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 _5
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; _10
A toil so sweet at times, and thou indeed
Art kind when I am sick, and pity me...
***
MUTABILITY.
[Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:
Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings _5
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; _10
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; _15
Nought may endure but Mutability.
NOTES:
_15 may 1816; can Lodore, chapter 49, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).
_16 Nought may endure but 1816;
Nor aught endure save Lodore, chapter 49, 1835 (Mrs. Shelley).
***
ON DEATH.
[For the date of composition see Editor’s Note.
Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]
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. _5
O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way,
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, _10
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 _15
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be, _20
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? _25
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? _30
***
A SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD.
LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
[Composed September, 1815. Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]
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, _5
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. _10
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.
Thou too, aereal Pile! whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, _15
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, _20
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 _25
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. _30
***
TO —.
[Published with “Alastor”, 1816. See Editor’s Note.]
DAKRTSI DIOISO 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 _5
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 _10
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? _15
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? _20
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 _25
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. _30
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. _35
NOTES:
_1 of 1816; in 1839.
_8 moonlight 1816; mountain 1839.
***
TO WORDSWORTH.
[Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]
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 _5
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: _10
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.
***
FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE.
[Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]
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 _5
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 _10
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.
***
LINES.
[Published in Hunt’s “Literary Pocket-Book”, 1823, where it is headed
“November, 1815”. Reprinted in the “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. See
Editor’s Note.]
1.
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 _5
Beneath the sinking moon.
2.
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, _10
Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.
3.
Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon’s dying light;
As a fen-fire’s beam on a sluggish stream _15
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.
4.
The moon made thy lips pale, beloved—
The wind made thy bosom chill— _20
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.
NOTE:
_17 raven 1823; tangled 1824.
***
NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The remainder of Shelley’s Poems will be arranged in the order in which
they were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of
the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside,
and I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings
after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of
others, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the poems are
often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess,
by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains
poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the
present arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed
together at the end.
The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the
poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as “Early Poems”, the greater
part were published with “Alastor”; some of them were written
previously, some at the same period. The poem beginning ‘Oh, there are
spirits in the air’ was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never
knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through
his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well.
He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than
conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by
what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.
The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the
churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in
1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in
the open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in
tracing the Thames to its source. He never spent a season more
tranquilly than the summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a severe
pulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near
Windsor Forest; and his life was spent under its shades or on the
water, meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at
extending his political doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in
prose essays to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but
he had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in
England, and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare
the way for better things.
In the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the
books that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814
and 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod,
Theocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes
Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero,
a large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton’s
poems, Wordsworth’s “Excursion”, Southey’s “Madoc” and “Thalaba”, Locke
“On the Human Understanding”, Bacon’s “Novum Organum”. In Italian,
Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the “Reveries d’un Solitaire”
of Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travel. He
read few novels.
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816.
THE SUNSET.
[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”.]
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 _5
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, _10
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, _15
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.— _20
‘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 _25
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, _30
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her aged 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 _35
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 _40
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, _45
Passionless calm and silence unreproved,
Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were—Peace!’ _50
This was the only moan she ever made.
NOTES:
_4 death 1839; youth 1824.
_22 sun? We will walk 1824; sunrise? We will wake cj. Forman.
_37 Her eyes...wan Hunt, 1823; omitted 1824, 1839.
_38 worn 1824; torn 1839.
***
HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.
[Composed, probably, in Switzerland, in the summer of 1816. Published
in Hunt’s “Examiner”, January 19, 1817, and with “Rosalind and Helen”,
1819.]
1.
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, _5
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,— _10
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
2.
Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,—where art thou gone? _15
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, _20
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?
3.
No voice from some sublimer world hath ever _25
To sage or poet these responses given—
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven.
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells—whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see, _30
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, _35
Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.
4.
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, _40
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! _45
Depart not as thy shadow came
Depart not—lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.
5.
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, _50
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard—I saw them not—
When musing deeply on the lot _55
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,—
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! _60
6.
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine—have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers _65
Of studious zeal or love’s delight
Outwatched with me the envious night—
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery, _70
That thou—O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express.
7.
The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past—there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, _75
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 _80
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.
NOTES:
_2 among 1819; amongst 1817.
_14 dost 1819; doth 1817.
_21 fear and dream 1819; care and pain Boscombe manuscript.
_37-_48 omitted Boscombe manuscript.
_44 art 1817; are 1819.
_76 or 1819; nor 1839.
***
MONT BLANC.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.
[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.
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 _5
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 _10
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.
2.
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine—
Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene, _15
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, _20
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 stretched across the sweep _25
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured 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, _30
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 _35
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; _40
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 _45
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!
3.
Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep,—that death is slumber, _50
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live.—I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep _55
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, _60
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 _65
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 tracts her there—how hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high, _70
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.—Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelope once this silent snow?
None can reply—all seems eternal now. _75
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be,
But for such faith, with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal _80
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.
4.
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell _85
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 _90
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. _95
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And THIS, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep _100
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower _105
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil _110
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; _115
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 _120
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, _125
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.
5.
Mont Blanc yet gleams on high—the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, _130
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them:—Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath _135
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 _140
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
July 23, 1816.
NOTES:
_15 cloud-shadows]cloud shadows 1817;
cloud, shadows 1824; clouds, shadows 1839.
_20 Thy 1824; The 1839.
_53 unfurled]upfurled cj. James Thomson (‘B.V.’).
_56 Spread 1824; Speed 1839.
_69 tracks her there 1824; watches her Boscombe manuscript.
_79 But for such 1824; In such a Boscombe manuscript.
_108 boundaries of the sky]boundary of the skies cj. Rossetti
(cf. lines 102, 106).
