The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1
Chapter 58
THE INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF FAMINE. THE STATUE OF THE GODDESS, A SKELETON CLOTHED IN PARTI-COLOURED RAGS, SEATED UPON A HEAP OF SKULLS AND LOAVES INTERMINGLED. A NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY FAT PRIESTS IN BLACK GARMENTS ARRAYED ON EACH SIDE, WITH MARROW-BONES AND CLEAVERS IN THEIR HANDS. [SOLOMON, THE COURT PORKMAN.] A FLOURISH OF TRUMPETS.
ENTER MAMMON AS ARCH-PRIEST, SWELLFOOT, DAKRY, PURGANAX, LAOCTONOS, FOLLOWED BY IONA TAURINA GUARDED. ON THE OTHER SIDE ENTER THE SWINE.
CHORUS OF PRIESTS, ACCOMPANIED BY THE COURT PORKMAN ON MARROW-BONES AND CLEAVERS: GODDESS bare, and gaunt, and pale, Empress of the world, all hail! What though Cretans old called thee City-crested Cybele? We call thee FAMINE! _5 Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming! Through thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and lords, Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words, The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits, Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots-- _10 Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat, Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean, Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that! And let things be as they have ever been; At least while we remain thy priests, _15 And proclaim thy fasts and feasts. Through thee the sacred SWELLF00T dynasty Is based upon a rock amid that sea Whose waves are Swine--so let it ever be!
[SWELLFOOT, ETC., SEAT THEMSELVES AT A TABLE MAGNIFICENTLY COVERED AT THE UPPER END OF THE TEMPLE. ATTENDANTS PASS OVER THE STAGE WITH HOG-WASH IN PAILS. A NUMBER OF PIGS, EXCEEDINGLY LEAN, FOLLOW THEM LICKING UP THE WASH.]
MAMMON: I fear your sacred Majesty has lost _20 The appetite which you were used to have. Allow me now to recommend this dish-- A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook, Such as is served at the great King's second table. The price and pains which its ingredients cost _25 Might have maintained some dozen families A winter or two--not more--so plain a dish Could scarcely disagree.--
SWELLFOOT: After the trial, And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps I may recover my lost appetite,-- _30 I feel the gout flying about my stomach-- Give me a glass of Maraschino punch.
PURGANAX (FILLING HIS GLASS, AND STANDING UP): The glorious Constitution of the Pigs!
ALL: A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three!
DAKRY: No heel-taps--darken daylights! --
LAOCTONOS: Claret, somehow, _35 Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret!
SWELLFOOT: Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment, But 'tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine, And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes. [TO PURGANAX.] For God's sake stop the grunting of those Pigs! _40
PURGANAX: We dare not, Sire, 'tis Famine's privilege.
CHORUS OF SWINE: Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine! Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags; Thou devil which livest on damning; Saint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN BAGS, _45 Till in pity and terror thou risest, Confounding the schemes of the wisest; When thou liftest thy skeleton form, When the loaves and the skulls roll about, We will greet thee-the voice of a storm _50 Would be lost in our terrible shout!
Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine! Hail to thee, Empress of Earth! When thou risest, dividing possessions; When thou risest, uprooting oppressions, _55 In the pride of thy ghastly mirth; Over palaces, temples, and graves, We will rush as thy minister-slaves, Trampling behind in thy train, Till all be made level again! _60
MAMMON: I hear a crackling of the giant bones Of the dread image, and in the black pits Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames. These prodigies are oracular, and show The presence of the unseen Deity. _65 Mighty events are hastening to their doom!
SWELLFOOT: I only hear the lean and mutinous Swine Grunting about the temple.
DAKRY: In a crisis Of such exceeding delicacy, I think We ought to put her Majesty, the QUEEN, _70 Upon her trial without delay.
MAMMON: THE BAG Is here.
PURGANAX: I have rehearsed the entire scene With an ox-bladder and some ditchwater, On Lady P--; it cannot fail. [TAKING UP THE BAG.] Your Majesty [TO SWELLFOOT.] In such a filthy business had better _75 Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you. A spot or two on me would do no harm, Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad Genius Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell, Upon my brow--which would stain all its seas, _80 But which those seas could never wash away!
IONA TAURINA: My Lord, I am ready--nay, I am impatient To undergo the test. [A GRACEFUL FIGURE IN A SEMI-TRANSPARENT VEIL PASSES UNNOTICED THROUGH THE TEMPLE; THE WORD "LIBERTY" IS SEEN THROUGH THE VEIL, AS IF IT WERE WRITTEN IN FIRE UPON ITS FOREHEAD. ITS WORDS ARE ALMOST DROWNED IN THE FURIOUS GRUNTING OF THE PIGS, AND THE BUSINESS OF THE TRIAL. SHE KNEELS ON THE STEPS OF THE ALTAR, AND SPEAKS IN TONES AT FIRST FAINT AND LOW, BUT WHICH EVER BECOME LOUDER AND LOUDER.] Mighty Empress! Death's white wife! Ghastly mother-in-law of Life! _85 By the God who made thee such, By the magic of thy touch, By the starving and the cramming Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine! I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude, _90 Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood. The earth did never mean her foison For those who crown life's cup with poison Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge-- But for those radiant spirits, who are still _95 The standard-bearers in the van of Change. Be they th' appointed stewards, to fill The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age!-- Remit, O Queen! thy accustomed rage! Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low _100 FREEDOM calls "Famine",--her eternal foe, To brief alliance, hollow truce.--Rise now!
[WHILST THE VEILED FIGURE HAS BEEN CHANTING THIS STROPHE, MAMMON, DAKRY, LAOCTONOS, AND SWELLFOOT, HAVE SURROUNDED IONA TAURINA, WHO, WITH HER HANDS FOLDED ON HER BREAST, AND HER EYES LIFTED TO HEAVEN, STANDS, AS WITH SAINT-LIKE RESIGNATION, TO WAIT THE ISSUE OF THE BUSINESS, IN PERFECT CONFIDENCE OF HER INNOCENCE.]
[PURGANAX, AFTER UNSEALING THE GREEN BAG, IS GRAVELY ABOUT TO POUR THE LIQUOR UPON HER HEAD, WHEN SUDDENLY THE WHOLE EXPRESSION OF HER FIGURE AND COUNTENANCE CHANGES; SHE SNATCHES IT FROM HIS HAND WITH A LOUD LAUGH OF TRIUMPH, AND EMPTIES IT OVER SWELLFOOT AND HIS WHOLE COURT, WHO ARE INSTANTLY CHANGED INTO A NUMBER OF FILTHY AND UGLY ANIMALS, AND RUSH OUT OF THE TEMPLE. THE IMAGE OF FAMINE THEN ARISES WITH A TREMENDOUS SOUND, THE PIGS BEGIN SCRAMBLING FOR THE LOAVES, AND ARE TRJPPED UP BY THE SKULLS; ALL THOSE WHO EAT THE LOAVES ARE TURNED INTO BULLS, AND ARRANGE THEMSELVES QUIETLY BEHIND THE ALTAR. THE IMAGE OF FAMINE SINKS THROUGH A CHASM IN THE EARTH, AND A MINOTAUR RISES.]
MINOTAUR: I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest Of all Europa's taurine progeny-- I am the old traditional Man-Bull; _105 And from my ancestors having been Ionian, I am called Ion, which, by interpretation, Is JOHN; in plain Theban, that is to say, My name's JOHN BULL; I am a famous hunter, And can leaf any gate in all Boeotia, _110 Even the palings of the royal park, Or double ditch about the new enclosures; And if your Majesty will deign to mount me, At least till you have hunted down your game, I will not throw you. _115
IONA TAURINA [DURING THIS SPEECH SHE HAS BEEN PUTTING ON BOOTS AND SPURS, AND A HUNTING-CAP, BUCKISHLY COCKED ON ONE SIDE, AND TUCKING UP HER HAIR, SHE LEAPS NIMBLY ON HIS BACK]: Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho! Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down, These stinking foxes, these devouring otters, These hares, these wolves, these anything but men. Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs Now let your noses be as keen as beagles', _120 Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries More dulcet and symphonious than the bells Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday; Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music. Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?) _125 But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho! Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert, Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!
FULL CHORUS OF I0NA AND THE SWINE: Tallyho! tallyho! Through rain, hail, and snow, _130 Through brake, gorse, and briar, Through fen, flood, and mire, We go! we go!
Tallyho! tallyho! Through pond, ditch, and slough, _135 Wind them, and find them, Like the Devil behind them, Tallyho! tallyho!
[EXEUNT, IN FULL CRY; IONA DRIVING ON THE SWINE, WITH THE EMPTY GEEEN BAG.]
THE END.
NOTE ON OEDIPUS TYRANNUS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August, 1820, Shelley 'begins "Swellfoot the Tyrant", suggested by the pigs at the fair of San Giuliano.' This was the period of Queen Caroline's landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV to get rid of her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the "Green Bag" on the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that an enquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We were then at the Baths of San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us on the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows: Shelley read to us his "Ode to Liberty"; and was riotously accompanied by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He compared it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous association suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve as chorus--and "Swellfoot" was begun. When finished, it was transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.
Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my publishing it at first. But I cannot bring myself to keep back anything he ever wrote; for each word is fraught with the peculiar views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human race, and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it does not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who aspire to pluck bright truth
'from the pale-faced moon; Or dive into the bottom of the deep Where fathom-line would never touch the ground, And pluck up drowned'
truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in his slightest word than in the waters of Lethe which are so eagerly prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woe. This drama, however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere plaything of the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote, it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.
***
EPIPSYCHIDION.
VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V--,
NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF --.
L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' infinito un Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro. HER OWN WORDS.
["Epipsychidion" was composed at Pisa, January, February, 1821, and published without the author's name, in the following summer, by C. & J. Ollier, London. The poem was included by Mrs. Shelley in the "Poetical Works", 1839, both editions. Amongst the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian is a first draft of "Epipsychidion", 'consisting of three versions, more or less complete, of the "Preface [Advertisement]", a version in ink and pencil, much cancelled, of the last eighty lines of the poem, and some additional lines which did not appear in print' ("Examination of the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, by C.D. Locock". Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903, page 3). This draft, the writing of which is 'extraordinarily confused and illegible,' has been carefully deciphered and printed by Mr. Locock in the volume named above. Our text follows that of the editio princeps, 1821.]
ADVERTISEMENT.
The Writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building, and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular; less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and feelings. The present Poem, like the "Vita Nuova" of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates and to a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it treats. Not but that gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace intendimento.
The present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page [1] is almost a literal translation from Dante's famous Canzone
Voi, ch' intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, etc.
The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. S.
[1] i.e. the nine lines which follow, beginning, 'My Song, I fear,' etc.--ED.
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning, Of such hard matter dost thou entertain; Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring Thee to base company (as chance may do), _5 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.
EPIPSYCHIDION.
Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one, Whose empire is the name thou weepest on, In my heart's temple I suspend to thee These votive wreaths of withered memory.
Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage, _5 Pourest such music, that it might assuage The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, Were they not deaf to all sweet melody; This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale! _10 But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom, And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed _15 It over-soared this low and worldly shade, Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest! I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be, Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. _20
Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman All that is insupportable in thee Of light, and love, and immortality! Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse! _25 Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe! Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm! Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror! Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror _30 In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun, All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on! Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow; I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song _35 All of its much mortality and wrong, With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through, Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy: Then smile on it, so that it may not die. _40
I never thought before my death to see Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily, I love thee; though the world by no thin name Will hide that love from its unvalued shame. Would we two had been twins of the same mother! _45 Or, that the name my heart lent to another Could be a sister's bond for her and thee, Blending two beams of one eternity! Yet were one lawful and the other true, These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due. _50 How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me! I am not thine: I am a part of THEE.
Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style, _55 All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile, A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless? A well of sealed and secret happiness, Whose waters like blithe light and music are, Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star _60 Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone? A Smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone Amid rude voices? a beloved light? A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight? A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play _65 Make music on, to soothe the roughest day And lull fond Grief asleep? a buried treasure? A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure? A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?--I measure The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, _70 And find--alas! mine own infirmity.
She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way, And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day, Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope, Led into light, life, peace. An antelope, _75 In the suspended impulse of its lightness, Were less aethereally light: the brightness Of her divinest presence trembles through Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew Embodied in the windless heaven of June _80 Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon Burns, inextinguishably beautiful: And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops, Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops _85 Of planetary music heard in trance. In her mild lights the starry spirits dance, The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap Under the lightnings of the soul--too deep For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. _90 The glory of her being, issuing thence, Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade Of unentangled intermixture, made By Love, of light and motion: one intense Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, _95 Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing, Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing With the unintermitted blood, which there Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air The crimson pulse of living morning quiver,) _100 Continuously prolonged, and ending never, Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world; Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress _105 And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress The air of her own speed has disentwined, The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind; And in the soul a wild odour is felt Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt _110 Into the bosom of a frozen bud.-- See where she stands! a mortal shape indued With love and life and light and deity, And motion which may change but cannot die; An image of some bright Eternity; _115 A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love Under whose motions life's dull billows move; A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning; _120 A Vision like incarnate April, warning, With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy Into his summer grave. Ah, woe is me! What have I dared? where am I lifted? how Shall I descend, and perish not? I know _125 That Love makes all things equal: I have heard By mine own heart this joyous truth averred: The spirit of the worm beneath the sod In love and worship, blends itself with God.
Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate _130 Whose course has been so starless! O too late Beloved! O too soon adored, by me! For in the fields of Immortality My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, A divine presence in a place divine; _135 Or should have moved beside it on this earth, A shadow of that substance, from its birth; But not as now:--I love thee; yes, I feel That on the fountain of my heart a seal Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright _140 For thee, since in those TEARS thou hast delight. We--are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar; Such difference without discord, as can make Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake _145 As trembling leaves in a continuous air?
Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked. I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select _150 Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, _155 Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.
True Love in this differs from gold and clay, _160 That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light, Imagination! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human fantasy, _165 As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, _170 The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.
Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good; misery from happiness; _175 The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thought, _180 Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared: This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law _185 By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth.
