heart a tomb,
  Regrets which glide through the spirit’s gloom,
  And with ghastly whispers tell
  That joy, once lost, is pain.

• The Pine Forest Of The Cascine Near Pisa Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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.
  
  Radiant Sister of the Day,
  Awake! arise! and come away!
  To the wild woods and the plains,
  To the pools where winter rains
  Image all the roof of leaves,
  Where the pine its garland weaves
  Sapless, gray, and ivy dun
  Round stems that never kiss the sun--
  To the sandhills of the sea,
  Where the earliest violets be.
  
  Now the last day of many days,
  All beautiful and bright as thou,
  The loveliest and the last, is dead,
  Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
  And do thy wonted work and trace
  The epitaph of glory fled;
  For now the Earth has changed its face,
  A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
  
  We wandered to the Pine Forest
  That skirts the Ocean's foam,
  The lightest wind was in its nest,
  The tempest in its home.
  
  The whispering waves were half asleep,
  The clouds were gone to play,
  And on the woods, and on the deep
  The smile of Heaven lay.
  
  It seemed as if the day were one
  Sent from beyond the skies,
  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;--
  And still, it seemed, the centre of
  The magic circle there,
  Was one whose being filled with love
  The breathless atmosphere.
  
  Were not the crocuses that grew
  Under that ilex-tree
  As beautiful in scent and hue
  As ever fed the bee?
  
  We stood beneath the pools that lie
  Under the forest bough,
  And each seemed like a sky
  Gulfed in a world below;
  A purple firmament of light
  Which in the dark earth lay,
  More boundless than the depth of night,
  And clearer than the day—
  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;
  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
  With an Elysian 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.
  
  This, the first draft of To Jane: The Invitation, The Recollection, was published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824, and reprinted, Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition.
  
  See Editor’s Prefatory Note to The Invitation, above

• The Question Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
  Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
  And gentle odours led my steps astray,
  Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
  Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay
  Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
  Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
  But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.
  
  There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
  Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,
  The constellated flower that never sets;
  Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
  The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets—
  Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—
  Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears,
  When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.
  
  And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
  Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
  And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
  Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day;
  And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
  With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
  And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
  Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
  
  And nearer to the river's trembling edge
  There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white,
  And starry river buds among the sedge,
  And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
  Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
  With moonlight beams of their own watery light;
  And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
  As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
  
  Methought that of these visionary flowers
  I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
  That the same hues, which in their natural bowers
  Were mingled or opposed, the like array
  Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
  Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,
  I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
  That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom?

• The Retrospect: CWM Elan, 1812 Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A scene, which 'wildered fancy viewed
  In the soul's coldest solitude,
  With that same scene when peaceful love
  Flings rapture's colour o'er the grove,
  When mountain, meadow, wood and stream
  With unalloying glory gleam,
  And to the spirit's ear and eye
  Are unison and harmony.
  
  The moonlight was my dearer day;
  Then would I wander far away,
  And, lingering on the wild brook's shore
  To hear its unremitting roar,
  Would lose in the ideal flow
  All sense of overwhelming woe;
  Or at the noiseless noon of night
  Would climb some heathy mountain's height,
  And listen to the mystic sound
  That stole in fitful gasps around.
  
  I joyed to see the streaks of day
  Above the purple peaks decay,
  And watch the latest line of light
  Just mingling with the shades of night;
  For day with me was time of woe
  When even tears refused to flow;
  Then would I stretch my languid frame
  Beneath the wild woods' gloomiest shade,
  And try to quench the ceaseless flame
  That on my withered vitals preyed;
  Would close mine eyes and dream I were
  On some remote and friendless plain,
  And long to leave existence there,
  If with it I might leave the pain
  That with a finger cold and lean
  Wrote madness on my withering mien.
  
  It was not unrequited love
  That bade my ‘wildered spirit rove;
  'Twas not the pride disdaining life,
  That with this mortal world at strife
  Would yield to the soul's inward sense,
  Then groan in human impotence,
  And weep because it is not given
  To taste on Earth the peace of Heaven.
  
  'Twas not that in the narrow sphere
  Where Nature fixed my wayward fate
  There was no friend or kindred dear
  Formed to become that spirit's mate,
  Which, searching on tired pinion, found
  Barren and cold repulse around;
  Oh, no! yet each one sorrow gave
  New graces to the narrow grave.
  
  For broken vows had early quelled
  The stainless spirit's vestal flame;
  Yes! whilst the faithful bosom swelled,
  Then the envenomed arrow came,
  And Apathy's unaltering eye
  Beamed coldness on the misery;
  And early I had learned to scorn
  The chains of clay that bound a soul
  Panting to seize the wings of morn,
  And where its vital fires were born
  To soar, and spur the cold control
  Which the vile slaves of earthly night
  Would twine around its struggling flight.
  
  Oh, many were the friends whom fame
  Had linked with the unmeaning name,
  Whose magic marked among mankind
  The casket of my unknown mind,
  Which hidden from the vulgar glare
  Imbibed no fleeting radiance there.
  
  My darksome spirit sought--it found
  A friendless solitude around.
  
  For who that might undaunted stand,
  The saviour of a sinking land,
  Would crawl, its ruthless tyrant's slave,
  And fatten upon Freedom's grave,
  Though doomed with her to perish, where
  The captive clasps abhorred despair.
  
  They could not share the bosom's feeling,
  Which, passion's every throb revealing,
  Dared force on the world's notice cold
  Thoughts of unprofitable mould,
  Who bask in Custom's fickle ray,
  Fit sunshine of such wintry day!
  They could not in a twilight walk
  Weave an impassioned web of talk,
  Till mysteries the spirits press
  In wild yet tender awfulness,
  Then feel within our narrow sphere
  How little yet how great we are!
  But they might shine in courtly glare,
  Attract the rabble's cheapest stare,
  And might command where'er they move
  A thing that bears the name of love;
  They might be learned, witty, gay,
  Foremost in fashion's gilt array,
  On Fame's emblazoned pages shine,
  Be princes' friends, but never mine!
  Ye jagged peaks that frown sublime,
  Mocking the blunted scythe of Time,
  Whence I would watch its lustre pale
  Steal from the moon o'er yonder vale
  Thou rock, whose bosom black and vast,
  Bared to the stream's unceasing flow,
  Ever its giant shade doth cast
  On the tumultuous surge below:
  Woods, to whose depths retires to die
  The wounded Echo's melody,
  And whither this lone spirit bent
  The footstep of a wild intent:
  Meadows! whose green and spangled breast
  These fevered limbs have often pressed,
  Until the watchful fiend Despair
  Slept in the soothing coolness there!
  Have not your varied beauties seen
  The sunken eye, the withering mien,
  Sad traces of the unuttered pain
  That froze my heart and burned my brain.
  
  How changed since Nature's summer form
  Had last the power my grief to charm,
  Since last ye soothed my spirit's sadness,
  Strange chaos of a mingled madness!
  Changed!--not the loathsome worm that fed
  In the dark mansions of the dead,
  Now soaring through the fields of air,
  And gathering purest nectar there,
  A butterfly, whose million hues
  The dazzled eye of wonder views,
  Long lingering on a work so strange,
  Has undergone so bright a change.
  
  How do I feel my happiness?
  
  I cannot tell, but they may guess
  Whose every gloomy feeling gone,
  Friendship and passion feel alone;
  Who see mortality's dull clouds
  Before affection's murmur fly,
  Whilst the mild glances of her eye
  Pierce the thin veil of flesh that shrouds
  The spirit's inmost sanctuary.
  
  O thou! whose virtues latest known,
  First in this heart yet claim'st a throne;
  Whose downy sceptre still shall share
  The gentle sway with virtue there;
  Thou fair in form, and pure in mind,
  Whose ardent friendship rivets fast
  The flowery band our fates that bind,
  Which incorruptible shall last
  When duty's hard and cold control
  Has thawed around the burning soul,--
  The gloomiest retrospects that bind
  With crowns of thorn the bleeding mind,
  The prospects of most doubtful hue
  That rise on Fancy's shuddering view,--
  Are gilt by the reviving ray
  Which thou hast flung upon my day.
  
  Published from the Esdaile manuscript book by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887.

• The Revolt Of Islam: Canto I-XII Read Poem Log in to favourite

  DEDICATION
  TO MARY —- —-
  There is no danger to a man, that knows
  What life and death is: there's not any law
  Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful
  That he should stoop to any other law.
  
  —Chapman.
  
  I
  So now my summer task is ended, Mary,
  And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;
  As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faëry,
  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 belovèd name, thou Child of love and light.
  
  II
  The toil which stole from thee so many an hour,
  Is ended,—and the fruit is at thy feet!
  No longer where the woods to frame a bower
  With interlacèd branches mix and meet,
  Or where with sound like many voices sweet,
  Waterfalls leap among wild islands green,
  Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat
  Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen:
  But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.
  
  III
  Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first
  The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.
  
  I do remember well the hour which burst
  My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was,
  When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
  And wept, I knew not why; until there rose
  From the near schoolroom, voices, that, alas!
  Were but one echo from a world of woes—
  The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
  
  IV
  And then I clasped my hands and looked around—
  —But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,
  Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground—
  So, without shame, I spake:—'I will be wise,
  And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies
  Such power, for I grow weary to behold
  The selfish and the strong still tyrannise
  Without reproach or check.
  
  ' I then controlled
  My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.
  
  V
  And from that hour did I with earnest thought
  Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore,
  Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
  I cared to learn, but from that secret store
  Wrought linkèd 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.
  
  VI
  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 clod, until revived by thee.
  
  VII
  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!
  VIII
  No more alone through the world's wilderness,
  Although I trod the paths of high intent,
  I journeyed now: no more companionless,
  Where solitude is like despair, I went.
  
  —
  There is the wisdom of a stern content
  When Poverty can blight the just and good,
  When Infamy dares mock the innocent,
  And cherished friends turn with the multitude
  To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood!
  IX
  Now has descended a serener hour,
  And with inconstant fortune, friends return;
  Though 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 thee.
  
  X
  Is it, that now my inexperienced fingers
  But strike the prelude of a loftier strain?
  
  Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers
  Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound again,
  Though 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 fain
  Reply in hope—but I am worn away,
  And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.
  
  XI
  And what art thou?
  
  I know, but dare not speak:
  Time may interpret to his silent years.
  
  Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,
  And in the light thine ample forehead wears,
  And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,
  And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy
  Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears:
  And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see
  A lamp of vestal fire burning internally.
  
  XII
  They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth,
  Of glorious parents, thou aspiring Child.
  
  I wonder not—for One then left this earth
  Whose life was like a setting planet mild,
  Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled
  Of its departing glory; still her fame
  Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild
  Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim
  The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name.
  
  XIII
  One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit,
  Which was the echo of three thousand years;
  And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it,
  As some lone man who in a desert hears
  The music of his home:—unwonted fears
  Fell on the pale oppressors of our race,
  And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares,
  Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space
  Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place.
  
  XIV
  Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind!
  If there must be no response to my cry—
  If men must rise and stamp with fury blind
  On his pure name who loves them,—thou and I,
  Sweet friend! can look from our 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.
  
  CANTO I
  When the last hope of trampled France had failed
  Like a brief dream of unremaining glory,
  From visions of despair I rose, and scaled
  The peak of an aëreal promontory,
  Whose caverned base with the vexed surge was hoary:
  And saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken
  Each cloud, and every wave:—but transitory
  The calm: for sudden, the firm earth was shaken,
  As if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken.
  
  So as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder
  Burst in far peals along the waveless deep,
  When, gathering fast, around, above, and under,
  Long trains of tremulous mist began to creep,
  Until their complicating lines did steep
  The orient sun in shadow:—not a sound
  Was heard; one horrible repose did keep
  The forests and the floods, and all around
  Darkness more dread than night was poured upon the ground.
  
  Hark! 'tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps
  Earth and the ocean.
  
  See! the lightnings yawn
  Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps
  Glitter and boil beneath: it rages on,
  One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown,
  Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by.
  
  There is a pause—the sea-birds, that were gone
  Into their caves to shriek, come forth, to spy
  What calm has fall'n on earth, what light is in the sky.
  
  For, where the irresistible storm had cloven
  That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen
  Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven
  Most delicately, and the ocean green,
  Beneath that opening spot of blue serene,
  Quivered like burning emerald: calm was spread
  On all below; but far on high, between
  Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled,
  Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest shed.
  
  For ever, as the war became more fierce
  Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high,
  That spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce
  The woof of those white clouds, which seem to lie
  Far, deep, and motionless; while through the sky
  The pallid semicircle of the moon
  Passed on, in slow and moving majesty;
  Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon
  But slowly fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon.
  
  I could not choose but gaze; a fascination
  Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which drew
  My fancy thither, and in expectation
  Of what I knew not, I remained:—the hue
  Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue,
  Suddenly stained with shadow did appear;
  A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew,
  Like a great ship in the sun's sinking sphere
  Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear.
  
  Even like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains,
  Dark, vast, and overhanging, on a river
  Which there collects the strength of all its fountains,
  Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth quiver,
  Sails, oars, and stream, tending to one endeavour;
  So, from that chasm of light a wingèd Form
  On all the winds of heaven approaching ever
  Floated, dilating as it came: the storm
  Pursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift and warm.
  
  A course precipitous, of dizzy speed,
  Suspending thought and breath; a monstrous sight!
  For in the air do I behold indeed
  An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight:—
  And now relaxing its impetuous flight,
  Before the aëreal rock on which I stood,
  The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right,
  And hung with lingering wings over the flood,
  And startled with its yells the wide air's solitude.
  
  A shaft of light upon its wings descended,
  And every golden feather gleamed therein—
  Feather and scale, inextricably blended.
  
  The Serpent's mailed and many-coloured skin
  Shone through the plumes its coils were twined within
  By many a swoln and knotted fold, and high
  And far, the neck, receding lithe and thin,
  Sustained a crested head, which warily
  Shifted and glanced before the Eagle's steadfast eye.
  
  Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling
  With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed
  Incessantly—sometimes on high concealing
  Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed,
  Drooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed.
  
  And casting back its eager head, with beak
  And talon unremittingly assailed
  The wreathèd Serpent, who did ever seek
  Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak.
  
  What life, what power, was kindled and arose
  Within the sphere of that appalling fray!
  For, from the encounter of those wondrous foes,
  A vapour like the sea's suspended spray
  Hung gathered: in the void air, far away,
  Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap,
  Where'er the Eagle's talons made their way,
  Like sparks into the darkness;—as they sweep,
  Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.
  
  Swift chances in that combat—many a check,
  And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil;
  Sometimes the Snake around his enemy's neck
  Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,
  Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil,
  Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea
  Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil
  His adversary, who then reared on high
  His red and burning crest, radiant with victory.
  
  Then on the white edge of the bursting surge,
  Where they had sunk together, would the Snake
  Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge
  The wind with his wild writhings; for to break
  That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake
  The strength of his unconquerable wings
  As in despair, and with his sinewy neck,
  Dissolve in sudden shock those linkèd rings,
  Then soar—as swift as smoke from a volcano springs.
  
  Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,
  Thus long, but unprevailing:—the event
  Of that portentous fight appeared at length:
  Until the lamp of day was almost spent
  It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,
  Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last
  Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent,
  With clang of wings and scream the Eagle passed,
  Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast.
  
  And with it fled the tempest, so that ocean
  And earth and sky shone through the atmosphere—
  Only, 'twas strange to see the red commotion
  Of waves like mountains o'er the sinking sphere
  Of sunset sweep, and their fierce roar to hear
  Amid the calm: down the steep path I wound
  To the sea-shore—the evening was most clear
  And beautiful, and there the sea I found
  Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.
  
  There was a Woman, beautiful as morning,
  Sitting beneath the rocks, upon the sand
  Of the waste sea—fair as one flower adorning
  An icy wilderness—each delicate hand
  Lay crossed upon her bosom, and the band
  Of her dark hair had fall'n, and so she sate
  Looking upon the waves; on the bare strand
  Upon the sea-mark a small boat did wait,
  Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left desolate.
  
  It seemed that this fair Shape had looked upon
  That unimaginable fight, and now
  That her sweet eyes were weary of the sun,
  As brightly it illustrated her woe;
  For in the tears which silently to flow
  Paused not, its lustre hung: she watching aye
  The foam-wreaths which the faint tide wove below
  Upon the spangled sands, groaned heavily,
  And after every groan looked up over the sea.
  
  And when she saw the wounded Serpent make
  His path between the waves, her lips grew pale,
  Parted, and quivered; the tears ceased to break
  From her immovable eyes; no voice of wail
  Escaped her; but she rose, and on the gale
  Loosening her star-bright robe and shadowy hair
  Poured forth her voice; the caverns of the vale
  That opened to the ocean, caught it there,
  And filled with silver sounds the overflowing air.
  
  She spake in language whose strange melody
  Might not belong to earth.
  
  I heard, alone,
  What made its music more melodious be,
  The pity and the love of every tone;
  But to the Snake those accents sweet were known
  His native tongue and hers; nor did he beat
  The hoar spray idly then, but winding on
  Through the green shadows of the waves that meet
  Near to the shore, did pause beside her snowy feet.
  
  Then on the sands the Woman sate again,
  And wept and clasped her hands, and all between,
  Renewed the unintelligible strain
  Of her melodious voice and eloquent mien;
  And she unveiled her bosom, and the green
  And glancing shadows of the sea did play
  O'er its marmoreal depth:—one moment seen,
  For ere the next, the Serpent did obey
  Her voice, and, coiled in rest in her embrace it lay.
  
  Then she arose, and smiled on me with eyes
  Serene yet sorrowing, like that planet fair,
  While yet the daylight lingereth in the skies
  Which cleaves with arrowy beams the dark-red air,
  And said: 'To grieve is wise, but the despair
  Was weak and vain which led thee here from sleep:
  This shalt thou know, and more, if thou dost dare
  With me and with this Serpent, o'er the deep,
  A voyage divine and strange, companionship to keep.
  
  '
  Her voice was like the wildest, saddest tone,
  Yet sweet, of some loved voice heard long ago.
  
  I wept.
  
  'Shall this fair woman all alone,
  Over the sea with that fierce Serpent go?
  
  His head is on her heart, and who can know
  How soon he may devour his feeble prey?
  
  '—
  Such were my thoughts, when the tide gan to flow;
  And that strange boat like the moon's shade did sway
  Amid reflected stars that in the waters lay:—
  A boat of rare device, which had no sail
  But its own curvèd prow of thin moonstone,
  Wrought like a web of texture fine and frail,
  To catch those gentlest winds which are not known
  To breathe, but by the steady speed alone
  With which it cleaves the sparkling sea; and now
  We are embarked—the mountains hang and frown
  Over the starry deep that gleams below,
  A vast and dim expanse, as o'er the waves we go.
  
  And as we sailed, a strange and awful tale
  That Woman told, like such mysterious dream
  As makes the slumberer's cheek with wonder pale!
  'Twas midnight, and around, a shoreless stream,
  Wide ocean rolled, when that majestic theme
  Shrined in her heart found utterance, and she bent
  Her looks on mine; those eyes a kindling beam
  Of love divine into my spirit sent,
  And ere her lips could move, made the air eloquent.
  
  'Speak not to me, but hear! Much shalt thou learn,
  Much must remain unthought, and more untold,
  In the dark Future's ever-flowing urn:
  Know then, that from the depth of ages old,
  Two Powers o'er mortal things dominion hold
  Ruling the world with a divided lot,
  Immortal, all-pervading, manifold,
  Twin Genii, equal Gods when life and thought
  Sprang forth, they burst the womb of inessential Nought.
  
  'The earliest dweller of the world, alone,
  Stood on the verge of chaos.
  
  Lo! afar
  O'er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone,
  Sprung from the depth of its tempestuous jar:
  A blood-red Comet and the Morning Star
  Mingling their beams in combat—as he stood,
  All thoughts within his mind waged mutual war,
  In dreadful sympathy—when to the flood
  That fair Star fell, he turned and shed his brother's blood.
  
  'Thus evil triumphed, and the Spirit of evil,
  One Power of many shapes which none may know,
  One Shape of many names; the Fiend did revel
  In victory, reigning o'er a world of woe,
  For the new race of man went to and fro,
  Famished and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild,
  And hating good—for his immortal foe,
  He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild,
  To a dire Snake, with man and beast unreconciled.
  
  'The darkness lingering o'er the dawn of things,
  Was Evil's breath and life; this made him strong
  To soar aloft with overshadowing wings;
  And the great Spirit of Good did creep among
  The nations of mankind, and every tongue
  Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed; for none
  Knew good from evil, though their names were hung
  In mockery o'er the fane where many a groan,
  As King, and Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend did own,—
  'The Fiend, whose name was Legion; Death, Decay,
  Earthquake and Blight, and Want, and Madness pale,
  Wingèd and wan diseases, an array
  Numerous as leaves that strew the autumnal gale;
  Poison, a snake in flowers, beneath the veil
  Of food and mirth hiding his mortal head;
  And, without whom all these might nought avail,
  Fear, Hatred, Faith, and Tyranny, who spread
  Those subtle nets which snare the living and the dead.
  
  'His spirit is their power, and they his slaves
  In air, and light, and thought, and language, dwell;
  And keep their state from palaces to graves,
  In all resorts of men—invisible,
  But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell
  To tyrant or impostor bids them rise,
  Black-wingèd demon forms—whom, from the hell,
  His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies,
  He loosens to their dark and blasting ministries.
  
  'In the world's youth his empire was a firm
  As its foundations .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Soon the Spirit of Good,
  Though in the likeness of a loathsome worm,
  Sprang from the billows of the formless flood,
  Which shrank and fled; and with that Fiend of blood
  Renewed the doubtful war .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Thrones then first shook,
  And earth's immense and trampled multitude
  In hope on their own powers began to look,
  And Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine shrine forsook.
  
  'Then Greece arose, and to its bards and sages,
  In dream, the golden-pinioned Genii came,
  Even where they slept amid the night of ages,
  Steeping their hearts in the divinest flame
  Which thy breath kindled, Power of holiest name!
  And oft in cycles since, when darkness gave
  New weapons to thy foe, their sunlike fame
  Upon the combat shone—a light to save,
  Like Paradise spread forth beyond the shadowy grave.
  
  'Such is this conflict—when mankind doth strive
  With its oppressors in a strife of blood,
  Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,
  And in each bosom of the multitude
  Justice and truth with Custom's hydra brood
  Wage silent war; when Priests and Kings dissemble
  In smiles or frowns their fierce disquietude,
  When round pure hearts a host of hopes assemble,
  The Snake and Eagle meet—the world's foundations tremble!
  'Thou hast beheld that fight—when to thy home
  Thou dost return, steep not its hearth in tears;
  Though thou may'st hear that earth is now become
  The tyrant's garbage, which to his compeers,
  The vile reward of their dishonoured years,
  He will dividing give.
  
  —The victor Fiend,
  Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears
  His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend
  An impulse swift and sure to his approaching end.
  
  'List, stranger, list, mine is an human form,
  Like that thou wearest—touch me—shrink not now!
  My hand thou feel'st is not a ghost's, but warm
  With human blood.
  
  —'Twas many years ago,
  Since first my thirsting soul aspired to know
  The secrets of this wondrous world, when deep
  My heart was pierced with sympathy, for woe
  Which could not be mine own—and thought did keep,
  In dream, unnatural watch beside an infant's sleep.
  
  'Woe could not be mine own, since far from men
  I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child,
  By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain-glen;
  And near the waves, and through the forests wild,
  I roamed, to storm and darkness reconciled:
  For I was calm while tempest shook the sky:
  But when the breathless heavens in beauty smiled,
  I wept, sweet tears, yet too tumultuously
  For peace, and clasped my hands aloft in ecstasy.
  
  'These were forebodings of my fate—before
  A woman's heart beat in my virgin breast,
  It had been nurtured in divinest lore:
  A dying poet gave me books, and blessed
  With wild but holy talk the sweet unrest
  In which I watched him as he died away—
  A youth with hoary hair—a fleeting guest
  Of our lone mountains: and this lore did sway
  My spirit like a storm, contending there alway.
  
  'Thus the dark tale which history doth unfold
  I knew, but not, methinks, as others know,
  For they weep not; and Wisdom had unrolled
  The clouds which hide the gulf of mortal woe.
  
  —
  To few can she that warning vision show—
  For I loved all things with intense devotion;
  So that when Hope's deep source in fullest flow,
  Like earthquake did uplift the stagnant ocean
  Of human thoughts—mine shook beneath the wide emotion.
  
  'When first the living blood through all these veins
  Kindled a thought in sense, great France sprang forth,
  And seized, as if to break, the ponderous chains
  Which bind in woe the nations of the earth.
  
  I saw, and started from my cottage-hearth;
  And to the clouds and waves in tameless gladness,
  Shrieked, till they caught immeasurable mirth—
  And laughed in light and music: soon, sweet madness
  Was poured upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness.
  
  'Deep slumber fell on me:—my dreams were fire—
  Soft and delightful thoughts did rest and hover
  Like shadows o'er my brain; and strange desire,
  The tempest of a passion, raging over
  My tranquil soul, its depths with light did cover,—
  Which passed; and calm, and darkness, sweeter far,
  Came—then I loved; but not a human lover!
  For when I rose from sleep, the Morning Star
  Shone through the woodbine-wreaths which round my casement were.
  
  ''Twas like an eye which seemed to smile on me.
  
  I watched, till by the sun made pale, it sank
  Under the billows of the heaving sea;
  But from its beams deep love my spirit drank,
  And to my brain the boundless world now shrank
  Into one thought—one image—yes, for ever!
  Even like the dayspring, poured on vapours dank,
  The beams of that one Star did shoot and quiver
  Through my benighted mind—and were extinguished never.
  
  'The day passed thus: at night, methought in dream
  A shape of speechless beauty did appear:
  It stood like light on a careering stream
  Of golden clouds which shook the atmosphere;
  A wingèd youth, his radiant brow did wear
  The Morning Star: a wild dissolving bliss
  Over my frame he breathed, approaching near,
  And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness
  Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss,—
  'And said: "A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden,
  How wilt thou prove thy worth?
  
  " Then joy and sleep
  Together fled, my soul was deeply laden,
  And to the shore I went to muse and weep;
  But as I moved, over my heart did creep
  A joy less soft, but more profound and strong
  Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep
  The path of the sea-shore: that Spirit's tongue
  Seemed whispering in my heart, and bore my steps along.
  
  'How, to that vast and peopled city led,
  Which was a field of holy warfare then,
  I walked among the dying and the dead,
  And shared in fearless deeds with evil men,
  Calm as an angel in the dragon's den—
  How I braved death for liberty and truth,
  And spurned at peace, and power, and fame—and when
  Those hopes had lost the glory of their youth,
  How sadly I returned—might move the hearer's ruth:
  'Warm tears throng fast! the tale may not be said—
  Know then, that when this grief had been subdued,
  I was not left, like others, cold and dead;
  The Spirit whom I loved, in solitude
  Sustained his child: the tempest-shaken wood,
  The waves, the fountains, and the hush of night—
  These were his voice, and well I understood
  His smile divine, when the calm sea was bright
  With silent stars, and Heaven was breathless with delight.
  
  'In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers,
  When the dim nights were moonless, have I known
  Joys which no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers
  When thought revisits them:—know thou alone,
  That after many wondrous years were flown,
  I was awakened by a shriek of woe;
  And over me a mystic robe was thrown,
  By viewless hands, and a bright Star did glow
  Before my steps—the Snake then met his mortal foe.
  
  '
  'Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart?
  
  '
  'Fear it!' she said, with brief and passionate cry,
  And spake no more: that silence made me start—
  I looked, and we were sailing pleasantly,
  Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky;
  Beneath the rising moon seen far away,
  Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on high,
  Hemming the horizon round, in silence lay
  On the still waters—these we did approach alway.
  
  And swift and swifter grew the vessel's motion,
  So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain—
  Wild music woke me: we had passed the ocean
  Which girds the pole, Nature's remotest reign—
  And we glode fast o'er a pellucid plain
  Of waters, azure with the noontide day.
  
  Ethereal mountains shone around—a Fane
  Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay
  On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away.
  
  It was a Temple, such as mortal hand
  Has never built, nor ecstasy, nor dream
  Reared in the cities of enchanted land:
  'Twas likest Heaven, ere yet day's purple stream
  Ebbs o'er the western forest, while the gleam
  Of the unrisen moon among the clouds
  Is gathering—when with many a golden beam
  The thronging constellations rush in crowds,
  Paving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods.
  
  Like what may be conceived of this vast dome,
  When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce
  Genius beholds it rise, his native home,
  Girt by the deserts of the Universe;
  Yet, nor in painting's light, or mightier verse,
  Or sculpture's marble language, can invest
  That shape to mortal sense—such glooms immerse
  That incommunicable sight, and rest
  Upon the labouring brain and overburdened 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 aërial heap:
  We disembarked, and through a portal wide
  We passed—whose roof of moonstone carved, did keep
  A glimmering o'er the forms on every side,
  Sculptures like life and thought; immovable, deep-eyed.
  
  We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof
  Was diamond, which had drank the lightning's sheen
  In darkness, and now poured it through the woof
  Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen
  Its blinding splendour—through such veil was seen
  That work of subtlest power, divine and rare;
  Orb above orb, with starry shapes between,
  And hornèd moons, and meteors strange and fair,
  On night-black columns poised—one hollow hemisphere!
  Ten thousand columns in that quivering light
  Distinct—between whose shafts wound far away
  The long and labyrinthine aisles—more bright
  With their own radiance than the Heaven of Day;
  And on the jasper walls around, there lay
  Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought,
  Which did the Spirit's history display;
  A tale of passionate change, divinely taught,
  Which, in their wingèd 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 crystal air.
  
  One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne,
  Reared on a pyramid like sculptured flame,
  Distinct with circling steps which rested on
  Their own deep fire—soon as the Woman came
  Into that hall, she shrieked the Spirit's name
  And fell; and vanished slowly from the sight.
  
  Darkness arose from her dissolving frame,
  Which gathering, filled that dome of woven light,
  Blotting its spherèd stars with supernatural night.
  
  Then first, two glittering lights were seen to glide
  In circles on the amethystine floor,
  Small serpent eyes trailing from side to side,
  Like meteors on a river's grassy shore,
  They round each other rolled, dilating more
  And more—then rose, commingling into one,
  One clear and mighty planet hanging o'er
  A cloud of deepest shadow, which was thrown
  Athwart the glowing steps and the crystalline throne.
  
  The cloud which rested on that cone of flame
  Was cloven; beneath the planet sate a Form,
  Fairer than tongue can speak or thought may frame,
  The radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm
  Flowed forth, and did with softest light inform
  The shadowy dome, the sculptures, and the state
  Of those assembled shapes—with clinging charm
  Sinking upon their hearts and mine.
  
  He sate
  Majestic, yet most mild—calm, yet compassionate.
  
  Wonder and joy a passing faintness threw
  Over my brow—a hand supported me,
  Whose touch was magic strength: an eye of blue
  Looked into mine, like moonlight, soothingly;
  And a voice said:—'Thou must a listener be
  This day—two mighty Spirits now return,
  Like birds of calm, from the world's raging sea,
  They pour fresh light from Hope's immortal urn;
  A tale of human power—despair not—list and learn!'
  I looked, and lo! one stood forth eloquently,
  His eyes were dark and deep, and the clear brow
  Which shadowed them was like the morning sky,
  The cloudless Heaven of Spring, when in their flow
  Through the bright air, the soft winds as they blow
  Wake the green world—his gestures did obey
  The oracular mind that made his features glow,
  And where his curvèd lips half-open lay,
  Passion's divinest stream had made impetuous way.
  
  Beneath the darkness of his outspread hair
  He stood thus beautiful: but there was One
  Who sate beside him like his shadow there,
  And held his hand—far lovelier—she was known
  To be thus fair, by the few lines alone
  Which through her floating locks and gathered cloak,
  Glances of soul-dissolving glory, shone:—
  None else beheld her eyes—in him they woke
  Memories which found a tongue as thus he silence broke.
  
  CANTO II
  The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks
  Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,
  The murmur of the unreposing brooks,
  And the green light which, shifting overhead,
  Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,
  The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers,
  The lamplight through the rafters cheerly spread,
  And on the twining flax—in life's young hours
  These sights and sounds did nurse my spirit's folded powers.
  
  In Argolis, beside the echoing sea,
  Such impulses within my mortal frame
  Arose, and they were dear to memory,
  Like tokens of the dead:—but others came
  Soon, in another shape: the wondrous fame
  Of the past world, the vital words and deeds
  Of minds whom neither time nor change can tame,
  Traditions dark and old, whence evil creeds
  Start forth, and whose dim shade a stream of poison feeds.
  
  I heard, as all have heard, the various story
  Of human life, and wept unwilling tears.
  
  Feeble historians of its shame and glory,
  False disputants on all its hopes and fears,
  Victims who worshipped ruin,—chroniclers
  Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state
  Yet, flattering power, had given its ministers
  A throne of judgement in the grave:—'twas fate,
  That among such as these my youth should seek its mate.
  
  The land in which I 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,
  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 ethereal 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 shows 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 gulf before,
  The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; behind,
  Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore
  On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from shore.
  
  Out 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.
  
  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.
  
  I heard, as all have heard, life's various story,
  And in no careless heart transcribed the tale;
  But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary
  In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale
  By famine, from a mother's desolate wail
  O'er her polluted child, from innocent blood
  Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale
  With the heart's warfare; did I gather food
  To feed my many thoughts: a tameless multitude!
  I wandered through the wrecks of days departed
  Far by the desolated shore, when even
  O'er the still sea and jagged islets darted
  The light of moonrise; in the northern Heaven,
  Among the clouds near the horizon driven,
  The mountains lay beneath our planet pale;
  Around me, broken tombs and columns riven
  Looked vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale
  Waked in those ruins gray its everlasting wail!
  I knew not who had framed these wonders then,
  Nor had I heard the story of their deeds;
  But dwellings of a race of mightier men,
  And monuments of less ungentle creeds
  Tell their own tale to him who wisely heeds
  The language which they speak; and now, to me
  The moonlight making pale the blooming weeds,
  The bright stars shining in the breathless sea,
  Interpreted those scrolls of mortal mystery.
  
  Such man has been, and such may yet become!
  Ay, wiser, greater, gentler, even than they
  Who on the fragments of yon shattered dome
  Have stamped the sign of power—I felt the sway
  Of the vast stream of ages bear away
  My floating thoughts—my heart beat loud and fast—
  Even as a storm let loose beneath the ray
  Of the still moon, my spirit onward past
  Beneath truth's steady beams upon its tumult cast.
  
  It shall be thus no more! too long, too long,
  Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound
  In darkness and in ruin!—Hope is strong,
  Justice and Truth their wingèd child have found—
  Awake! arise! until the mighty sound
  Of your career shall scatter in its gust
  The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground
  Hide the last altar's unregarded dust,
  Whose Idol has so long betrayed your impious trust!
  It must be so—I will arise and waken
  The multitude, and like a sulphurous hill,
  Which on a sudden from its snows has shaken
  The swoon of ages, it shall burst and fill
  The world with cleansing fire: it must, it will—
  It may not be restrained!—and who shall stand
  Amid the rocking earthquake steadfast still,
  But Laon?
  
  on high Freedom's desert land
  A tower whose marble walls the leaguèd storms withstand!
  One summer night, in commune with the hope
  Thus deeply fed, amid those ruins gray
  I watched, beneath the dark sky's starry cope;
  And ever from that hour upon me lay
  The burden of this hope, and night or day,
  In vision or in dream, clove to my breast:
  Among mankind, or when gone far away
  To the lone shores and mountains, 'twas a guest
  Which followed where I fled, and watched when I did rest.
  
  These hopes found words through which my spirit sought
  To weave a bondage of such sympathy,
  As might create some response to the thought
  Which ruled me now—and as the vapours lie
  Bright in the outspread morning's radiancy,
  So were these thoughts invested with the light
  Of language: and all bosoms made reply
  On which its lustre streamed, whene'er it might
  Through darkness wide and deep those trancèd spirits smite.
  
  Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was dim,
  And oft I thought to clasp my own heart's brother,
  When I could feel the listener's senses swim,
  And hear his breath its own swift gaspings smother
  Even as my words evoked them—and another,
  And yet another, I did fondly deem,
  Felt that we all were sons of one great mother;
  And the cold truth such sad reverse did seem,
  As to awake in grief from some delightful dream.
  
  Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth
  Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep,
  Did Laon and his friend, on one gray plinth,
  Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap,
  Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep:
  And that this friend was false, may now be said
  Calmly—that he like other men could weep
  Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread
  Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.
  
  Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow,
  I must have sought dark respite from its stress
  In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow—
  For to tread life's dismaying wilderness
  Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless,
  Amid the snares and scoffs of human kind,
  Is hard—but I betrayed it not, nor less
  With love that scorned return, sought to unbind
  The interwoven clouds which make its wisdom blind.
  
  With deathless minds which leave where they have passed
  A path of light, my soul communion knew;
  Till from that glorious intercourse, at last,
  As from a mine of magic store, I drew
  Words which were weapons;—round my heart there grew
  The adamantine armour of their power,
  And from my fancy wings of golden hue
  Sprang forth—yet not alone from wisdom's tower,
  A minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore.
  
  An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes
  Were lodestars of delight, which drew me home
  When I might wander forth; nor did I prize
  Aught human thing beneath Heaven's mighty dome
  Beyond this child: so when sad hours were come,
  And baffled hope like ice still clung to me,
  Since kin were cold, and friends had now become
  Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be,
  Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee.
  
  What wert thou then?
  
  A child most infantine,
  Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age
  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 through the waste air's pathless blue,
  To nourish some far desert: she did seem
  Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,
  Like the bright shade of some immortal dream
  Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream.
  
  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 I what solace for that loss was left,
  Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.
  
  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 aëreal mountains whose vast cells
  The unreposing billows ever beat,
  Through 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,
  Through the lone paths of our immortal land.
  
  It had no waste but some memorial lent
  Which strung me to my toil—some monument
  Vital with mind: then, Cythna by my side,
  Until the bright and beaming day were spent,
  Would rest, with looks entreating to abide,
  Too earnest and too sweet ever to be denied.
  
  And soon I could not have refused her—thus
  For ever, day and night, we two were ne'er
  Parted, but when brief sleep divided us:
  And when the pauses of the lulling air
  Of noon beside the sea, had made a lair
  For her soothed senses, in my arms she slept,
  And I kept watch over her slumbers there,
  While, as the shifting visions o'er her swept,
  Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept.
  
  And, in the murmur of her dreams was heard
  Sometimes the name of Laon:—suddenly
  She would arise, and, like the secret bird
  Whom sunset wakens, fill the shore and sky
  With her sweet accents—a wild melody!
  Hymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, strong
  The source of passion, whence they rose, to be;
  Triumphant strains, which, like a spirit's tongue,
  To the enchanted waves that child of glory sung—
  Her white arms lifted through the shadowy stream
  Of her loose hair—oh, excellently great
  Seemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme
  Of those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate
  Amid the calm which rapture doth create
  After its tumult, her heart vibrating,
  Her spirit o'er the ocean's floating state
  From her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing
  Of visions that were mine, beyond its utmost spring.
  
  For, before Cythna loved it, had my song
  Peopled with thoughts the boundless universe,
  A mighty congregation, which were strong
  Where'er they trod the darkness to disperse
  The cloud of that unutterable curse
  Which clings upon mankind:—all things became
  Slaves to my holy and heroic verse,
  Earth, sea and sky, the planets, life and fame
  And fate, or whate'er else binds the world's wondrous frame.
  
  And this beloved child thus felt the sway
  Of my conceptions, gathering like a cloud
  The very wind on which it rolls away:
  Hers too were all my thoughts, ere yet, endowed
  With music and with light, their fountains flowed
  In poesy; and her still and earnest face,
  Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed
  Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace,
  Watching the hopes which there her heart had learned to trace.
  
  In me, communion with this purest being
  Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise
  In knowledge, which, in hers mine own mind seeing,
  Left in the human world few mysteries:
  How without fear of evil or disguise
  Was Cythna!—what a spirit strong and mild,
  Which death, or pain or peril could despise,
  Yet melt in tenderness! what genius wild
  Yet mighty, was enclosed within one simple child!
  New lore was this—old age, with its gray hair,
  And wrinkled legends of unworthy things,
  And icy sneers, is nought: it cannot dare
  To burst the chains which life for ever flings
  On the entangled soul's aspiring wings,
  So is it cold and cruel, and is made
  The careless slave of that dark power which brings
  Evil, like blight, on man, who, still betrayed,
  Laughs o'er the grave in which his living hopes are laid.
  
  Nor are the strong and the severe to keep
  The empire of the world: thus Cythna taught
  Even in the visions of her eloquent sleep,
  Unconscious of the power through which she wrought
  The woof of such intelligible thought,
  As from the tranquil strength which cradled lay
  In her smile-peopled rest, my spirit sought
  Why the deceiver and the slave has sway
  O'er heralds so divine of truth's arising day.
  
  Within that fairest form, the female mind
  Untainted by the poison-clouds which rest
  On the dark world, a sacred home did find:
  But else, from the wide earth's maternal breast,
  Victorious Evil, which had dispossessed
  All native power, had those fair children torn,
  And made them slaves to soothe his vile unrest,
  And minister to lust its joys forlorn,
  Till they had learned to breathe the atmosphere of scorn.
  
  This misery was but coldly felt, till she
  Became my only friend, who had endued
  My purpose with a wider sympathy;
  Thus, Cythna mourned with me the servitude
  In which the half of humankind were mewed
  Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves,
  She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food
  To the hyaena lust, who, among graves,
  Over his loathèd meal, laughing in agony, raves.
  
  And I, still gazing on that glorious child,
  Even as these thoughts flushed o'er her:—'Cythna sweet,
  Well with the world art thou unreconciled;
  Never will peace and human nature meet
  Till free and equal man and woman greet
  Domestic peace; and ere this power can make
  In human hearts its calm and holy seat,
  This slavery must be broken'—as I spake,
  From Cythna's eyes a light of exultation brake.
  
  She replied earnestly:—'It shall be mine,
  This task, mine, Laon!—thou hast much to gain;
  Nor wilt thou at poor Cythna's pride repine,
  If she should lead a happy female train
  To meet thee over the rejoicing plain,
  When myriads at thy call shall throng around
  The Golden City.
  
  '—Then the child did strain
  My arm upon her tremulous heart, and wound
  Her own about my neck, till some reply she found.
  
  I smiled, and spake not.
  
  —'Wherefore dost thou smile
  At what I say?
  
  Laon, I am not weak,
  And though my cheek might become pale the while,
  With thee, if thou desirest, will I seek
  Through their array of banded slaves to wreak
  Ruin upon the tyrants.
  
  I had thought
  It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek
  To scorn and shame, and this beloved spot
  And thee, O dearest friend, to leave and murmur not.
  
  'Whence came I what I am?
  
  Thou, Laon, knowest
  How a young child should thus undaunted be;
  Methinks, it is a power which thou bestowest,
  Through which I seek, by most resembling thee,
  So to become most good and great and free,
  Yet far beyond this Ocean's utmost roar
  In towers and huts are many like to me,
  Who, could they see thine eyes, or feel such lore
  As I have learnt from them, like me would fear no more.
  
  'Think'st thou that I shall speak unskilfully,
  And none will heed me?
  
  I remember now,
  How once, a slave in tortures doomed to die,
  Was saved, because in accents sweet and low
  He sung a song his Judge loved long ago,
  As he was led to death.
  
  —All shall relent
  Who hear me—tears, as mine have flowed, shall flow,
  Hearts beat as mine now beats, with such intent
  As renovates the world; a will omnipotent!
  'Yes, I will tread Pride's golden palaces,
  Through Penury's roofless huts and squalid cells
  Will I descend, where'er in abjectness
  Woman with some vile slave her tyrant dwells,
  There with the music of thine own sweet spells
  Will disenchant the captives, and will pour
  For the despairing, from the crystal wells
  Of thy deep spirit, reason's mighty lore,
  And power shall then abound, and hope arise once more.
  
  'Can man be free if woman be a slave?
  
  Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air,
  To the corruption of a closèd grave!
  Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear
  Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare
  To trample their oppressors?
  
  in their home
  Among their babes, thou knowest a curse would wear
  The shape of woman—hoary Crime would come
  Behind, and Fraud rebuild religion's tottering dome.
  
  'I am a child:—I would not yet depart.
  
  When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp
  Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart,
  Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp
  Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp
  Of ages leaves their limbs—no ill may harm
  Thy Cythna ever—truth its radiant stamp
  Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm
  Upon her children's brow, dark Falsehood to disarm.
  
  'Wait yet awhile for the appointed day—
  Thou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand
  Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean gray;
  Amid the dwellers of this lonely land
  I shall remain alone—and thy command
  Shall then dissolve the world's unquiet trance,
  And, multitudinous as the desert sand
  Borne on the storm, its millions shall advance,
  Thronging round thee, the light of their deliverance.
  
  'Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain,
  Which from remotest glens two warring winds
  Involve in fire which not the loosened fountain
  Of broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds
  Of evil, catch from our uniting minds
  The spark which must consume them;—Cythna then
  Will have cast off the impotence that binds
  Her childhood now, and through the paths of men
  Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent's den.
  
  'We part!—O Laon, I must dare nor tremble
  To meet those looks no more!—Oh, heavy stroke!
  Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble
  The agony of this thought?
  
  '—As thus she spoke
  The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke,
  And in my arms she hid her beating breast.
  
  I remained still for tears—sudden she woke
  As one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed
  My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possessed.
  
  'We part to meet again—but yon blue waste,
  Yon desert wide and deep holds no recess,
  Within whose happy silence, thus embraced
  We might survive all ills in one caress:
  Nor doth the grave—I fear 'tis passionless—
  Nor yon cold vacant Heaven:—we meet again
  Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless
  Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain
  When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.
  
  '
  I could not speak, though she had ceased, for now
  The fountains of her feeling, swift and deep,
  Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow;
  So we arose, and by the starlight steep
  Went homeward—neither did we speak nor weep,
  But, pale, were calm with passion—thus subdued
  Like evening shades that o'er the mountains creep,
  We moved towards our home; where, in this mood,
  Each from the other sought refuge in solitude.
  
