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[handwritten: PB Shelley]
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Riverside College Classics
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SELECTED POEMS OF
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
BY
GEORGE HERBERT CLARKE, M.A.
Formerly Professor of English in the University of the South
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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO SAN FRANCISCO
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
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COPYRIGHT 1907 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Printed in the U.S.A.
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To my Father
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PREFACE
No one can attempt to deal with Shelley in editorial fashion without being conscious at almost every step of the great value of Professor Dowden’s biography of the poet, and of much of the other material mentioned in the Bibliography. I have tried, however, in preparing the Introduction and Notes, to maintain that independence of judgment which should characterize all Shelleyans, and to produce a text suitable indeed for student use, and conforming to classroom requirements, yet based on other than formally pedagogic principles. Literature, it seems, is not getting itself taught in our higher schools as vitally as we would like, despite immense critical apparatus. Is it because we are too judicial? Is it because a poem, like a person, invites affection before it yields confidence?
G.H.C.
MACON, GEORGIA, December, 1906.
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CONTENTS
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[page vii]
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INTRODUCTION
THE LIFE OF SHELLEY
EVERY life is a symbol as well as a history, — a symbol, perhaps it were truer to say, because it is a history. The life of Shelley as a man, exceptional as it appears, is at one with the genius of Shelley as a poet, — it was impulsive; generously ardent; filled with the scorn of scorn, the love of love; eager and anxious to establish universal justice, freedom, and happiness; but pursuing too characteristically the dehumanized method of importing goodness into men rather than that of winning men into goodness. The course of his life moved from the tense yet dark mood of Paracelsus, exultant in denial and challenge, to the high affirmations of Aprile, —
“. . . the over-radiant star too mad
To drink the life-springs.”
Had he lived, it is hardly possible that he would have failed to become at last
“. . . a third
And better-tempered spirit, warned by both.”
On the fourth day of August, 1792, their first child was born to Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex. He was called Percy, because that was a favourite name in the Shelley family, ancient in Sussex; and Bysshe because that was the name of his paternal grandfather, a handsome, wealthy, and positive old gentleman, eventually made a baronet, who had been twice married, first to Miss Mary Catherine Michell, a Sussex heiress, who died after eight years of union, at the age of twenty-six; and again to Miss Elizabeth Jane Sidney, [unnumbered page] another heiress, this time of Kent, and a descendant of Sir Philip. It is interesting to note that, according to Medwin, the impetuous Sir Bysshe eloped in each instance, and also that he was usually on bad terms with his son Timothy, one of three children — the others being girls — born in the first family.
Timothy Shelley was a good-hearted rural Englishman of social importance and limited intelligence. He believed in the things that it was proper and dignified to believe in, and he expected equal conformity from his fellows, perhaps rather more of it from his inferiors. He had attended University College, Oxford, and had got himself duly elected Member of Parliament. He did his duty by the Church, the State, and the family, and was hardly less willing than his father to play Sir Oracle. In October, 1791, he married Miss Elizabeth Pilfold, of Effingham, Surrey, a somewhat unfeminine yet attractive and gracious woman. She became the mother of seven children, — two boys, Percy Bysshe and John, separated in age by fourteen years; and five girls, Elizabeth, Mary, two Hellens — one of whom died very early — and Margaret. Their adventurous and well-favoured brother was adored by the little maidens, who, during his stay at home, “followed my leader” in all sorts of thrilling excursions about house and garden. Quiet old Field Place spelled to these half-quaking explorers a land of mystery and portent, of golden enchantment, — a background for the most moving legends, told fearsomely by Bysshe to his awed companions. He was fond, too, like other imaginative children, of inventing remarkable but shadowy situations in which he had played a leading part, or again, he would detach himself from all, and go brooding about alone in the moonlight, save for a watchful servant in following discreetly at a distance.
After six secluded years of infancy and boyhood had passed, Bysshe became a pupil of the Rev. Mr. Edwards, of the village of Warnham, hard by. The four succeeding years [page x] he spent chiefly in studying Latin and developing his strength by somewhat irregular exercise. At ten he was entered at Sion House Academy, Isleworth, near Brentford. Here he found himself one of some sixty pupils, ruled by a Dr. Greenlaw, “a vigorous old Scotch divine,” writes Professor Dowden, “choleric and hard-headed, but not unkindly…. With spectacles pushed high above his dark and bushy eyebrows, the dominie would stimulate the laggard construers. Frequent dips into his mull of Scotch snuff helped him to sustain the wear and tear of the class-room.” Shelley’s slight, lithe, graceful figure was at once felt by the hoi polloi to present an irritatingly marked deviation from the norm, and they soon found that this was true also of his manner. His advent, accordingly, provoked roughness, persecution even, the more readily that the fagging system covered a multitude of petty tyrannies. Thomas Medwin, a cousin and biographer of Shelley, who was also a pupil at Sion House, describes him as “a strange and unsocial being.” Preoccupied as he was with his visions and imaginings, he gave only a constrained attention to either his schoolmates or his tasks, yet he advanced steadily in learning, and was transferred at the age of twelve to Eton. Meantime his taste for the eerie as steadily asserted itself: he read avidly the sixpenny dreadfuls, and was particularly charmed with the gothic romances of Mrs. Anne Radcliffe. He was also significantly interested in physical and chemical experiments.
Shelley must have passed from Sion House with scant regret, for he seems there to have been an all too willing Ishmael, save for a single friend; yet at Eton his situation was hardly improved. Though he found more friends of a sort, he found also more persecutors among both masters and pupils, and he was so often thrashed that he became dully apathetic to the mere bodily pain. Dr. Goodall, the head-master, a man of solid worth, was seconded in the Lower School by Dr. Keate, powerful with book and birch alike. Shelley entered the Fourth Form under Keate’s jurisdiction, [page xi] and resided first with a Mr. Hexton as his tutor and mentor, and thereafter with George Bethell, renowned in the history of Eton for his dulness and his good-nature. But neither Keate’s severity nor Bethell’s absurdity moved Shelley much. He still lived aloof for the most part, from the ordinary associations and requirements of school citizenship. So indifferent was he to the excitements of his five hundred fellows, and so fiercely resentful, not a physical hurt, but of injustice and the spirit of cruelty, that the came to be known as “Mad Shelley,” and was baited time after time for their amusement by a crew of thoughtless tormentors. When pushed to the limit of his patience, says one, his eyes would “flash like a tiger’s, his cheeks grow pale as death, his limbs quiver.” Such boys as he did attract, however, — though few but one Halliday appear to have had an instinctive understanding of him, — loved him for his unswerving honour, his kindness, and his generosity. With Halliday, Shelley took many a pleasant ramble in the fields and woods about Eton, pouring out his young soul in fits and starts of hope and enthusiasm. “He certainly was not happy at Eton,” wrote his friend in later years, “for his was a disposition that needed especial personal superintendence, to watch and cherish and direct all his noble aspirations, and the remarkable tenderness of his heart. He had great moral courage, and feared nothing but what was base and false and low.” From the same source we learn that his lessons “were child’s play to him.” He moved through the formal curriculum with ease, and chose to add to his school work outside the reading of such classical authors as Lucretius and Pliny, with Franklin, Condorcet, and his particularly Godwin — his future father-in-law — in his Political Justice. His fascinated interest in science, too, increased, and he ran not a few risks — both physical and magisterial — in his ardour for experiment. One likes to think of Shelley’s spiritual kinship with Shakespeare’s Ariel, creature of air and fire. Certainly, the young Etonian could have [page xii] found no better image of his own relentless adventurings than the balloons1 of fire he so often gave to the darkness, cleaving the gloom of night and steering their uncertain course into the company of moon and stars. Shelley’s science was a matter of lore and wonder rather than of knowledge and precision. This attitude, already characteristic, was encouraged by the boy’s contact with Dr. Lind, a retired physician living close at hand in Windsor, whose memory Shelley always regarded with a lively gratitude, and who is immortalized in The Revolt of Islam as the friendly hermit, and in Prince Athanase as Zonoras, —
“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.”
Professor Dowden, in his admirably full and discriminating biography, speaks of two “shining moments” in Shelley’s youth, which were to the boy as moments of revolution. His experiences at Sion House led him to take careful thought concerning individual and popular unhappiness, its causes and conditions, and finally to vow in youthful yet serious fashion that he would never oppress another nor himself submit to tyranny. In the dedication of The Revolt of Islam — originally Loan of Cyntha — to Mary Shelley he writes: —
“I do remember well the hour which burst
My spirit’s sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,
When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,
And wept, I knew not why: until there rose
From the near schoolroom voices that, alas!
Were but one echo from a world of woes —
The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.
“And then I clasped my hands and looked around;
But none was near to mock my streaming eyes
1 Shelley was fond, too, of sailing miniature paper boats. Cf. Rosalind and Helen, 11. 181-187.
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Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground.
So, without shame, I spake: ‘I will be wise,
And just and free, and mild, if in me lies
Such power, for I grow weary to behold
The selfish and the strong will tyrannize
Without reproach or check.’ I then controlled
My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.”
If in the first moment Shelley felt his conscience quickened and dedicated to the cause of liberty, so in the second his imagination sought deliverance from the bondage of the merely horrible and sinister, and began instead to seek pure beauty and pursue it. This moment, too, he has fixed for us in his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty: —
“While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed.
I was not heard, I saw them not;
When, musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden thy shadow fell on me: —
I shrieked and clasped my hands in ecstasy!
“I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine; have I not kept the vow?
. . . . . . . . . . .
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express.”
These passages were conceived by a saner mind and written with a steadier hand than were the rather prolific effusions of Shelley’s earlier youth, productions which began first at Eton to court pen and paper. Several fragmentary poems belong to this time, as also the extravagant romance, Zastrozzi, written probably in collaboration with [page xiv] Harriet Grove. Shelley’s cousin and sweetheart. Indeed, collaboration was something of a habit with the boy, not, it would seem, through any lack of confidence in his own creative powers, — for young Shelley was much less disturbed than his riper self by doubts concerning his own works, — but rather as the co-operative impulse of a spirit willing to share its enthusiasms with kindred spirits. He formed literary partnerships with his sisters Elizabeth and Hellen, with Medwin, and possibly also with Edward Graham, a friend of 1810-1811. Graham may have been associated with the “Victor and Cazire” project, the appearance of a volume of poems that were wild and whirling indeed, but of which all the copies — save one, since reprinted — were apparently destroyed or suppressed. More probably, however, Elizabeth was the “Cazire” of the partnership. Medwin helped to shape the beginnings of a romantic Nightmare, and a poem about that persevering pilgrim, the Wandering Jew. Apart from their biographical interest hardly one of these works is worth naming.
Complacent Mr. Timothy Shelley had no manner of doubt that his son — peculiar in some respects though he seemed — would do about as well as at Oxford as he himself had done, and the two travelled up thither amicably to arrange for Bysshe’s entrance upon residence in University College at the beginning of the Michaelmas term of 1810. Mr. Timothy was graciously paternal, and even went so far as to introduce his son to a local printer named Slatter, with the suggestion that this man should indulge the youth “in his printing freaks.” Rooms were secured, money matters adjusted, advice freely given, and the Polonius of Field Place departed in high good-humour with himself and all the world. He would have been interested, perhaps, to know what was passing in Bysshe’s mind as he looked about him at Oxford, deciding what he liked and what he did not like. He liked seclusion, the libraries, the natural beauty of the place; he did not like its sleepiness, its conservatism, [page xv] its orderly academic routine. One is strikingly reminded of Bacon’s indictment of the Cambridge of his day: “In the universities, all things are found opposite to the advancement of the sciences; for the readings and exercises are here so managed that it cannot easily come into any one’s mind to think of things out of the common road….For the studies of men in such places are confined, and pinned down to the writings of certain authors: from which, if any man happens to differ, he is presently represented as a disturber and innovator.” Shelley’s mind — alert, original, though always in certain respects untrained — thought of many things out of the common road. His prime Oxford “innovation,” it is true, was not carefully conceived or tactfully presented. It was a piece of folly for which he paid dear, but it was not dishonourable, nor was it even “dangerous” in any vital sense. Soon after his arrival he made the acquaintance casually of a fellow-freshman, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a well-born and worldly-wise young man of considerable cultivation, easy opinions, and a half-cynical, half-amused, interest in the people he met and in the problems he heard them discuss and on occasion discussed with them. Ten years later Shelley thus described him, in his Letter to Maria Gisborne: —
“I cannot express
His virtues, though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades, the gate
Within which they inhabit; — of his wit
And wisdom, you’ll cry out when you are bit.
He is a pearl within an oyster shell,
One of the richest of the deep.”
Hogg was strongly attracted by Shelley’s looks, sincerity, and enthusiasms. The two met night after night in each other’s rooms, and debated questions of literature, science, and history, on Shelley’s side with fervour, on Hogg’s with growing interest in this rara avis, an interest almost wonder. Hogg deeply respected Shelley’s power of imagination and purity of [page xvi] character, though he allowed himself to be entertained by his new friend’s extravagances of manner and statement. He has left us in his Life of Shelley a detailed and picturesque account of the poet as he knew him during their six months’ comradeship at college. He describes Shelley’s figure as “slight and fragile, and yet his bones and joints were large and strong. He was tall, but he stooped so much that he seemed of a low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made according to the most approved mode of the day; but they were tumbled, rumpled, and unbrushed. His gestures were abrupt, and sometimes violent, occasionally even awkward, yet more frequently gentle and graceful….His features, his whole face and particularly his head, were, in fact, unusually small; yet the last appeared of a remarkable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and in fits of absence and in the agonies (if I may use the word) of anxious thought, he often rubbed it fiercely with his hands, or passed his fingers quickly through his locks unconsciously, so that it was singularly wild and rough.1 . . . His features were not symmetrical (the mouth, perhaps, excepted), yet was the effect of the whole extremely powerful. They breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with in any other countenance. Nor was the moral expression less beautiful than the intellectual; for there was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and especially (though this will surprise many) that air of profound religious veneration that characterizes the best works, and chiefly the frescoes (and into these they infused their whole souls) of the great masters of Florence and of Rome.” Only his voice did Hogg find displeasing, which seemed to him at first “intolerably shrill, harsh and discordant.” Other friends and contemporaries speak also of this defect, but generally agree that it was observable only in moments of high excitement, and that Shelley’s normal tones were winsome enough.
The two friends not only read and talked together, but
1 Cf. “his scattered hair.” — Alastor, 1.248
[page xvii]
Hogg would incredulously watch Shelley performing his always miraculous chemical experiments, or they would tramp about the countryside — Shelley seemed rather to float — and meet with adventures more or less exciting. Shelley cared little for the studies imposed upon him, and pursued his intellectual investigations with a free mind and in entirely free manner within the privacy of his chambers, reading Plutarch, Plato, Hume, Locke, the Greek tragedies, Shakespeare, and Landor. He continued also to write, publishing at his own expense another Etonian romance, — and failure, — St. Irvyne, or The Rosicrusian; some political verse; and a volume of miscellaneous poetry containing burlesques that pleased undergraduate taste, printed together with some more serious work produced spasmodically. That Shelley could have been willing at this date to publish, though anonymously, his crude and overstrained tale, and to push its fortunes with enthusiasm, attests perhaps better than any other single fact the condition of his critical judgment during the Oxford days. The poet in him must surely have been protestant the while! “I am aware,” he wrote to Stockdale the publisher, after reaction began to be felt, “of the imprudence of publishing a book so ill-digested as St. Irvyne.” Stockdale, for his part, from whatever motive, stirred up trouble for Shelley at home by calling his father’s attention to the unsoundness of his views and attributing this to his continued association with Hogg. Parental — chiefly paternal — intervention followed, only to confirm Shelley in what candour must designate as the heroic of the misunderstood. He vowed excitedly to defend his principles to the last, and to remain loyal to his friend at all hazards. His elders did not treat him with the wisdom born of humour and sympathy; they did not know the way to his heart, and had they known it they would have found that heart at the moment out of tune and harsh. Harriet Grove’s affection was not proof against her alarm at Shelley’s reputed heresies and his own exaggerated declarations of belief and unbelief. [page xviii] She both loved and dreaded the strange youth; prudence prevailed, and in 1811 she married “a clod of earth,” as Shelley described him, a Mr. Helyar. The boy felt the blow keenly, philosophized at length concerning it, and in a letter to Hogg written from Field Place during the Christmas vacation anathematized Intolerance, the cause of all his woes, He now planned that Hogg, should marry Elizabeth, his elder sister, who was affectionately consoling him at home. At least his friend should be happy.
Most, perhaps all, of this coil had been avoided if the prime actor therein had been less intense in behaviour, and his friends more willing to rely on his personal goodness and root docility. It is far from the mark to allow that Shelley was at any time a deliberate atheist. No man, it is safe to say, has felt more directly and continually than did he the existence of a beneficent Spirit. As an undergraduate, it is true, he was affected in his thought by the dogmas of materialism, but at no time ceased to postulate the being of an ultimate Intelligence and Love. It would be difficult to find in pure literature a more eager hunger and thirst for holiness and the Source of holiness than appears in Shelley’s Adonais, The Cenci, Hellas, The Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Unbound, not to speak of his just and reverent Essay on Christianity. With what he conceived to be the inherent taint of ecclesiasticism, indeed, he was constantly at war, like Chaucer, Milton, Ruskin, Carlyle, and Browning, in their diverse ways; though, unlike them, he attacked not merely the taint, but also, and with fierce energy, the entire churchly system. In this regard he betrayed unusual zest, as witness the implications of character in cardinal and pope in The Cenci, and the vivid pictures of the Prometheus, when compared with Chaucer’s good-humoured revelations in The Canterbury Tales, and Browning’s half-friendly condemnations of Blougram and his kind. Shelley unfortunately tended to identify always priesthood with tradition, the church with uncompromising [page xix] and persecuting conservatism. There is in his work no “povre Persoun of a toun,” no Innocent XII. He did not habitually see both sides, though in one of his more pensive moods he actually expressed a desire to become himself a minister. “Of the moral doctrines of Christianity I am a more decided disciple than many of its more ostentatious professors. And consider for a moment how much good a good clergyman may do.”1 But for a moment only was this considered. Shelley wished characteristically to dispense for good and all with the “law” idea, and to bring the sorely suffering world out into the light of knowledge, virtue, love, and freedom. He knew what prayer meant; he was deeply moved by awe and wonder in contemplation of the eternal mysteries. In brief, he was not the enemy of religion that he thought he was; he everywhere proclaimed the efficacy of Love in healing and redeeming humanity. In later years Dante and Petrarch, in some respects, modified his aversion to historical Christianity, for through their works he came to feel keenly its spiritual beauty and power. His own religious instinct and attitude as a youth are suggested for us in two stanzas of Wordsworths’s Ode to Duty: —
“There are who ask not if thine eye
Be on them; who, in love and truth
Where no misgiving is, rely
Upon the genial sense of youth:
Glad hearts! without reproach or blot,
Who do thy work, and know it not:
Oh! if through confidence misplaced
They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power! around them cast.
“Serene will be our days and bright
And happy will our nature be
When love is an unerring light,
And joy its own security.
And they blissful course may hold
Ev’n now, who, not unwisely bold,
1 From a conversation with Thomas Love Peacock, reported by him.
[page xx]
Live in the spirit of this creed;
Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.”
The freshman of University College, however, with a passion for negations and for reform, was in no mood to consider his ways and be wise. He was but too “unwisely bold.” Almost immediately after his return to Oxford, he arranged, with Hogg’s connivance, if not collaboration, for the anonymous publication of little pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism. His motive in doing so was a mixed one, — partly sincere; partly, no doubt, dramatic. The argument, what there is of it, follows the beaten materialistic track, assuming throughout that sense-knowledge is all of knowledge, but the author seems to lament the “deficiency of proof” and to court sympathy and help. Not a few sedate dignitaries, to whom Shelley addressed copies of the pamphlet, with a specific request from “Jeremiah Stukeley” for counsel concerning it, fell into the trap and furnished their correspondent with much-desired controversial openings. Shelley had sent a copy to the Vice-Chancellor and to each of the Masters, and by his own Master he was interrogated and condemned. Upon “contumaciously refusing” either to acknowledge or to disavow the authorship of the paper, he was summarily expelled. From the stern conclave of Master and Fellows he rushed nervously to Hogg with the fateful news; Hogg instantly entered the breach, and drew upon himself a like examination, with a like result. If the judges hoped that submission might finally be made, they were disappointed, and the sentence had to stand. The anger of the authorities rapidly cooled, but that of Shelley and Hogg flamed and mounted. The next day, March 26, 1811, they left Oxford together for London. She who might have become more and more truly Shelley’s Alma Mater had behaved in a moment of natural impatience as his Dura Noverca.
After visiting friends and skirmishing about London in [page xxi] search of comfortable lodgings, which by some strange irony they found at length in Oxford Road, on Poland Street, — the “Poland,” at least, reminded Shelley of “Thaddeus of Warsaw and of freedom,” — the two young men settled down to their habitual comradeship, until interrupted by the appearance of Shelley’s father, freshly fortified by Paley’s Natural Theology. He had already written to Bysshe, requiring implicit future obedience and a rupture with Hogg as the price of his continued goodwill. He had also adjured Mr. Hogg, Sr., to assist in separating the two. Bysshe smiled mournfully at his father’s blustering theological expostulations, but flared up at the conditions named as ensuring a welcome home. These he deliberately rejected, feeling that to forego liberty of action was to forego all, and that his truth of character, as well as his personal affection for Hogg, demanded the persistence of the friendship. Hogg, however , soon withdrew or was withdrawn to York to read law, and Shelley, who planned to follow him later, and who was at this time half willing to study medicine, found himself for this the first moment in his life concerned about the means to live. His father had cut off all aid, and Bysshe was constrained to accept secret gifts from his devoted sisters, and the more substantial assistance of his uncle, Captain Pilfold, who had a strong liking for the youth. The girls sent their contributions though sixteen-year-old Harriet Westbrook, a close friend in their school life at Mrs. Fenning’s, Clapham. Harriet, being a resident of London, and possessing, therefore, the requisite freedom, bore many messages — both real and personal — between sisters and brother. Her father, John Westbrook, was a former tavern-keeper of some property, and her sister Eliza, a “Dark Lady,” her senior by many years, exercised an almost maternal control of her. Harriet was a winsome lass, exquisitely neat and pretty, and of a cheerfully sentimental disposition. She shared the indignation of the Shelley girls at the ill-treatment accorded their brother, and she found that brother a [page xxii] particularly attractive and interesting young man. Though at first much distressed at the perversity of his views, she rapidly came under the charm of his earnest manner and luminous deep-blue eyes, so rapidly that before many weeks had passed her heart began to whisper a secret. Shelley, for his part, knew nothing, or at least thought nothing, of such a possibility, but took a hearty pleasure in the comings of Harriet and in their conversations. He visited her at home and at school, and wrote frequently concerning matters they discussed. Harriet’s health thereafter began to fail, and Shelley, attributing this to some minor school “persecutions” and the major offence of her father in insisting on her continued stay at school, again broke a lance with Intolerance. Shortly afterward, Harriet’s preceptress discovered one of Shelley’s letters in her possession, warned both her and his families, and even, it is said, suspended Harriet.
Meanwhile, though the intervention of Captain Pilfold and the Duke of Norfolk, Mr. Timothy Shelley’s political chief, that gentleman became, in a measure, reconciled to his son, endowed him unconditionally with ₤200 a year, and consented to receive him at Field Place. Once again at home, Shelley found constraint even in his mother and Elizabeth, dearly as they loved him. Elizabeth scorned his desire that she should accept Hogg. To the latter Shelley wrote: “I am a perfect hermit, not a being to speak with! I sometimes exchange a word with my mother on the subject of the weather, upon which she is irresistibly eloquent; otherwise, all is deep silence! I wander about this place, walking all over the grounds, with no particular object in view.” He wrote not only to Hogg, but also to the Westbrook sisters and to Miss Elizabeth Hitchener, a keen and nervously intellectual schoolmistress whom he had met at Captain Pilfold’s house in Cuckfield.
The home of his cousin, Thomas Grove, near Rhayader, Wales, shortly succeeded York as Shelley’s objective point. [page xxiii] In the midst of this beautiful country he dwelt a while, unhappy and distraught, writing copious letters and marking time in a dubious mood. Though the Westbrook ladies were also in Wales at this time, he did not see them, but, upon their return to London, was shocked to receive from Harriet several letters expressing mingled misery and entreaty, — misery at the thought of returning to a school where what she felt to be unbearable persecution awaited her, and entreaty for sympathy and help. Shelley responded warmly, counselling resistance, and even addressed a letter of advice and remonstrate to Mr. Westbrook, a letter which he declined to heed. Harriet wrote once again, appealing to Shelley to save her from fear and tyranny, and the highhearted youth — he was now only nineteen — posted at once to London, saw Harriet, was amazed at her altered appearance, and enlightened only when she falteringly told her love. Shelley doubtless felt as Jules in Browning’s Pippa Passes: —
“If whoever loves
Must be, in some sort, god or worshipper,
The blessing or the blest one, queen or page,
Why should we always choose the page’s part?
Here is a woman with utter need of me, —
I find myself queen here, it seems!”
In a letter to Hogg he speaks of his course as resembling rather “exerted action” than “inspired passion.” Late in August Bysshe and Harriet fled — a long, slow flight it was — by coach to Edinburgh, where they were married August 28, 1811.
Both husband and wife — despite financial troubles, for Shelley’s father, deeply incensed against his son, again withdrew his aid — spent a bright honeymoon of five weeks in Edinburgh. Hogg shortly arrived from York, and was domiciled with his friends. Edinburgh in itself did not then attract Shelley, but the three shared one another’s enthusiasms in matters literary, social, and political, even if Harriet [page xxiv] somewhat surprised Shelley and Hogg by persistently reading aloud from sententiously moral books. She was not a cultured woman, but only a bright, eager, undiscriminating schoolgirl, very willing to accept her liege’s opinions, and yet trifle positive in presenting hers. Shelley’s increasing anxiety concerning income was allayed a little by the goodness of Captain Pilfold, who proved himself now, as before, a substantially corporeal guardian angel. From Edinburgh the travellers moved on to York, Bysshe shortly resolving to seek a personal interview with his father. He made a hasty trip into Sussex, as the guest of his uncle, only to be met with Mr. Shelley’s curt refusal of help. A delightful conversation with Miss Hitchener, whose fine mental and spiritual qualities he characteristically overrated, was his only gain. Passing through London, he returned to York to find Eliza Westbrook had come north and had assumed charge of his establishment. Though Shelley was aware of this plan, and had forwarded it, he seems to have been somewhat disconcerted. A strict domestic programme was inaugurated, and was meekly accepted by Harriet, who was a clay in Eliza’s hands; and by Shelley, who could only look on and wonder; and by Hogg, who was not considered at all. Harriet, indeed, was feeling the need of protection form Hogg’s unworthy interest, an interest which shortly cost him the comradeship, though not the continued friendship, of a grieved and troubled Shelley. From York the little company, still numbering three, but with Eliza in the place of Hogg, proceeded to Keswick and settled in Chestnut Cottage, near Derwentwater and Bassenthwaite. Here they stayed for several months, Shelley occupying himself with the beautiful nature aspects and with divers literary enterprises, including a collection of his shorter poems, another of essays, and a political novel, Hubert Cauvin, of which nothing is now known. With the people of Keswick Shelley had little to do, though he met and admired friendly William Calvert, and through him became [page xxv] acquainted with Robert Southey. The older poet — different in temper and theory as the two were — showed the younger much practical kindness, but though Shelley met his early advances with some eagerness, he soon afterward wrote to Miss Hitchener: “I do not think so highly of Southey as I did….I do not mean that he is or can be the great character which once I linked him to; his mind is terribly narrow compared to it….It rends my heart when I think what he might have been!”
The Duke of Norfolk was again to act as mediator between the Shelleys — father and son — in response to a manly letter from Bysshe requesting his service. The matter was not at once adjusted, but negotiations were opened, and before long the young couple and Miss Westbrook were invited to Greystoke, the Duke’s neighbouring seat. Shortly afterward it was intimated to Shelley an income of ₤2000 annually might become his if he would consent to entail the estate in favour of a possible son or of his brother John. Shelley, who strongly opposed the law of primogeniture and believed that he had no moral right to accept this tentative suggestion, declined it with indignation and without parley. Should he himself inherit the estate — which he thought unlikely, as he anticipated an early death — he purposed to share it with his friends. Before this discussion arose, however, Shelley, by the advice of the Duke, had sent his father a letter so just and kind that a favourable response was induced, and by January, 1812, an annuity of ₤200 was again settled upon him. This, with a similar sum granted by Mr. Westbrook for Harriet’s subsistence, saved the young people from what had become a really acute though temporary poverty.
It will be recalled that Shelley, while at Eton, was much interested in Godwin’s revolutionary book, Political Justice. His interest had so grown that when he now heard casually of Godwin’s continued physical existence — he had supposed him dead — he eagerly penned a letter overflowing [page xxvi] with respect and admiration, for Shelley the proselyte was no less ardent than Shelley the proselytizer. Godwin found his communication sufficiently interesting to warrant a reply inviting particulars of the writer’s history. These Shelley immediately supplied, and a steady correspondence followed, — Godwin’s letters being friendly and hortative, Shelley’s tractable but animated. In one of these Shelley announced his purpose of going into Ireland, there to aid in Catholic Emancipation, asking and receiving much good advice from Godwin concerning this course. Miss Hitchener was invited to join the party, but declined, and Shelley, with his wife and sister-in-law, left Keswick February 2, 1812, arriving in Dublin, after tiresome delays, ten days later.
In parlous Ireland Shelley found work at first to his liking. Caring little for Catholic Emancipation in itself, — he owned “no cause,” he wrote to Godwin, “but virtue, no party but the world,” — he nevertheless threw himself eagerly into the service of the politically oppressed. He issued an Address to the Irish People that created some stir, and until dissuaded by Godwin, sought to form a peaceably revolutionary “Association of Philanthropists.” Harriet and he must have greatly enjoyed their methods of distributing the pamphlets he wrote, sometimes throwing them from the window to “likely” persons. On the 28th Shelley spoke with some acceptance at a public meeting, and thereafter met, though with scant satisfaction, several of the leading Irish patriots. He encountered praise, blame, and suspicion, but made himself a manful missionary until personal reaction set in, a reaction due partly to the failure of his efforts to modify the situation in any practical way, and partly to Godwin’s rather chilling criticisms. At length, on April 4, he left Ireland for Holyhead, and after several wandering days, pitched tent at Nantgwillt, North Wales. Here he penned one or two literary studies, and met and liked Thomas Love Peacock, a liberal, cultured, pleasing man and writer, thenceforth Shelley’s friend. But again stakes were up, and the [page xxvii] pilgrims away, first to the Groves’ home, near by, and then to Chepstow, and the Lynmouth, Devon. Amid the entrancing coast scenery they stayed two months, and here they welcomed the advent of Miss Hitchener, whose extraordinary charms, however, slowly lapsed into commonplace in Shelley’s as in Harriet’s thinking. From “soul of my soul” she became, through several transitions, “Brown Demon.” Much reading and writing went on in Lynmouth, and at this time Shelley was busily at work upon his Queen Mab. Here, too, he wrote his birthday sonnet and his blank verse apostrophe to Harriet, and penned his energetic Letter to Lord Ellenborough concerning the prosecution of one Eaton, a poor bookseller, for publishing part of Paine’s Age of Reason. The Devon coast saw Shelley often engaged in the boyishly serious business of scattering his revolutionary writings to the world at large through the media of bottles, sea-boxes, and fire-balloons. The arrest of his manservant, however, while distributing copies of the Shelleyan Declaration of Rights, decided the swift mind. When Godwin arrived in Lynmouth, September 18, he found his discipline flown.
During the next year Shelley travelled variously in all parts of the United Kingdom. He settled first at Tan-yr-allt, near Tremadoc, Carnarvonshire, and turned from the reform of humanity to that of nature, earnestly aiding W. Alexander Madocks, M.P., in his attempt to reclaim several thousand acres of land from the sea. While visiting London in order to raise a subscription for this project, he seized the opportunity to visit the home of Godwin, where he met, besides the old philosopher, — who looked, Harriet thought, like Socrates, — the second Mrs. Godwin also, her young son William, and Fanny (Imlay) Godwin, born to Mary Wollstonecraft before she became Godwin’s first wife. Clara Jane Clairmont, daughter of Mrs. Goldwin and her first husband, and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, daughter of Godwin and his first wife — a sufficiently complicated [page xxviii] family, this! — were absent during most of the time of Shelley’s stay in London, and, though both were soon to become closely concerned with the life of the poet, he has left on record no minute of his impressions, if he then saw them. While in London Shelley made other friends also, and sought out Hogg, permitting such renewal as was possible of their old association. Miss Hitchener, her pedestal being lost, took her final leave of Shelley hospitality. “We were entirely deceived in her character as to republicanism,” wrote Harriet to an Irish friend, Mrs. Catherine Nugent, “and in short everything else which she pretended to be.” By November 15 Tremadoc was again in sight, and months of happy domesticity followed, Shelley reading much, continuing Queen Mab, relieving the distresses of the poor about him, and consuming his soul in indignation at the imprisonment of Leigh Hunt for a libel upon the Prince Regent. Late in February, 1813, a burglarious attack was perhaps made upon the poet’s home, and his life seems to have been in some danger. At all events, the incident1 was nervously magnified by Shelley into “atrocious assassination,” and, convinced that some sinister villain was on his track, he left again for Dublin. Thence the young family journeyed to the beautiful Killarney Lakes, and by April were again in London.
Queen Mab, a long, uneven, unrhymed poem, lyric and heroic, far more representative of the boy Shelley than of the man, was completed in spring, and was printed for restricted distribution. In 1821, its author described it as “a poem….written by me at the age of eighteen — I dare say, in a sufficiently intemperate spirit….I doubt not but that it is perfectly worthless in point of literary composition;
1 In an interesting article in The Century Magazine for October, 1905, A Strange Adventure of Shelley’s, Margaret L. Croft presents evidence that one Robin Pant Evan, a rough Welsh sheep-farmer, deliberately broke into Tan-yr-allt in order to frighten away Shelley, his ire having been aroused at the poet’s humane practice of killing his neighbours’ hopelessly diseased sheep.
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and that, in all that concerns moral and political speculation, as well as in the subtler discriminations of metaphysical and religious doctrine, it is still more crude and immature.” During the same year he wrote to Horace Smith: “If you happen to have brought a copy of Clarke’s edition of Queen Mab for me, I should like very well to see it. — I really hardly know what this poem is about. I am afraid it is rather rough.” The Ianthe in the poem gave her name to Shelley and Harriet’s first child, Ianthe Elizabeth, born the following June. Shelley’s September sonnet, To Ianthe, expresses the growing love he bestowed upon the infant. After her coming a removal was made to Bracknell, in Berkshire, at the suggestion of Mrs. Boinville, a cultured and high-principled woman, and her daughter, Cornelia Turner, whom Shelley had met in London. From Bracknell they went into the Lake country, and thence to Edinburgh again, with Peacock, but by December were back in London, securing a temporary home in Windsor, near Bracknell. Shelley was now feeling keenly the need of additional income, and had lately paid a clandestine visit home. He wrote once again to his father for consideration, urgently, but in vain. Such money as was imperatively necessary to him, therefore, he raised on post-obit bonds.
The biographers of Shelley agree that shortly after the birth of her first babe a certain insensibility, always latent in Harriet’s temper, began to show itself in peculiar fashion. She lost, almost completely, her interest in books and reading, in intellectual adventures, and even in the domestic responsibilities attaching to her as wife and mother. That Shelley felt deeply this diminution of her customary cheerfulness, this new, strange aloofness of his formerly bright-natured wife, is amply evident from the testimony of his poems and letters. With an aching heart he watched the too rapid course of the chill current of indifference. Sometimes he would turn to the Boinvilles in perplexity and doubt, seeking help for a problem he hardly knew how to voice. [page xxx] In the society of his thoughtful friends he found stimulus for an increasingly dejected spirit, and for the time perhaps succeeded in forgetting Harriet. On her side, no doubt, Harriet also experienced disillusion. She was no longer a fanciful schoolgirl, but a young matron who looked upon her husband’s exceptional views and manners with less partial eyes than before. Now he was reading rapturously with Cornelia Turner in the Italian poets, now debating ardently some religious or political question, now impulsively wandering abroad or losing himself in fantastic abstractions, but she, who had given herself to him for all the time, was not receiving due consideration, and did not feel the necessity of making her gift a progressive one. They were husband and wife, and the wife had no fear of losing the husband. If Shelley hoped to break through this film hardening into a barrier, Eliza’s constant presence, which had become very irksome to him, and Harriet’s 1 carelessness toward Ianthe, made the attempt more and more difficult. Through the advice of her sister and father, too, Harriet was beginning to press for a better social station in life. Was not Shelley a baronet-to-be and heir to a great estate? It was becoming surely apparent that the relation between these two had never been a vital one, but only for a time vitalized. Despite a second marriage ceremony, entered upon March 22 for legal reasons, and despite Shelley’s passive acceptance of duty of patience, Eliza and Harriet, by April, 1814, had taken their departure for a season, and Shelley had written the mournful stanzas printed on page 1. The following month he addressed a poem to Harriet, concluding with appeal: —
“O trust for once no erring guide!
Bid the remorseless feeling flee;
’T is malice, ’t is revenge, ’t is pride,
’T is anything but thee;
O deign a nobler pride to prove,
And pity if thou canst not love.”
1 Harriet’s last letters to Mrs. Nugent, however, contain several very affectionate references to Ianthe.
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But Harriet remained away, settling now at Bath, while Shelley walked despairingly the streets of London. He called not infrequently the home of his master, Godwin, whose financial condition was even worse than his own, and whom he was devotedly anxious to relieve. One midsummer day he met — probably then for the first time — Godwin’s daughter Mary,1 seventeen years of age, pale, earnest, and beautiful. Their intellectual sympathy was immediate, and after but a month of acquaintance each knew but to certainly the feeling for the other. As yet no word of disloyalty to Harriet was uttered on either side. Shelley did not at the moment believe that an honourable release was open to him, and Harriet, for her part, was now beginning to regret their division. By July, however, Shelley had come into possession of what he thought unquestionable evidence of his wife’s unfaithfulness to him, evidence which he continued to believe, though it was later modified in some important particulars, until he died. Concerning its actual value it is difficult if not impossible to pronounce, but there can be no doubt of Shelley’s pain and sincerity in relation to it. Neither he nor Mary Godwin hesitated to accept what seemed to them a justifying condition of their present love and, indeed, of their later union. Writing to Southey in 1820, Shelley declares himself “innocent of ill, either done or intended; the consequences you allude to flowed in no respect from me. If you were my friend, I could tell you a history that would make you open your eyes; but I shall certainly never make the public my familiar confidant.”
When Shelley, about July 14, suggested to Harriet the desirability of an understood separation, she did not openly oppose him, thinking it probable that his regard for Mary
1 Harriet’s first reference to Mary, in her correspondence with Mrs. Nugent, has pathetic interest: “There is another daughter of hers, who is now in Scotland. She is very much like her mother, whose picture hangs up in his (Godwin’s) study. She must have been a most lovely woman. Her countenance speaks her a woman who would dare to think and act for herself.”
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Godwin would shortly cease and that he would return to her. This attitude of compliance gave Shelley a wrong impression; he arranged for her material welfare, and withdrew with a feeling that all would be well, and that Harriet concurred in the course he had resolved to pursue. That he was mistaken in this supposition made Harriet’s loss only the more grievous, but both Shelley and Mary believed that the new union was to prove best not merely for them but for Harriet as well, whose “interests,” as he conceived them, Shelley constantly consulted. On July 28, 1814, Mary Godwin and Percy Bysshe Shelley, accompanied by Clara Jane Clairmont, left London for the Continent, and the next day, at Calais, the poet wrote in his journal: “Suddenly the broad sun rose over France.”
The tour that followed was a brief one, cut short by lack of funds and by difficulties arising in England. While it lasted, however, Shelley and Mary had opportunity to realize the strength and virtue of their love, in a time of physical and mental stress. Spending but a few days in Paris, they proceeded on foot (Mary riding a donkey) to Charenton. There they replaced their little beast by a sturdy mule, and reaching Troyes bough an open carriage. By these means, after many annoyances, they at length arrived at Neuchâtel, and at Brunnen on Lake Lucerne. En route Shelley had written to Harriet, urging her to meet them in Switzerland, and assuring her of his intention to remain her friend. At Brunnen he began the fragment entitled The Assassins, a romantic tale of some power. After a brief stay here and at Lucerne, the travellers turned homeward, following the Reuss and the Rhine. The beauty of the latter river, form Mayence to Bonn, greatly impressed Shelley and influenced scenic setting of Alastor. Rotterdam was reached September 8, and London once again a week later.