_121 torrents’]torrent’s 1817, 1824, 1839.
***
CANCELLED PASSAGE OF MONT BLANC.
[Published by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
There is a voice, not understood by all,
Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roar
Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call,
Plunging into the vale—it is the blast
Descending on the pines—the torrents pour... _5
***
FRAGMENT: HOME.
[Published by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys,
The least of which wronged Memory ever makes
Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears.
***
FRAGMENT OF A GHOST STORY.
[Published by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
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, _5
And so they followed hard—
But Helen clung to her brother’s arm,
And her own spasm made her shake.
***
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
Shelley wrote little during this year. The poem entitled “The Sunset”
was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at
Bishopsgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva.
The “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” was conceived during his voyage round
the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage by
reading the “Nouvelle Heloise” for the first time. The reading it on
the very spot where the scenes are laid added to the interest; and he
was at once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and
earnest enthralling interest that pervade this work. There was
something in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self,
and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley’s own
disposition; and, though differing in many of the views and shocked by
others, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating and delightful.
“Mont Blanc” was inspired by a view of that mountain and its
surrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on
his way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following
mention of this poem in his publication of the “History of a Six Weeks’
Tour, and Letters from Switzerland”: ‘The poem entitled “Mont Blanc” is
written by the author of the two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. It
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.’
This was an eventful year, and less time was given to study than usual.
In the list of his reading I find, in Greek, Theocritus, the
“Prometheus” of Aeschylus, several of Plutarch’s “Lives”, and the works
of Lucian. In Latin, Lucretius, Pliny’s “Letters”, the “Annals” and
“Germany” of Tacitus. In French, the “History of the French Revolution”
by Lacretelle. He read for the first time, this year, Montaigne’s
“Essays”, and regarded them ever after as one of the most delightful
and instructive books in the world. The list is scanty in English
works: Locke’s “Essay”, “Political Justice”, and Coleridge’s “Lay
Sermon”, form nearly the whole. It was his frequent habit to read aloud
to me in the evening; in this way we read, this year, the New
Testament, “Paradise Lost”, Spenser’s “Faery Queen”, and “Don Quixote”.
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817.
MARIANNE’S DREAM.
[Composed at Marlow, 1817. Published in Hunt’s “Literary Pocket-Book”,
1819, and reprinted in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
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, _5
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: _10
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 _15
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, _20
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, _25
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. _30
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 _35
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 _40
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, _45
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, _50
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, _55
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 _60
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; _65
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. _70
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 _75
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 _80
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. _85
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 _90
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, _95
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 _100
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, _105
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 _110
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. _115
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, _120
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 _125
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; _130
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, _135
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. _140
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 _145
That sleep has sights as clear and true
As any waking eyes can view.
NOTES:
_18 golden 1819; gold 1824, 1839.
_28 or 1824; nor 1839.
_62 or]a cj. Rossetti.
_63 its]their cj. Rossetti.
_92 flames cj. Rossetti; waves 1819, 1824, 1839.
_101 mountains 1819; mountain 1824, 1839.
_106 flood]flames cj. James Thomson (‘B.V.’).
_120 that 1819, 1824; who 1839.
_135 mountains 1819; mountain 1824, 1839.
***
TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Amongst the
Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian is a chaotic first draft, from
which Mr. Locock [“Examination”, etc., 1903, pages 60-62] has, with
patient ingenuity, disengaged a first and a second stanza consistent
with the metrical scheme of stanzas 3 and 4. The two stanzas thus
recovered are printed here immediately below the poem as edited by Mrs.
Shelley. It need hardly be added that Mr. Locock’s restored version
cannot, any more than Mrs. Shelley’s obviously imperfect one, be
regarded in the light of a final recension.]
1.
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; _5
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!
2.
A breathless awe, like the swift change _10
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, _15
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. _20
3.
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— _25
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, _30
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.
4.
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, _35
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, _40
Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.
STANZAS 1 AND 2.
As restored by Mr. C.D. Locock.
1.
Cease, cease—for such wild lessons madmen learn
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 its voice that were _5
Between [thy] lips are laid to sleep:
Within thy breath, and on thy hair
Like odour, it is [lingering] yet
And from thy touch like fire doth leap—
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet— _10
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed but not forget.
2.
[A deep and] breathless awe like the swift change
Of dreams unseen but felt in youthful slumbers
Wild sweet yet incommunicably strange
Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers... _15
***
TO CONSTANTIA.
[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. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc.,
1903, page 46.]
1.
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, _5
Makes it wan with her borrowed light.
2.
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; _10
And fed with love, like air and dew,
Its growth—
NOTES:
_1 The rose]The red Rose B.
_2 pleasant]fragrant B.
_6 her omitted B.
***
FRAGMENT: TO ONE SINGING.
[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. The metre, as Mr. Locock (“Examination”,
etc., 1903, page 63) points out, is terza rima.]
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, _5
Speeds through dark forests o’er the waters swinging...
NOTES:
_3 Far far away B.; Far away 1839.
_6 Speeds...swinging B.; omitted 1839.
***
A FRAGMENT: TO MUSIC.
[Published in “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.
Dated 1817 (Mrs. Shelley).]
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. _5
***
ANOTHER FRAGMENT: TO MUSIC.
[Published in “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.
Dated 1817 (Mrs. Shelley).]
No, Music, thou art not the ‘food of Love.’
Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self,
Till it becomes all Music murmurs of.
***
‘MIGHTY EAGLE’.
SUPPOSED TO BE ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM GODWIN.
[Published in 1882 (“Poetical Works of P. B. S.”) by Mr. H. Buxton
Forman, C.B., by whom it is dated 1817.]
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 _5
The embattled tempests’ warning!
