Chapter 69

OXFORD EDITION. INCLUDING MATERIALS NEVER BEFORE PRINTED IN ANY EDITION OF THE POEMS.

EDITED WITH TEXTUAL NOTES

BY

THOMAS HUTCHINSON, M. A. EDITOR OF THE OXFORD WORDSWORTH.

1914.

CONTENTS.

TRANSLATIONS.

HYMN TO MERCURY. TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF HOMER.

HOMER’S HYMN TO CASTOR AND POLLUX.

HOMER’S HYMN TO THE MOON.

HOMER’S HYMN TO THE SUN.

HOMER’S HYMN TO THE EARTH: MOTHER OF ALL.

HOMER’S HYMN TO MINERVA.

HOMER’S HYMN TO VENUS.

THE CYCLOPS: A SATYRIC DRAMA. TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF EURIPIDES.

EPIGRAMS:

1. TO STELLA. FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO.

2. KISSING HELENA. FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO.

3. SPIRIT OF PLATO. FROM THE GREEK.

4. CIRCUMSTANCE. FROM THE GREEK.

FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF ADONIS. FROM THE GREEK OF BION.

FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF BION. FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.

FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.

PAN, ECHO, AND THE SATYR. FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.

FROM VERGIL’S TENTH ECLOGUE.

THE SAME.

FROM VERGIL’S FOURTH GEORGIC.

SONNET. FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE.

THE FIRST CANZONE OF THE “CONVITO”. FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE.

MATILDA GATHERING FLOWERS. FROM THE “PURGATORIO” OF DANTE.

FRAGMENT. ADAPTED FROM THE “VITA NUOVA” OF DANTE.

UGOLINO. “INFERNO”, 33, 22-75, TRANSLATED BY MEDWIN AND CORRECTED BY SHELLEY.

SONNET. FROM THE ITALIAN OF CAVALCANTI.

SCENES FROM THE “MAGICO PRODIGIOSO”. FROM THE SPANISH OF CALDERON.

STANZAS FROM CALDERON’S “CISMA DE INGLETERRA”.

SCENES FROM THE “FAUST” OF GOETHE.

JUVENILIA.

QUEEN MAB. A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM. TO HARRIET ******. QUEEN MAB. SHELLEY’S NOTES. NOTE BY MRS. SHELLEY.

VERSES ON A CAT.

FRAGMENT: OMENS.

EPITAPHIUM [LATIN VERSION OF THE EPITAPH IN GRAY’S “ELEGY”].

IN HOROLOGIUM.

A DIALOGUE.

TO THE MOONBEAM.

THE SOLITARY.

TO DEATH.

LOVE’S ROSE.

EYES: A FRAGMENT.

ORIGINAL POETRY BY VICTOR AND CAZIRE.

1. ‘HERE I SIT WITH MY PAPER, MY PEN AND MY INK’.

2. TO MISS — — [HARRIET GROVE] FROM MISS — — [ELIZABETH SHELLEY].

3. SONG: ‘COLD, COLD IS THE BLAST’.

4. SONG: ‘COME [HARRIET]! SWEET IS THE HOUR’.

5. SONG: DESPAIR.

6. SONG: SORROW.

7. SONG: HOPE.

8. SONG: TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN.

9. SONG: TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN.

10. THE IRISHMAN’S SONG.

11. SONG: ‘FIERCE ROARS THE MIDNIGHT STORM’.

12. SONG: TO — [HARRIET].

13. SONG: TO — [HARRIET].

14. SAINT EDMOND’S EVE.

15. REVENGE.

16. GHASTA; OR, THE AVENGING DEMON.

17. FRAGMENT; OR, THE TRIUMPH OF CONSCIENCE.

POEMS FROM ST. IRVYNE; OR, THE ROSICRUCIAN.

1. VICTORIA.

2. ‘ON THE DARK HEIGHT OF JURA’.

3. SISTER ROSA. A BALLAD.

4. ST. IRVYNE’S TOWER.

5. BEREAVEMENT.

6. THE DROWNED LOVER.

POSTHUMOUS FRAGMENTS OF MARGARET NICHOLSON.

ADVERTISEMENT.

WAR.

FRAGMENT: SUPPOSED TO BE AN EPITHALAMIUM OF FRANCIS RAVAILLAC AND CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

DESPAIR.

FRAGMENT.

THE SPECTRAL HORSEMAN.

MELODY TO A SCENE OF FORMER TIMES.

STANZA FROM A TRANSLATION OF THE MARSEILLAISE HYMN.

BIGOTRY’S VICTIM.

ON AN ICICLE THAT CLUNG TO THE GRASS OF A GRAVE.

LOVE.

ON A FETE AT CARLTON HOUSE: FRAGMENT.

TO A STAR.

TO MARY, WHO DIED IN THIS OPINION.

A TALE OF SOCIETY AS IT IS: FROM FACTS, 1811.

TO THE REPUBLICANS OF NORTH AMERICA.

TO IRELAND.

ON ROBERT EMMET’S GRAVE.

THE RETROSPECT: CWM ELAN, 1812.

FRAGMENT OF A SONNET: TO HARRIET.

TO HARRIET.

SONNET: TO A BALLOON LADEN WITH KNOWLEDGE.

SONNET: ON LAUNCHING SOME BOTTLES FILLED WITH KNOWLEDGE INTO THE BRISTOL CHANNEL.

THE DEVIL’S WALK.

FRAGMENT OF A SONNET: FAREWELL TO NORTH DEVON.

ON LEAVING LONDON FOR WALES.

THE WANDERING JEW’S SOLILOQUY.

EVENING: TO HARRIET.

TO IANTHE.

SONG FROM THE WANDERING JEW.

FRAGMENT FROM THE WANDERING JEW.

TO THE QUEEN OF MY HEART.

EDITOR’S NOTES.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST OF EDITIONS.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES.

***

TRANSLATIONS.

[Of the Translations that follow a few were published by Shelley himself, others by Mrs. Shelley in the “Posthumous Poems”, 1824, or the “Poetical Works”, 1839, and the remainder by Medwin (1834, 1847), Garnett (1862), Rossetti (1870), Forman (1876) and Locock (1903) from the manuscript originals. Shelley’s “Translations” fall between the years 1818 and 1822.]

HYMN TO MERCURY.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF HOMER.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. This alone of the “Translations” is included in the Harvard manuscript book. ‘Fragments of the drafts of this and the other Hymns of Homer exist among the Boscombe manuscripts’ (Forman).]

1. Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove, The Herald-child, king of Arcadia And all its pastoral hills, whom in sweet love Having been interwoven, modest May Bore Heaven’s dread Supreme. An antique grove _5 Shadowed the cavern where the lovers lay In the deep night, unseen by Gods or Men, And white-armed Juno slumbered sweetly then.

2. Now, when the joy of Jove had its fulfilling, And Heaven’s tenth moon chronicled her relief, _10 She gave to light a babe all babes excelling, A schemer subtle beyond all belief; A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing, A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief, Who ‘mongst the Gods was soon about to thieve, _15 And other glorious actions to achieve.

3. The babe was born at the first peep of day; He began playing on the lyre at noon, And the same evening did he steal away Apollo’s herds;—the fourth day of the moon _20 On which him bore the venerable May, From her immortal limbs he leaped full soon, Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep, But out to seek Apollo’s herds would creep.

4. Out of the lofty cavern wandering _25 He found a tortoise, and cried out—‘A treasure!’ (For Mercury first made the tortoise sing) The beast before the portal at his leisure The flowery herbage was depasturing, Moving his feet in a deliberate measure _30 Over the turf. Jove’s profitable son Eying him laughed, and laughing thus begun:—

5. ‘A useful godsend are you to me now, King of the dance, companion of the feast, Lovely in all your nature! Welcome, you _35 Excellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain-beast, Got you that speckled shell? Thus much I know, You must come home with me and be my guest; You will give joy to me, and I will do All that is in my power to honour you. _40

6. ‘Better to be at home than out of door, So come with me; and though it has been said That you alive defend from magic power, I know you will sing sweetly when you’re dead.’ Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore, _45 Lifting it from the grass on which it fed And grasping it in his delighted hold, His treasured prize into the cavern old.

7. Then scooping with a chisel of gray steel, He bored the life and soul out of the beast.— _50 Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal Darts through the tumult of a human breast Which thronging cares annoy—not swifter wheel The flashes of its torture and unrest Out of the dizzy eyes—than Maia’s son _55 All that he did devise hath featly done.

8. ... And through the tortoise’s hard stony skin At proper distances small holes he made, And fastened the cut stems of reeds within, And with a piece of leather overlaid _60 The open space and fixed the cubits in, Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o’er all Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical.

9. When he had wrought the lovely instrument, He tried the chords, and made division meet, _65 Preluding with the plectrum, and there went Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent A strain of unpremeditated wit Joyous and wild and wanton—such you may _70 Hear among revellers on a holiday.

10. He sung how Jove and May of the bright sandal Dallied in love not quite legitimate; And his own birth, still scoffing at the scandal, And naming his own name, did celebrate; _75 His mother’s cave and servant maids he planned all In plastic verse, her household stuff and state, Perennial pot, trippet, and brazen pan,— But singing, he conceived another plan.

11. ... Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat, _80 He in his sacred crib deposited The hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet Rushed with great leaps up to the mountain’s head, Revolving in his mind some subtle feat Of thievish craft, such as a swindler might _85 Devise in the lone season of dun night.

12. Lo! the great Sun under the ocean’s bed has Driven steeds and chariot—the child meanwhile strode O’er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows, Where the immortal oxen of the God _90 Are pastured in the flowering unmown meadows, And safely stalled in a remote abode.— The archer Argicide, elate and proud, Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud.

13. He drove them wandering o’er the sandy way, _95 But, being ever mindful of his craft, Backward and forward drove he them astray, So that the tracks which seemed before, were aft; His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray, And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft _100 Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs, And bound them in a lump with withy twigs.

14. And on his feet he tied these sandals light, The trail of whose wide leaves might not betray His track; and then, a self-sufficing wight, _105 Like a man hastening on some distant way, He from Pieria’s mountain bent his flight; But an old man perceived the infant pass Down green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass.

15. The old man stood dressing his sunny vine: _110 ‘Halloo! old fellow with the crooked shoulder! You grub those stumps? before they will bear wine Methinks even you must grow a little older: Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine, As you would ‘scape what might appal a bolder— _115 Seeing, see not—and hearing, hear not—and— If you have understanding—understand.’

16. So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast; O’er shadowy mountain and resounding dell, And flower-paven plains, great Hermes passed; _120 Till the black night divine, which favouring fell Around his steps, grew gray, and morning fast Wakened the world to work, and from her cell Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime Into her watch-tower just began to climb. _125

17. Now to Alpheus he had driven all The broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun; They came unwearied to the lofty stall And to the water-troughs which ever run Through the fresh fields—and when with rushgrass tall, _130 Lotus and all sweet herbage, every one Had pastured been, the great God made them move Towards the stall in a collected drove.

18. A mighty pile of wood the God then heaped, And having soon conceived the mystery _135 Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches stripped The bark, and rubbed them in his palms;—on high Suddenly forth the burning vapour leaped And the divine child saw delightedly.— Mercury first found out for human weal _140 Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and steel.

19. And fine dry logs and roots innumerous He gathered in a delve upon the ground— And kindled them—and instantaneous The strength of the fierce flame was breathed around: _145 And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus Wrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound, Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing loud, Close to the fire—such might was in the God.

20. And on the earth upon their backs he threw _150 The panting beasts, and rolled them o’er and o’er, And bored their lives out. Without more ado He cut up fat and flesh, and down before The fire, on spits of wood he placed the two, Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all the gore _155 Pursed in the bowels; and while this was done He stretched their hides over a craggy stone.

