The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 176

The magic car no longer moved. _40 The Fairy and the Spirit Entered the Hall of Spells: Those golden clouds That rolled in glittering billows Beneath the azure canopy _45 With the aethereal footsteps trembled not: The light and crimson mists, Floating to strains of thrilling melody Through that unearthly dwelling, Yielded to every movement of the will. _50 Upon their pa.s.sive swell the Spirit leaned, And, for the varied bliss that pressed around, Used not the glorious privilege Of virtue and of wisdom.

'Spirit!' the Fairy said, _55 And pointed to the gorgeous dome, 'This is a wondrous sight And mocks all human grandeur; But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell In a celestial palace, all resigned _60 To pleasurable impulses, immured Within the prison of itself, the will Of changeless Nature would be unfulfilled.

Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come!

This is thine high reward:--the past shall rise; _65 Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach The secrets of the future.'

The Fairy and the Spirit Approached the overhanging battlement.-- Below lay stretched the universe! _70 There, far as the remotest line That bounds imagination's flight, Countless and unending orbs In mazy motion intermingled, Yet still fulfilled immutably _75 Eternal Nature's law.

Above, below, around, The circling systems formed A wilderness of harmony; Each with undeviating aim, _80 In eloquent silence, through the depths of s.p.a.ce Pursued its wondrous way.

There was a little light That twinkled in the misty distance: None but a spirit's eye _85 Might ken that rolling orb; None but a spirit's eye, And in no other place But that celestial dwelling, might behold Each action of this earth's inhabitants. _90 But matter, s.p.a.ce and time In those aereal mansions cease to act; And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps The harvest of its excellence, o'er-bounds Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul _95 Fears to attempt the conquest.

The Fairy pointed to the earth.

The Spirit's intellectual eye Its kindred beings recognized.

The thronging thousands, to a pa.s.sing view, _100 Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens.

How wonderful! that even The pa.s.sions, prejudices, interests, That sway the meanest being, the weak touch That moves the finest nerve, _105 And in one human brain Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link In the great chain of Nature.

'Behold,' the Fairy cried, 'Palmyra's ruined palaces!-- _110 Behold! where grandeur frowned; Behold! where pleasure smiled; What now remains?--the memory Of senselessness and shame-- What is immortal there? _115 Nothing--it stands to tell A melancholy tale, to give An awful warning: soon Oblivion will steal silently The remnant of its fame. _120 Monarchs and conquerors there Proud o'er prostrate millions trod-- The earthquakes of the human race; Like them, forgotten when the ruin That marks their shock is past. _125

'Beside the eternal Nile, The Pyramids have risen.

Nile shall pursue his changeless way: Those Pyramids shall fall; Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell _130 The spot whereon they stood!

Their very site shall be forgotten, As is their builder's name!

'Behold yon sterile spot; Where now the wandering Arab's tent _135 Flaps in the desert-blast.

There once old Salem's haughty fane Reared high to Heaven its thousand golden domes, And in the blushing face of day Exposed its shameful glory. _140 Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed The building of that fane; and many a father; Worn out with toil and slavery, implored The poor man's G.o.d to sweep it from the earth, And spare his children the detested task _145 Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning The choicest days of life, To soothe a dotard's vanity.

There an inhuman and uncultured race Howled hideous praises to their Demon-G.o.d; _150 They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb The unborn child,--old age and infancy Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends: But what was he who taught them that the G.o.d _155 Of nature and benevolence hath given A special sanction to the trade of blood?

His name and theirs are fading, and the tales Of this barbarian nation, which imposture Recites till terror credits, are pursuing _160 Itself into forgetfulness.

'Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood, There is a moral desert now: The mean and miserable huts, The yet more wretched palaces, _165 Contrasted with those ancient fanes, Now crumbling to oblivion; The long and lonely colonnades, Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks, Seem like a well-known tune, _170 Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear, Remembered now in sadness.

But, oh! how much more changed, How gloomier is the contrast Of human nature there! _175 Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave, A coward and a fool, spreads death around-- Then, shuddering, meets his own.

