People of England, ye who toil and groan,
Who reap the harvests which are not your own,
Who weave the clothes which your oppressors wear,
And for your own take the inclement air;
Who build warm houses... _5
And are like gods who give them all they have,
And nurse them from the cradle to the grave...
...
***
FRAGMENT: ‘WHAT MEN GAIN FAIRLY’.
(Perhaps connected with that immediately preceding (Forman).—ED.)
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
What men gain fairly—that they should possess,
And children may inherit idleness,
From him who earns it—This is understood;
Private injustice may be general good.
But he who gains by base and armed wrong, _5
Or guilty fraud, or base compliances,
May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress
Is stripped from a convicted thief; and he
Left in the nakedness of infamy.
***
A NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
1.
God prosper, speed, and save,
God raise from England’s grave
Her murdered Queen!
Pave with swift victory
The steps of Liberty, _5
Whom Britons own to be
Immortal Queen.
2.
See, she comes throned on high,
On swift Eternity!
God save the Queen! _10
Millions on millions wait,
Firm, rapid, and elate,
On her majestic state!
God save the Queen!
3.
She is Thine own pure soul _15
Moulding the mighty whole,—
God save the Queen!
She is Thine own deep love
Rained down from Heaven above,—
Wherever she rest or move, _20
God save our Queen!
4.
‘Wilder her enemies
In their own dark disguise,—
God save our Queen!
All earthly things that dare _25
Her sacred name to bear,
Strip them, as kings are, bare;
God save the Queen!
5.
Be her eternal throne
Built in our hearts alone— _30
God save the Queen!
Let the oppressor hold
Canopied seats of gold;
She sits enthroned of old
O’er our hearts Queen. _35
6.
Lips touched by seraphim
Breathe out the choral hymn
‘God save the Queen!’
Sweet as if angels sang,
Loud as that trumpet’s clang _40
Wakening the world’s dead gang,—
God save the Queen!
***
SONNET: ENGLAND IN 1819.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,—
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring,—
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling, _5
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,—
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,—
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,—
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay; _10
Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;
A Senate,—Time’s worst statute, unrepealed,—
Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.
***
AN ODE, WRITTEN OCTOBER, 1819,
BEFORE THE SPANIARDS HAD RECOVERED THEIR LIBERTY.
[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820.]
Arise, arise, arise!
There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread;
Be your wounds like eyes
To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.
What other grief were it just to pay? _5
Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they;
Who said they were slain on the battle day?
Awaken, awaken, awaken!
The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;
Be the cold chains shaken _10
To the dust where your kindred repose, repose:
Their bones in the grave will start and move,
When they hear the voices of those they love,
Most loud in the holy combat above.
Wave, wave high the banner! _15
When Freedom is riding to conquest by:
Though the slaves that fan her
Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh.
And ye who attend her imperial car,
Lift not your hands in the banded war, _20
But in her defence whose children ye are.
Glory, glory, glory,
To those who have greatly suffered and done!
Never name in story
Was greater than that which ye shall have won. _25
Conquerors have conquered their foes alone,
Whose revenge, pride, and power they have overthrown
Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.
Bind, bind every brow
With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine: _30
Hide the blood-stains now
With hues which sweet Nature has made divine:
Green strength, azure hope, and eternity:
But let not the pansy among them be;
Ye were injured, and that means memory. _35
***
CANCELLED STANZA.
[Published in “The Times” (Rossetti).]
Gather, O gather,
Foeman and friend in love and peace!
Waves sleep together
When the blasts that called them to battle, cease.
For fangless Power grown tame and mild _5
Is at play with Freedom’s fearless child—
The dove and the serpent reconciled!
***
ODE TO HEAVEN.
[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820. Dated ‘Florence, December,
1819’ in Harvard manuscript (Woodberry). A transcript exists amongst
the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s
“Examination”, etc., page 39.]
CHORUS OF SPIRITS:
FIRST SPIRIT:
Palace-roof of cloudless nights!
Paradise of golden lights!
Deep, immeasurable, vast,
Which art now, and which wert then
Of the Present and the Past, _5
Of the eternal Where and When,
Presence-chamber, temple, home,
Ever-canopying dome,
Of acts and ages yet to come!
Glorious shapes have life in thee, _10
Earth, and all earth’s company;
Living globes which ever throng
Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;
And green worlds that glide along;
And swift stars with flashing tresses; _15
And icy moons most cold and bright,
And mighty suns beyond the night,
Atoms of intensest light.
Even thy name is as a god,
Heaven! for thou art the abode _20
Of that Power which is the glass
Wherein man his nature sees.
Generations as they pass
Worship thee with bended knees.
Their unremaining gods and they _25
Like a river roll away:
Thou remainest such—alway!—
SECOND SPIRIT:
Thou art but the mind’s first chamber,
Round which its young fancies clamber,
Like weak insects in a cave, _30
Lighted up by stalactites;
But the portal of the grave,
Where a world of new delights
Will make thy best glories seem
But a dim and noonday gleam _35
From the shadow of a dream!
THIRD SPIRIT:
Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn
At your presumption, atom-born!
What is Heaven? and what are ye
Who its brief expanse inherit? _40
What are suns and spheres which flee
With the instinct of that Spirit
Of which ye are but a part?
Drops which Nature’s mighty heart
Drives through thinnest veins! Depart! _45
What is Heaven? a globe of dew,
Filling in the morning new
Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken
On an unimagined world:
Constellated suns unshaken, _50
Orbits measureless, are furled
In that frail and fading sphere,
With ten millions gathered there,
To tremble, gleam, and disappear.
***
CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF THE ODE TO HEAVEN.
[Published by Mr. C.D. Locock, “Examination”, etc., 1903.]
The [living frame which sustains my soul]
Is [sinking beneath the fierce control]
Down through the lampless deep of song
I am drawn and driven along—
When a Nation screams aloud _5
Like an eagle from the cloud
When a...
...
When the night...
...
Watch the look askance and old—
See neglect, and falsehood fold... _10
***
ODE TO THE WEST WIND.
(This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the
Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose
temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours
which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset
with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent
thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.
The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well
known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of
rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change
of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce
it.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])
[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820.]
1.
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, _5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill _10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
2.
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion, _15
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head _20
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, _25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
3.
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, _30
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers _35
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know _40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
4.
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share _45
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed _50
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed _55
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
5.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, _60
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse, _65
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? _70
***
AN EXHORTATION.
[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820. Dated ‘Pisa, April, 1820’
in Harvard manuscript (Woodberry), but assigned by Mrs. Shelley to
1819.]
Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets’ food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they, _5
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?
Poets are on this cold earth, _10
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
in a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do: _15
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.
Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet’s free and heavenly mind: _20
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star, _25
Spirits from beyond the moon,
Oh, refuse the boon!
***
THE INDIAN SERENADE.
[Published, with the title, “Song written for an Indian Air”, in “The
Liberal”, 2, 1822. Reprinted (“Lines to an Indian Air”) by Mrs.
Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. The poem is included in the Harvard
manuscript book, and there is a description by Robert Browning of an
autograph copy presenting some variations from the text of 1824. See
Leigh Hunt’s “Correspondence”, 2, pages 264-8.]
1.
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee, _5
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me—who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!
2.
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream— _10
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart;—
As I must on thine, _15
Oh, beloved as thou art!
3.
Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale. _20
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;—
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.
NOTES:
_3 Harvard manuscript omits When.
_4 shining]burning Harvard manuscript, 1822.