  CANTO III
  What thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's lonely slumber
  That night, I know not; but my own did seem
  As if they might ten thousand years outnumber
  Of waking life, the visions of a dream
  Which hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream
  Of mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast,
  Whose limits yet were never memory's theme:
  And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds passed,
  Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast.
  
  Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace
  More time than might make gray the infant world,
  Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space:
  When the third came, like mist on breezes curled,
  From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled:
  Methought, upon the threshold of a cave
  I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled
  With dew from the wild streamlet's shattered wave,
  Hung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave.
  
  We lived a day as we were wont to live,
  But Nature had a robe of glory on,
  And the bright air o'er every shape did weave
  Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone,
  The leafless bough among the leaves alone,
  Had being clearer than its own could be,
  And Cythna's pure and radiant self was shown,
  In this strange vision, so divine to me,
  That, if I loved before, now love was agony.
  
  Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night descended,
  And we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphere
  Of the calm moon—when suddenly was blended
  With our repose a nameless sense of fear;
  And from the cave behind I seemed to hear
  Sounds gathering upwards!—accents incomplete,
  And stifled shrieks,—and now, more near and near,
  A tumult and a rush of thronging feet
  The cavern's secret depths beneath the earth did beat.
  
  The scene was changed, and away, away, away!
  Through the air and over the sea we sped,
  And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay,
  And the winds bore me—through the darkness spread
  Around, the gaping earth then vomited
  Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung
  Upon my flight; and ever, as we fled,
  They plucked at Cythna—soon to me then clung
  A sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among.
  
  And I lay struggling in the impotence
  Of sleep, while outward life had burst its bound,
  Though, still deluded, strove the tortured sense
  To its dire wanderings to adapt the sound
  Which in the light of morn was poured around
  Our dwelling—breathless, pale, and unaware
  I rose, and all the cottage crowded found
  With armèd men, whose glittering swords were bare,
  And whose degraded limbs the tyrant's garb did wear.
  
  And, ere with rapid lips and gathered brow
  I could demand the cause—a feeble shriek—
  It was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low,
  Arrested me—my mien grew calm and meek,
  And grasping a small knife, I went to seek
  That voice among the crowd—'twas Cythna's cry!
  Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak
  Its whirlwind rage:—so I passed quietly
  Till I beheld, where bound, that dearest child did lie.
  
  I started to behold her, for delight
  And exultation, and a joyance free,
  Solemn, serene and lofty, filled the light
  Of the calm smile with which she looked on me:
  So that I feared some brainless ecstasy,
  Wrought from that bitter woe, had wildered her—
  'Farewell! farewell!' she said, as I drew nigh.
  
  'At first my peace was marred by this strange stir,
  Now I am calm as truth—its chosen minister.
  
  'Look not so, Laon—say farewell in hope,
  These bloody men are but the slaves who bear
  Their mistress to her task—it was my scope
  The slavery where they drag me now, to share,
  And among captives willing chains to wear
  Awhile—the rest thou knowest—return, dear friend!
  Let our first triumph trample the despair
  Which would ensnare us now, for in the end,
  In victory or in death our hopes and fears must blend.
  
  '
  These words had fallen on my unheeding ear,
  Whilst I had watched the motions of the crew
  With seeming-careless glance; not many were
  Around her, for their comrades just withdrew
  To guard some other victim—so I drew
  My knife, and with one impulse, suddenly
  All unaware three of their number slew,
  And grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud cry
  My countrymen invoked to death or liberty!
  What followed then, I know not—for a stroke
  On my raised arm and naked head, came down,
  Filling my eyes with blood—when I awoke,
  I felt that they had bound me in my swoon,
  And up a rock which overhangs the town,
  By the steep path were bearing me: below,
  The plain was filled with slaughter,—overthrown
  The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow
  Of blazing roofs shone far o'er the white Ocean's flow.
  
  Upon that rock a mighty column stood,
  Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky,
  Which to the wanderers o'er the solitude
  Of distant seas, from ages long gone by,
  Had made a landmark; o'er its height to fly
  Scarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast,
  Has power—and when the shades of evening lie
  On Earth and Ocean, its carved summits cast
  The sunken daylight far through the aërial waste.
  
  They bore me to a cavern in the hill
  Beneath that column, and unbound me there:
  And one did strip me stark; and one did fill
  A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare
  A lighted torch, and four with friendless care
  Guided my steps the cavern-paths along,
  Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair
  We wound, until the torch's fiery tongue
  Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.
  
  They raised me to the platform of the pile,
  That column's dizzy height:—the grate of brass
  Through which they thrust me, open stood the while,
  As to its ponderous and suspended mass,
  With chains which eat into the flesh, alas!
  With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound:
  The grate, as they departed to repass,
  With horrid clangour fell, and the far sound
  Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom were drowned.
  
  The noon was calm and bright:—around that column
  The overhanging sky and circling sea
  Spread forth in silentness profound and solemn
  The darkness of brief frenzy cast on me,
  So that I knew not my own misery:
  The islands and the mountains in the day
  Like clouds reposed afar; and I could see
  The town among the woods below that lay,
  And the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy bay.
  
  It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed
  Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone
  Swayed in the air:—so bright, that noon did breed
  No shadow in the sky beside mine own—
  Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone.
  
  Below, the smoke of roofs involved in flame
  Rested like night, all else was clearly shown
  In that broad glare, yet sound to me none came,
  But of the living blood that ran within my frame.
  
  The peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon!
  A ship was lying on the sunny main,
  Its sails were flagging in the breathless noon—
  Its shadow lay beyond—that sight again
  Waked, with its presence, in my trancèd brain
  The stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold:
  I knew that ship bore Cythna o'er the plain
  Of waters, to her blighting slavery sold,
  And watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold.
  
  I watched, until the shades of evening wrapped
  Earth like an exhalation—then the bark
  Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapped.
  
  It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark:
  Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark
  Its path no more!—I sought to close mine eyes,
  But like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark;
  I would have risen, but ere that I could rise,
  My parchèd 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—linkèd remembrance lent
  To that such power, to me such a severe content.
  
  To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair
  And die, I questioned not; nor, though the Sun
  Its shafts of agony kindling through the air
  Moved over me, nor though in evening dun,
  Or when the stars their visible courses run,
  Or morning, the wide universe was spread
  In dreary calmness round me, did I shun
  Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead
  From one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison shed.
  
  Two days thus passed—I 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 possessed
  My thoughts, and now no drop remained! The uprest
  Of the third sun brought hunger—but the crust
  Which had been left, was to my craving breast
  Fuel, not food.
  
  I chewed the bitter dust,
  And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.
  
  My brain began to fail when the fourth morn
  Burst o'er the golden isles—a fearful sleep,
  Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn
  Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep
  With whirlwind swiftness—a fall far and deep,—
  A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness—
  These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep
  Their watch in some dim charnel's loneliness,
  A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!
  The forms which peopled this terrific trance
  I well remember—like a choir of devils,
  Around me they involved a giddy dance;
  Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels
  Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels,
  Foul, ceaseless shadows:—thought could not divide
  The actual world from these entangling evils,
  Which so bemocked themselves, that I 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 accursed,
  Where then my spirit dwelt—but of the first
  I know not yet, was it a dream or no.
  
  But both, though not distincter, were immersed
  In hues which, when through memory's waste they flow,
  Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now.
  
  Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven
  Who brought me thither four stiff corpses bare,
  And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven
  Hung them on high by the entangled hair:
  Swarthy were three—the fourth was very fair:
  As they retired, the golden moon unsprung,
  And eagerly, out in the giddy air,
  Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung
  Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.
  
  A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue,
  The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,
  Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew
  To my dry lips—what radiance did inform
  Those horny eyes?
  
  whose was that withered form?
  
  Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna's ghost
  Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm
  Within my teeth!—A whirlwind keen as frost
  Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.
  
  Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane
  Arose, and bore me in its dark career
  Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane
  On the verge of formless space—it languished there,
  And dying, left a silence lone and drear,
  More horrible than famine:—in the deep
  The shape of an old man did then appear,
  Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep
  His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.
  
  And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw
  That column, and those corpses, and the moon,
  And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw
  My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon
  Of senseless death would be accorded soon;—
  When from that stony gloom a voice arose,
  Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune
  The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,
  And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.
  
  He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled:
  As they were loosened by that Hermit old,
  Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,
  To answer those kind looks—he did enfold
  His giant arms around me, to uphold
  My wretched frame, my scorchèd limbs he wound
  In linen moist and balmy, and as cold
  As dew to drooping leaves;—the chain, with sound
  Like earthquake, through the chasm of that steep stair did bound,
  As, lifting me, it fell!—What next I heard,
  Were billows leaping on the harbour-bar,
  And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirred
  My hair;—I looked abroad, and saw a star
  Shining beside a sail, and distant far
  That mountain and its column, the known mark
  Of those who in the wide deep wandering are,
  So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark,
  In trance had lain me thus within a fiendish bark.
  
  For now indeed, over the salt sea-billow
  I sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape
  Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow
  For my light head was hollowed in his lap,
  And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap,
  Fearing it was a fiend: at last, he bent
  O'er me his aged face, as if to snap
  Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent,
  And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.
  
  A soft and healing potion to my lips
  At intervals he raised—now looked on high,
  To mark if yet the starry giant dips
  His zone in the dim sea—now cheeringly,
  Though he said little, did he speak to me.
  
  'It is a friend beside thee—take good cheer,
  Poor victim, thou art now at liberty!'
  I joyed as those a human tone to hear,
  Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year.
  
  A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft
  Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams,
  Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft
  The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams
  Of morn descended on the ocean-streams,
  And still that aged man, so grand and mild,
  Tended me, even as some sick mother seems
  To hang in hope over a dying child,
  Till in the azure East darkness again was piled.
  
  And then the night-wind steaming from the shore,
  Sent odours dying sweet across the sea,
  And the swift boat the little waves which bore,
  Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly;
  Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see
  The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove,
  As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee
  On sidelong wing, into a silent cove,
  Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.
  
  CANTO IV
  The old man took the oars, and soon the bark
  Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone;
  It was a crumbling heap, whose portal dark
  With blooming ivy-trails was overgrown;
  Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown,
  And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood,
  Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown
  Within the walls of that gray tower, which stood
  A changeling of man's art, nursed amid Nature's brood.
  
  When the old man his boat had anchorèd,
  He wound me in his arms with tender care,
  And very few, but kindly words he said,
  And bore me through the tower adown a stair,
  Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear
  For many a year had fallen.
  
  —We came at last
  To a small chamber, which with mosses rare
  Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed
  Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.
  
  The moon was darting through the lattices
  Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day—
  So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze,
  The old man opened them; the moonlight lay
  Upon a lake whose waters wove their play
  Even to the threshold of that lonely home:
  Within was seen in the dim wavering ray
  The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome
  Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become.
  
  The rock-built barrier of the sea was past,—
  And I was on the margin of a lake,
  A lonely lake, amid the forests vast
  And snowy mountains:—did my spirit wake
  From sleep as many-coloured as the snake
  That girds eternity?
  
  in life and truth,
  Might not my heart its cravings ever slake?
  
  Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth,
  And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth?
  
  Thus madness came again,—a milder madness,
  Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flow
  With supernatural shades of clinging sadness;
  That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,
  By my sick couch was busy to and fro,
  Like a strong spirit ministrant of good:
  When I was healed, he led me forth to show
  The wonders of his sylvan solitude,
  And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.
  
  He knew his soothing words to weave with skill
  From all my madness told; like mine own heart,
  Of Cythna would he question me, until
  That thrilling name had ceased to make me start,
  From his familiar lips—it was not art,
  Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke—
  When mid soft looks of pity, there would dart
  A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke
  When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.
  
  Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,
  My thoughts their due array did re-assume
  Through the enchantments of that Hermit old;
  Then I bethought me of the glorious doom
  Of those who sternly struggle to relume
  The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot,
  And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom
  Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought—
  That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.
  
  That hoary man had spent his livelong age
  In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp
  Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page,
  When they are gone into the senseless damp
  Of graves;—his spirit thus became a lamp
  Of splendour, like to those on which it fed:
  Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp,
  Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led,
  And all the ways of men among mankind he read.
  
  But custom maketh blind and obdurate
  The loftiest hearts:—he had beheld the woe
  In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate
  Which made them abject, would preserve them so;
  And in such faith, some steadfast joy to know,
  He sought this cell: but when fame went abroad,
  That one in Argolis did undergo
  Torture for liberty, and that the crowd
  High truths from gifted lips had heard and understood;
  And that the multitude was gathering wide,—
  His spirit leaped within his aged frame,
  In lonely peace he could no more abide,
  But to the land on which the victor's flame
  Had fed, my native land, the Hermit came:
  Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue
  Was as a sword, of truth—young Laon's name
  Rallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung
  Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among.
  
  He came to the lone column on the rock,
  And with his sweet and mighty eloquence
  The hearts of those who watched it did unlock,
  And made them melt in tears of penitence.
  
  They gave him entrance free to bear me thence.
  
  'Since this,' the old man said, 'seven years are spent,
  While slowly truth on thy benighted sense
  Has crept; the hope which wildered it has lent
  Meanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent.
  
  'Yes, from the records of my youthful state,
  And from the lore of bards and sages old,
  From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create
  Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,
  Have I collected language to unfold
  Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore
  Doctrines of human power my words have told,
  They have been heard, and men aspire to more
  Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.
  
  'In secret chambers parents read, and weep,
  My writings to their babes, no longer blind;
  And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,
  And vows of faith each to the other bind;
  And marriageable maidens, who have pined
  With love, till life seemed melting through their look,
  A warmer zeal, a nobler hope now find;
  And every bosom thus is rapt and shook,
  Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain-brook.
  
  'The tyrants of the Golden City tremble
  At voices which are heard about the streets,
  The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble
  The lies of their own heart; but when one meets
  Another at the shrine, he inly weets,
  Though he says nothing, that the truth is known;
  Murderers are pale upon the judgement-seats,
  And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone,
  And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne.
  
  'Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds
  Abound, for fearless love, and the pure law
  Of mild equality and peace, succeeds
  To faiths which long have held the world in awe,
  Bloody and false, and cold:—as whirlpools draw
  All wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway
  Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw
  This hope, compels all spirits to obey,
  Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array.
  
  'For I have been thy passive instrument'—
  (As thus the old man spake, his countenance
  Gleamed on me like a spirit's)—'thou hast lent
  To me, to all, the power to advance
  Towards this unforeseen deliverance
  From our ancestral chains—ay, thou didst rear
  That lamp of hope on high, which time nor chance
  Nor change may not extinguish, and my share
  Of good, was o'er the world its gathered beams to bear.
  
  'But I, alas! am both unknown and old,
  And though the woof of wisdom I know well
  To dye in hues of language, I am cold
  In seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell,
  My manners note that I did long repel;
  But Laon's name to the tumultuous throng
  Were like the star whose beams the waves compel
  And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue
  Were as a lance to quell the mailèd crest of wrong.
  
  'Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length
  Wouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spare
  Their brethren and themselves; great is the strength
  Of words—for lately did a maiden fair,
  Who from her childhood has been taught to bear
  The tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make
  Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear,
  And with these quiet words—"For thine own sake
  I prithee spare me;"—did with ruth so take
  'All hearts, that even the torturer who had bound
  Her meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled,
  Loosened her, weeping then; nor could be found
  One human hand to harm her—unassailed
  Therefore she walks through the great City, veiled
  In virtue's adamantine eloquence,
  'Gainst scorn, and death and pain thus trebly mailed,
  And blending, in the smiles of that defence,
  The Serpent and the Dove, Wisdom and Innocence.
  
  'The wild-eyed women throng around her path:
  From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust
  Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor's wrath,
  Or the caresses of his sated lust
  They congregate:—in her they put their trust;
  The tyrants send their armèd slaves to quell
  Her power;—they, even like a thunder-gust
  Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell
  Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel.
  
  'Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach
  To woman, outraged and polluted long;
  Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach
  For those fair hands now free, while armèd wrong
  Trembles before her look, though it be strong;
  Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,
  And matrons with their babes, a stately throng!
  Lovers renew the vows which they did plight
  In early faith, and hearts long parted now unite,
  'And homeless orphans find a home near her,
  And those poor victims of the proud, no less,
  Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir,
  Thrusts the redemption of its wickedness:—
  In squalid huts, and in its palaces
  Sits Lust alone, while o'er the land is borne
  Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress
  All evil, and her foes relenting turn,
  And cast the vote of love in hope's abandoned urn.
  
  'So in the populous City, a young maiden
  Has baffled Havoc of the prey which he
  Marks as his own, whene'er with chains o'erladen
  Men make them arms to hurl down tyranny,—
  False arbiter between the bound and free;
  And o'er the land, in hamlets and in towns
  The multitudes collect tumultuously,
  And throng in arms; but tyranny disowns
  Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones.
  
  'Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed,
  The free cannot forbear—the Queen of Slaves,
  The hoodwinked Angel of the blind and dead,
  Custom, with iron mace points to the graves
  Where her own standard desolately waves
  Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings.
  
  Many yet stand in her array—"she paves
  Her path with human hearts," and o'er it flings
  The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.
  
  'There is a plain beneath the City's wall,
  Bounded by misty mountains, wide and vast,
  Millions there lift at Freedom's thrilling call
  Ten thousand standards wide, they load the blast
  Which bears one sound of many voices past,
  And startles on his throne their sceptred foe:
  He sits amid his idle pomp aghast,
  And that his power hath passed away, doth know—
  Why pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow?
  
  'The tyrant's guards resistance yet maintain:
  Fearless, and fierce, and hard as beasts of blood,
  They stand a speck amid the peopled plain;
  Carnage and ruin have been made their food
  From infancy—ill has become their good,
  And for its hateful sake their will has wove
  The chains which eat their hearts—the multitude
  Surrounding them, with words of human love,
  Seek from their own decay their stubborn minds to move.
  
  'Over the land is felt a sudden pause,
  As night and day those ruthless bands around,
  The watch of love is kept:—a trance which awes
  The thoughts of men with hope—as, when the sound
  Of whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves and clouds confound,
  Dies suddenly, the mariner in fear
  Feels silence sink upon his heart—thus bound,
  The conquerors pause, and oh! may freemen ne'er
  Clasp the relentless knees of Dread the murderer!
  'If blood be shed, 'tis but a change and choice
  Of bonds,—from slavery to cowardice
  A wretched fall!—Uplift thy charmèd voice!
  Pour on those evil men the love that lies
  Hovering within those spirit-soothing eyes—
  Arise, my friend, farewell!'—As thus he spake,
  From the green earth lightly I did arise,
  As one out of dim dreams that doth awake,
  And looked upon the depth of that reposing lake.
  
  I saw my countenance reflected there;—
  And then my youth fell on me like a wind
  Descending on still waters—my thin hair
  Was prematurely gray, my face was lined
  With channels, such as suffering leaves behind,
  Not age; my brow was pale, but in my cheek
  And lips a flush of gnawing fire did find
  Their food and dwelling; though mine eyes might speak
  A subtle mind and strong within a frame thus weak.
  
  And though their lustre now was spent and faded,
  Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien
  The likeness of a shape for which was braided
  The brightest woof of genius, still was seen—
  One who, methought, had gone from the world's scene,
  And left it vacant—'twas her lover's face—
  It might resemble her—it once had been
  The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace
  Which her mind's shadow cast, left there a lingering trace.
  
  What then was I?
  
  She slumbered with the dead.
  
  Glory and joy and peace, had come and gone.
  
  Doth the cloud perish, when the beams are fled
  Which steeped its skirts in gold?
  
  or, dark and lone,
  Doth it not through the paths of night unknown,
  On outspread wings of its own wind upborne
  Pour rain upon the earth?
  
  The stars are shown,
  When the cold moon sharpens her silver horn
  Under the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn.
  
  Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man
  I left, with interchange of looks and tears,
  And lingering speech, and to the Camp began
  My way.
  
  O'er many a mountain-chain which rears
  Its hundred crests aloft, my spirit bears
  My frame; o'er many a dale and many a moor,
  And gaily now meseems serene earth wears
  The blosmy spring's star-bright investiture,
  A vision which aught sad from sadness might allure.
  
  My powers revived within me, and I went
  As one whom winds waft o'er the bending grass,
  Through many a vale of that broad continent.
  
  At night when I reposed, fair dreams did pass
  Before my pillow;—my own Cythna was,
  Not like a child of death, among them ever;
  When I arose from rest, a woful mass
  That gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever,
  As if the light of youth were not withdrawn for ever.
  
  Aye as I went, that maiden who had reared
  The torch of Truth afar, of whose high deeds
  The Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard,
  Haunted my thoughts.
  
  —Ah, Hope its sickness feeds
  With whatso'er it finds, or flowers or weeds!
  Could she be Cythna?
  
  —Was that corpse a shade
  Such as self-torturing thought from madness breeds?
  
  Why was this hope not torture?
  
  Yet it made
  A light around my steps which would not ever fade.
  
  CANTO V
  Over the utmost hill at length I sped,
  A snowy steep:—the moon was hanging low
  Over the Asian mountains, and outspread
  The plain, the City, and the Camp below,
  Skirted the midnight Ocean's glimmering flow;
  The City's moonlit spires and myriad lamps,
  Like stars in a sublunar sky did glow,
  And fires blazed far amid the scattered camps,
  Like springs of flame, which burst where'er swift Earthquake stamps.
  
  All slept but those in watchful arms who stood,
  And those who sate tending the beacon's light,
  And the few sounds from that vast multitude
  Made silence more profound.
  
  —Oh, what a might
  Of human thought was cradled in that night!
  How many hearts impenetrably veiled
  Beat underneath its shade, what secret fight
  Evil and good, in woven passions mailed,
  Waged through that silent throng; a war that never failed!
  And now the Power of Good held victory,
  So, through the labyrinth of many a tent,
  Among the silent millions who did lie
  In innocent sleep, exultingly I went;
  The moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent
  From eastern morn the first faint lustre showed
  An armèd youth—over his spear he bent
  His downward face.
  
  —'A friend!' I cried aloud,
  And quickly common hopes made freemen understood.
  
  I sate beside him while the morning beam
  Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him
  Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme!
  Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim:
  And all the while, methought, his voice did swim
  As if it drownèd in remembrance were
  Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim:
  At last, when daylight 'gan to fill the air,
  He looked on me, and cried in wonder—'Thou art here!'
  Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth
  In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;
  But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,
  And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,
  And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,
  Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded;
  The truth now came upon me, on the ground
  Tears of repenting joy, which fast intruded,
  Fell fast, and o'er its peace our mingling spirits brooded.
  
  Thus, while with rapid lips and earnest eyes
  We talked, a sound of sweeping conflict spread
  As from the earth did suddenly arise;
  From every tent roused by that clamour dread,
  Our bands outsprung and seized their arms—we sped
  Towards the sound: our tribes were gathering far.
  
  Those sanguine slaves amid ten thousand dead
  Stabbed in their sleep, trampled in treacherous war
  The gentle hearts whose power their lives had sought to spare.
  
  Like rabid snakes, that sting some gentle child
  Who brings them food, when winter false and fair
  Allures them forth with its cold smiles, so wild
  They rage among the camp;—they overbear
  The patriot hosts—confusion, then despair
  Descends like night—when 'Laon!' one did cry:
  Like a bright ghost from Heaven that shout did scare
  The slaves, and widening through the vaulted sky,
  Seemed sent from Earth to Heaven in sign of victory.
  
  In sudden panic those false murderers fled,
  Like insect tribes before the northern gale:
  But swifter still, our hosts encompassèd
  Their shattered ranks, and in a craggy vale,
  Where even their fierce despair might nought avail,
  Hemmed them around!—and then revenge and fear
  Made the high virtue of the patriots fail:
  One pointed on his foe the mortal spear—
  I rushed before its point, and cried, 'Forbear, forbear!'
  The spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted
  In swift expostulation, and the blood
  Gushed round its point: I smiled, and—'Oh! thou gifted
  With eloquence which shall not be withstood,
  Flow thus!'—I cried in joy, 'thou vital flood,
  Until my heart be dry, ere thus the cause
  For which thou wert aught worthy be subdued—
  Ah, ye are pale,—ye weep,—your passions pause,—
  'Tis well! ye feel the truth of love's benignant laws.
  
  'Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain.
  
  Ye murdered them, I think, as they did sleep!
  Alas, what have ye done?
  
  the slightest pain
  Which ye might suffer, there were eyes to weep,
  But ye have quenched them—there were smiles to steep
  Your hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe;
  And those whom love did set his watch to keep
  Around your tents, truth's freedom to bestow,
  Ye stabbed as they did sleep—but they forgive ye now.
  
  'Oh wherefore should ill ever flow from ill,
  And pain still keener pain for ever breed?
  
  We all are brethren—even the slaves who kill
  For hire, are men; and to avenge misdeed
  On the misdoer, doth but Misery feed
  With her own broken heart! O Earth, O Heaven!
  And thou, dread Nature, which to every deed
  And all that lives or is, to be hath given,
  Even as to thee have these done ill, and are forgiven!
  'Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past
  Be as a grave which gives not up its dead
  To evil thoughts.
  
  '—A film then overcast
  My sense with dimness, for the wound, which bled
  Freshly, swift shadows o'er mine eyes had shed.
  
  When I awoke, I lay mid friends and foes,
  And earnest countenances on me shed
  The light of questioning looks, whilst one did close
  My wound with balmiest herbs, and soothed me to repose;
  And one whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside,
  With quivering lips and humid eyes;—and all
  Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide
  Gone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall
  In a strange land, round one whom they might call
  Their friend, their chief, their father, for assay
  Of peril, which had saved them from the thrall
  Of death, now suffering.
  
  Thus the vast array
  Of those fraternal bands were reconciled that day.
  
  Lifting the thunder of their acclamation,
  Towards the City then the multitude,
  And I among them, went in joy—a nation
  Made free by love;—a mighty 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 passed.
  
  Our armies through the City's hundred gates
  Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair
  Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits,
  Throng from the mountains when the storms are there
  And, as we passed through the calm sunny air
  A thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed,
  The token flowers of truth and freedom fair,
  And fairest hands bound them on many a head,
  Those angels of love's heaven, that over all was spread.
  
  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.
  
  And they, and all, in one loud symphony
  My name with Liberty commingling, lifted,
  'The friend and the preserver of the free!
  The parent of this joy!' and fair eyes gifted
  With feelings, caught from one who had uplifted
  The light of a great spirit, round me shone;
  And all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted
  Like restless clouds before the steadfast sun,—
  Where was that Maid?
  
  I asked, but it was known of none.
  
  Laone was the name her love had chosen,
  For she was nameless, and her birth none knew:
  Where was Laone now?
  
  —The words were frozen
  Within my lips with fear; but to subdue
  Such dreadful hope, to my great task was due,
  And when at length one brought reply, that she
  To-morrow would appear, I then withdrew
  To judge what need for that great throng might be,
  For now the stars came thick over the twilight sea.
  
  Yet need was none for rest or food to care,
  Even though that multitude was passing great,
  Since each one for the other did prepare
  All kindly succour—Therefore to the gate
  Of the Imperial House, now desolate,
  I passed, and there was found aghast, alone,
  The fallen Tyrant!—Silently he sate
  Upon the footstool of his golden throne,
  Which, starred with sunny gems, in its own lustre shone.
  
  Alone, but for one child, who led before him
  A graceful dance: the only living thing
  Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him
  Flocked yesterday, who solace sought to bring
  In his abandonment!—She knew the King
  Had praised her dance of yore, and now she wove
  Its circles, aye weeping and murmuring
  Mid her sad task of unregarded love,
  That to no smiles it might his speechless sadness move.
  
  She fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet
  When human steps were heard:—he moved nor spoke,
  Nor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet
  The gaze of strangers—our loud entrance woke
  The echoes of the hall, which circling broke
  The calm of its recesses,—like a tomb
  Its sculptured walls vacantly to the stroke
  Of footfalls answered, and the twilight's gloom
  Lay like a charnel's mist within the radiant dome.
  
  The little child stood up when we came nigh;
  Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan,
  But on her forehead, and within her eye
  Lay beauty, which makes hearts that feed thereon
  Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne
  She leaned;—the King, with gathered brow, and lips
  Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown
  With hue like that when some great painter dips
  His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
  
  She stood beside him like a rainbow braided
  Within some storm, when scarce its shadows vast
  From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded;
  A sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna's, cast
  One moment's light, which made my heart beat fast,
  O'er that child's parted lips—a gleam of bliss,
  A shade of vanished days,—as the tears passed
  Which wrapped it, even as with a father's kiss
  I pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness.
  
  The sceptred wretch then from that solitude
  I drew, and, of his change compassionate,
  With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood.
  
  But he, while pride and fear held deep debate,
  With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate
  Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare:
  Pity, not scorn I felt, though desolate
  The desolator now, and unaware
  The curses which he mocked had caught him by the hair.
  
  I led him forth from that which now might seem
  A gorgeous grave: through portals sculptured deep
  With imagery beautiful as dream
  We went, and left the shades which tend on sleep
  Over its unregarded gold to keep
  Their silent watch.
  
  —The child trod faintingly,
  And as she went, the tears which she did weep
  Glanced in the starlight; wildered seemèd she,
  And when I spake, for sobs she could not answer me.
  
  At last the tyrant cried, 'She hungers, slave,
  Stab her, or give her bread!'—It was a tone
  Such as sick fancies in a new-made grave
  Might hear.
  
  I trembled, for the truth was known;
  He with this child had thus been left alone,
  And neither had gone forth for food,—but he
  In mingled pride and awe cowered near his throne,
  And she a nursling of captivity
  Knew nought beyond those walls, nor what such change might be.
  
  And he was troubled at a charm withdrawn
  Thus suddenly; that sceptres ruled no more—
  That even from gold the dreadful strength was gone,
  Which once made all things subject to its power—
  Such wonder seized him, as if hour by hour
  The past had come again; and the swift fall
  Of one so great and terrible of yore,
  To desolateness, in the hearts of all
  Like wonder stirred, who saw such awful change befall.
  
  A mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours
  Once in a thousand years, now gathered round
  The fallen tyrant;—like the rush of showers
  Of hail in spring, pattering along the ground,
  Their many footsteps fell, else came no sound
  From the wide multitude: that lonely man
  Then knew the burden of his change, and found,
  Concealing in the dust his visage wan,
  Refuge from the keen looks which through his bosom ran.
  
  And he was faint withal: I sate beside him
  Upon the earth, and took that child so fair
  From his weak arms, that ill might none betide him
  Or her;—when food was brought to them, her share
  To his averted lips the child did bear,
  But, when she saw he had enough, she ate
  And wept the while;—the lonely man's despair
  Hunger then overcame, and of his state
  Forgetful, on the dust as in a trance he sate.
  
  Slowly the silence of the multitudes
  Passed, as when far is heard in some lone dell
  The gathering of a wind among the woods—
  'And he is fallen!' they cry, 'he who did dwell
  Like famine or the plague, or aught more fell
  Among our homes, is fallen! the murderer
  Who slaked his thirsting soul as from a well
  Of blood and tears with ruin! he is here!
  Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none may him rear!'
  Then was heard—'He who judged let him be brought
  To judgement! blood for blood cries from the soil
  On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!
  Shall Othman only unavenged despoil?
  
  Shall they who by the stress of grinding toil
  Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries,
  Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil,
  Or creep within his veins at will?
  
  —Arise!
  And to high justice make her chosen sacrifice.
  
  '
  'What do ye seek?
  
  what fear ye,' then I cried,
  Suddenly starting forth, 'that ye should shed
  The blood of Othman?
  
  —if your hearts are tried
  In the true love of freedom, cease to dread
  This one poor lonely man—beneath Heaven spread
  In purest light above us all, through earth
  Maternal earth, who doth her sweet smiles shed
  For all, let him go free; until the worth
  Of human nature win from these a second birth.
  
  'What call ye justice?
  
  Is there one who ne'er
  In secret thought has wished another's ill?
  
  —
  Are ye all pure?
  
  Let those stand forth who hear,
  And tremble not.
  
  Shall they insult and kill,
  If such they be?
  
  their mild eyes can they fill
  With the false anger of the hypocrite?
  
  Alas, such were not pure,—the chastened will
  Of virtue sees that justice is the light
  Of love, and not revenge, and terror and despite.
  
  '
  The murmur of the people, slowly dying,
  Paused as I spake, then those who near me were,
  Cast gentle looks where the lone man was lying
  Shrouding his head, which now that infant fair
  Clasped on her lap in silence;—through the air
  Sobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet
  In pity's madness, and to the despair
  Of him whom late they cursed, a solace sweet
  His very victims brought—soft looks and speeches meet.
  
  Then to a home for his repose assigned,
  Accompanied by the still throng he went
  In silence, where, to soothe his rankling mind,
  Some likeness of his ancient state was lent;
  And if his heart could have been innocent
  As those who pardoned him, he might have ended
  His days in peace; but his straight lips were bent,
  Men said, into a smile which guile portended,
  A sight with which that child like hope with fear was blended.
  
  '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 recall
  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 forth 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 tossed,
  While the eternal hills, and the sea lost
  In wavering light, and, starring the blue sky
  The city's myriad spires of gold, almost
  With human joy made mute society—
  Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be.
  
  To see, like some vast island from the Ocean,
  The Altar of the Federation rear
  Its pile i' the midst; a work, which the devotion
  Of millions in one night created there,
  Sudden, as when the moonrise makes 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 for ever
  Around the base of that great Altar flow,
  As on some mountain-islet burst and shiver
  Atlantic waves; and solemnly and slow
  As the wind bore that tumult to and fro,
  To feel the dreamlike music, which did swim
  Like beams through floating clouds on waves below
  Falling in pauses, from that Altar dim
  As silver-sounding tongues breathed an aëreal 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,
  And mine was one,—and we had both dissembled;
  So with a beating heart I went, 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 choirs 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 kissed
  With their cold lips, fled, and the summit shone
  Like Athos seen from Samothracia, dressed
  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 enchant
  The faiths of men: all mortal eyes were drawn,
  As famished mariners through strange seas gone
  Gaze on a burning watch-tower, by the light
  Of those divinest lineaments—alone
  With thoughts which none could share, from that fair sight
  I turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded her countenance bright.
  
  And, neither did I hear the acclamations,
  Which from brief silence bursting, filled the air
  With her strange name and mine, from all the nations
  Which we, they said, in strength had gathered there
  From the sleep of bondage; nor the vision fair
  Of that bright pageantry beheld,—but blind
  And silent, as a breathing corpse did fare,
  Leaning upon my friend, till like a wind
  To fevered cheeks, a voice flowed o'er my troubled mind.
  
  Like music of some minstrel heavenly-gifted,
  To one whom fiends enthral, this voice to me;
  Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted,
  I was so calm and joyous.
  
  —I could see
  The platform where we stood, the statues three
  Which kept their marble watch on that high shrine,
  The multitudes, the mountains, and the sea;
  As when eclipse hath passed, things sudden shine
  To men's astonished eyes most clear and crystalline.
  
  At first Laone spoke most tremulously:
  But soon her voice the calmness which it shed
  Gathered, and—'Thou art whom I sought to see,
  And thou art our first votary here,' she said:
  'I had a dear friend once, but he is dead!—
  And of all those on the wide earth who breathe,
  Thou dost resemble him alone—I spread
  This veil between us two, that thou beneath
  Shouldst image one who may have been long lost in death.
  
  'For this wilt thou not henceforth pardon me?
  
  Yes, but those joys which silence well requite
  Forbid reply;—why men have chosen me
  To be the Priestess of this holiest rite
  I scarcely know, but that the floods of light
  Which flow over the world, have borne me hither
  To meet thee, long most dear; and now unite
  Thine hand with mine, and may all comfort wither
  From both the hearts whose pulse in joy now beat together,
  'If our own will as others' law we bind,
  If the foul worship trampled here we fear;
  If as ourselves we cease to love our kind!'—
  She paused, and pointed upwards—sculptured there
  Three shapes around her ivory throne appear;
  One was a Giant, like a child asleep
  On a loose rock, whose grasp crushed, as it were
  In dream, sceptres and crowns; and one did keep
  Its watchful eyes in doubt whether to smile or weep;
  A Woman sitting on the sculptured disk
  Of the broad earth, and feeding from one breast
  A human babe and a young basilisk;
  Her looks were sweet as Heaven's when loveliest
  In Autumn eves.
  
  The third Image was dressed
  In white wings swift as clouds in winter skies;
  Beneath his feet, 'mongst ghastliest forms, repressed
  Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise,
  While calmly on the Sun he turned his diamond eyes.
  
  Beside that Image then I sate, while she
  Stood, mid the throngs which ever ebbed and flowed,
  Like light amid the shadows of the sea
  Cast from one cloudless star, and on the crowd
  That touch which none who feels forgets, bestowed;
  And whilst the sun returned the steadfast gaze
  Of the great Image, as o'er Heaven it glode,
  That rite had place; it ceased when sunset's blaze
  Burned o'er the isles.
  
  All stood in joy and deep amaze—
  —When in the silence of all spirits there
  Laone's voice was felt, and through the air
  Her thrilling gestures spoke, most eloquently fair:—
  '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 through them burning:
  Nature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure,
  Or Sympathy the sad tears turning
  To mutual smiles, a drainless treasure,
  Descends amidst us;—Scorn, and Hate,
  Revenge and Selfishness are desolate—
  A hundred nations swear that there shall be
  Pity and Peace and Love, among the good and free!
  '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 clasp thy sacred feet.
  
  'My brethren, we are free! the plains and mountains,
  The gray sea-shore, the forests and the fountains,
  Are haunts of happiest dwellers;—man and woman,
  Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow
  From lawless love a solace for their sorrow;
  For oft we still must weep, since we are human.
  
  A stormy night's serenest morrow,
  Whose showers are pity's gentle tears,
  Whose clouds are smiles of those that die
  Like infants without hopes or fears,
  And whose beams are joys that lie
  In blended hearts, now holds dominion;
  The dawn of mind, which upwards on a pinion
  Borne, swift as sunrise, far illumines space,
  And clasps this barren world in its own bright embrace!
  '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,
  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 charmèd name he hear,
  Shall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes,
  While Truth with Joy enthroned o'er his lost empire reigns!'
  Ere she had ceased, the mists of night entwining
  Their dim woof, floated o'er the infinite throng;
  She, like a spirit through the darkness shining,
  In tones whose sweetness silence did prolong,
  As if to lingering winds they did belong,
  Poured forth her inmost soul: a passionate speech
  With wild and thrilling pauses woven among,
  Which whoso heard, was mute, for it could teach
  To rapture like her own all listening hearts to reach.
  
  Her voice was as a mountain-stream which sweeps
  The withered leaves of Autumn to the lake,
  And in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps
  In the shadow of the shores; as dead leaves wake
  Under the wave, in flowers and herbs which make
  Those green depths beautiful when skies are blue,
  The multitude so moveless did partake
  Such living change, and kindling murmurs flew
  As o'er that speechless calm delight and wonder grew.
  
  Over the plain the throngs were scattered then
  In groups around the fires, which from the sea
  Even to the gorge of the first mountain-glen
  Blazed wide and far: the banquet of the free
  Was spread beneath many a dark cypress-tree,
  Beneath whose spires, which swayed in the red flame,
  Reclining, as they ate, of Liberty,
  And Hope, and Justice, and Laone's name,
  Earth's children did a woof of happy converse frame.
  
  Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother,
  Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles
  In the embrace of Autumn;—to each other
  As when some parent fondly reconciles
  Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles
  With her own sustenance; they relenting weep:
  Such was this Festival, which from their isles
  And continents, and winds, and oceans deep,
  All shapes might throng to share, that fly, or walk, or creep,
  Might share in peace and innocence, for gore
  Or poison none this festal did pollute,
  But piled on high, an overflowing store
  Of pomegranates, and citrons, fairest fruit,
  Melons, and dates, and figs, and many a root
  Sweet and sustaining, and bright grapes ere yet
  Accursed fire their mild juice could transmute
  Into a mortal bane, and brown corn set
  In baskets; with pure streams their thirsting lips they wet.
  
  Laone had descended from the shrine,
  And every deepest look and holiest mind
  Fed on her form, though now those tones divine
  Were silent as she passed; she did unwind
  Her veil, as with the crowds of her own kind
  She mixed; some impulse made my heart refrain
  From seeking her that night, so I reclined
  Amidst a group, where on the utmost plain
  A festal watchfire burned beside the dusky main.
  
  And joyous was our feast; pathetic talk,
  And wit, and harmony of choral strains,
  While far Orion o'er the waves did walk
  That flow among the isles, held us in chains
  Of sweet captivity, which none disdains
  Who feels: but when his zone grew dim in mist
  Which clothes the Ocean's bosom, o'er the plains
  The multitudes went homeward, to their rest,
  Which that delightful day with its own shadow blessed.
  
  CANTO VI
  Beside the dimness of the glimmering sea,
  Weaving swift language from impassioned themes,
  With that dear friend I lingered, who to me
  So late had been restored, beneath the gleams
  Of the silver stars; and ever in soft dreams
  Of future love and peace sweet converse lapped
  Our willing fancies, till the pallid beams
  Of the last watchfire fell, and darkness wrapped
  The waves, and each bright chain of floating fire was snapped;
  And till we came even to the City's wall
  And the great gate; then, none knew whence or why,
  Disquiet on the multitudes did fall:
  And first, one pale and breathless passed us by,
  And stared and spoke not;—then with piercing cry
  A troop of wild-eyed women, by the shrieks
  Of their own terror driven,—tumultuously
  Hither and thither hurrying with pale cheeks,
  Each one from fear unknown a sudden refuge seeks—
  Then, rallying cries of treason and of danger
  Resounded: and—'They come! to arms! to arms!
  The Tyrant is amongst us, and the stranger
  Comes to enslave us in his name! to arms!'
  In vain: for Panic, the pale fiend who charms
  Strength to forswear her right, those millions swept
  Like waves before the tempest—these alarms
  Came to me, as to know their cause I lept
  On the gate's turret, and in rage and grief and scorn I wept!
  For to the North I saw the town on fire,
  And its red light made morning pallid now,
  Which burst over wide Asia;—louder, higher,
  The yells of victory and the screams of woe
  I heard approach, and saw the throng below
  Stream through the gates like foam-wrought waterfalls
  Fed from a thousand storms—the fearful glow
  Of bombs flares overhead—at intervals
  The red artillery's bolt mangling among them falls.
  
  And now the horsemen come—and all was done
  Swifter than I have spoken—I beheld
  Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun.
  
  I rushed among the rout, to have repelled
  That miserable flight—one moment quelled
  By voice and looks and eloquent despair,
  As if reproach from their own hearts withheld
  Their steps, they stood; but soon came pouring there
  New multitudes, and did those rallied bands o'erbear.
  
  I strove, as, drifted on some cataract
  By irresistible streams, some wretch might strive
  Who hears its fatal roar:—the files compact
  Whelmed me, and from the gate availed to drive
  With quickening impulse, as each bolt did rive
  Their ranks with bloodier chasm:—into the plain
  Disgorged at length the dead and the alive
  In one dread mass, were parted, and the stain
  Of blood, from mortal steel fell o'er the fields like rain.
  
  For now the despot's bloodhounds with their prey
  Unarmed and unaware, were gorging deep
  Their gluttony of death; the loose array
  Of horsemen o'er the wide fields murdering sweep,
  And with loud laughter for their tyrant reap
  A harvest sown with other hopes, the while,
  Far overhead, ships from Propontis keep
  A killing rain of fire:—when the waves smile
  As sudden earthquakes light many a volcano-isle,
  Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread
  For the carrion-fowls of Heaven.
  
  —I saw the sight—
  I moved—I lived—as o'er the heaps of dead,
  Whose stony eyes glared in the morning light
  I trod;—to me there came no thought of flight,
  But with loud cries of scorn which whoso heard
  That dreaded death, felt in his veins the might
  Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred,
  And desperation's hope in many hearts recurred.
  
  A band of brothers gathering round me, made,
  Although unarmed, a steadfast front, and still
  Retreating, with stern looks beneath the shade
  Of gathered eyebrows, did the victors fill
  With doubt even in success; deliberate will
  Inspired our growing troop, not overthrown
  It gained the shelter of a grassy hill,
  And ever still our comrades were hewn down,
  And their defenceless limbs beneath our footsteps strown.
  
  Immovably we stood—in joy I found,
  Beside me then, firm as a giant pine
  Among the mountain-vapours driven around,
  The old man whom I loved—his eyes divine
  With a mild look of courage answered mine,
  And my young friend was near, and ardently
  His hand grasped mine a moment—now the line
  Of war extended, to our rallying cry
  As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die.
  
  For ever while the sun was climbing Heaven
  The horseman hewed our unarmed myriads down
  Safely, though when by thirst of carnage driven
  Too near, those slaves were swiftly overthrown
  By hundreds leaping on them:—flesh and bone
  Soon made our ghastly ramparts; then the shaft
  Of the artillery from the sea was thrown
  More fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed
  In pride to hear the wind our screams of torment waft.
  
  For on one side alone the hill gave shelter,
  So vast that phalanx of unconquered men,
  And there the living in the blood did welter
  Of the dead and dying, which, in that green glen,
  Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen
  Under the feet—thus was the butchery waged
  While the sun clomb Heaven's eastern steep—but when
  It 'gan to sink—a fiercer combat raged,
  For in more doubtful strife the armies were engaged.
  
  Within a cave upon the hill were found
  A bundle of rude pikes, the instrument
  Of those who war but on their native ground
  For natural rights: a shout of joyance sent
  Even from our hearts the wide air pierced and rent.
  
  As those few arms the bravest and the best
  Seized, and each sixth, thus armed, did now present
  A line which covered and sustained the rest,
  A confident phalanx, which the foe on every side invest.
  
  That onset turned the foes to flight almost;
  But soon they saw their present strength, and knew
  That coming night would to our resolute host
  Bring victory; so dismounting, close they drew
  Their glittering files, and then the combat grew
  Unequal but most horrible;—and ever
  Our myriads, whom the swift bolt overthrew,
  Or the red sword, failed like a mountain-river
  Which rushes forth in foam to sink in sands for ever.
  