Where Cicero and Antoninus lived, A cowled and hypocritical monk _180 Prays, curses and deceives.

'Spirit, ten thousand years Have scarcely pa.s.sed away, Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons, _185 Wakes the unholy song of war, Arose a stately city, Metropolis of the western continent: There, now, the mossy column-stone, Indented by Time's unrelaxing grasp, _190 Which once appeared to brave All, save its country's ruin; There the wide forest scene, Rude in the uncultivated loveliness Of gardens long run wild, _195 Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps Chance in that desert has delayed, Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.

Yet once it was the busiest haunt, Whither, as to a common centre, flocked _200 Strangers, and ships, and merchandise: Once peace and freedom blessed The cultivated plain: But wealth, that curse of man, Blighted the bud of its prosperity: _205 Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty, Fled, to return not, until man shall know That they alone can give the bliss Worthy a soul that claims Its kindred with eternity. _210

'There's not one atom of yon earth But once was living man; Nor the minutest drop of rain, That hangeth in its thinnest cloud, But flowed in human veins: _215 And from the burning plains Where Libyan monsters yell, From the most gloomy glens Of Greenland's sunless clime, To where the golden fields _220 Of fertile England spread Their harvest to the day, Thou canst not find one spot Whereon no city stood.

'How strange is human pride! _225 I tell thee that those living things, To whom the fragile blade of gra.s.s, That springeth in the morn And perisheth ere noon, Is an unbounded world; _230 I tell thee that those viewless beings, Whose mansion is the smallest particle Of the impa.s.sive atmosphere, Think, feel and live like man; That their affections and antipathies, _235 Like his, produce the laws Ruling their moral state; And the minutest throb That through their frame diffuses The slightest, faintest motion, _240 Is fixed and indispensable As the majestic laws That rule yon rolling orbs.'

The Fairy paused. The Spirit, In ecstasy of admiration, felt _245 All knowledge of the past revived; the events Of old and wondrous times, Which dim tradition interruptedly Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded In just perspective to the view; _250 Yet dim from their infinitude.

The Spirit seemed to stand High on an isolated pinnacle; The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe _255 Above, and all around Nature's unchanging harmony.

3.

'Fairy!' the Spirit said, And on the Queen of Spells Fixed her aethereal eyes, 'I thank thee. Thou hast given A boon which I will not resign, and taught _5 A lesson not to be unlearned. I know The past, and thence I will essay to glean A warning for the future, so that man May profit by his errors, and derive Experience from his folly: _10 For, when the power of imparting joy Is equal to the will, the human soul Requires no other Heaven.'

MAB: 'Turn thee, surpa.s.sing Spirit!

Much yet remains unscanned. _15 Thou knowest how great is man, Thou knowest his imbecility: Yet learn thou what he is: Yet learn the lofty destiny Which restless time prepares _20 For every living soul.

'Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid Yon populous city rears its thousand towers And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks, _25 Encompa.s.s it around: the dweller there Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not The curses of the fatherless, the groans Of those who have no friend? He pa.s.ses on: The King, the wearer of a gilded chain _30 That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave Even to the basest appet.i.tes--that man Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles At the deep curses which the dest.i.tute _35 Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan But for those morsels which his wantonness Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save All that they love from famine: when he hears _40 The tale of horror, to some ready-made face Of hypocritical a.s.sent he turns, Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him, Flushes his bloated cheek.

Now to the meal Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags _45 His palled unwilling appet.i.te. If gold, Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled From every clime, could force the loathing sense To overcome satiety,--if wealth The spring it draws from poisons not,--or vice, _50 Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not Its food to deadliest venom; then that king Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils His unforced task, when he returns at even, And by the blazing f.a.ggot meets again _55 Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped, Tastes not a sweeter meal.

Behold him now Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain Reels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon The slumber of intemperance subsides, _60 And conscience, that undying serpent, calls Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.

Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye-- Oh! mark that deadly visage.'