21. We mortals let an ox grow old, and then Cut it up after long consideration,— But joyous-minded Hermes from the glen _160 Drew the fat spoils to the more open station Of a flat smooth space, and portioned them; and when He had by lot assigned to each a ration Of the twelve Gods, his mind became aware Of all the joys which in religion are. _165

22. For the sweet savour of the roasted meat Tempted him though immortal. Natheless He checked his haughty will and did not eat, Though what it cost him words can scarce express, And every wish to put such morsels sweet _170 Down his most sacred throat, he did repress; But soon within the lofty portalled stall He placed the fat and flesh and bones and all.

23. And every trace of the fresh butchery And cooking, the God soon made disappear, _175 As if it all had vanished through the sky; He burned the hoofs and horns and head and hair,— The insatiate fire devoured them hungrily;— And when he saw that everything was clear, He quenched the coal, and trampled the black dust, _180 And in the stream his bloody sandals tossed.

24. All night he worked in the serene moonshine— But when the light of day was spread abroad He sought his natal mountain-peaks divine. On his long wandering, neither Man nor God _185 Had met him, since he killed Apollo’s kine, Nor house-dog had barked at him on his road; Now he obliquely through the keyhole passed, Like a thin mist, or an autumnal blast.

25. Right through the temple of the spacious cave _190 He went with soft light feet—as if his tread Fell not on earth; no sound their falling gave; Then to his cradle he crept quick, and spread The swaddling-clothes about him; and the knave Lay playing with the covering of the bed _195 With his left hand about his knees—the right Held his beloved tortoise-lyre tight.

26. There he lay innocent as a new-born child, As gossips say; but though he was a God, The Goddess, his fair mother, unbeguiled, _200 Knew all that he had done being abroad: ‘Whence come you, and from what adventure wild, You cunning rogue, and where have you abode All the long night, clothed in your impudence? What have you done since you departed hence? _205

27. ‘Apollo soon will pass within this gate And bind your tender body in a chain Inextricably tight, and fast as fate, Unless you can delude the God again, Even when within his arms—ah, runagate! _210 A pretty torment both for Gods and Men Your father made when he made you!’—‘Dear mother,’ Replied sly Hermes, ‘wherefore scold and bother?

28. ‘As if I were like other babes as old, And understood nothing of what is what; _215 And cared at all to hear my mother scold. I in my subtle brain a scheme have got, Which whilst the sacred stars round Heaven are rolled Will profit you and me—nor shall our lot Be as you counsel, without gifts or food, _220 To spend our lives in this obscure abode.

29 ‘But we will leave this shadow-peopled cave And live among the Gods, and pass each day In high communion, sharing what they have Of profuse wealth and unexhausted prey; _225 And from the portion which my father gave To Phoebus, I will snatch my share away, Which if my father will not—natheless I, Who am the king of robbers, can but try.

30. ‘And, if Latona’s son should find me out, _230 I’ll countermine him by a deeper plan; I’ll pierce the Pythian temple-walls, though stout, And sack the fane of everything I can— Caldrons and tripods of great worth no doubt, Each golden cup and polished brazen pan, _235 All the wrought tapestries and garments gay.’— So they together talked;—meanwhile the Day

31. Aethereal born arose out of the flood Of flowing Ocean, bearing light to men. Apollo passed toward the sacred wood, _240 Which from the inmost depths of its green glen Echoes the voice of Neptune,—and there stood On the same spot in green Onchestus then That same old animal, the vine-dresser, Who was employed hedging his vineyard there. _245

32. Latona’s glorious Son began:—‘I pray Tell, ancient hedger of Onchestus green, Whether a drove of kine has passed this way, All heifers with crooked horns? for they have been Stolen from the herd in high Pieria, _250 Where a black bull was fed apart, between Two woody mountains in a neighbouring glen, And four fierce dogs watched there, unanimous as men.

33. ‘And what is strange, the author of this theft Has stolen the fatted heifers every one, _255 But the four dogs and the black bull are left:— Stolen they were last night at set of sun, Of their soft beds and their sweet food bereft.— Now tell me, man born ere the world begun, Have you seen any one pass with the cows?’— _260 To whom the man of overhanging brows:

34. ‘My friend, it would require no common skill Justly to speak of everything I see: On various purposes of good or ill Many pass by my vineyard,—and to me _265 ’Tis difficult to know the invisible Thoughts, which in all those many minds may be:— Thus much alone I certainly can say, I tilled these vines till the decline of day,

35. ‘And then I thought I saw, but dare not speak _270 With certainty of such a wondrous thing, A child, who could not have been born a week, Those fair-horned cattle closely following, And in his hand he held a polished stick: And, as on purpose, he walked wavering _275 From one side to the other of the road, And with his face opposed the steps he trod.’

36. Apollo hearing this, passed quickly on— No winged omen could have shown more clear That the deceiver was his father’s son. _280 So the God wraps a purple atmosphere Around his shoulders, and like fire is gone To famous Pylos, seeking his kine there, And found their track and his, yet hardly cold, And cried—‘What wonder do mine eyes behold! _285

37. ‘Here are the footsteps of the horned herd Turned back towards their fields of asphodel;— But THESE are not the tracks of beast or bird, Gray wolf, or bear, or lion of the dell, Or maned Centaur—sand was never stirred _290 By man or woman thus! Inexplicable! Who with unwearied feet could e’er impress The sand with such enormous vestiges?

38. ‘That was most strange—but this is stranger still!’ Thus having said, Phoebus impetuously _295 Sought high Cyllene’s forest-cinctured hill, And the deep cavern where dark shadows lie, And where the ambrosial nymph with happy will Bore the Saturnian’s love-child, Mercury— And a delightful odour from the dew _300 Of the hill pastures, at his coming, flew.

39. And Phoebus stooped under the craggy roof Arched over the dark cavern:—Maia’s child Perceived that he came angry, far aloof, About the cows of which he had been beguiled; _305 And over him the fine and fragrant woof Of his ambrosial swaddling-clothes he piled— As among fire-brands lies a burning spark Covered, beneath the ashes cold and dark.

40. There, like an infant who had sucked his fill _310 And now was newly washed and put to bed, Awake, but courting sleep with weary will, And gathered in a lump, hands, feet, and head, He lay, and his beloved tortoise still He grasped and held under his shoulder-blade. _315 Phoebus the lovely mountain-goddess knew, Not less her subtle, swindling baby, who

41. Lay swathed in his sly wiles. Round every crook Of the ample cavern, for his kine, Apollo Looked sharp; and when he saw them not, he took _320 The glittering key, and opened three great hollow Recesses in the rock—where many a nook Was filled with the sweet food immortals swallow, And mighty heaps of silver and of gold Were piled within—a wonder to behold! _325

42. And white and silver robes, all overwrought With cunning workmanship of tracery sweet— Except among the Gods there can be nought In the wide world to be compared with it. Latona’s offspring, after having sought _330 His herds in every corner, thus did greet Great Hermes:—‘Little cradled rogue, declare Of my illustrious heifers, where they are!

43. ‘Speak quickly! or a quarrel between us Must rise, and the event will be, that I _335 Shall hurl you into dismal Tartarus, In fiery gloom to dwell eternally; Nor shall your father nor your mother loose The bars of that black dungeon—utterly You shall be cast out from the light of day, _340 To rule the ghosts of men, unblessed as they.

44. To whom thus Hermes slily answered:—‘Son Of great Latona, what a speech is this! Why come you here to ask me what is done With the wild oxen which it seems you miss? _345 I have not seen them, nor from any one Have heard a word of the whole business; If you should promise an immense reward, I could not tell more than you now have heard.

45. ‘An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong, _350 And I am but a little new-born thing, Who, yet at least, can think of nothing wrong:— My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling The cradle-clothes about me all day long,— Or half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing, _355 And to be washed in water clean and warm, And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.

46. ‘O, let not e’er this quarrel be averred! The astounded Gods would laugh at you, if e’er You should allege a story so absurd _360 As that a new-born infant forth could fare Out of his home after a savage herd. I was born yesterday—my small feet are Too tender for the roads so hard and rough:— And if you think that this is not enough, _365

47. I swear a great oath, by my father’s head, That I stole not your cows, and that I know Of no one else, who might, or could, or did.— Whatever things cows are, I do not know, For I have only heard the name.’—This said _370 He winked as fast as could be, and his brow Was wrinkled, and a whistle loud gave he, Like one who hears some strange absurdity.

48. Apollo gently smiled and said:—‘Ay, ay,— You cunning little rascal, you will bore _375 Many a rich man’s house, and your array Of thieves will lay their siege before his door, Silent as night, in night; and many a day In the wild glens rough shepherds will deplore That you or yours, having an appetite, _380 Met with their cattle, comrade of the night!

49. ‘And this among the Gods shall be your gift, To be considered as the lord of those Who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal, and shop-lift;— But now if you would not your last sleep doze; _385 Crawl out!’—Thus saying, Phoebus did uplift The subtle infant in his swaddling clothes, And in his arms, according to his wont, A scheme devised the illustrious Argiphont.

50. ... ... And sneezed and shuddered—Phoebus on the grass _390 Him threw, and whilst all that he had designed He did perform—eager although to pass, Apollo darted from his mighty mind Towards the subtle babe the following scoff:— ‘Do not imagine this will get you off, _395

51. ‘You little swaddled child of Jove and May! And seized him:—‘By this omen I shall trace My noble herds, and you shall lead the way.’— Cyllenian Hermes from the grassy place, Like one in earnest haste to get away, _400 Rose, and with hands lifted towards his face Round both his ears up from his shoulders drew His swaddling clothes, and—‘What mean you to do

52. ‘With me, you unkind God?’—said Mercury: ‘Is it about these cows you tease me so? _405 I wish the race of cows were perished!—I Stole not your cows—I do not even know What things cows are. Alas! I well may sigh That since I came into this world of woe, I should have ever heard the name of one— _410 But I appeal to the Saturnian’s throne.’

53. Thus Phoebus and the vagrant Mercury Talked without coming to an explanation, With adverse purpose. As for Phoebus, he Sought not revenge, but only information, _415 And Hermes tried with lies and roguery To cheat Apollo.—But when no evasion Served—for the cunning one his match had found— He paced on first over the sandy ground.

54. ... He of the Silver Bow the child of Jove _420 Followed behind, till to their heavenly Sire Came both his children, beautiful as Love, And from his equal balance did require A judgement in the cause wherein they strove. O’er odorous Olympus and its snows _425 A murmuring tumult as they came arose,—

55. And from the folded depths of the great Hill, While Hermes and Apollo reverent stood Before Jove’s throne, the indestructible Immortals rushed in mighty multitude; _430 And whilst their seats in order due they fill, The lofty Thunderer in a careless mood To Phoebus said:—‘Whence drive you this sweet prey, This herald-baby, born but yesterday?—

56. ‘A most important subject, trifler, this _435 To lay before the Gods!’—‘Nay, Father, nay, When you have understood the business, Say not that I alone am fond of prey. I found this little boy in a recess Under Cyllene’s mountains far away— _440 A manifest and most apparent thief, A scandalmonger beyond all belief.

57. ‘I never saw his like either in Heaven Or upon earth for knavery or craft:— Out of the field my cattle yester-even, _445 By the low shore on which the loud sea laughed, He right down to the river-ford had driven; And mere astonishment would make you daft To see the double kind of footsteps strange He has impressed wherever he did range. _450

58. ‘The cattle’s track on the black dust, full well Is evident, as if they went towards The place from which they came—that asphodel Meadow, in which I feed my many herds,— HIS steps were most incomprehensible— _455 I know not how I can describe in words Those tracks—he could have gone along the sands Neither upon his feet nor on his hands;—

59. ‘He must have had some other stranger mode Of moving on: those vestiges immense, _460 Far as I traced them on the sandy road, Seemed like the trail of oak-toppings:—but thence No mark nor track denoting where they trod The hard ground gave:—but, working at his fence, A mortal hedger saw him as he passed _465 To Pylos, with the cows, in fiery haste.

