THE COMPLETE
POETICAL WORKS
OF
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

EDITED WITH TEXTUAL NOTES

BY

THOMAS HUTCHINSON, M. A.

1914

PREFACE

This edition of his Poetical Works contains all Shelley’s ascertained poems and fragments of verse that have hitherto appeared in print. In preparing the volume I have worked as far as possible on the principle of recognizing the editio princeps as the primary textual authority. I have not been content to reprint Mrs. Shelley’s recension of 1839, or that of any subsequent editor of the Poems. The present text is the result of a fresh collation of the early editions; and in every material instance of departure from the wording of those originals the rejected reading has been subjoined in a footnote. Again, wherever—as in the case of Julian and Maddalo—there has appeared to be good reason for superseding the authority of the editio princeps, the fact is announced, and the substituted exemplar indicated, in the Prefatory Note. In the case of a few pieces extant in two or more versions of debatable authority the alternative text or texts will be found at the [end] of the [relevant work]; but it may be said once for all that this does not pretend to be a variorum edition, in the proper sense of the term—the textual apparatus does not claim to be exhaustive. Thus I have not thought it necessary to cumber the footnotes with every minute grammatical correction introduced by Mrs. Shelley, apparently on her own authority, into the texts of 1839; nor has it come within the scheme of this edition to record every conjectural emendation adopted or proposed by Rossetti and others in recent times. But it is hoped that, up to and including the editions of 1839 at least, no important variation of the text has been overlooked. Whenever a reading has been adopted on MS. authority, a reference to the particular source has been added below.

I have been chary of gratuitous interference with the punctuation of the MSS. and early editions; in this direction, however, some revision was indispensable. Even in his most carefully finished ‘fair copy’ Shelley under-punctuates¹, and sometimes punctuates capriciously. In the very act of transcribing his mind was apt to stray from the work in hand to higher things; he would lose himself in contemplating those airy abstractions and lofty visions of which alone he greatly cared to sing, to the neglect and detriment of the merely external and formal element of his song. Shelley recked little of the jots and tittles of literary craftsmanship; he committed many a small sin against the rules of grammar, and certainly paid but a halting attention to the nice distinctions of punctuation. Thus in the early editions a comma occasionally plays the part of a semicolon; colons and semicolons seem to be employed interchangeably; a semicolon almost invariably appears where nowadays we should employ the dash; and, lastly, the dash itself becomes a point of all work, replacing indifferently commas, colons, semicolons or periods. Inadequate and sometimes haphazard as it is, however, Shelley’s punctuation, so far as it goes, is of great value as an index to his metrical, or at times, it may be, to his rhetorical intention—for, in Shelley’s hands, punctuation serves rather to mark the rhythmical pause and onflow of the verse, or to secure some declamatory effect, than to indicate the structure or elucidate the sense. For this reason the original pointing has been retained, save where it tends to obscure or pervert the poet’s meaning. Amongst the Editor’s Notes at the end of the volume the reader will find lists of the punctual variations in the longer poems, by means of which the supplementary points now added may be identified, and the original points, which in this edition have been deleted or else replaced by others, ascertained, in the order of their occurrence. In the use of capitals Shelley’s practice has been followed, while an attempt has been made to reduce the number of his inconsistencies in this regard.

To have reproduced the spelling of the MSS. would only have served to divert attention from Shelley’s poetry to my own ingenuity in disgusting the reader according to the rules of editorial punctilio.² Shelley was neither very accurate, nor always consistent, in his spelling. He was, to say the truth, indifferent about all such matters: indeed, to one absorbed in the spectacle of a world travailing for lack of the gospel of Political Justice, the study of orthographical niceties must have seemed an occupation for Bedlamites. Again—as a distinguished critic and editor of Shelley, Professor Dowden, aptly observes in this connexion—‘a great poet is not of an age, but for all time.’ Irregular or antiquated forms such as ‘recieve,’ ‘sacrifize,’ ‘tyger,’ ‘gulph,’ ‘desart,’ ‘falshood,’ and the like, can only serve to distract the reader’s attention, and mar his enjoyment of the verse. Accordingly Shelley’s eccentricities in this kind have been discarded, and his spelling reversed in accordance with modern usage. All weak preterite-forms, whether indicatives or participles, have been printed with ed rather than t, participial adjectives and substantives, such as ‘past,’ alone excepted. In the case of ‘leap,’ which has two preterite-forms, both employed by Shelley³—one with the long vowel of the present-form, the other with a vowel-change⁴ like that of ‘crept’ from ‘creep’—I have not hesitated to print the longer form ‘leaped,’ and the shorter (after Mr. Henry Sweet’s example) ‘lept,’ in order clearly to indicate the pronunciation intended by Shelley. In the editions the two vowel-sounds are confounded under the one spelling, ‘leapt.’ In a few cases Shelley’s spelling, though unusual or obsolete, has been retained. Thus in ‘aethereal,’ ‘paean,’ and one or two more words the ae will be found, and ‘airy’ still appears as ‘aëry’. Shelley seems to have uniformly written ‘lightening’: here the word is so printed whenever it is employed as a trisyllable; elsewhere the ordinary spelling has been adopted.⁵.

The editor of Shelley to-day enters upon a goodly heritage, the accumulated gains of a series of distinguished predecessors. Mrs. Shelley’s two editions of 1839 form the nucleus of the present volume, and her notes are here reprinted in full; but the arrangement of the poems differs to some extent from that followed by her—chiefly in respect of Queen Mab, which is here placed at the head of the Juvenilia, instead of at the forefront of the poems of Shelley’s maturity. In 1862 a slender volume of poems and fragments, entitled Relics of Shelley, was published by Dr. Richard Garnett, C.B.—a precious sheaf gleaned from the MSS. preserved at Boscombe Manor. The Relics constitute a salvage second only in value to the Posthumous Poems of 1824. To the growing mass of Shelley’s verse yet more material was added in 1870 by Mr. William Michael Rossetti, who edited for Moxon the Complete Poetical Works published in that year. To him we owe in particular a revised and greatly enlarged version of the fragmentary drama of Charles I. But though not seldom successful in restoring the text, Mr. Rossetti pushed revision beyond the bounds of prudence, freely correcting grammatical errors, rectifying small inconsistencies in the sense, and too lightly adopting conjectural emendations on the grounds of rhyme or metre. In the course of an article published in the Westminster Review for July, 1870, Miss Mathilde Blind, with the aid of material furnished by Dr. Garnett, ‘was enabled,’ in the words of Mr. Buxton Forman, ‘to supply omissions, make authoritative emendations, and controvert erroneous changes’ in Mr. Rossetti’s work; and in the more cautiously edited text of his later edition, published by Moxon in 1878, may be traced the influence of her strictures.

Six years later appeared a variorum edition in which for the first time Shelley’s text was edited with scientific exactness of method, and with a due respect for the authority of the original editions. It would be difficult indeed to over-estimate the gains which have accrued to the lovers of Shelley from the strenuous labours of Mr. Harry Buxton Forman, C.B. He too has enlarged the body of Shelley’s poetry⁶; but, important as his editions undoubtedly are, it may safely be affirmed that his services in this direction constitute the least part of what we owe him. He has vindicated the authenticity of the text in many places, while in many others he has succeeded, with the aid of MSS., in restoring it. His untiring industry in research, his wide bibliographical knowledge and experience, above all, his accuracy, as invariable as it is minute, have combined to make him, in the words of Professor Dowden, ‘our chief living authority on all that relates to Shelley’s writings.’ His name stands securely linked for all time to Shelley’s by a long series of notable words, including three successive editions (1876, 1882, 1892) of the Poems, an edition of the Prose Remains, as well as many minor publications—a Bibliography (The Shelley Library, 1886) and several Facsimile Reprints of the early issues, edited for the Shelley Society.

To Professor Dowden, whose authoritative Biography of the poet, published in 1886, was followed in 1890 by an edition of the Poems (Macmillans), is due the addition of several pieces belonging to the juvenile period, incorporated by him in the pages of the Life of Shelley. Professor Dowden has also been enabled, with the aid of the MSS. placed in his hands, to correct the text of the Juvenilia in many places. In 1893 Professor George E. Woodberry edited a Centenary Edition of the Complete Poetical Works, in which, to quote his own words, an attempt is made ‘to summarize the labours of more than half a century on Shelley’s text, and on his biography so far as the biography is bound up with the text.’ In this Centenary edition the textual variations found in the Harvard College MSS., as well as those in the MSS. belonging to Mr. Frederickson of Brooklyn, are fully recorded. Professor Woodberry’s text is conservative on the whole, but his revision of the punctuation is drastic, and occasionally sacrifices melody to perspicuity.

In 1903 Mr. C.D. Locock published, in a quarto volume of seventy-five pages, the fruits of a careful scrutiny of the Shelley MSS. now lodged in the Bodleian Library. Mr. Locock succeeded in recovering several inedited fragments of verse and prose. Amongst the poems chiefly concerned in the results of his Examination may be named Marenghi, Prince Athanase, The Witch of Atlas, To Constantia, the Ode to Naples, and (last, not least) Prometheus Unbound. Full use has been made in this edition of Mr. Locock’s collations, and the fragments recovered and printed by him are included in the text. Variants derived from the Bodleian MSS. are marked B. in the footnotes.

On the state of the text generally, and the various quarters in which it lies open to conjectural emendation, I cannot do better than quote the following succinct and luminous account from a Causerie on the Shelley MSS. in the Bodleian Library, contributed by Dr. Richard Garnett, C.B., to the columns of The Speaker of December 19, 1903:—

‘From the textual point of view, Shelley’s works may be divided into three classes—those published in his lifetime under his own direction; those also published in his lifetime, but in his absence from the press; and those published after his death. The first class includes Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam, and Alastor with its appendages, published in England before his final departure for the continent; and The Cenci and Adonais, printed under his own eye at Leghorn and Pisa respectively. Except for some provoking but corrigible misprints in The Revolt of Islam and one crucial passage in Alastor, these poems afford little material for conjectural emendation; for the Alexandrines now and then left in the middle of stanzas in The Revolt of Islam must remain untouched, as proceeding not from the printer’s carelessness but the author’s. The second class, poems printed during Shelley’s lifetime, but not under his immediate inspection, comprise Prometheus Unbound and Rosalind and Helen, together with the pieces which accompanied them, Epipsychidion, Hellas, and Swellfoot the Tyrant. The correction of the most important of these, the Prometheus, was the least satisfactory. Shelley, though speaking plainly to the publisher, rather hints than expresses his dissatisfaction when writing to Gisborne, the corrector, but there is a pretty clear hint when on a subsequent occasion he says to him, “I have received Hellas, which is prettily printed, and with fewer mistakes than any poem I ever published.” This also was probably not without influence on his determination to have The Cenci and Adonais printed in Italy … Of the third class of Shelley’s writings—those which were first published after his death—sufficient facsimiles have been published to prove that Trelawny’s graphic description of the chaotic state of most of them was really in no respect exaggerated … The difficulty is much augmented by the fact that these pieces are rarely consecutive, but literally disiecti membra poetae, scattered through various notebooks in a way to require piecing together as well as deciphering. The editors of the Posthumous Poems, moreover, though diligent according to their light, were neither endowed with remarkable acumen nor possessed of the wide knowledge requisite for the full intelligence of so erudite a poet as Shelley, hence the perpetration of numerous mistakes. Some few of the MSS., indeed, such as those of The Witch of Atlas, Julian and Maddalo, and the Lines at Naples, were beautifully written out for the press in Shelley’s best hand, but their very value and beauty necessitated the ordeal of transcription, with disastrous results in several instances. An entire line dropped out of the Lines at Naples, and although Julian and Maddalo was extant in more than one very clear copy, the printed text had several such sense-destroying errors as least for lead.

‘The corrupt state of the text has stimulated the ingenuity of numerous correctors, who have suggested many acute and convincing emendations, and some very specious ones which sustained scrutiny has proved untenable. It should be needless to remark that success has in general been proportionate to the facilities of access to the MSS., which have only of late become generally available. If Shelley is less fortunate than most modern poets in the purity of his text, he is more fortunate than many in the preservation of his MSS. These have not, as regards a fair proportion, been destroyed or dispersed at auctions, but were protected from either fate by their very character as confused memoranda. As such they remained in the possession of Shelley’s widow, and passed from her to her son and daughter-in-law. After Sir Percy Shelley’s death, Lady Shelley took the occasion of the erection of the monument to Shelley at University College, Oxford, to present [certain of] the MSS. to the Bodleian Library, and verse and sculpture form an imperishable memorial of his connection with the University where his residence was so brief and troubled.’⁷

In placing Queen Mab at the head of the Juvenilia I have followed the arrangement adopted by Mr. Buxton Forman in his Library Edition of 1876. I have excluded The Wandering Jew, having failed to satisfy myself of the sufficiency of the grounds on which, in certain quarters, it is accepted as the work of Shelley. The shorter fragments are printed, as in Professor Dowden’s edition of 1890, along with the miscellaneous poems of the years to which they severally belong, under titles which are sometimes borrowed from Mr. Buxton Forman, sometimes of my own choosing. I have added a few brief Editor’s Notes, mainly on textual questions, at the end of the book. Of the poverty of my work in this direction I am painfully aware; but in the present edition the ordinary reader will, it is hoped, find an authentic, complete, and accurately printed text, and, if this be so, the principal end and aim of the OXFORD SHELLEY will have been attained.

I desire cordially to acknowledge the courtesy of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., by whose kind sanction the second part of The Daemon of the World appears in this volume. And I would fain express my deep sense of obligation for manifold information and guidance, derived from Mr. Buxton Forman’s various editions, reprints and other publications—especially from the monumental Library Edition of 1876. Acknowledgements are also due to the poet’s grandson, Charles E.J. Esdaile, Esq., for permission to include the early poems first printed in Professor Dowden’s Life of Shelley; and to Mr. C.D. Locock, for leave to make full use of the material contained in his interesting and stimulating volume. To Dr. Richard Garnett, C.B., and to Professor Dowden, cordial thanks are hereby tendered for good counsel cheerfully bestowed. To two of the editors of the Shelley Society Reprints, Mr. Thomas J. Wise and Mr. Robert A. Potts—both generously communicative collectors—I am deeply indebted for the gift or loan of scarce volumes, as well as for many kind offices in other ways. Lastly, to the staff of the Oxford University Press my heartiest thanks are owing, for their unremitting care in all that relates to the printing and correcting of the sheets.

THOMAS HUTCHINSON.

December, 1904.

POSTSCRIPT.—In a valuable paper, ‘Notes on Passages in Shelley,’ contributed to The Modern Language Review (October, 1905), Mr. A.C. Bradley discussed, amongst other things, some fifty places in the text of Shelley’s verse, and indicated certain errors and omissions in this edition. With the aid of these Notes the editor has now carefully revised the text, and has in many places adopted the suggestions or conclusions of their accomplished author.

June, 1913.

1 Thus in the exquisite autograph ‘Hunt MS.’ of Julian and Maddalo, Mr. Buxton Forman, the most conservative of editors, finds it necessary to supplement Shelley’s punctuation in no fewer than ninety-four places.

2 I adapt a phrase or two from the preface to The Revolt of Islam.

3 See for an example of the longer form, the Hymn to Mercury, xviii. 5, where ‘leaped’ rhymes with ‘heaped’ (line 1). The shorter form, rhyming to ‘wept,’ ‘adapt,’ etc., occurs more frequently.

4 Of course, wherever this vowel-shortening takes place, whether indicated by a corresponding change in the spelling or not, t, not ed is properly used—‘cleave,’ ‘cleft,’; ‘deal,’ ‘dealt’; etc. The forms discarded under the general rule laid down above are such as ‘wrackt,’ ‘prankt,’ ‘snatcht,’ ‘kist,’ ‘opprest,’ &c.

5 Not a little has been written about ‘uprest’ (Revolt of Islam, III. xxi. 5), which has been described as a nonce-word deliberately coined by Shelley ‘on no better warrant than the exigency of the rhyme.’ There can be little doubt that ‘uprest’ is simply an overlooked misprint for ‘uprist’—not by any means a nonce-word, but a genuine English verbal substantive of regular formation, familiar to many from its employment by Chaucer. True, the corresponding rhyme-words in the passage above referred to are ‘nest,’ ‘possessed,’ ‘breast’; but a laxity such as ‘nest’—‘uprist’ is quite in Shelley’s manner. Thus in this very poem we find ‘midst’—‘shed’st’ (VI. xvi), ‘mist’—‘rest’—‘blest’ (V. lviii), ‘loveliest’—‘mist’—kissed’—‘dressed’ (V. xliii). Shelley may have first seen the word in The Ancient Mariner; but he employs it more correctly than Coleridge, who seems to have mistaken it for a preterite-form (=‘uprose’) whereas in truth it serves either as the third person singular of the present (=‘upriseth’), or, as here, for the verbal substantive (=‘uprising’).

6 Mr. Forman’s most notable addition is the second part of The Daemon of the World, which he printed privately in 1876, and included in his Library Edition of the Poetical Works published in the same year. See the List of Editions, &c. at the end this volume.

7 Dr. Garnett proceeds:—‘The most important of the Bodleian MSS. is that of Prometheus Unbound, which, says Mr. Locock, has the appearance of being an intermediate draft, and also the first copy made. This should confer considerable authority on its variations from the accepted text, as this appears to have been printed from a copy not made by Shelley himself. “My Prometheus,” he writes to Ollier on September 6, 1819, “is now being transcribed,” an expression which he would hardly have used if he had himself been the copyist. He wished the proofs to be sent to him in Italy for correction, but to this Ollier objected, and on May 14, 1820, Shelley signifies his acquiescence, adding, however, “In this case I shall repose trust in your care respecting the correction of the press; Mr. Gisborne will revise it; he heard it recited, and will therefore more readily seize any error.” This confidence in the accuracy of Gisborne’s verbal memory is touching! From a letter to Gisborne on May 26 following it appears that the offer to correct came from him, and that Shelley sent him “two little papers of corrections and additions,” which were probably made use of, or the fact would have been made known. In the case of additions this may satisfactorily account for apparent omissions in the Bodleian MS. Gisborne, after all, did not prove fully up to the mark. “It is to be regretted,” writes Shelley to Ollier on November 20, “that the errors of the press are so numerous,” adding, “I shall send you the list of errata in a day or two.” This was probably “the list of errata written by Shelley himself,” from which Mrs. Shelley corrected the edition of 1839.’

PREFACE BY MRS. SHELLEY

TO FIRST COLLECTED EDITION, 1839

Obstacles have long existed to my presenting the public with a perfect edition of Shelley’s Poems. These being at last happily removed, I hasten to fulfil an important duty,—that of giving the productions of a sublime genius to the world, with all the correctness possible, and of, at the same time, detailing the history of those productions, as they sprang, living and warm, from his heart and brain. I abstain from any remark on the occurrences of his private life, except inasmuch as the passions which they engendered inspired his poetry. This is not the time to relate the truth; and I should reject any colouring of the truth. No account of these events has ever been given at all approaching reality in their details, either as regards himself or others; nor shall I further allude to them than to remark that the errors of action committed by a man as noble and generous as Shelley, may, as far as he only is concerned, be fearlessly avowed by those who loved him, in the firm conviction that, were they judged impartially, his character would stand in fairer and brighter light than that of any contemporary. Whatever faults he had ought to find extenuation among his fellows, since they prove him to be human; without them, the exalted nature of his soul would have raised him into something divine.

The qualities that struck any one newly introduced to Shelley were,—First, a gentle and cordial goodness that animated his intercourse with warm affection and helpful sympathy. The other, the eagerness and ardour with which he was attached to the cause of human happiness and improvement; and the fervent eloquence with which he discussed such subjects. His conversation was marked by its happy abundance, and the beautiful language in which he clothed his poetic ideas and philosophical notions. To defecate life of its misery and its evil was the ruling passion of his soul; he dedicated to it every power of his mind, every pulsation of his heart. He looked on political freedom as the direct agent to effect the happiness of mankind; and thus any new-sprung hope of liberty inspired a joy and an exultation more intense and wild than he could have felt for any personal advantage. Those who have never experienced the workings of passion on general and unselfish subjects cannot understand this; and it must be difficult of comprehension to the younger generation rising around, since they cannot remember the scorn and hatred with which the partisans of reform were regarded some few years ago, nor the persecutions to which they were exposed. He had been from youth the victim of the state of feeling inspired by the reaction of the French Revolution; and believing firmly in the justice and excellence of his views, it cannot be wondered that a nature as sensitive, as impetuous, and as generous as his, should put its whole force into the attempt to alleviate for others the evils of those systems from which he had himself suffered. Many advantages attended his birth; he spurned them all when balanced with what he considered his duties. He was generous to imprudence, devoted to heroism.

These characteristics breathe throughout his poetry. The struggle for human weal; the resolution firm to martyrdom; the impetuous pursuit, the glad triumph in good; the determination not to despair;—such were the features that marked those of his works which he regarded with most complacency, as sustained by a lofty subject and useful aim.

In addition to these, his poems may be divided into two classes,—the purely imaginative, and those which sprang from the emotions of his heart. Among the former may be classed the Witch of Atlas, Adonais, and his latest composition, left imperfect, the Triumph of Life. In the first of these particularly he gave the reins to his fancy, and luxuriated in every idea as it rose; in all there is that sense of mystery which formed an essential portion of his perception of life—a clinging to the subtler inner spirit, rather than to the outward form—a curious and metaphysical anatomy of human passion and perception.

The second class is, of course, the more popular, as appealing at once to emotions common to us all; some of these rest on the passion of love; others on grief and despondency; others on the sentiments inspired by natural objects. Shelley’s conception of love was exalted, absorbing, allied to all that is purest and noblest in our nature, and warmed by earnest passion; such it appears when he gave it a voice in verse. Yet he was usually averse to expressing these feelings, except when highly idealized; and many of his more beautiful effusions he had cast aside unfinished, and they were never seen by me till after I had lost him. Others, as for instance Rosalind and Helen and Lines written among the Euganean Hills, I found among his papers by chance; and with some difficulty urged him to complete them. There are others, such as the Ode to the Skylark and The Cloud, which, in the opinion of many critics, bear a purer poetical stamp than any other of his productions. They were written as his mind prompted: listening to the carolling of the bird, aloft in the azure sky of Italy; or marking the cloud as it sped across the heavens, while he floated in his boat on the Thames.

No poet was ever warmed by a more genuine and unforced inspiration. His extreme sensibility gave the intensity of passion to his intellectual pursuits; and rendered his mind keenly alive to every perception of outward objects, as well as to his internal sensations. Such a gift is, among the sad vicissitudes of human life, the disappointments we meet, and the galling sense of our own mistakes and errors, fraught with pain; to escape from such, he delivered up his soul to poetry, and felt happy when he sheltered himself, from the influence of human sympathies, in the wildest regions of fancy. His imagination has been termed too brilliant, his thoughts too subtle. He loved to idealize reality; and this is a taste shared by few. We are willing to have our passing whims exalted into passions, for this gratifies our vanity; but few of us understand or sympathize with the endeavour to ally the love of abstract beauty, and adoration of abstract good, the τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ τὸ καλόν of the Socratic philosophers, with our sympathies with our kind. In this, Shelley resembled Plato; both taking more delight in the abstract and the ideal than in the special and tangible. This did not result from imitation; for it was not till Shelley resided in Italy that he made Plato his study. He then translated his Symposium and his Ion; and the English language boasts of no more brilliant composition than Plato’s Praise of Love translated by Shelley. To return to his own poetry. The luxury of imagination, which sought nothing beyond itself (as a child burdens itself with spring flowers, thinking of no use beyond the enjoyment of gathering them), often showed itself in his verses: they will be only appreciated by minds which have resemblance to his own; and the mystic subtlety of many of his thoughts will share the same fate. The metaphysical strain that characterizes much of what he has written was, indeed, the portion of his works to which, apart from those whose scope was to awaken mankind to aspirations for what he considered the true and good, he was himself particularly attached. There is much, however, that speaks to the many. When he would consent to dismiss these huntings after the obscure (which, entwined with his nature as they were, he did with difficulty), no poet ever expressed in sweeter, more heart-reaching, or more passionate verse, the gentler or more forcible emotions of the soul.

A wise friend once wrote to Shelley: ‘You are still very young, and in certain essential respects you do not yet sufficiently perceive that you are so.’ It is seldom that the young know what youth is, till they have got beyond its period; and time was not given him to attain this knowledge. It must be remembered that there is the stamp of such inexperience on all he wrote; he had not completed his nine-and-twentieth year when he died. The calm of middle life did not add the seal of the virtues which adorn maturity to those generated by the vehement spirit of youth. Through life also he was a martyr to ill-health, and constant pain wound up his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility that rendered his views of life different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy sensations. Perfectly gentle and forbearing in manner, he suffered a good deal of internal irritability, or rather excitement, and his fortitude to bear was almost always on the stretch; and thus, during a short life, he had gone through more experience of sensation than many whose existence is protracted. ‘If I die to-morrow,’ he said, on the eve of his unanticipated death, ‘I have lived to be older than my father.’ The weight of thought and feeling burdened him heavily; you read his sufferings in his attenuated frame, while you perceived the mastery he held over them in his animated countenance and brilliant eyes.

He died, and the world showed no outward sign. But his influence over mankind, though slow in growth, is fast augmenting; and, in the ameliorations that have taken place in the political state of his country, we may trace in part the operation of his arduous struggles. His spirit gathers peace in its new state from the sense that, though late, his exertions were not made in vain, and in the progress of the liberty he so fondly loved.

He died, and his place, among those who knew him intimately, has never been filled up. He walked beside them like a spirit of good to comfort and benefit—to enlighten the darkness of life with irradiations of genius, to cheer it with his sympathy and love. Any one, once attached to Shelley, must feel all other affections, however true and fond, as wasted on barren soil in comparison. It is our best consolation to know that such a pure-minded and exalted being was once among us, and now exists where we hope one day to join him;—although the intolerant, in their blindness, poured down anathemas, the Spirit of Good, who can judge the heart, never rejected him.

In the notes appended to the poems I have endeavoured to narrate the origin and history of each. The loss of nearly all letters and papers which refer to his early life renders the execution more imperfect than it would otherwise have been. I have, however, the liveliest recollection of all that was done and said during the period of my knowing him. Every impression is as clear as if stamped yesterday, and I have no apprehension of any mistake in my statements as far as they go. In other respects I am indeed incompetent: but I feel the importance of the task, and regard it as my most sacred duty. I endeavour to fulfil it in a manner he would himself approve; and hope, in this publication, to lay the first stone of a monument due to Shelley’s genius, his sufferings, and his virtues:—

Se al seguir son tarda,

Forse avverrà che ’l bel nome gentile

Consacrerò con questa stanca penna.*

POSTSCRIPT IN SECOND EDITION OF 1839

In revising this new edition, and carefully consulting Shelley’s scattered and confused papers, I found a few fragments which had hitherto escaped me, and was enabled to complete a few poems hitherto left unfinished. What at one time escapes the searching eye, dimmed by its own earnestness, becomes clear at a future period. By the aid of a friend, I also present some poems complete and correct which hitherto have been defaced by various mistakes and omissions. It was suggested that the poem To the Queen of my Heart was falsely attributed to Shelley. I certainly find no trace of it among his papers; and, as those of his intimate friends whom I have consulted never heard of it, I omit it.

Two poems are added of some length, Swellfoot the Tyrant and Peter Bell the Third. I have mentioned the circumstances under which they were written in the notes; and need only add that they are conceived in a very different spirit from Shelley’s usual compositions. They are specimens of the burlesque and fanciful; but, although they adopt a familiar style and homely imagery, there shine through the radiance of the poet’s imagination the earnest views and opinions of the politician and the moralist.

At my request the publisher has restored the omitted passages of Queen Mab. I now present this edition as a complete collection of my husband’s poetical works, and I do not foresee that I can hereafter add to or take away a word or line.

PUTNEY, November 6, 1839.

* And if I'm slow to follow her, it’s in the hope that I might consecrate her fair name with this weary pen—Petrarch: Sonnet xxix ‘Due gran nemiche’ TRANS. ED.

PREFACE BY MRS. SHELLEY

TO THE VOLUME OF POSTHUMOUS POEMS PUBLISHED IN 1824

In nobil sangue vita umile e queta,

Ed in alto intelletto un puro core

Frutto senile in sul giovenil fibre,

E in aspetto pensoso anima lieta.*

—PETRARCA.

It had been my wish, on presenting the public with the Posthumous Poems of Mr. Shelley, to have accompanied them by a biographical notice; as it appeared to me that at this moment a narration of the events of my husband’s life would come more gracefully from other hands than mine, I applied to Mr. Leigh Hunt. The distinguished friendship that Mr. Shelley felt for him, and the enthusiastic affection with which Mr. Leigh Hunt clings to his friend’s memory, seemed to point him out as the person best calculated for such an undertaking. His absence from this country, which prevented our mutual explanation, has unfortunately rendered my scheme abortive. I do not doubt but that on some other occasion he will pay this tribute to his lost friend, and sincerely regret that the volume which I edit has not been honoured by its insertion.

The comparative solitude in which Mr. Shelley lived was the occasion that he was personally known to few; and his fearless enthusiasm in the cause which he considered the most sacred upon earth, the improvement of the moral and physical state of mankind, was the chief reason why he, like other illustrious reformers, was pursued by hatred and calumny. No man was ever more devoted than he to the endeavour of making those around him happy; no man ever possessed friends more unfeignedly attached to him. The ungrateful world did not feel his loss, and the gap it made seemed to close as quickly over his memory as the murderous sea above his living frame. Hereafter men will lament that his transcendent powers of intellect were extinguished before they had bestowed on them their choicest treasures. To his friends his loss is irremediable: the wise, the brave, the gentle, is gone for ever! He is to them as a bright vision, whose radiant track, left behind in the memory, is worth all the realities that society can afford. Before the critics contradict me, let them appeal to any one who had ever known him. To see him was to love him: and his presence, like Ithuriel’s spear, was alone sufficient to disclose the falsehood of the tale which his enemies whispered in the ear of the ignorant world.

His life was spent in the contemplation of Nature, in arduous study, or in acts of kindness and affection. He was an elegant scholar and a profound metaphysician; without possessing much scientific knowledge, he was unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural objects; he knew every plant by its name, and was familiar with the history and habits of every production of the earth; he could interpret without a fault each appearance in the sky; and the varied phenomena of heaven and earth filled him with deep emotion. He made his study and reading-room of the shadowed copse, the stream, the lake, and the waterfall. Ill health and continual pain preyed upon his powers; and the solitude in which we lived, particularly on our first arrival in Italy, although congenial to his feelings, must frequently have weighed upon his spirits; those beautiful and affecting Lines written in Dejection near Naples were composed at such an interval; but, when in health, his spirits were buoyant and youthful to an extraordinary degree.

Such was his love for Nature that every page of his poetry is associated, in the minds of his friends, with the loveliest scenes of the countries which he inhabited. In early life he visited the most beautiful parts of this country and Ireland. Afterwards the Alps of Switzerland became his inspirers. Prometheus Unbound was written among the deserted and flower-grown ruins of Rome; and, when he made his home under the Pisan hills, their roofless recesses harboured him as he composed the Witch of Atlas, Adonais, and Hellas. In the wild but beautiful Bay of Spezzia, the winds and waves which he loved became his playmates. His days were chiefly spent on the water; the management of his boat, its alterations and improvements, were his principal occupation. At night, when the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he often went alone in his little shallop to the rocky caves that bordered it, and, sitting beneath their shelter, wrote the Triumph of Life, the last of his productions. The beauty but strangeness of this lonely place, the refined pleasure which he felt in the companionship of a few selected friends, our entire sequestration from the rest of the world, all contributed to render this period of his life one of continued enjoyment. I am convinced that the two months we passed there were the happiest which he had ever known: his health even rapidly improved, and he was never better than when I last saw him, full of spirits and joy, embark for Leghorn, that he might there welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy. I was to have accompanied him; but illness confined me to my room, and thus put the seal on my misfortune. His vessel bore out of sight with a favourable wind, and I remained awaiting his return by the breakers of that sea which was about to engulf him.

He spent a week at Pisa, employed in kind offices toward his friend, and enjoying with keen delight the renewal of their intercourse. He then embarked with Mr. Williams, the chosen and beloved sharer of his pleasures and of his fate, to return to us. We waited for them in vain; the sea by its restless moaning seemed to desire to inform us of what we would not learn:—but a veil may well be drawn over such misery. The real anguish of those moments transcended all the fictions that the most glowing imagination ever portrayed; our seclusion, the savage nature of the inhabitants of the surrounding villages, and our immediate vicinity to the troubled sea, combined to imbue with strange horror our days of uncertainty. The truth was at last known,—a truth that made our loved and lovely Italy appear a tomb, its sky a pall. Every heart echoed the deep lament, and my only consolation was in the praise and earnest love that each voice bestowed and each countenance demonstrated for him we had lost,—not, I fondly hope, for ever; his unearthly and elevated nature is a pledge of the continuation of his being, although in an altered form. Rome received his ashes; they are deposited beneath its weed-grown wall, and ‘the world’s sole monument’ is enriched by his remains.

I must add a few words concerning the contents of this volume. Julian and Maddalo, the Witch of Atlas, and most of the Translations, were written some years ago; and, with the exception of the Cyclops, and the Scenes from the Magico Prodigioso, may be considered as having received the author’s ultimate corrections. The Triumph of Life was his last work, and was left in so unfinished a state that I arranged it in its present form with great difficulty. All his poems which were scattered in periodical works are collected in this volume, and I have added a reprint of Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude: the difficulty with which a copy can be obtained is the cause of its republication. Many of the Miscellaneous Poems, written on the spur of the occasion, and never retouched, I found among his MS. books, and have carefully copied. I have subjoined, whenever I have been able, the date of their composition.

I do not know whether the critics will reprehend the insertion of some of the most imperfect among them; but I frankly own that I have been more actuated by the fear lest any monument of his genius should escape me than the wish of presenting nothing but what was complete to the fastidious reader. I feel secure that the lovers of Shelley’s poetry (who know how, more than any poet of the present day, every line and word he wrote is instinct with peculiar beauty) will pardon and thank me: I consecrate this volume to them.

The size of this collection has prevented the insertion of any prose pieces. They will hereafter appear in a separate publication.

MARY W. SHELLEY.

LONDON, June 1, 1824.