  Sorrow and shame, to see with their own kind
  Our human brethren mix, like beasts of blood,
  To mutual ruin armed by one behind
  Who sits and scoffs!—That friend so mild and good,
  Who like its shadow near my youth had stood,
  Was stabbed!—my old preserver's hoary hair
  With the flesh clinging to its roots, was strewed
  Under my feet!—I lost all sense or care,
  And like the rest I grew desperate and unaware.
  
  The battle became ghastlier—in the midst
  I paused, and saw, how ugly and how fell
  O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd'st
  For love.
  
  The ground in many a little dell
  Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell
  Alternate victory and defeat, and there
  The combatants with rage most horrible
  Strove, and their eyes started with 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
  Thou loathèd slave.
  
  I saw all shapes of death
  And ministered to many, o'er the plain
  While carnage in the sunbeam's warmth did seethe,
  Till twilight o'er the east wove her serenest wreath.
  
  The few who yet survived, resolute and firm
  Around me fought.
  
  At the decline of day
  Winding above the mountain's snowy term
  New banners shone: they quivered in the ray
  Of the sun's unseen orb—ere night the array
  Of fresh troops hemmed us in—of those brave bands
  I soon survived alone—and now I lay
  Vanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands
  I felt, and saw on high the glare of falling brands:
  When on my foes a sudden terror came,
  And they fled, scattering—lo! with reinless speed
  A black Tartarian horse of giant frame
  Comes trampling over the dead, the living bleed
  Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed,
  On which, like to an Angel, robed in white,
  Sate one waving a sword;—the hosts recede
  And fly, as through their ranks with awful might,
  Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift and bright;
  And its path made a solitude.
  
  —I rose
  And marked its coming: it relaxed its course
  As it approached me, and the wind that flows
  Through night, bore accents to mine ear whose force
  Might create smiles in death—the Tartar horse
  Paused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed,
  And heard her musical pants, like the sweet source
  Of waters in the desert, as she said,
  'Mount with me Laon, now!'—I rapidly obeyed.
  
  Then: 'Away! away!' she cried, and stretched her sword
  As 'twere a scourge over the courser's head,
  And lightly shook the reins.
  
  —We spake no word,
  But like the vapour of the tempest fled
  Over the plain; her dark hair was dispread
  Like the pine's locks upon the lingering blast;
  Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread
  Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast,
  As o'er their glimmering forms the steed's broad shadow passed.
  
  And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust,
  His strong sides made the torrents rise in spray,
  And turbulence, as of a whirlwind's gust
  Surrounded us;—and still away! away!
  Through the desert night we sped, while she alway
  Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest,
  Crowned with a marble ruin, in the ray
  Of the obscure stars gleamed;—its rugged breast
  The steed strained up, and then his impulse did arrest.
  
  A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean:—
  From that lone ruin, when the steed that panted
  Paused, might be heard the murmur of the motion
  Of waters, as in spots for ever haunted
  By the choicest winds of Heaven, which are enchanted
  To music, by the wand of Solitude,
  That wizard wild, and the far tents implanted
  Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood
  Thence marking the dark shore of Ocean's curved flood.
  
  One moment these were heard and seen—another
  Passed; and the two who stood beneath that night,
  Each only heard, or saw, or felt the other;
  As from the lofty steed she did alight,
  Cythna, (for, from the eyes whose deepest light
  Of love and sadness made my lips feel pale
  With influence strange of mournfullest delight,
  My own sweet Cythna looked), with joy did quail,
  And felt her strength in tears of human weakness fail.
  
  And for a space in my embrace she rested,
  Her head on my unquiet heart reposing,
  While my faint arms her languid frame invested:
  At length she looked on me, and half unclosing
  Her tremulous lips, said: 'Friend, thy bands were losing
  The battle, as I stood before the King
  In bonds.
  
  —I burst them then, and swiftly choosing
  The time, did seize a Tartar's sword, and spring
  Upon his horse, and, swift as on the whirlwind's wing,
  'Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer,
  And we are here.
  
  '—Then turning to the steed,
  She pressed the white moon on his front with pure
  And rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed
  From the green ruin plucked, that he might feed;—
  But I to a stone seat that Maiden led,
  And kissing her fair eyes, said, 'Thou hast need
  Of rest,' and I heaped up the courser's bed
  In a green mossy nook, with mountain-flowers dispread.
  
  Within that ruin, where a shattered portal
  Looks to the eastern stars, abandoned now
  By man, to be the home of things immortal,
  Memories, like awful ghosts which come and go,
  And must inherit all he builds below,
  When he is gone, a hall stood; o'er whose roof
  Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,
  Clasping its gray rents with a verdurous woof,
  A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.
  
  The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made
  A natural couch of leaves in that recess,
  Which seasons none disturbed, but, in the shade
  Of flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress
  With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness
  Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars, whene'er
  The wandering wind her nurslings might caress;
  Whose intertwining fingers ever there
  Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.
  
  We know not where we go, or what sweet dream
  May pilot us through caverns strange and fair
  Of far and pathless passion, while the stream
  Of life, our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,
  Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air;
  Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion
  Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there
  Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean
  Of universal life, attuning its commotion.
  
  To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapped
  Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow
  Of public hope was from our being snapped,
  Though linkèd years had bound it there; for now
  A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below
  All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere,
  Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,
  Came on us, as we sate in silence there,
  Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air:—
  In silence which doth follow talk that causes
  The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,
  When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses
  Of inexpressive speech:—the youthful years
  Which we together passed, their hopes and fears,
  The blood itself which ran within our frames,
  That likeness of the features which endears
  The thoughts expressed by them, our very names,
  And all the wingèd hours which speechless memory claims,
  Had found a voice—and ere that voice did pass,
  The night grew damp and dim, and through a rent
  Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass,
  A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent,
  Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent
  A faint and pallid lustre; while the song
  Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent,
  Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among;
  A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit's tongue.
  
  The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate,
  And Cythna's glowing arms, and the thick ties
  Of her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight
  My neck near hers, her dark and deepening eyes,
  Which, as twin phantoms of one star that lies
  O'er a dim well, move, though the star reposes,
  Swam in our mute and liquid ecstasies,
  Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,
  With their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses.
  
  The Meteor to its far morass returned:
  The beating of our veins one interval
  Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned
  Within her frame, mingle with mine, and fall
  Around my heart like fire; and over all
  A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep
  And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall
  Two disunited spirits when they leap
  In union from this earth's obscure and fading sleep.
  
  Was it one moment that confounded thus
  All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one
  Unutterable power, which shielded us
  Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone
  Into a wide and wild oblivion
  Of tumult and of tenderness?
  
  or now
  Had ages, such as make the moon and sun,
  The seasons, and mankind their changes know,
  Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?
  
  I know not.
  
  What are kisses whose fire clasps
  The failing heart in languishment, or limb
  Twined within limb?
  
  or the quick dying gasps
  Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim
  Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,
  In one caress?
  
  What is the strong control
  Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb,
  Where far over the world those vapours roll,
  Which blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?
  
  It is the shadow which doth float unseen,
  But not unfelt, o'er blind mortality,
  Whose divine darkness fled not, from that green
  And lone recess, where lapped in peace did lie
  Our linkèd frames till, from the changing sky,
  That night and still another day had fled;
  And then I saw and felt.
  
  The moon was high,
  And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread
  Under its orb,—loud winds were gathering overhead.
  
  Cythna's sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon,
  Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill,
  And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn
  O'er her pale bosom:—all within was still,
  And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill
  The depth of her unfathomable look;—
  And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill,
  The waves contending in its caverns strook,
  For they foreknew the storm, and the gray ruin shook.
  
  There we unheeding sate, in the communion
  Of interchangèd vows, which, with a rite
  Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.
  
  —
  Few were the living hearts which could unite
  Like ours, or celebrate a bridal-night
  With such close sympathies, for they had sprung
  From linkèd youth, and from the gentle might
  Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long,
  Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong.
  
  And such is Nature's law divine, that those
  Who grow together cannot choose but love,
  If faith or custom do not interpose,
  Or common slavery mar what else might move
  All gentlest thoughts; as in the sacred grove
  Which shades the springs of Ethiopian Nile,
  That living tree, which, if the arrowy dove
  Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile,
  But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sunbeams smile;
  And clings to them, when darkness may dissever
  The close caresses of all duller plants
  Which bloom on the wide earth—thus we for ever
  Were linked, for love had nursed us in the haunts
  Where knowledge, from its secret source enchants
  Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing,
  Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants,
  As the great Nile feeds Egypt; ever flinging
  Light on the woven boughs which o'er its waves are swinging.
  
  The tones of Cythna's voice like echoes were
  Of those far murmuring streams; they rose and fell.
  
  Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air,
  And so we sate, until our talk befell
  Of the late ruin, swift and horrible,
  And how those seeds of hope might yet be sown,
  Whose fruit is evil's mortal poison: well,
  For us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone,
  But Cythna's eyes looked faint, and now two days were gone
  Since she had food:—therefore I did awaken
  The Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane
  Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken,
  Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein,
  Following me obediently; with pain
  Of heart, so deep and dread, that one caress,
  When lips and heart refuse to part again
  Till they have told their fill, could scarce express
  The anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness,
  Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode
  That willing steed—the tempest and the night,
  Which gave my path its safety as I rode
  Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite
  The darkness and the tumult of their might
  Borne on all winds.
  
  —Far through the streaming rain
  Floating at intervals the garments white
  Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again
  Came to me on the gust, and soon I reached the plain.
  
  I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he
  Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red
  Turned on the lightning's cleft exultingly;
  And when the earth beneath his tameless tread,
  Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread
  His nostrils to the blast, and joyously
  Mock the fierce peal with neighings;—thus we sped
  O'er the lit plain, and soon I could descry
  Where Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of victory.
  
  There was a desolate village in a wood
  Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now scattering fed
  The hungry storm; it was a place of blood,
  A heap of hearthless walls;—the flames were dead
  Within those dwellings now,—the life had fled
  From all those corpses now,—but the wide sky
  Flooded with lightning was ribbed overhead
  By the black rafters, and around did lie
  Women, and babes, and men, slaughtered confusedly.
  
  Beside the fountain in the market-place
  Dismounting, I beheld those corpses stare
  With horny eyes upon each other's face,
  And on the earth and on the vacant air,
  And upon me, close to the waters where
  I stooped to slake my thirst;—I shrank to taste,
  For the salt bitterness of blood was there;
  But tied the steed beside, and sought in haste
  If any yet survived amid that ghastly waste.
  
  No living thing was there beside one woman,
  Whom I found wandering in the streets, and she
  Was withered from a likeness of aught human
  Into a fiend, by some strange misery:
  Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me,
  And glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed
  With a loud, long, and frantic laugh of glee,
  And cried, 'Now, Mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed
  The Plague's blue kisses—soon millions shall pledge the draught!
  'My name is Pestilence—this bosom dry,
  Once fed two babes—a sister and a brother—
  When I came home, one in the blood did lie
  Of three death-wounds—the flames had ate the other!
  Since then I have no longer been a mother,
  But I am Pestilence;—hither and thither
  I flit about, that I may slay and smother:—
  All lips which I have kissed must surely wither,
  But Death's—if thou art he, we'll go to work together!
  'What seek'st thou here?
  
  The moonlight comes in flashes,—
  The dew is rising dankly from the dell—
  'Twill moisten her! and thou shalt see the gashes
  In my sweet boy, now full of worms—but tell
  First what thou seek'st.
  
  '—'I seek for food.
  
  '—'Tis well,
  Thou shalt have food; Famine, my paramour,
  Waits for us at the feast—cruel and fell
  Is Famine, but he drives not from his door
  Those whom these lips have kissed, alone.
  
  No more, no more!
  As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength
  Of madness, and by many a ruined hearth
  She led, and over many a corpse:—at length
  We came to a lone hut where on the earth
  Which made its floor, she in her ghastly mirth
  Gathering from all those homes now desolate,
  Had piled three heaps of loaves, making a dearth
  Among the dead—round which she set in state
  A ring of cold, stiff babes; silent and stark they sate.
  
  She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high
  Her mad looks to the lightning, and cried: 'Eat!
  Share the great feast—to-morrow we must die!'
  And then she spurned the loaves with her pale feet,
  Towards her bloodless guests;—that sight to meet,
  Mine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she
  Who loved me, did with absent looks defeat
  Despair, I might have raved in sympathy;
  But now I took the food that woman offered me;
  And vainly having with her madness striven
  If I might win her to return with me,
  Departed.
  
  In the eastern beams of Heaven
  The lightning now grew pallid—rapidly,
  As by the shore of the tempestuous sea
  The dark steed bore me, and the mountain gray
  Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see
  Cythna among the rocks, where she alway
  Had sate, with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering day.
  
  And joy was ours to meet: she was most pale,
  Famished, and wet and weary, so I cast
  My arms around her, lest her steps should fail
  As to our home we went, and thus embraced,
  Her full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste
  Than e'er the prosperous know; the steed behind
  Trod peacefully along the mountain waste:
  We reached our home ere morning could unbind
  Night's latest veil, and on our bridal-couch reclined.
  
  Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom,
  And sweetest kisses past, we two did share
  Our peaceful meal:—as an autumnal blossom
  Which spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air,
  After cold showers, like rainbows woven there,
  Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit
  Mantled, and in her eyes, an atmosphere
  Of health, and hope; and sorrow languished near it,
  And fear, and all that dark despondence doth inherit.
  
  CANTO VII
  So we sate joyous as the morning ray
  Which fed upon the wrecks of night and storm
  Now lingering on the winds; light airs did play
  Among the dewy weeds, the sun was warm,
  And we sate linked in the inwoven charm
  Of converse and caresses sweet and deep,
  Speechless caresses, talk that might disarm
  Time, though he wield the darts of death and sleep,
  And those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison steep.
  
  I told her of my sufferings and my madness,
  And how, awakened from that dreamy mood
  By Liberty's uprise, the strength of gladness
  Came to my spirit in my solitude;
  And all that now I was—while tears pursued
  Each other down her fair and listening cheek
  Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood
  From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak,
  Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake.
  
  She told me a strange tale of strange endurance,
  Like broken memories of many a heart
  Woven into one; to which no firm assurance,
  So wild were they, could her own faith impart.
  
  She said that not a tear did dare to start
  From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm
  When from all mortal hope she did depart,
  Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term,
  And that she reached the port without one fear infirm.
  
  One was she among many there, the thralls
  Of the cold Tyrant's cruel lust: and they
  Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;
  But she was calm and sad, musing alway
  On loftiest enterprise, till on a day
  The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute
  A wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay,
  Like winds that die in wastes—one moment mute
  The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast pollute.
  
  Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness,
  One moment to great Nature's sacred power
  He bent, and was no longer passionless;
  But when he bade her to his secret bower
  Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore
  Her locks in agony, and her words of flame
  And mightier looks availed not; then he bore
  Again his load of slavery, and became
  A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.
  
  She told me what a loathsome agony
  Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight,
  Foul as in dream's most fearful imagery
  To dally with the mowing dead—that night
  All torture, fear, or horror made seem light
  Which the soul dreams or knows, and when the day
  Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight
  Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay
  Struggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant fled away.
  
  Her madness was a beam of light, a power
  Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave,
  Gestures, and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore
  Which might not be withstood—whence none could save—
  All who approached their sphere,—like some calm wave
  Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath;
  And sympathy made each attendant slave
  Fearless and free, and they began to breathe
  Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.
  
  The King felt pale upon his noonday throne:
  At night two slaves he to her chamber sent,—
  One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown
  From human shape into an instrument
  Of all things ill—distorted, bowed and bent.
  
  The other was a wretch from infancy
  Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant
  But to obey: from the fire-isles came he,
  A diver lean and strong, of Oman's coral sea.
  
  They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke
  Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas,
  Until upon their path the morning broke;
  They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze,
  The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades
  Shakes with the sleepless surge;—the Ethiop there
  Wound his long arms around her, and with knees
  Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her
  Among the closing waves out of the boundless air.
  
  'Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain
  Of morning light, into some shadowy wood,
  He plunged through the green silence of the main,
  Through many a cavern which the eternal flood
  Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood;
  And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,
  And among mightier shadows which pursued
  His heels, he wound: until the dark rocks under
  He touched a golden chain—a sound arose like thunder.
  
  'A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling
  Beneath the deep—a burst of waters driven
  As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling:
  And in that roof of crags a space was riven
  Through which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,
  Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven,
  Like sunlight through acacia woods at even,
  Through which, his way the diver having cloven,
  Passed like a spark sent up out of a burning oven.
  
  'And then,' she said, 'he laid me in a cave
  Above the waters, by that chasm of sea,
  A fountain round and vast, in which the wave
  Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually,
  Down which, one moment resting, he did flee,
  Winning the adverse depth; that spacious cell
  Like an hupaithric temple wide and high,
  Whose aëry dome is inaccessible,
  Was pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell.
  
  'Below, the fountain's brink was richly paven
  With the deep's wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand
  Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven
  With mystic legends by no mortal hand,
  Left there, when thronging to the moon's command,
  The gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate
  Of mountains, and on such bright floor did stand
  Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state
  Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create.
  
  'The fiend of madness which had made its prey
  Of my poor heart, was lulled to sleep awhile:
  There was an interval of many a day,
  And a sea-eagle brought me food the while,
  Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle,
  And who, to be the gaoler had been taught
  Of that strange dungeon; as a friend whose smile
  Like light and rest at morn and even is sought
  That wild bird was to me, till madness misery brought.
  
  'The misery of a madness slow and creeping,
  Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air,
  And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping,
  In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair,
  Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there;
  And the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore
  Thy mangled limbs for food!—Thus all things were
  Transformed into the agony which I wore
  Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom's core.
  
  'Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing,
  The eagle, and the fountain, and the air;
  Another frenzy came—there seemed a being
  Within me—a strange load my heart did bear,
  As if some living thing had made its lair
  Even in the fountains of my life:—a long
  And wondrous vision wrought from my despair,
  Then grew, like sweet reality among
  Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng.
  
  'Methought I was about to be a mother—
  Month after month went by, and still I dreamed
  That we should soon be all to one another,
  I and my child; and still new pulses seemed
  To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed
  There was a babe within—and, when the rain
  Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed,
  Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain,
  I saw that lovely shape, which near my heart had lain.
  
  'It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,—
  It was like thee, dear love, its eyes were thine,
  Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth
  It laid its fingers, as now rest on mine
  Thine own, belovèd!—'twas a dream divine;
  Even to remember how it fled, how swift,
  How utterly, might make the heart repine,—
  Though 'twas a dream.
  
  '—Then Cythna did uplift
  Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift:
  A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness
  Of questioning grief, a source of thronging tears:
  Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress
  She spoke: 'Yes, in the wilderness of years
  Her memory, aye, like a green home appears;
  She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love,
  For many months.
  
  I had no mortal fears;
  Methought I felt her lips and breath approve,—
  It was a human thing which to my bosom clove.
  
  'I watched the dawn of her first smiles, and soon
  When zenith-stars were trembling on the wave,
  Or when the beams of the invisible moon,
  Or sun, from many a prism within the cave
  Their gem-born shadows to the water gave,
  Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand.
  
  From the swift lights which might that fountain pave.
  
  She would mark one, and laugh, when that command
  Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.
  
  'Methought her looks began to talk with me;
  And no articulate sounds, but something sweet
  Her lips would frame,—so sweet it could not be,
  That it was meaningless; her touch would meet
  Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat
  In response while we slept; and on a day
  When I was happiest in that strange retreat,
  With heaps of golden shells we two did play,—
  Both infants, weaving wings for time's perpetual way.
  
  'Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown
  Weary with joy, and tired with our delight,
  We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down
  On one fair mother's bosom:—from that night
  She fled;—like those illusions clear and bright,
  Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high
  Pause ere it wakens tempest;—and her flight,
  Though 'twas the death of brainless fantasy,
  Yet smote my lonesome heart more than all misery.
  
  'It seemed that in the dreary night, the diver
  Who brought me thither, came again, and bore
  My child away.
  
  I saw the waters quiver,
  When he so swiftly sunk, as once before:
  Then morning came—it shone even as of yore,
  But I was changed—the very life was gone
  Out of my heart—I wasted more and more,
  Day after day, and sitting there alone,
  Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.
  
  'I was no longer mad, and yet methought
  My breasts were swoln and changed:—in every vein
  The blood stood still one moment, while that thought
  Was passing—with a gush of sickening pain
  It ebbed even to its withered springs again:
  When my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned
  From that most strange delusion, which would fain
  Have waked the dream for which my spirit yearned
  With more than human love,—then left it unreturned.
  
  'So now my reason was restored to me
  I struggled with that dream, which, like a beast
  Most fierce and beauteous, in my memory
  Had made its lair, and on my heart did feast;
  But all that cave and all its shapes, possessed
  By thoughts which could not fade, renewed each one
  Some smile, some look, some gesture which had blessed
  Me heretofore: I, sitting there alone,
  Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.
  
  'Time passed, I know not whether months or years;
  For day, nor night, nor change of seasons made
  Its note, but thoughts and unavailing tears:
  And I became at last even as a shade,
  A smoke, a cloud on which the winds have preyed,
  Till it be thin as air; until, one even,
  A Nautilus upon the fountain played,
  Spreading his azure sail where breath of Heaven
  Descended not, among the waves and whirlpools driven.
  
  'And, when the Eagle came, that lovely thing,
  Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat,
  Fled near me as for shelter; on slow wing,
  The Eagle, hovering o'er his prey did float;
  But when he saw that I with fear did note
  His purpose, proffering my own food to him,
  The eager plumes subsided on his throat—
  He came where that bright child of sea did swim,
  And o'er it cast in peace his shadow broad and dim.
  
  'This wakened me, it gave me human strength;
  And hope, I know not whence or wherefore, rose,
  But I resumed my ancient powers at length;
  My spirit felt again like one of those
  Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes
  Of humankind their prey—what was this cave?
  
  Its deep foundation no firm purpose knows
  Immutable, resistless, strong to save,
  Like mind while yet it mocks the all-devouring grave.
  
  'And where was Laon?
  
  might my heart be dead,
  While that far dearer heart could move and be?
  
  Or whilst over the earth the pall was spread,
  Which I had sworn to rend?
  
  I might be free,
  Could I but win that friendly bird to me,
  To bring me ropes; and long in vain I sought
  By intercourse of mutual imagery
  Of objects, if such aid he could be taught;
  But fruit, and flowers, and boughs, yet never ropes he brought.
  
  'We live in our own world, and mine was made
  From glorious fantasies of hope departed:
  Aye we are darkened with their floating shade,
  Or cast a lustre on them—time imparted
  Such power to me—I became fearless-hearted,
  My eye and voice grew firm, calm was my mind,
  And piercing, like the morn, now it has darted
  Its lustre on all hidden things, behind
  Yon dim and fading clouds which load the weary wind.
  
  'My mind became the book through which I grew
  Wise in all human wisdom, and its cave,
  Which like a mine I rifled through and through,
  To me the keeping of its secrets gave—
  One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave
  Whose calm reflects all moving things that are,
  Necessity, and love, and life, the grave,
  And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear;
  Justice, and truth, and time, and the world's natural sphere.
  
  'And on the sand would I make signs to range
  These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought;
  Clear, elemental shapes, whose smallest change
  A subtler language within language wrought:
  The key of truths which once were dimly taught
  In old Crotona;—and sweet melodies
  Of love, in that lorn solitude I caught
  From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes
  Shone through my sleep, and did that utterance harmonize.
  
  'Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at will,
  As in a wingèd chariot, o'er the plain
  Of crystal youth; and thou wert there to fill
  My heart with joy, and there we sate again
  On the gray margin of the glimmering main.
  
  Happy as then but wiser far, for we
  Smiled on the flowery grave in which were lain
  Fear, Faith, and Slavery; and mankind was free,
  Equal, and pure, and wise, in Wisdom's prophecy.
  
  'For to my will my fancies were as slaves
  To do their sweet and subtile ministries;
  And oft from that bright fountain's shadowy waves
  They would make human throngs gather and rise
  To combat with my overflowing eyes,
  And voice made deep with passion—thus I grew
  Familiar with the shock and the surprise
  And war of earthly minds, from which I drew
  The power which has been mine to frame their thoughts anew.
  
  'And thus my prison was the populous earth—
  Where I saw—even as misery dreams of morn
  Before the east has given its glory birth—
  Religion's pomp made desolate by the scorn
  Of Wisdom's faintest smile, and thrones uptorn,
  And dwellings of mild people interspersed
  With undivided fields of ripening corn,
  And love made free,—a hope which we have nursed
  Even with our blood and tears,—until its glory burst.
  
  'All is not lost! There is some recompense
  For hope whose fountain can be thus profound,
  Even thronèd Evil's splendid impotence,
  Girt by its hell of power, the secret sound
  Of hymns to truth and freedom—the dread bound
  Of life and death passed fearlessly and well,
  Dungeons wherein the high resolve is found,
  Racks which degraded woman's greatness tell,
  And what may else be good and irresistible.
  
  'Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that flare
  In storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet
  In this dark ruin—such were mine even there;
  As in its sleep some odorous violet,
  While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet,
  Breathes in prophetic dreams of day's uprise,
  Or, as ere Scythian frost in fear has met
  Spring's messengers descending from the skies,
  The buds foreknow their life—this hope must ever rise.
  
  'So years had passed, when sudden earthquake rent
  The depth of ocean, and the cavern cracked
  With sound, as if the world's wide continent
  Had fallen in universal ruin wracked:
  And through the cleft streamed in one cataract
  The stifling waters—when I woke, the flood
  Whose banded waves that crystal cave had sacked
  Was ebbing round me, and my bright abode
  Before me yawned—a chasm desert, and bare, and broad.
  
  'Above me was the sky, beneath the sea:
  I stood upon a point of shattered stone,
  And heard loose rocks rushing tumultuously
  With splash and shock into the deep—anon
  All ceased, and there was silence wide and lone.
  
  I felt that I was free! The Ocean-spray
  Quivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone
  Around, and in my hair the winds did play
  Lingering as they pursued their unimpeded way.
  
  'My spirit moved upon the sea like wind
  Which round some thymy cape will lag and hover,
  Though it can wake the still cloud, and unbind
  The strength of tempest: day was almost over,
  When through the fading light I could discover
  A ship approaching—its white sails were fed
  With the north wind—its moving shade did cover
  The twilight deep;—the Mariners in dread
  Cast anchor when they saw new rocks around them spread.
  
  'And when they saw one sitting on a crag,
  They sent a boat to me;—the Sailors rowed
  In awe through many a new and fearful jag
  Of overhanging rock, through which there flowed
  The foam of streams that cannot make abode.
  
  They came and questioned me, but when they heard
  My voice, they became silent, and they stood
  And moved as men in whom new love had stirred
  Deep thoughts: so to the ship we passed without a word.
  
  CANTO VIII
  'I sate beside the Steersman then, and gazing
  Upon the west, cried, "Spread the sails! Behold!
  The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing
  Over the mountains yet;—the City of Gold
  Yon Cape alone does from the sight withhold;
  The stream is fleet—the north breathes steadily
  Beneath the stars, they tremble with the cold!
  Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea!—
  Haste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny!"
  'The Mariners obeyed—the Captain stood
  Aloof, and, whispering to the Pilot, said,
  "Alas, alas! I fear we are pursued
  By wicked ghosts: a Phantom of the Dead,
  The night before we sailed, came to my bed
  In dream, like that!" The Pilot then replied,
  "It cannot be—she is a human Maid—
  Her low voice makes you weep—she is some bride,
  Or daughter of high birth—she can be nought beside.
  
  "
  'We passed the islets, borne by wind and stream,
  And as we sailed, the Mariners came near
  And thronged around to listen;—in the gleam
  Of the pale moon I stood, as one whom fear
  May not attaint, and my calm voice did rear;
  "Ye all are human—yon broad moon gives light
  To millions who the selfsame likeness wear,
  Even while I speak—beneath this very night,
  Their thoughts flow on like ours, in sadness or delight.
  
  '"What dream ye?
  
  Your own hands have built an home,
  Even for yourselves on a beloved shore:
  For some, fond eyes are pining till they come,
  How they will greet him when his toils are o'er,
  And laughing babes rush from the well-known door!
  Is this your care?
  
  ye toil for your own good—
  Ye feel and think—has some immortal power
  Such purposes?
  
  or in a human mood,
  Dream ye some Power thus builds for man in solitude?
  
  '"What is that Power?
  
  Ye mock yourselves, and give
  A human heart to what ye cannot know:
  As if the cause of life could think and live!
  'Twere as if man's own works should feel, and show
  The hopes, and fears, and thoughts from which they flow,
  And he be like to them! Lo! Plague is free
  To waste, Blight, Poison, Earthquake, Hail, and Snow,
  Disease, and Want, and worse Necessity
  Of hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny!
  '"What is that Power?
  
  Some moon-struck sophist stood
  Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown
  Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood
  The Form he saw and worshipped was his own,
  His likeness in the world's vast mirror shown;
  And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faith
  Nursed by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon.
  
  And that men say, that Power has chosen Death
  On all who scorn its laws, to wreak immortal wrath.
  
  '"Men say that they themselves have heard and seen,
  Or known from others who have known such things,
  A Shade, a Form, which Earth and Heaven between
  Wields an invisible rod—that Priests and Kings,
  Custom, domestic sway, ay, all that brings
  Man's freeborn soul beneath the oppressor's heel,
  Are his strong ministers, and that the stings
  Of death will make the wise his vengeance feel,
  Though truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel.
  
  '"And it is said, this Power will punish wrong;
  Yes, add despair to crime, and pain to pain!
  And deepest hell, and deathless snakes among,
  Will bind the wretch on whom is fixed a stain,
  Which, like a plague, a burden, and a bane,
  Clung to him while he lived;—for love and hate,
  Virtue and vice, they say are difference vain—
  The will of strength is right—this human state
  Tyrants, that they may rule, with lies thus desolate.
  
  '"Alas, what strength?
  
  Opinion is more frail
  Than yon dim cloud now fading on the moon
  Even while we gaze, though it awhile avail
  To hide the orb of truth—and every throne
  Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow, rests thereon,
  One shape of many names:—for this ye plough
  The barren waves of ocean, hence each one
  Is slave or tyrant; all betray and bow,
  Command, or kill, or fear, or wreak, or suffer woe.
  
  '"Its names are each a sign which maketh holy
  All power—ay, the ghost, the dream, the shade
  Of power—lust, falsehood, hate, and pride, and folly;
  The pattern whence all fraud and wrong is made,
  A law to which mankind has been betrayed;
  And human love, is as the name well known
  Of a dear mother, whom the murderer laid
  In bloody grave, and into darkness thrown,
  Gathered her wildered babes around him as his own.
  
  '"O Love, who to the hearts of wandering men
  Art as the calm to Ocean's weary waves!
  Justice, or Truth, or Joy! those only can
  From slavery and religion's labyrinth caves
  Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves.
  
  To give to all an equal share of good,
  To track the steps of Freedom, though through graves
  She pass, to suffer all in patient mood,
  To weep for crime, though stained with thy friend's dearest blood,—
  '"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 sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone,
  To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe;
  To live, as if to love and live were one,—
  This is not faith or law, nor those who bow
  To thrones on Heaven or Earth, such destiny may know.
  
  '"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,
  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; through 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.
  
  '"Whence come ye, friends?
  
  from pouring human blood
  Forth on the earth?
  
  Or bring ye steel and gold,
  That Kings may dupe and slay the multitude?
  
  Or from the famished poor, pale, weak, and cold,
  Bear ye the earnings of their toil?
  
  Unfold!
  Speak! Are your hands in slaughter's sanguine hue
  Stained freshly?
  
  have your hearts in guile grown old?
  
  Know yourselves thus! ye shall be pure as dew,
  And I will be a friend and sister unto you.
  
  '"Disguise it not—we have one human heart—
  All mortal thoughts confess a common home:
  Blush not for what may to thyself impart
  Stains of inevitable crime: the doom
  Is this, which has, or may, or must become
  Thine, and all humankind's.
  
  Ye are the spoil
  Which Time thus marks for the devouring tomb,
  Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil
  Wherewith ye twine the rings of life's perpetual coil.
  
  '"Disguise it not—ye blush for what ye hate,
  And Enmity is sister unto Shame;
  Look on your mind—it is the book of fate—
  Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name
  Of misery—all are mirrors of the same;
  But the dark fiend who with his iron pen
  Dipped in scorn's fiery poison, makes his fame
  Enduring there, would o'er the heads of men
  Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.
  
  '"Yes, it is Hate—that shapeless fiendly thing
  Of many names, all evil, some divine,
  Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting;
  Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwine
  Is wasted quite, and when it doth repine
  To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside
  It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine
  When Amphisbæna 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.
  
  '"Speak thou! whence come ye?
  
  "—A Youth made reply:
  "Wearily, wearily o'er the boundless deep
  We sail;—thou readest well the misery
  Told in these faded eyes, but much doth sleep
  Within, which there the poor heart loves to keep,
  Or dare not write on the dishonoured brow;
  Even from our childhood have we learned to steep
  The bread of slavery in the tears of woe,
  And never dreamed of hope or refuge until now.
  
  '"Yes—I must speak—my secret should have perished
  Even with the heart it wasted, as a brand
  Fades in the dying flame whose life it cherished,
  But that no human bosom can withstand
  Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command
  Of thy keen eyes:—yes, we are wretched slaves,
  Who from their wonted loves and native land
  Are reft, and bear o'er the dividing waves
  The unregarded prey of calm and happy graves.
  
  '"We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest
  Among the daughters of those mountains lone,
  We drag them there, where all things best and rarest
  Are stained and trampled:—years have come and gone
  Since, like the ship which bears me, I have known
  No thought;—but now the eyes of one dear Maid
  On mine with light of mutual love have shone—
  She is my life,—I am but as the shade
  Of her,—a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade.
  
  '"For she must perish in the Tyrant's hall—
  Alas, alas!"—He ceased, and by the sail
  Sate cowering—but his sobs were heard by all,
  And still before the ocean and the gale
  The ship fled fast till the stars 'gan to fail,
  And, round me gathered with mute countenance,
  The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale
  With toil, the Captain with gray locks, whose glance
  Met mine in restless awe—they stood as in a trance.
  
  '"Recede not! pause not now! Thou art grown old,
  But Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth
  Are children of one mother, even Love—behold!
  The eternal stars gaze on us!—is the truth
  Within your soul?
  
  care for your own, or ruth
  For others' sufferings?
  
  do ye thirst to bear
  A heart which not the serpent Custom's tooth
  May violate?
  
  —Be free! and even here,
  Swear to be firm till death!" They cried "We swear! We swear!"
  'The very darkness shook, as with a blast
  Of subterranean thunder, at the cry;
  The hollow shore its thousand echoes cast
  Into the night, as if the sea, and sky,
  And earth, rejoiced with new-born liberty,
  For in that name they swore! Bolts were undrawn,
  And on the deck, with unaccustomed eye
  The captives gazing stood, and every one
  Shrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance shone.
  
  'They were earth's purest children, young and fair,
  With eyes the shrines of unawakened thought,
  And brows as bright as Spring or Morning, ere
  Dark time had there its evil legend wrought
  In characters of cloud which wither not.
  
  —
  The change was like a dream to them; but soon
  They knew the glory of their altered lot,
  In the bright wisdom of youth's breathless noon,
  Sweet talk, and smiles, and sighs, all bosoms did attune.
  
  'But one was mute, her cheeks and lips most fair,
  Changing their hue like lilies newly blown,
  Beneath a bright acacia's shadowy hair,
  Waved by the wind amid the sunny noon,
  Showed that her soul was quivering; and full soon
  That Youth arose, and breathlessly did look
  On her and me, as for some speechless boon:
  I smiled, and both their hands in mine I took,
  And felt a soft delight from what their spirits shook.
  
  CANTO IX
  'That night we anchored in a woody bay,
  And sleep no more around us dared to hover
  Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away,
  It shades the couch of some unresting lover,
  Whose heart is now at rest: thus night passed over
  In mutual joy:—around, a forest grew
  Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover
  The waning stars pranked in the waters blue,
  And trembled in the wind which from the morning flew.
  
  'The joyous Mariners, and each free Maiden,
  Now brought from the deep forest many a bough,
  With woodland spoil most innocently laden;
  Soon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow
  Over the mast and sails, the stern and prow
  Were canopied with blooming boughs,—the while
  On the slant sun's path o'er the waves we go
  Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle
  Doomed to pursue those waves that cannot cease to smile.
  
  'The many ships spotting the dark blue deep
  With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,
  In fear and wonder; and on every steep
  Thousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry,
  Like Earth's own voice lifted unconquerably
  To all her children, the unbounded mirth,
  The glorious joy of thy name—Liberty!
  They heard!—As o'er the mountains of the earth
  From peak to peak leap on the beams of Morning's birth:
  'So from that cry over the boundless hills
  Sudden was caught one universal sound,
  Like a volcano's voice, whose thunder fills
  Remotest skies,—such glorious madness found
  A path through human hearts with stream which drowned
  Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom's brood;
  They knew not whence it came, but felt around
  A wide contagion poured—they called aloud
  On Liberty—that name lived on the sunny flood.
  
  'We reached the port.
  
  —Alas! from many spirits
  The wisdom which had waked that cry, was fled,
  Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits
  From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread,
  Upon the night's devouring darkness shed:
  Yet soon bright day will burst—even like a chasm
  Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead,
  Which wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm,
  To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake's spasm!
  'I walked through the great City then, but free
  From shame or fear; those toil-worn Mariners
  And happy Maidens did encompass me;
  And like a subterranean wind that stirs
  Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears
  From every human soul, a murmur strange
  Made as I passed: and many wept, with tears
  Of joy and awe, and winged thoughts did range,
  And half-extinguished words, which prophesied of change.
  
  'For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid
  Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love,—
  As one who from some mountain's pyramid
  Points to the unrisen sun!—the shades approve
  His truth, and flee from every stream and grove.
  
  Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,—
  Wisdom, the mail of tried affections wove
  For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill,
  Thrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable will.
  
  'Some said I was a maniac wild and lost;
  Some, that I scarce had risen from the grave,
  The Prophet's virgin bride, a heavenly ghost:—
  Some said, I was a fiend from my weird cave,
  Who had stolen human shape, and o'er the wave,
  The forest, and the mountain came;—some said
  I was the child of God, sent down to save
  Women from bonds and death, and on my head
  The burden of their sins would frightfully be laid.
  
  'But soon my human words found sympathy
  In human hearts: the purest and the best,
  As friend with friend, made common cause with me,
  And they were few, but resolute;—the rest,
  Ere yet success the enterprise had blessed,
  Leagued with me in their hearts;—their meals, their slumber,
  Their hourly occupations, were possessed
  By hopes which I had armed to overnumber
  Those hosts of meaner cares, which life's strong wings encumber.
  
  'But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken
  From their cold, careless, willing slavery,
  Sought me: one truth their dreary prison has shaken,—
  They looked around, and lo! they became free!
  Their many tyrants sitting desolately
  In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;
  For wrath's red fire had withered in the eye,
  Whose lightning once was death,—nor fear, nor gain
  Could tempt one captive now to lock another's chain.
  
  'Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt
  Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,
  Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt
  In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,
  A pause of hope and awe the City bound,
  Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth,
  When in its awful shadow it has wound
  The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,
  Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.
  
  'Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky,
  By winds from distant regions meeting there,
  In the high name of truth and liberty,
  Around the City millions gathered were.
  
  By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,—
  Words which the lore of truth in hues of flame
  Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air
  Like homeless odours floated, and the name
  Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.
  
  'The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,
  The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event—
  That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,
  And whatsoe'er, when force is impotent,
  To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,
  Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.
  
  Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent
  To curse the rebels.
  
  —To their gods did they
  For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way.
  
  'And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell
  From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,
  How glorious Athens in her splendour fell,
  Because her sons were free,—and that among
  Mankind, the many to the few belong,
  By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.
  
  They said, that age was truth, and that the young
  Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,
  With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.
  
  'And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips
  They breathed on the enduring memory
  Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse;
  There was one teacher, who necessity
  Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind,
  His slave and his avenger aye to be;
  That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,
  And that the will of one was peace, and we
  Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery—
  '"For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter.
  
  "
  So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied;
  Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter
  Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride
  Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;
  And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,
  And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,
  Said, that the rule of men was over now,
  And hence, the subject world to woman's will must bow;
  'And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine
  Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.
  
  In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine
  As they were wont, nor at the priestly call
  Left Plague her banquet in the Ethiop's hall,
  Nor Famine from the rich man's portal came,
  Where at her ease she ever preys on all
  Who throng to kneel for food: nor fear nor shame,
  Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope's newly kindled flame.
  
  'For gold was as a god whose faith began
  To fade, so that its worshippers were few,
  And Faith itself, which in the heart of man
  Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew
  Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,
  Till the Priests stood alone within the fane;
  The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,
  And the cold sneers of calumny were vain,
  The union of the free with discord's brand to stain.
  
  'The rest thou knowest.
  
  —Lo! we two are here—
  We have survived a ruin wide and deep—
  Strange thoughts are mine.
  
  —I cannot grieve or fear,
  Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep
  I smile, though human love should make me weep.
  
  We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,
  And I do feel a mighty calmness creep
  Over my heart, which can no longer borrow
  Its hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.
  
  'We know not what will come—yet Laon, dearest,
  Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love,
  Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,
  To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove
  Within the homeless Future's wintry grove;
  For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem
  Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,
  And violence and wrong are as a dream
  Which rolls from steadfast truth, an unreturning stream.
  
  'The blasts of Autumn drive the wingèd seeds
  Over the earth,—next come the snows, and rain,
  And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads
  Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;
  Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,
  Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;
  Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,
  And music on the waves and woods she flings,
  And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.
  
  'O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness
  Wind-wingèd emblem! brightest, best and fairest!
  Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter's sadness
  The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?
  
  Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest
  Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet;
  Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest
  Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,
  Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.
  
  '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 enchanter'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 gray 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,
  Expiring in the frore and foggy air.
  
  —
  Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made
  The promise of its birth,—even as the shade
  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 gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.
  
  '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 though some envious shades may interlope
  Between the effect and it, One comes behind,
  Who aye the future to the past will bind—
  Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever
  Evil with evil, good with good must wind
  In bands of union, which no power may sever:
  They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!
  '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 steadfast 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 all that we have been,
  Immortally must live, and burn and move,
  When we shall be no more;—the world has seen
  A type of peace; and—as some most serene
  And lovely spot to a poor maniac's eye,
  After long years, some sweet and moving scene
  Of youthful hope, returning suddenly,
  Quells his long madness—thus man shall remember thee.
  
  'And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us,
  As worms devour the dead, and near the throne
  And at the altar, most accepted thus
  Shall sneers and curses be;—what we have done
  None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known;
  That record shall remain, when they must pass
  Who built their pride on its oblivion;
  And fame, in human hope which sculptured was,
  Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.
  
  'The while we two, belovèd, must depart,
  And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,
  Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart
  That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair:
  These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there
  To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep
  Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,
  Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep
  In joy;—but senseless death—a ruin dark and deep!
  'These are blind fancies—reason cannot know
  What sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive;
  There is delusion in the world—and woe,
  And fear, and pain—we know not whence we live,
  Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give
  Their being to each plant, and star, and beast,
  Or even these thoughts.
  
  —Come near me! I do weave
  A chain I cannot break—I am possessed
  With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.
  
  'Yes, yes—thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm—
  O! willingly, belovèd, would these eyes,
  Might they no more drink being from thy form,
  Even as to sleep whence we again arise,
  Close their faint orbs in death: I fear nor prize
  Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee—
  Yes, Love when Wisdom fails makes Cythna wise:
  Darkness and death, if death be true, must be
  Dearer than life and hope, if unenjoyed with thee.
  
  'Alas, our thoughts flow on with stream, whose waters
  Return not to their fountain—Earth and Heaven,
  The Ocean and the Sun, the Clouds their daughters,
  Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even,
  All that we are or know, is darkly driven
  Towards one gulf.
  
  —Lo! what a change is come
  Since I first spake—but time shall be forgiven,
  Though it change all but thee!'—She ceased—night's gloom
  Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky's sunless dome.
  
  Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted
  To Heaven, still spake, with solemn glory bright;
  Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted
  The air they breathed with love, her locks undight.
  
  'Fair star of life and love,' I cried, 'my soul's delight,
  Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?
  
  O, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night,
  Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!'
  She turned to me and smiled—that smile was Paradise!
  CANTO X
  Was there a human spirit in the steed,
  That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,
  He broke our linkèd rest?
  
  or do indeed
  All living things a common nature own,
  And thought erect an universal throne,
  Where many shapes one tribute ever bear?
  
  And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan
  To see her sons contend?
  
  and makes she bare
  Her breast, that all in peace its drainless stores may share?
  
  I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue
  Which was not human—the lone nightingale
  Has answered me with her most soothing song,
  Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale
  With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale
  The antelopes who flocked for food have spoken
  With happy sounds, and motions, that avail
  Like man's own speech; and such was now the token
  Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.
  
  Each night, that mighty steed bore me abroad,
  And I returned with food to our retreat,
  And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed
  Over the fields, had stained the courser's feet;
  Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew,—then meet
  The vulture, and the wild dog, and the snake,
  The wolf, and the hyæna gray, and eat
  The dead in horrid truce: their throngs did make
  Behind the steed, a chasm like waves in a ship's wake.
  
  For, from the utmost realms of earth, came pouring
  The banded slaves whom every despot sent
  At that throned traitor's summons; like the roaring
  Of fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent
  In the scorched pastures of the South; so bent
  The armies of the leaguèd Kings around
  Their files of steel and flame;—the continent
  Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound,
  Beneath their feet, the sea shook with their Navies' sound.
  
  From every nation of the earth they came,
  The multitude of moving heartless things,
  Whom slaves call men: obediently they came,
  Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings
  To the stall, red with blood; their many kings
  Led them, thus erring, from their native land;
  Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings
  Of Indian breezes lull, and many a band
  The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea's sand,
  Fertile in prodigies and lies;—so there
  Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.
  