During the remainder of the year Shelley and Mary suffered seriously from the want of income. Although Godwin indignantly refused to condone Shelley’s course, he [page xxxiii] freely accepted money from his scant purse and even asked for more. There is no unconscious dramatic irony lurking in a passage concerning Godwin in one of Shelley’s early letters to Miss Hitchener: “He remains unchanged. I have no soul-chilling alteration to record of his character.” Harriet, too, was losing patience and troubling both Shelley and the Godwins with increasing demands. ON November 30 she gave birth to a boy, Charles Bysshe, who, with Ianthe, was soon to become the subject of Chancery litigation. Peacock was proving himself and old friend; Fanny Godwin was secretly kind; but for the most part Shelley and Mary were let severely alone save for the companionship of Hogg, who called often, and Jane Clairmont (Claire), who declined to return home. Omnivorous reading solaced the evil time, — Anacreon, Coleridge, Spenser, Byron, Browne of Norwich, Gibbon, Godwin, etc. Claire, alert and olive-hued, often disturbed the household with her fears and doubts concerning the supernatural, and they were not unrelieved to see her depart, in May, 1815, for a stay in Lynmouth. Shelley, for his part, had other fears, and was now moving from spot to spot in London, protecting himself as he might against the vigilance of the bailiffs. The new year brought important changes. Sir Bysshe had passed away on January 6, Mr. Timothy Shelley became a baronet in his stead, and the poet succeeded his father as heir-apparent to the title of a great estate. He went down to Field Place, but was not welcomed. The question of entail again came up, and though Shelley declined to change his attitude, he was willing to sell his reversion. Eventually he planned to dispose of his interest in a small part of the property for an annual income of ₤1000 during the joint survival of his father and himself, but Chancery would not later permit this plan to be realized. Money was advanced to meet his most pressing needs, and it is worthy of note that he immediately settled ₤200 a year upon Harriet, a like sum having been continued by Mr. Westbrook. [page xxxiv]
Shelley’s health had of late become seriously impaired, and was not improved by the shock consequent upon the death, March 6, of Mary’s first infant, hardly more than a fortnight old, and by the continued alienation of Godwin, whom he was aiding steadily. He bore Godwin’s bitter letters very patiently save for one final outbreak of feeling: “Do not talk forgiveness again to me, for my blood boils in my veins, and my gall rises against all that bears the human form, when I think of what I, their benefactor and ardent lover, have endured of enmity and contempt from you and from all mankind.” A trip of several days’ duration up the Thames to Lechlade, in the company of Mary, Peacock, and Charles Clairmont, Claire’s brother, did much to restore the poet to health and good spirits. On his return to Bishopgate he conceived and that autumn wrote the moving revelatory poem, Alastor, the first of his really sure and vital works, published the following March. Peaceful months followed, of study and composition, whose sunshine was made the brighter by the birth of William, Mary’s second child, January 24, 1816. But Godwin’s attitude, the coldness of others, and the failure of the lawyers satisfactorily to adjust financial matters, — he was again dependent upon his father’s voluntary advances, — led Shelley to heed the invitation of a voice of whose charms he could no longer be insensible. It was Switzerland’s recall of him that he heard and obeyed. Byron, whom he had not yet met, but with whom Claire had become only too well acquainted, was soon to arrive to Geneva, and the infatuated girl, keeping her secret from Shelley and Mary, asked and was permitted to become one of the party. Early in May, 1816, the trio, with little William, started again for Paris. They reached Geneva about the 14th, and shortly afterward Byron appeared. The two poets, though associated as contemporary apostles of revolution, were yet of very different fibres, — Byron, proud, passionate, fitfully purposive, like an alien bird oaring and flapping close to earth; Shelley, keen, [page xxxv] luminous, mild, sun-adventuring, sailing the upper ether of thought and love with tense but tireless wings. Each knew the other for a poet, — Shelley had drawn the two portraits for us in Julian and Maddalo, — and they spent eager hours together with Polidori, Byron’s young Anglo-Indian physician, cruising about the lake, or exploring its shores. During this time Byron wrote some the best stanzas of his Childe Harold, Shelley conceived his Mont Blanc and Hymn of Intellectual Beauty, and Mary began her famous romance, Frankenstein, inspired by a ghostly conversation between poets and Polidori. The Shelley group had meanwhile secured a cottage near Coligny, and Byron was living at the Villa Diodati. While they circumnavigated the lake, Byron produced his Prisoner of Chillon and Shelley stored up countless memories of joy and beauty. After a visit of high emotion to Chamouni, Shelley and Mary received a rather melancholy letter form Fanny Godwin, and a month later left Geneva for Versailles, Havre, and Portsmouth.
The year 1816 was a fatal one for several of Shelley’s friends and connections. The death of Sir Bysshe was followed during the autumn by those of Fanny Godwin and Harriet Shelley, each of these women dying by her own hand. Fanny, who had been growing of late more and more dejected, feeling the unkindness of her stepmother and other relatives, and deprived of the immediate counsel of Shelley and Mary, decided she was a useless cumberer of the ground, and took laudanum at Swansea, October 10. She had written only a week earlier an affectionate letter to Mary who with Shelley now staying at Bath, in which all her thoughts unselfishly went out to the welfare of Godwin and the Shelleys. These were her sincere mourners. “Our feelings are less tumultuous than deep,” wrote Godwin to Mary; and she to Shelley, who went to Swansea suffering great anguish of spirit: “If she had lived until this moment, she would have been saved, for my house would [page xxxvi] then have been a proper asylum for her.” Two months later the body of Harriet was found in the Serpentine River, after a disappearance of three weeks. She had, even as a schoolgirl, remotely contemplated such ending, and now, with Shelley gone (though he was at this very time seeking her anxiously, that he might relieve her distresses), with her father and sister angered against her, and with a last friend unwilling longer to forward her happiness, she took the plunge with a despairing calmness. If she had wandered morally, she felt at least as justified as Shelley himself, whose social views were not capable of a uniformly beneficent application t concrete cases. Love, as she understood it, seemed indeed, by harsh evidence, thrown from its eminence. Yet her death was far less the specific outcome of Shelley’s conduct than it was the due result of a fatal flaw in her own character, and though Shelley felt acute and abiding regret, he cannot be said to have experienced remorse. We may briefly compare, in passing, the matrimonial beginnings with Shelley with those of his grandfather, and note the untimely closing of the waters over Shelley’s head as over Harriet’s. We must pass rapidly over the accompanying and dependent events of this season, — the renewal of old friendships, Godwin’s persistent difficulties, the generous literary encouragement of Shelley by Leigh Hunt, the reconciliation of Godwin to the poet, and the formal ceremony of marriage between Shelley and Mary at St. Mildred’s Church, London, December 30.
The care of his children, Ianthe and Charles Bysshe, had been reluctantly and at her earnest request committed to Harriet by their father, who now sought to gain possession of them. His right to do so was stoutly contested by the Westbrooks, who filed a suit in Chancery to determine the question. They represented that Shelley, as the deserter of Harriet and the author of Queen Mab, was not a proper person to have control of the children’s upbringing and education; while Shelley’s counsel argued that the poet [page xxxvii] was justified in leaving Harriet, and that he had since that time faithfully supplied her needs, while it were intolerable tyranny to wrest his children from him merely on account of intellectual conclusions. After two months of legal conflict the case was decided against both parties, Lord Eldon postponing the final judgment until July 25, 1818, but declining to grant the custody of the children to either Shelley or Mr. Westbrook. At length it was determined to place Ianthe and Charles in the care of Dr. and Mrs. Hume, of Brent End Lodge, Hanwell, persons nominated by Shelley and paid chiefly by him and partly by the interest of a fund previously settled upon the children by Mr. Westbrook. Shelley keenly felt the injustice of the judgment, but preserved a fine attitude throughout the proceedings. During this time he and Mary, with their child William, were for the most part resident at Marlow on the Thames. Before going thither, however, Shelley met Keats, Hazlitt, and also Horace Smith, who became a close friend and sympathizer. At Marlow he spent more than a year of busy authorship, hospitality, and beneficence. As writer, he produced, among other pamphlets and poems, some remonstrant lines to Lord Eldon, Prince Athanase, part of Rosalind and Helen, and Laon and Cythna, — afterward The Revolt of Islam, — a stirring and eloquent prophecy of the triumph of the spirit of love and liberality. “I have attempted,” he wrote to his publisher, “in the progress of my work to speak to the common elementary emotions of the human heart, so that though it is the story of violence and revolution, it is relieved by milder pictures of friendship and love and natural affections.” As host, he entertained Peacock, Godwin, the Hunts, William Baxter, and Horace Smith, besides Claire and the little newcomer, Clara Allegra, daughter of Byron. As friend and helper, the poor of Marlow knew and loved him. On September 2, 1817, after the completion of Frankenstein, a third child was born to Shelley and Mary, whom [page xxxviii] they named Clara Everina. Godwin’s well-known novel, Mandeville, appeared during November, and Shelley corresponded freely with its author as both admiring critic and purse-opener.
“I think we ought to go to Italy,” wrote restless Shelley to Mary late in 1817, after much discussion both ways and means. Shelley’s failing health, medical advice, Mary’s own inclination, and the desire to help Claire toward an understanding with Byron, all conspired to this end. March 12, 1818, saw the travellers once again — for Shelley now the last time — leaving the cliffs of Dover for Calais. Had the poet known that he was to see his native land no more, his hearth would have gone out to her in a high song of farewell, for despite his passionate desire to compass the reform of many of her laws and institutions, his life and letters at many points affectionately attest the strength of his love for England.
The four closing years of Shelley’s brief life were the happiest and most productive. Indeed, had these been denied him, his works would hardly have won large place in the memories and affections of men. Animation was his, bright and breathless; power was his, earnest and unmistakable; but time and place were yet to bring their calm and their counsel to his too agitated spirit. What the clear sunny skies of Italy had done for Chaucer and Milton, what they were to reveal to Browning and his lyric love, they were now about to give to Shelley in abundant measure, and thereafter to keep protective watch above his cloverclustered Roman grave.
The passage of the Alps was safely achieved, and the travellers reached Milan, April 4. Thence Shelley and Mary proceeded to the Lake of Como, but, disappointed by their continued failure to find a suitable abode, they returned to Milan, shortly gathered their little flock together, and pressed on to Pisa and Leghorn, not, however, before Claire had satisfied the demand Byron made from Venice that she [page xxxix] should relinquish to him the control of Allegra. At Leghorn they gladly met Mr. and Mrs. John Gisborne, the latter of whom, a bright, thoughtful woman, was an old friend of Godwin’s, and the mother of Henry Reveley, Gisborne’s stepson. After a few weeks in Leghorn, Shelley transferred his family to the Baths of Lucca, in the beautiful forest country north of Pisa. Here Rosalind and Helen was concluded, and here husband and wife spent memorable hours in the groves and vineyards, within sight of Apennine summits. This life of calm was broken by the growing anxiety of Claire, whom Shelley at length accompanied to Venice to see Byron and Allegra. Claire found her little daughter at the home of the Hoppners, the English consul-general’s family, who received the wayfarers with great hospitality. Shelley alone visited Byron, who heard him with friendly regard, but with little real consideration. He stressed his liking for Shelley, however, and insisted that he bring his family and Claire to live for the time in Byron’s then unoccupied villa — I Cappuccini — at Este, among the Euganean Hills. Shelley accepted the invitation, and wrote to Mary asking her to meet him in Este. Little Clara was taken ill on the road, and after anxious days in the new home, the parents hastened with her to Venice to consult there a noted medico, but had hardly arrived when the child died. A week passed sadly in Venice before they returned to Este to find Claire again, William, and Allegra. Now for some time having brooded his masterpiece, Prometheus Unbound, Shelley fell back upon present surroundings and recent memories, first producing Julian and Maddalo, and, in part at least, Lines Written among the Euganean Hills. The latter poem is poignant and almost incredible lyric beauty; the former has been already touched. By October 12, the poet, with Mary and William, was back in Venice, seeing much of Byron, admiring his genius but despising his excesses. After a brief return to Este and the re-delivery of Allegra to Byron, the hospitable villa was deserted and the faces of the four were [page xl] set southward for Naples. Here, notwithstanding his hope of improvement, a deep dejection, both physical and spiritual, seized upon Shelley, an almost Hamlet-like sense of isolation, from which he did not well recover until the early spring. It was now resolved to visit Rome, where they had spent but a week en route to Naples, and the completion of their first year in Italy was signalized by the entrance of the pilgrims into the Eternal City. They found themselves now somewhat less lonely; acquaintances called; steady reading went on; and interested visits were paid to the Vatican, Villa Borghese, Pantheon, and Capitol. In the remote and solitary moments of his frequent walks about the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, Shelley almost completed his great lyrical drama, Prometheus Unbound, among at once the gentlest and proudest vindications of the human spirit. He felt his inevitable way to the symbolic heart of this noble myth, as imagined and made vital not only by Æschylus and others, but by the high instinct of man he had himself developed. Here Shelley’s prime idea of the self-saving and self-justifying power of Love reaches its surest and most elevated expression.
A long reaction and an anticipation of evil to come led the poet to long again for at least a brief visit to England, “out of pure weakness of heart.” The temperamental barometer proved true. On June 7 William, the most fondly cherished of the children, passed away. The English burying-ground, hard-by the Porta San Paolo, received the little body, and Shelley and Mary were left desolate indeed. The mother’s melancholy, in truth, became so intense that Shelley decided upon Leghorn and Mrs. Gisborne as the place and person most suited to her at the moment, and rented, accordingly, the Villa Valsovano there. He himself had urged his doubtful steps through many a gloom, and felt for the thrice-bereaved mother no less than he felt with her. “We must all weep on these occasions,” wrote Leigh Hunt to Mary, “and it is better for the kindly fountains within us that we [page xli] should. May you weep quietly, but not long; and may the calmest and most affectionate spirit that comes out of the contemplation of great things, and the love of all, lay his most blessed hand upon you.” When Mary would be much alone Shelley read and though as rapidly and eagerly as ever, adventuring through Dante, Boccaccio, and Calderon, and praising the Spanish dramatist with discriminating enthusiasm. Now, too, he finished his own deeply stirring drama, The Cenci, conceived more than a year before, after reading an old MS. at Leghorn and viewing Guido’s supposed portrait of Beatrice in the Colonna Palace at Rome. This production, touched as it is with weaknesses of phrasing and of dramatic “business,” — the dramatist sometimes hinders the poet, — is yet comparable, as a study in the spirit of hate and villainy, only with Shakespeare’s Richard III and Browning’s Guido; while Cordelia, Pompilia, and Beatrice form the triad of great women in English poetry. The fifth act is by far the most powerful, not only because it contains the “tremendous end,” but because Shelley raises here a nigh unfettered wing in soul-criticism and dramatic range.
In Florence, where the autumn of 1819 found them settled, Shelley spent many days visiting the great galleries of painting and statuary, though with increasing physical unrest. On November 12 a last child was born to him, christened Percy Florence, who survived both his father and his mother, and inherited due baronetcy. The prevailing discontent in England, with which Shelley deeply sympathized, occasioned at this time the writing of his Songs and Poems for the Men of England, and his Masque of Anarchy, — poems of peaceful poise but revolutionary impulse, — and a thoughtful treatise, A Philosophical View of Reform. A translation of Euripides’ The Cyclops, the creation of the Prometheus, and the breathing of the subtly lyric incantation to the spirit of the West Wind, all belong to this great creative year. It is interesting to note the loyal [page xlii] human interest Shelley took during this winter in his friend Reveley’s projected steamship, an interest that did not hesitate to provide ill-to-be-spared money for the advancement of what was almost a foredoomed failure. The extreme cold of early January 1820, drove him at length to Pisa, where most of his time was thenceforth to be spent. A small group of friends cheered Shelley and Mary here, during the few intervals not give over to study and composition, — friends not unwelcome, since the Gisbornes and Henry Reveley were now leaving for England. Though the poet’s health was responding favourably to the change of climate, Godwin’s monotonous embarrassments and demands preyed upon his spirits, and he was obliged to protect Mary from full knowledge of her father’s rapacity. There were other sources of perplexity and even anger that greatly disturbed the Shelleys at this time, — a grossly unfair attack upon the poet in the Quarterly Review, and a scandal spread abroad by a vicious servant which it took some time to check and refute. With the advent of midsummer the heat grew so intense that a move was made to the proffered home of the absent Gisbornes, Casa Ricci, in Leghorn, where — following the Pisan lyric, The Cloud — the Ode to a Skylark was written. Probably the music of the Spenserian Alexandrines, for he had long loved the Faerie Queene, rang in Shelley’s ears as he penned this exulting yet regretful cry. Among the other poems of 1820 are the Letter to Maria Gisborne, The Sensitive Plant, The Witch of Atlas, Hymn to Mercury, Ode to Liberty, and Ode to Naples. By August, the heat was unbearable, and another change was made to the Baths of San Giuliano di Pisa. Shelley’s interest in European political conditions was acute, and he watched with keen solicitude the course of the revolutions in Spain and Naples, greatly regretting the eventual success of the Austrians in restoring the false Neapolitan king. During the early months of 1821 he sought and found social reinforcement of his views. The [page xliii] Gisbornes were back, though a lively misunderstanding prevented an early renewal of old ties; and Thomas Medwin, the poet’s cousin and former schoolmate, had found his not too welcome way to Pisa. Over against these was the finer intelligence and exalted spirit of the Greek patriot, Alexander Mavrocordato, to whom Shelley’s prophetic drama, Hellas, was afterward dedicated; the finesse of Francesco Pacchiani, a Pisan academician; the good-natured vapidity of Count Taaffe; the skilful improvisations of the famous Sgricci; and the pathetic durance of the Contessina Emilia Viviani, beloved alike by Shelley, Mary, and Claire. Condemned, with her sister, to the strict seclusion of a convent life by a jealous stepmother and an indifferent father, Emilia was in evil case, and this, with her exquisite loveliness, so wrought upon Shelley’s imagination that he sought continuallyn to deliver her from the Intolerance he had so often scourged of old. He became her “caro fratello” and Mary her “dearest sister.” The profound though passing influence exerted upon Shelley by her character and situation is apparent in his Epipsychidion. “It is,” he wrote to Gisborne, after many months, “an idealized history of my feelings. I think one is always in love with something or other; the error — and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it — consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.” The “isle under Ionian skies,” and idea which had so strong a hold upon Shelley’s fancy,1 as upon the youthful Browning’s,2 here achieves its right poetic value. Emilia married at last a Signor Biondi, and lived but a brief and checkered life. It was fitting though almost accidental
1 Cf. letter of August, 1821, to Mary: “My greatest content would be utterly to desert all human society. I would retire with you and our child to a solitary island in the sea and build a boat, and shut upon my retreat the floodgates of the world.” Cf. also Prometheus, IV, iv, 200,201.
2 Cf. Pippa Passes, ii, 314-327.
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that at this time Shelley should put into critical form his own noble theory of poetry, published after his death.
Soon after the departure of Claire, who was now engaged in tutoring certain young Florentines, there arrived in Pisa friends of Medwin, Lieutenant Edward Elliker Williams and his wife Jane. The Shelleys, both husband and wife, were much pleased with the newcomers, who in their turn attached themselves with sympathy and understanding to their fellow-exiles. With Williams and Reveley the poet would sail the Arno in a light Arthurian shallop that on one exciting occasion suddenly overset, nearly ending Shelley, the non-swimmer, then and there. Notwithstanding this mishap his love for nautical excursions grew into a passion, nearly every day found him on the water, and May 4, he even undertook a venturesome excursion with Reveley from the mouth of the Arno to Leghorn. In San Giuliano the case was not different, and it was there, indeed, that the
Boat on the Serchio was born. Here also was produced the last of Shelley’s completed major poems, Adonais, written in memory of John Keats.
Upon hearing of Keats’s illness and of his arrival in Italy, Shelley had urged him to accept the invitation to Pisa he had previously extended, but poor Keats was already struggling with death, and yielded himself at Rome, February 23, 1821. Shelley received the news some weeks later, probably a letter from England, and began almost immediately to brood his elegy. He had not known Keats well, had variously estimated his work, and had scarcely sympathized with his consuming passion for his art. Indeed, he had written Keats an earnest word concerning his own freedom from “system and mannerism,” instancing the Prometheus and The Cenci. Over-regularity he had sought to avoid. “I wish those who excel me in genius would pursue the same plan.” And Keats had good-humouredly replied: “An artist must serve Mammon; he must have ‘self-concentration’ — selfishness, perhaps. You, I am sure, will forgive [page xlv] me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore.” Shelley did not much admire Endymion, but he though Hyperion “grand poetry,” The product of “transcendent genius.” He sincerely respected Keats, though he failed to understand him, and it is matter for large regret that the two poets, because of the sensitiveness of the one and the too lately aroused concern of the other, did not find a closer union — a communion — possible. The poem itself, written in Spenserians, is a pure elegy unequalled in our language. It sounds the deeps of death, for Keats, for Shelley, for all “the inheritors of unfulfilled renown.” It was first printed at Pisa, with the types of Didot. “I am especially curious,” wrote Shelley to his English publisher, Ollier, “to hear the fate of Adonais. I confess I should be surprised if that poem were born to an immortality of oblivion.”
After a flying visit to Florence, house-hunting on behalf of Horace Smith, who was defending against calumnies consequent upon the pirated republication of Queen Mab, and who failed, eventually, to reach Italy, Shelley journeyed to Ravenna early in August, 1821, to become the guest of Byron at Guiccioli Palace. He found his fellow-poet less extravagant than before in conduct, if not in criticism of all things. Had he known of Byron’s perfidy in failing to suppress — indeed actually using — reports against Shelley’s honour, — a perfidy completed when he engaged yet failed to deliver to Mrs. Hoppner an important letter written to her by Mary, — it is doubtful whether he would have consented to meet Byron again. As it was, he found life in Ravenna none too pleasant, and though he was captivated with the fifth canto of Don Juan, as Byron read it, and felt his own inability to rival the facility of such art, yet both Byron’s personality and his vey genius oppressed Shelley, and he left Ravenna for Pisa August 17. Before long, however, Byron and his companion had decided to [page xlvi] come also to Pisa, taking the Lanfranchi Palace on the Lung’ Arno. Byron had suggested to Shelley at Ravenna that they and Leigh Hunt should unite in founding a periodical, to contain representative future work from each of them. Shelley now took up the plan with enthusiasm, so far at least as it concerned Hunt, and, learning of his friend’s serious illness in England, wrote proposing his departure for Italy. Hunt reached Leghorn early in July, 1822, but the affectionate welcome with which Shelley greeted him was to be both the beginning and the end of the renewed comradeship for which each was hungering.
But a few miles up to coast from Pisa lies the Gulf of Spezia, whither Shelley and Mary, with Claire, who had rejoined them, travelled in September, 1821, seeking a nest for time to come. They explored the enchanting shores with delight, and returned happy in the assurance that they had found their summer haven for the succeeding year. Shortly afterward they left the Baths, and re-established themselves in Pisa proper, at the Tre Palazzi di Chiesa, opposite the Lanfranchi Palace and Byron, inviting the Williams family to occupy the lower floor. The Shelleys — free for the moment from the cares of authorship, now that Hellas and Mary’s Valperga were concluded — read freely, discussed high matters with Byron and the Williamses, or beguiled the time with Medwin and Taaffe. Shelley himself walked and rode and sailed not a little, or Byron would mischievously invite him to a formal dinner, for the sake of watching his unease, or would read his Cain to a hearer even more appreciative, perhaps, than its creator. Byron placed great value upon Shelley’s critical opinions, asserting that “he, alone, in this age of humbug, dares stemt he current, as he did to-day the flooded Arno in his skiff, although I could not observe made any progress.” These words are quoted form the original Recollections of Edward John Trelawny, a Cornishman, and friend of Medwin and Williams, who though still young, had led a wild and varied career. He [page xlvii] arrived in Pisa, at Williams’s instance, January 14, 1822, hoping to secure Williams and other recruits for a summer cruise on the Mediterranean. He was a man of fine physique, dark, tall, and strong, “a kind of half-Arab Englishman,” as Mary described hem, whose frank manner and adventurous disposition soon won him the regard of the little colony on the Lung’ Arno. His Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author are, though somewhat inaccurate, peculiarly interesting and readable. Shelley found him a valorous figure, a ready-to-hand symbol of knight-errantry, and drew a poetic picture of him in Fragments of an Unfinished Drama. Williams and Shelley, with Byron’s party, soon formed a league with Trelawny for the ensuing descent upon Spezia, and he was commissioned to order a little schooner from Captain Daniel Roberts, and old friend then staying at Genoa. Early in February Shelley and Williams left for Spezia to secure houses, but returned to announce that only one good residence was to be had, and that this was “to serve for all.” The “all,” however, became limited by Byron’s defection. During the softly beautiful days of the Tuscan spring Shelley wrote his three lyrics to Jane Williams, originally intended only for the private reading of her husband and herself. He was also at work on the fragmentary drama, Charles the First.
It was fortunate for the Shelleys that Byron decided against going to Spezia. Not Byron’s posing humours, to which Shelley was accustomed, but his steady cruelty toward Claire, despite all intervention, slowly wore out Shelley’s friendship, and it was therefore with relief on all grounds that he accepted Byron’s decision. Claire’s anxiety for Allegra, who soon thereafter died in an unhealthful convent, caused her such suffering that Shelley and Mary resolved to take her with them. On April 26 Trelawny escorted Mary and Claire to Spezia, followed the next day by Shelley and the Williamses. By May 1 the party were settled in Casa Magni, a picturesque but not too comfortable villa on the [page xlviii] Bay of Lerici, near the fishing-hamlet of San Terenzo. Claire, apprised at length of Allegra’s death, returned for a time to Florence, and Trelawny proceeded to Genoa, there to lend a hand in Captain Roberts’s boat-building. This now included not only Shelley’s craft, but a yacht, the Bolivar, for Byron.
On May 12 the long-expected boat arrived, built from the somewhat eccentric plans of Williams, but so swift and graceful that Ariel became her named during the original partnership. Charles Vivian, a young sailor-lad, one of the crew that brought her was retained, and made a quietly efficient helper to the too pleased and energetic Williams and the book-preoccupied Shelley, who, delegated to steer, used oftener than not to put the helm the wrong way. Trelawny and Roberts touched Spezia, June 13, with Byron’s yacht, and Trelawny went on to Leghorn three days later. Whether on land or sea, Shelley was almost constantly reading or musing, though at times his mood was as quick and merry as a child’s at play. The Triumph of Life, begun at Pisa, and continued at Casa Magni, is the last fine fragment of his poetic work. The poem is touched with a deeper and truer philosophy of old, the fruit of maturing experience , and leads us to feel that, if time had been his, he would have become at once more human and catholic, less impatient for the renovation of life, more penetrating in its interpretation.
In many of Shelley’s most haunting songs there is heard the echoing whisper of early death. Never of a really robust constitution, and subject during his last years to spams of acute pain, he insensibly allowed his youthfully pensive anticipations to take on a more settled habit. When boating with Byron during the summer of 1816 and threatened with accidental death, he felt in the prospect, he wrote to Peacock, “a mixture of sensations, among which terror entered, though but subordinately.” Trelawny tells us that Shelley remained [page xlix] inert at the bottom of adeep pool in the Arno during the progress of the only swimming lessons he seems to have taken, and had to be hastily rescued. “When he recovered his breath, he said: ‘I always find the bottom of the well, and they say Truth lies there. In another minute I should have found it, and you would have found an empty shell.’” And at Casa Magni, oaring the boat one day into the deep water, with Jane Williams and her babes as passengers, he sat silent a while, at last looking up and exclaiming: “Now let us together solve the great mystery!” Williams writes of what, perhaps, was the strangest portent of all, the vision that came to Shelley in May of a child like Allegra rising from the sea, to smile at him and clap her hands in joy.
Early in June “Claire returned to Casa Magni, and assisted in nursing Mary, who became for a week more seriously ill. Though attended by Shelley with unrelaxing devotion, she improved but slowly. By July Hunt’s announced departure from Genoa for Leghorn determined Shelley and Williams to sail for the same port, that they might there welcome him to Italy, and see his family safely housed in the lower floor of the Lanfranchi Palace at Pisa. With vague fears Mary saw her husband embark, and “cried bitterly when he went away.” 1 The voyage was pleasant and speedy, but disappointment awaited the voyagers. Although Hunt arrived and greeted with affectionate warmth, Byron, as it happened, was sulking at a slight put upon him the Italian authorities, and was resolved to quit the literary enterprise and the country at once. It was imperative that Shelley should appeal to Byron on behalf of Hunt’s necessity and good faith, which he did with so much force and reason that a satisfactory programme was at last arranged. By July 7 all was settled, and the poet, turning to Mrs. Hunt, as the three friends strolled about Pisa, exclaimed: “If I die tomorrow, I have lived to be older than my father; I am ninety years of age.”
1 From a letter to Mrs. Gisborne.
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Prophetic words! Farewells were exchanged, Hunt put into Shelley’s hands a copy of Keats’s last volume, and the evening shadows of the Leghorn road swallowed up the form of his friend. On the morrow, July 8, 1822, both the port authorities and the friends of Williams and Shelley at Leghorn were disturbed by signs of tempest. Captain Roberts, in particular, sought to detain them for another day. But dissuasion was of no avail. Both were anxious to return to Casa Magni, and shortly after noon, with the lad Vivian, they set sail, watched anxiously by the glasses of Roberts and Trelawny. A few hours later a thunderstorm broke into harbour. Trelawny was stationed on board the anchored Bolivar, whence he did not retire until dark. Roberts saw the last of the Ariel from the lighthouse tower. It was speck some miles out at sea, but his glass descried the occupants taking in the topsail.
Not for several days did the sea relinquish its dead, casting up Shelley’s body near Via Reggio, and Williams’s about three miles distant, in Tuscan territory. The end had come, and Shelley’s life of light and song, —
“. . . its pinions disarrayed of might,
Drooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way
Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play.”
Some weeks passed before Vivian’s body was found.
The anxiety of the women at Casa Magni soon deepened into alarm, and, on the Friday following the fatal Monday, drove them into Pisa. They saw Byron first, and then Roberts and Trelawny at Leghorn. None could comfort them. After anguished conversations they were persuaded to return to Lerici, accompanied by Trelawny. The bodies, much mutilated, were found July 17 and 18. In one of Shelley’s pockets was a volume of Sophocles, in the other the borrowed copy of Keats, turned back at The Eve of St. [page li] Agnes. The stringency of the Italian quarantine law made it necessary to secure permission to cremate the bodies — already officially buried in quicklime on the shore — in order to preserve the ashes for later interment. On August 15, Trelawny, Hunt, and Byron gathered on the beach; the funeral pyre for Williams’s body was made ready, and was lit by Trelawny. “The materials being dry and resinous the pine-wood burnt furiously, and drove use back. It was hot enough before, there was no breath of air, and the loose sand scorched our feet. As soon as the flames became clear, and allowed us to approach, we threw frankincense and slat into the furnace, and poured a flask of wine and oil over the body. The Greek oration was omitted, for we had lost our Hellenic bard.” The next day, at Via Reggio, Shelley’s remains were similarly treated, before a group of curious native spectators. The story is realistically told by Trelawny. “What surprised us all,” he concludes, “was that the heart remained entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, my hand was severely burnt; and had any one seen me do the act I should have been put into quarantine.”
The final burial of the poet’s ashes took place, by Mary’s desire, in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, in a tomb built by Trelawny within a recess of the old Roman wall. this was covered with solid stone, bearing an inscription in Latin written by Leigh Hunt, with a passage added by Trelawny from The Tempest, well loved by Shelley: —
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
COR CORDIUM
NATUS IV AUG. MDCCXCII
OBIIT VIII JUL. MDCCCXXII
“Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”
In the companion tomb lies Trelawny, whose graves is inscribed in Shelley’s lines, The Epitaph. Not far away [page lii] are the graves of John Keats and Joseph Severn, and that of John Addington Symonds, lover and biographer of Shelley. ‘And all about grow every sorte of flower,’ — violets and daisies, roses and clover, and over all the tall, dark cypresses wave solemn boughs.
SHELLEY AS A POET 1
There is nothing more difficult to define than Poetry, because there is nothing more Protean. The statements are as various as the creators and the critics, and it is well that it is so, for particularity and insistent dicta are foreign to the spirit of literature. Literature is large and catholic; it is in its essence a mystery, incapable of precise scientific analysis; it is an unquenchable spiritual impulse and adventure realized in words; it is an interpretation of the dream of life; and with its instinct humanity is inalienably endowed. “You cannot escape Literature,” declared Sidney Lanier. “For how can you think yourself out of thought? How can you run away from your own feet?”
Yet there are at least three qualities that may seem to determine the literary artist, the poet. He must, first, seek pure truth with a devoted and single-minded enthusiasm, whatever the cost. He must cherish every hint, every gleam. He must catch the rhythms of the noisy life about him as those of the sea and the forest. He must be at heart a man of social sympathy, yet of a lonely habit. Certainly, he will belong the more truly to the world of men because he does not belong to them. He must be for mankind —
‘The only speaker of essential truth,
Opposed to relative, comparative
And temporal truths.’
“Poets,” said Shelley, “are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” And again, “A poem is the very image of life
1 The attempt has been made to touch the biographical sketch with criticism. The present treatment aims to derive general critical principles from the particulars already give.
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expressed in its eternal truth.” The place of the poet is high but hard. It is his, to experience with fortitude “the baptism in salt water,” to suffer nobly in life and even at times in are for his power’s sake. If slowly and with struggle, yet he still spells out his word. Shelley’s solitary figure of Alastor was not, we think, unhappy, though his war was holden to hear “the eternal note of sadness.”
The poet must have, also, fine sensibility to the beauty that lurks in language. This is the plastic material with which he works, — positively, in words; negatively, in silences. His diction must be sure, representing life and representing him. He must be keenly aware of the dignity of the dignity of words, their music, colours, individualities, and kinships. His poems must not be word-prisons, but word-homes. And to this regard for works — indeed, as conditioning and justifying such regard — he must, last, add an impelling insight into the root rightness of things. Art, with its hunger for truth and its passion for beauty, feeds also and always upon good, upon the law love and virtue. A fine-grained æsthete must the artist be; but he must be, before and beyond that, a man. One in any field who delights to picture the unholy for its own sake, who is preoccupied rather than with the struggle that makes for character — such an one is not less dead to beauty than to good. It is quite true that he professed moralizer has no place in pure literature, for he is a briefholder, a special pleader, and does not see and show impartially. “A poet would do ill,” thought Shelley, “to embody his own conceptions of right and wrong, which are usually those of place and time, in his poetical creations, which participate in neither.” Yet it is also true that life is seen by the poet as a unit, and art, like life, is of moral significance. Every great artist is implicitly devoted to the idea of good, is sincerely on the better side. All sure literary masterpieces are marked by unmistakable signs of love for [page liv] that which is holy, whatever plot or method may appear. No genius, however erratic, therefore, has been radically vicious. Though the light he lives in may sometimes blind him, it will not blast him. Extraordinary sincerity is demanded in art, whole-hearted allegiance to one’s ideal and inspiration, and lifelong perseverance in the attempt to realize these. “Poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity of man.”
Notwithstanding the varying emphases of the great poets, — variations often more apparent than real, — it will be found that their lives and their works satisfy these conditions. It is easy to distinguish Shelley’s poetry from Wordsworth’s, or from Shakespeare’s, an yet it would sometimes be a good deal less easy were it not for the single fact of style, — the characteristic clothing, or rather the special way in which each man’s work wears its clothing. Even so, there are brief passages in Alastor that Wordsworth might have uttered, and lyric touches in Prometheus that would not readily be wrested as spurious from one of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies. The truth is, the Poetry, too, is one, and that, as Shelley himself so finely phrases it, “poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought, and with the contemporary condition of them: one great poet is a masterpiece of nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe, as exclude from his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. . . . A poet is the combined product of such internal powers and as modify the nature of others; and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers; he is not one, but both. Every man’s mind [page lv] is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected, and in which they compose one form. Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape.” 1
Shelley, for his part, saturated himself as a youth in the plays of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other Elizabethans; in the Faire Queene of Spenser (whose influence on succeeding English poets, particularly Milton and Keats, has justly won for him the title of “the poets’ poet”); in Homer and the Greek tragedies; in Theocritus, Moschus, and Bion; in Horace, Ovid, Virgil, and Lucreitius; in Tasso, Ariosto, and lesser Italians; in Milton’s austere epic and his minor works; and in the poems of Scott, Moore, Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Goethe, too, he read. In later years he praised much Calderon and Dante, and read Byron with the added interest their frequent contact aroused. This is but a partial catalogue of the poetry he eagerly absorbed — the prose was correspondingly considerable — and which more and more discovered to him his powers and opportunities, as his own works did for Browning on a later day. He was stirred and moved, also, by the great Biblical poems and dramas, — the book of Job especially.
The living persons who most influenced Shelley have been already mentioned and described in the sketch of his life, and there also it was shown how deeply his imagination was affected by the elemental forces of nature. Forces, — because, Titanic or delicate as the object might be, Mont Blanc or a skylark, Shelley seems chiefly concerned with its incentive, the spirit that gives it being and direction. He sees nature neither as vast painted scenery against which as against a background man plays his part, nor yet as the
1 From the Preface to Prometheus Unbound.
[page lvi]
unreal projection of human thought and fancy. Responsive as he is to every sensuous impression, and eager to trace the course of human diversity in the symbolic aspects of nature, he yet characteristically regards all natural phenomena as vital in themselves and for themselves, understanding man no less that understood by him, honouring their own dignity as members of the spiritual economy of the universe, and calmer and truer in their movement toward destiny than the mortals who live among them in alternating fits of love and cruelty, of fear and hope. Into their spiritual brotherhood the illumined may gain access, but only on terms of purity and unselfishness. What they reveal to such is revealed for the large sake of all, not for little, local gain of a wandering human. Nature and man are tending toward the high estate of perfect love, and each will be the better for the other’s understanding friendship. Prometheus, the ideal of Man, and Asia, transfigured Nature, will at length become united into one being, that Light of which the poet sings in Adonais —
“. . . whose smiles kindles the Universe,
That Beauty in which all things work and move,
That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse
Of birth can quench not, the sustaining Love
Which, through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst.”
It will thus be seen that Shelley is at one with the romantic temper of his age in ascribing to nature a spiritual quality and significance, and in regarding man’s life as symbolic and progressive; but he goes beyond Romanticism — Wordsworthian Romanticism at least — in his idea of the vigorously dynamic life of nature, an idea he holds in common with modern physicists, save that with him in nature is almost everywhere apotheosized. Wordsworth, though he informed nature with intense spiritual meaning, yet saw it in familiar images and rather still habitudes. Even at its highest, [page lvii] nature in his work is somewhat domesticized, at least localized, in tinge, and is often comparatively hushed and stationary. Where it moves and energizes it does so slowly, and within limits. In brief, its tone is the tone of the phenomenal tenanted in time by the Eternal, rather than that of a rushing mighty wind. To Wordsworth nature is the garment of the Eternal; to Shelley, its movement. Shelley makes his pictures less pictures than actional prophecies. Arethusa leaps down the rocks, the Night swiftly walks over the western wave, the skylark pants forth a flood of rapture, the West Wind is a wild spirit moving everywhere, and “Follow! Follow!” cry the echoing Voices to Panthea and Asia in the Prometheus. The very mythological largeness of many of his nature-conceptions — Greek in body but intensely modern and fervent in spirit — gives them power that stirs and draws even usually unemotional readers. His poetry illustrates one of his own cardinal doctrines as critic, it “compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to imagine that which we know.”
For Shelley is nearly always a coursing poet. There is sun in his work, and wind and storm. An “enemy of society,” he was yet an anxious lover and reformer of mankind. Against occasional laws he rebelled, considering only the laws of the spirit to be binding and immutable. He was always a Platonist in temper, and early became one also by conviction. All that man needs, he thought, is freedom to think and to act. Granted relief from fear and tyranny, he cannot fail to come out into the light of love. His instinct will lead him if he will but trust it, for it is not blind, but is made purposeful by the Power, the Spirit, that helps all things finally to realize themselves in love. Man has been shamefully abused, drugged, made mad, by oppression, selfishness, and dread. Let him become himself —
“Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea; [page lviii]
Familiar acts are beautiful trough love;
Labour, and pain, and grief, in life’s green grove
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be!
“His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,
A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,
Is a tempest-wingéd ship, whose helm
Love rules through waves which dare not overwhelm,
Forcing life’s wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
“The lighting is his slave; heaven’s utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
The pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!
The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;
And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare:
‘Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.’”
In order to clear man’s way for him Shelley discovers not only his internal foes, but also the external enemies which encourage these, — King and Priest. Against political and ecclesiastical tyrants he lifts up a burning voice, in his Ode to Liberty, Revolt of Islam, Prometheus, and The Cenci. Here he is ta one with the most ardent spirits of the modern revolutionary era, though in point of patience 1 he had much to learn. It seemed to Shelley that personal prosperity and content meant nearly always a selfish blindness to the large woes of others; it seemed to him that the world at large was in the grip of baneful and intolerable custom; the men were smugly and fatuously wearing shackles that not only hampered their movements bur corroded their very souls; and that all that was necessary to their deliverance was acceptance of the spirit of love in place of the dictates of
1 In matters intimately affecting himself, however, Shelley sometimes showed extraordinary long-suffering. Note the mildness of the following rebuke in a letter to James Ollier, his publisher: “Mr. Gisborne has sent me a copy of the Prometheus, which is certainly most beautifully printed. It is to be regretted that the errors of the press are so numerous, and in many respects so destructive of the sense of a species of poetry which, I fear, even without this disadvantage, very few will understand or like.”
[page lix]
what they called law,1 a willingness to see and assume mankind’s heritage of freedom of soul, and a determination no longer to submit to the whims and wilfulnesses of self-constituted exploiters. In brief, Shelley was a thorough-going Radical in thought, in teaching, and in deed, though a many-sided one. He was wholesomely earnest in his desire for the world’s betterment, yet he was, in his personal relations, sometimes strangely unsensitive in his very sensitiveness. He was hardly willing that men should encounter and overthrow tyranny with its own weapons, and yet he was deeply impatient of their long hesitation to be free. If Wordsworth was a priest of Liberty, and Byron its soldier, Shelley rather was its young prophet, who brooded, and promised, and exhorted, and lamented, in turn.