_7 Hath led Browning manuscript, 1822;
Has borne Harvard manuscript; Has led 1824.
_11 The Champak Harvard manuscript, 1822, 1824;
And the Champak’s Browning manuscript.
_15 As I must on 1822, 1824;
As I must die on Harvard manuscript, 1839, 1st edition.
_16 Oh, beloved Browning manuscript, Harvard manuscript, 1839, 1st edition;
Beloved 1822, 1824.
_23 press it to thine own Browning manuscript;
press it close to thine Harvard manuscript, 1824, 1839, 1st edition;
press me to thine own, 1822.
***
CANCELLED PASSAGE.
[Published by W.M. Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works”, 1870.]
O pillow cold and wet with tears!
Thou breathest sleep no more!
***
TO SOPHIA [MISS STACEY].
[Published by W.M. Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works”, 1870.]
1.
Thou art fair, and few are fairer
Of the Nymphs of earth or ocean;
They are robes that fit the wearer—
Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion
Ever falls and shifts and glances _5
As the life within them dances.
2.
Thy deep eyes, a double Planet,
Gaze the wisest into madness
With soft clear fire,—the winds that fan it
Are those thoughts of tender gladness _10
Which, like zephyrs on the billow,
Make thy gentle soul their pillow.
3.
If, whatever face thou paintest
In those eyes, grows pale with pleasure,
If the fainting soul is faintest _15
When it hears thy harp’s wild measure,
Wonder not that when thou speakest
Of the weak my heart is weakest.
4.
As dew beneath the wind of morning,
As the sea which whirlwinds waken, _20
As the birds at thunder’s warning,
As aught mute yet deeply shaken,
As one who feels an unseen spirit
Is my heart when thine is near it.
***
TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.
The fragment included in the Harvard manuscript book.]
(With what truth may I say—
Roma! Roma! Roma!
Non e piu come era prima!)
1.
My lost William, thou in whom
Some bright spirit lived, and did
That decaying robe consume
Which its lustre faintly hid,—
Here its ashes find a tomb, _5
But beneath this pyramid
Thou art not—if a thing divine
Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
Is thy mother’s grief and mine.
2.
Where art thou, my gentle child? _10
Let me think thy spirit feeds,
With its life intense and mild,
The love of living leaves and weeds
Among these tombs and ruins wild;—
Let me think that through low seeds _15
Of sweet flowers and sunny grass
Into their hues and scents may pass
A portion—
NOTE:
Motto _1 may I Harvard manuscript; I may 1824.
_12 With Harvard manuscript, Mrs. Shelley, 1847; Within 1824, 1839.
_16 Of sweet Harvard manuscript; Of the sweet 1824, 1839.
***
TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
Thy little footsteps on the sands
Of a remote and lonely shore;
The twinkling of thine infant hands,
Where now the worm will feed no more;
Thy mingled look of love and glee _5
When we returned to gaze on thee—
***
TO MARY SHELLEY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,
And left me in this dreary world alone?
Thy form is here indeed—a lovely one—
But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,
That leads to Sorrow’s most obscure abode; _5
Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,
Where
For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.
***
TO MARY SHELLEY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
The world is dreary,
And I am weary
Of wandering on without thee, Mary;
A joy was erewhile
In thy voice and thy smile, _5
And ’tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary.
***
ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie _5
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
2.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer’s spirit into stone, _10
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
’Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain. _15
3.
And from its head as from one body grow,
As ... grass out of a watery rock,
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
And their long tangles in each other lock, _20
And with unending involutions show
Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
4.
And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft _25
Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,
And he comes hastening like a moth that hies _30
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
5.
’Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
Kindled by that inextricable error, _35
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become a ... and ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there—
A woman’s countenance, with serpent-locks,
Gazing in death on Heaven from those wet rocks. _40
NOTES:
_5 seems 1839; seem 1824.
_6 shine]shrine 1824, 1839.
_26 those 1824; these 1839.
***
LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY.
[Published by Leigh Hunt, “The Indicator”, December 22, 1819. Reprinted
by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. Included in the Harvard
manuscript book, where it is headed “An Anacreontic”, and dated
‘January, 1820.’ Written by Shelley in a copy of Hunt’s “Literary
Pocket-Book”, 1819, and presented to Sophia Stacey, December 29, 1820.]
1.
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single; _5
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?—
2.
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another; _10
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth _15
If thou kiss not me?
NOTES:
_3 mix for ever 1819, Stacey manuscript;
meet together, Harvard manuscript.
_7 In one spirit meet and Stacey manuscript;
In one another’s being 1819, Harvard manuscript.
_11 No sister 1824, Harvard and Stacey manuscripts; No leaf or 1819.
_12 disdained its 1824, Harvard and Stacey manuscripts;
disdained to kiss its 1819.
_15 is all this sweet work Stacey manuscript;
were these examples Harvard manuscript;
are all these kissings 1819, 1824.
***
FRAGMENT: ‘FOLLOW TO THE DEEP WOOD’S WEEDS’.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
Follow to the deep wood’s weeds,
Follow to the wild-briar dingle,
Where we seek to intermingle,
And the violet tells her tale
To the odour-scented gale, _5
For they two have enough to do
Of such work as I and you.
***
THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
At the creation of the Earth
Pleasure, that divinest birth,
From the soil of Heaven did rise,
Wrapped in sweet wild melodies—
Like an exhalation wreathing _5
To the sound of air low-breathing
Through Aeolian pines, which make
A shade and shelter to the lake
Whence it rises soft and slow;
Her life-breathing [limbs] did flow _10
In the harmony divine
Of an ever-lengthening line
Which enwrapped her perfect form
With a beauty clear and warm.
***
FRAGMENT: LOVE THE UNIVERSE TO-DAY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
And who feels discord now or sorrow?
Love is the universe to-day—
These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,
Darkening Life’s labyrinthine way.
***
FRAGMENT: ‘A GENTLE STORY OF TWO LOVERS YOUNG’.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
A gentle story of two lovers young,
Who met in innocence and died in sorrow,
And of one selfish heart, whose rancour clung
Like curses on them; are ye slow to borrow
The lore of truth from such a tale? _5
Or in this world’s deserted vale,
Do ye not see a star of gladness
Pierce the shadows of its sadness,—
When ye are cold, that love is a light sent
From Heaven, which none shall quench, to cheer the innocent? _10
NOTE:
_9 cold]told cj. A.C. Bradley.
For the metre cp. Fragment: To a Friend Released from Prison.
***
FRAGMENT: LOVE’S TENDER ATMOSPHERE.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
There is a warm and gentle atmosphere
About the form of one we love, and thus
As in a tender mist our spirits are
Wrapped in the ... of that which is to us
The health of life’s own life— _5
***
FRAGMENT: WEDDED SOULS.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
I am as a spirit who has dwelt
Within his heart of hearts, and I have felt
His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known
The inmost converse of his soul, the tone
Unheard but in the silence of his blood, _5
When all the pulses in their multitude
Image the trembling calm of summer seas.
I have unlocked the golden melodies
Of his deep soul, as with a master-key,
And loosened them and bathed myself therein— _10
Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist
Clothing his wings with lightning.
***
FRAGMENT: ‘IS IT THAT IN SOME BRIGHTER SPHERE’.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
Is it that in some brighter sphere
We part from friends we meet with here?
Or do we see the Future pass
Over the Present’s dusky glass?
Or what is that that makes us seem _5
To patch up fragments of a dream,
Part of which comes true, and part
Beats and trembles in the heart?