60. ‘I found that in the dark he quietly Had sacrificed some cows, and before light Had thrown the ashes all dispersedly About the road—then, still as gloomy night, _470 Had crept into his cradle, either eye Rubbing, and cogitating some new sleight. No eagle could have seen him as he lay Hid in his cavern from the peering day.

61. ‘I taxed him with the fact, when he averred _475 Most solemnly that he did neither see Nor even had in any manner heard Of my lost cows, whatever things cows be; Nor could he tell, though offered a reward, Not even who could tell of them to me.’ _480 So speaking, Phoebus sate; and Hermes then Addressed the Supreme Lord of Gods and Men:—

62. ‘Great Father, you know clearly beforehand That all which I shall say to you is sooth; I am a most veracious person, and _485 Totally unacquainted with untruth. At sunrise Phoebus came, but with no band Of Gods to bear him witness, in great wrath, To my abode, seeking his heifers there, And saying that I must show him where they are, _490

63. ‘Or he would hurl me down the dark abyss. I know that every Apollonian limb Is clothed with speed and might and manliness, As a green bank with flowers—but unlike him I was born yesterday, and you may guess _495 He well knew this when he indulged the whim Of bullying a poor little new-born thing That slept, and never thought of cow-driving.

64. ‘Am I like a strong fellow who steals kine? Believe me, dearest Father—such you are— _500 This driving of the herds is none of mine; Across my threshold did I wander ne’er, So may I thrive! I reverence the divine Sun and the Gods, and I love you, and care Even for this hard accuser—who must know _505 I am as innocent as they or you.

65. ‘I swear by these most gloriously-wrought portals (It is, you will allow, an oath of might) Through which the multitude of the Immortals Pass and repass forever, day and night, _510 Devising schemes for the affairs of mortals— I am guiltless; and I will requite, Although mine enemy be great and strong, His cruel threat—do thou defend the young!’

66. So speaking, the Cyllenian Argiphont _515 Winked, as if now his adversary was fitted:— And Jupiter, according to his wont, Laughed heartily to hear the subtle-witted Infant give such a plausible account, And every word a lie. But he remitted _520 Judgement at present—and his exhortation Was, to compose the affair by arbitration.

67. And they by mighty Jupiter were bidden To go forth with a single purpose both, Neither the other chiding nor yet chidden: _525 And Mercury with innocence and truth To lead the way, and show where he had hidden The mighty heifers.—Hermes, nothing loth, Obeyed the Aegis-bearer’s will—for he Is able to persuade all easily. _530

68. These lovely children of Heaven’s highest Lord Hastened to Pylos and the pastures wide And lofty stalls by the Alphean ford, Where wealth in the mute night is multiplied With silent growth. Whilst Hermes drove the herd _535 Out of the stony cavern, Phoebus spied The hides of those the little babe had slain, Stretched on the precipice above the plain.

69. ‘How was it possible,’ then Phoebus said, ‘That you, a little child, born yesterday, _540 A thing on mother’s milk and kisses fed, Could two prodigious heifers ever flay? Even I myself may well hereafter dread Your prowess, offspring of Cyllenian May, When you grow strong and tall.’—He spoke, and bound _545 Stiff withy bands the infant’s wrists around.

70. He might as well have bound the oxen wild; The withy bands, though starkly interknit, Fell at the feet of the immortal child, Loosened by some device of his quick wit. _550 Phoebus perceived himself again beguiled, And stared—while Hermes sought some hole or pit, Looking askance and winking fast as thought, Where he might hide himself and not be caught.

71. Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill _555 Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might Of winning music, to his mightier will; His left hand held the lyre, and in his right The plectrum struck the chords—unconquerable Up from beneath his hand in circling flight _560 The gathering music rose—and sweet as Love The penetrating notes did live and move

72. Within the heart of great Apollo—he Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure. Close to his side stood harping fearlessly _565 The unabashed boy; and to the measure Of the sweet lyre, there followed loud and free His joyous voice; for he unlocked the treasure Of his deep song, illustrating the birth Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth: _570

73. And how to the Immortals every one A portion was assigned of all that is; But chief Mnemosyne did Maia’s son Clothe in the light of his loud melodies;— And, as each God was born or had begun, _575 He in their order due and fit degrees Sung of his birth and being—and did move Apollo to unutterable love.

74. These words were winged with his swift delight: ‘You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you _580 Deserve that fifty oxen should requite Such minstrelsies as I have heard even now. Comrade of feasts, little contriving wight, One of your secrets I would gladly know, Whether the glorious power you now show forth _585 Was folded up within you at your birth,

75. ‘Or whether mortal taught or God inspired The power of unpremeditated song? Many divinest sounds have I admired, The Olympian Gods and mortal men among; _590 But such a strain of wondrous, strange, untired, And soul-awakening music, sweet and strong, Yet did I never hear except from thee, Offspring of May, impostor Mercury!

76. ‘What Muse, what skill, what unimagined use, _595 What exercise of subtlest art, has given Thy songs such power?—for those who hear may choose From three, the choicest of the gifts of Heaven, Delight, and love, and sleep,—sweet sleep, whose dews Are sweeter than the balmy tears of even:— _600 And I, who speak this praise, am that Apollo Whom the Olympian Muses ever follow:

77. ‘And their delight is dance, and the blithe noise Of song and overflowing poesy; And sweet, even as desire, the liquid voice _605 Of pipes, that fills the clear air thrillingly; But never did my inmost soul rejoice In this dear work of youthful revelry As now. I wonder at thee, son of Jove; Thy harpings and thy song are soft as love. _610

78. ‘Now since thou hast, although so very small, Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear,— And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall, Witness between us what I promise here,— That I will lead thee to the Olympian Hall, _615 Honoured and mighty, with thy mother dear, And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee, And even at the end will ne’er deceive thee.’

79. To whom thus Mercury with prudent speech:— ‘Wisely hast thou inquired of my skill: _620 I envy thee no thing I know to teach Even this day:—for both in word and will I would be gentle with thee; thou canst reach All things in thy wise spirit, and thy sill Is highest in Heaven among the sons of Jove, _625 Who loves thee in the fulness of his love.

80. ‘The Counsellor Supreme has given to thee Divinest gifts, out of the amplitude Of his profuse exhaustless treasury; By thee, ’tis said, the depths are understood _630 Of his far voice; by thee the mystery Of all oracular fates,—and the dread mood Of the diviner is breathed up; even I— A child—perceive thy might and majesty.

81. ‘Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit _635 Can find or teach;—yet since thou wilt, come take The lyre—be mine the glory giving it— Strike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake Thy joyous pleasure out of many a fit Of tranced sound—and with fleet fingers make _640 Thy liquid-voiced comrade talk with thee,— It can talk measured music eloquently.

82. ‘Then bear it boldly to the revel loud, Love-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state, A joy by night or day—for those endowed _645 With art and wisdom who interrogate It teaches, babbling in delightful mood All things which make the spirit most elate, Soothing the mind with sweet familiar play, Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay. _650

83. ‘To those who are unskilled in its sweet tongue, Though they should question most impetuously Its hidden soul, it gossips something wrong— Some senseless and impertinent reply. But thou who art as wise as thou art strong _655 Canst compass all that thou desirest. I Present thee with this music-flowing shell, Knowing thou canst interrogate it well.

84. ‘And let us two henceforth together feed, On this green mountain-slope and pastoral plain, _660 The herds in litigation—they will breed Quickly enough to recompense our pain, If to the bulls and cows we take good heed;— And thou, though somewhat over fond of gain, Grudge me not half the profit.’—Having spoke, _665 The shell he proffered, and Apollo took;

85. And gave him in return the glittering lash, Installing him as herdsman;—from the look Of Mercury then laughed a joyous flash. And then Apollo with the plectrum strook _670 The chords, and from beneath his hands a crash Of mighty sounds rushed up, whose music shook The soul with sweetness, and like an adept His sweeter voice a just accordance kept.

86. The herd went wandering o’er the divine mead, _675 Whilst these most beautiful Sons of Jupiter Won their swift way up to the snowy head Of white Olympus, with the joyous lyre Soothing their journey; and their father dread Gathered them both into familiar _680 Affection sweet,—and then, and now, and ever, Hermes must love Him of the Golden Quiver,

87. To whom he gave the lyre that sweetly sounded, Which skilfully he held and played thereon. He piped the while, and far and wide rebounded _685 The echo of his pipings; every one Of the Olympians sat with joy astounded; While he conceived another piece of fun, One of his old tricks—which the God of Day Perceiving, said:—‘I fear thee, Son of May;— _690

88. ‘I fear thee and thy sly chameleon spirit, Lest thou should steal my lyre and crooked bow; This glory and power thou dost from Jove inherit, To teach all craft upon the earth below; Thieves love and worship thee—it is thy merit _695 To make all mortal business ebb and flow By roguery:—now, Hermes, if you dare By sacred Styx a mighty oath to swear

89. ‘That you will never rob me, you will do A thing extremely pleasing to my heart.’ _700 Then Mercury swore by the Stygian dew, That he would never steal his bow or dart, Or lay his hands on what to him was due, Or ever would employ his powerful art Against his Pythian fane. Then Phoebus swore _705 There was no God or Man whom he loved more.

90. ‘And I will give thee as a good-will token, The beautiful wand of wealth and happiness; A perfect three-leaved rod of gold unbroken, Whose magic will thy footsteps ever bless; _710 And whatsoever by Jove’s voice is spoken Of earthly or divine from its recess, It, like a loving soul, to thee will speak, And more than this, do thou forbear to seek.

91. ‘For, dearest child, the divinations high _715 Which thou requirest, ’tis unlawful ever That thou, or any other deity Should understand—and vain were the endeavour; For they are hidden in Jove’s mind, and I, In trust of them, have sworn that I would never _720 Betray the counsels of Jove’s inmost will To any God—the oath was terrible.

92. ‘Then, golden-wanded brother, ask me not To speak the fates by Jupiter designed; But be it mine to tell their various lot _725 To the unnumbered tribes of human-kind. Let good to these, and ill to those be wrought As I dispense—but he who comes consigned By voice and wings of perfect augury To my great shrine, shall find avail in me. _730

93. ‘Him will I not deceive, but will assist; But he who comes relying on such birds As chatter vainly, who would strain and twist The purpose of the Gods with idle words, And deems their knowledge light, he shall have missed _735 His road—whilst I among my other hoards His gifts deposit. Yet, O son of May, I have another wondrous thing to say.

96. ‘There are three Fates, three virgin Sisters, who Rejoicing in their wind-outspeeding wings, _740 Their heads with flour snowed over white and new, Sit in a vale round which Parnassus flings Its circling skirts—from these I have learned true Vaticinations of remotest things. My father cared not. Whilst they search out dooms, _745 They sit apart and feed on honeycombs.

95. ‘They, having eaten the fresh honey, grow Drunk with divine enthusiasm, and utter With earnest willingness the truth they know; But if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter _750 All plausible delusions;—these to you I give;—if you inquire, they will not stutter; Delight your own soul with them:—any man You would instruct may profit if he can.

96. ‘Take these and the fierce oxen, Maia’s child— _755 O’er many a horse and toil-enduring mule, O’er jagged-jawed lions, and the wild White-tusked boars, o’er all, by field or pool, Of cattle which the mighty Mother mild Nourishes in her bosom, thou shalt rule— _760 Thou dost alone the veil from death uplift— Thou givest not—yet this is a great gift.’