Too often his poetry struck the note of grief at the listlessness and insufficiency of human life. It is interesting to note with what unrest he time after time contrasts life with death, the waking consciousness with sleep. Indeed, there are few of the romantic poets who are not moved to noble utterance of these twin themes. In Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Byron, such references recur again and again. For the sleep-experience, it seems to the poet, provides him a way of escape from the weaknesses and wrongs of mortality, rescues him from his own and his fellows’ littleness, gives his imagination the right and the power to assert his mastery and go on its unchecked adventure. So, too, as in sleep he dies to the world of fact, from sleep he rises with enlarged horizon, with cleared and refreshed spirit.
“Every morning we are born: every night we die.”
1 In his Essay on Christianity, Shelley writes: “This, and no other, is justice: — to consider, under all the circumstances of a particular case, how the greatest quantity and purest quality of happiness will ensue from any action; [this] is to be just, and there is no other justice. The distinction between justice and mercy was first imagined in the courts of tyranny. Mankind receive every relaxation of their tyranny as a circumstance of grace and favour.”
[page lx]
If sleep can so serve him, how, he asks himself, shall not death also serve him, only more greatly? For death, it seems, much gather into itself all the meanings and benedictions of sleep. Shelley touches these ideas with a more delicate and lingering sympathy than does any other. We find their rising and falling music in Queen Mab, the opening chorus in Hellas, Mutability, To Night, Adonais, Stanzas written in Dejection, and in these lettered words concerning the English burying-place at Rome: “To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, when we first visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear the whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the tombs, mostly of women and young people, who were buried there, one might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and so it peoples with its wishes vacancy and oblivion.” The figures under which Shelley broods upon the thoughts of sleep and death are among the gentlest and truest in the whole range of his shining imagery.
A rising and falling music, it was said, — tinged often with melancholy. But this melancholy is not to be confounded with pessimism. It is the melancholy of art and artists, a principle that has persisted in Teutonic literatures especially, from the time of the Saxon sagas to our own day. Its roots, perhaps, are three: recognition of the incompleteness of human life; inability to express a though or truth with the sheer first power of that thought or truth; and failure to secure more than a very slight share of the responsive sympathy of men and women. The poet is baffled at every turn by these “Thus far’s,” — even though he fight the better for them, — the limitation of life, the limitation of language, the limitation of love. Shelley felt them all acutely. Himself hindered by himself, he looked forward the more eagerly to the emancipation of mankind; in his later days deeply doubtful — save in brief moments — [page lxi] of the poetic power he yet felt constrained to exert; hungry always for words and looks of understanding; he has left us his testimony touching each of these common sorrows. Of the imperfections of life he wrote: —
“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Of the struggle of expression: —
“Woe is me!
The wingéd words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of love’s rare Universe
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire.”
And again: “The most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet.” And of the inadequacy of human love:—
“O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For your cradle, your home and your bier?”
Shelley’s own though of himself as poet and reformer is set forth in the following extract from a letter of December 11, 1817, to Godwin, concerning Laon and Cythna, or The Revolt of Islam: “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 sympathy 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 [page lxii] believe these faculties, which perhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist very imperfectly in my own mind. . . . I cannot but be conscious, in much of what I write, of an absence of that tranquility which is the attribute and accompaniment of power. . . . If I live, or if I see any trust in coming years, doubt not 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.” Godwin need not have doubted, for Shelley was not born to pass away until he had uttered his masterpiece, — both a revelation and a prophecy. Alastor, too, Julian and Maddalo, and Adonais, have peculiar value as presenting self-delineations of the poet’s mind, while in the exquisite song of the Fourth Spirit in Prometheus we get something of the instinct and joy of the creative faculty that upbore him in those great moments for which he paid in the pain and sorrow of gray intervals: —
“On a poet’s lip I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept:
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the aërial kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality.”
It remains to speak of Shelley’s distinctive style, which is, of course, one always in point of word-lore, musical keenness, vivified sensibility, acceleration, yet is separable into the lyric manner, the dramatic, the satiric, and the polemic. In the lyric Shelley is most surely himself, striking through to the secret of his feeling with quick penetration, [page lxiii] and singing out his emotion exultantly, as in The Cloud; or mournfully, as in Stanzas written in Dejection; or both, as in Epipsychidion; yet in all with an astonishing anticipativeness. It is a singing at its happiest like the shrill delight of his own skylark, or the careless rapture of Browning’s thrush, bird-like in both its trilling echoes and its swift-flung ritornelles; in its quiet caressing of a single note, as dædal” or multitudinous,” and in the flooding harmonies of its finale. And here it should be said that Shelley’s endings are among his greatest poetic victories over the clogs of expression, whether in the lyric-built drama, Prometheus, with which he could not rest content until he had added a fourth act of hope and gladness; or in the magnificently sustained pæn of Eternity with which Adonais breaks off its music; or in the lingering promise-refrains of the Ode to the West Wind and the apostrophes to Jane. Yet this is not true of all of his work, some of which, in its sheer lyric abandon, is over-careless of the oracle that “truth in art is the unity of a thing with itself.” In the sonnet form, particularly, Shelley is less successful, possibly because his repugnance to even a literary law that did not immediately commend itself to his art sense may have disturbed his pen’s ease and power. Certainly, he was careless here of the canons, and seems to have had scant appreciation of the self-justifying genius of this difficult but finely subtle form. Even so, one cannot but be grateful that Shelley needed no salvation from the vice of fastidiousness. It is possible to fail in art, as Browning writes, “only to succeed in highest art.”
Something of the same unease in technique appears in the dramas, Hellas, Prometheus, and The Cenci, of which only the last-named is, in the traditional sense, a contribution drama power. I have used of the Prometheus the term “lyric-built,” for Shelley’s utterance is always essentially lyrical, and so indeed is his point of view. By this is meant that he is chiefly interested in reproducing [page lxiv] his own emotions in song, — emotions touching past deaths and persecutions, present pleasures and sorrows, and ideal aspirations toward a World-Cause he too often felt as silent and remote. He wrote — in its highest sense — personal poetry. His characteristic work is never horizontal: when exultant it shoots upward; when dejected it plunges downward. It has no merely craftsmanlike propriety. Of the craft of the dramatist, indeed, he knew little either by experience or by reflection, though his critical vision showed him the meaning of the dramatic idea so plainly that his statement of it in the preface to The Cenci is among the best we have. “The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama,” he writes, “is the teaching the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself; in proportion to the possession of which knowledge every human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant, and kind.” And again: “In a dramatic composition the imagery and the passion should interpenetrate one another, the former being reserved for the full development and illustration of the latter. Imagination is as the immortal God which should assume flesh for the redemption of mortal passion. It is true that the most remote and the most familiar imagery may alike be fit for dramatic purposes when employed in the illustration of strong feeling, which raises what is low, and levels to the apprehension that which is lofty, casting over all the shadow of its own greatness.” The Cenci itself, though an actable play by virtue of its many sharply striking and challenging antitheses between the incarnated spirits of good and evil, its fidelity to the prime structural conditions of drama, is yet rather modern than critically orthodox in its literary tendencies. The last act, it is true, equals in nobility of diction the nobility of its passion; emphasizes the art value of reserve; is finely selective; and not once, it seems, falls into the tiresome mire of Commonplace, a success only partially achieved in the acts preceding. [page lxv] In these powerful as they are, Shelley strangely strikes a few notes of undeniable flatness, his novitiate in drama, perhaps, in the less inspirational moments, intimidating him. The play as whole tends, like Hellas and the Prometheus, toward closet drama. Though The Cenci is more immediately forceful than Browning’s plays in general, yet the Prometheus is even farther away from the stage and stagecraft than Hardy’s Dynasts, one of the most extreme instances in modern English drama of the closet play. In any case, the direction of the dramatic spirit of to-day is toward mind-enactment. We are beginning to suspect play-house plausibility, and to feel that personal Forests of Arden are better for us than any staged presentation can possibly be. The normal man, no doubt, even in a cultured community, will find in a carefully staged performance value for both his conscience and his fancy; yet, as the progress of the race is steadily away form the objective to the subjective (precisely as Shakespeare’s progress was from the frankly concrete figures of the early comedies to Hamlet and The Tempest, neither of which plays can achieve on the stage a success commensurate with its spiritual power), it is natural that closet drama is becoming more and more persistent, and that we should have come to feel as well as to admit that the theatre is only an incident — however important — in the development of the drama, and that a play is not great first of all because it is actable. Shelley, for his part, felt this very keenly. “With the exception of Fazio,” 1 wrote Peacock, “I do not remember his having been pleased with any performance at an English theatre.” In his Defence of Poetry he discusses at some length the history of the dramatic idea and the weakness of the modern stage. His own plays, give their appropriate background, will not fail of their social and spiritual appeal.
Of his satiric and polemic verse but little need be said. Though keen and animated, it does not convince, because
1 By Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868).
[page lxvi]
neither Shelley’s human experience nor his theory of life was quite extensive and catholic enough to enable him easily to see humour in folly, or love in hate. When he derides we do not feel that he is quite true to himself, and when he argues in verse we would rather hear him “tell.” He would have produced less of this sort of work had he come more fully in spirit of his follower Browning, as expressed in Paracelsus’ dying words: —
“In my own heart love had not been made wise
To trace love’s faint beginnings in mankind,
To know even hate is but a mask of love’s,
To see good in evil, and a hope
In ill-success; to sympathize, be proud
Of their half-reasons, faint aspirings, dim
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies,
Their prejudice and fears and cares and doubts;
All with a touch of nobleness, despite
Their error, upward tending all though weak,
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun,
But dream of him, and guess where he may be,
And do their best to climb and get to him.”
Shelley’s theory of evil, admirably hopeful though it is, seeks to abolish its reality rather than to impress that reality into the service of good. He caught foregleam visions of Paracelsus’ final truth,1 but visions not long enough or intense enough to hearten his thought of life into a steadier and saner regard. Swellfoot the Tyrant is not a poem that adds to Shelley’s fame, and even in the youthful and not ineffective Queen Mab the poet in him uneasily constrained to precipitate the worser part of the human’s ire into footnotes. When he foregoes the ungrateful business denunciation, and begins to sound the high and pure notes of the race and time to be, it is then that both he and his readers most surely find their way.
Shelley stumbled sometimes in physical gait, yet his habitual movement was a quick floating or gliding. It is
1 See Prometheus, I, 303-305; III, iv, 381-383.
[page lxvii]
so in his life and in his poetry. Where he stumbles and is checked, he recovers for a longer adventure. A man of penetrative intention and restless imagining, less anxious to lead than to love, he reveals himself in spirit-winged words as one of the most intimate and powerful among the stimulators of the soul, the builders of “that great poem,” to use his words, “which all poets, like the co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the world.
[page lxviii]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE most important Shelley bibliographies are those of H. Buxton Forman — An Essay in Bibliography — and John P. Anderson — the Bibliography appended to Sharp’s Life of Shelley. Mention may also be made of Frederick S. Ellis’s An Alphabetical Table of Contents to Shelley’s Poetical Works, adapted to the editions of Forman and Rossetti; and of C.D. Locock’s An Examination of the Shelley MSS. in the Bodleian Library. The Shelley Society’s Papers and Publications are invaluable.
Magazine articles on Shelley and his works will be found listed in Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature. The American Library Association’s An Index to General Literature should also be consulted.
The following list comprises a carefully selected number of Lives, Critical Essays, Editions, and Poems concerning Shelley.
LIVES AND RECORDS
EDWARD DOWDEN: The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Two vols. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.
Same. Abridged. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS: Shelley. Macmillan.
WILLIAM SHARP: Shelley. Walter Scott.
EDWARD JOHN TRELAWNY: Records of Shelley, Byron and the Author. Pickering & Chatto.
THOMAS JEFFERSON HOGG: Life of Shelley.
THOMAS MEDWIN: Life of Shelley.
W.M. ROSETTI: Life of Shelley. Shelley Society.
THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK: Memoirs of Percy Bysshe Shelley.
H.S. SALT: Shelley, A Biographical Study.
MRS. JULIAN MARSHALL: Life and Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Two vols.
Bentley.
LEIGH HUNT: Autobiography.
ALFRED WEBB: Harriet Shelley and Catherine Nugent. The Nation, vol. xlviii.
CRITICAL ESSAYS
ROBERT BROWNING: An Essay on Shelley.
LESLIE STEPHEN: Hours in the Library, vol. iii.
MATTHEW ARNOLD: Essays in Criticism.
DAVID MASSON: Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.
EDWARD DOWDEN: Studies in Literature.
R.H. HUTTON: Literary Essays. Macmillan.
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY: Makers of Literature. The Torch.
WALTER BAGEHOT: Literary Studies.
PAUL BOURGET: Études et Portraits.
ANDREW LANG: Letters to Dead Authors.
W.M. ROSSETTI: Lives of Famous Poets.
EDITIONS
Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Verse and Prose. Edited by Harry Buxton Forman. Eight vols.
Reeves & Turner.
Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited, with a Memoir, by Mrs. Shelley. Two vols.
Houghton, Mifflin.
Complete Poetical Works of Shelley. Edited, with Memoir and Notes, by George Edward
Woodberry. Four vols. Houghton, Mifflin.
Poetical Works of Shelley. Edited, with Memoir and Notes, by W.M. Rossetti. Three vols.
Poems of Shelley. Edited by Edward Dowden. (Globe edition) Macmillan.
Poems of Shelley. Edited by George E. Woodberry. (Cambridge edition) Houghton, Mifflin.
[page lxx]
Adonais. Edited by W.M. Rossetti. Clarendon Press.
Adonais and Alastor. Edited by Charles G.D. Roberts. Silver, Burdett.
Prometheus Unbound. Edited by Vida D. Scudder. Heath.
Select Poems of Shelley. Edited by W.J. Alexander. Ginn.
Essays and Letters by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Ernest Rhys. Walter Scott.
Poems of Shelley. Selected and Arranged by Stopford A. Brooke. Macmillan.
With Shelley in Italy. Selected Poems and Letters. Edited by Anna D. McMahan. McClurg.
POEMS CONCERNING SHELLEY
ROBERT BROWNING: Memorabilia; Pauline (beginning, “I ne’er had ventured e’en to hope
for this”).
LEIGH HUNT: Sonnet to Shelley.
WILLIAM WATSON: To Edward Dowden, on his Life of Shelley; Shelley’s Centenary; Shelley
and Harriet.
ANDREW LANG: San Terenzo; Lines on the Inaugural Meeting of the Shelley Society.
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN: Ariel.
PAUL BOURGET: Sur un Volume de Shelley.
D.G. ROSSETTI: Percy Bysshe Shelley.
W.M. ROSSETTI: Shelley’s Heart.
J.B. TABB: Shelley. A Sonnet.
GEORGE E. WOODBERRY: Shelley, A Sonnet; Shelley’s House.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE: Cor Cordium.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: After a Lecture on Shelley.
[page lxxi]
[blank page]
POEMS OF
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
STANZAS — APRIL, 1814
AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even:
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.
Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries,
Away! 5
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend’s ungentle mood:
Thy lover’s eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.
Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth; 10
Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.
The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head,
The blooms of dewy Spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:
But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead, 15
Ere the midnight’s frown and morning’s smile, ere thou and peace, may meet. [unnumbered page]
The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose,
For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep;
Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows;
Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep. 20
Thou in the grave shalt rest — yet, till the phantoms flee
Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile,
Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings, are not free
From the music of two voices, and the light of one sweet smile.
TO COLERIDGE
ΔΑΚΡϒΣΙ ΔΙΟΙΣΩ ΑΠΟΤΜΟΝ
O, there are spirits in the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As starbeams among twilight trees: —
Such lovely ministers to meet 5
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And moonlight seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things,
Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice 10
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast like a worthless boon, thy love away. [page 2]
And thou hast sought in starry eyes
Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another’s wealth; — tame sacrifice 15
To a fond faith! Still dost thou pine?
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?
Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth’s inconstancy? 20
Did thine own mind afford no scope
Of love, or moving thougts to thee?
That natural scenes or human smiles
Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles.
Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled 25
Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;
The glory of the moon is dead;
Night’s ghost and dreams have now departed:
Thine own soul still is true to thee,
But changed to a foul fiend through misery. 30
This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
Dream not to chase; — the mad endeavour
Would scourge thee to severer pangs.
Be as thou art. Thy settled fate, 35
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate.
1815.
TO WORDSWORTH
POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return;
Childhood and youth, friendship, and love’s first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. [page 3]
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine, 5
Which thou too feel’st, yet I alone deplore:
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter’s midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude; 10
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty; —
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.
1815.
A SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD
LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE
THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset’s ray;
And pallid evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day.
Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men, 5
Creep hand in hand from you obscurest glen.
They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,
Responding to the charm with its own mystery. 10
The winds are still, or the dry church tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.
Thou too, aërial Pile, whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obey’st in silence their sweet solemn spells, 15
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire, [page 4]
Around whose lessening and invisible height
Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres;
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, 20
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around;
And, mingling with the still nigh and mute sky,
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.
Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild 25
And terrorless as this serenest night:
Here could I hope, like some inquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
That loveliest dreams and perpetual watch did keep. 30
September, 1815.
LINES
THE cold earth slept below,
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,
With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow 5
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.
The wintry hedge was black,
The green grass was not seen,
The birds did rest 10
On the bare thorn’s breast, [page 5]
Whose roots beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.
Thine eyes glowed in the glare 15
Of the moon’s dying light;
As a fen-fire’s beam
On a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly — so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night. 21
The moon made thy lips pale, belovéd;
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed
On thy dear head 25
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.
November, 1815.
THE SUNSET
THERE late was One, within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon’s burning sky,
Genius and death contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath 5
Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walked along the pathway of a field,
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o’er, 10
But to the west was open to the sky. [page 6]
There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers,
And the old dandelion’s hoary beard, 15
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
On the brown massy woods — and in the east
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
While the faint stars were gathering overhead. 20
“Is it not strange, Isabel,” said the youth,
“I never saw the sun? We will walk here
To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.”
That night the youth and lady mingled lay
In love and sleep — but when the morning came 25
The lady found her lover dead and cold.
Let none believe that God in mercy gave
That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on — in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, 30
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her agéd father, were a kind of madness,
If madness ’t is to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief; — 36
Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead — so pale;
Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins
And weak articulations might be seen 40
Day’s ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
Which one vexed ghost inhabits night and day,
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee! [page 7]
“Inheritor of more than earth can give,
Passionless calm, and silence unreproved, 45
Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were — Peace!”
This was the only moan she ever made. 50
1816.
HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY
THE awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us; visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, 5
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,
Like memory of music fled, 10
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone? 15
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o’er you mountain river;
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown;
Why fear and dream and death and birth 21
Cast on the daylight of this earth [page 8]
Such gloom; why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope.
No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 25
To sage or poet these responses give;
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,
Remain the records of their vain endeavour:
Frail spells, whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see, 30
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone, like mist o’er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, 35
Gives grace and truth to life’s unquiet dream.
Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds, depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 40
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies
That wax and wane in lovers’ eyes;
Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame; 45
Depart not as thy shadow came!
Depart not, lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality!
While yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing [page 9] 51
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead;
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed.
I was not heard, I saw them not;
When, musing deeply on the lot 55
Of life, at the sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,
Sudden thy shadow fell on me:
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! 60
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine: have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers 65
Of studious zeal or love’s delight
Outwatched with me the envious night:
They know that never joy illumed my brow,
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery, 70
That thou, O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate’er these words cannot express!
The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past: there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, 75
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply [page 10] 80
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all mankind.
1816.
MONT BLANC
LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI
I
THE everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark — now glittering — now reflecting gloom —
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings 5
Of waters, — with a sound but half its own,
Such a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where the waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and vast river 10
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.
II
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve — dark, deep Ravine —
Thou many-coloured, many voicéd vale,
Over whose pines and crags and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams; awful scene 15
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest; — thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, 20
Children of elder time, in whose devotion [page 11]
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
To hear — an old and solemn harmony:
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep 25
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which, when the voices of the desert fail,
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commotion 30
A loud, lone sound, no other sound can tame;
Thou art the path of that unresting sound,
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee,
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange 35
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around; 40
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by, 45
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!
III
Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep, — that death is slumber, 50
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live. I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled [page 12]
The vale of life and death? Or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep 55
Spread far around and inaccessibly
Its circles? for the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes among the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, 60
Mont Blanc appears, — still, snowy, and serene —
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread 65
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter’s bone,
And the wolf tracks her there — how hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high, 70
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. — Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-dæmon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelope once this silent snow?
None can reply — all seems eternal now. 75
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be,
But for such faith, with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal 80
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
IV
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell [page 13] 85
Within the dædal earth; lighting and rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower, — the bound 90
With which form that detested trance they leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him, and all that his may be;
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die, revolve, subside, and swell. 95
Power dwells apart in its tranquility,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And this, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primeval mountains,
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep, 100
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow-rolling on; there, many a precipice
Frost and the Sun in scorn mortal power
Have piled — dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower 105
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil 110
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon the remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; 115
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race [page 14]
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest’s stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves 120
Shine in the rushing torrents’ restless gleam,
Which, from the secret chasms in tumult welling,
Meet in Vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, 125
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.
V
Mont Blanc yet gleams on high: — the power is there,
The still and solemn power, of many sights
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, 130
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon the mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them: — Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow, with breath 135
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome 140
Of heaven is a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
June 23, 1816. [page 15]
TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING
THUS to be lost and thus to sink and die,
Perchance were death indeed! — Constantia, turn!
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,
Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn
Between thy lips, are laid to sleep; 5
Within thy breath and on thy hair, like odour it is yet,
And from thy touch like fire doth leap.
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet,
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!
A breathless awe, like the swift change 10
Unseen but felt in youthful slumbers,
Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,
Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers.
The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven
By the enchantment of thy strain, 15
And on my shoulders wings are woven,
To follow its sublime career,
Beyond the mighty moons that wane
Upon the verge of nature’s utmost sphere,
Till the world’s shadowy walls are past and disappear.
Her voice is hovering o’er my soul — it lingers 21
O’ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings,
The blood and life within those snowy fingers
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.
My brain is wild, my breath comes quick — 25
The blood listening in my frame,
And thronging shadows, fast and thick, [page 16]
Fall on my overflowing eyes;
My heart is quivering like a flame;
As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies, 30
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.
I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee,
Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
Flows on, and fills all things with melody.
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong, 35
On which, like one in trance upborne,
Secure o’er rocks and waves I sweep,
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn;
Now ’t is the breath of summer night,
Which, when the starry waters sleep 40
Round western isles with incense-blossoms bright,
Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.
1817.
SONNET — OZYMANDIAS
I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in a desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 5
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 10
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
1817. [page 17]
LINES
THAT time is dead for ever, child,
Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!
We look on the past,
And stare aghast
At the spectres wailing, pale, and ghast, 5
Of hopes which thou and I beguiled
To death on life’s dark river.
The stream we gazed on then, rolled by;
Its waves are unreturning;
But we yet stand 10
In a lone land,
Like tombs to mark the memory
Of hopes and fears which fade and fly
In the light of life’s dim morning.
November 15, 1817.
LINES TO A CRITIC
HONEY from silkworms who can gather,
Or silk from the yellow bee?
The grass may grow in winter weather
As soon as hate in me.
Hate men who cant, and men who pray, 5
And men who rail like thee;
An equal passion to repay, —
They are not coy like me.
Or seek some slave of power and gold,
To be thy dear heart’s mate; [page 18] 10
Thy love will move that bigot cold,
Sooner than me thy hate.
A passion like the one I prove
Cannot divided be;
I hate thy want of truth and love — 15
How should I then hate thee?
December, 1817.
PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES
LISTEN, listen Mary mine,
To the whisper of the Apennine;
It bursts on the roof like the thunder’s roar,
Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow 5
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay;
But when night comes, a chaos dread 10
On the dim starlight then is spread,
And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.
May 4, 1818.
ON A FADED VIOLET
THE odour from the flower is gone
Which like thy kisses breathed on me;
The colour from the flower is flown
Which glowed of thee and only thee!
A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form, 5
It lies on my abandoned breast, [page 19]
And mocks the heart which yet is warm,
With cold and silent rest.
I weep, — my tears revive it not!
I sigh, — it breathes no more on me; 10
Its mute and uncomplaining lot
Is such as mine should be.
1818.
LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HILLS
MANY a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on
Day and night, and night and day, 5
Drifting on his dreary way,
With the solid darkness black
Closing round his vessel’s track;
Whilst above, the sunless sky,
Big with clouds, hangs heavily; 10
And behind, the tempest fleet
Hurries on with lightning feet,
Riving sail, and cord, and plank,
Till the ship has almost drank
Death from the o’er-brimming deep, 15
And sinks down, down, like that sleep
When the dreamer seems to be
Weltering through eternity;
And the dim low line before
Of a dark and distant shore 20
Still recedes, as ever still
Longing with divided will, [page 20]
But no power to seek or shun,
He is ever drifted on
O’er the unreposing wave 25
To the haven of the grave.
What if there no friends will greet;
What if there no heart will meet
His with love’s impatient beat;
Wander wheresoe’er he may, 30
Can he dream before that day
To find refuge from distress
In friendship’s smile, in love’s caress?
Then ’t will wreak him little woe
Whether such there be or no: 35
Senseless is the breast, and cold,
Which relenting love would fold;
Bloodless are the veins and chill
Which the pulse of pain did fill;
Every little living nerve 40
That from bitter words did swerve
Round the tortured lips and brow,
Are like sapless leaflets now
Frozen upon December’s bough.
On the beach of a northern sea 45
Which tempests shake eternally,
As once the wretch there lay to sleep,
Lies a solitary heap,
One white skull and seven dry bones,
On the margin of the stones, 50
Where a few gray rushes stand,
Boundaries of the sea and land:
Nor is heard one voice of wail
But the seamews, as they sail
O’er the billows of the gale; [page 21] 55
Or the whirlwind up and down
Howling, like a slaughtered town,
When a king in glory rides
Through the pomp of fratricides:
Those unburied bones around 60
There is many a mournful sound;
There is no lament for him,
Like a sunless vapour, dim,
Who once clothed with life and thought
What now moves nor murmurs not. 65
Ay, many flowering islands lie
In the waters of wide Agony:
To such a one this morn was led
My bark, by soft winds piloted.
’Mid the mountains Euganean, 70
I stood listening to the pæan
With which the legioned rooks did hail
The sun’s uprise majestical;
Gathering round with wings all hoar,
Through the dewy mist they soar 75
Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven
Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,
Flecked with fire and azure, lie
In the unfathomable sky,
So their plumes of purple grain, 80
Starred with drops of golden rain,
Gleam above the sunlight woods,
As in the silent multitudes
On the morning’s fitful gale
Through the broken mist they sail, 85
And the vapours cloven and gleaming
Follow down the dark steep streaming,
Till all is bright, and clear, and still,
Round the solitary hill. [page 22]
Beneath is spread like a green sea 90
The waveless plain of Lombardy,
Bounded by the vaporous air,
Islanded by cities fair.
Underneath day’s azure eyes,
Ocean’s nursling, Venice lies, — 95
A peopled labyrinth of walls,
Amphitrite’s destined halls,
Which her hoary sire now paves
With his blue and beaming waves.
Lo! the sun upsprings behind, 100
Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined
On the level quivering line
Of the waters crystalline;
And before that chasm of light,
As within a furnace bright, 105
Column, tower, and dome, and spire,
Shine like obelisks of fire,
Pointing with inconstant motion
From the altar of dark ocean
To the sapphire-tinted skies; 110
As the flames of sacrifice
From the marble shrines did rise,
As to pierce the dome of gold
Where Apollo spoke of old.
Sun-girt City! thou hast been 115
Ocean’s child, and then his queen;
Now is come a darker day,
And thou soon must be his prey,
If the power that raised thee here
Hallow so thy watery bier. 120
A less drear ruin then than now,
With thy conquest-branded brow [page 23]
Stooping to the slave of slaves
From thy throne, among the waves
Wilt thou be, when the seamew 125
Flies, as once before it flew,
O’er thine isles depopulate,
And all is in its ancient state,
Save where many a palace-gate
With green sea-flowers overgrown 130
Like a rock of ocean’s own,
Topples o’er the abandoned sea
As the tides change sullenly.
The fisher on his watery way,
Wandering at the close of day, 135
Will spread his sail and seize his oar,
Till he passes the gloomy shore,
Lest the dead should, from their sleep
Bursting o’er the starlight deep,
Lead a rapid masque of death 140
O’er the waters of his path.
Those who alone thy towers behold
Quivering through aërial gold,
As I now behold them here,
Would imagine not they were 145
Sepulchres, where human forms,
Like pollution-nourished worms,
To the corpse of greatness cling,
Murdered and now mouldering:
But if Freedom should awake 150
In her omnipotence, and shake
From the Celtic Anarch’s hold
All the keys of dungeons cold,
Where a hundred cities lie
Chained like thee, ingloriously, [page 24] 155
Thou and all thy sister band
Might adorn this sunny land,
Twining memories of old time
With new virtues more sublime;
If not, perish thou and they; 160
Clouds which stain truth’s rising day
By her sun consumed away,
Earth can spare ye; while like flowers,
In the waste of years and hours,
From your dust new nations spring 165
With more kindly blossoming.
Perish! let there only be
Floating o’er thy hearthless sea,
As the garment of thy sky
Clothes the world immortally, 170
One remembrance, more sublime
Than the tattered pall of Time,
Which scarce hides thy visage wan:
That a tempest-cleaving swan
Of the songs of Albion, 175
Driven from his ancestral streams
By the might of evil dreams,
Found a nest in thee; and ocean
Welcomed him with such emotion
That its joy grew his, and sprung 180
From his lips like music flung
O’er a mighty thunder-fit,
Chastening terror: what though yet
Poesy’s unfailing river,
Which through Albion winds for ever, 185
Lashing with melodious wave
Many a sacred poet’s grave,
Mourn its latest nursling fled! [page 25]
What though thou with all thy dead
Scarce can for this fame repay 190
Aught thine own, — oh, rather say,
Though thy sins and slaveries foul
Overcloud a sunlike soul!
As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Scamander’s wasting springs 195
As divinest Shakespeare’s might
Fills Avon and the world with light,
Like omniscient power, which he
Imaged ’mid mortality;
As the love from Petrarch’s urn 200
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp, by which the heart
Sees things unearthly; so thou art,
Mighty spirit: so shall be
The city that did refuge thee. 205
Lo, the sun floats up the sky,
Like thought-wingéd Liberty,
Till the universal light
Seems to level plain and height;
From the sea a mist has spread, 210
And the beams of morn lie dead
On the towers of Venice now,
Like its glory long ago.
By the skirts of that gray cloud
Many-doméd Padua proud 215
Stands, a peopled solitude,
’Mid the harvest heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe,
And the milk-white oxen slow 220
With the purple vintage strain, [page 26]
Heaped upon the creaking wain,
That the brutal Celt may swill
Drunken sleep with savage will;
And the sickle to the sword 225
Lies unchanged, though many a lord,
Like a weed whose shade is poison,
Overgrows this region’s foison,
Sheaves of whom are ripe to come
To destruction’s harvest-home: 230
Men must reap the things they sow,
Force from force must ever flow,
Or worse; but ’t is bitter woe
That love or reason cannot change
The despot’s rage, the slave’s revenge. 235
Padua, thou within those walls
Those mute guests at festivals,
Son and Mother, Death and Sin,
Played at dice for Ezzelin,
Till Death cried, “I win, I win!” 240
And Sin cursed to lose the wager,
But Death promised, to assuage her,
That he would petition for
Her to be made Vice-Emperor,
When he destined years o’er, 245
Over all between the Po
And the eastern Alpine snow,
Under the mighty Austrian.
Sin smiled so as Sin only can,
And, since that time, ay, long before, 250
Both have ruled from shore to shore,
That incestuous pair, who follow
Tyrants as the sun the swallow,
As Repentance follows Crime,
And as changes follow Time. [page 27] 255
In thine halls the lamp of learning,
Padua, now no more is burning;
Like a meteor, whose wild way
Is lost over the grave of day,
It gleams betrayed and to betray: 260
Once remotest nations came
To adore that sacred flame,
When it lit not many a hearth
On this cold and gloomy earth;
Now new fires from antique light 265
Spring beneath the wide world’s might;
But their spark lies dead in thee,
Trampled out by tyranny.
As the Norway woodman quells,
In the depth of piny dells, 270
One light flame among the brakes,
While the boundless forest shakes,
And its mighty trunks are torn
By the fire thus lowly born —
The spark beneath his feet is dead, 275
He starts to see the flames it fed
Howling through the darkened sky
With myriad tongues victoriously,
And sinks down in fear: so thou,
O tyranny! beholdest now 280
Light around thee, and thou hearest
The loud flames ascend, and fearest:
Grovel on the earth; ay, hide
In the dust thy purple pride!
Noon descends around me now: 285
’T is the noon of autumn’s glow,
When a soft and purple mist
Like a vaporous amethyst, [page 28]
Or an air-dissolvéd star
Mingling light and fragrance, far 290
From the curved horizon’s profound,
Fills the overflowing sky;
And the plains that silent lie
Underneath. The leaves unsodden 295
Where the infant frost has trodden
With his morning-wingéd feet,
Whose bright print is gleaming yet;
And the red and golden vines,
Piercing with their trellised lines 300
The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;
The dun and bladed grass no less,
Pointing from this hoary tower
In the windless air, the flower
Glimmering at my feet; the line 305
Of the olive-sandalled Apennine
In the south dimly islanded;
And the Alps, whose snows are spread
High between the clouds and sun;
And of living things each one; 310
And my spirit, which so long
Darkened this swift stream of song,
Interpenetrated lie
By the glory of the sky:
Be it love, light, and harmony, 315
Odour, or the soul of all
Which from heaven like dew doth fall,
Or the mind which feeds this verse
Peopling the lone universe.
Noon descends, and after noon 320
Autumn’s evenings meets me soon, [page 29]
Leading the infantine moon,
And that one star, which to her
Almost seems to minister
Half the crimson light she brings 325
From the sunset’s radiant springs:
And the soft dreams of the morn
(Which like wingéd winds had borne,
To that silent isle, which lies
’Mid remembered agonies, 330
The frail bark of this lone being),
Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,
And its ancient pilot Pain,
Sits beside the helm again.
Other flowering isles must be 335
In the sea of life and agony:
Other spirits float and flee
O’er that gulf: even now, perhaps,
On some rock the wild wave wraps,
With folded wings they waiting sit 340
For my bark, to pilot it
To some calm and blooming cove,
Where for me, and those I love,
May a windless bower be built,
Far from passion, pain, and guilt, 345
In a dell ’mid lawny hills,
Which the wild sea-murmur fills,
And soft sunshine, and the sound
Of old forests echoing round,
And the light and smell divine 350
Of all flowers that breathe and shine.
We may live happy there
That the spirits of the air,
Envying us, may even entice [page 30]
To our healing paradise 355
The polluting multitude:
But their rage would be subdued
By that clime divine and calm,
And the winds whose wings rain balm
On the uplifted soul, and leaves 360
Under the which the bright sea heaves;
While each breathless interval
In their whisperings musical
The inspiréd soul supplies
With its own deep melodies, 365
And the love which heals all strife,
Circling, like the breath of life,
All things in that sweet abode
With its own mild brotherhood.
They, not it, would change; and soon 370
Every sprite beneath the moon
Would repent its envy vain,
And the earth grow young again.
October, 1818.
STANZAS
WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES
THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple’s noon’s transparent might;
The breath of the moist earth is light, 5
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean-floods,
The City’s voice itself is soft like Solitude’s. [page 31]
I see the Deep’s untrampled floor 10
With green and purple seaweeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown;
I sit upon the sands alone,
The lighting of the noontide ocean 15
Is flashing round me, and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
Alas! I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around, 20
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found,
And walked with inward glory crowned, —
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.
Others I see whom these surround; 25
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child, 30
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne, and yet must bear,
Till death like sleep might steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 35
Breathe o’er my dying brain its last monotony.
Some might lament that I were cold,
As I when this sweet day is gone,
Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,
Insults with this untimely moan; [page 32] 40
They might lament —for I am one
Whom men love not — and yet regret,
Unlike this day, which, when the sun
Shall on its stainless glory set, 44
Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.
December, 1818.
LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR
I ARISE from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.
I arise from dreams of thee, 5
And a spirit in my feet
Has led me — who knows how? —
To thy chamber-window, sweet!
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream; 10
The champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart,
As I must die on thin 15
O belovéd as thou art!
O lift me from the grass!
I die, I faint, I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale. 20
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast, [page 33]
O! press it close to thine again,
Where it will break at last.
1819.
LOVE’S PHILOSOPHY
THE fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean;
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single; 5
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle:
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another; 10
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What are all these kissings worth, 15
If thou kiss not me?
1819.
SONG — TO THE MEN OF ENGLAND
MEN of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, 5
From the cradle to the grave, [page 34]
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat — nay, drink your blood?
Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, 10
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear 15
With your pain and with your fear?
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears. 20
Sow seed, —but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth, — let no impostor heap;
Weave robes, — let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, — in your defence to bear.
Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells; 25
In halls ye deck, another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb, 30
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre!
1819. [page 35]
ENGLAND IN 1819
AN old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, —
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy spring;
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling, 5
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow;
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field;
An army, which liberticide and prey
Make as a two-edged sword to all who wield;
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;
Religion Christless, Godless, — a book sealed; 11
A Senate, — time’s worst statute unrepealed, —
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Bust, to illuminate our tempestuous day.
1819.
ODE TO THE WEST WIND
I
O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes; O thou, 5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingéd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow [page 36]
Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill 10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
II
Thou on whose stream, ’mid the steep sky’s commotion, 15
Loose clouds like earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning; there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 20
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, form whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst; O hear!
III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 30
Lulled by the coil of his crystálline streams, [page 37]
Beside a pumice isle of Baiæ’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 35
So sweet the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves; O hear!
IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 45
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skyey speed 50
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed 55
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud. [page 38]
V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 60
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse, 65
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 70
1819. [page 39]
PROMETHEUS UNBOUND
A LYRICAL DRAMA, IN FOUR ACTS
Audisne hæe, Amphiaræ, sub terram abdite?
PREFACE
THE Greek tragic writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of their national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of it a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves bound to adhere to the common interpretation, or to imitate in story, as in the title, their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would have amounted to a resignation of those claims to preference over their competitors which incited the composition. The Agamemnomnian story was exhibited on the Athenian theatre with as many variations as dramas.
I have presumed to employ a similar license. The Prometheus Unbound of Æschylus supposed the reconciliation of Jupiter with his victim as the price of the disclosure of the danger threatened to his empire by the consummation of his marriage with Thetis. Thetis, according to this view of the subject, was given in marriage to Peleus, and Prometheus, by the permission of Jupiter, delivered from his captivity by Hercules. Had I framed my story on this model, I should have done no more than have attempted to restore the lost drama of Æschylus; an ambition which, if my preference to this mode of treating the subject had incited me to cherish, the recollection of the high comparison such attempt would challenge might well abate. But, in truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. The only imaginary being resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan: and Prometheus is, in my judgement, a more poetical [unnumbered page] character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt form the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement, which, in Hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. The character of Satan engenders in the mind a pernicious casuistry which leads us to weigh his faults with his wrongs, and to excuse the former because the latter exceed all measure. In the minds of those who consider that magnificent fiction with a religious feeling, it engenders something worse. But Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the best and noblest ends.
This poem was chiefly written upon the mountainous ruins of Caracalla, among the flowery glades, and thickets of odoriferous blossoming trees, which are extended in ever-winding labyrinths upon its immense platforms and dizzy arches suspended in the air. The bright blue sky of Rome, and the effect of the vigorous awakening of spring in that divinest climate, and the new life with which it drenches the spirits event to intoxication, were the inspiration of this drama.
The imagery which I have employed will be found, in many instances, to have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, or from those external actions by which they are expressed. This is unusual in modern poetry, although Dante and Shakespeare are full of instances of the same kind: Dante indeed more than any other poet, and with greater success. But the Greek poets, as writers to whom no resource of awakening the sympathy of their contemporaries was unknown, were in the habitual use of this power; and it is the study of their works (since a higher merit would probably be denied me) to which I am willing that my readers should impute this singularity.
One word is due in candour to the degree in which the study of contemporary writings may have tinged my composition; for such has been a topic of censure with regard to poems far more popular, and indeed more deservedly popular, than mine. It is impossible that any one who inhabits the same age with such writers as those who stand in the foremost ranks of our own, can conscientiously assure himself that his language and tone of thought may not have been modified by the study of the productions of those extraordinary intellects. It is true, that, not the [page 41] spirit of their genius, but the forms in which it has manifested itself, are due less to the peculiarities of their own minds than to the peculiarity of the moral and intellectual condition of the minds among which they have been produced. Thus a number of writers possess the form, whilst they want the spirit of those whom, it is alleged, they imitate; because the former is the endowment of the age in which they live, and the latter must be the uncommunicated lightning of their own mind.