  The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear
  His Asian shield and bow, when, at the will
  Of Europe's subtler son, the bolt would kill
  Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure;
  But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill,
  And savage sympathy: those slaves impure,
  Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.
  
  For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe
  His countenance in lies,—even at the hour
  When he was snatched from death, then o'er the globe,
  With secret signs from many a mountain-tower,
  With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power
  Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,
  He called:—they knew his cause their own, and swore
  Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars
  Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.
  
  Myriads had come—millions were on their way;
  The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel
  Of hired assassins, through the public way,
  Choked with his country's dead:—his footsteps reel
  On the fresh blood—he smiles.
  
  'Ay, now I feel
  I am a King in truth!' he said, and took
  His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel
  Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,
  And scorpions; that his soul on its revenge might look.
  
  'But first, go slay the rebels—why return
  The victor bands?
  
  ' he said, 'millions yet live,
  Of whom the weakest with one word might turn
  The scales of victory yet;—let none survive
  But those within the walls—each fifth shall give
  The expiation for his brethren here.
  
  —
  Go forth, and waste and kill!'—'O king, forgive
  My speech,' a soldier answered—'but we fear
  The spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near;
  'For we were slaying still without remorse,
  And now that dreadful chief beneath my hand
  Defenceless lay, when, on a hell-black horse,
  An Angel bright as day, waving a brand
  Which flashed among the stars, passed.
  
  '—'Dost thou stand
  Parleying with me, thou wretch?
  
  ' the king replied;
  'Slaves, bind him to the wheel; and of this band,
  Whoso will drag that woman to his side
  That scared him thus, may burn his dearest foe beside;
  'And gold and glory shall be his.
  
  —Go forth!'
  They rushed into the plain.
  
  —Loud was the roar
  Of their career: the horsemen shook the earth;
  The wheeled artillery's speed the pavement tore;
  The infantry, file after file, did pour
  Their clouds on the utmost hills.
  
  Five days they slew
  Among the wasted fields; the sixth saw gore
  Stream through the city; on the seventh, the dew
  Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:
  Peace in the desert fields and villages,
  Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead!
  Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries
  Of victims to their fiery judgement led,
  Made pale their voiceless lips who seemed to dread
  Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue
  Be faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed;
  Peace in the Tyrant's palace, where the throng
  Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song!
  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 rotting vapour passed
  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 deserts; 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.
  
  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 chase
  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 aëreal 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 foretell:—
  Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread
  Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell,
  A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread
  With the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings 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 burden of a new despair;
  Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter
  Feeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping there
  With lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and Slaughter,
  A ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe's sullen water.
  
  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 wingèd 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
  Through hunger, bared her scornèd 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 sheathèd 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 his fiery torture howl and rave,
  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 through their bursting veins;
  Naked they were from torture, without shame,
  Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains,
  Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.
  
  It was not thirst but madness! Many saw
  Their own lean image everywhere, it went
  A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe
  Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent
  Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,
  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,
  As if not dead, but 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 gray,
  The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile
  Comes Plague, a wingèd wolf, who loathes alway
  The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.
  
  So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast,
  Sheathed in resplendent arms, or loosely dight
  To luxury, ere the mockery yet had ceased
  That lingered on his lips, the warrior's might
  Was loosened, and a new and ghastlier night
  In dreams of frenzy lapped his eyes; he fell
  Headlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate upright
  Among the guests, or raving mad, did tell
  Strange truths; a dying seer of dark oppression's hell.
  
  The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror;
  That monstrous faith wherewith they ruled mankind,
  Fell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman's error,
  On their own hearts: they sought and they could find
  No refuge—'twas the blind who led the blind!
  So, through the desolate streets to the high fane,
  The many-tongued and endless armies wind
  In sad procession: each among the train
  To his own Idol lifts his supplications vain.
  
  'O God!' they cried, 'we know our secret pride
  Has scorned thee, and thy worship, and thy name;
  Secure in human power we have defied
  Thy fearful might; we bend in fear and shame
  Before thy presence; with the dust we claim
  Kindred; be merciful, O King of Heaven!
  Most justly have we suffered for thy fame
  Made dim, but be at length our sins forgiven,
  Ere to despair and death thy worshippers be driven.
  
  'O King of Glory! thou alone hast power!
  Who can resist thy will?
  
  who can restrain
  Thy wrath, when on the guilty thou dost shower
  The shafts of thy revenge, a blistering rain?
  
  Greatest and best, be merciful again!
  Have we not stabbed thine enemies, and made
  The Earth an altar, and the Heavens a fane,
  Where thou wert worshipped with their blood, and laid
  Those hearts in dust which would thy searchless works have weighed?
  
  'Well didst thou loosen on this impious City
  Thine angels of revenge: recall them now;
  Thy worshippers, abased, here kneel for pity,
  And bind their souls by an immortal vow:
  We swear by thee! and to our oath do thou
  Give sanction, from thine hell of fiends and flame,
  That we will kill with fire and torments slow,
  The last of those who mocked thy holy name,
  And scorned the sacred laws thy prophets did proclaim.
  
  Thus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips
  Worshipped their own hearts' image, dim and vast,
  Scared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse
  The light of other minds;—troubled they passed
  From the great Temple;—fiercely still and fast
  The arrows of the plague among them fell,
  And they on one another gazed aghast,
  And through the hosts contention wild befell,
  As each of his own god the wondrous works did tell.
  
  And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,
  Moses and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,
  A tumult of strange names, which never met
  Before, as watchwords of a single woe,
  Arose; each raging votary 'gan to throw
  Aloft his armèd hands, and each did howl
  'Our God alone is God!'—and slaughter now
  Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl
  A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.
  
  'Twas an Iberian Priest from whom it came,
  A zealous man, who led the legioned West,
  With words which faith and pride had steeped in flame,
  To quell the unbelievers; a dire guest
  Even to his friends was he, for in his breast
  Did hate and guile lie watchful, intertwined,
  Twin serpents in one deep and winding nest;
  He loathed all faith beside his own, and pined
  To wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on mankind.
  
  But more he loathed and hated the clear light
  Of wisdom and free thought, and more did fear,
  Lest, kindled once, its beams might pierce the night,
  Even where his Idol stood; for, far and near
  Did many a heart in Europe leap to hear
  That faith and tyranny were trampled down;
  Many a pale victim, doomed for truth to share
  The murderer's cell, or see, with helpless groan,
  The priests his children drag for slaves to serve their own.
  
  He dared not kill the infidels with fire
  Or steel, in Europe; the slow agonies
  Of legal torture mocked his keen desire:
  So he made truce with those who did despise
  The expiation, and the sacrifice,
  That, though detested, Islam's kindred creed
  Might crush for him those deadlier enemies;
  For fear of God did in his bosom breed
  A jealous hate of man, an unreposing need.
  
  'Peace! Peace!' he cried, 'when we are dead, the Day
  Of Judgement comes, and all shall surely know
  Whose God is God, each fearfully shall pay
  The errors of his faith in endless woe!
  But there is sent a mortal vengeance now
  On earth, because an impious race had spurned
  Him whom we all adore,—a subtle foe,
  By whom for ye this dread reward was earned,
  And kingly thrones, which rest on faith, nigh overturned.
  
  'Think ye, because ye weep, and kneel, and pray,
  That God will lull the pestilence?
  
  It rose
  Even from beneath his throne, where, many a day,
  His mercy soothed it to a dark repose:
  It walks upon the earth to judge his foes;
  And what are thou and I, that he should deign
  To curb his ghastly minister, or close
  The gates of death, ere they receive the twain
  Who shook with mortal spells his undefended reign?
  
  'Ay, there is famine in the gulf of hell,
  Its giant worms of fire for ever yawn,—
  Their lurid eyes are on us! those who fell
  By the swift shafts of pestilence ere dawn,
  Are in their jaws! they hunger for the spawn
  Of Satan, their own brethren, who were sent
  To make our souls their spoil.
  
  See! see! they fawn
  Like dogs, and they will sleep with luxury spent,
  When those detested hearts their iron fangs have rent!
  'Our God may then lull Pestilence to sleep:—
  Pile high the pyre of expiation now,
  A forest's spoil of boughs, and on the heap
  Pour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow,
  When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow,
  A stream of clinging fire,—and fix on high
  A net of iron, and spread forth below
  A couch of snakes, and scorpions, and the fry
  Of centipedes and worms, earth's hellish progeny!
  'Let Laon and Laone on that pyre,
  Linked tight with burning brass, perish!—then pray
  That, with this sacrifice, the withering ire
  Of Heaven may be appeased.
  
  ' He ceased, and they
  A space stood silent, as far, far away
  The echoes of his voice among them died;
  And he knelt down upon the dust, alway
  Muttering the curses of his speechless pride,
  Whilst shame, and fear, and awe, the armies did divide.
  
  His voice was like a blast that burst the portal
  Of fabled hell; and as he spake, each one
  Saw gape beneath the chasms of fire immortal,
  And Heaven above seemed cloven, where, on a throne
  Girt round with storms and shadows, sate alone
  Their King and Judge—fear killed in every breast
  All natural pity then, a fear unknown
  Before, and with an inward fire possessed,
  They raged like homeless beasts whom burning woods invest.
  
  'Twas morn.
  
  —At noon the public crier went forth,
  Proclaiming through the living and the dead,
  'The Monarch saith, that his great Empire's worth
  Is set on Laon and Laone's head:
  He who but one yet living here can lead,
  Or who the life from both their hearts can wring,
  Shall be the kingdom's heir, a glorious meed!
  But he who both alive can hither bring,
  The Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal King.
  
  '
  Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron
  Was spread above, the fearful couch below:
  It overtopped the towers that did environ
  That spacious square; for Fear is never slow
  To build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe,
  So, she scourged forth the maniac multitude
  To rear this pyramid—tottering and slow,
  Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued
  By gadflies, they have piled the heath, and gums, and wood.
  
  Night came, a starless and a moonless gloom.
  
  Until the dawn, those hosts of many a nation
  Stood round that pile, as near one lover's tomb
  Two gentle sisters mourn their desolation;
  And in the silence of that expectation,
  Was heard on high the reptiles' hiss and crawl—
  It was so deep—save when the devastation
  Of the swift pest, with fearful interval,
  Marking its path with shrieks, among the crowd would fall.
  
  Morn came,—among those sleepless multitudes,
  Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine still
  Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods
  The frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill
  Earth's cold and sullen brooks; in silence, still
  The pale survivors stood; ere noon, the fear
  Of Hell became a panic, which did kill
  Like hunger or disease, with whispers drear,
  As 'Hush! hark! Come they yet?
  
  Just Heaven! thine hour is near!'
  And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting
  The rage they did inspire, some mad indeed
  With their own lies; they said their god was waiting
  To see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed,—
  And that, till then, the snakes of Hell had need
  Of human souls:—three hundred furnaces
  Soon blazed through the wide City, where, with speed,
  Men brought their infidel kindred to appease
  God's wrath, and while they burned, knelt round on quivering knees.
  
  The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke,
  The winds of eve dispersed those ashes gray.
  
  The madness which these rites had lulled, awoke
  Again at sunset.
  
  —Who shall dare to say
  The deeds which night and fear brought forth, or weigh
  In balance just the good and evil there?
  
  He might man's deep and searchless heart display,
  And cast a light on those dim labyrinths, where
  Hope, near imagined chasms, is struggling with despair.
  
  'Tis said, a mother dragged three children then,
  To those fierce flames which roast the eyes in the head,
  And laughed, and died; and that unholy men,
  Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead,
  Looked from their meal, and saw an Angel tread
  The visible floor of Heaven, and it was she!
  And, on that night, one without doubt or dread
  Came to the fire, and said, 'Stop, I am he!
  Kill me!'—They burned them both with hellish mockery.
  
  And, one by one, that night, young maidens came,
  Beauteous and calm, like shapes of living stone
  Clothed in the light of dreams, and by the flame
  Which shrank as overgorged, they laid them down.
  
  And sung a low sweet song, of which alone
  One word was heard, and that was Liberty;
  And that some kissed their marble feet, with moan
  Like love, and died; and then that they did die
  With happy smiles, which sunk in white tranquillity.
  
  CANTO XI
  She saw me not—she heard me not—alone
  Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood;
  She spake not, breathed not, moved not—there was thrown
  Over her look, the shadow of a mood
  Which only clothes the heart in solitude.
  
  A thought of voiceless depth;—she stood alone,
  Above, the Heavens were spread;—below, the flood
  Was murmuring in its caves;—the wind had blown
  Her hair apart, through which her eyes and forehead shone.
  
  A cloud was hanging o'er the western mountains;
  Before its blue and moveless depth were flying
  Gray mists poured forth from the unresting fountains
  Of darkness in the North:—the day was dying:—
  Sudden, the sun shone forth, its beams were lying
  Like boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see,
  And on the shattered vapours, which defying
  The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly
  In the red Heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.
  
  It was a stream of living beams, whose bank
  On either side by the cloud's cleft was made;
  And where its chasms that flood of glory drank,
  Its waves gushed forth like fire, and as if swayed
  By some mute tempest, rolled on her; the shade
  Of her bright image floated on the river
  Of liquid light, which then did end and fade—
  Her radiant shape upon its verge did shiver;
  Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver.
  
  I stood beside her, but she saw me not—
  She looked upon the sea, and skies, and earth;
  Rapture, and love, and admiration wrought
  A passion deeper far than tears, or mirth,
  Or speech, or gesture, or whate'er has birth
  From common joy; which with the speechless feeling
  That led her there united, and shot forth
  From her far eyes a light of deep revealing,
  All but her dearest self from my regard concealing.
  
  Her lips were parted, and the measured breath
  Was now heard there;—her dark and intricate eyes
  Orb within orb, deeper than sleep or death,
  Absorbed the glories of the burning skies,
  Which, mingling with her heart's deep ecstasies,
  Burst from her looks and gestures;—and a light
  Of liquid tenderness, like love, did rise
  From her whole frame, an atmosphere which quite
  Arrayed her in its beams, tremulous and soft and bright.
  
  She would have clasped me to her glowing frame;
  Those warm and odorous lips might soon have shed
  On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame
  Which now the cold winds stole;—she would have laid
  Upon my languid heart her dearest head;
  I might have heard her voice, tender and sweet;
  Her eyes mingling with mine, might soon have fed
  My soul with their own joy.
  
  —One moment yet
  I gazed—we parted then, never again to meet!
  Never but once to meet on Earth again!
  She heard me as I fled—her eager tone
  Sunk on my heart, and almost wove a chain
  Around my will to link it with her own,
  So that my stern resolve was almost gone.
  
  'I cannot reach thee! whither dost thou fly?
  
  My steps are faint—Come back, thou dearest one—
  Return, ah me! return!'—The wind passed by
  On which those accents died, faint, far, and lingeringly.
  
  Woe! Woe! that moonless midnight!—Want and Pest
  Were horrible, but one more fell doth rear,
  As in a hydra's swarming lair, its crest
  Eminent among those victims—even the Fear
  Of Hell: each girt by the hot atmosphere
  Of his blind agony, like a scorpion stung
  By his own rage upon his burning bier
  Of circling coals of fire; but still there clung
  One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung:
  Not death—death was no more refuge or rest;
  Not life—it was despair to be!—not sleep,
  For fiends and chasms of fire had dispossessed
  All natural dreams: to wake was not to weep,
  But to gaze mad and pallid, at the leap
  To which the Future, like a snaky scourge,
  Or like some tyrant's eye, which aye doth keep
  Its withering beam upon his slaves, did urge
  Their steps; they heard the roar of Hell's sulphureous surge.
  
  Each of that multitude, alone, and lost
  To sense of outward things, one hope yet knew;
  As on a foam-girt crag some seaman tossed
  Stares at the rising tide, or like the crew
  Whilst now the ship is splitting through and through;
  Each, if the tramp of a far steed was heard,
  Started from sick despair, or if there flew
  One murmur on the wind, or if some word
  Which none can gather yet, the distant crowd has stirred.
  
  Why became cheeks, wan with the kiss of death,
  Paler from hope?
  
  they had sustained despair.
  
  Why watched those myriads with suspended breath
  Sleepless a second night?
  
  they are not here,
  The victims, and hour by hour, a vision drear,
  Warm corpses fall upon the clay-cold dead;
  And even in death their lips are wreathed with fear.
  
  —
  The crowd is mute and moveless—overhead
  Silent Arcturus shines—'Ha! hear'st thou not the tread
  'Of rushing feet?
  
  laughter?
  
  the shout, the scream,
  Of triumph not to be contained?
  
  See! hark!
  They come, they come! give way!' Alas, ye deem
  Falsely—'tis but a crowd of maniacs stark
  Driven, like a troop of spectres, through the dark,
  From the choked well, whence a bright death-fire sprung,
  A lurid earth-star, which dropped many a spark
  From its blue train, and spreading widely, clung
  To their wild hair, like mist the topmost pines among.
  
  And many, from the crowd collected there,
  Joined that strange dance in fearful sympathies;
  There was the silence of a long despair,
  When the last echo of those terrible cries
  Came from a distant street, like agonies
  Stifled afar.
  
  —Before the Tyrant's throne
  All night his aged Senate sate, their eyes
  In stony expectation fixed; when one
  Sudden before them stood, a Stranger and alone.
  
  Dark Priests and haughty Warriors gazed on him
  With baffled wonder, for a hermit's vest
  Concealed his face; but, when he spake, his tone,
  Ere yet the matter did their thoughts arrest,—
  Earnest, benignant, calm, as from a breast
  Void of all hate or terror—made them start;
  For as with gentle accents he addressed
  His speech to them, on each unwilling heart
  Unusual awe did fall—a spirit-quelling dart.
  
  'Ye Princes of the Earth, ye sit aghast
  Amid the ruin which yourselves have made,
  Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet's blast,
  And sprang from sleep!—dark Terror has obeyed
  Your bidding—O, that I whom ye have made
  Your foe, could set my dearest enemy free
  From pain and fear! but evil casts a shade,
  Which cannot pass so soon, and Hate must be
  The nurse and parent still of an ill progeny.
  
  'Ye turn to Heaven for aid in your distress;
  Alas, that ye, the mighty and the wise,
  Who, if ye dared, might not aspire to less
  Than ye conceive of power, should fear the lies
  Which thou, and thou, didst frame for mysteries
  To blind your slaves:—consider your own thought,
  An empty and a cruel sacrifice
  Ye now prepare, for a vain idol wrought
  Out of the fears and hate which vain desires have brought.
  
  'Ye seek for happiness—alas, the day!
  Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold,
  Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway
  For which, O willing slaves to Custom old,
  Severe taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold.
  
  Ye seek for peace, and when ye die, to dream
  No evil dreams: all mortal things are cold
  And senseless then; if aught survive, I deem
  It must be love and joy, for they immortal seem.
  
  'Fear not the future, weep not for the past.
  
  O, could I win your ears to dare be now
  Glorious, and great, and calm! that ye would cast
  Into the dust those symbols of your woe,
  Purple, and gold, and steel! that ye would go
  Proclaiming to the nations whence ye came,
  That Want, and Plague, and Fear, from slavery flow;
  And that mankind is free, and that the shame
  Of royalty and faith is lost in freedom's fame!
  'If thus, 'tis well—if not, I come to say
  That Laon—' while the Stranger spoke, among
  The Council sudden tumult and affray
  Arose, for many of those warriors young,
  Had on his eloquent accents fed and hung
  Like bees on mountain-flowers; they knew the truth,
  And from their thrones in vindication sprung;
  The men of faith and law then without ruth
  Drew forth their secret steel, and stabbed each ardent youth.
  
  They stabbed them in the back and sneered—a slave
  Who stood behind the throne, those corpses drew
  Each to its bloody, dark, and secret grave;
  And one more daring raised his steel anew
  To pierce the Stranger.
  
  'What hast thou to do
  With me, poor wretch?
  
  '—Calm, solemn, and severe,
  That voice unstrung his sinews, and he threw
  His dagger on the ground, and pale with fear,
  Sate silently—his voice then did the Stranger rear.
  
  'It doth avail not that I weep for ye—
  Ye cannot change, since ye are old and gray,
  And ye have chosen your lot—your fame must be
  A book of blood, whence in a milder day
  Men shall learn truth, when ye are wrapped in clay:
  Now ye shall triumph.
  
  I am Laon's friend,
  And him to your revenge will I betray,
  So ye concede one easy boon.
  
  Attend!
  For now I speak of things which ye can apprehend.
  
  'There is a People mighty in its youth,
  A land beyond the Oceans of the West,
  Where, though 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 sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;
  An epitaph of glory for the tomb
  Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
  Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
  Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;
  The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.
  
  'Yes, in the desert there is built a home
  For Freedom.
  
  Genius is made strong to rear
  The monuments of man beneath the dome
  Of a new Heaven; myriads assemble there,
  Whom the proud lords of man, in rage or fear,
  Drive from their wasted homes: the boon I pray
  Is this—that Cythna shall be convoyed there—
  Nay, start not at the name—America!
  And then to you this night Laon will I betray.
  
  'With me do what you will.
  
  I am your foe!'
  The light of such a joy as makes the stare
  Of hungry snakes like living emeralds glow,
  Shone in a hundred human eyes—'Where, where
  Is Laon?
  
  Haste! fly! drag him swiftly here!
  We grant thy boon.
  
  '—'I put no trust in ye,
  Swear by the Power ye dread.
  
  '—'We swear, we swear!'
  The Stranger threw his vest back suddenly,
  And smiled in gentle pride, and said, Lo! I am he!'
  CANTO XII
  The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness
  Spread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying
  Upon the winds of fear; from his dull madness
  The starveling waked, and died in joy; the dying,
  Among the corpses in stark agony lying,
  Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope
  Closed their faint eyes; from house to house replying
  With loud acclaim, the living shook Heaven's cope,
  And filled the startled Earth with echoes: morn did ope
  Its pale eyes then; and lo! the long array
  Of guards in golden arms, and Priests beside,
  Singing their bloody hymns, whose garbs betray
  The blackness of the faith it seems to hide;
  And see, the Tyrant's gem-wrought chariot glide
  Among the gloomy cowls and glittering spears—
  A Shape of light is sitting by his side,
  A child most beautiful.
  
  I' the midst appears
  Laon,—exempt alone from mortal hopes and fears.
  
  His head and feet are bare, his hands are bound
  Behind with heavy chains, yet none do wreak
  Their scoffs on him, though myriads throng around;
  There are no sneers upon his lip which speak
  That scorn or hate has made him bold; his cheek
  Resolve has not turned pale,—his eyes are mild
  And calm, and, like the morn about to break,
  Smile on mankind—his heart seems reconciled
  To all things and itself, like a reposing child.
  
  Tumult was in the soul of all beside,
  Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but those who saw
  Their tranquil victim pass, felt wonder glide
  Into their brain, and became calm with awe.
  
  —
  See, the slow pageant near the pile doth draw.
  
  A thousand torches in the spacious square,
  Borne by the ready slaves of ruthless law,
  Await the signal round: the morning fair
  Is changed to a dim night by that unnatural glare.
  
  And see! beneath a sun-bright canopy,
  Upon a platform level with the pile,
  The anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on high,
  Girt by the chieftains of the host; all smile
  In expectation, but one child: the while
  I, Laon, led by mutes, ascend my bier
  Of fire, and look around: each distant isle
  Is dark in the bright dawn; towers far and near,
  Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmosphere.
  
  There was such silence through the host, as when
  An earthquake trampling on some populous town,
  Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men
  Expect the second; all were mute but one,
  That fairest child, who, bold with love, alone
  Stood up before the King, without avail,
  Pleading for Laon's life—her stifled groan
  Was heard—she trembled like one aspen pale
  Among the gloomy pines of a Norwegian vale.
  
  What were his thoughts linked in the morning sun,
  Among those reptiles, stingless with delay,
  Even like a tyrant's wrath?
  
  —The signal-gun
  Roared—hark, again! In that dread pause he lay
  As in a quiet dream—the slaves obey—
  A thousand torches drop,—and hark, the last
  Bursts on that awful silence; far away,
  Millions, with hearts that beat both loud and fast,
  Watch for the springing flame expectant and aghast.
  
  They fly—the torches fall—a cry of fear
  Has startled the triumphant!—they recede!
  For ere the cannon's roar has died, they hear
  The tramp of hoofs like earthquake, and a steed
  Dark and gigantic, with the tempest's speed,
  Bursts through their ranks: a woman sits thereon,
  Fairer, it seems, than aught that earth can breed,
  Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn,
  A spirit from the caves of daylight wandering gone.
  
  All thought it was God's Angel come to sweep
  The lingering guilty to their fiery grave;
  The Tyrant from his throne in dread did leap,—
  Her innocence his child from fear did save;
  Scared by the faith they feigned, each priestly slave
  Knelt for his mercy whom they served with blood,
  And, like the refluence of a mighty wave
  Sucked into the loud sea, the multitude
  With crushing panic, fled in terror's altered mood.
  
  They pause, they blush, they gaze,—a gathering shout
  Bursts like one sound from the ten thousand streams
  Of a tempestuous sea:—that sudden rout
  One checked, who, never in his mildest dreams
  Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams
  Of his rent heart so hard and cold a creed
  Had seared with blistering ice—but he misdeems
  That he is wise, whose wounds do only bleed
  Inly for self—thus thought the Iberian Priest indeed,
  And others too, thought he was wise to see,
  In pain, and fear, and hate, something divine;
  In love and beauty, no divinity.
  
  —
  Now with a bitter smile, whose light did shine
  Like a fiend's hope upon his lips and eyne,
  He said, and the persuasion of that sneer
  Rallied his trembling comrades—'Is it mine
  To stand alone, when kings and soldiers fear
  A woman?
  
  Heaven has sent its other victim here.
  
  '
  'Were it not impious,' said the King, 'to break
  Our holy oath?
  
  '—'Impious to keep it, say!'
  Shrieked the exulting Priest—'Slaves, to the stake
  Bind her, and on my head the burden lay
  Of her just torments:—at the Judgement Day
  Will I stand up before the golden throne
  Of Heaven, and cry, "To thee did I betray
  An Infidel; but for me she would have known
  Another moment's joy! the glory be thine own!"'
  They trembled, but replied not, nor obeyed,
  Pausing in breathless silence.
  
  Cythna sprung
  From her gigantic steed, who, like a shade
  Chased by the winds, those vacant streets among
  Fled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung
  Upon his neck, and kissed his moonèd brow.
  
  A piteous sight, that one so fair and young,
  The clasp of such a fearful death should woo
  With smiles of tender joy as beamed from Cythna now.
  
  The warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear
  From many a tremulous eye, but like soft dews
  Which feed Spring's earliest buds, hung gathered there,
  Frozen by doubt,—alas! they could not choose
  But weep; for when her faint limbs did refuse
  To climb the pyre, upon the mutes she smiled;
  And with her eloquent gestures, and the hues
  Of her quick lips, even as a weary child
  Wins sleep from some fond nurse with its caresses mild,
  She won them, though unwilling, her to bind
  Near me, among the snakes.
  
  When there had fled
  One soft reproach that was most thrilling kind,
  She smiled on me, and nothing then we said,
  But each upon the other's countenance fed
  Looks of insatiate love; the mighty veil
  Which doth divide the living and the dead
  Was almost rent, the world grew dim and pale,—
  All light in Heaven or Earth beside our love did fail.
  
  —
  Yet—yet—one brief relapse, like the last beam
  Of dying flames, the stainless air around
  Hung silent and serene—a blood-red gleam
  Burst upwards, hurling fiercely from the ground
  The globèd smoke,—I heard the mighty sound
  Of its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean;
  And through its chasms I saw, as in a swound,
  The tyrant's child fall without life or motion
  Before his throne, subdued by some unseen emotion.
  
  And is this death?
  
  —The pyre has disappeared,
  The Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the throng;
  The flames grow silent—slowly there is heard
  The music of a breath-suspending song,
  Which, like the kiss of love when life is young,
  Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep;
  With ever-changing notes it floats along,
  Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep
  A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap.
  
  The warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand
  Wakened me then; lo! Cythna sate reclined
  Beside me, on the waved and golden sand
  Of a clear pool, upon a bank o'ertwined
  With strange and star-bright flowers, which to the wind
  Breathed divine odour; high above, was spread
  The emerald heaven of trees of unknown kind,
  Whose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead
  A shadow, which was light, upon the waters shed.
  
  And round about sloped many a lawny mountain
  With incense-bearing forests, and vast caves
  Of marble radiance, to that mighty fountain;
  And where the flood its own bright margin laves,
  Their echoes talk with its eternal waves,
  Which, from the depths whose jaggèd caverns breed
  Their unreposing strife, it lifts and heaves,—
  Till through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed
  A river deep, which flies with smooth but arrowy speed.
  
  As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder,
  A boat approached, borne by the musical air
  Along the waves which sung and sparkled under
  Its rapid keel—a wingèd shape sate there,
  A child with silver-shining wings, so fair,
  That as her bark did through the waters glide,
  The shadow of the lingering waves did wear
  Light, as from starry beams; from side to side,
  While veering to the wind her plumes the bark did guide.
  
  The boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl,
  Almost translucent with the light divine
  Of her within; the prow and stern did curl
  Hornèd on high, like the young moon supine,
  When o'er dim twilight mountains dark with pine,
  It floats upon the sunset's sea of beams,
  Whose golden waves in many a purple line
  Fade fast, till borne on sunlight's ebbing streams,
  Dilating, on earth's verge the sunken meteor gleams.
  
  Its keel has struck the sands beside our feet;—
  Then Cythna turned to me, and from her eyes
  Which swam with unshed tears, a look more sweet
  Than happy love, a wild and glad surprise,
  Glanced as she spake: 'Ay, this is Paradise
  And not a dream, and we are all united!
  Lo, that is mine own child, who in the guise
  Of madness came, like day to one benighted
  In lonesome woods: my heart is now too well requited!'
  And then she wept aloud, and in her arms
  Clasped that bright Shape, less marvellously fair
  Than her own human hues and living charms;
  Which, as she leaned in passion's silence there,
  Breathed warmth on the cold bosom of the air,
  Which seemed to blush and tremble with delight;
  The glossy darkness of her streaming hair
  Fell o'er that snowy child, and wrapped from sight
  The fond and long embrace which did their hearts unite.
  
  Then the bright child, the plumèd Seraph came,
  And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine,
  And said, 'I was disturbed by tremulous shame
  When once we met, yet knew that I was thine
  From the same hour in which thy lips divine
  Kindled a clinging dream within my brain,
  Which ever waked when I might sleep, to twine
  Thine image with her memory dear—again
  We meet; exempted now from mortal fear or pain.
  
  'When the consuming flames had wrapped ye round,
  The hope which I had cherished went away;
  I fell in agony on the senseless ground,
  And hid mine eyes in dust, and far astray
  My mind was gone, when bright, like dawning day,
  The Spectre of the Plague before me flew,
  And breathed upon my lips, and seemed to say,
  "They wait for thee, belovèd!"—then I knew
  The death-mark on my breast, and became calm anew.
  
  'It was the calm of love—for I was dying.
  
  I saw the black and half-extinguished pyre
  In its own gray and shrunken ashes lying;
  The pitchy smoke of the departed fire
  Still hung in many a hollow dome and spire
  Above the towers, like night; beneath whose shade
  Awed by the ending of their own desire
  The armies stood; a vacancy was made
  In expectation's depth, and so they stood dismayed.
  
  'The frightful silence of that altered mood,
  The tortures of the dying clove alone,
  Till one uprose among the multitude,
  And said—"The flood of time is rolling on,
  We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone
  To glide in peace down death's mysterious stream.
  
  Have ye done well?
  
  They moulder flesh and bone,
  Who might have made this life's envenomed dream
  A sweeter draught than ye will ever taste, I deem.
  
  '"These perish as the good and great of yore
  Have perished, and their murderers will repent,—
  Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before
  Yon smoke has faded from the firmament
  Even for this cause, that ye who must lament
  The death of those that made this world so fair,
  Cannot recall them now; but there is lent
  To man the wisdom of a high despair,
  When such can die, and he live on and linger here.
  
  '"Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence,
  From fabled hell as by a charm withdrawn;
  All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence
  In pain and fire have unbelievers gone;
  And ye must sadly turn away, and moan
  In secret, to his home each one returning,
  And to long ages shall this hour be known;
  And slowly shall its memory, ever burning,
  Fill this dark night of things with an eternal morning.
  
  '"For me the world is grown too void and cold,
  Since Hope pursues immortal Destiny
  With steps thus slow—therefore shall ye behold
  How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die;
  Tell to your children this!" Then suddenly
  He sheathed a dagger in his heart and fell;
  My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me
  There came a murmur from the crowd, to tell
  Of deep and mighty change which suddenly befell.
  
  'Then suddenly I stood, a wingèd Thought,
  Before the immortal Senate, and the seat
  Of that star-shining spirit, whence is wrought
  The strength of its dominion, good and great,
  The better Genius of this world's estate.
  
  His realm around one mighty Fane is spread,
  Elysian islands bright and fortunate,
  Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead,
  Where I am sent to lead!' These wingèd words she said,
  And with the silence of her eloquent smile,
  Bade us embark in her divine canoe;
  Then at the helm we took our seat, the while
  Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue
  Into the winds' invisible stream she threw,
  Sitting beside the prow: like gossamer
  On the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew
  O'er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair,
  Whose shores receded fast, whilst we seemed lingering there;
  Till down that mighty stream, dark, calm, and fleet,
  Between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven,
  Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet
  As swift as twinkling beams, had, under Heaven,
  From woods and waves wild sounds and odours driven,
  The boat fled visibly—three nights and days,
  Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even,
  We sailed along the winding watery ways
  Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.
  
  A scene of joy and wonder to behold
  That river's shapes and shadows changing ever,
  When the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold
  Its whirlpools, where all hues did spread and quiver;
  And where melodious falls did burst and shiver
  Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray
  Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river,
  Or when the moonlight poured a holier day,
  One vast and glittering lake around green islands lay.
  
  Morn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran
  The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud
  Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man,
  Which flieth forth and cannot make abode;
  Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode,
  Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned
  With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,
  The homes of the departed, dimly frowned
  O'er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round.
  
  Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows,
  Mile after mile we sailed, and 'twas delight
  To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows
  Over the grass; sometimes beneath the night
  Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright
  With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep
  And dark-green chasms, shades beautiful and white,
  Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep,
  Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.
  
  And ever as we sailed, our minds were full
  Of love and wisdom, which would overflow
  In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful,
  And in quick smiles whose light would come and go
  Like music o'er wide waves, and in the flow
  Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress—
  For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know,
  That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less
  Survives all mortal change in lasting loveliness.
  
  Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling
  Number delightful hours—for through the sky
  The spherèd lamps of day and night, revealing
  New changes and new glories, rolled on high,
  Sun, Moon, and moonlike lamps, the progeny
  Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair:
  On the fourth day, wild as a windwrought sea
  The stream became, and fast and faster bare
  The spirit-wingèd boat, steadily speeding there.
  
  Steady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains
  Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour
  Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains,
  The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar
  Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore,
  Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child
  Securely fled, that rapid stress before,
  Amid the topmost spray, and sunbows wild,
  Wreathed in the silver mist: in joy and pride we smiled.
  
  The torrent of that wide and raging river
  Is passed, and our aëreal speed suspended.
  
  We look behind; a golden mist did quiver
  Where its wild surges with the lake were blended,—
  Our bark hung there, as on a line suspended
  Between two heavens,—that windless waveless lake
  Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended
  By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break,
  And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.
  
  Motionless resting on the lake awhile,
  I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear
  Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle,
  And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere
  Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear
  The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound
  Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near,
  Like the swift moon this glorious earth around,
  The charmèd boat approached, and there its haven found.
  
  Composed in the neighbourhood of Bisham Wood, near Great Marlow, Bucks, 1817 (April - Sept.
  
  23); printed, with the title (dated 1818), Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century, Oct.
  
  , Nov.
  
  , 1817, but suppressed, pending revision, by the publishers, C.
  
  & J.
  
  Ollier.
  
  (A few copies had got out, but these were recalled, and some recovered.
  
  )  Published, with a fresh title-page and twenty-seven cancel-leaves, as The Revolt of Islam, Jan.
  
  10, 1818.

• The Rude Wind Is Singing Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The rude wind is singing
  The dirge of the music dead;
  The cold worms are clinging
  Where kisses were lately fed.

• The Sensitive Plant Read Poem Log in to favourite

  PART 1.
  
  A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
  And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
  And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
  
  And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.
  
  And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
  Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
  And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
  Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
  
  But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
  In the garden, the field, or the wilderness,
  Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want,
  As the companionless Sensitive Plant.
  
  The snowdrop, and then the violet,
  Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
  And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
  From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
  
  Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
  And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
  Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess,
  Till they die of their own dear loveliness;
  And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
  Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale
  That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
  Through their pavilions of tender green;
  And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue,
  Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
  Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
  It was felt like an odour within the sense;
  And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,
  Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
  Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
  The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:
  And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
  As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
  Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
  Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;
  And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
  The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
  And all rare blossoms from every clime
  Grew in that garden in perfect prime.
  
  And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
  Was pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom,
  With golden and green light, slanting through
  Their heaven of many a tangled hue,
  Broad water-lilies lay tremulously,
  And starry river-buds glimmered by,
  And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
  With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.
  
  And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,
  Which led through the garden along and across,
  Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
  Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,
  Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells
  As fair as the fabulous asphodels,
  And flow’rets which, drooping as day drooped too,
  Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,
  To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.
  
  And from this undefiled Paradise
  The flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes
  Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet
  Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),
  When Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them,
  As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
  Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one
  Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;
  For each one was interpenetrated
  With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
  Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear
  Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.
  
  But the Sensitive Plant which could give small fruit
  Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
  Received more than all, it loved more than ever,
  Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver,—
  For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower;
  Radiance and odour are not its dower;
  It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,
  It desires what it has not, the Beautiful!
  The light winds which from unsustaining wings
  Shed the music of many murmurings;
  The beams which dart from many a star
  Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;
  The plumed insects swift and free,
  Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
  Laden with light and odour, which pass
  Over the gleam of the living grass;
  The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
  Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,
  Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
  Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;
  The quivering vapours of dim noontide,
  Which like a sea o’er the warm earth glide,
  In which every sound, and odour, and beam,
  Move, as reeds in a single stream;
  Each and all like ministering angels were
  For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear,
  Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by
  Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky.
  
  And when evening descended from Heaven above,
  And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,
  And delight, though less bright, was far more deep,
  And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep,
  And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned
  In an ocean of dreams without a sound;
  Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress
  The light sand which paves it, consciousness;
  (Only overhead the sweet nightingale
  Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,
  And snatches of its Elysian chant
  Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant);--
  The Sensitive Plant was the earliest
  Upgathered into the bosom of rest;
  A sweet child weary of its delight,
  The feeblest and yet the favourite,
  Cradled within the embrace of Night.
  
  PART 2.
  
  There was a Power in this sweet place,
  An Eve in this Eden; a ruling Grace
  Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
  Was as God is to the starry scheme.
  
  A Lady, the wonder of her kind,
  Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind
  Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion
  Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,
  Tended the garden from morn to even:
  And the meteors of that sublunar Heaven,
  Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth,
  Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!
  She had no companion of mortal race,
  But her tremulous breath and her flushing face
  Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes,
  That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:
  As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake
  Had deserted Heaven while the stars were awake,
  As if yet around her he lingering were,
  Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.
  
  Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed;
  You might hear by the heaving of her breast,
  That the coming and going of the wind
  Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.
  
  And wherever her aery footstep trod,
  Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
  Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,
  Like a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep.
  
  I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
  Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;
  I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
  From her glowing fingers through all their frame.
  
  She sprinkled bright water from the stream
  On those that were faint with the sunny beam;
  And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
  She emptied the rain of the thunder-showers.
  
  She lifted their heads with her tender hands,
  And sustained them with rods and osier-bands;
  If the flowers had been her own infants, she
  Could never have nursed them more tenderly.
  
  And all killing insects and gnawing worms,
  And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
  She bore, in a basket of Indian woof,
  Into the rough woods far aloof,--
  In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full,
  The freshest her gentle hands could pull
  For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
  Although they did ill, was innocent.
  
  But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris
  Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss
  The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she
  Make her attendant angels be.
  
  And many an antenatal tomb,
  Where butterflies dream of the life to come,
  She left clinging round the smooth and dark
  Edge of the odorous cedar bark.
  
  This fairest creature from earliest Spring
  Thus moved through the garden ministering
  Mi the sweet season of Summertide,
  And ere the first leaf looked brown—she died!
  PART 3.
  
  Three days the flowers of the garden fair,
  Like stars when the moon is awakened, were,
  Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous
  She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.
  
  And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant
  Felt the sound of the funeral chant,
  And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,
  And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low;
  The weary sound and the heavy breath,
  And the silent motions of passing death,
  And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,
  Sent through the pores of the coffin-plank;
  The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,
  Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;
  From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone,
  And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.
  
  The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
  Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,
  Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,
  Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap
  To make men tremble who never weep.
  
  Swift Summer into the Autumn flowed,
  And frost in the mist of the morning rode,
  Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,
  Mocking the spoil of the secret night.
  
  The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
  Paved the turf and the moss below.
  
  The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,
  Like the head and the skin of a dying man.
  
  And Indian plants, of scent and hue
  The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,
  Leaf by leaf, day after day,
  Were massed into the common clay.
  
  And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,
  And white with the whiteness of what is dead,
  Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed;
  Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.
  
  And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds,
  Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,
  Till they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem,
  Which rotted into the earth with them.
  
  The water-blooms under the rivulet
  Fell from the stalks on which they were set;
  And the eddies drove them here and there,
  As the winds did those of the upper air.
  
  Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks
  Were bent and tangled across the walks;
  And the leafless network of parasite bowers
  Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.
  
  Between the time of the wind and the snow
  All loathliest weeds began to grow,
  Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,
  Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.
  
  And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
  And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank,
  Stretched out its long and hollow shank,
  And stifled the air till the dead wind stank.
  
  And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,
  Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,
  Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,
  Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.
  
  And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould
  Started like mist from the wet ground cold;
  Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead
  With a spirit of growth had been animated!
  Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,
  Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,
  And at its outlet flags huge as stakes
  Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.
  
  And hour by hour, when the air was still,
  The vapours arose which have strength to kill;
  At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,
  At night they were darkness no star could melt.
  
  And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
  Crept and flitted in broad noonday
  Unseen; every branch on which they alit
  By a venomous blight was burned and bit.
  
  The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
  Wept, and the tears within each lid
  Of its folded leaves, which together grew,
  Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.
  
  For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
  By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;
  The sap shrank to the root through every pore
  As blood to a heart that will beat no more.
  
  For Winter came: the wind was his whip:
  One choppy finger was on his lip:
  He had torn the cataracts from the hills
  And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;
  His breath was a chain which without a sound
  The earth, and the air, and the water bound;
  He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne
  By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.
  
  Then the weeds which were forms of living death
  Fled from the frost to the earth beneath.
  
  Their decay and sudden flight from frost
  Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!
  And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
  The moles and the dormice died for want:
  The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air
  And were caught in the branches naked and bare.
  
  First there came down a thawing rain
  And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;
  Then there steamed up a freezing dew
  Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew;
  And a northern whirlwind, wandering about
  Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,
  Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy, and stiff,
  And snapped them off with his rigid griff.
  
  When Winter had gone and Spring came back
  The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;
  But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels,
  Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.
  
  CONCLUSION.
  
  Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that
  Which within its boughs like a Spirit sat,
  Ere its outward form had known decay,
  Now felt this change, I cannot say.
  
  Whether that Lady’s gentle mind,
  No longer with the form combined
  Which scattered love, as stars do light,
  Found sadness, where it left delight,
  I dare not guess; but in this life
  Of error, ignorance, and strife,
  Where nothing is, but all things seem,
  And we the shadows of the dream,
  It is a modest creed, and yet
  Pleasant if one considers it,
  To own that death itself must be,
  Like all the rest, a mockery.
  
  That garden sweet, that lady fair,
  And all sweet shapes and odours there,
  In truth have never passed away:
  ’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.
  
  For love, and beauty, and delight,
  There is no death nor change: their might
  Exceeds our organs, which endure
  No light, being themselves obscure.
  
  Composed at Pisa, early in 1820 (dated 'March, 1820,' in Harvard manuscript), and published, with Prometheus Unbound, the same year: included in the Harvard College manuscript book.
  
  Reprinted in the Poetical Works, 1839, both editions.

• The Sepulchre Of Memory Read Poem Log in to favourite

  And where is truth?
  
  On tombs?
  
  for such to thee
  Has been my heart—and thy dead memory
  Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year,
  Unchangingly preserved and buried there.

• The Solitary Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Dar’st thou amid the varied multitude
  To live alone, an isolated thing?
  
  To see the busy beings round thee spring,
  And care for none; in thy calm solitude,
  A flower that scarce breathes in the desert rude
  To Zephyr’s passing wing?
  
  II.
  
  Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove,
  Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother’s hate,
  Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate
  As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love:
  He bears a load which nothing can remove,
  A killing, withering weight.
  
  III.
  
  He smiles--'tis sorrow's deadliest mockery;
  He speaks--the cold words flow not from his soul;
  He acts like others, drains the genial bowl,--
  Yet, yet he longs--although he fears--to die;
  He pants to reach what yet he seems to fly,
  Dull life's extremest goal.
  
  Published by Rossetti, Complete Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  , 1870; dated 1810.
  
  Included in the Esdaile manuscript book.

• The Spectral Horseman Read Poem Log in to favourite

  What was the shriek that struck Fancy's ear
  As it sate on the ruins of time that is past?
  
  Hark! it floats on the fitful blast of the wind,
  And breathes to the pale moon a funeral sigh.
  
  It is the Benshie's moan on the storm,
  Or a shivering fiend that thirsting for sin,
  Seeks murder and guilt when virtue sleeps,
  Winged with the power of some ruthless king,
  And sweeps o'er the breast of the prostrate plain.
  
  It was not a fiend from the regions of Hell
  That poured its low moan on the stillness of night:
  It was not a ghost of the guilty dead,
  Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore;
  But aye at the close of seven years' end,
  That voice is mixed with the swell of the storm,
  And aye at the close of seven years' end,
  A shapeless shadow that sleeps on the hill
  Awakens and floats on the mist of the heath.
  