97. Thus King Apollo loved the child of May In truth, and Jove covered their love with joy. Hermes with Gods and Men even from that day _765 Mingled, and wrought the latter much annoy, And little profit, going far astray Through the dun night. Farewell, delightful Boy, Of Jove and Maia sprung,—never by me, Nor thou, nor other songs, shall unremembered be. _770

NOTES: _13 cow-stealing]qy. cattle-stealing? _57 stony Boscombe manuscript. Harvard manuscript; strong edition 1824. _252 neighbouring]neighbour Harvard manuscript. _336 hurl Harvard manuscript, editions 1839; haul edition 1824. _402 Round]Roused edition 1824 only. _488 wrath]ruth Harvard manuscript. _580 heifer-stealing]heifer-killing Harvard manuscript. _673 and like 1839, 1st edition; as of edition 1824, Harvard manuscript. _713 loving]living cj. Rossetti. _761 from Harvard manuscript; of editions 1824, 1839. _764 their love with joy Harvard manuscript; them with love and joy, editions 1824, 1839. _767 going]wandering Harvard manuscript.

***

HOMER’S HYMN TO CASTOR AND POLLUX.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.]

Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove, Whom the fair-ankled Leda, mixed in love With mighty Saturn’s Heaven-obscuring Child, On Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild, Brought forth in joy: mild Pollux, void of blame, _5 And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame. These are the Powers who earth-born mortals save And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave. When wintry tempests o’er the savage sea Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly _10 Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow, Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow, And sacrifice with snow-white lambs,—the wind And the huge billow bursting close behind, Even then beneath the weltering waters bear _15 The staggering ship—they suddenly appear, On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky, And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity, And strew the waves on the white Ocean’s bed, Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread _20 The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight, And plough the quiet sea in safe delight.

NOTE: _6 steed-subduing emend. Rossetti; steel-subduing 1839, 2nd edition.

***

HOMER’S HYMN TO THE MOON.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.]

Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody, Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy Sing the wide-winged Moon! Around the earth, From her immortal head in Heaven shot forth, Far light is scattered—boundless glory springs; _5 Where’er she spreads her many-beaming wings The lampless air glows round her golden crown.

But when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone Under the sea, her beams within abide, Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean’s tide, _10 Clothing her form in garments glittering far, And having yoked to her immortal car The beam-invested steeds whose necks on high Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky A western Crescent, borne impetuously. _15 Then is made full the circle of her light, And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then, A wonder and a sign to mortal men.

The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power _20 Mingled in love and sleep—to whom she bore Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are.

Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity, Fair-haired and favourable! thus with thee _25 My song beginning, by its music sweet Shall make immortal many a glorious feat Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well Which minstrels, servants of the Muses, tell.

***

HOMER’S HYMN TO THE SUN.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.]

Offspring of Jove, Calliope, once more To the bright Sun, thy hymn of music pour; Whom to the child of star-clad Heaven and Earth Euryphaessa, large-eyed nymph, brought forth; Euryphaessa, the famed sister fair _5 Of great Hyperion, who to him did bear A race of loveliest children; the young Morn, Whose arms are like twin roses newly born, The fair-haired Moon, and the immortal Sun, Who borne by heavenly steeds his race doth run _10 Unconquerably, illuming the abodes Of mortal Men and the eternal Gods.

Fiercely look forth his awe-inspiring eyes, Beneath his golden helmet, whence arise And are shot forth afar, clear beams of light; _15 His countenance, with radiant glory bright, Beneath his graceful locks far shines around, And the light vest with which his limbs are bound, Of woof aethereal delicately twined, Glows in the stream of the uplifting wind. _20 His rapid steeds soon bear him to the West; Where their steep flight his hands divine arrest, And the fleet car with yoke of gold, which he Sends from bright Heaven beneath the shadowy sea.

***

HOMER’S HYMN TO THE EARTH: MOTHER OF ALL.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.]

O universal Mother, who dost keep From everlasting thy foundations deep, Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee! All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea, All things that fly, or on the ground divine _5 Live, move, and there are nourished—these are thine; These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity!

The life of mortal men beneath thy sway _10 Is held; thy power both gives and takes away! Happy are they whom thy mild favours nourish; All things unstinted round them grow and flourish. For them, endures the life-sustaining field Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield _15 Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled. Such honoured dwell in cities fair and free, The homes of lovely women, prosperously; Their sons exult in youth’s new budding gladness, And their fresh daughters free from care or sadness, _20 With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song, On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among, Leap round them sporting—such delights by thee Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity.

Mother of gods, thou Wife of starry Heaven, _25 Farewell! be thou propitious, and be given A happy life for this brief melody, Nor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be.

***

HOMER’S HYMN TO MINERVA.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.]

I sing the glorious Power with azure eyes, Athenian Pallas! tameless, chaste, and wise, Tritogenia, town-preserving Maid, Revered and mighty; from his awful head Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike armour dressed, _5 Golden, all radiant! wonder strange possessed The everlasting Gods that Shape to see, Shaking a javelin keen, impetuously Rush from the crest of Aegis-bearing Jove; Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did move _10 Beneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed; Earth dreadfully resounded, far and wide; And, lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high In purple billows, the tide suddenly Stood still, and great Hyperion’s son long time _15 Checked his swift steeds, till, where she stood sublime, Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw The arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view. Child of the Aegis-bearer, hail to thee, Nor thine nor others’ praise shall unremembered be. _20

***

HOMER’S HYMN TO VENUS.

[Published by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862; dated 1818.]

[VERSES 1-55, WITH SOME OMISSIONS.]

Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite, Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things That fleet along the air, or whom the sea, _5 Or earth, with her maternal ministry, Nourish innumerable, thy delight All seek ... O crowned Aphrodite! Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell:— Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well _10 Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame. Diana ... golden-shafted queen, Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green Of the wild woods, the bow, the... _15 And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit Of beasts among waste mountains,—such delight Is hers, and men who know and do the right. Nor Saturn’s first-born daughter, Vesta chaste, Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last, _20 Such was the will of aegis-bearing Jove; But sternly she refused the ills of Love, And by her mighty Father’s head she swore An oath not unperformed, that evermore A virgin she would live mid deities _25 Divine: her father, for such gentle ties Renounced, gave glorious gifts—thus in his hall She sits and feeds luxuriously. O’er all In every fane, her honours first arise From men—the eldest of Divinities. _30

These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives, But none beside escape, so well she weaves Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods Who live secure in their unseen abodes. She won the soul of him whose fierce delight _35 Is thunder—first in glory and in might. And, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiving, With mortal limbs his deathless limbs inweaving, Concealed him from his spouse and sister fair, Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare. _40 but in return, In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken, That by her own enchantments overtaken, She might, no more from human union free, Burn for a nursling of mortality. _45 For once amid the assembled Deities, The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes

Shot forth the light of a soft starlight smile, And boasting said, that she, secure the while, Could bring at Will to the assembled Gods _50 The mortal tenants of earth’s dark abodes, And mortal offspring from a deathless stem She could produce in scorn and spite of them. Therefore he poured desire into her breast Of young Anchises, _55 Feeding his herds among the mossy fountains Of the wide Ida’s many-folded mountains,— Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the love clung Like wasting fire her senses wild among.

***

THE CYCLOPS.

A SATYRIC DRAMA TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF EURIPIDES.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; dated 1819. Amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian there is a copy, ‘practically complete,’ which has been collated by Mr. C.D. Locock. See “Examination”, etc., 1903, pages 64-70. ‘Though legible throughout, and comparatively free from corrections, it has the appearance of being a first draft’ (Locock).]

SILENUS. ULYSSES. CHORUS OF SATYRS. THE CYCLOPS.

SILENUS: O Bacchus, what a world of toil, both now And ere these limbs were overworn with age, Have I endured for thee! First, when thou fled’st The mountain-nymphs who nursed thee, driven afar By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee; _5 Then in the battle of the Sons of Earth, When I stood foot by foot close to thy side, No unpropitious fellow-combatant, And, driving through his shield my winged spear, Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now, _10 Is it a dream of which I speak to thee? By Jove it is not, for you have the trophies! And now I suffer more than all before. For when I heard that Juno had devised A tedious voyage for you, I put to sea _15 With all my children quaint in search of you, And I myself stood on the beaked prow And fixed the naked mast; and all my boys Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain Made white with foam the green and purple sea,— _20 And so we sought you, king. We were sailing Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose, And drove us to this waste Aetnean rock; The one-eyed children of the Ocean God, The man-destroying Cyclopses, inhabit, _25 On this wild shore, their solitary caves, And one of these, named Polypheme, has caught us To be his slaves; and so, for all delight Of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody, We keep this lawless giant’s wandering flocks. _30 My sons indeed on far declivities, Young things themselves, tend on the youngling sheep, But I remain to fill the water-casks, Or sweeping the hard floor, or ministering Some impious and abominable meal _35 To the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it! And now I must scrape up the littered floor With this great iron rake, so to receive My absent master and his evening sheep In a cave neat and clean. Even now I see _40 My children tending the flocks hitherward. Ha! what is this? are your Sicinnian measures Even now the same, as when with dance and song You brought young Bacchus to Althaea’s halls?

NOTE: _23 waste B.; wild 1824; ‘cf. 26, where waste is cancelled for wild’ (Locock).

CHORUS OF SATYRS:

STROPHE: Where has he of race divine _45 Wandered in the winding rocks? Here the air is calm and fine For the father of the flocks;— Here the grass is soft and sweet, And the river-eddies meet _50 In the trough beside the cave, Bright as in their fountain wave.— Neither here, nor on the dew Of the lawny uplands feeding? Oh, you come!—a stone at you _55 Will I throw to mend your breeding;— Get along, you horned thing, Wild, seditious, rambling!

EPODE: An Iacchic melody To the golden Aphrodite _60 Will I lift, as erst did I Seeking her and her delight With the Maenads, whose white feet To the music glance and fleet. Bacchus, O beloved, where, _65 Shaking wide thy yellow hair, Wanderest thou alone, afar? To the one-eyed Cyclops, we, Who by right thy servants are, Minister in misery, _70 In these wretched goat-skins clad, Far from thy delights and thee.

SILENUS: Be silent, sons; command the slaves to drive The gathered flocks into the rock-roofed cave.

CHORUS: Go! But what needs this serious haste, O father? _75

SILENUS: I see a Grecian vessel on the coast, And thence the rowers with some general Approaching to this cave.—About their necks Hang empty vessels, as they wanted food, And water-flasks.—Oh, miserable strangers! _80 Whence come they, that they know not what and who My master is, approaching in ill hour The inhospitable roof of Polypheme, And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroying? Be silent, Satyrs, while I ask and hear _85 Whence coming, they arrive the Aetnean hill.

ULYSSES: Friends, can you show me some clear water-spring, The remedy of our thirst? Will any one Furnish with food seamen in want of it? Ha! what is this? We seem to be arrived _90 At the blithe court of Bacchus. I observe This sportive band of Satyrs near the caves. First let me greet the elder.—Hail!

SILENUS: Hail thou, O Stranger! tell thy country and thy race.

ULYSSES: The Ithacan Ulysses and the king _95 Of Cephalonia.

SILENUS: Oh! I know the man, Wordy and shrewd, the son of Sisyphus.

ULYSSES: I am the same, but do not rail upon me.—

SILENUS: Whence sailing do you come to Sicily?

ULYSSES: From Ilion, and from the Trojan toils. _100

SILENUS: How, touched you not at your paternal shore?

ULYSSES: The strength of tempests bore me here by force.

SILENUS: The self-same accident occurred to me.

ULYSSES: Were you then driven here by stress of weather?

SILENUS: Following the Pirates who had kidnapped Bacchus. _105

ULYSSES: What land is this, and who inhabit it?—

SILENUS: Aetna, the loftiest peak in Sicily.

ULYSSES: And are there walls, and tower-surrounded towns?

SILENUS: There are not.—These lone rocks are bare of men.

ULYSSES: And who possess the land? the race of beasts? _110

SILENUS: Cyclops, who live in caverns, not in houses.

ULYSSES: Obeying whom? Or is the state popular?