***
TO THE LORD CHANCELLOR.
[Published in part (5-9, 14) by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839,
1st edition (without title); in full 2nd edition (with title). Four
transcripts in Mrs. Shelley’s hand are extant: two—Leigh Hunt’s and
Ch. Cowden Clarke’s—described by Forman, and two belonging to Mr. C.W.
Frederickson of Brooklyn, described by Woodberry [“Poetical Works”,
Centenary Edition, 3 193-6]. One of the latter (here referred to as Fa)
is corrected in Shelley’s autograph. A much-corrected draft in
Shelley’s hand is in the Harvard manuscript book.]
1.
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!
2.
Thy country’s curse is on thee! Justice sold, _5
Truth trampled, Nature’s landmarks overthrown,
And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold,
Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction’s throne.
3.
And whilst that sure slow Angel which aye stands
Watching the beck of Mutability _10
Delays to execute her high commands,
And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee,
4.
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 _15
To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom.
5.
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; _20
6.
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:
7.
By those unpractised accents of young speech, _25
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!
8.
By all the happy see in children’s growth—
That undeveloped flower of budding years— _30
Sweetness and sadness interwoven both,
Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears-
9.
By all the days, under an hireling’s care,
Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness,—
O wretched ye if ever any were,— _35
Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless!
10.
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— _40
11.
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—
12.
By thy complicity with lust and hate— _45
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—
13.
By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile—
By all the arts and snares of thy black den, _50
And—for thou canst outweep the crocodile—
By thy false tears—those millstones braining men—
14.
By all the hate which checks a father’s love—
By all the scorn which kills a father’s care—
By those most impious hands which dared remove _55
Nature’s high bounds—by thee—and by despair—
15.
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
16.
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!
NOTES:
_9 Angel which aye cancelled by Shelley for Fate which ever Fa.
_24 promise of a 1839, 2nd edition; promises of 1839, 1st edition.
_27 lore]love Fa.
_32 and saddest]the saddest Fa.
_36 yet not fatherless! cancelled by Shelley for why not fatherless? Fa.
_41-_44 By...built ‘crossed by Shelley and marked dele by Mrs. Shelley’
(Woodberry) Fa.
_50 arts and snares 1839, 1st edition;
snares and arts Harvard Coll. manuscript;
snares and nets Fa.;
acts and snares 1839, 2nd edition.
_59 those]their Fa.
***
TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley (1, 5, 6), “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st
edition; in full, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition. A transcript is
extant in Mrs. Shelley’s hand.]
1.
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, _5
And the winds are loose, we must not stay,
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.
2.
They have taken thy brother and sister dear,
They have made them unfit for thee; _10
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 _15
Because we fearless are and free.
3.
Come thou, beloved as thou art;
Another sleepeth still
Near thy sweet mother’s anxious heart,
Which thou with joy shalt fill, _20
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.
4.
Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever, _25
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; _30
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks on the surge of eternity.
5.
Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle child!
The rocking of the boat thou fearest,
And the cold spray and the clamour wild?— _35
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 _40
Who hunt us o’er these sheltering waves.
6.
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; _45
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 _50
A patriot’s birthright thou mayst claim!
NOTES:
_1 on the beach omitted 1839, 1st edition.
_8 of the law 1839, 1st edition; of law 1839, 2nd edition.
_14 prime transcript; time editions 1839.
_16 fearless are editions 1839; are fearless transcript.
_20 shalt transcript; wilt editions 1839.
_25-_32 Fear...eternity omitted, transcript.
See “Rosalind and Helen”, lines 894-901.
_33 and transcript; omitted editions 1839.
_41 us transcript, 1839, 1st edition; thee 1839, 2nd edition.
_42 will in transcript, 1839, 2nd edition;
will sometime in 1839, 1st edition.
_43 long transcript; omitted editions 1839.
_48 those transcript, 1839, 1st edition; their 1839, 2nd edition.
***
FROM THE ORIGINAL DRAFT OF THE POEM TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.
[Published in Dr. Garnett’s “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
1.
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 _5
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. _10
2.
This lament,
The memory of thy grievous wrong
Will fade...
But genius is omnipotent
To hallow... _15
***
ON FANNY GODWIN.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, among the poems of 1817, in “Poetical
Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
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, _5
This world is all too wide for thee.
***
LINES.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley with the date ‘November 5th, 1817,’ in
“Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
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, _5
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life’s dark river.
2.
The stream we gazed on then rolled by;
Its waves are unreturning;
But we yet stand _10
In a lone land,
Like tombs to mark the memory
Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee
In the light of life’s dim morning.
***
DEATH.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley in “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
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— _5
Fond wretch, all dead! those vacant names alone,
This most familiar scene, my pain—
These tombs—alone remain.
2.
Misery, my sweetest friend—oh, weep no more!
Thou wilt not be consoled—I wonder not! _10
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— _15
These tombs—alone remain.
NOTE:
_5 calls editions 1839; called 1824.
***
OTHO.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
1.
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 _5
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.
2.
‘Twill wrong thee not—thou wouldst, if thou couldst feel,
Abjure such envious fame—great Otho died _10
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, _15
That will not be refused its offering.
NOTE:
_13 bring cj. Garnett; buy 1839, 1st edition; wring cj. Rossetti.
***
FRAGMENTS SUPPOSED TO BE PARTS OF OTHO.
[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.]
1.
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 _5
Chastened by deathful victory now, and find
Foundations in this foulest age, and stir
Me whom they cheer to be their minister.
2.
Dark is the realm of grief: but human things
Those may not know who cannot weep for them. _10
...
3.
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, _15
Casts on the gloomy world it leaves behind.
...