***
FRAGMENT: SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer
Into the darkness of the day to come?
Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?
And will the day that follows change thy doom?
Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way; _5
And who waits for thee in that cheerless home
Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return
Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?
***
FRAGMENT: ‘YE GENTLE VISITATIONS OF CALM THOUGHT’.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
Ye gentle visitations of calm thought—
Moods like the memories of happier earth,
Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth,
Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought,—
But that the clouds depart and stars remain, _5
While they remain, and ye, alas, depart!
***
FRAGMENT: MUSIC AND SWEET POETRY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
How sweet it is to sit and read the tales
Of mighty poets and to hear the while
Sweet music, which when the attention fails
Fills the dim pause—
***
FRAGMENT: THE SEPULCHRE OF MEMORY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
And where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee
Has been my heart—and thy dead memory
Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year,
Unchangingly preserved and buried there.
***
FRAGMENT: ‘WHEN A LOVER CLASPS HIS FAIREST’.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
1.
When a lover clasps his fairest,
Then be our dread sport the rarest.
Their caresses were like the chaff
In the tempest, and be our laugh
His despair—her epitaph! _5
2.
When a mother clasps her child,
Watch till dusty Death has piled
His cold ashes on the clay;
She has loved it many a day—
She remains,—it fades away. _10
***
FRAGMENT: ‘WAKE THE SERPENT NOT’.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
Wake the serpent not—lest he
Should not know the way to go,—
Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping
Through the deep grass of the meadow!
Not a bee shall hear him creeping, _5
Not a may-fly shall awaken
From its cradling blue-bell shaken,
Not the starlight as he’s sliding
Through the grass with silent gliding.
***
FRAGMENT: RAIN.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
The fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.
***
FRAGMENT: A TALE UNTOLD.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
One sung of thee who left the tale untold,
Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;
Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,
Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.
***
FRAGMENT: TO ITALY.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
As the sunrise to the night,
As the north wind to the clouds,
As the earthquake’s fiery flight,
Ruining mountain solitudes,
Everlasting Italy, _5
Be those hopes and fears on thee.
***
FRAGMENT: WINE OF THE FAIRIES.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
I am drunk with the honey wine
Of the moon-unfolded eglantine,
Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls.
The bats, the dormice, and the moles
Sleep in the walls or under the sward _5
Of the desolate castle yard;
And when ’tis spilt on the summer earth
Or its fumes arise among the dew,
Their jocund dreams are full of mirth,
They gibber their joy in sleep; for few _10
Of the fairies bear those bowls so new!
***
FRAGMENT: A ROMAN’S CHAMBER.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
1.
In the cave which wild weeds cover
Wait for thine aethereal lover;
For the pallid moon is waning,
O’er the spiral cypress hanging
And the moon no cloud is staining. _5
2.
It was once a Roman’s chamber,
Where he kept his darkest revels,
And the wild weeds twine and clamber;
It was then a chasm for devils.
***
FRAGMENT: ROME AND NATURE.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition.]
Rome has fallen, ye see it lying
Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
Nature is alone undying.
***
VARIATION OF THE SONG OF THE MOON.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]
(“PROMETHEUS UNBOUND”, ACT 4.)
As a violet’s gentle eye
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds;
As a gray and empty mist
Lies like solid amethyst _5
Over the western mountain it enfolds,
When the sunset sleeps
Upon its snow;
As a strain of sweetest sound
Wraps itself the wind around _10
Until the voiceless wind be music too;
As aught dark, vain, and dull,
Basking in what is beautiful,
Is full of light and love—
***
CANCELLED STANZA OF THE MASK OF ANARCHY.
[Published by H. Buxton Forman, “The Mask of Anarchy” (“Facsimile of
Shelley’s manuscript”), 1887.]
(FOR WHICH STANZAS 68, 69 HAVE BEEN SUBSTITUTED.)
From the cities where from caves,
Like the dead from putrid graves,
Troops of starvelings gliding come,
Living Tenants of a tomb.
***
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1819, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
Shelley loved the People; and respected them as often more virtuous, as
always more suffering, and therefore more deserving of sympathy, than
the great. He believed that a clash between the two classes of society
was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people’s side. He
had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to
commemorate their circumstances and wrongs. He wrote a few; but, in
those days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed. They
are not among the best of his productions, a writer being always
shackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those
who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they
show his earnestness, and with what heart-felt compassion he went home
to the direct point of injury—that oppression is detestable as being
the parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance. Besides these
outpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the
cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph: such is the
scope of the “Ode to the Assertors of Liberty”. He sketched also a new
version of our national anthem, as addressed to Liberty.
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820.
THE SENSITIVE PLANT.
[Composed at Pisa, early in 1820 (dated ‘March, 1820,’ in Harvard
manuscript), and published, with “Prometheus Unbound”, the same year:
included in the Harvard College manuscript book. Reprinted in the
“Poetical Works”, 1839, both editions.]
PART 1.
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.
And the Spring arose on the garden fair, _5
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, _10
Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want,
As the companionless Sensitive Plant.
The snowdrop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent _15
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness; _20
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;
And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, _25
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, _30
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:
And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky; _35
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime. _40
And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,
Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, _45
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.
And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,
Which led through the garden along and across, _50
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,
Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells
As fair as the fabulous asphodels,
And flow’rets which, drooping as day drooped too, _55
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.
And from this undefiled Paradise
The flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet _60
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),
When Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them,
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one _65
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;
For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.
But the Sensitive Plant which could give small fruit _70
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
Received more than all, it loved more than ever,
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver,—
For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower;
Radiance and odour are not its dower; _75
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,
It desires what it has not, the Beautiful!
The light winds which from unsustaining wings
Shed the music of many murmurings;
The beams which dart from many a star _80
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;
The plumed insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odour, which pass
Over the gleam of the living grass; _85
The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,
Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;
The quivering vapours of dim noontide, _90
Which like a sea o’er the warm earth glide,
In which every sound, and odour, and beam,
Move, as reeds in a single stream;
Each and all like ministering angels were
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, _95
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by
Like windless clouds o’er a tender sky.
And when evening descended from Heaven above,
And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, _100
And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep,
And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned
In an ocean of dreams without a sound;
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress
The light sand which paves it, consciousness; _105
(Only overhead the sweet nightingale
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,
And snatches of its Elysian chant
Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant);—
The Sensitive Plant was the earliest _110
Upgathered into the bosom of rest;
A sweet child weary of its delight,
The feeblest and yet the favourite,
Cradled within the embrace of Night.
NOTES:
_6 Like the Spirit of Love felt 1820;
And the Spirit of Love felt 1839, 1st edition;
And the Spirit of Love fell 1839, 2nd edition.
_49 and of moss]and moss Harvard manuscript.
_82 The]And the Harvard manuscript.
PART 2.
There was a Power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this Eden; a ruling Grace
Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.
A Lady, the wonder of her kind, _5
Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,
Tended the garden from morn to even:
And the meteors of that sublunar Heaven, _10
Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth,
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!
She had no companion of mortal race,
But her tremulous breath and her flushing face
Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes, _15
That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:
As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake
Had deserted Heaven while the stars were awake,
As if yet around her he lingering were,
Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. _20
Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed;
You might hear by the heaving of her breast,
That the coming and going of the wind
Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.
And wherever her aery footstep trod, _25
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,
Like a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep.
I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet; _30
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers through all their frame.
She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam;
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers _35
She emptied the rain of the thunder-showers.