SILENUS: Shepherds: no one obeys any in aught.

ULYSSES: How live they? do they sow the corn of Ceres?

SILENUS: On milk and cheese, and on the flesh of sheep. _115

ULYSSES: Have they the Bromian drink from the vine’s stream?

SILENUS: Ah! no; they live in an ungracious land.

ULYSSES: And are they just to strangers?—hospitable?

SILENUS: They think the sweetest thing a stranger brings Is his own flesh.

ULYSSES: What! do they eat man’s flesh? _120

SILENUS: No one comes here who is not eaten up.

ULYSSES: The Cyclops now—where is he? Not at home?

SILENUS: Absent on Aetna, hunting with his dogs.

ULYSSES: Know’st thou what thou must do to aid us hence?

SILENUS: I know not: we will help you all we can. _125

ULYSSES: Provide us food, of which we are in want.

SILENUS: Here is not anything, as I said, but meat.

ULYSSES: But meat is a sweet remedy for hunger.

SILENUS: Cow’s milk there is, and store of curdled cheese.

ULYSSES: Bring out:—I would see all before I bargain. _130

SILENUS: But how much gold will you engage to give?

ULYSSES: I bring no gold, but Bacchic juice.

SILENUS: Oh, joy! Tis long since these dry lips were wet with wine.

ULYSSES: Maron, the son of the God, gave it me.

SILENUS: Whom I have nursed a baby in my arms. _135

ULYSSES: The son of Bacchus, for your clearer knowledge.

SILENUS: Have you it now?—or is it in the ship?

ULYSSES: Old man, this skin contains it, which you see.

SILENUS: Why, this would hardly be a mouthful for me.

ULYSSES: Nay, twice as much as you can draw from thence. _140

SILENUS: You speak of a fair fountain, sweet to me.

ULYSSES: Would you first taste of the unmingled wine?

SILENUS: ’Tis just—tasting invites the purchaser.

ULYSSES: Here is the cup, together with the skin.

SILENUS: Pour: that the draught may fillip my remembrance.

ULYSSES: See! _145

SILENUS: Papaiapax! what a sweet smell it has!

ULYSSES: You see it then?—

SILENUS: By Jove, no! but I smell it.

ULYSSES: Taste, that you may not praise it in words only.

SILENUS: Babai! Great Bacchus calls me forth to dance! Joy! joy!

ULYSSES: Did it flow sweetly down your throat? _150

SILENUS: So that it tingled to my very nails.

ULYSSES: And in addition I will give you gold.

SILENUS: Let gold alone! only unlock the cask.

ULYSSES: Bring out some cheeses now, or a young goat.

SILENUS: That will I do, despising any master. _155 Yes, let me drink one cup, and I will give All that the Cyclops feed upon their mountains.

...

CHORUS: Ye have taken Troy and laid your hands on Helen?

ULYSSES: And utterly destroyed the race of Priam.

...

SILENUS: The wanton wretch! she was bewitched to see _160 The many-coloured anklets and the chain Of woven gold which girt the neck of Paris, And so she left that good man Menelaus. There should be no more women in the world But such as are reserved for me alone.— _165 See, here are sheep, and here are goats, Ulysses, Here are unsparing cheeses of pressed milk; Take them; depart with what good speed ye may; First leaving my reward, the Bacchic dew Of joy-inspiring grapes.

ULYSSES: Ah me! Alas! _170 What shall we do? the Cyclops is at hand! Old man, we perish! whither can we fly?

SILENUS: Hide yourselves quick within that hollow rock.

ULYSSES: ’Twere perilous to fly into the net.

SILENUS: The cavern has recesses numberless; _175 Hide yourselves quick.

ULYSSES: That will I never do! The mighty Troy would be indeed disgraced If I should fly one man. How many times Have I withstood, with shield immovable. Ten thousand Phrygians!—if I needs must die, _180 Yet will I die with glory;—if I live, The praise which I have gained will yet remain.

SILENUS: What, ho! assistance, comrades, haste, assistance!

[THE CYCLOPS, SILENUS, ULYSSES; CHORUS.]

CYCLOPS: What is this tumult? Bacchus is not here, Nor tympanies nor brazen castanets. _185 How are my young lambs in the cavern? Milking Their dams or playing by their sides? And is The new cheese pressed into the bulrush baskets? Speak! I’ll beat some of you till you rain tears— Look up, not downwards when I speak to you. _190

SILENUS: See! I now gape at Jupiter himself; I stare upon Orion and the stars.

CYCLOPS: Well, is the dinner fitly cooked and laid?

SILENUS: All ready, if your throat is ready too.

CYCLOPS: Are the bowls full of milk besides?

SILENUS: O’er-brimming; _195 So you may drink a tunful if you will.

CYCLOPS: Is it ewe’s milk or cow’s milk, or both mixed?—

SILENUS: Both, either; only pray don’t swallow me.

CYCLOPS: By no means.— ... What is this crowd I see beside the stalls? _200 Outlaws or thieves? for near my cavern-home I see my young lambs coupled two by two With willow bands; mixed with my cheeses lie Their implements; and this old fellow here Has his bald head broken with stripes.

SILENUS: Ah me! _205 I have been beaten till I burn with fever.

CYCLOPS: By whom? Who laid his fist upon your head?

SILENUS: Those men, because I would not suffer them To steal your goods.

CYCLOPS: Did not the rascals know I am a God, sprung from the race of Heaven? _210

SILENUS: I told them so, but they bore off your things, And ate the cheese in spite of all I said, And carried out the lambs—and said, moreover, They’d pin you down with a three-cubit collar, And pull your vitals out through your one eye, _215 Furrow your back with stripes, then, binding you, Throw you as ballast into the ship’s hold, And then deliver you, a slave, to move Enormous rocks, or found a vestibule.

NOTE: _216 Furrow B.; Torture (evidently misread for Furrow) 1824.

CYCLOPS: In truth? Nay, haste, and place in order quickly The cooking-knives, and heap upon the hearth, _221 And kindle it, a great faggot of wood.— As soon as they are slaughtered, they shall fill My belly, broiling warm from the live coals, Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling caldron. _225 I am quite sick of the wild mountain game; Of stags and lions I have gorged enough, And I grow hungry for the flesh of men.

SILENUS: Nay, master, something new is very pleasant After one thing forever, and of late _230 Very few strangers have approached our cave.

ULYSSES: Hear, Cyclops, a plain tale on the other side. We, wanting to buy food, came from our ship Into the neighbourhood of your cave, and here This old Silenus gave us in exchange _235 These lambs for wine, the which he took and drank, And all by mutual compact, without force. There is no word of truth in what he says, For slyly he was selling all your store.

SILENUS: I? May you perish, wretch—

ULYSSES: If I speak false! _240

SILENUS: Cyclops, I swear by Neptune who begot thee, By mighty Triton and by Nereus old, Calypso and the glaucous Ocean Nymphs, The sacred waves and all the race of fishes— Be these the witnesses, my dear sweet master, _245 My darling little Cyclops, that I never Gave any of your stores to these false strangers;— If I speak false may those whom most I love, My children, perish wretchedly!

CHORUS: There stop! I saw him giving these things to the strangers. _250 If I speak false, then may my father perish, But do not thou wrong hospitality.

CYCLOPS: You lie! I swear that he is juster far Than Rhadamanthus—I trust more in him. But let me ask, whence have ye sailed, O strangers? _255 Who are you? And what city nourished ye?

ULYSSES: Our race is Ithacan—having destroyed The town of Troy, the tempests of the sea Have driven us on thy land, O Polypheme.

CYCLOPS: What, have ye shared in the unenvied spoil _260 Of the false Helen, near Scamander’s stream?

ULYSSES: The same, having endured a woful toil.

CYCLOPS: Oh, basest expedition! sailed ye not From Greece to Phrygia for one woman’s sake?

ULYSSES: ’Twas the Gods’ work—no mortal was in fault. _265 But, O great Offspring of the Ocean-King, We pray thee and admonish thee with freedom, That thou dost spare thy friends who visit thee, And place no impious food within thy jaws. For in the depths of Greece we have upreared _270 Temples to thy great Father, which are all His homes. The sacred bay of Taenarus Remains inviolate, and each dim recess Scooped high on the Malean promontory, And aery Sunium’s silver-veined crag, _275 Which divine Pallas keeps unprofaned ever, The Gerastian asylums, and whate’er Within wide Greece our enterprise has kept From Phrygian contumely; and in which You have a common care, for you inhabit _280 The skirts of Grecian land, under the roots Of Aetna and its crags, spotted with fire. Turn then to converse under human laws, Receive us shipwrecked suppliants, and provide Food, clothes, and fire, and hospitable gifts; _285 Nor fixing upon oxen-piercing spits Our limbs, so fill your belly and your jaws. Priam’s wide land has widowed Greece enough; And weapon-winged murder leaped together Enough of dead, and wives are husbandless, _290 And ancient women and gray fathers wail Their childless age;—if you should roast the rest— And ’tis a bitter feast that you prepare— Where then would any turn? Yet be persuaded; Forgo the lust of your jaw-bone; prefer _295 Pious humanity to wicked will: Many have bought too dear their evil joys.

SILENUS: Let me advise you, do not spare a morsel Of all his flesh. If you should eat his tongue You would become most eloquent, O Cyclops. _300

CYCLOPS: Wealth, my good fellow, is the wise man’s God, All other things are a pretence and boast. What are my father’s ocean promontories, The sacred rocks whereon he dwells, to me? Stranger, I laugh to scorn Jove’s thunderbolt, _305 I know not that his strength is more than mine. As to the rest I care not.—When he pours Rain from above, I have a close pavilion Under this rock, in which I lie supine, Feasting on a roast calf or some wild beast, _310 And drinking pans of milk, and gloriously Emulating the thunder of high Heaven. And when the Thracian wind pours down the snow, I wrap my body in the skins of beasts, Kindle a fire, and bid the snow whirl on. _315 The earth, by force, whether it will or no, Bringing forth grass, fattens my flocks and herds, Which, to what other God but to myself And this great belly, first of deities, Should I be bound to sacrifice? I well know _320 The wise man’s only Jupiter is this, To eat and drink during his little day, And give himself no care. And as for those Who complicate with laws the life of man, I freely give them tears for their reward. _325 I will not cheat my soul of its delight, Or hesitate in dining upon you:— And that I may be quit of all demands, These are my hospitable gifts;—fierce fire And yon ancestral caldron, which o’er-bubbling _330 Shall finely cook your miserable flesh. Creep in!—

...

ULYSSES: Ai! ai! I have escaped the Trojan toils, I have escaped the sea, and now I fall Under the cruel grasp of one impious man. _335 O Pallas, Mistress, Goddess, sprung from Jove, Now, now, assist me! Mightier toils than Troy Are these;—I totter on the chasms of peril;— And thou who inhabitest the thrones Of the bright stars, look, hospitable Jove, _340 Upon this outrage of thy deity, Otherwise be considered as no God!

CHORUS (ALONE): For your gaping gulf and your gullet wide, The ravin is ready on every side, The limbs of the strangers are cooked and done; _345 There is boiled meat, and roast meat, and meat from the coal, You may chop it, and tear it, and gnash it for fun, An hairy goat’s-skin contains the whole. Let me but escape, and ferry me o’er The stream of your wrath to a safer shore. _350 The Cyclops Aetnean is cruel and bold, He murders the strangers That sit on his hearth, And dreads no avengers To rise from the earth. _355 He roasts the men before they are cold, He snatches them broiling from the coal, And from the caldron pulls them whole, And minces their flesh and gnaws their bone With his cursed teeth, till all be gone. _360 Farewell, foul pavilion: Farewell, rites of dread! The Cyclops vermilion, With slaughter uncloying, Now feasts on the dead, _365 In the flesh of strangers joying!

NOTE: _344 ravin Rossetti; spelt ravine in B., editions 1824, 1839.