***
‘O THAT A CHARIOT OF CLOUD WERE MINE’.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
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...
***
FRAGMENT: TO A FRIEND RELEASED FROM PRISON.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
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 _5
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. _10
NOTE:
For the metre see Fragment: “A Gentle Story” (A.C. Bradley.)
***
FRAGMENT: SATAN BROKEN LOOSE.
[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]
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 _5
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, _10
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. _15
***
FRAGMENT: “IGNICULUS DESIDERII”.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition. This
fragment is amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr.
C.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, page 63.]
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 _5
Till dim imagination just possesses
The half-created shadow, then all the night
Sick...
NOTES:
_2 unsteady B.; uneasy 1839, 1st edition.
_7, _8 then...Sick B.; wanting, 1839, 1st edition.
***
FRAGMENT: “AMOR AETERNUS”.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
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 _5
All that frail stuff which will be—or which was.
***
FRAGMENT: THOUGHTS COME AND GO IN SOLITUDE.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
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! _5
***
A HATE-SONG.
[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870.]
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.
***
LINES TO A CRITIC.
[Published by Hunt in “The Liberal”, No. 3, 1823. Reprinted in
“Posthumous Poems”, 1824, where it is dated December, 1817.]
1.
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.
2.
Hate men who cant, and men who pray, _5
And men who rail like thee;
An equal passion to repay
They are not coy like me.
3.
Or seek some slave of power and gold
To be thy dear heart’s mate; _10
Thy love will move that bigot cold
Sooner than me, thy hate.
4.
A passion like the one I prove
Cannot divided be;
I hate thy want of truth and love— _15
How should I then hate thee?
***
OZYMANDIAS.
[Published by Hunt in “The Examiner”, January, 1818. Reprinted with
“Rosalind and Helen”, 1819. There is a copy amongst the Shelley
manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s
“Examination”, etc., 1903, page 46.]
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, _5
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 is Ozymandias, king of kings: _10
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.
NOTE:
_9 these words appear]this legend clear B.
***
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had
approached so near Shelley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life
the Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by
pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year.
The “Revolt of Islam”, written and printed, was a great
effort—“Rosalind and Helen” was begun—and the fragments and poems I
can trace to the same period show how full of passion and reflection
were his solitary hours.
In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a
stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt
expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never
wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many
such, in his manuscript books, that scarcely bear record; while some of
them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who
love Shelley’s mind, and desire to trace its workings.
He projected also translating the “Hymns” of Homer; his version of
several of the shorter ones remains, as well as that to Mercury already
published in the “Posthumous Poems”. His readings this year were
chiefly Greek. Besides the “Hymns” of Homer and the “Iliad”, he read
the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the “Symposium” of Plato, and
Arrian’s “Historia Indica”. In Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In
English, the Bible was his constant study; he read a great portion of
it aloud in the evening. Among these evening readings I find also
mentioned the “Faerie Queen”; and other modern works, the production of
his contemporaries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore and Byron.
His life was now spent more in thought than action—he had lost the
eager spirit which believed it could achieve what it projected for the
benefit of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily life Shelley was
far from being a melancholy man. He was eloquent when philosophy or
politics or taste were the subjects of conversation. He was playful;
and indulged in the wild spirit that mocked itself and others—not in
bitterness, but in sport. The author of “Nightmare Abbey” seized on
some points of his character and some habits of his life when he
painted Scythrop. He was not addicted to ‘port or madeira,’ but in
youth he had read of ‘Illuminati and Eleutherarchs,’ and believed that
he possessed the power of operating an immediate change in the minds of
men and the state of society. These wild dreams had faded; sorrow and
adversity had struck home; but he struggled with despondency as he did
with physical pain. There are few who remember him sailing paper boats,
and watching the navigation of his tiny craft with eagerness—or
repeating with wild energy “The Ancient Mariner”, and Southey’s “Old
Woman of Berkeley”; but those who do will recollect that it was in
such, and in the creations of his own fancy when that was most daring
and ideal, that he sheltered himself from the storms and
disappointments, the pain and sorrow, that beset his life.
No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were
torn from him. In his first resentment against the Chancellor, on the
passing of the decree, he had written a curse, in which there breathes,
besides haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father’s love,
which could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the
consequences.
At one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had
said some words that seemed to intimate that Shelley should not be
permitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment he feared
that our infant son would be torn from us. He did not hesitate to
resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon country, fortune, everything,
and to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas
addressed to this son, whom afterwards we lost at Rome, written under
the idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to
preserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not
written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the
spontaneous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and woes,
and was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the
uncontrollable emotions of his heart. I ought to observe that the
fourth verse of this effusion is introduced in “Rosalind and Helen”.
When afterwards this child died at Rome, he wrote, a propos of the
English burying-ground in that city: ‘This spot is the repository of a
sacred loss, of which the yearnings of a parent’s heart are now
prophetic; he is rendered immortal by love, as his memory is by death.
My beloved child lies buried here. I envy death the body far less than
the oppressors the minds of those whom they have torn from me. The one
can only kill the body, the other crushes the affections.’
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818.
TO THE NILE.
[‘Found by Mr. Townshend Meyer among the papers of Leigh Hunt, [and]
published in the “St. James’s Magazine” for March, 1876.’ (Mr. H.
Buxton Forman, C.B.; “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, Library Edition,
1876, volume 3 page 410.) First included among Shelley’s poetical works
in Mr. Forman’s Library Edition, where a facsimile of the manuscript is
given. Composed February 4, 1818. See “Complete Works of John Keats”,
edition H. Buxton Forman, Glasgow, 1901, volume 4 page 76.]
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. _5
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 _10
That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil
And fruits and poisons spring where’er thou flowest.