She lifted their heads with her tender hands,
And sustained them with rods and osier-bands;
If the flowers had been her own infants, she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly. _40
And all killing insects and gnawing worms,
And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
She bore, in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof,—
In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full, _45
The freshest her gentle hands could pull
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.
But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris
Whose path is the lightning’s, and soft moths that kiss _50
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she
Make her attendant angels be.
And many an antenatal tomb,
Where butterflies dream of the life to come,
She left clinging round the smooth and dark _55
Edge of the odorous cedar bark.
This fairest creature from earliest Spring
Thus moved through the garden ministering
Mid the sweet season of Summertide,
And ere the first leaf looked brown—she died! _60
NOTES:
_15 morn Harvard manuscript, 1839; moon 1820.
_23 and going 1820; and the going Harvard manuscript, 1839.
_59 All 1820, 1839; Through all Harvard manuscript.
PART 3.
Three days the flowers of the garden fair,
Like stars when the moon is awakened, were,
Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.
And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant _5
Felt the sound of the funeral chant,
And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,
And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low;
The weary sound and the heavy breath,
And the silent motions of passing death, _10
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,
Sent through the pores of the coffin-plank;
The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, _15
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.
The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap _20
To make men tremble who never weep.
Swift Summer into the Autumn flowed,
And frost in the mist of the morning rode,
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,
Mocking the spoil of the secret night. _25
The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Paved the turf and the moss below.
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,
Like the head and the skin of a dying man.
And Indian plants, of scent and hue _30
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,
Leaf by leaf, day after day,
Were massed into the common clay.
And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,
And white with the whiteness of what is dead, _35
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed;
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.
And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds,
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,
Till they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem, _40
Which rotted into the earth with them.
The water-blooms under the rivulet
Fell from the stalks on which they were set;
And the eddies drove them here and there,
As the winds did those of the upper air. _45
Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks
Were bent and tangled across the walks;
And the leafless network of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.
Between the time of the wind and the snow _50
All loathliest weeds began to grow,
Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,
Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.
And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, _55
Stretched out its long and hollow shank,
And stifled the air till the dead wind stank.
And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, _60
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.
And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould
Started like mist from the wet ground cold;
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead
With a spirit of growth had been animated! _65
Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,
And at its outlet flags huge as stakes
Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.
And hour by hour, when the air was still, _70
The vapours arose which have strength to kill;
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,
At night they were darkness no star could melt.
And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
Crept and flitted in broad noonday _75
Unseen; every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burned and bit.
The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves, which together grew, _80
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.
For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;
The sap shrank to the root through every pore
As blood to a heart that will beat no more. _85
For Winter came: the wind was his whip:
One choppy finger was on his lip:
He had torn the cataracts from the hills
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;
His breath was a chain which without a sound _90
The earth, and the air, and the water bound;
He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne
By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.
Then the weeds which were forms of living death
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. _95
Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!
And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want:
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air _100
And were caught in the branches naked and bare.
First there came down a thawing rain
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;
Then there steamed up a freezing dew
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew; _105
And a northern whirlwind, wandering about
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,
Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy, and stiff,
And snapped them off with his rigid griff.
When Winter had gone and Spring came back _110
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;
But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels,
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.
CONCLUSION.
Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a Spirit sat, _115
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt this change, I cannot say.
Whether that Lady’s gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light, _120
Found sadness, where it left delight,
I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream, _125
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.
That garden sweet, that lady fair, _130
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed; not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change: their might _135
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.
NOTES:
_19 lovely Harvard manuscript, 1839; lively 1820.
_23 of the morning 1820, 1839; of morning Harvard manuscript.
_26 snow Harvard manuscript, 1839; now 1820.
_28 And lilies were drooping, white and wan Harvard manuscript.
_32 Leaf by leaf, day after day Harvard manuscript;
Leaf after leaf, day after day 1820;
Leaf after leaf, day by day 1839.
_63 mist]mists Harvard manuscript.
_96 and sudden flight]and their sudden flight the Harvard manuscript.
_98 And under]Under Harvard manuscript.
_114 Whether]And if Harvard manuscript.
_118 Whether]Or if Harvard manuscript.
***
CANCELLED PASSAGE.
[This stanza followed 3, 62-65 in the editio princeps, 1820, but was
omitted by Mrs. Shelley from all editions from 1839 onwards. It is
cancelled in the Harvard manuscript.]
Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake,
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake,
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high,
Infecting the winds that wander by.
***
A VISION OF THE SEA.
[Composed at Pisa early in 1820, and published with “Prometheus
Unbound” in the same year. A transcript in Mrs. Shelley’s handwriting
is included in the Harvard manuscript book, where it is dated ‘April,
1820.’]
’Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale:
From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,
And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven,
She sees the black trunks of the waterspouts spin _5
And bend, as if Heaven was ruining in,
Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass
As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: they pass
To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,
And the waves and the thunders, made silent around, _10
Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed
Through the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost
In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep
Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale _15
Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale,
Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about;
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron,
With splendour and terror the black ship environ, _20
Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire
In fountains spout o’er it. In many a spire
The pyramid-billows with white points of brine
In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine,
As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea. _25
The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree,
While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast
Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has passed.
The intense thunder-balls which are raining from Heaven
Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven. _30
The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk
On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk,
Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold
Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold,
One deck is burst up by the waters below, _35
And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow
O’er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other?
Is that all the crew that lie burying each other,
Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those
Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, _40
In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold;
(What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold;)
Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank,
The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank
Are these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain _45
On the windless expanse of the watery plain,
Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon,
And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon,
Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep,
Whose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep _50
Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn,
O’er the populous vessel. And even and morn,
With their hammocks for coffins the seamen aghast
Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast
Down the deep, which closed on them above and around, _55
And the sharks and the dogfish their grave-clothes unbound,
And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down
From God on their wilderness. One after one
The mariners died; on the eve of this day,
When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array, _60
But seven remained. Six the thunder has smitten,
And they lie black as mummies on which Time has written
His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck
An oak-splinter pierced through his breast and his back,
And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck. _65
No more? At the helm sits a woman more fair
Than Heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair,
It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea.
She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee;
It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder _70
Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder
It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near,
It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear
Is outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high,
The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye, _75
While its mother’s is lustreless. ‘Smile not, my child,
But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be,
So dreadful since thou must divide it with me!
Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed, _80
Will it rock thee not, infant? ’Tis beating with dread!
Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we,
That when the ship sinks we no longer may be?
What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?
To be after life what we have been before? _85
Not to touch those sweet hands? Not to look on those eyes,
Those lips, and that hair,—all the smiling disguise
Thou yet wearest, sweet Spirit, which I, day by day,
Have so long called my child, but which now fades away
Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower?’—Lo! the ship _90
Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip;
The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine
Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne,
Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry
Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously, _95
And ’tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave,
Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave,
Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain,
Hurried on by the might of the hurricane:
The hurricane came from the west, and passed on _100
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,
Transversely dividing the stream of the storm;
As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form
Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.
Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, _105
Between Ocean and Heaven, like an ocean, passed,
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world
Which, based on the sea and to Heaven upcurled,
Like columns and walls did surround and sustain
The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain, _110
As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag:
And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,
Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed,
Like the dust of its fall, on the whirlwind are cast;
They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and where _115
The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air
Of clear morning the beams of the sunrise flow in,
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate. _120
And that breach in the tempest is widening away,
And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day,
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,
Lulled by the motion and murmurings
And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea, _125
And overhead glorious, but dreadful to see,
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,
Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves behold
The deep calm of blue Heaven dilating above,
And, like passions made still by the presence of Love, _130
Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide
Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide
From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,
Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with Heaven’s azure smile,
The wide world of waters is vibrating. Where _135
Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay
One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray
With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle
Stain the clear air with sunbows; the jar, and the rattle
Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress _140
Of the snake’s adamantine voluminousness;
And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains
Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins
Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash
As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash _145
The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams
And hissings crawl fast o’er the smooth ocean-streams,
Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion,
A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,
The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other _150
Is winning his way from the fate of his brother
To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat
Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought
Urge on the keen keel,—the brine foams. At the stern
Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn _155
In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on
To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone,—
’Tis dwindling and sinking, ’tis now almost gone,—
Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.
With her left hand she grasps it impetuously. _160
With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death, Fear,
Love, Beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere,
Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread
Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head,
Like a meteor of light o’er the waters! her child _165
Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring; so smiled
The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and brother
The child and the ocean still smile on each other,
Whilst—
NOTES:
_6 ruining Harvard manuscript, 1839; raining 1820.
_8 sunk Harvard manuscript, 1839; sank 1820.
_35 by Harvard manuscript; from 1820, 1839.
_61 has 1820; had 1839.
_87 all the Harvard manuscript; all that 1820, 1839.
_116 through Harvard manuscript; from 1820, 1839.
_121 away]alway cj. A.C. Bradley.
_122 cloud Harvard manuscript, 1839; clouds 1820.
_160 impetuously 1820, 1839; convulsively Harvard manuscript.
***
THE CLOUD.
[Published with “Prometheus Unbound”, 1820.]
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken _5
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under, _10
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ’tis my pillow white, _15
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits; _20
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills. _25
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains. _30
The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag, _35
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love, _40
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above.
With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbed maiden with white fire laden, _45
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear, _50
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof.
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees.
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, _55
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl; _60
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hand like a roof,— _65
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow; _70
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; _75
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air, _80
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
NOTES:
_3 shade 1820; shades 1839.
_6 buds 1839; birds 1820.
_59 with a 1820; with the 1830.
***
TO A SKYLARK.
[Composed at Leghorn, 1820, and published with “Prometheus Unbound” in
the same year. There is a transcript in the Harvard manuscript.]
Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. _5
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. _10
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O’er which clouds are bright’ning.
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. _15
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, _20
Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there. _25
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed. _30
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. _35
Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: _40
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: _45
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aereal hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view! _50
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves: _55
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass: _60
Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. _65
Chorus Hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Matched with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. _70
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? _75
With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest—but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety. _80
Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? _85
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. _90
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. _95
Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! _100
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then—as I am listening now. _105
NOTE:
_55 those Harvard manuscript: these 1820, 1839.
***
ODE TO LIBERTY.
[Composed early in 1820, and published, with “Prometheus Unbound”, in
the same year. A transcript in Shelley’s hand of lines 1-21 is included
in the Harvard manuscript book, and amongst the Boscombe manuscripts
there is a fragment of a rough draft (Garnett). For further particulars
concerning the text see Editor’s Notes.]
Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.—BYRON.
1.
A glorious people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations: Liberty
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o’er Spain,
Scattering contagious fire into the sky,
Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, _5
And in the rapid plumes of song
Clothed itself, sublime and strong;
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
Hovering inverse o’er its accustomed prey;
Till from its station in the Heaven of fame _10
The Spirit’s whirlwind rapped it, and the ray
Of the remotest sphere of living flame
Which paves the void was from behind it flung,
As foam from a ship’s swiftness, when there came
A voice out of the deep: I will record the same. _15
2.
The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth:
The burning stars of the abyss were hurled
Into the depths of Heaven. The daedal earth,
That island in the ocean of the world,
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air: _20
But this divinest universe
Was yet a chaos and a curse,
For thou wert not: but, power from worst producing worse,
The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,
And of the birds, and of the watery forms, _25
And there was war among them, and despair
Within them, raging without truce or terms:
The bosom of their violated nurse
Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms,
And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. _30
3.
Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied
His generations under the pavilion
Of the Sun’s throne: palace and pyramid,
Temple and prison, to many a swarming million
Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. _35
This human living multitude
Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,
For thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude,
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,
Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified _40
The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;
Into the shadow of her pinions wide
Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood
Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,
Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. _45
4.
The nodding promontories, and blue isles,
And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves
Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles
Of favouring Heaven: from their enchanted caves
Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. _50
On the unapprehensive wild
The vine, the corn, the olive mild,
Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled;
And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,
Like the man’s thought dark in the infant’s brain, _55
Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,
Art’s deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein
Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child,
Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain
Her lidless eyes for thee; when o’er the Aegean main _60
5.
Athens arose: a city such as vision
Builds from the purple crags and silver towers
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision
Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors
Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; _65
Its portals are inhabited
By thunder-zoned winds, each head
Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,—
A divine work! Athens, diviner yet,
Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will _70
Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set;
For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill
Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead
In marble immortality, that hill
Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. _75
6.
Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away!
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder _80
With an earth-awakening blast
Through the caverns of the past:
(Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:)
A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,
Which soars where Expectation never flew, _85
Rending the veil of space and time asunder!
One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;
One Sun illumines Heaven; one Spirit vast
With life and love makes chaos ever new,
As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. _90
7.
Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,
Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad,
She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest
From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;
And many a deed of terrible uprightness _95
By thy sweet love was sanctified;
And in thy smile, and by thy side,
Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.
But when tears stained thy robe of vestal-whiteness,
And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne, _100
Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,
The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone
Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed
Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown _105
8.
From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,
Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,
Or utmost islet inaccessible,
Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,
Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, _110
And every Naiad’s ice-cold urn,
To talk in echoes sad and stern
Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?
For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks
Of the Scald’s dreams, nor haunt the Druid’s sleep. _115
What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks
Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,
When from its sea of death, to kill and burn,
The Galilean serpent forth did creep,
And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. _120
9.
A thousand years the Earth cried, ‘Where art thou?’
And then the shadow of thy coming fell
On Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow:
And many a warrior-peopled citadel.
Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, _125
Arose in sacred Italy,
Frowning o’er the tempestuous sea
Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;
That multitudinous anarchy did sweep
And burst around their walls, like idle foam, _130
Whilst from the human spirit’s deepest deep
Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb
Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,
With divine wand traced on our earthly home
Fit imagery to pave Heaven’s everlasting dome. _135
10.
Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror
Of the world’s wolves! thou bearer of the quiver,
Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,
As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever
In the calm regions of the orient day! _140
Luther caught thy wakening glance;
Like lightning, from his leaden lance
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;
And England’s prophets hailed thee as their queen, _145
In songs whose music cannot pass away,
Though it must flow forever: not unseen
Before the spirit-sighted countenance
Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene
Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien. _150
11.
The eager hours and unreluctant years
As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood.
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,
Darkening each other with their multitude,
And cried aloud, ‘Liberty!’ Indignation _155
Answered Pity from her cave;
Death grew pale within the grave,
And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!
When like Heaven’s Sun girt by the exhalation
Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise. _160
Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation
Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies
At dreaming midnight o’er the western wave,
Men started, staggering with a glad surprise,
Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. _165
12.
Thou Heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then
In ominous eclipse? a thousand years
Bred from the slime of deep Oppression’s den.
Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears.
Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away; _170
How like Bacchanals of blood
Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood
Destruction’s sceptred slaves, and Folly’s mitred brood!