There was a Being whom my spirit oft _190 Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves _195 Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor Paved her light steps;--on an imagined shore, Under the gray beak of some promontory She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, That I beheld her not. In solitudes _200 Her voice came to me through the whispering woods, And from the fountains, and the odours deep Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there, Breathed but of HER to the enamoured air; _205 And from the breezes whether low or loud, And from the rain of every passing cloud, And from the singing of the summer-birds, And from all sounds, all silence. In the words Of antique verse and high romance,--in form, _210 Sound, colour--in whatever checks that Storm Which with the shattered present chokes the past; And in that best philosophy, whose taste Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom As glorious as a fiery martyrdom; _215 Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.--
Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire, And towards the lodestar of my one desire, I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight _220 Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light, When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.-- But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, _225 Passed, like a God throned on a winged planet, Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, Into the dreary cone of our life's shade; And as a man with mighty loss dismayed, I would have followed, though the grave between _230 Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen: When a voice said:--'O thou of hearts the weakest, The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.' Then I--'Where?'--the world's echo answered 'where?' And in that silence, and in my despair, _235 I questioned every tongueless wind that flew Over my tower of mourning, if it knew Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul; And murmured names and spells which have control Over the sightless tyrants of our fate; _240 But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate The night which closed on her; nor uncreate That world within this Chaos, mine and me, Of which she was the veiled Divinity, The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her: _245 And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear And every gentle passion sick to death, Feeding my course with expectation's breath, Into the wintry forest of our life; And struggling through its error with vain strife, _250 And stumbling in my weakness and my haste, And half bewildered by new forms, I passed, Seeking among those untaught foresters If I could find one form resembling hers, In which she might have masked herself from me. _255 There,--One, whose voice was venomed melody Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers: The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers, Her touch was as electric poison,--flame Out of her looks into my vitals came, _260 And from her living cheeks and bosom flew A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew Into the core of my green heart, and lay Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime _265 With ruins of unseasonable time.
In many mortal forms I rashly sought The shadow of that idol of my thought. And some were fair--but beauty dies away: Others were wise--but honeyed words betray: _270 And One was true--oh! why not true to me? Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain. _275 When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed As like the glorious shape which I had d reamed As is the Moon, whose changes ever run Into themselves, to the eternal Sun; _280 The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles, Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles, That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame Which ever is transformed, yet still the same, And warms not but illumines. Young and fair _285 As the descended Spirit of that sphere, She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night From its own darkness, until all was bright Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind, And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, _290 She led me to a cave in that wild place, And sate beside me, with her downward face Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon Waxing and waning o'er Endymion. And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, _295 And all my being became bright or dim As the Moon's image in a summer sea, According as she smiled or frowned on me; And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed: Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:-- _300 For at her silver voice came Death and Life, Unmindful each of their accustomed strife, Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother, The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother, And through the cavern without wings they flew, _305 And cried 'Away, he is not of our crew.' I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.
What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;-- _310 And how my soul was as a lampless sea, And who was then its Tempest; and when She, The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast The moving billows of my being fell _315 Into a death of ice, immovable;-- And then--what earthquakes made it gape and split, The white Moon smiling all the while on it, These words conceal:--If not, each word would be The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me! _320
At length, into the obscure Forest came The Vision I had sought through grief and shame. Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's, And from her presence life was radiated _325 Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead; So that her way was paved, and roofed above With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love; And music from her respiration spread Like light,--all other sounds were penetrated _330 By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound, So that the savage winds hung mute around; And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air: Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, _335 When light is changed to love, this glorious One Floated into the cavern where I lay, And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow _340 I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night Was penetrating me with living light: I knew it was the Vision veiled from me So many years--that it was Emily.
Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth, _345 This world of loves, this ME; and into birth Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart Magnetic might into its central heart; And lift its billows and its mists, and guide By everlasting laws, each wind and tide _350 To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave; And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers The armies of the rainbow-winged showers; And, as those married lights, which from the towers _355 Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe; And all their many-mingled influence blend, If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;-- So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway _360 Govern my sphere of being, night and day! Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might; Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light; And, through the shadow of the seasons three, From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity, _365 Light it into the Winter of the tomb, Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom. Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce, Who drew the heart of this frail Universe Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion, _370 Alternating attraction and repulsion, Thine went astray and that was rent in twain; Oh, float into our azure heaven again! Be there Love's folding-star at thy return; The living Sun will feed thee from its urn _375 Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn Will worship thee with incense of calm breath And lights and shadows; as the star of Death And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild _380 Called Hope and Fear--upon the heart are piled Their offerings,--of this sacrifice divine A World shall be the altar. Lady mine, Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth _385 Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes, Will be as of the trees of Paradise.
The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. To whatsoe'er of dull mortality Is mine, remain a vestal sister still; _390 To the intense, the deep, the imperishable, Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. The hour is come:--the destined Star has risen Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. _395 The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set The sentinels--but true Love never yet Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence: Like lightning, with invisible violence Piercing its continents; like Heaven's free breath, _400 Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death, Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array Of arms: more strength has Love than he or they; For it can burst his charnel, and make free _405 The limbs in chains, the heart in agony, The soul in dust and chaos. Emily, A ship is floating in the harbour now, A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow; There is a path on the sea's azure floor, _410 No keel has ever ploughed that path before; The halcyons brood around the foamless isles; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; The merry mariners are bold and free: Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me? _415 Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest Is a far Eden of the purple East; And we between her wings will sit, while Night, And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, _420 Treading each other's heels, unheededly. It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise, And, for the harbours are not safe and good, This land would have remained a solitude _425 But for some pastoral people native there, Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, Simple and spirited; innocent and bold. The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, _430 With ever-changing sound and light and foam, Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar; And all the winds wandering along the shore Undulate with the undulating tide: There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; _435 And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond, As clear as elemental diamond, Or serene morning air; and far beyond, The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer (Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year) _440 Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls Illumining, with sound that never fails Accompany the noonday nightingales; And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; _445 The light clear element which the isle wears Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers, Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers. And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep; And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, _450 And dart their arrowy odour through the brain Till you might faint with that delicious pain. And every motion, odour, beam and tone, With that deep music is in unison: Which is a soul within the soul--they seem _455 Like echoes of an antenatal dream.-- It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity; Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer, Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. _460 It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight, Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they Sail onward far upon their fatal way: The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm _465 To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew, From which its fields and woods ever renew Their green and golden immortality. And from the sea there rise, and from the sky _470 There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright. Veil after veil, each hiding some delight, Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside, Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride Glowing at once with love and loveliness, _475 Blushes and trembles at its own excess: Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less Burns in the heart of this delicious isle, An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen _480 O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green, Filling their bare and void interstices.-- But the chief marvel of the wilderness Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how None of the rustic island-people know: _485 'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height It overtops the woods; but, for delight, Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime Had been invented, in the world's young prime, Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, _490 An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house Made sacred to his sister and his spouse. It scarce seems now a wreck of human art, But, as it were Titanic; in the heart Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown _495 Out of the mountains, from the living stone, Lifting itself in caverns light and high: For all the antique and learned imagery Has been erased, and in the place of it The ivy and the wild-vine interknit _500 The volumes of their many-twining stems; Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, _505 Or fragments of the day's intense serene;-- Working mosaic on their Parian floors. And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem To sleep in one another's arms, and dream _510 Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we Read in their smiles, and call reality.
This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed Thee to be lady of the solitude.-- And I have fitted up some chambers there _515 Looking towards the golden Eastern air, And level with the living winds, which flow Like waves above the living waves below.-- I have sent books and music there, and all Those instruments with which high Spirits call _520 The future from its cradle, and the past Out of its grave, and make the present last In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, Folded within their own eternity. Our simple life wants little, and true taste _525 Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste The scene it would adorn, and therefore still, Nature with all her children haunts the hill. The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit _530 Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance Between the quick bats in their twilight dance; The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight Before our gate, and the slow, silent night Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. _535 Be this our home in life, and when years heap Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay, Let us become the overhanging day, The living soul of this Elysian isle, Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile _540 We two will rise, and sit, and walk together, Under the roof of blue Ionian weather, And wander in the meadows, or ascend The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; _545 Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore, Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,-- Possessing and possessed by all that is Within that calm circumference of bliss, _550 And by each other, till to love and live Be one:--or, at the noontide hour, arrive Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep The moonlight of the expired night asleep, Through which the awakened day can never peep; _555 A veil for our seclusion, close as night's, Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights: Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again. And we will talk, until thought's melody _560 Become too sweet for utterance, and it die In words, to live again in looks, which dart With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart, Harmonizing silence without a sound. Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, _565 And our veins beat together; and our lips With other eloquence than words, eclipse The soul that burns between them, and the wells Which boil under our being's inmost cells, The fountains of our deepest life, shall be _570 Confused in Passion's golden purity, As mountain-springs under the morning sun. We shall become the same, we shall be one Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two? One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew, _575 Till like two meteors of expanding flame, Those spheres instinct with it become the same, Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still Burning, yet ever inconsumable: In one another's substance finding food, _580 Like flames too pure and light and unimbued To nourish their bright lives with baser prey, Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away: One hope within two wills, one will beneath Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, _585 One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality, And one annihilation. Woe is me! The winged words on which my soul would pierce Into the height of Love's rare Universe, Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- _590 I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
...
Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet, And say:--'We are the masters of thy slave; What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?' Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave, _595 All singing loud: 'Love's very pain is sweet, But its reward is in the world divine Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.' So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste Over the hearts of men, until ye meet _600 Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest, And bid them love each other and be blessed: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest,--for I am Love's.
NOTES: _100 morning]morn may Rossetti cj. _118 of]on edition 1839. _405 it]he edition 1839. _501 many-twining]many twining editio prin. 1821. _504 winter-woof]inter-woof Rossetti cj.
FRAGMENTS CONNECTED WITH EPIPSYCHIDION.
[Of the fragments of verse that follow, lines 1-37, 62-92 were printed by Mrs. Shelley in "Posthumous Works", 1839, 2nd edition; lines 1-174 were printed or reprinted by Dr. Garnett in "Relics of Shelley", 1862; and lines 175-186 were printed by Mr. C.D. Locock from the first draft of "Epipsychidion" amongst the Shelley manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. See "Examination, etc.", 1903, pages 12, 13. The three early drafts of the "Preface (Advertisement)" were printed by Mr. Locock in the same volume, pages 4, 5.]
THREE EARLY DRAFTS OF THE PREFACE.
(ADVERTISEMENT.)
PREFACE 1.
The following Poem was found amongst other papers in the Portfolio of a young Englishman with whom the Editor had contracted an intimacy at Florence, brief indeed, but sufficiently long to render the Catastrophe by which it terminated one of the most painful events of his life.--
The literary merit of the Poem in question may not be considerable; but worse verses are printed every day, &
He was an accomplished & amiable person but his error was, thuntos on un thunta phronein,--his fate is an additional proof that 'The tree of Knowledge is not that of Life.'--He had framed to himself certain opinions, founded no doubt upon the truth of things, but built up to a Babel height; they fell by their own weight, & the thoughts that were his architects, became unintelligible one to the other, as men upon whom confusion of tongues has fallen.
[These] verses seem to have been written as a sort of dedication of some work to have been presented to the person whom they address: but his papers afford no trace of such a work--The circumstances to which [they] the poem allude, may easily be understood by those to whom [the] spirit of the poem itself is [un]intelligible: a detail of facts, sufficiently romantic in [themselves but] their combinations
The melancholy [task] charge of consigning the body of my poor friend to the grave, was committed to me by his desolated family. I caused him to be buried in a spot selected by himself, & on the h
PREFACE 2.
[Epips] T. E. V. Epipsych Lines addressed to the Noble Lady [Emilia] [E. V.] Emilia
[The following Poem was found in the PF. of a young Englishman, who died on his passage from Leghorn to the Levant. He had bought one of the Sporades] He was accompanied by a lady [who might have been] supposed to be his wife, & an effeminate looking youth, to whom he shewed an [attachment] so [singular] excessive an attachment as to give rise to the suspicion, that she was a woman--At his death this suspicion was confirmed;...object speedily found a refuge both from the taunts of the brute multitude, and from the...of her grief in the same grave that contained her lover.--He had bought one of the Sporades, & fitted up a Saracenic castle which accident had preserved in some repair with simple elegance, & it was his intention to dedicate the remainder of his life to undisturbed intercourse with his companions
These verses apparently were intended as a dedication of a longer poem or series of poems
PREFACE 3.
The writer of these lines died at Florence in [January 1820] while he was preparing * * for one wildest of the of the Sporades, where he bought & fitted up the ruins of some old building--His life was singular, less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it, than the ideal tinge which they received from his own character & feelings--
The verses were apparently intended by the writer to accompany some longer poem or collection of poems, of which there* [are no remnants in his] * * * remains [in his] portfolio.--
The editor is induced to
The present poem, like the vita Nova of Dante, is sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a matter of fact history of the circumstances to which it relate, & to a certain other class, it must & ought ever to remain incomprehensible--It was evidently intended to be prefixed to a longer poem or series of poems--but among his papers there are no traces of such a collection.
PASSAGES OF THE POEM, OR CONNECTED THEREWITH.
Here, my dear friend, is a new book for you; I have already dedicated two To other friends, one female and one male,-- What you are, is a thing that I must veil; What can this be to those who praise or rail? _5 I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the world a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion--though 'tis in the code _10 Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world--and so With one sad friend, and many a jealous foe, _15 The dreariest and the longest journey go.
Free love has this, different from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Like ocean, which the general north wind breaks Into ten thousand waves, and each one makes _20 A mirror of the moon--like some great glass, Which did distort whatever form might pass, Dashed into fragments by a playful child, Which then reflects its eyes and forehead mild; Giving for one, which it could ne'er express, _25 A thousand images of loveliness.
If I were one whom the loud world held wise, I should disdain to quote authorities In commendation of this kind of love:-- Why there is first the God in heaven above, _30 Who wrote a book called Nature, 'tis to be Reviewed, I hear, in the next Quarterly; And Socrates, the Jesus Christ of Greece, And Jesus Christ Himself, did never cease To urge all living things to love each other, _35 And to forgive their mutual faults, and smother The Devil of disunion in their souls.