  It is not the shade of a murdered man,
  Who has rushed uncalled to the throne of his God,
  And howls in the pause of the eddying storm.
  
  This voice is low, cold, hollow, and chill,
  'Tis not heard by the ear, but is felt in the soul.
  
  'Tis more frightful far than the death-daemon's scream,
  Or the laughter of fiends when they howl o’er the corpse
  Of a man who has sold his soul to Hell.
  
  It tells the approach of a mystic form,
  A white courser bears the shadowy sprite;
  More thin they are than the mists of the mountain,
  When the clear moonlight sleeps on the waveless lake.
  
  More pale HIS cheek than the snows of Nithona,
  When winter rides on the northern blast,
  And howls in the midst of the leafless wood.
  
  Yet when the fierce swell of the tempest is raving,
  And the whirlwinds howl in the caves of Inisfallen,
  Still secure mid the wildest war of the sky,
  The phantom courser scours the waste,
  And his rider howls in the thunder's roar.
  
  O'er him the fierce bolts of avenging Heaven
  Pause, as in fear, to strike his head.
  
  The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure,
  Yet the 'wildered peasant, that oft passes by,
  With wonder beholds the blue flash through his form:
  And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead,
  The startled passenger shudders to hear,
  More distinct than the thunder's wildest roar.
  
  Then does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns
  To eternity, curses the champion of Erin,
  Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight,
  And twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the daemons;
  Then in agony roll his death-swimming eyeballs,
  Though 'wildered by death, yet never to die!
  Then he shakes from his skeleton folds the nightmares,
  Who, shrieking in agony, seek the couch
  Of some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain;
  Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead
  In horror pause on the fitful gale.
  
  They float on the swell of the eddying tempest,
  And scared seek the caves of gigantic.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Where their thin forms pour unearthly sounds
  On the blast that sweets the breast of the lake,
  And mingles its swell with the moonlight air.

• The Sunset Read Poem Log in to favourite

  There late was One within whose subtle being,
  As light and wind within some delicate cloud
  That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,
  Genius and death contended.
  
  None may know
  The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
  Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
  When, with the Lady of his love, who then
  First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
  He walked along the pathway of a field
  Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er,
  But to the west was open to the sky.
  
  There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
  Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
  Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
  And the old dandelion's hoary beard,
  And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
  On the brown massy woods -- and in the east
  The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
  Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
  While the faint stars were gathering overhead--
  'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the youth,
  'I never saw the sun?
  
  We will walk here
  To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.
  
  '
  That night the youth and lady mingled lay
  In love and sleep--but when the morning came
  The lady found her lover dead and cold.
  
  Let none believe that God in mercy gave
  That stroke.
  
  The lady died not, nor grew wild,
  But year by year lived on--in truth I think
  Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,
  And that she did not die, but lived to tend
  Her agèd father, were a kind of madness,
  If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.
  
  For but to see her were to read the tale
  Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts
  Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;--
  Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:
  Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,
  Her lips and cheeks were like things dead--so pale;
  Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins
  And weak articulations might be seen
  Day's ruddy light.
  
  The tomb of thy dead self
  Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,
  Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!
  'Inheritor of more than earth can give,
  Passionless calm and silence unreproved,
  Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
  And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
  Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;
  Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were-- Peace!'
  This was the only moan she ever made.
  
  Written at Bishopsgate, 1816 (spring).
  
  Published in full in the 'Posthumous Poems', 1824.
  
  Lines 9-20, and 28-42, appeared in Hunt's 'Literary Pocket-Book', 1823, under the titles, respectively, of 'Sunset.
  
  From an Unpublished Poem', And 'Grief.
  
  A Fragment'.

• The Tower Of Famine Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Amid the desolation of a city,
  Which was the cradle, and is now the grave
  Of an extinguished people,—so that Pity
  Weeps o’er the shipwrecks of Oblivion’s wave,
  There stands the Tower of Famine.
  
  It is built
  Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave
  For bread, and gold, and blood: Pain, linked to Guilt,
  Agitates the light flame of their hours,
  Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.
  
  There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers
  And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,
  The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers
  Of solitary wealth,--the tempest-proof
  Pavilions of the dark Italian air,--
  Are by its presence dimmed--they stand aloof,
  And are withdrawn—so that the world is bare;
  As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror
  Amid a company of ladies fair
  Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror
  Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue,
  The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error,
  Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley in The Keepsake, 1829.
  
  Mr.
  
  C.
  
  W.
  
  Frederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in Mrs.
  
  Shelley’s handwriting.

• The Triumph Of Life Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
  Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth
  Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask
  Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
  
  The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
  Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
  Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
  To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
  All flowers in field or forest which unclose
  Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
  Swinging their censers in the element,
  With orient incense lit by the new ray
  Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
  Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
  And in succession due, did Continent,
  Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
  The form & character of mortal mould
  Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
  Their portion of the toil which he of old
  Took as his own & then imposed on them;
  But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
  Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
  The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
  Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
  Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
  Of a green Apennine: before me fled
  The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
  Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head
  When a strange trance over my fancy grew
  Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
  Was so transparent that the scene came through
  As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
  O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
  That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
  Bathed in the same cold dew my brow & hair
  And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
  Under the self same bough, & heard as there
  The birds, the fountains & the Ocean hold
  Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
  
  And then a Vision on my brain was rolled.
  
  As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
  This was the tenour of my waking dream.
  
  Methought I sate beside a public way
  Thick strewn with summer dust, & a great stream
  Of people there was hurrying to & fro
  Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
  All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
  Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
  He made one of the multitude, yet so
  Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
  One of the million leaves of summer's bier.
  
  —
  Old age & youth, manhood & infancy,
  Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
  Some flying from the thing they feared & some
  Seeking the object of another's fear,
  And others as with steps towards the tomb
  Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
  And others mournfully within the gloom
  Of their own shadow walked, and called it death…
  And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
  Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.
  
  But more with motions which each other crost
  Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
  Or birds within the noonday ether lost,
  Upon that path where flowers never grew;
  And weary with vain toil & faint for thirst
  Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew
  Out of their mossy cells forever burst
  Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
  Of grassy paths, & wood lawns interspersed
  With overarching elms & caverns cold,
  And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
  Pursued their serious folly as of old….
  
  And as I gazed methought that in the way
  The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
  When the South wind shakes the extinguished day.
  
  —
  And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
  But icy cold, obscured with [[blank]] light
  The Sun as he the stars.
  
  Like the young moon
  When on the sunlit limits of the night
  Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
  And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might
  Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
  The ghost of her dead Mother, whose dim form
  Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair,
  So came a chariot on the silent storm
  Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
  So sate within as one whom years deform
  Beneath a dusky hood & double cape
  Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
  And o'er what seemed the head, a cloud like crape,
  Was bent a dun & faint etherial gloom
  Tempering the light; upon the chariot's beam
  A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
  The guidance of that wonder-winged team.
  
  The Shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
  Were lost: I heard alone on the air's soft stream
  The music of their ever moving wings.
  
  All the four faces of that charioteer
  Had their eyes banded .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  little profit brings
  Speed in the van & blindness in the rear,
  Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
  Or that his banded eyes could pierce the sphere
  Of all that is, has been, or will be done.
  
  —
  So ill was the car guided, but it past
  With solemn speed majestically on .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The crowd gave way, & I arose aghast,
  Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
  And saw like clouds upon the thunder blast
  The million with fierce song and maniac dance
  Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
  As when to greet some conqueror's advance
  Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
  From senatehouse & prison & theatre
  When Freedom left those who upon the free
  Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.
  
  Nor wanted here the true similitude
  Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er
  The chariot rolled a captive multitude
  Was driven; althose who had grown old in power
  Or misery,—all who have their age subdued,
  By action or by suffering, and whose hour
  Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
  So that the trunk survived both fruit & flower;
  All those whose fame or infamy must grow
  Till the great winter lay the form & name
  Of their own earth with them forever low,
  All but the sacred few who could not tame
  Their spirits to the Conqueror, but as soon
  As they had touched the world with living flame
  Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
  Of those who put aside the diadem
  Of earthly thrones or gems, till the last one
  Were there;—for they of Athens & Jerusalem
  Were neither mid the mighty captives seen
  Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them
  Or fled before .
  
  .
  
  Now swift, fierce & obscene
  The wild dance maddens in the van, & those
  Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green,
  Outspeed the chariot & without repose
  Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
  To savage music….
  
  Wilder as it grows,
  They, tortured by the agonizing pleasure,
  Convulsed & on the rapid whirlwinds spun
  Of that fierce spirit, whose unholy leisure
  Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
  Throw back their heads & loose their streaming hair,
  And in their dance round her who dims the Sun
  Maidens & youths fling their wild arms in air
  As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now
  Bending within each other's atmosphere
  Kindle invisibly; and as they glow
  Like moths by light attracted & repelled,
  Oft to new bright destruction come & go.
  
  Till like two clouds into one vale impelled
  That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
  And die in rain,—the fiery band which held
  Their natures, snaps .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ere the shock cease to tingle
  One falls and then another in the path
  Senseless, nor is the desolation single,
  Yet ere I can say  where the chariot hath
  Past over them; nor other trace I find
  But as of foam after the Ocean's wrath
  Is spent upon the desert shore.
  
  —Behind,
  Old men, and women foully disarrayed
  Shake their grey hair in the insulting wind,
  Limp in the dance & strain, with limbs decayed,
  Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still
  Farther behind & deeper in the shade.
  
  But not the less with impotence of will
  They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
  Round them & round each other, and fulfill
  Their work and to the dust whence they arose
  Sink & corruption veils them as they lie
  And frost in these performs what fire in those.
  
  Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
  Half to myself I said, "And what is this?
  
  Whose shape is that within the car?
  
  & why"-
  I would have added—"is all here amiss?
  
  "
  But a voice answered .
  
  .
  
  "Life" .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I turned & knew
  (O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
  That what I thought was an old root which grew
  To strange distortion out of the hill side
  Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
  And that the grass which methought hung so wide
  And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
  And that the holes it vainly sought to hide
  Were or had been eyes.
  
  —"lf thou canst forbear
  To join the dance, which I had well forborne,"
  Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,
  "I will now tell that which to this deep scorn
  Led me & my companions, and relate
  The progress of the pageant since the morn;
  "If thirst of knowledge doth not thus abate,
  Follow it even to the night, but I
  Am weary" .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Then like one who with the weight
  Of his own words is staggered, wearily
  He paused, and ere he could resume, I cried,
  "First who art thou?
  
  " .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  "Before thy memory
  "I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, & died,
  And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
  Earth had with purer nutriment supplied
  "Corruption would not now thus much inherit
  Of what was once Rousseau—nor this disguise
  Stained that within which still disdains to wear it.
  
  —
  "If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
  A thousand beacons from the spark I bore.
  
  "—
  "And who are those chained to the car?
  
  " "The Wise,
  "The great, the unforgotten: they who wore
  Mitres & helms & crowns, or wreathes of light,
  Signs of thought's empire over thought; their lore
  "Taught them not this—to know themselves; their might
  Could not repress the mutiny within,
  And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
  "Caught them ere evening.
  
  " "Who is he with chin
  Upon his breast and hands crost on his chain?
  
  "
  "The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
  "The world, and lost all it did contain
  Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; & more
  Of fame & peace than Virtue's self can gain
  "Without the opportunity which bore
  Him on its eagle's pinion to the peak
  From which a thousand climbers have before
  "Fall'n as Napoleon fell.
  
  "—I felt my cheek
  Alter to see the great form pass away
  Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
  That every pigmy kicked it as it lay—
  And much I grieved to think how power & will
  In opposition rule our mortal day—
  And why God made irreconcilable
  Good & the means of good; and for despair
  I half disdained mine eye's desire to fill
  With the spent vision of the times that were
  And scarce have ceased to be .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  "Dost thou behold,"
  Said then my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
  "Frederic, & Kant, Catherine, & Leopold,
  Chained hoary anarch, demagogue & sage
  Whose name the fresh world thinks already old—
  "For in the battle Life & they did wage
  She remained conqueror—I was overcome
  By my own heart alone, which neither age
  "Nor tears nor infamy nor now the tomb
  Could temper to its object.
  
  "—"Let them pass"—
  I cried—"the world & its mysterious doom
  "Is not so much more glorious than it was
  That I desire to worship those who drew
  New figures on its false & fragile glass
  "As the old faded.
  
  "—"Figures ever new
  Rise on the bubble, paint them how you may;
  We have but thrown, as those before us threw,
  "Our shadows on it as it past away.
  
  But mark, how chained to the triumphal chair
  The mighty phantoms of an elder day—
  "All that is mortal of great Plato there
  Expiates the joy & woe his master knew not;
  That star that ruled his doom was far too fair—
  "And Life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
  Conquered the heart by love which gold or pain
  Or age or sloth or slavery could subdue not—
  "And near [[blank]] walk the [[blank]] twain,
  The tutor & his pupil, whom Dominion
  Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.
  
  —
  "The world was darkened beneath either pinion
  Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
  Fame singled as her thunderbearing minion;
  "The other long outlived both woes & wars,
  Throned in new thoughts of men, and still had kept
  The jealous keys of truth's eternal doors
  "If Bacon's spirit [[blank]] had not leapt
  Like lightning out of darkness; he compelled
  The Proteus shape of Nature's as it slept
  "To wake & to unbar the caves that held
  The treasure of the secrets of its reign—
  See the great bards of old who inly quelled
  "The passions which they sung, as by their strain
  May well be known: their living melody
  Tempers its own contagion to the vein
  "Of those who are infected with it—I
  Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!—
  "And so my words were seeds of misery—
  Even as the deeds of others.
  
  "—"Not as theirs,"
  I said—he pointed to a company
  In which I recognized amid the heirs
  Of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine,
  The Anarchs old whose force & murderous snares
  Had founded many a sceptre bearing line
  And spread the plague of blood & gold abroad,
  And Gregory & John and men divine
  Who rose like shadows between Man & god
  Till that eclipse, still hanging under Heaven,
  Was worshipped by the world o'er which they strode
  For the true Sun it quenched.
  
  —"Their power was given
  But to destroy," replied the leader—"I
  Am one of those who have created, even
  "If it be but a world of agony.
  
  "—
  "Whence camest thou & whither goest thou?
  
  How did thy course begin," I said, "& why?
  
  "Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
  Of people, & my heart of one sad thought.
  
  —
  Speak.
  
  "—"Whence I came, partly I seem to know,
  "And how & by what paths I have been brought
  To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;
  Why this should be my mind can compass not;
  "Whither the conqueror hurries me still less.
  
  But follow thou, & from spectator turn
  Actor or victim in this wretchedness,
  "And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn
  From thee.
  
  —Now listen .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  In the April prime
  When all the forest tops began to burn
  "With kindling green, touched by the azure clime
  Of the young year, I found myself asleep
  Under a mountain which from unknown time
  "Had yawned into a cavern high & deep,
  And from it came a gentle rivulet
  Whose water like clear air in its calm sweep
  "Bent the soft grass & kept for ever wet
  The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
  With sound which all who hear must needs forget
  "All pleasure & all pain, all hate & love,
  Which they had known before that hour of rest:
  A sleeping mother then would dream not of
  "The only child who died upon her breast
  At eventide, a king would mourn no more
  The crown of which his brow was dispossest
  "When the sun lingered o'er the Ocean floor
  To gild his rival's new prosperity.
  
  —
  Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore
  "Ills, which if ills, can find no cure from thee,
  The thought of which no other sleep will quell
  Nor other music blot from memory—
  "So sweet & deep is the oblivious spell.
  
  —
  Whether my life had been before that sleep
  The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell
  "Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep,
  I know not.
  
  I arose & for a space
  The scene of woods & waters seemed to keep,
  "Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace
  Of light diviner than the common Sun
  Sheds on the common Earth, but all the place
  "Was filled with many sounds woven into one
  Oblivious melody, confusing sense
  Amid the gliding waves & shadows dun;
  "And as I looked the bright omnipresence
  Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
  And the Sun's image radiantly intense
  "Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
  Like gold, and threaded all the forest maze
  With winding paths of emerald fire—there stood
  "Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze
  Of his own glory, on the vibrating
  Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
  "A shape all light, which with one hand did fling
  Dew on the earth, as if she were the Dawn
  Whose invisible rain forever seemed to sing
  "A silver music on the mossy lawn,
  And still before her on the dusky grass
  Iris her many coloured scarf had drawn.
  
  —
  "In her right hand she bore a crystal glass
  Mantling with bright Nepenthe;—the fierce splendour
  Fell from her as she moved under the mass
  "Of the deep cavern, & with palms so tender
  Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
  Glided along the river, and did bend her
  "Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
  Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream
  That whispered with delight to be their pillow.
  
  —
  "As one enamoured is upborne in dream
  O'er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist
  To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
  "Partly to tread the waves with feet which kist
  The dancing foam, partly to glide along
  The airs that roughened the moist amethyst,
  "Or the slant morning beams that fell among
  The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
  And her feet ever to the ceaseless song
  "Of leaves & winds & waves & birds & bees
  And falling drops moved in a measure new
  Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze
  "Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
  Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,
  Moves up the east, where eagle never flew.
  
  —
  "And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
  To which they moved, seemed as they moved, to blot
  The thoughts of him who gazed on them, & soon
  "All that was seemed as if it had been not,
  As if the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
  Her feet like embers, & she, thought by thought,
  "Trampled its fires into the dust of death,
  As Day upon the threshold of the east
  Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath
  "Of darkness reillumines even the least
  Of heaven's living eyes—like day she came,
  Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
  "To move, as one between desire and shame
  Suspended, I said—'If, as it doth seem,
  Thou comest from the realm without a name,
  " 'Into this valley of perpetual dream,
  Shew whence I came, and where I am, and why—
  Pass not away upon the passing stream.
  
  '
  " 'Arise and quench thy thirst,' was her reply,
  And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
  Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,
  "I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
  Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
  And suddenly my brain became as sand
  "Where the first wave had more than half erased
  The track of deer on desert Labrador,
  Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed
  "Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
  Until the second bursts—so on my sight
  Burst a new Vision never seen before.
  
  —
  "And the fair shape waned in the coming light
  As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
  From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
  "Of sunrise ere it strike the mountain tops—
  And as the presence of that fairest planet
  Although unseen is felt by one who hopes
  "That his day's path may end as he began it
  In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent
  Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,
  "Or the soft note in which his dear lament
  The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
  That turned his weary slumber to content.
  
  —
  "So knew I in that light's severe excess
  The presence of that shape which on the stream
  Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
  "More dimly than a day appearing dream,
  The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep
  A light from Heaven whose half extinguished beam
  "Through the sick day in which we wake to weep
  Glimmers, forever sought, forever lost.
  
  —
  So did that shape its obscure tenour keep
  "Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;
  But the new Vision, and its cold bright car,
  With savage music, stunning music, crost
  "The forest, and as if from some dread war
  Triumphantly returning, the loud million
  Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.
  
  —
  "A moving arch of victory the vermilion
  And green & azure plumes of Iris had
  Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
  "And underneath aetherial glory clad
  The wilderness, and far before her flew
  The tempest of the splendour which forbade
  Shadow to fall from leaf or stone;—the crew
  Seemed in that light like atomies that dance
  Within a sunbeam.
  
  —Some upon the new
  "Embroidery of flowers that did enhance
  The grassy vesture of the desart, played,
  Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance;
  "Others stood gazing till within the shade
  Of the great mountain its light left them dim.
  
  —
  Others outspeeded it, and others made
  "Circles around it like the clouds that swim
  Round the high moon in a bright sea of air,
  And more did follow, with exulting hymn,
  "The chariot & the captives fettered there,
  But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
  Fell into the same track at last & were
  "Borne onward.
  
  —I among the multitude
  Was swept; me sweetest flowers delayed not long,
  Me not the shadow nor the solitude,
  "Me not the falling stream's Lethean song,
  Me, not the phantom of that early form
  Which moved upon its motion,—but among
  "The thickest billows of the living storm
  I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
  Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.
  
  —
  "Before the chariot had begun to climb
  The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
  Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
  "Of him whom from the lowest depths of Hell
  Through every Paradise & through all glory
  Love led serene, & who returned to tell
  "In words of hate & awe the wondrous story
  How all things are transfigured, except Love;
  For deaf as is a sea which wrath makes hoary
  "The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
  The sphere whose light is melody to lovers—-
  A wonder worthy of his rhyme—the grove
  "Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,
  The earth was grey with phantoms, & the air
  Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers
  "A flock of vampire-bats before the glare
  Of the tropic sun, bring ere evening
  Strange night upon some Indian isle,—thus were
  "Phantoms diffused around, & some did fling
  Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
  Behind them, some like eaglets on the wing
  "Were lost in the white blaze, others like elves
  Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
  Upon the sunny streams & grassy shelves;
  "And others sate chattering like restless apes
  On vulgar paws and voluble like fire.
  
  Some made a cradle of the ermined capes
  "Of kingly mantles, some upon the tiar
  Of pontiffs sate like vultures, others played
  Within the crown which girt with empire
  "A baby's or an idiot's brow, & made
  Their nests in it; the old anatomies
  Sate hatching their bare brood under the shade
  "Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
  To reassume the delegated power
  Arrayed in which these worms did monarchize
  "Who make this earth their charnel.
  
  —Others more
  Humble, like falcons sate upon the fist
  Of common men, and round their heads did soar,
  "Or like small gnats & flies, as thick as mist
  On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
  Of lawyer, statesman, priest & theorist,
  "And others like discoloured flakes of snow
  On fairest bosoms & the sunniest hair
  Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
  "Which they extinguished; for like tears, they were
  A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained
  In drops of sorrow.
  
  —I became aware
  "Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
  The track in which we moved; after brief space
  From every form the beauty slowly waned,
  "From every firmest limb & fairest face
  The strength & freshness fell like dust, & left
  The action & the shape without the grace
  "Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft
  With care, and in the eyes where once hope shone
  Desire like a lioness bereft
  "Of its last cub, glared ere it died; each one
  Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
  These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
  "In Autumn evening from a popular tree—
  Each, like himself & like each other were,
  At first, but soon distorted, seemed to be
  "Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air;
  And of this stuff the car's creative ray
  Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there
  "As the sun shapes the clouds—thus, on the way
  Mask after mask fell from the countenance
  And form of all, and long before the day
  "Was old, the joy which waked like Heaven's glance
  The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died,
  And some grew weary of the ghastly dance
  "And fell, as I have fallen by the way side,
  Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past
  And least of strength & beauty did abide.
  
  "—
  "Then, what is Life?
  
  " I said .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  the cripple cast
  His eye upon the car which now had rolled
  Onward, as if that look must be the last,
  And answered….
  
  "Happy those for whom the fold
  Of…
  Composed at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezzia in the spring and early summer of 1822 -- the poem on which Shelley was engaged at the time of his death.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley in the Posthumous Poems of 1824, from a MS.
  
  (now in the Bodleian library), whose corrections, omitted words, passages of unrevised improvisation, difficult hand, and long inaccessibility have so far prevented much certainty in the establishment of a text.
  
  Form: terza rima.
  
  The reference to Dante's Divine Comedy in lines 471-76 and to Petrarch's Triumphs in the title (both of which, like The Triumph of Life, are written in terza
  rima stanzas) suggests two probable models for the poem.
  
  132-34.
  
  Mary Shelley's text seems impossible, but no textual authority has been
  adduced for amending it.
  
  Misreading or miswriting of some kind must be
  responsible for that apparently parallel, but conflicting, pair, "were there" and
  "were neither.
  
  " W.
  
  M.
  
  Rossetti makes some sense out of the passage by amending
  "or" in 132 to "for" and "were there" in 134 to "whether", and by placing a
  semi-colon at the end of 131.
  
  134.
  
  Of Athens or Jerusalem.
  
  Commentators assume that the renouncing figures
  of which Shelley is thinking are Socrates in Athens and Jesus in Jerusalem.
  
  But
  the corruption of the text here makes any interpretation doubtful.
  
  190.
  
  Grim Feature: a reminiscence of Paradise Lost, X, 279, where it
  represents Death and carries the Latin meaning of "factura" or "creature.
  
  "
  204.
  
  Rousseau.
  
  Compare Byron's portrait of Rousseau in Childe Harold's
  Pilgrimage, III, lxxvii-lxxxii.
  
  236.
  
  Frederick and Paul, Catherine and Leopold: Frederick the Great of Prussia,
  Czar Paul and Catherine the Great of Russia, and Leopold II of the Holy Roman
  Empire.
  
  254.
  
  Plato.
  
  In the lines which follow, Shelley refers to the legend that Plato in
  his old age fell in love with a boy, whose name, Aster, is Greek for a star as
  well as for a particular (and short-lived) flower.
  
  261.
  
  The tutor and his pupil: Aristotle and Alexander the Great.
  
  283-84.
  
  The heirs of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine.
  
  Julius Caesar's
  crime was to undermine the Roman republic and prepare the way for the
  Roman emperors ("anarch chiefs" in 286), a procession of which up to
  Constantine Shelley now observes.
  
  288.
  
  Gregory and John.
  
  "Gregory the Great is appropriate, as the true founder
  of the independent political power of the papacy.
  
  Which of many Johns is
  involved, there is no way of telling" (H.
  
  Bloom).
  
  414.
  
  Lucifer: the Morning Star.
  
  421-22.
  
  The soft note in which his dear lament the Brescian shepherd breathes.
  
  "The favourite song, 'Stanco di pascolar le peccorelle, [being weary of pasturing
  the little sheep], is a Brescian national air" (Mrs.
  
  Shelley's note).
  
  439.
  
  Iris: classical goddess of the rainbow.
  
  472.
  
  Him: Dante in The Divine Comedy.
  
  544.
  
  Here the MS.
  
  breaks off.

• The Two Spirits: An Allegory Read Poem Log in to favourite

  FIRST SPIRIT:
  O thou, who plumed with strong desire
  Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
  A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire--
  Night is coming!
  Bright are the regions of the air,
  And among the winds and beams
  It were delight to wander there--
  Night is coming!
  SECOND SPIRIT:
  The deathless stars are bright above;
  If I would cross the shade of night,
  Within my heart is the lamp of love,
  And that is day!
  And the moon will smile with gentle light
  On my golden plumes where’er they move;
  The meteors will linger round my flight,
  And make night day.
  
  FIRST SPIRIT:
  But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
  Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain;
  See, the bounds of the air are shaken--
  Night is coming!
  The red swift clouds of the hurricane
  Yon declining sun have overtaken,
  The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain--
  Night is coming!
  SECOND SPIRIT:
  I see the light, and I hear the sound; 25
  I’ll sail on the flood of the tempest dark
  With the calm within and the light around
  Which makes night day:
  And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,
  Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound,
  My moon-like flight thou then mayst mark
  On high, far away.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Some say there is a precipice
  Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin
  O’er piles of snow and chasms of ice
  Mid Alpine mountains;
  And that the languid storm pursuing
  That winged shape, for ever flies
  Round those hoar branches, aye renewing
  Its aery fountains.
  
  Some say when nights are dry and clear,
  And the death-dews sleep on the morass,
  Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,
  Which make night day:
  And a silver shape like his early love doth pass
  Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,
  And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,
  He finds night day.
  
  Assigned to 1820 by Mary Shelley, the poet's wife.
  
  A notebook draft, whose many variants are of doubtful authority for establishing Shelley's final intention,
  survives.
  
  Two important variants are listed (from the Julian edition) in the notes below.
  
  25.
  
  Light.
  
  MS.
  
  reads "glare.
  
  "
  41.
  
  Nights are.
  
  MS.
  
  starts to change this to the singular, correcting "are"
  to "is," but not going on to correct the subject.

• The Viewless And Invisible Consequence Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The viewless and invisible Consequence
  Watches thy goings-out, and comings-in,
  And.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  hovers o'er thy guilty sleep,
  Unveiling every new-born deed, and thoughts
  More ghastly than those deeds--

• The Wandering Jew's Soliloquy Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He
  Who dares arrest the wheels of destiny
  And plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells?
  
  Will not the lightning's blast destroy my frame?
  
  Will not steel drink the blood-life where it swells?
  
  No—let me hie where dark Destruction dwells,
  To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair,
  And, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire,
  Light long Oblivion's death-torch at its flame
  And calmly mount Annihilation's pyre.
  
  Tyrant of Earth! pale Misery's jackal Thou!
  Are there no stores of vengeful violent fate
  Within the magazines of Thy fierce hate?
  
  No poison in the clouds to bathe a brow
  That lowers on Thee with desperate contempt?
  
  Where is the noonday Pestilence that slew
  The myriad sons of Israel's favoured nation?
  
  Where the destroying Minister that flew
  Pouring the fiery tide of desolation
  Upon the leagued Assyrian's attempt?
  
  Where the dark Earthquake-daemon who engorged
  At the dread word Korah's unconscious crew?
  
  Or the Angel's two-edged sword of fire that urged
  Our primal parents from their bower of bliss
  (Reared by Thine hand) for errors not their own
  By Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown?
  
  Yes! I would court a ruin such as this,
  Almighty Tyrant! and give thanks to Thee--
  Drink deeply—drain the cup of hate; remit this--I may die.
  
  Published (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Bertram Dobell, 1887.

• The Waning Moon Read Poem Log in to favourite

  And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
  Who totters forth, wrapp'd 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 East,
  A white and shapeless mass.

• The Witch Of Atlas Read Poem Log in to favourite

  TO MARY
  (ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST)
  I.
  
  How, my dear Mary, -- are you critic-bitten
  (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
  That you condemn these verses I have written,
  Because they tell no story, false or true?
  
  What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
  May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
  Till its claws come?
  
  Prithee, for this one time,
  Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
  
  II.
  
  What hand would crush the silken-wingèd fly,
  The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
  Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
  Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
  
  Not thine.
  
  Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
  When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
  The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
  Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.
  
  III.
  
  To thy fair feet a wingèd Vision came,
  Whose date should have been longer than a day,
  And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
  And in thy sight its fading plumes display;
  The watery bow burned in the evening flame,
  But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way—
  And that is dead.
  
  —O, let me not believe
  That anything of mine is fit to live!
  IV.
  
  Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
  Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
  Watering his laurels with the killing tears
  Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
  Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
  Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well
  May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
  The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.
  
  V.
  
  My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
  As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
  Clothes for our grandsons—but she matches Peter,
  Though he took nineteen years, and she three days
  In dressing.
  
  Light the vest of flowing metre
  She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
  Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
  Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness.
  
  '
  VI.
  
  If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
  Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate
  Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:
  A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
  In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.
  
  If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
  Can shrive you of that sin, -- if sin there be
  In love, when it becomes idolatry.
  
  THE WITCH OF ATLAS.
  
  I.
  
  Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
  Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,
  Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth
  All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
  And left us nothing to believe in, worth
  The pains of putting into learnèd rhyme,
  A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain
  Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.
  
  II.
  
  Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
  The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
  In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
  So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden
  In the warm shadow of her loveliness;--
  He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
  The chamber of gray rock in which she lay--
  She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
  
  III.
  
  'Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,
  And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
  Like splendour-wingèd moths about a taper,
  Round the red west when the sun dies in it:
  And then into a meteor, such as caper
  On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit:
  Then, into one of those mysterious stars
  Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.
  
  IV.
  
  Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
  Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden
  With that bright sign the billows to indent
  The sea-deserted sand -- like children chidden,
  At her command they ever came and went--
  Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden
  Took shape and motion: with the living form
  Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm.
  
  V.
  
  A lovely lady garmented in light
  From her own beauty -- deep her eyes, as are
  Two openings of unfathomable night
  Seen through a Temple's cloven roof -- her hair
  Dark—the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight,
  Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,
  And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
  All living things towards this wonder new.
  
  VI.
  
  And first the spotted cameleopard came,
  And then the wise and fearless elephant;
  Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
  Of his own volumes intervolved -- all gaunt
  And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
  
  They drank before her at her sacred fount;
  And every beast of beating heart grew bold,
  Such gentleness and power even to behold.
  
  VII.
  
  The brinded lioness led forth her young,
  That she might teach them how they should forego
  Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
  His sinews at her feet, and sought to know
  With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue
  How he might be as gentle as the doe.
  
  The magic circle of her voice and eyes
  All savage natures did imparadise.
  
  VIII.
  
  And old Silenus, shaking a green stick
  Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
  Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
  Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:
  And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
  Teasing the God to sing them something new;
  Till in this cave they found the lady lone,
  Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.
  
  IX.
  
  And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there,
  And though none saw him,—through the adamant
  Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air,
  And through those living spirits, like a want,
  He passed out of his everlasting lair
  Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,
  And felt that wondrous lady all alone,—
  And she felt him, upon her emerald throne.
  
  X.
  
  And every nymph of stream and spreading tree,
  And every shepherdess of Ocean's flocks,
  Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
  And Ocean with the brine on his gray locks,
  And quaint Priapus with his company,
  All came, much wondering how the enwombèd rocks
  Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;—
  Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.
  
  XI.
  
  The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
  And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant—
  Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
  Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
  Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,
  Centaurs, and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
  Wet clefts,—and lumps neither alive nor dead,
  Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.
  
  XII.
  
  For she was beautiful—her beauty made
  The bright world dim, and everything beside
  Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
  No thought of living spirit could abide,
  Which to her looks had ever been betrayed,
  On any object in the world so wide,
  On any hope within the circling skies,
  But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.
  
  XIII.
  
  Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle
  And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
  Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
  The clouds and waves and mountains with; and she
  As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle
  In the belated moon, wound skilfully;
  And with these threads a subtle veil she wove—
  A shadow for the splendour of her love.
  
  XIV.
  
  The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
  Were stored with magic treasures—sounds of air,
  Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
  Folded in cells of crystal silence there;
  Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
  Will never die—yet ere we are aware,
  The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
  And the regret they leave remains alone.
  
  XV.
  
  And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,
  Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis,
  Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint
  With the soft burthen of intensest bliss
  It was its work to bear to many a saint
  Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
  Even Love's -- and others white, green, gray, and black,
  And of all shapes—and each was at her beck.
  
  XVI.
  
  And odours in a kind of aviary
  Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,
  Clipped in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy
  Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept;
  As bats at the wired window of a dairy.
  
  They beat their vans; and each was an adept,
  When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds,
  To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.
  
  XVII.
  
  And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
  Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
  And change eternal death into a night
  Of glorious dreams—or if eyes needs must weep,
  Could make their tears all wonder and delight,
  She in her crystal vials did closely keep:
  If men could drink of those clear vials, 'tis said
  The living were not envied of the dead.
  
  XVIII.
  
  Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,
  The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
  Which taught the expiations at whose price
  Men from the Gods might win that happy age
  Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
  And which might quench the Earth-consuming rage
  Of gold and blood—till men should live and move
  Harmonious as the sacred stars above;
  XIX.
  
  And how all things that seem untameable,
  Not to be checked and not to be confined,
  Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill;
  Time, earth, and fire—the ocean and the wind,
  And all their shapes -- and man's imperial will;
  And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
  The inmost lore of Love—let the profane
  Tremble to ask what secrets they contain.
  
  XX.
  
  And wondrous works of substances unknown,
  To which the enchantment of her father's power
  Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
  Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
  Carved lamps and chalices, and vials which shone
  In their own golden beams -- each like a flower,
  Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light
  Under a cypress in a starless night.
  
  XXI.
  
  At first she lived alone in this wild home,
  And her own thoughts were each a minister,
  Clothing themselves, or with the ocean foam,
  Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
  To work whatever purposes might come
  Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire
  Had girt them with, whether to fly or run,
  Through all the regions which he shines upon.
  
  XXII.
  
  The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,
  Oreads and Naiads, with long weedy locks,
  Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
  Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks,
  And far beneath the matted roots of trees,
  And in the gnarlèd heart of stubborn oaks,
  So they might live for ever in the light
  Of her sweet presence -- each a satellite.
  
  XXIII.
  
  'This may not be,' the wizard maid replied;
  'The fountains where the Naiades bedew
  Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried;
  The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew
  Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;
  The boundless ocean like a drop of dew
  Will be consumed—the stubborn centre must
  Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.
  
  XXIV.
  
  'And ye with them will perish, one by one;—
  If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
  If I must weep when the surviving Sun
  Shall smile on your decay -- oh, ask not me
  To love you till your little race is run;
  I cannot die as ye must -- over me
  Your leaves shall glance -- the streams in which ye dwell
  Shall be my paths henceforth, and so -- farewell!'--
  XXV.
  
  She spoke and wept:—the dark and azure well
  Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
  And every little circlet where they fell
  Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
  And intertangled lines of light:—a knell
  Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
  From those departing Forms, o'er the serene
  Of the white streams and of the forest green.
  
  XXVI.
  
  All day the wizard lady sate aloof,
  Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity,
  Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof;
  Or broidering the pictured poesy
  Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
  Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
  In hues outshining heaven—and ever she
  Added some grace to the wrought poesy.
  
  XXVII.
  
  While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece
  Of sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon;
  Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is—
  Each flame of it is as a precious stone
  Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this
  Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.
  
  The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand
  She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.
  
  XXVIII.
  
  This lady never slept, but lay in trance
  All night within the fountain -- as in sleep.
  
  Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance;
  Through the green splendour of the water deep
  She saw the constellations reel and dance
  Like fire-flies -- and withal did ever keep
  The tenour of her contemplations calm,
  With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm.
  
  XXIX.
  
  And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended
  From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,
  She passed at dewfall to a space extended,
  Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel
  Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended,
  There yawned an inextinguishable well
  Of crimson fire—full even to the brim,
  And overflowing all the margin trim.
  
  XXX.
  
  Within the which she lay when the fierce war
  Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor
  In many a mimic moon and bearded star
  O'er woods and lawns -- the serpent heard it flicker
  In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar--
  And when the windless snow descended thicker
  Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came
  Melt on the surface of the level flame.
  
  XXXI.
  
  She had a boat, which some say Vulcan wrought
  For Venus, as the chariot of her star;
  But it was found too feeble to be fraught
  With all the ardours in that sphere which are,
  And so she sold it, and Apollo bought
  And gave it to this daughter: from a car
  Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat
  Which ever upon mortal stream did float.
  
  XXXII.
  
  And others say, that, when but three hours old,
  The first-born Love out of his cradle lept,
  And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,
  And like an horticultural adept,
  Stole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould,
  And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept
  Watering it all the summer with sweet dew,
  And with his wings fanning it as it grew.
  
  XXXIII.
  
  The plant grew strong and green, the snowy flower
  Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began
  To turn the light and dew by inward power
  To its own substance; woven tracery ran
  Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er
  The solid rind, like a leaf's veinèd fan--
  Of which Love scooped this boat -- and with soft motion
  Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.
  
  XXXIV.
  
  This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit
  A living spirit within all its frame,
  Breathing the soul of swiftness into it.
  
  Couched on the fountain like a panther tame,
  One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit--
  Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame--
  Or on blind Homer's heart a wingèd thought,--
  In joyous expectation lay the boat.
  
  XXXV.
  
  Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow
  Together, tempering the repugnant mass
  With liquid love -- all things together grow
  Through which the harmony of love can pass;
  And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow--
  A living Image, which did far surpass
  In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
  Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.
  
  XXXVI.
  
  A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
  It seemed to have developed no defect
  Of either sex, yet all the grace of both,--
  In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;
  The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,
  The countenance was such as might select
  Some artist that his skill should never die,
  Imaging forth such perfect purity.
  
  XXXVII.
  
  From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,
  Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,
  Tipped with the speed of liquid lightenings,
  Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere:
  She led her creature to the boiling springs
  Where the light boat was moored, and said: 'Sit here!'
  And pointed to the prow, and took her seat
  Beside the rudder, with opposing feet.
  
  XXXVIII.
  
  And down the streams which clove those mountains vast,
  Around their inland islets, and amid
  The panther-peopled forests, whose shade cast
  Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid
  In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed;
  By many a star-surrounded pyramid
  Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,
  And caverns yawning round unfathomably.
  
  XXXIX.
  
  The silver noon into that winding dell,
  With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,
  Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell;
  A green and glowing light, like that which drops
  From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell,
  When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps;
  Between the severed mountains lay on high,
  Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky.
  
  XL.
  
  And ever as she went, the Image lay
  With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
  And o'er its gentle countenance did play
  The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
  Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay,
  And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
  Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
  They had aroused from that full heart and brain.
  
  XLI.
  
  And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
  Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:
  Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
  The calm and darkness of the deep content
  In which they paused; now o'er the shallow road
  Of white and dancing waters, all besprent
  With sand and polished pebbles:—mortal boat
  In such a shallow rapid could not float.
  
  XLII.
  
  And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver
  Their snow-like waters into golden air,
  Or under chasms unfathomable ever
  Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear
  A subterranean portal for the river,
  It fled—the circling sunbows did upbear
  Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
  Lighting it far upon its lampless way.
  
  XLIII.
  
  And when the wizard lady would ascend
  The labyrinths of some many-winding vale,
  Which to the inmost mountain upward tend—
  She called 'Hermaphroditus!'—and the pale
  And heavy hue which slumber could extend
  Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale
  A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,
  Into the darkness of the stream did pass.
  
  XLIV.
  
  And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,
  With stars of fire spotting the stream below;
  And from above into the Sun's dominions
  Flinging a glory, like the golden glow
  In which Spring clothes her emerald-wingèd minions,
  All interwoven with fine feathery snow
  And moonlight splendour of intensest rime,
  With which frost paints the pines in winter time.
  
  XLV.
  
  And then it winnowed the Elysian air
  Which ever hung about that lady bright,
  With its aethereal vans—and speeding there,
  Like a star up the torrent of the night,
  Or a swift eagle in the morning glare
  Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,
  The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
  Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.
  
  XLVI.
  
  The water flashed, like sunlight by the prow
  Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven;
  The still air seemed as if its waves did flow
  In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven
  The lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro:
  Beneath, the billows having vainly striven
  Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel
  The swift and steady motion of the keel.
  
  XLVII.
  
  Or, when the weary moon was in the wane,
  Or in the noon of interlunar night,
  The lady-witch in visions could not chain
  Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light
  Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain
  Its storm-outspeeding wings, the Hermaphrodite;
  She to the Austral waters took her way,
  Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana,—
  XLVIII.
  
  Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven,
  Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake,
  With the Antarctic constellations paven,
  Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake—
  There she would build herself a windless haven
  Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make
  The bastions of the storm, when through the sky
  The spirits of the tempest thundered by:
  XLIX.
  
  A haven beneath whose translucent floor
  The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
  And around which the solid vapours hoar,
  Based on the level waters, to the sky
  Lifted their dreadful crags, and like a shore
  Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
  Hemmed in with rifts and precipices gray,
  And hanging crags, many a cove and bay.
  
  L.
  
  And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
  Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a wounded thing,
  And the incessant hail with stony clash
  Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
  Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash
  Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
  Fragment of inky thunder-smoke -- this haven
  Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven,--
  LI.
  
  On which that lady played her many pranks,
  Circling the image of a shooting star,
  Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks
  Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are,
  In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
  She played upon the water, till the car
  Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan,
  To journey from the misty east began.
  
  LII.
  
  And then she called out of the hollow turrets
  Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,
  The armies of her ministering spirits—
  In mighty legions, million after million,
  They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
  On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion
  Of the intertexture of the atmosphere
  They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.
  
  LIII.
  
  They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen
  Of woven exhalations, underlaid
  With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen
  A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid
  With crimson silk -- cressets from the serene
  Hung there, and on the water for her tread
  A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,
  Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.
  
  LIV.
  
  And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught
  Upon those wandering isles of aëry dew,
  Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not,
  She sate, and heard all that had happened new
  Between the earth and moon, since they had brought
  The last intelligence -- and now she grew
  Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night--
  And now she wept, and now she laughed outright.
  
  LV.
  
  These were tame pleasures; she would often climb
  The steepest ladder of the crudded rack
  Up to some beakèd cape of cloud sublime,
  And like Arion on the dolphin's back
  Ride singing through the shoreless air; -- oft-time
  Following the serpent lightning's winding track,
  She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
  And laughed to hear the fire-balls roar behind.
  
  LVI.
  
  And sometimes to those streams of upper air
  Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round,
  She would ascend, and win the spirits there
  To let her join their chorus.
  
  Mortals found
  That on those days the sky was calm and fair,
  And mystic snatches of harmonious sound
  Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed,
  And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.
  
  LVII.
  
  But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,
  To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads
  Egypt and Aethiopia, from the steep
  Of utmost Axumè, until he spreads,
  Like a calm flock of silver-fleecèd sheep,
  His waters on the plain: and crested heads
  Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
  And many a vapour-belted pyramid.
  
  LVIII.
  
  By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes,
  Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors,
  Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
  Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
  Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
  Of those huge forms -- within the brazen doors
  Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
  Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.
  
  LIX.
  
  And where within the surface of the river
  The shadows of the massy temples lie,
  And never are erased -- but tremble ever
  Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
  Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever
  The works of man pierced that serenest sky
  With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight
  To wander in the shadow of the night.
  
  LX.
  
  With motion like the spirit of that wind
  Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
  Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind,
  Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,
  Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined
  With many a dark and subterranean street
  Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
  She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.
  
  LXI.
  
  A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
  Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.
  
  Here lay two sister twins in infancy;
  There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
  Within, two lovers linkèd innocently
  In their loose locks which over both did creep
  Like ivy from one stem;—and there lay calm
  Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.
  
  LXII.
  
  But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
  Not to be mirrored in a holy song--
  Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
  And pale imaginings of visioned wrong;
  And all the code of Custom's lawless law
  Written upon the brows of old and young:
  'This,' said the wizard maiden, 'is the strife
  Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life.
  
  '
  LXIII.
  
  And little did the sight disturb her soul.
  
  --
  We, the weak mariners of that wide lake
  Where'er its shores extend or billows roll,
  Our course unpiloted and starless make
  O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal:--
  But she in the calm depths her way could take,
  Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide
  Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.
  
  LXIV.
  
  And she saw princes couched under the glow
  Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
  In dormitories ranged, row after row,
  She saw the priests asleep—all of one sort--
  For all were educated to be so.
  
  —
  The peasants in their huts, and in the port
  The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,
  And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves.
  
  LXV.
  
  And all the forms in which those spirits lay
  Were to her sight like the diaphanous
  Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array
  Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us
  Only their scorn of all concealment: they
  Move in the light of their own beauty thus.
  
  But these and all now lay with sleep upon them,
  And little thought a Witch was looking on them.
  
  LXVI.
  