The peculiar style of intense and comprehensive imagery which distinguishes the modern literature of England, has not been, as a general power, the product of the imitation of any particular writer. The mass of capabilities remains at every period materially the same; the circumstances which awaken it to action perpetually change. If England were divided into forty republics, each equal in population and extent to Athens, there is no reason to suppose but that, under institutions not more perfect than those of Athens, each would produce philosophers and poets equal to those who (if we except Shakespeare) have never been surpassed. We owe the great writers of the golden age of our literature to that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion. We owe Milton to the progress and the development of the same spirit: the sacred Milton was, let it ever be remembered, a republican, and a bold inquirer into morals and religion. The great writers of our own age, we have reason to suppose, the companions and forerunners of some unimagined change in our social condition, or the opinions is now restoring, or is about to be restored.
As to imitation, poetry is a mimetic art. It creates, but it creates by combination and representation. Poetical abstractions are beautiful and new, not because the portions of which they are composed had no previous existence in the mind of man or in nature, but because the whole produced by their combination has some intelligible and beautiful analogy with those sources of emotion and thought, and with the contemporary condition of them: one great poet is a masterpiece of nature which another not only ought to study but must study. He might as wisely and as easily determine that his mind should no longer be the mirror of all that is lovely in the visible universe, as exclude from [page 42] his contemplation the beautiful which exists in the writings of a great contemporary. The pretence of doing it would be a presumption in any but the greatest; the effect, even in him, would be strained, unnatural, and ineffectual. A poet is the combined product of such internal powers as modify the nature of others; and of such external influences as excite and sustain these powers: he is not one, but both. Every man’s mind is, in this respect, modified by all the objects of nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness; it is the mirror upon which all forms are reflected, and in which they compose form. Poets, not otherwise philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. From this subjection the loftiest do not escape. There is a similarity between Homer and Hesiod, between Æschylus and Euripides, between Virgil and Horace, between Dante and Petrarch, between Shakespeare and Fletcher, between Dryden and Pope; each has a generic resemblance under which their specific distinctions are arranged. If this similarity be the result of imitation, I am willing to confess that I have imitated.
Let this opportunity be conceded to me of acknowledging that I have, what a Scotch philosopher characteristically terms, “a passion for reforming the world”: what passion incited him to write and publish his book, he omits to explain. For my part, I had rather be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon than go to heaven with Paley and Malthus. But it is a mistake to suppose that I dedicate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life. Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and supererogatory in verse. My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life, which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness. Should I live to accomplish what I purpose, that is, produce a systematical history of what appear to me to be the genuine elements of human society, let not the advocates of injustice and [page 43] superstition flatter themselves that I should take Æschylus rather than Plato as my model.
The having spoken with myself with unaffected freedom will need little apology with the candid; and let the uncandid consider that they injure me less than their own hearts and minds by misrepresentation. Whatever talents a person may possess to amuse and instruct others, be they ever so inconsiderable, he is yet bound to exert them: if his attempt be ineffectual, let the punishment of an unaccomplished purpose have sufficient; let none trouble themselves to heap the dust of oblivion upon his efforts; the pile they raise will betray his grave, which might otherwise have been unknown.
_______________________
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
PROMETHEUS DEMOGORDON JUPITER | ASIA, PANTHEA, IONE, } Oceanides |
THE EARTH | THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER |
OCEAN | THE SPIRIT OF EARTH |
APPOLLO | THE SPIRIT OF THE MOON |
MERCURY | SPIRITS OF THE HOURS |
HERCULES | SPIRITS. ECHOES. FAUNS |
FURIES |
ACT I
SCENE, A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus.
PROMETHEUS discovered bound to the Precipice.
PANTHEA and IONE are seated at his feet. Time, Night.
During the Scene, Morning slowly breaks.
PROMETHEUS
Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits
But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds
Which thou and I alone of living things
Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth
Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou 5
Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,
And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts, [page 44]
With fear and self-contempt and barren hope:
Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,
Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn, 10
O’er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.
Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,
And moments aye divided by keen pangs
Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,
Scorn, and despair, — these are mine empire, 15
More glorious far than that which thou surveyest
From thine unenvied throne, O mighty God!
Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame
Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here
Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain, 20
Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,
Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.
Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!
No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.
I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt? 25
I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,
Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,
Heaven’s ever-changing Shadow, spread below,
Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?
Ah me! alas, pain ever, for ever! 30
The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears
Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains
Eat with their burning cold into my bones.
Heaven’s wingéd hound, polluting from thy lips
His beak in poison not his own, tears up 35
My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,
The ghastly people of the realm of dream,
Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged
To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds [page 45]
When the rocks split and close again behind; 40
While from their loud abysses howling throng
The genii of the storm, urging the rage
Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.
And yet to me welcome is day and night,
Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn, 45
Or, starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs
The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead
The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom —
As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim —
Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood 50
From these pale feet, which then might trample thee
If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.
Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin
Will hunt thee undefended through the wide Heaven!
How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror, 55
Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,
Not exultation, for I hate no more,
As then ere misery made me wise. The curse
Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,
Whose many-voicéd Echoes, through the mist 60
Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!
Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,
Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept
Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air, 64
Through which the Sun walks burning without beams’
And the swift Whirlwinds, who on poiséd wings
Hung mute and moveless o’er yon hushed abyss,
As thunder, louder than your own, made rock
The orbéd world! If then my words had power,
Though I am changed so that aught evil wish 70
Is dead within; although no memory be
Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!
What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak. [page 46]
FIRST VOICE: from the Mountains
Thrice three hundred thousand years
O’er the Earthquake’s couch we stood: 75
Oft, as men convulsed with fears,
We trembled in our multitude.
SECOND VOICE: from the Springs
Thunderbolts had parched our water,
We had been stained with bitter blood,
And had run mute, ’mid shrieks of slaughter, 80
Through a city and a solitude.
THIRD VOICE: from the Air
I had clothed, since Earth uprose,
Its wastes in colours not their own;
And oft had my serene repose
Been cloven by many a rending groan. 85
FOURTH VOICE: from the Whirlwinds
We had soared beneath these mountains
Unresting ages; nor had thunder,
Nor yon volcano’s flaming fountains,
Nor any power above or under
Ever made us mute with wonder. 90
FIRST VOICE
But never bowed our snowy crest
As at the voice of thine unrest.
SECOND VOICE
Never such a sound before
To the Indian waves we bore.
A pilot asleep on the howling sea 95
Leaped up from the deck in agony, [page 47]
And heard, and cried, “Ah, woe is me!”
And died as mad as the wild waves be.
THIRD VOICE
By such dread words from Earth and Heaven
My still realm was never riven: 100
When its wound was closed, there stood
Darkness o’er the day like blood.
FOURTH VOICE
And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin
To frozen caves our flight pursuing
Made us keep silence — thus — and thus — 105
Though silence is a hell to us.
THE EARTH
The tongueless Caverns of the craggy hills
Cried, “Misery!” then; the hollow Heaven replied,
“Misery!” and the Ocean’s purple waves,
Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds, 110
And the pale nations heard it, “Misery!”
PROMETHEUS
I hear a sound of voices: not the voice
Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou
Scorn him without whose all-enduring will
Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove, 115
Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist
Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,
The Titan? he who made his agony
The barrier to your else all-conquering Foe?
O rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams, 120
Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,
Through whose o’ershadowing woods I wandered once [page 48]
With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;
Why scorns the spirit which inform ye, now 125
To commune with me? me alone, who checked,
As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,
The falsehood and the force of him who reigns
Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves
Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses.
Why answer ye not, still, Brethren? 130
THE EARTH
They dare not.
PROMETHEUS
Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.
Ha! what an awful whisper rises up!
’T is scarce like sound: it tingles through the frame
As lightning tingles, hovering ere its strike.
Speak, Spirit! From thine inorganic voice, 135
I only know that thou art moving near
And love. How cursed I him?
THE EARTH
How canst thou hear
Who knowest not the language of the dead?
PROMETHEUS
Thor art a living spirit; speak as they!
THE EARTH
I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven’s fell King 140
Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain
More torturing than the one whereon I roll.
Subtle thou art and good; and though the Gods
Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,
Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now! [page 49] 145
PROMETHEUS
Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim,
Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel
Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;
Yet ’t is not pleasure.
THE EARTH
No, thou canst not hear:
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known 150
Only to those who die.
PROMETHEUS
And what art thou,
O melancholy Voice?
THE EARTH
I am the Earth,
Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,
To the last fibre of the loftiest tree
Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air, 155
Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,
When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud
Of glory, arise, a spirit keen joy!
And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted
Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust, 160
And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread
Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.
Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll
Around us: their inhabitants beheld
My spheréd light wane in wide Heaven; the sea 165
Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire
From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow
Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven’s frown;
Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains; [page 50]
Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads 170
Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled:
When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm,
And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;
And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,
Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds 175
Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry
With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained
With the contagion of a mother’s hate
Breathed on her child’s destroyer; ay, I heard
Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not 180
Yet my innumerable seas and streams,
Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,
And the inarticulate people of the dead,
Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate
In secret joy and hope those dreadful words, 185
But dare not speak them.
PROMETHEUS
Venerable mother!
All else who live and suffer take from thee
Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,
And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.
But mine own words, I pray, deny me not! 190
THE EARTH
They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,
The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,
Met his own image walking in the garden.
That apparition, sole of men, he saw.
For know, there are two worlds of life and death: 195
One, that which thou beholdest; but the other
Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit
The shadows of all forms that think and live, [page 51]
Till death unite them and they part no more;
Dreams and the light imaginings of men, 200
And all that faith creates or love desires,
Terrible, strange, sublime, and beauteous shapes.
There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,
Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the Gods
Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds, 205
Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;
And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;
And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne
Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter
The curse which all remember. Call at will 210
Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,
Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods
From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin
Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.
Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge 215
Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,
As rainy wind through the abandoned gate
Of a fallen palace.
PROMETHEUS
Mother, let not aught
Of that which may be evil, pass again
My lips, or those of aught resembling me. 220
Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!
IONE
My wings are folded o’er mine ears:
My wings are crosséd o’er mine eyes:
Yet through their silver shade appears,
And through their lulling plumes arise, 225
A Shape, a throng of sounds.
May it be no ill to thee [page 52]
O thou of many wounds!
Near whom, for our sweet sister’s sake,
Ever thus we watch and wake. 230
PANTHEA
The sound is of whirlwind underground,
Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;
The shape is awful like the sound,
Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.
A sceptre of pale gold, 235
To stay steps proud, o’er the slow cloud,
His veinéd hand doth hold.
Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,
Like one who does, not suffers wrong.
PHANTASM OF JUPITER
Why have the secret powers of this strange world
Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither 241
On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds
Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice
With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk
In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou? 245
PROMETHEUS
Tremendous Image! as thou art must be
He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe,
The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear,
Although no thought inform thine empty voice!
THE EARTH
Listen! and thou your echoes must be mute, 250
Gray mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,
Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,
Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak! [page 53]
PHANTASM
A spirit seizes me and speaks within:
It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud. 255
PANTHEA
See how he lifts his mighty looks! the Heaven
Darkens above!
IONE
He speaks! O shelter me!
PROMETHEUS
I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,
And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,
And such despair as mocks itself with smiles, 260
Written as on a scroll: yet speak! O speak!
PHANTASM
Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,
All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;
Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Humankind,
One only being shalt thou not subdue. 265
Rain then thy plagues upon me here,
Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear;
And let alternate frost and fire
Eat into me, and be thine ire
Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms 270
Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms!
Ay, do thy worst! Thou art omnipotent.
O’er all things but thyself I gave thee power,
And by my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent
To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower. 275
Let thy malignant spirit move [page 54]
In darkness over those I love:
On me and mine imprecate
The utmost torture of thy hate;
And thus devote to sleepless agony, 280
This undeclining head while thou must reign on high.
But thou, who art the God and Lord: O thou,
Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe,
To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow
In fear and worship: all-prevailing foe, — 285
I curse thee! Let a sufferer’s curse
Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;
Till thine Infinity shall be
A robe of envenomed agony;
And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain, 290
To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain!
Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse,
Ill deeds; then be thou damned, beholding good;
Both infinite as in the universe,
And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude! 295
An awful image of calm power
Though now thou sittest, let the hour
Come, when thou must appear to be
That which thou art internally.
And after many a false and fruitless crime 300
Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time!
PROMETHEUS
Were these my words, O Parent?
THE EARTH
They were thine.
[page 55]
PROMETHEUS
It doth repent me; words are quick and vain;
Grief for a while is blind, and so was mine.
I wish no living thing to suffer pain. 305
THE EARTH
Misery, Oh misery to me,
That Jove at length should vanquish thee!
Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,
The Earth’s rent heart shall answer ye.
Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead, 310
Your refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquishéd!
FIRST ECHO
Lies fallen and vanquishéd!
SECOND ECHO
Fallen and vanquishéd!
IONE
Fear not: ’t is but some passing spasm:
The Titan is unvanquished still. 315
But see, where through the azure chasm
Of yon forked and snowy hill,
Trampling the slant winds on high
With golden-sandalled feet, that glow
Under plume of purple dye, 320
Like rose-ensanguined ivory,
A Shape comes now,
Stretching on high from his right hand
A serpent-cinctured wand.
PANTHEA
’T is a Jove’s world-wandering herald, Mercury. [page 56] 325
IONE
And who are those with hydra tresses
And iron wings that climb the wind,
Whom the frowning God represses,
Like vapours streaming up behind,
Changing loud, and endless crowd — 330
PANTHEA
These are Jove’s tempest-walking hounds,
Whom he gluts with groans and blood,
When charioted on sulphurous cloud
He bursts Heaven’s bounds.
IONE
Are they now led from the thin dead, 335
On new pangs to be fed?
PANTHEA
The Titan loos as ever, firm, not proud.
FIRST FURY
Ha! I scent life!
SECOND FURY
Let me but look into his eyes!
THIRD FURY
The hope of torturing him smells like a heap 340
Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle.
FIRST FURY
Darest thou delay, O Herald! Take cheer, Hounds
Of Hell: What if the Son of Maia soon [page 57]
Should make us food and sport — who can please long
The Omnipotent?
MERCURY
Back to your towers of iron, 345
And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,
Your foodless teeth! Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,
Chimæra, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends,
Who ministered to Thebes Heaven’s poisoned wine,
Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate: 350
These shall perform your task.
FIRST FURY
Oh, mercy! mercy!
We die with our desire: drive us not back!
MERCURY
Crouch then in silence!
Awful Sufferer!
To thee unwilling, most unwillingly
I come, by the Great Father’s will driven down, 355
To execute a doom of new revenge.
Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself
That I can do no more: aye from thy sight
Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,
So thy worn form pursues me night and day, 360
Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,
But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife
Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps
That measure and divide the weary years
From which there is no refuge, long have taught, 365
And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms
With the strange might of unimagined pains
The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell, [page 58]
And my commission is to lead them here,
Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends 370
People the abyss, and leave them to their task.
Be it not so! There is a secret known
To thee, and to none else of living things,
Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,
The fear of which perplexes the Supreme: 375
Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne
In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,
And, like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,
Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart:
For benefits and meek submission tame 380
The fiercest and the mightiest.
PROMETHEUS
Evil minds
Change good to their own nature. I gave all
He has; and in return he chains me here
Years, ages, night and day: whether the Sun
Split my parched skin, or in the moony night 385
The crystal-wingéd snow cling round my hair:
Whilst my belovéd race is trampled down
By his thought-executing ministers.
Such is the Tyrant’s recompense. ’T is just:
He who is evil can receive no good; 390
And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,
He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude:
He but requites me for his own misdeed.
Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks
With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge. 395
Submission, thou dost know I cannot try:
For what submission but that fatal word,
The death-seal of mankind’s captivity,
Like the Sicilian’s hair-suspended sword, [page 59]
Which trembles o’er his crown, would he accept, 400
Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.
Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned
In brief Omnipotence: secure are they:
For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down
Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs, 405
Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,
Enduring thus, the retributive hour
Which since we spake is even nearer now.
But hark, the hell-hounds clamour. Fear delay!
Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father’s frown. 410
MERCURY
Oh, that we might be spared: I to inflict,
And thou to suffer! Once more answer me:
Thou knowest not the period of Jove’s power?
PROMETHEUS
I know but this, that it must come.
MERCURY
Alas!
Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain? 415
PROMETHEUS
They last while Jove must reign; nor more, nor less
Do I desire or fear.
MERCURY
Yet pause, and plunge
Into eternity, where recorded time,
Even all that we imagine, age on age,
Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind 420
Flags wearily in its unending flight, [page 60]
Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless;
Perchance it has not numbered the slow years
Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved? 424
PROMETHEUS
Perchance no though can count then, yet they pass.
MERCURY
If thou mightst dwell among the Gods the while
Lapped in voluptuous joy?
PROMETHEUS
I would not quit
This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.
MERCURY
Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.
PROMETHEUS
Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven, 430
Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene,
As light in the sun, throned. How vain is talk!
Call up the fiends!
IONE
O sister, look! White fire
Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;
How fearfully God’s thunder howls behind! 435
MERCURY
I must obey his words and thine: alas!
Most heavily remorse bangs at my heart!
PANTHEA
See where the child of Heaven, with wingéd feet,
Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn. [page 61]
IONE
Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes, 440
Lest thou behold and die. They come, they come,
Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,
And hollow underneath, like death.
FIRST FURY
Prometheus!
SECOND FURY
Immortal Titan!
THIRD FURY
Champion of Heaven’s slaves!
PROMETHEUS
He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here; 445
Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,
What and who are ye? Never yet there came
Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell
From the all-miscreative brain of Jove;
Whilst I behold such execrable shapes, 450
Methinks I grow like I contemplate,
And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.
FIRST FURY
We are the ministers of pain, and fear,
And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,
And clinging crime; and lean dogs pursue 455
Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,
We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,
When the great King betrays them to our will. [page 62]
PROMETHEUS
O many fearful natures in one name,
I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know 460
The darkness and the clangour of your winds.
But why more hideous than your loathéd selves
Gather ye up in legions from the deep?
SECOND FURY
We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice, rejoice!
PROMETHEUS
Can aught exult in its deformity? 465
SECOND FURY
The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,
Gazing on one another: so are we.
As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels
To gather for her festal crown of flowers
The aërial crimson falls, flushing her cheek, 470
So from our victim’s destined agony
The shade which is our form invests us round;
Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.
PROMETHEUS
I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,
To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain! 475
FIRST FURY
Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone,
And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?
PROMETHEUS
Pain is my element, as hate is thine.
Ye rend me now: I care not. [page 63]
SECOND FURY
Dost imagine
We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes? 480
PROMETHEUS
I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,
Being evil. Cruel was the power which called
You, or aught else so wretched, into light.
THIRD FURY
Thou think’st we will live through thee, one by one,
Like animal life, and, though we can obscure not 485
The soul which burns within, that we will dwell
Beside it, like a vain loud multitude
Vexing the self-content of wisest men:
That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,
And foul desire round thine astonished heart, 490
And blood within thy labyrinthine veins
Crawling like agony?
PROMETHEUS
Why, ye are thus now;
Yet am I king over myself, and rule
The torturing and conflicting throngs within,
As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous. 495
CHORUS OF FURIES
From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,
Come, come, come!
O ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye [page 64] 500
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine’s track,
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
Come, come, come!
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red, 505
Strewed beneath a nation dead;
Leave the hatred, as in ashes
Fire is left for future burning:
It will burst in bloodier flashes
When ye stir it, soon returning: 510
Leave the self-contempt implanted
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
Misery’s yet unkindled fuel:
Leave Hell’s secrets half unchanted
To the maniac dreamer; cruel 515
More than ye can be with hate,
Is he with fear.
Come, come, come!
We are steaming up from Hell’s wide gate
And we burthen the blasts of the atmosphere,
But vainly we toil till ye come here. 521
IONE
Sister, I hear thunder of new wings.
PANTHEA
These solid mountains quiver the sound,
Even as the tremulous air: their shadows make 524
The space within my plumes more black than night.
FIRST FURY
Your call was as a wingéd car,
Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;
It rapt us from red gulfs of war. [page 65]
SECOND FURY
From wide cities, famine wasted;
THIRD FURY
Groans half heard, and blood untasted; 530
FOURTH FURY
Kingly conclaves, stern and cold,
Where blood with gold is bought and sold;
FIFTH FURY
From the furnace, white and hot,
In which —
A FURY
Speak not: whisper not:
I know all that ye would tell, 535
But to speak might break the spell
Which must bend the Invincible,
The stern of thought;
He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.
FURY
Tear the veil!
ANOTHER FURY
It is torn.
CHORUS
The pale stars of the morn 540
Shine on a misery, dire to be borne.
Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.
Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken’dst with for man? [page 66]
Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran
Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever, 545
Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever.
One came forth of gentle worth,
Smiling on the sanguine earth;
His words outlived him, like swift poison
Withering up truth, peace, and pity. 550
Look! where round the wide horizon
Many a million-peopled city
Vomits smoke in the bright air;
Mark that outcry of despair!
’T is his mild and gentle ghost 555
Wailing for the faith he kindled:
Look again! the flames almost
To a glow-worm’s lamp have dwindled:
The survivors round the embers
Gather in dread. 560
Joy, joy, joy!
Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers;
And the future is dark, and the present is spread
Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.
SEMICHORUS I
Drops of bloody agony flow 565
From his white and quivering brow.
Grant a little respite now:
See! a disenchanted nation
Springs like day from desolation;
To Truth its state is dedicate, 570
And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;
A legioned band of linkéd brothers,
Whom Love calls children — [page 67]
SEMICHORUS II
’T is another’s:
See how kindred murder kin!
’T is the vintage-time for death and sin. 575
Blood, like new wine, bubbles within:
Till Despair smothers
The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.
[All the FURIES vanish, except one.
IONE
Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan
Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart 580
Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,
And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves.
Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him?
PANTHEA
Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more.
IONE
What didst thou see?
PANTHEA
A woful sight: a youth 585
With patient looks, nailed to a crucifix.
IONE
What next?
PANTHEA
The heaven around, the earth below,
Was peopled with thick shapes of human death,
All horrible, and wrought by human hands;
And some appeared the work of human hearts, 590
For men were slowly like by frowns and smiles; [page 68]
And other sights too foul to speak and live
Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear
By looking forth: those groans are grief enough.
FURY
Behold and emblem: those who do endure 595
Deep wrongs for man, and scorn and chains, but heap
Thousandfold torment on themselves and him.
PROMETHEUS
Remit the anguish of that lighted stare;
Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow
Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears! 600
Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,
So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,
So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.
Oh horrible! Thy name I will not speak,
It hath become a curse. I see, I see 605
The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,
Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,
Some hunted by foul lies from their heart’s home, —
An early-chosen, late-lamented home, —
As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind; 610
Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells;
Some — Hear I not the multitude laugh loud? —
Impaled in lingering fire: and mighty realms
Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,
Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood 615
By the red light of their own burning homes.
FURY
Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans:
Worse things, unheard, unseen, remain behind. [page 69]
PROMETHEUS
Worse?
FURY
In each human heart terror survives
The ruin it has gorged: the loftiest fear 620
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man’s estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare. 625
The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
Many are strong and rich, and would be just, 630
But I live among their suffering fellow-men
As if none-felt: they know not what they do.
PROMETHEUS
Thy words are like a cloud of wingéd snakes;
And yet I pity those they torture not.
FURY
Thou pitiest them? I speak no more! 635
[Vanishes.
PROMETHEUS
Ah woe!
Ah, woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever!
I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear
Thy works within my woe-illumined mind,
Thou subtle Tyrant! Peace is in the grave:
The grave hides all things beautiful and good. 640
I am a God and cannot find it there, [page 70]
Nor would I seek it: for, though dread revenge,
This is defeat, fierce King! not victory.
The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul
With new endurance, till the hour arrives 645
When they shall be no types of things which are.
PANTHEA
Alas! what sawest thou?
PROMETHEUS
There are two woes:
To speak, and to behold; thou spare me one.
Names are there, Nature’s sacred watchwords, they
Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry; 650
The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,
As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love!
Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven
Among them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:
Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil. 655
This was the shadow of the truth I saw.
THE EARTH
I felt my torture, son, with such mixed joy
As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state,
I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits, 659
Whose bones are the dim caves of human thought,
And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,
Its world-surrounding ether: they behold
Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,
The future: may they speak comfort to thee!
PANTHEA
Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather, 665
Like flocks of clouds in spring’s delightful weather,
Thronging in the blue air! [page 71]
IONE
And see! more come,
Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,
That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.
And hark! is it the music of the pines? 670
Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?
PANTHEA
’T is something sadder, sweeter far than all.
CHORUS OF SPIRITS
From unremembered ages we
Gentle guides and guardians be
Of heaven-oppressed mortality! 675
And we breathe, and sicken not,
The atmosphere of human thought:
Be it dim, and dank, and gray,
Like a storm-extinguished day,
Travelled o’er by dying gleams: 680
Be it bright as all between
Cloudless skies and windless streams,
Silent liquid, and serene.
As the birds within the wind,
As the fish within the wave, 685
As the thoughts of man’s own mind
Float through all above the grave:
We make there our liquid lair,
Voyaging cloudlike and unpent
Through the boundless element. 690
Thence we bear the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee!
IONE
More yet come, one by one: the air around them
Looks radiant as the air around a star. [page 72]
FIRST SPIRIT
On a battle-trumpet’s blast 695
I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,
’Mid the darkness upward cast.
From the dust of creeds outworn,
From the tyrant’s banner torn,
Gathering round me, onward borne, 700
There was mingled many a cry —
Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!
Till they faded through the sky;
And one sound, above, around,
One sound, beneath, around, above, 705
Was moving; ’t was the soul of love:
’T was the hope, the prophecy,
Which begins and ends in thee.
SECOND SPIRIT
A rainbow’s arch stood on the sea,
Which rocked beneath, immovably; 710
And the triumphant storm did flee,
Like a conqueror, swift and proud,
Between, with many a captive cloud,
A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,
Each by lightning riven in half. 715
I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh:
Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff
And spread beneath a hell of death
O’er the white waters. I alit
On a great ship lightning-split, 720
And speeded hither on the sigh
Of one who gave an enemy
His plank, then plunged aside to die. [page 73]
THIRD SPIRIT
I sate beside a sage’s bed,
And the lamp was burning red 725
Near the book where he had fed,
When a Dream with plumes of flame
To his pillow hovering came,
And I knew it was the same
Which had kindled long ago 730
Pity, eloquence, and woe;
And the world awhile below
Wore the shade its lustre made.
It has borne me here as fleet
As Desire’s lightning feet: 735
I must ride it back ere morrow,
Or the sage will wake in sorrow.
FOURTH SPIRIT
On a poet’s lips I slept,
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept; 740
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,
But feeds on the aërial kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume 745
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man,
Nurslings of immortality! 750
One of these awakened me,
And I sped to succour thee. [page 74]
IONE
Behold’st thou not two shapes from the east and west
Come, as two doves to one belovéd nest,
Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air, 755
On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?
And hark! their sweet, sad voices! ’t is despair
Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.
PANTHEA
Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned.
IONE
Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float 760
On their sustaining wings of skyey grain,
Orange and azure deepening into gold!
Their soft smiles light the air like a star’s fire.
CHORUS OF SPIRITS
Hast thou beheld the form of Love?
FIFTH SPIRIT
As over wide dominions
I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air’s wildernesses, 765
That planet-crested shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,
Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses:
His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed ’t was fading,
And hollow ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,
And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding, [page 75] 770
Gleamed in the night. I wandered o’er, till thou, O King of sadness,
Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.
SIXTH SPIRIT
Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:
It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,
But treads with silent footstep, and fans with silent wing 775
The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;
Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above,
And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,
Dream visions of aërial joy, and call the monster Love,
And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet. 780
CHORUS
Though Ruin now Love’s shadow be,
Following him, destroyingly,
On Death’s white and wingéd steed,
Which the fleetest cannot flee,
Trampling down both flower and weed, 785
Man and best, and foul and fair,
Like a tempest through the air;
Thou shalt quell this horseman grim,
Woundless though in heart or limb.
PROMETHEUS
Spirits! how know ye this shall be? [page 76] 790
CHORUS
In the atmosphere we breathe,
As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee,
From the spring gathering up beneath,
Whose mild winds shake the elder-brake,
And the wandering herdsmen know 795
That the white-thorn soon will blow:
Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,
When they struggle to increase,
Art to us as soft winds be
To shepherd-boys, the prophecy 800
Which begins and ends in thee.
IONE
Where are the spirits fled?
PANTHEA
Only a sense
Remains of them, like the omnipotence
Of music, when the inspired voice and lute
Languish, ere yet the responses are mute, 805
Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,
Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.
PROMETHEUS
How fair these air-born shapes! and yet I feel
Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far,
Asia! who, when my being overflowed, 810
Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine
Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.
All things are still: alas! how heavily
This quiet morning weighs upon my heart;
Though I should dream I could even sleep with grief [page 77] 815
If slumber were denied not. I would fain
Be what it is my destiny to be,
The saviour and the strength of suffering man,
Or sink into the original gulf of things:
There is no agony, and no solace left; 820
Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more.
PANTHEA
Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee
The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when
The shadow of thy spirit falls on her?
PROMETHEUS
I said all hope was vain but love: thou lovest. 825
PANTHEA
Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white,
And Asia waits in that far Indian vale,
The scene of her sad exile; rugged once
And desolate and frozen, like this ravine;
But now invested with fair flowers and herbs, 830
And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow
Among the woods and waters, from the ether
Of her transforming presence, which would fade
If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!
ACT II
SCENE I. — Morning. A lovely vale in the Indian Caucasus. ASIA, alone.
ASIA
From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended:
Yes, like a spirit, like a thought which makes [page 78]
Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,
And beatings haunt the desolated heart,
Which should have learnt repose: thou hast descended
Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring! 6
O child of many winds! As suddenly
Thou comest as the memory of a dream,
Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;
Like genius, or like joy which riseth up 10
As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds
The desert of our life.
This is the season, this is the day, the hour;
At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,
Too long desired, too long delaying, come! 15
How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!
The point of one white star is quivering still
Deep in the orange light of widening morn
Beyond the purple mountains: through a chasm
Of wind-divided mist the darker lake 20
Reflects it; now it wanes: it gleams again
As the waves fade, and as the burning threads
Of woven cloud unravel in pale air:
’T is lost! and through yon peaks of cloudlike snow
The roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not 25
The Æolian music of her sea-green plumes
Winnowing the crimson dawn? [PANTHEA enters.
I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
Like stars half-quenched in mists of silver dew.
Belovéd and most beautiful, who wearest 30
The shadow of that soul by which I live,
How late thou art! the spheréd sun had climbed
The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before
The printless air felt thy belated plumes. [page 79]
PANTHEA
Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint 35
With the delight of a remembered dream,
As are the noontide plumes of summer winds
Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep
Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm,
Before the sacred Titan’s fall, and thy 40
Unhappy love, had made, through use and pity,
Both love and woe familiar to my heart
As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept
Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean
Within dim bowers of green and purple moss, 45
Our young Ione’s soft and milky arms
Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,
While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within
The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:
Bus not as now, since I am made the wind 50
Which fails beneath the music that I bear
Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved
Into the sense with which love talks, my rest
Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours
Too full of care and pain.
ASIA
Lift up thine eyes, 55
And let me read thy dream.
PANTHEA
As I have said,
With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.
The mountain mists, condensing at our voice
Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,
From the keen ice shielding our linkéd sleep. 60
Then two dreams came. One, I remember not. [page 80]
But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs
Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night
Grew radiant with the glory of that form
Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell 65
Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,
Faint with intoxication of keen joy:
“Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world
With loveliness — more fair than aught but her,
Whose shadow thou art — lift thine eyes on me!” 70
I lifted them: the overpowering light
Of that immortal shape was shadowed o’er
By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,
And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,
Steamed forth like vaporous fire; and atmosphere 75
Which wrapt me in its all-dissolving power,
As the warm ether of the morning sun
Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.
I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt
His presence flow and mingle through my blood 80
Till it became his life, and his grew mine,
And I was thus absorbed, until it past,
And like the vapours when the sun sinks down,
Gathering again in drops upon the pines,
And tremulous as they, in the deep night 85
My being was condensed; and as the rays
Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear
His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died
Like footsteps of weak melody: thy name
Among the many sounds alone I heard 90
Of what might be articulate; though still
I listened through the night when sound was none.
Ione wakened then, and said to me:
“Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night?
I always knew what I desired before, [page 81] 95
Nor ever found delight to wish in vain.
But now I cannot tell thee what I seek;
I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet
Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;
Thou hast discovered some enchantment old, 100
Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept
And mingled it with thine: for when just now
We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips
The sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth
Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint, 105
Quivered between our intertwining arms.”
I answered not, for the eastern star grew pale,
But fled to thee.
ASIA
Thou speakest, but thy words
Are as the air; I feel them not. Oh, lift
Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul! 110
PLANTHEA
I lift them, though they droop beneath the load
Of that they would express: what canst thou see
But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?
ASIA
Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
Contracted to two circles underneath 115
Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
Orb, within orb, and line through line inwoven.
PANTHEA
Why lookest thou as if a spirit past? [page 82]
ASIA
There is a change: beyond their inmost depth
I see a shade, a shape: ’t is He, arrayed 120
In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread
Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.
Prometheus, it is thine! Depart not yet!
Say not those smiles that we shall meet again
Within that bright pavilion which their beams 125
Shall build on the waste world? The dream is told.
What shape is that between us? Its rude hair
Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard
Is wild and quick, yet ’t is a thing of air,
For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew 130
Whose stars the noon has quenched not.
DREAM
Follow! Follow!
PANTHEA
It is mine other dream.
ASIA
It disappears.
PANTHEA
It passes now into my mind. Methought
As we sate here, the flower-enfolding buds
Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond-tree, 135
When swift from the white Seythian wilderness
A wind swept forth wrinkling the earth with frost:
I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;
But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells
Of Hyacinth tell Apollo’s written grief, 140
O, FOLLOW, FOLLOW! [page 83]
ASIA
As you speak, your words
Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep
With shapes. Methought among the lawns together
We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,
And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds 145
Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains,
Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;
And the white dew on the new-bladed grass,
Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently;
And there was more which I remember not: 150
But on the shadows of the morning clouds,
Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written
FOLLOW, O, FOLLOW! as they vanished by;
And on each herb, from which Heaven’s dew had fallen,
The like was stamped, as with a withering fire; 155
A wind arose among the pines: it shook
The clinging music from their boughs, and then
Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,
Were heard: O, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ME!
And then I said: “Panthea, look on me!” 160
But in the depth of those belovéd eyes
Still I saw, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!
ECHO
Follow, follow!
PANTHEA
The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices,
As they were spirit-tongued. [page 84]
ASIA
It is some being 164
Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! O, list!
ECHOES (unseen)
Echoes we: listen!
We cannot stay:
As dew-stars glisten
Then fade away —
Child of Ocean! 170
ASIA
Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses
Of their aërial tongues yet sound.
PANTHEA
I hear.
ECHOES
O, follow, follow,
As our voice recedeth
Through the caverns hollow, 175
Where the forest spreadeth;
(More distant.)
O, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
Where the wild bee never flew, 180
Through the noontide darkness deep,
By the odour-breathing sleep
Of faint night-flowers, and the waves
At the fountain-lighted caves,
While our music, wild and sweet, 185
Mocks thy gently falling feet,
Child of Ocean! [page 85]
ASIA
Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint
And distant.
PANTHEA
List! The strain floats nearer now.
ECHOES
In the world unknown 190
Sleeps a voice unspoken;
By thy step alone
Can its rest be broken;
Child of Ocean!
ASIA
How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind! 195
ECHOES
O, follow, follow!
Through the caverns hollow,
As the song floats thou pursue,
By the woodland noontide dew,
By the forests, lakes, and fountains 200
Through the many-folded mountains;
Where the Earth reposed from spasms,
On the day when He and Thou
Parted, to commingle now; 205
Child of Ocean!
ASIA
Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,
And follow, ere the voices fade away. [page 86]
SCENE II. — A Forest, intermingled with Rocks and Caverns. ASIA and PANTHEA pass into it. Two young Fauns are sitting on a Rock, listening.
SEMICHORUS OF SPIRITS
The path through which that lovely twain
Have past, by cedar, pine, and yew, 210
And each dark tree that ever grew,
Is curtained out from heaven’s wide blue;
Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,
Can pierce its interwoven bowers,
Nor aught, save where the cloud of dew, 215
Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze,
Between the trunks of the hoar trees,
Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers
Of the green laurel, blown anew;
And bends, and then fades silently, 220
One frail and fair anemone:
Or when some star of many a one
That climbs and wanders through steep night,
Has found the cleft through which alone
Beams fall from high those depths upon, 225
Ere it is borne away, away,
By the swift heavens that cannot stay,
It scatters drops of golden light,
Like lines of rain that ne’er unite:
And the gloom divine is all around; 230
And underneath is the messy ground.
SEMICHORUS II
There the voluptuous nightingales,
Are awake through all the broad noonday.
When one with bliss or sadness fails,
And through the windless ivy-boughs, 235
Sick with sweet love, droops dying away [page 87]
On its mate’s music-panting bosom;
Another, from the swinging blossom,
Watching to catch the languid close
Of the last strain, then lifts on high 240
The wings of the weak melody,
Till some new strain of feeling bear
The song, and all the woods are mute;
When there is heard through the dim air
The rush of wings, and rising there 245
Like many a lake-surrounded flute,
Sounds overflow the listener’s brain
So sweet, that joy is almost pain.
SEMICHORUS I
There those enchanted eddies play
Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw, 250
By Demogorgon’s mighty law,
With melting rapture, or sweet awe,
All spirits on that secret way;
As inland boats are driven to Ocean
Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw; 255
And first there comes a gentle sound
To those in talk or slumber bound,
And wakes the destined soft emotion,
Attracts, impels them: those who saw
Say from the breathing earth behind 260
There steams a plume-uplifting wind
Which drives them on their path, while they
Believe their own swift wings and feet
The sweet desires within obey:
And so they float upon their way, 265
Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,
The storm of sound is driven along,
Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet
Behind, its gathering billows meet [page 88]
And to fatal mountain bear 270
Like clouds amid the yielding air.
FIRST FAUN
Canst thou imagine where those spirits live
Which make such delicate music in the woods?
We haunt within the least frequented caves
And closest coverts, and we know these wilds, 275
Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:
Where may they hide themselves?
SECOND FAUN
’T is hard to tell:
I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,
The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun
Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave 280
The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,
Are the pavilions where such dwell and float
Under the green and golden atmosphere
Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves;
And when these burst, and the thin fiery air, 285
The which they breathed within those lucent domes,
Ascends to flow like meteors through the night,
They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,
And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire
Under the waters of the earth again. 290
FIRST FAUN
If such live thus, have others other lives,
Under pink blossoms or within the bells
Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,
Or on their dying odours, when they die,
Or in the sunlight of spheréd dew? [page 89] 295
SECOND FAUN
Ay, many more which we may well divine.
But should we stay to speak, noontide would come,
And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,
And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs
Of fate, and chance, and God, and Chaos old, 300
And Love, and the chained Titan’s woful doom,
And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth
One brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer
Our solitary twilights, and which charm
To silence the unenvying nightingales. 305
SCENE III. —A Pinnacle of Rock among Mountains.
ASIA and PANTHEA.
PANTHEA
Hither the sound has borne us — to the realm
Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,
Like a volcano’s meteor-breathing chasm,
Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up
Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth, 310
And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,
That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain
To deep intoxication; and uplift,
Like Mænads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!
The voice which is contagion to the world. 315
ASIA
Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!
How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be
The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,
Though evil stain its work, and it should be
Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, 320
I could fall down and worship that and thee.
Even now my heat adoreth. Wonderful! [page 90]
Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain:
Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,
As a lake, paving in the morning sky, 325
With azure waves which burst in silver light,
Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on
Under the curdling winds, and islanding
The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,
Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests, 330
Dim twilight lawns, and stream-illumined caves,
And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;
And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains
From icy spires of sunlike radiance fling
The dawn, as lifted Ocean’s dazzling spray, 335
From some Atlantic islet scattered up,
Spangles the wind with lamp-like water drops.
The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl
Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines
Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, 340
Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!
The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,
Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there
Flake their flake, in heaven-defying minds 344
As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth
Is loosened, and the nations echo round,
Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.
PANTHEA
Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking
In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises
As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon 350
Round the foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.
ASIA
The fragments of the cloud are scattered up;
The winds that lifts them disentwines my hair; [page 91]
Its billows now sweep o’er mine eyes; my brain
Grows dizzy; I see thin shapes within the mist. 355
PANTHEA
A countenance with beckoning smiles: there burns
An azure fire within its golden locks!
Another and another: hark! they speak!
SONG OF SPIRITS
To the deep, to the deep,
Down, down! 360
Through the shade of sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and Life;
Through the veil and the bar
Of things which seem and are, 365
Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
Down, down!
While the sound whirls around,
Down, down!
As the fawn draws the hound, 370
As the lightning the vapour
As a weak moth the taper;
Death, despair; love, sorrow;
Time, both; to-day, to-morrow;
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone; 375
Down, down!
Through the gray, void abysm,
Down, down!
Where the air is no prism,
And the moon and stars are not, 380
And the cavern-crags wear not [page 92]
The radiance of Heaven
Nor the gloom to Earth given,
Where there is one pervading, one alone, —
Down, down!
We have bound thee, we guide thee; 395
Down, down!
With the bright form beside thee;
Resist not the weakness!
Such strength is in meekness
That the Eternal, the Immortal, 400
Must unloose through life’s portal
The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne
By that alone.
SCENE IV. — The Cave of DEMOGORGON. ASIA and PANTHEA.
PANTHEA
What veiléd form sits on that ebon throne?
ASIA
The veil has fallen.