...
I love you!--Listen, O embodied Ray Of the great Brightness; I must pass away While you remain, and these light words must be _40 Tokens by which you may remember me. Start not--the thing you are is unbetrayed, If you are human, and if but the shade Of some sublimer spirit...
...
And as to friend or mistress, 'tis a form; _45 Perhaps I wish you were one. Some declare You a familiar spirit, as you are; Others with a ... more inhuman Hint that, though not my wife, you are a woman; What is the colour of your eyes and hair? _50 Why, if you were a lady, it were fair The world should know--but, as I am afraid, The Quarterly would bait you if betrayed; And if, as it will be sport to see them stumble Over all sorts of scandals. hear them mumble _55 Their litany of curses--some guess right, And others swear you're a Hermaphrodite; Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes, Which looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes The very soul that the soul is gone _60 Which lifted from her limbs the veil of stone.
...
It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm, A happy and auspicious bird of calm, Which rides o'er life's ever tumultuous Ocean; A God that broods o'er chaos in commotion; _65 A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are, Lifts its bold head into the world's frore air, And blooms most radiantly when others die, Health, hope, and youth, and brief prosperity; And with the light and odour of its bloom, _70 Shining within the dun eon and the tomb; Whose coming is as light and music are 'Mid dissonance and gloom--a star Which moves not 'mid the moving heavens alone-- A smile among dark frowns--a gentle tone _75 Among rude voices, a beloved light, A solitude, a refuge, a delight. If I had but a friend! Why, I have three Even by my own confession; there may be Some more, for what I know, for 'tis my mind _80 To call my friends all who are wise and kind,- And these, Heaven knows, at best are very few; But none can ever be more dear than you. Why should they be? My muse has lost her wings, Or like a dying swan who soars and sings, _85 I should describe you in heroic style, But as it is, are you not void of guile? A lovely soul, formed to be blessed and bless: A well of sealed and secret happiness; A lute which those whom Love has taught to play _90 Make music on to cheer the roughest day, And enchant sadness till it sleeps?...
...
To the oblivion whither I and thou, All loving and all lovely, hasten now With steps, ah, too unequal! may we meet _95 In one Elysium or one winding-sheet!
If any should be curious to discover Whether to you I am a friend or lover, Let them read Shakespeare's sonnets, taking thence A whetstone for their dull intelligence _100 That tears and will not cut, or let them guess How Diotima, the wise prophetess, Instructed the instructor, and why he Rebuked the infant spirit of melody On Agathon's sweet lips, which as he spoke _105 Was as the lovely star when morn has broke The roof of darkness, in the golden dawn, Half-hidden, and yet beautiful. I'll pawn My hopes of Heaven-you know what they are worth -- That the presumptuous pedagogues of Earth, _110 If they could tell the riddle offered here Would scorn to be, or being to appear What now they seem and are--but let them chide, They have few pleasures in the world beside; Perhaps we should be dull were we not chidden, _115 Paradise fruits are sweetest when forbidden. Folly can season Wisdom, Hatred Love.
...
Farewell, if it can be to say farewell To those who
...
I will not, as most dedicators do, _120 Assure myself and all the world and you, That you are faultless--would to God they were Who taunt me with your love! I then should wear These heavy chains of life with a light spirit, And would to God I were, or even as near it _125 As you, dear heart. Alas! what are we? Clouds Driven by the wind in warring multitudes, Which rain into the bosom of the earth, And rise again, and in our death and birth, And through our restless life, take as from heaven _130 Hues which are not our own, but which are given, And then withdrawn, and with inconstant glance Flash from the spirit to the countenance. There is a Power, a Love, a Joy, a God Which makes in mortal hearts its brief abode, _135 A Pythian exhalation, which inspires Love, only love--a wind which o'er the wires Of the soul's giant harp There is a mood which language faints beneath; You feel it striding, as Almighty Death _140 His bloodless steed...
...
And what is that most brief and bright delight Which rushes through the touch and through the sight, And stands before the spirit's inmost throne, A naked Seraph? None hath ever known. _145 Its birth is darkness, and its growth desire; Untameable and fleet and fierce as fire, Not to be touched but to be felt alone, It fills the world with glory-and is gone.
...
It floats with rainbow pinions o'er the stream _150 Of life, which flows, like a ... dream Into the light of morning, to the grave As to an ocean...
...
What is that joy which serene infancy Perceives not, as the hours content them by, _155 Each in a chain of blossoms, yet enjoys The shapes of this new world, in giant toys Wrought by the busy ... ever new? Remembrance borrows Fancy's glass, to show These forms more ... sincere _160 Than now they are, than then, perhaps, they were. When everything familiar seemed to be Wonderful, and the immortality Of this great world, which all things must inherit, Was felt as one with the awakening spirit, _165 Unconscious of itself, and of the strange Distinctions which in its proceeding change It feels and knows, and mourns as if each were A desolation...
...
Were it not a sweet refuge, Emily, _170 For all those exiles from the dull insane Who vex this pleasant world with pride and pain, For all that band of sister-spirits known To one another by a voiceless tone?
...
If day should part us night will mend division _175 And if sleep parts us--we will meet in vision And if life parts us--we will mix in death Yielding our mite [?] of unreluctant breath Death cannot part us--we must meet again In all in nothing in delight in pain: _180 How, why or when or where--it matters not So that we share an undivided lot...
...
And we will move possessing and possessed Wherever beauty on the earth's bare [?] breast Lies like the shadow of thy soul--till we _185 Become one being with the world we see...
NOTES: _52-_53 afraid The cj. A.C. Bradley. _54 And as cj. Rossetti, A.C. Bradley. _61 stone... cj. A.C. Bradley. _155 them]trip or troop cj. A.C. Bradley. _157 in]as cj. A.C. Bradley.
***
ADONAIS.
AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS, AUTHOR OF ENDYMION, HYPERION, ETC.
Aster prin men elampes eni zooisin Eoos nun de thanon lampeis Esperos en phthimenois.--PLATO.
["Adonais" was composed at Pisa during the early days of June, 1821, and printed, with the author's name, at Pisa, 'with the types of Didot,' by July 13, 1821. Part of the impression was sent to the brothers Ollier for sale in London. An exact reprint of this Pisa edition (a few typographical errors only being corrected) was issued in 1829 by Gee & Bridges, Cambridge, at the instance of Arthur Hallam and Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton). The poem was included in Galignani's edition of "Coleridge, Shelley and Keats", Paris, 1829, and by Mrs. Shelley in the "Poetical Works" of 1839. Mrs. Shelley's text presents three important variations from that of the editio princeps. In 1876 an edition of the "Adonais", with Introduction and Notes, was printed for private circulation by Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B. Ten years later a reprint 'in exact facsimile' of the Pisa edition was edited with a Bibliographical Introduction by Mr. T.J. Wise ("Shelley Society Publications", 2nd Series, No. 1, Reeves & Turner, London, 1886). Our text is that of the editio princeps, Pisa, 1821, modified by Mrs. Shelley's text of 1839. The readings of the editio princeps, wherever superseded, are recorded in the footnotes. The Editor's Notes at the end of the Volume 3 should be consulted.]
PREFACE.
Pharmakon elthe, Bion, poti son stoma, pharmakon eides. pos ten tois cheilessi potesrame, kouk eglukanthe; tis de Brotos tossouton anameros, e kerasai toi, e dounai laleonti to pharmakon; ekphugen odan. --MOSCHUS, EPITAPH. BION.
It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem a criticism upon the claims of its lamented object to be classed among the writers of the highest genius who have adorned our age. My known repugnance to the narrow principles of taste on which several of his earlier compositions were modelled prove at least that I am an impartial judge. I consider the fragment of "Hyperion" as second to nothing that was ever produced by a writer of the same years.
John Keats died at Rome of a consumption, in his twenty-fourth year, on the -- of -- 1821; and was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
The genius of the lamented person to whose memory I have dedicated these unworthy verses was not less delicate and fragile than it was beautiful; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder if its young flower was blighted in the bud? The savage criticism on his "Endymion", which appeared in the "Quarterly Review", produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind; the agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs; a rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgements from more candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.
It may be well said that these wretched men know not what they do. They scatter their insults and their slanders without heed as to whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by many blows or one like Keats's composed of more penetrable stuff. One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and unprincipled calumniator. As to "Endymion", was it a poem, whatever might be its defects, to be treated contemptuously by those who had celebrated, with various degrees of complacency and panegyric, "Paris", and "Woman", and a "Syrian Tale", and Mrs. Lefanu, and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne, and a long list of the illustrious obscure? Are these the men who in their venal good nature presumed to draw a parallel between the Reverend Mr. Milman and Lord Byron? What gnat did they strain at here, after having swallowed all those camels? Against what woman taken in adultery dares the foremost of these literary prostitutes to cast his opprobrious stone? Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse, that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers, but used none.
The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's life were not made known to me until the "Elegy" was ready for the press. I am given to understand that the wound which his sensitive spirit had received from the criticism of "Endymion" was exasperated by the bitter sense of unrequited benefits; the poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius, than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care. He was accompanied to Rome, and attended in his last illness by Mr. Severn, a young artist of the highest promise, who, I have been informed, 'almost risked his own life, and sacrificed every prospect to unwearied attendance upon his dying friend.' Had I known these circumstances before the completion of my poem, I should have been tempted to add my feeble tribute of applause to the more solid recompense which the virtuous man finds in the recollection of his own motives. Mr. Severn can dispense with a reward from 'such stuff as dreams are made of.' His conduct is a golden augury of the success of his future career--may the unextinguished Spirit of his illustrious friend animate the creations of his pencil, and plead against Oblivion for his name!
***
ADONAIS.
I weep for Adonais--he is dead! O, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, _5 And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity!"
2. Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, _10 When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies In darkness? where was lorn Urania When Adonais died? With veiled eyes, 'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, _15 Rekindled all the fading melodies, With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death.
3. Oh, weep for Adonais--he is dead! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep! _20 Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep; For he is gone, where all things wise and fair Descend;--oh, dream not that the amorous Deep _25 Will yet restore him to the vital air; Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.
4. Most musical of mourners, weep again! Lament anew, Urania!--He died, Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, _30 Blind, old and lonely, when his country's pride, The priest, the slave, and the liberticide, Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified, Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite _35 Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.
5. Most musical of mourners, weep anew! Not all to that bright station dared to climb; And happier they their happiness who knew, Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time _40 In which suns perished; others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or god, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime; And some yet live, treading the thorny road, Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode. _45
6. But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished-- The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew; Most musical of mourners, weep anew! _50 Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste; The broken lily lies--the storm is overpast.
7. To that high Capital, where kingly Death _55 Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came; and bought, with price of purest breath, A grave among the eternal.--Come away! Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still _60 He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay; Awake him not! surely he takes his fill Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.
8. He will awake no more, oh, never more!-- Within the twilight chamber spreads apace _65 The shadow of white Death, and at the door Invisible Corruption waits to trace His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place; The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface _70 So fair a prey, till darkness and the law Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.
9. Oh, weep for Adonais!--The quick Dreams, The passion-winged Ministers of thought, Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams _75 Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught The love which was its music, wander not,-- Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, _80 They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.
10. And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head, And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries; 'Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead; See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, _85 Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.' Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise! She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain. _90
11. One from a lucid urn of starry dew Washed his light limbs as if embalming them; Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw The wreath upon him, like an anadem, Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem; _95 Another in her wilful grief would break Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem A greater loss with one which was more weak; And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.
12. Another Splendour on his mouth alit, _100 That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit, And pass into the panting heart beneath With lightning and with music: the damp death Quenched its caress upon his icy lips; _105 And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips, It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.
13. And others came...Desires and Adorations, Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, _110 Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies; And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, _115 Came in slow pomp;--the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.
14. All he had loved, and moulded into thought, From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound, Lamented Adonais. Morning sought _120 Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound, Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground, Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day; Afar the melancholy thunder moaned, Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, _125 And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
15. Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, And feeds her grief with his remembered lay, And will no more reply to winds or fountains, Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray, _130 Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day; Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear Than those for whose disdain she pined away Into a shadow of all sounds:--a drear Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear. _135
16. Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were, Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown, For whom should she have waked the sullen year? To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear _140 Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere Amid the faint companions of their youth, With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.
17. Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale _145 Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain; Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain, Soaring and screaming round her empty nest, _150 As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!
18. Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year; _155 The airs and streams renew their joyous tone; The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear; Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier; The amorous birds now pair in every brake, And build their mossy homes in field and brere; _160 And the green lizard, and the golden snake, Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.
19. Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst As it has ever done, with change and motion, _165 From the great morning of the world when first God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed, The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light; All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst; Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight, _170 The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.
20. The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender, Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath; Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death _175 And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath; Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows Be as a sword consumed before the sheath By sightless lightning?--the intense atom glows A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose. _180
21. Alas! that all we loved of him should be, But for our grief, as if it had not been, And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me! Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene The actors or spectators? Great and mean _185 Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow. As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
22. HE will awake no more, oh, never more! _190 'Wake thou,' cried Misery, 'childless Mother, rise Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core, A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.' And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes, And all the Echoes whom their sister's song _195 Had held in holy silence, cried: 'Arise!' Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung, From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.
23. She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs Out of the East, and follows wild and drear _200 The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, Even as a ghost abandoning a bier, Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear So struck, so roused, so rapped Urania; So saddened round her like an atmosphere _205 Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
24. Out of her secret Paradise she sped, Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel, And human hearts, which to her aery tread _210 Yielding not, wounded the invisible Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell: And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they, Rent the soft Form they never could repel, Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May, _215 Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.
25. In the death-chamber for a moment Death, Shamed by the presence of that living Might, Blushed to annihilation, and the breath Revisited those lips, and Life's pale light _220 Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight. 'Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless, As silent lightning leaves the starless night! Leave me not!' cried Urania: her distress Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress. _225
26. 'Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again; Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; And in my heartless breast and burning brain That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive, With food of saddest memory kept alive, _230 Now thou art dead, as if it were a part Of thee, my Adonais! I would give All that I am to be as thou now art! But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!
27. 'O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, _235 Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart Dare the unpastured dragon in his den? Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear? _240 Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere, The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.