* Tranquil and meek her life, noble her blood;

A lofty mind ; a pure heart filled with grace;

Mature the fruitage, tender still the bud;

A joyful spirit in a thoughtful face;

—Petrarch Sonnet clxxix ‘In nobil sangue’ TRANS. W.D. Foulke

Contents

Preface

Preface by Mrs. Shelley [1839]

Preface by Mrs. Shelley [1824]

The Daemon of the World

Alastor: or, The Spirit of Solitude

The Revolt of Islam

Prince Athanase

Rosalind and Helen

Julian and Maddalo

Prometheus Unbound

The Cenci

The Mask of Anarchy

Peter Bell the Third

Letter to Maria Gisborne

The Witch of Atlas

Œdipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot the Tyrant

Epipsychidion

Adonais

Hellas

Fragments of an Unfinished Drama

Charles the First

The Triumph of Life

Early Poems [1814, 1815]

Stanza, written at Bracknell

Stanzas.—April, 1814

To Harriet

To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

To ———

Mutability

On Death

A Summer Evening Churchyard

To ———

To Wordsworth

Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte

Lines

Note on the Early Poems, by Mrs. Shelley

Poems written in 1816

The Sunset

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Mont Blanc

Fragment: Home

Fragment of a Ghost Story

Note on Poems of 1816, by Mrs. Shelley

Poems written in 1817

Marianne’s Dream

To Constantia, Singing

To Constantia

Fragment: To One Singing

A Fragment: To Music

Another Fragment: To Music

‘Mighty Eagle’

To the Lord Chancellor

To William Shelley

On Fanny Godwin

Lines

Death

Otho

‘O that a Chariot of Cloud were mine’

Fragment: To a Friend released from Prison

Fragment: Satan Broken Loose

Fragment: Igniculus Desiderii

Fragment: Amor Aeternus

Fragment: Thoughts come and go in Solitude

A Hate-Song

Lines to a Critic

Ozymandias

Note on Poems of 1817, by Mrs. Shelley

Poems written in 1818

To the Nile

Passage of the Apennines

The Past

To Mary ———

On a Faded Violet

Lines written among the Euganean Hills

Scene from ‘Tasso’

Song for ‘Tasso’

Invocation to Misery

Stanzas

The Woodman and the Nightingale

Marenghi

Sonnet: ‘Lift not the painted veil’

Fragment: To Byron

Fragment: Apostrophe to Silence

Fragment: The Lake’s Margin

Fragment: ‘My head is wild with weeping’

Fragment: The Vine-Shroud

Note on Poems of 1818, by Mrs. Shelley

Poems written in 1819

Lines written during the Castlereagh Administration

Song to the Men of England

Similes for two Political Characters of 1819

Fragment: To the People of England

Fragment: ‘What men gain fairly’

A New National Anthem

Sonnet: England in 1819

An Ode

Ode to Heaven

Ode to the West Wind

An Exhortation

The Indian Serenade

To Sophia [Miss Stacey]

To William Shelley

To William Shelley

To Mary Shelley

To Mary Shelley

On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery

Love’s Philosophy

Fragment: ‘Follow to the deep wood’s weeds’

The Birth of Pleasure

Fragment: Love the Universe to-day

Fragment: ‘A gentle story of two lovers young’

Fragment: Love’s Tender Atmosphere

Fragment: Wedded Souls

Fragment: ‘Is it that in some brighter sphere’

Fragment: Sufficient unto the Day

Fragment: ‘Ye gentle visitations of calm thought’

Fragment: Music and Sweet Poetry

Fragment: The Sepulchre of Memory

Fragment: ‘When a lover clasps his fairest’

Fragment: ‘Wake the serpent not’

Fragment: Rain

Fragment: A Tale Untold

Fragment: To Italy

Fragment: Wine of the Fairies

Fragment: A Roman’s Chamber

Fragment: Rome and Nature

Variation of the Song of the Moon

Cancelled Stanza of The Mask of Anarchy

Note on Poems of 1819, by Mrs. Shelley

Poems written in 1820

The Sensitive Plant

A Vision of the Sea

The Cloud

To a Skylark

Ode to Liberty

To ——

Arethusa

Song of Proserpine

Hymn of Apollo

Hymn of Pan

The Question

The Two Spirits: An Allegory

Ode to Naples

Autumn: A Dirge

The Waning Moon

To the Moon

Death

Liberty

Summer and Winter

The Tower of Famine

An Allegory

The World’s Wanderers

Sonnet

Lines to a Reviewer

Fragment of a Satire on Satire

Good-night

Buona Notte

Orpheus

Fiordispina

Time Long Past

Fragment: The Deserts of Dim Sleep

Fragment: ‘The viewless and invisible consequence’

Fragment: A Serpent-face

Fragment: Death in Life

Fragment: ‘Such hope, as is the sick despair of good’

Fragment: ‘Alas! This is not what I thought life was’

Fragment: Milton’s Spirit

Fragment: ‘Unrisen splendour of the brightest sun’

Fragment: Pater Omnipotens

Fragment: To the Mind of Man

Note on Poems of 1820, by Mrs. Shelley

Poems written in 1821

Dirge for the Year

To Night

Time

Lines

From the Arabic: An Imitation

To Emilia Viviani

The Fugitives

To ——

Song

Mutability

Lines written on Hearing the News of the Death Of Napoleon

Sonnet: Political Greatness

The Aziola

A Lament

Remembrance

To Edward Williams

To ——

To ——

A Bridal Song

Epithalamium

Another Version of the Same

Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear

Fragments written for Hellas

Fragment: ‘I would not be a king’

Ginevra

Evening: Ponte Al Mare, Pisa

The Boat on the Serchio

Music

Sonnet to Byron

Fragment on Keats

Fragment: ‘Methought I was a billow in the crowd’

To-morrow

Stanza

Fragment: A Wanderer

Fragment: Life Rounded with Sleep

Fragment: ‘I faint, I perish with my love!’

Fragment: The Lady of the South

Fragment: Zephyrus the Awakener

Fragment: Rain

Fragment: ‘When soft winds and sunny skies’

Fragment: ‘And that I walk thus proudly crowned’

Fragment: ‘The rude wind is singing’

Fragment: ‘Great Spirit’

Fragment: ‘O thou immortal deity’

Fragment: The False Laurel and the True

Fragment: May the Limner

Fragment: Beauty’s Halo

Fragment: ‘The death knell is ringing’

Fragment: ‘I stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret’

Note on Poems of 1821, by Mrs. Shelley

Poems written in 1822

The Zucca

The Magnetic Lady to her Patient

Lines: ‘When the lamp is shattered’

To Jane: The invitation

To Jane: The recollection

The Pine Forest of the Cascine Near Pisa

With a Guitar, to Jane

To Jane: ‘The keen stars were twinkling’

A Dirge

Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici

Lines: ‘We meet not as we parted’

The Isle

Fragment: To the Moon

Epitaph

Note on Poems of 1822, by Mrs. Shelley

Translations

Hymn to Mercury

Homer’s Hymn to Castor and Pollux

Homer’s Hymn to the Moon

Homer’s Hymn to the Sun

Homer’s Hymn to the Earth: Mother of All

Homer’s Hymn to Minerva

Homer’s Hymn to Venus

The Cyclops

Epigrams

Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Adonis

Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Bion

From the Greek of Moschus

Pan, Echo, and the Satyr

From Vergil’s Tenth Eclogue

The Same

From Vergil’s Fourth Georgic

Sonnet from the Italian of Dante

The first Canzone of the Convito

Matilda Gathering Flowers

Fragment adapted from the Vita Nuova of Dante

Ugolino

Sonnet from the Italian of Cavalcanti

Scenes from the Magico Prodigioso

Stanzas from Calderon’s Cisma de Inglaterra

Scenes from the Faust of Goethe

Juvenilia

Queen Mab

Notes on Queen Mab

Note on Queen Mab, by Mrs. Shelley

Verses on a Cat

Fragment: Omens

Epitaphium

In Horologium

A Dialogue

To the Moonbeam

The Solitary

To Death

Love’s Rose

Eyes: a fragment

Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire

I

II

III. Song

IV. Song

V. Song

VI. Song

VII. Song

VIII. Song

IX. Song

X. The Irishman’s Song

XI. Song

XII. Song

XIII. Song

XIV. Saint Edmond’s Eve

XV. Revenge

XVI. Ghasta

XVII. Fragment, or the Triumph of Conscience

Poems from St. Irvyne, or, The Rosicrucian

Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson

War

Fragment: Supposed to be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Corday

Despair

Fragment: ‘Yes! all is past’

The Spectral Horseman

Melody to a Scene of Former Times

Stanza from a Translation of the Marseillaise Hymn

Bigotry’s Victim

On an Icicle that Clung to the Grass of a Grave

Love

On a Fête at Carlton House: Fragment

To a Star

To Mary who Died in this Opinion

A Tale of Society as it is: From Facts, 1811

To the Republicans of North America

To Ireland

On Robert Emmet’s Grave

The Retrospect: Cwm Elan, 1812

Fragment of a Sonnet: To Harriet

To Harriet

Sonnet: To a Balloon laden with knwoledge

Sonnet: On launching some Bottles filled with Knowledge into the Bristol Channel

The Devil’s Walk

Fragment of a Sonnet

On Leaving London for Wales

The Wandering Jew’s Soliloquy

Evening

To Ianthe

Song from the Wandering Jew

Fragment from the Wandering Jew

To The Queen of my Heart

Notes on the Text and its Punctuation

A List of the Principal Editions of Shelley’s Poetical Works

Index of First Lines

COLOPHON

THE DAEMON OF THE WORLD

A FRAGMENT.

PART I

[Sections i and ii of Queen Mab rehandled, and published by Shelley in the Alastor volume, 1816. See Bibliographical List, and the Editor’s Introductory Note to Queen Mab.]

Nec tantum prodere vati,

Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unam

Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.*

LUCAN, Phars. v. 176.

How wonderful is Death,

Death and his brother Sleep!

One pale as yonder wan and hornèd moon,

With lips of lurid blue,

5

The other glowing like the vital morn,

When throned on ocean’s wave

It breathes over the world:

Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!

Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,

10

Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,

To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne

Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,

Which love and admiration cannot view

Without a beating heart, whose azure veins

15

Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,

Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed

In light of some sublimest mind, decay?

Nor putrefaction’s breath

Leave aught of this pure spectacle

20

But loathsomeness and ruin?—

Spare aught but a dark theme,

On which the lightest heart might moralize?

Or is it but that downy-wingèd slumbers

Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids

25

To watch their own repose?

Will they, when morning’s beam

Flows through those wells of light,

Seek far from noise and day some western cave,

Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds

30

A lulling murmur weave?—

Ianthe doth not sleep

The dreamless sleep of death:

Nor in her moonlight chamber silently

Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,

35

Or mark her delicate cheek

With interchange of hues mock the broad moon,

Outwatching weary night,

Without assured reward.

Her dewy eyes are closed;

40

On their translucent lids, whose texture fine

Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below

With unapparent fire,

The baby Sleep is pillowed:

Her golden tresses shade

45

The bosom’s stainless pride,

Twining like tendrils of the parasite

Around a marble column.

Hark! whence that rushing sound?

’Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps

50

Around a lonely ruin

When west winds sigh and evening waves respond

In whispers from the shore:

’Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes

Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves

55

The genii of the breezes sweep.

Floating on waves of music and of light,

The chariot of the Daemon of the World

Descends in silent power:

Its shape reposed within: slight as some cloud

60

That catches but the palest tinge of day

When evening yields to night,

Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indue

Its transitory robe.

Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful

65

Draw that strange car of glory, reins of light

Check their unearthly speed; they stop and fold

Their wings of braided air:

The Daemon leaning from the ethereal car

Gazed on the slumbering maid.

70

Human eye hath ne’er beheld

A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,

As that which o’er the maiden’s charmèd sleep

Waving a starry wand,

Hung like a mist of light.

75

Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds

Of wakening spring arose,

Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky.

Maiden, the world’s supremest spirit

Beneath the shadow of her wings

80

Folds all thy memory doth inherit

From ruin of divinest things,

Feelings that lure thee to betray,

And light of thoughts that pass away.

For thou hast earned a mighty boon,

85

The truths which wisest poets see

Dimly, thy mind may make its own,

Regarding cj. A.C. Bradley.

Rewarding its own majesty,

Entranced in some diviner mood

Of self-oblivious solitude.

90

Custom, and Faith, and Power thou spurnest;

From hate and awe thy heart is free;

Ardent and pure as day thou burnest,

For dark and cold mortality

A living light, to cheer it long,

95

The watch-fires of the world among.

Therefore from nature’s inner shrine,

Where gods and fiends in worship bend,

Majestic spirit, be it thine

The flame to seize, the veil to rend,

100

Where the vast snake Eternity

In charmèd sleep doth ever lie.

All that inspires thy voice of love,

Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes,

Or through thy frame doth burn or move,

105

Or think or feel, awake, arise!

Spirit, leave for mine and me

Earth’s unsubstantial mimicry!

It ceased, and from the mute and moveless frame

A radiant spirit arose,

110

All beautiful in naked purity.

Robed in its human hues it did ascend,

Disparting as it went the silver clouds,

It moved towards the car, and took its seat

Beside the Daemon shape.

115

Obedient to the sweep of aëry song,

The mighty ministers

Unfurled their prismy wings.

The magic car moved on;

The night was fair, innumerable stars

120

Studded heaven’s dark blue vault;

The eastern wave grew pale

With the first smile of morn.

The magic car moved on.

From the swift sweep of wings

125

The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew;

And where the burning wheels

Eddied above the mountain’s loftiest peak

Was traced a line of lightning.

Now far above a rock the utmost verge

130

Of the wide earth it flew,

The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow

Frowned o’er the silver sea.

Far, far below the chariot’s stormy path,

Calm as a slumbering babe,

135

Tremendous ocean lay.

Its broad and silent mirror gave to view

The pale and waning stars,

The chariot’s fiery track,

And the grey light of morn

140

Tingeing those fleecy clouds

That cradled in their folds the infant dawn.

The chariot seemed to fly

Through the abyss of an immense concave,

Radiant with million constellations, tinged

145

With shades of infinite colour,

And semicircled with a belt

Flashing incessant meteors.

As they approached their goal,

The wingèd shadows seemed to gather speed.

150

The sea no longer was distinguished; earth

Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, suspended

In the black concave of heaven

With the sun’s cloudless orb,

Whose rays of rapid light

155

Parted around the chariot’s swifter course,

And fell like ocean’s feathery spray

Dashed from the boiling surge

Before a vessel’s prow.

The magic car moved on.

160

Earth’s distant orb appeared

The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens,

Whilst round the chariot’s way

Innumerable systems widely rolled,

And countless spheres diffused

165

An ever varying glory.

It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned,

And like the moon’s argentine crescent hung

In the dark dome of heaven; some did shed

A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea

170

Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashed

Athwart the night with trains of bickering fire,

Like spherèd worlds to death and ruin driven;

Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passed

Bedimmed all other light.

175

Spirit of Nature! here

In this interminable wilderness

Of worlds, at whose involved immensity

Even soaring fancy staggers,

Here is thy fitting temple.

180

Yet not the lightest leaf

That quivers to the passing breeze

Is less instinct with thee,—

Yet not the meanest worm.

That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,

185

Less shares thy eternal breath.

Spirit of Nature! thou

Imperishable as this glorious scene,

Here is thy fitting temple.

If solitude hath ever led thy steps

190

To the shore of the immeasurable sea,

And thou hast lingered there

Until the sun’s broad orb

Seemed resting on the fiery line of ocean,

Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold

195

That without motion hang

Over the sinking sphere:

Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds,

Edged with intolerable radiancy,

Towering like rocks of jet

200

Above the burning deep:

And yet there is a moment

When the sun’s highest point

Peers like a star o’er ocean’s western edge,

When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam

205

Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea:

Then has thy rapt imagination soared

Where in the midst of all existing things

The temple of the mightiest Daemon stands.

Yet not the golden islands

210

That gleam amid yon flood of purple light,

Nor the feathery curtains

That canopy the sun’s resplendent couch,

Nor the burnished ocean waves

Paving that gorgeous dome,

215

So fair, so wonderful a sight

As the eternal temple could afford.

The elements of all that human thought

Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join

To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught

220

Of earth may image forth its majesty.

Yet likest evening’s vault that faëry hall,

As heaven low resting on the wave it spread

Its floors of flashing light,

Its vast and azure dome;

225

And on the verge of that obscure abyss

Where crystal battlements o’erhang the gulf

Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse

Their lustre through its adamantine gates.

The magic car no longer moved;

230

The Daemon and the Spirit

Entered the eternal gates.

Those clouds of aëry gold

That slept in glittering billows

Beneath the azure canopy,

235

With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;

While slight and odorous mists

Floated to strains of thrilling melody

Through the vast columns and the pearly shrines.

The Daemon and the Spirit

240

Approached the overhanging battlement,

Below lay stretched the boundless universe!

There, far as the remotest line

That limits swift imagination’s flight.

Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,

245

Immutably fulfilling

Eternal Nature’s law.

Above, below, around,

The circling systems formed

A wilderness of harmony.

250

Each with undeviating aim

In eloquent silence through the depths of space

Pursued its wondrous way.—

Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.

Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,

255

Strange things within their belted orbs appear.

Like animated frenzies, dimly moved

Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,

Thronging round human graves, and o’er the dead

Sculpturing records for each memory

260

In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,

Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell

Confounded burst in ruin o’er the world:

And they did build vast trophies, instruments

Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold,

265

Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls

With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,

Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained

With blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,

The sanguine codes of venerable crime.

270

The likeness of a thronèd king came by.

When these had passed, bearing upon his brow

A threefold crown; his countenance was calm.

His eye severe and cold; but his right hand

Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw

275

By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart

Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,

A multitudinous throng, around him knelt.

With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks

Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by.

280

Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,

Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues

Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly,

Breathing in self-contempt fierce blasphemies

Against the Daemon of the World, and high

285

Hurling their armèd hands where the pure Spirit,

Serene and inaccessibly secure,

Stood on an isolated pinnacle.

The flood of ages combating below,

The depth of the unbounded universe

290

Above, and all around

Necessity’s unchanging harmony.

PART II

[Sections 8 and 9 of Queen Mab rehandled by Shelley. First printed in 1876 by Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., by whose kind permission it is here reproduced. See Editor’s Introductory Note to Queen Mab.]

O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!

To which those restless powers that ceaselessly

Throng through the human universe aspire;

295

Thou consummation of all mortal hope!

Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!

Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,

Verge to one point and blend for ever there:

Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!

300

Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,

Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come:

O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!

Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,

And dim forebodings of thy loveliness,

305

Haunting the human heart, have there entwined

Those rooted hopes, that the proud Power of Evil

Shall not for ever on this fairest world

Shake pestilence and war, or that his slaves

With blasphemy for prayer, and human blood

310

For sacrifice, before his shrine for ever

In adoration bend, or Erebus

With all its banded fiends shall not uprise

To overwhelm in envy and revenge

The dauntless and the good, who dare to hurl

315

Defiance at his throne, girt tho’ it be

With Death’s omnipotence. Thou hast beheld

His empire, o’er the present and the past;

It was a desolate sight—now gaze on mine,

Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time,

320

Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,—

And from the cradles of eternity,

Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep

By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,

Tear thou that gloomy shroud.—Spirit, behold

Thy glorious destiny!

325

The Spirit saw

The vast frame of the renovated world

Smile in the lap of Chaos, and the sense

Of hope thro’ her fine texture did suffuse

Such varying glow, as summer evening casts

330

On undulating clouds and deepening lakes.

Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,

That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea

And dies on the creation of its breath,

And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits,

335

Was the sweet stream of thought that with wild motion

Flowed o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies.

The mighty tide of thought had paused awhile,

Which from the Daemon now like Ocean’s stream

Again began to pour.—

To me is given

340

The wonders of the human world to keep-

Space, matter, time and mind—let the sight

Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.

All things are recreated, and the flame

Of consentaneous love inspires all life:

345

The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck

To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,

Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:

The balmy breathings of the wind inhale

Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:

350

Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,

Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream;

No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,

Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride

The foliage of the undecaying trees;

355

But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,

And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,

Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,

Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit

Reflects its tint and blushes into love.

360

The habitable earth is full of bliss;

Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled

By everlasting snow-storms round the poles,

Where matter dared not vegetate nor live,

But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude

365

Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;

And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles

Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls

Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,

Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet

370

To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves

And melodise with man’s blest nature there.

The vast tract of the parched and sandy waste

Now teems with countless rills and shady woods,

Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages;

375

And where the startled wilderness did hear

A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,

Hymmng his victory, or the milder snake

Crushing the bones of some frail antelope

Within his brazen folds—the dewy lawn,

380

Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles

To see a babe before his mother’s door,

Share with the green and golden basilisk

That comes to lick his feet, his morning’s meal.

Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail

385

Has seen, above the illimitable plain,

Morning on night and night on morning rise,

Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread

Its shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea,

Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves

390

So long have mingled with the gusty wind

In melancholy loneliness, and swept

The desert of those ocean solitudes,

But vocal to the sea-bird’s harrowing shriek,

The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,

395

Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds

Of kindliest human impulses respond:

Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,

With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,

And fertile valleys resonant with bliss,

400

Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,

Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,

To meet the kisses of the flowerets there.

Man chief perceives the change, his being notes

The gradual renovation, and defines

405

Each movement of its progress on his mind.

Man, where the gloom of the long polar night

Lowered o’er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,

Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost

Basked in the moonlight’s ineffectual glow,

410

Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;

Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day

With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,

Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere

Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed

415

Unnatural vegetation, where the land

Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,

Was man a nobler being; slavery

Had crushed him to his country’s blood-stained dust.

Even where the milder zone afforded man

420

A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,

Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,

Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availed

Till late to arrest its progress, or create

That peace which first in bloodless victory waved

425

Her snowy standard o’er this favoured clime:

There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,

The mimic of surrounding misery,

The jackal of ambition’s lion-rage,

The bloodhound of religion’s hungry zeal.

430

Here now the human being stands adorning

This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;

Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,

Which gently in his noble bosom wake

All kindly passions and all pure desires.

435

Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing,

Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal

Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise

In time-destroying infiniteness gift

With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks

440

The unprevailing hoariness of age,

And man, once fleeting o’er the transient scene

Swift as an unremembered vision, stands

Immortal upon earth: no longer now

He slays the beast that sports around his dwelling

445

And horribly devours its mangled flesh,

Or drinks its vital blood, which like a stream

Of poison thro’ his fevered veins did flow

Feeding a plague that secretly consumed

His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind

450

Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief,

The germs of misery, death, disease and crime.

No longer now the wingèd habitants,

That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,

Flee from the form of man; but gather round,

455

And prune their sunny feathers on the hands

Which little children stretch in friendly sport

Towards these dreadless partners of their play.

All things are void of terror: man has lost

His desolating privilege, and stands

460

An equal amidst equals: happiness

And science dawn though late upon the earth;

Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;

Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,

Reason and passion cease to combat there;

465

Whilst mind unfettered o’er the earth extends

Its all-subduing energies, and wields

The sceptre of a vast dominion there.

Mild is the slow necessity of death:

The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,

470

Without a groan, almost without a fear,

Resigned in peace to the necessity,

Calm as a voyager to some distant land,

And full of wonder, full of hope as he.

The deadly germs of languor and disease

475

Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts

With choicest boons her human worshippers.

How vigorous now the athletic form of age!

How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!

Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care,

480

Had stamped the seal of grey deformity

On all the mingling lineaments of time.

How lovely the intrepid front of youth!

How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.

Within the massy prison’s mouldering courts,

485

Fearless and free the ruddy children play,

Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows

With the green ivy and the red wall-flower,

That mock the dungeon’s unavailing gloom;

The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,

490

There rust amid the accumulated ruins

Now mingling slowly with their native earth:

There the broad beam of day, which feebly once

Lighted the cheek of lean captivity

With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines

495

On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:

No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair

Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes

Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds

And merriment are resonant around.

500

The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more

The voice that once waked multitudes to war

Thundering thro’ all their aisles: but now respond

To the death dirge of the melancholy wind:

It were a sight of awfulness to see

505

The works of faith and slavery, so vast,

So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!

Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall.

A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death

To-day, the breathing marble glows above

510

To decorate its memory, and tongues

Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms

In silence and in darkness seize their prey.

These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind:

Their elements, wide-scattered o’er the globe,

515

To happier shapes are moulded, and become

Ministrant to all blissful impulses:

Thus human things are perfected, and earth,

Even as a child beneath its mother’s love,

Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows

520

Fairer and nobler with each passing year.

Now Time his dusky pennons o’er the scene

Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past

Fades from our charmèd sight. My task is done:

Thy lore is learned. Earth’s wonders are thine own,

525

With all the fear and all the hope they bring.

My spells are past: the present now recurs.

Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains

Yet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand.

Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,

530

Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue

The gradual paths of an aspiring change:

For birth and life and death, and that strange state

Before the naked powers that thro’ the world

Wander like winds have found a human home,

535

All tend to perfect happiness, and urge

The restless wheels of being on their way,

Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,

Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:

For birth but wakes the universal mind

540

Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow

Thro’ the vast world, to individual sense

Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape

New modes of passion to its frame may lend;

Life is its state of action, and the store

545

Of all events is aggregated there

That variegate the eternal universe;

Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,

That leads to azure isles and beaming skies

And happy regions of eternal hope.

550

Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:

Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,

Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,

Yet spring’s awakening breath will woo the earth,

To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,

555

That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,

Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile.

Fear not then, Spirit, death’s disrobing hand,

So welcome when the tyrant is awake,

So welcome when the bigot’s hell-torch flares;

560

’Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,

The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.

For what thou art shall perish utterly,

But what is thine may never cease to be;

Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seen

565

Love’s brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,

Mingling with freedom’s fadeless laurels there,

And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.

Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene

Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?

570

Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires

Of mind as radiant and as pure as thou,

Have shone upon the paths of men—return,

Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thou

Art destined an eternal war to wage

575

With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot

The germs of misery from the human heart.

Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe

The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,

Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,

580

Watching its wanderings as a friend’s disease:

Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy

Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,

When fenced by power and master of the world.

Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,

585

Free from heart-withering custom’s cold control,

Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.

Earth’s pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,

And therefore art thou worthy of the boon

Which thou hast now received: virtue shall keep

590

Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,

And many days of beaming hope shall bless

Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.

Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy

Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch

595

Light, life and rapture from thy smile.

The Daemon called its wingèd ministers.

Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,

That rolled beside the crystal battlement,

Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.

600

The burning wheels inflame

The steep descent of Heaven’s untrodden way.

Fast and far the chariot flew:

The mighty globes that rolled

Around the gate of the Eternal Fane

605

Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared

Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs

That ministering on the solar power

With borrowed light pursued their narrower way.

Earth floated then below:

610

The chariot paused a moment;

The Spirit then descended:

And from the earth departing

The shadows with swift wings

Speeded like thought upon the light of Heaven.

615

The Body and the Soul united then,

A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame:

Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;

Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:

She looked around in wonder and beheld

620

Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,

Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,

And the bright beaming stars

That through the casement shone.

* Nor was it given her by the god to speak

All that she knew; for into one vast mass

All time was gathered, and her panting chest

Groaned ’neath the centuries.—TRANS. E. Ridley

ALASTOR: OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

[Composed at Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Park, 1815 (autumn); published, as the title-piece of a slender volume containing other poems (see Biographical List, by Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, London, 1816 (March). Reprinted—the first edition being sold out—amongst the Posthumous Poems, 1824. Sources of the text are (1) the editio princeps, 1816; (2) Posthumous Poems, 1824; (3) Poetical Works, 1839, editions 1st and 2nd. For (2) and (3) Mrs. Shelley is responsible.]

PREFACE

The poem entitled Alastor may be considered as allegorical of one of the most interesting situations of the human mind. It represents a youth of uncorrupted feelings and adventurous genius led forth by an imagination inflamed and purified through familiarity with all that is excellent and majestic, to the contemplation of the universe. He drinks deep of the fountains of knowledge, and is still insatiate. The magnificence and beauty of the external world sinks profoundly into the frame of his conceptions, and affords to their modifications at variety not to be exhausted. so long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous, and tranquil, and self-possessed. But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves. Conversant with speculations of the sublimest and most perfect natures, the vision in which he embodies his own imaginations unites all of wonderful, or wise, or beautiful, which the poet, the philosopher, or the lover could depicture. The intellectual faculties, the imagination, the functions of sense, have their respective requisitions on the sympathy of corresponding powers in other human beings. The Poet is represented as uniting these requisitions, and attaching them to a single image. He seeks in vain for a prototype of his conception. Blasted by his disappointment, he descends to an untimely grave.

The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet’s self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those manner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.

‘The good die first,

And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust,

Burn to the socket!’

December 14, 1815.

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.*

—Confess. St. August.

Earth, Ocean, Air, belovèd brotherhood!

If our great Mother has imbued my soul

With aught of natural piety to feel

Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;

5

If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,

With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,

And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness;

If autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood,

And winter robing with pure snow and crowns

10

Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs;

If spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathes

Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;

If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast

I consciously have injured, but still loved

15

And cherished these my kindred; then forgive

This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw

No portion of your wonted favour now!

Mother of this unfathomable world!

Favour my solemn song, for I have loved

20

Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched

Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,

And my heart ever gazes on the depth

Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed

In charnels and on coffins, where black death

25

Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,

Hoping to still these obstinate questionings

Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,

Thy messenger, to render up the tale

Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,

30

When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,

Like an inspired and desperate alchymist

Staking his very life on some dark hope,

Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks

With my most innocent love, until strange tears,

35

Uniting with those breathless kisses, made

Such magic as compels the charmèd night

To render up thy charge:… and, though ne’er yet

Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,

Enough from incommunicable dream,

40

And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought,

Has shone within me, that serenely now

And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre

Suspended in the solitary dome

Of some mysterious and deserted fane,

45

I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain

May modulate with murmurs of the air,

And motions of the forests and the sea,

And voice of living beings, and woven hymns

Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.

50

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb

No human hands with pious reverence reared,

But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds

Built o’er his mouldering bones a pyramid

Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:—

55

A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked

With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,

The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:—

Gentle, and brave, and generous,—no lorn bard

Breathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh:

60

He lived, he died, he sung in solitude.

Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,

And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined

And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.

The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,

65

And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,

Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

By solemn vision, and bright silver dream

His infancy was nurtured. Every sight

And sound from the vast earth and ambient air,

70

Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.

The fountains of divine philosophy

Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,

Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past

In truth or fable consecrates, he felt

75

And knew. When early youth had passed, he left

His cold fireside and alienated home

To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.

Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness

Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought

80

With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,

His rest and food. Nature’s most secret steps

He like her shadow has pursued, where’er

The red volcano overcanopies

Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice

85

With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes

On black bare pointed islets ever beat

With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,

Rugged and dark, winding among the springs

Of fire and poison, inaccessible

90

To avarice or pride, their starry domes

Of diamond and of gold expand above

Numberless and immeasurable halls,

Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines

Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.

95

Nor had that scene of ampler majesty

Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven

And the green earth lost in his heart its claims

To love and wonder; he would linger long

In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,

100

Until the doves and squirrels would partake

From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,

Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,

And the wild antelope, that starts whene’er

The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend

105

Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form

More graceful than her own.

His wandering step,

Obedient to high thoughts, has visited

The awful ruins of the days of old:

Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste

110

Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers

Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,

Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange,

Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,

Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx,

115

Dark Aethiopia in her desert hills

Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,

Stupendous columns, and wild images

Of more than man, where marble daemons watch

The Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men

120

Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,

He lingered, poring on memorials

Of the world’s youth: through the long burning day

Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon

Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades

125

Suspended he that task, but ever gazed

And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind

Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw

The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,

130

Her daily portion, from her father’s tent,

And spread her matting for his couch, and stole

From duties and repose to tend his steps,

Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe

To speak her love:—and watched his nightly sleep,

135

Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips

Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath

Of innocent dreams arose; then, when red morn

Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home

Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

140

The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie,

And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,

And o’er the aërial mountains which pour down

Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,

In joy and exultation held his way;

145

Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within

Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine

Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,

Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched

His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep

150

There came, a dream of hopes that never yet

Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veilèd maid

Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.

Her voice was like the voice of his own soul

Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,

155

Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held

His inmost sense suspended in its web

Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.

Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,

And lofty hopes of divine liberty,

160

Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,

Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood

Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame

A permeating fire; wild numbers then

She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs

165

Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands

Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp

Strange symphony, and in their branching veins

The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.

The beating of her heart was heard to fill

170

The pauses of her music, and her breath

Tumultuously accorded with those fits

Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,

As if her heart impatiently endured

Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,

175

And saw by the warm light of their own life

Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil

Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,

Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,

Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips

180

Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.

His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess

Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled

His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet

Her panting bosom:… she drew back a while,

185

Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,

With frantic gesture and short breathless cry

Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.

Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night

Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,

190

Like a dark flood suspended in its course,

Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

Roused by the shock he started from his trance—

The cold white light of morning, the blue moon

Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,

195

The distinct valley and the vacant woods,

Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled

The hues of heaven that canopied his bower

Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,

The mystery and the majesty of Earth,

200

The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes

Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly

As ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven.

The spirit of sweet human love has sent

A vision to the sleep of him who spurned

205

Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues

Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;

He overleaps the bounds. Alas! Alas!

Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined

Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost

210

In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,

That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death

Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,

O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds

And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,

215

Lead only to a black and watery depth,

While death’s blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,

Where every shade which the foul grave exhales

Hides its dead eye from the detested day,

Conduct ed. 1816. See Notes.

Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?

220

This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart;

The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung

His brain even like despair.

While daylight held

The sky, the Poet kept mute conference

With his still soul. At night the passion came,

225

Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,

And shook him from his rest, and led him forth

Into the darkness.—As an eagle, grasped

In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast

Burn with the poison, and precipitates

230

Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,

Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight

O’er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven

By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,

Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,

235

Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,

Startling with careless step the moonlight snake,

He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,

Shedding the mockery of its vital hues

Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on

240

Till vast Aornos seen from Petra’s steep

Hung o’er the low horizon like a cloud;

Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs

Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind

Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,

245

Day after day a weary waste of hours,

Bearing within his life the brooding care

That ever fed on its decaying flame.

And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair,

Sered by the autumn of strange suffering

250

Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand

Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;

Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone

As in a furnace burning secretly

From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,

255

Who ministered with human charity

His human wants, beheld with wondering awe

Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,

Encountering on some dizzy precipice

That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind

260

With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet

Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused

In its career: the infant would conceal

His troubled visage in his mother’s robe

In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,

265

To remember their strange light in many a dream

Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taught

By nature, would interpret half the woe

That wasted him, would call him with false names

Brother and friend, would press his pallid hand

270

At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path

Of his departure from their father’s door.

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore

He paused, a wide and melancholy waste

Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged

275

His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,

Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.

It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings

Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course

High over the immeasurable main.

280

His eyes pursued its flight:—‘Thou hast a home,

Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home,

Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck

With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes

Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.

285

And what am I that I should linger here,

With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,

Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned

To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers

In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven

290

That echoes not my thoughts?’ A gloomy smile

Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.

For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly

Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,

Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,

295

With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.

There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight

Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.

A little shallop floating near the shore

300

Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.

It had been long abandoned, for its sides

Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints

Swayed with the undulations of the tide.

A restless impulse urged him to embark

305

And meet lone Death on the drear ocean’s waste;

For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves

The slimy caverns of the populous deep.

The day was fair and sunny; sea and sky

Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind

310

Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.

Following his eager soul, the wanderer

Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft

On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,

And felt the boat speed o’er the tranquil sea

315

Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.

As one that in a silver vision floats

Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds

Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly

Along the dark and ruffled waters fled

320

The straining boat.—A whirlwind swept it on,

With fierce gusts and precipitating force,

Through the white ridges of the chafèd sea.

The waves arose. Higher and higher still

Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest’s scourge

325

Like serpents struggling in a vulture’s grasp.

Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war

Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast

Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven

With dark obliterating course, he sate:

330

As if their genii were the ministers

Appointed to conduct him to the light

Of those belovèd eyes, the Poet sate,

Holding the steady helm. Evening came on,

The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues

335

High ’mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray

That canopied his path o’er the waste deep;

Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,

Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks

O’er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;

340

Night followed, clad with stars. On every side

More horribly the multitudinous streams

Of ocean’s mountainous waste to mutual war

Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock

The calm and spangled sky. The little boat

345

Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam

Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;

Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;

Now leaving far behind the bursting mass

That fell, convulsing ocean: safely fled—

350

As if that frail and wasted human form,

Had been an elemental god.

At midnight

The moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffs

Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone

Among the stars like sunlight, and around

355

Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves

Bursting and eddying irresistibly

Rage and resound forever.—Who shall save?—

The boat fled on,—the boiling torrent drove,—

The crags closed round with black and jaggèd arms,

360

The shattered mountain overhung the sea,

And faster still, beyond all human speed,

Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,

The little boat was driven. A cavern there

Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths

365

Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on

With unrelaxing speed.—‘Vision and Love!’

The Poet cried aloud, ‘I have beheld

The path of thy departure. Sleep and death

Shall not divide us long!’