When one, like them, but mightier far than they,
The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, _175
Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,
Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers
Of serene Heaven. He, by the past pursued,
Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,
Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. _180
13.
England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?
Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder
Vesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold
Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:
O’er the lit waves every Aeolian isle _185
From Pithecusa to Pelorus
Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:
They cry, ‘Be dim; ye lamps of Heaven suspended o’er us!’
Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile
And they dissolve; but Spain’s were links of steel, _190
Till bit to dust by virtue’s keenest file.
Twins of a single destiny! appeal
To the eternal years enthroned before us
In the dim West; impress us from a seal,
All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal. _195
14.
Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead
Till, like a standard from a watch-tower’s staff,
His soul may stream over the tyrant’s head;
Thy victory shall be his epitaph,
Wild Bacchanal of truth’s mysterious wine, _200
King-deluded Germany,
His dead spirit lives in thee.
Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!
And thou, lost Paradise of this divine
And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness! _205
Thou island of eternity! thou shrine
Where Desolation, clothed with loveliness,
Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,
Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress
The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces. _210
15.
Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name
Of KING into the dust! or write it there,
So that this blot upon the page of fame
Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air
Erases, and the flat sands close behind! _215
Ye the oracle have heard:
Lift the victory-flashing sword.
And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
Into a mass, irrefragably firm, _220
The axes and the rods which awe mankind;
The sound has poison in it, ’tis the sperm
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;
Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,
To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm. _225
16.
Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,
That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle
Into the hell from which it first was hurled,
A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure; _230
Till human thoughts might kneel alone,
Each before the judgement-throne
Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown!
Oh, that the words which make the thoughts obscure
From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew _235
From a white lake blot Heaven’s blue portraiture,
Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,
Till in the nakedness of false and true
They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due! _240
17.
He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever
Can be between the cradle and the grave
Crowned him the King of Life. Oh, vain endeavour!
If on his own high will, a willing slave,
He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor _245
What if earth can clothe and feed
Amplest millions at their need,
And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?
Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,
Driving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne, _250
Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,
And cries: ‘Give me, thy child, dominion
Over all height and depth’? if Life can breed
New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan,
Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one! _255
18.
Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame; _260
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,
To judge, with solemn truth, life’s ill-apportioned lot?
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame
Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? _265
O Liberty! if such could be thy name
Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free
Wept tears, and blood like tears?—The solemn harmony _270
19.
Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aereal golden light _275
On the heavy-sounding plain,
When the bolt has pierced its brain;
As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;
As a far taper fades with fading night,
As a brief insect dies with dying day,— _280
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,
Drooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way
Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play. _285
NOTES:
_4 into]unto Harvard manuscript.
_9 inverse cj. Rossetti; in verse 1820.
_92 See the Bacchae of Euripides—[SHELLEY’S NOTE].
_113 lore 1839; love 1820.
_116 shattered]scattered cj. Rossetti.
_134 wand 1820; want 1830.
_194 us]as cj. Forman.
_212 KING Boscombe manuscript; **** 1820, 1839; CHRIST cj. Swinburne.
_249 Or 1839; O, 1820.
_250 Driving 1820; Diving 1839.
***
CANCELLED PASSAGE OF THE ODE TO LIBERTY.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]
Within a cavern of man’s trackless spirit
Is throned an Image, so intensely fair
That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it
Worship, and as they kneel, tremble and wear
The splendour of its presence, and the light _5
Penetrates their dreamlike frame
Till they become charged with the strength of flame.
***
TO —.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burthen thine.
2.
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion, _5
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart’s devotion
With which I worship thine.
***
ARETHUSA.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, and dated by her
‘Pisa, 1820.’ There is a fair draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at
the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903,
page 24.]
1.
Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,—
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag, _5
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;—
Her steps paved with green _10
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep; _15
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.
2.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold, _20
With his trident the mountains strook;
And opened a chasm
In the rocks—with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind _25
It unsealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below. _30
And the beard and the hair
Of the River-god were
Seen through the torrent’s sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph’s flight _35
To the brink of the Dorian deep.
3.
‘Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair!’
The loud Ocean heard, _40
To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer;
And under the water
The Earth’s white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam; _45
Behind her descended
Her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream:—
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main _50
Alpheus rushed behind,—
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
4.
Under the bowers _55
Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearled thrones;
Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods,
Over heaps of unvalued stones; _60
Through the dim beams
Which amid the streams
Weave a network of coloured light;
And under the caves,
Where the shadowy waves _65
Are as green as the forest’s night:—
Outspeeding the shark,
And the sword-fish dark,
Under the Ocean’s foam,
And up through the rifts _70
Of the mountain clifts
They passed to their Dorian home.
5.
And now from their fountains
In Enna’s mountains,
Down one vale where the morning basks, _75
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep _80
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of asphodel;
And at night they sleep _85
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;—
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more. _90
NOTES:
_6 unsealed B.; concealed 1824.
_31 And the B.; The 1824.
_69 Ocean’s B.; ocean 1824.
***
SONG OF PROSERPINE WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition. There
is a fair draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian
Library. See Mr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination,” etc., 1903, page 24.]
1.
Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,
Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine _5
On thine own child, Proserpine.
2.
If with mists of evening dew
Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the Hours, _10
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.
***
HYMN OF APOLLO.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is a fair
draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr. C.D.
Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, page 25.]
1.
The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,—
Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, _5
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.
2.
Then I arise, and climbing Heaven’s blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves _10
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.
3.
The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill _15
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of Night.
4.
I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers
With their aethereal colours; the moon’s globe _20
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine
Are portions of one power, which is mine.
5.
I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, _25
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;
For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle? _30
6.
I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine is mine,
All light of art or nature;—to my song _35
Victory and praise in its own right belong.
NOTES:
_32 itself divine]it is divine B.
_34 is B.; are 1824.
_36 its cj. Rossetti, 1870, B.; their 1824.
***
HYMN OF PAN.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is a fair
draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr. C.D.
Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, page 25.]
1.
From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings. _5
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass, _10
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
2.
Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing _15
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, _20
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.
3.
I sang of the dancing stars, _25
I sang of the daedal Earth,
And of Heaven—and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth,—
And then I changed my pipings,—
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus _30
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed.
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood, _35
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
NOTE:
_5, _12 Listening to]Listening B.
***
THE QUESTION.
[Published by Leigh Hunt (with the signature Sigma) in “The Literary
Pocket-Book”, 1822. Reprinted by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”,
1824. Copies exist in the Harvard manuscript book, amongst the Boscombe
manuscripts, and amongst Ollier manuscripts.]
1.
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay _5
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.
2.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, _10
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxslips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets—
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth—
Its mother’s face with Heaven’s collected tears, _15
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
3.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day; _20
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
4.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge _25
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white.
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light; _30
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
5.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers _35
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand,—and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it!—Oh! to whom? _40
NOTES:
_14 Like...mirth Harvard manuscript, Boscombe manuscript;
wanting in Ollier manuscript, 1822, 1824, 1839.
_15 Heaven’s collected Harvard manuscript, Ollier manuscript, 1822;
Heaven-collected 1824, 1839.
***
THE TWO SPIRITS: AN ALLEGORY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
FIRST SPIRIT:
O thou, who plumed with strong desire
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire—
Night is coming!
Bright are the regions of the air, _5
And among the winds and beams
It were delight to wander there—
Night is coming!
