The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 112

A hater he came and sat by a ditch, And he took an old cracked lute; And he sang a song which was more of a screech 'Gainst a woman that was a brute.

LINES TO A CRITIC.

[Published by Hunt in "The Liberal", No. 3, 1823. Reprinted in "Posthumous Poems", 1824, where it is dated December, 1817.]

1.

Honey from silkworms who can gather, Or silk from the yellow bee?

The gra.s.s may grow in winter weather As soon as hate in me.

2.

Hate men who cant, and men who pray, _5 And men who rail like thee; An equal pa.s.sion to repay They are not coy like me.

3.

Or seek some slave of power and gold To be thy dear heart's mate; _10 Thy love will move that bigot cold Sooner than me, thy hate.

4.

A pa.s.sion like the one I prove Cannot divided be; I hate thy want of truth and love-- _15 How should I then hate thee?

OZYMANDIAS.

[Published by Hunt in "The Examiner", January, 1818. Reprinted with "Rosalind and Helen", 1819. There is a copy amongst the Sh.e.l.ley ma.n.u.scripts at the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C.D. Loc.o.c.k's "Examination", etc., 1903, page 46.]

I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, _5 Tell that its sculptor well those pa.s.sions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: _10 Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

NOTE: _9 these words appear]this legend clear B.

NOTE ON POEMS OF 1817, BY MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY.

The very illness that oppressed, and the aspect of death which had approached so near Sh.e.l.ley, appear to have kindled to yet keener life the Spirit of Poetry in his heart. The restless thoughts kept awake by pain clothed themselves in verse. Much was composed during this year.

The "Revolt of Islam", written and printed, was a great effort--"Rosalind and Helen" was begun--and the fragments and poems I can trace to the same period show how full of pa.s.sion and reflection were his solitary hours.

In addition to such poems as have an intelligible aim and shape, many a stray idea and transitory emotion found imperfect and abrupt expression, and then again lost themselves in silence. As he never wandered without a book and without implements of writing, I find many such, in his ma.n.u.script books, that scarcely bear record; while some of them, broken and vague as they are, will appear valuable to those who love Sh.e.l.ley's mind, and desire to trace its workings.

He projected also translating the "Hymns" of Homer; his version of several of the shorter ones remains, as well as that to Mercury already published in the "Posthumous Poems". His readings this year were chiefly Greek. Besides the "Hymns" of Homer and the "Iliad", he read the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles, the "Symposium" of Plato, and Arrian's "Historia Indica". In Latin, Apuleius alone is named. In English, the Bible was his constant study; he read a great portion of it aloud in the evening. Among these evening readings I find also mentioned the "Faerie Queen"; and other modern works, the production of his contemporaries, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore and Byron.

His life was now spent more in thought than action--he had lost the eager spirit which believed it could achieve what it projected for the benefit of mankind. And yet in the converse of daily life Sh.e.l.ley was far from being a melancholy man. He was eloquent when philosophy or politics or taste were the subjects of conversation. He was playful; and indulged in the wild spirit that mocked itself and others--not in bitterness, but in sport. The author of "Nightmare Abbey" seized on some points of his character and some habits of his life when he painted Scythrop. He was not addicted to 'port or madeira,' but in youth he had read of 'Illuminati and Eleutherarchs,' and believed that he possessed the power of operating an immediate change in the minds of men and the state of society. These wild dreams had faded; sorrow and adversity had struck home; but he struggled with despondency as he did with physical pain. There are few who remember him sailing paper boats, and watching the navigation of his tiny craft with eagerness--or repeating with wild energy "The Ancient Mariner", and Southey's "Old Woman of Berkeley"; but those who do will recollect that it was in such, and in the creations of his own fancy when that was most daring and ideal, that he sheltered himself from the storms and disappointments, the pain and sorrow, that beset his life.

No words can express the anguish he felt when his elder children were torn from him. In his first resentment against the Chancellor, on the pa.s.sing of the decree, he had written a curse, in which there breathes, besides haughty indignation, all the tenderness of a father's love, which could imagine and fondly dwell upon its loss and the consequences.

At one time, while the question was still pending, the Chancellor had said some words that seemed to intimate that Sh.e.l.ley should not be permitted the care of any of his children, and for a moment he feared that our infant son would be torn from us. He did not hesitate to resolve, if such were menaced, to abandon country, fortune, everything, and to escape with his child; and I find some unfinished stanzas addressed to this son, whom afterwards we lost at Rome, written under the idea that we might suddenly be forced to cross the sea, so to preserve him. This poem, as well as the one previously quoted, were not written to exhibit the pangs of distress to the public; they were the spontaneous outbursts of a man who brooded over his wrongs and woes, and was impelled to shed the grace of his genius over the uncontrollable emotions of his heart. I ought to observe that the fourth verse of this effusion is introduced in "Rosalind and Helen".

When afterwards this child died at Rome, he wrote, a propos of the English burying-ground in that city: 'This spot is the repository of a sacred loss, of which the yearnings of a parent's heart are now prophetic; he is rendered immortal by love, as his memory is by death.

My beloved child lies buried here. I envy death the body far less than the oppressors the minds of those whom they have torn from me. The one can only kill the body, the other crushes the affections.'

POEMS WRITTEN IN 1818.

TO THE NILE.

['Found by Mr. Townshend Meyer among the papers of Leigh Hunt, [and]

published in the "St. James's Magazine" for March, 1876.' (Mr. H.

Buxton Forman, C.B.; "Poetical Works of P. B. S.", Library Edition, 1876, volume 3 page 410.) First included among Sh.e.l.ley's poetical works in Mr. Forman's Library Edition, where a facsimile of the ma.n.u.script is given. Composed February 4, 1818. See "Complete Works of John Keats", edition H. Buxton Forman, Glasgow, 1901, volume 4 page 76.]

Month after month the gathered rains descend Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells, And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend. _5 Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells By Nile's aereal urn, with rapid spells Urging those waters to their mighty end.

O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level And they are thine, O Nile--and well thou knowest _10 That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.

Beware, O Man--for knowledge must to thee, Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be.

Pa.s.sAGE OF THE APENNINES.

[Composed May 4, 1818. Published by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. There is a copy amongst the Sh.e.l.ley ma.n.u.scripts at the Bodleian Library, which supplies the last word of the fragment.]

Listen, listen, Mary mine, To the whisper of the Apennine, It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar, Or like the sea on a northern sh.o.r.e, Heard in its raging ebb and flow _5 By the captives pent in the cave below.

The Apennine in the light of day Is a mighty mountain dim and gray, Which between the earth and sky doth lay; But when night comes, a chaos dread _10 On the dim starlight then is spread, And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm, Shrouding...

THE PAST.

[Published by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.]

1.

Wilt thou forget the happy hours Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, Heaping over their corpses cold Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?

Blossoms which were the joys that fell, _5 And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

2.

Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, Memories that make the heart a tomb, Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, _10 And with ghastly whispers tell That joy, once lost, is pain.

TO MARY --.

[Published by Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.]