1.
The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness _4450
Spread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying
Upon the winds of fear; from his dull madness
The starveling waked, and died in joy; the dying,
Among the corpses in stark agony lying,
Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope _4455
Closed their faint eyes; from house to house replying
With loud acclaim, the living shook Heaven's cope,
And filled the startled Earth with echoes: morn did ope
2.
Its pale eyes then; and lo! the long array
Of guards in golden arms, and Priests beside, _4460
Singing their bloody hymns, whose garbs betray
The blackness of the faith it seems to hide;
And see, the Tyrant's gem-wrought chariot glide
Among the gloomy cowls and glittering spears--
A Shape of light is sitting by his side, _4465
A child most beautiful. I' the midst appears
Laon,--exempt alone from mortal hopes and fears.
3.
His head and feet are bare, his hands are bound
Behind with heavy chains, yet none do wreak
Their scoffs on him, though myriads throng around; _4470
There are no sneers upon his lip which speak
That scorn or hate has made him bold; his cheek
Resolve has not turned pale,--his eyes are mild
And calm, and, like the morn about to break,
Smile on mankind--his heart seems reconciled _4475
To all things and itself, like a reposing child.
4.
Tumult was in the soul of all beside,
Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but those who saw
Their tranquil victim pass, felt wonder glide
Into their brain, and became calm with awe.-- _4480
See, the slow pageant near the pile doth draw.
A thousand torches in the spacious square,
Borne by the ready slaves of ruthless law,
Await the signal round: the morning fair
Is changed to a dim night by that unnatural glare. _4485
5.
And see! beneath a sun-bright canopy,
Upon a platform level with the pile,
The anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on high,
Girt by the chieftains of the host; all smile
In expectation, but one child: the while _4490
I, Laon, led by mutes, ascend my bier
Of fire, and look around: each distant isle
Is dark in the bright dawn; towers far and near,
Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmosphere.
6.
There was such silence through the host, as when _4495
An earthquake trampling on some populous town,
Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men
Expect the second; all were mute but one,
That fairest child, who, bold with love, alone
Stood up before the King, without avail, _4500
Pleading for Laon's life--her stifled groan
Was heard--she trembled like one aspen pale
Among the gloomy pines of a Norwegian vale.
7.
What were his thoughts linked in the morning sun,
Among those reptiles, stingless with delay, _4505
Even like a tyrant's wrath?--The signal-gun
Roared--hark, again! In that dread pause he lay
As in a quiet dream--the slaves obey--
A thousand torches drop,--and hark, the last
Bursts on that awful silence; far away, _4510
Millions, with hearts that beat both loud and fast,
Watch for the springing flame expectant and aghast.
8.
They fly--the torches fall--a cry of fear
Has startled the triumphant!--they recede!
For, ere the cannon's roar has died, they hear _4515
The tramp of hoofs like earthquake, and a steed
Dark and gigantic, with the tempest's speed,
Bursts through their ranks: a woman sits thereon,
Fairer, it seems, than aught that earth can breed,
Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn, _4520
A spirit from the caves of daylight wandering gone.
9.
All thought it was God's Angel come to sweep
The lingering guilty to their fiery grave;
The Tyrant from his throne in dread did leap,--
Her innocence his child from fear did save; _4525
Scared by the faith they feigned, each priestly slave
Knelt for his mercy whom they served with blood,
And, like the refluence of a mighty wave
Sucked into the loud sea, the multitude
With crushing panic, fled in terror's altered mood. _4530
10.
They pause, they blush, they gaze,--a gathering shout
Bursts like one sound from the ten thousand streams
Of a tempestuous sea:--that sudden rout
One checked, who, never in his mildest dreams
Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams _4535
Of his rent heart so hard and cold a creed
Had seared with blistering ice--but he misdeems
That he is wise, whose wounds do only bleed
Inly for self,--thus thought the Iberian Priest indeed,
11.
And others, too, thought he was wise to see, _4540
In pain, and fear, and hate, something divine;
In love and beauty, no divinity.--
Now with a bitter smile, whose light did shine
Like a fiend's hope upon his lips and eyne,
He said, and the persuasion of that sneer _4545
Rallied his trembling comrades--'Is it mine
To stand alone, when kings and soldiers fear
A woman? Heaven has sent its other victim here.'
12.
'Were it not impious,' said the King, 'to break
Our holy oath?'--'Impious to keep it, say!' _4550
Shrieked the exulting Priest:--'Slaves, to the stake
Bind her, and on my head the burden lay
Of her just torments:--at the Judgement Day
Will I stand up before the golden throne
Of Heaven, and cry, "To Thee did I betray _4555
An infidel; but for me she would have known
Another moment's joy! the glory be thine own."'
13.
They trembled, but replied not, nor obeyed,
Pausing in breathless silence. Cythna sprung
From her gigantic steed, who, like a shade _4560
Chased by the winds, those vacant streets among
Fled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung
Upon his neck, and kissed his mooned brow.
A piteous sight, that one so fair and young,
The clasp of such a fearful death should woo _4565
With smiles of tender joy as beamed from Cythna now.
14.
The warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear
From many a tremulous eye, but like soft dews
Which feed Spring's earliest buds, hung gathered there,
Frozen by doubt,--alas! they could not choose _4570
But weep; for when her faint limbs did refuse
To climb the pyre, upon the mutes she smiled;
And with her eloquent gestures, and the hues
Of her quick lips, even as a weary child
Wins sleep from some fond nurse with its caresses mild, _4575
15.
She won them, though unwilling, her to bind
Near me, among the snakes. When there had fled
One soft reproach that was most thrilling kind,
She smiled on me, and nothing then we said,
But each upon the other's countenance fed _4580
Looks of insatiate love; the mighty veil
Which doth divide the living and the dead
Was almost rent, the world grew dim and pale,--
All light in Heaven or Earth beside our love did fail.--
16.
Yet--yet--one brief relapse, like the last beam _4585
Of dying flames, the stainless air around
Hung silent and serene--a blood-red gleam
Burst upwards, hurling fiercely from the ground
The globed smoke,--I heard the mighty sound
Of its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean; _4590
And through its chasms I saw, as in a swound,
The tyrant's child fall without life or motion
Before his throne, subdued by some unseen emotion.--
17.
And is this death?--The pyre has disappeared,
The Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the throng; _4595
The flames grow silent--slowly there is heard
The music of a breath-suspending song,
Which, like the kiss of love when life is young,
Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep;
With ever-changing notes it floats along, _4600
Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep
A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap.
18.
The warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand
Wakened me then; lo! Cythna sate reclined
Beside me, on the waved and golden sand _4605
Of a clear pool, upon a bank o'ertwined
With strange and star-bright flowers, which to the wind
Breathed divine odour; high above, was spread
The emerald heaven of trees of unknown kind,
Whose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead _4610
A shadow, which was light, upon the waters shed.
19.
And round about sloped many a lawny mountain
With incense-bearing forests and vast caves
Of marble radiance, to that mighty fountain;
And where the flood its own bright margin laves, _4615
Their echoes talk with its eternal waves,
Which, from the depths whose jagged caverns breed
Their unreposing strife, it lifts and heaves,--
Till through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed
A river deep, which flies with smooth but arrowy speed. _4620
20.
As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder,
A boat approached, borne by the musical air
Along the waves which sung and sparkled under
Its rapid keel--a winged shape sate there,
A child with silver-shining wings, so fair, _4625
That as her bark did through the waters glide,
The shadow of the lingering waves did wear
Light, as from starry beams; from side to side,
While veering to the wind her plumes the bark did guide.
21.
The boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl, _4630
Almost translucent with the light divine
Of her within; the prow and stern did curl
Horned on high, like the young moon supine,
When o'er dim twilight mountains dark with pine,
It floats upon the sunset's sea of beams, _4635
Whose golden waves in many a purple line
Fade fast, till borne on sunlight's ebbing streams,
Dilating, on earth's verge the sunken meteor gleams.
22.
Its keel has struck the sands beside our feet;--
Then Cythna turned to me, and from her eyes _4640
Which swam with unshed tears, a look more sweet
Than happy love, a wild and glad surprise,
Glanced as she spake: 'Ay, this is Paradise
And not a dream, and we are all united!
Lo, that is mine own child, who in the guise _4645
Of madness came, like day to one benighted
In lonesome woods: my heart is now too well requited!'
23.
And then she wept aloud, and in her arms
Clasped that bright Shape, less marvellously fair
Than her own human hues and living charms; _4650
Which, as she leaned in passion's silence there,
Breathed warmth on the cold bosom of the air,
Which seemed to blush and tremble with delight;
The glossy darkness of her streaming hair
Fell o'er that snowy child, and wrapped from sight _4655
The fond and long embrace which did their hearts unite.
24.
Then the bright child, the plumed Seraph came,
And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine,
And said, 'I was disturbed by tremulous shame
When once we met, yet knew that I was thine _4660
From the same hour in which thy lips divine
Kindled a clinging dream within my brain,
Which ever waked when I might sleep, to twine
Thine image with HER memory dear--again
We meet; exempted now from mortal fear or pain. _4665
25.
'When the consuming flames had wrapped ye round,
The hope which I had cherished went away;
I fell in agony on the senseless ground,
And hid mine eyes in dust, and far astray
My mind was gone, when bright, like dawning day, _4670
The Spectre of the Plague before me flew,
And breathed upon my lips, and seemed to say,
"They wait for thee, beloved!"--then I knew
The death-mark on my breast, and became calm anew.
26.
'It was the calm of love--for I was dying. _4675
I saw the black and half-extinguished pyre
In its own gray and shrunken ashes lying;
The pitchy smoke of the departed fire
Still hung in many a hollow dome and spire
Above the towers, like night,--beneath whose shade _4680
Awed by the ending of their own desire
The armies stood; a vacancy was made
In expectation's depth, and so they stood dismayed.
27.
'The frightful silence of that altered mood,
The tortures of the dying clove alone, _4685
Till one uprose among the multitude,
And said--"The flood of time is rolling on;
We stand upon its brink, whilst THEY are gone
To glide in peace down death's mysterious stream.
Have ye done well? They moulder, flesh and bone, _4690
Who might have made this life's envenomed dream
A sweeter draught than ye will ever taste, I deem.
28.
'"These perish as the good and great of yore
Have perished, and their murderers will repent,--
Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before _4695
Yon smoke has faded from the firmament
Even for this cause, that ye who must lament
The death of those that made this world so fair,
Cannot recall them now; but there is lent
To man the wisdom of a high despair, _4700
When such can die, and he live on and linger here.
29.
'"Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence,
From fabled hell as by a charm withdrawn;
All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence
In pain and fire have unbelievers gone; _4705
And ye must sadly turn away, and moan
In secret, to his home each one returning;
And to long ages shall this hour be known;
And slowly shall its memory, ever burning,
Fill this dark night of things with an eternal morning. _4710
30.
'"For me that world is grown too void and cold,
Since Hope pursues immortal Destiny
With steps thus slow--therefore shall ye behold
How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die;
Tell to your children this!" Then suddenly _4715
He sheathed a dagger in his heart and fell;
My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me
There came a murmur from the crowd, to tell
Of deep and mighty change which suddenly befell.
31.
'Then suddenly I stood, a winged Thought, _4720
Before the immortal Senate, and the seat
Of that star-shining spirit, whence is wrought
The strength of its dominion, good and great,
The better Genius of this world's estate.
His realm around one mighty Fane is spread, _4725
Elysian islands bright and fortunate,
Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead,
Where I am sent to lead!' These winged words she said,
32.
And with the silence of her eloquent smile,
Bade us embark in her divine canoe; _4730
Then at the helm we took our seat, the while
Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue
Into the winds' invisible stream she threw,
Sitting beside the prow: like gossamer
On the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew _4735
O'er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair,
Whose shores receded fast, while we seemed lingering there;
33.
Till down that mighty stream, dark, calm, and fleet,
Between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven,
Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet _4740
As swift as twinkling beams, had, under Heaven,
From woods and waves wild sounds and odours driven,
The boat fled visibly--three nights and days,
Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even,
We sailed along the winding watery ways _4745
Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.
34.
A scene of joy and wonder to behold
That river's shapes and shadows changing ever,
Where the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold
Its whirlpools, where all hues did spread and quiver; _4750
And where melodious falls did burst and shiver
Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray
Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river,
Or when the moonlight poured a holier day,
One vast and glittering lake around green islands lay. _4755
35.
Morn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran
The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud
Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man,
Which flieth forth and cannot make abode;
Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode, _4760
Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned
With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,
The homes of the departed, dimly frowned
O'er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round.