SECOND SPIRIT:
The deathless stars are bright above;
If I would cross the shade of night, _10
Within my heart is the lamp of love,
And that is day!
And the moon will smile with gentle light
On my golden plumes where’er they move;
The meteors will linger round my flight, _15
And make night day.
FIRST SPIRIT:
But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain;
See, the bounds of the air are shaken—
Night is coming! _20
The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken,
The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain—
Night is coming!
SECOND SPIRIT:
I see the light, and I hear the sound; _25
I’ll sail on the flood of the tempest dark
With the calm within and the light around
Which makes night day:
And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,
Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound, _30
My moon-like flight thou then mayst mark
On high, far away.
...
Some say there is a precipice
Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin
O’er piles of snow and chasms of ice _35
Mid Alpine mountains;
And that the languid storm pursuing
That winged shape, for ever flies
Round those hoar branches, aye renewing
Its aery fountains. _40
Some say when nights are dry and clear,
And the death-dews sleep on the morass,
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,
Which make night day:
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass _45
Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,
And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,
He finds night day.
NOTES:
_2 Wouldst 1839; Would 1824.
_31 moon-like 1824; moonlight 1839.
_44 make]makes 1824, 1839.
***
ODE TO NAPLES.
(The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii
and Baiae with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the
proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a
tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes
which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings
permanently connected with the scene of this animating
event.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.])
[Composed at San Juliano di Pisa, August 17-25, 1820; published in
“Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is a copy, ‘for the most part neat and
legible,’ amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See
Mr. C.D. Locock’s “Examination”, etc., 1903, pages 14-18.]
EPODE 1a.
I stood within the City disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
The Mountain’s slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls; _5
The oracular thunder penetrating shook
The listening soul in my suspended blood;
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke—
I felt, but heard not:—through white columns glowed
The isle-sustaining ocean-flood, _10
A plane of light between two heavens of azure!
Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear _15
As in the sculptor’s thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine,
Like winter leaves o’ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow
Because the crystal silence of the air _20
Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine
Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.
NOTE:
_1 Pompeii.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
EPODE 2a.
Then gentle winds arose
With many a mingled close
Of wild Aeolian sound, and mountain-odours keen; _25
And where the Baian ocean
Welters with airlike motion,
Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves,
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere _30
Floats o’er the Elysian realm,
It bore me, like an Angel, o’er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm.
I sailed, where ever flows _35
Under the calm Serene
A spirit of deep emotion
From the unknown graves
Of the dead Kings of Melody.
Shadowy Aornos darkened o’er the helm _40
The horizontal aether; Heaven stripped bare
Its depth over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhaean mount, Inarime,
There streamed a sunbright vapour, like the standard _45
Of some aethereal host;
Whilst from all the coast,
Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered
Over the oracular woods and divine sea
Prophesyings which grew articulate—
They seize me—I must speak them!—be they fate! _50
NOTES:
_25 odours B.; odour 1824.
_42 depth B.; depths 1824.
_45 sun-bright B.; sunlit 1824.
_39 Homer and Virgil.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
STROPHE 1.
Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven!
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest
The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even _55
As sleep round Love, are driven!
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise
Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained!
Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice
Which armed Victory offers up unstained _60
To Love, the flower-enchained!
Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,—
Hail, hail, all hail! _65
STROPHE 2.
Thou youngest giant birth
Which from the groaning earth
Leap’st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale!
Last of the Intercessors!
Who ’gainst the Crowned Transgressors _70
Pleadest before God’s love! Arrayed in Wisdom’s mail,
Wave thy lightning lance in mirth
Nor let thy high heart fail,
Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors
With hurried legions move! _75
Hail, hail, all hail!
ANTISTROPHE 1a.
What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam
To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer; _80
A new Actaeon’s error
Shall theirs have been—devoured by their own hounds!
Be thou like the imperial Basilisk
Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!
Gaze on Oppression, till at that dread risk _85
Aghast she pass from the Earth’s disk:
Fear not, but gaze—for freemen mightier grow,
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe:—
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail,
Thou shalt be great—All hail! _90
ANTISTROPHE 2a.
From Freedom’s form divine,
From Nature’s inmost shrine,
Strip every impious gawd, rend
Error veil by veil;
O’er Ruin desolate,
O’er Falsehood’s fallen state, _95
Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale!
And equal laws be thine,
And winged words let sail,
Freighted with truth even from the throne of God:
That wealth, surviving fate, _100
Be thine.—All hail!
NOTE:
_100 wealth-surviving cj. A.C. Bradley.
ANTISTROPHE 1b.
Didst thou not start to hear Spain’s thrilling paean
From land to land re-echoed solemnly,
Till silence became music? From the Aeaean
To the cold Alps, eternal Italy _105
Starts to hear thine! The Sea
Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs
In light, and music; widowed Genoa wan
By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs,
Murmuring, ‘Where is Doria?’ fair Milan, _110
Within whose veins long ran
The viper’s palsying venom, lifts her heel
To bruise his head. The signal and the seal
(If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail)
Art thou of all these hopes.—O hail! _115
NOTES:
_104 Aeaea, the island of Circe.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
_112 The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti,
tyrants of Milan.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.]
ANTISTROPHE 2b.
Florence! beneath the sun,
Of cities fairest one,
Blushes within her bower for Freedom’s expectation:
From eyes of quenchless hope
Rome tears the priestly cope, _120
As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,—
An athlete stripped to run
From a remoter station
For the high prize lost on Philippi’s shore:—
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, _125
So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!
EPODE 1b.
Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
Arrayed against the ever-living Gods?
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
Bursting their inaccessible abodes _130
Of crags and thunder-clouds?
See ye the banners blazoned to the day,
Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride?
Dissonant threats kill Silence far away,
The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide _135
With iron light is dyed;
The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions
Like Chaos o’er creation, uncreating;
An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions
And lawless slaveries,—down the aereal regions _140
Of the white Alps, desolating,
Famished wolves that bide no waiting,
Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory,
Trampling our columned cities into dust,
Their dull and savage lust _145
On Beauty’s corse to sickness satiating—
They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary
With fire—from their red feet the streams run gory!
EPODE 2b.
Great Spirit, deepest Love!
Which rulest and dost move _150
All things which live and are, within the Italian shore;
Who spreadest Heaven around it,
Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it;
Who sittest in thy star, o’er Ocean’s western floor;
Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command _155
The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison
From the Earth’s bosom chill;
Oh, bid those beams be each a blinding brand
Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison!
Bid the Earth’s plenty kill! _160
Bid thy bright Heaven above,
Whilst light and darkness bound it,
Be their tomb who planned
To make it ours and thine!
Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill _165
And raise thy sons, as o’er the prone horizon
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire—
Be man’s high hope and unextinct desire
The instrument to work thy will divine!
Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, _170
And frowns and fears from thee,
Would not more swiftly flee
Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds.—
Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine
Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be _175
This city of thy worship ever free!
NOTES:
_143 old 1824; lost B.
_147 black 1824; blue B.
***
AUTUMN: A DIRGE.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying. _5
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year, _10
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
2.
The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
For the Year;
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone _15
To his dwelling;
Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play—
Ye, follow the bier _20
Of the dead cold Year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.
***
THE WANING MOON.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East, _5
A white and shapeless mass—
***
TO THE MOON.
[Published (1) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, (2) by W.M.
Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works”, 1870.]
1.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,—
And ever changing, like a joyless eye _5
That finds no object worth its constancy?
2.