ULYSSES: O Jupiter! I saw within the cave Horrible things; deeds to be feigned in words, But not to be believed as being done.

NOTE: _369 not to be believed B.; not believed 1824.

CHORUS: What! sawest thou the impious Polypheme _370 Feasting upon your loved companions now?

ULYSSES: Selecting two, the plumpest of the crowd, He grasped them in his hands.—

CHORUS: Unhappy man!

...

ULYSSES: Soon as we came into this craggy place, Kindling a fire, he cast on the broad hearth _375 The knotty limbs of an enormous oak, Three waggon-loads at least, and then he strewed Upon the ground, beside the red firelight, His couch of pine-leaves; and he milked the cows, And pouring forth the white milk, filled a bowl _380 Three cubits wide and four in depth, as much As would contain ten amphorae, and bound it With ivy wreaths; then placed upon the fire A brazen pot to boil, and made red hot The points of spits, not sharpened with the sickle _385 But with a fruit tree bough, and with the jaws Of axes for Aetnean slaughterings. And when this God-abandoned Cook of Hell Had made all ready, he seized two of us And killed them in a kind of measured manner; _390 For he flung one against the brazen rivets Of the huge caldron, and seized the other By the foot’s tendon, and knocked out his brains Upon the sharp edge of the craggy stone: Then peeled his flesh with a great cooking-knife _395 And put him down to roast. The other’s limbs He chopped into the caldron to be boiled. And I, with the tears raining from my eyes, Stood near the Cyclops, ministering to him; The rest, in the recesses of the cave, _400 Clung to the rock like bats, bloodless with fear. When he was filled with my companions’ flesh, He threw himself upon the ground and sent A loathsome exhalation from his maw. Then a divine thought came to me. I filled _405 The cup of Maron, and I offered him To taste, and said:—‘Child of the Ocean God, Behold what drink the vines of Greece produce, The exultation and the joy of Bacchus.’ He, satiated with his unnatural food, _410 Received it, and at one draught drank it off, And taking my hand, praised me:—‘Thou hast given A sweet draught after a sweet meal, dear guest.’ And I, perceiving that it pleased him, filled Another cup, well knowing that the wine _415 Would wound him soon and take a sure revenge. And the charm fascinated him, and I Plied him cup after cup, until the drink Had warmed his entrails, and he sang aloud In concert with my wailing fellow-seamen _420 A hideous discord—and the cavern rung. I have stolen out, so that if you will You may achieve my safety and your own. But say, do you desire, or not, to fly This uncompanionable man, and dwell _425 As was your wont among the Grecian Nymphs Within the fanes of your beloved God? Your father there within agrees to it, But he is weak and overcome with wine, And caught as if with bird-lime by the cup, _430 He claps his wings and crows in doting joy. You who are young escape with me, and find Bacchus your ancient friend; unsuited he To this rude Cyclops.

NOTES: _382 ten cj. Swinburne; four 1824; four cancelled for ten (possibly) B. _387 I confess I do not understand this.—[SHELLEY’S NOTE.] _416 take]grant (as alternative) B.

CHORUS: Oh my dearest friend, That I could see that day, and leave for ever _435 The impious Cyclops.

...

ULYSSES: Listen then what a punishment I have For this fell monster, how secure a flight From your hard servitude.

CHORUS: O sweeter far Than is the music of an Asian lyre _440 Would be the news of Polypheme destroyed.

ULYSSES: Delighted with the Bacchic drink he goes To call his brother Cyclops—who inhabit A village upon Aetna not far off.

CHORUS: I understand, catching him when alone _445 You think by some measure to dispatch him, Or thrust him from the precipice.

NOTE: _446 by some measure 1824; with some measures B.

ULYSSES: Oh no; Nothing of that kind; my device is subtle.

CHORUS: How then? I heard of old that thou wert wise.

ULYSSES: I will dissuade him from this plan, by saying _450 It were unwise to give the Cyclopses This precious drink, which if enjoyed alone Would make life sweeter for a longer time. When, vanquished by the Bacchic power, he sleeps, There is a trunk of olive wood within, _455 Whose point having made sharp with this good sword I will conceal in fire, and when I see It is alight, will fix it, burning yet, Within the socket of the Cyclops’ eye And melt it out with fire—as when a man _460 Turns by its handle a great auger round, Fitting the framework of a ship with beams, So will I, in the Cyclops’ fiery eye Turn round the brand and dry the pupil up.

CHORUS: Joy! I am mad with joy at your device. _465

ULYSSES: And then with you, my friends, and the old man, We’ll load the hollow depth of our black ship, And row with double strokes from this dread shore.

CHORUS: May I, as in libations to a God, Share in the blinding him with the red brand? _470 I would have some communion in his death.

ULYSSES: Doubtless: the brand is a great brand to hold.

CHORUS: Oh! I would lift an hundred waggon-loads, If like a wasp’s nest I could scoop the eye out Of the detested Cyclops.

ULYSSES: Silence now! _475 Ye know the close device—and when I call, Look ye obey the masters of the craft. I will not save myself and leave behind My comrades in the cave: I might escape, Having got clear from that obscure recess, _480 But ’twere unjust to leave in jeopardy The dear companions who sailed here with me.

CHORUS: Come! who is first, that with his hand Will urge down the burning brand Through the lids, and quench and pierce _485 The Cyclops’ eye so fiery fierce?

SEMICHORUS 1 [SONG WITHIN]: Listen! listen! he is coming, A most hideous discord humming. Drunken, museless, awkward, yelling, Far along his rocky dwelling; _490 Let us with some comic spell Teach the yet unteachable. By all means he must be blinded, If my counsel be but minded.

SEMICHORUS 2: Happy thou made odorous _495 With the dew which sweet grapes weep, To the village hastening thus, Seek the vines that soothe to sleep; Having first embraced thy friend, Thou in luxury without end, _500 With the strings of yellow hair, Of thy voluptuous leman fair, Shalt sit playing on a bed!— Speak! what door is opened?

NOTES: _495 thou cj. Swinburne, Rossetti; those 1824; ‘the word is doubtful in B.’ (Locock). _500 Thou B.; There 1824.

CYCLOPS: Ha! ha! ha! I’m full of wine, _505 Heavy with the joy divine, With the young feast oversated; Like a merchant’s vessel freighted To the water’s edge, my crop Is laden to the gullet’s top. _510 The fresh meadow grass of spring Tempts me forth thus wandering To my brothers on the mountains, Who shall share the wine’s sweet fountains. Bring the cask, O stranger, bring! _515

NOTE: _508 merchant’s 1824; merchant B.

CHORUS: One with eyes the fairest Cometh from his dwelling; Some one loves thee, rarest Bright beyond my telling. In thy grace thou shinest _520 Like some nymph divinest In her caverns dewy:— All delights pursue thee, Soon pied flowers, sweet-breathing, Shall thy head be wreathing. _525

ULYSSES: Listen, O Cyclops, for I am well skilled In Bacchus, whom I gave thee of to drink.

CYCLOPS: What sort of God is Bacchus then accounted?

ULYSSES: The greatest among men for joy of life.

CYCLOPS: I gulped him down with very great delight. _530

ULYSSES: This is a God who never injures men.

CYCLOPS: How does the God like living in a skin?

ULYSSES: He is content wherever he is put.

CYCLOPS: Gods should not have their body in a skin.

ULYSSES: If he gives joy, what is his skin to you? _535

CYCLOPS: I hate the skin, but love the wine within.

ULYSSES: Stay here now: drink, and make your spirit glad.

NOTE: _537 Stay here now, drink B.; stay here, now drink 1824.

CYCLOPS: Should I not share this liquor with my brothers?

ULYSSES: Keep it yourself, and be more honoured so.

CYCLOPS: I were more useful, giving to my friends. _540

ULYSSES: But village mirth breeds contests, broils, and blows.

CYCLOPS: When I am drunk none shall lay hands on me.—

ULYSSES: A drunken man is better within doors.

CYCLOPS: He is a fool, who drinking, loves not mirth.

ULYSSES: But he is wise, who drunk, remains at home. _545

CYCLOPS: What shall I do, Silenus? Shall I stay?

SILENUS: Stay—for what need have you of pot companions?

CYCLOPS: Indeed this place is closely carpeted With flowers and grass.

SILENUS: And in the sun-warm noon ’Tis sweet to drink. Lie down beside me now, _550 Placing your mighty sides upon the ground.

CYCLOPS: What do you put the cup behind me for?

SILENUS: That no one here may touch it.

CYCLOPS: Thievish One! You want to drink;—here place it in the midst. And thou, O stranger, tell how art thou called? _555

ULYSSES: My name is Nobody. What favour now Shall I receive to praise you at your hands?

CYCLOPS: I’ll feast on you the last of your companions.

ULYSSES: You grant your guest a fair reward, O Cyclops.

CYCLOPS: Ha! what is this? Stealing the wine, you rogue! _560

SILENUS: It was this stranger kissing me because I looked so beautiful.

CYCLOPS: You shall repent For kissing the coy wine that loves you not.

SILENUS: By Jupiter! you said that I am fair.

CYCLOPS: Pour out, and only give me the cup full. _565

SILENUS: How is it mixed? let me observe.

CYCLOPS: Curse you! Give it me so.

SILENUS: Not till I see you wear That coronal, and taste the cup to you.

CYCLOPS: Thou wily traitor!

SILENUS: But the wine is sweet. Ay, you will roar if you are caught in drinking. _570

CYCLOPS: See now, my lip is clean and all my beard.

SILENUS: Now put your elbow right and drink again. As you see me drink—...

CYCLOPS: How now?

SILENUS: Ye Gods, what a delicious gulp!

CYCLOPS: Guest, take it;—you pour out the wine for me. _575

ULYSSES: The wine is well accustomed to my hand.

CYCLOPS: Pour out the wine!

ULYSSES: I pour; only be silent.

CYCLOPS: Silence is a hard task to him who drinks.

ULYSSES: Take it and drink it off; leave not a dreg. Oh that the drinker died with his own draught! _580

CYCLOPS: Papai! the vine must be a sapient plant.

ULYSSES: If you drink much after a mighty feast, Moistening your thirsty maw, you will sleep well; If you leave aught, Bacchus will dry you up.

CYCLOPS: Ho! ho! I can scarce rise. What pure delight! _585 The heavens and earth appear to whirl about Confusedly. I see the throne of Jove And the clear congregation of the Gods. Now if the Graces tempted me to kiss I would not—for the loveliest of them all _590 I would not leave this Ganymede.

SILENUS: Polypheme, I am the Ganymede of Jupiter.

CYCLOPS: By Jove, you are; I bore you off from Dardanus.

...

[ULYSSES AND THE CHORUS.]

ULYSSES: Come, boys of Bacchus, children of high race, This man within is folded up in sleep, _595 And soon will vomit flesh from his fell maw; The brand under the shed thrusts out its smoke, No preparation needs, but to burn out The monster’s eye;—but bear yourselves like men.

CHORUS: We will have courage like the adamant rock, _600 All things are ready for you here; go in, Before our father shall perceive the noise.

ULYSSES: Vulcan, Aetnean king! burn out with fire The shining eye of this thy neighbouring monster! And thou, O Sleep, nursling of gloomy Night, _605 Descend unmixed on this God-hated beast, And suffer not Ulysses and his comrades, Returning from their famous Trojan toils, To perish by this man, who cares not either For God or mortal; or I needs must think _610 That Chance is a supreme divinity, And things divine are subject to her power.

NOTE: _606 God-hated 1824; God-hating (as an alternative) B.

CHORUS: Soon a crab the throat will seize Of him who feeds upon his guest, Fire will burn his lamp-like eyes _615 In revenge of such a feast! A great oak stump now is lying In the ashes yet undying. Come, Maron, come! Raging let him fix the doom, _620 Let him tear the eyelid up Of the Cyclops—that his cup May be evil! Oh! I long to dance and revel With sweet Bromian, long desired, _625 In loved ivy wreaths attired; Leaving this abandoned home— Will the moment ever come?