36.
Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows, _4765
Mile after mile we sailed, and 'twas delight
To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows
Over the grass; sometimes beneath the night
Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright
With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep _4770
And dark-green chasms, shades beautiful and white,
Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep,
Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.
37.
And ever as we sailed, our minds were full
Of love and wisdom, which would overflow _4775
In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful,
And in quick smiles whose light would come and go
Like music o'er wide waves, and in the flow
Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress--
For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know, _4780
That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less
Survives all mortal change in lasting loveliness.
38.
Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling
Number delightful hours--for through the sky
The sphered lamps of day and night, revealing _4785
New changes and new glories, rolled on high,
Sun, Moon and moonlike lamps, the progeny
Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair:
On the fourth day, wild as a windwrought sea
The stream became, and fast and faster bare _4790
The spirit-winged boat, steadily speeding there.
39.
Steady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains
Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour
Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains,
The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar _4795
Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore,
Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child
Securely fled, that rapid stress before,
Amid the topmost spray, and sunbows wild,
Wreathed in the silver mist: in joy and pride we smiled. _4800
40.
The torrent of that wide and raging river
Is passed, and our aereal speed suspended.
We look behind; a golden mist did quiver
When its wild surges with the lake were blended,--
Our bark hung there, as on a line suspended _4805
Between two heavens,--that windless waveless lake
Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended
By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break,
And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.
41.
Motionless resting on the lake awhile, _4810
I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear
Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle,
And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere
Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear
The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound _4815
Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near,
Like the swift moon this glorious earth around,
The charmed boat approached, and there its haven found.
NOTES:
_4577 there]then edition 1818.
_4699 there]then edition 1818.
_4749 When]Where edition 1818.
_4804 Where]When edition 1818.
_4805 on a line]one line edition 1818.
NOTE ON THE "REVOLT OF ISLAM", BY MRS. SHELLEY.
Shelley possessed two remarkable qualities of intellect--a brilliant
imagination, and a logical exactness of reason. His inclinations led
him (he fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions.
I say 'he fancied,' because I believe the former to have been
paramount, and that it would have gained the mastery even had he
struggled against it. However, he said that he deliberated at one time
whether he should dedicate himself to poetry or metaphysics; and,
resolving on the former, he educated himself for it, discarding in a
great measure his philosophical pursuits, and engaging himself in the
study of the poets of Greece, Italy, and England. To these may be
added a constant perusal of portions of the old Testament--the Psalms,
the Book of Job, the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime poetry of
which filled him with delight.
As a poet, his intellect and compositions were powerfully influenced
by exterior circumstances, and especially by his place of abode. He
was very fond of travelling, and ill-health increased this
restlessness. The sufferings occasioned by a cold English winter made
him pine, especially when our colder spring arrived, for a more genial
climate. In 1816 he again visited Switzerland, and rented a house on
the banks of the Lake of Geneva; and many a day, in cloud or sunshine,
was passed alone in his boat--sailing as the wind listed, or weltering
on the calm waters. The majestic aspect of Nature ministered such
thoughts as he afterwards enwove in verse. His lines on the Bridge of
the Arve, and his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", were written at this
time. Perhaps during this summer his genius was checked by association
with another poet whose nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, yet
who, in the poem he wrote at that time, gave tokens that he shared for
a period the more abstract and etherealised inspiration of Shelley.
The saddest events awaited his return to England; but such was his
fear to wound the feelings of others that he never expressed the
anguish he felt, and seldom gave vent to the indignation roused by the
persecutions he underwent; while the course of deep unexpressed
passion, and the sense of injury, engendered the desire to embody
themselves in forms defecated of all the weakness and evil which cling
to real life.
He chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of
liberty, some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the
opinions of the world; but who is animated throughout by an ardent
love of virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons of political and
intellectual freedom on his fellow-creatures. He created for this
youth a woman such as he delighted to imagine--full of enthusiasm for
the same objects; and they both, with will unvanquished, and the
deepest sense of the justice of their cause, met adversity and death.
There exists in this poem a memorial of a friend of his youth. The
character of the old man who liberates Laon from his tower prison, and
tends on him in sickness, is founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, when
Shelley was at Eton, had often stood by to befriend and support him,
and whose name he never mentioned without love and veneration.
During the year 1817 we were established at Marlow in Buckinghamshire.
Shelley's choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no
great distance from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames. The
poem was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of
Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is
distinguished for peculiar beauty. The chalk hills break into cliffs
that overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech; the
wilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant
vegetation; and the cultivated part is peculiarly fertile. With all
this wealth of Nature which, either in the form of gentlemen's parks
or soil dedicated to agriculture, flourishes around, Marlow was
inhabited (I hope it is altered now) by a very poor population. The
women are lacemakers, and lose their health by sedentary labour, for
which they were very ill paid. The Poor-laws ground to the dust not
only the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and
were obliged to pay poor-rates. The changes produced by peace
following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with them the most
heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley afforded what alleviation he
could. In the winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe
attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the poor cottages. I
mention these things,--for this minute and active sympathy with his
fellow-creatures gives a thousandfold interest to his speculations,
and stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race.
The poem, bold in its opinions and uncompromising in their expression,
met with many censurers, not only among those who allow of no virtue
but such as supports the cause they espouse, but even among those
whose opinions were similar to his own. I extract a portion of a
letter written in answer to one of these friends. It best details the
impulses of Shelley's mind, and his motives: it was written with
entire unreserve; and is therefore a precious monument of his own
opinion of his powers, of the purity of his designs, and the ardour
with which he clung, in adversity and through the valley of the shadow
of death, to views from which he believed the permanent happiness of
mankind must eventually spring.
'Marlowe, December 11, 1817.
'I have read and considered all that you say about my general powers,
and the particular instance of the poem in which I have attempted to
develop them. Nothing can be more satisfactory to me than the interest
which your admonitions express. But I think you are mistaken in some
points with regard to the peculiar nature of my powers, whatever be
their amount. I listened with deference and self-suspicion to your
censures of "The Revolt of Islam"; but the productions of mine which
you commend hold a very low place in my own esteem; and this reassures
me, in some degree at least. The poem was produced by a series of
thoughts which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm.
I felt the precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this task,
resolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume
contains was written with the same feeling--as real, though not so
prophetic--as the communications of a dying man. I never presumed
indeed to consider it anything approaching to faultless; but, when I
consider contemporary productions of the same apparent pretensions, I
own I was filled with confidence. I felt that it was in many respects
a genuine picture of my own mind. I felt that the sentiments were
true, not assumed. And in this have I long believed that my power
consists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates
to sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in
common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote
distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the
living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions
which result from considering either the moral or the material
universe as a whole. Of course, I believe these faculties, which
perhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist very
imperfectly in my own mind. But, when you advert to my Chancery-paper,
a cold, forced, unimpassioned, insignificant piece of cramped and
cautious argument, and to the little scrap about "Mandeville", which
expressed my feelings indeed, but cost scarcely two minutes' thought
to express, as specimens of my powers more favourable than that which
grew as it were from "the agony and bloody sweat" of intellectual
travail; surely I must feel that, in some manner, either I am mistaken
in believing that I have any talent at all, or you in the selection of
the specimens of it. Yet, after all, I cannot but be conscious, in
much of what I write, of an absence of that tranquillity which is the
attribute and accompaniment of power. This feeling alone would make
your most kind and wise admonitions, on the subject of the economy of
intellectual force, valuable to me. And, if I live, or if I see any
trust in coming years, doubt not but that I shall do something,
whatever it may be, which a serious and earnest estimate of my powers
will suggest to me, and which will be in every respect accommodated to
their utmost limits.
[Shelley to Godwin.]
***
PRINCE ATHANASE.
A FRAGMENT.
(The idea Shelley had formed of Prince Athanase was a good deal
modelled on "Alastor". In the first sketch of the poem, he named it
"Pandemos and Urania". Athanase seeks through the world the One whom
he may love. He meets, in the ship in which he is embarked, a lady who
appears to him to embody his ideal of love and beauty. But she proves
to be Pandemos, or the earthly and unworthy Venus; who, after
disappointing his cherished dreams and hopes, deserts him. Athanase,
crushed by sorrow, pines and dies. 'On his deathbed, the lady who can
really reply to his soul comes and kisses his lips' ("The Deathbed of
Athanase"). The poet describes her [in the words of the final
fragment, page 164]. This slender note is all we have to aid our
imagination in shaping out the form of the poem, such as its author
imagined. [Mrs. Shelley's Note.])
[Written at Marlow in 1817, towards the close of the year; first
published in "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Part 1 is dated by Mrs.
Shelley, 'December, 1817,' the remainder, 'Marlow, 1817.' The verses
were probably rehandled in Italy during the following year. Sources of
the text are (1) "Posthumous Poems", 1824; (2) "Poetical Works" 1839,
editions 1st and 2nd; (3) a much-tortured draft amongst the Bodleian
manuscripts, collated by Mr. C.D. Locock. For (1) and (2) Mrs. Shelley
is responsible. Our text (enlarged by about thirty lines fro the
Bodleian manuscript) follows for the most part the "Poetical Works",
1839; verbal exceptions are pointed out in the footnotes. See also the
Editor's Notes at the end of this volume, and Mr. Locock's
"Examination of Shelley Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library", Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1903.]
PART 1.
There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,
Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;
Nor any could the restless griefs unravel
Which burned within him, withering up his prime
And goading him, like fiends, from land to land. _5
Not his the load of any secret crime,
For nought of ill his heart could understand,
But pity and wild sorrow for the same;--
Not his the thirst for glory or command,
Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame; _10
Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,
And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,
Had left within his soul their dark unrest:
Nor what religion fables of the grave
Feared he,--Philosophy's accepted guest. _15
For none than he a purer heart could have,
Or that loved good more for itself alone;
Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.
What sorrow, strange, and shadowy, and unknown,
Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?-- _20
If with a human sadness he did groan,
He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;
Just, innocent, with varied learning fed;
And such a glorious consolation find
In others' joy, when all their own is dead: _25
He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,
And yet, unlike all others, it is said
That from such toil he never found relief.
Although a child of fortune and of power,
Of an ancestral name the orphan chief, _30
His soul had wedded Wisdom, and her dower
Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate
Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,
Pitying the tumult of their dark estate.--
Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse _35
The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate
Those false opinions which the harsh rich use
To blind the world they famish for their pride;
Nor did he hold from any man his dues,
But, like a steward in honest dealings tried, _40
With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise,
His riches and his cares he did divide.
Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,
What he dared do or think, though men might start,
He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes; _45
Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,
And to his many friends--all loved him well--
Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart,
If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;
If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes _50
He neither spurned nor hated--though with fell
And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,
They passed like aimless arrows from his ear--
Nor did his heart or mind its portal close
To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere _55
May comprehend within its wide array.
What sadness made that vernal spirit sere?--
He knew not. Though his life, day after day,
Was failing like an unreplenished stream,
Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay, _60
Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam
Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,
Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem
Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;
And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour, _65
Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,
Were driven within him by some secret power,
Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,
Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower
O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war _70
Is levied by the night-contending winds,
And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;--
Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends
Which wake and feed an everliving woe,--
What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds _75
A mirror found,--he knew not--none could know;
But on whoe'er might question him he turned
The light of his frank eyes, as if to show
He knew not of the grief within that burned,
But asked forbearance with a mournful look; _80
Or spoke in words from which none ever learned
The cause of his disquietude; or shook
With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:
So that his friends soon rarely undertook
To stir his secret pain without avail;-- _85
For all who knew and loved him then perceived
That there was drawn an adamantine veil
Between his heart and mind,--both unrelieved
Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.
Some said that he was mad, others believed _90
That memories of an antenatal life
Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;
And others said that such mysterious grief
From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell
On souls like his, which owned no higher law _95
Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible
By mortal fear or supernatural awe;
And others,--''Tis the shadow of a dream
Which the veiled eye of Memory never saw,
'But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream _100
Through shattered mines and caverns underground,
Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam
'Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned
In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure;
Soon its exhausted waters will have found _105
'A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,
O Athanase!--in one so good and great,
Evil or tumult cannot long endure.
So spake they: idly of another's state
Babbling vain words and fond philosophy; _110
This was their consolation; such debate
Men held with one another; nor did he,
Like one who labours with a human woe,
Decline this talk: as if its theme might be
Another, not himself, he to and fro _115
Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;
And none but those who loved him best could know
That which he knew not, how it galled and bit
His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;
For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit _120
Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold
Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend
Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;--
And so his grief remained--let it remain--untold. [1]
PART 2.