The boat pursued

370

The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone

At length upon that gloomy river’s flow;

Now, where the fiercest war among the waves

Is calm, on the unfathomable stream

The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,

375

Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,

Ere yet the flood’s enormous volume fell

Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound

That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass

Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm:

380

Stair above stair the eddying waters rose,

Circling immeasurably fast, and laved

With alternating dash the gnarlèd roots

Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms

In darkness over it. I’ the midst was left,

385

Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud,

A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.

Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,

With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,

Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,

390

Till on the verge of the extremest curve,

Where, through an opening of the rocky bank,

The waters overflow, and a smooth spot

Of glassy quiet mid those battling tides

Is left, the boat paused shuddering.—Shall it sink

395

Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress

Of that resistless gulf embosom it?

Now shall it fall?—A wandering stream of wind,

Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,

And, lo! with gentle motion, between banks

400

Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,

Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark!

The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar,

With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.

Where the embowering trees recede, and leave

405

A little space of green expanse, the cove

Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers

For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes,

Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave

Of the boat’s motion marred their pensive task,

410

Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,

Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay

Had e’er disturbed before. The Poet longed

To deck with their bright hues his withered hair,

But on his heart its solitude returned,

415

And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid

In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame

Had yet performed its ministry: it hung

Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud

Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods

420

Of night close over it.

The noonday sun

Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass

Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence

A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,

Scooped in the dark base of their aëry rocks,

425

Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.

The meeting boughs and implicated leaves

Wove twilight o’er the Poet’s path, as led

By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,

He sought in Nature’s dearest haunt some bank,

430

Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark

And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,

Expanding its immense and knotty arms,

Embraces the light beech. The pyramids

Of the tall cedar overarching frame

435

Most solemn domes within, and far below,

Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,

The ash and the acacia floating hang

Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed

In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,

440

Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around

The grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants’ eyes,

With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,

Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,

These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs

445

Uniting their close union; the woven leaves

Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,

And the night’s noontide clearness, mutable

As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns

Beneath these canopies extend their swells,

450

Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms

Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen

Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,

A soul-dissolving odour to invite

To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,

455

Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep

Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,

Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well,

Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,

Images all the woven boughs above,

460

And each depending leaf, and every speck

Of azure sky, darting between their chasms;

Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves

Its portraiture, but some inconstant star

Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,

465

Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,

Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,

Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings

Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.

Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld

470

Their own wan light through the reflected lines

Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth

Of that still fountain; as the human heart,

Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,

Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard

475

The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung

Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel

An unaccustomed presence, and the sound

Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs

Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed

480

To stand beside him—clothed in no bright robes

Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,

Borrowed from aught the visible world affords

Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;—

But, undulating woods, and silent well,

485

And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom

Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,

Held commune with him, as if he and it

Were all that was,—only … when his regard

Was raised by intense pensiveness,… two eyes,

490

Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,

And seemed with their serene and azure smiles

To beckon him.

Obedient to the light

That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing

The windings of the dell.—The rivulet,

495

Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine

Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell

Among the moss with hollow harmony

Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones

It danced; like childhood laughing as it went:

500

Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,

Reflecting every herb and drooping bud

That overhung its quietness.—‘O stream!

Whose source is inaccessibly profound,

Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?

505

Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,

Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,

Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course

Have each their type in me; and the wide sky.

And measureless ocean may declare as soon

510

What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud

Contains thy waters, as the universe

Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched

Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste

I’ the passing wind!’

Beside the grassy shore

515

Of the small stream he went; he did impress

On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught

Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one

Roused by some joyous madness from the couch

Of fever, he did move; yet, not like him,

520

Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame

Of his frail exultation shall be spent,

He must descend. With rapid steps he went

Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow

Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now

525

The forest’s solemn canopies were changed

For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.

Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed

The struggling brook; tall spires of windlestrae

Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,

roots ed. 1816: query stumps or trunks. See Notes.

530

And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines

Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots

The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,

Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,

The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin

535

And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes

Had shone, gleam stony orbs:—so from his steps

Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade

Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds

And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued

540

The stream, that with a larger volume now

Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there

Fretted a path through its descending curves

With its wintry speed. On every side now rose

Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,

545

Lifted their black and barren pinnacles

In the light of evening, and its precipice

Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,

Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,

Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues

550

To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands

Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,

And seems, with its accumulated crags,

To overhang the world: for wide expand

Beneath the wan stars and descending moon

555

Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,

Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom

Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills

Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge

Of the remote horizon. The near scene,

560

In naked and severe simplicity,

Made contrast with the universe. A pine,

Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy

Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast

Yielding one only response, at each pause

565

In most familiar cadence, with the howl

The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams

Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river

Foaming and hurrying o’er its rugged path,

Fell into that immeasurable void

570

Scattering its waters to the passing winds.

Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine

And torrent were not all;—one silent nook

Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,

Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,

575

It overlooked in its serenity

The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.

It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile

Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped

The fissured stones with its entwining arms,

580

And did embower with leaves for ever green,

And berries dark, the smooth and even space

Of its inviolated floor, and here

The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,

In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,

585

Red, yellow, or ethereally pale,

Rivals the pride of summer. ’Tis the haunt

Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach

The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,

One human step alone, has ever broken

590

The stillness of its solitude:—one voice

Alone inspired its echoes;—even that voice

Which hither came, floating among the winds,

And led the loveliest among human forms

To make their wild haunts the depository

595

Of all the grace and beauty that endued

Its motions, render up its majesty,

Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,

And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,

Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,

600

Commit the colours of that varying cheek,

That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.

The dim and hornèd moon hung low, and poured

A sea of lustre on the horizon’s verge

That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist

605

Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank

Wan moonlight even to fulness; not a star

Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,

Danger’s grim playmates, on that precipice

Slept, clasped in his embrace.—O, storm of death!

Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night: 610

And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still

Guiding its irresistible career

In thy devastating omnipotence,

Art king of this frail world, from the red field

615

Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,

The patriot’s sacred couch, the snowy bed

Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,

A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls

His brother Death. A rare and regal prey

620

He hath prepared, prowling around the world;

Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men

Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,

Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine

The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

625

When on the threshold of the green recess

The wanderer’s footsteps fell, he knew that death

Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,

Did he resign his high and holy soul

To images of the majestic past,

630

That paused within his passive being now,

Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe

Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place

His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk

Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone

635

Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,

Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink

Of that obscurest chasm;—and thus he lay,

Surrendering to their final impulses

The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,

640

The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear

Marred his repose; the influxes of sense,

And his own being unalloyed by pain,

Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed

The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there

645

At peace, and faintly smiling:—his last sight

Was the great moon, which o’er the western line

Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,

With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed

To mingle. Now upon the jaggèd hills

650

It rests; and still as the divided frame

Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet’s blood,

That ever beat in mystic sympathy

With nature’s ebb and flow, grew feebler still:

And when two lessening points of light alone

655

Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp

Of his faint respiration scarce did stir

The stagnate night:—till the minutest ray

Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.

It paused—it fluttered. But when heaven remained

660

Utterly black, the murky shades involved

An image, silent, cold, and motionless,

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.

Even as a vapour fed with golden beams

That ministered on sunlight, ere the west

665

Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame—

No sense, no motion, no divinity—

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings

The breath of heaven did wander—a bright stream

Once fed with many-voicèd waves—a dream

670

Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,

Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

Oh, for Medea’s wondrous alchemy,

Which wheresoe’er it fell made the earth gleam

With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale

675

From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,

Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice

Which but one living man has drained, who now,

Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels

No proud exemption in the blighting curse

680

He bears, over the world wanders for ever,

Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream

Of dark magician in his visioned cave,

Raking the cinders of a crucible

For life and power, even when his feeble hand

685

Shakes in its last decay, were the true law

Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled,

Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn

Robes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled!

The brave, the gentle and the beautiful,

690

The child of grace and genius. Heartless things

Are done and said i’ the world, and many worms

And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth

From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,

In vesper low or joyous orison,

695

Lifts still its solemn voice:—but thou art fled—

Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes

Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee

Been purest ministers, who are, alas!

Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips

700

So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes

That image sleep in death, upon that form

Yet safe from the worm’s outrage, let no tear

Be shed—not even in thought. Nor, when those hues

Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,

705

Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone

In the frail pauses of this simple strain,

Let not high verse, mourning the memory

Of that which is no more, or painting’s woe

Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery

710

Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,

And all the shows o’ the world are frail and vain

To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.

It is a woe ‘too deep for tears,’ when all

Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,

715

Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves

Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,

The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;

But pale despair and cold tranquillity,

Nature’s vast frame, the web of human things,

720

Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

* I had not yet loved and I longed for it, I sought something to love for I was in love with love itself.—TRANS. ED.

NOTE ON ALASTOR,
BY MRS. SHELLEY.

Alastor is written in a very different tone from Queen Mab. In the latter, Shelley poured out all the cherished speculations of his youth—all the irrepressible emotions of sympathy, censure, and hope, to which the present suffering, and what he considers the proper destiny of his fellow-creatures, gave birth. Alastor, on the contrary, contains an individual interest only. A very few years, with their attendant events, had checked the ardour of Shelley’s hopes, though he still thought them well-grounded, and that to advance their fulfilment was the noblest task man could achieve.

This is neither the time nor place to speak of the misfortunes that chequered his life. It will be sufficient to say that, in all he did, he at the time of doing it believed himself justified to his own conscience; while the various ills of poverty and loss of friends brought home to him the sad realities of life. Physical suffering had also considerable influence in causing him to turn his eyes inward; inclining him rather to brood over the thoughts and emotions of his own soul than to glance abroad, and to make, as in Queen Mab, the whole universe the object and subject of his song. In the Spring of 1815, an eminent physician pronounced that he was dying rapidly of a consumption; abscesses were formed on his lungs, and he suffered acute spasms. Suddenly a complete change took place; and though through life he was a martyr to pain and debility, every symptom of pulmonary disease vanished. His nerves, which nature had formed sensitive to an unexampled degree, were rendered still more susceptible by the state of his health.

As soon as the peace of 1814 had opened the Continent, he went abroad. He visited some of the more magnificent scenes of Switzerland, and returned to England from Lucerne, by the Reuss and the Rhine. This river-navigation enchanted him. In his favourite poem of Thalaba, his imagination had been excited by a description of such a voyage. In the summer of 1815, after a tour along the southern coast of Devonshire and a visit to Clifton, he rented a house on Bishopgate Heath, on the borders of Windsor Forest, where he enjoyed several months of comparative health and tranquil happiness. The later summer months were warm and dry. Accompanied by a few friends, he visited the source of the Thames, making a voyage in a wherry from Windsor to Crichlade. His beautiful stanzas in the churchyard of Lechlade were written on that occasion. Alastor was composed on his return. He spent his days under the oak-shades of Windsor Great Park; and the magnificent woodland was a fitting study to inspire the various descriptions of forest scenery we find in the poem.

None of Shelley’s poems is more characteristic than this. The solemn spirit that reigns throughout, the worship of the majesty of nature, the broodings of a poet’s heart in solitude—the mingling of the exulting joy which the various aspects of the visible universe inspires with the sad and struggling pangs which human passion imparts—give a touching interest to the whole. The death which he had often contemplated during the last months as certain and near he here represented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic than narrative: it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by the recent anticipation of death.

THE REVOLT OF ISLAM

A POEM IN TWELVE CANTOS.

Ὅσαις δὲ βροτὸν ἔθνος ἀγλαίαις ἁπτόμεσθα περαίνει πρὸς ἔσχατον

πλόον. ναυσὶ δ᾽ οὔτε πεζὸς ἰὼν ἂν εὕροις

ἐς Ὑπερβορέων ἀγῶνα θαυματὰν ὁδόν.

Πινδ. Πυθ. x.*

[Composed in the neighbourhood of Bisham Wood, near Great Marlow, Bucks, 1817 (April–September 23); printed, with title (dated 1818), Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century, October, November, 1817, but suppressed, pending revision, by the publishers, C & J. Ollier. (A few copies had got out, but these were recalled, and some recovered.) Published, with a fresh title-page and twenty-seven cancel-leaves, as The Revolt of Islam, January 10, 1818. Sources of the text are (1) Laon and Cythna, 1818; (2) The Revolt of Islam, 1818; (3) Poetical Works, 1839, editions 1st and 2nd—both edited by Mrs. Shelley. A copy, with several pages missing, of the Preface, the Dedication, and Canto I of Laon and Cythna is amongst the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian. For a full collation of this MS. see Mr. C.D. Locock’s Examination of the Shelley MSS. at the Bodleian Library. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903. Two MS. fragments from the Hunt papers are also extant: one (twenty-four lines) in the possession of Mr. W.M. Rossetti, another (IX. xxiii. 9–xxix. 6) in that of Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B. See The Shelley Library, pp. 83–86, for an account of the copy of Laon upon which Shelley worked in revising for publication.]

* They on the farthest fairest beach

The bark of mortal life can reach

Through dangers braved their sails display.

But who with venturous course through wave or waste

To Hyperborean haunts and wilds untraced

E’er found his wondrous way?

—Pindar: Pythian Odes x. TRANS. A. Moore

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

The Poem which I now present to the world is an attempt from which I scarcely dare to expect success, and in which a writer of established fame might fail without disgrace. It is an experiment on the temper of the public mind, as to how far a thirst for a happier condition of moral and political society survives, among the enlightened and refined, the tempests which have shaken the age in which we live. I have sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language, the ethereal combinations of the fancy, the rapid and subtle transitions of human passion, all those elements which essentially compose a Poem, in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality; and in the view of kindling within the bosoms of my readers a virtuous enthusiasm for those doctrines of liberty and justice, that faith and hope in something good, which neither violence nor misrepresentation nor prejudice can ever totally extinguish among mankind.

For this purpose I have chosen a story of human passion in its most universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures, and appealing, in contempt of all artificial opinions or institutions, to the common sympathies of every human breast. I have made no attempt to recommend the motives which I would substitute for those at present governing mankind, by methodical and systematic argument. I would only awaken the feelings, so that the reader should see the beauty of true virtue, and be incited to those inquiries which have led to my moral and political creed, and that of some of the sublimest intellects in the world. The Poem therefore (with the exception of the first canto, which is purely introductory) is narrative, not didactic. It is a succession of pictures illustrating the growth and progress of individual mind aspiring after excellence, and devoted to the love of mankind; its influence in refining and making pure the most daring and uncommon impulses of the imagination, the understanding, and the senses; its impatience at ‘all the oppressions which are done under the sun;’ its tendency to awaken public hope, and to enlighten and improve mankind; the rapid effects of the application of that tendency; the awakening of an immense nation from their slavery and degradation to a true sense of moral dignity and freedom; the bloodless dethronement of their oppressors, and the unveiling of the religious frauds by which they had been deluded into submission; the tranquillity of successful patriotism, and the universal toleration and benevolence of true philanthropy; the treachery and barbarity of hired soldiers; vice not the object of punishment and hatred, but kindness and pity; the faithlessness of tyrants; the confederacy of the Rulers of the World and the restoration of the expelled Dynasty by foreign arms; the massacre and extermination of the Patriots, and the victory of established power; the consequences of legitimate despotism,—civil war, famine, plague, superstition, and an utter extinction of the domestic affections; the judicial murder of the advocates of Liberty; the temporary triumph of oppression, that secure earnest of its final and inevitable fall; the transient nature of ignorance and error and the eternity of genius and virtue. Such is the series of delineations of which the Poem consists. And, if the lofty passions with which it has been my scope to distinguish this story shall not excite in the reader a generous impulse, an ardent thirst for excellence, an interest profound and strong such as belongs to no meaner desires, let not the failure be imputed to a natural unfitness for human sympathy in these sublime and animating themes. It is the business of the Poet to communicate to others the pleasure and the enthusiasm arising out of those images and feelings in the vivid presence of which within his own mind consists at once his inspiration and his reward.

The panic which, like an epidemic transport, seized upon all classes of men during the excesses consequent upon the French Revolution, is gradually giving place to sanity. It has ceased to be believed that whole generations of mankind ought to consign themselves to a hopeless inheritance of ignorance and misery, because a nation of men who had been dupes and slaves for centuries were incapable of conducting themselves with the wisdom and tranquillity of freemen so soon as some of their fetters were partially loosened. That their conduct could not have been marked by any other characters than ferocity and thoughtlessness is the historical fact from which liberty derives all its recommendations, and falsehood the worst features of its deformity. There is a reflux in the tide of human things which bears the shipwrecked hopes of men into a secure haven after the storms are past. Methinks, those who now live have survived an age of despair.

The French Revolution may be considered as one of those manifestations of a general state of feeling among civilised mankind produced by a defect of correspondence between the knowledge existing in society and the improvement or gradual abolition of political institutions. The year 1788 may be assumed as the epoch of one of the most important crises produced by this feeling. The sympathies connected with that event extended to every bosom. The most generous and amiable natures were those which participated the most extensively in these sympathies. But such a degree of unmingled good was expected as it was impossible to realise. If the Revolution had been in every respect prosperous, then misrule and superstition would lose half their claims to our abhorrence, as fetters which the captive can unlock with the slightest motion of his fingers, and which do not eat with poisonous rust into the soul. The revulsion occasioned by the atrocities of the demagogues, and the re-establishment of successive tyrannies in France, was terrible, and felt in the remotest corner of the civilised world. Could they listen to the plea of reason who had groaned under the calamities of a social state according to the provisions of which one man riots in luxury whilst another famishes for want of bread? Can he who the day before was a trampled slave suddenly become liberal-minded, forbearing, and independent? This is the consequence of the habits of a state of society to be produced by resolute perseverance and indefatigable hope, and long-suffering and long-believing courage, and the systematic efforts of generations of men of intellect and virtue. Such is the lesson which experience teaches now. But, on the first reverses of hope in the progress of French liberty, the sanguine eagerness for good overleaped the solution of these questions, and for a time extinguished itself in the unexpectedness of their result. Thus, many of the most ardent and tender-hearted of the worshippers of public good have been morally ruined by what a partial glimpse of the events they deplored appeared to show as the melancholy desolation of all their cherished hopes. Hence gloom and misanthropy have become the characteristics of the age in which we live, the solace of a disappointment that unconsciously finds relief only in the wilful exaggeration of its own despair. This influence has tainted the literature of the age with the hopelessness of the minds from which it flows. Metaphysics¹, and inquiries into moral and political science, have become little else than vain attempts to revive exploded superstitions, or sophisms like those² of Mr. Malthus, calculated to lull the oppressors of mankind into a security of everlasting triumph. Our works of fiction and poetry have been overshadowed by the same infectious gloom. But mankind appear to me to be emerging from their trance. I am aware, methinks, of a slow, gradual, silent change. In that belief I have composed the following Poem.

I do not presume to enter into competition with our greatest contemporary Poets. Yet I am unwilling to tread in the footsteps of any who have preceded me. I have sought to avoid the imitation of any style of language or versification peculiar to the original minds of which it is the character; designing that, even if what I have produced be worthless, it should still be properly my own. Nor have I permitted any system relating to mere words to divert the attention of the reader, from whatever interest I may have succeeded in creating, to my own ingenuity in contriving to disgust them according to the rules of criticism. I have simply clothed my thoughts in what appeared to me the most obvious and appropriate language. A person familiar with nature, and with the most celebrated productions of the human mind, can scarcely err in following the instinct, with respect to selection of language, produced by that familiarity.

There is an education peculiarly fitted for a Poet, without which genius and sensibility can hardly fill the circle of their capacities. No education, indeed, can entitle to this appellation a dull and unobservant mind, or one, though neither dull nor unobservant, in which the channels of communication between thought and expression have been obstructed or closed. How far it is my fortune to belong to either of the latter classes I cannot know. I aspire to be something better. The circumstances of my accidental education have been favourable to this ambition. I have been familiar from boyhood with mountains and lakes and the sea, and the solitude of forests: Danger, which sports upon the brink of precipices, has been my playmate. I have trodden the glaciers of the Alps, and lived under the eye of Mont Blanc. I have been a wanderer among distant fields. I have sailed down mighty rivers, and seen the sun rise and set, and the stars come forth, whilst I have sailed night and day down a rapid stream among mountains. I have seen populous cities, and have watched the passions which rise and spread, and sink and change, amongst assembled multitudes of men. I have seen the theatre of the more visible ravages of tyranny and war, cities and villages reduced to scattered groups of black and roofless houses, and the naked inhabitants sitting famished upon their desolated thresholds. I have conversed with living men of genius. The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Italy, and our own country, has been to me, like external nature, a passion and an enjoyment. Such are the sources from which the materials for the imagery of my Poem have been drawn. I have considered Poetry in its most comprehensive sense; and have read the Poets and the Historians and the Metaphysicians³ whose writings have been accessible to me, and have looked upon the beautiful and majestic scenery of the earth, as common sources of those elements which it is the province of the Poet to embody and combine. Yet the experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in themselves constitute men Poets, but only prepares them to be the auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found to possess that more essential attribute of Poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom, is that which, to speak sincerely, I know not; and which, with an acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address.

I have avoided, as I have said before, the imitation of any contemporary style. But there must be a resemblance, which does not depend upon their own will, between all the writers of any particular age. They cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live; though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded. Thus, the tragic poets of the age of Pericles; the Italian revivers of ancient learning; those mighty intellects of our own country that succeeded the Reformation, the translators of the Bible, Shakespeare, Spenser, the Dramatists of the reign of Elizabeth, and Lord Bacon⁴; the colder spirits of the interval that succeeded;—all resemble each other, and differ from every other in their several classes. In this view of things, Ford can no more be called the imitator of Shakespeare than Shakespeare the imitator of Ford. There were perhaps few other points of resemblance between these two men than that which the universal and inevitable influence of their age produced. And this is an influence which neither the meanest scribbler nor the sublimest genius of any era can escape; and which I have not attempted to escape.

I have adopted the stanza of Spenser (a measure inexpressibly beautiful), not because I consider it a finer model of poetical harmony than the blank verse of Shakespeare and Milton, but because in the latter there is no shelter for mediocrity; you must either succeed or fail. This perhaps an aspiring spirit should desire. But I was enticed also by the brilliancy and magnificence of sound which a mind that has been nourished upon musical thoughts can produce by a just and harmonious arrangement of the pauses of this measure. Yet there will be found some instances where I have completely failed in this attempt, and one, which I here request the reader to consider as an erratum, where there is left, most inadvertently, an alexandrine in the middle of a stanza.

But in this, as in every other respect, I have written fearlessly. It is the misfortune of this age that its Writers, too thoughtless of immortality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or blame. They write with the fear of Reviews before their eyes. This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when Poetry was not. Poetry, and the art which professes to regulate and limit its powers, cannot subsist together. Longinus could not have been the contemporary of Homer, nor Boileau of Horace. Yet this species of criticism never presumed to assert an understanding of its own; it has always, unlike true science, followed, not preceded, the opinion of mankind, and would even now bribe with worthless adulation some of our greatest Poets to impose gratuitous fetters on their own imaginations, and become unconscious accomplices in the daily murder of all genius either not so aspiring or not so fortunate as their own. I have sought therefore to write, as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and Milton wrote, with an utter disregard of anonymous censure. I am certain that calumny and misrepresentation, though it may move me to compassion, cannot disturb my peace. I shall understand the expressive silence of those sagacious enemies who dare not trust themselves to speak. I shall endeavour to extract, from the midst of insult and contempt and maledictions, those admonitions which may tend to correct whatever imperfections such censurers may discover in this my first serious appeal to the Public. If certain Critics were as clear-sighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their virulent writings! As it is, I fear I shall be malicious enough to be amused with their paltry tricks and lame invectives. Should the Public judge that my composition is worthless, I shall indeed bow before the tribunal from which Milton received his crown of immortality, and shall seek to gather, if I live, strength from that defeat, which may nerve me to some new enterprise of thought which may not be worthless. I cannot conceive that Lucretius, when he meditated that poem whose doctrines are yet the basis of our metaphysical knowledge, and whose eloquence has been the wonder of mankind, wrote in awe of such censure as the hired sophists of the impure and superstitious noblemen of Rome might affix to what he should produce. It was at the period when Greece was led captive and Asia made tributary to the Republic, fast verging itself to slavery and ruin, that a multitude of Syrian captives, bigoted to the worship of their obscene Ashtaroth, and the unworthy successors of Socrates and Zeno, found there a precarious subsistence by administering, under the name of freedmen, to the vices and vanities of the great. These wretched men were skilled to plead, with a superficial but plausible set of sophisms, in favour of that contempt for virtue which is the portion of slaves, and that faith in portents, the most fatal substitute for benevolence in the imaginations of men, which, arising from the enslaved communities of the East, then first began to overwhelm the western nations in its stream. Were these the kind of men whose disapprobation the wise and lofty-minded Lucretius should have regarded with a salutary awe? The latest and perhaps the meanest of those who follow in his footsteps would disdain to hold life on such conditions.

The Poem now presented to the Public occupied little more than six months in the composition. That period has been devoted to the task with unremitting ardour and enthusiasm. I have exercised a watchful and earnest criticism on my work as it grew under my hands. I would willingly have sent it forth to the world with that perfection which long labour and revision is said to bestow. But I found that, if I should gain something in exactness by this method, I might lose much of the newness and energy of imagery and language as it flowed fresh from my mind. And, although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years.

I trust that the reader will carefully distinguish between those opinions which have a dramatic propriety in reference to the characters which they are designed to elucidate, and such as are properly my own. The erroneous and degrading idea which men have conceived of a Supreme Being, for instance, is spoken against, but not the Supreme Being itself. The belief which some superstitious persons whom I have brought upon the stage entertain of the Deity, as injurious to the character of his benevolence, is widely different from my own. In recommending also a great and important change in the spirit which animates the social institutions of mankind, I have avoided all flattery to those violent and malignant passions of our nature which are ever on the watch to mingle with and to alloy the most beneficial innovations. There is no quarter given to Revenge, or Envy, or Prejudice. Love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world.

1 I ought to except Sir W. Drummond's Academical Questions; a volume of very acute and powerful metaphysical criticism.

2 It is remarkable, as a symptom of the revival of public hope, that Mr. Malthus has assigned, in the later editions of his work, an indefinite dominion to moral restraint over the principle of population. This concession answers all the inferences from his doctrine unfavourable to human improvement, and reduces the Essay on Population to a commentary illustrative of the unanswerableness of Political Justice.

3 In this sense there may be such a thing as perfectibility in works of fiction, notwithstanding the concession often made by the advocates of human improvement, that perfectibility is a term applicable only to science.

4 Milton stands alone in the age which he illumined.

DEDICATION

There is no danger to a man that knows

What life and death is: there’s not any law

Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful

That he should stoop to any other law.

—CHAPMAN.

TO MARY —— ——

I

So now my summer task is ended, Mary,

And I return to thee, mine own heart’s home;

As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faëry,

Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;

5

Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become

A star among the stars of mortal night,

If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,

Its doubtful promise thus I would unite

With thy belovèd name, thou Child of love and light.

II

10

The toil which stole from thee so many an hour,

Is ended,—and the fruit is at thy feet!

No longer where the woods to frame a bower

With interlaced branches mix and meet,

Or where with sound like many voices sweet,

15

Waterfalls leap among wild islands green,

Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat

Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen;

But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.

III

Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first

20

The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.

I do remember well the hour which burst

My spirit’s sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,

When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,

And wept, I knew not why; until there rose

25

From the near schoolroom, voices that, alas!

Were but one echo from a world of woes—

The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.

IV

And then I clasped my hands and looked around—

—But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,

30

Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground—

So without shame I spake:—‘I will be wise,

And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies

Such power, for I grow weary to behold

The selfish and the strong still tyrannise

35

Without reproach or check.’ I then controlled

My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.

V

And from that hour did I with earnest thought

Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;

Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught

40

I cared to learn, but from that secret store

Wrought linkèd armour for my soul, before

It might walk forth to war among mankind;

Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more

Within me, till there came upon my mind

45

A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined.

VI

Alas, that love should be a blight and snare

To those who seek all sympathies in one!—

Such once I sought in vain; then black despair,

The shadow of a starless night, was thrown

50

Over the world in which I moved alone:—

Yet never found I one not false to me,

Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone

Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be

clog ed. 1818. See Notes.

Aught but a lifeless clod, until revived by thee.

VII

55

Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart

Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain;

How beautiful and calm and free thou wert

In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain

Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain,

60

And walked as free as light the clouds among,

Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain

From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung

To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long!

VIII

No more alone through the world’s wilderness,

65

Although I trod the paths of high intent,

I journeyed now: no more companionless,

Where solitude is like despair, I went.—

There is the wisdom of a stern content

When Poverty can blight the just and good,

70

When Infamy dares mock the innocent,

And cherished friends turn with the multitude

To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood!

IX

Now has descended a serener hour,

And with inconstant fortune, friends return;

75

Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power

Which says:—Let scorn be not repaid with scorn.

And from thy side two gentle babes are born

To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we

Most fortunate beneath life’s beaming morn;

80

And these delights, and thou, have been to me

The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee.

X

Is it that now my inexperienced fingers

But strike the prelude of a loftier strain?

Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers

85

Soon pause in silence, ne’er to sound again,

Though it might shake the Anarch Custom’s reign,

And charm the minds of men to Truth’s own sway

Holier than was Amphion’s? I would fain

Reply in hope—but I am worn away,

90

And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.

XI

And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak:

Time may interpret to his silent years.

Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,

And in the light thine ample forehead wears,

95

And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,

And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy

Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears:

And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see

A lamp of vestal fire burning internally.

XII

100

They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth,

Of glorious parents thou aspiring Child.

I wonder not—for One then left this earth

Whose life was like a setting planet mild,

Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled

105

Of its departing glory; still her fame

Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild

Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim

The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name.

XIII

One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit,

110

Which was the echo of three thousand years;

And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it,

As some lone man who in a desert hears

The music of his home:—unwonted fears

Fell on the pale oppressors of our race,

115

And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares,

Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space

Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place.

XIV

Truth’s deathless voice pauses among mankind!

If there must be no response to my cry—

120

If men must rise and stamp with fury blind

On his pure name who loves them,—thou and I,

Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity

Like lamps into the world’s tempestuous night,—

Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by

125

Which wrap them from the foundering seaman’s sight,

That burn from year to year with unextinguished light.

CANTO I

I

When the last hope of trampled France had failed

Like a brief dream of unremaining glory,

From visions of despair I rose, and scaled

130

The peak of an aerial promontory,

Whose caverned base with the vexed surge was hoary;

And saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken

Each cloud, and every wave:—but transitory

The calm; for sudden, the firm earth was shaken,

135

As if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken.

II

So as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder

Burst in far peals along the waveless deep,

When, gathering fast, around, above, and under,

Long trains of tremulous mist began to creep,

140

Until their complicating lines did steep

The orient sun in shadow:—not a sound

Was heard; one horrible repose did keep

The forests and the floods, and all around

Darkness more dread than night was poured upon the ground.

III

145

Hark! ’tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps

Earth and the ocean. See! the lightnings yawn

Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps

Glitter and boil beneath: it rages on,

One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown,

150

Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by.

There is a pause—the sea-birds, that were gone

Into their caves to shriek, come forth, to spy

What calm has fall’n on earth, what light is in the sky.

IV

For, where the irresistible storm had cloven

155

That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen

Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven

Most delicately, and the ocean green,

Beneath that opening spot of blue serene,

Quivered like burning emerald; calm was spread

160

On all below; but far on high, between

Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled,

Countless and swift as leaves on autumn’s tempest shed.

V

For ever, as the war became more fierce

Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high,

165

That spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce

The woof of those white clouds, which seem to lie

Far, deep, and motionless; while through the sky

The pallid semicircle of the moon

Passed on, in slow and moving majesty;

170

Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon

But slowly fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon.

VI

I could not choose but gaze; a fascination

Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which drew

My fancy thither, and in expectation

175

Of what I knew not, I remained:—the hue

Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue,

Suddenly stained with shadow did appear;

A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew,

Like a great ship in the sun’s sinking sphere

180

Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear.

VII

Even like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains,

Dark, vast and overhanging, on a river

Which there collects the strength of all its fountains,

Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth quiver,

185

Sails, oars and stream, tending to one endeavour;

So, from that chasm of light a wingèd Form

On all the winds of heaven approaching ever

Floated, dilating as it came; the storm

Pursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift and warm.

VIII

190

A course precipitous, of dizzy speed,

Suspending thought and breath; a monstrous sight!

For in the air do I behold indeed

An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight:—

And now, relaxing its impetuous flight,

195

Before the aëreal rock on which I stood,

The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right,

And hung with lingering wings over the flood,

And startled with its yells the wide air’s solitude.

IX

A shaft of light upon its wings descended,

200

And every golden feather gleamed therein—

Feather and scale, inextricably blended.

The Serpent’s mailed and many-coloured skin

Shone through the plumes its coils were twined within

By many a swoln and knotted fold, and high

205

And far, the neck, receding lithe and thin,

Sustained a crested head, which warily

Shifted and glanced before the Eagle’s steadfast eye.

X

Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling

With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed

210

Incessantly—sometimes on high concealing

Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed,

Drooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed,

And casting back its eager head, with beak

And talon unremittingly assailed

215

The wreathèd Serpent, who did ever seek

Upon his enemy’s heart a mortal wound to wreak.

XI

What life, what power, was kindled and arose

Within the sphere of that appalling fray!

For, from the encounter of those wondrous foes,

220

A vapour like the sea’s suspended spray

Hung gathered; in the void air, far away,

Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap,

Where’er the Eagle’s talons made their way,

Like sparks into the darkness;—as they sweep,

225

Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.

XII

Swift chances in that combat—many a check,

And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil;

Sometimes the Snake around his enemy’s neck

Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,

230

Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil,

Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea

Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil

His adversary, who then reared on high

His red and burning crest, radiant with victory.

XIII

235

Then on the white edge of the bursting surge,

Where they had sunk together, would the Snake

Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge

The wind with his wild writhings; for to break

That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake

240

The strength of his unconquerable wings

As in despair, and with his sinewy neck,

Dissolve in sudden shock those linkèd rings—

Then soar, as swift as smoke from a volcano springs.

XIV

Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,

245

Thus long, but unprevailing:—the event

Of that portentous fight appeared at length:

Until the lamp of day was almost spent

It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,

Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last

250

Fell to the sea, while o’er the continent

With clang of wings and scream the Eagle passed,

Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast.

XV

And with it fled the tempest, so that ocean

And earth and sky shone through the atmosphere—

255

Only, ’twas strange to see the red commotion

Of waves like mountains o’er the sinking sphere

Of sunset sweep, and their fierce roar to hear

Amid the calm: down the steep path I wound

To the sea-shore—the evening was most clear

260

And beautiful, and there the sea I found

Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.

XVI

There was a Woman, beautiful as morning,

Sitting beneath the rocks, upon the sand

Of the waste sea—fair as one flower adorning

265

An icy wilderness; each delicate hand

Lay crossed upon her bosom, and the band

Of her dark hair had fall’n, and so she sate

Looking upon the waves; on the bare strand

Upon the sea-mark a small boat did wait,

270

Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left desolate.

XVII

It seemed that this fair Shape had looked upon

That unimaginable fight, and now

That her sweet eyes were weary of the sun,

As brightly it illustrated her woe;

275

For in the tears which silently to flow

Paused not, its lustre hung: she watching aye

The foam-wreaths which the faint tide wove below

Upon the spangled sands, groaned heavily,

And after every groan looked up over the sea.

XVIII

280

And when she saw the wounded Serpent make

His path between the waves, her lips grew pale,

Parted, and quivered; the tears ceased to break

From her immovable eyes; no voice of wail

Escaped her; but she rose, and on the gale

285

Loosening her star-bright robe and shadowy hair

Poured forth her voice; the caverns of the vale

That opened to the ocean, caught it there,

And filled with silver sounds the overflowing air.