PANTHEA
I see a mighty darkness [page 93] 405
Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom
Dart round, as light from the meridian sun,
Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,
Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is
A living Spirit.
DEMOGORGON
Ask what thou wouldst know. 410
ASIA
What canst thou tell?
DEMOGORGON
All things thou dar’st demand.
ASIA
Who made the living world?
DEMOGORGON
God.
ASIA
Who made all
That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will,
Imagination?
DEMOGORGON
God: Almighty God.
ASIA
Who made that sense which, when the winds of spring
In rarest visitation, or the voice 416
Of one belovéd heard in youth alone,
Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim [page 94]
The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,
And leaves this peopled earth a solitude 420
When it returns no more?
DEMOGORGON
Merciful God.
ASIA
And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,
Which from the links of the great chain of things,
To every thought within the mind of man
Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels 425
Under the load towards the pit of death;
Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;
And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;
Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech
Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day; 430
And Hell, of the sharp fear of Hell?
DEMOGORGON
He reigns.
ASIA
Utter his name: a world pining in pain
Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down.
DEMOGORGON
He reigns.
ASIA
I feel, I know it: who?
DEMOGORGON
He reigns. 434
ASIA
Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first, [page 95]
And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne
Time fell, an envious shadow: such the state
Of the earth’s primal spirits beneath his sway,
As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves
Before the wind or sun has withered them 440
And semivital worms; but he refused
The birthright of their being, knowledge, power,
The skill which wields the elements, the thought
Which pierces this dim universe like light,
Self-empire, and the majesty of love; 445
For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus
Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,
And with this law alone, “Let man be free,”
Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.
To know nor faith, nor love, nor law, to be 450
Omnipotent but friendless, is to reign;
And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man
First famine, and then toil, and then disease,
Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,
Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove, 455
With alternating shafts of frost and fire,
Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves:
And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle
Of unreal good, which levied mutual war, 460
So ruining the lair wherein they raged.
Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes
Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,
Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,
That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings 465
The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind
The disunited tendrils of that vine
Which bears the wine of life, the human heart:
And he tamed fire, which, like some beast of prey, [page 96]
Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath 470
The frown of man; and tortured to his will
Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,
And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms
Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.
He gave man speech, and speech created thought, 475
Which is the measure of the universe;
And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,
Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind
Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;
And music lifted up the listening spirit 480
Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,
Godlike, o’er the clear billows of sweet sound;
And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,
With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,
The human form, till marble grew divine, 485
And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see
Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.
He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,
And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.
He taught the implicated orbits woven 490
Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun
Changes his lair, and by what secret spell
The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye
Gazes not on the interlunar sea.
He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs, 495
The tempest-wingéd chariots of the Ocean,
And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then
Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed
The warm winds, and the azure ether shone,
And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen. 500
Such, the alleviations of his state,
Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs [page 97]
Withering in destined pain: but who rains down
Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while
Man looks on his creation like a God 505
And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,
The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth,
The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?
Not Jove: while yet his frown shook heaven, ay, when
His adversary from adamantine chains 510
Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare
Who is his master? Is he too a slave?
DEMOGORGON
All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil:
Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no.
ASIA
Whom calledst thou God?
DEMOGORGON
I spoke but as ye speak,
For Jove is the supreme of living things. 516
ASIA
Who is master of the slave?
DEMOGORGON
If the abysm
Could vomit forth his secrets…. But a voice
Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless;
For what would it avail to bid thee gaze 520
On the revolving world? what to bid speak
Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance, and Change? To these
All things are subject but eternal Love. [page 98]
ASIA
So much I asked before, and my heart gave
The response thou hast given; and of such truths 525
Each to itself must be the oracle.
One more demand; and do thou answer me
As my own soul would answer, did it know
That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise
Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world: 530
When shall the destined hour arrive?
DEMOGORGON
Behold!
The rocks are cloven, and through the purple nigh
I see cars drawn by rainbow-wingéd steeds
Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight. 535
Some look behind, as fiends pursue them there,
And yet I see no shape, but the keen stars:
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the ting they loved fled on before, 540
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet’s flashing hair: they all
Sweep onward.
DEMOGORGON
These are the immortal Hours,
Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee.
ASIA
A spirit with a dreadful countenance 545
Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf.
Unlike thy brethren, ghastly charioteer,
Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou bear me? Speak! [page 99]
SPIRIT
I am the shadow of a destiny
More dread than is my aspect: ere yon planet 550
Has set, the darkness which ascends with me
Shall wrap in lasting night Heaven’s kingless throne.
ASIA
What meanest thou?
PANTHEA
That terrible shadow floats
Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke
Lo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly
Terrified: watch its path among the stars
Blackening the night!
ASIA
Thus I am answered: strange!
PANTHEA
See, near the verge, another chariot stays;
An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire, 560
Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim
Of delicate strange tracery; the young spirit
That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope;
How its soft smiles attract the soul! as light
Lures wingéd insects through the lampless air. 565
SPIRIT
My coursers are fed with the lightning,
They drink of the whirlwind’s stream,
And when the red morning is bright’ning,
They bathe in the fresh sunbeam;
They have the strength for their swiftness I deem, 570
Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean. [page 100]
I desire: and their speed makes night kindle;
I fear: they outstrip the typhoon;
Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle
We encircle the earth and the moon: 575
We shall rest from long labours at noon:
Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.
SCENE V. — The Car pauses within a Cloud on the Top of a snowy Mountain. ASIA, PANTHEA, and the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.
SPIRIT
On the brink of the night and the morning
My coursers are wont to respire;
But the Earth has just whispered a warning 580
That their flight must be swifter than fire:
They shall drink the hot speed of desire!
ASIA
Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath
Would give them swifter speed.
SPIRIT
Alas! it could not.
PANTHEA
O Spirit! pause, and tell whence is the light 585
Which fills the cloud? The sun is yet unrisen.
SPIRIT
The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo
Is held in heaven by wonder; and the light
Which fills this vapour, as the aërial hue
Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water, 590
Flows from thy mighty sister. [page 101]
PANTHEA
Yes, I feel —
ASIA
What is it with thee, sister? Thou art pale.
PANTHEA
How thou art changed! I dare not look on thee;
I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure
The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change 595
Is working in the elements, which suffer
Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell
That on the day when the clear hyaline
Was cloven at thy uprise, and thou didst stand
Within a veinéd shell, which floated on 600
Over the calm floor of the crystal sea,
Among the Ægean isles, and by the shores
Which bear thy name; love, like the atmosphere
Of the sun’s fire filling the living world,
Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven 605
And the deep ocean and the sunless caves,
And all that dwells within them; till grief cast
Eclipse upon the soul from which it came.
Such art thou now; nor is it I alone,
Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one, 610
But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy.
Hearest thou not sounds i’ the air which speak the love
Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not
The inanimate winds enamoured of thee? List!
[Music.
ASIA
Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his 615
Whose echoes they are: yet all love is sweet,
Given or returned. Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever. [page 102]
Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,
It makes the reptile equal to the God: 620
They who inspire it most are fortunate,
As I am now; but those who feel it most
Are happier still, after long sufferings,
As I shall soon become.
PANTHEA
List! Spirits speak.
VOICE in the air, singing.
Life of Life! thy lips enkindle 625
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire; then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes. 630
Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them;
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest 635
Shrouds thee wheresoe’er thou shinest.
Fair are others; none beholds thee,
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest; for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendour, 640
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever!
Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, [page 103]
And the souls of whom thou lovest 645
Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!
ASIA
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float 650
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside the helm conducting it,
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float for ever, for ever, 655
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around, 660
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.
Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In music’s most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar, 665
Without a course, without a star,
But by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden-islets
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided, 670
The boat of my desire is guided:
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above. [page 104]
We have passed Age’s icy caves, 675
And Manhood’s dark and tossing waves,
And Youth’s smooth ocean, smiling to betray:
Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee
Of shadow-peopled Infancy,
Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day: 680
A paradise of vaulted bowers
List by downward-gazing flowers,
And watery paths that wind between
Wilderness calm and green,
Peopled by shapes too bright to see, 685
And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;
Which walk upon the sea, and chaunt melodiously!
ACT III
SCENE I. — Heaven. JUPITER on his Throne; THETIS and the other Deities assembled.
JUPITER
Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share
The glory and the strength of him ye serve,
Rejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent.
All else had been subdued to me; alone
The soul of man, like unextinguished fire, 5
Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt,
And lamentation, and reluctant prayer,
Hurling up insurrection, which might make
Our antique empire insecure, though built
One eldest faith, and hell’s coeval, fear; 10
And though my curses through the pendulous air,
Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,
And cling to it; though under my wrath’s night [page 105]
It climb the crags of life, step after step,
Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet, 15
It yet remains supreme o’er misery,
Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall:
Even now have I begotten a strange wonder,
That fatal child, the terror of the earth,
Who waits but till the destined hour arrive, 20
Bearing from Demogorgon’s vacant throne
The dreadful might of ever-living limbs
Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld,
To redescend, and trample out the spark.
Pour forth heaven’s wine, Idæan Ganymede, 25
And let it fill the dædal cups like fire,
And from the flower-inwoven soil divine
Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise,
As dew from earth under the twilight stars:
Drink! Be the nectar circling through your veins 30
The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,
Till exultation burst in one wide voice
Like music from Elysian winds.
And thou
Ascend beside me, veiléd in the light
Of the desire which makes thee one with me, 35
Thetis, bright image of eternity!
When thou didst cry, “Insufferable might!
God! spare me! I sustain not the quick flames,
The penetrating presence; all my being,
Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw 40
Into a dew with poison, is dissolved,
Sinking through its foundations:” even then
Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third
Mightier than either, which, unbodied now,
Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld, [page 106] 45
Waiting the incarnation, which ascends,
(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels
Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon’s throne.
Victory! victory! Feel’st thou not, O world,
The earthquake of his chariot thundering up 50
Olympus?
[The Car of the HOUR arrives. DEMOGORGON
descends, and moves towards the Throne of
JUPITER.
Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!
DEMOGORGON
Eternity. Demand no direr name!
Descend, and follow me down the abyss!
I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn’s child;
Mightier than thee: and we must dwell together 55
Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not!
The tyranny of heaven none may retain,
Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee:
Yet, if thou wilt, as ’t is the destiny
Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead, 60
Put forth thy might!
JUPITER
Detested prodigy!
Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons
I trample thee! Thou lingerest?
Mercy! mercy!
No pity, no release, no respite! Oh,
That thou wouldest make mine enemy my judge, 65
Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,
On Caucasus! he would not doom me thus.
Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not
The monarch of the world? What then art thou?
No refuge! no appeal! [page 107]
Sink with me then, 70
We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,
Even as a vulture and snake outspent
Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,
Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock
Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire, 75
And whelm on them into the bottomless void
This desolated world, and thee, and me,
The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck
Of that for which they combated!
Ai! Ai!
The elements obey me not. I sink 80
Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down.
And, like a cloud, mine enemy above
Darkens my fall with victory! Ai! Ai!
SCENE II. — The Mouth of a great River in the Island Atlantis. OCEAN is discovered reclining near the Shore; APOLLO stands beside him.
OCEAN
He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror’s frown?
APOLLO
Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim 85
The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars,
The terrors of his eye illumined heaven
With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts
Of the victorious darkness, as he fell:
Like the last glare of day’s red agony, 90
Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds,
Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep.
OCEAN
He sunk to the abyss? to the dark void? [page 108]
APOLLO
An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud
On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings 95
Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes
Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded
By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail
Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length
Prone, and the aërial ice clings over it. 100
OCEAN
Henceforth the fields of Heaven-reflecting sea
Which are my real, will heave, unstained with blood,
Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn
Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow
Round many-peopled continents, and round 105
Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones
Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark
The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see
The floating bark of the light-laden moon
With that white star, its sightless pilot’s crest, 110
Borne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea;
Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,
And desolation, and the mingled voice
Of slavery and command; but by the light
Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours, 115
And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,
That sweetest music, such as spirits love.
APOLLO
And is all gaze not on the deeds which make
My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse
Darkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear 120
The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit
That sits i’ the morning star. [page 109]
OCEAN
Thou must away;
Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell:
The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it
With azure calm of the emerald urns 125
Which stand for ever full beside my throne.
Behold the Nereids under the green sea,
Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,
Their white arms lifted o’er their streaming hair
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns, 130
Hastening to grace their mighty sister’s joy.
[A sound of waves is heard.
It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.
Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell.
APOLLO
Farewell.
SCENE III. — Caucasus. PROMETHEUS, HERCULES, IONE, the EARTH, SPIRITS, ASIA, and PANTHEA, borne in the Car with the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.
HERCULES unbinds PROMETHEUS, who descends.
HERCULES
Most glorious among spirits! thus doth strength
To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love, 135
And thee, who art the form they animate,
Minister like a slave.
PROMETHEUS
Thy gentle words
Are sweeter than my freedom long desired
And long delayed.
Asia, thou light of my life,
Shadow of beauty unbeheld; and ye, [page 110] 140
Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain
Sweet to remember, through your love and care:
Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave,
All overgrown with trailing odorous plants 144
Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,
And paved with veinéd emerald, and a fountain
Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.
From its curved roof the mountain’s frozen tears,
Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,
Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light: 150
And there is heard the ever-moving air,
Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,
And bees; and all around are mossy seats,
And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;
A simple dwelling, which shall be our own; 155
Where we will sit and talk of time and change,
As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.
What can hide man from mutability?
And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,
Ione, shalt chaunt fragments of sea-music, 160
Until I weep, when ye shall smile away
The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.
We will entangle buds and flowers and beams
Which twinkle on the fountain’s brim, and make
Strange combinations out of common things, 165
Like human babes in their brief innocence;
And we will search, with looks and words of love,
For hidden thoughts each lovelier than the last,
Our unexhausted spirits; and like lutes
Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind, 170
Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,
From difference sweet where discord cannot be;
And hither come, sped on the charméd winds
Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees [page 111]
From every flower aërial Enna feeds, 175
At their own island-homes in Himera,
The echoes of the human world, which tell
Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,
And dove-eyed pity’s murmured pain, and music,
Itself the echo of the heart, and all 180
That tempers or improves man’s life, now free;
And lovely apparitions, dim at first,
Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright
From the embrace of beauty, whence the forms
Of which these are the phantoms, casts on them 185
The gathered rays which are reality,
Shall visit us, the progeny immortal
Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,
And arts, though unimagined, yet to be.
The wandering voices and the shadows these 190
Of all that man becomes, the mediators
Of that best worship, love, by him and us
Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow
More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,
And, veil by veil, evil and error fall: 195
Such virtue has the cave and place around.
[Turning to the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.
For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,
Give her that curvéd shell, which Proteus old
Made Asia’s nuptial boon, breathing within it
A voice to be accomplished, and which thou 200
Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock.
IONE
Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely
Than all thy sisters, this [is] the mystic shell.
See the pale azure fading into silver [page 112]
Lining it with a soft yet glowing light: 205
Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there?
SPIRIT
It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean:
Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange.
PROMETHEUS
Go, borne over the cities of mankind
On whirlwind-footed coursers: once again 210
Outspeed the sun around the orbéd world;
And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,
Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,
Loosening its mighty music; it shall be
As thunder mingled with clear echoes: then 215
Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.
And thou, O Mother Earth! —
THE EARTH
I hear, I feel;
Thy lips are on me, and thy touch runs down
Even to the adamantine central gloom
Along these marble nerves; ’t is life, ’t is joy, 220
And through my withered, old, and icy frame
The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down
Circling. Henceforth the many children fair
Folded in my sustaining arms: all plants,
And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged, 225
And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,
Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,
Draining the poison of despair, shall take
And interchange sweet nutriment; to me
Shall they become like sister-antelopes [page 113] 220
By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,
Nursed among the lilies near a brimming stream.
The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float
Under the stars like balm: night-folded flowers
Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose: 235
And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather
Strength for the coming day, and all its joy:
And death shall be the last embrace of her
Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother,
Folding her child, says, “Leave me not again!” 240
ASIA
O mother! wherefore speak the name of death?
Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak,
Who die?
THE EARTH
It would avail to reply:
Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known
But to the uncommunicating dead. 245
Death is the veil which those who live call life:
They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile
In mild variety the seasons mild
With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,
And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night, 250
And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun’s
All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain
Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,
Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even
The crag-built deserts of the barren deep, 255
With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.
And thou! There is a cavern where my spirit
Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain
Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it
Became mad too, and built a temple there, [page 114] 260
And spoke, and were oracular, and lured
The erring nations round to mutual war,
And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;
Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds
A violet’s exhalation, and it fills 265
With a serener light and crimson air,
Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;
It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,
And the dark linkéd ivy tangling wild,
And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms 270
Which star the winds with points of coloured light,
As they rain through them; and bright golden globes
Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven;
And through their veinéd leaves and amber stems
The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls 275
Stand ever mantling with aërial dew,
The drink of spirits: and it circles round,
Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,
Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,
Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine. 280
Arise! Appear!
[A SPIRIT rises in the likeness of a winged child.
This is my torch-bearer;
Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing
On eyes from which he kindled it anew
With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,
For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward, 285
And guide this company beyond the peak
Of Bacchie Nysa, Mӕnad-haunted mountain,
And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,
Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes
With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying, 290
And up the green ravine, across the vale,
Beside the windless and crystalline pool [page 115]
Where ever lies on unerasing waves
The image of a temple, built above,
Distinct with column, arch, and architrave, 295
And palm-like capital, and overwrought
And populous most with living imagery,
Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles
Fill the hushed air with everlasting love.
It is deserted now, but once it bore 300
Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths
Bore to thy honour through the divine gloom
The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those
Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope
Into the grave, across the night of life, 305
As thou hast borne it most triumphantly
To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.
Beside that temple is the destined cave.
SCENE IV. — A Forest. In the Background a Cave. PROMETHEUS, ASIA, PANTHEA, IONE,
and the SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.
IONE
Sister, it is not earthly: how it glides
Under the leaves! how on its head there burns 310
A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams
Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,
The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass!
Knowest thou it?
PANTHEA
It is the delicate spirit
That guides the earth through heaven. From afar 315
The populous constellations call that light
The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes
It floats along the spray of the salt sea,
Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud, [page 116]
Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep, 320
Or o’er the mountain-tops, or down the rivers,
Or through the green waste wilderness, as now,
Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned
It loved our sister Asia, and it came
Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light 325
Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted
As one bit by a dipsas, and with her
It made its childish confidence, and told her
All it had known or seen, for it saw much,
Yet idly reasoned what is saw; and called her, 330
For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I,
Mother, dear mother.
THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH (running to ASIA)
Mother, dearest mother;
May I then talk with thee as I was wont?
May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,
After thy looks have made them tired of joy? 335
May I then play beside thee the long noons,
When work is none in the bright silent air?
ASIA
I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth
Can cherish thee unenvied; speak, I pray:
Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights. 340
SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child
Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;
And happier too; happier and wiser both.
Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,
And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs [page 117] 345
That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever
An hindrance to my walks o’er the green world:
And that, among the haunts of humankind,
Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,
Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles, 350
Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,
Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts
Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man;
And women too, ugliest of all things evil,
(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair, 355
When good and kind, free and sincere like thee,)
When false or frowning made me sick at heart
To pass them, thought they slept, and I unseen.
Well, my path lately lay through a great city
Into the woody hills surrounding it: 360
A sentinel was sleeping at the gate:
When there was heard a sound, so loud it shook
The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet
Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;
A long, long sound, as it would never end: 365
And all the inhabitants leapt suddenly
Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,
Looking in wonder up to heaven, while yet
The music pealed along. I hid myself
Within a fountain in the public square, 370
Where I lay like the reflex of the moon
Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon
Those ugly human shapes and visages
Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,
Past floating through the air, and fading still 375
Into the winds that scattered them; and those
From whom they past seemed mild and lovely forms
After some foul disguise had fallen, and all
Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise [page 118]
And greetings of delighted wonder, all 380
Went to their sleep again: and when the dawn
Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,
Could e’er be beautiful? yet so they were,
And that with little change of shape or hue:
All things had put their evil nature off: 385
I cannot tell my joy, when o’er lake
Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,
With quick long breaks, and in the deep there lay 390
Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;
So with my thoughts full of these happy changes,
We meet again, the happiest change of all.
ASIA
And never will we part, till thy chaste sister
Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon, 395
Will look on thy more warm and equal light
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow,
And love thee.
SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
What! as Asia loves Prometheus?
ASIA
Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.
Think ye by gazing on each other’s eyes 400
To multiply your lovely selves, and fill
With spheréd fires the interlunar air?
SPIRIT OF THE EARTH
Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp
’T is hard I should go darkling. [page 119]
ASIA
Listen; look!
[The SPIRIT OF THE HOUR enters.
PROMETHEUS
We feel what thou hast heard and seen: yet speak! 405
SPIRIT OF THE HOUR
Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,
There was a change: the impalpable thin air
And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,
As if the sense of love, dissolved in them, 410
Had folded itself round the spheréd world.
My vision then grew clear, and I could see
Into the mysteries of the universe.
Dizzy as with delight I floated down,
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes, 415
My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,
Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,
Pasturing [on] flowers of vegetable fire;
And where moonlike car will stand within
A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms 420
Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,
And you fair nymphs, looking the love we feel;
In memory of the tidings it has borne;
Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone, 425
And open to the bright and liquid sky.
Yoked to it by an amphisbӕnic snake
The likeness of those wingéd steeds will mock
The flight from which they find repose. Alas,
Whither has wandered now my partial tongue, 430
When all remains untold which ye would hear? [page 120]
As I have said, I floated to the earth:
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss
To move, to breathe, to be. I wandering went
Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind, 435
And first was disappointed not to see
Such mighty change as I had felt within,
Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,
And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked
One with the other even as spirits do: 440
None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,
Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows
No more inscribed, as o’er the gate of hell,
“All hope abandon ye who enter here;”
None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear 445
Gazed on another’s eye of cold command,
Until the subject of a tyrant’s will
Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,
Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.
None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines 450
Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart
The sparks of love and hope till there remained
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,
And the wretch crept a vampire among men, 455
Infecting all with his own hideous ill;
None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk
Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy
With such a self-mistrust as has no name. 460
And women too, frank, beautiful, and kind
As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth, past; gentle, radiant forms,
From custom’s evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think, [page 121] 465
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be,
Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill-shame,
The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall, 470
Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.
Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons, — wherein,
And beside which, by wretched men were borne
Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes
Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance, — 475
Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,
The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,
Which from their unworn obelisks, look forth
In triumph o’er the palaces and tombs
Of those who were their conquerors, mouldering round, 480
Those imaged, to the pride of kings and priests,
A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide
As is the world it wasted, and are now
But an astonishment. Even so the tools
And emblems of its last captivity, 485
Amid the dwelling of the peopled earth,
Stand, not o’erthrown, but unregarded now;
And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,
Which, under many a name and many a form,
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execrable, 490
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;
And which the nations, panic-stricken, served
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love
Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,
And slain among men’s unreclaiming tears, 495
Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate, — [page 122]
Frown, mouldering fast, o’er their abandoned shrines.
The painted veil, by those who were, called life,
Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread,
All men believed and hoped, is torn aside; 500
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains,
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man:
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just gentle, wise: but man. 505
Passionless? no, yet free from guilt or pain,
Which were, for his will made or suffered them;
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar 510
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.
ACT IV
SCENE. — A part of the Forest near the Cave of PROMETHEUS. PANTHEA and IONE are
sleeping; they awaken gradually during the first Song.
VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS
The pale stars are gone!
For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,
In the depths of the dawn,
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and they flee 5
Beyond his blue dwelling,
As fauns flee the leopard,
But where are ye?
[A train of dark Forms and Shadows passes by confusedly singing. [page 123]
Here, oh, here:
We bear the bier 10
Of the Father of many a cancelled year!
Spectres we
Of the dead Hours be,
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.
Strew, oh, strew 15
Hair, not yew!
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!
Be the faded flowers
Of Death’s bare bowers
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours!
Haste, oh, haste! 21
As shades are chased,
Trembling, by day, from heaven’s blue waste,
We melt away,
Like dissolving spray, 25
From the children of a diviner day,
With the lullaby
Of the winds that die
On the bosom of their own harmony!
IONE
What dark forms were they? 30
PANTHEA
The past Hours weak and gray,
With the spoil which their toil
Raked together
From the conquest but One could foil.
IONE
Have they past? [page 124] 35
PANTHEA
They have past; 35
They outspeeded the blast,
While ’t is said, they are fled:
IONE
Whither, oh, whither?
PANTHEA
To the dark, to the past, to the dead.
VOICE OF THE UNSEEN SPIRITS
Bright clouds float in heaven, 40
Dew-stars gleam on earth,
Waves assemble on ocean:
They are gathered and driven
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!
They shake with emotion, 45
They dance in their mirth.
But where are ye?
The pine-boughs are singing
Old songs with new gladness,
The billows and fountains 50
Fresh music are flinging,
Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;
The storms mock the mountains
With the thunder of gladness.
But where are ye? 55
IONE
What charioteers are these?
PANTHEA
Where are their chariots? [page 125]
SEMICHORUS OF HOURS
The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth
Has drawn back the figured curtain of sleep
Which covered our being and darkened our birth
In the deep.
A VOICE
In the deep?
SEMICHORUS II
Oh, below the deep.
SEMICHORUS I
An hundred ages we had been kept 61
Cradled in visions of hate and care,
And each one who waked as his brother slept,
Found the truth —
SEMICHORUS II
Worse than his visions were!
SEMICHORUS I
We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep; 65
We have known the voice of Love in dreams;
We have felt the wand of Power, and leap —
SEMICHORUS II
As the billows leap in the morning beams!
CHORUS
Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,
Pierce with song heaven’s silent light, 70
Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,
To check its flight ere the cave of night. [page 126]
Once the hungry Hours were hounds
Which chased the day like a bleeding deer,
And it limped and stumbled with many wounds 75
Through the nightly dells of the desert year.
But now, oh weave the mystic measure
Of music, and dance, and shapes of light;
Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure,
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite! 80
A VOICE
Unite!
PANTHEA
See, where Spirits of the human mind,
Wrapt in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach!
CHORUS OF SPIRITS
We join the throng
Of the dance and the song,
By the whirlwind of gladness borne along; 85
As the flying-fish leap
From the Indian deep,
And mix with the sea-birds, half asleep.
CHORUS OF HOURS
Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet? —
For sandals of lightning are on your feet, 90
And your wings are soft and swift as thought,
And your eyes are as love which is veiléd not.
CHORUS OF SPIRITS
We come from the mind
Of humankind,
Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind; [page 127] 95
Now ’t is an ocean
Of clear emotion,
A heaven of serene and mighty motion.
From that deep abyss
Of wonder and bliss, 100
Whose caverns are crystal palaces;
From those skyey towers
Where Thought’s crowned powers
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!
From the dim recesses 105
Of woven caresses,
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses;
From the azure isles,
Where sweet Wisdom smiles,
Delaying your ships with her siren wiles. 110
From the temples high
Of Man’s ear and eye,
Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;
From the murmurings
Of the unsealed springs 115
Where Science bedews his dædal wings.
Years after years,
Through blood, and tears,
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears,
We waded and flew, 120
And the islets were few
Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.
Our feet now, every palm,
Are sandalled with calm,
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm; [page 128] 125
And beyond our eyes,
The human love lies
Which makes all its gazes on Paradise.
CHORUS OF THE SPIRITS AND HOURS
Then weave the web of the mystic measure;
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth, 130
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,
Fill the dance and the music of mirth,
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by
To an ocean of splendour and harmony!
CHORUS OF SPIRITS
Our spoil is won, 135
Our task is done,
We are free to dive, or soar, or run;
Beyond and around,
Or within the bound
Which clips the world with darkness round. 140
We’ll pass the eyes
Of the starry skies
Into the hoar deep to colonize:
Death, Chaos, and Night,
From the sound of our flight, 145
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest’s might.
And Earth, Air, and Light,
And the Spirit of Might,
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;
And Love, Thought, and Breath, 150
The powers that quell Death,
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath. [page 129]
And our singing shall build
In the void’s loose field
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield; 155
We will take our plan
From the new world of man,
And our work shall be called Promethean.
CHORUS OF HOURS
Break the dance, and scatter the song;
Let some depart, and some remain. 160
SEMICHORUS I
We, beyond heaven, are driven along:
SEMICHORUS II
Us the enchantments of earth retain:
SEMICHORUS I
Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free,
With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea,
And a heaven where yet heaven could never be. 165
SEMICHORUS II
Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright,
Leading the Day, and outspeeding the Night,
With the powers of a world of perfect light.
SEMICHORUS I
We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,
Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear. 171
SEMICHORUS II
We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth, [page 130]
And the happy forms of its death and birth
Change to the music of our sweet mirth.
CHORUS OF HOURS AND SPIRITS
Break the dance, and scatter the song, 175
Let some depart, and some remain;
Wherever we fly we lead along
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,
The clouds that are heavy with love’s sweet rain.
PANTHEA
Ha! they are gone!
IONE
Yet feel you no delight 180
From the past sweetness?
PANTHEA
As the bare green hill,
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water
To the unpavilioned sky!
IONE
Even whilst we speak
New notes arise. What is that awful sound? 185
PANTHEA
’T is the deep music of the rolling world,
Kindling within the strings of the waved air
Æolian modulations.
IONE
Listen, too,
How every pause is filled with under-notes, [page 131]
Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones, 190
Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,
As the sharp stars pierce winter’s crystal sea.
And gaze upon themselves within the sea.
PANTHEA
But see where, though two openings in the forest
Which hanging branches overcanopy, 195
And where two runnels of rivulet
Between the close moss, violet-inwoven,
Have made their path of melody, like sisters
Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,
Turning their dear disunion to an isle 200
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;
Two visions of strange radiance float upon
The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,
Which flows intenser, keener deeper yet,
Under the ground and through the windless air. 205
IONE
I see a chariot like that thinnest boat
In which the mother of the months is borne
By ebbing night in her western cave,
When she upsprings from interlunar dreams;
O’er which is curved an orblike canopy 210
Of gentle darkness, and the hills and the woods
Distinctly seen through that dusk airy veil,
Regard like shapes in an enchanter’s glass;
Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
Such as the genii of the thunderstorm 215
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea
When the sun rushes under it; they roll
And move and grow as with an inward wind;
Within it sits a wingéd infant, white [page 132]
Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow, 220
Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,
Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds
Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl.
Its hair is white, the brightness of white light
Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens 225
Of liquid darkness, which is deity
Within seems pouring, as a strom is poured
From jaggéd, out of their arrowy lashes,
Tempering the cold and radiant air around,
With fire that is not brightness; in its hand 230
It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point
A guiding power directs the chariot’s prow
Over its wheeléd clouds, which as they roll
Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds,
Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew. 235
PANTHEA
And from the opening in the wood
Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,
A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres,
Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass
Flow, as through empty space, music and light: 240
Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,
Purple and azure, white, green, and golden,
Sphere within sphere; and every space between
Peopled with unimaginable shapes,
Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep, 245
Yet each intertranspicuous, and they whirl
Over each other with a thousand motions,
Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning,
And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,
Intensely, slowly, solemnly roll on, 250
Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones, [page 133]
Intelligible words and music wild.
With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb
Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist
Of elemental subtlety, like light; 255
And the wild odour of the forest flowers,
The music of the living grass and air,
The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams,
Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed
Seem kneaded into one aërial mass 260
Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,
Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,
Like to a child o’erwearied with sweet toil,
On its own folded wings and wavy hair,
The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep, 265
And you can see its little lips are moving,
Amid the changing light of their own smiles,
Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.
IONE
’T is only mocking the orb’s harmony.
PANTHEA
And from a star upon its forehead, shoot, 270
Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears
With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,
Embleming heaven and earth united now,
Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel 274
Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought,
Filling the abyss with sun-like lightnings,
And perpendicular now, and now transverse,
Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,
Make bare the secrets of the earth’s deep heart;
Infinite mine of adamant and gold, 280
Valueless stones, and unimagined gems, [page 134]
And caverns on crystalline columns poised
With vegetable silver overspread;
Wells of unfathomed fire, and water-springs
Whence the great sea even as a child is fed, 285
Whose vapours clothe earth’s monarch mountain-tops
With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on,
And make appear the melancholy ruins
Of cancelled cycles: anchors, beaks of ships;
Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears,
And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels 291
Of scythéd chariots, and the emblazonry
Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,
Round which Death laughed, sepulchred emblems
Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin! 295
The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
Whose population which the earth grew over
Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes 300
Huddled in gray annihilation, split,
Jammed in the hard, black deep; and, over these,
The anatomies of unknown wingéd things,
And fishes which were isles of living scale,
And serpents, bony chains, twisted around 305
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
The jaggéd alligator, and the might
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once 310
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
Increased and multiplied like summer worms
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
Wrapt deluge round it like a cloke, and they [page 135] 315
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God
Whose throne was in a comet, past, and cried,
Be not! And like my words they were no more.
THE EARTH
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness, 320
The vaporous exultation not to be confined!
Ha! ha! the animation of delight
Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind!
THE MOON
Brother mine, calm wanderer, 325
Happy globe of land and air,
Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,
Which penetrates my frozen frame,
And passes with the warmth of flame,
With love, and odour, and deep melody 330
Through me, through me!
THE EARTH
Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,
My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains,
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.
The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses, 335
And the deep air’s unmeasured wilderness,
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.
They cry aloud as I do: Sceptred curse,
Who all our green and azure universe
Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending [page 136] 340
A solid cloud to rain hot thunder-stones,
And splinter and knead down my children’s bones,
All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending;
Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,
Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn, 345
My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire;
My sea like forests, every blade and blossom
Which finds a grave or cradle in bosom,
Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire.
How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up 350
By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup
Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;
And from beneath, around, within, above,
Filling thy void annihilation, love
Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunderball! 355
THE MOON
The snow upon my lifeless mountains
Is loosened into living fountains,
My solid oceans flow, and sing, and shine:
A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
It clothes with unexpected birth 360
My cold bare bosom: Oh, it must be thine
On mine, on mine!
Gazing on thee, I feel, I know,
Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,
And living shapes upon my bosom move: [page 137] 365
Music is in the sea and air,
Wingéd clouds soar and there,
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:
’T is love, all love!
THE EARTH
It interpenetrates my granite mass, 370
Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass,
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;
Upon the winds, among the clouds ’t is spread:
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead, —
They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers.
And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison 376
With thunder and with whirlwind, has arisen
Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being:
With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver
Thought’s stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever, 380
Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,
Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror,
Which could distort to many a shade of error,
This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love;
Which over all his kind as the sun’s heaven 385
Gliding o’er ocean, smooth, serene, and even
Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move:
Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left,
Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft
Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured, — 390
Then when it wanders home with rosy smile, [page 138]
Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile
It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored:
Man, oh, not men! a chain of linkéd thought,
Of love and might to be divided not, 395
Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;
As the sun rules, even with a tyrant’s gaze,
The unquiet republic of the maze
Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven’s free wilderness:
Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, 400
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;
Familiar acts are beautiful through love;
Labour, and pain, and grief, in life’s green grove
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be! 405
His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,
A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,
Is a tempest-wingéd ship, whose helm
Love rules through waves which dare not overwhelm, 410
Forcing life’s wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.
All things confess his strength. Through the cold of mass
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;
Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;
Language is perpetual orphic song. [page 139] 415
Which rules with dædal harmony a throng
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.
The lightning is his slave; heaven’s utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on! 420
The tempest is his steed, he strides with air;
And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.
THE MOON
The shadow of white death has past
From my path in heaven at last, 425
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly-woven bowers,
Wander happy paramours,
Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
Thy vales more deep. 430
THE EARTH
As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold
A half infrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,
And crystalline, till it becomes a wingéd mist,
And wanders up the vault of the blue day,
Outlives the noon, and one the sun’s last ray 435
Hangs o’er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.
THE MOON
Thou art folded, thou art lying
In the light which is undying
Of thine own joy, and heaven’s smile divine;
All suns and constellations shower [page 140] 440
On thee light, a life, a power
Which doth array thy spear; thou pourest thine
On mine, on mine!
THE EARTH
I spin beneath my pyramid of night,
Which points into the heavens, dreaming delight, 445
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.
THE MOON
As in the soft and sweet eclipse, 45
When soul meets soul on lover’s lips,
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
So when thy shadow falls on me,
Then am I mute and still, by thee
Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, 455
Full, oh, too full!
Thou art speeding round the sun,
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest 460
Among all the lamps of heaven
To whom life and light is given.
I, thy crystal paramour,
Borne beside thee by a power
Like a polar paradise, 465
Magnet-like, of lover’s eyes;
I, a most enamoured maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen [page 141]
With the pleasure of love,
Maniac-like around thee move 470
Gazing, an insatiate bride,
On thy form from every side
Like a Mænad, round the cup
Which Agave lifted up
In the weird Cadmean forests. 475
Brother, whereso’er thou soarest
I must hurry, whirl and follow
Through the heavens wide and hollow,
Sheltered by the warm embrace
Of thy soul from hungry space, 480
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty, and might,
As a lover or cameleon
Grows like what it looks upon;
As a violet’s gentle eye 485
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds,
As a gray and watery mist
Glows like solid amethyst
Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, 490
When the sunset sleeps
Upon its snow.
THE EARTH
And the weak day weeps
That it should be so
O gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight 495
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night
Through isles for ever calm;
O gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride’s deep universe, [page 142] 500
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.
PANTHEA
I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,
Out of the stream of sound.
IONE
Ah me! sweet sister, 505
The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
And you pretend to rise out of its wave,
Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew
Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph’s limbs and hair.
PANTHEA
Peace! peace! A mighty Power, which is as darkness, 510
Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky
Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,
Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone, 515
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.
IONE
There is a sense of words upon mine ear.
PANTHEA
An universal sound like words: Oh, list!
DEMOGORGON
Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shape and harmonies, [page 143] 520
Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll
The love which paves thy path along the skies:
THE EARTH
I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.
DEMOGORGON
Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee; 525
Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift of birth
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:
THE MOON
I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!
DEMOGORGON
Ye kings of suns and stars! Dæmons and Gods,
Æthereal Dominations! who possess 530
Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
Beyond Heaven’s constellated wilderness:
A VOICE FROM ABOVE
Our great Republic hears; we are blest, and bless.
DEMOGORGON
Ye happy dead! whom beams of brightest verse
Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray, 535
Whether your nature is that universe
Which once ye saw and suffered —
A VOICE FROM BENEATH
Or as they
Whom we have left, we change and pass away. [page 144]
DEMOGORGON
Ye elemental Genii, who have homes
From man’s high mind even to the central stone 540
Of sullen lead; from Heaven’s star-fretted domes
To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:
A CONFUSED VOICE
We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.
DEMOGORGON
Spirits, whose homes are flesh: ye beasts and birds,
Ye worms, and fish; ye living leaves and buds; 545
Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air’s solitudes:
A VOICE
Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.
DEMOGORGON
Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay; 550
A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day:
ALL
Speak! Thy strong words may never pass away.
DEMOGORGON
This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born’s spell yawns for Heaven’s despotism, 555
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour [page 145]
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs 560
And folds over the world its healing wings.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, 565
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length,
These are the spells by which to re-assume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; 570
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; 575
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory! [page 146]
THE WORLD’S WANDERERS
TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light
Speed thee in thy fiery flight,
In what cavern of the night
Will thy pinions close now?
Tell me, moon, thou pale and gray 5
Pilgrim of heaven’s homeless way,
In what depth of night or day
Seekest thou repose now?
Weary wind, who wanderest
Like the world’s rejected guest, 10
Hast thou still some secret nest
On the tree or billow?
1820.
THE WANING MOON
AND like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapt in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East, 5
A white and shapeless mass.
1820.
TO THE MOON
ART thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth, —
And ever changing, like a joyless eye 5
That finds no object worth constancy?
1820. [page 147]
GOOD NIGHT
GOOD NIGHT? ah, no; the hour is ill
Which serves those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.
How can I call the lone night good, 5
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood,
Then it will be good night.
To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light 10
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good night.
1820.
SONG
RARELY, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day 5
’T is since thou art fled away.
How shall ever one like me
Win thee back again?
With the joyous and the free
Thou wilt scoff at pain. 10
Spirit false! thou hast forgot
All but those who need thee not. [page 148]
As a lizard with the shade
Of a trembling leaf,
Thou with sorrow art dismayed; 15
Even the sighs of grief
Reproach thee, that thou art not near,
And reproach thou wilt not hear.
Let me set my mournful ditty
To a merry measure: 20
Thou wilt never come for pity,
Thou wilt come for pleasure;
Pity then will cut away
Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.
I love all that thou lovest, 25
Spirit of Delight!
The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,
And the starry night;
Autumn evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born. 30
I love snow, and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature’s, and may be 35
Untainted by man’s misery.
I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me 40
What difference? But thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less. [page 149]
I love Love — though he has wings,
And like light can flee,
But, above all other things, 45
Spirit, I love thee —
Thou art love and life! O come,
Make once more my heart thy home!
1820.
TO —
I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden, —
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burthen thine.
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion, — 5
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart’s devotion
With which I worship thine.
1820.
SONG OF PROSERPINE
WHILST GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA
SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth,
Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine 5
On thine own child, Proserpine.
If with mists of evening dew
Thou dost nourish these young flowers [page 150]
Till they grow, in scent and hue
Fairest children of the Hours, 10
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.
1820.
AUTUMN
A DIRGE
THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying;
And the year
On the earth, her death-bed, in shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying. 5
Come, months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold year, 10
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.
The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
From the year:
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone 15
To his dwelling.
Come, months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play —
Ye follow the bier 20
Of the dead cold year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.
1820. [page 151]
THE QUESTION
I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 5
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms around the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightiest in dream.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets;
Daisies, those pearled Areturi of the earth; 10
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets —
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth —
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears, 15
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew yet drained not by the Day; 20
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.