  She, all those human figures breathing there,
  Beheld as living spirits -- to her eyes
  The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,
  And often through a rude and worn disguise
  She saw the inner form most bright and fair--
  And then she had a charm of strange device,
  Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone,
  Could make that spirit mingle with her own.
  
  LXVII.
  
  Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given
  For such a charm when Tithon became gray?
  
  Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven
  Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina
  Had half (oh! why not all?
  
  ) the debt forgiven
  Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,
  To any witch who would have taught you it?
  
  The Heliad doth not know its value yet.
  
  LXVIII.
  
  'Tis said in after times her spirit free
  Knew what love was, and felt itself alone--
  But holy Dian could not chaster be
  Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,
  Than now this lady -- like a sexless bee
  Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none,
  Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden
  Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.
  
  LXIX.
  
  To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
  Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:--
  They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,
  And lived thenceforward as if some control,
  Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
  Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
  Was as a green and overarching bower
  Lit by the gems of many a starry flower.
  
  LXX.
  
  For on the night when they were buried, she
  Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook
  The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
  A mimic day within that deathy nook;
  And she unwound the woven imagery
  Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took
  The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
  And threw it with contempt into a ditch.
  
  LXXI.
  
  And there the body lay, age after age,
  Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,
  Like one asleep in a green hermitage,
  With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
  And living in its dreams beyond the rage
  Of death or life; while they were still arraying
  In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind
  And fleeting generations of mankind.
  
  LXXII.
  
  And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
  Of those who were less beautiful, and make
  All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
  Than in the desert is the serpent's wake
  Which the sand covers—all his evil gain
  The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
  Into a beggar's lap;—the lying scribe
  Would his own lies betray without a bribe.
  
  LXXIII.
  
  The priests would write an explanation full,
  Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
  How the God Apis really was a bull,
  And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
  The same against the temple doors, and pull
  The old cant down; they licensed all to speak
  What'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
  By pastoral letters to each diocese.
  
  LXXIV.
  
  The king would dress an ape up in his crown
  And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
  And on the right hand of the sunlike throne
  Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
  The chatterings of the monkey.
  
  —Every one
  Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
  Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,
  And kissed -- alas, how many kiss the same!
  LXXV.
  
  The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
  Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
  Round the red anvils you might see them stand
  Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
  Beating their swords to ploughshares; -- in a band
  The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
  Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,
  To the annoyance of king Amasis.
  
  LXXVI.
  
  And timid lovers who had been so coy,
  They hardly knew whether they loved or not,
  Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
  To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
  And when next day the maiden and the boy
  Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
  Blushed at the thing which each believed was done
  Only in fancy -- till the tenth moon shone;
  LXXVII.
  
  And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
  Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
  The Witch found one,—and so they took their fill
  Of happiness in marriage warm and kind.
  
  Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
  Were torn apart -- a wide wound, mind from mind!--
  She did unite again with visions clear
  Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
  
  LXXVIII.
  
  These were the pranks she played among the cities
  Of mortal men, and what she did to Sprites
  And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
  To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
  I will declare another time; for it is
  A tale more fit for the weird winter nights
  Than for these garish summer days, when we
  Scarcely believe much more than we can see.
  
  Composed at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 14-16, 1820; published in Posthumous Poems, ed.
  
  Mrs.
  
  Shelley, 1824.
  
  The dedication To Mary first appeared in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st ed.
  
  Note by Mrs.
  
  Shelley: 'We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa.
  
  These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous irritability.
  
  We made several excursions in the neighbourhood.
  
  The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains.
  
  The peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright.
  
  During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pellegrino -- a mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the object, during certain days of the year, of many pilgrimages.
  
  The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lsasitude and weakness on his return.
  
  During the expedition he conceived the idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the Witch of Atlas.
  
  This poem is peculiarly characteristic of his tastes -- wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas that his imagination suggested.
  
  '

• The Woodman And The Nightingale Read Poem Log in to favourite

  A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
  (I think such hearts yet never came to good)
  Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
  One nightingale in an interfluous wood
  Satiate the hungry dark with melody;--
  And as a vale is watered by a flood,
  Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
  Struggling with darkness—as a tuberose
  Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
  Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
  The singing of that happy nightingale
  In this sweet forest, from the golden close
  Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
  Was interfused upon the silentness;
  The folded roses and the violets pale
  Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
  Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
  Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
  Of the circumfluous waters,—every sphere
  And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,
  And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
  And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
  And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
  And every silver moth fresh from the grave
  Which is its cradle—ever from below
  Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
  To be consumed within the purest glow
  Of one serene and unapproached star,
  As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
  Unconscious, as some human lovers are,
  Itself how low, how high beyond all height
  The heaven where it would perish!—and every form
  That worshipped in the temple of the night
  Was awed into delight, and by the charm
  Girt as with an interminable zone,
  Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
  Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
  Out of their dreams; harmony became love
  In every soul but one.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And so this man returned with axe and saw
  At evening close from killing the tall treen,
  The soul of whom by Nature’s gentle law
  Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
  The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
  Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene
  With jagged leaves,—and from the forest tops
  Singing the winds to sleep—or weeping oft
  Fast showers of aereal water-drops
  Into their mother’s bosom, sweet and soft,
  Nature’s pure tears which have no bitterness;--
  Around the cradles of the birds aloft
  They spread themselves into the loveliness
  Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
  Hang like moist clouds:—or, where high branches kiss,
  Make a green space among the silent bowers,
  Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
  Surrounded by the columns and the towers
  All overwrought with branch-like traceries
  In which there is religion—and the mute
  Persuasion of unkindled melodies,
  Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
  Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
  Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
  Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
  To such brief unison as on the brain
  One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
  One accent never to return again.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The world is full of Woodmen who expel
  Love’s gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
  And vex the nightingales in every dell.

• The World's Wanderers Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  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?
  
  II.
  
  Tell me, Moon, thou pale and gray
  Pilgrim of Heaven’s homeless way,
  In what depth of night or day
  Seekest thou repose now?
  
  III.
  
  Weary Wind, who wanderest
  Like the world’s rejected guest,
  Hast thou still some secret nest
  On the tree or billow?

• The Zucca Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,
  And infant Winter laughed upon the land
  All cloudlessly and cold;--when I, desiring
  More in this world than any understand,
  Wept o’er the beauty, which, like sea retiring,
  Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand
  Of my lorn heart, and o’er the grass and flowers
  Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.
  
  II.
  
  Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep
  The instability of all but weeping;
  And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep
  I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.
  
  Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep
  The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping
  From unremembered dreams, shalt .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  see
  No death divide thy immortality.
  
  III.
  
  I loved--oh, no, I mean not one of ye,
  Or any earthly one, though ye are dear
  As human heart to human heart may be;--
  I loved, I know not what--but this low sphere
  And all that it contains, contains not thee,
  Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere.
  
  From Heaven and Earth, and all that in them are,
  Veiled art thou, like a .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  star.
  
  IV.
  
  By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,
  Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden;
  Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,
  When for a moment thou art not forbidden
  To live within the life which thou bestowest;
  And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,
  Cold as a corpse after the spirit’s flight
  Blank as the sun after the birth of night.
  
  V.
  
  In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,
  In music and the sweet unconscious tone
  Of animals, and voices which are human,
  Meant to express some feelings of their own;
  In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,
  In flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh-shown,
  Or dying in the autumn, I the most
  Adore thee present or lament thee lost.
  
  VI.
  
  And thus I went lamenting, when I saw
  A plant upon the river’s margin lie
  Like one who loved beyond his nature’s law,
  And in despair had cast him down to die;
  Its leaves, which had outlived the frost, the thaw
  Had blighted; like a heart which hatred’s eye
  Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew
  Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.
  
  VII.
  
  The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth
  Had crushed it on her maternal breast
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  VIII.
  
  I bore it to my chamber, and I planted
  It in a vase full of the lightest mould;
  The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted
  Fell through the window-panes, disrobed of cold,
  Upon its leaves and flowers; the stars which panted
  In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled
  Over the horizon’s wave, with looks of light
  Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.
  
  IX.
  
  The mitigated influences of air
  And light revived the plant, and from it grew
  Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,
  Full as a cup with the vine’s burning dew,
  O’erflowed with golden colours; an atmosphere
  Of vital warmth enfolded it anew,
  And every impulse sent to every part
  The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.
  
  X.
  
  Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong,
  Even if the air and sun had smiled not on it;
  For one wept o’er it all the winter long
  Tears pure as Heaven’s rain, which fell upon it
  Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song
  Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it
  To leave the gentle lips on which it slept,
  Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.
  
  XI.
  
  Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers 75
  On which he wept, the while the savage storm
  Waked by the darkest of December’s hours
  Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm;
  The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers,
  The fish were frozen in the pools, the form
  Of every summer plant was dead
  Whilst this.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .

• Time Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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
  Claspest the limits of mortality!
  
  And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,
  Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;
  Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,
  Who shall put forth on thee,
  Unfathomable Sea?

• Time Long Past Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Like the ghost of a dear friend dead
  Is Time long past.
  
  A tone which is now forever fled,
  A hope which is now forever past,
  A love so sweet it could not last,
  Was Time long past.
  
  There were sweet dreams in the night
  Of Time long past:
  And, was it sadness or delight,
  Each day a shadow onward cast
  Which made us wish it yet might last—
  That Time long past.
  
  There is regret, almost remorse,
  For Time long past.
  
  'Tis like a child's belovèd corse
  A father watches, till at last
  Beauty is like remembrance, cast
  From Time long past.

• To A Skylark Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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.
  
  In the golden lightning
  Of the sunken sun
  O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
  Thou dost float and run,
  Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
  
  The pale purple even
  Melts around thy flight;
  Like a star of Heaven
  In the broad daylight
  Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:
  Keen as are the arrows
  Of that silver sphere,
  Whose intense lamp narrows
  In the white dawn clear
  Until we hardly see — we feel that it is there.
  
  All the earth and air
  With thy voice is loud.
  
  As, when night is bare,
  From one lonely cloud
  The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
  
  What thou art we know not;
  What is most like thee?
  
  From rainbow clouds there flow not
  Drops so bright to see
  As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
  
  Like a poet hidden
  In the light of thought,
  Singing hymns unbidden,
  Till the world is wrought
  To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
  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.
  
  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 hymeneal
  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?
  
  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!
  Composed at Leghorn, 1820, and published with "Prometheus Unbound" in the same year.
  
  There is a transcript in the Harvard manuscript.

• To A Star Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Sweet star, which gleaming o'er the darksome scene
  Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance fliest,
  Spanglet of light on evening's shadowy veil,
  Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake,
  Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet
  Than the expiring morn-star’s paly fires:--
  Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep,
  And all is hushed,--all, save the voice of Love,
  Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast
  Of soft Favonius, which at intervals
  Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but
  Lulling the slaves of interest to repose
  With that mild, pitying gaze?
  
  Oh, I would look
  In thy dear beam till every bond of sense
  Became enamoured--
  Published (without title) by Hogg, 'Life of Shelley', 1858; dated 1811.
  
  The title is Rossetti’s (1870).

• To Coleridge Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Oh! there are spirits of the air,
  And genii of the evening breeze,
  And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
  As star-beams among twilight trees:
  Such lovely ministers to meet
  Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
  
  With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
  And moonlight seas, that are the voice
  Of these inexplicable things,
  Thou dost 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,
  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.

• To Constantia Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The rose that drinks the fountain dew
  In the pleasant air of noon,
  Grows pale and blue with altered hue—
  In the gaze of the nightly moon;
  For the planet of frost, so cold and bright
  Makes it wan with her borrowed light.
  
  II.
  
  Such is my heart—roses are fair,
  And that at best a withered blossom;
  But thy false care did idly wear
  Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom;
  And fed with love, like air and dew,
  Its growth----
  Dated 1817 by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, and printed by her in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition.
  
  A copy exists amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian.

• To Constantia, Singing Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die,
  Perchance were death indeed!—Constantia, turn!
  In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,
  Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn
  Between thy lips, are laid to sleep;
  Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour, it is yet,
  And from thy touch like fire doth leap.
  
  Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet.
  
  Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!
  II.
  
  A breathless awe, like the swift change
  Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers,
  Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,
  Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers.
  
  The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven
  By the enchantment of thy strain,
  And on my shoulders wings are woven,
  To follow its sublime career
  Beyond the mighty moons that wane
  Upon the verge of Nature's utmost sphere,
  Till the world’s shadowy walls are past and disappear.
  
  III.
  
  Her voice is hovering o’er my soul—it lingers
  O’ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings,
  The blood and life within those snowy fingers
  Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.
  
  My brain is wild, my breath comes quick--
  The blood is listening in my frame,
  And thronging shadows, fast and thick,
  Fall on my overflowing eyes;
  My heart is quivering like a flame;
  As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies,
  I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.
  
  IV.
  
  I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee,
  Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
  Flows on, and fills all things with melody.
  
  --
  Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong,
  On which, like one in trance upborne,
  Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep,
  Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.
  
  Now 'tis the breath of summer night,
  Which when the starry waters sleep,
  Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright,
  Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.
  
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley in Posthumous Poems, 1824.

• To Death Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Death! where is thy victory?
  
  To triumph whilst I die,
  To triumph whilst thine ebon wing
  Enfolds my shuddering soul?
  
  O Death! where is thy sting?
  
  Not when the tides of murder roll,
  When nations groan, that kings may bask in bliss,
  Death! canst thou boast a victory such as this--
  When in his hour of pomp and power
  His blow the mightiest murderer gave,
  Mid Nature’s cries the sacrifice
  Of millions to glut the grave;
  When sunk the Tyrant Desolation’s slave;
  Or Freedom’s life-blood streamed upon thy shrine;
  Stern Tyrant, couldst thou boast a victory such as mine?
  
  To know in dissolution’s void
  That mortals’ baubles sunk decay;
  That everything, but Love, destroyed
  Must perish with its kindred clay,--
  Perish Ambition’s crown,
  Perish her sceptred sway:
  From Death’s pale front fades Pride’s fastidious frown.
  
  In Death’s damp vault the lurid fires decay,
  That Envy lights at heaven-born Virtue’s beam--
  That all the cares subside,
  Which lurk beneath the tide
  Of life’s unquiet stream;--
  Yes! this is victory!
  And on yon rock, whose dark form glooms the sky,
  To stretch these pale limbs, when the soul is fled;
  To baffle the lean passions of their prey,
  To sleep within the palace of the dead!
  Oh! not the King, around whose dazzling throne
  His countless courtiers mock the words they say,
  Triumphs amid the bud of glory blown,
  As I in this cold bed, and faint expiring groan!
  Tremble, ye proud, whose grandeur mocks the woe
  Which props the column of unnatural state!
  You the plainings, faint and low,
  From Misery’s tortured soul that flow,
  Shall usher to your fate.
  
  Tremble, ye conquerors, at whose fell command
  The war-fiend riots o’er a peaceful land!
  You Desolation’s gory throng
  Shall bear from Victory along
  To that mysterious strand.
  
  Published (without title) by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1810.
  
  Included (under the title, “To Death”) in the Esdaile manuscript book.

• To Edward Williams Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The serpent is shut out from Paradise.
  
  The wounded deer must seek the herb no more
  In which its heart-cure lies:
  The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower
  Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs
  Fled in the April hour.
  
  I too must seldom seek again
  Near happy friends a mitigated pain.
  
  II.
  
  Of hatred I am proud,--with scorn content;
  Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown
  Itself indifferent;
  But, not to speak of love, pity alone
  Can break a spirit already more than bent.
  
  The miserable one
  Turns the mind’s poison into food,--
  Its medicine is tears,--its evil good.
  
  III.
  
  Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,
  Dear friends, dear FRIEND! know that I only fly
  Your looks, because they stir
  Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die:
  The very comfort that they minister
  I scarce can bear, yet I,
  So deeply is the arrow gone,
  Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.
  
  IV.
  
  When I return to my cold home, you ask
  Why I am not as I have ever been.
  
  YOU spoil me for the task
  Of acting a forced part in life's dull scene,--
  Of wearing on my brow the idle mask
  Of author, great or mean,
  In the world's carnival.
  
  I sought
  Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.
  
  V.
  
  Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot
  With various flowers, and every one still said,
  'She loves me--loves me not.
  
  '
  And if this meant a vision long since fled--
  If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought--
  If it meant,--but I dread
  To speak what you may know too well:
  Still there was truth in the sad oracle.
  
  VI.
  
  The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home;
  No bird so wild but has its quiet nest,
  When it no more would roam;
  The sleepless billows on the ocean’s breast
  Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam,
  And thus at length find rest:
  Doubtless there is a place of peace
  Where MY weak heart and all its throbs will cease.
  
  VII.
  
  I asked her, yesterday, if she believed
  That I had resolution.
  
  One who HAD
  Would ne’er have thus relieved
  His heart with words,—but what his judgement bade
  Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.
  
  These verses are too sad
  To send to you, but that I know,
  Happy yourself, you feel another’s woe.
  
  Published in Ascham's edition of the Poems, 1834.
  
  There is a copy amongst the Trelawny manuscripts.

• To Emilia Viviani Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me
  Sweet-basil and mignonette?
  
  Embleming love and health, which never yet
  In the same wreath might be.
  
  Alas, and they are wet!
  Is it with thy kisses or thy tears?
  
  For never rain or dew
  Such fragrance drew
  From plant or flower—the very doubt endears
  My sadness ever new,
  The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed for thee.
  
  II.
  
  Send the stars light, but send not love to me,
  In whom love ever made
  Health like a heap of embers soon to fade--

• To Harriet Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Thy look of love has power to calm
  The stormiest passion of my soul;
  Thy gentle words are drops of balm
  In life's too bitter bowl;
  No grief is mine, but that alone
  These choicest blessings I have known.
  
  Harriet! if all who long to live
  In the warm sunshine of thine eye,
  That price beyond all pain must give,—
  Beneath thy scorn to die;
  Then hear thy chosen own too late
  His heart most worthy of thy hate.
  
  Be thou, then, one among mankind
  Whose heart is harder not for state,
  Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,
  Amid a world of hate;
  And by a slight endurance seal
  A fellow-being's lasting weal.
  
  For pale with anguish is his cheek,
  His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim,
  Thy name is struggling ere he speak,
  Weak is each trembling limb;
  In mercy let him not endure
  The misery of a fatal cure.
  
  Oh, trust for once no erring guide!
  Bid the remorseless feeling flee;
  'Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride,
  'Tis anything but thee;
  Oh, deign a nobler pride to prove,
  And pity if thou canst not love.
  
  Composed May, 1814.

• To Harriet -- It Is Not Blasphemy To Hope That Heaven Read Poem Log in to favourite

  It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven
  More perfectly will give those nameless joys
  Which throb within the pulses of the blood
  And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth
  Infuses in the heaven-born soul.
  
  O thou
  Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path
  Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,
  Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits
  Which mark the bounds of Time and of the space
  When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn
  Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me,
  Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven,
  And Heaven is Earth?
  
  --will not thy glowing cheek,
  Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine,
  And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame
  Of my corporeal nature, through the soul
  Now knit with these fine fibres?
  
  I would give
  The longest and the happiest day that fate
  Has marked on my existence but to feel
  ONE soul-reviving kiss.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  O thou most dear,
  'Tis an assurance that this Earth is Heaven,
  And Heaven the flower of that untainted seed
  Which springeth here beneath such love as ours.
  
  Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,
  But ours shall not be mortal! The cold hand
  Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds
  Half frozen now; the frigid intercourse
  Of common souls lives but a summer's day;
  It dies, where it arose, upon this earth.
  
  But ours! oh, 'tis the stretch of Fancy's hope
  To portray its continuance as now,
  Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when age
  Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given
  A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow
  Which blazing on devotion's pinnacle
  Makes virtuous passion supersede the power
  Of reason; nor when life's aestival sun
  To deeper manhood shall have ripened me;
  Nor when some years have added judgement's store
  To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire
  Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then
  Shall holy friendship (for what other name
  May love like ours assume?
  
  ), not even then
  Shall Custom so corrupt, or the cold forms
  Of this desolate world so harden us,
  As when we think of the dear love that binds
  Our souls in soft communion, while we know
  Each other's thoughts and feelings, can we say
  Unblushingly a heartless compliment,
  Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world,
  Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve
  That knits our love to virtue.
  
  Can those eyes,
  Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart
  To purify its purity, e'er bend
  To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears?
  
  Never, thou second Self! Is confidence
  So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt
  The mirror even of Truth?
  
  Dark flood of Time,
  Roll as it listeth thee; I measure not
  By month or moments thy ambiguous course.
  
  Another may stand by me on thy brink,
  And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken,
  Which pauses at my feet.
  
  The sense of love,
  The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
  Prolong my being; if I wake no more,
  My life more actual living will contain
  Than some gray veteran’s of the world's cold school,
  Whose listless hours unprofitably roll
  By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed,
  Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude,
  Freedom, Devotedness and Purity!
  That life my Spirit consecrates to you.
  
  Published, 5-13, by Forman, 'Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  ', 1876; 58-69, by Shelley, 'Notes to Queen Mab', 1813; and entire (from the Esdaile manuscript book) by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887; dated 1812.

• To Ianthe Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake;
  Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled cheek,
  Thy tender frame, so eloquently weak,
  Love in the sternest heart of hate might wake;
  But more when o'er thy fitful slumber bending
  Thy mother folds thee to her wakeful heart,
  Whilst love and pity, in her glances blending,
  All that thy passive eyes can feel impart:
  More, when some feeble lineaments of her,
  Who bore thy weight beneath her spotless bosom,
  As with deep love I read thy face, recur,--
  More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blossom;
  Dearest when most thy tender traits express
  The image of thy mother’s loveliness.
  
  Published by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887.
  
  Composed September, 1813.

• To Ireland Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Bear witness, Erin! when thine injured isle
  Sees summer on its verdant pastures smile,
  Its cornfields waving in the winds that sweep
  The billowy surface of thy circling deep!
  Thou tree whose shadow o'er the Atlantic gave
  Peace, wealth and beauty, to its friendly wave, its blossoms fade,
  And blighted are the leaves that cast its shade;
  Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty fruit,
  Whose chillness struck a canker to its root.
  
  II.
  
  I could stand
  Upon thy shores, O Erin, and could count
  The billows that, in their unceasing swell,
  Dash on thy beach, and every wave might seem
  An instrument in Time the giant's grasp,
  To burst the barriers of Eternity.
  
  Proceed, thou giant, conquering and to conquer;
  March on thy lonely way! The nations fall
  Beneath thy noiseless footstep; pyramids
  That for millenniums have defied the blast,
  And laughed at lightnings, thou dost crush to nought.
  
  Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,
  Is but the fungus of a winter day
  That thy light footstep presses into dust.
  
  Thou art a conqueror, Time; all things give way
  Before thee but the 'fixed and virtuous will';
  The sacred sympathy of soul which was
  When thou wert not, which shall be when thou perishest.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Published, 1-10, by Rossetti, 'Complete Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  ', 1870; 11-17, 25-28, by Dowden, 'Life of Shelley', 1887; 18-24 by Kingsland, 'Poet-Lore', July, 1892.
  
  Dated 1812.

• To Italy Read Poem Log in to favourite

  As the sunrise to the night,
  As the north wind to the clouds,
  As the earthquake's fiery flight,
  Ruining mountain solitudes,
  Everlasting Italy,
  Be those hopes and fears on thee.

• To Jane: The Invitation Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Best and brightest, come away!
  Fairer far than this fair Day,
  Which, like thee to those in sorrow,
  Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
  To the rough Year just awake
  In its cradle on the brake.
  
  The Brightest hour of unborn Spring,
  Through the winter wandering,
  Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn
  To hoar February born.
  
  Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
  It kissed the forehead of the Earth,
  And smiled upon the silent sea,
  And bade the frozen streams be free,
  And waked to music all their fountains,
  And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
  And like a prophetess of May
  Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
  Making the wintry world appear
  Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.
  
  Away, away, from men and towns,
  To the wild wood and the downs—
  To the silent wilderness
  Where the soul need not repress
  Its music lest it should not find
  An echo in another’s mind.
  
  While the touch of Nature’s art
  Harmonizes heart to heart.
  
  I leave this notice on my door
  For each accustomed visitor:—
  “I am gone into the fields
  To take what this sweet hour yields;—
  Reflection, you may come tomorrow,
  Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.
  
  —
  You with the unpaid bill, Despair,—
  You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,—
  I will pay you in the grave,—
  Death will listen to your stave.
  
  Expectation too, be off!
  Today is for itself enough;
  Hope, in pity mock not Woe
  With smiles, nor follow where I go;
  Long having lived on thy sweet food,
  At length I find one moment’s good
  After long pain—with all your love,
  This you never told me of.
  
  ”
  
  Radiant Sister of the Day,
  Awake! arise! And come away!
  To the wild woods and the plains,
  And the pools where winter rains
  Image all their roof of leaves,
  Where the pine its garland weaves
  Of sapless green, and ivy dun
  Round stems that never kiss the sun:
  Where the lawns and pastures be,
  And the sandhills of the sea:—
  Where the melting hoar-frost wets
  The daisy-star that never sets,
  And wind-flowers, and violets,
  Which yet join not scent to hue,
  Crown the pale year weak and new;
  When the night is left behind
  In the deep east, dun and blind,
  And the blue noon is over us,
  And the multitudinous
  Billows murmur at our feet,
  Where the earth and ocean meet,
  And all things seem only one
  In the universal sun.

• To Jane: The Keen Stars Were Twinkling Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The keen stars were twinkling,
  And the fair moon was rising among them,
  Dear Jane.
  
  The guitar was tinkling,
  But the notes were not sweet till you sung them
  Again.
  
  II.
  
  As the moon's soft splendour
  O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven
  Is thrown,
  So your voice most tender
  To the strings without soul had then given
  Its own.
  
  III.
  
  The stars will awaken,
  Though the moon sleep a full hour later
  To-night;
  No leaf will be shaken
  Whilst the dews of your melody scatter
  Delight.
  
  IV.
  
  Though the sound overpowers,
  Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
  A tone
  Of some world far from ours,
  Where music and moonlight and feeling
  Are one.
  
  Published in part (lines 7-24) by Medwin (under the title, An Ariette for Music.
  
  To a Lady singing to her Accompaniment on the Guitar), The Athenaeum, November 17, 1832; reprinted by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Poetical Works, 1839, 1st edition.
  
  Republished in full (under the title, To --.
  
  ) Poetical Works, 1839, 2nd edition.
  
  The Trelawny manuscript is headed To Jane.
  
  Mr.
  
  C.
  
  W.
  
  Frederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in an unknown hand.

• To Jane: The Recollection Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Now the last day of many days,
  All beautiful and bright as thou,
  The loveliest and the last, is dead,
  Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
  Up,--to thy wonted work! come, trace
  The epitaph of glory fled,--
  For now the Earth has changed its face,
  A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
  
  II.
  
  We wandered to the Pine Forest
  That skirts the Ocean’s foam,
  The lightest wind was in its nest,
  The tempest in its home.
  
  The whispering waves were half asleep,
  The clouds were gone to play,
  And on the bosom of the deep
  The smile of Heaven lay;
  It seemed as if the hour were one
  Sent from beyond the skies,
  Which scattered from above the sun
  A light of Paradise.
  
  III.
  
  We paused amid the pines that stood
  The giants of the waste,
  Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
  As serpents interlaced;
  And, soothed by every azure breath,
  That under Heaven is blown,
  To harmonies and hues beneath,
  As tender as its own,
  Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
  Like green waves on the sea,
  As still as in the silent deep
  The ocean woods may be.
  
  IV.
  
  How calm it was!—the silence there
  By such a chain was bound
  That even the busy woodpecker
  Made stiller by her sound
  The inviolable quietness;
  The breath of peace we drew
  With its soft motion made not less
  The calm that round us grew.
  
  There seemed from the remotest seat
  Of the white mountain waste,
  To the soft flower beneath our feet,
  A magic circle traced,--
  A spirit interfused around
  A thrilling, silent life,--
  To momentary peace it bound
  Our mortal nature’s strife;
  And still I felt the centre of
  The magic circle there
  Was one fair form that filled with love
  The lifeless atmosphere.
  
  V.
  
  We paused beside the pools that lie
  Under the forest bough,--
  Each seemed as ’twere a little sky
  Gulfed in a world below;
  A firmament of purple light
  Which in the dark earth lay,
  More boundless than the depth of night,
  And purer than the day--
  In which the lovely forests grew,
  As in the upper air,
  More perfect both in shape and hue
  Than any spreading there.
  
  There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,
  And through the dark green wood
  The white sun twinkling like the dawn
  Out of a speckled cloud.
  
  Sweet views which in our world above
  Can never well be seen,
  Were imaged by the water’s love
  Of that fair forest green.
  
  And all was interfused beneath
  With an Elysian glow,
  An atmosphere without a breath,
  A softer day below.
  
  Like one beloved the scene had lent
  To the dark water’s breast,
  Its every leaf and lineament
  With more than truth expressed;
  Until an envious wind crept by,
  Like an unwelcome thought,
  Which from the mind’s too faithful eye
  Blots one dear image out.
  
  Though thou art ever fair and kind,
  The forests ever green,
  Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mind,
  Than calm in waters, seen.

• To Mary ---- Read Poem Log in to favourite

  O Mary dear, that you were here
  With your brown eyes bright and clear.
  
  And your sweet voice, like a bird
  Singing love to its lone mate
  In the ivy bower disconsolate;
  Voice the sweetest ever heard!
  And your brow more.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Than the          sky
  Of this azure Italy.
  
  Mary dear, come to me soon,
  I am not well whilst thou art far;
  As sunset to the sphered moon,
  As twilight to the western star,
  Thou, beloved, art to me.
  
  O Mary dear, that you were here;
  The Castle echo whispers 'Here!'

• To Mary Shelley Read Poem Log in to favourite

  My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,
  And left me in this dreary world alone?
  
  Thy form is here indeed--a lovely one--
  But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,
  That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode;
  Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,
  Where
  For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.

• To Mary Who Died In This Opinion Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Maiden, quench the glare of sorrow
  Struggling in thine haggard eye:
  Firmness dare to borrow
  From the wreck of destiny;
  For the ray morn’s bloom revealing
  Can never boast so bright an hue
  As that which mocks concealing,
  And sheds its loveliest light on you.
  
  II.
  
  Yet is the tie departed
  Which bound thy lovely soul to bliss?
  
  Has it left thee broken-hearted
  In a world so cold as this?
  
  Yet, though, fainting fair one,
  Sorrow’s self thy cup has given,
  Dream thou’lt meet thy dear one,
  Never more to part, in Heaven.
  
  III.
  
  Existence would I barter
  For a dream so dear as thine,
  And smile to die a martyr
  On affection's bloodless shrine.
  
  Nor would I change for pleasure
  That withered hand and ashy cheek,
  If my heart enshrined a treasure
  Such as forces thine to break.
  
  Published by Rossetti, 'Complete Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  ', 1870; dated 1810-11.

• To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed;
  Yes, I was firm -- thus wert not thou;--
  My baffled looks did fear yet dread
  To meet thy looks -- I could not know
  How anxiously they sought to shine
  With soothing pity upon mine.
  
  II.
  
  To sit and curb the soul's mute rage
  Which preys upon itself alone;
  To curse the life which is the cage
  Of fettered grief that dares not groan,
  Hiding from many a careless eye
  The scornèd load of agony.
  
  III.
  
  Whilst thou alone, then not regarded,
  The thou alone should be,
  To spend years thus, and be rewarded,
  As thou, sweet love, requited me
  When none were near -- Oh! I did wake
  From torture for that moment's sake.
  
  IV.
  
  Upon my heart thy accents sweet
  Of peace and pity fell like dew
  On flowers half dead;-- thy lips did meet
  Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw
  Their soft persuasion on my brain,
  Charming away its dream of pain.
  
  V.
  
  We are not happy, sweet! our state
  Is strange and full of doubt and fear;
  More need of words that ills abate;--
  Reserve or censure come not near
  Our sacred friendship, lest there be
  No solace left for thee and me.
  
  VI.
  
  Gentle and good and mild thou art,
  Nor can I live if thou appear
  Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart
  Away from me, or stoop to wear
  The mask of scorn, although it be
  To hide the love thou feel'st for me.

• To Night Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Swiftly walk o'er 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 dear,—
  Swift be thy flight!
  
  Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
  Star-inwrought!
  Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;
  Kiss her until she be wearied out,
  Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,
  Touching all with thine opiate wand—
  Come, long-sought!
  
  When I arose and saw the dawn,
  I sighed for thee;
  When light rode high, and the dew was gone,
  And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
  And the weary Day turned to his rest,
  Lingering like an unloved guest.
  
  I sighed for thee.
  
  Thy brother Death came, and cried,
  Wouldst thou me?
  
  Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
  Murmured like a noontide bee,
  Shall I nestle near thy side?
  
  Wouldst thou me?
  
  —And I replied,
  No, not thee!
  
  Death will come when thou art dead,
  Soon, too soon—
  Sleep will come when thou art fled;
  Of neither would I ask the boon
  I ask of thee, belovèd Night—
  Swift be thine approaching flight,
  Come soon, soon!

• To Sophia (Miss Stacey) Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Thou art fair, and few are fairer
  Of the Nymphs of earth or ocean;
  They are robes that fit the wearer--
  Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion
  Ever falls and shifts and glances
  As the life within them dances.
  
  II.
  
  Thy deep eyes, a double Planet,
  Gaze the wisest into madness
  With soft clear fire,--the winds that fan it
  Are those thoughts of tender gladness
  Which, like zephyrs on the billow,
  Make thy gentle soul their pillow.
  
  III.
  
  If, whatever face thou paintest
  In those eyes, grows pale with pleasure,
  If the fainting soul is faintest
  When it hears thy harp’s wild measure,
  Wonder not that when thou speakest
  Of the weak my heart is weakest.
  
  IV.
  
  As dew beneath the wind of morning,
  As the sea which whirlwinds waken,
  As the birds at thunder’s warning,
  As aught mute yet deeply shaken,
  As one who feels an unseen spirit
  Is my heart when thine is near it.

• To The Lord Chancellor Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Thy country's curse is on thee, darkest crest
  Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm
  Which rends our Mother’s bosom—Priestly Pest!
  Masked Resurrection of a buried Form!
  II.
  
  Thy country's curse is on thee! Justice sold,
  Truth trampled, Nature’s landmarks overthrown,
  And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold,
  Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne.
  
  III.
  
  And whilst that sure slow Angel which aye stands
  Watching the beck of Mutability
  Delays to execute her high commands,
  And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee,
  IV.
  
  Oh, let a father's curse be on thy soul,
  And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb;
  Be both, on thy gray head, a leaden cowl
  To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom.
  
  V.
  
  I curse thee by a parent's outraged love,
  By hopes long cherished and too lately lost,
  By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove,
  By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed;
  VI.
  
  By those infantine smiles of happy light,
  Which were a fire within a stranger's hearth,
  Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night
  Hiding the promise of a lovely birth:
  VII.
  
  By those unpractised accents of young speech,
  Which he who is a father thought to frame
  To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach--
  THOU strike the lyre of mind!--oh, grief and shame!
  VIII.
  
  By all the happy see in children's growth--
  That undeveloped flower of budding years--
  Sweetness and sadness interwoven both,
  Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears--
  IX.
  
  By all the days, under an hireling's care,
  Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness,--
  O wretched ye if ever any were,--
  Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless!
  X.
  
  By the false cant which on their innocent lips
  Must hang like poison on an opening bloom,
  By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse
  Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb--
  XI.
  
  By thy most impious Hell, and all its terror;
  By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt
  Of thine impostures, which must be their error--
  That sand on which thy crumbling power is built--
  XII.
  
  By thy complicity with lust and hate--
  Thy thirst for tears—thy hunger after gold--
  The ready frauds which ever on thee wait--
  The servile arts in which thou hast grown old--
  XIII.
  
  By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile--
  By all the arts and snares of thy black den,
  And—for thou canst outweep the crocodile--
  By thy false tears—those millstones braining men--
  XIV.
  
  By all the hate which checks a father's love--
  By all the scorn which kills a fathe's care--
  By those most impious hands which dared remove
  Nature’s high bounds--by thee--and by despair--
  XV.
  
  Yes, the despair which bids a father groan,
  And cry, 'My children are no longer mine--
  The blood within those veins may be mine own,
  But--Tyrant--their polluted souls are thine;— 60
  XVI.
  
  I curse thee--though I hate thee not.
  
  --O slave!
  If thou couldst quench the earth-consuming Hell
  Of which thou art a daemon, on thy grave
  This curse should be a blessing.
  
  Fare thee well!

• To The Men Of England Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Men of England, wherefore plough
  For the lords who lay ye low?
  
  Wherefore weave with toil and care
  The rich robes your tyrants wear?
  
  Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
  From the cradle to the grave,
  Those ungrateful drones who would
  Drain your sweat -- nay, drink your blood?
  
  Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
  Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
  That these stingless drones may spoil
  The forced produce of your toil?
  
  Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
  Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?
  
  Or what is it ye buy so dear
  With your pain and with your fear?
  
  The seed ye sow another reaps;
  The wealth ye find another keeps;
  The robes ye weave another wears;
  The arms ye forge another bears.
  
  Sow seed, -- but let no tyrant reap;
  Find wealth, -- let no imposter heap;
  Weave robes, -- let not the idle wear;
  Forge arms, in your defence to bear.
  
  Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
  In halls ye deck another dwells.
  
  Why shake the chains ye wrought?
  
  Ye see
  The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
  
  With plough and spade and hoe and loom,
  Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
  And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
  England be your sepulchre!

• To The Mind Of Man Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Thou living light that in thy rainbow hues
  Clothest this naked world; and over Sea
  And Earth and air, and all the shapes that be
  In peopled darkness of this wondrous world
  The Spirit of thy glory dost diffuse
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  truth .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  thou Vital Flame
  Mysterious thought that in this mortal frame
  Of things, with unextinguished lustre burnest
  Now pale and faint now high to Heaven upcurled
  That eer as thou dost languish still returnest
  And ever
  Before the .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  before the Pyramids
  So soon as from the Earth formless and rude
  One living step had chased drear Solitude
  Thou wert, Thought; thy brightness charmed the lids
  Of the vast snake Eternity, who kept
  The tree of good and evil.
  
  --

• To the Moon Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I
  Art thou pale for weariness
  Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
  Wandering companionless
  Among the stars that have a different birth, —
  And ever changing, like a joyless eye
  That finds no object worth its constancy?
  
  II
  Thou chosen sister of the Spirit,
  That gazes on thee till in thee it pities .
  
  .
  
  .

• To The Moonbeam Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Moonbeam, leave the shadowy vale,
  To bathe this burning brow.
  
  Moonbeam, why art thou so pale,
  As thou walkest o'er the dewy dale,
  Where humble wild-flowers grow?
  
  Is it to mimic me?
  
  But that can never be;
  For thine orb is bright,
  And the clouds are light,
  That at intervals shadow the star-studded night.
  
  II.
  
  Now all is deathy still on earth;
  Nature’s tired frame reposes;
  And, ere the golden morning’s birth
  Its radiant hues discloses,
  Flies forth its balmy breath.
  
  But mine is the midnight of Death,
  And Nature's morn
  To my bosom forlorn
  Brings but a gloomier night, implants a deadlier thorn.
  
  III.
  
  Wretch! Suppress the glare of madness
  Struggling in thine haggard eye,
  For the keenest throb of sadness,
  Pale Despair's most sickening sigh,
  Is but to mimic me;
  And this must ever be,
  When the twilight of care,
  And the night of despair,
  Seem in my breast but joys to the pangs that rankle there.

• To The Nile Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Month after month the gathered rains descend
  Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,
  And from the desert’s ice-girt pinnacles
  Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend
  On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.
  
  Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells
  By Nile’s aereal urn, with rapid spells
  Urging those waters to their mighty end.
  
  O’er Egypt’s land of Memory floods are level
  And they are thine, O Nile--and well thou knowest
  That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
  And fruits and poisons spring where’er thou flowest.
  
  Beware, O Man--for knowledge must to thee,
  Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

• To The Queen Of My Heart Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Shall we roam, my love,
  To the twilight grove,
  When the moon is rising bright;
  Oh, I'll whisper there,
  In the cool night-air,
  What I dare not in broad daylight!
  II.
  
  I'll tell thee a part
  Of the thoughts that start
  To being when thou art nigh;
  And thy beauty, more bright
  Than the stars' soft light,
  Shall seem as a weft from the sky.
  
  III.
  
  When the pale moonbeam
  On tower and stream
  Sheds a flood of silver sheen,
  How I love to gaze
  As the cold ray strays
  O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen!
  IV.
  
  Wilt thou roam with me
  To the restless sea,
  And linger upon the steep,
  And list to the flow
  Of the waves below
  How they toss and roar and leap?
  
  V.
  
  Those boiling waves,
  And the storm that raves
  At night o'er their foaming crest,
  Resemble the strife
  That, from earliest life,
  The passions have waged in my breast.
  
  VI.
  
  Oh, come then, and rove
  To the sea or the grove,
  When the moon is rising bright;
  And I'll whisper there,
  In the cool night-air,
  What I dare not in broad daylight.
  
  Published as Shelley's by Medwin, 'The Shelley Papers', 1833, and by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, 'Poetical Works', 1839, 1st edition; afterwards suppressed as of doubtful authenticity.

• To The Republicans Of North America Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  Brothers! between you and me
  Whirlwinds sweep and billows roar:
  Yet in spirit oft I see
  On thy wild and winding shore
  Freedom’s bloodless banners wave,--
  Feel the pulses of the brave
  Unextinguished in the grave,--
  See them drenched in sacred gore,--
  Catch the warrior's gasping breath
  Murmuring 'Liberty or death!'
  II.
  
  Shout aloud! Let every slave,
  Crouching at Corruption's throne,
  Start into a man, and brave
  Racks and chains without a groan:
  And the castle's heartless glow,
  And the hovel's vice and woe,
  Fade like gaudy flowers that blow--
  Weeds that peep, and then are gone
  Whilst, from misery's ashes risen,
  Love shall burst the captive's prison.
  
  III.
  
  Cotopaxi! bid the sound
  Through thy sister mountains ring,
  Till each valley smile around
  At the blissful welcoming!
  And, O thou stern Ocean deep,
  Thou whose foamy billows sweep
  Shores where thousands wake to weep
  Whilst they curse a villain king,
  On the winds that fan thy breast
  Bear thou news of Freedom's rest!
  IV.
  
  Can the daystar dawn of love,
  Where the flag of war unfurled
  Floats with crimson stain above
  The fabric of a ruined world?
  
  Never but to vengeance driven
  When the patriot's spirit shriven
  Seeks in death its native Heaven!
  There, to desolation hurled,
  Widowed love may watch thy bier,
  Balm thee with its dying tear.
  
  Published (from the Esdaile manuscript with title as above) by Rossetti, 'Complete Poetical Works of P.
  
  B.
  
  S.
  
  ', 1870; dated 1812.
  
  Rossetti’s title is 'The Mexican Revolution'.

• To William Shelley Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  The billows on the beach are leaping around it,
  The bark is weak and frail,
  The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it
  Darkly strew the gale.
  
  Come with me, thou delightful child,
  Come with me, though the wave is wild,
  And the winds are loose, we must not stay,
  Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.
  
  II.
  
  They have taken thy brother and sister dear,
  They have made them unfit for thee;
  They have withered the smile and dried the tear
  Which should have been sacred to me.
  
  To a blighting faith and a cause of crime
  They have bound them slaves in youthly prime,
  And they will curse my name and thee
  Because we fearless are and free.
  
  III.
  
  Come thou, beloved as thou art;
  Another sleepeth still
  Near thy sweet mother’s anxious heart,
  Which thou with joy shalt fill,
  With fairest smiles of wonder thrown
  On that which is indeed our own,
  And which in distant lands will be
  The dearest playmate unto thee.
  
  IV.
  
  Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever,
  Or the priests of the evil faith;
  They stand on the brink of that raging river,
  Whose waves they have tainted with death.
  
  It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells,
  Around them it foams and rages and swells;
  And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
  Like wrecks on the surge of eternity.
  
  V.
  
  Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle child!
  The rocking of the boat thou fearest,
  And the cold spray and the clamour wild?
  
  --
  There, sit between us two, thou dearest--
  Me and thy mother--well we know
  The storm at which thou tremblest so,
  With all its dark and hungry graves,
  Less cruel than the savage slaves
  Who hunt us o’er these sheltering waves.
  
  VI.
  
  This hour will in thy memory
  Be a dream of days forgotten long.
  
  We soon shall dwell by the azure sea
  Of serene and golden Italy,
  Or Greece, the Mother of the free;
  And I will teach thine infant tongue
  To call upon those heroes old
  In their own language, and will mould
  Thy growing spirit in the flame
  Of Grecian lore, that by such name
  A patriot’s birthright thou mayst claim!

• To William Shelley. Read Poem Log in to favourite

  (With what truth may I say--
  Roma! Roma! Roma!
  Non e piu come era prima!)
  I.
  
  My lost William, thou in whom
  Some bright spirit lived, and did
  That decaying robe consume
  Which its lustre faintly hid,--
  Here its ashes find a tomb,
  But beneath this pyramid
  Thou art not—if a thing divine
  Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
  Is thy mother’s grief and mine.
  
  II.
  
  Where art thou, my gentle child?
  
  Let me think thy spirit feeds,
  With its life intense and mild,
  The love of living leaves and weeds
  Among these tombs and ruins wild;--
  Let me think that through low seeds
  Of sweet flowers and sunny grass
  Into their hues and scents may pass
  A portion--
  Published by Mrs.
  
  Shelley, Posthumous Poems, 1824.
  
  The fragment included in the Harvard manuscript book.

• To William Shelley. Thy Little Footsteps On The Sands Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Thy little footsteps on the sands
  Of a remote and lonely shore;
  The twinkling of thine infant hands,
  Where now the worm will feed no more;
  Thy mingled look of love and glee
  When we returned to gaze on thee--

• To Wordsworth Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
  That things depart which never may return:
  Childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow,
  Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
  
  These common woes I feel.
  
  One loss is mine
  Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore.
  
  Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
  On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
  Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
  Above the blind and battling multitude:
  In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
  Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,—
  Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
  Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

• To-- I Fear Thy Kisses, Gentle Maiden Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,
  Thou needest not fear mine;
  My spirit is too deeply laden
  Ever to burthen thine.
  
  II.
  
  I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,
  Thou needest not fear mine;
  Innocent is the heart’s devotion
  With which I worship thine.