XIX

She spake in language whose strange melody

290

Might not belong to earth. I heard alone,

What made its music more melodious be,

The pity and the love of every tone;

But to the Snake those accents sweet were known

His native tongue and hers; nor did he beat

295

The hoar spray idly then, but winding on

Through the green shadows of the waves that meet

Near to the shore, did pause beside her snowy feet.

XX

Then on the sands the Woman sate again,

And wept and clasped her hands, and all between,

300

Renewed the unintelligible strain

Of her melodious voice and eloquent mien;

And she unveiled her bosom, and the green

And glancing shadows of the sea did play

O’er its marmoreal depth:—one moment seen,

305

For ere the next, the Serpent did obey

Her voice, and, coiled in rest in her embrace it lay.

XXI

Then she arose, and smiled on me with eyes

Serene yet sorrowing, like that planet fair,

While yet the daylight lingereth in the skies

310

Which cleaves with arrowy beams the dark-red air,

And said: ‘To grieve is wise, but the despair

Was weak and vain which led thee here from sleep:

This shalt thou know, and more, if thou dost dare

With me and with this Serpent, o’er the deep,

315

A voyage divine and strange, companionship to keep.’

XXII

Her voice was like the wildest, saddest tone,

Yet sweet, of some loved voice heard long ago.

I wept. ‘Shall this fair woman all alone,

Over the sea with that fierce Serpent go?

320

His head is on her heart, and who can know

How soon he may devour his feeble prey?’—

Such were my thoughts, when the tide gan to flow;

And that strange boat like the moon’s shade did sway

Amid reflected stars that in the waters lay:—

XXIII

325

A boat of rare device, which had no sail

But its own curvèd prow of thin moonstone,

Wrought like a web of texture fine and frail,

To catch those gentlest winds which are not known

To breathe, but by the steady speed alone

330

With which it cleaves the sparkling sea; and now

We are embarked—the mountains hang and frown

Over the starry deep that gleams below,

A vast and dim expanse, as o’er the waves we go.

XXIV

And as we sailed, a strange and awful tale

335

That Woman told, like such mysterious dream

As makes the slumberer’s cheek with wonder pale!

’Twas midnight, and around, a shoreless stream,

Wide ocean rolled, when that majestic theme

Shrined in her heart found utterance, and she bent

340

Her looks on mine; those eyes a kindling beam

Of love divine into my spirit sent,

And ere her lips could move, made the air eloquent.

XXV

‘Speak not to me, but hear! Much shalt thou learn,

Much must remain unthought, and more untold,

345

In the dark Future’s ever-flowing urn:

Know then, that from the depth of ages old

Two Powers o’er mortal things dominion hold,

Ruling the world with a divided lot,

Immortal, all-pervading, manifold,

350

Twin Genii, equal Gods—when life and thought

Sprang forth, they burst the womb of inessential Nought.

XXVI

‘The earliest dweller of the world, alone,

Stood on the verge of chaos. Lo! afar

O’er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone,

355

Sprung from the depth of its tempestuous jar:

A blood-red Comet and the Morning Star

Mingling their beams in combat—as he stood,

All thoughts within his mind waged mutual war,

In dreadful sympathy—when to the flood

360

That fair Star fell, he turned and shed his brother’s blood.

XXVII

‘Thus evil triumphed, and the Spirit of evil,

One Power of many shapes which none may know,

One Shape of many names; the Fiend did revel

In victory, reigning o’er a world of woe,

365

For the new race of man went to and fro,

Famished and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild,

And hating good—for his immortal foe,

He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild,

To a dire Snake, with man and beast unreconciled.

XXVIII

370

‘The darkness lingering o’er the dawn of things,

Was Evil’s breath and life; this made him strong

To soar aloft with overshadowing wings;

And the great Spirit of Good did creep among

The nations of mankind, and every tongue

375

Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed; for none

Knew good from evil, though their names were hung

In mockery o’er the fane where many a groan,

As King, and Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend did own,—

XXIX

‘The Fiend, whose name was Legion: Death, Decay,

380

Earthquake and Blight, and Want, and Madness pale,

Wingèd and wan diseases, an array

Numerous as leaves that strew the autumnal gale;

Poison, a snake in flowers, beneath the veil

Of food and mirth, hiding his mortal head;

385

And, without whom all these might nought avail,

Fear, Hatred, Faith, and Tyranny, who spread

Those subtle nets which snare the living and the dead.

XXX

‘His spirit is their power, and they his slaves

In air, and light, and thought, and language, dwell;

390

And keep their state from palaces to graves,

In all resorts of men—invisible,

But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell

To tyrant or impostor bids them rise,

Black wingèd demon forms—whom, from the hell,

395

His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies,

He loosens to their dark and blasting ministries.

XXXI

‘In the world’s youth his empire was as firm

As its foundations … Soon the Spirit of Good,

Though in the likeness of a loathsome worm,

400

Sprang from the billows of the formless flood,

Which shrank and fled; and with that Fiend of blood

Renewed the doubtful war … Thrones then first shook,

And earth’s immense and trampled multitude

In hope on their own powers began to look,

405

And Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine shrine forsook.

XXXII

‘Then Greece arose, and to its bards and sages,

In dream, the golden-pinioned Genii came,

Even where they slept amid the night of ages,

Steeping their hearts in the divinest flame

410

Which thy breath kindled, Power of holiest name!

And oft in cycles since, when darkness gave

New weapons to thy foe, their sunlike fame

Upon the combat shone—a light to save,

Like Paradise spread forth beyond the shadowy grave.

XXXIII

415

‘Such is this conflict—when mankind doth strive

With its oppressors in a strife of blood,

Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,

And in each bosom of the multitude

Justice and truth with Custom’s hydra brood

420

Wage silent war; when Priests and Kings dissemble

In smiles or frowns their fierce disquietude,

When round pure hearts a host of hopes assemble,

The Snake and Eagle meet—the world’s foundations tremble!

XXXIV

‘Thou hast beheld that fight—when to thy home

425

Thou dost return, steep not its hearth in tears;

Though thou may’st hear that earth is now become

The tyrant’s garbage, which to his compeers,

The vile reward of their dishonoured years,

He will dividing give.—The victor Fiend,

430

Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears

His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend

An impulse swift and sure to his approaching end.

XXXV

‘List, stranger, list, mine is an human form,

Like that thou wearest—touch me—shrink not now!

435

My hand thou feel’st is not a ghost’s, but warm

With human blood.—’Twas many years ago,

Since first my thirsting soul aspired to know

The secrets of this wondrous world, when deep

My heart was pierced with sympathy, for woe

440

Which could not be mine own, and thought did keep,

In dream, unnatural watch beside an infant’s sleep.

XXXVI

‘Woe could not be mine own, since far from men

I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child,

By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen;

445

And near the waves, and through the forests wild,

I roamed, to storm and darkness reconciled:

For I was calm while tempest shook the sky:

But when the breathless heavens in beauty smiled,

I wept, sweet tears, yet too tumultuously

450

For peace, and clasped my hands aloft in ecstasy.

XXXVII

‘These were forebodings of my fate—before

A woman’s heart beat in my virgin breast,

It had been nurtured in divinest lore:

A dying poet gave me books, and blessed

455

With wild but holy talk the sweet unrest

In which I watched him as he died away—

A youth with hoary hair—a fleeting guest

Of our lone mountains: and this lore did sway

My spirit like a storm, contending there alway.

XXXVIII

460

‘Thus the dark tale which history doth unfold

I knew, but not, methinks, as others know,

For they weep not; and Wisdom had unrolled

The clouds which hide the gulf of mortal woe,—

To few can she that warning vision show—

465

For I loved all things with intense devotion;

So that when Hope’s deep source in fullest flow,

Like earthquake did uplift the stagnant ocean

Of human thoughts—mine shook beneath the wide emotion.

XXXIX

‘When first the living blood through all these veins

470

Kindled a thought in sense, great France sprang forth,

And seized, as if to break, the ponderous chains

Which bind in woe the nations of the earth.

I saw, and started from my cottage-hearth;

And to the clouds and waves in tameless gladness

475

Shrieked, till they caught immeasurable mirth—

And laughed in light and music: soon, sweet madness

Was poured upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness.

XL

‘Deep slumber fell on me:—my dreams were fire—

Soft and delightful thoughts did rest and hover

480

Like shadows o’er my brain; and strange desire,

The tempest of a passion, raging over

My tranquil soul, its depths with light did cover,

Which passed; and calm, and darkness, sweeter far,

Came—then I loved; but not a human lover!

485

For when I rose from sleep, the Morning Star

Shone through the woodbine-wreaths which round my casement were.

XLI

’Twas like an eye which seemed to smile on me.

I watched, till by the sun made pale, it sank

Under the billows of the heaving sea;

490

But from its beams deep love my spirit drank,

And to my brain the boundless world now shrank

Into one thought—one image—yes, for ever!

Even like the dayspring, poured on vapours dank,

The beams of that one Star did shoot and quiver

495

Through my benighted mind—and were extinguished never.

XLII

‘The day passed thus: at night, methought, in dream

A shape of speechless beauty did appear:

It stood like light on a careering stream

Of golden clouds which shook the atmosphere;

500

A wingèd youth, his radiant brow did wear

The Morning Star: a wild dissolving bliss

Over my frame he breathed, approaching near,

And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness

Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss,—

XLIII

505

‘And said: “A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden,

How wilt thou prove thy worth?” Then joy and sleep

Together fled; my soul was deeply laden,

And to the shore I went to muse and weep;

But as I moved, over my heart did creep

510

A joy less soft, but more profound and strong

Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep

The path of the sea-shore: that Spirit’s tongue

Seemed whispering in my heart, and bore my steps along.

XLIV

‘How, to that vast and peopled city led,

515

Which was a field of holy warfare then,

I walked among the dying and the dead,

And shared in fearless deeds with evil men,

Calm as an angel in the dragon’s den—

How I braved death for liberty and truth,

520

And spurned at peace, and power, and fame—and when

Those hopes had lost the glory of their youth,

How sadly I returned—might move the hearer’s ruth:

XLV

‘Warm tears throng fast! the tale may not be said—

Know then, that when this grief had been subdued,

525

I was not left, like others, cold and dead;

The Spirit whom I loved, in solitude

Sustained his child: the tempest-shaken wood,

The waves, the fountains, and the hush of night—

These were his voice, and well I understood

530

His smile divine, when the calm sea was bright

With silent stars, and Heaven was breathless with delight.

XLVI

‘In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers,

When the dim nights were moonless, have I known

Joys which no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers

535

When thought revisits them:—know thou alone,

That after many wondrous years were flown,

I was awakened by a shriek of woe;

And over me a mystic robe was thrown,

By viewless hands, and a bright Star did glow

540

Before my steps—the Snake then met his mortal foe.’

XLVII

‘Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart?’

‘Fear it!’ she said, with brief and passionate cry,

And spake no more: that silence made me start—

I looked, and we were sailing pleasantly,

545

Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky;

Beneath the rising moon seen far away,

Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on high,

Hemming the horizon round, in silence lay

On the still waters—these we did approach alway.

XLVIII

550

And swift and swifter grew the vessel’s motion,

So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain—

Wild music woke me; we had passed the ocean

Which girds the pole, Nature’s remotest reign—

And we glode fast o’er a pellucid plain

555

Of waters, azure with the noontide day.

Ethereal mountains shone around—a Fane

Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay

On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away.

XLIX

It was a Temple, such as mortal hand

560

Has never built, nor ecstasy, nor dream

Reared in the cities of enchanted land:

’Twas likest Heaven, ere yet day’s purple stream

Ebbs o’er the western forest, while the gleam

Of the unrisen moon among the clouds

565

Is gathering—when with many a golden beam

The thronging constellations rush in crowds,

Paving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods.

L

Like what may be conceived of this vast dome,

When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce

570

Genius beholds it rise, his native home,

Girt by the deserts of the Universe;

Yet, nor in painting’s light, or mightier verse,

Or sculpture’s marble language, can invest

That shape to mortal sense—such glooms immerse

575

That incommunicable sight, and rest

Upon the labouring brain and overburdened breast.

LI

Winding among the lawny islands fair,

Whose blosmy forests starred the shadowy deep,

The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair

580

Its fretwork in the crystal sea did steep,

Encircling that vast Fane’s aërial heap:

We disembarked, and through a portal wide

We passed—whose roof of moonstone carved, did keep

A glimmering o’er the forms on every side,

585

Sculptures like life and thought, immovable, deep-eyed.

LII

We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof

Was diamond, which had drunk the lightning’s sheen

In darkness, and now poured it through the woof

Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen

590

Its blinding splendour—through such veil was seen

That work of subtlest power, divine and rare;

Orb above orb, with starry shapes between,

And hornèd moons, and meteors strange and fair,

On night-black columns poised—one hollow hemisphere!

LIII

595

Ten thousand columns in that quivering light

Distinct—between whose shafts wound far away

The long and labyrinthine aisles—more bright

With their own radiance than the Heaven of Day;

And on the jasper walls around, there lay

600

Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought,

Which did the Spirit’s history display;

A tale of passionate change, divinely taught,

Which, in their winged dance, unconscious Genii wrought.

LIV

Beneath, there sate on many a sapphire throne,

605

The Great, who had departed from mankind,

A mighty Senate;—some, whose white hair shone

Like mountain snow, mild, beautiful, and blind;

Some, female forms, whose gestures beamed with mind;

And ardent youths, and children bright and fair;

610

And some had lyres whose strings were intertwined

With pale and clinging flames, which ever there

Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the crystal air.

LV

One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne,

Reared on a pyramid like sculptured flame,

615

Distinct with circling steps which rested on

Their own deep fire—soon as the Woman came

Into that hall, she shrieked the Spirit’s name

And fell; and vanished slowly from the sight.

Darkness arose from her dissolving frame,

620

Which gathering, filled that dome of woven light,

Blotting its sphered stars with supernatural night.

LVI

Then first, two glittering lights were seen to glide

In circles on the amethystine floor,

Small serpent eyes trailing from side to side,

625

Like meteors on a river’s grassy shore,

They round each other rolled, dilating more

And more—then rose, commingling into one,

One clear and mighty planet hanging o’er

A cloud of deepest shadow, which was thrown

630

Athwart the glowing steps and the crystalline throne.

LVII

The cloud which rested on that cone of flame

Was cloven; beneath the planet sate a Form,

Fairer than tongue can speak or thought may frame,

The radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm

635

Flowed forth, and did with softest light inform

The shadowy dome, the sculptures, and the state

Of those assembled shapes—with clinging charm

Sinking upon their hearts and mine. He sate

Majestic, yet most mild—calm, yet compassionate.

LVIII

640

Wonder and joy a passing faintness threw

Over my brow—a hand supported me,

Whose touch was magic strength; an eye of blue

Looked into mine, like moonlight, soothingly;

And a voice said:—‘Thou must a listener be

645

This day—two mighty Spirits now return,

Like birds of calm, from the world’s raging sea,

They pour fresh light from Hope’s immortal urn;

A tale of human power—despair not—list and learn!

LIX

I looked, and lo! one stood forth eloquently.

650

His eyes were dark and deep, and the clear brow

Which shadowed them was like the morning sky,

The cloudless Heaven of Spring, when in their flow

Through the bright air, the soft winds as they blow

Wake the green world—his gestures did obey

655

The oracular mind that made his features glow,

And where his curvèd lips half-open lay,

Passion’s divinest stream had made impetuous way.

LX

Beneath the darkness of his outspread hair

He stood thus beautiful; but there was One

660

Who sate beside him like his shadow there,

And held his hand—far lovelier; she was known

To be thus fair, by the few lines alone

Which through her floating locks and gathered cloak,

Glances of soul-dissolving glory, shone:—

665

None else beheld her eyes—in him they woke

Memories which found a tongue as thus he silence broke.

CANTO II

I

The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks

Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,

The murmur of the unreposing brooks,

670

And the green light which, shifting overhead,

Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,

The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers,

The lamp-light through the rafters cheerly spread,

And on the twining flax—in life’s young hours

675

These sights and sounds did nurse my spirit’s folded powers.

II

In Argolis, beside the echoing sea,

Such impulses within my mortal frame

Arose, and they were dear to memory,

Like tokens of the dead:—but others came

680

Soon, in another shape: the wondrous fame

Of the past world, the vital words and deeds

Of minds whom neither time nor change can tame,

Traditions dark and old, whence evil creeds

Start forth, and whose dim shade a stream of poison feeds.

III

685

I heard, as all have heard, the various story

Of human life, and wept unwilling tears.

Feeble historians of its shame and glory,

False disputants on all its hopes and fears,

Victims who worshipped ruin, chroniclers

690

Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state

Yet, flattering power, had given its ministers

A throne of judgement in the grave:—’twas fate,

That among such as these my youth should seek its mate.

IV

The land in which I lived, by a fell bane

695

Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,

And stabled in our homes,—until the chain

Stifled the captive’s cry, and to abide

That blasting curse men had no shame—all vied

In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust

700

Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,

Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust,

Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.

V

Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters,

And the ethereal shapes which are suspended

705

Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters,

The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended

The colours of the air since first extended

It cradled the young world, none wandered forth

To see or feel; a darkness had descended

710

On every heart; the light which shows its worth,

Must among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth.

VI

This vital world, this home of happy spirits,

Was as a dungeon to my blasted kind;

All that despair from murdered hope inherits

715

They sought, and in their helpless misery blind,

A deeper prison and heavier chains did find,

And stronger tyrants:—a dark gulf before,

The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; behind,

Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore

720

On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from shore.

VII

Out of that Ocean’s wrecks had Guilt and Woe

Framed a dark dwelling for their homeless thought,

And, starting at the ghosts which to and fro

Glide o’er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought

725

The worship thence which they each other taught.

Well might men loathe their life, well might they turn

Even to the ills again from which they sought

Such refuge after death!—well might they learn

To gaze on this fair world with hopeless unconcern!

VIII

730

For they all pined in bondage; body and soul,

Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent

Before one Power, to which supreme control

Over their will by their own weakness lent,

Made all its many names omnipotent;

735

All symbols of things evil, all divine;

And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent

The air from all its fanes, did intertwine

Imposture’s impious toils round each discordant shrine.

IX

I heard, as all have heard, life’s various story,

740

And in no careless heart transcribed the tale;

But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary

In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale

By famine, from a mother’s desolate wail

O’er her polluted child, from innocent blood

745

Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale

With the heart’s warfare, did I gather food

To feed my many thoughts—a tameless multitude!

X

I wandered through the wrecks of days departed

Far by the desolated shore, when even

750

O’er the still sea and jagged islets darted

The light of moonrise; in the northern Heaven,

Among the clouds near the horizon driven,

The mountains lay beneath one planet pale;

Around me, broken tombs and columns riven

755

Looked vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale

Waked in those ruins gray its everlasting wail!

XI

I knew not who had framed these wonders then,

Nor had I heard the story of their deeds;

But dwellings of a race of mightier men,

760

And monuments of less ungentle creeds

Tell their own tale to him who wisely heeds

The language which they speak; and now, to me

The moonlight making pale the blooming weeds,

The bright stars shining in the breathless sea,

765

Interpreted those scrolls of mortal mystery.

XII

Such man has been, and such may yet become!

Ay, wiser, greater, gentler even than they

Who on the fragments of yon shattered dome

Have stamped the sign of power—I felt the sway

770

Of the vast stream of ages bear away

My floating thoughts—my heart beat loud and fast—

Even as a storm let loose beneath the ray

Of the still moon, my spirit onward passed

Beneath truth’s steady beams upon its tumult cast.

XIII

775

It shall be thus no more! too long, too long,

Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound

In darkness and in ruin!—Hope is strong,

Justice and Truth their wingèd child have found—

Awake! arise! until the mighty sound

780

Of your career shall scatter in its gust

The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground

Hide the last altar’s unregarded dust,

Whose Idol has so long betrayed your impious trust!

XIV

It must be so—I will arise and waken

785

The multitude, and like a sulphurous hill,

Which on a sudden from its snows has shaken

The swoon of ages, it shall burst and fill

The world with cleansing fire; it must, it will—

It may not be restrained!—and who shall stand

790

Amid the rocking earthquake steadfast still,

But Laon? on high Freedom’s desert land

A tower whose marble walls the leaguèd storms withstand!

XV

One summer night, in commune with the hope

Thus deeply fed, amid those ruins gray

795

I watched, beneath the dark sky’s starry cope;

And ever from that hour upon me lay

The burden of this hope, and night or day,

In vision or in dream, clove to my breast:

Among mankind, or when gone far away

800

To the lone shores and mountains, ’twas a guest

Which followed where I fled, and watched when I did rest.

XVI

These hopes found words through which my spirit sought

To weave a bondage of such sympathy,

As might create some response to the thought

805

Which ruled me now—and as the vapours lie

Bright in the outspread morning’s radiancy,

So were these thoughts invested with the light

Of language: and all bosoms made reply

On which its lustre streamed, whene’er it might

810

Through darkness wide and deep those trancèd spirits smite.

XVII

Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was dim,

And oft I thought to clasp my own heart’s brother,

When I could feel the listener’s senses swim,

And hear his breath its own swift gaspings smother

815

Even as my words evoked them—and another,

And yet another, I did fondly deem,

Felt that we all were sons of one great mother;

And the cold truth such sad reverse did seem

As to awake in grief from some delightful dream.

XVIII

820

Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth

Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep,

Did Laon and his friend, on one gray plinth,

Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap,

Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep:

825

And that this friend was false, may now be said

Calmly—that he like other men could weep

Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread

Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.

XIX

Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow,

830

I must have sought dark respite from its stress

In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow—

For to tread life’s dismaying wilderness

Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless,

Amid the snares and scoffs of human kind,

835

Is hard—but I betrayed it not, nor less

With love that scorned return sought to unbind

The interwoven clouds which make its wisdom blind.

XX

With deathless minds which leave where they have passed

A path of light, my soul communion knew;

840

Till from that glorious intercourse, at last,

As from a mine of magic store, I drew

Words which were weapons;—round my heart there grew

The adamantine armour of their power;

And from my fancy wings of golden hue

845

Sprang forth—yet not alone from wisdom’s tower,

A minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore.

XXI

An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes

Were lodestars of delight, which drew me home

When I might wander forth; nor did I prize

850

Aught human thing beneath Heaven’s mighty dome

Beyond this child; so when sad hours were come,

And baffled hope like ice still clung to me,

Since kin were cold, and friends had now become

Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be,

855

Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee.

XXII

What wert thou then? A child most infantine,

Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age

In all but its sweet looks and mien divine;

Even then, methought, with the world’s tyrant rage

860

A patient warfare thy young heart did wage,

When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought

Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage

To overflow with tears, or converse fraught

With passion, o’er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.

XXIII

865

She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,

A power, that from its objects scarcely drew

One impulse of her being—in her lightness

Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,

Which wanders through the waste air’s pathless blue,

870

To nourish some far desert; she did seem

Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,

Like the bright shade of some immortal dream

Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life’s dark stream.

XXIV

As mine own shadow was this child to me,

875

A second self, far dearer and more fair;

Which clothed in undissolving radiancy

All those steep paths which languor and despair

Of human things, had made so dark and bare,

But which I trod alone—nor, till bereft

880

Of friends, and overcome by lonely care,

Knew I what solace for that loss was left,

Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.

XXV

Once she was dear, now she was all I had

To love in human life—this playmate sweet,

885

This child of twelve years old—so she was made

My sole associate, and her willing feet

Wandered with mine where earth and ocean meet,

Beyond the aëreal mountains whose vast cells

The unreposing billows ever beat,

890

Through forests wild and old, and lawny dells

Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells.

XXVI

And warm and light I felt her clasping hand

When twined in mine; she followed where I went,

Through the lone paths of our immortal land.

895

It had no waste but some memorial lent

Which strung me to my toil—some monument

Vital with mind; then Cythna by my side,

Until the bright and beaming day were spent,

Would rest, with looks entreating to abide,

900

Too earnest and too sweet ever to be denied.

XXVII

And soon I could not have refused her—thus

For ever, day and night, we two were ne’er

Parted, but when brief sleep divided us:

And when the pauses of the lulling air

905

Of noon beside the sea had made a lair

For her soothed senses, in my arms she slept,

And I kept watch over her slumbers there,

While, as the shifting visions over her swept,

Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept.

XXVIII

910

And, in the murmur of her dreams was heard

Sometimes the name of Laon:—suddenly

She would arise, and, like the secret bird

Whom sunset wakens, fill the shore and sky

With her sweet accents, a wild melody!

915

Hymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, strong

The source of passion, whence they rose, to be;

Triumphant strains, which, like a spirit’s tongue,

To the enchanted waves that child of glory sung—

XXIX

Her white arms lifted through the shadowy stream

920

Of her loose hair. Oh, excellently great

Seemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme

Of those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate

Amid the calm which rapture doth create

After its tumult, her heart vibrating,

925

Her spirit o’er the Ocean’s floating state

From her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing

Of visions that were mine, beyond its utmost spring!

XXX

For, before Cythna loved it, had my song

Peopled with thoughts the boundless universe,

930

A mighty congregation, which were strong

Where’er they trod the darkness to disperse

The cloud of that unutterable curse

Which clings upon mankind:—all things became

Slaves to my holy and heroic verse,

935

Earth, sea and sky, the planets, life and fame

And fate, or whate’er else binds the world’s wondrous frame.

XXXI

And this belovèd child thus felt the sway

Of my conceptions, gathering like a cloud

The very wind on which it rolls away:

940

Hers too were all my thoughts, ere yet, endowed

With music and with light, their fountains flowed

In poesy; and her still and earnest face,

Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed

Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace,

945

Watching the hopes which there her heart had learned to trace.

XXXII

In me, communion with this purest being

Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise

In knowledge, which, in hers mine own mind seeing,

Left in the human world few mysteries:

950

How without fear of evil or disguise

Was Cythna!—what a spirit strong and mild,

Which death, or pain or peril could despise,

Yet melt in tenderness! what genius wild

Yet mighty, was enclosed within one simple child!

XXXIII

955

New lore was this—old age with its gray hair,

And wrinkled legends of unworthy things,

And icy sneers, is nought: it cannot dare

To burst the chains which life for ever flings

On the entangled soul’s aspiring wings,

960

So is it cold and cruel, and is made

The careless slave of that dark power which brings

Evil, like blight, on man, who, still betrayed,

Laughs o’er the grave in which his living hopes are laid.

XXXIV

Nor are the strong and the severe to keep

965

The empire of the world: thus Cythna taught

Even in the visions of her eloquent sleep,

Unconscious of the power through which she wrought

The woof of such intelligible thought,

As from the tranquil strength which cradled lay

970

In her smile-peopled rest, my spirit sought

Why the deceiver and the slave has sway

O’er heralds so divine of truth’s arising day.

XXXV

Within that fairest form, the female mind,

Untainted by the poison clouds which rest

975

On the dark world, a sacred home did find:

But else, from the wide earth’s maternal breast,

Victorious Evil, which had dispossessed

All native power, had those fair children torn,

And made them slaves to soothe his vile unrest,

980

And minister to lust its joys forlorn,

Till they had learned to breathe the atmosphere of scorn.

XXXVI

This misery was but coldly felt, till she

Became my only friend, who had endued

My purpose with a wider sympathy;

985

Thus, Cythna mourned with me the servitude

In which the half of humankind were mewed

Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves,

She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food

To the hyena lust, who, among graves,

990

Over his loathèd meal, laughing in agony, raves.

XXXVII

And I, still gazing on that glorious child,

Even as these thoughts flushed o’er her:—‘Cythna sweet,

Well with the world art thou unreconciled;

Never will peace and human nature meet

995

Till free and equal man and woman greet

Domestic peace; and ere this power can make

In human hearts its calm and holy seat,

This slavery must be broken’—as I spake,

From Cythna’s eyes a light of exultation brake.

XXXVIII

1000

She replied earnestly:—‘It shall be mine,

This task,—mine, Laon!—thou hast much to gain;

Nor wilt thou at poor Cythna’s pride repine,

If she should lead a happy female train

To meet thee over the rejoicing plain,

1005

When myriads at thy call shall throng around

The Golden City.’—Then the child did strain

My arm upon her tremulous heart, and wound

Her own about my neck, till some reply she found.

XXXIX

I smiled, and spake not.—‘Wherefore dost thou smile

1010

At what I say? Laon, I am not weak,

And, though my cheek might become pale the while,

With thee, if thou desirest, will I seek

Through their array of banded slaves to wreak

Ruin upon the tyrants. I had thought

1015

It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek

To scorn and shame, and this beloved spot

And thee, O dearest friend, to leave and murmur not.

XL

‘Whence came I what I am? Thou, Laon, knowest

How a young child should thus undaunted be;

1020

Methinks, it is a power which thou bestowest,

Through which I seek, by most resembling thee,

So to become most good and great and free;

Yet far beyond this Ocean’s utmost roar,

In towers and huts are many like to me,

1025

Who, could they see thine eyes, or feel such lore

As I have learnt from them, like me would fear no more.

XLI

‘Think’st thou that I shall speak unskilfully,

And none will heed me? I remember now,

How once, a slave in tortures doomed to die,

1030

Was saved, because in accents sweet and low

He sung a song his Judge loved long ago,

As he was led to death.—All shall relent

Who hear me—tears, as mine have flowed, shall flow,

Hearts beat as mine now beats, with such intent

1035

As renovates the world; a will omnipotent!

XLII

‘Yes, I will tread Pride’s golden palaces,

Through Penury’s roofless huts and squalid cells

Will I descend, where’er in abjectness

Woman with some vile slave her tyrant dwells,

1040

There with the music of thine own sweet spells

Will disenchant the captives, and will pour

For the despairing, from the crystal wells

Of thy deep spirit, reason’s mighty lore,

And power shall then abound, and hope arise once more.

XLIII

1045

‘Can man be free if woman be a slave?

Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air,

To the corruption of a closèd grave!

Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear

Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare

1050

To trample their oppressors? in their home

Among their babes, thou knowest a curse would wear

The shape of woman—hoary Crime would come

Behind, and Fraud rebuild religion’s tottering dome.

XLIV

‘I am a child:—I would not yet depart.

1055

When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp

Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart,

Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp

Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp

Of ages leaves their limbs—no ill may harm

1060

Thy Cythna ever—truth its radiant stamp

Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm,

Upon her children’s brow, dark Falsehood to disarm.

XLV

‘Wait yet awhile for the appointed day—

Thou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand

1065

Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean gray;

Amid the dwellers of this lonely land

I shall remain alone—and thy command

Shall then dissolve the world’s unquiet trance,

And, multitudinous as the desert sand

1070

Borne on the storm, its millions shall advance,

Thronging round thee, the light of their deliverance.

XLVI

‘Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain,

Which from remotest glens two warring winds

Involve in fire which not the loosened fountain

1075

Of broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds

Of evil, catch from our uniting minds

The spark which must consume them;—Cythna then

Will have cast off the impotence that binds

Her childhood now, and through the paths of men

1080

Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent’s den.

XLVII

‘We part!—O Laon, I must dare nor tremble,

To meet those looks no more!—Oh, heavy stroke!

Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble

The agony of this thought?’—As thus she spoke

1085

The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke,

And in my arms she hid her beating breast.

I remained still for tears—sudden she woke

As one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed

My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possessed.

XLVIII

1090

‘We part to meet again—but yon blue waste,

Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess,

Within whose happy silence, thus embraced

We might survive all ills in one caress:

Nor doth the grave—I fear ’tis passionless—

1095

Nor yon cold vacant Heaven:—we meet again

Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless

Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain

When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.’

XLIX

I could not speak, though she had ceased, for now

1100

The fountains of her feeling, swift and deep,

Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow;

So we arose, and by the starlight steep

Went homeward—neither did we speak nor weep,

But, pale, were calm with passion—thus subdued

1105

Like evening shades that o’er the mountains creep,

We moved towards our home; where, in this mood,

Each from the other sought refuge in solitude.

CANTO III

I

What thoughts had sway o’er Cythna’s lonely slumber

That night, I know not; but my own did seem

1110

As if they might ten thousand years outnumber

Of waking life, the visions of a dream

Which hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream

Of mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast,

Whose limits yet were never memory’s theme:

1115

And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds passed,

Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast.

II

Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace

More time than might make gray the infant world,

Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space:

1120

When the third came, like mist on breezes curled,

From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled:

Methought, upon the threshold of a cave

I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled

With dew from the wild streamlet’s shattered wave,

1125

Hung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave.

III

We lived a day as we were wont to live,

But Nature had a robe of glory on,

And the bright air o’er every shape did weave

Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone,

1130

The leafless bough among the leaves alone,

Had being clearer than its own could be,

And Cythna’s pure and radiant self was shown,

In this strange vision, so divine to me,

That if I loved before, now love was agony.

IV

1135

Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night descended,

And we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphere

Of the calm moon—when suddenly was blended

With our repose a nameless sense of fear;

And from the cave behind I seemed to hear

1140

Sounds gathering upwards!—accents incomplete,

And stifled shrieks,—and now, more near and near,

A tumult and a rush of thronging feet

The cavern’s secret depths beneath the earth did beat.

V

The scene was changed, and away, away, away!

1145

Through the air and over the sea we sped,

And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay,

And the winds bore me—through the darkness spread

Around, the gaping earth then vomited

Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung

1150

Upon my flight; and ever, as we fled,

They plucked at Cythna—soon to me then clung

A sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among.

VI

And I lay struggling in the impotence

Of sleep, while outward life had burst its bound,

1155

Though, still deluded, strove the tortured sense

To its dire wanderings to adapt the sound

Which in the light of morn was poured around

Our dwelling; breathless, pale and unaware

I rose, and all the cottage crowded found

1160

With armed men, whose glittering swords were bare,

And whose degraded limbs the tyrant’s garb did wear.

VII

And, ere with rapid lips and gathered brow

I could demand the cause—a feeble shriek—

It was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low,

1165

Arrested me—my mien grew calm and meek,

And grasping a small knife, I went to seek

That voice among the crowd—’twas Cythna’s cry!

Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak

Its whirlwind rage:—so I passed quietly

1170

Till I beheld, where bound, that dearest child did lie.

VIII

I started to behold her, for delight

And exultation, and a joyance free,

Solemn, serene and lofty, filled the light

Of the calm smile with which she looked on me:

1175

So that I feared some brainless ecstasy,

Wrought from that bitter woe, had wildered her—

‘Farewell! farewell!’ she said, as I drew nigh;

‘At first my peace was marred by this strange stir,

Now I am calm as truth—its chosen minister.

IX

1180

‘Look not so, Laon—say farewell in hope,

These bloody men are but the slaves who bear

Their mistress to her task—it was my scope

The slavery where they drag me now, to share,

And among captives willing chains to wear

1185

Awhile—the rest thou knowest—return, dear friend!

Let our first triumph trample the despair

Which would ensnare us now, for in the end,

In victory or in death our hopes and fears must blend.’

X

These words had fallen on my unheeding ear,

1190

Whilst I had watched the motions of the crew

With seeming-careless glance; not many were

Around her, for their comrades just withdrew

To guard some other victim—so I drew

My knife, and with one impulse, suddenly

1195

All unaware three of their number slew,

And grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud cry

My countrymen invoked to death or liberty!

XI

What followed then, I know not—for a stroke

On my raised arm and naked head, came down,

1200

Filling my eyes with blood.—When I awoke,

I felt that they had bound me in my swoon,

And up a rock which overhangs the town,

By the steep path were bearing me; below,

The plain was filled with slaughter,—overthrown

1205

The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow

Of blazing roofs shone far o’er the white Ocean’s flow.