FRAGMENT 1.
Prince Athanase had one beloved friend, _125
An old, old man, with hair of silver white,
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend
With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light
Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.
He was the last whom superstition's blight _130
Had spared in Greece--the blight that cramps and blinds,--
And in his olive bower at Oenoe
Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds
A fertile island in the barren sea,
One mariner who has survived his mates _135
Many a drear month in a great ship--so he
With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates
Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:--
'The mind becomes that which it contemplates,'--
And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing _140
Their bright creations, grew like wisest men;
And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing
A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,
O sacred Hellas! many weary years
He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen _145
Was grass-grown--and the unremembered tears
Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,
Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:--
And as the lady looked with faithful grief
From her high lattice o'er the rugged path, _150
Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief
And blighting hope, who with the news of death
Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,
She saw between the chestnuts, far beneath,
An old man toiling up, a weary wight; _155
And soon within her hospitable hall
She saw his white hairs glittering in the light
Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;
And his wan visage and his withered mien,
Yet calm and gentle and majestical. _160
And Athanase, her child, who must have been
Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed
In patient silence.
FRAGMENT 2.
Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds
One amaranth glittering on the path of frost, _165
When autumn nights have nipped all weaker kinds,
Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tossed,
Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled
From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,
The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child, _170
With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore
And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.
And sweet and subtle talk they evermore,
The pupil and the master, shared; until,
Sharing that undiminishable store, _175
The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill
Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran
His teacher, and did teach with native skill
Strange truths and new to that experienced man;
Still they were friends, as few have ever been _180
Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span.
So in the caverns of the forest green,
Or on the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,
Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen
By summer woodmen; and when winter's roar _185
Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of war,
The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,
Hanging upon the peaked wave afar,
Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret gleam,
Piercing the stormy darkness, like a star _190
Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam,
Whilst all the constellations of the sky
Seemed reeling through the storm...They did but seem--
For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,
And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing, _195
And far o'er southern waves, immovably
Belted Orion hangs--warm light is flowing
From the young moon into the sunset's chasm.--
'O, summer eve! with power divine, bestowing
'On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm _200
Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness,
Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm
'Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madness,
Were lulled by thee, delightful nightingale,--
And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness,-- _205
'And the far sighings of yon piny dale
Made vocal by some wind we feel not here.--
I bear alone what nothing may avail
'To lighten--a strange load!'--No human ear
Heard this lament; but o'er the visage wan _210
Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere
Of dark emotion, a swift shadow, ran,
Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake,
Glassy and dark.--And that divine old man
Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake, _215
Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest--
And with a calm and measured voice he spake,
And, with a soft and equal pressure, pressed
That cold lean hand:--'Dost thou remember yet
When the curved moon then lingering in the west _220
'Paused, in yon waves her mighty horns to wet,
How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea?
'Tis just one year--sure thou dost not forget--
'Then Plato's words of light in thee and me
Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east, _225
For we had just then read--thy memory
'Is faithful now--the story of the feast;
And Agathon and Diotima seemed
From death and dark forgetfulness released...'
FRAGMENT 3.
And when the old man saw that on the green
Leaves of his opening ... a blight had lighted _230
He said: 'My friend, one grief alone can wean
A gentle mind from all that once delighted:--
Thou lovest, and thy secret heart is laden
With feelings which should not be unrequited.' _235
And Athanase ... then smiled, as one o'erladen
With iron chains might smile to talk (?) of bands
Twined round her lover's neck by some blithe maiden,
And said...
FRAGMENT 4.
'Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings _240
From slumber, as a sphered angel's child,
Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,
Stands up before its mother bright and mild,
Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems--
So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled _245
To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,
The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove
Waxed green--and flowers burst forth like starry beams;--
The grass in the warm sun did start and move,
And sea-buds burst under the waves serene:-- _250
How many a one, though none be near to love,
Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen
In any mirror--or the spring's young minions,
The winged leaves amid the copses green;--
How many a spirit then puts on the pinions _255
Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,
And his own steps--and over wide dominions
Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,
More fleet than storms--the wide world shrinks below,
When winter and despondency are past. _260
FRAGMENT 5.
'Twas at this season that Prince Athanase
Passed the white Alps--those eagle-baffling mountains
Slept in their shrouds of snow;--beside the ways
The waterfalls were voiceless--for their fountains
Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now, _265
Or by the curdling winds--like brazen wings
Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow--
Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung
And filled with frozen light the chasms below.
Vexed by the blast, the great pines groaned and swung _270
Under their load of [snow]--
...
...
Such as the eagle sees, when he dives down
From the gray deserts of wide air, [beheld] _275
[Prince] Athanase; and o'er his mien (?) was thrown
The shadow of that scene, field after field,
Purple and dim and wide...
FRAGMENT 6.
Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all
We can desire, O Love! and happy souls, _280
Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,
Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls
Thousands who thirst for thine ambrosial dew;--
Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls
Investeth it; and when the heavens are blue _285
Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair
The shadow of thy moving wings imbue
Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear
Beauty like some light robe;--thou ever soarest
Among the towers of men, and as soft air _290
In spring, which moves the unawakened forest,
Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,
Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest
That which from thee they should implore:--the weak
Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts _295
The strong have broken--yet where shall any seek
A garment whom thou clothest not? the darts
Of the keen winter storm, barbed with frost,
Which, from the everlasting snow that parts
The Alps from Heaven, pierce some traveller lost _300
In the wide waved interminable snow
Ungarmented,...
ANOTHER FRAGMENT (A)
Yes, often when the eyes are cold and dry,
And the lips calm, the Spirit weeps within
Tears bitterer than the blood of agony _305
Trembling in drops on the discoloured skin
Of those who love their kind and therefore perish
In ghastly torture--a sweet medicine
Of peace and sleep are tears, and quietly
Them soothe from whose uplifted eyes they fall _310
But...
ANOTHER FRAGMENT (B)
Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown,
And in their dark and liquid moisture swam,
Like the dim orb of the eclipsed moon;
Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came _315
The light from them, as when tears of delight
Double the western planet's serene flame.
NOTES:
_19 strange edition 1839; deep edition 1824.
_74 feed an Bodleian manuscript; feed on editions 1824, 1839.
_124 [1. The Author was pursuing a fuller development of the ideal
character of Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at
extreme refinement and analysis, his conceptions might be betrayed
into the assuming a morbid character. The reader will judge whether he
is a loser or gainer by this diffidence. [Shelley's Note.]
Footnote diffidence cj. Rossetti (1878); difference editions 1824,
1839.]
_154 beneath editions 1824, 1839; between Bodleian manuscript.
_165 One Bodleian manuscript edition 1839; An edition 1824.
_167 Thus thro' Bodleian manuscript (?) edition 1839; Thus had edition 1824.
_173 talk they edition 1824, Bodleian manuscript; talk now edition 1839.
_175 that edition 1839; the edition 1824.
_182 So edition 1839; And edition 1824.
_183 Or on Bodleian manuscript; Or by editions 1824, 1839.
_199 eve Bodleian manuscript edition 1839; night edition 1824.
_212 emotion, a swift editions 1824, 1839;
emotion with swift Bodleian manuscript.
_250 under edition 1824, Bodleian manuscript; beneath edition 1839.
_256 outstrips editions 1824, 1839; outrides Bodleian manuscript.
_259 Exulting, while the wide Bodleian manuscript.
_262 mountains editions 1824, 1839; crags Bodleian manuscript.
_264 fountains editions 1824, 1839; springs Bodleian manuscript.
_269 chasms Bodleian manuscript; chasm editions 1824, 1839.
_283 thine Bodleian manuscript; thy editions 1824, 1839.
_285 Investeth Bodleian manuscript; Investest editions 1824, 1839.
_289 light Bodleian manuscript; bright editions 1824, 1839.
***
ROSALIND AND HELEN.
A MODERN ECLOGUE.
[Begun at Marlow, 1817 (summer); already in the press, March, 1818;
finished at the Baths of Lucca, August, 1818; published with other
poems, as the title-piece of a slender volume, by C. & J. Ollier,
London, 1819 (spring). See "Biographical List". Sources of the text
are (1) editio princeps, 1819; (2) "Poetical Works", edition Mrs.
Shelley, 1839, editions 1st and 2nd. A fragment of the text is amongst
the Boscombe manuscripts. The poem is reprinted here from the editio
princeps; verbal alterations are recorded in the footnotes, punctual
in the Editor's Notes at the end of Volume 3.]
ADVERTISEMENT.
The story of "Rosalind and Helen" is, undoubtedly, not an attempt in
the highest style of poetry. It is in no degree calculated to excite
profound meditation; and if, by interesting the affections and amusing
the imagination, it awakens a certain ideal melancholy favourable to
the reception of more important impressions, it will produce in the
reader all that the writer experienced in the composition. I resigned
myself, as I wrote, to the impulses of the feelings which moulded the
conception of the story; and this impulse determined the pauses of a
measure, which only pretends to be regular inasmuch as it corresponds
with, and expresses, the irregularity of the imaginations which
inspired it.
I do not know which of the few scattered poems I left in England will
be selected by my bookseller to add to this collection. One ("Lines
written among the Euganean Hills".--Editor.), which I sent from Italy,
was written after a day's excursion among those lovely mountains which
surround what was once the retreat, and where is now the sepulchre, of
Petrarch. If any one is inclined to condemn the insertion of the
introductory lines, which image forth the sudden relief of a state of
deep despondency by the radiant visions disclosed by the sudden burst
of an Italian sunrise in autumn on the highest peak of those
delightful mountains, I can only offer as my excuse, that they were
not erased at the request of a dear friend, with whom added years of
intercourse only add to my apprehension of its value, and who would
have had more right than any one to complain, that she has not been
able to extinguish in me the very power of delineating sadness.
Naples, December 20, 1818.
ROSALIND, HELEN, AND HER CHILD.
SCENE. THE SHORE OF THE LAKE OF COMO.
HELEN:
Come hither, my sweet Rosalind.
'Tis long since thou and I have met;
And yet methinks it were unkind
Those moments to forget.
Come, sit by me. I see thee stand _5
By this lone lake, in this far land,
Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,
Thy sweet voice to each tone of even
United, and thine eyes replying
To the hues of yon fair heaven. _10
Come, gentle friend: wilt sit by me?
And be as thou wert wont to be
Ere we were disunited?
None doth behold us now; the power
That led us forth at this lone hour _15
Will be but ill requited
If thou depart in scorn: oh! come,
And talk of our abandoned home.
Remember, this is Italy,
And we are exiles. Talk with me _20
Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,
Barren and dark although they be,
Were dearer than these chestnut woods:
Those heathy paths, that inland stream,
And the blue mountains, shapes which seem _25
Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream:
Which that we have abandoned now,
Weighs on the heart like that remorse
Which altered friendship leaves. I seek
No more our youthful intercourse. _30
That cannot be! Rosalind, speak.
Speak to me. Leave me not.--When morn did come,
When evening fell upon our common home,
When for one hour we parted,--do not frown:
I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken: _35
But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token,
Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown,
Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me,
And not my scorned self who prayed to thee.
ROSALIND:
Is it a dream, or do I see _40
And hear frail Helen? I would flee
Thy tainting touch; but former years
Arise, and bring forbidden tears;
And my o'erburthened memory
Seeks yet its lost repose in thee. _45
I share thy crime. I cannot choose
But weep for thee: mine own strange grief
But seldom stoops to such relief:
Nor ever did I love thee less,
Though mourning o'er thy wickedness _50
Even with a sister's woe. I knew
What to the evil world is due,
And therefore sternly did refuse
To link me with the infamy
Of one so lost as Helen. Now _55
Bewildered by my dire despair,
Wondering I blush, and weep that thou
Should'st love me still,--thou only!--There,
Let us sit on that gray stone
Till our mournful talk be done. _60
HELEN:
Alas! not there; I cannot bear
The murmur of this lake to hear.
A sound from there, Rosalind dear,
Which never yet I heard elsewhere
But in our native land, recurs, _65
Even here where now we meet. It stirs
Too much of suffocating sorrow!
In the dell of yon dark chestnutwood
Is a stone seat, a solitude
Less like our own. The ghost of Peace _70
Will not desert this spot. To-morrow,
If thy kind feelings should not cease,
We may sit here.
ROSALIND:
Thou lead, my sweet,
And I will follow.
HENRY:
'Tis Fenici's seat
Where you are going? This is not the way, _75
Mamma; it leads behind those trees that grow
Close to the little river.
HELEN:
Yes: I know;
I was bewildered. Kiss me and be gay,
Dear boy: why do you sob?