ULYSSES: Be silent, ye wild things! Nay, hold your peace, And keep your lips quite close; dare not to breathe, _630 Or spit, or e’en wink, lest ye wake the monster, Until his eye be tortured out with fire.

CHORUS: Nay, we are silent, and we chaw the air.

ULYSSES: Come now, and lend a hand to the great stake Within—it is delightfully red hot. _635

CHORUS: You then command who first should seize the stake To burn the Cyclops’ eye, that all may share In the great enterprise.

SEMICHORUS 1: We are too far; We cannot at this distance from the door Thrust fire into his eye.

SEMICHORUS 2: And we just now _640 Have become lame! cannot move hand or foot.

CHORUS: The same thing has occurred to us,—our ankles Are sprained with standing here, I know not how.

ULYSSES: What, sprained with standing still?

CHORUS: And there is dust Or ashes in our eyes, I know not whence. _645

ULYSSES: Cowardly dogs! ye will not aid me then?

CHORUS: With pitying my own back and my back-bone, And with not wishing all my teeth knocked out, This cowardice comes of itself—but stay, I know a famous Orphic incantation _650 To make the brand stick of its own accord Into the skull of this one-eyed son of Earth.

ULYSSES: Of old I knew ye thus by nature; now I know ye better.—I will use the aid Of my own comrades. Yet though weak of hand _655 Speak cheerfully, that so ye may awaken The courage of my friends with your blithe words.

CHORUS: This I will do with peril of my life, And blind you with my exhortations, Cyclops. Hasten and thrust, _660 And parch up to dust, The eye of the beast Who feeds on his guest. Burn and blind The Aetnean hind! _665 Scoop and draw, But beware lest he claw Your limbs near his maw.

CYCLOPS: Ah me! my eyesight is parched up to cinders.

CHORUS: What a sweet paean! sing me that again! _670

CYCLOPS: Ah me! indeed, what woe has fallen upon me! But, wretched nothings, think ye not to flee Out of this rock; I, standing at the outlet, Will bar the way and catch you as you pass.

CHORUS: What are you roaring out, Cyclops?

CYCLOPS: I perish! _675

CHORUS: For you are wicked.

CYCLOPS: And besides miserable.

CHORUS: What, did you fall into the fire when drunk?

CYCLOPS: ’Twas Nobody destroyed me.

CHORUS: Why then no one Can be to blame.

CYCLOPS: I say ’twas Nobody Who blinded me.

CHORUS: Why then you are not blind. _680

CYCLOPS: I wish you were as blind as I am.

CHORUS: Nay, It cannot be that no one made you blind.

CYCLOPS: You jeer me; where, I ask, is Nobody?

CHORUS: Nowhere, O Cyclops.

CYCLOPS: It was that stranger ruined me:—the wretch _685 First gave me wine and then burned out my eye, For wine is strong and hard to struggle with. Have they escaped, or are they yet within?

CHORUS: They stand under the darkness of the rock And cling to it.

CYCLOPS: At my right hand or left? _690

CHORUS: Close on your right.

CYCLOPS: Where?

CHORUS: Near the rock itself. You have them.

CYCLOPS: Oh, misfortune on misfortune! I’ve cracked my skull.

CHORUS: Now they escape you—there.

NOTE: _693 So B.; Now they escape you there 1824.

CYCLOPS: Not there, although you say so.

CHORUS: Not on that side.

CYCLOPS: Where then?

CHORUS: They creep about you on your left. _695

CYCLOPS: Ah! I am mocked! They jeer me in my ills.

CHORUS: Not there! he is a little there beyond you.

CYCLOPS: Detested wretch! where are you?

ULYSSES: Far from you I keep with care this body of Ulysses.

CYCLOPS: What do you say? You proffer a new name. _700

ULYSSES: My father named me so; and I have taken A full revenge for your unnatural feast; I should have done ill to have burned down Troy And not revenged the murder of my comrades.

CYCLOPS: Ai! ai! the ancient oracle is accomplished; _705 It said that I should have my eyesight blinded By your coming from Troy, yet it foretold That you should pay the penalty for this By wandering long over the homeless sea.

ULYSSES: I bid thee weep—consider what I say; _710 I go towards the shore to drive my ship To mine own land, o’er the Sicilian wave.

CYCLOPS: Not so, if, whelming you with this huge stone, I can crush you and all your men together; I will descend upon the shore, though blind, _715 Groping my way adown the steep ravine.

CHORUS: And we, the shipmates of Ulysses now, Will serve our Bacchus all our happy lives.

***

EPIGRAMS.

[These four Epigrams were published—numbers 2 and 4 without title—by Mrs. Shelley, “Poetical Works”, 1839, 1st edition.]

1.—TO STELLA.

FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO.

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

2.—KISSING HELENA.

FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO.

Kissing Helena, together With my kiss, my soul beside it Came to my lips, and there I kept it,— For the poor thing had wandered thither, To follow where the kiss should guide it, _5 Oh, cruel I, to intercept it!

3.—SPIRIT OF PLATO.

FROM THE GREEK.

Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb? To what sublime and star-ypaven home Floatest thou?— I am the image of swift Plato’s spirit, Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit _5 His corpse below.

NOTE: _5 doth Boscombe manuscript; does edition 1839.

4.—CIRCUMSTANCE.

FROM THE GREEK.

A man who was about to hang himself, Finding a purse, then threw away his rope; The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf, The halter found; and used it. So is Hope Changed for Despair—one laid upon the shelf, _5 We take the other. Under Heaven’s high cope Fortune is God—all you endure and do Depends on circumstance as much as you.

***

FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF ADONIS.

PROM THE GREEK OF BION.

[Published by Forman, “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1876.]

I mourn Adonis dead—loveliest Adonis— Dead, dead Adonis—and the Loves lament. Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof— Wake violet-stoled queen, and weave the crown Of Death,—’tis Misery calls,—for he is dead. _5

The lovely one lies wounded in the mountains, His white thigh struck with the white tooth; he scarce Yet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony there. The dark blood wanders o’er his snowy limbs, His eyes beneath their lids are lustreless, _10 The rose has fled from his wan lips, and there That kiss is dead, which Venus gathers yet.

A deep, deep wound Adonis... A deeper Venus bears upon her heart. See, his beloved dogs are gathering round— _15 The Oread nymphs are weeping—Aphrodite With hair unbound is wandering through the woods, ‘Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled—the thorns pierce Her hastening feet and drink her sacred blood. Bitterly screaming out, she is driven on _20 Through the long vales; and her Assyrian boy, Her love, her husband, calls—the purple blood From his struck thigh stains her white navel now, Her bosom, and her neck before like snow.

Alas for Cytherea—the Loves mourn— _25 The lovely, the beloved is gone!—and now Her sacred beauty vanishes away. For Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair— Alas! her loveliness is dead with him. The oaks and mountains cry, Ai! ai! Adonis! _30 The springs their waters change to tears and weep— The flowers are withered up with grief...

Ai! ai! ... Adonis is dead Echo resounds ... Adonis dead. Who will weep not thy dreadful woe. O Venus? _35 Soon as she saw and knew the mortal wound Of her Adonis—saw the life-blood flow From his fair thigh, now wasting,—wailing loud She clasped him, and cried ... ‘Stay, Adonis! Stay, dearest one,... _40 and mix my lips with thine— Wake yet a while, Adonis—oh, but once, That I may kiss thee now for the last time— But for as long as one short kiss may live— Oh, let thy breath flow from thy dying soul _45 Even to my mouth and heart, that I may suck That...’

NOTE: _23 his Rossetti, Dowden, Woodberry; her Boscombe manuscript, Forman.

***

FRAGMENT OF THE ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF BION.

FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.

[Published from the Hunt manuscripts by Forman, “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1876.]

Ye Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud,— Augment your tide, O streams, with fruitless tears, For the beloved Bion is no more. Let every tender herb and plant and flower, From each dejected bud and drooping bloom, _5 Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath Of melancholy sweetness on the wind Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush, Anemones grow paler for the loss Their dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth, _10 Utter thy legend now—yet more, dumb flower, Than ‘Ah! alas!’—thine is no common grief— Bion the [sweetest singer] is no more.

NOTE: _2 tears]sorrow (as alternative) Hunt manuscript.

***

FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.

[Published with “Alastor”, 1816.]

Tan ala tan glaukan otan onemos atrema Balle—k.t.l.

When winds that move not its calm surface sweep The azure sea, I love the land no more; The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep Tempt my unquiet mind.—But when the roar Of Ocean’s gray abyss resounds, and foam _5 Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst, I turn from the drear aspect to the home Of Earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed, When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody. Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea, _10 Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot Has chosen.—But I my languid limbs will fling Beneath the plane, where the brook’s murmuring Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not.

***

PAN, ECHO, AND THE SATYR.

FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.

[Published (without title) by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824. There is a draft amongst the Hunt manuscripts.]

Pan loved his neighbour Echo—but that child Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping; The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild The bright nymph Lyda,—and so three went weeping. As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr, _5 The Satyr, Lyda; and so love consumed them.— And thus to each—which was a woful matter— To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them; For, inasmuch as each might hate the lover, Each, loving, so was hated.—Ye that love not _10 Be warned—in thought turn this example over, That when ye love, the like return ye prove not.

NOTE: _6 so Hunt manuscript; thus 1824. _11 So 1824; This lesson timely in your thoughts turn over, The moral of this song in thought turn over (as alternatives) Hunt manuscript.

***

FROM VERGIL’S TENTH ECLOGUE.

[VERSES 1-26.]

[Published by Rossetti, “Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1870, from the Boscombe manuscripts now in the Bodleian. Mr. Locock (“Examination”, etc., 1903, pages 47-50), as the result of his collation of the same manuscripts, gives a revised and expanded version which we print below.]

Melodious Arethusa, o’er my verse Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream: Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam Of Syracusan waters, mayst thou flow _5 Unmingled with the bitter Doric dew! Begin, and, whilst the goats are browsing now The soft leaves, in our way let us pursue The melancholy loves of Gallus. List! We sing not to the dead: the wild woods knew _10 His sufferings, and their echoes... Young Naiads,...in what far woodlands wild Wandered ye when unworthy love possessed Your Gallus? Not where Pindus is up-piled, Nor where Parnassus’ sacred mount, nor where _15 Aonian Aganippe expands... The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim. The pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus, The cold crags of Lycaeus, weep for him; And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals, _20 Came shaking in his speed the budding wands And heavy lilies which he bore: we knew Pan the Arcadian.

...

‘What madness is this, Gallus? Thy heart’s care With willing steps pursues another there.’ _25

***

THE SAME.

(As revised by Mr. C.D. Locock.)

Melodious Arethusa, o’er my verse Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream:

(Two lines missing.)

Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam Of Syracusan waters, mayest thou flow _5 Unmingled with the bitter Dorian dew! Begin, and whilst the goats are browsing now The soft leaves, in our song let us pursue The melancholy loves of Gallus. List! We sing not to the deaf: the wild woods knew _10 His sufferings, and their echoes answer... Young Naiades, in what far woodlands wild Wandered ye, when unworthy love possessed Our Gallus? Nor where Pindus is up-piled, Nor where Parnassus’ sacred mount, nor where _15 Aonian Aganippe spreads its...

(Three lines missing.)

The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim, The pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus, The cold crags of Lycaeus weep for him.

(Several lines missing.)

‘What madness is this, Gallus? thy heart’s care, _20 Lycoris, mid rude camps and Alpine snow, With willing step pursues another there.’

(Some lines missing.)