XII

Upon that rock a mighty column stood,

Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky,

Which to the wanderers o’er the solitude

1210

Of distant seas, from ages long gone by,

Had made a landmark; o’er its height to fly

Scarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast,

Has power—and when the shades of evening lie

On Earth and Ocean, its carved summits cast

1215

The sunken daylight far through the aërial waste.

XIII

They bore me to a cavern in the hill

Beneath that column, and unbound me there;

And one did strip me stark; and one did fill

A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare

1220

A lighted torch, and four with friendless care

Guided my steps the cavern-paths along,

Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair

torches’ edd. 1818, 1839.

We wound, until the torch’s fiery tongue

Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.

XIV

1225

They raised me to the platform of the pile,

That column’s dizzy height:—the grate of brass

Through which they thrust me, open stood the while,

As to its ponderous and suspended mass,

With chains which eat into the flesh, alas!

1230

With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound:

The grate, as they departed to repass,

With horrid clangour fell, and the far sound

Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom was drowned.

XV

The noon was calm and bright:—around that column

1235

The overhanging sky and circling sea

Spread forth in silentness profound and solemn

The darkness of brief frenzy cast on me,

So that I knew not my own misery:

The islands and the mountains in the day

1240

Like clouds reposed afar; and I could see

The town among the woods below that lay,

And the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy bay.

XVI

It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed

Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone

1245

Swayed in the air:—so bright, that noon did breed

No shadow in the sky beside mine own—

Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone.

Below, the smoke of roofs involved in flame

Rested like night, all else was clearly shown

1250

In that broad glare; yet sound to me none came,

But of the living blood that ran within my frame.

XVII

The peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon!

A ship was lying on the sunny main,

Its sails were flagging in the breathless noon—

1255

Its shadow lay beyond—that sight again

Waked, with its presence, in my trancèd brain

The stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold:

I knew that ship bore Cythna o’er the plain

Of waters, to her blighting slavery sold,

1260

And watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold.

XVIII

I watched until the shades of evening wrapped

Earth like an exhalation—then the bark

Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapped.

It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark:

1265

Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark

Its path no more!—I sought to close mine eyes,

But like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark;

I would have risen, but ere that I could rise,

My parchèd skin was split with piercing agonies.

XIX

1270

I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever

Its adamantine links, that I might die:

O Liberty! forgive the base endeavour,

Forgive me, if, reserved for victory,

The Champion of thy faith e’er sought to fly.—

1275

That starry night, with its clear silence, sent

Tameless resolve which laughed at misery

Into my soul—linkèd remembrance lent

To that such power, to me such a severe content.

XX

To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair

1280

And die, I questioned not; nor, though the Sun

Its shafts of agony kindling through the air

Moved over me, nor though in evening dun,

Or when the stars their visible courses run,

Or morning, the wide universe was spread

1285

In dreary calmness round me, did I shun

Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead

From one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison shed.

XXI

Two days thus passed—I neither raved nor died—

Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion’s nest

1290

Built in mine entrails; I had spurned aside

The water-vessel, while despair possessed

My thoughts, and now no drop remained! The uprest

Of the third sun brought hunger—but the crust

Which had been left, was to my craving breast

1295

Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust,

And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.

XXII

My brain began to fail when the fourth morn

Burst o’er the golden isles—a fearful sleep,

Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn

1300

Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep

With whirlwind swiftness—a fall far and deep,—

A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness—

These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep

Their watch in some dim charnel’s loneliness,

1305

A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!

XXIII

The forms which peopled this terrific trance

I well remember—like a choir of devils,

Around me they involved a giddy dance;

Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels

1310

Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels,

Foul, ceaseless shadows:—thought could not divide

The actual world from these entangling evils,

Which so bemocked themselves, that I descried

All shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied.

XXIV

1315

The sense of day and night, of false and true,

Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst

That darkness—one, as since that hour I knew,

Was not a phantom of the realms accursed,

Where then my spirit dwelt—but of the first

1320

I know not yet, was it a dream or no.

But both, though not distincter, were immersed

In hues which, when through memory’s waste they flow,

Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now.

XXV

grate] gate ed. 1818.

Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven

1325

Who brought me thither four stiff corpses bare,

And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven

Hung them on high by the entangled hair;

Swarthy were three—the fourth was very fair;

As they retired, the golden moon upsprung,

1330

And eagerly, out in the giddy air,

Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung

Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.

XXVI

A woman’s shape, now lank and cold and blue,

The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,

1335

Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew

To my dry lips—what radiance did inform

Those horny eyes? whose was that withered form?

Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna’s ghost

Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm

1340

Within my teeth!—a whirlwind keen as frost

Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.

XXVII

Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane

Arose, and bore me in its dark career

Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane

1345

On the verge of formless space—it languished there,

And dying, left a silence lone and drear,

More horrible than famine:—in the deep

The shape of an old man did then appear,

Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep

1350

His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.

XXVIII

And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw

That column, and those corpses, and the moon,

And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw

My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon

1355

Of senseless death would be accorded soon;—

When from that stony gloom a voice arose,

Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune

The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,

And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.

XXIX

1360

He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled;

As they were loosened by that Hermit old,

Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,

To answer those kind looks; he did enfold

His giant arms around me, to uphold

1365

My wretched frame; my scorchèd limbs he wound

In linen moist and balmy, and as cold

As dew to drooping leaves;—the chain, with sound

Like earthquake, through the chasm of that steep stair did bound,

XXX

As, lifting me, it fell!—What next I heard,

1370

Were billows leaping on the harbour-bar,

And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirred

My hair;—I looked abroad, and saw a star

Shining beside a sail, and distant far

That mountain and its column, the known mark

1375

Of those who in the wide deep wandering are,

So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark,

In trance had lain me thus within a fiendish bark.

XXXI

For now indeed, over the salt sea-billow

I sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape

1380

Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow

For my light head was hollowed in his lap,

And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap,

Fearing it was a fiend: at last, he bent

O’er me his aged face; as if to snap

1385

bent] meant cj. J. Nettleship.

Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent,

And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.

XXXII

A soft and healing potion to my lips

At intervals he raised—now looked on high,

To mark if yet the starry giant dips

1390

His zone in the dim sea—now cheeringly,

Though he said little, did he speak to me.

‘It is a friend beside thee—take good cheer,

Poor victim, thou art now at liberty!’

I joyed as those a human tone to hear,

1395

Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year.

XXXIII

A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft

Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams;

Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft

The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams

1400

Of morn descended on the ocean-streams,

And still that aged man, so grand and mild,

Tended me, even as some sick mother seems

To hang in hope over a dying child,

Till in the azure East darkness again was piled.

XXXIV

1405

And then the night-wind steaming from the shore,

Sent odours dying sweet across the sea,

And the swift boat the little waves which bore,

Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly;

Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see

1410

The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove,

As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee

On sidelong wing, into a silent cove,

Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.

CANTO IV

I

The old man took the oars, and soon the bark

1415

Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone;

It was a crumbling heap, whose portal dark

With blooming ivy-trails was overgrown;

Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown,

And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood,

1420

Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown

Within the walls of that gray tower, which stood

A changeling of man’s art nursed amid Nature’s brood.

II

When the old man his boat had anchored,

He wound me in his arms with tender care,

1425

And very few, but kindly words he said,

And bore me through the tower adown a stair,

Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear

For many a year had fallen.—We came at last

To a small chamber, which with mosses rare

1430

Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed

Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.

III

The moon was darting through the lattices

Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day—

So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze,

1435

The old man opened them; the moonlight lay

Upon a lake whose waters wove their play

Even to the threshold of that lonely home:

Within was seen in the dim wavering ray

The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome

1440

Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become.

IV

The rock-built barrier of the sea was past,—

And I was on the margin of a lake,

A lonely lake, amid the forests vast

And snowy mountains:—did my spirit wake

1445

From sleep as many-coloured as the snake

That girds eternity? in life and truth,

Might not my heart its cravings ever slake?

Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth,

And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth?

V

1450

Thus madness came again,—a milder madness,

Which darkened nought but time’s unquiet flow

With supernatural shades of clinging sadness;

That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,

By my sick couch was busy to and fro,

1455

Like a strong spirit ministrant of good:

When I was healed, he led me forth to show

The wonders of his sylvan solitude,

And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.

VI

He knew his soothing words to weave with skill

1460

From all my madness told; like mine own heart,

Of Cythna would he question me, until

That thrilling name had ceased to make me start,

From his familiar lips—it was not art,

Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke—

1465

When mid soft looks of pity, there would dart

A glance as keen as is the lightning’s stroke

When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.

VII

Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,

My thoughts their due array did re-assume

1470

Through the enchantments of that Hermit old;

Then I bethought me of the glorious doom

Of those who sternly struggle to relume

The lamp of Hope o’er man’s bewildered lot,

And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom

1475

Of eve, to that friend’s heart I told my thought—

That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.

VIII

That hoary man had spent his livelong age

In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp

Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page,

1480

When they are gone into the senseless damp

Of graves;—his spirit thus became a lamp

Of splendour, like to those on which it fed;

Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp,

Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led,

1485

And all the ways of men among mankind he read.

IX

But custom maketh blind and obdurate

The loftiest hearts;—he had beheld the woe

In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate

Which made them abject, would preserve them so;

1490

And in such faith, some steadfast joy to know,

He sought this cell: but when fame went abroad

That one in Argolis did undergo

Torture for liberty, and that the crowd

High truths from gifted lips had heard and understood;

X

1495

And that the multitude was gathering wide,—

His spirit leaped within his aged frame;

In lonely peace he could no more abide,

But to the land on which the victor’s flame

Had fed, my native land, the Hermit came:

1500

Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue

Was as a sword of truth—young Laon’s name

Rallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung

Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among.

XI

He came to the lone column on the rock,

1505

And with his sweet and mighty eloquence

The hearts of those who watched it did unlock,

And made them melt in tears of penitence.

They gave him entrance free to bear me thence.

‘Since this,’ the old man said, ‘seven years are spent,

1510

While slowly truth on thy benighted sense

Has crept; the hope which wildered it has lent

Meanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent.

XII

‘Yes, from the records of my youthful state,

And from the lore of bards and sages old,

1515

From whatsoe’er my wakened thoughts create

Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,

Have I collected language to unfold

Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore

Doctrines of human power my words have told,

1520

They have been heard, and men aspire to more

Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.

XIII

‘In secret chambers parents read, and weep,

My writings to their babes, no longer blind;

And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,

1525

And vows of faith each to the other bind;

And marriageable maidens, who have pined

With love, till life seemed melting through their look,

A warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now find;

And every bosom thus is rapt and shook,

1530

Like autumn’s myriad leaves in one swoln mountain-brook.

XIV

‘The tyrants of the Golden City tremble

At voices which are heard about the streets;

The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble

The lies of their own heart, but when one meets

1535

Another at the shrine, he inly weets,

Though he says nothing, that the truth is known;

Murderers are pale upon the judgement-seats,

And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone,

And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne.

XV

1540

‘Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds

Abound, for fearless love, and the pure law

Of mild equality and peace, succeeds

To faiths which long have held the world in awe,

Bloody and false, and cold:—as whirlpools draw

1545

All wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway

Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw

This hope, compels all spirits to obey,

Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array.

XVI

‘For I have been thy passive instrument’—

1550

(As thus the old man spake, his countenance

Gleamed on me like a spirit’s)—‘thou hast lent

To me, to all, the power to advance

Towards this unforeseen deliverance

From our ancestral chains—ay, thou didst rear

1555

That lamp of hope on high, which time nor chance

Nor change may not extinguish, and my share

Of good, was o’er the world its gathered beams to bear.

XVII

‘But I, alas! am both unknown and old,

And though the woof of wisdom I know well

1560

To dye in hues of language, I am cold

In seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell,

My manners note that I did long repel;

But Laon’s name to the tumultuous throng

Were like the star whose beams the waves compel

1565

And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue

Were as a lance to quell the mailèd crest of wrong.

XVIII

‘Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length

Wouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spare

Their brethren and themselves; great is the strength

1570

Of words—for lately did a maiden fair,

Who from her childhood has been taught to bear

The Tyrant’s heaviest yoke, arise, and make

Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear,

And with these quiet words—“for thine own sake

1575

I prithee spare me;”—did with ruth so take

XIX

‘All hearts, that even the torturer who had bound

Her meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled,

Loosened her, weeping then; nor could be found

One human hand to harm her—unassailed

1580

Therefore she walks through the great City, veiled

In virtue’s adamantine eloquence,

’Gainst scorn, and death and pain thus trebly mailed,

And blending, in the smiles of that defence,

The Serpent and the Dove, Wisdom and Innocence.

XX

1585

‘The wild-eyed women throng around her path:

From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust

Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor’s wrath,

Or the caresses of his sated lust

They congregate:—in her they put their trust;

1590

The tyrants send their armèd slaves to quell

Her power;—they, even like a thunder-gust

Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell

Of that young maiden’s speech, and to their chiefs rebel.

XXI

‘Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach

1595

To woman, outraged and polluted long;

Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach

For those fair hands now free, while armed wrong

Trembles before her look, though it be strong;

Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,

1600

And matrons with their babes, a stately throng!

Lovers renew the vows which they did plight

In early faith, and hearts long parted now unite,

XXII

‘And homeless orphans find a home near her,

And those poor victims of the proud, no less,

1605

Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir,

Thrusts the redemption of its wickedness:—

In squalid huts, and in its palaces

Sits Lust alone, while o’er the land is borne

Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress

1610

All evil, and her foes relenting turn,

And cast the vote of love in hope’s abandoned urn.

XXIII

‘So in the populous City, a young maiden

Has baffled Havoc of the prey which he

Marks as his own, whene’er with chains o’erladen

1615

Men make them arms to hurl down tyranny,—

False arbiter between the bound and free;

And o’er the land, in hamlets and in towns

The multitudes collect tumultuously,

And throng in arms; but tyranny disowns

1620

Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones.

XXIV

‘Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed

The free cannot forbear—the Queen of Slaves,

The hoodwinked Angel of the blind and dead,

Custom, with iron mace points to the graves

1625

Where] When ed. 1818.

Where her own standard desolately waves

Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings.

Many yet stand in her array—“she paves

Her path with human hearts,” and o’er it flings

The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.

XXV

1630

‘There is a plain beneath the City’s wall,

Bounded by misty mountains, wide and vast,

Millions there lift at Freedom’s thrilling call

Ten thousand standards wide, they load the blast

Which bears one sound of many voices past,

1635

And startles on his throne their sceptred foe:

He sits amid his idle pomp aghast,

And that his power hath passed away, doth know—

Why pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow?

XXVI

‘The tyrant’s guards resistance yet maintain:

1640

Fearless, and fierce, and hard as beasts of blood,

They stand a speck amid the peopled plain;

Carnage and ruin have been made their food

From infancy—ill has become their good,

And for its hateful sake their will has wove

1645

The chains which eat their hearts. The multitude

Surrounding them, with words of human love,

Seek from their own decay their stubborn minds to move.

XXVII

‘Over the land is felt a sudden pause,

As night and day those ruthless bands around,

1650

The watch of love is kept:—a trance which awes

The thoughts of men with hope; as when the sound

Of whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves and clouds confound,

Dies suddenly, the mariner in fear

Feels silence sink upon his heart—thus bound,

1655

The conquerors pause, and oh! may freemen ne’er

Clasp the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer!

XXVIII

‘If blood be shed, ’tis but a change and choice

Of bonds,—from slavery to cowardice

A wretched fall!—Uplift thy charmèd voice!

1660

Pour on those evil men the love that lies

Hovering within those spirit-soothing eyes—

Arise, my friend, farewell!’—As thus he spake,

From the green earth lightly I did arise,

As one out of dim dreams that doth awake,

1665

And looked upon the depth of that reposing lake.

XXIX

I saw my countenance reflected there;—

And then my youth fell on me like a wind

Descending on still waters—my thin hair

Was prematurely gray, my face was lined

1670

With channels, such as suffering leaves behind,

Not age; my brow was pale, but in my cheek

And lips a flush of gnawing fire did find

Their food and dwelling; though mine eyes might speak

A subtle mind and strong within a frame thus weak.

XXX

1675

And though their lustre now was spent and faded,

Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien

The likeness of a shape for which was braided

The brightest woof of genius, still was seen—

One who, methought, had gone from the world’s scene,

1680

And left it vacant—’twas her lover’s face—

It might resemble her—it once had been

The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace

Which her mind’s shadow cast, left there a lingering trace.

XXXI

What then was I? She slumbered with the dead.

1685

Glory and joy and peace, had come and gone.

Doth the cloud perish, when the beams are fled

Which steeped its skirts in gold? or, dark and lone,

Doth it not through the paths of night unknown,

On outspread wings of its own wind upborne

1690

Pour rain upon the earth? The stars are shown,

When the cold moon sharpens her silver horn

Under the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn.

XXXII

Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man

I left, with interchange of looks and tears,

1695

And lingering speech, and to the Camp began

My war. O’er many a mountain-chain which rears

Its hundred crests aloft, my spirit bears

My frame; o’er many a dale and many a moor,

And gaily now meseems serene earth wears

1700

The blosmy spring’s star-bright investiture,

A vision which aught sad from sadness might allure.

XXXIII

My powers revived within me, and I went,

As one whom winds waft o’er the bending grass,

Through many a vale of that broad continent.

1705

At night when I reposed, fair dreams did pass

Before my pillow;—my own Cythna was,

Not like a child of death, among them ever;

When I arose from rest, a woful mass

That gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever,

1710

As if the light of youth were not withdrawn for ever.

XXXIV

Aye as I went, that maiden who had reared

The torch of Truth afar, of whose high deeds

The Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard,

Haunted my thoughts.—Ah, Hope its sickness feeds

1715

With whatsoe’er it finds, or flowers or weeds!

Could she be Cythna?—Was that corpse a shade

Such as self-torturing thought from madness breeds?

Why was this hope not torture? Yet it made

A light around my steps which would not ever fade.

CANTO V

I

1720

Over the utmost hill at length I sped,

A snowy steep:—the moon was hanging low

Over the Asian mountains, and outspread

The plain, the City, and the Camp below,

Skirted the midnight Ocean’s glimmering flow;

1725

The City’s moonlit spires and myriad lamps,

Like stars in a sublunar sky did glow,

And fires blazed far amid the scattered camps,

Like springs of flame, which burst where’er swift Earthquake stamps.

II

All slept but those in watchful arms who stood,

1730

And those who sate tending the beacon’s light,

And the few sounds from that vast multitude

Made silence more profound.—Oh, what a might

Of human thought was cradled in that night!

How many hearts impenetrably veiled

1735

Beat underneath its shade, what secret fight

Evil and good, in woven passions mailed,

Waged through that silent throng—a war that never failed!

III

And now the Power of Good held victory.

So, through the labyrinth of many a tent,

1740

Among the silent millions who did lie

In innocent sleep, exultingly I went;

The moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent

From eastern morn the first faint lustre showed

An armèd youth—over his spear he bent

1745

His downward face.—‘A friend!’ I cried aloud,

And quickly common hopes made freemen understood.

IV

I sate beside him while the morning beam

Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him

Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme!

1750

Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim:

And all the while, methought, his voice did swim

As if it drownèd in remembrance were

Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim:

At last, when daylight ’gan to fill the air,

1755

He looked on me, and cried in wonder—‘Thou art here!’

V

Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth

In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;

But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,

And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,

1760

And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,

Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded;

The truth now came upon me, on the ground

Tears of repenting joy, which fast intruded,

Fell fast, and o’er its peace our mingling spirits brooded.

VI

1765

Thus, while with rapid lips and earnest eyes

We talked, a sound of sweeping conflict spread

As from the earth did suddenly arise;

From every tent roused by that clamour dread,

Our bands outsprung and seized their arms—we sped

1770

Towards the sound: our tribes were gathering far.

Those sanguine slaves amid ten thousand dead

Stabbed in their sleep, trampled in treacherous war

The gentle hearts whose power their lives had sought to spare.

VII

Like rabid snakes, that sting some gentle child

1775

Who brings them food, when winter false and fair

Allures them forth with its cold smiles, so wild

They rage among the camp;—they overbear

The patriot hosts—confusion, then despair,

Descends like night—when ‘Laon!’ one did cry;

1780

Like a bright ghost from Heaven that shout did scare

The slaves, and widening through the vaulted sky,

Seemed sent from Earth to Heaven in sign of victory.

VIII

In sudden panic those false murderers fled,

Like insect tribes before the northern gale:

1785

But swifter still, our hosts encompassèd

Their shattered ranks, and in a craggy vale,

Where even their fierce despair might nought avail,

Hemmed them around!—and then revenge and fear

Made the high virtue of the patriots fail:

1790

One pointed on his foe the mortal spear—

I rushed before its point, and cried ‘Forbear, forbear!’

IX

The spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted

In swift expostulation, and the blood

Gushed round its point: I smiled, and—‘Oh! thou gifted

1795

With eloquence which shall not be withstood,

Flow thus!’ I cried in joy, ‘thou vital flood,

Until my heart be dry, ere thus the cause

For which thou wert aught worthy be subdued—

Ah, ye are pale,—ye weep,—your passions pause,—

1800

’Tis well! ye feel the truth of love’s benignant laws.

X

‘Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain.

Ye murdered them, I think, as they did sleep!

Alas, what have ye done? the slightest pain

Which ye might suffer, there were eyes to weep,

1805

But ye have quenched them—there were smiles to steep

Your hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe;

And those whom love did set his watch to keep

Around your tents, truth’s freedom to bestow,

Ye stabbed as they did sleep—but they forgive ye now.

XI

1810

‘Oh wherefore should ill ever flow from ill,

And pain still keener pain for ever breed?

We all are brethren—even the slaves who kill

For hire, are men; and to avenge misdeed

On the misdoer, doth but Misery feed

1815

With her own broken heart! O Earth, O Heaven!

And thou, dread Nature, which to every deed

And all that lives, or is, to be hath given,

Even as to thee have these done ill, and are forgiven!

XII

‘Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past

1820

Be as a grave which gives not up its dead

To evil thoughts.’—A film then overcast

My sense with dimness, for the wound, which bled

Freshly, swift shadows o’er mine eyes had shed.

When I awoke, I lay mid friends and foes,

1825

And earnest countenances on me shed

The light of questioning looks, whilst one did close

My wound with balmiest herbs, and soothed me to repose;

XIII

And one whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside

With quivering lips and humid eyes;—and all

1830

Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide

Gone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall

In a strange land, round one whom they might call

Their friend, their chief, their father, for assay

Of peril, which had saved them from the thrall

1835

Of death, now suffering. Thus the vast array

Of those fraternal bands were reconciled that day.

XIV

Lifting the thunder of their acclamation,

Towards the City then the multitude,

And I among them, went in joy—a nation

1840

Made free by love;—a mighty brotherhood

Linked by a jealous interchange of good;

A glorious pageant, more magnificent

Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood,

When they return from carnage, and are sent

1845

In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement.

XV

Afar, the city-walls were thronged on high,

And myriads on each giddy turret clung,

And to each spire far lessening in the sky

Bright pennons on the idle winds were hung;

1850

As we approached, a shout of joyance sprung

At once from all the crowd, as if the vast

And peopled Earth its boundless skies among

The sudden clamour of delight had cast,

When from before its face some general wreck had passed.

XVI

1855

Our armies through the City’s hundred gates

Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair

Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits,

Throng from the mountains when the storms are there

And, as we passed through the calm sunny air

1860

A thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed,

The token flowers of truth and freedom fair,

And fairest hands bound them on many a head,

Those angels of love’s heaven that over all was spread.

XVII

I trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision:

1865

Those bloody bands so lately reconciled,

Were, ever as they went, by the contrition

Of anger turned to love, from ill beguiled,

And every one on them more gently smiled,

Because they had done evil:—the sweet awe

1870

Of such mild looks made their own hearts grow mild,

And did with soft attraction ever draw

Their spirits to the love of freedom’s equal law.

XVIII

And they, and all, in one loud symphony

My name with Liberty commingling, lifted,

1875

‘The friend and the preserver of the free!

The parent of this joy!’ and fair eyes gifted

With feelings, caught from one who had uplifted

The light of a great spirit, round me shone;

And all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted

1880

Like restless clouds before the steadfast sun,—

Where was that Maid? I asked, but it was known of none.

XIX

Laone was the name her love had chosen,

For she was nameless, and her birth none knew:

Where was Laone now?—The words were frozen

1885

Within my lips with fear; but to subdue

Such dreadful hope, to my great task was due,

And when at length one brought reply, that she

To-morrow would appear, I then withdrew

To judge what need for that great throng might be,

1890

For now the stars came thick over the twilight sea.

XX

Yet need was none for rest or food to care,

Even though that multitude was passing great,

Since each one for the other did prepare

All kindly succour—Therefore to the gate

1895

Of the Imperial House, now desolate,

I passed, and there was found aghast, alone,

The fallen Tyrant!—Silently he sate

Upon the footstool of his golden throne,

Which, starred with sunny gems, in its own lustre shone.

XXI

1900

Alone, but for one child, who led before him

A graceful dance: the only living thing

Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him

Flocked yesterday, who solace sought to bring

In his abandonment!—She knew the King

1905

Had praised her dance of yore, and now she wove

Its circles, aye weeping and murmuring

Mid her sad task of unregarded love,

That to no smiles it might his speechless sadness move.

XXII

She fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet

1910

When human steps were heard:—he moved nor spoke,

Nor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet

The gaze of strangers—our loud entrance woke

The echoes of the hall, which circling broke

The calm of its recesses,—like a tomb

1915

Its sculptured walls vacantly to the stroke

Of footfalls answered, and the twilight’s gloom

Lay like a charnel’s mist within the radiant dome.

XXIII

The little child stood up when we came nigh;

Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan,

1920

But on her forehead, and within her eye

Lay beauty, which makes hearts that feed thereon

Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne

She leaned;—the King, with gathered brow, and lips

Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown

1925

With hue like that when some great painter dips

His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.

XXIV

She stood beside him like a rainbow braided

Within some storm, when scarce its shadows vast

From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded;

1930

A sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna’s, cast

One moment’s light, which made my heart beat fast,

O’er that child’s parted lips—a gleam of bliss,

A shade of vanished days,—as the tears passed

Which wrapped it, even as with a father’s kiss

1935

I pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness.

XXV

The sceptred wretch then from that solitude

I drew, and, of his change compassionate,

With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood.

But he, while pride and fear held deep debate,

1940

With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate

Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare:

Pity, not scorn I felt, though desolate

The desolator now, and unaware

The curses which he mocked had caught him by the hair.

XXVI

1945

I led him forth from that which now might seem

A gorgeous grave: through portals sculptured deep

With imagery beautiful as dream

We went, and left the shades which tend on sleep

Over its unregarded gold to keep

1950

Their silent watch.—The child trod faintingly,

And as she went, the tears which she did weep

Glanced in the starlight; wildered seemèd she,

And, when I spake, for sobs she could not answer me.

XXVII

At last the tyrant cried, ‘She hungers, slave!

1955

Stab her, or give her bread!’—It was a tone

Such as sick fancies in a new-made grave

Might hear. I trembled, for the truth was known;

He with this child had thus been left alone,

And neither had gone forth for food,—but he

1960

In mingled pride and awe cowered near his throne,

And she a nursling of captivity

Knew nought beyond those walls, nor what such change might be.

XXVIII

And he was troubled at a charm withdrawn

Thus suddenly; that sceptres ruled no more—

1965

That even from gold the dreadful strength was gone,

Which once made all things subject to its power—

Such wonder seized him, as if hour by hour

The past had come again; and the swift fall

Of one so great and terrible of yore,

1970

To desolateness, in the hearts of all

Like wonder stirred, who saw such awful change befall.

XXIX

A mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours

Once in a thousand years, now gathered round

The fallen tyrant;—like the rush of showers

1975

Of hail in spring, pattering along the ground,

Their many footsteps fell, else came no sound

From the wide multitude: that lonely man

Then knew the burden of his change, and found,

Concealing in the dust his visage wan,

1980

Refuge from the keen looks which through his bosom ran.

XXX

And he was faint withal: I sate beside him

Upon the earth, and took that child so fair

From his weak arms, that ill might none betide him

Or her;—when food was brought to them, her share

1985

To his averted lips the child did bear,

But, when she saw he had enough, she ate

And wept the while;—the lonely man’s despair

Hunger then overcame, and of his state

Forgetful, on the dust as in a trance he sate.

XXXI

1990

Slowly the silence of the multitudes

Passed, as when far is heard in some lone dell

The gathering of a wind among the woods—

‘And he is fallen!’ they cry, ‘he who did dwell

Like famine or the plague, or aught more fell

1995

Among our homes, is fallen! the murderer

Who slaked his thirsting soul as from a well

Of blood and tears with ruin! he is here!

Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none may him rear!’

XXXII

Then was heard—‘He who judged let him be brought

2000

To judgement! blood for blood cries from the soil

On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!

Shall Othman only unavenged despoil?

Shall they who by the stress of grinding toil

Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries,

2005

Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil,

Or creep within his veins at will?—Arise!

And to high justice make her chosen sacrifice!’

XXXIII

‘What do ye seek? what fear ye,’ then I cried,

Suddenly starting forth, ‘that ye should shed

2010

The blood of Othman?—if your hearts are tried

In the true love of freedom, cease to dread

This one poor lonely man—beneath Heaven spread

In purest light above us all, through earth—

Maternal earth, who doth her sweet smiles shed

2015

For all, let him go free; until the worth

Of human nature win from these a second birth.

XXXIV

‘What call ye justice? Is there one who ne’er

In secret thought has wished another’s ill?—

Are ye all pure? Let those stand forth who hear

2020

And tremble not. Shall they insult and kill,

If such they be? their mild eyes can they fill

With the false anger of the hypocrite?

Alas, such were not pure!—the chastened will

Of virtue sees that justice is the light

2025

Of love, and not revenge, and terror and despite.’

XXXV

The murmur of the people, slowly dying,

Paused as I spake, then those who near me were,

Cast gentle looks where the lone man was lying

Shrouding his head, which now that infant fair

2030

Clasped on her lap in silence;—through the air

Sobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet

In pity’s madness, and to the despair

Of him whom late they cursed, a solace sweet

His very victims brought—soft looks and speeches meet.

XXXVI

2035

Then to a home for his repose assigned,

Accompanied by the still throng, he went

In silence, where, to soothe his rankling mind,

Some likeness of his ancient state was lent;

And if his heart could have been innocent

2040

As those who pardoned him, he might have ended

His days in peace; but his straight lips were bent,

Men said, into a smile which guile portended,

A sight with which that child like hope with fear was blended.

XXXVII

’Twas midnight now, the eve of that great day

2045

Whereon the many nations at whose call

The chains of earth like mist melted away,

Decreed to hold a sacred Festival,

A rite to attest the equality of all

Who live. So to their homes, to dream or wake

2050

All went. The sleepless silence did recall

Laone to my thoughts, with hopes that make

The flood recede from which their thirst they seek to slake.

XXXVIII

The dawn flowed forth, and from its purple fountains

I drank those hopes which make the spirit quail,

2055

As to the plain between the misty mountains

And the great City, with a countenance pale,

I went:—it was a sight which might avail

To make men weep exulting tears, for whom

Now first from human power the reverend veil

2060

Was torn, to see Earth from her general womb

Pour forth her swarming sons to a fraternal doom:

XXXIX

To see, far glancing in the misty morning,

The signs of that innumerable host;

To hear one sound of many made, the warning

2065

Of Earth to Heaven from its free children tossed,

While the eternal hills, and the sea lost

In wavering light, and, starring the blue sky

The city’s myriad spires of gold, almost

With human joy made mute society—

2070

Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be.

XL

To see, like some vast island from the Ocean,

The Altar of the Federation rear

Its pile i’ the midst; a work, which the devotion

Of millions in one night created there,

2075

Sudden as when the moonrise makes appear

Strange clouds in the east; a marble pyramid

Distinct with steps: that mighty shape did wear

The light of genius; its still shadow hid

Far ships: to know its height the morning mists forbid!

XLI

2080

To hear the restless multitudes for ever

Around the base of that great Altar flow,

As on some mountain-islet burst and shiver

Atlantic waves; and solemnly and slow

As the wind bore that tumult to and fro,

2085

To feel the dreamlike music, which did swim

Like beams through floating clouds on waves below

Falling in pauses, from that Altar dim,

As silver-sounding tongues breathed an aëreal hymn.

XLII

To hear, to see, to live, was on that morn

2090

Lethean joy! so that all those assembled

Cast off their memories of the past outworn;

Two only bosoms with their own life trembled,

And mine was one,—and we had both dissembled;

So with a beating heart I went, and one,

2095

Who having much, covets yet more, resembled;

A lost and dear possession, which not won,

He walks in lonely gloom beneath the noonday sun.

XLIII

To the great Pyramid I came: its stair

With female choirs was thronged: the loveliest

2100

Among the free, grouped with its sculptures rare;

As I approached, the morning’s golden mist,

Which now the wonder-stricken breezes kissed

With their cold lips, fled, and the summit shone

Like Athos seen from Samothracia, dressed

2105

In earliest light, by vintagers, and one

Sate there, a female Shape upon an ivory throne:

XLIV

A Form most like the imagined habitant

Of silver exhalations sprung from dawn,

By winds which feed on sunrise woven, to enchant

2110

The faiths of men: all mortal eyes were drawn,

As famished mariners through strange seas gone

Gaze on a burning watch-tower, by the light

Of those divinest lineaments—alone

With thoughts which none could share, from that fair sight

2115

I turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded her countenance bright.

XLV

And neither did I hear the acclamations,

Which from brief silence bursting, filled the air

With her strange name and mine, from all the nations

Which we, they said, in strength had gathered there

2120

From the sleep of bondage; nor the vision fair

Of that bright pageantry beheld,—but blind

And silent, as a breathing corpse did fare,

Leaning upon my friend, till like a wind

To fevered cheeks, a voice flowed o’er my troubled mind.

XLVI

2125

Like music of some minstrel heavenly gifted,

To one whom fiends enthral, this voice to me;

Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted,

I was so calm and joyous.—I could see

The platform where we stood, the statues three

2130

Which kept their marble watch on that high shrine,

The multitudes, the mountains, and the sea;

As when eclipse hath passed, things sudden shine

To men’s astonished eyes most clear and crystalline.

XLVII

At first Laone spoke most tremulously:

2135

But soon her voice the calmness which it shed

Gathered, and—‘Thou art whom I sought to see,

And thou art our first votary here,’ she said:

‘I had a dear friend once, but he is dead!—

And of all those on the wide earth who breathe,

2140

Thou dost resemble him alone—I spread

This veil between us two that thou beneath

Shouldst image one who may have been long lost in death.

XLVIII

‘For this wilt thou not henceforth pardon me?

Yes, but those joys which silence well requite

2145

Forbid reply;—why men have chosen me

To be the Priestess of this holiest rite

I scarcely know, but that the floods of light

Which flow over the world, have borne me hither

To meet thee, long most dear; and now unite

2150

Thine hand with mine, and may all comfort wither

From both the hearts whose pulse in joy now beat together,

XLIX

‘If our own will as others’ law we bind,

If the foul worship trampled here we fear;

If as ourselves we cease to love our kind!’—

2155

She paused, and pointed upwards—sculptured there

Three shapes around her ivory throne appear;

One was a Giant, like a child asleep

On a loose rock, whose grasp crushed, as it were

In dream, sceptres and crowns; and one did keep

2160

Its watchful eyes in doubt whether to smile or weep;

L

A Woman sitting on the sculptured disk

Of the broad earth, and feeding from one breast

A human babe and a young basilisk;

Her looks were sweet as Heaven’s when loveliest

2165

In Autumn eves. The third Image was dressed

In white wings swift as clouds in winter skies;

Beneath his feet, ‘mongst ghastliest forms, repressed

Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise,

While calmly on the Sun he turned his diamond eyes.