• To-- Music, when soft voices die Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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.

• To-- Oh! there are spirits of the air Read Poem Log in to favourite

  DAKRYSI DIOISW POTMON APOTMON
  Oh! there are spirits of the air,
  And genii of the evening breeze,
  And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
  As star-beams among twilight trees:—
  Such lovely ministers to meet
  Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
  
  With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
  And moonlight seas, that are the voice
  Of these inexplicable things,
  Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
  When they did answer thee; but they
  Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.
  
  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,
  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.
  
  'The poem beginning ''Oh, there are spirits in the air,'' was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never knew' -- writes Mrs.
  
  Shelley.
  
  Mr.
  
  Bertram Dobell, Mr.
  
  Rossetti and Professor Dowden, however, incline to think that we have here an address by Shelley in a despondent mood to his own spirit.
  
  ~ Hutchinson's Poetical Works of Percy Shelley, 1905.

• To-- One word is too often profaned Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  One word is too often profaned
  For me to profane it,
  One feeling too falsely disdained
  For thee to disdain it;
  One hope is too like despair
  For prudence to smother,
  And pity from thee more dear
  Than that from another.
  
  II.
  
  I can give not what men call love,
  But wilt 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?

• To-- Yet look on me Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Yet look on me -- take not thine eyes away,
  Which feed upon the love within mine own,
  Which is indeed but the reflected ray
  Of thine own beauty from my spirit thrown.
  
  Yet speak to me -- thy voice is as the tone
  Of my heart’s echo, and I think I hear
  That thou yet lovest me; yet thou alone
  Like one before a mirror, without care
  Of aught but thine own features, imaged there;
  And yet I wear out life in watching thee;
  A toil so sweet at times, and thou indeed
  Art kind when I am sick, and pity me.
  
  Published in Poetical Works, 1839, 2nd.
  
  ed.

• To----- Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I
  WHEN passion's trance is overpast,
  If tenderness and truth could last,
  Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
  Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
  I should not weep, I should not weep!
  II
  It were enough to feel, to see,
  Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly.
  
  And dream the rest and burn and be
  The secret food of fires unseen,
  Couldst thou but be as thou hast been.
  
  III
  After the slumber of the year
  The woodland violets reappear;
  All things revive in field or grove,
  And sky and sea, but two, which move
  And form all others, life and love.

• To-morrow Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Where art thou, beloved To-morrow?
  
  When young and old, and strong and weak,
  Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,
  Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,--
  In thy place--ah! well-a-day!
  We find the thing we fled--To-day.

• Ugolino Read Poem Log in to favourite

  INFERNO 33, 22-75.
  
  Now had the loophole of that dungeon, still
  Which bears the name of Famine's Tower from me,
  And where ’tis fit that many another will
  Be doomed to linger in captivity,
  Shown through its narrow opening in my cell
  ‘Moon after moon slow waning’, when a sleep,
  ‘That of the future burst the veil, in dream
  Visited me.
  
  It was a slumber deep
  And evil; for I saw, or I did seem’
  To see, ‘that’ tyrant Lord his revels keep
  The leader of the cruel hunt to them,
  Chasing the wolf and wolf-cubs up the steep
  Ascent, that from ‘the Pisan is the screen’
  Of ‘Lucca’; with him Gualandi came,
  Sismondi, and Lanfranchi, ‘bloodhounds lean,
  Trained to the sport and eager for the game
  Wide ranging in his front;’ but soon were seen
  Though by so short a course, with ‘spirits tame,’
  The father and ‘his whelps’ to flag at once,
  And then the sharp fangs gored their bosoms deep.
  
  Ere morn I roused myself, and heard my sons,
  For they were with me, moaning in their sleep,
  And begging bread.
  
  Ah, for those darling ones!
  Right cruel art thou, if thou dost not weep
  In thinking of my soul’s sad augury;
  And if thou weepest not now, weep never more!
  They were already waked, as wont drew nigh
  The allotted hour for food, and in that hour
  Each drew a presage from his dream.
  
  When I
  ‘Heard locked beneath me of that horrible tower
  The outlet; then into their eyes alone
  I looked to read myself,’ without a sign
  Or word.
  
  I wept not—turned within to stone.
  
  They wept aloud, and little Anselm mine,
  Said—’twas my youngest, dearest little one,--
  “What ails thee, father?
  
  Why look so at thine?
  
  ”
  In all that day, and all the following night,
  I wept not, nor replied; but when to shine
  Upon the world, not us, came forth the light
  Of the new sun, and thwart my prison thrown
  Gleamed through its narrow chink, a doleful sight,
  ‘Three faces, each the reflex of my own,
  Were imaged by its faint and ghastly ray;’
  Then I, of either hand unto the bone,
  Gnawed, in my agony; and thinking they
  Twas done from sudden pangs, in their excess,
  All of a sudden raise themselves, and say,
  “Father! our woes, so great, were yet the less
  Would you but eat of us,—twas ‘you who clad
  Our bodies in these weeds of wretchedness;
  Despoil them’.
  
  ” Not to make their hearts more sad,
  I ‘hushed’ myself.
  
  That day is at its close,--
  Another—still we were all mute.
  
  Oh, had
  The obdurate earth opened to end our woes!
  The fourth day dawned, and when the new sun shone,
  Outstretched himself before me as it rose
  My Gaddo, saying, “Help, father! hast thou none
  For thine own child—is there no help from thee?
  
  ”
  He died—there at my feet—and one by one,
  I saw them fall, plainly as you see me.
  
  Between the fifth and sixth day, ere twas dawn,
  I found ‘myself blind-groping o’er the three.
  
  ’
  Three days I called them after they were gone.
  
  Famine of grief can get the mastery.
  
  [Translated by Medwin and corrected by Shelley.
  
  ]

• Unrisen Splendour Of The Brightest Sun Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Unrisen splendour of the brightest sun,
  To rise upon our darkness, if the star
  Now beckoning thee out of thy misty throne
  Could thaw the clouds which wage an obscure war
  With thy young brightness!

• Verses On A Cat Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  A cat in distress,
  Nothing more, nor less;
  Good folks, I must faithfully tell ye,
  As I am a sinner,
  It waits for some dinner
  To stuff out its own little belly.
  
  II.
  
  You would not easily guess
  All the modes of distress
  Which torture the tenants of earth;
  And the various evils,
  Which like so many devils,
  Attend the poor souls from their birth.
  
  III.
  
  Some a living require,
  And others desire
  An old fellow out of the way;
  And which is the best
  I leave to be guessed,
  For I cannot pretend to say.
  
  IV.
  
  One wants society,
  Another variety,
  Others a tranquil life;
  Some want food,
  Others, as good,
  Only want a wife.
  
  V.
  
  But this poor little cat
  Only wanted a rat,
  To stuff out its own little maw;
  And it were as good
  SOME people had such food,
  To make them HOLD THEIR JAW!
  Published by Hogg, “Life of Shelley”, 1858; dated 1800

• Wake The Serpent Not Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Wake the serpent not—lest he
  Should not know the way to go,--
  Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping
  Through the deep grass of the meadow!
  Not a bee shall hear him creeping,
  Not a may-fly shall awaken
  From its cradling blue-bell shaken,
  Not the starlight as he’s sliding
  Through the grass with silent gliding.

• War Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurled
  Death, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding world.
  
  See! on yon heath what countless victims lie,
  Hark! what loud shrieks ascend through yonder sky;
  Tell then the cause, 'tis sure the avenger's rage
  Has swept these myriads from life's crowded stage:
  Hark to that groan, an anguished hero dies,
  He shudders in death’s latest agonies;
  Yet does a fleeting hectic flush his cheek,
  Yet does his parting breath essay to speak--
  'Oh God! my wife, my children--Monarch thou
  For whose support this fainting frame lies low;
  For whose support in distant lands I bleed,
  Let his friends' welfare be the warrior's meed.
  
  He hears me not—ah! no—kings cannot hear,
  For passion's voice has dulled their listless ear.
  
  To thee, then, mighty God, I lift my moan,
  Thou wilt not scorn a suppliant's anguished groan.
  
  Oh! now I die--but still is death's fierce pain--
  God hears my prayer--we meet, we meet again.
  
  '
  He spake, reclined him on death's bloody bed,
  And with a parting groan his spirit fled.
  
  Oppressors of mankind to YOU we owe
  The baleful streams from whence these miseries flow;
  For you how many a mother weeps her son,
  Snatched from life's course ere half his race was run!
  For you how many a widow drops a tear,
  In silent anguish, on her husband's bier!
  'Is it then Thine, Almighty Power,' she cries,
  'Whence tears of endless sorrow dim these eyes?
  
  Is this the system which Thy powerful sway,
  Which else in shapeless chaos sleeping lay,
  Formed and approved?
  
  --it cannot be--but oh!
  Forgive me, Heaven, my brain is warped by woe.
  
  '
  'Tis not--He never bade the war-note swell,
  He never triumphed in the work of hell--
  Monarchs of earth! thine is the baleful deed,
  Thine are the crimes for which thy subjects bleed.
  
  Ah! when will come the sacred fated time,
  When man unsullied by his leaders' crime,
  Despising wealth, ambition, pomp, and pride,
  Will stretch him fearless by his foe-men's side?
  
  Ah! when will come the time, when o'er the plain
  No more shall death and desolation reign?
  
  When will the sun smile on the bloodless field,
  And the stern warrior's arm the sickle wield?
  
  Not whilst some King, in cold ambition's dreams,
  Plans for the field of death his plodding schemes;
  Not whilst for private pique the public fall,
  And one frail mortal's mandate governs all.
  
  Swelled with command and mad with dizzying sway;
  Who sees unmoved his myriads fade away.
  
  Careless who lives or dies--so that he gains
  Some trivial point for which he took the pains.
  
  What then are Kings?
  
  --I see the trembling crowd,
  I hear their fulsome clamours echoed loud;
  Their stern oppressor pleased appears awhile,
  But April's sunshine is a Monarch’s smile--
  Kings are but dust--the last eventful day
  Will level all and make them lose their sway;
  Will dash the sceptre from the Monarch’s hand,
  And from the warrior’s grasp wrest the ensanguined brand.
  
  Oh! Peace, soft Peace, art thou for ever gone,
  Is thy fair form indeed for ever flown?
  
  And love and concord hast thou swept away,
  As if incongruous with thy parted sway?
  
  Alas, I fear thou hast, for none appear.
  
  Now o'er the palsied earth stalks giant Fear,
  With War, and Woe, and Terror, in his train;--
  List'ning he pauses on the embattled plain,
  Then speeding swiftly o'er the ensanguined heath,
  Has left the frightful work to Hell and Death.
  
  See! gory Ruin yokes his blood-stained car,
  He scents the battle's carnage from afar;
  Hell and Destruction mark his mad career,
  He tracks the rapid step of hurrying Fear;
  Whilst ruined towns and smoking cities tell,
  That thy work, Monarch, is the work of Hell.
  
  'It is thy work!' I hear a voice repeat,
  Shakes the broad basis of thy bloodstained seat;
  And at the orphan’s sigh, the widow's moan,
  Totters the fabric of thy guilt-stained throne--
  'It is thy work, O Monarch;' now the sound
  Fainter and fainter, yet is borne around,
  Yet to enthusiast ears the murmurs tell
  That Heaven, indignant at the work of Hell,
  Will soon the cause, the hated cause remove,
  Which tears from earth peace, innocence, and love.
  
  War: the title is Woodberry's, 1893; no title, 1810.

• When A Lover Clasps His Fairest Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  When a lover clasps his fairest,
  Then be our dread sport the rarest.
  
  Their caresses were like the chaff
  In the tempest, and be our laugh
  His despair—her epitaph!
  II.
  
  When a mother clasps her child,
  Watch till dusty Death has piled
  His cold ashes on the clay;
  She has loved it many a day--
  She remains,—it fades away.

• When Soft Winds And Sunny Skies Read Poem Log in to favourite

  When soft winds and sunny skies
  With the green earth harmonize,
  And the young and dewy dawn,
  Bold as an unhunted fawn,
  Up the windless heaven is gone,--
  Laugh—for ambushed in the day,--
  Clouds and whirlwinds watch their prey.

• When The Lamp Is Shattered Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  When the lamp is shattered
  The light in the dust lies dead--
  When the cloud is scattered
  The rainbow's glory is shed.
  
  When the lute is broken,
  Sweet tones are remembered not;
  When the lips have spoken,
  Loved accents are soon forgot.
  
  II.
  
  As music and splendour
  Survive not the lamp and the lute,
  The heart’s echoes render
  No song when the spirit is mute:--
  No song but sad dirges,
  Like the wind through a ruined cell,
  Or the mournful surges
  That ring the dead seaman’s knell.
  
  III.
  
  When hearts have once mingled
  Love first leaves the well-built nest;
  The weak one is singled
  To endure what it once possessed.
  
  O Love! who bewailest
  The frailty of all things here,
  Why choose you the frailest
  For your cradle, your home, and your bier?
  
  IV.
  
  Its passions will rock thee
  As the storms rock the ravens on high;
  Bright reason will mock thee,
  Like the sun from a wintry sky.
  
  From thy nest every rafter
  Will rot, and thine eagle home
  Leave thee naked to laughter,
  When leaves fall and cold winds come.

• Wine Of The Fairies Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I am drunk with the honey wine
  Of the moon-unfolded eglantine,
  Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls.
  
  The bats, the dormice, and the moles
  Sleep in the walls or under the sward
  Of the desolate castle yard;
  And when ’tis spilt on the summer earth
  Or its fumes arise among the dew,
  Their jocund dreams are full of mirth,
  They gibber their joy in sleep; for few
  Of the fairies bear those bowls so new!

• With A Guitar, To Jane Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Ariel to Miranda:-- Take
  This slave of music, for the sake
  Of him who is the slave of thee;
  And teach it all the harmony
  In which thou canst, and only thou,
  Make the delighted spirit glow,
  Till joy denies itself again
  And, too intense, is turned to pain.
  
  For by permission and command
  Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,
  Poor Ariel sends this silent token
  Of more than ever can be spoken;
  Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who
  From life to life must still pursue
  Your happiness,-- for thus alone
  Can Ariel ever find his own.
  
  From Prospero's enchanted cell,
  As the mighty verses tell,
  To the throne of Naples he
  Lit you o'er the trackless sea,
  Flitting on, your prow before,
  Like a living meteor.
  
  When you die, the silent Moon
  In her interlunar swoon
  Is not sadder in her cell
  Than deserted Ariel.
  
  When you live again on earth,
  Like an unseen Star of birth
  Ariel guides you o'er the sea
  Of life from your nativity.
  
  Many changes have been run
  Since Ferdinand and you begun
  Your course of love, and Ariel still
  Has tracked your steps and served your will.
  
  Now in humbler, happier lot,
  This is all remembered not;
  And now, alas! the poor sprite is
  Imprisoned for some fault of his
  In a body like a grave —
  From you he only dares to crave,
  For his service and his sorrow,
  A smile today, a song tomorrow.
  
  The artist who this idol wrought
  To echo all harmonious thought,
  Felled a tree, while on the steep
  The woods were in their winter sleep,
  Rocked in that repose divine
  On the wind-swept Apennine;
  And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
  And some of Spring approaching fast,
  And some of April buds and showers,
  And some of songs in July bowers,
  And all of love; and so this tree,--
  O that such our death may be!--
  Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
  To live in happier form again:
  From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star,
  The artist wrought this loved Guitar;
  And taught it justly to reply
  To all who question skilfully
  In language gentle as thine own;
  Whispering in enamoured tone
  Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
  And summer winds in sylvan cells;
  — For it had learnt all harmonies
  Of the plains and of the skies,
  Of the forests and the mountains,
  And the many-voiced fountains;
  The clearest echoes of the hills,
  The softest notes of falling rills,
  The melodies of birds and bees,
  The murmuring of summer seas,
  And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
  And airs of evening; and it knew
  That seldom-heard mysterious sound
  Which, driven on its diurnal round,
  As it floats through boundless day,
  Our world enkindles on its way:
  — All this it knows, but will not tell
  To those who cannot question well
  The Spirit that inhabits it;
  It talks according to the wit
  Of its companions; and no more
  Is heard than has been felt before
  By those who tempt it to betray
  These secrets of an elder day.
  
  But, sweetly as its answers will
  Flatter hands of perfect skill,
  It keeps its highest holiest tone
  For one beloved Friend alone.
  
  Published by Medwin, The Athenaeum, Oct.
  
  20, 1832; Frazer's Magazine, Jan.
  
  1833.
  
  There is a copy amongst the Trelawny MSS.

• Written At Bracknell Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;
  Thy gentle words stir poison there;
  Thou hast disturbed the only rest
  That was the portion of despair!
  Subdued to Duty's hard control,
  I could have borne my wayward lot:
  The chains that bind this ruined soul
  Had cankered then—but crushed it not.

• Zephyrus The Awakener Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Come, thou awakener of the spirit's ocean,
  Zephyr, whom to thy cloud or cave
  No thought can trace! speed with thy gentle motion!

• Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I
  I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
  Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
  Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
  And 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!"
  
  II
  Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,
  When thy Son lay, pierc'd by the shaft which flies
  In darkness?
  
  where was lorn Urania
  When Adonais died?
  
  With veiled eyes,
  'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
  She sate, while one, with soft enamour'd breath,
  Rekindled all the fading melodies,
  With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
  He had adorn'd and hid the coming bulk of Death.
  
  III
  Oh, 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.
  
  IV
  Most musical of mourners, weep again!
  Lament anew, Urania! He died,
  Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,
  Blind, old and lonely, when his country's pride,
  The priest, the slave and the liberticide,
  Trampled and mock'd with many a loathed rite
  Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
  Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite
  Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.
  
  V
  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 perish'd; 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.
  
  VI
  But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perish'd,
  The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
  Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherish'd,
  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 nipp'd before they blew
  Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
  The broken lily lies—the storm is overpast.
  
  VII
  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.
  
  VIII
  He will awake no more, oh, never more!
  Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
  The shadow of white Death, and at the door
  Invisible Corruption waits to trace
  His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
  The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
  Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
  So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
  Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.
  
  IX
  Oh, weep for Adonais! The quick Dreams,
  The passion-winged Ministers of thought,
  Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
  Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
  The love which was its music, wander not—
  Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
  But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot
  Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
  They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.
  
  X
  And one with trembling hands 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 loosen'd from his brain.
  
  "
  Lost Angel of a ruin'd Paradise!
  She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain
  She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.
  
  XI
  One from a lucid urn of starry dew
  Wash'd his light limbs as if embalming them;
  Another clipp'd 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.
  
  XII
  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
  Quench'd its caress upon his icy lips;
  And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
  Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
  It flush'd through his pale limbs, and pass'd to its eclipse.
  
  XIII
  And others came .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Desires and Adorations,
  Winged Persuasions and veil'd 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.
  
  XIV
  All he had lov'd, and moulded into thought,
  From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,
  Lamented Adonais.
  
  Morning sought
  Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
  Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
  Dimm'd the aëreal eyes that kindle day;
  Afar the melancholy thunder moan'd,
  Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
  And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
  
  XV
  Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
  And feeds her grief with his remember'd lay,
  And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
  Or amorous birds perch'd 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 pin'd away
  Into a shadow of all sounds: a drear
  Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.
  
  XVI
  Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
  Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
  Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,
  For whom should she have wak'd the sullen year?
  
  To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear
  Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both
  Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere
  Amid the faint companions of their youth,
  With dew all turn'd to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.
  
  XVII
  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 pierc'd thy innocent breast,
  And scar'd the angel soul that was its earthly guest!
  
  XVIII
  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 Seasons' bier;
  The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
  And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
  And the green lizard, and the golden snake,
  Like unimprison'd flames, out of their trance awake.
  
  XIX
  Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
  A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst
  As it has ever done, with change and motion,
  From the great morning of the world when first
  God dawn'd on Chaos; in its stream immers'd,
  The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;
  All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst;
  Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight,
  The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.
  
  XX
  The leprous corpse, touch'd by this spirit tender,
  Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
  Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
  Is chang'd 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 consum'd before the sheath
  By sightless lightning?
  
  —the intense atom glows
  A moment, then is quench'd in a most cold repose.
  
  XXI
  Alas! that all we lov'd 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 mass'd in death, who lends what life must borrow.
  
  As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
  Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
  Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
  
  XXII
  Hewill 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 watch'd 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.
  
  XXIII
  She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs
  Out of the East, and follows wild and drear
  The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,
  Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
  Had left the Earth a corpse.
  
  Sorrow and fear
  So struck, so rous'd, so rapt Urania;
  So sadden'd round her like an atmosphere
  Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way
  Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
  
  XXIV
  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,
  Pav'd with eternal flowers that undeserving way.
  
  XXV
  In the death-chamber for a moment Death,
  Sham'd by the presence of that living Might,
  Blush'd to annihilation, and the breath
  Revisited those lips, and Life's pale light
  Flash'd 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
  Rous'd Death: Death rose and smil'd, and met her vain caress.
  
  XXVI
  "Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
  Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;
  And in my heartless breast and burning brain
  That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
  With food 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 chain'd to Time, and cannot thence depart!
  
  XXVII
  "O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
  Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
  Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
  Dare the unpastur'd dragon in his den?
  
  Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then
  Wisdom the mirror'd shield, or scorn the spear?
  
  Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
  Thy spirit should have fill'd its crescent sphere,
  The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.
  
  XXVIII
  "The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
  The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead;
  The vultures to the conqueror's banner true
  Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
  And whose wings rain contagion; how they fled,
  When, like Apollo, from his golden bow
  The Pythian of the age one arrow sped
  And smil'd! The spoilers tempt no second blow,
  They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.
  
  XXIX
  "The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
  He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
  Is gather'd 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 dimm'd or shar'd its light
  Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night.
  
  "
  
  XXX
  Thus ceas'd 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 Ierne sent
  The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,
  And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.
  
  XXXI
  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 gaz'd 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,
  Pursu'd, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.
  
  XXXII
  A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift—
  A Love in desolation mask'd—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.
  
  XXXIII
  His head was bound with pansies overblown,
  And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
  And a light spear topp'd 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 grasp'd it; of that crew
  He came the last, neglected and apart;
  A herd-abandon'd deer struck by the hunter's dart.
  
  XXXIV
  All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
  Smil'd through their tears; well knew that gentle band
  Who in another's fate now wept his own,
  As in the accents of an unknown land
  He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scann'd
  The Stranger's mien, and murmur'd: "Who art thou?
  
  "
  He answer'd not, but with a sudden hand
  Made bare his branded and ensanguin'd brow,
  Which was like Cain's or Christ's—oh! that it should be so!
  
  XXXV
  What softer voice is hush'd 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, sooth'd, lov'd, honour'd the departed one,
  Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,
  The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.
  
  XXXVI
  Our Adonais has drunk poison—oh!
  What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
  Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?
  
  The nameless worm would now itself disown:
  It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone
  Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong,
  But what was howling in one breast alone,
  Silent with expectation of the song,
  Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.
  
  XXXVII
  Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!
  Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
  Thou noteless blot on a remember'd 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.
  
  XXXVIII
  Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
  Far from these carrion kites that scream below;
  He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
  Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.
  
  Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
  Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
  A portion of the Eternal, which must glow
  Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
  Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.
  
  XXXIX
  Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
  He hath awaken'd 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.
  
  Wedecay
  Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
  Convulse us and consume us day by day,
  And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
  
  XL
  He has outsoar'd 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 gray in vain;
  Nor, when the spirit's self has ceas'd to burn,
  With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.
  
  XLI
  He lives, he wakes—'tis Death is dead, not he;
  Mourn not for Adonais.
  
  Thou young Dawn,
  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 abandon'd Earth, now leave it bare
  Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!
  
  XLII
  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.
  
  XLIII
  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.
  
  XLIV
  The splendours of the firmament of time
  May be eclips'd, but are extinguish'd not;
  Like stars to their appointed height they climb,
  And death is a low mist which cannot blot
  The brightness it may veil.
  
  When lofty thought
  Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
  And love and life contend in it for what
  Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there
  And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.
  
  XLV
  The inheritors of unfulfill'd 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 liv'd and lov'd
  Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,
  Arose; and Lucan, by his death approv'd:
  Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reprov'd.
  
  XLVI
  And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,
  But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
  So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
  Rose, rob'd in dazzling immortality.
  
  "Thou art become as one of us," they cry,
  "It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long
  Swung blind in unascended majesty,
  Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song.
  
  Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!"
  
  XLVII
  Who mourns for Adonais?
  
  Oh, come forth,
  Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.
  
  Clasp with thy panting soul the 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 lur'd thee to the brink.
  
  XLVIII
  Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
  Oh, 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 gather'd to the kings of thought
  Who wag'd contention with their time's decay,
  And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
  
  XLIX
  Go thou to Rome—at once the Paradise,
  The grave, the city, and the wilderness;
  And where its wrecks like shatter'd mountains rise,
  And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
  The bones of Desolation's nakedness
  Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead
  Thy footsteps to a slope of green access
  Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead
  A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;
  
  L
  And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time
  Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
  And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
  Pavilioning the dust of him who plann'd
  This refuge for his memory, doth stand
  Like flame transform'd to marble; and beneath,
  A field is spread, on which a newer band
  Have pitch'd in Heaven's smile their camp of death,
  Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguish'd breath.
  
  LI
  Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
  To have outgrown the sorrow which consign'd
  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?
  
  LII
  The One remains, the many change and pass;
  Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
  Life, like a dome of many-colour'd glass,
  Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
  Until Death tramples it to fragments.
  
  —Die,
  If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
  Follow where all is fled!—Rome's azure sky,
  Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
  The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
  
  LIII
  Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?
  
  Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here
  They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
  A light is pass'd 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 together.
  
  LIV
  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.
  
  LV
  The breath whose might I have invok'd in song
  Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven,
  Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
  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 Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Earth, ocean, air, belovèd 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 grey 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, belovèd brethren, and withdraw
  No portion of your wonted favour now!
  
  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 bed
  In charnels and on coffins, where black death
  Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,
  Hoping to still these obstinate questionings
  Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost
  Thy messenger, to render up the tale
  Of what we are.
  
  In lone and silent hours,
  When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
  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 charmèd night
  To render up thy charge:.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  and, though ne'er yet
  Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,
  Enough from incommunicable dream,
  And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day 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,
  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 passed, have pined
  And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.
  
  The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,
  And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,
  Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.
  
  By solemn vision, and bright silver dream,
  His infancy was nurtured.
  
  Every sight
  And sound from the vast earth and ambient air,
  Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.
  
  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
  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 dark, 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
  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 sphynx,
  Dark Æthiopia 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,
  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 Arabie
  And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,
  And o'er the aërial 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 veilèd 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,
  Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,
  Herself a poet.
  
  Soon the solemn mood
  Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame
  A permeating fire: wild numbers then
  She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs
  Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands
  Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp
  Strange symphony, and in their branching veins
  The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.
  
  The beating of her heart was heard to fill
  The pauses of her music, and her breath
  Tumultuously accorded with those fits
  Of intermitted song.
  
  Sudden she rose,
  As if her heart impatiently endured
  Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,
  And saw by the warm light of their own life
  Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil
  Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,
  Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,
  Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips
  Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.
  
  His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess
  Of love.
  
  He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled
  His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet
  Her panting bosom:.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  she drew back a while,
  Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,
  With frantic gesture and short breathless cry
  Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.
  
  Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night
  Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,
  Like a dark flood suspended in its course
  Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.
  
  Roused by the shock he started from his trance—
  The cold white light of morning, the blue moon
  Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,
  The distinct valley and the vacant woods,
  Spread round him where he stood.
  
  Whither have fled
  The hues of heaven that canopied his bower
  Of yesternight?
  
  The sounds that soothed his sleep,
  The mystery and the majesty of Earth,
  The joy, the exultation?
  
  His wan eyes
  Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly
  As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.
  
  The spirit of sweet human love has sent
  A vision to the sleep of him who spurned
  Her choicest gifts.
  
  He eagerly pursues
  Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;
  He overleaps the bounds.
  
  Alas! Alas!
  Were limbs and breath and being intertwined
  Thus treacherously?
  
  Lost, lost, for ever lost,
  In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,
  That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death
  Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,
  O Sleep?
  
  Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,
  And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,
  Lead only to a black and watery depth,
  While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,
  Where every shade which the foul grave exhales
  Hides its dead eye from the detested day,
  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 daylight held
  The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
  With his still soul.
  
  At night the passion came,
  Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,
  And shook him from his rest, and led him forth
  Into the darkness.
  
  —As an eagle grasped
  In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast
  Burn with the poison, and precipitates
  Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,
  Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight
  O'er the wide aëry 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 moonlight 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
  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 its career: the infant would conceal
  His troubled visage in his mother's robe
  In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,
  To remember their strange light in many a dream
  Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taught
  By nature, would interpret half the woe
  That wasted him, would call him with false names
  Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand
  At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path
  Of his departure from their father's door.
  
  At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore
  He paused, a wide and melancholy waste
  Of putrid marshes.
  
  A strong impulse urged
  His steps to the sea-shore.
  
  A swan was there,
  Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.
  
  It rose as he approached, and with strong wings
  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
  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 chafèd 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 ruining on wave, and blast on blast
  Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven
  With dark obliterating course, he sate:
  As if their genii were the ministers
  Appointed to conduct him to the light
  Of those belovèd eyes, the Poet sate
  Holding the steady helm.
  
  Evening came on,
  The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues
  High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray
  That canopied his path o'er the waste deep;
  Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,
  Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks
  O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;
  Night followed, clad with stars.
  
  On every side
  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 jaggèd arms,
  The shattered mountain overhung the sea,
  And faster still, beyond all human speed,
  Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,
  The little boat was driven.
  
  A cavern there
  Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths
  Ingulfed the rushing sea.
  
  The boat fled on
  With unrelaxing speed.
  
  —"Vision and Love!"
  The Poet cried aloud, "I have beheld
  The path of thy departure.
  
  Sleep and death
  Shall not divide us long!"
  
  The boat pursued
  The windings of the cavern.
  
  Daylight shone
  At length upon that gloomy river's flow;
  Now, where the fiercest war among the waves
  Is calm, on the unfathomable stream
  The boat moved slowly.
  
  Where the 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 rose,
  Circling immeasurably fast, and laved
  With alternating dash the gnarlèd roots
  Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms
  In darkness over it.
  
  I' the midst was left,
  Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud,
  A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.
  
  Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,
  With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,
  Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,
  Till on the verge of the extremest curve,
  Where, through an opening of the rocky bank,
  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
  For ever 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
  Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud
  Gleams, hovering 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 their aëry 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 immense and knotty arms,
  Embraces the light beech.
  
  The pyramids
  Of the tall cedar overarching, frame
  Most solemn domes within, and far below,
  Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,
  The ash and the acacia floating hang
  Tremulous and pale.
  
  Like restless serpents, clothed
  In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,
  Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around
  The grey 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
  Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,
  And the night's noontide clearness, mutable
  As shapes in the weird clouds.
  
  Soft mossy lawns
  Beneath these canopies extend their swells,
  Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms
  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
  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!
  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 gulfs,
  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.
  
  Grey 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 gnarlèd roots of ancient pines
  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 gulfs 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,
  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 grey 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 ethereally 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
  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 hornèd 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
  His brother Death.
  
  A rare and regal prey
  He hath prepared, prowling around the world;
  Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men
  Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,
  Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine
  The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.
  
  When on the threshold of the green recess
  The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death
  Was on him.
  
  Yet a little, ere it fled,
  Did he resign his high and holy soul
  To images of the majestic past,
  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,
  Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink
  Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,
  Surrendering to their final impulses
  The hovering powers of life.
  
  Hope and despair,
  The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear
  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,
  With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed
  To mingle.
  
  Now upon the jaggèd 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-voicèd 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 alchemy,
  Which wheresoe'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
  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!
  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,
  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 lights 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.

• Archy's Song from Charles I (A Widow Bird Sate Mourning) Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Heigho! the lark and the owl!
  One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:
  Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
  Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
  
  "A widow bird sate mourning for her love
  Upon a wintry bough;
  The frozen wind crept on above,
  The freezing stream below.
  
  "There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
  No flower upon the ground,
  And little motion in the air
  Except the mill-wheel's sound.
  
  "

• Art thou pale for weariness Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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?

• England in 1819 Read Poem Log in to favourite

  An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
  Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
  Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;
  Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
  But leechlike to their fainting country cling
  Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow.
  
  A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;
  An army, whom liberticide and prey
  Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
  Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
  Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
  A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—
  Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
  Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

• fromEpipsychidion Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Emily,
  A ship is floating in the harbour now,
  A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
  There is a path on the sea's azure floor,
  No keel has ever plough'd that path before;
  The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
  The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
  The merry mariners are bold and free:
  Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
  
  Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
  Is a far Eden of the purple East;
  And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
  And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
  Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,
  Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
  
  It is an isle under Ionian skies,
  Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
  And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
  This land would have remain'd a solitude
  But for some pastoral people native there,
  Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
  Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
  Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.
  
  The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,
  With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
  Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
  And all the winds wandering along the shore
  Undulate with the undulating tide:
  There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;
  And many a fountain, rivulet and pond,
  As clear as elemental diamond,
  Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
  The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
  (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)
  Pierce into glades, caverns and bowers, and halls
  Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
  Illumining, with sound that never fails
  Accompany the noonday nightingales;
  And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;
  The light clear element which the isle wears
  Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
  Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers,
  And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
  And from the moss violets and jonquils peep
  And dart their arrowy odour through the brain
  Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
  
  And every motion, odour, beam and tone,
  With that deep music is in unison:
  Which is a soul within the soul—they seem
  Like echoes of an antenatal dream.
  
  It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth and Sea,
  Cradled and hung in clear tranquillity;
  Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
  Wash'd by the soft blue Oceans of young air.
  
  It is a favour'd place.
  
  Famine or Blight,
  Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
  Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
  Sail onward far upon their fatal way:
  The wingèd storms, chanting their thunder-psalm
  To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
  Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
  From which its fields and woods ever renew
  Their green and golden immortality.
  
  And from the sea there rise, and from the sky
  There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,
  Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
  Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
  Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
  Glowing at once with love and loveliness,
  Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
  Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
  Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
  An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile
  Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen
  O'er the gray rocks, blue waves and forests green,
  Filling their bare and void interstices.
  
  But the chief marvel of the wilderness
  Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
  None of the rustic island-people know:
  'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
  It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
  Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
  Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
  Rear'd it, a wonder of that simple time,
  An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
  Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
  
  It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
  But, as it were, Titanic; in the heart
  Of Earth having assum'd its form, then grown
  Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
  Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
  For all the antique and learned imagery
  Has been eras'd, and in the place of it
  The ivy and the wild-vine interknit
  The volumes of their many-twining stems;
  Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
  The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
  Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
  With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,
  Or fragments of the day's intense serene;
  Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
  
  And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
  And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
  To sleep in one another's arms, and dream
  Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
  Read in their smiles, and call reality.
  
  This isle and house are mine, and I have vow'd
  Thee to be lady of the solitude.
  
  And I have fitted up some chambers there
  Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
  And level with the living winds, which flow
  Like waves above the living waves below.
  
  I have sent books and music there, and all
  Those instruments with which high Spirits call
  The future from its cradle, and the past
  Out of its grave, and make the present last
  In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,
  Folded within their own eternity.
  
  Our simple life wants little, and true taste
  Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste
  The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,
  Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
  
  The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
  Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit
  Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
  Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
  The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
  Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
  Is measur'd by the pants of their calm sleep.
  
  Be this our home in life, and when years heap
  Their wither'd hours, like leaves, on our decay,
  Let us become the overhanging day,
  The living soul of this Elysian isle,
  Conscious, inseparable, one.
  
  Meanwhile
  We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
  Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
  And wander in the meadows, or ascend
  The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
  With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;
  Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
  Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea,
  Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy—
  Possessing and possess'd by all that is
  Within that calm circumference of bliss,
  And by each other, till to love and live
  Be one: or, at the noontide hour, arrive
  Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
  The moonlight of the expir'd night asleep,
  Through which the awaken'd day can never peep;
  A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
  Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights;
  Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
  Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
  
  And we will talk, until thought's melody
  Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
  In words, to live again in looks, which dart
  With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
  Harmonizing silence without a sound.
  
  Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,
  And our veins beat together; and our lips
  With other eloquence than words, eclipse
  The soul that burns between them, and the wells
  Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
  The fountains of our deepest life, shall be
  Confus'd in Passion's golden purity,
  As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
  
  We shall become the same, we shall be one
  Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
  
  One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,
  Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
  Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
  Touch, mingle, are transfigur'd; ever still
  Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
  In one another's substance finding food,
  Like flames too pure and light and unimbu'd
  To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
  Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
  One hope within two wills, one will beneath
  Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,
  One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
  And one annihilation.
  
  Woe is me!
  The winged words on which my soul would pierce
  Into the height of Love's rare Universe,
  Are chains of lead around its flight of fire—
  I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

• Hellas: Chorus Read Poem Log in to favourite

  CHORUS
  The world's great age begins anew,
  The golden years return,
  The earth doth like a snake renew
  Her winter weeds outworn:
  Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
  Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.
  
  A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
  From waves serener far;
  A new Peneus rolls his fountains
  Against the morning star.
  
  Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
  Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
  
  A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
  Fraught with a later prize;
  Another Orpheus sings again,
  And loves, and weeps, and dies.
  
  A new Ulysses leaves once more
  Calypso for his native shore.
  
  Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
  If earth Death's scroll must be!
  Nor mix with Laian rage the joy
  Which dawns upon the free:
  Although a subtler Sphinx renew
  Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
  
  Another Athens shall arise,
  And to remoter time
  Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
  The splendour of its prime;
  And leave, if nought so bright may live,
  All earth can take or Heaven can give.
  
  Saturn and Love their long repose
  Shall burst, more bright and good
  Than all who fell, than One who rose,
  Than many unsubdu'd:
  Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
  But votive tears and symbol flowers.
  
  Oh cease! must hate and death return?
  
  Cease! must men kill and die?
  
  Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
  Of bitter prophecy.
  
  The world is weary of the past,
  Oh might it die or rest at last!

• Julian and Maddalo Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
  Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
  Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
  Of hillocks, heap'd from ever-shifting sand,
  Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,
  Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
  Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
  Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
  Abandons; and no other object breaks
  The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes
  Broken and unrepair'd, and the tide makes
  A narrow space of level sand thereon,
  Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
  
  This ride was my delight.
  
  I love all waste
  And solitary places; where we taste
  The pleasure of believing what we see
  Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
  And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
  More barren than its billows; and yet more
  Than all, with a remember'd friend I love
  To ride as then I rode; for the winds drove
  The living spray along the sunny air
  Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
  Stripp'd to their depths by the awakening north;
  And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth
  Harmonizing with solitude, and sent
  Into our hearts aëreal merriment.
  
  So, as we rode, we talk'd; and the swift thought,
  Winging itself with laughter, linger'd not,
  But flew from brain to brain—such glee was ours,
  Charg'd with light memories of remember'd hours,
  None slow enough for sadness: till we came
  Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
  
  This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
  The sun was sinking, and the wind also.
  
  Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
  Talk interrupted with such raillery
  As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn
  The thoughts it would extinguish: 'twas forlorn,
  Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell,
  The devils held within the dales of Hell
  Concerning God, freewill and destiny:
  Of all that earth has been or yet may be,
  All that vain men imagine or believe,
  Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve,
  We descanted, and I (for ever still
  Is it not wise to make the best of ill?
  
  )
  Argu'd against despondency, but pride
  Made my companion take the darker side.
  
  The sense that he was greater than his kind
  Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
  By gazing on its own exceeding light.
  
  Meanwhile the sun paus'd ere it should alight,
  Over the horizon of the mountains—Oh,
  How beautiful is sunset, when the glow
  Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
  Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
  Thy mountains, seas, and vineyards, and the towers
  Of cities they encircle! It was ours
  To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,
  Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men
  Were waiting for us with the gondola.
  
  As those who pause on some delightful way
  Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood
  Looking upon the evening, and the flood
  Which lay between the city and the shore,
  Pav'd with the image of the sky.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The hoar
  And aëry Alps towards the North appear'd
  Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark rear'd
  Between the East and West; and half the sky
  Was roof'd with clouds of rich emblazonry
  Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
  Down the steep West into a wondrous hue
  Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
  Where the swift sun yet paus'd in his descent
  Among the many-folded hills: they were
  Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
  As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles,
  The likeness of a clump of peakèd isles—
  And then—as if the Earth and Sea had been
  Dissolv'd into one lake of fire, were seen
  Those mountains towering as from waves of flame
  Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
  The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
  Their very peaks transparent.
  
  "Ere it fade,"
  Said my companion, "I will show you soon
  A better station"—so, o'er the lagune
  We glided; and from that funereal bark
  I lean'd, and saw the city, and could mark
  How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,
  Its temples and its palaces did seem
  Like fabrics of enchantment pil'd to Heaven.
  
  I was about to speak, when—"We are even
  Now at the point I meant," said Maddalo,
  And bade the gondolieri cease to row.
  
  "Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well
  If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.
  
  "
  I look'd, and saw between us and the sun
  A building on an island; such a one
  As age to age might add, for uses vile,
  A windowless, deform'd and dreary pile;
  And on the top an open tower, where hung
  A bell, which in the radiance sway'd and swung;
  We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue:
  The broad sun sunk behind it, and it toll'd
  In strong and black relief.
  
  "What we behold
  Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,"
  Said Maddalo, "and ever at this hour
  Those who may cross the water, hear that bell
  Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,
  To vespers.
  
  " "As much skill as need to pray
  In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they
  To their stern Maker," I replied.
  
  "O ho!
  You talk as in years past," said Maddalo.
  
  " 'Tis strange men change not.
  
  You were ever still
  Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel,
  A wolf for the meek lambs—if you can't swim
  Beware of Providence.
  
  " I look'd on him,
  But the gay smile had faded in his eye.
  
  "And such," he cried, "is our mortality,
  And this must be the emblem and the sign
  Of what should be eternal and divine!
  And like that black and dreary bell, the soul,
  Hung in a heaven-illumin'd tower, must toll
  Our thoughts and our desires to meet below
  Round the rent heart and pray—as madmen do
  For what?
  
  they know not—till the night of death,
  As sunset that strange vision, severeth
  Our memory from itself, and us from all
  We sought and yet were baffled.
  
  " I recall
  The sense of what he said, although I mar
  The force of his expressions.
  
  The broad star
  Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill,
  And the black bell became invisible,
  And the red tower look'd gray, and all between
  The churches, ships and palaces were seen
  Huddled in gloom;—into the purple sea
  The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.
  
  We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola
  Convey'd me to my lodgings by the way.
  
  The following morn was rainy, cold and dim:
  Ere Maddalo arose, I call'd on him,
  And whilst I waited with his child I play'd;
  A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made,
  A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being,
  Graceful without design and unforeseeing,
  With eyes—Oh speak not of her eyes!—which seem
  Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam
  With such deep meaning, as we never see
  But in the human countenance: with me
  She was a special favourite: I had nurs'd
  Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first
  To this bleak world; and she yet seem'd to know
  On second sight her ancient playfellow,
  Less chang'd than she was by six months or so;
  For after her first shyness was worn out
  We sate there, rolling billiard balls about,
  When the Count enter'd.
  
  Salutations past—
  "The word you spoke last night might well have cast
  A darkness on my spirit—if man be
  The passive thing you say, I should not see
  Much harm in the religions and old saws
  (Though I may never own such leaden laws)
  Which break a teachless nature to the yoke:
  Mine is another faith"—thus much I spoke
  And noting he replied not, added: "See
  This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free;
  She spends a happy time with little care,
  While we to such sick thoughts subjected are
  As came on you last night.
  
  It is our will
  That thus enchains us to permitted ill.
  
  We might be otherwise.
  
  We might be all
  We dream of happy, high, majestical.
  
  Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek
  But in our mind?
  
  and if we were not weak
  Should we be less in deed than in desire?
  
  "
  "Ay, if we were not weak—and we aspire
  How vainly to be strong!" said Maddalo:
  "You talk Utopia.
  
  " "It remains to know,"
  I then rejoin'd, "and those who try may find
  How strong the chains are which our spirit bind;
  Brittle perchance as straw.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  We are assur'd
  Much may be conquer'd, much may be endur'd,
  Of what degrades and crushes us.
  
  We know
  That we have power over ourselves to do
  And suffer—what, we know not till we try;
  But something nobler than to live and die:
  So taught those kings of old philosophy
  Who reign'd, before Religion made men blind;
  And those who suffer with their suffering kind
  Yet feel their faith, religion.
  
  " "My dear friend,"
  Said Maddalo, "my judgement will not bend
  To your opinion, though I think you might
  Make such a system refutation-tight
  As far as words go.
  
  I knew one like you
  Who to this city came some months ago,
  With whom I argu'd in this sort, and he
  Is now gone mad—and so he answer'd me—
  Poor fellow! but if you would like to go
  We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show
  How vain are such aspiring theories.
  
  "
  "I hope to prove the induction otherwise,
  And that a want of that true theory, still,
  Which seeks a 'soul of goodness' in things ill
  Or in himself or others, has thus bow'd
  His being.
  
  There are some by nature proud,
  Who patient in all else demand but this—
  To love and be belov'd with gentleness;
  And being scorn'd, what wonder if they die
  Some living death?
  
  this is not destiny
  But man's own wilful ill.
  
  "
  
  As thus I spoke
  Servants announc'd the gondola, and we
  Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
  Sail'd to the island where the madhouse stands.

• fromLaon and Cythna; or The Revolution of the Golden City Read Poem Log in to favourite

  1.
  
  So now my summer task is ended, Mary,
  1.
  
  And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;
  As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faëry,
  Earning bright spoils for her inchanted 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.
  
  2.
  
  The toil which stole from thee so many an hour
  2.
  
  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,
  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.
  
  3.
  
  Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first
  3.
  
  The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.
  
  I do remember well the hour which burst
  My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was,
  When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
  And wept, I knew not why; until there rose
  From the near school-room, voices, that, alas!
  Were but one echo from a world of woes—
  The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
  
  4.
  
  And then I clasped my hands and looked around—
  4.
  
  —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 tyrannise
  Without reproach or check.
  
  " I then controuled
  My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.
  
  5.
  
  And from that hour did I with earnest thought
  5.
  
  Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore,
  Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
  I cared to learn, but from that secret store
  Wrought 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.
  
  6.
  
  Alas, that love should be a blight and snare
  6.
  
  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.
  
  7.
  
  Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart
  7.
  
  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.
  
  8.
  
  No more alone through the world's wilderness,
  8.
  
