The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 106

'Inheritor of more than earth can give, _45 Pa.s.sionless calm and silence unreproved, Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest, And are the uncomplaining things they seem, Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love; Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were--Peace!' _50 This was the only moan she ever made.

NOTES: _4 death 1839; youth 1824.

_22 sun? We will walk 1824; sunrise? We will wake cj. Forman.

_37 Her eyes...wan Hunt, 1823; omitted 1824, 1839.

_38 worn 1824; torn 1839.

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.

[Composed, probably, in Switzerland, in the summer of 1816. Published in Hunt's "Examiner", January 19, 1817, and with "Rosalind and Helen", 1819.]

1.

The awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen among us,--visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,-- Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, _5 It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening,-- Like clouds in starlight widely spread,-- Like memory of music fled,-- _10 Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

2.

Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form,--where art thou gone? _15 Why dost thou pa.s.s away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?

Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, _20 Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom,--why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope?

3.

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever _25 To sage or poet these responses given-- Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven.

Remain the records of their vain endeavour, Frail spells--whose uttered charm might not avail to sever, From all we hear and all we see, _30 Doubt, chance, and mutability.

Thy light alone--like mist o'er mountains driven, Or music by the night-wind sent Through strings of some still instrument, Or moonlight on a midnight stream, _35 Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

4.

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart And come, for some uncertain moments lent.

Man were immortal, and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, _40 Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.

Thou messenger of sympathies, That wax and wane in lovers' eyes-- Thou--that to human thought art nourishment, Like darkness to a dying flame! _45 Depart not as thy shadow came Depart not--lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality.

5.

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, _50 And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.

I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed; I was not heard--I saw them not-- When musing deeply on the lot _55 Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming,-- Sudden, thy shadow fell on me; I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! _60

6.

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers To thee and thine--have I not kept the vow?

With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers _65 Of studious zeal or love's delight Out.w.a.tched with me the envious night-- They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, _70 That thou--O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

7.

The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past--there is a harmony In autumn, and a l.u.s.tre in its sky, _75 Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been!

Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my pa.s.sive youth Descended, to my onward life supply _80 Its calm--to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

NOTES: _2 among 1819; amongst 1817.

_14 dost 1819; doth 1817.

_21 fear and dream 1819; care and pain Bos...o...b.. ma.n.u.script.

_37-_48 omitted Bos...o...b.. ma.n.u.script.

_44 art 1817; are 1819.

_76 or 1819; nor 1839.

MONT BLANC.

LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.

[Composed in Switzerland, July, 1816 (see date below). Printed at the end of the "History of a Six Weeks' Tour" published by Sh.e.l.ley in 1817, and reprinted with "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Amongst the Bos...o...b.. ma.n.u.scripts is a draft of this Ode, mainly in pencil, which has been collated by Dr. Garnett.]

1.

The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom-- Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings _5 Of waters,--with a sound but half its own, Such as a feeble brook will oft a.s.sume In the wild woods, among the mountains lone, Where waterfalls around it leap for ever, Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river _10 Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

2.

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve--dark, deep Ravine-- Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale, Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene, _15 Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne, Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame Of lightning through the tempest;--thou dost lie, Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, _20 Children of elder time, in whose devotion The chainless winds still come and ever came To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging To hear--an old and solemn harmony; Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep _25 Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep Which when the voices of the desert fail Wraps all in its own deep eternity;-- Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, _30 A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame; Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion, Thou art the path of that unresting sound-- Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee I seem as in a trance sublime and strange _35 To muse on my own separate fantasy, My own, my human mind, which pa.s.sively Now renders and receives fast influencings, Holding an unremitting interchange With the clear universe of things around; _40 One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings Now float above thy darkness, and now rest Where that or thou art no unbidden guest, In the still cave of the witch Poesy, Seeking among the shadows that pa.s.s by _45 Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee, Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

3.

Some say that gleams of a remoter world Visit the soul in sleep,--that death is slumber, _50 And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber Of those who wake and live.--I look on high; Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled The veil of life and death? or do I lie In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep _55 Spread far around and inaccessibly Its circles? For the very spirit fails, Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep That vanishes among the viewless gales!

Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, _60 Mont Blanc appears,--still, snowy, and serene-- Its subject mountains their unearthly forms Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps, Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread _65 And wind among the acc.u.mulated steeps; A desert peopled by the storms alone, Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone, And the wolf tracts her there--how hideously Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high, _70 Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.--Is this the scene Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea Of fire envelope once this silent snow?

None can reply--all seems eternal now. _75 The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild, So solemn, so serene, that man may be, But for such faith, with nature reconciled; Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal _80 Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood By all, but which the wise, and great, and good Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.

4.

The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, Ocean, and all the living things that dwell _85 Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain, Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, The torpor of the year when feeble dreams Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep Holds every future leaf and flower;--the bound _90 With which from that detested trance they leap; The works and ways of man, their death and birth, And that of him and all that his may be; All things that move and breathe with toil and sound Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. _95 Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, Remote, serene, and inaccessible: And THIS, the naked countenance of earth, On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep _100 Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice, Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, A city of death, distinct with many a tower _105 And wall impregnable of beaming ice.

Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing Its destined path, or in the mangled soil _110 Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down From yon remotest waste, have overthrown The limits of the dead and living world, Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; _115 Their food and their retreat for ever gone, So much of life and joy is lost. The race Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream, And their place is not known. Below, vast caves _120 Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam, Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling Meet in the vale, and one majestic River, The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, _125 Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.

5.

Mont Blanc yet gleams on high--the power is there, The still and solemn power of many sights, And many sounds, and much of life and death.

In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, _130 In the lone glare of day, the snows descend Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there, Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun, Or the star-beams dart through them:--Winds contend Silently there, and heap the snow with breath _135 Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home The voiceless lightning in these solitudes Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods Over the snow. The secret strength of things Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome _140 Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind's imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy?

July 23, 1816.

NOTES: _15 cloud-shadows]cloud shadows 1817; cloud, shadows 1824; clouds, shadows 1839.

_20 Thy 1824; The 1839.

_53 unfurled]upfurled cj. James Thomson ('B.V.').

_56 Spread 1824; Speed 1839.

_69 tracks her there 1824; watches her Bos...o...b.. ma.n.u.script.

_79 But for such 1824; In such a Bos...o...b.. ma.n.u.script.

_108 boundaries of the sky]boundary of the skies cj. Rossetti (cf. lines 102, 106).

_121 torrents']torrent's 1817, 1824, 1839.

CANCELLED Pa.s.sAGE OF MONT BLANC.

[Published by Garnett, "Relics of Sh.e.l.ley", 1862.]

There is a voice, not understood by all, Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roar Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call, Plunging into the vale--it is the blast Descending on the pines--the torrents pour... _5