And nearer to the river’s trembling edge 25
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white;
And starry river-buds among the sedge;
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, [page 152]
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light; 30
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers 35
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand, — and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it! — O, to whom? 40
1820.
HYMN OF APOLLO
THE sleepless Hours who watch me, as I lie
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, —
Waking me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, 5
Tells them that dreams and the moon is gone.
Then I arise, and climbing Heaven’s blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean-foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves 10
Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare.
The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill 15
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray [page 153]
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of night.
I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers,
With their æthereal colours; the Moon’s globe 20
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine
Are portions of one power, which is mine.
I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven; 25
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;
For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle? 30
I am the eye with which the universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine, are mine,
All light of art or nature; —to my song 35
Victory and praise in their own right belong.
1820.
HYMN OF PAN
FROM the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings. 5
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme, [page 154]
The birds on the myrtle-bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass, 10
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing 15
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, 20
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.
I sang of the dancing stars, 25
I sang of the dædal Earth,
And of Heaven — and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth; —
And then I changed my pipings, —
Singing how down the vale of Mænalus 30
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood, 35
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.
1820. [page 155]
ARETHUSA
ARETHUSA arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains, —
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag, 5
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;
Her steps paved with green 10
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams:
And the gliding and springing,
She went, ever singing
In murmurs as soft as sleep. 15
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold, 20
With his trident the mountains strook;
And opened a chasm
In the rocks; — with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind 25
It concealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did render in sunder
The bars of the springs below: 30
The beard and the hair
Of the river-god were [page 156]
Seen through the torrent’s sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph’s flight 35
To the brink of the Dorian deep.
“O save me! O guide me,
And bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair!”
The loud Ocean heard, 40
To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer;
And under the water
The Earth’s white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam; 45
Behind her descended
Her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream:
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main 50
Alpheus rushed behind, —
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
Under the bowers 55
Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearléd thrones;
Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods;
Over heaps of unvalued stones; 60
Through the dim beams
Which amid the streams
Weave a network of coloured light;
And under the caves
Where the shadowy waves [page 157] 65
Are as green as the forest’s night:
Outspeeding the shark,
And the sword-fish dark,
Under the ocean foam,
And up through the rifts 70
Of the mountain-clifts
They passed to their Dorian home.
And now from their fountains
In Enna’s mountains,
Down one vale where the morning basks, 75
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
Then ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep 80
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below,
And the meadows of asphodel;
And at night they sleep 85
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore; —
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more. 90
1820.
THE CLOUD
I BRING the fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear the light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams. [page 158]
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken 5
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under, 10
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ’t is my pillow white, 15
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits; 20
Over the earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills, 25
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains. 30
The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning-star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag, 35
Which an earthquake rocks and swings, [page 159]
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours or rest and of love, 40
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbéd maiden, with white fire laden, 45
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angles hear, 50
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, 55
Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the moon’s with a girdle of pearl; 60
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over the torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof, 65
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march,
With hurricane, fire, and snow, [page 160]
When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow; 70
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; 75
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams,
Build up the blue dome of air, 80
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
1820.
TO A SKYLARK
HAIL to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 5
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest, 9
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun, [page 161]
O’er which clouds are brigh’ning,
Thou dost float and run;
Like and unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 15
The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, 20
Keen as are the arrows
Of what silver sphere
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear,
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 25
All the earth and air
With my voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed. 30
What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. 35
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: [page 162] 40
Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour 44
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:
Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aërial hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: 50
Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-wingéd thieves. 55
Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers, —
All that ever was 59
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, —thy music doth surpass.
Teach us, sprite or bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 65
Chorus Hymenæal,
Or triumphal chaunt, [page 163]
Matched with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt, —
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 70
What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain? 74
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?
With thy clear keen joyance
Languour cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never can near thee:
Thou lovest; but ne’er knew love’s sad satiety. 80
Walking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream, 84
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 90
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. [page 164] 95
Better than all measures
Of delight and sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 100
Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,
The world should listen then, as I am listening now. 105
1820.
ODE TO LIBERTY
Yet, Freedom, yet thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind. — BYRON
I
A GLORIOUS people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations: Liberty,
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o’er Spain,
Scattering contagious fire into the sky,
Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, 5
And, in the rapid plumes of song,
Clothed itself, sublime and strong;
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
Hovering inverse o’er its accustomed prey;
Till from its station in the heaven of fame 10
The Spirit’s whirlwind rapt it, and the ray
Of the remotest sphere of living flame
Which paves the void, was from behind it flung,
As foam from a ship’s swiftness; when there came
A voice out of the deep: I will record the same. — [page 165]
II
“The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth; 16
The burning stars of the abyss were hurled
Into the depths of heaven. The dædal earth,
That island in the ocean of the world,
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air; 20
But this divinest universe
Was yet a chaos and a curse,
For thou wert not: but power from worst producing worse,
The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,
And of the birds, and of the watery forms, 25
And there was war among them, and despair
With them, raging without truce or terms:
The bosom of their violated nurse
Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms,
And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. 30
III
“Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied
His generations under the pavilion
Of the Sun’s throne: palace and pyramid,
Temple and prison, to many a swarming million
Were as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. 35
This human living multitude
Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,
For thou wert not; but o’er the populous solitude,
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,
Hung tyranny; beneath, sate deified 40
The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;
In the shadow of her pinions wide, [page 166]
Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood,
Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed, 44
Drove the astonished herds of men from every side.
IV
“The nodding promontories, and blue isles,
And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves
Of Greece basked glorious in the open smiles
Of favouring heaven; from their enchanted caves
Prophetic echoes flung dim melody 50
On the unapprehensive wild.
The vine, the corn, the olive mild,
Grew, savage yet, to human use unreconciled;
And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,
Like the man’s thought dark in the infant’s brain,
Like aught that is which wraps what is to be, 56
Art’s deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein
Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child,
Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain
Her lidless eyes for thee; when o’er the Ægean main 60
V
“Athens arose: a city such a vision
Builds from the purple crags and silver towers
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision
Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors
Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; 65
Its portals are inhabited
By thunder-zonéd winds, each head
Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,
A divine work! Athens diviner yet
Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will 70
Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set;
For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill [page 167]
Peopled with forms that mock the eternal dead
In marble immortality, that hill
Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle.
VI
“Within the surface of Time’s fleeting river 76
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles but it cannot pass away!
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder 80
With an earth-awakening blast
Through the caverns past;
Religion veils her eyes; Oppression sinks aghast:
A wingéd sound of joy, and love, and wonder,
Which soars where expectation never flew, 85
Rending the veil of space and time asunder!
One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;
One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast
With life and love makes chaos ever new, — 89
As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew.
VII
“Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,
Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmæan Mænad,
She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest
From the elysian food was yet unweanéd;
And many a deed of terrible uprightness 95
By thy sweet love was sanctified;
And in thy smile, and by thy side,
Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.
But when tears stained thy robe of vestal whiteness,
And gold profaned thy capitolian throne, 100
Thou didst desert, with spirit-wingéd lightness,
The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone [page 168]
Slaves of one tyrant. Palatinus sighed
Faint echoes of Ionian song: that tone
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown. 105
VIII
“From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,
Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,
Or utmost islet inaccessible,
Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,
Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, 110
And every Naiad’s ice-cold urn,
To talk in echoes sad and stern,
Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?
For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks
Of the Scald’s dreams, nor haunt the Druid’s sleep. 115
What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks
Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,
When from its sea of death to kill and burn,
The Galilean serpent forth did creep,
And made thy world an undistinguishable heap.
IX
“A thousand years the Earth cried, Where art thou?
And then the shadow of thy coming fell
On Saxon Alfred’s olive-cinctured brow:
And many a warrior-peopled citadel,
Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, 125
Arose in sacred Italy,
Frowning o’er the tempestuous sea
Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;
That multitudinous anarchy did sweep
And burst around their walls like idle foam, [page 169] 130
Whilst from the human spirit’s deepest deep,
Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb
Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,
With divine wand traced on our earthly home
Fit imagery to pave heaven’s everlasting dome. 135
X
“Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! Thou terror
Of the world’s wolves! thou bearer of the quiver,
Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-wingéd Error,
As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever
In the calm regions of the orient day! 140
Luther caught thy wakening glance:
Like lightning from his leaden lance
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay; 144
And England’s prophets hailed thee as their queen,
In songs whose music cannot pass away,
Though it must flow for ever: not unseen
Before the spirit-sighted countenance
Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene 149
Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien.
XI
“The eager hours and unreluctant years
As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood,
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,
Darkening each other with their multitude,
And cried aloud, Liberty! Indignation 155
Answered in Pity from her cave;
Death grew pale within the grave;
And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!
When, like heaven’s sun girt by the exhalation [page 170]
Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise, 160
Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation
Like shadows; as if day had cloven the skies
At dreaming midnight o’er the western wave,
Men started, staggering with a glad surprise,
Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. 165
XII
“Thou heaven and earth! What spells could pall thee then,
In ominous eclipse? A thousand years,
Bred from the slime of deep oppression’s den,
Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears,
Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away; 170
How like Bacchanals of blood,
Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood
Destruction’s sceptre slaves, and Folly’s mitred brood!
When one, like them, but mightier far than they,
The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, 175
Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,
Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers
Of serene heaven. He, by the past pursued,
Rests with those dead but unforgotten hours,
Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. 180
XIII
“England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?
Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder
Vesuvius wakens Ætna, and the cold
Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:
O’er the lit waves every Æolian isle 185
From Pithecusa to Pelorus
Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus: [page 171]
They cry, Be dim, ye lamps of heaven suspended o’er us!
Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile
And they dissolve; but Spain’s were links of steel,
Till bit to dust by virtue’s keenest file. 191
Twins of a single destiny! appeal
To the eternal years enthroned before us,
In the dim West, impress us from a seal,
All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal. 195
XIV
“Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead,
Till, like a standard from a watch-tower’s staff,
His soul may stream over the tyrant’s head!
Thy victory shall be his epitaph!
Wild Bacchanal of truth’s mysterious wine, 200
King-deluded Germany,
His dead spirit lives in thee.
Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!
And thou, lost paradise of this divine
And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness! 205
Thou island of eternity! thou shrine
Where desolation, clothed with loveliness,
Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,
Gather up thy blood into thy heart; repress 209
The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces!
XV
“O that the free would stamp the impious name
Of KING into the dust; or write it there,
So that this blot upon the page of fame
Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air [page 172]
Erases, and the flat sands close behind! 215
Ye the oracle have heard:
Lift the victory-flashing sword,
And cut the snaky knots of this foul Gordian word,
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
Into a mass, irrefragably firm 220
The axes and the rods which mankind;
The sound has poison in it; ’t is the sperm
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;
Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term, 224
To set thine arméd heel on this reluctant worm.
XVI
“O that the wise from their bright minds would kindle
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,
That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle
Into the hell from which it first was hurled,
A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure;
Till human thoughts might kneel alone,
Each before the judgment-throne
Of its own aweless soul, or of the power unknown!
O that the words which make the thoughts obscure
From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew 235
From a white lake blot heaven’s blue portraiture,
Were stript of their thin masks and various hue,
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,
Till in the nakedness of false and true
They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due! [page 173] 240
XVII
“He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever
Can be between the cradle and the grave,
Crowned him the King of Life. O vain endeavour!
If on his own high will, a willing slave, 244
He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor!
What if earth can clothe and feed
Amplest millions at their need,
And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?
Or what if Art, and ardent intercessor,
Driving on fiery wings to Nature’s throne, 250
Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,
And cries, Give me, thy child, dominion
Over all height and depth! if Life can breed
New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan, 254
Rend, of thy gifts and hers, a thousandfold for one!
XVIII
“Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
Of man’s deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the sun from the Eoan wave,
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame; 260
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,
To judge with solemn truth life’s ill-apportioned lot, —
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame
Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? 265
O, Liberty! If such could be thy name
Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee; [page 174]
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free
Wept tears, and blood like tears?” — The solemn harmony 270
XIX
Paused, and the spirit of that mighty singing
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;
Then as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aërial golden light 275
On the heavy-sounding plain,
When the bolt has pierced its brain;
As summer clouds dissolve, unburdened of their rain;
As a far taper fades with fading night;
As a brief insect dies within a dying day, — 280
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,
Drooped; o’er it closed the echoes far away
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way
Hiss round a drowner’s head in their tempestuous play. 285
1820.
THE SENSITIVE PLANT
PART I
A SENSITIVE PLANT in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
And closed them beneath the kisses of night.
And the Spring arose on the garden fair, 5
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; [page 175]
And each flower and herb on earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, 10
Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want,
As the companionless Sensitive Plant.
The snowdrop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, 14
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream’s recess
Till they die of their owns dear loveliness, 20
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale,
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;
And the hyacinth, purple, and white, and blue, 25
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, 29
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast,
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare; [page 176]
And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
As a Mænad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye, 35
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky;
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose —
The sweetest flower for scent that blows —
And all rare blossoms from every clime,
Grew in that garden in perfect prime. 40
And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was prankt, under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,
Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, 45
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.
And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,
Which led through the garden along and across, 50
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,
Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells,
As fair as the famous asphodels,
And flow’rets which, drooping as day drooped too, 55
Fell into pavilions, white, and purple, and blue,
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.
And from this undefiled Paradise
The flowers (as an infant’s awakening eyes [page 177]
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet 60
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),
When Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun; 65
For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
Like young lovers who youth and love make dear
Wrapt and filled by their mutual atmosphere.
But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit 70
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
Received more than all, it loved more than ever,
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver;
For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower:
Radiance and odour are not its dower; 75
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full;
It desires what it has not, the Beautiful!
The light winds, which from unsustaining winds
Shed the music of many murmurings;
The beams which dart from many a star 80
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;
The pluméd insect swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odour, which pass
Over the gleam of the living grass; [page 178] 85
The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,
Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;
The quivering vapours of dim noontide, 90
Which like a sea o’er the warm earth glide,
In which every sound, and odour, and beam,
Move, as reeds in a single stream; —
Each and all like ministering angels were
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, 95
Whilst lagging hours of the day went by
Like windless clouds o’er the tender sky.
And when evening descended from Heaven above,
And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep,
And the day’s veil fell from the world of sleep, 101
And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned
In an ocean of dreams without a sound,
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress
The light sand which paves it, consciousness; 105
(Only overhead the sweet nightingale
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,
And snatches of its Elysian chant
Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant.)
The Sensitive Plant was the earliest 110
Upgathered into the bosom of rest:
A sweet child weary of its delight, [page 179]
The feeblest and yet the favourite,
Cradled within the embrace of night.
PART II
There was a Power in this sweet place, 115
An Eve in this Eden, a ruling grace
Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
Was a God is to the starry scheme:
A Lady, the wonder of her kind,
Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind, 120
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,
Tended the garden from morn to even:
And the meteors of that sublunary heaven,
Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth, 125
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!
She had no companion of mortal face
Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes,
That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise: 130
As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake
Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake,
As if yet around her he lingering were,
Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.
Her steep seemed to pity the grass it prest; 135
You might hear, by the heaving of her breast,
That the coming and going of the wind
Brought pleasure there, and left passion behind. [page 180]
And wherever her airy footstep trod,
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod 140
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweet,
Like a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep.
I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet;
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came 145
From her glowing fingers through all their frame.
She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam;
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers
She emptied the rain of the thunder-showers. 150
She lifted their heads with her tender hands,
And sustained them with rods and osier bands;
If the flowers had been her own infants, she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly.
And all killing insects and gnawing worms, 155
And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
She bore in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof, —
In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full,
The freshest her gentle hands could pull 160
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.
But the bee, and the beamlike ephemeris
Whose path is the lightning’s, and soft moths that kiss
The sweet lips of flowers, and harm not, did she
Make her attendant angels be. [page 181] 166
And many an antenatal tomb,
Where butterflies dream of the life to come,
She left clinging round the smooth and dark
Edge of the odorous cedar bark. 170
This fairest creature from earliest spring
Thus moved through the garden ministering
All the sweet season of summer tide,
And ere the first leaf looked brown — she died!
PART III
Three days the flowers of the garden fair, 175
Like stars when the moon is awakened, were,
Or the waves of Baiæ, ere luminous
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.
And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant
Felt the sound of the funeral chant, 180
And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,
And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low;
The weary sound and the heavy breath,
And the silent motions of passing death,
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, 185
Sent through the pores of the coffin plank.
The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone,
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan. 190
The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul:
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep, [page 182]
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap
To make men tremble who never weep. 195
Swift summer into the autumn flowed,
And frost in the mist of the morning rode,
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,
Mocking the spoil of the secret night.
The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, 200
Paved the turf and the moss below.
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,
Like the head and the skin of a dying man.
And Indian plants, of scent and hue
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, 205
Leaf after leaf, day after day,
Were massed into the common clay.
And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,
And white with the whiteness of what is dread,
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past; 210
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.
And the gusty winds waked the wingéd seeds
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,
Till they clung round many a sweet flower’s stem,
Which rotted into the earth with them. 215
The water-blooms under the rivulet
Fell from the stalks on which they were set,
And the eddies drove them here and there,
As the winds did those of the upper air.
Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks 220
Were bent and tangled across the walks; [page 183]
And the leafless network of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin, and all sweet flowers.
Between the time of the wind and the snow,
All loathliest weeds began to grow, 225
Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,
Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back.
And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank,
Stretched out its long and hollow shank, 230
And stifled the air till dead wind stank.
And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue,
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. 235
And agarics and fungi, with mildew and mould,
Stated like mist from the wet ground cold;
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead
With a spirit of growth had been animated!
Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake, 240
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake,
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high,
Infecting the winds that wander by.
Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb, 245
And at its outlet, flags huge as stakes
Damned it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.
And hour by hour, when the air was still,
The vapours arose which have strength to kill: [page 184]
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt, 250
At night they were darkness no star could melt.
And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
Crept and flitted in broad noonday
Unseen; every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burned and bit. 255
The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves which together grew,
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.
For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon 260
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;
The sap shrank to the root through every pore,
As blood to a heart that will beat no more.
For Winter came: The wind was his whip;
One choppy hinger was on his lip;
He had torn the cataracts from the hills,
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;
His breath was a chain which without a sound
The earth, and the air, and the water bound;
He came, fiercely driven in his chariot-throne 270
By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.
Then the weeds which were forms of living death
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath;
Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost! 275
And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want: [page 185]
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air,
And were caught in the branches naked and bare.
First there came down a thawing rain 280
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;
Then there steamed up a freezing dew
Which to the drips of the thaw-rain grew;
And a northern whirlwind, wandering about
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, 285
Shook the boughs, thus laden, and heavy and stiff,
And snapped them off with his rigid griff.
When winter had gone and spring came back,
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;
But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels, 290
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.
CONCLUSION
Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a spirit sat
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt his change, I cannot say. 295
Whether that lady’s gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light,
Found sadness, where it left delight,
I dare not guess; but in this life 300
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream, [page 186]
It is modest creed, and yet
Pleasant, if one considers it, 305
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.
That garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet, shapes and odours there,
In truth have never past away: 310
’T is we, ’t is ours, are changed; not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change; their might
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure. 315
1820.
DIRGE FOR THE YEAR
ORPHAN hours, the year is dead,
Come and sigh, come and weep!
Merry hours, smile instead,
For the year is but asleep:
See, it smiles as it is sleeping, 5
Mocking your untimely weeping.
As an earthquake rocks a corse
In its coffin in the clay,
So white Winter, that rough nurse,
Rocks the death-cold year to-day; 10
Solemn hours! wail aloud
For your mother in her shroud.
As the wild air stirs and sways
The tree-swung cradle of a child, [page 187]
So the breath of these rude days 15
Rocks the year: — be calm and mild,
Trembling hours; she will arise
With new love within her eyes.
January gray is here,
Like a sexton by her grave; 20
February bears the bier,
March with grief doth howl and rave,
And April weeps —but, O ye hours!
Follow with May’s fairest flowers.
January 1, 1821.
TO NIGHT
SWIFTLY walk over the western wave,
Spirit of Night!
Out of the misty eastern cave,
Where all the long and lone daylight
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, 5
Which make thee terrible and dear, —
Swift be thy flight!
Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,
Star-inwrought!
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day, 10
Kiss her until she be wearied out,
Then wander o’er the city, and sea, and land,
Touching all with thine opiate wand —
Come, long-sought!
When I arose and saw the dawn, 15
I sighed for thee;
When light rode high, and the dew was gone, [page 188]
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary Day turned to his rest,
Lingering like an unloved guest, 20
I sighed for thee.
Thy brother Death came, and cried:
Wouldst thou me?
Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,
Murmured like a noontide bee: 25
Shall I nestle near thy side?
Wouldst thou me? — And I replied:
No, not thee!
Death will come when thou art dead,
Soon, too soon — 30
Sleep will come when thou art fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, belovéd Night —
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon! 35
1821.
SONNET TO BYRON
[I AM afraid these verses will not please you, but]
If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill
Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair
The ministration of the thoughts that fill
The mind which, like a worn whose life may share
A portion of the unapproachable, 5
Marks your creations rise as fast and fair
As perfect worlds at the Creator’s will.
But such is my regard that nor your power
To soar above the heights where others [climb], [page 189]
Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour 10
Cast from the envious future on time,
Move one regret for his unhonoured name
Who dares these words: — the worm beneath the sod
May lift itself in homage of the God.
1821.
LINES
I
FAR, far away, O ye
Halycons of memory!
Seek some far calmer nest
Than his abandoned breast;
No news of your false spring 5
To my heart’s winter’s bring;
Once having gone, in vain
Ye come again.
II
Vultures, who build your bowers
High in the future’s towers! 10
Withered hopes on hopes are spread;
Dying joys, choked by the dead,
Will serve your beaks for prey
Many a day.
1821.
TO EMILIA VIVIANI
MADONNA, wherefore hast thou sent to me
Sweet-basil and mignonette?
Embleming love and health, which never yet
In the same wreath might be.
Alas, and they are wet! [page 190] 5
Is it with thy kisses or thy tears?
For never rain nor dew
Such fragrance drew
From plant or flower — the very doubt endears
My sadness ever new, 10
The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed, for thee.
Send the stars light, but send not love to me,
In whom love ever made
Health like a heap of embers soon to fade.
March, 1821.
TO —
MUSIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken;
Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, 5
Are heaped for the belovéd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
1821.
TO —
ONE word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair 5
For prudence to smother,
And Pity from thee more dear
Than that from another. [page 191]
I can give not what men call love,
But wilt thou accept not 10
The worship the heart lifts above
And the Heavens reject not, —
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar 15
From the sphere of our sorrow?
1821.
TO —
WHEN passion’s trance is overpast,
If tenderness and truth could last
Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep
Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,
I should not weep, I should not weep! 5
It were enough to feel, to see
Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,
And dream the rest — and burn and be
The secret food of fires unseen,
Couldst thou but be as thou hast been. 10
After the slumber of the year
The woodland violets reappear;
All things revive in field or grove
And sky and sea, but two, which move
And form all others, life and love. 15
1821. [page 192]
BRIDAL SONG
I
THE golden gates of sleep unbar
Where strength and beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down; 5
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew; —
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair sot true.
Let eyes not see their own delight;
Haste, swift hour, and thy flight 10
Oft renew.
II
Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!
Holy stars, permit no wrong!
And return to wake the sleeper,
Dawn, — ere it be long. 15
O joy! O fear! what will be done
In the absence of the sun!
Come along!
1821.
MUTABILITY
THE flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay,
Tempts and then flies.
What is this world’s delight? 5
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright. [page 193]
Virtue, how frail it is!
Friendship, how rare!
Love, how it sells poor bliss 10
For proud despair!
But we, though soon they fall,
Survive their joy and all
Which ours we call.
Whilst skies are blue and bright, 15
Whilst flowers are gay,
Whilst eyes that change ere night
Make glad the day,
Whilst yet the calm hours creep,
Dream thou — and from thy sleep 20
Then wake to weep.
1821.
SONNET
POLITICAL GREATNESS
NOR happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,
Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame: —
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts;
History is but the shadow of their shame; 5
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts,
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery
Of their own likeness. What are numbers, knit
By force or custom? Man who man would be, 10
Must rule the empire of himself! in it
Must be supreme, establishing his throne
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.
1821. [page 194]
TO-MORROW
WHERE art thou, beloved To-morrow?
When young and old, and strong and weak,
Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,
Thy sweet smiles we ever seek, —
In thy place — ah! well-a-day! 5
We find the thing we fled — To-day.
1821.
A LAMENT
O WORLD! O Life! O Time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more — oh, never more! 5
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more — oh, never more! 10
1821.
A LAMENT
SWIFTER far than summer’s flight,
Swifter far than youth’s delight,
Swifter far than happy night,
Art thou come and gone:
As the earth when leaves are dead, 5
As the night when sleep is sped,
As the heart when joy is fled,
I am left alone, alone. [page 195]
The swallow Summer comes again,
The owlet Night resume her reign, 10
But the wild swan Youth is fain
To fly with thee, false as thou:
My heart each day desired the morrow,
Sleep itself is turned to sorrow;
Vainly would my winter borrow 15
Sunny leaves from any bough.
Lilies for a bridal bed,
Roses for a matron’s head,
Violets for a maiden dead;
Pansies let my flowers be: 20
On the living grave I bear,
Scatter them without a tear;
Let no friend, however dear,
Waste one hope, one fear for me.
1821. [page 196]
ADONAIS
AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS
PREFACE
Φάρμακον ἧλθϵ, Βίων, τοτὶ σὸν στόμα, ϕάρμακον ϵἷδϵϛ
Πῶϛ τϵυ τοῖϛ χϵίλϵσσι ποτϵδραμϵ, κοὐκ ἐγλυκάνθη;
Τίςδϵ̀ βροτòς τοσσοῦτον ἀνάμϵρος, ἢ κϵράσαι τοι,
Ἢ δοῦναι λαλέονντι τὸ ϕάρμακον; ἔκϕυγϵν ῷδάν.
MOSCHUS, Epitaph, Bion.
IT is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My know repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled, proves, at least, that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of Hyperion as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.
John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the 23d of February, 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses, was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and, where canker-worms abound, what wonder if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his Endymion, which appeared in the Quarterly Review, produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued; and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid critics, of the true greatness of his powers, were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted. [page 197]
It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows, or one, like Keats’s, composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to Endymion, was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, Paris, and Woman, and A Syrian Tale, and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mrs. Barret, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men who, in their venal good-nature, presumed to draw parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken into adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none.
The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats’s life were not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press. I am given to understand the wound which his sensitive spirit had received from the criticism of Endymion was exasperated by the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius, than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been informed, “almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend.” Had I known these circumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from “such stuff as dreams are made of.” His conduct is a golden augury of the success of his future career — may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name! [page 198]
Ἀστὴρ πρὶν μὲν ἔλαμπϵϛ ἐνι ζώοιν ἐῶοϛ.
Νῦν δὲ θανὼν λάμπϵιϛ ἕσπϵροϛ ἐν ϕθιμένοϛ.
PLATO.
I
I WEEP for Adonais — he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, 5
And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: “With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!”
II
Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, 10
When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? Where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veiléd eyes,
’Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, 15
Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death.
III
Oh, weep for Adonais — he is dead!
Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! 20
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone, where all things wise and fair
Descend: — oh, dream not that the amorous Deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air; 26
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair. [page 199]
IV
Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania! — He died,
Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, 30
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country’s pride
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,
Trampled and mocked with many a loathéd rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite 35
Yet reigns o’er earth; the third among the sons of light.
V
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb:
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time 40
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or God,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road,
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame’s serene abode. 45
VI
But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true-love tears instead of dew;
Most musical of mourners, weep anew! 50
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom, whose petals, nipt before they blew,
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies — the storm is overpast. [page 200]
VII
To that high capital, where kingly Death 55
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came; and bought, with price and purest breath,
A grave among the eternal. — Come away!
Haste, while the vault of the blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still 60
He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.
VIII
He will awake no more, oh, never more!
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace. 65
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The external Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface 70
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
Of change, shall o’er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.
IX
Oh, weep for Adonais! — The quick Dreams,
The passion-wingéd ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams 75
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not, —
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot 79
Round their cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
They ne’er will gather strength, or find a home again. [page 201]
X
And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries:
“Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 85
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.”
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!
She knew not ’t was her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. 90
XI
One from a lucid urn of starry dew
Washed his light limbs, as if embalming them;
Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; 95
Another in her wilful grief would break
Her bow and wingéd reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more weak;
And dull the barbéd fire against his frozen cheek.
XII
Another Splendour on his mouth alit, 100
That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips; 105
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse. [page 202]
XIII
And others came: Desires and Adorations,
Wingéd Persuasions, and veiled Destinies, 110
Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering incarnations
Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Fantasies,
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 115
Came in slow pomp; — the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.
XIV
All he had loved and moulded into thought
From shape and hue and odour and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought 120
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aërial eyes that kindle day;
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, 125
And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
XV
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or herdsman’s horn, or bell at closing day; 131
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds: — a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. [page 203] 135
XVI
Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,
For whom should she have waked the sullen year?
To Phœbus was not Hyacinth so dear, 140
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both
Thou Adonais: wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.
XVII
Thy spirit’s sister, the lorn nightingale, 145
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun’s domain
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, 150
As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,
And scared the angle soul that was its earthly guest!
XVIII
Ah woe is me! Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year; 155
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows, reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons’ bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in fields and brere; 160
And their green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake. [page 204]
XIX
Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean
A quickening life from the Earth’s heart has burst,
As it has ever done, with change and motion, 165
From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on Chaos: in its steam immersed,
The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life’s sacred thirst,
Diffuse themselves, and spend in love’s delight 170
The beauty and the joy of their renewéd might.
XX
The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death, 175
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath.
Naught we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning? — th’ intense atom glows
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. 180
XXI
Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean 185
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, [page 205]
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
XXII
He will awake no more, oh, never more! 190
“Wake thou,” cried Misery, “childless Mother, rise
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart’s core,
A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.”
And all the Dreams that watched Urania’s eyes,
And all the Echoes whom their sister’s song 195
Had held in holy silence, cried: “Arise!”
Swift as a thought by the snake Memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.
XXIII
She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs
Out of the East, and follows wild and drear 200
The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
Had left the Earth a corpse; — sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt, Urania;
So saddened round her like an atmosphere 205
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way,
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
XXIV
Out of her secret Paradise she sped,
Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,
And human hearts, which to her aëry tread 210
Yielding not, wounded the invisible [page 206]
Palms of her tender feet where’er they fell;
And barbéd tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,
Rent the soft Form they never could repel, 214
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.
XXV
In the death-chamber for a moment of Death,
Shamed by the presence of that living Might,
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
Revisited those lips, and life’s pale light 220
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.
“Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
As silent lightning leaves the starless night!
Leave me not!” cried Urania: her distress
Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. 225
XXVI
“Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive, 230
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!
XXVII
“O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 235
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men [page 207]
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then 239
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?
Of hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,
The monsters of life’s waste had fled from thee like deer.
XXVIII
“The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead; 245
The vultures, to the conqueror’s banner true,
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion; — how they fled,
When, like Apollo from his goden bow,
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped 250
And smiled! — The spoilers tempt no second blow,
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.
XXIX
“The sun comes forth, and many reptiles swan;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
Is gathered into death without a dawn, 255
And the immortal stars awake again.
So is it in the world of living men:
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light 260
Leave its kindred lamps the spirit’s awful night.” [page 208]
XXX
Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame
Over his living head like Heaven is bent, 265
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,
And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue. 270
XXXI
’Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,
A phantom among men, companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm,
Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,
Had gazed on Nature’s naked loveliness, 275
Actæon-like, and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o’er the world’s wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along the rugged way,
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.
XXXII
A pard-like Spirit beautiful and swift — 280
A Love in desolation masked; — a Power
Girt round with weakness; — it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow; — even whilst we speak 285
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly; on a cheek
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break. [page 209]
XXXIII
His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; 290
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew
Yet dripping with the forest’s noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew
He came the last, neglected and apart; 296
A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter’s dart.
XXXIV
All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another’s fate now wept his own; 300
As in the accents of an unknown land
He sang new sorrow; sad Urania scanned
The stranger’s mien, and murmured: “Who art thou?”
He answered not, but with a sudden hand
Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, 305
Which was like Cain’s or Christ’s. — Oh! that it should be so!
XXXV
What softer voice is hushed over the dead?
Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?
What form leans sadly o’er the white death-bed,
In mockery of monumental stone, 310
The heavy heart heaving without a moan?
If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,
Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one;
Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,
The silence of that heart’s accepted sacrifice. [page 210] 315
XXXVI
Our Adonais has drunk poison — oh,
What deaf and viperous murderer could crown
Life’s early cup with such a draught of woe?
The nameless worm would now itself disown:
It felt, yet could escape the magic tone 320
Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and wrong,
But what was howling in one breast alone,
Silent with expectation of the song,
Whose master’s hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.
XXXVII
Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! 325
Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,
Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!
But by thyself, and know thyself to be!
And ever at thy season be thou free
To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow: 330
Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt — as now.
XXXVIII
Nor let us weep that our delight is fled
Far from these carrion-kites that scream below; 335
He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now.
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow
Back to the burning fountain whence it came,
A portion of the Eternal, which must glow 340
Through time and change, unquenchably the same,
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sorbid hearth of shame. [page 211]
XXXIX
Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep —
He hath awakened from the dream of life —
’T is we, who, lost in stormy visions, keep 345
With phantoms an unprotifable strife,
And in mad trance strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings. — We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day, 350
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
XL
He has outsoared the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not and torture not again; 355
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit’s self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 360
XLI
He lives, he wakes — ’t is Death is dead, not he;
Mourn not for Adonais. — Then young Dawn,
Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone!
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! 365
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
O’er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair! [page 212]
XLII
He is made one with Nature: there is heard 370
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night’s sweet bird;
He is a presence to be felt and known
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
Spreading itself where’er that Power may move 375
Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
Sustains if from beneath, and kindles it above.
XLIII
He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear 380
His part, while the one Spirit’s plastic stress
Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there
All new successions to the forms they wear;
Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight
To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; 385
And bursting in its beauty and its might
From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven’s light.
XLIV
The splendours of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb, 390
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
And love and life contend in it, for what
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there, 395
And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air. [page 213]
XLV
The inheritors of unfulfilled renown
Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,
Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not 400
Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought
And as he fell, and as he lived and loved,
Sublimely mild, a spirit without spot,
Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:
Oblivion as the rose shrank like a thing reproved. 405
XLVI
And many more, whose names on earth are dark,
But whose transmitted effluence cannot die
So long as fire outlives the parent spark,
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.
“Thou art become as one of us,” they cry; 410
“It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long
Swung blind in unascended majesty,
Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song.
Assume thy wingéd throne, thou Vesper or our throng!”
XLVII
Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth, 415
Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.
Clasp with thy painting soul the pendulous Earth;
As from the centre, dart thy spirit’s light
Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might
Satiate the void circumference: then shrink 420
Even to a point within our day and night;
And keep thy heart light, lest it make thee sink
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink. [page 214]
XLVIII
Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,
Oh, not of him, but of our joy: ’t is nought 425
That ages, empires, and religions, there
Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;
For such as he can lend, — they borrow not
Glory from those who made the world their prey;
And he is gathered to the kings of thought 430
Who waged contention with their time’s decay,
And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
XLIX
Go thou to Rome, — at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness; 434
And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,
And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress
The bones of Desolation’s nakedness,
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access,
Where, like an infant’s smile, over the dead 440
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;
L
And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time
Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;
And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,
Pavilioning the dust of him who planned 445
This refuge for his memory, doth stand
Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath
A field is spread, on which a newer band
Have pitched in Heaven’s smile their camp of death,
Welcoming him we lose with scarce-extinguished breath. [page 215] 450
LI
Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet
To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned
Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,
Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,
Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find 455
Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,
Of tears and gall. From the world’s bitter wind
Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.
What Adonais is, why fear we to become?
LII
The One remains, the many change and pass; 460
Heaven’s light for ever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die, 464
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! — Rome’s azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
LIII
Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my heart?
Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here 470
They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!
A light is past from the revolving year,
And man, and woman; and what still is dear
Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.
The soft sky smiles, the low wind whispers near: 475
’T is Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither!
No more let Life divide what Death can join together. [page 216]
LIV
That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,
That Beauty in which all things work and move,
That Benediction which the eclipsing curse 480
Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love
Which, through the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and earth and air and sea,
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of
The fire for which all thirst, now beams on me, 485
Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.
LV
The breath whose might I have invoked in song
Descends on me; my spirit’s bark is driven
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given; 490
The massy earth and spheréd skies are riven!
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar:
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. 495
1821. [page 217]
A DIRGE
ROUGH wind, that meanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain, 5
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,
Wail for the world’s wrong!
1822.
EPITAPH
THESE are two friends whose lives were undivided:
So let their memory be, now they have glided
Under the grave; let not their bones be parted,
For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.
1822.
LINES
WHEN the lamp is shattered,
The light in the dust lies dead;
When the cloud is scattered,
The rainbow’s glory is shed;
When the lute is broken, 5
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon to forgot.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute, [page 218] 10
The heart’s echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute, —
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges 15
That ring the dead seaman’s knell.
When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest;
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possest. 20
O Love! who bewailest
The frailty of all things here,
Why choose you the frailest
For you cradle, your home, and your bier?
Its passions will rock thee, 25
As the storms rock the ravens on high:
Bright reason will mock thee,
Like the sun from a wintry sky.
From thy nest every rafter
Will rot, and thine eagle home 30
Leave the naked to laughter,
When leaves fall and cold winds come.
1822.
SONG
FROM “CHARLES THE FIRST”
A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below. [page 219]
There was no leaf upon the forest bare, 5
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel’s sound.
1822.
TO JANE
THE INVITATION
BEST and brightest, come away,
Fairer far than this fair day,
Which, like thee, to those in sorrow,
Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow
To the rough Year just awake 5
In its cradle on the brake.
The brightest hour of unborn Spring,
Through the winter wandering,
Found, it seems, the halcyon morn
To hoar February born; 10
Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,
It kissed the forehead of the earth,
And smiled upon the silent sea,
And bade the frozen streams be free,
And waked to music all their fountains, 15
And breathed upon the frozen mountains,
And like a prophetess of May
Strewed flowers upon the barren way,
Making the wintry world appear
Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. 20
Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs;
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need not repress [page 220]
Its music, lest it should not find 25
An echo in another’s mind,
While the touch of Nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
I leave this notice on my door
For each accustomed visitor: — 30
“I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields.
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside of Sorrow.
You with the unpaid bill, Despair, 35
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,
I will pay you in the grave,
Death will listen to your stave.
Expectation, too, be off!
To-day is for itself enough. 40
Hope, in pity, mock not Woe
With smiles, nor follow where I go;
Long having lived on thy sweet food,
At length I find one moment good
After long pain — with all your love, 45
This you never told me of.”
Radiant Sister of the Day,
Awake, arise, and come away!
To the wild woods and the plains,
And the pools where winter rains 50
Image all their roof of leaves,
Where the pine its garland weaves
Of sapless green, and ivy dun,
Round stems that never kiss the sun,
Where the lawns and pastures be 55
And the sandhills of the sea,
Where the melting hoar-frost wets
The daisy-star that never sets, [page 221]
And wind-flowers, and violets,
Which yet join not scent to hue, 60
Crown the pale year weak and new;
When the night is left behind
In the deep east, dun and blind,
And the blue noon is over us,
And the multitudinous 65
Billows murmur at our feet,
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one,
In the universal Sun.
February, 1822.
TO JANE
THE RECOLLECTION
I
NOW the last day of many days,
All beautiful and bright as thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead,
Rise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up, do thy wonted work! come, trace 5
The epitaph of glory fled,
For now the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.
II
We wandered to the Pine Forest
That skirts the Ocean’s foam, 10
The lightest wind was in its nest,
The tempest in its home.
The whispering waves were half asleep,
The clouds were gone to play, [page 222]
And on the bosom of the deep 15
The smile of Heaven lay;
It seemed as if the hour were one
Sent from beyond the skies,
Which scattered from above the sun
A light of Paradise. 20
III
We paused amid the pines that stood
The giants of the waste,
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude
As serpents interlaced,
And soothed by every azure breath 25
That under heaven is blown,
To harmonies and hues beneath,
As tender as its own;
Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,
Like green waves on the sea, 30
As still as in the silent deep
The ocean-woods may be.
IV
How calm it was! — the silence there
By such a chain was bound,
That even the busy woodpecker 35
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness;
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew. 40
There seemed from the remotest seat
Of the wide mountain waste,
To the soft flower beneath our feet,
A magic circle traced; [page 223]
A spirit interfused around, 45
A thrilling silent life,
To momentary peace it bound
Our mortal nature’s strife; —
And still I felt the center of
The magic circle there 50
Was one fair Form that filled with love
The lifeless atmosphere.
V
We paused beside the pools that lie
Under the forest bough;
Each seemed as ’t were a little sky 55
Gulfed in a world below;
A firmament of purple light,
Which in the dark earth lay,
More boundless than the depth of night,
And purer than the day; 60
In which the lovely forests grew,
As in the upper air,
More perfect both in shape and hue
Than any spreading there.
There lay the glade, the neighbouring lawn, 65
And through the dark green wood
The white sun twinkling like the dawn
Out of a speckled cloud.
Sweet views which in our world above
Can never well be seen, 70
Were imaged by the water’s love
Of that fair forest green.