HENRY:
I do not know:
But it might break any one's heart to see _80
You and the lady cry so bitterly.
HELEN:
It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home,
Henry, and play with Lilla till I come.
We only cried with joy to see each other;
We are quite merry now: Good-night.
The boy _85
Lifted a sudden look upon his mother,
And in the gleam of forced and hollow joy
Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee
Of light and unsuspecting infancy,
And whispered in her ear, 'Bring home with you _90
That sweet strange lady-friend.' Then off he flew,
But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile,
Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while,
Hiding her face, stood weeping silently.
In silence then they took the way _95
Beneath the forest's solitude.
It was a vast and antique wood,
Thro' which they took their way;
And the gray shades of evening
O'er that green wilderness did fling _100
Still deeper solitude.
Pursuing still the path that wound
The vast and knotted trees around
Through which slow shades were wandering,
To a deep lawny dell they came, _105
To a stone seat beside a spring,
O'er which the columned wood did frame
A roofless temple, like the fane
Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,
Man's early race once knelt beneath _110
The overhanging deity.
O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,
Now spangled with rare stars. The snake,
The pale snake, that with eager breath
Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake, _115
Is beaming with many a mingled hue,
Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,
When he floats on that dark and lucid flood
In the light of his own loveliness;
And the birds that in the fountain dip _120
Their plumes, with fearless fellowship
Above and round him wheel and hover.
The fitful wind is heard to stir
One solitary leaf on high;
The chirping of the grasshopper _125
Fills every pause. There is emotion
In all that dwells at noontide here;
Then, through the intricate wild wood,
A maze of life and light and motion
Is woven. But there is stillness now: _130
Gloom, and the trance of Nature now:
The snake is in his cave asleep;
The birds are on the branches dreaming:
Only the shadows creep:
Only the glow-worm is gleaming: _135
Only the owls and the nightingales
Wake in this dell when daylight fails,
And gray shades gather in the woods:
And the owls have all fled far away
In a merrier glen to hoot and play, _140
For the moon is veiled and sleeping now.
The accustomed nightingale still broods
On her accustomed bough,
But she is mute; for her false mate
Has fled and left her desolate. _145
This silent spot tradition old
Had peopled with the spectral dead.
For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold
And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told
That a hellish shape at midnight led _150
The ghost of a youth with hoary hair,
And sate on the seat beside him there,
Till a naked child came wandering by,
When the fiend would change to a lady fair!
A fearful tale! The truth was worse: _155
For here a sister and a brother
Had solemnized a monstrous curse,
Meeting in this fair solitude:
For beneath yon very sky,
Had they resigned to one another _160
Body and soul. The multitude:
Tracking them to the secret wood,
Tore limb from limb their innocent child,
And stabbed and trampled on its mother;
But the youth, for God's most holy grace, _165
A priest saved to burn in the market-place.
Duly at evening Helen came
To this lone silent spot,
From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow
So much of sympathy to borrow _170
As soothed her own dark lot.
Duly each evening from her home,
With her fair child would Helen come
To sit upon that antique seat,
While the hues of day were pale; _175
And the bright boy beside her feet
Now lay, lifting at intervals
His broad blue eyes on her;
Now, where some sudden impulse calls
Following. He was a gentle boy _180
And in all gentle sorts took joy;
Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,
With a small feather for a sail,
His fancy on that spring would float,
If some invisible breeze might stir _185
Its marble calm: and Helen smiled
Through tears of awe on the gay child,
To think that a boy as fair as he,
In years which never more may be,
By that same fount, in that same wood, _190
The like sweet fancies had pursued;
And that a mother, lost like her,
Had mournfully sate watching him.
Then all the scene was wont to swim
Through the mist of a burning tear. _195
For many months had Helen known
This scene; and now she thither turned
Her footsteps, not alone.
The friend whose falsehood she had mourned,
Sate with her on that seat of stone. _200
Silent they sate; for evening,
And the power its glimpses bring
Had, with one awful shadow, quelled
The passion of their grief. They sate
With linked hands, for unrepelled _205
Had Helen taken Rosalind's.
Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds
The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair,
Which is twined in the sultry summer air
Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre, _210
Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,
And the sound of her heart that ever beat,
As with sighs and words she breathed on her,
Unbind the knots of her friend's despair,
Till her thoughts were free to float and flow; _215
And from her labouring bosom now,
Like the bursting of a prisoned flame,
The voice of a long pent sorrow came.
ROSALIND:
I saw the dark earth fall upon
The coffin; and I saw the stone _220
Laid over him whom this cold breast
Had pillowed to his nightly rest!
Thou knowest not, thou canst not know
My agony. Oh! I could not weep:
The sources whence such blessings flow _225
Were not to be approached by me!
But I could smile, and I could sleep,
Though with a self-accusing heart.
In morning's light, in evening's gloom,
I watched,--and would not thence depart-- _230
My husband's unlamented tomb.
My children knew their sire was gone,
But when I told them,--'He is dead,'--
They laughed aloud in frantic glee,
They clapped their hands and leaped about, _235
Answering each other's ecstasy
With many a prank and merry shout.
But I sate silent and alone,
Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed.
They laughed, for he was dead: but I _240
Sate with a hard and tearless eye,
And with a heart which would deny
The secret joy it could not quell,
Low muttering o'er his loathed name;
Till from that self-contention came _245
Remorse where sin was none; a hell
Which in pure spirits should not dwell.
I'll tell thee truth. He was a man
Hard, selfish, loving only gold,
Yet full of guile; his pale eyes ran _250
With tears, which each some falsehood told,
And oft his smooth and bridled tongue
Would give the lie to his flushing cheek;
He was a coward to the strong:
He was a tyrant to the weak, _255
On whom his vengeance he would wreak:
For scorn, whose arrows search the heart,
From many a stranger's eye would dart,
And on his memory cling, and follow
His soul to its home so cold and hollow. _260
He was a tyrant to the weak,
And we were such, alas the day!
Oft, when my little ones at play,
Were in youth's natural lightness gay,
Or if they listened to some tale _265
Of travellers, or of fairy land,--
When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand
Flashed on their faces,--if they heard
Or thought they heard upon the stair
His footstep, the suspended word _270
Died on my lips: we all grew pale:
The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear
If it thought it heard its father near;
And my two wild boys would near my knee
Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully. _275
I'll tell thee truth: I loved another.
His name in my ear was ever ringing,
His form to my brain was ever clinging:
Yet if some stranger breathed that name,
My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast: _280
My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame,
My days were dim in the shadow cast
By the memory of the same!
Day and night, day and night,
He was my breath and life and light, _285
For three short years, which soon were passed.
On the fourth, my gentle mother
Led me to the shrine, to be
His sworn bride eternally.
And now we stood on the altar stair, _290
When my father came from a distant land,
And with a loud and fearful cry
Rushed between us suddenly.
I saw the stream of his thin gray hair,
I saw his lean and lifted hand, _295
And heard his words,--and live! Oh God!
Wherefore do I live?--'Hold, hold!'
He cried, 'I tell thee 'tis her brother!
Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod
Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold: _300
I am now weak, and pale, and old:
We were once dear to one another,
I and that corpse! Thou art our child!'
Then with a laugh both long and wild
The youth upon the pavement fell: _305
They found him dead! All looked on me,
The spasms of my despair to see:
But I was calm. I went away:
I was clammy-cold like clay!
I did not weep: I did not speak: _310
But day by day, week after week,
I walked about like a corpse alive!
Alas! sweet friend, you must believe
This heart is stone: it did not break.
My father lived a little while, _315
But all might see that he was dying,
He smiled with such a woeful smile!
When he was in the churchyard lying
Among the worms, we grew quite poor,
So that no one would give us bread: _320
My mother looked at me, and said
Faint words of cheer, which only meant
That she could die and be content;
So I went forth from the same church door
To another husband's bed. _325
And this was he who died at last,
When weeks and months and years had passed,
Through which I firmly did fulfil
My duties, a devoted wife,
With the stern step of vanquished will, _330
Walking beneath the night of life,
Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain
Falling for ever, pain by pain,
The very hope of death's dear rest;
Which, since the heart within my breast _335
Of natural life was dispossessed,
Its strange sustainer there had been.
When flowers were dead, and grass was green
Upon my mother's grave,--that mother
Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make _340
My wan eyes glitter for her sake,
Was my vowed task, the single care
Which once gave life to my despair,--
When she was a thing that did not stir
And the crawling worms were cradling her _345
To a sleep more deep and so more sweet
Than a baby's rocked on its nurse's knee,
I lived: a living pulse then beat
Beneath my heart that awakened me.
What was this pulse so warm and free? _350
Alas! I knew it could not be
My own dull blood: 'twas like a thought
Of liquid love, that spread and wrought
Under my bosom and in my brain,
And crept with the blood through every vein; _355
And hour by hour, day after day,
The wonder could not charm away,
But laid in sleep, my wakeful pain,
Until I knew it was a child,
And then I wept. For long, long years _360
These frozen eyes had shed no tears:
But now--'twas the season fair and mild
When April has wept itself to May:
I sate through the sweet sunny day
By my window bowered round with leaves, _365
And down my cheeks the quick tears fell
Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves,
When warm spring showers are passing o'er.
O Helen, none can ever tell
The joy it was to weep once more! _370
I wept to think how hard it were
To kill my babe, and take from it
The sense of light, and the warm air,
And my own fond and tender care,
And love and smiles; ere I knew yet _375
That these for it might, as for me,
Be the masks of a grinning mockery.
And haply, I would dream, 'twere sweet
To feed it from my faded breast,
Or mark my own heart's restless beat _380
Rock it to its untroubled rest,
And watch the growing soul beneath
Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath,
Half interrupted by calm sighs,
And search the depth of its fair eyes _385
For long departed memories!
And so I lived till that sweet load
Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed
The stream of years, and on it bore
Two shapes of gladness to my sight; _390
Two other babes, delightful more
In my lost soul's abandoned night,
Than their own country ships may be
Sailing towards wrecked mariners,
Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea. _395
For each, as it came, brought soothing tears;
And a loosening warmth, as each one lay
Sucking the sullen milk away
About my frozen heart, did play,
And weaned it, oh how painfully-- _400
As they themselves were weaned each one
From that sweet food,--even from the thirst
Of death, and nothingness, and rest,
Strange inmate of a living breast!
Which all that I had undergone _405
Of grief and shame, since she, who first
The gates of that dark refuge closed,
Came to my sight, and almost burst
The seal of that Lethean spring;
But these fair shadows interposed: _410
For all delights are shadows now!
And from my brain to my dull brow
The heavy tears gather and flow:
I cannot speak: Oh, let me weep!
The tears which fell from her wan eyes _415
Glimmered among the moonlight dew:
Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs
Their echoes in the darkness threw.
When she grew calm, she thus did keep
The tenor of her tale:
He died: _420
I know not how: he was not old,
If age be numbered by its years:
But he was bowed and bent with fears,
Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold,
Which, like fierce fever, left him weak; _425
And his strait lip and bloated cheek
Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers;
And selfish cares with barren plough,
Not age, had lined his narrow brow,
And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed _430
Upon the withering life within,
Like vipers on some poisonous weed.
Whether his ill were death or sin
None knew, until he died indeed,
And then men owned they were the same. _435
Seven days within my chamber lay
That corse, and my babes made holiday:
At last, I told them what is death:
The eldest, with a kind of shame,
Came to my knees with silent breath, _440
And sate awe-stricken at my feet;
And soon the others left their play,
And sate there too. It is unmeet
To shed on the brief flower of youth
The withering knowledge of the grave; _445
From me remorse then wrung that truth.
I could not bear the joy which gave
Too just a response to mine own.
In vain. I dared not feign a groan,
And in their artless looks I saw, _450
Between the mists of fear and awe,
That my own thought was theirs, and they
Expressed it not in words, but said,
Each in its heart, how every day
Will pass in happy work and play, _455
Now he is dead and gone away.
After the funeral all our kin
Assembled, and the will was read.
My friend, I tell thee, even the dead
Have strength, their putrid shrouds within, _460
To blast and torture. Those who live
Still fear the living, but a corse
Is merciless, and power doth give
To such pale tyrants half the spoil
He rends from those who groan and toil, _465
Because they blush not with remorse
Among their crawling worms. Behold,
I have no child! my tale grows old
With grief, and staggers: let it reach
The limits of my feeble speech, _470
And languidly at length recline
On the brink of its own grave and mine.
Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty
Among the fallen on evil days:
'Tis Crime, and Fear, and Infamy, _475
And houseless Want in frozen ways
Wandering ungarmented, and Pain,
And, worse than all, that inward stain
Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers
Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears _480
First like hot gall, then dry for ever!