28. 'The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead; _245 The vultures to the conqueror's banner true Who feed where Desolation first has fed, And whose wings rain contagion;--how they fled, When, like Apollo, from his golden bow The Pythian of the age one arrow sped _250 And smiled!--The spoilers tempt no second blow, They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.
29. 'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn; He sets, and each ephemeral insect then Is gathered into death without a dawn, _255 And the immortal stars awake again; So is it in the world of living men: A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light _260 Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night.'
30. Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came, Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent; The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, _265 An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue. _270
31. Midst others of less note, came one frail Form, A phantom among men; companionless As the last cloud of an expiring storm Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess, Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness, _275 Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness, And his own thoughts, along that rugged way, Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.
32. A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift-- _280 A Love in desolation masked;--a Power Girt round with weakness;--it can scarce uplift The weight of the superincumbent hour; It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, A breaking billow;--even whilst we speak _285 Is it not broken? On the withering flower The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.
33. His head was bound with pansies overblown, And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue; _290 And a light spear topped with a cypress cone, Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew, Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew _295 He came the last, neglected and apart; A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.
34. All stood aloof, and at his partial moan Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band Who in another's fate now wept his own, _300 As in the accents of an unknown land He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned The Stranger's mien, and murmured: 'Who art thou?' He answered not, but with a sudden hand Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow, _305 Which was like Cain's or Christ's--oh! that it should be so!
35. What softer voice is hushed over the dead? Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown? What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed, In mockery of monumental stone, _310 The heavy heart heaving without a moan? If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one, Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs, The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice. _315
36. Our Adonais has drunk poison--oh! What deaf and viperous murderer could crown Life's early cup with such a draught of woe? The nameless worm would now itself disown: It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone _320 Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong, But what was howling in one breast alone, Silent with expectation of the song, Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.
37. Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! _325 Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me, Thou noteless blot on a remembered name! But be thyself, and know thyself to be! And ever at thy season be thou free To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow; _330 Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee; Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt--as now.
38. Nor let us weep that our delight is fled Far from these carrion kites that scream below; _335 He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead; Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now-- Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow Back to the burning fountain whence it came, A portion of the Eternal, which must glow _340 Through time and change, unquenchably the same, Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.
39. Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep-- He hath awakened from the dream of life-- 'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep _345 With phantoms an unprofitable strife, And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife Invulnerable nothings.--WE decay Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief Convulse us and consume us day by day, _350 And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.
40. He has outsoared the shadow of our night; Envy and calumny and hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; _355 From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain; Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn, With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. _360
41. He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he; Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou young Dawn, Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan! _365 Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air, Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!
42. He is made one with Nature: there is heard _370 His voice in all her music, from the moan Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird; He is a presence to be felt and known In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, Spreading itself where'er that Power may move _375 Which has withdrawn his being to its own; Which wields the world with never-wearied love, Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
43. He is a portion of the loveliness Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear _380 His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there All new successions to the forms they wear; Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight To its own likeness, as each mass may bear; _385 And bursting in its beauty and its might From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.
44. The splendours of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb, _390 And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, And love and life contend in it, for what Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there _395 And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.
45. The inheritors of unfulfilled renown Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought, Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton Rose pale,--his solemn agony had not _400 Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought And as he fell and as he lived and loved Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot, Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved: Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved. _405
46. And many more, whose names on Earth are dark, But whose transmitted effluence cannot die So long as fire outlives the parent spark, Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 'Thou art become as one of us,' they cry, _410 'It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long Swung blind in unascended majesty, Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song. Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!'
47. Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth, _415 Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright. Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth; As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might Satiate the void circumference: then shrink _420 Even to a point within our day and night; And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.
48. Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre, Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought _425 That ages, empires and religions there Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought; For such as he can lend,--they borrow not Glory from those who made the world their prey; And he is gathered to the kings of thought _430 Who waged contention with their time's decay, And of the past are all that cannot pass away.
49. Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness; And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, _435 And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation's nakedness Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead _440 A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;
50. And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand; And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime, Pavilioning the dust of him who planned _445 This refuge for his memory, doth stand Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath, A field is spread, on which a newer band Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath. _450
51. Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned Its charge to each; and if the seal is set, Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind, Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find Thine own well full, if thou returnest home, Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. What Adonais is, why fear we to become?
52. The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek! Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky, Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.
53. Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart? Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here They have departed; thou shouldst now depart! A light is passed from the revolving year, And man, and woman; and what still is dear Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither. The soft sky smiles,--the low wind whispers near: 'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither, No more let Life divide what Death can join together.
54. That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me, Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.
55. The breath whose might I have invoked in song Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven, Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng Whose sails were never to the tempest given; The massy earth and sphered skies are riven! I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar; Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven, The soul of Adonais, like a star, Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are. _495
NOTES: _49 true-love]true love editions 1821, 1839. _72 Of change, etc. so editions 1829 (Galignani), 1839; Of mortal change, shall fill the grave which is her maw edition 1821. _81 or edition 1821; nor edition 1839. _105 his edition 1821; its edition 1839. _126 round edition 1821; around edition 1839. _143 faint companions edition 1839; drooping comrades edition 1821. _204 See Editor's Note. _252 lying low edition 1839; as they go edition 1821.
CANCELLED PASSAGES OF ADONAIS.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862.]
PASSAGES OF THE PREFACE.
...the expression of my indignation and sympathy. I will allow myself a first and last word on the subject of calumny as it relates to me. As an author I have dared and invited censure. If I understand myself, I have written neither for profit nor for fame. I have employed my poetical compositions and publications simply as the instruments of that sympathy between myself and others which the ardent and unbounded love I cherished for my kind incited me to acquire. I expected all sorts of stupidity and insolent contempt from those...
...These compositions (excepting the tragedy of "The Cenci", which was written rather to try my powers than to unburthen my full heart) are insufficiently...commendation than perhaps they deserve, even from their bitterest enemies; but they have not attained any corresponding popularity. As a man, I shrink from notice and regard; the ebb and flow of the world vexes me; I desire to be left in peace. Persecution, contumely, and calumny have been heaped upon me in profuse measure; and domestic conspiracy and legal oppression have violated in my person the most sacred rights of nature and humanity. The bigot will say it was the recompense of my errors; the man of the world will call it the result of my imprudence; but never upon one head...
...Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thieftaker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic. But a young spirit panting for fame, doubtful of its powers, and certain only of its aspirations, is ill qualified to assign its true value to the sneer of this world. He knows not that such stuff as this is of the abortive and monstrous births which time consumes as fast as it produces. He sees the truth and falsehood, the merits and demerits, of his case inextricably entangled...No personal offence should have drawn from me this public comment upon such stuff...
...The offence of this poor victim seems to have consisted solely in his intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Mr. Hazlitt, and some other enemies of despotism and superstition. My friend Hunt has a very hard skull to crack, and will take a deal of killing. I do not know much of Mr. Hazlitt, but...
...I knew personally but little of Keats; but on the news of his situation I wrote to him, suggesting the propriety of trying the Italian climate, and inviting him to join me. Unfortunately he did not allow me...
PASSAGES OF THE POEM.
And ever as he went he swept a lyre Of unaccustomed shape, and ... strings Now like the ... of impetuous fire, Which shakes the forest with its murmurings, Now like the rush of the aereal wings _5 Of the enamoured wind among the treen, Whispering unimaginable things, And dying on the streams of dew serene, Which feed the unmown meads with ever-during green.
...
And the green Paradise which western waves _10 Embosom in their ever-wailing sweep, Talking of freedom to their tongueless caves, Or to the spirits which within them keep A record of the wrongs which, though they sleep, Die not, but dream of retribution, heard _15 His hymns, and echoing them from steep to steep, Kept--
...
And then came one of sweet and earnest looks, Whose soft smiles to his dark and night-like eyes Were as the clear and ever-living brooks _20 Are to the obscure fountains whence they rise, Showing how pure they are: a Paradise Of happy truth upon his forehead low Lay, making wisdom lovely, in the guise Of earth-awakening morn upon the brow _25 Of star-deserted heaven, while ocean gleams below.
His song, though very sweet, was low and faint, A simple strain--
...
A mighty Phantasm, half concealed In darkness of his own exceeding light, _30 Which clothed his awful presence unrevealed, Charioted on the ... night Of thunder-smoke, whose skirts were chrysolite.
And like a sudden meteor, which outstrips The splendour-winged chariot of the sun, _35 ... eclipse The armies of the golden stars, each one Pavilioned in its tent of light--all strewn Over the chasms of blue night--
***
HELLAS
A LYRICAL DRAMA.
MANTIS EIM EZTHLON AGONUN.--OEDIP. COLON.
["Hellas" was composed at Pisa in the autumn of 1821, and dispatched to London, November 11. It was published, with the author's name, by C. & J. Ollier in the spring of 1822. A transcript of the poem by Edward Williams is in the Rowfant Library. Ollier availed himself of Shelley's permission to cancel certain passages in the notes; he also struck out certain lines of the text. These omissions were, some of them, restored in Galignani's one-volume edition of "Coleridge, Shelley and Keats", Paris, 1829, and also by Mrs. Shelley in the "Poetical Works", 1839. A passage in the "Preface", suppressed by Ollier, was restored by Mr. Buxton Forman (1892) from a proof copy of "Hellas" in his possession. The "Prologue to Hellas" was edited by Dr. Garnett in 1862 ("Relics of Shelley") from the manuscripts at Boscombe Manor.
Our text is that of the editio princeps, 1822, corrected by a list of "Errata" sent by Shelley to Ollier, April 11, 1822. The Editor's Notes at the end of Volume 3 should be consulted.]
TO HIS EXCELLENCY
PRINCE ALEXANDER MAVROCORDATO
LATE SECRETARY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS TO THE HOSPODAR OF WALLACHIA
THE DRAMA OF HELLAS IS INSCRIBED AS AN
IMPERFECT TOKEN OF THE ADMIRATION,
SYMPATHY, AND FRIENDSHIP OF
THE AUTHOR.
Pisa, November 1, 1821.
PREFACE.
The poem of "Hellas", written at the suggestion of the events of the moment, is a mere improvise, and derives its interest (should it be found to possess any) solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause he would celebrate.
The subject, in its present state, is insusceptible of being treated otherwise than lyrically, and if I have called this poem a drama from the circumstance of its being composed in dialogue, the licence is not greater than that which has been assumed by other poets who have called their productions epics, only because they have been divided into twelve or twenty-four books.
The "Persae" of Aeschylus afforded me the first model of my conception, although the decision of the glorious contest now waging in Greece being yet suspended forbids a catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians. I have, therefore, contented myself with exhibiting a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the cause of civilisation and social improvement.
The drama (if drama it must be called) is, however, so inartificial that I doubt whether, if recited on the Thespian waggon to an Athenian village at the Dionysiaca, it would have obtained the prize of the goat. I shall bear with equanimity any punishment, greater than the loss of such a reward, which the Aristarchi of the hour may think fit to inflict.
The only "goat-song" which I have yet attempted has, I confess, in spite of the unfavourable nature of the subject, received a greater and a more valuable portion of applause than I expected or than it deserved.
Common fame is the only authority which I can allege for the details which form the basis of the poem, and I must trespass upon the forgiveness of my readers for the display of newspaper erudition to which I have been reduced. Undoubtedly, until the conclusion of the war, it will be impossible to obtain an account of it sufficiently authentic for historical materials; but poets have their privilege, and it is unquestionable that actions of the most exalted courage have been performed by the Greeks--that they have gained more than one naval victory, and that their defeat in Wallachia was signalized by circumstances of heroism more glorious even than victory.
The apathy of the rulers of the civilised world to the astonishing circumstance of the descendants of that nation to which they owe their civilisation, rising as it were from the ashes of their ruin, is something perfectly inexplicable to a mere spectator of the shows of this mortal scene. We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece. But for Greece--Rome, the instructor, the conqueror, or the metropolis of our ancestors, would have spread no illumination with her arms, and we might still have been savages and idolaters; or, what is worse, might have arrived at such a stagnant and miserable state of social institution as China and Japan possess.
The human form and the human mind attained to a perfection in Greece which has impressed its image on those faultless productions, whose very fragments are the despair of modern art, and has propagated impulses which cannot cease, through a thousand channels of manifest or imperceptible operation, to ennoble and delight mankind until the extinction of the race.
The modern Greek is the descendant of those glorious beings whom the imagination almost refuses to figure to itself as belonging to our kind, and he inherits much of their sensibility, their rapidity of conception, their enthusiasm, and their courage. If in many instances he is degraded by moral and political slavery to the practice of the basest vices it engenders--and that below the level of ordinary degradation--let us reflect that the corruption of the best produces the worst, and that habits which subsist only in relation to a peculiar state of social institution may be expected to cease as soon as that relation is dissolved. In fact, the Greeks, since the admirable novel of Anastasius could have been a faithful picture of their manners, have undergone most important changes; the flower of their youth, returning to their country from the universities of Italy, Germany, and France, have communicated to their fellow-citizens the latest results of that social perfection of which their ancestors were the original source. The University of Chios contained before the breaking out of the revolution eight hundred students, and among them several Germans and Americans. The munificence and energy of many of the Greek princes and merchants, directed to the renovation of their country with a spirit and a wisdom which has few examples, is above all praise.
The English permit their own oppressors to act according to their natural sympathy with the Turkish tyrant, and to brand upon their name the indelible blot of an alliance with the enemies of domestic happiness, of Christianity and civilisation.
Russia desires to possess, not to liberate Greece; and is contented to see the Turks, its natural enemies, and the Greeks, its intended slaves, enfeeble each other until one or both fall into its net. The wise and generous policy of England would have consisted in establishing the independence of Greece, and in maintaining it both against Russia and the Turk;--but when was the oppressor generous or just?