LI

2170

Beside that Image then I sate, while she

Stood, mid the throngs which ever ebbed and flowed,

Like light amid the shadows of the sea

Cast from one cloudless star, and on the crowd

That touch which none who feels forgets, bestowed;

2175

And whilst the sun returned the steadfast gaze

Of the great Image, as o’er Heaven it glode,

That rite had place; it ceased when sunset’s blaze

Burned o’er the isles. All stood in joy and deep amaze—

—When in the silence of all spirits there

2180

Laone’s voice was felt, and through the air

Her thrilling gestures spoke, most eloquently fair:—

1

‘Calm art thou as yon sunset! swift and strong

As new-fledged Eagles, beautiful and young,

That float among the blinding beams of morning;

2185

And underneath thy feet writhe Faith, and Folly,

Custom, and Hell, and mortal Melancholy—

Hark! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning

Of thy voice sublime and holy;

Its free spirits here assembled

2190

See thee, feel thee, know thee now,—

To thy voice their hearts have trembled

Like ten thousand clouds which flow

With one wide wind as it flies!—

Wisdom! thy irresistible children rise

2195

To hail thee, and the elements they chain

And their own will, to swell the glory of thy train.

2

‘O Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven!

Mother and soul of all to which is given

The light of life, the loveliness of being,

2200

Lo! thou dost re-ascend the human heart,

Thy throne of power, almighty as thou wert

In dreams of Poets old grown pale by seeing

The shade of thee;—now, millions start

To feel thy lightnings through them burning:

2205

Nature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure,

Or Sympathy the sad tears turning

To mutual smiles, a drainless treasure,

Descends amidst us;—Scorn and Hate,

Revenge and Selfishness are desolate—

2210

A hundred nations swear that there shall be

Pity and Peace and Love, among the good and free!

3

‘Eldest of things, divine Equality!

Wisdom and Love are but the slaves of thee,

The Angels of thy sway, who pour around thee

2215

Treasures from all the cells of human thought,

And from the Stars, and from the Ocean brought,

And the last living heart whose beatings bound thee:

The powerful and the wise had sought

Thy coming, thou in light descending

2220

O’er the wide land which is thine own

Like the Spring whose breath is blending

All blasts of fragrance into one,

Comest upon the paths of men!—

Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken,

2225

And all her children here in glory meet

To feed upon thy smiles, and clasp thy sacred feet.

4

‘My brethren, we are free! the plains and mountains,

The gray sea-shore, the forests and the fountains,

Are haunts of happiest dwellers;—man and woman,

2230

Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow

From lawless love a solace for their sorrow;

For oft we still must weep, since we are human.

A stormy night’s serenest morrow,

Whose showers are pity’s gentle tears,

2235

Whose clouds are smiles of those that die

Like infants without hopes or fears,

And whose beams are joys that lie

In blended hearts, now holds dominion;

The dawn of mind, which upwards on a pinion

2240

Borne, swift as sunrise, far illumines space,

And clasps this barren world in its own bright embrace!

5

‘My brethren, we are free! The fruits are glowing

Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing

O’er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dreaming—

2245

Never again may blood of bird or beast

Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,

To the pure skies in accusation steaming;

Avenging poisons shall have ceased

To feed disease and fear and madness,

2250

The dwellers of the earth and air

Shall throng around our steps in gladness,

Seeking their food or refuge there.

Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull,

To make this Earth, our home, more beautiful,

2255

And Science, and her sister Poesy,

Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free!

6

‘Victory, Victory to the prostrate nations!

Bear witness Night, and ye mute Constellations

Who gaze on us from your crystalline cars!

2260

Thoughts have gone forth whose powers can sleep no more!

Victory! Victory! Earth’s remotest shore,

Regions which groan beneath the Antarctic stars,

The green lands cradled in the roar

Of western waves, and wildernesses

2265

Peopled and vast, which skirt the oceans

Where morning dyes her golden tresses,

Shall soon partake our high emotions:

Kings shall turn pale! Almighty Fear,

The Fiend-God, when our charmèd name he hear,

2270

Shall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes,

While Truth with Joy enthroned o’er his lost empire reigns!’

LII

Ere she had ceased, the mists of night entwining

Their dim woof, floated o’er the infinite throng;

She, like a spirit through the darkness shining,

2275

In tones whose sweetness silence did prolong,

As if to lingering winds they did belong,

Poured forth her inmost soul: a passionate speech

With wild and thrilling pauses woven among,

Which whoso heard was mute, for it could teach

2280

To rapture like her own all listening hearts to reach.

LIII

Her voice was as a mountain stream which sweeps

The withered leaves of Autumn to the lake,

And in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps

In the shadow of the shores; as dead leaves wake,

2285

Under the wave, in flowers and herbs which make

Those green depths beautiful when skies are blue,

The multitude so moveless did partake

Such living change, and kindling murmurs flew

As o’er that speechless calm delight and wonder grew.

LIV

2290

Over the plain the throngs were scattered then

In groups around the fires, which from the sea

Even to the gorge of the first mountain-glen

Blazed wide and far: the banquet of the free

Was spread beneath many a dark cypress-tree,

2295

flame] light ed. 1818.

Beneath whose spires, which swayed in the red flame,

Reclining, as they ate, of Liberty,

And Hope, and Justice, and Laone’s name,

Earth’s children did a woof of happy converse frame.

LV

Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother,

2300

Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles

In the embrace of Autumn;—to each other

As when some parent fondly reconciles

Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles

With her own sustenance, they relenting weep:

2305

Such was this Festival, which from their isles

And continents, and winds, and oceans deep,

All shapes might throng to share, that fly, or walk or creep,—

LVI

Might share in peace and innocence, for gore

Or poison none this festal did pollute,

2310

But, piled on high, an overflowing store

Of pomegranates and citrons, fairest fruit,

Melons, and dates, and figs, and many a root

Sweet and sustaining, and bright grapes ere yet

Accursed fire their mild juice could transmute

2315

Into a mortal bane, and brown corn set

In baskets; with pure streams their thirsting lips they wet.

LVII

Laone had descended from the shrine,

And every deepest look and holiest mind

Fed on her form, though now those tones divine

2320

Were silent as she passed; she did unwind

Her veil, as with the crowds of her own kind

She mixed; some impulse made my heart refrain

From seeking her that night, so I reclined

Amidst a group, where on the utmost plain

2325

A festal watchfire burned beside the dusky main.

LVIII

And joyous was our feast; pathetic talk,

And wit, and harmony of choral strains,

While far Orion o’er the waves did walk

That flow among the isles, held us in chains

2330

Of sweet captivity which none disdains

Who feels; but when his zone grew dim in mist

Which clothes the Ocean’s bosom, o’er the plains

The multitudes went homeward, to their rest,

Which that delightful day with its own shadow blessed.

CANTO VI

I

2335

Beside the dimness of the glimmering sea,

Weaving swift language from impassioned themes,

With that dear friend I lingered, who to me

So late had been restored, beneath the gleams

Of the silver stars; and ever in soft dreams

2340

Of future love and peace sweet converse lapped

Our willing fancies, till the pallid beams

Of the last watchfire fell, and darkness wrapped

The waves, and each bright chain of floating fire was snapped;

II

And till we came even to the City’s wall

2345

And the great gate; then, none knew whence or why,

Disquiet on the multitudes did fall:

And first, one pale and breathless passed us by,

And stared and spoke not;—then with piercing cry

A troop of wild-eyed women, by the shrieks

2350

Of their own terror driven,—tumultuously

Hither and thither hurrying with pale cheeks,

Each one from fear unknown a sudden refuge seeks—

III

Then, rallying cries of treason and of danger

Resounded: and—‘They come! to arms! to arms!

2355

The Tyrant is amongst us, and the stranger

Comes to enslave us in his name! to arms!’

In vain: for Panic, the pale fiend who charms

Strength to forswear her right, those millions swept

Like waves before the tempest—these alarms

2360

Came to me, as to know their cause I lept

On the gate’s turret, and in rage and grief and scorn I wept!

IV

For to the North I saw the town on fire,

And its red light made morning pallid now,

Which burst over wide Asia;—louder, higher,

2365

The yells of victory and the screams of woe

I heard approach, and saw the throng below

Stream through the gates like foam-wrought waterfalls

Fed from a thousand storms—the fearful glow

Of bombs flares overhead—at intervals

2370

The red artillery’s bolt mangling among them falls.

V

And now the horsemen come—and all was done

Swifter than I have spoken—I beheld

Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun.

I rushed among the rout, to have repelled

2375

That miserable flight—one moment quelled

By voice and looks and eloquent despair,

As if reproach from their own hearts withheld

Their steps, they stood; but soon came pouring there

New multitudes, and did those rallied bands o’erbear.

VI

2380

I strove, as, drifted on some cataract

By irresistible streams, some wretch might strive

Who hears its fatal roar:—the files compact

Whelmed me, and from the gate availed to drive

With quickening impulse, as each bolt did rive

2385

Their ranks with bloodier chasm:—into the plain

Disgorged at length the dead and the alive

In one dread mass, were parted, and the stain

Of blood, from mortal steel fell o’er the fields like rain.

VII

For now the despot’s bloodhounds with their prey

2390

Unarmed and unaware, were gorging deep

Their gluttony of death; the loose array

Of horsemen o’er the wide fields murdering sweep,

And with loud laughter for their tyrant reap

A harvest sown with other hopes; the while,

2395

Far overhead, ships from Propontis keep

-isle. Bradley, who cps. Marianne’s Dream, st. xii. See Notes.

A killing rain of fire:—when the waves smile

As sudden earthquakes light many a volcano-isle,

VIII

Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread

For the carrion-fowls of Heaven.—I saw the sight—

2400

I moved—I lived—as o’er the heaps of dead,

Whose stony eyes glared in the morning light

I trod;—to me there came no thought of flight,

But with loud cries of scorn, which whoso heard

That dreaded death, felt in his veins the might

2405

Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred,

And desperation’s hope in many hearts recurred.

IX

A band of brothers gathering round me, made,

Although unarmed, a steadfast front, and still

Retreating, with stern looks beneath the shade

2410

Of gathered eyebrows, did the victors fill

With doubt even in success; deliberate will

Inspired our growing troop; not overthrown

It gained the shelter of a grassy hill,

And ever still our comrades were hewn down,

2415

And their defenceless limbs beneath our footsteps strown.

X

Immovably we stood—in joy I found,

Beside me then, firm as a giant pine

Among the mountain-vapours driven around,

The old man whom I loved—his eyes divine

2420

With a mild look of courage answered mine,

And my young friend was near, and ardently

His hand grasped mine a moment—now the line

Of war extended, to our rallying cry

As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die.

XI

2425

For ever while the sun was climbing Heaven

The horseman hewed our unarmed myriads down

Safely, though when by thirst of carnage driven

Too near, those slaves were swiftly overthrown

By hundreds leaping on them:—flesh and bone

2430

Soon made our ghastly ramparts; then the shaft

Of the artillery from the sea was thrown

More fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed

In pride to hear the wind our screams of torment waft.

XII

For on one side alone the hill gave shelter,

2435

So vast that phalanx of unconquered men,

And there the living in the blood did welter

Of the dead and dying, which in that green glen,

Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen

Under the feet—thus was the butchery waged

2440

While the sun clomb Heaven’s eastern steep—but when

It ’gan to sink—a fiercer combat raged,

For in more doubtful strife the armies were engaged.

XIII

Within a cave upon the hill were found

A bundle of rude pikes, the instrument

2445

Of those who war but on their native ground

For natural rights: a shout of joyance sent

Even from our hearts the wide air pierced and rent,

As those few arms the bravest and the best

Seized, and each sixth, thus armed, did now present

2450

A line which covered and sustained the rest,

A confident phalanx, which the foes on every side invest.

XIV

That onset turned the foes to flight almost;

But soon they saw their present strength, and knew

That coming night would to our resolute host

2455

Bring victory; so dismounting, close they drew

Their glittering files, and then the combat grew

Unequal but most horrible;—and ever

Our myriads, whom the swift bolt overthrew,

Or the red sword, failed like a mountain river

2460

Which rushes forth in foam to sink in sands for ever.

XV

Sorrow and shame, to see with their own kind

Our human brethren mix, like beasts of blood,

To mutual ruin armed by one behind

Who sits and scoffs!—That friend so mild and good,

2465

Who like its shadow near my youth had stood,

Was stabbed!—my old preserver’s hoary hair

With the flesh clinging to its roots, was strewed

Under my feet!—I lost all sense or care,

And like the rest I grew desperate and unaware.

XVI

2470

The battle became ghastlier—in the midst

I paused, and saw, how ugly and how fell

O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd’st

For love. The ground in many a little dell

Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell

2475

Alternate victory and defeat, and there

The combatants with rage most horrible

Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare,

And impotent their tongues they lolled into the air,

XVII

Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog’s hanging;

2480

Want, and Moon-madness, and the pest’s swift Bane

When its shafts smite—while yet its bow is twanging—

Have each their mark and sign—some ghastly stain;

And this was thine, O War! of hate and pain

Thou loathèd slave! I saw all shapes of death

2485

And ministered to many, o’er the plain

While carnage in the sunbeam’s warmth did seethe,

Till twilight o’er the east wove her serenest wreath.

XVIII

The few who yet survived, resolute and firm

Around me fought. At the decline of day

2490

Winding above the mountain’s snowy term

New banners shone; they quivered in the ray

Of the sun’s unseen orb—ere night the array

Of fresh troops hemmed us in—of those brave bands

I soon survived alone—and now I lay

2495

Vanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands

I felt, and saw on high the glare of falling brands,

XIX

When on my foes a sudden terror came,

And they fled, scattering—lo! with reinless speed

A black Tartarian horse of giant frame

2500

Comes trampling over the dead, the living bleed

Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed,

On which, like to an Angel, robed in white,

Sate one waving a sword;—the hosts recede

And fly, as through their ranks with awful might,

2505

Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift and bright;

XX

And its path made a solitude.—I rose

And marked its coming: it relaxed its course

As it approached me, and the wind that flows

Through night, bore accents to mine ear whose force

2510

Might create smiles in death—the Tartar horse

Paused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed,

And heard her musical pants, like the sweet source

Of waters in the desert, as she said,

‘Mount with me, Laon, now’—I rapidly obeyed.

XXI

2515

Then: ‘Away! away!’ she cried, and stretched her sword

As ’twere a scourge over the courser’s head,

And lightly shook the reins.—We spake no word,

But like the vapour of the tempest fled

Over the plain; her dark hair was dispread

2520

Like the pine’s locks upon the lingering blast;

Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread

Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast,

As o’er their glimmering forms the steed’s broad shadow passed.

XXII

And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust,

2525

His strong sides made the torrents rise in spray,

And turbulence, as of a whirlwind’s gust

Surrounded us;—and still away! away!

Through the desert night we sped, while she alway

Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest,

2530

Crowned with a marble ruin, in the ray

Of the obscure stars gleamed;—its rugged breast

The steed strained up, and then his impulse did arrest.

XXIII

A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean:—

From that lone ruin, when the steed that panted

2535

Paused, might be heard the murmur of the motion

Of waters, as in spots for ever haunted

By the choicest winds of Heaven, which are enchanted

To music, by the wand of Solitude,

That wizard wild, and the far tents implanted

2540

Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood

Thence marking the dark shore of Ocean’s curvèd flood.

XXIV

One moment these were heard and seen—another

Passed; and the two who stood beneath that night,

Each only heard, or saw, or felt the other;

2545

As from the lofty steed she did alight,

Cythna, (for, from the eyes whose deepest light

Of love and sadness made my lips feel pale

With influence strange of mournfullest delight,

My own sweet Cythna looked), with joy did quail,

2550

And felt her strength in tears of human weakness fail.

XXV

And for a space in my embrace she rested,

Her head on my unquiet heart reposing,

While my faint arms her languid frame invested;

At length she looked on me, and half unclosing

2555

Her tremulous lips, said, ‘Friend, thy bands were losing

The battle, as I stood before the King

In bonds.—I burst them then, and swiftly choosing

The time, did seize a Tartar’s sword, and spring

Upon his horse, and swift, as on the whirlwind’s wing,

XXVI

2560

‘Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer,

And we are here.’—Then, turning to the steed,

She pressed the white moon on his front with pure

And rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed

From the green ruin plucked, that he might feed;—

2565

But I to a stone seat that Maiden led,

And, kissing her fair eyes, said, ‘Thou hast need

Of rest,’ and I heaped up the courser’s bed

In a green mossy nook, with mountain flowers dispread.

XXVII

Within that ruin, where a shattered portal

2570

Looks to the eastern stars, abandoned now

By man, to be the home of things immortal,

Memories, like awful ghosts which come and go,

And must inherit all he builds below,

When he is gone, a hall stood; o’er whose roof

2575

Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,

Clasping its gray rents with a verdurous woof,

A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.

XXVIII

The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made

A natural couch of leaves in that recess,

2580

Which seasons none disturbed, but, in the shade

Of flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress

With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness

Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars, whene’er

The wandering wind her nurslings might caress;

2585

Whose intertwining fingers ever there

Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.

XXIX

We know not where we go, or what sweet dream

May pilot us through caverns strange and fair

Of far and pathless passion, while the stream

2590

Of life, our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,

Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air;

Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion

Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there

Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean

2595

Of universal life, attuning its commotion.

XXX

To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapped

Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow

Of public hope was from our being snapped,

Though linkèd years had bound it there; for now

2600

A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below

All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere,

Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,

Came on us, as we sate in silence there,

Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air;—

XXXI

2605

In silence which doth follow talk that causes

The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,

When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses

Of inexpressive speech:—the youthful years

Which we together passed, their hopes and fears,

2610

The blood itself which ran within our frames,

That likeness of the features which endears

The thoughts expressed by them, our very names,

And all the winged hours which speechless memory claims,

XXXII

Had found a voice—and ere that voice did pass,

2615

The night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent

Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass

A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent,

Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent

A faint and pallid lustre; while the song

2620

Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent,

Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among;

A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit’s tongue.

XXXIII

The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate,

And Cythna’s glowing arms, and the thick ties

2625

Of her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight

My neck near hers; her dark and deepening eyes,

Which, as twin phantoms of one star that lies

O’er a dim well, move, though the star reposes,

Swam in our mute and liquid ecstasies,

2630

Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,

With their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses.

XXXIV

The Meteor to its far morass returned:

The beating of our veins one interval

Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned

2635

Within her frame, mingle with mine, and fall

Around my heart like fire; and over all

A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep

And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall

Two disunited spirits when they leap

2640

In union from this earth’s obscure and fading sleep.

XXXV

Was it one moment that confounded thus

All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one

Unutterable power, which shielded us

Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone

2645

Into a wide and wild oblivion

Of tumult and of tenderness? or now

Had ages, such as make the moon and sun,

The seasons, and mankind their changes know,

Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?

XXXVI

2650

I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps

The failing heart in languishment, or limb

Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps

Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim

Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,

2655

In one caress? What is the strong control

Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb,

Where far over the world those vapours roll

Which blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?

XXXVII

It is the shadow which doth float unseen,

2660

But not unfelt, o’er blind mortality,

Whose divine darkness fled not from that green

And lone recess, where lapped in peace did lie

Our linkèd frames, till, from the changing sky

That night and still another day had fled;

2665

And then I saw and felt. The moon was high,

And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread

Under its orb,—loud winds were gathering overhead.

XXXVIII

Cythna’s sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon,

Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill,

2670

And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn

O’er her pale bosom:—all within was still,

And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill

The depth of her unfathomable look;—

And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill,

2675

The waves contending in its caverns strook,

For they foreknew the storm, and the gray ruin shook.

XXXIX

There we unheeding sate, in the communion

Of interchangèd vows, which, with a rite

Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.—

2680

Few were the living hearts which could unite

Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night

With such close sympathies, for they had sprung

From linkèd youth, and from the gentle might

Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long,

2685

Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong.

XL

And such is Nature’s law divine, that those

Who grow together cannot choose but love,

If faith or custom do not interpose,

Or common slavery mar what else might move

2690

All gentlest thoughts; as in the sacred grove

Which shades the springs of Ethiopian Nile,

That living tree which, if the arrowy dove

Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile,

But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sunbeams smile;

XLI

2695

And clings to them, when darkness may dissever

The close caresses of all duller plants

Which bloom on the wide earth—thus we for ever

Were linked, for love had nursed us in the haunts

Where knowledge, from its secret source enchants

2700

Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing,

Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants,

As the great Nile feeds Egypt; ever flinging

Light on the woven boughs which o’er its waves are swinging.

XLII

The tones of Cythna’s voice like echoes were

2705

Of those far murmuring streams; they rose and fell,

Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air,—

And so we sate, until our talk befell

Of the late ruin, swift and horrible,

And how those seeds of hope might yet be sown,

2710

Whose fruit is evil’s mortal poison: well,

For us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone,

But Cythna’s eyes looked faint, and now two days were gone

XLIII

Since she had food:—therefore I did awaken

The Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane

2715

Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken,

Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein,

Following me obediently; with pain

Of heart, so deep and dread, that one caress,

When lips and heart refuse to part again

2720

Till they have told their fill, could scarce express

The anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness,

XLIV

Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode

That willing steed—the tempest and the night,

Which gave my path its safety as I rode

2725

Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite

The darkness and the tumult of their might

Borne on all winds.—Far through the streaming rain

Floating at intervals the garments white

Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again

2730

Came to me on the gust, and soon I reached the plain.

XLV

I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he

Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red

Turned on the lightning’s cleft exultingly;

And when the earth beneath his tameless tread,

2735

Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread

His nostrils to the blast, and joyously

Mock the fierce peal with neighings;—thus we sped

O’er the lit plain, and soon I could descry

Where Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of victory.

XLVI

2740

There was a desolate village in a wood

Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now scattering fed

The hungry storm; it was a place of blood,

A heap of hearthless walls;—the flames were dead

Within those dwellings now,—the life had fled

2745

From all those corpses now,—but the wide sky

Flooded with lightning was ribbed overhead

By the black rafters, and around did lie

Women, and babes, and men, slaughtered confusedly.

XLVII

Beside the fountain in the market-place

2750

Dismounting, I beheld those corpses stare

With horny eyes upon each other’s face,

And on the earth and on the vacant air,

And upon me, close to the waters where

I stooped to slake my thirst;—I shrank to taste,

2755

For the salt bitterness of blood was there;

But tied the steed beside, and sought in haste

If any yet survived amid that ghastly waste.

XLVIII

No living thing was there beside one woman,

Whom I found wandering in the streets, and she

2760

Was withered from a likeness of aught human

Into a fiend, by some strange misery:

Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me,

And glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed

With a loud, long, and frantic laugh of glee,

2765

And cried, ‘Now, Mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed

The Plague’s blue kisses—soon millions shall pledge the draught!

XLIX

‘My name is Pestilence—this bosom dry,

Once fed two babes—a sister and a brother—

When I came home, one in the blood did lie

2770

Of three death-wounds—the flames had ate the other!

Since then I have no longer been a mother,

But I am Pestilence;—hither and thither

I flit about, that I may slay and smother:—

All lips which I have kissed must surely wither,

2775

But Death’s—if thou art he, we’ll go to work together!

L

‘What seek’st thou here? The moonlight comes in flashes,—

The dew is rising dankly from the dell—

’Twill moisten her! and thou shalt see the gashes

In my sweet boy, now full of worms—but tell

2780

First what thou seek’st.’—‘I seek for food.’—‘ ’Tis well,

Thou shalt have food. Famine, my paramour,

Waits for us at the feast—cruel and fell

Is Famine, but he drives not from his door

Those whom these lips have kissed, alone. No more, no more!’

LI

2785

As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength

Of madness, and by many a ruined hearth

She led, and over many a corpse:—at length

We came to a lone hut where on the earth

Which made its floor, she in her ghastly mirth,

2790

Gathering from all those homes now desolate,

Had piled three heaps of loaves, making a dearth

Among the dead—round which she set in state

A ring of cold, stiff babes; silent and stark they sate.

LII

She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high

2795

Her mad looks to the lightning, and cried: ‘Eat!

Share the great feast—to-morrow we must die!’

And then she spurned the loaves with her pale feet,

Towards her bloodless guests;—that sight to meet,

Mine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she

2800

Who loved me, did with absent looks defeat

Despair, I might have raved in sympathy;

But now I took the food that woman offered me;

LIII

And vainly having with her madness striven

If I might win her to return with me,

2805

Departed. In the eastern beams of Heaven

The lightning now grew pallid—rapidly,

As by the shore of the tempestuous sea

The dark steed bore me; and the mountain gray

Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see

2810

Cythna among the rocks, where she alway

Had sate with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering day.

LIV

And joy was ours to meet: she was most pale,

Famished, and wet and weary, so I cast

My arms around her, lest her steps should fail

2815

As to our home we went, and thus embraced,

Her full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste

Than e’er the prosperous know; the steed behind

Trod peacefully along the mountain waste;

We reached our home ere morning could unbind

2820

Night’s latest veil, and on our bridal-couch reclined.

LV

Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom,

And sweetest kisses past, we two did share

Our peaceful meal:—as an autumnal blossom

Which spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air,

2825

After cold showers, like rainbows woven there,

Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit

Mantled, and in her eyes, an atmosphere

Of health, and hope; and sorrow languished near it,

And fear, and all that dark despondence doth inherit.

CANTO VII

I

2830

So we sate joyous as the morning ray

Which fed upon the wrecks of night and storm

Now lingering on the winds; light airs did play

Among the dewy weeds, the sun was warm,

And we sate linked in the inwoven charm

2835

Of converse and caresses sweet and deep,

Speechless caresses, talk that might disarm

Time, though he wield the darts of death and sleep,

And those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison steep.

II

I told her of my sufferings and my madness,

2840

And how, awakened from that dreamy mood

By Liberty’s uprise, the strength of gladness

Came to my spirit in my solitude;

And all that now I was—while tears pursued

Each other down her fair and listening cheek

2845

Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood

From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak,

Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake.

III

She told me a strange tale of strange endurance,

Like broken memories of many a heart

2850

Woven into one; to which no firm assurance,

So wild were they, could her own faith impart.

She said that not a tear did dare to start

From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm

When from all mortal hope she did depart,

2855

Borne by those slaves across the Ocean’s term,

And that she reached the port without one fear infirm.

IV

One was she among many there, the thralls

Of the cold Tyrant’s cruel lust; and they

Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;

2860

But she was calm and sad, musing alway

On loftiest enterprise, till on a day

The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute

A wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay,

Like winds that die in wastes—one moment mute

2865

The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast pollute.

V

Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness,

One moment to great Nature’s sacred power

He bent, and was no longer passionless;

But when he bade her to his secret bower

2870

Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore

Her locks in agony, and her words of flame

And mightier looks availed not; then he bore

Again his load of slavery, and became

A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.

VI

2875

She told me what a loathsome agony

Is that when selfishness mocks love’s delight,

dreams ed. 1818.

Foul as in dream’s most fearful imagery,

To dally with the mowing dead—that night

All torture, fear, or horror made seem light

2880

Which the soul dreams or knows, and when the day

Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight

Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay

Struggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant fled away.

VII

Her madness was a beam of light, a power

2885

Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave,

Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore

Which might not be withstood—whence none could save—

All who approached their sphere,—like some calm wave

Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath;

2890

And sympathy made each attendant slave

Fearless and free, and they began to breathe

Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.

VIII

The King felt pale upon his noonday throne:

At night two slaves he to her chamber sent,—

2895

One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown

From human shape into an instrument

Of all things ill—distorted, bowed and bent.

The other was a wretch from infancy

Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant

2900

But to obey: from the fire isles came he,

A diver lean and strong, of Oman’s coral sea.

IX

They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke

Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas,

Until upon their path the morning broke;

2905

They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze,

The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades

Shakes with the sleepless surge;—the Ethiop there

Wound his long arms around her, and with knees

Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her

2910

Among the closing waves out of the boundless air.

X

‘Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain

Of morning light, into some shadowy wood,

He plunged through the green silence of the main,

Through many a cavern which the eternal flood

2915

Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood;

And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,

And among mightier shadows which pursued

His heels, he wound: until the dark rocks under

He touched a golden chain—a sound arose like thunder.

XI

2920

‘A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling

Beneath the deep—a burst of waters driven

As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling:

And in that roof of crags a space was riven

Through which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,

2925

Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven,

Like sunlight through acacia woods at even,

Through which, his way the diver having cloven,

Passed like a spark sent up out of a burning oven.

XII

‘And then,’ she said, ‘he laid me in a cave

2930

Above the waters, by that chasm of sea,

A fountain round and vast, in which the wave

Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually,

Down which, one moment resting, he did flee,

Winning the adverse depth; that spacious cell

2935

Like an hupaithric temple wide and high,

Whose aëry dome is inaccessible,

Was pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell.

XIII

‘Below, the fountain’s brink was richly paven

With the deep’s wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand

2940

Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven

With mystic legends by no mortal hand,

Left there, when thronging to the moon’s command,

The gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate

Of mountains, and on such bright floor did stand

2945

Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state

Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create.

XIV

‘The fiend of madness which had made its prey

Of my poor heart, was lulled to sleep awhile:

There was an interval of many a day,

2950

And a sea-eagle brought me food the while,

Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle,

And who, to be the gaoler had been taught

Of that strange dungeon; as a friend whose smile

Like light and rest at morn and even is sought

2955

That wild bird was to me, till madness misery brought.

XV

‘The misery of a madness slow and creeping,

Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air,

And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping,

In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair,

2960

Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there;

And the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore

Thy mangled limbs for food!—Thus all things were

Transformed into the agony which I wore

Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom’s core.

XVI

2965

‘Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing,

The eagle, and the fountain, and the air;

Another frenzy came—there seemed a being

Within me—a strange load my heart did bear,

As if some living thing had made its lair

2970

Even in the fountains of my life:—a long

And wondrous vision wrought from my despair,

Then grew, like sweet reality among

Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng.

XVII

‘Methought I was about to be a mother—

2975

Month after month went by, and still I dreamed

That we should soon be all to one another,

I and my child; and still new pulses seemed

To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed

There was a babe within—and, when the rain

2980

Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed,

Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain,

I saw that lovely shape, which near my heart had lain.

XVIII

‘It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,—

It was like thee, dear love, its eyes were thine,

2985

Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth

It laid its fingers, as now rest on mine

Thine own, belovèd!—’twas a dream divine;

Even to remember how it fled, how swift,

How utterly, might make the heart repine,—

2990

Though ’twas a dream.’—Then Cythna did uplift

Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift:

XIX

A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness

Of questioning grief, a source of thronging tears;

opprest ed. 1818.

Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress

2995

She spoke: ‘Yes, in the wilderness of years

Her memory, aye, like a green home appears;

She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love,

For many months. I had no mortal fears;

Methought I felt her lips and breath approve,—

3000

It was a human thing which to my bosom clove.

XX

‘I watched the dawn of her first smiles; and soon

When zenith stars were trembling on the wave,

Or when the beams of the invisible moon,

Or sun, from many a prism within the cave

3005

Their gem-born shadows to the water gave,

Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand,

From the swift lights which might that fountain pave,

She would mark one, and laugh, when that command

Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.

XXI

3010

‘Methought her looks began to talk with me;

And no articulate sounds, but something sweet

Her lips would frame,—so sweet it could not be,

That it was meaningless; her touch would meet

Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat

3015

In response while we slept; and on a day

When I was happiest in that strange retreat,

With heaps of golden shells we two did play,—

Both infants, weaving wings for time’s perpetual way.

XXII

‘Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown

3020

Weary with joy, and tired with our delight,

We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down

On one fair mother’s bosom:—from that night

She fled,—like those illusions clear and bright,

Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high

3025

Pause ere it wakens tempest;—and her flight,

Though ’twas the death of brainless fantasy,

Yet smote my lonesome heart more than all misery.

XXIII

‘It seemed that in the dreary night the diver

Who brought me thither, came again, and bore

3030

My child away. I saw the waters quiver,

When he so swiftly sunk, as once before:

Then morning came—it shone even as of yore,

But I was changed—the very life was gone

Out of my heart—I wasted more and more,

3035

Day after day, and sitting there alone,

Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.

XXIV

‘I was no longer mad, and yet methought

My breasts were swoln and changed:—in every vein

The blood stood still one moment, while that thought

3040

Was passing—with a gush of sickening pain

It ebbed even to its withered springs again:

When my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned

From that most strange delusion, which would fain

Have waked the dream for which my spirit yearned

3045

With more than human love,—then left it unreturned.

XXV

‘So now my reason was restored to me

I struggled with that dream, which, like a beast

Most fierce and beauteous, in my memory

Had made its lair, and on my heart did feast;

3050

But all that cave and all its shapes, possessed

By thoughts which could not fade, renewed each one

Some smile, some look, some gesture which had blessed

Me heretofore: I, sitting there alone,

Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.

XXVI

3055

‘Time passed, I know not whether months or years;

For day, nor night, nor change of seasons made

Its note, but thoughts and unavailing tears:

And I became at last even as a shade,

A smoke, a cloud on which the winds have preyed,

3060

Till it be thin as air; until, one even,

A Nautilus upon the fountain played,

Spreading his azure sail where breath of Heaven

Descended not, among the waves and whirlpools driven.

XXVII

‘And, when the Eagle came, that lovely thing,

3065

Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat,

Fled near me as for shelter; on slow wing,

The Eagle, hovering o’er his prey did float;

But when he saw that I with fear did note

His purpose, proffering my own food to him,

3070

The eager plumes subsided on his throat—

He came where that bright child of sea did swim,

And o’er it cast in peace his shadow broad and dim.

XXVIII

‘This wakened me, it gave me human strength;

And hope, I know not whence or wherefore, rose,

3075

But I resumed my ancient powers at length;

My spirit felt again like one of those

Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes

Of humankind their prey—what was this cave?

Its deep foundation no firm purpose knows

3080

Immutable, resistless, strong to save,

Like mind while yet it mocks the all-devouring grave.

XXIX

‘And where was Laon? might my heart be dead,

While that far dearer heart could move and be?

Or whilst over the earth the pall was spread,

3085

Which I had sworn to rend? I might be free,

Could I but win that friendly bird to me,

To bring me ropes; and long in vain I sought

By intercourse of mutual imagery

Of objects, if such aid he could be taught;

3090

But fruit, and flowers, and boughs, yet never ropes he brought.

XXX

‘We live in our own world, and mine was made

From glorious fantasies of hope departed:

Aye we are darkened with their floating shade,

Or cast a lustre on them—time imparted

3095

Such power to me—I became fearless-hearted,

My eye and voice grew firm, calm was my mind,

And piercing, like the morn, now it has darted

Its lustre on all hidden things, behind

Yon dim and fading clouds which load the weary wind.

XXXI

3100

‘My mind became the book through which I grew

Wise in all human wisdom, and its cave,

Which like a mine I rifled through and through,

To me the keeping of its secrets gave—

One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave

3105

Whose calm reflects all moving things that are,

Necessity, and love, and life, the grave,

And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear,

Justice, and truth, and time, and the world’s natural sphere.

XXXII

‘And on the sand would I make signs to range

3110

These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought;

Clear, elemental shapes, whose smallest change

A subtler language within language wrought:

The key of truths which once were dimly taught

In old Crotona;—and sweet melodies

lone solitude ed. 1818.

3115

Of love, in that lorn solitude I caught

From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes

Shone through my sleep, and did that utterance harmonize.