Beware, O Man—for knowledge must to thee,
Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.
***
PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES.
[Composed May 4, 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.]
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 _5
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 _10
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,
Shrouding...
***
THE PAST.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
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, _5
And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.
2.
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, _10
And with ghastly whispers tell
That joy, once lost, is pain.
***
TO MARY —.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
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; _5
Voice the sweetest ever heard!
And your brow more...
Than the ... sky
Of this azure Italy.
Mary dear, come to me soon, _10
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; _15
The Castle echo whispers ‘Here!’
***
ON A FADED VIOLET.
[Published by Hunt, “Literary Pocket-Book”, 1821. Reprinted by Mrs.
Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Again reprinted, with several
variants, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition. Our text is that of the
editio princeps, 1821. A transcript is extant in a letter from Shelley
to Sophia Stacey, dated March 7, 1820.]
1.
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!
2.
A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, _5
It lies on my abandoned breast,
And mocks the heart which yet is warm,
With cold and silent rest.
3.
I weep,—my tears revive it not!
I sigh,—it breathes no more on me; _10
Its mute and uncomplaining lot
Is such as mine should be.
NOTES:
_1 odour]colour 1839.
_2 kisses breathed]sweet eyes smiled 1839.
_3 colour]odour 1839.
_4 glowed]breathed 1839.
_5 shrivelled]withered 1839.
_8 cold and silent all editions; its cold, silent Stacey manuscript.
***
LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS.
OCTOBER, 1818.
[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.]
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, _5
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel’s track:
Whilst above the sunless sky,
Big with clouds, hangs heavily, _10
And behind the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightning feet,
Riving sail, and cord, and plank,
Till the ship has almost drank
Death from the o’er-brimming deep; _15
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 _20
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 _25
To the haven of the grave.
What, if there no friends will greet;
What, if there no heart will meet
His with love’s impatient beat;
Wander wheresoe’er he may, _30
Can he dream before that day
To find refuge from distress
In friendship’s smile, in love’s caress?
Then ‘twill wreak him little woe
Whether such there be or no: _35
Senseless is the breast, and cold,
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve _40
That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortured lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now
Frozen upon December’s bough.
On the beach of a northern sea _45
Which tempests shake eternally,
As once the wretch there lay to sleep,
Lies a solitary heap,
One white skull and seven dry bones,
On the margin of the stones, _50
Where a few gray rushes stand,
Boundaries of the sea and land:
Nor is heard one voice of wail
But the sea-mews, as they sail
O’er the billows of the gale; _55
Or the whirlwind up and down
Howling, like a slaughtered town,
When a king in glory rides
Through the pomp of fratricides:
Those unburied bones around _60
There is many a mournful sound;
There is no lament for him,
Like a sunless vapour, dim,
Who once clothed with life and thought
What now moves nor murmurs not. _65
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 _70
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 _75
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, _80
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, _85
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 _90
The waveless plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair;
Underneath Day’s azure eyes
Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies, _95
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, _100
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, _105
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; _110
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 _115
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. _120
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 _125
Flies, as once before it flew,
O’er thine isles depopulate,
And all is in its ancient state,
Save where many a palace gate _130
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, _135
Will spread his sail and seize his oar
Till he pass the gloomy shore,
Lest thy dead should, from their sleep
Bursting o’er the starlight deep,
Lead a rapid masque of death _140
O’er the waters of his path.
Those who alone thy towers behold
Quivering through aereal gold,
As I now behold them here,
Would imagine not they were _145
Sepulchres, where human forms,
Like pollution-nourished worms,
To the corpse of greatness cling,
Murdered, and now mouldering:
But if Freedom should awake _150
In her omnipotence, and shake
From the Celtic Anarch’s hold
All the keys of dungeons cold,
Where a hundred cities lie
Chained like thee, ingloriously, _155
Thou and all thy sister band
Might adorn this sunny land,
Twining memories of old time
With new virtues more sublime;
If not, perish thou and they!— _160
Clouds which stain truth’s rising day
By her sun consumed away—
Earth can spare ye: while like flowers,
In the waste of years and hours,
From your dust new nations spring _165
With more kindly blossoming.
Perish—let there only be
Floating o’er thy hearthless sea
As the garment of thy sky
Clothes the world immortally, _170
One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tattered pall of time,
Which scarce hides thy visage wan;—
That a tempest-cleaving Swan
Of the songs of Albion, _175
Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in thee; and Ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion
That its joy grew his, and sprung _180
From his lips like music flung
O’er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror:—what though yet
Poesy’s unfailing River,
Which through Albion winds forever _185
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 _190
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; _195
As divinest Shakespeare’s might
Fills Avon and the world with light
Like omniscient power which he
Imaged ‘mid mortality;
As the love from Petrarch’s urn, _200
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp by which the heart
Sees things unearthly;—so thou art,
Mighty spirit—so shall be
The City that did refuge thee. _205
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, _210
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 _215
Stands, a peopled solitude,
‘Mid the harvest-shining plain,
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow _220
With the purple vintage strain,
Heaped upon the creaking wain,
That the brutal Celt may swill
Drunken sleep with savage will;
And the sickle to the sword _225
Lies unchanged, though many a lord,
Like a weed whose shade is poison,
Overgrows this region’s foison,
Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
To destruction’s harvest-home: _230
Men must reap the things they sow,
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse; but ’tis a bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change
The despot’s rage, the slave’s revenge. _235
Padua, thou within whose walls
Those mute guests at festivals,
Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
Played at dice for Ezzelin,
Till Death cried, “I win, I win!” _240
And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When the destined years were o’er, _245
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian.