[Should the English people ever become free, they will reflect upon the part which those who presume to represent their will have played in the great drama of the revival of liberty, with feelings which it would become them to anticipate. This is the age of the war of the oppressed against the oppressors, and every one of those ringleaders of the privileged gangs of murderers and swindlers, called Sovereigns, look to each other for aid against the common enemy, and suspend their mutual jealousies in the presence of a mightier fear. Of this holy alliance all the despots of the earth are virtual members. But a new race has arisen throughout Europe, nursed in the abhorrence of the opinions which are its chains, and she will continue to produce fresh generations to accomplish that destiny which tyrants foresee and dread. (This paragraph, suppressed in 1822 by Charles Ollier, was first restored in 1892 by Mr. Buxton Forman ["Poetical Works of P. B. S.", volume 4 pages 40-41] from a proof copy of Hellas in his possession.]
The Spanish Peninsula is already free. France is tranquil in the enjoyment of a partial exemption from the abuses which its unnatural and feeble government are vainly attempting to revive. The seed of blood and misery has been sown in Italy, and a more vigorous race is arising to go forth to the harvest. The world waits only the news of a revolution of Germany to see the tyrants who have pinnacled themselves on its supineness precipitated into the ruin from which they shall never arise. Well do these destroyers of mankind know their enemy, when they impute the insurrection in Greece to the same spirit before which they tremble throughout the rest of Europe, and that enemy well knows the power and the cunning of its opponents, and watches the moment of their approaching weakness and inevitable division to wrest the bloody sceptres from their grasp.
PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.
HERALD OF ETERNITY: It is the day when all the sons of God Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline
...
The shadow of God, and delegate _5 Of that before whose breath the universe Is as a print of dew. Hierarchs and kings Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom _10 Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation Steaming from earth, conceals the ... of heaven Which gave it birth. ... assemble here Before your Father's throne; the swift decree Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation _15 Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall annul The fairest of those wandering isles that gem The sapphire space of interstellar air, That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped _20 Less in the beauty of its tender light Than in an atmosphere of living spirit Which interpenetrating all the ... it rolls from realm to realm And age to age, and in its ebb and flow _25 Impels the generations To their appointed place, Whilst the high Arbiter Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time Sends His decrees veiled in eternal... _30
Within the circuit of this pendent orb There lies an antique region, on which fell The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung Temples and cities and immortal forms _35 And harmonies of wisdom and of song, And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair. And when the sun of its dominion failed, And when the winter of its glory came, The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept _40 That dew into the utmost wildernesses In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed The unmaternal bosom of the North. Haste, sons of God, ... for ye beheld, Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished, _45 The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece Ruin and degradation and despair. A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God, To speed or to prevent or to suspend, If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld, _50 The unaccomplished destiny.
NOTE: _8 your Garnett; yon Forman, Dowden.
...
CHORUS: The curtain of the Universe Is rent and shattered, The splendour-winged worlds disperse Like wild doves scattered. _55
Space is roofless and bare, And in the midst a cloudy shrine, Dark amid thrones of light. In the blue glow of hyaline Golden worlds revolve and shine. _60 In ... flight From every point of the Infinite, Like a thousand dawns on a single night The splendours rise and spread; And through thunder and darkness dread _65 Light and music are radiated, And in their pavilioned chariots led By living wings high overhead The giant Powers move, Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill. _70
...
A chaos of light and motion Upon that glassy ocean.
...
The senate of the Gods is met, Each in his rank and station set; There is silence in the spaces-- _75 Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet Start from their places!
CHRIST: Almighty Father! Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny
...
There are two fountains in which spirits weep _80 When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named, And with their bitter dew two Destinies Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion's lymph, _85 And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain
...
The Aurora of the nations. By this brow Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds, By this imperial crown of agony, By infamy and solitude and death, _90 For this I underwent, and by the pain Of pity for those who would ... for me The unremembered joy of a revenge, For this I felt--by Plato's sacred light, Of which my spirit was a burning morrow-- _95 By Greece and all she cannot cease to be. Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth, Stars of all night--her harmonies and forms, Echoes and shadows of what Love adores In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate, _100 Thy irrevocable child: let her descend, A seraph-winged Victory [arrayed] In tempest of the omnipotence of God Which sweeps through all things.
From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms _105 Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies To stamp, as on a winged serpent's seed, Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens The solid heart of enterprise; from all _110 By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits Are stars beneath the dawn... She shall arise Victorious as the world arose from Chaos! And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed Their presence in the beauty and the light _115 Of Thy first smile, O Father,--as they gather The spirit of Thy love which paves for them Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere Shall be one living Spirit,--so shall Greece--
SATAN: Be as all things beneath the empyrean, _120 Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny, Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns? Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn; For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor _125 The innumerable worlds of golden light Which are my empire, and the least of them which thou wouldst redeem from me? Know'st thou not them my portion? Or wouldst rekindle the ... strife _130 Which our great Father then did arbitrate Which he assigned to his competing sons Each his apportioned realm? Thou Destiny, Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence Of Him who tends thee forth, whate'er thy task, _135 Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine Thy trophies, whether Greece again become The fountain in the desert whence the earth Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death _140 To swallow all delight, all life, all hope. Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less Than of the Father's; but lest thou shouldst faint, The winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence, Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forked snake _145 Insatiate Superstition still shall... The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings, Convulsing and consuming, and I add _150 Three vials of the tears which daemons weep When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death Pass triumphing over the thorns of life, Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares, Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates. _155 The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure, Glory and science and security, On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree, Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes. The second Tyranny--
CHRIST: Obdurate spirit! _160 Thou seest but the Past in the To-come. Pride is thy error and thy punishment. Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops Before the Power that wields and kindles them. _165 True greatness asks not space, true excellence Lives in the Spirit of all things that live, Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine.
...
MAHOMET: ...Haste thou and fill the waning crescent With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow _170 Of Christian night rolled back upon the West, When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow.
...
Wake, thou Word Of God, and from the throne of Destiny _175 Even to the utmost limit of thy way May Triumph
...
Be thou a curse on them whose creed Divides and multiplies the most high God.
HELLAS.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
MAHMUD. HASSAN. DAOOD. AHASUERUS, A JEW. CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN. [THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET II. (OMITTED, EDITION 1822.)] MESSENGERS, SLAVES, AND ATTENDANTS.
SCENE: CONSTANTINOPLE.
TIME: SUNSET.
SCENE: A TERRACE ON THE SERAGLIO. MAHMUD SLEEPING, AN INDIAN SLAVE SITTING BESIDE HIS COUCH.
CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN: We strew these opiate flowers On thy restless pillow,-- They were stripped from Orient bowers, By the Indian billow. Be thy sleep _5 Calm and deep, Like theirs who fell--not ours who weep!
INDIAN: Away, unlovely dreams! Away, false shapes of sleep Be his, as Heaven seems, _10 Clear, and bright, and deep! Soft as love, and calm as death, Sweet as a summer night without a breath.
CHORUS: Sleep, sleep! our song is laden With the soul of slumber; _15 It was sung by a Samian maiden, Whose lover was of the number Who now keep That calm sleep Whence none may wake, where none shall weep. _20
INDIAN: I touch thy temples pale! I breathe my soul on thee! And could my prayers avail, All my joy should be Dead, and I would live to weep, _25 So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.
CHORUS: Breathe low, low The spell of the mighty mistress now! When Conscience lulls her sated snake, And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake. _30 Breathe low--low The words which, like secret fire, shall flow Through the veins of the frozen earth--low, low!
SEMICHORUS 1: Life may change, but it may fly not; Hope may vanish, but can die not; _35 Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; Love repulsed,--but it returneth!
SEMICHORUS 2: Yet were life a charnel where Hope lay coffined with Despair; Yet were truth a sacred lie, _40 Love were lust--
SEMICHORUS 1: If Liberty Lent not life its soul of light, Hope its iris of delight, Truth its prophet's robe to wear, Love its power to give and bear. _45
CHORUS: In the great morning of the world, The Spirit of God with might unfurled The flag of Freedom over Chaos, And all its banded anarchs fled, Like vultures frighted from Imaus, _50 Before an earthquake's tread.-- So from Time's tempestuous dawn Freedom's splendour burst and shone:-- Thermopylae and Marathon Caught like mountains beacon-lighted, _55 The springing Fire.--The winged glory On Philippi half-alighted, Like an eagle on a promontory. Its unwearied wings could fan The quenchless ashes of Milan. _60 From age to age, from man to man, It lived; and lit from land to land Florence, Albion, Switzerland.
Then night fell; and, as from night, Reassuming fiery flight, _65 From the West swift Freedom came, Against the course of Heaven and doom. A second sun arrayed in flame, To burn, to kindle, to illume. From far Atlantis its young beams _70 Chased the shadows and the dreams. France, with all her sanguine steams, Hid, but quenched it not; again Through clouds its shafts of glory rain From utmost Germany to Spain. _75 As an eagle fed with morning Scorns the embattled tempest's warning, When she seeks her aerie hanging In the mountain-cedar's hair, And her brood expect the clanging _80 Of her wings through the wild air, Sick with famine:--Freedom, so To what of Greece remaineth now Returns; her hoary ruins glow Like Orient mountains lost in day; _85 Beneath the safety of her wings Her renovated nurslings prey, And in the naked lightenings Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. Let Freedom leave--where'er she flies, _90 A Desert, or a Paradise: Let the beautiful and the brave Share her glory, or a grave.
NOTES: _77 tempest's]tempests edition 1822. _87 prey edition 1822; play editions 1839.
SEMICHORUS 1: With the gifts of gladness Greece did thy cradle strew; _95
SEMICHORUS 2: With the tears of sadness Greece did thy shroud bedew!
SEMICHORUS 1: With an orphan's affection She followed thy bier through Time;
SEMICHORUS 2: And at thy resurrection _100 Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!
SEMICHORUS 1: If Heaven should resume thee, To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;
SEMICHORUS 2: If Hell should entomb thee, To Hell shall her high hearts bend. _105
SEMICHORUS 1: If Annihilation--
SEMICHORUS 2: Dust let her glories be! And a name and a nation Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee!
INDIAN: His brow grows darker--breathe not--move not! _110 He starts--he shudders--ye that love not, With your panting loud and fast, Have awakened him at last.
MAHMUD [STARTING FROM HIS SLEEP]: Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate! What! from a cannonade of three short hours? _115 'Tis false! that breach towards the Bosphorus Cannot be practicable yet--who stirs? Stand to the match; that when the foe prevails One spark may mix in reconciling ruin The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower _120 Into the gap--wrench off the roof! [ENTER HASSAN.] Ha! what! The truth of day lightens upon my dream And I am Mahmud still.
HASSAN: Your Sublime Highness Is strangely moved.
MAHMUD: The times do cast strange shadows On those who watch and who must rule their course, _125 Lest they, being first in peril as in glory, Be whelmed in the fierce ebb:--and these are of them. Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me As thus from sleep into the troubled day; It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea, _130 Leaving no figure upon memory's glass. Would that--no matter. Thou didst say thou knewest A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle Of strange and secret and forgotten things. I bade thee summon him:--'tis said his tribe _135 Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.
HASSAN: The Jew of whom I spake is old,--so old He seems to have outlived a world's decay; The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean Seem younger still than he;--his hair and beard _140 Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow; His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct With light, and to the soul that quickens them Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift _145 To the winter wind:--but from his eye looks forth A life of unconsumed thought which pierces The Present, and the Past, and the To-come. Some say that this is he whom the great prophet Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery, _150 Mocked with the curse of immortality. Some feign that he is Enoch: others dream He was pre-adamite and has survived Cycles of generation and of ruin. The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence _155 And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh, Deep contemplation, and unwearied study, In years outstretched beyond the date of man, May have attained to sovereignty and science Over those strong and secret things and thoughts _160 Which others fear and know not.
MAHMUD: I would talk With this old Jew.
HASSAN: Thy will is even now Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern 'Mid the Demonesi, less accessible Than thou or God! He who would question him _165 Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream Of Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles, When the young moon is westering as now, And evening airs wander upon the wave; And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle, _170 Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water, Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud 'Ahasuerus!' and the caverns round Will answer 'Ahasuerus!' If his prayer _175 Be granted, a faint meteor will arise Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest, And with the wind a storm of harmony Unutterably sweet, and pilot him _180 Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus: Thence at the hour and place and circumstance Fit for the matter of their conference The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare Win the desired communion--but that shout _185 Bodes--
[A SHOUT WITHIN.]
MAHMUD: Evil, doubtless; Like all human sounds. Let me converse with spirits.
HASSAN: That shout again.
MAHMUD: This Jew whom thou hast summoned--
HASSAN: Will be here--
MAHMUD: When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked He, I, and all things shall compel--enough! _190 Silence those mutineers--that drunken crew, That crowd about the pilot in the storm. Ay! strike the foremost shorter by a head! They weary me, and I have need of rest. Kinks are like stars--they rise and set, they have _195 The worship of the world, but no repose.
[EXEUNT SEVERALLY.]
CHORUS: Worlds on worlds are rolling ever From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river Sparkling, bursting, borne away. _200 But they are still immortal Who, through birth's orient portal And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, Clothe their unceasing flight In the brief dust and light _205 Gathered around their chariots as they go; New shapes they still may weave, New gods, new laws receive, Bright or dim are they as the robes they last On Death's bare ribs had cast. _210
A power from the unknown God, A Promethean conqueror, came; Like a triumphal path he trod The thorns of death and shame. A mortal shape to him _215 Was like the vapour dim Which the orient planet animates with light; Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, Like bloodhounds mild and tame, Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight; _220 The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set: While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon The cross leads generations on.
Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep _225 From one whose dreams are Paradise Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep, And Day peers forth with her blank eyes; So fleet, so faint, so fair, The Powers of earth and air _230 Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem: Apollo, Pan, and Love, And even Olympian Jove Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them; Our hills and seas and streams, _235 Dispeopled of their dreams, Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears, Wailed for the golden years.
[ENTER MAHMUD, HASSAN, DAOOD, AND OTHERS.]
MAHMUD: More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory, And shall I sell it for defeat?
DAOOD: The Janizars _240 Clamour for pay.
MAHMUD: Go! bid them pay themselves With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy? No infidel children to impale on spears? No hoary priests after that Patriarch _245 Who bent the curse against his country's heart, Which clove his own at last? Go! bid them kill, Blood is the seed of gold.
DAOOD: It has been sown, And yet the harvest to the sicklemen Is as a grain to each.