KING: 'No cessation!

Oh! must this last for ever? Awful Death, _65 I wish, yet fear to clasp thee!--Not one moment Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace!

Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity In penury and dungeons? wherefore lurkest With danger, death, and solitude; yet shunn'st _70 The palace I have built thee? Sacred peace!

Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed One drop of balm upon my withered soul.'

THE FAIRY: 'Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart, And Peace defileth not her snowy robes _75 In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters; His slumbers are but varied agonies, They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.

There needeth not the h.e.l.l that bigots frame To punish those who err: earth in itself _80 Contains at once the evil and the cure; And all-sufficing Nature can chastise Those who transgress her law,--she only knows How justly to proportion to the fault The punishment it merits.

Is it strange _85 That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?

Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns, Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured _90 Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth, His soul a.s.serts not its humanity?

That man's mild nature rises not in war Against a king's employ? No--'tis not strange. _95 He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives Just as his father did; the unconquered powers Of precedent and custom interpose Between a KING and virtue. Stranger yet, To those who know not Nature, nor deduce _100 The future from the present, it may seem, That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes Of this unnatural being; not one wretch, Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm To dash him from his throne! _105 Those gilded flies That, basking in the sunshine of a court, Fatten on its corruption!--what are they?

--The drones of the community; they feed On the mechanic's labour: the starved hind _110 For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form, Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes A sunless life in the unwholesome mine, Drags out in labour a protracted death, _115 To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil, That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.

'Whence, think'st thou, kings and parasites arose?

Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap Toil and unvanquishable penury _120 On those who build their palaces, and bring Their daily bread?--From vice, black loathsome vice; From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong; From all that 'genders misery, and makes Of earth this th.o.r.n.y wilderness; from l.u.s.t, _125 Revenge, and murder...And when Reason's voice, Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked The nations; and mankind perceive that vice Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue Is peace, and happiness and harmony; _130 When man's maturer nature shall disdain The playthings of its childhood;--kingly glare Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority Will silently pa.s.s by; the gorgeous throne Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall, _135 Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade Shall be as hateful and unprofitable As that of truth is now.

Where is the fame Which the vainglorious mighty of the earth Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound _140 From Time's light footfall, the minutest wave That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! today Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze That flashes desolation, strong the arm _145 That scatters mult.i.tudes. To-morrow comes!

That mandate is a thunder-peal that died In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash On which the midnight closed, and on that arm The worm has made his meal.

The virtuous man, _150 Who, great in his humility, as kings Are little in their grandeur; he who leads Invincibly a life of resolute good, And stands amid the silent dungeon depths More free and fearless than the trembling judge, _155 Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove To bind the impa.s.sive spirit;--when he falls, His mild eye beams benevolence no more: Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve; Sunk Reason's simple eloquence, that rolled _160 But to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave Hath quenched that eye, and Death's relentless frost Withered that arm: but the unfading fame Which Virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb; The deathless memory of that man, whom kings _165 Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance With which the happy spirit contemplates Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth, Shall never pa.s.s away.

'Nature rejects the monarch, not the man; _170 The subject, not the citizen: for kings And subjects, mutual foes, forever play A losing game into each other's hands, Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys. _175 Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience, Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame, A mechanized automaton.

When Nero, _180 High over flaming Rome, with savage joy Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld The frightful desolation spread, and felt A new-created sense within his soul _185 Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound; Think'st thou his grandeur had not overcome The force of human kindness? and, when Rome, With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down, Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood _190 Had not submissive abjectness destroyed Nature's suggestions?

Look on yonder earth: The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees, Arise in due succession; all things speak _195 Peace, harmony, and love. The universe, In Nature's silent eloquence, declares That all fulfil the works of love and joy,-- All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth _200 The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe, Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun, Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams, Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch _205 Than on the dome of kings? Is mother Earth A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil; A mother only to those puling babes Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men _210 The playthings of their babyhood, and mar, In self-important childishness, that peace Which men alone appreciate?

'Spirit of Nature! no.