Sin smiled so as Sin only can,
And since that time, ay, long before, _250
Both have ruled from shore to shore,—
That incestuous pair, who follow
Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
As Repentance follows Crime,
And as changes follow Time. _255
In thine halls the lamp of learning,
Padua, now no more is burning;
Like a meteor, whose wild way
Is lost over the grave of day,
It gleams betrayed and to betray: _260
Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth:
Now new fires from antique light _265
Spring beneath the wide world’s might;
But their spark lies dead in thee,
Trampled out by Tyranny.
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depth of piny dells, _270
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn
By the fire thus lowly born:
The spark beneath his feet is dead, _275
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 _280
Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest:
Grovel on the earth; ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!
Noon descends around me now: _285
’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 _290
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 _295
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 _300
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
The dun and bladed grass no less,
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air; the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line _305
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one; _310
And my spirit which so long
Darkened this swift stream of song,—
Interpenetrated lie
By the glory of the sky:
Be it love, light, harmony, _315
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 _320
Autumn’s evening meets me soon,
Leading the infantine moon,
And that one star, which to her
Almost seems to minister
Half the crimson light she brings _325
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, _330
The frail bark of this lone being)
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot, Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.
Other flowering isles must be _335
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 _340
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, _345
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 _350
Of all flowers that breathe and shine:
We may live so happy there,
That the Spirits of the Air,
Envying us, may even entice
To our healing Paradise _355
The polluting multitude;
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,
And the winds whose wings rain balm
On the uplifted soul, and leaves _360
Under which the bright sea heaves;
While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical
The inspired soul supplies
With its own deep melodies; _365
And the love which heals all strife
Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode
With its own mild brotherhood,
They, not it, would change; and soon _370
Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again.
NOTES:
_54 seamews 1819; seamew’s Rossetti.
_115 Sun-girt]Sea-girt cj. Palgrave.
_165 From your dust new 1819;
From thy dust shall Rowfant manuscript (heading of lines 167-205).
_175 songs 1819; sons cj. Forman.
_278 a 1819; wanting, 1839.
***
SCENE FROM ‘TASSO’.
[Composed, 1818. Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
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 _5
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, _10
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 _15
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, _20
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. _25
MALPIGLIO:
Would they were parching lightnings for his sake
On whom they fell!
***
SONG FOR ‘TASSO’.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
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, _5
Of all that men had thought before.
And all that Nature shows, and more.
2.
And still I love and still I think,
But strangely, for my heart can drink
The dregs of such despair, and live, _10
And love;...
And if I think, my thoughts come fast,
I mix the present with the past,
And each seems uglier than the last.
3.
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 _20
Breathes o’er the breezy streamlet’s edge.
***
INVOCATION TO MISERY.
[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. See Mr. C.D.
Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, page 38. The readings of this copy
are indicated by the letter B. in the footnotes.]
1.
Come, be happy!—sit near me,
Shadow-vested Misery:
Coy, unwilling, silent bride,
Mourning in thy robe of pride,
Desolation—deified! _5
2.
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. _10
3.
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. _15
4.
’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. _20
5.
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! _25
6.
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. _30
7.
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? _35
8.
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. _40
9.
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. _45
10.
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. _50
11.
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. _55
12.
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. _60
13.
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? _65
NOTES:
_1 near B., 1839; by 1832.
_8 happier far]merrier yet B.
_15 Hours or]Years and 1832.
_17 best]most 1832.
_19 We two will]We will 1832.
_27 mine arm shall be thy B., 1839; thine arm shall be my 1832.
_33 represented by asterisks, 1832.
_34, _35 Thou art murmuring, thou art weeping,
Whilst my burning bosom’s leaping 1832;
Was thine icy bosom leaping
While my burning heart was sleeping B.
_40 frozen 1832, 1839, B.; molten cj. Forman.
_44 be]is B.
_47 shadows]lovers 1832, B.
_59 which B., 1839; that 1832.
_62 Show]Are 1832, B.
_63 Puppets passing]Shadows shifting 1832; Shadows passing B.
_64, _65 So B.: What but mockery may they mean?
Where am I?—Where thou hast been 1832.
***
STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, where it is dated
‘December, 1818.’ A draft of stanza 1 is amongst the Boscombe
manuscripts. (Garnett).]
1.
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, _5
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.
2.
I see the Deep’s untrampled floor _10
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 _15
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
3.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around, _20
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— _25
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;—
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
4.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child, _30
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 _35
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
5.
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; _40
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. _45
NOTES:
_4 might Boscombe manuscript, Medwin 1847; light 1824, 1839.
_5 The...light Boscombe manuscript, 1839, Medwin 1847;
omitted, 1824. moist earth Boscombe manuscript;
moist air 1839; west wind Medwin 1847.
_17 measured 1824; mingled 1847.
_18 did any heart now 1824; if any heart could Medwin 1847.
_31 the 1824; this Medwin 1847.
_36 dying 1824; outworn Medwin 1847.
***
THE WOODMAN AND THE NIGHTINGALE.
[Published in part (1-67) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824;
the remainder (68-70) by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
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;— _5
And as a vale is watered by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness—as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose, _10
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale _15
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters,—every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave, _20
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle—ever from below _25
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, _30
Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish!—and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night
Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone, _35
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.
...
And so this man returned with axe and saw _40
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature’s gentle law
Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene _45
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;— _50
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, _55
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, _60
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 _65
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. _70
NOTE:
_8 —or as a tuberose cj. A.C. Bradley.
***
MARENGHI. (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.])
[Published in part (stanzas 7-15.) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”,
1824; stanzas 1-28 by W.M. Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B.