MAHMUD: Then, take this signet, _250 Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie The treasures of victorious Solyman,-- An empire's spoil stored for a day of ruin. O spirit of my sires! is it not come? The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep; _255 But these, who spread their feast on the red earth, Hunger for gold, which fills not.--See them fed; Then, lead them to the rivers of fresh death. [EXIT DAOOD.] O miserable dawn, after a night More glorious than the day which it usurped! _260 O faith in God! O power on earth! O word Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing wings Darkened the thrones and idols of the West, Now bright!--For thy sake cursed be the hour, Even as a father by an evil child, _265 When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph From Caucasus to White Ceraunia! Ruin above, and anarchy below; Terror without, and treachery within; The Chalice of destruction full, and all _270 Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares To dash it from his lips? and where is Hope?
HASSAN: The lamp of our dominion still rides high; One God is God--Mahomet is His prophet. Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits _275 Of utmost Asia, irresistibly Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco's cry; But not like them to weep their strength in tears: They bear destroying lightning, and their step Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm, _280 And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus, Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen With horrent arms; and lofty ships even now, Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge, Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala _285 The convoy of the ever-veering wind. Samos is drunk with blood;--the Greek has paid Brief victory with swift loss and long despair. The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far When the fierce shout of 'Allah-illa-Allah!' _290 Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm. So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day! If night is mute, yet the returning sun _295 Kindles the voices of the morning birds; Nor at thy bidding less exultingly Than birds rejoicing in the golden day, The Anarchies of Africa unleash Their tempest-winged cities of the sea, _300 To speak in thunder to the rebel world. Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm, They sweep the pale Aegean, while the Queen Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne, Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons _305 Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee: Russia still hovers, as an eagle might Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane Hang tangled in inextricable fight, To stoop upon the victor;--for she fears _310 The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine. But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy, And howl upon their limits; for they see _315 The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover, Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood Crouch round. What Anarch wears a crown or mitre, Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold, Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes? _320 Our arsenals and our armouries are full; Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannon Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city; The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale _325 The Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth. Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds, Over the hills of Anatolia, Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry _330 Sweep;--the far flashing of their starry lances Reverberates the dying light of day. We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law; But many-headed Insurrection stands Divided in itself, and soon must fall. _335
NOTES: _253 spoil edition 1822; spoils editions 1839. _279 bear edition 1822; have editions 1839. _322 assault edition 1822; assaults editions 1839.
MAHMUD: Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable: Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud Which leads the rear of the departing day; Wan emblem of an empire fading now! _340 See how it trembles in the blood-red air, And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from above, One star with insolent and victorious light Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams, _345 Like arrows through a fainting antelope, Strikes its weak form to death.
HASSAN: Even as that moon Renews itself--
MAHMUD: Shall we be not renewed! Far other bark than ours were needed now To stem the torrent of descending time: _350 The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lord Stalks through the capitals of armed kings, And spreads his ensign in the wilderness: Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls, Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust; _355 And the inheritors of the earth, like beasts When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear Cower in their kingly dens--as I do now. What were Defeat when Victory must appal? Or Danger, when Security looks pale?-- _360 How said the messenger--who, from the fort Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle Of Bucharest?--that--
NOTES: _351 his edition 1822; its editions 1839. _356 of the earth edition 1822; of earth editions 1839.
HASSAN: Ibrahim's scimitar Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven, To burn before him in the night of battle-- _365 A light and a destruction.
MAHMUD: Ay! the day Was ours: but how?--
HASSAN: The light Wallachians, The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies Fled from the glance of our artillery Almost before the thunderstone alit. _370 One half the Grecian army made a bridge Of safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead; The other--
MAHMUD: Speak--tremble not.--
HASSAN: Islanded By victor myriads, formed in hollow square With rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back _375 The deluge of our foaming cavalry; Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines. Our baffled army trembled like one man Before a host, and gave them space; but soon, From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed, _380 Kneading them down with fire and iron rain: Yet none approached; till, like a field of corn Under the hook of the swart sickleman, The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead, Grew weak and few.--Then said the Pacha, 'Slaves, _385 Render yourselves--they have abandoned you-- What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid? We grant your lives.' 'Grant that which is thine own!' Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died! Another--'God, and man, and hope abandon me; _390 But I to them, and to myself, remain Constant:'--he bowed his head, and his heart burst. A third exclaimed, 'There is a refuge, tyrant, Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.' _395 Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm, The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment Among the slain--dead earth upon the earth! So these survivors, each by different ways, Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable, _400 Met in triumphant death; and when our army Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame Held back the base hyaenas of the battle That feed upon the dead and fly the living, One rose out of the chaos of the slain: _405 And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit Of the old saviours of the land we rule Had lifted in its anger, wandering by;-- Or if there burned within the dying man Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith _410 Creating what it feigned;--I cannot tell-- But he cried, 'Phantoms of the free, we come! Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike To dust the citadels of sanguine kings, And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts, _415 And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew;-- O ye who float around this clime, and weave The garment of the glory which it wears, Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped, Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;-- _420 Progenitors of all that yet is great, Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept In your high ministrations, us, your sons-- Us first, and the more glorious yet to come! And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale _425 When the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread, The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame, Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still They crave the relic of Destruction's feast. The exhalations and the thirsty winds _430 Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death; Heaven's light is quenched in slaughter: thus, where'er Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets, The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast Of these dead limbs,--upon your streams and mountains, _435 Upon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops, Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly, Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down With poisoned light--Famine, and Pestilence, And Panic, shall wage war upon our side! _440 Nature from all her boundaries is moved Against ye: Time has found ye light as foam. The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake Their empire o'er the unborn world of men On this one cast;--but ere the die be thrown, _445 The renovated genius of our race, Proud umpire of the impious game, descends, A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding The tempest of the Omnipotence of God, Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom, _450 And you to oblivion!'--More he would have said, But--
NOTE: _384 band edition 1822; bands editions 1839.
MAHMUD: Died--as thou shouldst ore thy lips had painted Their ruin in the hues of our success. A rebel's crime, gilt with a rebel's tongue! Your heart is Greek, Hassan.
HASSAN: It may be so: _455 A spirit not my own wrenched me within, And I have spoken words I fear and hate; Yet would I die for--
MAHMUD: Live! oh live! outlive Me and this sinking empire. But the fleet--
HASSAN: Alas!--
MAHMUD: The fleet which, like a flock of clouds _460 Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner! Our winged castles from their merchant ships! Our myriads before their weak pirate bands! Our arms before their chains! our years of empire Before their centuries of servile fear! _465 Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters! They own no more the thunder-bearing banner Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed, Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master.
NOTE: _466 Repulse is "Shelley, Errata", edition 1822; Repulsed edition 1822.
HASSAN: Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae saw _470 The wreck--
MAHMUD: The caves of the Icarian isles Told each to the other in loud mockery, And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes, First of the sea-convulsing fight--and, then,-- Thou darest to speak--senseless are the mountains: _475 Interpret thou their voice!
NOTE: _472 Told Errata, Wms. transcript; Hold edition 1822.
HASSAN: My presence bore A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet Bore down at daybreak from the North, and hung As multitudinous on the ocean line, As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind. _480 Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men, Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle Was kindled.-- First through the hail of our artillery The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail _485 Dashed:--ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man To man were grappled in the embrace of war, Inextricable but by death or victory. The tempest of the raging fight convulsed To its crystalline depths that stainless sea, _490 And shook Heaven's roof of golden morning clouds, Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles. In the brief trances of the artillery One cry from the destroyed and the destroyer Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped _495 The unforeseen event, till the north wind Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil Of battle-smoke--then victory--victory! For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon _500 The abhorred cross glimmered behind, before, Among, around us; and that fatal sign Dried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts, As the sun drinks the dew.--What more? We fled!-- Our noonday path over the sanguine foam _505 Was beaconed,--and the glare struck the sun pale,-- By our consuming transports: the fierce light Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red, And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding The ravening fire, even to the water's level; _510 Some were blown up; some, settling heavily, Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far, Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perished! We met the vultures legioned in the air _515 Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind; They, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks, Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched Each on the weltering carcase that we loved, Like its ill angel or its damned soul, _520 Riding upon the bosom of the sea. We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast. Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea, And ravening Famine left his ocean cave To dwell with War, with us, and with Despair. _525 We met night three hours to the west of Patmos, And with night, tempest--
NOTES: _503 in edition 1822; of editions 1839. _527 And edition 1822; As editions 1839.
MAHMUD: Cease!
[ENTER A MESSENGER.]
MESSENGER: Your Sublime Highness, That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador, Has left the city.--If the rebel fleet Had anchored in the port, had victory _530 Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome, Panic were tamer.--Obedience and Mutiny, Like giants in contention planet-struck, Stand gazing on each other.--There is peace In Stamboul.--
MAHMUD: Is the grave not calmer still? _535 Its ruins shall be mine.
HASSAN: Fear not the Russian: The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay Against the hunter.--Cunning, base, and cruel, He crouches, watching till the spoil be won, And must be paid for his reserve in blood. _540 After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields, Rivers and seas, like that which we may win, But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves! _545
[ENTER SECOND MESSENGER.]
SECOND MESSENGER: Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens, Navarin, Artas, Monembasia, Corinth, and Thebes are carried by assault, And every Islamite who made his dogs Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves _550 Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood, Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death; But like a fiery plague breaks out anew In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale In its own light. The garrison of Patras _555 Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant, His wishes still are weaker than his fears, Or he would sell what faith may yet remain From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway; _560 And if you buy him not, your treasury Is empty even of promises--his own coin. The freedman of a western poet-chief Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels, And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont: _565 The aged Ali sits in Yanina A crownless metaphor of empire: His name, that shadow of his withered might, Holds our besieging army like a spell In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny; _570 He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors The ruins of the city where he reigned Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped The costly harvest his own blood matured, _575 Not the sower, Ali--who has bought a truce From Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads Of Indian gold.
NOTE: _563 freedman edition 1822; freeman editions 1839.
[ENTER A THIRD MESSENGER.]
MAHMUD: What more?
THIRD MESSENGER: The Christian tribes Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness Are in revolt;--Damascus, Hems, Aleppo _580 Tremble;--the Arab menaces Medina, The Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar, And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed, Who denies homage, claims investiture As price of tardy aid. Persia demands _585 The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus, Like mountain-twins that from each other's veins Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake-spasm, Shake in the general fever. Through the city, _590 Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek, And prophesyings horrible and new Are heard among the crowd: that sea of men Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still. A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches _595 That it is written how the sins of Islam Must raise up a destroyer even now. The Greeks expect a Saviour from the West, Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory, But in the omnipresence of that Spirit _600 In which all live and are. Ominous signs Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky: One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun; It has rained blood; and monstrous births declare The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord. _605 The army encamped upon the Cydaris Was roused last night by the alarm of battle, And saw two hosts conflicting in the air, The shadows doubtless of the unborn time Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet _610 The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm Which swept the phantoms from among the stars. At the third watch the Spirit of the Plague Was heard abroad flapping among the tents; Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead. _615 The last news from the camp is, that a thousand Have sickened, and--
[ENTER A FOURTH MESSENGER.]
MAHMUD: And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow Of some untimely rumour, speak!
FOURTH MESSENGER: One comes Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood: He stood, he says, on Chelonites' _620 Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters Then trembling in the splendour of the moon, When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets _625 Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer, Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams, And smoke which strangled every infant wind That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air. At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco _630 Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds Over the sea-horizon, blotting out All objects--save that in the faint moon-glimpse He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral And two the loftiest of our ships of war, _635 With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven, Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed; And the abhorred cross--
NOTE: _620 on Chelonites']on Chelonites "Errata"; upon Clelonite's edition 1822; upon Clelonit's editions 1839.
[ENTER AN ATTENDANT.]
ATTENDANT: Your Sublime Highness, The Jew, who--
MAHMUD: Could not come more seasonably: Bid him attend. I'll hear no more! too long _640 We gaze on danger through the mist of fear, And multiply upon our shattered hopes The images of ruin. Come what will! To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps Set in our path to light us to the edge _645 Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught Which He inflicts not in whose hand we are.
[EXEUNT.]
SEMICHORUS 1: Would I were the winged cloud Of a tempest swift and loud! I would scorn _650 The smile of morn And the wave where the moonrise is born! I would leave The spirits of eve A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave _655 From other threads than mine! Bask in the deep blue noon divine. Who would? Not I.
NOTE: _657 the deep blue "Errata", Wms. transcript; the blue edition 1822.
SEMICHORUS 2: Whither to fly?
SEMICHORUS 1: Where the rocks that gird th' Aegean _660 Echo to the battle paean Of the free-- I would flee A tempestuous herald of victory! My golden rain For the Grecian slain _665 Should mingle in tears with the bloody main, And my solemn thunder-knell Should ring to the world the passing-bell Of Tyranny! _670
SEMICHORUS 2: Ah king! wilt thou chain The rack and the rain? Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane? The storms are free, But we-- _675
CHORUS: O Slavery! thou frost of the world's prime, Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare! Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime, These brows thy branding garland bear, But the free heart, the impassive soul _680 Scorn thy control!
SEMICHORUS 1: Let there be light! said Liberty, And like sunrise from the sea, Athens arose!--Around her born, Shone like mountains in the morn _685 Glorious states;--and are they now Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?
SEMICHORUS 2: Go, Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed Persia, as the sand does foam: Deluge upon deluge followed, _690 Discord, Macedon, and Rome: And lastly thou!
SEMICHORUS 1: Temples and towers, Citadels and marts, and they Who live and die there, have been ours, And may be thine, and must decay; _695 But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity; Her citizens, imperial spirits, _700 Rule the present from the past, On all this world of men inherits Their seal is set.
SEMICHORUS 2: Hear ye the blast, Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls From ruin her Titanian walls? _705 Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete Hear, and from their mountain thrones The daemons and the nymphs repeat The harmony.
SEMICHORUS 1: I hear! I hear! _710
SEMICHORUS 2: The world's eyeless charioteer, Destiny, is hurrying by! What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds? What eagle-winged victory sits _715 At her right hand? what shadow flits Before? what splendour rolls behind? Ruin and renovation cry 'Who but We?'