And all was interfused beneath
With an Elysian glow,
And atmosphere without a breath, 75
A softer day below. [page 224]
Like one beloved, the scene had lent
To the dark water’s breast
Its every leaf and lineament
With more than truth exprest, 80
Until an envious wind crept by,
Like an unwelcome thought,
Which from the mind’s too faithful eye
Blots one dear image out.
Though Thou art ever fair and kind, 85
And forests ever green,
Less oft is peace in Shelley’s mind,
Than calm in waters seen.
February, 1822.
WITH A GUITAR
TO JANE
Ariel to Miranda: —Take
This slave of Music, for the sake
Of him, who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou, 5
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain.
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 10
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness, for thus alone 15
Can Ariel ever find his own. [page 225]
From Prospero’s enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples he
Lit you o’er the trackless sea, 20
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent Moon,
In her interlunar swoon,
Is not sadder in her cell 25
Than deserted Ariel;
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen star of birth,
Ariel guides you o’er the sea
Of life from your nativity. 30
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps and served your will.
Now in humbler, happier lot, 35
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned for some fault of his
In a body like a grave; —
From you he only dares to crave, 40
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.
The artist who this idol wrought
To echo all harmonious thought,
Felled a tree, while on the steep 45
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of autumn past, [page 226]
And some of spring approaching fast, 50
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree, —
O that such our death may be! —
Died in sleep, and felt no pain, 55
To live in happier form again:
From which, beneath Heaven’s fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved Guitar,
And taught it justly to reply,
To all who question skillfully, 60
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamoured tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells;
For it had learnt all harmonies 65
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voicéd fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills, 70
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound 75
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day,
Our world enkindles on its way.
All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well 80
The spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more [page 227]
Is heard than has been felt before
By those who tempt it to betray 85
These secrets of an elder day.
But, sweetly as it answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest, holiest tone
For our belovéd Friend alone. 90
1822. [page 228]
NOTES
PAGE
1 Stanzas — April, 1814.
See Introduction, page xxxi. “The beautiful ‘Stanzas, dated ‘April, 1814,’ read like a
fantasia of sorrow, the motives of which are supplied by Shelley’s anticipated farewell to
Bracknell, and his return, at the call of duty, to a loveless home. . . . It is moonless and
starless night in the poem — night with its melancholy ebb of life and strength; and at such
an hour the lover is summoned to bid farewell to a refuge as dear as this at Bracknell was to
Shelley, and to loved ones as gentle and delicate in sympathy as he had found in Harriet
Boinville and Cornelia Turner.” — Dowden’s Life of Shelley, I, 411.
2 To Coleridge.
“The poem beginning, ‘O, there are spirits in the air,’ was addressed in idea to Coleridge,
whom he never knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through his
writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well. He regarded his
change of opinions as rather an act of will than conviction, and believed that in his inner
heart he would be haunted by what Shelley that in his inner heart he would be haunted by
what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.” — Mrs. Shelley’s
note. “I have often questioned whether the poem . . . has reference (as Mrs. Shelley
declares it has) to Coleridge, or whether it was not rather addressed in a despondent mood
by Shelley to his own spirit.” — Dowden’s Life of Shelley, I, 472.
3 25-30. Note the references in this stanza to Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, —
“glory of the moon,” “Night’s ghosts and dreams,” “foul fiend.” These seem to me opposed
to Professor Dowden’s conjecture.
To Wordsworth.
Shelley’s early regard for Wordsworth slowly lessened. The elder poet, at first eloquently
liberal in his political utterance, became conservative with years, and seemed to Shelley to
be betratying his noblest human impulses. In 1819 Shelley wrote his satire on Wordsworth,
Peter Bell the Third. Cf. Browning’s The Last Leader.
4 A Summer Evening Churchyard.
See Introduction, page xxxv. “The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written
in the churchyard of Lechlade, occurred during his voyage up the Thames, in the autumn of
1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much possible in the open air; and a
fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in tracing the Thames to its source.” —Mrs.
Shelley’s note. [unnumbered page]
4 3, 4. Cf. To Night, ll. 10, 11.
5 25 sq. Note the poet’s frequent premonitions of early death. See Introduction, pp. xxvi and
xlix.
5 Lines (“The cold earth slept below”).
“There can be no great rashness,” says Forman, “in which suggesting the subject of the
poem is the death of Harriet Shelley, who drowned herself on the 9th of November, 1816.
In that case, 1815 and rawn hair were used as a disguise, Harriet’s hair having been a light
brown.”
8 Hymn to the Intellectual Beauty.
Based on the Platonic doctrine of supreme beauty. See the speech of Diotima in Plato’s
Symposium. “The Hymn to the Intellectual Beauty was conceived during his voyage round
the lake with Lord Byron.” — Mrs. Shelley’s note. “A Presence, or its radiant yet awful
shadow, haunts and startles and waylays us in all that is beautiful, sublime, or heroic in the
world without us or in the world within; to this we dedicate our powers in all high moments
of joy or aspiration; and when the ecstasy has sunk and the joy has faded, still in a calmer,
purer temper, it may become the habit of our soul to follow upon the track of this ideal
Loveliness, until in a measure we partake of its image.” —Dowden’s Life, II, 31.
9 32-36. “The beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty,” said Sidney Lanier, “mean one
thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light.”
49-52. Cf. Alastor, ll. 18-49.
51. “pursuing.” The final “g” is slurred, a common practice both in England and in the
Southern States. Cf. Arethusa, ll. 52,53; Mont Blanc, ll. 107, 109; Prometheus Unbound, I,
1, 103, 4.
10 59. Cf. Prometheus Unbound, IV, 453.
11 Mont Blanc.
This poem, like the Hymn to the Intellectual Beauty and Lines Written among the
Euganean Hills, — indeed, like all of Shelley’s poems that touch the subject even remotely,
— witnesses the unity of all nature, and its ideal significance. Sensible nature is but a world
of symbols governed always by a Nature behind nature, by a Mind of Power
“Remote, serene and inaccessible.”
“Mont Blanc was inspired by a view of that mountain and its surrounding peaks and
valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge on his way through the Valley of Chamouni.” — Mrs.
Shelley’s note. “It was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful
feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and as an undisciplined
overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untamable
wildness and inaccessible solemnity from which those [page 230] feelings sprang.” —
Shelley’s note. cf. Coleridge’s Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni.
12 49 sq. The student will note the frequency with which Shelley and the other romantic poets
touch the idea of sleep. See Introduction, pp. lx, lxi.
13 80. Cf. Wordsworth’s sonnet, England and Switzerland, 1802.
14 86. “dædal.” Curiously made; complex; intricate. Note Shelley’s fondness for the phrase
“dædal earth.” Cf. Ode to Liberty, 1. 18; Hymn of Pan, 1. 26; Prometheus Unbound, III, I,
26; IV, 116, 416.
16 To Constantia, Singing.
This poem was addressed to Clara Jane Clairmont, Godwin’s stepdaughter, and friend of
the Shelleys. She had an excellent voice, and was fond of musical instruments, though her
sense of tune is said to have been deficient. The lyric testifies to Shelley’s appreciation of
the soul of music.
17 30, 31. Cf. Epipsychidion, ll. 445-456.
17 Sonnet — Ozymandias.
Structurally uncanonical. See Introduction, p. lxiv.
Diodorus, the Greek historian, tells us that the statue of Ozymandias was the largest in all
Egypt, and bore the inscription: “I am Ozymandias, king of kings; if any one wishes to know
what I am and where I lie, let him surpass me in some of my exploits.”
8. “hand. The sculptor’s. “heart.” The king’s.
18 Lines to a Critic.
This remonstrance was doubtless provoked by certain attacks upon the unrevised Laon
and Cythna, of which a few copies were issued late in 1817. In a letter of December 11,
Shelley wrote to his publisher Ollier, who was disposed to withdraw from the undertaking;
“I beseech you to reconsider the matter, for your sake no less than for my own. Assume the
high and the secure ground of courage. The people who visit your shop, and the wretched
bigot who gave his worthless custom to some other bookseller, are not the public.”
19 Passage of the Appenines.
The poem “was written,” said Shelley, “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 [page 231] 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 whou 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.” The poem was written in
large part at Este, and according to Medwin, finished Naples. Mrs. Shelley wrote of Este:
“We looked from the garden over the wide plain of Lombardy, bounded to the horizon was
lost in misty distance.”
20 16. A fine example of artistic repetition.
18. “Weltering.” Moving vaguely, without direction; tossing. Cf. Miltion’s Lycidas, ll.
12-14: —
“He must not float upon his watery bier
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind,
Without the meed of some melodious tear.”
21 43. “are.” Note the error in syntax.
23 97. Amphitrite was the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, and wife of Neptune.
100 sq. Comment on this splendid picture is superfluous, yet attention may be called to
the “romantic” incorporating into some nature of man-built structures. Cf. Wordsworth’s
Sonnet on Westminster Bridge, and Emerson’s The Problem, ll. 25-62.
100. The “time” of the poem in a single day. See also ll. 71-73, 206, 285, 320-326. Cf.
Browning’s Colombe’s Birthday and Pippa Passes.
116. “his queen.” Probably a reference to the custom of “wedding the Adriatic,” originated
in 1177, by Pope Alexander III. After the victory of the Venetian galleys over the
Ghibellines, led by Otho, the Pope presented the Doge Ziane with a ring, commanding him
to wed the Adriatic therewith, thus testifying the sea’s subjection to Venice as her lord and
master.
118. “his prey.” A reference to the apparently slow sinking of Venice. The student will
recall the fall of the Campanile in 1902. Professor Marinelli, however, declares that the
northern Adriatic is slowly drying up, and the entire Gulf of Venice will eventually
disappear, the mean annual increase in the delta of the River Po being three tenths of a mile.
24 123. “the slave of slaves.” Austria, then ruling Venice and virtually all of Italy.
152. “Celtic Anarch’s” Probably another reference to [page 232] Austria, the term Celt
long being applied to the northern barbarians as distinguished from the Romans.
25 167-205. Shelley added this passage to the original manuscript. The reference is, of course,
to Byron, who was then at Venice.
178-183. Cf. with these lines Shelley’s remark in a letter to Peacock: “That he is a great
poet, I think the address to ocean proves.”
26 195. “Scamander.” An ancient river near Troy.
196. “divinest Shakespeare’s.” Shelley was more attracted by Shakespeare than by any
other English writer.
27 223. “brutal Celt.” See note on l. 152.
239. “Ezzelin.” Ezzelino da Romano, a Ghibelline leader.
240. Cf. Coleridge’s Rine of the Ancient Mariner, ll. 195-198; Milton’s Paradise Lost, ll.
648 sq.
28 285-319. Cf. with this commingling of the human spirit with natural phenomena — an
imaginative habit of the romanticists — Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey, ll. 95-104. and
Emerson’s Each and All. Cf. also Adonais, ll. 370-378.
30 335-373. See Introduction, p. xliv.
31 Stanzas Written in Dejection, near Naples.
“At this time Shelley suffered greatly in health. He put himself under the care of a medical
man, who promised great things, and made him endure severe bodily pain, without any good
results. Constant and poignant physical suffering exhausted him; and though he preserved
the appearance of cheerfulness, and often greatly enjoyed our wanderings in the environs of
Naples, and our excursions on its sunny sea, yet many hours were passed when his thoughts,
shadowed by illness, became gloomy, and then he escaped to solitude, and in verses, which
he hid from fear of wounding me, poured forth morbid but too natural bursts of discontent
and sadness.” — Mrs. Shelley’s note. See Introduction. p. xli.
32 33. Cf. Queen Mab, ll. 1, 2; To Night, ll. 22, 24; Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Lyric 68, stanza
1.
33 Lines to an Indian Air.
A manuscript copy of this lyric was found on Shelley’s body after his death.
11. “champak.” Probably jasmine.
18. Cf. Epipsychidion, l. 591.
34 Love’s Philosophy.
In Notes and Queries (January, 1868) Mr. J. H. Dixon relates this poem to a short French
song, — “Les vents baisent les nuages.” — Forman.
Song — To the men of England.
At an open-air Reform meeting held in St. Peter’s Field, Manchester, August 16, 1819,
and dispersed by the militia, several casualties had occurred. Alarmist reports reached [page
233] Shelley at Leghorn, and he at first anticipated a general English revolution. “It was,”
says Dowden, “the hardships and sufferings of the industrious poor that especially claimed
his sympathy, and he thought of publishing for them a series of popular songs which should
inspire them with heart and hope, and perhaps awaken and direct the imagination of the
reformers. . . . The Songs and Poems for the Men of England, written in 1819, remained
unpublished until several years after Shelley’s death, when the first great battle for reform
had been fought and won.” — II, 285-6.
35 9-12. In his willingness to become, for the moment, a “popular” poet, Shelley has let his
metaphors shift for themselves.
36 England in 1819.
1. George III reigned from 1760 to 1820. During the last ten years he was blind, deaf, and
insane, his eldest son, afterward George IV, serving as Prince Regent.
36 Ode to the West Wind.
“This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the Arno, near
Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose temperature is at once mild and
animating, was collecting the vapours which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as
I foresaw, at sunset, with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent
thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.
“The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well known to
naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with
that of the land in the change of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which
announce it.” — Shelley’s note.
“Harmonizing under a common idea the forces of external nature and the passion of the
writer’s individual heart, the stanzas, with all the penetrating power of a lyric, have
something almost of epic largeness and grandeur.” — Dowden’s Life, II, 299.
Says Professor W. J. Alexander: “The terza rima (aba, beb, ede, etc.) employed in this
poem is but little used in English poetry. The suitability here of the stanza form to the theme
should be noted. The series of sustained waves of feeling, each closing in an invocation,
corresponds to the suspended rhyme of each triplet, resolved at the close of each fourth
stanza by the couplet, with its sense of completeness.”
It will be noted that in the first three sections of this impassioned cry, the poet pursues the West Wind — so to speak — as it blows over land (i), and “’mid the steep sky’s commotion” (ii), and upon the sea (iii), while in the two concluding sections he passes through momentary [page 234] longings to be himself resolved into each of these (iv, 43-45) into an appeal not for translation, but for union, eagerly adventuring even into identification as based on the truth of his own spirit’s oneness (“one too like thee”) with that of the West Wind: —
“ . . . Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!”
Perhaps the words of his well-loved Ariel, sprite of air and fire, were haunting his memory
(The Tempest, I, 2, 198, 199; 244-212): —
“I flam’d amazement: sometime I’d divide,
And burn in many places.”
“. . . the vessel,
Then all afire with me.”
37 21. “Mænad.” See note on The Sensitive Plant, l. 34.
38 32. Baiæ was an ancient Roman city and watering-place near Naples.
43. Cf. Prometheus Unbound, IV, 528.
40 Prometheus Unbound.
See Introduction, pp. xli, lvii, lviii, lix, lxiii, lxiv, and lxvi. “The prominent feature of
Shelley’s theory of the destiny of the human species was that evil is not inherent in the
system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of
Christianity: God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall,
‘Brought death into the world and all our woe.’
Shelley believed mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be
none. It is not my part in these Notes to notice arguments that have been urged against this
opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it with
fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his
own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system.
And the subject he loved best to dwell on was the image of one warring with the Evil
Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all — even the good, who were deluded into
considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fortitude and hope and the
spirit of triumph, emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good. Such he
had depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim of tyrants. He
now took a more idealized image of the same subject. He followed certain classical
authorities in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping evil lone, and
Prometheus as the regenerator, who, unable to bring mankind back to primitive [page 235]
innocence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind, beyond the state
wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through
wisdom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the Titan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus,
and causing a vulture to devour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in
heaven portending the fall of Jove, the secret of everting which was known only to
Prometheus; and the god offered freedom from torture on condition of its being
communicated to him. According to the mythological story, this referred to the offspring of
Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for
his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the
vulture, and set him free; and Thetis was married to Peleus, the father of Achilles.
“Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar view. The son greater than
his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and Thetis, was to dethrone Evil, and bring back a
happier reign than that of Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures
centuries of torture; till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the real event, but darkly
guessing that some great good to himself will flow, espoused Thetis. At the moment, the
Primal Power of the world drives him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the person
of Hercules, liberates Humanity, typified in Prometheus — she, was, according to other
mythological interpretations, the same as Venus and Nature. When the benefactor of
mankind is liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her prime, and is united to her husband,
the emblem of the human race, in perfect and happy union. In the fourth Act, the poet hives
further scope to his imagination, and idealized the forms of creation — such as we know
them, instead of such as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, the mighty parent, is
superseded by the Spirit of the Earth, the guide of our planet through the realms of sky;
while his fair and weaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss
from the annihilation of Evil in the superior sphere.
“Shelley develops more particularly in the lyrics of this dram his abstruse and imaginative
theories with regard to the creation. It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own
to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary
reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are far from vague. It was
his design to write prose metaphysical essays on the nature of Man, which would have served
to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; [page 236] a few scattered fragments of
observations and remarks alone remain. He considered these philosophical views of Mind
and Nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry.” — From Mrs. Shelley’s Note.
“The martyrdom of a heroic lover and saviour of mankind was a theme around which
Shelley’s highest and purest feelings and imaginings must gather; and for him such a
martyrdom must needs be pledge of the final victory of joy an wisdom of love.” —
Dowden’s Life, II, 239.
“The essential thought of Shelley’s creed was that the universe is penetrated, vitalized,
made real by a spirit, which he sometimes called the Spirit of Nature, but which is always
conceived as more than Life, as that which gives its actuality to Life, and lastly as Love and
Beauty. To adore this spirit, to clasp it with affection, and to blend with it, is, he thought,
the true object of man. Therefore, the final union of Prometheus with Asia is the
consummation of human destinies. Love was the only law Shelley recognized. Unterrified
by the grim realities of pain and crime revealed in nature and society, he held fast to the
belief that, if we could but pierce to the core of things, if we could be what we might be, the
world and man would both attain to their perfection in eternal love. What resolution through
some transcendental harmony was expected by Shelley for the palpable discords in the
structure of the universe, we hardly know. He did not give his philosophy systematic form:
and his new science of love remains a luminous poetic vision — nowhere more brilliantly
set forth than in the ‘sevenfold hallelujahs and harping symphonies’ of this, the final triumph
of his lyrical poetry.” — John Addington Symonds’s Shelley.
“Shelley came to this subject naturally and through years of unconscious preparation; and
when the moment of creation came, he felt the Titanic quality . . . in the Revolution,
felt the Promethean security of victory it contained — felt, too, the Promethean suffering
which [page 237] was the heart of mankind as he saw it, surveying Europe in his day, and
knew it in his own bosom as well. He conceived of Prometheus as mankind, of his history
and fate as the destiny of man; and being full of that far sight of Prometheus which saw the
victorious end — being as full of it as the wheel of Ezekiel was full of eyes — he saw, as
the centre of all vision, Prometheus Unbound — the millennium mankind. He imagined the
process of that great liberation and its crowning prosperities. This is his poem. In this poem
the Revolution as a moral idea reached its height; that is what makes it, from the social point
of view, the race point of view, the greatest work of the last century in creative imagination
— for it is the summary and centre, in the world of art, of the greatest power in that century
— the power of the idea of humanity.” — George Edward Woodberry’s The Torch.
Prometheus Unbound is Shelley’s greatest drama and his greatest poem, fit subject at once
for the philosophizings of a Hegel or the musical genius of a Wagner. Though it is possible
to question some of its structural ideas in truth of detail, the truth of its movement and
aspiration is beyond question. Its political value is no doubt less than its social value, and
that again less than its spiritual value. It offers no sure method for the renovation of life, but
it impresses us all with the assurance and reality of renovation. Having said this, however,
we must caution the student against a too docile acceptance of the dicta of those critics who
can see no vitality in Shelly’s social and political views. The truth would seem to be that
although poet, as a student of affairs, remained steadily faithful to the teachings of William
Godwin, yet his matter of belief in this regard was far less important to him — and ought to
be so to us — than the energy and enthusiasm of his belief, its spirit and power. If he placed
too little stress on the effortful co-operation of men in the working out of their long salvation,
we must remember that Shelley was a Romantic poet and that his own experience had
actually given him more occasion for believing in the beneficent dynamic of Nature than in
that of his fellows. In Man, as the great member and expression of Nature, he believed; of
the mental and spiritual inertia of men he was but too keenly aware. Nor is it by any means
certain that Shelley’s social philosophy, more particularly examined, is as inadequate as it
sometimes appears. It is not to be interpreted as postulating a purely external impulse, but
rather an inclusive one. Shelley’s mankind, though given fluctuating place in a vast Nature-
organization, is not by any means a mechanicized conception. He saw and felt the
importance of arousing humanity to active enterprise in [page 238] its own behalf, and
sounded peal after peal or warning and entreaty in pamphlet and poem; but his eyes were
habitually fixed on the great principles of Love and Wisdom and Virtue, abstractions which
became so keenly and glowingly realized in his own thought that of their inherent activity
he could entertain no doubt. Shelley’s great myth-poem, indeed, before and between its
rapid, insatiate flights, rests back upon a basis of ultimate an immutable law, that stern yet
kind rightness of things of which we have spoken in the Introduction. There is in it the Greek
sense of Fate, the Renaissance sense of love, the modern sense of science. It completes
Æschylus as England completes Greece, and if it is not as sensitive to current knowledge as
some have wished, it is yet a poem of astonishingly self-renewing modernity, filled with the
spirit of justice, of liberty, and of truth, — in a word, of enfranchised being. Jupiter is the
symbol of Hindrance, Custom, Tradition; Prometheus, of Wisdom, Fortitude, Humanity;
Asia, of Love and Beauty in Nature; Demogorgon, of Eternal Fate. Prometheus and Jupiter
— protagonist and antagonist — are as sharply opposed as, in more concrete drama, are
Hamlet and Claudius, Othello and Iago, Beatrice and Count Cenci, and the opposition is far
more important here because its issues are felt to be decisive. Yet the dramatic structure of
the poem is of less value than its emotional power, — the truth of its instinct, the pure lyric
fervour of its utterance, the credible triumph of its great finale.
In the Notes that follow the comparisons with the Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus refer
to Mrs. Browning’s translation, which is, perhaps, the one most easily accessible to the
average student. The original text and the admirable versions by J.S. Blackie and by E.H.
Plumptre should be consulted, whenever possible.
ACT I
44 Scene. The time references here and in general throughout the poem are not without their
symbolic value.
2. “One.” The speaker. Cf. ll. 265, 174, 493.
45 9. “Eyeless in hate.” Blinded by bitterness. Cf. King Lear, III, 1, 8. The phrase modifies
“thou” in l. 10. It is a Promethean taunt of the dramatic moment quite in keeping with the
words Æschylus makes his hero speak to Io concerning Zeus, his persecuter and her lover:
“Io. By whom shall his imperial sceptre hand
Be emptied so?
Prometheus. Himself shall spoil himself,
Through his idiotic counsels.”
— Mrs. Browning’s translation, Prometheus Unbound, ll. 886-888. [page 239]
45 24-43. Cf. Prometheus Bound, ll. 99-127.
34. “Heaven’s wingéd hound.” The vulture. An Æschylean phrase.
46 40. “When the rocks split.” Cf. Prometheus Bound, ll. 1205-09:
“ . . . For at first
The Father will split up this jut of rock
With the great thunder and the bolted flame,
And hide thy body where a hinge of stone
Shall catch it like an arm.”
50-52. For similar invective, cf. Gray’s The Bard, ll. 1, 6, 25, 97-99.
53. This line contains the first suggestion of the character of the Shelleyan Prometheus as
excelling that of the Æschylean. The hero of Prometheus Vinctus endures and defies.
Shelley’s Prometheus adds to the just and suffering spirit of his prototype a modern
sympathy and magnanimity gained through long discipline, and wins no higher tribute than
that of Jupiter himself. — Act III, Sc. 1, ll. 64-69.
54. Forman recommends the omission of “the” as a metrical improvement. It seems,
however, that the crowding haste of the line accords happily with its meaning.
63. “vibrated.” Note the nervous effect induced by the accent-shifting.
47 74-106. The responses are made by each Voice as adjured by Prometheus. All the Voices
are in sympathy with the Titan, like the Æschylean chorus, but their nature-equilibrium is
shudderingly disturbed by the conflict between Jupiter and his victim, as brought to focus in
the memory of the awful curse, of which they are silently unforgetful.
95-98. Cf. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, ll. 560-569.
48 112-113. Prometheus refers to the curse he uttered against Jupiter, which the Voices dare
not repeat.
49 137. “love.” The subject is the “thou” of l. 136, in the present editor’s judgment, not “I.”
In ll. 113 sq. Prometheus accuses his mother Earth of scorning him. Her nearer movement
and dimly compassionate voice now reassure him, and he acknowledges her love. Forman,
however, prefers “I” as the subject.
51 175-177. Cf. The Sensitive Plant, ll. 224-251.
191-218. A finely imaginative picture of the fixity of the Past in Eternal Memory. The
suggestion is Platonic.
52 212. “Hades.” Pluto. “Typhon.” A giant resister of Zeus, destroyed by his enemy.
213. “Evil.” Note the allegorical suggestion. Contrast ll. 219-222. [page 240]
52 222 sq. The constant presence of Ione and Panthea, sisters of the remote greater Asia,
brings to Prometheus something of the consolation her own presence would assure. These
spirits serve the purpose of a chorus, as now, lyrically anticipating the appearance of the
Phantasm of Jupiter.
54 273. Zeus owed his throne to Prometheus. Cf. ll. 382-3; Prometheus Bound, ll. 240-269.
Note the allegory here, — all power derives its authority from the spirit of truth and justice.
56 303. “It doth repent me.” The operation of the law of necessity expressed in the curse as
inevitable is not repented, but rather the spirit of malevolence found in ll. 286-295. Cf. l. 53.
and note. The lyric outbursts of despair that follow suggest the inability of the purely natural
mind of antiquity — facing the fact of Prometheus’ captivity — to appreciate the meaning
and power of unselfishness. Cf. Matthew Arnold’s sonnet, In Harmony with Nature. Cf. also
ll. 394-401.
312-313. Note the extraordinary emotional power of these iterations as prolonging the
sense of failure and despair.
325. Mercury, or Hermes, tempts and taunts the Æschylean Prometheus. Shelley, however,
makes him well disposed toward the sufferer.
57 343. “the Son of Maia.” Mercury. There is a vindictive suggestion here of Jovean
vengeance overtaking hesitancy, as in Strength’s words to Hephæstus, Prometheus Bound,
ll. 73-75:
“Dost thou flinch again,
And breathe groans for the enemies of Zeus?
Beware lest thine own pity find thee out.
58 347. “Geryon.” “Gorgon.” Fabulous monsters. Geryon had three heads and three bodies,
and was slain by Hercules. The Gorgons were three sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa.
Medusa was slain by Perseus.
348. “Chimaera.” A fire-belching monster, destroyed by Bellerophon. “Sphinx.” The
Sphinx was sent by Juno to the Thebans, and devoured those of them who tried and failed
their enigmas. Œdipus solved one at last, and the Sphinx destroyed herself.
354. Cf. Prometheus Bound, ll. 21-22.
“Thee loath, I loath must rivet in chains
Against this rocky height unclomb by man,” etc.
59 372. “a secret.” The secret is that Jupiter will take a wife — Thetis — whose child —
Demogorgon — will cause his sire’s downfall. [page 241]
59 399. “the Sicilian’s.” Damocles, a flattering courtier, over whose banqueting-chair the
tyrant Dionysius suspended a keen sword by a horsehair, as a symbol of the insecurity of
place and power.
61 427-428. Cf. Prometheus Bound, ll. 1107, 1146 sq.
438-439. These lines, witnessing the departure of Mercury on his mission (see ll. 366-
371), are memorably beautiful.
62 446-447. Cf. Macbeth, Act III, Sc. 4. ll. 106, 107:
“ . . . Hence, horrible shadow!
Unreal mockery, hence!”
455, 456. A favourite figure with Shelley. See note on Adonais, l. 297.
63 465. Cf. from Bacon’s essay, Of Deformity: “Certainly there is a consent between body
and the mind, and where nature erreth in the one she ventureth in the other.” Cf. also
Shakespeare’s Richard III, Act I, Sc. 1, ll. 14-31.
64 496-521. Note the evil heaviness of the flight and movement metrically suggested in this
hag chorus. Cf. the Witch scenes in Macbeth, Act I, Scenes 1 and 3; Act IV, Sc. 1; and Faust,
Walpurgis Night, Part I, Sc. 21.
66 540-577. The chants of the Choruses accompany the climax of the spiritual suffering of
Prometheus, as he sees into the future tragedy of Christ (ll. 568-566), both events, as Shelley
believed, wrested from the control of Good and perverted to Evil. Prometheus is tempted
thus to doubt the ultimate value of his own work for mankind.
69 598-616. Prometheus addresses the vision of Christ. Shelley’s hated of ecclesiasticism, of
formal and legal religion, finds congenial expression here. See Introduction, pp. xix and xx.
598. Cf. Prometheus Bound, ll. 301-302:
“Chorus. And truly for such sins Zeus tortures thee,
And will remit no anguish?”
70 628. Though this is a projected picture, it reflects back also upon the present situation in
the drama — Prometheus wanting Asia’s aid, and Asia Demogorgon’s, to complete their
freedom of spirit and of action.
635. The invincible goodness of the Titan conquers the Fury’s power longer to molest him.
This great scene inevitably suggests the Temptation of Christ in the wilderness. See Matthew
iv, 1-11; Luke iv, 1-13.
640. A not infrequently recurring mood of Shelley finds brief expression here.
641. Cf. Prometheus Bound, ll. 1245-1248.
71 647-672. The rhyme — not employed in the dialogue touching the Furies (ll. 440-443 and
522-525) — relieves [page 242] the verse and sympathetically anticipates the coming of the
Spirits. “Their beauty gives me voice.” (l. 760.)
73 695 sq. The Spirits have insight into the final triumph of Good, as the Furies into the long-
persisting power of Evil. Each Spirit, instancing an action or attitude of high good, seeks to
justify the faith of all the Spirits.
709-715. Cf. The Cloud, ll. 67-72.
719, 720. Cf. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act I, Sc. 2, ll. 195-212.
74 738-752. See Introduction, p. lxiii.
75 757. Cf. line 672.
770. Cf. Adonais, ll. 399-401.
76 786. Cf. Macbeth, Act I, Sc. 2, ll. 11, 12; Sc. 3, l. 38.
77 805. “responses.” Accented on the first syllable. Cf. Act II, ll. 171, 525.
78 820, 821. The Furies’ torments and the Spirit’s consolation are alike incomplete. The
Furies have derided the idea of love, and even the Spirits cannot ignore its apparent failures,
yet in it alone lies hope. The memory of Prometheus and the words of Panthea both turn his
thoughts toward Asia, the principle of that never-wearied Love which animates and sustains
the universe. See Adonais, ll. 481-486.
833, 834. Love, if she is to persist, must be united to Wisdom.
ACT II
SCENE I
79 12. The short line dwells for a moment with sad intensity upon the idea it expresses.
31. “The shadow of that soul.” Panthea, messenger between Prometheus and Asia, sits
within the shadow of the Titan. To Asia she is the shadow of Prometheus, to Prometheus the
shadow of Asia. See l. 70.
80 36. Cf. ll. 61-92.
81 67. Cf. Epipsychidion, ll. 587-591.
94-106. Ione felt what Panthea felt, but more dimly, and did not understand the meaning
of her dream. Ione represents Hope. Panthea, the more active of the two sisters, symbolizes
Faith — the faith that Shelley felt in the ultimate ‘Godness’ of things. Note the derivation.
82 113, 120. These two lines again unite Prometheus and Asia through Panthea. See note on
l. 31 above.
114-117. A beautiful picture of Faith.
83 131-208. “Follow! Follow!” The Dream utters the words of progress that all Nature sounds
and echoes, the chorus-words that accompany for ever the “eternal process moving on.” The
beauty of Shelley’s idea, or, rather, of its expression here, is extraordinarily moving. [page
243]
83 140. See note on Adonais, l. 140.
84 156-159. Cf. Ode to the West Wind, ll. 57-61.
SCENE II
87 “Love and Faith are pursuing their journey through all human experience: and first they
pass through the sphere of the Senses, or external life (Semichorus I); then through that of
the Emotions (Semichorus II); finally, through that of the Reason and the Will (Semichorus
III).” — Vida D. Scudder.
221. “anemone.” See note on The Question, l. 9.
232. sq. See Adonais, ll. 145, 146.
88 248. See Act II, Sc. 1, l. 67.
89 270. A reference, no doubt, to the higher environment of Scene III.
272-277. An evident reminiscence from The Tempest, always Shelley’s admiration. See
Act I, Sc. 2, ll. 386-394.
281. “oozy.” A favourite word with Shelley, as “odours” also in l. 294.
90 298. “thwart.” Perverse; ill-natured. “Silenus.” A prophesying demigod, crowned with
flowers, and usually represented as riding on an ass.
SCENE III
90 314. “Mænads.” See note on The Sensitive Plant, l. 34.
91 326. Note the great beauty of the figure here.
93 384. This line keys the song of the Spirits. Asia and Panthea are now to descend to the
ultimate Source and Ground of all things, to leave sensible Nature and confront the Law of
Nature’s being.
SCENE IV
94 411. Demogorgon’s answers have the remoteness and changeless truth of their speaker’s
character.
415-421. As the passage stands, “which” in line 415 seems to have no predicate. Shelley,
however, surely intended “fills” as the predicate. Rossetti makes “when” (l. 415) “at,” and
Forman suggests “hear” (l. 416) for “or.” If “breathe” were adopted for “in” in l. 416, the
original image would perhaps be most apparent, though any of these changes would, of
course, be hazardous.
95 428. Cf. Act I, ll. 511-513; Act III, Sc. 4, l. 442.
435. Note the rising emotional insistence in Asia’s repetitions. She is face to face with the
most obstinate of mysteries. [page 244]
96 446-448. These lines admirably express the Promethean character, — wisdom, and
friendship for humanity.
446-461. Cf. Prometheus Bound, ll. 241-277.
462-503. Cf. Prometheus Bound, ll. 269-300; 512-575.
464. “Nepenthe.” The Homeric drug of forgetfulness. Cf. Poe’s The Raven, l 83. “Moly.”
A fabled plant given to Ulysses by Hermes to save him from Circe’s power. See the Odyssey,
Book X, ll. 302-306. “Amaranth.” An imaginary fadeless flower. It appears in Spenser’s
Fairie Queene, Book III, Canto 6, stanza 45; and in Milton’s Lycidas, l. 149, and Paradise
Lost, Book III, l. 353.
97 489. Cf. Mont Blanc, l. 49 sq. See Introduction, pp. lx, lxi.
98 515-523. Cf. Act. I, 1. 144. Behind and beyond Zeus, said Æschylus stands Necessity (cf.
Prometheus Bound, modern idealism, makes Love the Lord of Necessity (l. 523). To him,
Love is the final idea of power, destiny, and Godhood. Cf. the following interesting
passages: —
“The God of Power, even before we learn quite positively to conceive him as the God of
Love, sometimes appears to us, despite his all-real Oneness, as somehow requiring another
and higher if much dimmer God beyond him, either to explain his existence or to justify his
being. this contradictory and restless search for a God beyond God, this looking for a reality
higher still than our highest already defined power, appears in several cases, in our poet’s
[Browning’s] work, as a sort of inner disease, about the very conception of the God of
Power, and as the beginning of the newer and nobler faith. The god beyond God of Love.
. . . The God beyond the God appears in Caliban’s theology, very explicitly, as ‘the
something over Setebos that made him, or he, maybe, found and fought.’ ‘There may be
something quiet o’er his head.’ . . . In far nobler form, Ixion rises from Zeus to the
higher law and life beyond him. . . . He [Guido] falls helpless at last, and, even while
he wrestles beneath hell’s most overwhelming might, still, like Ixion, like Karshish, and like
David, he conceives at last the Over-God, afar off, beyond the great gulf fixed; and this
Over-God, mentioned in his final cry for help after all the powers, — after Grand Duke,
Pope, Cardinal, Christ, Maria, God, — is Pompilia. . . . Euripides, too, in his way, found
the Over-God, and found him in the world of love, beyond nature, and yet within man’s
heart.” — Josiah Royce: Browning’s Theism (Boston Browning Society Papers. 1886-1897).
“There is an Entity, a Soul-Entity, as yet unrecognized . . . it is an addition to the
existence of the soul; in addition to immortality; and beyond the idea of the deity. . . . I
conclude that there is an existence, a something higher [page 245] than soul — higher,
better, and more perfect than deity. Earnestly I pray to find . . . this Highest Soul, this greater
than deity, this better than god.” — Richard Jefferies: The Story of My Heart.
“When we have broken our god of tradition, and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then
may God fire the heart with his presence.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Over-Soul.
99 536. Contrast Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, ll. 446-451.
545. The Hour of Jupiter’s dethronement, whose car Demogorgon now ascends (ll.
553-558).
100 562. The Hour of Prometheus’ restoration.
566-577. Note the light and confident swiftness of these exquisite lines. As Demogorgon
goes to banish Jupiter (Act III, Sc. 1) Asia and Panthea ascend to witness the release of
Prometheus (Act III, Sc. 3).
SCENE V
101 587,588. The Sun-God awaits the conclusion of the journey of Love, Child of Light
(l. 631), whose own being illumines the cloud about the car (ll. 588-591).
102 597-608. Aphrodite (Venus), the goddess of love, was so created. Asia, its greatest Spirit
Exemplar, absorbs into her own being all other symbols and dispensers of love.
103 620. Cf. Browning’s Christmas Eve, v, ll. 23-25: —
“For the loving worm within its clod
Were diviner than a loveless god
Amid his worlds, I will dare to say.”
625-648. The Voice of Prometheus anticipates the coming of Asia.
630. In Hawthorne’s Marble Faun, he speaks (Book II, chapter 19) of the lack of frankness
in Italian eyes: “ ‘Very strange, indeed, signor,’ she replied, meekly, without turning away
her eyes in the least, but checking his insight of them at about half an inch below the
surface.” Shelley wrote to Peacock of what, on the contrary, seemed to him “the mazy depth
of colour behind colour with which the intellectual women of England and Germany
entangle the heart in soul-inspiring labyrinths.”
104 649-687. The song responds to the song of the Voice of Prometheus. There linger in it
some notes of the Spenserian music. Cf. The Fairie Queene, Book II, Canto 12. Cf., for
similar symbolic suggestions — the regaining of “the glory and the freshness” —
Wordsworth’s Ode on the Imitations of Immortality. Cf. also Henry Vaughan’s The Retreat,
ll. 21-32:
“O how I long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track! [page 246]
That I might once more reach that plain
Where first I left my glorious train;
From whence th’ enlightened spirit sees
That shady City of palm trees!
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way: —
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move:
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.”
104 674. “Harmonizing.” Accented on the second syllable.
105 687. The antecedent of “which” is “shapes.” The thought is that the shapes are so bright
— “somewhat like thee” — that one cannot bear to look at them, and yet, once seen, their
beauty destroys the beholder’s rest.
ACT III
SCENE I
106 25. “Idæan Ganymede.” Ganymede was a beautiful Phrygian youth who was carried up
from Mount Ida to succeed Hebe as cup-bearer to Jupiter.
26. “dædal.” See note on Mont Blanc, l. 86.
40. “him.” The soldier Sabellus. “Numidian seps.” Seps is the name of a species of deadly
serpents. See Lucan’s Pharsalia, IX, for the allusion.
107 61. Note the wrath and growing fear indicated by Jupiter’s change of address as contrasted
with l. 51, in which anticipative though as yet undefined dread is suggested.
64-69. In these words, following the eloquent silence of Jupiter’s recognition of his doom,
“the wheel has come full circle.” His appeal to the name of Prometheus is one of the most
impressive dramatic moments in the drama. The Evil that opposed and oppressed the good
recognizes explicitly the superior power of its victim, and implores succour therefrom. Cf.
Act I, l. 305.
108 72-74. Cf. The Revolt of Islam, Canto 1, stanzas 6-14.
81. Associate Jupiter’s “ever, for ever” with the same words of Prometheus, Act I, ll. 23,
30, 636.
SCENE II
109 94-100. Cf. Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum, ll. 556-572.
94. As Forman suggests, “sinks” is understood after “eagle.” [page 247]
109 107. “Proteus.” A famous sea-god, on whom Neptune bestowed the gift of prophecy, and
who assumed various perplexing shapes.
SCENE III
110 139. Cf. Act II, Sc. 5, ll. 625,631.
111 143 sq. Shelley’s longing for the crystallization — so to speak — of high moments finds
frequent expression in both his life and his poetry. He was always on the verge of
discovering a personal as well as a social Eden. Cf. Epipsychidion, ll. 513-591; “ ‘We must
stay here,’ whispered Shelley — ‘stay for ever.’ This ‘for ever’ became afterwards a jest
between friends; for all Shelley’s movements, sudden and erratic as the starts of a meteor —
one of those that
‘Caper
On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit’ —
were to conduct him to some resting-place where he should abide ‘for ever.’ ”
At the same time, we can hardly agree with Miss Scudder that this passage has a “merely
pastoral prettiness,” nor accept her stricture on l. 157 because it seems to be out of harmony
with the theory of evolution. “Ourselves unchanged” expresses a common and here justly
dramatic longing for peace and rest after long spiritual toil and suffering. Cf. ll. 194-196 as
completing the meaning. Cf. also III, 4, 501-512.