S.”, 1870. The Boscombe manuscript—evidently a first draft—from which
(through Dr. Garnett) Rossetti derived the text of 1870 is now at the
Bodleian, and has recently been collated by Mr. C.D. Locock, to whom
the enlarged and amended text here printed is owing. The substitution,
in title and text, of “Marenghi” for “Mazenghi” (1824) is due to
Rossetti. Here as elsewhere in the footnotes B. = the Bodleian
manuscript.]
1.
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 _5
Such bitter faith beside Marenghi’s urn.
2.
A massy tower yet overhangs the town,
A scattered group of ruined dwellings now...
...
3.
Another scene are wise Etruria knew
Its second ruin through internal strife _10
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.
4.
In Pisa’s church a cup of sculptured gold _15
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...
5.
And reconciling factions wet their lips _20
With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit
Undarkened by their country’s last eclipse...
...
6.
Was Florence the liberticide? that band
Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,
Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand, _25
A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted
Of many impious faiths—wise, just—do they,
Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants’ prey?
7.
O foster-nurse of man’s abandoned glory,
Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour; _30
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.
8.
And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught _35
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? _40
9.
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, _45
And thus thy victim’s fate is as thine own.
10.
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;— _50
Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make
Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi’s sake.
10a.
[Albert] Marenghi was a Florentine;
If he had wealth, or children, or a wife
Or friends, [or farm] or cherished thoughts which twine _55
The sights and sounds of home with life’s own life
Of these he was despoiled and Florence sent...
...
11.
No record of his crime remains in story,
But if the morning bright as evening shone, _60
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.
12.
For when by sound of trumpet was declared
A price upon his life, and there was set _65
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.
13.
Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,
He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold, _70
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. _75
14.
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, _80
Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,—
15.
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, _85
And on the other, creeps eternally,
Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.
16.
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— _90
And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,
And the wolf’s dark gray scalp who tracked him there.
17.
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.
18.
There must have burned within Marenghi’s breast _100
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. _105
19.
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, _110
Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.
20.
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 _115
To some enchanted music they would dance—
Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.
21.
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 _120
Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn
Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves
The likeness of the wood’s remembered leaves.
22.
And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken—
While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron _125
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.
23.
And in the moonless nights when the dun ocean _130
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. _135
24.
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 _140
Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.
25.
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,— _145
As, when the black storm hurries round at night,
The fisher basks beside his red firelight.
26.
Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,
Like billows unawakened by the wind,
Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors, _150
Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.
His couch...
...
27.
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, _155
Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,
Like the dark ghost of the unburied even
Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven,—
28.
The thought of his own kind who made the soul
Which sped that winged shape through night and day,— _160
The thought of his own country...
...
NOTES:
_3 Who B.; Or 1870.
_6 Marenghi’s 1870; Mazenghi’s B.
_7 town 1870; sea B.
_8 ruined 1870; squalid B. (‘the whole line is cancelled,’ Locock).
_11 threw 1870; cancelled, B.
_17 A Sacrament more B.; At Sacrament: more 1870.
_18 mid B.; with 1870.
_19 forests when... B.; forests. 1870.
_23, _24 that band Of free and glorious brothers who had 1870; omitted, B.
_25 a 1870; one B.
_27 wise, just—do they 1870; omitted, B.
_28 Does 1870; Doth B. prey 1870; spoil B.
_33 angel 1824; Herald [?] B.
_34 to welcome thee 1824; cancelled for... by thee B.
_42 direst 1824; Desert B.
_45 sits amid 1824 amid cancelled for soils (?) B.
_53-_57 Albert...sent B.; omitted 1824, 1870. Albert cancelled B.:
Pietro is the correct name.
_53 Marenghi]Mazenghi B.
_55 farm doubtful: perh. fame (Locock).
_62 he 1824; thus B.
_70 Amid the mountains 1824; Mid desert mountains [?] B.
_71 toil, and cold]cold and toil editions 1824, 1839.
_92, _93 And... there B. (see Editor’s Note); White bones, and locks of
dun and yellow hair, And ringed horns which buffaloes did wear— 1870.
_94 at the utmost point 1870; cancelled for when (where?) B.
_95 reed B.; weed 1870.
_99 after B.; upon 1870.
_100 burned within Marenghi’s breast B.;
lived within Marenghi’s heart 1870.
_101 and B.; or 1870.
_103 free B.; the 1870.
_109 freshes B.; omitted, 1870.
_118 by 1870; with B.
_119 dew-globes B.; dewdrops 1870.
_120 languished B.; vanished 1870.
_121 path, as on [bare] B.; footprints, as on 1870.
_122 silver B.; silence 1870.
_130 And in the moonless nights 1870; cancelled, B. dun B.;
dim 1870.
_131 Heaved 1870; cancelled, B. wide B.;
the 1870. star-impearled B.; omitted, 1870.
_132 Starting from dreams 1870; cancelled for He B.
_137 autumn B.; autumnal 1870.
_138 or B.; and 1870.
_155 pennon B.; pennons 1870.
_158 athwart B.; across 1870.
***
SONNET.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.
Our text is that of the “Poetical Works”, 1839.]
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 _5
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. _10
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.
NOTES:
_6 Their...drear 1839;
The shadows, which the world calls substance, there 1824.
_7 who had lifted 1839; who lifted 1824.
***
FRAGMENT: TO BYRON.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
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: APOSTROPHE TO SILENCE.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862. A transcript by
Mrs. Shelley, given to Charles Cowden Clarke, presents one or two
variants.]
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, _5
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...
NOTES:
_4 Spirit 1862; O Spirit C.C.C. manuscript.
_8 This wandering melody 1862;
These wandering melodies... C.C.C. manuscript.
***
FRAGMENT: THE LAKE’S MARGIN.
[Published by W.M. Rossetti, 1870.]
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: ‘MY HEAD IS WILD WITH WEEPING’.