  Although I trod the paths of high intent,
  I journeyed now: no more companionless,
  Where solitude is like despair, I went.
  
  —
  There is the wisdom of a stern content
  When Poverty can blight the just and good,
  When Infamy dares mock the innocent,
  And cherished friends turn with the multitude
  To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood!
  
  9.
  
  Now has descended a serener hour,
  9.
  
  And with inconstant fortune, friends return;
  Though 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 thee.
  
  10.
  
  Is it, that now my inexperienced fingers
  10.
  
  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,
  Though 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 fain
  Reply in hope—but I am worn away,
  And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.
  
  11.
  
  And what art thou?
  
  I know, but dare not speak:
  11.
  
  Time may interpret to his silent years.
  
  Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,
  And in the light thine ample forehead wears,
  And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,
  And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy
  Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears:
  And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see
  A lamp of vestal fire burning internally.
  
  12.
  
  They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth,
  12.
  
  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 undefiled
  Of its departing glory; still her fame
  Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild
  Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim
  The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name.
  
  13.
  
  One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit,
  13.
  
  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.
  
  14.
  
  Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind!
  14.
  
  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,
  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.

• Lines Written among the Euganean Hills Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Many a green isle needs must be
  In the deep wide sea of Misery,
  Or the mariner, worn and wan,
  Never thus could voyage on
  Day and night, and night and day,
  Drifting on his dreary way,
  With the solid darkness black
  Closing round his vessel's track;
  Whilst above, the sunless sky,
  Big with clouds, hangs heavily,
  And behind, the tempest fleet
  Hurries on with lightning feet,
  Riving sail, and cord, and plank,
  Till the ship has almost drank
  Death from the o'er-brimming deep;
  And sinks down, down, like that sleep
  When the dreamer seems to be
  Weltering through eternity;
  And the dim low line before
  Of a dark and distant shore
  Still recedes, as ever still
  Longing with divided will,
  But no power to seek or shun,
  He is ever drifted on
  O'er the unreposing wave
  To the haven of the grave.
  
  What, if there no friends will greet;
  What, if there no heart will meet
  His with love's impatient beat;
  Wander wheresoe'er he may,
  Can he dream before that day
  To find refuge from distress
  In friendship's smile, in love's caress?
  
  Then 'twill wreak him little woe
  Whether such there be or no:
  Senseless is the breast and cold
  Which relenting love would fold;
  Bloodless are the veins and chill
  Which the pulse of pain did fill;
  Every little living nerve
  That from bitter words did swerve
  Round the tortur'd lips and brow,
  Are like sapless leaflets now
  Frozen upon December's bough.
  
  On the beach of a northern sea
  Which tempests shake eternally,
  As once the wretch there lay to sleep,
  Lies a solitary heap,
  One white skull and seven dry bones,
  On the margin of the stones,
  Where a few gray rushes stand,
  Boundaries of the sea and land:
  Nor is heard one voice of wail
  But the sea-mews, as they sail
  O'er the billows of the gale;
  Or the whirlwind up and down
  Howling, like a slaughter'd town,
  When a king in glory rides
  Through the pomp of fratricides:
  Those unburied bones around
  There is many a mournful sound;
  There is no lament for him,
  Like a sunless vapour, dim,
  Who once cloth'd with life and thought
  What now moves nor murmurs not.
  
  Ay, many flowering islands lie
  In the waters of wide Agony:
  To such a one this morn was led
  My bark, by soft winds piloted:
  'Mid the mountains Euganean
  I stood listening to the paean
  With which the legion'd rooks did hail
  The sun's uprise majestical;
  Gathering round with wings all hoar,
  Through the dewy mist they soar
  Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
  Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,
  Fleck'd with fire and azure, lie
  In the unfathomable sky,
  So their plumes of purple grain,
  Starr'd with drops of golden rain,
  Gleam above the sunlight woods,
  As in silent multitudes
  On the morning's fitful gale
  Through the broken mist they sail,
  And the vapours cloven and gleaming
  Follow, down the dark steep streaming,
  Till all is bright, and clear, and still,
  Round the solitary hill.
  
  Beneath is spread like a green sea
  The waveless plain of Lombardy,
  Bounded by the vaporous air,
  Islanded by cities fair;
  Underneath Day's azure eyes
  Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,
  A peopled labyrinth of walls,
  Amphitrite's destin'd halls,
  Which her hoary sire now paves
  With his blue and beaming waves.
  
  Lo! the sun upsprings behind,
  Broad, red, radiant, half-reclin'd
  On the level quivering line
  Of the water crystalline;
  And before that chasm of light,
  As within a furnace bright,
  Column, tower, and dome, and spire,
  Shine like obelisks of fire,
  Pointing with inconstant motion
  From the altar of dark ocean
  To the sapphire-tinted skies;
  As the flames of sacrifice
  From the marble shrines did rise,
  As to pierce the dome of gold
  Where Apollo spoke of old.
  
  Sun-girt City, thou hast been
  Ocean's child, and then his queen;
  Now is come a darker day,
  And thou soon must be his prey,
  If the power that rais'd thee here
  Hallow so thy watery bier.
  
  A less drear ruin then than now,
  With thy conquest-branded brow
  Stooping to the slave of slaves
  From thy throne, among the waves
  Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew
  Flies, as once before it flew,
  O'er thine isles depopulate,
  And all is in its ancient state,
  Save where many a palace gate
  With green sea-flowers overgrown
  Like a rock of Ocean's own,
  Topples o'er the abandon'd sea
  As the tides change sullenly.
  
  The fisher on his watery way,
  Wandering at the close of day,
  Will spread his sail and seize his oar
  Till he pass the gloomy shore,
  Lest thy dead should, from their sleep
  Bursting o'er the starlight deep,
  Lead a rapid masque of death
  O'er the waters of his path.
  
  Those who alone thy towers behold
  Quivering through a{:e}real gold,
  As I now behold them here,
  Would imagine not they were
  Sepulchres, where human forms,
  Like pollution-nourish'd worms,
  To the corpse of greatness cling,
  Murder'd, and now mouldering:
  But if Freedom should awake
  In her omnipotence, and shake
  From the Celtic Anarch's hold
  All the keys of dungeons cold,
  Where a hundred cities lie
  Chain'd like thee, ingloriously,
  Thou and all thy sister band
  Might adorn this sunny land,
  Twining memories of old time
  With new virtues more sublime;
  If not, perish thou and they,
  Clouds which stain truth's rising day
  By her sun consum'd away—
  Earth can spare ye! while like flowers,
  In the waste of years and hours,
  From your dust new nations spring
  With more kindly blossoming.
  
  Perish—let there only be
  Floating o'er thy hearthless sea
  As the garment of thy sky
  Clothes the world immortally,
  One remembrance, more sublime
  Than the tatter'd pall of time,
  Which scarce hides thy visage wan:
  That a tempest-cleaving Swan
  Of the sons of Albion,
  Driven from his ancestral streams
  By the might of evil dreams,
  Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
  Welcom'd him with such emotion
  That its joy grew his, and sprung
  From his lips like music flung
  O'er a mighty thunder-fit,
  Chastening terror: what though yet
  Poesy's unfailing river,
  Which through Albion winds forever
  Lashing with melodious wave
  Many a sacred Poet's grave,
  Mourn its latest nursling fled!
  What though thou with all thy dead
  Scarce can for this fame repay
  Aught thine own, oh, rather say
  Though thy sins and slaveries foul
  Overcloud a sunlike soul!
  As the ghost of Homer clings
  Round Scamander's wasting springs;
  As divinest Shakespeare's might
  Fills Avon and the world with light
  Like omniscient power which he
  Imag'd 'mid mortality;
  As the love from Petrarch's urn
  Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
  A quenchless lamp by which the heart
  Sees things unearthly; so thou art,
  Mighty spirit: so shall be
  The City that did refuge thee.
  
  Lo, the sun floats up the sky
  Like thought-winged Liberty,
  Till the universal light
  Seems to level plain and height;
  From the sea a mist has spread,
  And the beams of morn lie dead
  On the towers of Venice now,
  Like its glory long ago.
  
  By the skirts of that gray cloud
  Many-domed Padua proud
  Stands, a peopled solitude,
  'Mid the harvest-shining plain,
  Where the peasant heaps his grain
  In the garner of his foe,
  And the milk-white oxen slow
  With the purple vintage strain,
  Heap'd upon the creaking wain,
  That the brutal Celt may swill
  Drunken sleep with savage will;
  And the sickle to the sword
  Lies unchang'd though many a lord,
  Like a weed whose shade is poison,
  Overgrows this region's foison,
  Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
  To destruction's harvest-home:
  Men must reap the things they sow,
  Force from force must ever flow,
  Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe
  That love or reason cannot change
  The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.
  
  Padua, thou within whose walls
  Those mute guests at festivals,
  Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
  Play'd at dice for Ezzelin,
  Till Death cried, 'I win, I win!'
  And Sin curs'd to lose the wager,
  But Death promis'd, to assuage her,
  That he would petition for
  Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
  When the destin'd years were o'er,
  Over all between the Po
  And the eastern Alpine snow,
  Under the mighty Austrian.
  
  Sin smil'd so as Sin only can,
  And since that time, ay, long before,
  Both have rul'd from shore to shore,
  That incestuous pair, who follow
  Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
  As Repentance follows Crime,
  And as changes follow Time.
  
  In thine halls the lamp of learning,
  Padua, now no more is burning;
  Like a meteor, whose wild way
  Is lost over the grave of day,
  It gleams betray'd and to betray:
  Once remotest nations came
  To adore that sacred flame,
  When it lit not many a hearth
  On this cold and gloomy earth:
  Now new fires from antique light
  Spring beneath the wide world's might;
  But their spark lies dead in thee,
  Trampled out by Tyranny.
  
  As the Norway woodman quells,
  In the depth of piny dells,
  One light flame among the brakes,
  While the boundless forest shakes,
  And its mighty trunks are torn
  By the fire thus lowly born:
  The spark beneath his feet is dead,
  He starts to see the flames it fed
  Howling through the darken'd sky
  With myriad tongues victoriously,
  And sinks down in fear: so thou,
  O Tyranny, beholdest now
  Light around thee, and thou hearest
  The loud flames ascend, and fearest:
  Grovel on the earth; ay, hide
  In the dust thy purple pride!
  
  Noon descends around me now:
  'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,
  When a soft and purple mist
  Like a vaporous amethyst,
  Or an air-dissolved star
  Mingling light and fragrance, far
  From the curv'd horizon's bound
  To the point of Heaven's profound,
  Fills the overflowing sky;
  And the plains that silent lie
  Underneath, the leaves unsodden
  Where the infant Frost has trodden
  With his morning-winged feet,
  Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
  And the red and golden vines,
  Piercing with their trellis'd lines
  The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
  The dun and bladed grass no less,
  Pointing from his hoary tower
  In the windless air; the flower
  Glimmering at my feet; the line
  Of the olive-sandall'd Apennine
  In the south dimly islanded;
  And the Alps, whose snows are spread
  High between the clouds and sun;
  And of living things each one;
  And my spirit which so long
  Darken'd this swift stream of song,
  Interpenetrated lie
  By the glory of the sky:
  Be it love, light, harmony,
  Odour, or the soul of all
  Which from Heaven like dew doth fall,
  Or the mind which feeds this verse
  Peopling the lone universe.
  
  Noon descends, and after noon
  Autumn's evening meets me soon,
  Leading the infantine moon,
  And that one star, which to her
  Almost seems to minister
  Half the crimson light she brings
  From the sunset's radiant springs:
  And the soft dreams of the morn
  (Which like winged winds had borne
  To that silent isle, which lies
  Mid remember'd agonies,
  The frail bark of this lone being)
  Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
  And its ancient pilot, Pain,
  Sits beside the helm again.
  
  Other flowering isles must be
  In the sea of Life and Agony:
  Other spirits float and flee
  O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,
  On some rock the wild wave wraps,
  With folded wings they waiting sit
  For my bark, to pilot it
  To some calm and blooming cove,
  Where for me, and those I love,
  May a windless bower be built,
  Far from passion, pain and guilt,
  In a dell mid lawny hills,
  Which the wild sea-murmur fills,
  And soft sunshine, and the sound
  Of old forests echoing round,
  And the light and smell divine
  Of all flowers that breathe and shine:
  We may live so happy there,
  That the Spirits of the Air,
  Envying us, may even entice
  To our healing paradise
  The polluting multitude;
  But their rage would be subdu'd
  By that clime divine and calm,
  And the winds whose wings rain balm
  On the uplifted soul, and leaves
  Under which the bright sea heaves;
  While each breathless interval
  In their whisperings musical
  The inspired soul supplies
  With its own deep melodies,
  And the love which heals all strife
  Circling, like the breath of life,
  All things in that sweet abode
  With its own mild brotherhood:
  They, not it, would change; and soon
  Every sprite beneath the moon
  Would repent its envy vain,
  And the earth grow young again.

• Love’s Philosophy Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The fountains mingle with the river
  And the rivers with the ocean,
  The winds of heaven mix for ever
  With a sweet emotion;
  Nothing in the world is single;
  All things by a law divine
  In one spirit meet and mingle.
  
  Why not I 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 is all this sweet work worth
  If thou kiss not me?

• Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I
  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 ceaselessly bursts and raves.
  
  II
  Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine—
  Thou many-colour'd, many-voiced vale,
  Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
  Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,
  Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
  From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
  Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
  Of lightning through the tempest;—thou dost lie,
  Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,
  Children of elder time, in whose devotion
  The chainless winds still come and ever came
  To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
  To hear—an old and solemn harmony;
  Thine earthly rainbows stretch'd across the sweep
  Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil
  Robes some unsculptur'd image; the strange sleep
  Which when the voices of the desert 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 fantasy,
  My own, my human mind, which passively
  Now renders and receives fast influencings,
  Holding an unremitting interchange
  With the clear universe of things around;
  One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
  Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
  Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
  In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
  Seeking among the shadows that pass by
  Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
  Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
  From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!
  
  III
  Some say that gleams of a remoter world
  Visit the soul in sleep, that death is slumber,
  And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
  Of those who wake and live.
  
  —I look on high;
  Has some unknown omnipotence unfurl'd
  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 desert 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 heap'd around! rude, bare, and high,
  Ghastly, and scarr'd, 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 envelop once this silent snow?
  
  None can reply—all seems eternal now.
  
  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 reconcil'd;
  Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal
  Large 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:
  Andthis, the naked countenance of earth,
  On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains
  Teach the adverting mind.
  
  The glaciers creep
  Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
  Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice
  Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
  Have pil'd: 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 destin'd path, or in the mangled soil
  Branchless and shatter'd stand; the rocks, drawn down
  From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
  The limits of the dead and living world,
  Never to be reclaim'd.
  
  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 torrents' restless gleam,
  Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
  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
  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 were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
  If to the human mind's imaginings
  Silence and solitude were vacancy?

• Music when Soft Voices Die (To --) Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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 belovèd's bed;
  And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
  Love itself shall slumber on.

• "The flower that smiles to-day" Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The flower that smiles to-day
  To-morrow dies;
  All that we wish to stay
  Tempts and then flies.
  
  What is this world's delight?
  
  Lightning that mocks the night,
  Brief even as bright.
  
  Virtue, how frail it is!
  Friendship how rare!
  Love, how it sells poor bliss
  For proud despair!
  But we, though soon they fall,
  Survive their joy, and all
  Which ours we call.
  
  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.

• Mutability ["We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon"] Read Poem Log in to favourite

  I.
  
  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:—
  
  II.
  
  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.
  
  III.
  
  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:—
  
  IV.
  
  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.

• O! there are spirits of the air Read Poem Log in to favourite

  O! there are spirits of the air,
  And genii of the evening breeze,
  And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
  As star-beams among twilight trees:—
  Such lovely ministers to meet
  Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
  
  With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
  And moonlight seas, that are the voice
  Of these inexplicable things,
  Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
  When they did answer thee; but they
  Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.
  
  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,
  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.

• One Sung of thee who Left the Tale Untold Read Poem Log in to favourite

  One sung of thee who left the tale untold,
  Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;
  Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,
  Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.

• fromQueen Mab: Part VI Read Poem Log in to favourite

  "Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,
  Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffus'd
  A Spirit of activity and life,
  That knows no term, cessation, or decay;
  That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,
  Extinguish'd 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 unpractis'd sense:
  But, active, steadfast and eternal, still
  Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,
  Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,
  Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;
  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 shipwreck'd mariner,
  Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,
  All seems unlink'd contingency and chance,
  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 sunbeam's fleeting glow
  Fulfils its destin'd, though invisible work,
  The universal Spirit guides; nor less,
  When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,
  Has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield,
  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
  Unrecogniz'd 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.
  
  "Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,
  Necessity! thou mother of the world!
  Unlike the God of human error, thou
  Requir'st no prayers or praises; the caprice
  Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee
  Than do the changeful passions of his breast
  To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,
  Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,
  And the good man, who lifts with virtuous pride
  His being in the sight of happiness
  That springs from his own works; the poison-tree,
  Beneath whose shade all life is wither'd up,
  And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords
  A temple where the vows of happy love
  Are register'd, are equal in thy sight:
  No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge
  And favouritism, and worst desire of fame
  Thou know'st not: all that the wide world contains
  Are but thy passive instruments, and thou
  Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,
  Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,
  Because thou hast not human sense,
  Because thou art not human mind.
  
  "Yes! when the sweeping storm of time
  Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruin'd fanes
  And broken altars of the almighty Fiend
  Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood
  Through centuries clotted there has floated down
  The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live
  Unchangeable! A shrine is rais'd to thee,
  Which, nor the tempest-breath of time,
  Nor the interminable flood
  Over earth's slight pageant rolling,
  Availeth to destroy—
  The sensitive extension of the world.
  
  That wondrous and eternal fane,
  Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,
  To do the will of strong necessity,
  And life, in multitudinous shapes,
  Still pressing forward where no term can be,
  Like hungry and unresting flame
  Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.
  
  "

• A Song: “Men of England” Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Men of England, wherefore plough
  For the lords who lay ye low?
  
  Wherefore weave with toil and care
  The rich robes your tyrants wear?
  
  Wherefore feed and clothe and save
  From the cradle to the grave
  Those ungrateful drones who would
  Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?
  
  Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
  Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
  That these stingless drones may spoil
  The forced produce of your toil?
  
  Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
  Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
  
  Or what is it ye buy so dear
  With your pain and with your fear?
  
  The seed ye sow, another reaps;
  The wealth ye find, another keeps;
  The robes ye weave, another wears;
  The arms ye forge, another bears.
  
  Sow seed—but let no tyrant reap:
  Find wealth—let no imposter heap:
  Weave robes—let not the idle wear:
  Forge arms—in your defence to bear.
  
  Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells—
  In hall ye deck another dwells.
  
  Why shake the chains ye wrought?
  
  Ye see
  The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
  
  With plough and spade and hoe and loom
  Trace your grave and build your tomb
  And weave your winding-sheet—till fair
  England be your Sepulchre.

• Song: Rarely, rarely, comest thou Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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 are 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.
  
  As a lizard with the shade
  Of a trembling leaf,
  Thou with sorrow art dismay'd;
  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 dress'd,
  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,
  Everything almost
  Which is Nature's, and may be
  Untainted by man's misery.
  
  I love tranquil solitude,
  And such society
  As is quiet, wise, and good;
  Between thee and me
  What difference?
  
  but thou dost possess
  The things I seek, not love them less.
  
  I love Love—though he has wings,
  And like light can flee,
  But above all other things,
  Spirit, I love thee—
  Thou art love and life! Oh come,
  Make once more my heart thy home.

• Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
  The waves are dancing fast and bright,
  Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
  The purple noon's transparent might,
  The breath of the moist earth is 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:
  I sit upon the sands alone,—
  The lightning of the noontide ocean
  Is flashing round me, and a tone
  Arises from its measured motion,
  How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
  
  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;
  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.

• To ---- Read Poem Log in to favourite

  One word is too often profaned
  For me to profane it,
  One feeling too falsely disdained
  For thee to disdain it;
  One hope is too like despair
  For prudence to smother,
  And pity from thee more dear
  Than that from another.
  
  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?

• To a Skylark Read Poem Log in to favourite

  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.
  
  In the golden lightning
  Of the sunken sun,
  O'er which clouds are bright'ning,
  Thou dost float and run;
  Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.
  
  The pale purple even
  Melts around thy flight;
  Like a star of Heaven,
  In the broad 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 overflow'd.
  
  What thou art we know not;
  What is most like thee?
  
  From rainbow clouds there flow not
  Drops so bright to see
  As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.
  
  Like a Poet hidden
  In the light of thought,
  Singing hymns unbidden,
  Till the world is wrought
  To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:
  
  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 aëreal hue
  Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:
  
  Like a rose embower'd
  In its own green leaves,
  By warm winds deflower'd,
  Till the scent it gives
  Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves:
  
  Sound of vernal showers
  On the twinkling grass,
  Rain-awaken'd flowers,
  All that ever was
  Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.
  
  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 Hymeneal,
  Or triumphal chant,
  Match'd 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?
  
  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.

• The Triumph of Life Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
  Of glory & of good, the Sun sprang forth
  Rejoicing in his splendour, & the mask
  Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
  
  The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
  Flamed above crimson clouds, & at the birth
  Of light, the Ocean's orison arose
  To which the birds tempered their matin lay,
  All flowers in field or forest which unclose
  Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
  Swinging their censers in the element,
  With orient incense lit by the new ray
  Burned slow & inconsumably, & sent
  Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air,
  And in succession due, did Continent,
  Isle, Ocean, & all things that in them wear
  The form & character of mortal mould
  Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
  Their portion of the toil which he of old
  Took as his own & then imposed on them;
  But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
  Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
  The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
  Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
  Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
  Of a green Apennine: before me fled
  The night; behind me rose the day; the Deep
  Was at my feet, & Heaven above my head
  When a strange trance over my fancy grew
  Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
  Was so transparent that the scene came through
  As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
  O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
  That I had felt the freshness of that dawn,
  Bathed in the same cold dew my brow & hair
  And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
  Under the self same bough, & heard as there
  The birds, the fountains & the Ocean hold
  Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
  
  And then a Vision on my brain was rolled.
  
  As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay
  This was the tenour of my waking dream.
  
  Methought I sate beside a public way
  Thick strewn with summer dust, & a great stream
  Of people there was hurrying to & fro
  Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
  All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
  Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
  He made one of the multitude, yet so
  Was borne amid the crowd as through the sky
  One of the million leaves of summer's bier.
  
  —
  Old age & youth, manhood & infancy,
  Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
  Some flying from the thing they feared & some
  Seeking the object of another's fear,
  And others as with steps towards the tomb
  Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
  And others mournfully within the gloom
  Of their own shadow walked, and called it death .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
  Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.
  
  But more with motions which each other crost
  Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw
  Or birds within the noonday ether lost,
  Upon that path where flowers never grew;
  And weary with vain toil & faint for thirst
  Heard not the fountains whose melodious dew
  Out of their mossy cells forever burst
  Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
  Of grassy paths, & wood lawns interspersed
  With overarching elms & caverns cold,
  And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
  Pursued their serious folly as of old .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  And as I gazed methought that in the way
  The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
  When the South wind shakes the extinguished day.
  
  —
  And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
  But icy cold, obscured with [[blank]] light
  The Sun as he the stars.
  
  Like the young moon
  When on the sunlit limits of the night
  Her white shell trembles amid crimson air
  And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might
  Doth, as a herald of its coming, bear
  The ghost of her dead Mother, whose dim form
  Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair,
  So came a chariot on the silent storm
  Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
  So sate within as one whom years deform
  Beneath a dusky hood & double cape
  Crouching within the shadow of a tomb,
  And o'er what seemed the head, a cloud like crape,
  Was bent a dun & faint etherial gloom
  Tempering the light; upon the chariot's beam
  A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
  The guidance of that wonder-winged team.
  
  The Shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
  Were lost: I heard alone on the air's soft stream
  The music of their ever moving wings.
  
  All the four faces of that charioteer
  Had their eyes banded .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  little profit brings
  Speed in the van & blindness in the rear,
  Nor then avail the beams that quench the Sun
  Or that his banded eyes could pierce the sphere
  Of all that is, has been, or will be done.
  
  —
  So ill was the car guided, but it past
  With solemn speed majestically on .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  The crowd gave way, & I arose aghast,
  Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
  And saw like clouds upon the thunder blast
  The million with fierce song and maniac dance
  Raging around; such seemed the jubilee
  As when to greet some conqueror's advance
  Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
  From senatehouse & prison & theatre
  When Freedom left those who upon the free
  Had bound a yoke which soon they stooped to bear.
  
  Nor wanted here the true similitude
  Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er
  The chariot rolled a captive multitude
  Was driven; althose who had grown old in power
  Or misery,—all who have their age subdued,
  By action or by suffering, and whose hour
  Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
  So that the trunk survived both fruit & flower;
  All those whose fame or infamy must grow
  Till the great winter lay the form & name
  Of their own earth with them forever low,
  All but the sacred few who could not tame
  Their spirits to the Conqueror, but as soon
  As they had touched the world with living flame
  Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
  Of those who put aside the diadem
  Of earthly thrones or gems, till the last one
  Were there;—for they of Athens & Jerusalem
  Were neither mid the mighty captives seen
  Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them
  Or fled before .
  
  .
  
  Now swift, fierce & obscene
  The wild dance maddens in the van, & those
  Who lead it, fleet as shadows on the green,
  Outspeed the chariot & without repose
  Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
  To savage music .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Wilder as it grows,
  They, tortured by the agonizing pleasure,
  Convulsed & on the rapid whirlwinds spun
  Of that fierce spirit, whose unholy leisure
  Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
  Throw back their heads & loose their streaming hair,
  And in their dance round her who dims the Sun
  Maidens & youths fling their wild arms in air
  As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now
  Bending within each other's atmosphere
  Kindle invisibly; and as they glow
  Like moths by light attracted & repelled,
  Oft to new bright destruction come & go.
  
  Till like two clouds into one vale impelled
  That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
  And die in rain,—the fiery band which held
  Their natures, snaps .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  ere the shock cease to tingle
  One falls and then another in the path
  Senseless, nor is the desolation single,
  Yet ere I can saywherethe chariot hath
  Past over them; nor other trace I find
  But as of foam after the Ocean's wrath
  Is spent upon the desert shore.
  
  —Behind,
  Old men, and women foully disarrayed
  Shake their grey hair in the insulting wind,
  Limp in the dance & strain, with limbs decayed,
  Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still
  Farther behind & deeper in the shade.
  
  But not the less with impotence of will
  They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
  Round them & round each other, and fulfill
  Their work and to the dust whence they arose
  Sink & corruption veils them as they lie
  And frost in these performs what fire in those.
  
  Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
  Half to myself I said, "And what is this?
  
  Whose shape is that within the car?
  
  & why"-
  I would have added—"is all here amiss?
  
  "
  But a voice answered .
  
  .
  
  "Life" .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  I turned & knew
  (O Heaven have mercy on such wretchedness!)
  That what I thought was an old root which grew
  To strange distortion out of the hill side
  Was indeed one of that deluded crew,
  And that the grass which methought hung so wide
  And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
  And that the holes it vainly sought to hide
  Were or had been eyes.
  
  —"lf thou canst forbear
  To join the dance, which I had well forborne,"
  Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,
  "I will now tell that which to this deep scorn
  Led me & my companions, and relate
  The progress of the pageant since the morn;
  "If thirst of knowledge doth not thus abate,
  Follow it even to the night, but I
  Am weary" .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  Then like one who with the weight
  Of his own words is staggered, wearily
  He paused, and ere he could resume, I cried,
  "First who art thou?
  
  " .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  "Before thy memory
  "I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did, & died,
  And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
  Earth had with purer nutriment supplied
  "Corruption would not now thus much inherit
  Of what was once Rousseau—nor this disguise
  Stained that within which still disdains to wear it.
  
  —
  "If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
  A thousand beacons from the spark I bore.
  
  "—
  "And who are those chained to the car?
  
  " "The Wise,
  "The great, the unforgotten: they who wore
  Mitres & helms & crowns, or wreathes of light,
  Signs of thought's empire over thought; their lore
  "Taught them not this—to know themselves; their might
  Could not repress the mutiny within,
  And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
  "Caught them ere evening.
  
  " "Who is he with chin
  Upon his breast and hands crost on his chain?
  
  "
  "The Child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
  "The world, and lost all it did contain
  Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; & more
  Of fame & peace than Virtue's self can gain
  "Without the opportunity which bore
  Him on its eagle's pinion to the peak
  From which a thousand climbers have before
  "Fall'n as Napoleon fell.
  
  "—I felt my cheek
  Alter to see the great form pass away
  Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
  That every pigmy kicked it as it lay—
  And much I grieved to think how power & will
  In opposition rule our mortal day—
  And why God made irreconcilable
  Good & the means of good; and for despair
  I half disdained mine eye's desire to fill
  With the spent vision of the times that were
  And scarce have ceased to be .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  "Dost thou behold,"
  Said then my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
  "Frederic, & Kant, Catherine, & Leopold,
  Chained hoary anarch, demagogue & sage
  Whose name the fresh world thinks already old—
  "For in the battle Life & they did wage
  She remained conqueror—I was overcome
  By my own heart alone, which neither age
  "Nor tears nor infamy nor now the tomb
  Could temper to its object.
  
  "—"Let them pass"—
  I cried—"the world & its mysterious doom
  "Is not so much more glorious than it was
  That I desire to worship those who drew
  New figures on its false & fragile glass
  "As the old faded.
  
  "—"Figures ever new
  Rise on the bubble, paint them how you may;
  We have but thrown, as those before us threw,
  "Our shadows on it as it past away.
  
  But mark, how chained to the triumphal chair
  The mighty phantoms of an elder day—
  "All that is mortal of great Plato there
  Expiates the joy & woe his master knew not;
  That star that ruled his doom was far too fair—
  "And Life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
  Conquered the heart by love which gold or pain
  Or age or sloth or slavery could subdue not—
  "And near [[blank]] walk the [[blank]] twain,
  The tutor & his pupil, whom Dominion
  Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.
  
  —
  "The world was darkened beneath either pinion
  Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
  Fame singled as her thunderbearing minion;
  "The other long outlived both woes & wars,
  Throned in new thoughts of men, and still had kept
  The jealous keys of truth's eternal doors
  "If Bacon's spirit [[blank]] had not leapt
  Like lightning out of darkness; he compelled
  The Proteus shape of Nature's as it slept
  "To wake & to unbar the caves that held
  The treasure of the secrets of its reign—
  See the great bards of old who inly quelled
  "The passions which they sung, as by their strain
  May well be known: their living melody
  Tempers its own contagion to the vein
  "Of those who are infected with it—I
  Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!—
  "And so my words were seeds of misery—
  Even as the deeds of others.
  
  "—"Not as theirs,"
  I said—he pointed to a company
  In which I recognized amid the heirs
  Of Caesar's crime from him to Constantine,
  The Anarchs old whose force & murderous snares
  Had founded many a sceptre bearing line
  And spread the plague of blood & gold abroad,
  And Gregory & John and men divine
  Who rose like shadows between Man & god
  Till that eclipse, still hanging under Heaven,
  Was worshipped by the world o'er which they strode
  For the true Sun it quenched.
  
  —"Their power was given
  But to destroy," replied the leader—"I
  Am one of those who have created, even
  "If it be but a world of agony.
  
  "—
  "Whence camest thou & whither goest thou?
  
  How did thy course begin," I said, "& why?
  
  "Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
  Of people, & my heart of one sad thought.
  
  —
  Speak.
  
  "—"Whence I came, partly I seem to know,
  "And how & by what paths I have been brought
  To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;
  Why this should be my mind can compass not;
  "Whither the conqueror hurries me still less.
  
  But follow thou, & from spectator turn
  Actor or victim in this wretchedness,
  "And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn
  From thee.
  
  —Now listen .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  In the April prime
  When all the forest tops began to burn
  "With kindling green, touched by the azure clime
  Of the young year, I found myself asleep
  Under a mountain which from unknown time
  "Had yawned into a cavern high & deep,
  And from it came a gentle rivulet
  Whose water like clear air in its calm sweep
  "Bent the soft grass & kept for ever wet
  The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
  With sound which all who hear must needs forget
  "All pleasure & all pain, all hate & love,
  Which they had known before that hour of rest:
  A sleeping mother then would dream not of
  "The only child who died upon her breast
  At eventide, a king would mourn no more
  The crown of which his brow was dispossest
  "When the sun lingered o'er the Ocean floor
  To gild his rival's new prosperity.
  
  —
  Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore
  "Ills, which if ills, can find no cure from thee,
  The thought of which no other sleep will quell
  Nor other music blot from memory—
  "So sweet & deep is the oblivious spell.
  
  —
  Whether my life had been before that sleep
  The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell
  "Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep,
  I know not.
  
  I arose & for a space
  The scene of woods & waters seemed to keep,
  "Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace
  Of light diviner than the common Sun
  Sheds on the common Earth, but all the place
  "Was filled with many sounds woven into one
  Oblivious melody, confusing sense
  Amid the gliding waves & shadows dun;
  "And as I looked the bright omnipresence
  Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
  And the Sun's image radiantly intense
  "Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
  Like gold, and threaded all the forest maze
  With winding paths of emerald fire—there stood
  "Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze
  Of his own glory, on the vibrating
  Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
  "A shape all light, which with one hand did fling
  Dew on the earth, as if she were the Dawn
  Whose invisible rain forever seemed to sing
  "A silver music on the mossy lawn,
  And still before her on the dusky grass
  Iris her many coloured scarf had drawn.
  
  —
  "In her right hand she bore a crystal glass
  Mantling with bright Nepenthe;—the fierce splendour
  Fell from her as she moved under the mass
  "Of the deep cavern, & with palms so tender
  Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
  Glided along the river, and did bend her
  "Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
  Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream
  That whispered with delight to be their pillow.
  
  —
  "As one enamoured is upborne in dream
  O'er lily-paven lakes mid silver mist
  To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
  "Partly to tread the waves with feet which kist
  The dancing foam, partly to glide along
  The airs that roughened the moist amethyst,
  "Or the slant morning beams that fell among
  The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
  And her feet ever to the ceaseless song
  "Of leaves & winds & waves & birds & bees
  And falling drops moved in a measure new
  Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze
  "Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
  Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,
  Moves up the east, where eagle never flew.
  
  —
  "And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
  To which they moved, seemed as they moved, to blot
  The thoughts of him who gazed on them, & soon
  "All that was seemed as if it had been not,
  As if the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
  Her feet like embers, & she, thought by thought,
  "Trampled its fires into the dust of death,
  As Day upon the threshold of the east
  Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath
  "Of darkness reillumines even the least
  Of heaven's living eyes—like day she came,
  Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
  "To move, as one between desire and shame
  Suspended, I said—'If, as it doth seem,
  Thou comest from the realm without a name,
  " 'Into this valley of perpetual dream,
  Shew whence I came, and where I am, and why—
  Pass not away upon the passing stream.
  
  '
  " 'Arise and quench thy thirst,' was her reply,
  And as a shut lily, stricken by the wand
  Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,
  "I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
  Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
  And suddenly my brain became as sand
  "Where the first wave had more than half erased
  The track of deer on desert Labrador,
  Whilst the fierce wolf from which they fled amazed
  "Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore
  Until the second bursts—so on my sight
  Burst a new Vision never seen before.
  
  —
  "And the fair shape waned in the coming light
  As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
  From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
  "Of sunrise ere it strike the mountain tops—
  And as the presence of that fairest planet
  Although unseen is felt by one who hopes
  "That his day's path may end as he began it
  In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent
  Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,
  "Or the soft note in which his dear lament
  The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
  That turned his weary slumber to content.
  
  —
  "So knew I in that light's severe excess
  The presence of that shape which on the stream
  Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
  "More dimly than a day appearing dream,
  The ghost of a forgotten form of sleep
  A light from Heaven whose half extinguished beam
  "Through the sick day in which we wake to weep
  Glimmers, forever sought, forever lost.
  
  —
  So did that shape its obscure tenour keep
  "Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;
  But the new Vision, and its cold bright car,
  With savage music, stunning music, crost
  "The forest, and as if from some dread war
  Triumphantly returning, the loud million
  Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.
  
  —
  "A moving arch of victory the vermilion
  And green & azure plumes of Iris had
  Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
  "And underneath aetherial glory clad
  The wilderness, and far before her flew
  The tempest of the splendour which forbade
  Shadow to fall from leaf or stone;—the crew
  Seemed in that light like atomies that dance
  Within a sunbeam.
  
  —Some upon the new
  "Embroidery of flowers that did enhance
  The grassy vesture of the desart, played,
  Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance;
  "Others stood gazing till within the shade
  Of the great mountain its light left them dim.
  
  —
  Others outspeeded it, and others made
  "Circles around it like the clouds that swim
  Round the high moon in a bright sea of air,
  And more did follow, with exulting hymn,
  "The chariot & the captives fettered there,
  But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
  Fell into the same track at last & were
  "Borne onward.
  
  —I among the multitude
  Was swept; me sweetest flowers delayed not long,
  Me not the shadow nor the solitude,
  "Me not the falling stream's Lethean song,
  Me, not the phantom of that early form
  Which moved upon its motion,—but among
  "The thickest billows of the living storm
  I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
  Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.
  
  —
  "Before the chariot had begun to climb
  The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
  Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
  "Of him whom from the lowest depths of Hell
  Through every Paradise & through all glory
  Love led serene, & who returned to tell
  "In words of hate & awe the wondrous story
  How all things are transfigured, except Love;
  For deaf as is a sea which wrath makes hoary
  "The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
  The sphere whose light is melody to lovers—-
  A wonder worthy of his rhyme—the grove
  "Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,
  The earth was grey with phantoms, & the air
  Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers
  "A flock of vampire-bats before the glare
  Of the tropic sun, bring ere evening
  Strange night upon some Indian isle,—thus were
  "Phantoms diffused around, & some did fling
  Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
  Behind them, some like eaglets on the wing
  "Were lost in the white blaze, others like elves
  Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
  Upon the sunny streams & grassy shelves;
  "And others sate chattering like restless apes
  On vulgar paws and voluble like fire.
  
  Some made a cradle of the ermined capes
  "Of kingly mantles, some upon the tiar
  Of pontiffs sate like vultures, others played
  Within the crown which girt with empire
  "A baby's or an idiot's brow, & made
  Their nests in it; the old anatomies
  Sate hatching their bare brood under the shade
  "Of demon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
  To reassume the delegated power
  Arrayed in which these worms did monarchize
  "Who make this earth their charnel.
  
  —Others more
  Humble, like falcons sate upon the fist
  Of common men, and round their heads did soar,
  "Or like small gnats & flies, as thick as mist
  On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
  Of lawyer, statesman, priest & theorist,
  "And others like discoloured flakes of snow
  On fairest bosoms & the sunniest hair
  Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
  "Which they extinguished; for like tears, they were
  A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained
  In drops of sorrow.
  
  —I became aware
  "Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
  The track in which we moved; after brief space
  From every form the beauty slowly waned,
  "From every firmest limb & fairest face
  The strength & freshness fell like dust, & left
  The action & the shape without the grace
  "Of life; the marble brow of youth was cleft
  With care, and in the eyes where once hope shone
  Desire like a lioness bereft
  "Of its last cub, glared ere it died; each one
  Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
  These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
  "In Autumn evening from a popular tree—
  Each, like himself & like each other were,
  At first, but soon distorted, seemed to be
  "Obscure clouds moulded by the casual air;
  And of this stuff the car's creative ray
  Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there
  "As the sun shapes the clouds—thus, on the way
  Mask after mask fell from the countenance
  And form of all, and long before the day
  "Was old, the joy which waked like Heaven's glance
  The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died,
  And some grew weary of the ghastly dance
  "And fell, as I have fallen by the way side,
  Those soonest from whose forms most shadows past
  And least of strength & beauty did abide.
  
  "—
  "Then, what is Life?
  
  " I said .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  the cripple cast
  His eye upon the car which now had rolled
  Onward, as if that look must be the last,
  And answered .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  .
  
  "Happy those for whom the fold
  Of .
  
  .
  
  .

• from Laon and Cythna; or The Revolution of the Golden City Read Poem Log in to favourite

  To Mary — —
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  1.
  
  So now my summer task is ended, Mary,
  
  And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;
  
  As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faëry,
  
  Earning bright spoils for her inchanted 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.
  
  2.
  
  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,   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.
  
  3.
  
  Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first
  
  The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.
  
  I do remember well the hour which burst
  
  My spirit's sleep: a fresh May-dawn it was,
  
  When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,   And wept, I knew not why; until there rose
  
  From the near school-room, voices, that, alas!   Were but one echo from a world of woes— The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
  
  4.
  
  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 tyrannise
  
  Without reproach or check.
  
  " I then controuled My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.
  
  5.
  
  And from that hour did I with earnest thought
  
  Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore,
  
  Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught
  
  I cared to learn, but from that secret store
  
  Wrought 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 mindA sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined.
  
  6.
  
  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.
  
  7.
  
  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.
  
  8.
  
  No more alone through the world's wilderness,
  
  Although I trod the paths of high intent,   I journeyed now: no more companionless,
  
  Where solitude is like despair, I went.
  
  —
  
  There is the wisdom of a stern content   When Poverty can blight the just and good,
  
  When Infamy dares mock the innocent,   And cherished friends turn with the multitude To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood!
  
  9.
  
  Now has descended a serener hour,
  
  And with inconstant fortune, friends return;   Though 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 meThe parents of the Song I consecrate to thee.
  
  10.
  
  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,
  
  Though 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 fain   Reply in hope—but I am worn away, And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.
  
  11.
  
  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,
  
  And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,  And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy
  
  Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears:   And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see A lamp of vestal fire burning internally.
  
  12.
  
  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 undefiled   Of its departing glory; still her fame
  
  Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild   Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name.
  
  13.
  
  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.
  
  14.
  
  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,
  
  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.

• from Epipsychidion Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Emily, A ship is floating in the harbour now, A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow; There is a path on the sea's azure floor, No keel has ever plough'd that path before; The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; The merry mariners are bold and free: Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?
  
  Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest Is a far Eden of the purple East; And we between her wings will sit, while Night, And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
  
  It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, And, for the harbours are not safe and good, This land would have remain'd a solitude But for some pastoral people native there, Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.
  
  The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, With ever-changing sound and light and foam, Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar; And all the winds wandering along the shore Undulate with the undulating tide: There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; And many a fountain, rivulet and pond, As clear as elemental diamond, Or serene morning air; and far beyond, The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year) Pierce into glades, caverns and bowers, and halls Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls Illumining, with sound that never fails Accompany the noonday nightingales; And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; The light clear element which the isle wears Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers, And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; And from the moss violets and jonquils peep And dart their arrowy odour through the brain Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
  
  And every motion, odour, beam and tone, With that deep music is in unison: Which is a soul within the soul—they seem Like echoes of an antenatal dream.
  
  It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth and Sea, Cradled and hung in clear tranquillity; Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer, Wash'd by the soft blue Oceans of young air.
  
  It is a favour'd place.
  
  Famine or Blight, Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they Sail onward far upon their fatal way: The wingèd storms, chanting their thunder-psalm To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, From which its fields and woods ever renew Their green and golden immortality.
  
  And from the sea there rise, and from the sky There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright, Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside, Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride Glowing at once with love and loveliness, Blushes and trembles at its own excess: Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile Unfolds itself, and may be felt not seen O'er the gray rocks, blue waves and forests green, Filling their bare and void interstices.
  
  But the chief marvel of the wilderness Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how None of the rustic island-people know: 'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height It overtops the woods; but, for delight, Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime Had been invented, in the world's young prime, Rear'd it, a wonder of that simple time, An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
  
  It scarce seems now a wreck of human art, But, as it were, Titanic; in the heart Of Earth having assum'd its form, then grown Out of the mountains, from the living stone, Lifting itself in caverns light and high: For all the antique and learned imagery Has been eras'd, and in the place of it The ivy and the wild-vine interknit The volumes of their many-twining stems; Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, Or fragments of the day's intense serene; Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
  
  And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem To sleep in one another's arms, and dream Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we Read in their smiles, and call reality.
  
  This isle and house are mine, and I have vow'd Thee to be lady of the solitude.
  
  And I have fitted up some chambers there Looking towards the golden Eastern air, And level with the living winds, which flow Like waves above the living waves below.
  
  I have sent books and music there, and all Those instruments with which high Spirits call The future from its cradle, and the past Out of its grave, and make the present last In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, Folded within their own eternity.
  
  Our simple life wants little, and true taste Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste The scene it would adorn, and therefore still, Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
  
  The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance Between the quick bats in their twilight dance; The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight Before our gate, and the slow, silent night Is measur'd by the pants of their calm sleep.
  
  Be this our home in life, and when years heap Their wither'd hours, like leaves, on our decay, Let us become the overhanging day, The living soul of this Elysian isle, Conscious, inseparable, one.
  
  Meanwhile We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, And wander in the meadows, or ascend The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea, Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy— Possessing and possess'd by all that is Within that calm circumference of bliss, And by each other, till to love and live Be one: or, at the noontide hour, arrive Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep The moonlight of the expir'd night asleep, Through which the awaken'd day can never peep; A veil for our seclusion, close as night's, Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights; Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
  
  And we will talk, until thought's melody Become too sweet for utterance, and it die In words, to live again in looks, which dart With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, Harmonizing silence without a sound.
  
  Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, And our veins beat together; and our lips With other eloquence than words, eclipse The soul that burns between them, and the wells Which boil under our being's inmost cells, The fountains of our deepest life, shall be Confus'd in Passion's golden purity, As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
  
  We shall become the same, we shall be one Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
  
  One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew, Till like two meteors of expanding flame, Those spheres instinct with it become the same, Touch, mingle, are transfigur'd; ever still Burning, yet ever inconsumable: In one another's substance finding food, Like flames too pure and light and unimbu'd To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away: One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, And one annihilation.
  
  Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love's rare Universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire— I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!

• Mutability ["The flower that smiles to-day"] Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The flower that smiles to-day
  
  To-morrow dies; All that we wish to stay
  
  Tempts and then flies.
  
  What is this world's delight?
  
  Lightning that mocks the night,
  
  Brief even as bright.
  
  Virtue, how frail it is!
  
  Friendship how rare! Love, how it sells poor bliss
  
  For proud despair! But we, though soon they fall, Survive their joy, and all
  
  Which ours we call.
  
  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.