112 175, 176. “Enna.” See note on Song of Proserpine. Enna was a Sicilian town in the
“Himera” country.
198. “Proteus.” See note on Act III, Sc. 2, l. 107.
113 206, 214. Cf. Act II, Sc. 1. ll. 156-159.
211. Cf. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Sc. 1, ll. 172, 173; The Tempest, Act IV,
Sc. 1, ll. 44-47; Act V, Sc. 1, ll. 102, 103.
114 246, 247. See note on Adonais, ll. 348-351. Cf. the sonnet beginning “Lift not the painted
veil.” See also Act III, Sc. 4, l. 498.
115 285. Cf. The Tempest, Act Iv, Sc. 1, l. 184; Act V, Sc. 1, l. 241; A Midsummer Night’s
Dream, Act II, Sc. 2, l. 244.
287. “Nysa.” Scene of the worship of Bacchus, who was sometimes called Nysæus.
“Mænad.” See note on The Sensitive Plant, l. 34.
116 298. “Praxitelean.” Praxiteles was a peculiarly skilful and sympathetic Greek sculptor
living nearly 500 years before Christ. Hawthorne has several interesting references to him
in The Marble Faun.
305. “the night of life.” Cf. Adonais, l. 344. [page 248]
116 314. “the delicate spirit.” “This spirit has been likened to Goethe’s Euphorion, in the
second part of Faust, although of course it has a wider meaning than the poet-child of Faust
and Helena. The old, half inorganic Gaia, the crude material earth, is replaced, now that the
harmony of and nature has been restored, by this dainty and more rational spirit, who,
childish at first, grows into swift maturity of intelligence and love by the end of Act IV.” —
Vida D. Scudder.
117 327. The bite of the dipsas serpent caused intolerable thirst. See Lucan’s Pharsailia, IX.
118 348-351. Cf. Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 1, ll. 70-76.
359. “Well.” The rather abrupt use of this colloquial expletive may be dramatically
justified by the Spirit’s quick, irrepressible boyishness, his eagerness to speak. Cf. l. 340.
363. Cf. Act III, Sc. 2, ll. 209-216.
376-385. Cf. from Browning’s Paracelsus, in the last utterance of Paracelsus, the passage
beginning
“In my own heart love had not been made wise.”
119 381, 382. Cf. Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, ll. 125-126; 238-239; 272-291.
404. “darkling.” Cf. King Lear, Act I, Sc. 4, l. 207.
120 418. The “on” after “pasturing” is supplied at Forman’s suggestion.
420. “Phidian.” Phidias is the most famous of the Greek sculptors.
427. “amphisbænic snake.” One having a head at each extreme.
121 432. “As I have said” is a strangely commonplace phrase for so sensitive a master of words
as Shelley.
434-512. A passionately beautiful prophecy of the triumph of Love over evil in mankind,
the passing of the mechanical and tyrannous in law, religion, and custom. Cf. for the
philosophical weakness involved, the Introduction, p. lxvii. Yet Shelley’s poetry must not
be interpreted as ignoring the value of moral effort.
442. Cf. Act I, ll. 511-513; Act II, Sc. 4, l. 248.
457-460. Shelley’s condemnation of social insincerity is a feeling one, as it had cause to
be. What success of scheme or manœuvre, he felt, gained at the expense of one’s self-respect
and moral integrity, can compare with an unstained freedom of soul? For himself, as man
and poet, he believed that honesty of speech and deed is the instinctive attitude and
expression of the liberal soul. Cf. Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Lyric 110, ll. 4-7.
122 481. “imaged.” is the past tense.
123 498. See note on Act III, Sc. 3, ll. 246, 247.
504, 505. Cf. ActI, l. 493. [page 249]
123 “At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several months after, when at
Florence, that he conceived a fourth act, a sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the
prophecies with regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition.” —
From Mrs. Shelley’s note.
It is strange that Sidney Lanier, a critic so generally discerning, should have written as
follows of this fourth act: “Act IV is the most amazing piece of surplusage in literature; the
catastrophe has been reached long ago in the third act, Jove is in eternal duress, Prometheus
has been liberated and has gone with Asia and Panthea to his eternal paradise above the
earth, and a final radiant picture of the reawakening of man and nature under the new régime
has closed up the whole with the effect of a transformation-scene. Yet, upon all this, Shelley
drags in Act IV, which is simply leaden in action and color alongside of Act III, and in which
the voices of unseen spirits, the chorus of Hours, Ione, Panthea, Demogorgon, the Earth and
the Moon pelt each other with endless sweetish speeches that rain like ineffectual comfits in
a carnival silliness.” — The English Novel, pp. 103, 104.
William Michael Rosetti, on the other hand, finds it “difficult to speak highly enough of
the fourth act so far as lyrical fervour and lambent play of imagination are concerned, both
of them springing from ethical enthusiasm. It is the combination of these which makes this
act the most surprising structure of lyrical faculty, sustained at an almost uniform pitch
through a very considerable length of verse, that I know of in any literature. One ought
perhaps to except certain passages, taken collectively, in Dante’s Paradiso.”
Certainly, if Lanier’s criticism were to stand, it would become necessary to curtail some
of Shakespeare’s plays and Thackeray’s novels, as concluding with other than structurally
necessary passages. Though it is true that the essential dramatic action is ended with the
third act of Prometheus, yet the dram itself is incomplete, for the movement has been
directed toward a catastrophe so stupendous and revolutionary that the reader instinctively
feels — as Shelley felt — the need of another act, both to give reality in celebrant music to
the central idea of the entire drama, and to relieve overcharged emotions. If Act III had been
followed to remain as the concluding act, the finale would have been one of ungrateful and
almost unconvincing abruptness, and the æsthetic result one of a surprise and joy so
unrelieved as to be almost painful. The “silver lining” apparent in the coming of Fortinbras
[page 250] after the catastrophe in Hamlet, hinting at the redemption of the tragic idea, and
the exultant strains of Shelley’s final act, serve alike one prime purpose, — the making of
both creations more artistically credible.
Panthea and Ione here serve the function of an interlinking and wonderingly interpretative
chorus between the Spirit-songs and duet of Earth and Moon, and again between these and
the great injunctions of Demogorgon.
127 73-76. For the figure cf. Act I, Sc. 1, l. 456; The Cenci, Act I, Sc. 2, l. 14; Adonais, l. 297;
Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 2, l. 250.
128 116. “dædal.” See note on Mont Blanc, l. 86. Cf. Act III, Sc. 1, l. 26; Act IV, l. 416.
121, 122. Contrast Lines Written among the Euganean Hills, ll. 1-8; 66-69.
132 192. Cf. Chaucer’s Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, ll. 267-268: —
“His eyen twinkled in his heed aright,
As doon the sterres in the frosty night.”
206-235. With this vision of the Moon cf. The Cloud, ll. 45-58.
213. “Regard.” Are regarded as; appear.
214-217. Cf. The Cloud, ll. 21-24.
134 266-268. Cf. Shakespeare’s King Henry V, Act III, Sc. 3, l. 16.
281. “valueless.” Invaluable.
136 319. sq. This spiritual coming together of Earth and Moon at once indicates the new and
rapid growth of each under the law of love and satisfies the prediction of Asia in Act III, Sc.
4, the freed and rejuvenated spirit of Scene 3, not the old Earth of Act I. In this final act it
has become “old enough” in its new life (cf. Asia’s words in Act III, Sc. 4, l. 399) for
complete delight and triumph. Æsthetically, this is a valuable study in interchanged metres,
and the student should carefully examine the measures as corresponding to the presences
and consciousnesses of Earth and Moon, Cf. Addison’s famous ode, The Spacious
Firmament on High, as exhibiting a brief moment of similar spiritual insight.
138 370-423. Literature contains no hymn of humanity more inspiring than this.
378. Cf. l. 245.
139 406. Cf. Coleridge’s Love, ll. 1-4.
“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.” [page 251]
141 453. Cf. Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, ll. 59, 60.
142 473. “Mænad.” See note on The Sensitive Plant, l. 34.
474. “Agave.” Daughter of Cadmus, founder of Thebes.
475. “Cadmæan.” See note on Ode to Liberty, l. 92.
145 554 sq. Demogorgon’s great utterance touches the root serenity that both conditions and
is produced by discipline through Evil. The student will compare the Shakespeare of The
Tempest and The Winter’s Tale with the Shakespeare of Hamlet and Lear. Both sorrow and
joy are now tempered and controlled to a music and undespairing and unexultant, but strong
and calm and kind. Shelley’s own firmest belief in the manner of Man’s redemption is here
expressed.
147 The World’s Wanderers.
In Forman’s opinion a stanza is wanting, the last word of which should rhyme with
“billow.”
148 Song (“Rarely, rarely comest thou”).
Though this lyric is usually grouped with the poems of 1821, there exists at Harvard an
autograph MS. dated “Pisa, May, 1820.”
149 19. Note the metrical means employed to induce the “merry measure.”
38-9. Shelley disliked the ordinary forms and conventions of “society.”
150 48. Cf. “When the lamp is shattered,” ll. 21-4.
150 Song of Proserpine.
In Greek mythology Persephone (Roman, Proserpine) was the daughter of Zeus (Jupiter)
and Demeter (Ceres). While gathering flowers on the plains of Enna, in Sicily, with Artemis
and Athena, she was seized by Pluto, god of the dead, and carried off to become Queen of
Hades. She was permitted, however, to return to her mother during a portion of each year,
and symbolizes vegetable life. Her story is told by Hesiod and Ovid. Cf. Swinburne’s Hymn
to Proserpine.
151 Autumn: A Dirge.
10. Cf. Dirge for the Year, l. 10.
152 The Question.
The sensuous beauty of this poem suggests comparison with Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale.
1-8. Cf. Prometheus Unbound, II, 1, 1-12.
9. “wind-flowers.” Anemones. (From ἄνϵμοϛ, wind.)
10. “Arcturi.” So-called because ever-blooming. The constellation of Arcturus never sets.
9-32. Cf. the famous flower-passages in Spenser’s Fairie Queene, Book III, Canto 6,
stanza 45; Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Sc. 1, ll. 249-252; Keats’s
Ode to a Nightingale, stanza 5; Milton’s Lycidas, ll. 142-151; Bacon’s Essay Of Gardens.
13. “that tall flower.” Probably the tulip.
21. “Our language has no line,” says Palgrave, “modulated with more subtle sweetness.”
[page 252]
152 27. “sedge.” Coarse grass or flags growing on the banks of lakes and rivers. Cf. Milton’s
Lycidas, l. 104.
153 Hymn of Apollo.
This and the succeeding Hymn were intended for use in a drama of Williams’s. Apollo and
Pan are contending before Tmolus for a prize in music. Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto,
and was the god of the sun, of divination, medicine, music, poetry, etc. (See. ll. 30-34.)
154 Hymn of Pan.
The god Pan in Greek mythology was a son of Hermes and Callisto. He controlled the
fields and woods, the flocks and herds, and is traditionally represented as having horns and
goat-like legs and feet. He was a master-musician, the inventor of “Pan’s pipes,” or the
shepherd’s flute. For circumstances of composition see note on Hymn of Apollo. Cf. Mrs.
Browning’s A Musical Instrument.
155 11. “Tmolus.” The god of Mount Tmolus, in Lydia, father of Tantalus, and judge in a
musical contests between Pan and Apollo.
13. “Peneus.” Or, Salembria, a river in Sicily.
14. “Tempe.” A vale in Thessaly, separating Olympus from Ossa.
15. “Pelion.” A mountain in Thessaly, fabled to have been piled on Ossa, another
mountain, by the giants, and directed against Olympus.
16. “Sileni.” Satyrs and followers of Bacchus. “Sylvans.” Wood-spirits. “Fauns. Creatures
of Latin mythology, resembling the Greek satyrs.
26. “dædal.” See note on Mont Blanc, l. 86.
30. “Mænalus.” A mountain in Arcadia, the original seat of Pan.
156 Arethusa.
Arethusa was a fountain in Ortygia, near Sicily, and Alpheus a river in the ancient
Peloponnesus, whose course was at times subterranean. The legend therefore arose that
Alpheus, the river-god, became enamoured of the nymph Arethusa, while she bathed in the
stream, and pursued her, whereupon she was changed by Artemis, or Diana, into the
Ortygian fountain. Alpheus continued his pursuit under “earth and ocean.” Cf. Milton’s
Arcades, ll. 29-31: —
“ . . that renowned flood, so often sung,
Divine Alpheus, who by secret sluice,
Stole under seas to meet his Arethuse.”
Cf. also Milton’s Lycidas, ll. 85, 132; and Coleridge’s Kubla Khan: —
“Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.” [page 253]
156 3. “Acroceraunian.” Acroceraunia was the ancient name of a promontory of Epirus.
24. “Erymanthus.” An Arcadian mountain in the Peloponnesus.
157 60. “unvalued.” Invaluable. Cf. Milton’s Lycidas, l. 176: —
“And hears the unexpressive [inexpressible] nuptial song.”
Cf. also Ode to Liberty, l. 51; Prometheus Unbound, IV, 281, 378.
158 74. “Enna’s.” See note on Song of Proserpine.
158 The Cloud.
It was natural that Shelley’s genius should take delight in things aerial, — birds, balloons,
lightning, stars, wind, clouds. The sympathy shown in this familiar lyric with the “being and
becoming” of the cloud testifies to the immediacy of his nature-vision, to his kinship with
Blake and Browning rather than with Bryant or even, in general, Wordsworth.
159 11, 12. Cf. Prometheus Unbound, IV, 181-4.
160 45. Cf. Letter to Maria Gisborne, ll. 69-70: —
“. . . when from the moist moon rains
The inmost shower of its white fire.”
45 sq. Note the difference in thought between the cloud-drawn picture of the moon and
the mortal’s melancholy fancy. Cf. To the Moon and The Waning Moon, and cf. also
Sidney’s admirable sonnet, “With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb’st the skies!”
52-4. Cf. Coleridge’s “star-dogged Moon,” Rime of the Ancient Mariner, l. 212, and
Wordsworth’s A Night-piece, ll. 11-20.
161 81. “cenotaph.” An empty tomb, intended as a memorial rather than as a grave.
161 To a Skylark.
See Introduction, pp. xlvii, and lxiv. “Here it was [at Casa Ricci], near bustling Leghorn,
that Shelley and Mary, wandering on a beautiful summer evening ‘’mong the lanes whose
myrtle-hedges were the bowers of fireflies,’ heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired
that spirit-winged song known to all lovers of English poetry — a song vibrating still with
such a keen and pure intensity.” — Dowden’s Life, II, 331.
8. Some critics have held that the semicolon at the end of this line should be placed after
line 7. This would be not only an unnecessary variation from the early editions of
indefensible one, the genius of the second stanza requiring a quick, exultant, ascending
movement. The stress is palpably upon line 8 rather than 7, since, as Professor Baynes points
out, “in the opening verse of the poem the lark . . . is already far up in the sky.” [page
254]
162 15. For “unbodied” Professor Craik substituted “embodied.” This change also is wholly
without warrant. The lark is a “blithe spirit,” a “sprite,” a “scorner of the ground.” It may
safely be said that too many corrupt passages in literature have become so through editorial
blindness and perversity rather than through original creative carelessness.
32. The succeeding stanzas attempt to answer the question. Cf. Wordsworth’s To the Daisy
(second poem), stanzas 2-5.
163 65. Among all of Shelley’s conquests over the apathy and heaviness of words there is none
more triumphant than this felicitous line.
164 80. Cf. To — (“When passion’s a trance is overpast”) and Lines (“When the lamp is
shattered”).
86 sq. Note the autobiographical value of the stanza.
165 101 sq. Cf. Poe’s Israfel, ll. 45-51.
165 Ode to Liberty.
“In the spring of the year [1920], moved by the uprising of the Spaniards, he had written
his Ode to Liberty, in which the grave Muse of History is summoned to utter oracles of hope
for the cause of freedom.” — Dowden’s Life, II, 343.
The motto is taken from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto IV, stanza 98.
15. “a voice.” Cf. Wordsworth’s sonnet, England and Switzerland, 1802. “the same.” A
weak phrase, flatting the line. The “voice” reviews the rise of Liberty and appeals for her
fuller welcome.
166 18. “dædal.” See note on Mont Blanc, l. 86.
19. “island.” A favourite image and idea with Shelley. Cf. ll. 108, 206. Cf. Introduction,
p. xliv.
31. “then.” A weak use.
38. “For thou wert not.” Note that this phrasing is iterated in precisely the same place in
stanzas 2 and 3. Contrast l. 72.
41. “sister-pest.” Ecclesiasticism, or traditional religion. Cf. l. 83.
167 47. “dividuous.” Dividing.
51. “unapprehensive.” Unable to apprehend. See note on Arethusa, l. 60.
69-75. Liberty a condition of art.
168 74. “that hill.” The Acropolis.
87-90. Cf. Adonais, stanzas 52 and 54.
92. “Cadmæan Mænad.” A Theban worshipper of Bacchus. Euripides makes them nurses
of young wolves. See note on The Sensitive Plant, l. 34.
93. “thy dearest.” Athens.
98. “Camillus.” Marcus Furies Camillus was a renowned Roman hero, who relieved his
people when besieged by [page 255] the Gauls. “Atilius.” Or, Regulus, a Roman consul,
who, captured by the Carthaginians and sent to Rome to solicit peace, advised the Senate to
continue the war. On his return to Carthage he was, as he expected, put to death.
169 103. “Palatinus.” One of the seven hills of Rome.
106. “Hyrcanian.” Hyrcania was an ancient Persian province, south of the Hyrcanian
(Caspian) sea.
110-113. Cf. Milton’s Lycidas, ll. 39-43.
114, 115. Cf. Milton’s Lycidas, ll. 52-55.
115. “Scald’s.” A Scald was an ancient Scandinavian minstrel. Among the Celts the word
equals ‘bard.’
119. “The Galilean serpent.” Christianity.
171 171-173. A reference to French Revolution.
175. “Anarch.” Napoleon.
180. Cf. Gray’s The Bard, stanzas 2 and 3.
186. “Pithecusa.” An island in the Bay of Naples. “Pelorus.” A Sicilian headland.
172 192. “Twins of a single destiny.” England and Spain.
194. “the dim West.” Possibly America; possibly the Past, though his latter interpretation
would hardly be in accord with Shelley’s idea of youth of Liberty; more probably the ripe
Future of humanity, as the West is the day-old sun’s glory and solace. “impress us.” Mrs.
Shelley suggests ‘as’ for ‘us.’
196. “Arminius.” An early German her, who defeated the Romans.
204. “thou.” Italy.
212. Cf. Prometheus Unbound, III, 4, 439.
173 226-240. Cf. Introduction, pp. xix and xx.
174 248. Cf. l. 55.
254-255. Understand ‘if Wealth can rend.’
258. “Eoan wave.” Wave of dawn.
266. Cf. Wordsworth’s Ode to Duty, l. 2.
175 271-285. The student will note the powerful felicity in general of Shelley’s finales. See
Introduction, p. lxiv.
283. “great voice.” Cf. Milton’s Lycidas, l. 132.
175 The Sensitive Plant.
In this lovely allegory Shelley expresses the cardinal truth of idealism and romanticism,
that
“The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light for ever shines, Earth’s shadows fly.”
Though the Spirit of Light and Love is impotent to prevent the apparent material decay of
all things beautiful, it is potent in the world of ideas to redeem for ever from death and
destruction. Cf. Browning’s Abt Vogler, ll. 69 sq. Lady Mountcashell (Mrs. Mason), with
whom the Shelleys were very friendly doting their stay in Pisa, was according to Medwin,
“a superior and accomplished woman, and a great resource to Shelley, who read with her
Greek. He [page 256] told me that she was the source of the inspiration of his Sensitive
Plant, and that the scene of it was laid in her garden, as unpoetical a place as could be well
imagined.” It will interest the student also to note the following passage from a letter of
Shelley to Leigh Hunt: “Williams is one the best fellows in the world; and Jane, his wife, a
most delightful person, who, we all agree, is the exact antitype of the lady I described in The
Sensitive Plant, though this must have been a pure anticipated cogntion, as it was written a
year before I knew her.”
176 13 sq. Cf. with this series of exquisitely wrought flower-pictures The Question, ll. 9-32,
and see note on same.
17. “wind-flowers.” See note on The Question, l. 9.
177 34. Mænad. A bacchante, a frenzied female worshipper of Bacchus, bearing the thyrsus, a
slight staff crowned with a pine-cone. Cf. Prometheus Unbound, II, 3, 314; III, 3, 287; IV,
473.
54. “asphodel.” In Greek mythology a pale and delicate flower growing in Hades among
the dead.
178 70-73. The last line of this stanza is rather obscure. The passage may be thus re-phrased:
‘The Sensitive Plant, unable to reveal its love, like the other flowers, in blossoms of beauty
and fragrance, nevertheless on that very account was more richly dowered than they, since
the love it so strongly felt but could not express, having no outlet (“where none wanted it”),
struck into the “deep heart” of the plant itself and expended all its power in gracing and
purifying that heart.’ “could belong to the giver,” i. e. the would-be giver; hence, ideally, a
giver indeed.
179 98. Cf. The Cloud, ll. 41-42.
182 177. “Baiæ.” See note on Ode to the West Wind, l. 32.
189. Cf. A Dirge (“Rough wind, that meanest loud.”)
183 210-211. Cf. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, ll. 220-223. Shelley was very fond of
Coleridge’s poem.
220-221. Cf. Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Lyric 72, ll. 9-12.
184 230, 231. The sense will be apparent if “stretched” is mentally related to “hemlock,” and
“stifled” to all the baneful weeds.
232-347. These stanzas show a marked reaction toward Shelley’s interest in the horrible
and sinister. See Introduction, pp. xi and xiv. Coleridge, in revising The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, omitted, after the first edition, the following stanza: —
“His bones were black with many a crack,
All bare and black, I ween;
Jet black and bare, save where with rust
Of mouldy damp and charnel crust
They’re patched with purple and green.” [page 257]
Would not The Sensitive Plant have gained in poetic power if Shelley had, similarly, made
some modifications here? Note the finer art shown in the more austere pictures of ll.
264-279.
185 256. “forbid.” Accursed.
186 287. “griff.” Grip, clutch.
302-303. Cf. Adonais, l. 344; Swinburne’s sonnet, On the Death of Robert Browning.
188 To Night.
Cf. Longfellow’s Hymn of the Night.
189 19. Rossetti uses the feminine pronoun, justifying the change by reference to ll. 10 and 11.
It is probable, however, that in this instance “Day” and “the Day” appealed to Shelley’s
imagination precisely as the gender of the original pronoun indicates.
34, 35. Cf. Prometheus Unbound, II, 1, 15.
189 Sonnet to Byron.
Not technically a legitimate sonnet. The student should consult any work in poetics —
such as Gummere’s Handbook — for a discussion of the canonical sonnet forms. See
Introduction, p. lxiv.
For remarks concerning the relations of Byron and Shelley, see Introduction, pp. xxxv,
xxxvi, xl, xlvii, and xlviii.
6. “rise as fast and fair.” Byron’s Cain, Heaven and Earth and The Vision of Judgment
were written in rapid succession, about this time.
190 To Emilia Viviani.
See Introduction, p. xliv, for an account of this beautiful and unfortunate girl. Cf. also
Shelley’s Epipsychidion, addressed to her.
191 To —— (“Music, when soft voices die”).
3. “odours.” Note Shelley’s fondness of this word as inducing sensuous appeal. Cf., with
the stanza, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Act I, Sc. 1, ll. 1-16.
192 To —— (When passion’s trance is overpast”).
The haunting melancholy of this lyric finely expresses the poet’s sense of mutability of
human life and of the incompleteness of human love. Cf. Shelley’s remark to Gisborne: “I
think one is always in love with something or other; the error . . . consists in seeking in a
mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps, eternal.” Cf. also Mutability and Lines (“When
the lamp is shattered”).
10. Cf. Byron’s Elegy on Thyrza, stanza 7, and his Youth and Age, stanza 5.
193 Mutability.
Cf. Robert Henrrick’s To Daffodils, Spenser’s unfinished canto to Mutability (The Fairie
Queene), and Bacon’s last completed Essay, Of Vicissitude of Things. Cf. also Shelley’s
other Mutability. [page 258]
194 Sonnet — Political Greatness.
See note on Sonnet to Byron.
5. Shelley had slight enthusiasm for historical study as such.
8. “obscene.” Ugly. Cf. Prometheus Unbound, IV. 95.
195 A Lament (“O World! O Life! O Time!)
8. Rossetti inserts “autumn” after “summer,” most improperly, as regards both music and
content.
197 Adonais.
See Introduction, pp. xlv, xlvi, lxi, lxiii, and lxiv.
The most notable personal elegies or elegiac poems in our language may be stated as
follows: —
Author. | Title. | In Memory of |
Unknown (Anglo-Saxon Period) | The Wanderer | The singer’s patron. |
Edmund Spenser | Astrophel | Sir Philip Sidney |
John Milton | Lycidas | Edward King |
Percy Bysshe Shelley | Adonais | John Keats |
Alfred Tennyson | In Memoriam | Arthur Henry Hallam |
Matthew Arnold | Thyrsis | Arthur Hugh Clough |
Robert Browning | La Saisiaz | Miss. A Egerton-Smith |
Algernon Charles Swinburne | Ave atque Vale | Charles Baudelaire |
Ralph Waldo Emerson | Threnody | His son |
Walt Whitman | When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed | Abraham Lincoln |
The more canonical and literary — by no means therefore the less vital — among these
elegies, including Adonais, show the influence of the memorial idylls of Theocritus, Bion
and Moschus. Shelley, more particularly, is indebted to Bion’s Lament for Adonais and to
Moschu’s Lament for Bion. Keats’s death, thought the circumstances attending it and its
meaning for him and for humanity are treated with poetic energy, is yet made but the
occasion of a penetrating glance into the problems of physical decay and spiritual futurity.
While Milton’s elegy makes its chief burden clerical insincerity and undutifulness,
corruption versus incorruption; Tennyson’s, the difficult restoration of the indispensable
minimum of faith; and Browning’s the intellectual veracity of the idea of the Soul; Shelley,
for his part, wings through palpable darkness flaming way into the slow sunrise of Eternal
Love and Beauty. His own opinions of the poem are given freely in such passages as
these: —
“You may announce the publication of a poem entitled Adonais. It is a lament on the death
of poor Keats, with some interposed stabs on the assasins of his peace and of his fame.”
(Letter to Ollier.)
“I have received the heart-rending account of the closing [page 259] scene of the great
genius whom envy and ingratitude scourged out of the world. I do not think that if I had seen
it before, I could have composed my poem. The enthusiasm of the imagination would have
overpowered the sentiment.
“As it is, I have finished my Elegy; and this day I send it to press at Pisa. You shall have
a copy the moment it is completed. I think it will please you. I have dipped my pen in
consuming fire for his destroyers; otherwise the style is calm and solemn.” (Letter to
Gisborne.)
Shelley doubtless uses the name ‘Adonais’ to indicate his literacy debt to Bion. Furnivall
says that it is Shelley’s variant for ‘Adonias,’ the women’s yearly lamentation for Adonis.
The passage from Moschus, beginning the Preface, is rendered by Andrew Lang thus:
“Poison came, Bion, to thy mouth — thou didst know poison. To such lips as thine did it
come, and was not sweetened? What mortal was so cruel that could mix poison for thee, or
who could hive thee the venom that heard thy voice? Surely he had no music in his soul.”
With this second paragraph of the Preface compare Byron’s Don Juan, Canto XI, stanza
60: —
“Tis very strange the mind, that fiery particle,
Should let itself be snuff’d out by and article.”
The student will note, however, that Keats was more virile than these passages indicate. Cf.
his own statement: “Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of
beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My own domestic
criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly
could possibly inflict; and also when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a
glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine.”
199 1 sq. Cf. the opening of Bion’s Lament for Adonis (Lang’s translation): “Woe, woe for
Adonis, he hath perished, the beauteous Adonis, dead is the beauteous Adonis, the Loves
join the lament. No more in thy purple raiment, Cypris, do thou sleep; arise, thou wretched
one, sable-stoled, and beat thy breasts, and say to all, ‘He hath perished, the lovely Adonis!’”
10. “Where wert thou?” Cf. Milton’s Lycidas, l. 50; “mighty Mother.” Urania, the Muse
of Astronomy, or the spirit of heaven, inspirer of poetry. The Uranian Aphrodite of Shelley
corresponds to the Cyprian Aphrodite of Bion. Cf. Tennyson’s In Memoriam, Lyric 37.
15. “one.” An Echo.
18. “he.” Adonais.
200 29. He.” Milton. [page 260]
200 35. “his clear sprite.” Cf. Milton’s Comus, ll. 381-382: —
“He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i’ the centre, and enjoy bright day.”
36. “the third.” Shelley ranks Homer, Dante, and Milton, in his Defence of Poetry, as the
three great epic poets. In widening the category, he would almost certainly have given
Shakespeare place among the prime three poets. In any case, the passage should not be
interpreted too particularly.
40-41. “Tapers” and “suns” are, of course, contrasted.
48-49. Cf. Keats’s Isabella, or The Pot of Basil.
51. “extreme.” The stress falls equally on each syllable, as also in l. 68.
201 55. “that high capital.” Rome.
65-72. Contrast this picture the unreserve of the ‘corruption’ passage in The Sensitive
Plant, ll. 232, 247, and see note thereon.
73. “The quick Dreams.” The subtle visions, emotions, imaginings, of the poetic
consciousness. Note their appearance in Prometheus Unbound.
80. “their sweet pain.” The sweet pain they cause, — “sweet,” because of the joy of the
visions; “pain,” because their beauty is not capable of adequate expression in words. They
are born, yet not born.
202 83. “moonlight wings.” An exquisite touch. For similar associations, cf. Shakespeare’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Sc. 1, ll. 29, 156-158; Act III, Sc. 1, ll. 175-176.
84. “is not dead.” Cf. Lycidas, l. 166.
88. “a ruined Paradise.” The mind of Adonais.
91-99. Cf., from Bion’s Lament for Adonis, “He reclines, the delicate Adonis, in his
raiment of purple, and around him the Loves are weeping, and groaning aloud, clipping their
locks for Adonis. And one upon his shafts, another on his bow is treading, and one hath
loosed the sandal of Adonis, and another hath broken his own feathered quiver, and one in
a golden vessel bears water, and another laves the wound, and another from behind him with
his wings is fanning Adonis.” (tr. Lang.)
104. “with lightning and with music.” Symbolizing the irresistible enchantment, the sheer
impetus, of sure poetry. Cf. Adonais itself. “the damp death.” The cold dews of death.
105. “its.” The antecedent is “Splendour.”
107. “clips.” Surrounds or embreaces. Anglo-Saxon, clyppan.
203 116. “pomp.” Processsion.
117. Note the melancholy in this fine figure. [page 261]
203 124. Cf. The Cloud, ll. 19-20.
127-139. Cf., from Moschus’s Lament for Bion, “And Echo in the rocks laments that thou
art silent, and no more she mimics thy voice. And in sorrow for thy fall the trees cast down
their fruit, and all the flowers have faded.” (tr. Lang.)
133. “those.” The lips of Narcissus, with whom the nymph Echo was in love. See note on
l. 141.
204 140. “Phœbus.” Apollo. “Hyacinth.” Hyacinthus was a son of Amyclas and Diomede, and
was greatly loved by Apollo, who accidently slew him. The flower which bears his name
sprang from his blood.
141. “Narcisssus.” Son of Cephisus and the nymph Liriope. He became enamoured of his
own image, conceiving it to be a nymph, and killed himself in chagrin at his failure to reach
it.
145. “lorn nightingale.” Cf. Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale.
146. “melodious pain.” Cf. Matthew Arnold’s Philomela:
“Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!
What triumph! hark! what pain!”
151-153. A reference to the critical attack upon Keats’s Endymion in the Quarterly
Review.
154 sq. Spring is at hand, but its reappearance has no counterpart in the revival of Adonais.
Cf. In Memoriam, Lyric 38, and also Moschus: “Ah me, when the mallows wither in the
garden, and the green parsley, and the curled tendrils of the anise, ion a later day they live
again, and spring in another year; but we men, we, the great and mighty, or wise, when once
we have died, in hollow earth we sleep, gone down into silence; a right long, and endless,
and unawakening sleep. (tr. Lang.)
205 179. “sightless.” Unsighted; invisible.
187-189. Cf. Lines Written among the Euganean Hills, ll. 1-16.
206 190-216. Urania, urged by Misery, Dreams, Echoes, hastens to Rome, to seek the death-
chamber of Adonais.
195. “their sister’s song.” See ll. 13-18.
208-216. Cf. Bion’s Lament for Adonis: “. . . but Aphrodite with unbound loxkd through
the glades goes wandering, — wretched, with hair unbraided, with feet unsandalled, and the
thorns as she passes wound her and pluck the blossom of her sacred blood.” (tr. Lang.)
207 217-261. Urania’s lament.
227-232. Cf. Bion’s Lament for Adonis: “.Abide with me, Adonis, hapless Adonis, Abide.
. . . Awake Adonis, for a little while, and kiss me yet again, the latest kiss! Nay kiss me
but a moment, but the lifetime of a kiss. . . .” (tr. Lang.)
228. “heartless.” In that Adonais has her heart. [page 262]
207 234. Cf. Bion’s Lament for Adonis: “. . . while wretched I yet live, being a goddess, and
may not follow thee!” (tr. Lang.)
235-240. Cf. Bion’s Lament for Adonis: “For why, ah overbold, didst thou follow the
chase, and being so fair, why wert thou thus overhardy to fight with beasts?” (tr. Lang.)
208 245. “obscene.” See note on Sonnet — Political Greatness, l. 8.
250. “Pythian.” Byron, who castigated his early critics in English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers. The Pythian Apollo, slayer of the Python, is referred to.
209 262-315. The pastoral mourning of the mountain-shepherds, the fellows of Adonais.
264. “The Pilgrim of Eternity.” Byron. Cf. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage.
268. “Ierne.” Ireland.
269. “sweetest lyrist.” Thomas Moore. These references are poetic, not particular.
271-297. These three stanzas contain Shelley’s portrait of himself.
274-276. Actæon was a hunter who chanced to see Artemis and her maidens bathing, and
was on that account changed into a stag and pursued to his death by his own hounds.
278-279. Cf. Tennyson’s The Passing of Arthur: —
“His own thought drove him like a goad.”
210 297. Cf. Prometheus Unbound, I, 456; IV, 73, 74: The Cenci, I, 2, 14; Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, Act III, Sc. 2, l. 250.
306. A reference to the many troubles of Shelley’s short life. Cf. the following passage
from a letter to Godwin (Feb. 26, 1816): “But he [Turner] is apt to take offence, and I am
too generally hated not to feel that the smallest kindness from an old acquaintance is
valuable.”
312-315. The reference is to Leigh Hunt, friend and lover of Keats. At Hunt’s home the
two poets first met.
211 316-324. Cf. the prefatory passage from Moschus. There is no necessary conflict here
with ll. 11 and 193. Precise and unvarying consistency in figurative expression does to
enter into Shelley’s theory of art.
316-333. The critic scourged.
334-396. An imaginative adventuring into the realm of the Eternal.
212 343. Revert to ll. 19 and 84. Cf. Lycidas. l. 166.
344. “the dream of life.” A phrase peculiarly characteristic of Shelley’s genius and
philosophy. See Introduction, pp. lx and lxi. Cf. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act IV,
[page 263] Sc. 1. ll. 68-69; Act V, Sc. 1, ll. 208-209; and Swinburne’s sonnet, On Robert
Browning: —
“He held no dream worth waking: so he said,
He who stands now on death’s triumphal steep,
Awakened out of life wherein we sleep
And dream of what he knows and sees, being dead.”
212 346. “phantoms.” Cf. Bryant’s Thanatopsis. ll. 63-64.
348-351. Cf. Walt Whitman’s Pensive and Faltering: —
“Pensive and faltering,
The words, the dead, I write;
For living are the dead;
(Haply the only living, only real,
And I the apparition — I the spectre.)”
Cf. also The Sensitive Plant, ll. 304-315; Prometheus Unbound, III, 3, 247-248. Plato and
Æschylus present similar ideas.
356. Cf. ll. 462-463.
366. Cf. Bion’s Lament for Adonis: “Cease, Cytherea, from thy lamentations, to-day
refrain from thy dirges.” (tr. Lang.)
213 370-387. Cf. with this high pantheistic outburst kindred passages in several of the great
elegies: Lycidas, ll. 183-185: In Memoriam, Lyrics 46 and 130; Thyrsis, stanzas 18-19; etc.
214 397-414. The eager welcome of Adonais by those of his spiritual kindred, who, like him,
were cut off before maturity.
399. “Chatterton.” Thomas Chatterton (1752-70) was a young romantic poet of great
promise, who slew himself at eighteen.
401. “Sidney.” Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) was an Elizabethan writer and statesman,
who died in the battle of Zutphen, aged thirty-two.
404. “Lucan.” Marcus Annæus Lucanus (A. D. 39-65), a Spaniard by birth and Roman
by citizenship, wrote the epic Pharsalia. Condemned to death for conspiring against Nero,
he took his own life at twenty-six.
415-495. The concluding apostrophe is addressed by the poet largely to his own heart, as
affected by the fact of death and the mystery of the future.
215 438-450. A beautiful picture of the English burying-place at Rome. See Introduction,
p. lxi.
444. “one keen pyramid.” In memory of Caius Cestius.
216 451-457. Shelley’s three-year-old son William was buried here.
460-464. This strong, serene passage unlocks the heart of Shelley as poet and thinker.
See note one l. 344.
217 478-486. The hope and aspiration of all the great romantic [page 264] poets are in these
lines, — Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Emerson, Keats himself.
217 480-481. Cf. Wordsworth’s Ode on Intimations of Immortality, stanzas 5 and 9; cf. also
Shelley’s Essay, On a Future State.
218 Lines (“When the lamp is shattered”).
Cf. To —— (“When passion’s trance is overpast”).
219 25. The poet is still addressing Love, who should not choose for his cradle a weak
human heart.
220 To Jane — The Invitation.
This and the following two poems were written and addressed to Jane Williams, wife of
Lieutenant Edward Elliker Williams. See Introduction, pp. xlv and xlviii.
Parts of this and the succeeding poem were originally published by Mrs. Shelley as a
unit of poetry, entitled The Pine Forest of the Cascine near Pisa.
221 29 sq. Cf. Emerson’s April.
222 To Jane — The Recollection.
9. The student will note that the metre of the introductory section is modified in the
succeeding section, to give unity of movement to the “recollection” proper. Note also the
finely vagrant effect of the alliterative first foot in l. 9, and of the change from iambus to
trochee in “forest.”
223 24. “serpents interlaced.” Shelley, and Browning as stimulated by Shelley, were
imaginatively much interested in snakes. Byron, indeed, called Shelley “the Snake,” on
account of his “bright eyes, slim figure, and noiseless movements.” Cf. Alastor, ll. 228,
325, 438; The Revolt of Islam, Canto I, stanzas 8-33; To Edward Williams, stanza 1;
Adonais, l. 197; Mont Blanc, l. 101; Ode to Liberty, ll. 119, 210; song of Beatrice in The
Cenci; Prometheus Unbound, I, 633; II 4, 402; III, 2, 72; III, 4, 427; IV, 305, 567: The
Assassins, chapter iv.
35. Note the realistic effect of the conjunction of the iambus, “sy wood” with the
trochee, “pecker.”
42. The Trelawny MS. has “white.” “Wide” is preferable as deepening the antithesis
between the remote distance and “the soft flower beneath our feet.”
224 55 sq. Cf. The Cloud, ll. 56-58.
225 With a Guitar, to Jane.
Trelawny thus describes his discovery of Shelley in the pine forest, where he sat
composing the present poem: “The strong light streamed through the opening of the trees.
One of the pines, undermined by the water, had fallen into it. Under its lee, and nearly
hidden, sat the Poet, gazing on the dark mirror beneath, so lost in his bardish reverie that
he did not hear my approach. There the trees were stunted and bent, and their crowns were
shorn like friars by the sea breezes, excepting a cluster of three, under which Shelley’s
traps were lying; these [page 265] overtopped the rest. To avoid startling the Poet out of
his dream, I squatted under the lofty trees, and opened his books. One was a volume of his
favourite Greek dramatist, Sophocles . . . and the other was a volume of Shakespeare. I
then hailed him, and turning his head, he answered faintly:
“‘Hollo, come in.’
“‘Is this your study?’ I asked.
“‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘and these trees are my books — they tell no lies. You are sitting
on the stool of inspiration,’ he exclaimed. . . . ‘Listen to the solemn music in the pine-
tops — don’t you hear the mournful murmurings of the sea?’”
“Jane, with her grace, and suavity, and bland motions, and soothing words, was
conceived by him as the dispenser of an exquisite felicity, to which her husband had a first
claim, but the overflow of which might by Shelley’s own. How could he adequately
express his pleasure in her gentleness, her penetrating charity, her ineffable tenderness?
She should be the Queen of Amity and halcyon hours, with Edward Williams for a
fortunate Prince Consort,a nd he should be her humble troubadour; or call the pair
Ferdinand and Miranda, with Shelley for their faithful Ariel.” Dowden’s Life, II, 474.
See Introduction, p. xii, for a comparison of Shelley with Ariel, the sprite of
Shakespeare’s Tempest. See also note on Ode to the West Wind.
228 90. For “Friend” several editions have “Jane.” The former word is not incongruous with
the Ariel-Miranda fancy. [page 266]
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U . S . A.
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