And well thou knowest a mother never
Could doom her children to this ill,
And well he knew the same. The will
Imported, that if e'er again _485
I sought my children to behold,
Or in my birthplace did remain
Beyond three days, whose hours were told,
They should inherit nought: and he,
To whom next came their patrimony, _490
A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold,
Aye watched me, as the will was read,
With eyes askance, which sought to see
The secrets of my agony;
And with close lips and anxious brow _495
Stood canvassing still to and fro
The chance of my resolve, and all
The dead man's caution just did call;
For in that killing lie 'twas said--
'She is adulterous, and doth hold _500
In secret that the Christian creed
Is false, and therefore is much need
That I should have a care to save
My children from eternal fire.'
Friend, he was sheltered by the grave, _505
And therefore dared to be a liar!
In truth, the Indian on the pyre
Of her dead husband, half consumed,
As well might there be false, as I
To those abhorred embraces doomed, _510
Far worse than fire's brief agony
As to the Christian creed, if true
Or false, I never questioned it:
I took it as the vulgar do:
Nor my vexed soul had leisure yet _515
To doubt the things men say, or deem
That they are other than they seem.
All present who those crimes did hear,
In feigned or actual scorn and fear,
Men, women, children, slunk away, _520
Whispering with self-contented pride,
Which half suspects its own base lie.
I spoke to none, nor did abide,
But silently I went my way,
Nor noticed I where joyously _525
Sate my two younger babes at play,
In the court-yard through which I passed;
But went with footsteps firm and fast
Till I came to the brink of the ocean green,
And there, a woman with gray hairs, _530
Who had my mother's servant been,
Kneeling, with many tears and prayers,
Made me accept a purse of gold,
Half of the earnings she had kept
To refuge her when weak and old. _535
With woe, which never sleeps or slept,
I wander now. 'Tis a vain thought--
But on yon alp, whose snowy head
'Mid the azure air is islanded,
(We see it o'er the flood of cloud, _540
Which sunrise from its eastern caves
Drives, wrinkling into golden waves,
Hung with its precipices proud,
From that gray stone where first we met)
There now--who knows the dead feel nought?-- _545
Should be my grave; for he who yet
Is my soul's soul, once said: ''Twere sweet
'Mid stars and lightnings to abide,
And winds and lulling snows, that beat
With their soft flakes the mountain wide, _550
Where weary meteor lamps repose,
And languid storms their pinions close:
And all things strong and bright and pure,
And ever during, aye endure:
Who knows, if one were buried there, _555
But these things might our spirits make,
Amid the all-surrounding air,
Their own eternity partake?'
Then 'twas a wild and playful saying
At which I laughed, or seemed to laugh: _560
They were his words: now heed my praying,
And let them be my epitaph.
Thy memory for a term may be
My monument. Wilt remember me?
I know thou wilt, and canst forgive _565
Whilst in this erring world to live
My soul disdained not, that I thought
Its lying forms were worthy aught
And much less thee.
HELEN:
O speak not so,
But come to me and pour thy woe _570
Into this heart, full though it be,
Ay, overflowing with its own:
I thought that grief had severed me
From all beside who weep and groan;
Its likeness upon earth to be, _575
Its express image; but thou art
More wretched. Sweet! we will not part
Henceforth, if death be not division;
If so, the dead feel no contrition.
But wilt thou hear since last we parted _580
All that has left me broken hearted?
ROSALIND:
Yes, speak. The faintest stars are scarcely shorn
Of their thin beams by that delusive morn
Which sinks again in darkness, like the light
Of early love, soon lost in total night. _585
HELEN:
Alas! Italian winds are mild,
But my bosom is cold--wintry cold--
When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves,
Soft music, my poor brain is wild,
And I am weak like a nursling child, _590
Though my soul with grief is gray and old.
ROSALIND:
Weep not at thine own words, though they must make
Me weep. What is thy tale?
HELEN:
I fear 'twill shake
Thy gentle heart with tears. Thou well
Rememberest when we met no more, _595
And, though I dwelt with Lionel,
That friendless caution pierced me sore
With grief; a wound my spirit bore
Indignantly, but when he died,
With him lay dead both hope and pride. _600
Alas! all hope is buried now.
But then men dreamed the aged earth
Was labouring in that mighty birth,
Which many a poet and a sage
Has aye foreseen--the happy age _605
When truth and love shall dwell below
Among the works and ways of men;
Which on this world not power but will
Even now is wanting to fulfil.
Among mankind what thence befell _610
Of strife, how vain, is known too well;
When Liberty's dear paean fell
'Mid murderous howls. To Lionel,
Though of great wealth and lineage high,
Yet through those dungeon walls there came _615
Thy thrilling light, O Liberty!
And as the meteor's midnight flame
Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth
Flashed on his visionary youth,
And filled him, not with love, but faith, _620
And hope, and courage mute in death;
For love and life in him were twins,
Born at one birth: in every other
First life then love its course begins,
Though they be children of one mother; _625
And so through this dark world they fleet
Divided, till in death they meet;
But he loved all things ever. Then
He passed amid the strife of men,
And stood at the throne of armed power _630
Pleading for a world of woe:
Secure as one on a rock-built tower
O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro,
'Mid the passions wild of human kind
He stood, like a spirit calming them; _635
For, it was said, his words could bind
Like music the lulled crowd, and stem
That torrent of unquiet dream
Which mortals truth and reason deem,
But is revenge and fear and pride. _640
Joyous he was; and hope and peace
On all who heard him did abide,
Raining like dew from his sweet talk,
As where the evening star may walk
Along the brink of the gloomy seas, _645
Liquid mists of splendour quiver.
His very gestures touched to tears
The unpersuaded tyrant, never
So moved before: his presence stung
The torturers with their victim's pain, _650
And none knew how; and through their ears
The subtle witchcraft of his tongue
Unlocked the hearts of those who keep
Gold, the world's bond of slavery.
Men wondered, and some sneered to see _655
One sow what he could never reap:
For he is rich, they said, and young,
And might drink from the depths of luxury.
If he seeks Fame, Fame never crowned
The champion of a trampled creed: _660
If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned
'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed
Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil,
Those who would sit near Power must toil;
And such, there sitting, all may see. _665
What seeks he? All that others seek
He casts away, like a vile weed
Which the sea casts unreturningly.
That poor and hungry men should break
The laws which wreak them toil and scorn, _670
We understand; but Lionel
We know, is rich and nobly born.
So wondered they: yet all men loved
Young Lionel, though few approved;
All but the priests, whose hatred fell _675
Like the unseen blight of a smiling day,
The withering honey dew, which clings
Under the bright green buds of May,
Whilst they unfold their emerald wings:
For he made verses wild and queer _680
On the strange creeds priests hold so dear,
Because they bring them land and gold.
Of devils and saints and all such gear,
He made tales which whoso heard or read
Would laugh till he were almost dead. _685
So this grew a proverb: 'Don't get old
Till Lionel's "Banquet in Hell" you hear,
And then you will laugh yourself young again.'
So the priests hated him, and he
Repaid their hate with cheerful glee. _690
Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died,
For public hope grew pale and dim
In an altered time and tide,
And in its wasting withered him,
As a summer flower that blows too soon _695
Droops in the smile of the waning moon,
When it scatters through an April night
The frozen dews of wrinkling blight.
None now hoped more. Gray Power was seated
Safely on her ancestral throne; _700
And Faith, the Python, undefeated,
Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on
Her foul and wounded train, and men
Were trampled and deceived again,
And words and shows again could bind _705
The wailing tribes of human kind
In scorn and famine. Fire and blood
Raged round the raging multitude,
To fields remote by tyrants sent
To be the scorned instrument _710
With which they drag from mines of gore
The chains their slaves yet ever wore:
And in the streets men met each other,
And by old altars and in halls,
And smiled again at festivals. _715
But each man found in his heart's brother
Cold cheer; for all, though half deceived,
The outworn creeds again believed,
And the same round anew began,
Which the weary world yet ever ran. _720
Many then wept, not tears, but gall
Within their hearts, like drops which fall
Wasting the fountain-stone away.
And in that dark and evil day
Did all desires and thoughts, that claim _725
Men's care--ambition, friendship, fame,
Love, hope, though hope was now despair--
Indue the colours of this change,
As from the all-surrounding air
The earth takes hues obscure and strange, _730
When storm and earthquake linger there.
And so, my friend, it then befell
To many, most to Lionel,
Whose hope was like the life of youth
Within him, and when dead, became _735
A spirit of unresting flame,
Which goaded him in his distress
Over the world's vast wilderness.
Three years he left his native land,
And on the fourth, when he returned, _740
None knew him: he was stricken deep
With some disease of mind, and turned
Into aught unlike Lionel.
On him, on whom, did he pause in sleep,
Serenest smiles were wont to keep, _745
And, did he wake, a winged band
Of bright persuasions, which had fed
On his sweet lips and liquid eyes,
Kept their swift pinions half outspread
To do on men his least command; _750
On him, whom once 'twas paradise
Even to behold, now misery lay:
In his own heart 'twas merciless,
To all things else none may express
Its innocence and tenderness. _755
'Twas said that he had refuge sought
In love from his unquiet thought
In distant lands, and been deceived
By some strange show; for there were found,
Blotted with tears as those relieved _760
By their own words are wont to do,
These mournful verses on the ground,
By all who read them blotted too.
'How am I changed! my hopes were once like fire:
I loved, and I believed that life was love. _765
How am I lost! on wings of swift desire
Among Heaven's winds my spirit once did move.
I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire
My liquid sleep: I woke, and did approve
All nature to my heart, and thought to make _770
A paradise of earth for one sweet sake.
'I love, but I believe in love no more.
I feel desire, but hope not. O, from sleep
Most vainly must my weary brain implore
Its long lost flattery now: I wake to weep, _775
And sit through the long day gnawing the core
Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep,
Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure,
To my own soul its self-consuming treasure.'
He dwelt beside me near the sea; _780
And oft in evening did we meet,
When the waves, beneath the starlight, flee
O'er the yellow sands with silver feet,
And talked: our talk was sad and sweet,
Till slowly from his mien there passed _785
The desolation which it spoke;
And smiles,--as when the lightning's blast
Has parched some heaven-delighting oak,
The next spring shows leaves pale and rare,
But like flowers delicate and fair, _790
On its rent boughs,--again arrayed
His countenance in tender light:
His words grew subtile fire, which made
The air his hearers breathed delight:
His motions, like the winds, were free, _795
Which bend the bright grass gracefully,
Then fade away in circlets faint:
And winged Hope, on which upborne
His soul seemed hovering in his eyes,
Like some bright spirit newly born _800
Floating amid the sunny skies,
Sprang forth from his rent heart anew.
Yet o'er his talk, and looks, and mien,
Tempering their loveliness too keen,
Past woe its shadow backward threw, _805
Till like an exhalation, spread
From flowers half drunk with evening dew,
They did become infectious: sweet
And subtle mists of sense and thought:
Which wrapped us soon, when we might meet, _810
Almost from our own looks and aught
The wild world holds. And so, his mind
Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear:
For ever now his health declined,
Like some frail bark which cannot bear _815
The impulse of an altered wind,
Though prosperous: and my heart grew full
'Mid its new joy of a new care:
For his cheek became, not pale, but fair,
As rose-o'ershadowed lilies are; _820
And soon his deep and sunny hair,
In this alone less beautiful,
Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare.
The blood in his translucent veins
Beat, not like animal life, but love _825
Seemed now its sullen springs to move,
When life had failed, and all its pains:
And sudden sleep would seize him oft
Like death, so calm, but that a tear,
His pointed eyelashes between, _830
Would gather in the light serene
Of smiles, whose lustre bright and soft
Beneath lay undulating there.
His breath was like inconstant flame,
As eagerly it went and came; _835
And I hung o'er him in his sleep,
Till, like an image in the lake
Which rains disturb, my tears would break
The shadow of that slumber deep:
Then he would bid me not to weep, _840
And say, with flattery false, yet sweet,
That death and he could never meet,
If I would never part with him.
And so we loved, and did unite
All that in us was yet divided: _845
For when he said, that many a rite,
By men to bind but once provided,
Could not be shared by him and me,
Or they would kill him in their glee,
I shuddered, and then laughing said-- _850
'We will have rites our faith to bind,
But our church shall be the starry night,
Our altar the grassy earth outspread,
And our priest the muttering wind.'