And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals, Came shaking in his speed the budding wands And heavy lilies which he bore: we knew _25 Pan the Arcadian with.... ...and said, ‘Wilt thou not ever cease? Love cares not. The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme, The goats with the green leaves of budding spring _30 Are saturated not—nor Love with tears.’

***

FROM VERGIL’S FOURTH GEORGIC.

[VERSES 360 ET SEQ.]

[Published by Locock, “Examination”, etc., 1903.]

And the cloven waters like a chasm of mountains Stood, and received him in its mighty portal And led him through the deep’s untrampled fountains

He went in wonder through the path immortal Of his great Mother and her humid reign _5 And groves profaned not by the step of mortal

Which sounded as he passed, and lakes which rain Replenished not girt round by marble caves ‘Wildered by the watery motion of the main

Half ‘wildered he beheld the bursting waves _10 Of every stream beneath the mighty earth Phasis and Lycus which the ... sand paves,

[And] The chasm where old Enipeus has its birth And father Tyber and Anienas[?] glow And whence Caicus, Mysian stream, comes forth _15

And rock-resounding Hypanis, and thou Eridanus who bearest like empire’s sign Two golden horns upon thy taurine brow

Thou than whom none of the streams divine Through garden-fields and meads with fiercer power, _20 Burst in their tumult on the purple brine

***

SONNET.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE.

[Published with “Alastor”, 1816; reprinted, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824.]

DANTE ALIGHIERI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI:

Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I, Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly With winds at will where’er our thoughts might wend, So that no change, nor any evil chance _5 Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be, That even satiety should still enhance Between our hearts their strict community: And that the bounteous wizard then would place Vanna and Bice and my gentle love, _10 Companions of our wandering, and would grace With passionate talk, wherever we might rove, Our time, and each were as content and free As I believe that thou and I should be.

_5 So 1824; And 1816.

***

THE FIRST CANZONE OF THE CONVITO.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE.

[Published by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862; dated 1820.]

1. Ye who intelligent the Third Heaven move, Hear the discourse which is within my heart, Which cannot be declared, it seems so new. The Heaven whose course follows your power and art, Oh, gentle creatures that ye are! me drew, _5 And therefore may I dare to speak to you, Even of the life which now I live—and yet I pray that ye will hear me when I cry, And tell of mine own heart this novelty; How the lamenting Spirit moans in it, _10 And how a voice there murmurs against her Who came on the refulgence of your sphere.

2. A sweet Thought, which was once the life within This heavy heart, man a time and oft Went up before our Father’s feet, and there _15 It saw a glorious Lady throned aloft; And its sweet talk of her my soul did win, So that I said, ‘Thither I too will fare.’ That Thought is fled, and one doth now appear Which tyrannizes me with such fierce stress, _20 That my heart trembles—ye may see it leap— And on another Lady bids me keep Mine eyes, and says—Who would have blessedness Let him but look upon that Lady’s eyes, Let him not fear the agony of sighs. _25

3. This lowly Thought, which once would talk with me Of a bright seraph sitting crowned on high, Found such a cruel foe it died, and so My Spirit wept, the grief is hot even now— And said, Alas for me! how swift could flee _30 That piteous Thought which did my life console! And the afflicted one ... questioning Mine eyes, if such a Lady saw they never, And why they would... I said: ‘Beneath those eyes might stand for ever _35 He whom ... regards must kill with... To have known their power stood me in little stead, Those eyes have looked on me, and I am dead.’

4. ‘Thou art not dead, but thou hast wandered, Thou Soul of ours, who thyself dost fret,’ _40 A Spirit of gentle Love beside me said; For that fair Lady, whom thou dost regret, Hath so transformed the life which thou hast led, Thou scornest it, so worthless art thou made. And see how meek, how pitiful, how staid, _45 Yet courteous, in her majesty she is. And still call thou her Woman in thy thought; Her whom, if thou thyself deceivest not, Thou wilt behold decked with such loveliness, That thou wilt cry [Love] only Lord, lo! here _50 Thy handmaiden, do what thou wilt with her.

5. My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning Of such hard matter dost thou entertain. Whence, if by misadventure chance should bring _55 Thee to base company, as chance may do, Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, I prithee comfort thy sweet self again, My last delight; tell them that they are dull, And bid them own that thou art beautiful. _60

NOTE: C5. Published with “Epispychidion”, 1821.—ED.

***

MATILDA GATHERING FLOWERS.

FROM THE PURGATORIO OF DANTE, CANTO 28, LINES 1-51.

[Published in part (lines 1-8, 22-51) by Medwin, “The Angler in Wales”, 1834, “Life of Shelley”, 1847; reprinted in full by Garnett, “Relics of Shelley”, 1862.]

And earnest to explore within—around— The divine wood, whose thick green living woof Tempered the young day to the sight—I wound

Up the green slope, beneath the forest’s roof, With slow, soft steps leaving the mountain’s steep, _5 And sought those inmost labyrinths, motion-proof

Against the air, that in that stillness deep And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare, The slow, soft stroke of a continuous...

In which the ... leaves tremblingly were _10 All bent towards that part where earliest The sacred hill obscures the morning air.

Yet were they not so shaken from the rest, But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray, Incessantly renewing their blithe quest, _15

With perfect joy received the early day, Singing within the glancing leaves, whose sound Kept a low burden to their roundelay,

Such as from bough to bough gathers around The pine forest on bleak Chiassi’s shore, _20 When Aeolus Sirocco has unbound.

My slow steps had already borne me o’er Such space within the antique wood, that I Perceived not where I entered any more,—

When, lo! a stream whose little waves went by, _25 Bending towards the left through grass that grew Upon its bank, impeded suddenly

My going on. Water of purest hue On earth, would appear turbid and impure Compared with this, whose unconcealing dew, _30

Dark, dark, yet clear, moved under the obscure Eternal shades, whose interwoven looms The rays of moon or sunlight ne’er endure.

I moved not with my feet, but mid the glooms Pierced with my charmed eye, contemplating _35 The mighty multitude of fresh May blooms

Which starred that night, when, even as a thing That suddenly, for blank astonishment, Charms every sense, and makes all thought take wing,—

A solitary woman! and she went _40 Singing and gathering flower after flower, With which her way was painted and besprent.

‘Bright lady, who, if looks had ever power To bear true witness of the heart within, Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower _45

Towards this bank. I prithee let me win This much of thee, to come, that I may hear Thy song: like Proserpine, in Enna’s glen,

Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here And gathering flowers, as that fair maiden when _50 She lost the Spring, and Ceres her, more dear.

NOTES: _2 The 1862; That 1834. _4, _5 So 1862; Up a green slope, beneath the starry roof, With slow, slow steps— 1834. _6 inmost 1862; leafy 1834. _9 So 1862; The slow, soft stroke of a continuous sleep cj. Rossetti, 1870. _9-_28 So 1862; Like the sweet breathing of a child asleep: Already I had lost myself so far Amid that tangled wilderness that I Perceived not where I ventured, but no fear Of wandering from my way disturbed, when nigh A little stream appeared; the grass that grew Thick on its banks impeded suddenly My going on. 1834. _13 the 1862; their cj. Rossetti, 1870. _26 through]the cj. Rossetti. _28 hue 1862; dew 1834. _30 dew 1862; hue 1834. _32 Eternal shades 1862; Of the close boughs 1834. _33 So 1862; No ray of moon or sunshine would endure 1834. _34, _35 So 1862; My feet were motionless, but mid the glooms Darted my charmed eyes—1834. _37 Which 1834; That 1862. _39 So 1834; Dissolves all other thought...1862. _40 So 1862; Appeared a solitary maid—she went 1834. _46 Towards 1862; Unto 1834. _47 thee, to come 1862; thee O come 1834.

***

FRAGMENT.

ADAPTED FROM THE VITA NUOVA OF DANTE.

[Published by Forman, “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1876.]

What Mary is when she a little smiles I cannot even tell or call to mind, It is a miracle so new, so rare.

***

UGOLINO.

(Published by Medwin, “Life of Shelley”, 1847, with Shelley’s corrections in italics [‘‘].—ED.)

INFERNO 33, 22-75.

[Translated by Medwin and corrected by Shelley.]

Now had the loophole of that dungeon, still Which bears the name of Famine’s Tower from me, And where ’tis fit that many another will

Be doomed to linger in captivity, Shown through its narrow opening in my cell _5 ‘Moon after moon slow waning’, when a sleep,

‘That of the future burst the veil, in dream Visited me. It was a slumber deep And evil; for I saw, or I did seem’

To see, ‘that’ tyrant Lord his revels keep _10 The leader of the cruel hunt to them, Chasing the wolf and wolf-cubs up the steep

Ascent, that from ‘the Pisan is the screen’ Of ‘Lucca’; with him Gualandi came, Sismondi, and Lanfranchi, ‘bloodhounds lean, _15

Trained to the sport and eager for the game Wide ranging in his front;’ but soon were seen Though by so short a course, with ‘spirits tame,’

The father and ‘his whelps’ to flag at once, And then the sharp fangs gored their bosoms deep. _20 Ere morn I roused myself, and heard my sons,

For they were with me, moaning in their sleep, And begging bread. Ah, for those darling ones! Right cruel art thou, if thou dost not weep

In thinking of my soul’s sad augury; _25 And if thou weepest not now, weep never more! They were already waked, as wont drew nigh

The allotted hour for food, and in that hour Each drew a presage from his dream. When I ‘Heard locked beneath me of that horrible tower _30

The outlet; then into their eyes alone I looked to read myself,’ without a sign Or word. I wept not—turned within to stone.

They wept aloud, and little Anselm mine, Said—’twas my youngest, dearest little one,— _35 “What ails thee, father? Why look so at thine?”

In all that day, and all the following night, I wept not, nor replied; but when to shine Upon the world, not us, came forth the light

Of the new sun, and thwart my prison thrown _40 Gleamed through its narrow chink, a doleful sight, ‘Three faces, each the reflex of my own,

Were imaged by its faint and ghastly ray;’ Then I, of either hand unto the bone, Gnawed, in my agony; and thinking they _45

Twas done from sudden pangs, in their excess, All of a sudden raise themselves, and say, “Father! our woes, so great, were yet the less

Would you but eat of us,—twas ‘you who clad Our bodies in these weeds of wretchedness; _50 Despoil them’.” Not to make their hearts more sad,

I ‘hushed’ myself. That day is at its close,— Another—still we were all mute. Oh, had The obdurate earth opened to end our woes!

The fourth day dawned, and when the new sun shone, _55 Outstretched himself before me as it rose My Gaddo, saying, “Help, father! hast thou none

For thine own child—is there no help from thee?” He died—there at my feet—and one by one, I saw them fall, plainly as you see me. _60

Between the fifth and sixth day, ere twas dawn, I found ‘myself blind-groping o’er the three.’ Three days I called them after they were gone.

Famine of grief can get the mastery.

***

SONNET.

FROM THE ITALIAN OF CAVALCANTI.

GUIDO CAVALCANTI TO DANTE ALIGHIERI:

[Published by Forman (who assigns it to 1815), “Poetical Works of P. B. S.”, 1876.]

Returning from its daily quest, my Spirit Changed thoughts and vile in thee doth weep to find: It grieves me that thy mild and gentle mind Those ample virtues which it did inherit Has lost. Once thou didst loathe the multitude _5 Of blind and madding men—I then loved thee— I loved thy lofty songs and that sweet mood When thou wert faithful to thyself and me I dare not now through thy degraded state Own the delight thy strains inspire—in vain _10 I seek what once thou wert—we cannot meet And we were wont. Again and yet again Ponder my words: so the false Spirit shall fly And leave to thee thy true integrity.

***

SCENES FROM THE MAGICO PRODIGIOSO.

FROM THE SPANISH OF CALDERON.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, “Posthumous Poems”, 1824; dated March, 1822. There is a transcript of Scene 1 among the Hunt manuscripts, which has been collated by Mr. Buxton Forman.]