[Published by W.M. Rossetti, 1870.]
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 _5
Among men’s spirits should be cold and blind.
NOTE:
_4 find cj. A.C. Bradley.
***
FRAGMENT: THE VINE-SHROUD.
[Published by W.M. Rossetti, 1870.]
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.
***
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1818, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
We often hear of persons disappointed by a first visit to Italy. This
was not Shelley’s case. The aspect of its nature, its sunny sky, its
majestic storms, of the luxuriant vegetation of the country, and the
noble marble-built cities, enchanted him. The sight of the works of art
was full enjoyment and wonder. He had not studied pictures or statues
before; he now did so with the eye of taste, that referred not to the
rules of schools, but to those of Nature and truth. The first entrance
to Rome opened to him a scene of remains of antique grandeur that far
surpassed his expectations; and the unspeakable beauty of Naples and
its environs added to the impression he received of the transcendent
and glorious beauty of Italy.
Our winter was spent at Naples. Here he wrote the fragments of
“Marenghi” and “The Woodman and the Nightingale”, which he afterwards
threw aside. At this time, Shelley suffered greatly in health. He put
himself under the care of a medical man, who promised great things, and
made him endure severe bodily pain, without any good results. Constant
and poignant physical suffering exhausted him; and though he preserved
the appearance of cheerfulness, and often greatly enjoyed our
wanderings in the environs of Naples, and our excursions on its sunny
sea, yet many hours were passed when his thoughts, shadowed by illness,
became gloomy,—and then he escaped to solitude, and in verses, which
he hid from fear of wounding me, poured forth morbid but too natural
bursts of discontent and sadness. One looks back with unspeakable
regret and gnawing remorse to such periods; fancying that, had one been
more alive to the nature of his feelings, and more attentive to soothe
them, such would not have existed. And yet, enjoying as he appeared to
do every sight or influence of earth or sky, it was difficult to
imagine that any melancholy he showed was aught but the effect of the
constant pain to which he was a martyr.
We lived in utter solitude. And such is often not the nurse of
cheerfulness; for then, at least with those who have been exposed to
adversity, the mind broods over its sorrows too intently; while the
society of the enlightened, the witty, and the wise, enables us to
forget ourselves by making us the sharers of the thoughts of others,
which is a portion of the philosophy of happiness. Shelley never liked
society in numbers,—it harassed and wearied him; but neither did he
like loneliness, and usually, when alone, sheltered himself against
memory and reflection in a book. But, with one or two whom he loved, he
gave way to wild and joyous spirits, or in more serious conversation
expounded his opinions with vivacity and eloquence. If an argument
arose, no man ever argued better. He was clear, logical, and earnest,
in supporting his own views; attentive, patient, and impartial, while
listening to those on the adverse side. Had not a wall of prejudice
been raised at this time between him and his countrymen, how many would
have sought the acquaintance of one whom to know was to love and to
revere! How many of the more enlightened of his contemporaries have
since regretted that they did not seek him! how very few knew his worth
while he lived! and, of those few, several were withheld by timidity or
envy from declaring their sense of it. But no man was ever more
enthusiastically loved—more looked up to, as one superior to his
fellows in intellectual endowments and moral worth, by the few who knew
him well, and had sufficient nobleness of soul to appreciate his
superiority. His excellence is now acknowledged; but, even while
admitted, not duly appreciated. For who, except those who were
acquainted with him, can imagine his unwearied benevolence, his
generosity, his systematic forbearance? And still less is his vast
superiority in intellectual attainments sufficiently understood—his
sagacity, his clear understanding, his learning, his prodigious memory.
All these as displayed in conversation, were known to few while he
lived, and are now silent in the tomb:
‘Ahi orbo mondo ingrato!
Gran cagion hai di dever pianger meco;
Che quel ben ch’ era in te, perdut’ hai seco.’
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1819.
LINES WRITTEN DURING THE CASTLEREAGH ADMINISTRATION.
[Published by Medwin, “The Athenaeum”, December 8, 1832; reprinted,
“Poetical Works”, 1839. There is a transcript amongst the Harvard
manuscripts, and another in the possession of Mr. C.W. Frederickson of
Brooklyn. Variants from these two sources are given by Professor
Woodberry, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, Centenary Edition,
1893, volume 3 pages 225, 226. The transcripts are referred to in our
footnotes as Harvard and Fred. respectively.]
1.
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. _5
2.
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. _10
3.
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. _15
4.
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. _20
5.
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! _25
NOTES:
_4 death-white Harvard, Fred.; white 1832, 1839.
_16 festival Harvard, Fred., 1839; festal 1832.
_19 that Fred.; which Harvard 1832.
_22 Disquiet Harvard, Fred., 1839; Disgust 1832.
_24 Hell Fred.; God Harvard, 1832, 1839.
_25 the bride Harvard, Fred., 1839; thy bride 1832.
***
SONG TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
1.
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
2.
Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, _5
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?
3.
Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, _10
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
4.
Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear _15
With your pain and with your fear?
5.
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge; another bears. _20
6.
Sow seed,—but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth,—let no impostor heap;
Weave robes,—let not the idle wear;
Forge arms,—in your defence to bear.
7.
Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; _25
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
8.
With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb, _30
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre.
***
SIMILES FOR TWO POLITICAL CHARACTERS OF 1819.
[Published by Medwin, “The Athenaeum”, August 25, 1832; reprinted by
Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839. Our title is that of 1839, 2nd
edition. The poem is found amongst the Harvard manuscripts, headed “To
S—th and O—gh”.]
1.
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:— _5
2.
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:— _10
3.
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— _15
4.
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. _20
NOTE:
_7 yew 1832; hue 1839.
**
FRAGMENT: TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.