'Twas sunset as I spoke: one star _855
Had scarce burst forth, when from afar
The ministers of misrule sent,
Seized upon Lionel, and bore
His chained limbs to a dreary tower,
In the midst of a city vast and wide. _860
For he, they said, from his mind had bent
Against their gods keen blasphemy,
For which, though his soul must roasted be
In hell's red lakes immortally,
Yet even on earth must he abide _865
The vengeance of their slaves: a trial,
I think, men call it. What avail
Are prayers and tears, which chase denial
From the fierce savage, nursed in hate?
What the knit soul that pleading and pale _870
Makes wan the quivering cheek, which late
It painted with its own delight?
We were divided. As I could,
I stilled the tingling of my blood,
And followed him in their despite, _875
As a widow follows, pale and wild,
The murderers and corse of her only child;
And when we came to the prison door
And I prayed to share his dungeon floor
With prayers which rarely have been spurned, _880
And when men drove me forth and I
Stared with blank frenzy on the sky,
A farewell look of love he turned,
Half calming me; then gazed awhile,
As if thro' that black and massy pile, _885
And thro' the crowd around him there,
And thro' the dense and murky air,
And the thronged streets, he did espy
What poets know and prophesy;
And said, with voice that made them shiver _890
And clung like music in my brain,
And which the mute walls spoke again
Prolonging it with deepened strain:
'Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,
Or the priests of the bloody faith; _895
They stand on the brink of that mighty river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death:
It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams, and rages, and swells,
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see, _900
Like wrecks in the surge of eternity.'
I dwelt beside the prison gate;
And the strange crowd that out and in
Passed, some, no doubt, with mine own fate,
Might have fretted me with its ceaseless din, _905
But the fever of care was louder within.
Soon, but too late, in penitence
Or fear, his foes released him thence:
I saw his thin and languid form,
As leaning on the jailor's arm, _910
Whose hardened eyes grew moist the while,
To meet his mute and faded smile,
And hear his words of kind farewell,
He tottered forth from his damp cell.
Many had never wept before, _915
From whom fast tears then gushed and fell:
Many will relent no more,
Who sobbed like infants then; aye, all
Who thronged the prison's stony hall,
The rulers or the slaves of law, _920
Felt with a new surprise and awe
That they were human, till strong shame
Made them again become the same.
The prison blood-hounds, huge and grim,
From human looks the infection caught, _925
And fondly crouched and fawned on him;
And men have heard the prisoners say,
Who in their rotting dungeons lay,
That from that hour, throughout one day,
The fierce despair and hate which kept _930
Their trampled bosoms almost slept:
Where, like twin vultures, they hung feeding
On each heart's wound, wide torn and bleeding,--
Because their jailors' rule, they thought,
Grew merciful, like a parent's sway. _935
I know not how, but we were free:
And Lionel sate alone with me,
As the carriage drove thro' the streets apace;
And we looked upon each other's face;
And the blood in our fingers intertwined _940
Ran like the thoughts of a single mind,
As the swift emotions went and came
Thro' the veins of each united frame.
So thro' the long long streets we passed
Of the million-peopled City vast; _945
Which is that desert, where each one
Seeks his mate yet is alone,
Beloved and sought and mourned of none;
Until the clear blue sky was seen,
And the grassy meadows bright and green, _950
And then I sunk in his embrace,
Enclosing there a mighty space
Of love: and so we travelled on
By woods, and fields of yellow flowers,
And towns, and villages, and towers, _955
Day after day of happy hours.
It was the azure time of June,
When the skies are deep in the stainless noon,
And the warm and fitful breezes shake
The fresh green leaves of the hedgerow briar, _960
And there were odours then to make
The very breath we did respire
A liquid element, whereon
Our spirits, like delighted things
That walk the air on subtle wings, _965
Floated and mingled far away,
'Mid the warm winds of the sunny day.
And when the evening star came forth
Above the curve of the new bent moon,
And light and sound ebbed from the earth, _970
Like the tide of the full and the weary sea
To the depths of its own tranquillity,
Our natures to its own repose
Did the earth's breathless sleep attune:
Like flowers, which on each other close _975
Their languid leaves when daylight's gone,
We lay, till new emotions came,
Which seemed to make each mortal frame
One soul of interwoven flame,
A life in life, a second birth _980
In worlds diviner far than earth,
Which, like two strains of harmony
That mingle in the silent sky
Then slowly disunite, passed by
And left the tenderness of tears, _985
A soft oblivion of all fears,
A sweet sleep: so we travelled on
Till we came to the home of Lionel,
Among the mountains wild and lone,
Beside the hoary western sea, _990
Which near the verge of the echoing shore
The massy forest shadowed o'er.
The ancient steward, with hair all hoar,
As we alighted, wept to see
His master changed so fearfully; _995
And the old man's sobs did waken me
From my dream of unremaining gladness;
The truth flashed o'er me like quick madness
When I looked, and saw that there was death
On Lionel: yet day by day _1000
He lived, till fear grew hope and faith,
And in my soul I dared to say,
Nothing so bright can pass away:
Death is dark, and foul, and dull,
But he is--O how beautiful! _1005
Yet day by day he grew more weak,
And his sweet voice, when he might speak,
Which ne'er was loud, became more low;
And the light which flashed through his waxen cheek
Grew faint, as the rose-like hues which flow _1010
From sunset o'er the Alpine snow:
And death seemed not like death in him,
For the spirit of life o'er every limb
Lingered, a mist of sense and thought.
When the summer wind faint odours brought _1015
From mountain flowers, even as it passed
His cheek would change, as the noonday sea
Which the dying breeze sweeps fitfully.
If but a cloud the sky o'ercast,
You might see his colour come and go, _1020
And the softest strain of music made
Sweet smiles, yet sad, arise and fade
Amid the dew of his tender eyes;
And the breath, with intermitting flow,
Made his pale lips quiver and part. _1025
You might hear the beatings of his heart,
Quick, but not strong; and with my tresses
When oft he playfully would bind
In the bowers of mossy lonelinesses
His neck, and win me so to mingle _1030
In the sweet depth of woven caresses,
And our faint limbs were intertwined,
Alas! the unquiet life did tingle
From mine own heart through every vein,
Like a captive in dreams of liberty, _1035
Who beats the walls of his stony cell.
But his, it seemed already free,
Like the shadow of fire surrounding me!
On my faint eyes and limbs did dwell
That spirit as it passed, till soon, _1040
As a frail cloud wandering o'er the moon,
Beneath its light invisible,
Is seen when it folds its gray wings again
To alight on midnight's dusky plain,
I lived and saw, and the gathering soul _1045
Passed from beneath that strong control,
And I fell on a life which was sick with fear
Of all the woe that now I bear.
Amid a bloomless myrtle wood,
On a green and sea-girt promontory, _1050
Not far from where we dwelt, there stood
In record of a sweet sad story,
An altar and a temple bright
Circled by steps, and o'er the gate
Was sculptured, 'To Fidelity;' _1055
And in the shrine an image sate,
All veiled: but there was seen the light
Of smiles which faintly could express
A mingled pain and tenderness
Through that ethereal drapery. _1060
The left hand held the head, the right--
Beyond the veil, beneath the skin,
You might see the nerves quivering within--
Was forcing the point of a barbed dart
Into its side-convulsing heart. _1065
An unskilled hand, yet one informed
With genius, had the marble warmed
With that pathetic life. This tale
It told: A dog had from the sea,
When the tide was raging fearfully, _1070
Dragged Lionel's mother, weak and pale,
Then died beside her on the sand,
And she that temple thence had planned;
But it was Lionel's own hand
Had wrought the image. Each new moon _1075
That lady did, in this lone fane,
The rites of a religion sweet,
Whose god was in her heart and brain:
The seasons' loveliest flowers were strewn
On the marble floor beneath her feet, _1080
And she brought crowns of sea-buds white
Whose odour is so sweet and faint,
And weeds, like branching chrysolite,
Woven in devices fine and quaint.
And tears from her brown eyes did stain _1085
The altar: need but look upon
That dying statue fair and wan,
If tears should cease, to weep again:
And rare Arabian odours came,
Through the myrtle copses steaming thence _1090
From the hissing frankincense,
Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam,
Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome--
That ivory dome, whose azure night
With golden stars, like heaven, was bright-- _1095
O'er the split cedar's pointed flame;
And the lady's harp would kindle there
The melody of an old air,
Softer than sleep; the villagers
Mixed their religion up with hers, _1100
And, as they listened round, shed tears.
One eve he led me to this fane:
Daylight on its last purple cloud
Was lingering gray, and soon her strain
The nightingale began; now loud, _1105
Climbing in circles the windless sky,
Now dying music; suddenly
'Tis scattered in a thousand notes,
And now to the hushed ear it floats
Like field smells known in infancy, _1110
Then failing, soothes the air again.
We sate within that temple lone,
Pavilioned round with Parian stone:
His mother's harp stood near, and oft
I had awakened music soft _1115
Amid its wires: the nightingale
Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale:
'Now drain the cup,' said Lionel,
'Which the poet-bird has crowned so well
With the wine of her bright and liquid song! _1120
Heardst thou not sweet words among
That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?
Heard'st thou not that those who die
Awake in a world of ecstasy?
That love, when limbs are interwoven, _1125
And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,
And thought, to the world's dim boundaries clinging,
And music, when one beloved is singing,
Is death? Let us drain right joyously
The cup which the sweet bird fills for me.' _1130
He paused, and to my lips he bent
His own: like spirit his words went
Through all my limbs with the speed of fire;
And his keen eyes, glittering through mine,
Filled me with the flame divine, _1135
Which in their orbs was burning far,
Like the light of an unmeasured star,
In the sky of midnight dark and deep:
Yes, 'twas his soul that did inspire
Sounds, which my skill could ne'er awaken; _1140
And first, I felt my fingers sweep
The harp, and a long quivering cry
Burst from my lips in symphony:
The dusk and solid air was shaken,
As swift and swifter the notes came _1145
From my touch, that wandered like quick flame,
And from my bosom, labouring
With some unutterable thing:
The awful sound of my own voice made
My faint lips tremble; in some mood _1150
Of wordless thought Lionel stood
So pale, that even beside his cheek
The snowy column from its shade
Caught whiteness: yet his countenance,
Raised upward, burned with radiance _1155
Of spirit-piercing joy, whose light,
Like the moon struggling through the night
Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break
With beams that might not be confined.
I paused, but soon his gestures kindled _1160
New power, as by the moving wind
The waves are lifted, and my song
To low soft notes now changed and dwindled,
And from the twinkling wires among,
My languid fingers drew and flung _1165
Circles of life-dissolving sound,
Yet faint; in aery rings they bound
My Lionel, who, as every strain
Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien
Sunk with the sound relaxedly; _1170
And slowly now he turned to me,
As slowly faded from his face
That awful joy: with looks serene
He was soon drawn to my embrace,
And my wild song then died away _1175
In murmurs: words I dare not say
We mixed, and on his lips mine fed
Till they methought felt still and cold:
'What is it with thee, love?' I said:
No word, no look, no motion! yes, _1180
There was a change, but spare to guess,
Nor let that moment's hope be told.
I looked, and knew that he was dead,
And fell, as the eagle on the plain
Falls when life deserts her brain, _1185
And the mortal lightning is veiled again.
O that I were now dead! but such
(Did they not, love, demand too much,
Those dying murmurs?) he forbade.
O that I once again were mad! _1190
And yet, dear Rosalind, not so,
For I would live to share thy woe.
Sweet boy! did I forget thee too?
Alas, we know not what we do
When we speak words.
No memory more _1195
Is in my mind of that sea shore.
Madness came on me, and a troop
Of misty shapes did seem to sit
Beside me, on a vessel's poop,
And the clear north wind was driving it. _1200
Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers,
And the stars methought grew unlike ours,
And the azure sky and the stormless sea
Made me believe that I had died,
And waked in a world, which was to me _1205
Drear hell, though heaven to all beside:
Then a dead sleep fell on my mind,
Whilst animal life many long years
Had rescued from a chasm of tears;
And when I woke, I wept to find _1210
That the same lady, bright and wise,
With silver locks and quick brown eyes,
The mother of my Lionel,
Had tended me in my distress,
And died some months before. Nor less _1215
Wonder, but far more peace and joy,
Brought in that hour my lovely boy;
For through that trance my soul had well
The impress of thy being kept;
And if I waked, or if I slept, _1220
No doubt, though memory faithless be,
Thy image ever dwelt on me;
And thus, O Lionel, like thee
Is our sweet child. 'Tis sure most strange
I knew not of so great a change, _1225
As that which gave him birth, who now
Is all the solace of my woe.