The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs _215 Alike in every human heart.

Thou, aye, erectest there Thy throne of power unappealable: Thou art the judge beneath whose nod Man's brief and frail authority _220 Is powerless as the wind That pa.s.seth idly by.

Thine the tribunal which surpa.s.seth The show of human justice, As G.o.d surpa.s.ses man. _225

'Spirit of Nature! thou Life of interminable mult.i.tudes; Soul of those mighty spheres Whose changeless paths through Heaven's deep silence lie; Soul of that smallest being, _230 The dwelling of whose life Is one faint April sun-gleam;-- Man, like these pa.s.sive things, Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth: Like theirs, his age of endless peace, _235 Which time is fast maturing, Will swiftly, surely come; And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest, Will be without a flaw Marring its perfect symmetry. _240

4.

'How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh, Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear, Were discord to the speaking quietude That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars unutterably bright, _5 Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love had spread To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills, Robed in a garment of untrodden snow; Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend, _10 So stainless, that their white and glittering spires Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep, Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it A metaphor of peace;--all form a scene _15 Where musing Solitude might love to lift Her soul above this sphere of earthliness; Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone, So cold, so bright, so still.

The orb of day, In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field _20 Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day; And vesper's image on the western main Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes: _25 Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening ma.s.s, Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar Of distant thunder mutters awfully; Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend, _30 With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey; The torn deep yawns,--the vessel finds a grave Beneath its jagged gulf.

Ah! whence yon glare That fires the arch of Heaven!--that dark red smoke Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched _35 In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round!

Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf'ning peals In countless echoes through the mountains ring, Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne! _40 Now swells the intermingling din; the jar Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb; The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout, The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men Inebriate with rage:--loud, and more loud _45 The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene, And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws His cold and b.l.o.o.d.y shroud.--Of all the men Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there, In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts _50 That beat with anxious life at sunset there; How few survive, how few are beating now!

All is deep silence, like the fearful calm That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause; Save when the frantic wail of widowed love _55 Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay Wrapped round its struggling powers.

The gray morn Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke Before the icy wind slow rolls away, _60 And the bright beams of frosty morning dance Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms, And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments _65 Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path Of the outsallying victors: far behind, Black ashes note where their proud city stood.

Within yon forest is a gloomy glen-- Each tree which guards its darkness from the day, Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.

I see thee shrink, _70 Surpa.s.sing Spirit!--wert thou human else?

I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet Across thy stainless features: yet fear not; This is no unconnected misery, Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable. _75 Man's evil nature, that apology Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood Which desolates the discord-wasted land.

From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose, _80 Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe, Whose grandeur his debas.e.m.e.nt. Let the axe Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall; And where its venomed exhalations spread Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay _85 Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast, A garden shall arise, in loveliness Surpa.s.sing fabled Eden.

Hath Nature's soul, That formed this world so beautiful, that spread _90 Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord Strung to unchanging unison, that gave The happy birds their dwelling in the grove, That yielded to the wanderers of the deep The lovely silence of the unfathomed main, _95 And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone, Partial in causeless malice, wantonly Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul Blasted with withering curses; placed afar _100 The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp, But serving on the frightful gulf to glare, Rent wide beneath his footsteps?

Nature!--no!

Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower Even in its tender bud; their influence darts _105 Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins Of desolate society. The child, Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name, Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts His baby-sword even in a hero's mood. _110 This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge Of devastated earth; whilst specious names, Learned in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour, Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims Bright Reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword _115 Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood.

Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man Inherits vice and misery, when Force And Falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good. _120 'Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps From its new tenement, and looks abroad For happiness and sympathy, how stern And desolate a tract is this wide world!

How withered all the buds of natural good! _125 No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame, Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds _130 Of Heaven, that renovate the insect tribes, May breathe not. The untainting light of day May visit not its longings. It is bound Ere it has life: yea, all the chains are forged Long ere its being: all liberty and love _135 And peace is torn from its defencelessness; Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed To abjectness and bondage!