SEMICHORUS 1: I hear! I hear! The hiss as of a rushing wind, _720 The roar as of an ocean foaming, The thunder as of earthquake coming. I hear! I hear! The crash as of an empire falling, The shrieks as of a people calling _725 'Mercy! mercy!'--How they thrill! Then a shout of 'kill! kill! kill!' And then a small still voice, thus--
SEMICHORUS 2: For Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are, _730 Their den is in the guilty mind, And Conscience feeds them with despair.
NOTE: _728 For edition 1822, Wms. transcript; Fear cj. Fleay, Forman, Dowden. See Editor's Note.
SEMICHORUS 1: In sacred Athens, near the fane Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood: Serve not the unknown God in vain. _735 But pay that broken shrine again, Love for hate and tears for blood.
[ENTER MAHMUD AND AHASUERUS.]
MAHMUD: Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.
AHASUERUS: No more!
MAHMUD: But raised above thy fellow-men By thought, as I by power.
AHASUERUS: Thou sayest so. _740
MAHMUD: Thou art an adept in the difficult lore Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest The flowers, and thou measurest the stars; Thou severest element from element; Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees _745 The birth of this old world through all its cycles Of desolation and of loveliness, And when man was not, and how man became The monarch and the slave of this low sphere, And all its narrow circles--it is much-- _750 I honour thee, and would be what thou art Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour, Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms, Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any Mighty or wise. I apprehended not _755 What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive That thou art no interpreter of dreams; Thou dost not own that art, device, or God, Can make the Future present--let it come! Moreover thou disdainest us and ours; _760 Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.
AHASUERUS: Disdain thee?--not the worm beneath thy feet! The Fathomless has care for meaner things Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those Who would be what they may not, or would seem _765 That which they are not. Sultan! talk no more Of thee and me, the Future and the Past; But look on that which cannot change--the One, The unborn and the undying. Earth and ocean, Space, and the isles of life or light that gem _770 The sapphire floods of interstellar air, This firmament pavilioned upon chaos, With all its cressets of immortal fire, Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them _775 As Calpe the Atlantic clouds--this Whole Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers, With all the silent or tempestuous workings By which they have been, are, or cease to be, Is but a vision;--all that it inherits _780 Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams; Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less The Future and the Past are idle shadows Of thought's eternal flight--they have no being: Nought is but that which feels itself to be. _785
NOTE: _762 thy edition 1822; my editions 1839.
MAHMUD: What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest Of dazzling mist within my brain--they shake The earth on which I stand, and hang like night On Heaven above me. What can they avail? They cast on all things surest, brightest, best, _790 Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.
AHASUERUS: Mistake me not! All is contained in each. Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup Is that which has been, or will be, to that Which is--the absent to the present. Thought _795 Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion, Reason, Imagination, cannot die; They are, what that which they regard appears, The stuff whence mutability can weave All that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, worms, _800 Empires, and superstitions. What has thought To do with time, or place, or circumstance? Wouldst thou behold the Future?--ask and have! Knock and it shall be opened--look, and lo! The coming age is shadowed on the Past _805 As on a glass.
MAHMUD: Wild, wilder thoughts convulse My spirit--Did not Mahomet the Second Win Stamboul?
AHASUERUS: Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit The written fortunes of thy house and faith. Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell _810 How what was born in blood must die.
MAHMUD: Thy words Have power on me! I see--
AHASUERUS: What hearest thou?
MAHMUD: A far whisper-- Terrible silence.
AHASUERUS: What succeeds?
MAHMUD: The sound As of the assault of an imperial city, _815 The hiss of inextinguishable fire, The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers, The shock of crags shot from strange enginery, The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs, _820 And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck Of adamantine mountains--the mad blast Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds, The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood, And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear, _825 As of a joyous infant waked and playing With its dead mother's breast, and now more loud The mingled battle-cry,--ha! hear I not 'En touto nike!' 'Allah-illa-Allah!'?
AHASUERUS: The sulphurous mist is raised--thou seest--
MAHMUD: A chasm, _830 As of two mountains in the wall of Stamboul; And in that ghastly breach the Islamites, Like giants on the ruins of a world, Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one _835 Of regal port has cast himself beneath The stream of war. Another proudly clad In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb Into the gap, and with his iron mace Directs the torrent of that tide of men, _840 And seems--he is--Mahomet!
AHASUERUS: What thou seest Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream. A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst behold How cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned, _845 Bow their towered crests to mutability. Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest, Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power Ebbs to its depths.--Inheritor of glory, Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished _850 With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past Now stands before thee like an Incarnation Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with That portion of thyself which was ere thou _855 Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death, Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion Which called it from the uncreated deep, Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms Of raging death; and draw with mighty will _860 The imperial shade hither.
[EXIT AHASUERUS.]
[THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET THE SECOND APPEARS.]
MAHMUD: Approach!
PHANTOM: I come Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter To take the living than give up the dead; Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here. The heavy fragments of the power which fell _865 When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds, Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose, Wailing for glory never to return.-- A later Empire nods in its decay: _870 The autumn of a greener faith is come, And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below. The storm is in its branches, and the frost _875 Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil, Ruin on ruin:--Thou art slow, my son; The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies _880 Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou, Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life, The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now-- Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears, And hopes that sate themselves on dust, and die!-- _885 Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine. Islam must fall, but we will reign together Over its ruins in the world of death:-- And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed Unfold itself even in the shape of that _890 Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe! To the weak people tangled in the grasp Of its last spasms.
MAHMUD: Spirit, woe to all! Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe To the destroyer, woe to the destroyed! _895 Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver! Woe to the oppressed, and woe to the oppressor! Woe both to those that suffer and inflict; Those who are born and those who die! but say, Imperial shadow of the thing I am, _900 When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish Her consummation!
PHANTOM: Ask the cold pale Hour, Rich in reversion of impending death, When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity-- _905 The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years, Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart Over the heads of men, under which burthen They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch! He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years _910 To come, and how in hours of youth renewed He will renew lost joys, and--
VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory!
[THE PHANTOM VANISHES.]
MAHMUD: What sound of the importunate earth has broken My mighty trance?
VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory!
MAHMUD: Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile _915 Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response Of hollow weakness! Do I wake and live? Were there such things, or may the unquiet brain, Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew, Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear? _920 It matters not!--for nought we see or dream, Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth More than it gives or teaches. Come what may, The Future must become the Past, and I As they were to whom once this present hour, _925 This gloomy crag of time to which I cling, Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy Never to be attained.--I must rebuke This drunkenness of triumph ere it die, And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves! _930
[EXIT MAHMUD.]
VOICE WITHOUT: Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks Are as a brood of lions in the net Round which the kingly hunters of the earth Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, _935 From Thule to the girdle of the world, Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men; The cup is foaming with a nation's blood, Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!
SEMICHORUS 1: Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, _940 Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day! I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream, Perch on the trembling pyramid of night, Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay In visions of the dawning undelight. _945 Who shall impede her flight? Who rob her of her prey?
VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eagles Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light. Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil! _950 Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!
SEMICHORUS 2: Thou voice which art The herald of the ill in splendour hid! Thou echo of the hollow heart Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode _955 When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed: Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloud Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid The momentary oceans of the lightning, Or to some toppling promontory proud _960 Of solid tempest whose black pyramid, Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright'ning Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire Before their waves expire, When heaven and earth are light, and only light _965 In the thunder-night!
NOTE: _958 earthquake edition 1822; earthquakes editions 1839.
VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England, And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France, Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak. Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes, _970 These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.
SEMICHORUS 1: Alas! for Liberty! If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years, Or fate, can quell the free! _975 Alas! for Virtue, when Torments, or contumely, or the sneers Of erring judging men Can break the heart where it abides. Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid, _980 Can change with its false times and tides, Like hope and terror,-- Alas for Love! And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended, If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror _985 Before the dazzled eyes of Error, Alas for thee! Image of the Above.
SEMICHORUS 2: Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn, Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn Through many an hostile Anarchy! _990 At length they wept aloud, and cried, 'The Sea! the Sea!' Through exile, persecution, and despair, Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair: _995 But Greece was as a hermit-child, Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built To woman's growth, by dreams so mild, She knew not pain or guilt; And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble _1000 When ye desert the free-- If Greece must be A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble, And build themselves again impregnably In a diviner clime, _1005 To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime, Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.
SEMICHORUS 1: Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made; Let the free possess the Paradise they claim; Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed _1010 With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!
SEMICHORUS 2: Our dead shall be the seed of their decay, Our survivors be the shadow of their pride, Our adversity a dream to pass away-- Their dishonour a remembrance to abide! _1015
VOICE WITHOUT: Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends The keys of ocean to the Islamite.-- Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled, And British skill directing Othman might, Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy _1020 This jubilee of unrevenged blood! Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!
SEMICHORUS 1: Darkness has dawned in the East On the noon of time: The death-birds descend to their feast _1025 From the hungry clime. Let Freedom and Peace flee far To a sunnier strand, And follow Love's folding-star To the Evening land! _1030
SEMICHORUS 2: The young moon has fed Her exhausted horn With the sunset's fire: The weak day is dead, But the night is not born; _1035 And, like loveliness panting with wild desire While it trembles with fear and delight, Hesperus flies from awakening night, And pants in its beauty and speed with light Fast-flashing, soft, and bright. _1040 Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free! Guide us far, far away, To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day Thou art hidden From waves on which weary Noon _1045 Faints in her summer swoon, Between kingless continents sinless as Eden, Around mountains and islands inviolably Pranked on the sapphire sea.
SEMICHORUS 1: Through the sunset of hope, _1050 Like the shapes of a dream. What Paradise islands of glory gleam! Beneath Heaven's cope, Their shadows more clear float by-- The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky, _1055 The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death, Through the walls of our prison; And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!
NOTE: _1057 dream edition 1822; dreams editions 1839.
CHORUS: The world's great age begins anew, _1060 The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn: Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. _1065
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains From waves serener far; A new Peneus rolls his fountains Against the morning star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep _1070 Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main, Fraught with a later prize; Another Orpheus sings again, And loves, and weeps, and dies. _1075 A new Ulysses leaves once more Calypso for his native shore.
Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be! Nor mix with Laian rage the joy _1080 Which dawns upon the free: Although a subtler Sphinx renew Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise, And to remoter time _1085 Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, The splendour of its prime; And leave, if nought so bright may live, All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose _1090 Shall burst, more bright and good Than all who fell, than One who rose, Than many unsubdued: Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, But votive tears and symbol flowers. _1095
Oh, cease! must hate and death return? Cease! must men kill and die? Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, _1100 Oh, might it die or rest at last!
NOTES: _1068 his edition 1822; its editions 1839. _1072 Argo]Argos edition 1822. _1091-_1093 See Editor's note. _1091 bright editions 1839; wise edition 1829 (ed. Galignani). _1093 unsubdued editions 1839; unwithstood edition 1829 (ed. Galignani).
NOTES.
(1) THE QUENCHLESS ASHES OF MILAN [L. 60].
Milan was the centre of the resistance of the Lombard league against the Austrian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa burnt the city to the ground, but liberty lived in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation from its ruin. See Sismondi's "Histoire des Republiques Italiennes", a book which has done much towards awakening the Italians to an imitation of their great ancestors.
(2) THE CHORUS [L. 197].
The popular notions of Christianity are represented in this chorus as true in their relation to the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more universal. The first stanza contrasts the immortality of the living and thinking beings which inhabit the planets, and to use a common and inadequate phrase, "clothe themselves in matter", with the transience of the noblest manifestations of the external world.
The concluding verses indicate a progressive state of more or loss exalted existence, according to the degree of perfection which every distinct intelligence may have attained. Let it not be supposed that I mean to dogmatise upon a subject, concerning which all men are equally ignorant, or that I think the Gordian knot of the origin of evil can be disentangled by that or any similar assertions. The received hypothesis of a Being resembling men in the moral attributes of His nature, having called us out of non-existence, and after inflicting on us the misery of the commission of error, should superadd that of the punishment and the privations consequent upon it, still would remain inexplicable and incredible. That there is a true solution of the riddle, and that in our present state that solution is unattainable by us, are propositions which may be regarded as equally certain: meanwhile, as it is the province of the poet to attach himself to those ideas which exalt and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to have conjectured the condition of that futurity towards which we are all impelled by an inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until better arguments can be produced than sophisms which disgrace the cause, this desire itself must remain the strongest and the only presumption that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking being.
(3) NO HOARY PRIESTS AFTER THAT PATRIARCH [L. 245].
The Greek Patriarch, after haying been compelled to fulminate an anathema against the insurgents, was put to death by the Turks.
Fortunately the Greeks have been taught that they cannot buy security by degradation, and the Turks, though equally cruel, are less cunning than the smooth-faced tyrants of Europe. As to the anathema, his Holiness might as well have thrown his mitre at Mount Athos for any effect that it produced. The chiefs of the Greeks are almost all men of comprehension and enlightened views on religion and politics.
(4) THE FREEDMAN OF A WESTERN POET-CHIEF [L. 563].
A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant commands the insurgents in Attica. This Greek, Lord Byron informs me, though a poet and an enthusiastic patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and unenterprising person. It appears that circumstances make men what they are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation or of greatness whose connection with our character is determined by events.
(5) THE GREEKS EXPECT A SAVIOUR FROM THE WEST [L. 598].
It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near Lacedaemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.
(6) THE SOUND AS OF THE ASSAULT OF AN IMPERIAL CITY [LL. 814-15].
For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, see Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", volume 12 page 223.
The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess of passion animating the creations of imagination.
It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a degree by any one who should have made himself master of the secret associations of another's thoughts.
(7) THE CHORUS [L. 1060].
The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumours of wars, etc., may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness is a more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign. It will remind the reader 'magno NEC proximus intervallo' of Isaiah and Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of society in which the 'lion shall lie down with the lamb,' and 'omnis feret omnia tellus.' Let these great names be my authority and my excuse.
(8) SATURN AND LOVE THEIR LONG REPOSE SHALL BURST [L. 1090].
Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of innocence and happiness. ALL those WHO FELL, or the Gods of Greece, Asia, and Egypt; the ONE WHO ROSE, or Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World wore amerced of their worship; and the MANY UNSUBDUED, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America, certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the arts, perpetually increasing, activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said, that as far as temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave so edifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a Power, who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were called into existence by His sole will; and for the period of a thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of men has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who approached the nearest to His innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under every aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well known.
NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at the beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a signal to Italy; secrete societies were formed; and, when Naples rose to declare the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium to the foot of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty, early in 1821 the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at first their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a people long enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa threw off the yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful imitation, the people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave the conge to their sovereign, and set up a republic.
Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said that the Austrian minister presented a list of sixty Carbonari to the Grand Duke, urging their imprisonment; and the Grand Duke replied, 'I do not know whether these sixty men are Carbonari, but I know, if I imprison them, I shall directly have sixty thousand start up.' But, though the Tuscans had no desire to disturb the paternal government beneath whose shelter they slumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian revolutions with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was warm in every bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the Neapolitans would offer no fit resistance to the regular German troops, and that the overthrow of the constitution in Naples would act as a decisive blow against all struggles for liberty in Italy.
We have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance was alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the peaceful triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion of freedom in the South of Europe was the only hope of the liberals, as, if it prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the example. Happily the reverse has proved the fact. The countries accustomed to the exercise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited extent, have extended, and are extending, these limits. Freedom and knowledge have now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, if it continue thus, we may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have said--in 1821--Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty, looked upon the struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the destinies of the world, probably for centuries to come. The interest he took in the progress of affairs was intense. When Genoa declared itself free, his hopes were at their highest. Day after day he read the bulletins of the Austrian army, and sought eagerly to gather tokens of its defeat. He heard of the revolt of Genoa with emotions of transport. His whole heart and soul were in the triumph of the cause. We were living at Pisa at that time; and several well-informed Italians, at the head of whom we may place the celebrated Vacca, were accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes from Shelley: they did not find such for the despair they too generally experienced, founded on contempt for their southern countrymen.
While the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the gentleman to whom the drama of "Hellas" is dedicated. Prince Mavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of his country which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen. He often intimated the possibility of an insurrection in Greece; but we had no idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of April 1821, he called on Shelley, bringing the proclamation of his cousin, Prince Ypsilanti, and, radiant with exultation and delight, declared that henceforth Greece would be free.
Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty in Spain and Naples, in two odes dictated by the warmest enthusiasm; he felt himself naturally impelled to decorate with poetry the uprise of the descendants of that people whose works he regarded with deep admiration, and to adopt the vaticinatory character in prophesying their success. "Hellas" was written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to remark how well he overcomes the difficulty of forming a drama out of such scant materials. His prophecies, indeed, came true in their general, not their particular, purport. He did not foresee the death of Lord Londonderry, which was to be the epoch of a change in English politics, particularly as regarded foreign affairs; nor that the navy of his country would fight for instead of against the Greeks, and by the battle of Navarino secure their enfranchisement from the Turks. Almost against reason, as it appeared to him, he resolved to believe that Greece would prove triumphant; and in this spirit, auguring ultimate good, yet grieving over the vicissitudes to be endured in the interval, he composed his drama.
"Hellas" was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:--
'But Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Based on the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity.'
And again, that philosophical truth felicitously imaged forth--
'Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind, The foul cubs like their parents are, Their den is in the guilty mind, And Conscience feeds them with despair.'
The conclusion of the last chorus is among the most beautiful of his lyrics. The imagery is distinct and majestic; the prophecy, such as poets love to dwell upon, the Regeneration of Mankind--and that regeneration reflecting back splendour on the foregone time, from which it inherits so much of intellectual wealth, and memory of past virtuous deeds, as must render the possession of happiness and peace of tenfold value.
***
FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.
[Published in part (lines 1-69, 100-120) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824; and again, with the notes, in "Poetical Works", 1839. Lines 127-238 were printed by Dr. Garnett under the title of "The Magic Plant" in his "Relics of Shelley", 1862. The whole was edited in its present form from the Boscombe manuscript by Mr. W.M. Rossetti in 1870 ("Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S.", Moxon, 2 volumes.). 'Written at Pisa during the late winter or early spring of 1822' (Garnett).]
The following fragments are part of a Drama undertaken for the amusement of the individuals who composed our intimate society, but left unfinished. I have preserved a sketch of the story as far as it had been shadowed in the poet's mind.
An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble nature. She becomes enamoured of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal love, for a while returns her passion; but at length, recalling the memory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, he escapes from the Enchanted Island, and returns to his lady. His mode of life makes him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island. --[MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1839.]
SCENE.--BEFORE THE CAVERN OF THE INDIAN ENCHANTRESS.
THE ENCHANTRESS COMES FORTH.
ENCHANTRESS: He came like a dream in the dawn of life, He fled like a shadow before its noon; He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife, And I wander and wane like the weary moon. O, sweet Echo, wake, _5 And for my sake Make answer the while my heart shall break!
But my heart has a music which Echo's lips, Though tender and true, yet can answer not, And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse _10 Can return not the kiss by his now forgot; Sweet lips! he who hath On my desolate path Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death!
NOTE: _8 my omitted 1824.
[THE ENCHANTRESS MAKES HER SPELL: SHE IS ANSWERED BY A SPIRIT.]
SPIRIT: Within the silent centre of the earth _15 My mansion is; where I have lived insphered From the beginning, and around my sleep Have woven all the wondrous imagery Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world; Infinite depths of unknown elements _20 Massed into one impenetrable mask; Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron. And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds, _25 And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns In the dark space of interstellar air.
NOTES: _15-_27 Within...air. 1839; omitted 1824. See these lines in "Posthumous Poems", 1824, page 209: "Song of a Spirit". _16 have 1839; omitted 1824, page 209. _25 seas, and waves 1824, page 209; seas, waves 1839.
[A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate's fate, leads, in a mysterious manner, the lady of his love to the Enchanted Isle. She is accompanied by a Youth, who loves the lady, but whose passion she returns only with a sisterly affection. The ensuing scene takes place between them on their arrival at the Isle. [MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1839.]]
ANOTHER SCENE.
INDIAN YOUTH AND LADY.
INDIAN: And, if my grief should still be dearer to me Than all the pleasures in the world beside, Why would you lighten it?--
NOTE: _29 pleasures]pleasure 1824.
LADY: I offer only _30 That which I seek, some human sympathy In this mysterious island.
INDIAN: Oh! my friend, My sister, my beloved!--What do I say? My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know whether I speak to thee or her.
LADY: Peace, perturbed heart! _35 I am to thee only as thou to mine, The passing wind which heals the brow at noon, And may strike cold into the breast at night, Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most, Or long soothe could it linger.
INDIAN: But you said _40 You also loved?
NOTE: _32-_41 Assigned to INDIAN, 1824.
LADY: Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks This word of love is fit for all the world, And that for gentle hearts another name Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns. I have loved.
INDIAN: And thou lovest not? if so, _45 Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep.
LADY: Oh! would that I could claim exemption From all the bitterness of that sweet name. I loved, I love, and when I love no more Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair _50 To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me, The embodied vision of the brightest dream, Which like a dawn heralds the day of life; The shadow of his presence made my world A Paradise. All familiar things he touched, _55 All common words he spoke, became to me Like forms and sounds of a diviner world. He was as is the sun in his fierce youth, As terrible and lovely as a tempest; He came, and went, and left me what I am. _60 Alas! Why must I think how oft we two Have sate together near the river springs, Under the green pavilion which the willow Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain, Strewn, by the nurslings that linger there, _65 Over that islet paved with flowers and moss, While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine, Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own? The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt, _70 And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn; And on a wintry bough the widowed bird, Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves, Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow. I, left like her, and leaving one like her, _75 Alike abandoned and abandoning (Oh! unlike her in this!) the gentlest youth, Whose love had made my sorrows dear to him, Even as my sorrow made his love to me!
NOTE: _71 spray Rossetti 1870, Woodberry; Spring Forman, Dowden.
INDIAN: One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould _80 The features of the wretched; and they are As like as violet to violet, When memory, the ghost, their odours keeps Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy.-- Proceed.
LADY: He was a simple innocent boy. _85 I loved him well, but not as he desired; Yet even thus he was content to be:-- A short content, for I was--
INDIAN [ASIDE]: God of Heaven! From such an islet, such a river-spring--! I dare not ask her if there stood upon it _90 A pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent, With steps to the blue water. [ALOUD.] It may be That Nature masks in life several copies Of the same lot, so that the sufferers May feel another's sorrow as their own, _95 And find in friendship what they lost in love. That cannot be: yet it is strange that we, From the same scene, by the same path to this Realm of abandonment-- But speak! your breath-- Your breath is like soft music, your words are _100 The echoes of a voice which on my heart Sleeps like a melody of early days. But as you said--
LADY: He was so awful, yet So beautiful in mystery and terror, Calming me as the loveliness of heaven _105 Soothes the unquiet sea:--and yet not so, For he seemed stormy, and would often seem A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds; For such his thoughts, and even his actions were; But he was not of them, nor they of him, _110 But as they hid his splendour from the earth. Some said he was a man of blood and peril, And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips. More need was there I should be innocent, More need that I should be most true and kind, _115 And much more need that there should be found one To share remorse and scorn and solitude, And all the ills that wait on those who do The tasks of ruin in the world of life. He fled, and I have followed him.
INDIAN: Such a one _120 Is he who was the winter of my peace. But, fairest stranger, when didst thou depart From the far hills where rise the springs of India? How didst thou pass the intervening sea?
LADY: If I be sure I am not dreaming now, _125 I should not doubt to say it was a dream. Methought a star came down from heaven, And rested mid the plants of India, Which I had given a shelter from the frost Within my chamber. There the meteor lay, _130 Panting forth light among the leaves and flowers, As if it lived, and was outworn with speed; Or that it loved, and passion made the pulse Of its bright life throb like an anxious heart, Till it diffused itself; and all the chamber _135 And walls seemed melted into emerald fire That burned not; in the midst of which appeared A spirit like a child, and laughed aloud A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment As made the blood tingle in my warm feet: _140 Then bent over a vase, and murmuring Low, unintelligible melodies, Placed something in the mould like melon-seeds, And slowly faded, and in place of it A soft hand issued from the veil of fire, _145 Holding a cup like a magnolia flower, And poured upon the earth within the vase The element with which it overflowed, Brighter than morning light, and purer than The water of the springs of Himalah. _150
NOTE: _120-_126 Such...dream 1839; omitted 1824.
INDIAN: You waked not?
LADY: Not until my dream became Like a child's legend on the tideless sand. Which the first foam erases half, and half Leaves legible. At length I rose, and went, Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought _155 To set new cuttings in the empty urns, And when I came to that beside the lattice, I saw two little dark-green leaves Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then I half-remembered my forgotten dream. _160 And day by day, green as a gourd in June, The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded With azure mail and streaks of woven silver; _165 And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel, Until the golden eye of the bright flower, Through the dark lashes of those veined lids, ...disencumbered of their silent sleep, _170 Gazed like a star into the morning light. Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw The pulses With which the purple velvet flower was fed To overflow, and like a poet's heart _175 Changing bright fancy to sweet sentiment, Changed half the light to fragrance. It soon fell, And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit Left all its treasured beauty. Day by day I nursed the plant, and on the double flute _180 Played to it on the sunny winter days Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain On silent leaves, and sang those words in which Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings; And I would send tales of forgotten love _185 Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs Of maids deserted in the olden time, And weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant, So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come, _190 And crept abroad into the moonlight air, And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon, The sun averted less his oblique beam.
INDIAN: And the plant died not in the frost?
LADY: It grew; And went out of the lattice which I left _195 Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires Along the garden and across the lawn, And down the slope of moss and through the tufts Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o'ergrown With simple lichens, and old hoary stones, _200 On to the margin of the glassy pool, Even to a nook of unblown violets And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn, Under a pine with ivy overgrown. And theme its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard _205 Under the shadows; but when Spring indeed Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at This shape of autumn couched in their recess, Then it dilated, and it grew until _210 One half lay floating on the fountain wave, Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies, Kept time Among the snowy water-lily buds. Its shape was such as summer melody _215 Of the south wind in spicy vales might give To some light cloud bound from the golden dawn To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed In hue and form that it had been a mirror Of all the hues and forms around it and _220 Upon it pictured by the sunny beams Which, from the bright vibrations of the pool, Were thrown upon the rafters and the roof Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections _225 Of every infant flower and star of moss And veined leaf in the azure odorous air. And thus it lay in the Elysian calm Of its own beauty, floating on the line Which, like a film in purest space, divided _230 The heaven beneath the water from the heaven Above the clouds; and every day I went Watching its growth and wondering; And as the day grew hot, methought I saw A glassy vapour dancing on the pool, _235 And on it little quaint and filmy shapes. With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall, Like clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.
...
O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from Heaven-- As if Heaven dawned upon the world of dream-- _240 When darkness rose on the extinguished day Out of the eastern wilderness.
INDIAN: I too Have found a moment's paradise in sleep Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow.
***
CHARLES THE FIRST.
["Charles the First" was designed in 1818, begun towards the close of 1819 [Medwin, "Life", 2 page 62], resumed in January, and finally laid aside by June, 1822. It was published in part in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824, and printed, in its present form (with the addition of some 530 lines), by Mr. W.M. Rossetti, 1870. Further particulars are given in the Editor's Notes at the end of Volume 3.]
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
KING CHARLES I. QUEEN HENRIETTA. LAUD, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY. WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD. LORD COTTINGTON. LORD WESTON. LORD COVENTRY. WILLIAMS, BISHOP OF LINCOLN. SECRETARY LYTTELTON. JUXON. ST. JOHN. ARCHY, THE COURT FOOL. HAMPDEN. PYM. CROMWELL. CROMWELL'S DAUGHTER. SIR HARRY VANE THE YOUNGER. LEIGHTON. BASTWICK. PRYNNE. GENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT, CITIZENS, PURSUIVANTS, MARSHALSMEN, LAW STUDENTS, JUDGES, CLERK.