That Lionel great wealth had left
By will to me, and that of all
The ready lies of law bereft _1230
My child and me, might well befall.
But let me think not of the scorn,
Which from the meanest I have borne,
When, for my child's beloved sake,
I mixed with slaves, to vindicate _1235
The very laws themselves do make:
Let me not say scorn is my fate,
Lest I be proud, suffering the same
With those who live in deathless fame.
She ceased.--'Lo, where red morning thro' the woods _1240
Is burning o'er the dew;' said Rosalind.
And with these words they rose, and towards the flood
Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves now wind
With equal steps and fingers intertwined:
Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore _1245
Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses
Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies,
And with their shadows the clear depths below,
And where a little terrace from its bowers,
Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers, _1250
Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er
The liquid marble of the windless lake;
And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar,
Under the leaves which their green garments make,
They come: 'Tis Helen's home, and clean and white, _1255
Like one which tyrants spare on our own land
In some such solitude, its casements bright
Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun,
And even within 'twas scarce like Italy.
And when she saw how all things there were planned, _1260
As in an English home, dim memory
Disturbed poor Rosalind: she stood as one
Whose mind is where his body cannot be,
Till Helen led her where her child yet slept,
And said, 'Observe, that brow was Lionel's, _1265
Those lips were his, and so he ever kept
One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it.
You cannot see his eyes--they are two wells
Of liquid love: let us not wake him yet.'
But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept _1270
A shower of burning tears, which fell upon
His face, and so his opening lashes shone
With tears unlike his own, as he did leap
In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.
So Rosalind and Helen lived together _1275
Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet friends again,
Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather
They wandered in their youth, through sun and rain.
And after many years, for human things
Change even like the ocean and the wind, _1280
Her daughter was restored to Rosalind,
And in their circle thence some visitings
Of joy 'mid their new calm would intervene:
A lovely child she was, of looks serene,
And motions which o'er things indifferent shed _1285
The grace and gentleness from whence they came.
And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed
From the same flowers of thought, until each mind
Like springs which mingle in one flood became,
And in their union soon their parents saw _1290
The shadow of the peace denied to them.
And Rosalind, for when the living stem
Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall,
Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe
The pale survivors followed her remains _1295
Beyond the region of dissolving rains,
Up the cold mountain she was wont to call
Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice
They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,
Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun, _1300
Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,
The last, when it had sunk; and thro' the night
The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round
Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home,
Whose sad inhabitants each year would come, _1305
With willing steps climbing that rugged height,
And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound
With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's despite,
Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light:
Such flowers, as in the wintry memory bloom _1310
Of one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb.
Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,
Whose sufferings too were less, Death slowlier led
Into the peace of his dominion cold:
She died among her kindred, being old. _1315
And know, that if love die not in the dead
As in the living, none of mortal kind
Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind.
NOTES:
_63 from there]from thee edition 1819.
_366 fell]ran edition 1819.
_405-_408 See Editor's Note on this passage.
_551 Where]When edition 1819.
_572 Ay, overflowing]Aye overflowing edition 1819.
_612 dear]clear cj. Bradley.
_711 gore editions 1819, 1839. See Editor's Note.
_932 Where]When edition 1819.
_1093-_1096 See Editor's Note.
_1168-_1171] See Editor's Note.
_1209 rescue]rescued edition 1819. See Editor's Note.
NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY.
"Rosalind and Helen" was begun at Marlow, and thrown aside--till I
found it; and, at my request, it was completed. Shelley had no care
for any of his poems that did not emanate from the depths of his mind,
and develop some high or abstruse truth. When he does touch on human
life and the human heart, no pictures can be more faithful, more
delicate, more subtle, or more pathetic. He never mentioned Love but
he shed a grace borrowed from his own nature, that scarcely any other
poet has bestowed on that passion. When he spoke of it as the law of
life, which inasmuch as we rebel against we err and injure ourselves
and others, he promulgated that which he considered an irrefragable
truth. In his eyes it was the essence of our being, and all woe and
pain arose from the war made against it by selfishness, or
insensibility, or mistake. By reverting in his mind to this first
principle, he discovered the source of many emotions, and could
disclose the secrets of all hearts, and his delineations of passion
and emotion touch the finest chords of our nature.
"Rosalind and Helen" was finished during the summer of 1818, while we
were at the Baths of Lucca.
***
JULIAN AND MADDALO.
A CONVERSATION.
[Composed at Este after Shelley's first visit to Venice, 1818
(Autumn); first published in the "Posthumous Poems", London, 1824
(edition Mrs. Shelley). Shelley's original intention had been to print
the poem in Leigh Hunt's "Examiner"; but he changed his mind and, on
August 15, 1819, sent the manuscript to Hunt to be published
anonymously by Ollier. This manuscript, found by Mr. Townshend Mayer,
and by him placed in the hands of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., is
described at length in Mr. Forman's Library Edition of the poems
(volume 3 page 107). The date, 'May, 1819,' affixed to "Julian and
Maddalo" in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824, indicates the time when the
text was finally revised by Shelley. Sources of the text are (1)
"Posthumous Poems", 1824; (2) the Hunt manuscript; (3) a fair draft of
the poem amongst the Boscombe manuscripts; (4) "Poetical Works", 1839,
1st and 2nd editions (Mrs. Shelley). Our text is that of the Hunt
manuscript, as printed in Forman's Library Edition of the Poems, 1876,
volume 3, pages 103-30; variants of 1824 are indicated in the
footnotes; questions of punctuation are dealt with in the notes at the
end of the volume.]
PREFACE.
The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,
The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring,
Are saturated not--nor Love with tears.--VIRGIL'S "Gallus".
Count Maddalo is a Venetian nobleman of ancient family and of great
fortune, who, without mixing much in the society of his countrymen,
resides chiefly at his magnificent palace in that city. He is a person
of the most consummate genius, and capable, if he would direct his
energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded
country. But it is his weakness to be proud: he derives, from a
comparison of his own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects
that surround him, an intense apprehension of the nothingness of human
life. His passions and his powers are incomparably greater than those
of other men; and, instead of the latter having been employed in
curbing the former, they have mutually lent each other strength. His
ambition preys upon itself, for want of objects which it can consider
worthy of exertion. I say that Maddalo is proud, because I can find no
other word to express the concentred and impatient feelings which
consume him; but it is on his own hopes and affections only that he
seems to trample, for in social life no human being can be more
gentle, patient and unassuming than Maddalo. He is cheerful, frank and
witty. His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men
are held by it as by a spell. He has travelled much; and there is an
inexpressible charm in his relation of his adventures in different
countries.
Julian is an Englishman of good family, passionately attached to those
philosophical notions which assert the power of man over his own mind,
and the immense improvements of which, by the extinction of certain
moral superstitions, human society may be yet susceptible. Without
concealing the evil in the world he is for ever speculating how good
may be made superior. He is a complete infidel, and a scoffer at all
things reputed holy; and Maddalo takes a wicked pleasure in drawing
out his taunts against religion. What Maddalo thinks on these matters
is not exactly known. Julian, in spite of his heterodox opinions, is
conjectured by his friends to possess some good qualities. How far
this is possible the pious reader will determine. Julian is rather
serious.
Of the Maniac I can give no information. He seems, by his own account,
to have been disappointed in love. He was evidently a very cultivated
and amiable person when in his right senses. His story, told at
length, might be like many other stories of the same kind: the
unconnected exclamations of his agony will perhaps be found a
sufficient comment for the text of every heart.
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,
Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds, _5
Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,
Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,
Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,
Abandons; and no other object breaks
The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes _10
Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes
A narrow space of level sand thereon,
Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.
This ride was my delight. I love all waste
And solitary places; where we taste _15
The pleasure of believing what we see
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore
More barren than its billows; and yet more
Than all, with a remembered friend I love _20
To ride as then I rode;--for the winds drove
The living spray along the sunny air
Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth _25
Harmonising with solitude, and sent
Into our hearts aereal merriment.
So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,
But flew from brain to brain,--such glee was ours, _30
Charged with light memories of remembered hours,
None slow enough for sadness: till we came
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.
This day had been cheerful but cold, and now
The sun was sinking, and the wind also. _35
Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be
Talk interrupted with such raillery
As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn
The thoughts it would extinguish: --'twas forlorn,
Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell, _40
The devils held within the dales of Hell
Concerning God, freewill and destiny:
Of all that earth has been or yet may be,
All that vain men imagine or believe,
Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve, _45
We descanted; and I (for ever still
Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)
Argued against despondency, but pride
Made my companion take the darker side.
The sense that he was greater than his kind _50
Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind
By gazing on its own exceeding light.
Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight,
Over the horizon of the mountains;--Oh,
How beautiful is sunset, when the glow _55
Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,
Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!
Thy mountains, seas and vineyards, and the towers
Of cities they encircle!--it was ours
To stand on thee, beholding it: and then, _60
Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men
Were waiting for us with the gondola.--
As those who pause on some delightful way
Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood
Looking upon the evening, and the flood _65
Which lay between the city and the shore,
Paved with the image of the sky...the hoar
And aery Alps towards the North appeared
Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared
Between the East and West; and half the sky _70
Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry
Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew
Down the steep West into a wondrous hue
Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent
Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent _75
Among the many-folded hills: they were
Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,
As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles,
The likeness of a clump of peaked isles--
And then--as if the Earth and Sea had been _80
Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen
Those mountains towering as from waves of flame
Around the vaporous sun, from which there came
The inmost purple spirit of light, and made
Their very peaks transparent. 'Ere it fade,' _85
Said my companion, 'I will show you soon
A better station'--so, o'er the lagune
We glided; and from that funereal bark
I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark
How from their many isles, in evening's gleam, _90
Its temples and its palaces did seem
Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven.
I was about to speak, when--'We are even
Now at the point I meant,' said Maddalo,
And bade the gondolieri cease to row. _95
'Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well
If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.'
I looked, and saw between us and the sun
A building on an island; such a one
As age to age might add, for uses vile, _100
A windowless, deformed and dreary pile;
And on the top an open tower, where hung
A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung;
We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue:
The broad sun sunk behind it, and it tolled _105
In strong and black relief.--'What we behold
Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,'
Said Maddalo, 'and ever at this hour
Those who may cross the water, hear that bell
Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell, _110
To vespers.'--'As much skill as need to pray
In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they
To their stern maker,' I replied. 'O ho!
You talk as in years past,' said Maddalo.
''Tis strange men change not. You were ever still _115
Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel,
A wolf for the meek lambs--if you can't swim
Beware of Providence.' I looked on him,
But the gay smile had faded in his eye.
'And such,'--he cried, 'is our mortality, _120
And this must be the emblem and the sign
Of what should be eternal and divine!--
And like that black and dreary bell, the soul,
Hung in a heaven-illumined tower, must toll
Our thoughts and our desires to meet below _125
Round the rent heart and pray--as madmen do
For what? they know not,--till the night of death
As sunset that strange vision, severeth
Our memory from itself, and us from all
We sought and yet were baffled.' I recall _130
The sense of what he said, although I mar
The force of his expressions. The broad star
Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill,
And the black bell became invisible,
And the red tower looked gray, and all between _135
The churches, ships and palaces were seen
Huddled in gloom;--into the purple sea
The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.
We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola
Conveyed me to my lodging by the way. _140
The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim:
Ere Maddalo arose, I called on him,
And whilst I waited with his child I played;
A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made;
A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being, _145
Graceful without design and unforeseeing,
With eyes--Oh speak not of her eyes!--which seem
Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam
With such deep meaning, as we never see
But in the human countenance: with me _150
She was a special favourite: I had nursed
Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first
To this bleak world; and she yet seemed to know
On second sight her ancient playfellow,
Less changed than she was by six months or so; _155
For after her first shyness was worn out
We sate there, rolling billiard balls about,
When the Count entered. Salutations past--
'The word you spoke last night might well have cast
A darkness on my spirit--if man be _160
The passive thing you say, I should not see
Much harm in the religions and old saws
(Tho' I may never own such leaden laws)
Which break a teachless nature to the yoke:
Mine is another faith.'--thus much I spoke _165
And noting he replied not, added: 'See
This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free;
She spends a happy time with little care,
While we to such sick thoughts subjected are
As came on you last night. It is our will _170
That thus enchains us to permitted ill--
We might be otherwise--we might be all
We dream of happy, high, majestical.
Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek,
But in our mind? and if we were not weak _175
Should we be less in deed than in desire?'