XXXIII

‘Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at will,

As in a wingèd chariot, o’er the plain

3120

Of crystal youth; and thou wert there to fill

My heart with joy, and there we sate again

On the gray margin of the glimmering main,

Happy as then but wiser far, for we

Smiled on the flowery grave in which were lain

3125

Fear, Faith and Slavery; and mankind was free,

Equal, and pure, and wise, in Wisdom’s prophecy.

XXXIV

‘For to my will my fancies were as slaves

To do their sweet and subtile ministries;

And oft from that bright fountain’s shadowy waves

3130

They would make human throngs gather and rise

To combat with my overflowing eyes,

And voice made deep with passion—thus I grew

Familiar with the shock and the surprise

And war of earthly minds, from which I drew

3135

The power which has been mine to frame their thoughts anew.

XXXV

‘And thus my prison was the populous earth—

Where I saw—even as misery dreams of morn

Before the east has given its glory birth—

Religion’s pomp made desolate by the scorn

3140

Of Wisdom’s faintest smile, and thrones uptorn,

And dwellings of mild people interspersed

With undivided fields of ripening corn,

And love made free,—a hope which we have nursed

Even with our blood and tears,—until its glory burst.

XXXVI

3145

‘All is not lost! There is some recompense

For hope whose fountain can be thus profound,

Even thronèd Evil’s splendid impotence,

Girt by its hell of power, the secret sound

Of hymns to truth and freedom—the dread bound

3150

Of life and death passed fearlessly and well,

Dungeons wherein the high resolve is found,

Racks which degraded woman’s greatness tell,

And what may else be good and irresistible.

XXXVII

‘Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that flare

3155

In storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet

In this dark ruin—such were mine even there;

As in its sleep some odorous violet,

While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet,

Breathes in prophetic dreams of day’s uprise,

3160

Or as, ere Scythian frost in fear has met

Spring’s messengers descending from the skies,

The buds foreknow their life—this hope must ever rise.

XXXVIII

‘So years had passed, when sudden earthquake rent

The depth of ocean, and the cavern cracked

3165

With sound, as if the world’s wide continent

Had fallen in universal ruin wracked:

And through the cleft streamed in one cataract

The stifling waters—when I woke, the flood

Whose banded waves that crystal cave had sacked

3170

Was ebbing round me, and my bright abode

Before me yawned—a chasm desert, and bare, and broad.

XXXIX

‘Above me was the sky, beneath the sea:

I stood upon a point of shattered stone,

And heard loose rocks rushing tumultuously

3175

With splash and shock into the deep—anon

All ceased, and there was silence wide and lone.

I felt that I was free! The Ocean-spray

Quivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone

Around, and in my hair the winds did play

3180

Lingering as they pursued their unimpeded way.

XL

‘My spirit moved upon the sea like wind

Which round some thymy cape will lag and hover,

Though it can wake the still cloud, and unbind

The strength of tempest: day was almost over,

3185

When through the fading light I could discover

A ship approaching—its white sails were fed

With the north wind—its moving shade did cover

The twilight deep; the mariners in dread

Cast anchor when they saw new rocks around them spread.

XLI

3190

‘And when they saw one sitting on a crag,

They sent a boat to me;—the Sailors rowed

In awe through many a new and fearful jag

Of overhanging rock, through which there flowed

The foam of streams that cannot make abode.

3195

They came and questioned me, but when they heard

My voice, they became silent, and they stood

And moved as men in whom new love had stirred

Deep thoughts: so to the ship we passed without a word.

CANTO VIII

I

‘I sate beside the Steersman then, and gazing

3200

Upon the west, cried, “Spread the sails! Behold!

The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing

Over the mountains yet;—the City of Gold

Yon Cape alone does from the sight withhold;

The stream is fleet—the north breathes steadily

3205

Beneath the stars; they tremble with the cold!

Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea!—

Haste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny!”

II

‘The Mariners obeyed—the Captain stood

Aloof, and, whispering to the Pilot, said,

3210

“Alas, alas! I fear we are pursued

By wicked ghosts; a Phantom of the Dead,

The night before we sailed, came to my bed

In dream, like that!” The Pilot then replied,

“It cannot be—she is a human Maid—

3215

Her low voice makes you weep—she is some bride,

Or daughter of high birth—she can be nought beside.”

III

‘We passed the islets, borne by wind and stream,

And as we sailed, the Mariners came near

And thronged around to listen;—in the gleam

3220

Of the pale moon I stood, as one whom fear

May not attaint, and my calm voice did rear;

“Ye are all human—yon broad moon gives light

To millions who the selfsame likeness wear,

Even while I speak—beneath this very night,

3225

Their thoughts flow on like ours, in sadness or delight.

IV

‘ “What dream ye? Your own hands have built an home,

Even for yourselves on a beloved shore:

For some, fond eyes are pining till they come,

How they will greet him when his toils are o’er,

3230

And laughing babes rush from the well-known door!

Is this your care? ye toil for your own good—

Ye feel and think—has some immortal power

Such purposes? or in a human mood,

Dream ye some Power thus builds for man in solitude?

V

3235

‘ “What is that Power? Ye mock yourselves, and give

A human heart to what ye cannot know:

As if the cause of life could think and live!

’Twere as if man’s own works should feel, and show

The hopes, and fears, and thoughts from which they flow,

3240

And he be like to them! Lo! Plague is free

To waste, Blight, Poison, Earthquake, Hail, and Snow,

Disease, and Want, and worse Necessity

Of hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny!

VI

‘ “What is that Power? Some moon-struck sophist stood

3245

Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown

Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood

The Form he saw and worshipped was his own,

His likeness in the world’s vast mirror shown;

And ’twere an innocent dream, but that a faith

3250

Nursed by fear’s dew of poison, grows thereon,

And that men say, that Power has chosen Death

On all who scorn its laws, to wreak immortal wrath.

VII

‘ “Men say that they themselves have heard and seen,

Or known from others who have known such things,

3255

A Shade, a Form, which Earth and Heaven between

Wields an invisible rod—that Priests and Kings,

Custom, domestic sway, ay, all that brings

Man’s freeborn soul beneath the oppressor’s heel,

Are his strong ministers, and that the stings

3260

Of death will make the wise his vengeance feel,

Though truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel.

VIII

‘ “And it is said, this Power will punish wrong;

Yes, add despair to crime, and pain to pain!

And deepest hell, and deathless snakes among,

3265

Will bind the wretch on whom is fixed a stain,

Which, like a plague, a burden, and a bane,

Clung to him while he lived; for love and hate,

Virtue and vice, they say are difference vain—

The will of strength is right—this human state

3270

Tyrants, that they may rule, with lies thus desolate.

IX

‘ “Alas, what strength? Opinion is more frail

Than yon dim cloud now fading on the moon

Even while we gaze, though it awhile avail

To hide the orb of truth—and every throne

3275

Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow, rests thereon,

One shape of many names:—for this ye plough

The barren waves of ocean, hence each one

Is slave or tyrant; all betray and bow,

Command, or kill, or fear, or wreak, or suffer woe.

X

3280

‘ “Its names are each a sign which maketh holy

All power—ay, the ghost, the dream, the shade

Of power—lust, falsehood, hate, and pride, and folly;

The pattern whence all fraud and wrong is made,

A law to which mankind has been betrayed;

3285

And human love, is as the name well known

Of a dear mother, whom the murderer laid

In bloody grave, and into darkness thrown,

Gathered her wildered babes around him as his own.

XI

‘ “O Love, who to the hearts of wandering men

3290

Art as the calm to Ocean’s weary waves!

Justice, or Truth, or Joy! those only can

From slavery and religion’s labyrinth caves

Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves.

To give to all an equal share of good,

3295

To track the steps of Freedom, though through graves

She pass, to suffer all in patient mood,

To weep for crime, though stained with thy friend’s dearest blood,—

XII

‘ “To feel the peace of self-contentment’s lot,

To own all sympathies, and outrage none,

3300

And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought,

Until life’s sunny day is quite gone down,

To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone,

To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe;

To live, as if to love and live were one,—

3305

This is not faith or law, nor those who bow

To thrones on Heaven or Earth, such destiny may know.

XIII

‘ “But children near their parents tremble now,

Because they must obey—one rules another,

And as one Power rules both high and low,

3310

So man is made the captive of his brother,

And Hate is throned on high with Fear her mother,

Above the Highest—and those fountain-cells,

Whence love yet flowed when faith had choked all other,

Are darkened—Woman as the bond-slave dwells

3315

Of man, a slave; and life is poisoned in its wells.

XIV

‘ “Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave

A lasting chain for his own slavery;—

In fear and restless care that he may live

He toils for others, who must ever be

3320

The joyless thralls of like captivity;

He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;

He builds the altar, that its idol’s fee

May be his very blood; he is pursuing—

O, blind and willing wretch!—his own obscure undoing.

XV

3325

‘ “Woman!—she is his slave, she has become

A thing I weep to speak—the child of scorn,

The outcast of a desolated home;

Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn

Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn,

3330

As calm decks the false Ocean:—well ye know

What Woman is, for none of Woman born

Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe,

Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressors flow.

XVI

‘ “This need not be; ye might arise, and will

3335

That gold should lose its power, and thrones their glory;

That love, which none may bind, be free to fill

The world, like light; and evil faith, grown hoary

With crime, be quenched and die.—Yon promontory

Even now eclipses the descending moon!—

3340

Dungeons and palaces are transitory—

High temples fade like vapour—Man alone

Remains, whose will has power when all beside is gone.

XVII

‘ “Let all be free and equal!—From your hearts

I feel an echo; through my inmost frame

3345

Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts—

Whence come ye, friends? Alas, I cannot name

All that I read of sorrow, toil, and shame,

On your worn faces; as in legends old

Which make immortal the disastrous fame

3350

Of conquerors and impostors false and bold,

The discord of your hearts, I in your looks behold.

XVIII

‘ “Whence come ye, friends? from pouring human blood

Forth on the earth? Or bring ye steel and gold,

That Kings may dupe and slay the multitude?

3355

Or from the famished poor, pale, weak and cold,

Bear ye the earnings of their toil? Unfold!

Speak! Are your hands in slaughter’s sanguine hue

Stained freshly? have your hearts in guile grown old?

Know yourselves thus! ye shall be pure as dew,

3360

And I will be a friend and sister unto you.

XIX

‘ “Disguise it not—we have one human heart—

All mortal thoughts confess a common home:

Blush not for what may to thyself impart

Stains of inevitable crime: the doom

3365

Is this, which has, or may, or must become

Thine, and all humankind’s. Ye are the spoil

Which Time thus marks for the devouring tomb—

Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil

Wherewith ye twine the rings of life’s perpetual coil.

XX

3370

‘ “Disguise it not—ye blush for what ye hate,

And Enmity is sister unto Shame;

Look on your mind—it is the book of fate—

Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name

Of misery—all are mirrors of the same;

3375

But the dark fiend who with his iron pen

Dipped in scorn’s fiery poison, makes his fame

Enduring there, would o’er the heads of men

Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.

XXI

‘ “Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing

3380

Of many names, all evil, some divine,

Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting;

Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwine

Is wasted quite, and when it doth repine

To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside

3385

It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine

When Amphisbaena some fair bird has tied,

Soon o’er the putrid mass he threats on every side.

XXII

‘ “Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself,

Nor hate another’s crime, nor loathe thine own.

3390

It is the dark idolatry of self,

Which, when our thoughts and actions once are gone,

Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan;

Oh, vacant expiation! Be at rest.—

The past is Death’s, the future is thine own;

3395

And love and joy can make the foulest breast

A paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest.

XXIII

‘ “Speak thou! whence come ye?”—A Youth made reply:

“Wearily, wearily o’er the boundless deep

We sail;—thou readest well the misery

3400

Told in these faded eyes, but much doth sleep

Within, which there the poor heart loves to keep,

Or dare not write on the dishonoured brow;

Even from our childhood have we learned to steep

The bread of slavery in the tears of woe,

3405

And never dreamed of hope or refuge until now.

XXIV

‘ “Yes—I must speak—my secret should have perished

Even with the heart it wasted, as a brand

Fades in the dying flame whose life it cherished,

But that no human bosom can withstand

3410

Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command

Of thy keen eyes:—yes, we are wretched slaves,

Who from their wonted loves and native land

Are reft, and bear o’er the dividing waves

The unregarded prey of calm and happy graves.

XXV

3415

‘ “We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest

Among the daughters of those mountains lone,

We drag them there, where all things best and rarest

Are stained and trampled:—years have come and gone

Since, like the ship which bears me, I have known

3420

No thought;—but now the eyes of one dear Maid

On mine with light of mutual love have shone—

She is my life,—I am but as the shade

Of her,—a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade.

XXVI

‘ “For she must perish in the Tyrant’s hall—

3425

Alas, alas!”—He ceased, and by the sail

Sate cowering—but his sobs were heard by all,

And still before the ocean and the gale

The ship fled fast till the stars ’gan to fail;

And, round me gathered with mute countenance,

3430

The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale

With toil, the Captain with gray locks, whose glance

Met mine in restless awe—they stood as in a trance.

XXVII

‘ “Recede not! pause not now! Thou art grown old,

But Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth

3435

Are children of one mother, even Love—behold!

The eternal stars gaze on us!—is the truth

Within your soul? care for your own, or ruth

For others’ sufferings? do ye thirst to bear

A heart which not the serpent Custom’s tooth

3440

May violate?—Be free! and even here,

Swear to be firm till death!” They cried, “We swear! We swear!”

XXVIII

‘The very darkness shook, as with a blast

Of subterranean thunder, at the cry;

The hollow shore its thousand echoes cast

3445

Into the night, as if the sea and sky,

And earth, rejoiced with new-born liberty,

For in that name they swore! Bolts were undrawn,

And on the deck, with unaccustomed eye

The captives gazing stood, and every one

3450

Shrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance shone.

XXIX

‘They were earth’s purest children, young and fair,

With eyes the shrines of unawakened thought,

And brows as bright as Spring or Morning, ere

Dark time had there its evil legend wrought

3455

In characters of cloud which wither not.—

The change was like a dream to them; but soon

They knew the glory of their altered lot,

In the bright wisdom of youth’s breathless noon,

Sweet talk, and smiles, and sighs, all bosoms did attune.

XXX

3460

‘But one was mute; her cheeks and lips most fair,

Changing their hue like lilies newly blown,

Beneath a bright acacia’s shadowy hair,

Waved by the wind amid the sunny noon,

Showed that her soul was quivering; and full soon

3465

That Youth arose, and breathlessly did look

On her and me, as for some speechless boon:

I smiled, and both their hands in mine I took,

And felt a soft delight from what their spirits shook.

CANTO IX

I

‘That night we anchored in a woody bay,

3470

And sleep no more around us dared to hover

Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away,

It shades the couch of some unresting lover,

Whose heart is now at rest: thus night passed over

In mutual joy:—around, a forest grew

3475

Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover

The waning stars pranked in the waters blue,

And trembled in the wind which from the morning flew.

II

‘The joyous Mariners, and each free Maiden

Now brought from the deep forest many a bough,

3480

With woodland spoil most innocently laden;

Soon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow

Over the mast and sails, the stern and prow

Were canopied with blooming boughs,—the while

On the slant sun’s path o’er the waves we go

3485

Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle

Doomed to pursue those waves that cannot cease to smile.

III

‘The many ships spotting the dark blue deep

With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,

In fear and wonder; and on every steep

3490

Thousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry,

Like Earth’s own voice lifted unconquerably

To all her children, the unbounded mirth,

The glorious joy of thy name—Liberty!

They heard!—As o’er the mountains of the earth

3495

From peak to peak leap on the beams of Morning’s birth:

IV

‘So from that cry over the boundless hills

Sudden was caught one universal sound,

Like a volcano’s voice, whose thunder fills

Remotest skies,—such glorious madness found

3500

A path through human hearts with stream which drowned

Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom’s brood;

They knew not whence it came, but felt around

A wide contagion poured—they called aloud

On Liberty—that name lived on the sunny flood.

V

3505

‘We reached the port.—Alas! from many spirits

The wisdom which had waked that cry, was fled,

Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits

From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread,

Upon the night’s devouring darkness shed:

3510

Yet soon bright day will burst—even like a chasm

Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead,

Which wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm,

To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake’s spasm!

VI

‘I walked through the great City then, but free

3515

From shame or fear; those toil-worn Mariners

And happy Maidens did encompass me;

And like a subterranean wind that stirs

Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears

From every human soul, a murmur strange

3520

Made as I passed; and many wept, with tears

Of joy and awe, and winged thoughts did range,

And half-extinguished words, which prophesied of change.

VII

‘For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid

Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love,—

3525

As one who from some mountain’s pyramid

Points to the unrisen sun!—the shades approve

His truth, and flee from every stream and grove.

Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,—

Wisdom, the mail of tried affections wove

3530

For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill,

Thrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable will.

VIII

‘Some said I was a maniac wild and lost;

Some, that I scarce had risen from the grave,

The Prophet’s virgin bride, a heavenly ghost:—

3535

Some said, I was a fiend from my weird cave,

Who had stolen human shape, and o’er the wave,

The forest, and the mountain, came;—some said

I was the child of God, sent down to save

Woman from bonds and death, and on my head

3540

The burden of their sins would frightfully be laid.

IX

‘But soon my human words found sympathy

In human hearts: the purest and the best,

As friend with friend, made common cause with me,

And they were few, but resolute;—the rest,

3545

Ere yet success the enterprise had blessed,

Leagued with me in their hearts;—their meals, their slumber,

Their hourly occupations, were possessed

By hopes which I had armed to overnumber

Those hosts of meaner cares, which life’s strong wings encumber.

X

3550

‘But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken

From their cold, careless, willing slavery,

Sought me: one truth their dreary prison has shaken,—

They looked around, and lo! they became free!

Their many tyrants sitting desolately

3555

In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;

For wrath’s red fire had withered in the eye,

Whose lightning once was death,—nor fear, nor gain

Could tempt one captive now to lock another’s chain.

XI

‘Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt

3560

Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,

Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt

In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,

A pause of hope and awe the City bound,

Which, like the silence of a tempest’s birth,

3565

When in its awful shadow it has wound

The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,

Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.

XII

‘Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky,

By winds from distant regions meeting there,

3570

In the high name of truth and liberty,

Around the City millions gathered were,

By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,—

hues of grace ed. 1818.

Words which the lore of truth in hues of flame

Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air

3575

Like homeless odours floated, and the name

Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.

XIII

‘The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,

The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event—

That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,

3580

And whatsoe’er, when force is impotent,

To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,

Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.

Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent

To curse the rebels.—To their gods did they

3585

For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way.

XIV

‘And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell

From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,

How glorious Athens in her splendour fell,

Because her sons were free,—and that among

3590

Mankind, the many to the few belong,

By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.

They said, that age was truth, and that the young

Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,

With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.

XV

3595

‘And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips

They breathed on the enduring memory

Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse;

There was one teacher, who necessity

Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind,

3600

His slave and his avenger aye to be;

That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,

And that the will of one was peace, and we

Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery—

XVI

‘ “For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter.”

3605

So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied;

Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter

Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride

Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;

And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,

3610

And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,

Said that the rule of men was over now,

And hence, the subject world to woman’s will must bow;

XVII

‘And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine

Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.

3615

In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine

As they were wont, nor at the priestly call

Left Plague her banquet in the Ethiop’s hall,

Nor Famine from the rich man’s portal came,

Where at her ease she ever preys on all

3620

Who throng to kneel for food: nor fear nor shame,

Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope’s newly kindled flame.

XVIII

‘For gold was as a god whose faith began

To fade, so that its worshippers were few,

And Faith itself, which in the heart of man

3625

Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew

Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,

Till the Priests stood alone within the fane;

The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,

And the cold sneers of calumny were vain,

3630

The union of the free with discord’s brand to stain.

XIX

‘The rest thou knowest.—Lo! we two are here—

We have survived a ruin wide and deep—

Strange thoughts are mine.—I cannot grieve or fear,

Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep

3635

I smile, though human love should make me weep.

We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,

And I do feel a mighty calmness creep

Over my heart, which can no longer borrow

Its hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.

XX

3640

‘We know not what will come—yet, Laon, dearest,

Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love,

Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,

To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove

Within the homeless Future’s wintry grove;

3645

For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem

Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,

And violence and wrong are as a dream

Which rolls from steadfast truth, an unreturning stream.

XXI

‘The blasts of Autumn drive the wingèd seeds

3650

Over the earth,—next come the snows, and rain,

And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads

Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;

Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,

Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;

3655

Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,

And music on the waves and woods she flings,

And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.

XXII

‘O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness

Wind-wingèd emblem! brightest, best and fairest!

3660

Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter’s sadness

The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?

Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest

Thy mother’s dying smile, tender and sweet;

Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest

3665

Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,

Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.

XXIII

‘Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven,

Surround the world.—We are their chosen slaves.

Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven

3670

Truth’s deathless germs to thought’s remotest caves?

Lo, Winter comes!—the grief of many graves,

The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,

The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves

Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter’s word,

3675

And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.

XXIV

‘The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile

The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey,

Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile

Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,

3680

The moon of wasting Science wanes away

Among her stars, and in that darkness vast

The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,

And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast

A shade of selfish care o’er human looks is cast.

XXV

3685

‘This is the winter of the world;—and here

We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,

Expiring in the frore and foggy air.

Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made

The promise of its birth,—even as the shade

3690

Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings

The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed

As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,

From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.

XXVI

‘O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold

3695

Before this morn may on the world arise;

Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?

Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes

On thine own heart—it is a paradise

Which everlasting Spring has made its own,

3700

And while drear Winter fills the naked skies,

Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh-blown,

Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one.

XXVII

‘In their own hearts the earnest of the hope

Which made them great, the good will ever find;

3705

And though some envious shade may interlope

Between the effect and it, One comes behind,

Who aye the future to the past will bind—

Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever

Evil with evil, good with good must wind

3710

In bands of union, which no power may sever:

They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!

XXVIII

‘The good and mighty of departed ages

Are in their graves, the innocent and free,

Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,

3715

Who leave the vesture of their majesty

To adorn and clothe this naked world;—and we

Are like to them—such perish, but they leave

All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,

Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,

3720

To be a rule and law to ages that survive.

XXIX

‘So be the turf heaped over our remains

Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,

Whate’er it be, when in these mingling veins

The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought

3725

Pass from our being, or be numbered not

Among the things that are; let those who come

Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought

A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,

Insult with careless tread, our undivided tomb.

XXX

3730

‘Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,

Our happiness, and all that we have been,

Immortally must live, and burn and move,

When we shall be no more;—the world has seen

A type of peace; and—as some most serene

3735

And lovely spot to a poor maniac’s eye,

After long years, some sweet and moving scene

Of youthful hope, returning suddenly,

Quells his long madness—thus man shall remember thee.

XXXI

‘And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us,

3740

As worms devour the dead, and near the throne

And at the altar, most accepted thus

Shall sneers and curses be;—what we have done

None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known;

That record shall remain, when they must pass

3745

Who built their pride on its oblivion;

And fame, in human hope which sculptured was,

Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.

XXXII

‘The while we two, belovèd, must depart,

And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,

3750

Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart

That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair:

These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there

To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep

Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,

3755

Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep

In joy;—but senseless death—a ruin dark and deep!

XXXIII

‘These are blind fancies—reason cannot know

What sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive;

There is delusion in the world—and woe,

3760

And fear, and pain—we know not whence we live,

Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give

Their being to each plant, and star, and beast,

Or even these thoughts.—Come near me! I do weave

A chain I cannot break—I am possessed

3765

With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.

XXXIV

‘Yes, yes—thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm—

O! willingly, belovèd, would these eyes,

Might they no more drink being from thy form,

Even as to sleep whence we again arise,

3770

Close their faint orbs in death: I fear nor prize

Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee—

Yes, Love when Wisdom fails makes Cythna wise:

Darkness and death, if death be true, must be

Dearer than life and hope, if unenjoyed with thee.

XXXV

3775

‘Alas, our thoughts flow on with stream, whose waters

Return not to their fountain—Earth and Heaven,

The Ocean and the Sun, the Clouds their daughters,

Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even,

All that we are or know, is darkly driven

3780

Towards one gulf.—Lo! what a change is come

Since I first spake—but time shall be forgiven,

Though it change all but thee!’—She ceased—night’s gloom

Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky’s sunless dome.

XXXVI

Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted

3785

To Heaven, still spake, with solemn glory bright;

Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted

The air they breathed with love, her locks undight.

‘Fair star of life and love,’ I cried, ‘my soul’s delight,

Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?

3790

O, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night,

Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!’

She turned to me and smiled—that smile was Paradise!

CANTO X

I

Was there a human spirit in the steed,

That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,

3795

He broke our linkèd rest? or do indeed

All living things a common nature own,

And thought erect an universal throne,

Where many shapes one tribute ever bear?

And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan

3800

To see her sons contend? and makes she bare

Her breast, that all in peace its drainless stores may share?

II

I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue

Which was not human—the lone nightingale

Has answered me with her most soothing song,

3805

Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale

With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale

The antelopes who flocked for food have spoken

With happy sounds, and motions, that avail

Like man’s own speech; and such was now the token

3810

Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.

III

Each night, that mighty steed bore me abroad,

And I returned with food to our retreat,

And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed

Over the fields, had stained the courser’s feet;

3815

Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew,—then meet

The vulture, and the wild dog, and the snake,

The wolf, and the hyaena gray, and eat

The dead in horrid truce: their throngs did make

Behind the steed, a chasm like waves in a ship’s wake.

IV

3820

For, from the utmost realms of earth came pouring

The banded slaves whom every despot sent

At that throned traitor’s summons; like the roaring

Of fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent

In the scorched pastures of the South; so bent

3825

The armies of the leaguèd Kings around

Their files of steel and flame;—the continent

Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound,

Beneath their feet, the sea shook with their Navies’ sound.

V

From every nation of the earth they came,

3830

The multitude of moving heartless things,

Whom slaves call men: obediently they came,

Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings

To the stall, red with blood; their many kings

native home ed. 1818.

Led them, thus erring, from their native land;

3835

Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings

Of Indian breezes lull, and many a band

The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea’s sand,

VI

Fertile in prodigies and lies;—so there

Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.

3840

The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear

His Asian shield and bow, when, at the will

Of Europe’s subtler son, the bolt would kill

Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure;

But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill,

3845

And savage sympathy: those slaves impure,

Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.

VII

For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe

His countenance in lies,—even at the hour

When he was snatched from death, then o’er the globe,

3850

With secret signs from many a mountain-tower,

With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power

Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,

He called:—they knew his cause their own, and swore

Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars

3855

Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.

VIII

Myriads had come—millions were on their way;

The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel

Of hired assassins, through the public way,

Choked with his country’s dead:—his footsteps reel

3860

On the fresh blood—he smiles. ‘Ay, now I feel

I am a King in truth!’ he said, and took

His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel

Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,

And scorpions, that his soul on its revenge might look.

IX

3865

‘But first, go slay the rebels—why return

The victor bands?’ he said, ‘millions yet live,

Of whom the weakest with one word might turn

The scales of victory yet;—let none survive

But those within the walls—each fifth shall give

3870

The expiation for his brethren here.—

Go forth, and waste and kill!’—‘O king, forgive

My speech,’ a soldier answered—‘but we fear

The spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near;

X

‘For we were slaying still without remorse,

3875

And now that dreadful chief beneath my hand

Defenceless lay, when on a hell-black horse,

An Angel bright as day, waving a brand

Which flashed among the stars, passed.’—‘Dost thou stand

Parleying with me, thou wretch?’ the king replied;

3880

‘Slaves, bind him to the wheel; and of this band,

Whoso will drag that woman to his side

That scared him thus, may burn his dearest foe beside;

XI

‘And gold and glory shall be his.—Go forth!’

They rushed into the plain.—Loud was the roar

3885

Of their career: the horsemen shook the earth;

The wheeled artillery’s speed the pavement tore;

The infantry, file after file, did pour

Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they slew

Among the wasted fields; the sixth saw gore

3890

Stream through the city; on the seventh, the dew

Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:

XII

Peace in the desert fields and villages,

Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead!

Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries

3895

Of victims to their fiery judgement led,

Made pale their voiceless lips who seemed to dread

Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue

Be faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed;

Peace in the Tyrant’s palace, where the throng

3900

Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song!

XIII

Day after day the burning sun rolled on

Over the death-polluted land—it came

Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone

A lamp of Autumn, ripening with its flame

3905

The few lone ears of corn;—the sky became

Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast

Languished and died,—the thirsting air did claim

All moisture, and a rotting vapour passed

From the unburied dead, invisible and fast.

XIV

3910

First Want, then Plague came on the beasts; their food

Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay.

Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood

Had lured, or who, from regions far away,

Had tracked the hosts in festival array,

3915

From their dark deserts; gaunt and wasting now,

Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey;

In their green eyes a strange disease did glow,

They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow.

XV

The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds

3920

In the green woods perished; the insect race

Was withered up; the scattered flocks and herds

Who had survived the wild beasts’ hungry chase

Died moaning, each upon the other’s face

In helpless agony gazing; round the City

3925

All night, the lean hyaenas their sad case

Like starving infants wailed; a woeful ditty!

And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity.

XVI

Amid the aëreal minarets on high,

The Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell

3930

From their long line of brethren in the sky,

Startling the concourse of mankind.—Too well

These signs the coming mischief did foretell:—

Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread

Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell,

3935

A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread

With the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.

XVII

Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts

Strip its green crown of leaves, till all is bare;

So on those strange and congregated hosts

3940

Came Famine, a swift shadow, and the air

Groaned with the burden of a new despair;

Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter

Feeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping there

With lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and Slaughter,

3945

A ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe’s sullen water.

XVIII

There was no food, the corn was trampled down,

The flocks and herds had perished; on the shore

The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown;

The deeps were foodless, and the winds no more

3950

Creaked with the weight of birds, but, as before

Those wingèd things sprang forth, were void of shade;

The vines and orchards, Autumn’s golden store,

Were burned;—so that the meanest food was weighed

With gold, and Avarice died before the god it made.

XIX

3955

There was no corn—in the wide market-place

All loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold;

They weighed it in small scales—and many a face

Was fixed in eager horror then: his gold

The miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold

3960

Through hunger, bared her scornèd charms in vain;

The mother brought her eldest born, controlled

By instinct blind as love, but turned again

And bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain.

XX

Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man.

3965

‘O, for the sheathèd steel, so late which gave

Oblivion to the dead, when the streets ran

earthquakes ed. 1818.

With brothers’ blood! O, that the earthquake’s grave

Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave!’

Vain cries—throughout the streets thousands pursued

3970

Each by his fiery torture howl and rave,

Or sit in frenzy’s unimagined mood,

Upon fresh heaps of dead; a ghastly multitude.

XXI

It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well

Was choked with rotting corpses, and became

3975

A cauldron of green mist made visible

At sunrise. Thither still the myriads came,

Seeking to quench the agony of the flame,

Which raged like poison through their bursting veins;

Naked they were from torture, without shame,

3980

Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains,

Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.

XXII

It was not thirst, but madness! Many saw

Their own lean image everywhere, it went

A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe

3985

Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent

Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,

Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed

Contagion on the sound; and others rent

Their matted hair, and cried aloud, ‘We tread

3990

On fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread!’

XXIII

Sometimes the living by the dead were hid.

Near the great fountain in the public square,

Where corpses made a crumbling pyramid

Under the sun, was heard one stifled prayer

3995

For life, in the hot silence of the air;

And strange ’twas, amid that hideous heap to see

Some shrouded in their long and golden hair,

As if not dead, but slumbering quietly

Like forms which sculptors carve, then love to agony.

XXIV

4000

Famine had spared the palace of the king:—

He rioted in festival the while,

He and his guards and priests; but Plague did fling

One shadow upon all. Famine can smile

On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile

4005

Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier gray,

The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile

Comes Plague, a wingèd wolf, who loathes alway

The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.

XXV

So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast,

4010

Sheathed in resplendent arms, or loosely dight

To luxury, ere the mockery yet had ceased

That lingered on his lips, the warrior’s might

Was loosened, and a new and ghastlier night

In dreams of frenzy lapped his eyes; he fell

4015

Headlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate upright

Among the guests, or raving mad did tell

Strange truths; a dying seer of dark oppression’s hell.

XXVI

The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror;

That monstrous faith wherewith they ruled mankind,

4020

Fell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman’s error,

On their own hearts: they sought and they could find

No refuge—’twas the blind who led the blind!

So, through the desolate streets to the high fane,

The many-tongued and endless armies wind

4025

In sad procession: each among the train

To his own Idol lifts his supplications vain.

XXVII

‘O God!’ they cried, ‘we know our secret pride

Has scorned thee, and thy worship, and thy name;

Secure in human power we have defied

4030

Thy fearful might; we bend in fear and shame

Before thy presence; with the dust we claim

Kindred; be merciful, O King of Heaven!

Most justly have we suffered for thy fame

Made dim, but be at length our sins forgiven,

4035

Ere to despair and death thy worshippers be driven.

XXVIII

‘O King of Glory! thou alone hast power!

Who can resist thy will? who can restrain

Thy wrath, when on the guilty thou dost shower

The shafts of thy revenge, a blistering rain?

4040

Greatest and best, be merciful again!

Have we not stabbed thine enemies, and made

The Earth an altar, and the Heavens a fane,

Where thou wert worshipped with their blood, and laid

Those hearts in dust which would thy searchless works have weighed?

XXIX

4045

‘Well didst thou loosen on this impious City

Thine angels of revenge: recall them now;

Thy worshippers, abased, here kneel for pity,

And bind their souls by an immortal vow:

We swear by thee! and to our oath do thou

4050

Give sanction, from thine hell of fiends and flame,

That we will kill with fire and torments slow,

The last of those who mocked thy holy name,

And scorned the sacred laws thy prophets did proclaim.’

XXX

Thus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips

4055

Worshipped their own hearts’ image, dim and vast,

Scared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse

The light of other minds;—troubled they passed

From the great Temple;—fiercely still and fast

The arrows of the plague among them fell,

4060

And they on one another gazed aghast,

And through the hosts contention wild befell,

As each of his own god the wondrous works did tell.

XXXI

And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,

Moses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,

4065

A tumult of strange names, which never met

Before, as watchwords of a single woe,

Arose; each raging votary ’gan to throw

Aloft his armed hands, and each did howl

‘Our God alone is God!’—and slaughter now

4070

Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl

A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.

XXXII

’Twas an Iberian Priest from whom it came,

A zealous man, who led the legioned West,

With words which faith and pride had steeped in flame,

4075

To quell the unbelievers; a dire guest

Even to his friends was he, for in his breast

Did hate and guile lie watchful, intertwined,

Twin serpents in one deep and winding nest;

He loathed all faith beside his own, and pined

4080

To wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on mankind.

XXXIII

But more he loathed and hated the clear light

Of wisdom and free thought, and more did fear,

Lest, kindled once, its beams might pierce the night,

Even where his Idol stood; for, far and near

4085

Did many a heart in Europe leap to hear

That faith and tyranny were trampled down;

Many a pale victim, doomed for truth to share

The murderer’s cell, or see, with helpless groan,

The priests his children drag for slaves to serve their own.

XXXIV

4090

He dared not kill the infidels with fire

Or steel, in Europe; the slow agonies

Of legal torture mocked his keen desire:

So he made truce with those who did despise

The expiation, and the sacrifice,

4095

That, though detested, Islam’s kindred creed

Might crush for him those deadlier enemies;

For fear of God did in his bosom breed

A jealous hate of man, an unreposing need.

XXXV

‘Peace! Peace!’ he cried, ‘when we are dead, the Day

4100

Of Judgement comes, and all shall surely know

Whose God is God, each fearfully shall pay

The errors of his faith in endless woe!