Thou chosen sister of the Spirit,
That grazes on thee till in thee it pities...
***
DEATH.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
Death is here and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere,
All around, within, beneath,
Above is death—and we are death.
2.
Death has set his mark and seal _5
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear,
...
3.
First our pleasures die—and then
Our hopes, and then our fears—and when
These are dead, the debt is due, _10
Dust claims dust—and we die too.
4.
All things that we love and cherish,
Like ourselves must fade and perish;
Such is our rude mortal lot—
Love itself would, did they not. _15
***
LIBERTY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
The fiery mountains answer each other;
Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;
The tempestuous oceans awake one another,
And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter’s throne,
When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown. _5
2.
From a single cloud the lightening flashes,
Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,
Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,
An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound
Is bellowing underground. _10
3.
But keener thy gaze than the lightening’s glare,
And swifter thy step than the earthquake’s tramp;
Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare
Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun’s bright lamp
To thine is a fen-fire damp. _15
4.
From billow and mountain and exhalation
The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;
From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,
From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,—
And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night _20
In the van of the morning light.
NOTE:
_4 zone editions 1824, 1839; throne later editions.
***
SUMMER AND WINTER.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley in “The Keepsake”, 1829. Mr. C.W.
Frederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in Mrs. Shelley’s
handwriting.]
It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon—and the stainless sky _5
Opens beyond them like eternity.
All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,
The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;
The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,
And the firm foliage of the larger trees. _10
It was a winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests; and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when, _15
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:
Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!
NOTE:
_11 birds die 1839; birds do die 1829.
***
THE TOWER OF FAMINE.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley in “The Keepsake”, 1829. Mr. C.W.
Frederickson of Brooklyn possesses a transcript in Mrs. Shelley’s
handwriting.]
Amid the desolation of a city,
Which was the cradle, and is now the grave
Of an extinguished people,—so that Pity
Weeps o’er the shipwrecks of Oblivion’s wave,
There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built _5
Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave
For bread, and gold, and blood: Pain, linked to Guilt,
Agitates the light flame of their hours,
Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.
There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers _10
And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,
The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers
Of solitary wealth,—the tempest-proof
Pavilions of the dark Italian air,—
Are by its presence dimmed—they stand aloof, _15
And are withdrawn—so that the world is bare;
As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror
Amid a company of ladies fair
Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror
Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue, _20
The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error,
Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew.
NOTE:
_7 For]With 1829.
***
AN ALLEGORY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
A portal as of shadowy adamant
Stands yawning on the highway of the life
Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;
Around it rages an unceasing strife
Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt _5
The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high
Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.
2.
And many pass it by with careless tread,
Not knowing that a shadowy ...
Tracks every traveller even to where the dead _10
Wait peacefully for their companion new;
But others, by more curious humour led,
Pause to examine;—these are very few,
And they learn little there, except to know
That shadows follow them where’er they go. _15
NOTE:
_8 pass Rossetti; passed editions 1824, 1839.
***
THE WORLD’S WANDERERS.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]
1.
Tell me, thou Star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night
Will thy pinions close now?
2.
Tell me, Moon, thou pale and gray _5
Pilgrim of Heaven’s homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?
3.
Weary Wind, who wanderest
Like the world’s rejected guest, _10
Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?
***
SONNET.
[Published by Leigh Hunt, “The Literary Pocket-Book”, 1823. There is a
transcript amongst the Ollier manuscripts, and another in the Harvard
manuscript book.]
Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,
Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes
Of the idle brain, which the world’s livery wear?
O thou quick heart, which pantest to possess
All that pale Expectation feigneth fair! _5
Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess
Whence thou didst come, and whither thou must go,
And all that never yet was known would know—
Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press,
With such swift feet life’s green and pleasant path, _10
Seeking, alike from happiness and woe,
A refuge in the cavern of gray death?
O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you
Hope to inherit in the grave below?
NOTE:
_1 grave Ollier manuscript;
dead Harvard manuscript, 1823, editions 1824, 1839.
_5 pale Expectation Ollier manuscript;
anticipation Harvard manuscript, 1823, editions 1824, 1839.
_7 must Harvard manuscript, 1823; mayst 1824; mayest editions 1839.
_8 all that Harvard manuscript, 1823; that which editions 1824, 1839.
would Harvard manuscript, 1823; wouldst editions 1839.
***
LINES TO A REVIEWER.
[Published by Leigh Hunt, “The Literary Pocket-Book”, 1823. These
lines, and the “Sonnet” immediately preceding, are signed Sigma in the
“Literary Pocket-Book”.]
Alas, good friend, what profit can you see
In hating such a hateless thing as me?
There is no sport in hate where all the rage
Is on one side: in vain would you assuage
Your frowns upon an unresisting smile, _5
In which not even contempt lurks to beguile
Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate.
Oh, conquer what you cannot satiate!
For to your passion I am far more coy
Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy _10
In winter noon. Of your antipathy
If I am the Narcissus, you are free
To pine into a sound with hating me.
NOTE:
_3 where editions 1824, 1839; when 1823.
***
FRAGMENT OF A SATIRE ON SATIRE.
[Published by Edward Dowden, “Correspondence of Robert Southey and
Caroline Bowles”, 1880.]
If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains,
And racks of subtle torture, if the pains
Of shame, of fiery Hell’s tempestuous wave,
Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,
Hurling the damned into the murky air _5
While the meek blest sit smiling; if Despair
And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror
Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error,
Are the true secrets of the commonweal
To make men wise and just;... _10
And not the sophisms of revenge and fear,
Bloodier than is revenge...
Then send the priests to every hearth and home
To preach the burning wrath which is to come,
In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw _15
The frozen tears...
If Satire’s scourge could wake the slumbering hounds
Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds,
The leprous scars of callous Infamy;
If it could make the present not to be, _20
Or charm the dark past never to have been,
Or turn regret to hope; who that has seen
What Southey is and was, would not exclaim,
‘Lash on!’ ... be the keen verse dipped in flame;
Follow his flight with winged words, and urge _25
The strokes of the inexorable scourge
Until the heart be naked, till his soul
See the contagion’s spots ... foul;
And from the mirror of Truth’s sunlike shield,
From which his Parthian arrow... _30
Flash on his sight the spectres of the past,
Until his mind’s eye paint thereon—
Let scorn like ... yawn below,
And rain on him like flakes of fiery snow.
This cannot be, it ought not, evil still— _35
Suffering makes suffering, ill must follow ill.
Rough words beget sad thoughts, ... and, beside,
Men take a sullen and a stupid pride
In being all they hate in others’ shame,
By a perverse antipathy of fame. _40
’Tis not worth while to prove, as I could, how
From the sweet fountains of our Nature flow
These bitter waters; I will only say,
If any friend would take Southey some day,
And tell him, in a country walk alone, _45
Softening harsh words with friendship’s gentle tone,
How incorrect his public conduct is,
And what men think of it, ’twere not amiss.
Far better than to make innocent ink—
***
GOOD-NIGHT.
[Published by Leigh Hunt over the signature Sigma, “The Literary
Pocket-Book”, 1822. It is included in the Harvard manuscript book, and
there is a transcript by Shelley in a copy of “The Literary
Pocket-Book”, 1819, presented by him to Miss Sophia Stacey, December
29, 1820. (See “Love’s Philosophy” and “Time Long Past”.) Our text is
that of the editio princeps, 1822, with which the Harvard manuscript
and “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, agree. The variants of the Stacey
manuscript, 1820, are given in the footnotes.]