'Ay, if we were not weak--and we aspire
How vainly to be strong!' said Maddalo:
'You talk Utopia.' 'It remains to know,'
I then rejoined, 'and those who try may find _180
How strong the chains are which our spirit bind;
Brittle perchance as straw...We are assured
Much may be conquered, much may be endured,
Of what degrades and crushes us. We know
That we have power over ourselves to do _185
And suffer--what, we know not till we try;
But something nobler than to live and die--
So taught those kings of old philosophy
Who reigned, before Religion made men blind;
And those who suffer with their suffering kind _190
Yet feel their faith, religion.' 'My dear friend,'
Said Maddalo, 'my judgement will not bend
To your opinion, though I think you might
Make such a system refutation-tight
As far as words go. I knew one like you _195
Who to this city came some months ago,
With whom I argued in this sort, and he
Is now gone mad,--and so he answered me,--
Poor fellow! but if you would like to go,
We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show _200
How vain are such aspiring theories.'
'I hope to prove the induction otherwise,
And that a want of that true theory, still,
Which seeks a "soul of goodness" in things ill
Or in himself or others, has thus bowed _205
His being--there are some by nature proud,
Who patient in all else demand but this--
To love and be beloved with gentleness;
And being scorned, what wonder if they die
Some living death? this is not destiny _210
But man's own wilful ill.'
As thus I spoke
Servants announced the gondola, and we
Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea
Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands.
We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands, _215
Fierce yells and howlings and lamentings keen,
And laughter where complaint had merrier been,
Moans, shrieks, and curses, and blaspheming prayers
Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs
Into an old courtyard. I heard on high, _220
Then, fragments of most touching melody,
But looking up saw not the singer there--
Through the black bars in the tempestuous air
I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing,
Long tangled locks flung wildly forth, and flowing, _225
Of those who on a sudden were beguiled
Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled
Hearing sweet sounds. Then I: 'Methinks there were
A cure of these with patience and kind care,
If music can thus move...but what is he _230
Whom we seek here?' 'Of his sad history
I know but this,' said Maddalo: 'he came
To Venice a dejected man, and fame
Said he was wealthy, or he had been so;
Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe; _235
But he was ever talking in such sort
As you do--far more sadly--he seemed hurt,
Even as a man with his peculiar wrong,
To hear but of the oppression of the strong,
Or those absurd deceits (I think with you _240
In some respects, you know) which carry through
The excellent impostors of this earth
When they outface detection--he had worth,
Poor fellow! but a humorist in his way'--
'Alas, what drove him mad?' 'I cannot say: _245
A lady came with him from France, and when
She left him and returned, he wandered then
About yon lonely isles of desert sand
Till he grew wild--he had no cash or land
Remaining,--the police had brought him here-- _250
Some fancy took him and he would not bear
Removal; so I fitted up for him
Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim,
And sent him busts and books and urns for flowers,
Which had adorned his life in happier hours, _255
And instruments of music--you may guess
A stranger could do little more or less
For one so gentle and unfortunate:
And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight
From madmen's chains, and make this Hell appear _260
A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.'--
'Nay, this was kind of you--he had no claim,
As the world says'--'None--but the very same
Which I on all mankind were I as he
Fallen to such deep reverse;--his melody _265
Is interrupted--now we hear the din
Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin;
Let us now visit him; after this strain
He ever communes with himself again,
And sees nor hears not any.' Having said _270
These words, we called the keeper, and he led
To an apartment opening on the sea--
There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully
Near a piano, his pale fingers twined
One with the other, and the ooze and wind _275
Rushed through an open casement, and did sway
His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray;
His head was leaning on a music book,
And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook;
His lips were pressed against a folded leaf _280
In hue too beautiful for health, and grief
Smiled in their motions as they lay apart--
As one who wrought from his own fervid heart
The eloquence of passion, soon he raised
His sad meek face and eyes lustrous and glazed _285
And spoke--sometimes as one who wrote, and thought
His words might move some heart that heeded not,
If sent to distant lands: and then as one
Reproaching deeds never to be undone
With wondering self-compassion; then his speech _290
Was lost in grief, and then his words came each
Unmodulated, cold, expressionless,--
But that from one jarred accent you might guess
It was despair made them so uniform:
And all the while the loud and gusty storm _295
Hissed through the window, and we stood behind
Stealing his accents from the envious wind
Unseen. I yet remember what he said
Distinctly: such impression his words made.
'Month after month,' he cried, 'to bear this load _300
And as a jade urged by the whip and goad
To drag life on, which like a heavy chain
Lengthens behind with many a link of pain!--
And not to speak my grief--O, not to dare
To give a human voice to my despair, _305
But live, and move, and, wretched thing! smile on
As if I never went aside to groan,
And wear this mask of falsehood even to those
Who are most dear--not for my own repose--
Alas! no scorn or pain or hate could be _310
So heavy as that falsehood is to me--
But that I cannot bear more altered faces
Than needs must be, more changed and cold embraces,
More misery, disappointment, and mistrust
To own me for their father...Would the dust _315
Were covered in upon my body now!
That the life ceased to toil within my brow!
And then these thoughts would at the least be fled;
Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead.
'What Power delights to torture us? I know _320
That to myself I do not wholly owe
What now I suffer, though in part I may.
Alas! none strewed sweet flowers upon the way
Where wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain
My shadow, which will leave me not again-- _325
If I have erred, there was no joy in error,
But pain and insult and unrest and terror;
I have not as some do, bought penitence
With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet offence,
For then,--if love and tenderness and truth _330
Had overlived hope's momentary youth,
My creed should have redeemed me from repenting;
But loathed scorn and outrage unrelenting
Met love excited by far other seeming
Until the end was gained...as one from dreaming _335
Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state
Such as it is.--
'O Thou, my spirit's mate
Who, for thou art compassionate and wise,
Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes
If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see-- _340
My secret groans must be unheard by thee,
Thou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood to know
Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe.
'Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed
In friendship, let me not that name degrade _345
By placing on your hearts the secret load
Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road
To peace and that is truth, which follow ye!
Love sometimes leads astray to misery.
Yet think not though subdued--and I may well _350
Say that I am subdued--that the full Hell
Within me would infect the untainted breast
Of sacred nature with its own unrest;
As some perverted beings think to find
In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind _355
Which scorn or hate have wounded--O how vain!
The dagger heals not but may rend again...
Believe that I am ever still the same
In creed as in resolve, and what may tame
My heart, must leave the understanding free, _360
Or all would sink in this keen agony--
Nor dream that I will join the vulgar cry;
Or with my silence sanction tyranny;
Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain
In any madness which the world calls gain, _365
Ambition or revenge or thoughts as stern
As those which make me what I am; or turn
To avarice or misanthropy or lust...
Heap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust!
Till then the dungeon may demand its prey, _370
And Poverty and Shame may meet and say--
Halting beside me on the public way--
"That love-devoted youth is ours--let's sit
Beside him--he may live some six months yet."
Or the red scaffold, as our country bends, _375
May ask some willing victim; or ye friends
May fall under some sorrow which this heart
Or hand may share or vanquish or avert;
I am prepared--in truth, with no proud joy--
To do or suffer aught, as when a boy _380
I did devote to justice and to love
My nature, worthless now!...
'I must remove
A veil from my pent mind. 'Tis torn aside!
O, pallid as Death's dedicated bride,
Thou mockery which art sitting by my side, _385
Am I not wan like thee? at the grave's call
I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball
To greet the ghastly paramour, for whom
Thou hast deserted me...and made the tomb
Thy bridal bed...But I beside your feet _390
Will lie and watch ye from my winding-sheet--
Thus...wide awake tho' dead...yet stay, O stay!
Go not so soon--I know not what I say--
Hear but my reasons...I am mad, I fear,
My fancy is o'erwrought...thou art not here... _395
Pale art thou, 'tis most true...but thou art gone,
Thy work is finished...I am left alone!--
...
'Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast
Which, like a serpent, thou envenomest
As in repayment of the warmth it lent? _400
Didst thou not seek me for thine own content?
Did not thy love awaken mine? I thought
That thou wert she who said, "You kiss me not
Ever, I fear you do not love me now"--
In truth I loved even to my overthrow _405
Her, who would fain forget these words: but they
Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away.
...
'You say that I am proud--that when I speak
My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break
The spirit it expresses...Never one _410
Humbled himself before, as I have done!
Even the instinctive worm on which we tread
Turns, though it wound not--then with prostrate head
Sinks in the dusk and writhes like me--and dies?
No: wears a living death of agonies! _415
As the slow shadows of the pointed grass
Mark the eternal periods, his pangs pass,
Slow, ever-moving,--making moments be
As mine seem--each an immortality!
...
'That you had never seen me--never heard _420
My voice, and more than all had ne'er endured
The deep pollution of my loathed embrace--
That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face--
That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out
The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root _425
With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne'er
Our hearts had for a moment mingled there
To disunite in horror--these were not
With thee, like some suppressed and hideous thought
Which flits athwart our musings, but can find _430
No rest within a pure and gentle mind...
Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,
And searedst my memory o'er them,--for I heard
And can forget not...they were ministered
One after one, those curses. Mix them up _435
Like self-destroying poisons in one cup,
And they will make one blessing which thou ne'er
Didst imprecate for, on me,--death.
...
'It were
A cruel punishment for one most cruel,
If such can love, to make that love the fuel _440
Of the mind's hell; hate, scorn, remorse, despair:
But ME--whose heart a stranger's tear might wear
As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone,
Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
For woes which others hear not, and could see _445
The absent with the glance of phantasy,
And with the poor and trampled sit and weep,
Following the captive to his dungeon deep;
ME--who am as a nerve o'er which do creep
The else unfelt oppressions of this earth, _450
And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,
When all beside was cold--that thou on me
Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony--
Such curses are from lips once eloquent
With love's too partial praise--let none relent _455
Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name
Henceforth, if an example for the same
They seek...for thou on me lookedst so, and so--
And didst speak thus...and thus...I live to show
How much men bear and die not!
...
'Thou wilt tell _460
With the grimace of hate, how horrible
It was to meet my love when thine grew less;
Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address
Such features to love's work...this taunt, though true,
(For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue _465
Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship)
Shall not be thy defence...for since thy lip
Met mine first, years long past, since thine eye kindled
With soft fire under mine, I have not dwindled
Nor changed in mind or body, or in aught _470
But as love changes what it loveth not
After long years and many trials.
'How vain
Are words! I thought never to speak again,
Not even in secret,--not to mine own heart--
But from my lips the unwilling accents start, _475
And from my pen the words flow as I write,
Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears...my sight
Is dim to see that charactered in vain
On this unfeeling leaf which burns the brain
And eats into it...blotting all things fair _480
And wise and good which time had written there.
'Those who inflict must suffer, for they see
The work of their own hearts, and this must be
Our chastisement or recompense--O child!
I would that thine were like to be more mild _485
For both our wretched sakes...for thine the most
Who feelest already all that thou hast lost
Without the power to wish it thine again;
And as slow years pass, a funereal train
Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend _490
Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend
No thought on my dead memory?
...
'Alas, love!
Fear me not...against thee I would not move
A finger in despite. Do I not live
That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve? _495
I give thee tears for scorn and love for hate;
And that thy lot may be less desolate
Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain
From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain.
Then, when thou speakest of me, never say _500
"He could forgive not." Here I cast away
All human passions, all revenge, all pride;
I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide
Under these words, like embers, every spark
Of that which has consumed me--quick and dark _505
The grave is yawning...as its roof shall cover
My limbs with dust and worms under and over
So let Oblivion hide this grief...the air
Closes upon my accents, as despair
Upon my heart--let death upon despair!' _510
He ceased, and overcome leant back awhile,
Then rising, with a melancholy smile
Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept
A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept
And muttered some familiar name, and we _515
Wept without shame in his society.
I think I never was impressed so much;
The man who were not, must have lacked a touch
Of human nature...then we lingered not,
Although our argument was quite forgot, _520
But calling the attendants, went to dine
At Maddalo's; yet neither cheer nor wine
Could give us spirits, for we talked of him
And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim;
And we agreed his was some dreadful ill _525
Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable,
By a dear friend; some deadly change in love
Of one vowed deeply which he dreamed not of;
For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot
Of falsehood on his mind which flourished not _530
But in the light of all-beholding truth;
And having stamped this canker on his youth
She had abandoned him--and how much more
Might be his woe, we guessed not--he had store
Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess _535
From his nice habits and his gentleness;
These were now lost...it were a grief indeed
If he had changed one unsustaining reed
For all that such a man might else adorn.
The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn; _540
For the wild language of his grief was high,
Such as in measure were called poetry;
And I remember one remark which then
Maddalo made. He said: 'Most wretched men
Are cradled into poetry by wrong, _545
They learn in suffering what they teach in song.'