But there is sent a mortal vengeance now

On earth, because an impious race had spurned

4105

Him whom we all adore,—a subtle foe,

By whom for ye this dread reward was earned,

And kingly thrones, which rest on faith, nigh overturned.

XXXVI

‘Think ye, because ye weep, and kneel, and pray,

That God will lull the pestilence? It rose

4110

Even from beneath his throne, where, many a day,

His mercy soothed it to a dark repose:

It walks upon the earth to judge his foes;

And what are thou and I, that he should deign

To curb his ghastly minister, or close

4115

The gates of death, ere they receive the twain

Who shook with mortal spells his undefended reign?

XXXVII

‘Ay, there is famine in the gulf of hell,

Its giant worms of fire for ever yawn.—

Their lurid eyes are on us! those who fell

4120

By the swift shafts of pestilence ere dawn,

Are in their jaws! they hunger for the spawn

Of Satan, their own brethren, who were sent

To make our souls their spoil. See! see! they fawn

Like dogs, and they will sleep with luxury spent,

4125

When those detested hearts their iron fangs have rent!

XXXVIII

‘Our God may then lull Pestilence to sleep:—

Pile high the pyre of expiation now,

A forest’s spoil of boughs, and on the heap

Pour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow,

4130

When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow,

A stream of clinging fire,—and fix on high

A net of iron, and spread forth below

A couch of snakes, and scorpions, and the fry

Of centipedes and worms, earth’s hellish progeny!

XXXIX

4135

‘Let Laon and Laone on that pyre,

Linked tight with burning brass, perish!—then pray

That, with this sacrifice, the withering ire

Of Heaven may be appeased.’ He ceased, and they

A space stood silent, as far, far away

4140

The echoes of his voice among them died;

And he knelt down upon the dust, alway

Muttering the curses of his speechless pride,

Whilst shame, and fear, and awe, the armies did divide.

XL

His voice was like a blast that burst the portal

4145

Of fabled hell; and as he spake, each one

Saw gape beneath the chasms of fire immortal,

And Heaven above seemed cloven, where, on a throne

Girt round with storms and shadows, sate alone

Their King and Judge—fear killed in every breast

4150

All natural pity then, a fear unknown

Before, and with an inward fire possessed,

They raged like homeless beasts whom burning woods invest.

XLI

’Twas morn.—At noon the public crier went forth,

Proclaiming through the living and the dead,

4155

‘The Monarch saith, that his great Empire’s worth

Is set on Laon and Laone’s head:

He who but one yet living here can lead,

Or who the life from both their hearts can wring,

Shall be the kingdom’s heir—a glorious meed!

4160

But he who both alive can hither bring,

The Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal King.’

XLII

Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron

Was spread above, the fearful couch below;

It overtopped the towers that did environ

4165

That spacious square; for Fear is never slow

To build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe;

So, she scourged forth the maniac multitude

To rear this pyramid—tottering and slow,

Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued

4170

By gadflies, they have piled the heath, and gums, and wood.

XLIII

Night came, a starless and a moonless gloom.

Until the dawn, those hosts of many a nation

Stood round that pile, as near one lover’s tomb

Two gentle sisters mourn their desolation;

4175

And in the silence of that expectation,

reptiles’] reptiles ed. 1818.

Was heard on high the reptiles’ hiss and crawl—

It was so deep—save when the devastation

Of the swift pest, with fearful interval,

Marking its path with shrieks, among the crowd would fall.

XLIV

4180

Morn came,—among those sleepless multitudes,

Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine still

Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods

The frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill

Earth’s cold and sullen brooks; in silence, still

4185

The pale survivors stood; ere noon, the fear

Of Hell became a panic, which did kill

Like hunger or disease, with whispers drear,

As ‘Hush! hark! Come they yet?—Just Heaven! thine hour is near!’

XLV

And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting

4190

The rage they did inspire, some mad indeed

With their own lies; they said their god was waiting

To see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed,—

And that, till then, the snakes of Hell had need

Of human souls:—three hundred furnaces

4195

Soon blazed through the wide City, where, with speed,

Men brought their infidel kindred to appease

God’s wrath, and, while they burned, knelt round on quivering knees.

XLVI

The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke,

The winds of eve dispersed those ashes gray.

4200

The madness which these rites had lulled, awoke

Again at sunset.—Who shall dare to say

The deeds which night and fear brought forth, or weigh

In balance just the good and evil there?

He might man’s deep and searchless heart display,

4205

And cast a light on those dim labyrinths, where

Hope, near imagined chasms, is struggling with despair.

XLVII

’Tis said, a mother dragged three children then,

To those fierce flames which roast the eyes in the head,

And laughed, and died; and that unholy men,

4210

Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead,

Looked from their meal, and saw an Angel tread

The visible floor of Heaven, and it was she!

And, on that night, one without doubt or dread

Came to the fire, and said, ‘Stop, I am he!

4215

Kill me!’—They burned them both with hellish mockery.

XLVIII

And, one by one, that night, young maidens came,

Beauteous and calm, like shapes of living stone

Clothed in the light of dreams, and by the flame

Which shrank as overgorged, they laid them down,

4220

And sung a low sweet song, of which alone

One word was heard, and that was Liberty;

And that some kissed their marble feet, with moan

Like love, and died; and then that they did die

With happy smiles, which sunk in white tranquillity.

CANTO XI

I

4225

She saw me not—she heard me not—alone

Upon the mountain’s dizzy brink she stood;

She spake not, breathed not, moved not—there was thrown

Over her look, the shadow of a mood

Which only clothes the heart in solitude,

4230

A thought of voiceless depth;—she stood alone,

Above, the Heavens were spread;—below, the flood

Was murmuring in its caves;—the wind had blown

Her hair apart, through which her eyes and forehead shone.

II

A cloud was hanging o’er the western mountains;

4235

Before its blue and moveless depth were flying

Gray mists poured forth from the unresting fountains

Of darkness in the North:—the day was dying:—

Sudden, the sun shone forth, its beams were lying

Like boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see,

4240

And on the shattered vapours, which defying

The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly

In the red Heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.

III

It was a stream of living beams, whose bank

On either side by the cloud’s cleft was made;

4245

And where its chasms that flood of glory drank,

Its waves gushed forth like fire, and as if swayed

By some mute tempest, rolled on her; the shade

Of her bright image floated on the river

Of liquid light, which then did end and fade—

4250

Her radiant shape upon its verge did shiver;

Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver.

IV

I stood beside her, but she saw me not—

She looked upon the sea, and skies, and earth;

Rapture, and love, and admiration wrought

4255

A passion deeper far than tears, or mirth,

Or speech, or gesture, or whate’er has birth

From common joy; which with the speechless feeling

That led her there united, and shot forth

From her far eyes a light of deep revealing,

4260

All but her dearest self from my regard concealing.

V

Her lips were parted, and the measured breath

Was now heard there;—her dark and intricate eyes

Orb within orb, deeper than sleep or death,

Absorbed the glories of the burning skies,

4265

Which, mingling with her heart’s deep ecstasies,

Burst from her looks and gestures;—and a light

Of liquid tenderness, like love, did rise

From her whole frame, an atmosphere which quite

Arrayed her in its beams, tremulous and soft and bright.

VI

4270

She would have clasped me to her glowing frame;

Those warm and odorous lips might soon have shed

On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame

Which now the cold winds stole;—she would have laid

Upon my languid heart her dearest head;

4275

I might have heard her voice, tender and sweet;

Her eyes, mingling with mine, might soon have fed

My soul with their own joy.—One moment yet

I gazed—we parted then, never again to meet!

VII

Never but once to meet on Earth again!

4280

She heard me as I fled—her eager tone

Sunk on my heart, and almost wove a chain

Around my will to link it with her own,

So that my stern resolve was almost gone.

‘I cannot reach thee! whither dost thou fly?

4285

My steps are faint—Come back, thou dearest one—

Return, ah me! return!’—The wind passed by

On which those accents died, faint, far, and lingeringly.

VIII

Woe! Woe! that moonless midnight!—Want and Pest

Were horrible, but one more fell doth rear,

4290

As in a hydra’s swarming lair, its crest

Eminent among those victims—even the Fear

Of Hell: each girt by the hot atmosphere

Of his blind agony, like a scorpion stung

By his own rage upon his burning bier

4295

Of circling coals of fire; but still there clung

One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung:

IX

Not death—death was no more refuge or rest;

Not life—it was despair to be!—not sleep,

For fiends and chasms of fire had dispossessed

4300

All natural dreams: to wake was not to weep,

But to gaze mad and pallid, at the leap

To which the Future, like a snaky scourge,

Or like some tyrant’s eye, which aye doth keep

Its withering beam upon his slaves, did urge

4305

Their steps; they heard the roar of Hell’s sulphureous surge.

X

Each of that multitude, alone, and lost

To sense of outward things, one hope yet knew;

As on a foam-girt crag some seaman tossed

Stares at the rising tide, or like the crew

4310

Whilst now the ship is splitting through and through;

Each, if the tramp of a far steed was heard,

Started from sick despair, or if there flew

One murmur on the wind, or if some word

Which none can gather yet, the distant crowd has stirred.

XI

4315

Why became cheeks, wan with the kiss of death,

Paler from hope? they had sustained despair.

Why watched those myriads with suspended breath

Sleepless a second night? they are not here,

The victims, and hour by hour, a vision drear,

4320

Warm corpses fall upon the clay-cold dead;

wreathed] writhed. P. W. 1839. 1st ed.

And even in death their lips are wreathed with fear.—

The crowd is mute and moveless—overhead

Silent Arcturus shines—‘Ha! hear’st thou not the tread

XII

‘Of rushing feet? laughter? the shout, the scream,

4325

Of triumph not to be contained? See! hark!

They come, they come! give way!’ Alas, ye deem

Falsely—’tis but a crowd of maniacs stark

Driven, like a troop of spectres, through the dark,

From the choked well, whence a bright death-fire sprung,

4330

A lurid earth-star, which dropped many a spark

From its blue train, and spreading widely, clung

To their wild hair, like mist the topmost pines among.

XIII

And many, from the crowd collected there,

Joined that strange dance in fearful sympathies;

4335

There was the silence of a long despair,

When the last echo of those terrible cries

Came from a distant street, like agonies

Stifled afar.—Before the Tyrant’s throne

All night his aged Senate sate, their eyes

4340

In stony expectation fixed; when one

Sudden before them stood, a Stranger and alone.

XIV

Dark Priests and haughty Warriors gazed on him

With baffled wonder, for a hermit’s vest

Concealed his face; but when he spake, his tone,

4345

Ere yet the matter did their thoughts arrest,—

Earnest, benignant, calm, as from a breast

Void of all hate or terror—made them start;

For as with gentle accents he addressed

His speech to them, on each unwilling heart

4350

Unusual awe did fall—a spirit-quelling dart.

XV

‘Ye Princes of the Earth, ye sit aghast

Amid the ruin which yourselves have made,

Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet’s blast,

And sprang from sleep!—dark Terror has obeyed

4355

Your bidding—O, that I whom ye have made

Your foe, could set my dearest enemy free

From pain and fear! but evil casts a shade,

Which cannot pass so soon, and Hate must be

The nurse and parent still of an ill progeny.

XVI

4360

‘Ye turn to Heaven for aid in your distress;

the mighty] tho’ mighty ed. 1818.

Alas, that ye, the mighty and the wise,

ye] he ed. 1818.

Who, if ye dared, might not aspire to less

Than ye conceive of power, should fear the lies

Which thou, and thou, didst frame for mysteries

4365

To blind your slaves:—consider your own thought,

An empty and a cruel sacrifice

Ye now prepare, for a vain idol wrought

Out of the fears and hate which vain desires have brought.

XVII

‘Ye seek for happiness—alas, the day!

4370

Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold,

Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway

For which, O willing slaves to Custom old,

Severe taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold.

Ye seek for peace, and when ye die, to dream

4375

No evil dreams: all mortal things are cold

And senseless then; if aught survive, I deem

It must be love and joy, for they immortal seem.

XVIII

‘Fear not the future, weep not for the past.

Oh, could I win your ears to dare be now

4380

Glorious, and great, and calm! that ye would cast

Into the dust those symbols of your woe,

Purple, and gold, and steel! that ye would go

Proclaiming to the nations whence ye came,

That Want, and Plague, and Fear, from slavery flow;

4385

And that mankind is free, and that the shame

Of royalty and faith is lost in freedom’s fame!

XIX

‘If thus, ’tis well—if not, I come to say

That Laon—’ while the Stranger spoke, among

The Council sudden tumult and affray

4390

Arose, for many of those warriors young,

Had on his eloquent accents fed and hung

Like bees on mountain-flowers; they knew the truth,

And from their thrones in vindication sprung;

The men of faith and law then without ruth

4395

Drew forth their secret steel, and stabbed each ardent youth.

XX

They stabbed them in the back and sneered—a slave

Who stood behind the throne, those corpses drew

Each to its bloody, dark, and secret grave;

And one more daring raised his steel anew

4400

To pierce the Stranger. ‘What hast thou to do

With me, poor wretch?’—Calm, solemn and severe,

That voice unstrung his sinews, and he threw

His dagger on the ground, and pale with fear,

Sate silently—his voice then did the Stranger rear.

XXI

4405

‘It doth avail not that I weep for ye—

Ye cannot change, since ye are old and gray,

And ye have chosen your lot—your fame must be

A book of blood, whence in a milder day

Men shall learn truth, when ye are wrapped in clay:

4410

Now ye shall triumph. I am Laon’s friend,

And him to your revenge will I betray,

So ye concede one easy boon. Attend!

For now I speak of things which ye can apprehend.

XXII

‘There is a People mighty in its youth,

4415

A land beyond the Oceans of the West,

Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth

Are worshipped; from a glorious Mother’s breast,

Who, since high Athens fell, among the rest

Sate like the Queen of Nations, but in woe,

4420

By inbred monsters outraged and oppressed,

Turns to her chainless child for succour now,

It draws the milk of Power in Wisdom’s fullest flow.

XXIII

‘That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze

Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume

4425

Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze

Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;

An epitaph of glory for the tomb

Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,

Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;

4430

Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;

The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.

XXIV

there] then ed. 1818.

‘Yes, in the desert there is built a home

For Freedom. Genius is made strong to rear

The monuments of man beneath the dome

4435

Of a new Heaven; myriads assemble there,

Whom the proud lords of man, in rage or fear,

Drive from their wasted homes: the boon I pray

Is this—that Cythna shall be convoyed there—

Nay, start not at the name—America!

4440

And then to you this night Laon will I betray.

XXV

‘With me do what ye will. I am your foe!’

The light of such a joy as makes the stare

Of hungry snakes like living emeralds glow,

Shone in a hundred human eyes—‘Where, where

4445

Is Laon? Haste! fly! drag him swiftly here!

We grant thy boon.’—‘I put no trust in ye,

Swear by the Power ye dread.’—‘We swear, we swear!’

The Stranger threw his vest back suddenly,

And smiled in gentle pride, and said, ‘Lo! I am he!’

CANTO XII

I

4450

The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness

Spread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying

Upon the winds of fear; from his dull madness

The starveling waked, and died in joy; the dying,

Among the corpses in stark agony lying,

4455

Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope

Closed their faint eyes; from house to house replying

With loud acclaim, the living shook Heaven’s cope,

And filled the startled Earth with echoes: morn did ope

II

Its pale eyes then; and lo! the long array

4460

Of guards in golden arms, and Priests beside,

Singing their bloody hymns, whose garbs betray

The blackness of the faith it seems to hide;

And see, the Tyrant’s gem-wrought chariot glide

Among the gloomy cowls and glittering spears—

4465

A Shape of light is sitting by his side,

A child most beautiful. I’ the midst appears

Laon,—exempt alone from mortal hopes and fears.

III

His head and feet are bare, his hands are bound

Behind with heavy chains, yet none do wreak

4470

Their scoffs on him, though myriads throng around;

There are no sneers upon his lip which speak

That scorn or hate has made him bold; his cheek

Resolve has not turned pale,—his eyes are mild

And calm, and, like the morn about to break,

4475

Smile on mankind—his heart seems reconciled

To all things and itself, like a reposing child.

IV

Tumult was in the soul of all beside,

Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but those who saw

Their tranquil victim pass, felt wonder glide

4480

Into their brain, and became calm with awe.—

See, the slow pageant near the pile doth draw.

A thousand torches in the spacious square,

Borne by the ready slaves of ruthless law,

Await the signal round: the morning fair

4485

Is changed to a dim night by that unnatural glare.

V

And see! beneath a sun-bright canopy,

Upon a platform level with the pile,

The anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on high,

Girt by the chieftains of the host; all smile

4490

In expectation, but one child: the while

I, Laon, led by mutes, ascend my bier

Of fire, and look around: each distant isle

Is dark in the bright dawn; towers far and near,

Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmosphere.

VI

4495

There was such silence through the host, as when

An earthquake trampling on some populous town,

Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men

Expect the second; all were mute but one,

That fairest child, who, bold with love, alone

4500

Stood up before the King, without avail,

Pleading for Laon’s life—her stifled groan

Was heard—she trembled like one aspen pale

Among the gloomy pines of a Norwegian vale.

VII

What were his thoughts linked in the morning sun,

4505

Among those reptiles, stingless with delay,

Even like a tyrant’s wrath?—The signal-gun

Roared—hark, again! In that dread pause he lay

As in a quiet dream—the slaves obey—

A thousand torches drop,—and hark, the last

4510

Bursts on that awful silence; far away,

Millions, with hearts that beat both loud and fast,

Watch for the springing flame expectant and aghast.

VIII

They fly—the torches fall—a cry of fear

Has startled the triumphant!—they recede!

4515

For, ere the cannon’s roar has died, they hear

The tramp of hoofs like earthquake, and a steed

Dark and gigantic, with the tempest’s speed,

Bursts through their ranks: a woman sits thereon,

Fairer, it seems, than aught that earth can breed,

4520

Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn,

A spirit from the caves of daylight wandering gone.

IX

All thought it was God’s Angel come to sweep

The lingering guilty to their fiery grave;

The Tyrant from his throne in dread did leap,—

4525

Her innocence his child from fear did save;

Scared by the faith they feigned, each priestly slave

Knelt for his mercy whom they served with blood,

And, like the refluence of a mighty wave

Sucked into the loud sea, the multitude

4530

With crushing panic, fled in terror’s altered mood.

X

They pause, they blush, they gaze,—a gathering shout

Bursts like one sound from the ten thousand streams

Of a tempestuous sea:—that sudden rout

One checked, who, never in his mildest dreams

4535

Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams

Of his rent heart so hard and cold a creed

Had seared with blistering ice—but he misdeems

That he is wise, whose wounds do only bleed

Inly for self,—thus thought the Iberian Priest indeed,

XI

4540

And others, too, thought he was wise to see,

In pain, and fear, and hate, something divine;

In love and beauty, no divinity.—

Now with a bitter smile, whose light did shine

Like a fiend’s hope upon his lips and eyne,

4545

He said, and the persuasion of that sneer

Rallied his trembling comrades—‘Is it mine

To stand alone, when kings and soldiers fear

A woman? Heaven has sent its other victim here.’

XII

‘Were it not impious,’ said the King, ‘to break

4550

Our holy oath?’—‘Impious to keep it, say!’

Shrieked the exulting Priest:—‘Slaves, to the stake

Bind her, and on my head the burden lay

Of her just torments:—at the Judgement Day

Will I stand up before the golden throne

4555

Of Heaven, and cry, “To Thee did I betray

An infidel; but for me she would have known

Another moment’s joy! the glory be thine own.” ’

XIII

They trembled, but replied not, nor obeyed,

Pausing in breathless silence. Cythna sprung

4560

From her gigantic steed, who, like a shade

Chased by the winds, those vacant streets among

Fled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung

Upon his neck, and kissed his moonèd brow.

A piteous sight, that one so fair and young,

4565

The clasp of such a fearful death should woo

With smiles of tender joy as beamed from Cythna now.

XIV

The warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear

From many a tremulous eye, but like soft dews

Which feed Spring’s earliest buds, hung gathered there,

4570

Frozen by doubt,—alas! they could not choose

But weep; for when her faint limbs did refuse

To climb the pyre, upon the mutes she smiled;

And with her eloquent gestures, and the hues

Of her quick lips, even as a weary child

4575

Wins sleep from some fond nurse with its caresses mild,

XV

She won them, though unwilling, her to bind

there] then ed. 1818.

Near me, among the snakes. When there had fled

One soft reproach that was most thrilling kind,

She smiled on me, and nothing then we said,

4580

But each upon the other’s countenance fed

Looks of insatiate love; the mighty veil

Which doth divide the living and the dead

Was almost rent, the world grew dim and pale,—

All light in Heaven or Earth beside our love did fail.—

XVI

4585

Yet—yet—one brief relapse, like the last beam

Of dying flames, the stainless air around

Hung silent and serene—a blood-red gleam

Burst upwards, hurling fiercely from the ground

The globèd smoke,—I heard the mighty sound

4590

Of its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean;

And through its chasms I saw, as in a swound,

The tyrant’s child fall without life or motion

Before his throne, subdued by some unseen emotion.—

XVII

And is this death?—The pyre has disappeared,

4595

The Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the throng;

The flames grow silent—slowly there is heard

The music of a breath-suspending song,

Which, like the kiss of love when life is young,

Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep;

4600

With ever-changing notes it floats along,

Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep

A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap.

XVIII

The warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand

Wakened me then; lo! Cythna sate reclined

4605

Beside me, on the waved and golden sand

Of a clear pool, upon a bank o’ertwined

With strange and star-bright flowers, which to the wind

Breathed divine odour; high above, was spread

The emerald heaven of trees of unknown kind,

4610

Whose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead

A shadow, which was light, upon the waters shed.

XIX

And round about sloped many a lawny mountain

With incense-bearing forests and vast caves

Of marble radiance, to that mighty fountain;

4615

And where the flood its own bright margin laves,

Their echoes talk with its eternal waves,

Which, from the depths whose jaggèd caverns breed

Their unreposing strife, it lifts and heaves,—

Till through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed

4620

A river deep, which flies with smooth but arrowy speed.

XX

As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder,

A boat approached, borne by the musical air

Along the waves which sung and sparkled under

Its rapid keel—a wingèd shape sate there,

4625

A child with silver-shining wings, so fair,

That as her bark did through the waters glide,

The shadow of the lingering waves did wear

Light, as from starry beams; from side to side,

While veering to the wind her plumes the bark did guide.

XXI

4630

The boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl,

Almost translucent with the light divine

Of her within; the prow and stern did curl

Hornèd on high, like the young moon supine,

When o’er dim twilight mountains dark with pine,

4635

It floats upon the sunset’s sea of beams,

Whose golden waves in many a purple line

Fade fast, till borne on sunlight’s ebbing streams,

Dilating, on earth’s verge the sunken meteor gleams.

XXII

Its keel has struck the sands beside our feet;—

4640

Then Cythna turned to me, and from her eyes

Which swam with unshed tears, a look more sweet

Than happy love, a wild and glad surprise,

Glanced as she spake: ‘Ay, this is Paradise

And not a dream, and we are all united!

4645

Lo, that is mine own child, who in the guise

Of madness came, like day to one benighted

In lonesome woods: my heart is now too well requited!’

XXIII

And then she wept aloud, and in her arms

Clasped that bright Shape, less marvellously fair

4650

Than her own human hues and living charms;

Which, as she leaned in passion’s silence there,

Breathed warmth on the cold bosom of the air,

Which seemed to blush and tremble with delight;

The glossy darkness of her streaming hair

4655

Fell o’er that snowy child, and wrapped from sight

The fond and long embrace which did their hearts unite.

XXIV

Then the bright child, the plumèd Seraph came,

And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine,

And said, ‘I was disturbed by tremulous shame

4660

When once we met, yet knew that I was thine

From the same hour in which thy lips divine

Kindled a clinging dream within my brain,

Which ever waked when I might sleep, to twine

Thine image with her memory dear—again

4665

We meet; exempted now from mortal fear or pain.

XXV

‘When the consuming flames had wrapped ye round,

The hope which I had cherished went away;

I fell in agony on the senseless ground,

And hid mine eyes in dust, and far astray

4670

My mind was gone, when bright, like dawning day,

The Spectre of the Plague before me flew,

And breathed upon my lips, and seemed to say,

“They wait for thee, belovèd!”—then I knew

The death-mark on my breast, and became calm anew.

XXVI

4675

‘It was the calm of love—for I was dying.

I saw the black and half-extinguished pyre

In its own gray and shrunken ashes lying;

The pitchy smoke of the departed fire

Still hung in many a hollow dome and spire

4680

Above the towers, like night,—beneath whose shade

Awed by the ending of their own desire

The armies stood; a vacancy was made

In expectation’s depth, and so they stood dismayed.

XXVII

‘The frightful silence of that altered mood,

4685

The tortures of the dying clove alone,

Till one uprose among the multitude,

And said—“The flood of time is rolling on;

We stand upon its brink, whilst they are gone

To glide in peace down death’s mysterious stream.

4690

Have ye done well? They moulder, flesh and bone,

Who might have made this life’s envenomed dream

A sweeter draught than ye will ever taste, I deem.

XXVIII

‘ “These perish as the good and great of yore

Have perished, and their murderers will repent,—

4695

Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before

Yon smoke has faded from the firmament

Even for this cause, that ye who must lament

The death of those that made this world so fair,

there] then ed. 1818.

Cannot recall them now; but there is lent

4700

To man the wisdom of a high despair,

When such can die, and he live on and linger here.

XXIX

‘ “Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence,

From fabled hell as by a charm withdrawn;

All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence

4705

In pain and fire have unbelievers gone;

And ye must sadly turn away, and moan

In secret, to his home each one returning;

And to long ages shall this hour be known;

And slowly shall its memory, ever burning,

4710

Fill this dark night of things with an eternal morning.

XXX

‘ “For me that world is grown too void and cold,

Since Hope pursues immortal Destiny

With steps thus slow—therefore shall ye behold

How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die;

4715

Tell to your children this!” Then suddenly

He sheathed a dagger in his heart and fell;

My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me

There came a murmur from the crowd, to tell

Of deep and mighty change which suddenly befell.

XXXI

4720

‘Then suddenly I stood, a wingèd Thought,

Before the immortal Senate, and the seat

Of that star-shining spirit, whence is wrought

The strength of its dominion, good and great,

The better Genius of this world’s estate.

4725

His realm around one mighty Fane is spread,

Elysian islands bright and fortunate,

Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead,

Where I am sent to lead!’ These wingèd words she said,

XXXII

And with the silence of her eloquent smile,

4730

Bade us embark in her divine canoe;

Then at the helm we took our seat, the while

Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue

Into the winds’ invisible stream she threw,

Sitting beside the prow: like gossamer

4735

On the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew

O’er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair,

Whose shores receded fast, while we seemed lingering there;

XXXIII

Till down that mighty stream, dark, calm, and fleet,

Between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven,

4740

Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet

As swift as twinkling beams, had, under Heaven,

From woods and waves wild sounds and odours driven,

The boat fled visibly—three nights and days,

Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even,

4745

We sailed along the winding watery ways

Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.

XXXIV

A scene of joy and wonder to behold

That river’s shapes and shadows changing ever,

When] Where ed. 1818.

When the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold

4750

Its whirlpools, where all hues did spread and quiver;

And where melodious falls did burst and shiver

Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray

Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river,

Or when the moonlight poured a holier day,

4755

One vast and glittering lake around green islands lay.

XXXV

Morn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran

The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud

Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man,

Which flieth forth and cannot make abode;

4760

Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode,

Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned

With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,

The homes of the departed, dimly frowned

O’er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round.

XXXVI

4765

Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows,

Mile after mile we sailed, and ’twas delight

To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows

Over the grass; sometimes beneath the night

Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright

4770

With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep

And dark-green chasms, shades beautiful and white,

Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep,

Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.

XXXVII

And ever as we sailed, our minds were full

4775

Of love and wisdom, which would overflow

In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful,

And in quick smiles whose light would come and go

Like music o’er wide waves, and in the flow

Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress—

4780

For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know,

That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less

Survives all mortal change in lasting loveliness.

XXXVIII

Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling

Number delightful hours—for through the sky

4785

The spherèd lamps of day and night, revealing

New changes and new glories, rolled on high,

Sun, Moon and moonlike lamps, the progeny

Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair:

On the fourth day, wild as a windwrought sea

4790

The stream became, and fast and faster bare

The spirit-wingèd boat, steadily speeding there.

XXXIX

Steady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains

Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour

Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains,

4795

The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar

Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore,

Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child

Securely fled, that rapid stress before,

Amid the topmost spray, and sunbows wild,

4800

Wreathed in the silver mist: in joy and pride we smiled.

XL

The torrent of that wide and raging river

Is passed, and our aëreal speed suspended.

We look behind; a golden mist did quiver

Where] When ed. 1818.

Where its wild surges with the lake were blended,—

on a line] one line ed. 1818.

4805

Our bark hung there, as on a line suspended

Between two heavens,—that windless waveless lake

Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended

By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break,

And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.

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Motionless resting on the lake awhile,

I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear

Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle,

And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere

Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear

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The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound

Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near,

Like the swift moon this glorious earth around,

The charmèd boat approached, and there its haven found.

NOTE ON THE REVOLT OF ISLAM,
BY MRS. SHELLEY

Shelley possessed two remarkable qualities of intellect—a brilliant imagination, and a logical exactness of reason. His inclinations led him (he fancied) almost alike to poetry and metaphysical discussions. I say ‘he fancied,’ because I believe the former to have been paramount, and that it would have gained the mastery even had he struggled against it. However, he said that he deliberated at one time whether he should dedicate himself to poetry or metaphysics; and, resolving on the former, he educated himself for it, discarding in a great measure his philosophical pursuits, and engaging himself in the study of the poets of Greece, Italy, and England. To these may be added a constant perusal of portions of the old Testament—the Psalms, the Book of Job, the Prophet Isaiah, and others, the sublime poetry of which filled him with delight.

As a poet, his intellect and compositions were powerfully influenced by exterior circumstances, and especially by his place of abode. He was very fond of travelling, and ill-health increased this restlessness. The sufferings occasioned by a cold English winter made him pine, especially when our colder spring arrived, for a more genial climate. In 1816 he again visited Switzerland, and rented a house on the banks of the Lake of Geneva; and many a day, in cloud or sunshine, was passed alone in his boat—sailing as the wind listed, or weltering on the calm waters. The majestic aspect of Nature ministered such thoughts as he afterwards enwove in verse. His lines on the Bridge of the Arve, and his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, were written at this time. Perhaps during this summer his genius was checked by association with another poet whose nature was utterly dissimilar to his own, yet who, in the poem he wrote at that time, gave tokens that he shared for a period the more abstract and etherealised inspiration of Shelley. The saddest events awaited his return to England; but such was his fear to wound the feelings of others that he never expressed the anguish he felt, and seldom gave vent to the indignation roused by the persecutions he underwent; while the course of deep unexpressed passion, and the sense of injury, engendered the desire to embody themselves in forms defecated of all the weakness and evil which cling to real life.

He chose therefore for his hero a youth nourished in dreams of liberty, some of whose actions are in direct opposition to the opinions of the world; but who is animated throughout by an ardent love of virtue, and a resolution to confer the boons of political and intellectual freedom on his fellow-creatures. He created for this youth a woman such as he delighted to imagine—full of enthusiasm for the same objects; and they both, with will unvanquished, and the deepest sense of the justice of their cause, met adversity and death. There exists in this poem a memorial of a friend of his youth. The character of the old man who liberates Laon from his tower prison, and tends on him in sickness, is founded on that of Doctor Lind, who, when Shelley was at Eton, had often stood by to befriend and support him, and whose name he never mentioned without love and veneration.

During the year 1817 we were established at Marlow in Buckinghamshire. Shelley’s choice of abode was fixed chiefly by this town being at no great distance from London, and its neighbourhood to the Thames. The poem was written in his boat, as it floated under the beech groves of Bisham, or during wanderings in the neighbouring country, which is distinguished for peculiar beauty. The chalk hills break into cliffs that overhang the Thames, or form valleys clothed with beech; the wilder portion of the country is rendered beautiful by exuberant vegetation; and the cultivated part is peculiarly fertile. With all this wealth of Nature which, either in the form of gentlemen’s parks or soil dedicated to agriculture, flourishes around, Marlow was inhabited (I hope it is altered now) by a very poor population. The women are lacemakers, and lose their health by sedentary labour, for which they were very ill paid. The Poor-laws ground to the dust not only the paupers, but those who had risen just above that state, and were obliged to pay poor-rates. The changes produced by peace following a long war, and a bad harvest, brought with them the most heart-rending evils to the poor. Shelley afforded what alleviation he could. In the winter, while bringing out his poem, he had a severe attack of ophthalmia, caught while visiting the poor cottages. I mention these things,—for this minute and active sympathy with his fellow-creatures gives a thousandfold interest to his speculations, and stamps with reality his pleadings for the human race.

The poem, bold in its opinions and uncompromising in their expression, met with many censurers, not only among those who allow of no virtue but such as supports the cause they espouse, but even among those whose opinions were similar to his own. I extract a portion of a letter written in answer to one of these friends. It best details the impulses of Shelley’s mind, and his motives: it was written with entire unreserve; and is therefore a precious monument of his own opinion of his powers, of the purity of his designs, and the ardour with which he clung, in adversity and through the valley of the shadow of death, to views from which he believed the permanent happiness of mankind must eventually spring.

‘Marlowe, December 11, 1817.

‘I have read and considered all that you say about my general powers, and the particular instance of the poem in which I have attempted to develop them. Nothing can be more satisfactory to me than the interest which your admonitions express. But I think you are mistaken in some points with regard to the peculiar nature of my powers, whatever be their amount. I listened with deference and self-suspicion to your censures of The Revolt of Islam; but the productions of mine which you commend hold a very low place in my own esteem; and this reassures me, in some degree at least. The poem was produced by a series of thoughts which filled my mind with unbounded and sustained enthusiasm. I felt the precariousness of my life, and I engaged in this task, resolved to leave some record of myself. Much of what the volume contains was written with the same feeling—as real, though not so prophetic—as the communications of a dying man. I never presumed indeed to consider it anything approaching to faultless; but, when I consider contemporary productions of the same apparent pretensions, I own I was filled with confidence. I felt that it was in many respects a genuine picture of my own mind. I felt that the sentiments were true, not assumed. And in this have I long believed that my power consists; in sympathy, and that part of the imagination which relates to sentiment and contemplation. I am formed, if for anything not in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us, and to communicate the conceptions which result from considering either the moral or the material universe as a whole. Of course, I believe these faculties, which perhaps comprehend all that is sublime in man, to exist very imperfectly in my own mind. But, when you advert to my Chancery-paper, a cold, forced, unimpassioned, insignificant piece of cramped and cautious argument, and to the little scrap about Mandeville, which expressed my feelings indeed, but cost scarcely two minutes’ thought to express, as specimens of my powers more favourable than that which grew as it were from “the agony and bloody sweat” of intellectual travail; surely I must feel that, in some manner, either I am mistaken in believing that I have any talent at all, or you in the selection of the specimens of it. Yet, after all, I cannot but be conscious, in much of what I write, of an absence of that tranquillity which is the attribute and accompaniment of power. This feeling alone would make your most kind and wise admonitions, on the subject of the economy of intellectual force, valuable to me. And, if I live, or if I see any trust in coming years, doubt not but that I shall do something, whatever it may be, which a serious and earnest estimate of my powers will suggest to me, and which will be in every respect accommodated to their utmost limits.

[Shelley to Godwin.]