The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 177

'Throughout this varied and eternal world Soul is the only element: the block _140 That for uncounted ages has remained The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight Is active, living spirit. Every grain Is sentient both in unity and part, And the minutest atom comprehends _145 A world of loves and hatreds; these beget Evil and good: hence truth and falsehood spring; Hence will and thought and action, all the germs Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate, That variegate the eternal universe. _150 Soul is not more polluted than the beams Of Heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.

'Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds Of high resolve, on fancy's boldest wing _155 To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield.

Or he is formed for abjectness and woe, To grovel on the dunghill of his fears, _160 To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame Of natural love in sensualism, to know That hour as blessed when on his worthless days The frozen hand of Death shall set its seal, Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease. _165 The one is man that shall hereafter be; The other, man as vice has made him now.

'War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired a.s.sa.s.sin's trade, And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones _170 Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore, The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.

Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround Their palaces, partic.i.p.ate the crimes That force defends, and from a nation's rage _175 Secure the crown, which all the curses reach That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.

These are the hired bravos who defend The tyrant's throne--the bullies of his fear: These are the sinks and channels of worst vice, _180 The refuse of society, the dregs Of all that is most vile: their cold hearts blend Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride, All that is mean and villanous, with rage Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt, _185 Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth, Honour and power, then are sent abroad To do their work. The pestilence that stalks In gloomy triumph through some eastern land Is less destroying. They cajole with gold, _190 And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth Already crushed with servitude: he knows His wretchedness too late, and cherishes Repentance for his ruin, when his doom Is sealed in gold and blood! _195 Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare The feet of Justice in the toils of law, Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still; And right or wrong will vindicate for gold, Sneering at public virtue, which beneath _200 Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled, where Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth.

'Then grave and h.o.a.ry-headed hypocrites, Without a hope, a pa.s.sion, or a love, Who, through a life of luxury and lies, _205 Have crept by flattery to the seats of power, Support the system whence their honours flow...

They have three words:--well tyrants know their use, Well pay them for the loan, with usury Torn from a bleeding world!--G.o.d, h.e.l.l, and Heaven. _210 A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend, Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage Of tameless tigers hungering for blood.

h.e.l.l, a red gulf of everlasting fire, Where poisonous and undying worms prolong _215 Eternal misery to those hapless slaves Whose life has been a penance for its crimes.

And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe Before the mockeries of earthly power. _220

'These tools the tyrant tempers to his work, Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys, Omnipotent in wickedness: the while Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend _225 Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.

'They rise, they fall; one generation comes Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe.

It fades, another blossoms: yet behold!

Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom, _230 Withering and cankering deep its pa.s.sive prime.

He has invented lying words and modes, Empty and vain as his own coreless heart; Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound, To lure the heedless victim to the toils _235 Spread round the valley of its paradise.

'Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince!

Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy l.u.s.ts Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor, With whom thy Master was:--or thou delight'st _240 In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain, All misery weighing nothing in the scale Against thy short-lived fame: or thou dost load With cowardice and crime the groaning land, A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self! _245 Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days Days of unsatisfying listlessness?

Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er, "When will the morning come?" Is not thy youth _250 A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?

Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?

Are not thy views of unregretted death Drear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind, Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, _255 Incapable of judgement, hope, or love?

And dost thou wish the errors to survive That bar thee from all sympathies of good, After the miserable interest Thou hold'st in their protraction? When the grave _260 Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself, Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth To twine its roots around thy coffined clay, Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb, That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die? _265

NOTE: _176 Secures edition 1813.

5.

'Thus do the generations of the earth Go to the grave, and issue from the womb, Surviving still the imperishable change That renovates the world; even as the leaves Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year _5 Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped For many seasons there--though long they choke, Loading with loathsome rottenness the land, All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, _10 Lie level with the earth to moulder there, They fertilize the land they long deformed, Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs Of youth, integrity, and loveliness, Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. _15 Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights The fairest feelings of the opening heart, Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love, And judgement cease to wage unnatural war _20 With pa.s.sion's unsubduable array.

Twin-sister of religion, selfishness!

Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all The wanton horrors of her b.l.o.o.d.y play; Yet frozen, unimpa.s.sioned, spiritless, _25 Shunning the light, and owning not its name, Compelled, by its deformity, to screen, With flimsy veil of justice and of right, Its unattractive lineaments, that scare All, save the brood of ignorance: at once _30 The cause and the effect of tyranny; Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile; Dead to all love but of its abjectness, With heart impa.s.sive by more n.o.ble powers Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame; _35 Despising its own miserable being, Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall.

'Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange Of all that human art or nature yield; Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, _40 And natural kindness hasten to supply From the full fountain of its boundless love, For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.

Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade No solitary virtue dares to spring, _45 But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand Scatter their withering curses, and unfold The doors of premature and violent death, To pining famine and full-fed disease, To all that shares the lot of human life, _50 Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce drags the chain, That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.

'Commerce has set the mark of selfishness, The signet of its all-enslaving power Upon a shining ore, and called it gold: _55 Before whose image bow the vulgar great, The vainly rich, the miserable proud, The mob of peasants, n.o.bles, priests, and kings, And with blind feelings reverence the power That grinds them to the dust of misery. _60 But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is a living G.o.d, and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue.

'Since tyrants, by the sale of human life, Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame _65 To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride, Success has sanctioned to a credulous world The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.

His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes The despot numbers; from his cabinet _70 These puppets of his schemes he moves at will, Even as the slaves by force or famine driven, Beneath a vulgar master, to perform A task of cold and brutal drudgery;-- Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, _75 Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine, Mere wheels of work and articles of trade, That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!

'The harmony and happiness of man Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts _80 His nature to the heaven of its pride, Is bartered for the poison of his soul; The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes, Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain, Withering all pa.s.sion but of slavish fear, _85 Extinguishing all free and generous love Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse That fancy kindles in the beating heart To mingle with sensation, it destroys,-- Leaves nothing but the sordid l.u.s.t of self, _90 The grovelling hope of interest and gold, Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed Even by hypocrisy.

And statesmen boast Of wealth! The wordy eloquence, that lives After the ruin of their hearts, can gild _95 The bitter poison of a nation's woe, Can turn the worship of the servile mob To their corrupt and glaring idol, Fame, From Virtue, trampled by its iron tread, Although its dazzling pedestal be raised _100 Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field, With desolated dwellings smoking round.

The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside, To deeds of charitable intercourse, And bare fulfilment of the common laws _105 Of decency and prejudice, confines The struggling nature of his human heart, Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds A pa.s.sing tear perchance upon the wreck Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door _110 The frightful waves are driven,--when his son Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man, Whose life is misery, and fear, and care; Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil; _115 Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream, Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene Of thousands like himself;--he little heeds _120 The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn The vain and bitter mockery of words, Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds, And unrestrained but by the arm of power, _125 That knows and dreads his enmity.

'The iron rod of Penury still compels Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth, And poison, with unprofitable toil, A life too void of solace to confirm _130 The very chains that bind him to his doom.

Nature, impartial in munificence, Has gifted man with all-subduing will.

Matter, with all its transitory shapes, Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, _135 That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread.

How many a rustic Milton has pa.s.sed by, Stifling the speechless longings of his heart, In unremitting drudgery and care!

How many a vulgar Cato has compelled _140 His energies, no longer tameless then, To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail!

How many a Newton, to whose pa.s.sive ken Those mighty spheres that gem infinity Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in Heaven _145 To light the midnights of his native town!

'Yet every heart contains perfection's germ: The wisest of the sages of the earth, That ever from the stores of reason drew Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone, _150 Were but a weak and inexperienced boy, Proud, sensual, unimpa.s.sioned, unimbued With pure desire and universal love, Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain, Untainted pa.s.sion, elevated will, _155 Which Death (who even would linger long in awe Within his n.o.ble presence, and beneath His changeless eyebeam) might alone subdue.

Him, every slave now dragging through the filth Of some corrupted city his sad life, _160 Pining with famine, swoln with luxury, Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense With narrow schemings and unworthy cares, Or madly rushing through all violent crime, To move the deep stagnation of his soul,-- _165 Might imitate and equal.

But mean l.u.s.t Has bound its chains so tight around the earth, That all within it but the virtuous man Is venal: gold or fame will surely reach The price prefixed by selfishness, to all _170 But him of resolute and unchanging will; Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd, Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury, Can bribe to yield his elevated soul To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield _175 With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.

'All things are sold: the very light of Heaven Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love, The smallest and most despicable things That lurk in the abysses of the deep, _180 All objects of our life, even life itself, And the poor pittance which the laws allow Of liberty, the fellowship of man, Those duties which his heart of human love Should urge him to perform instinctively, _185 Are bought and sold as in a public mart Of undisguising selfishness, that sets On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.

Even love is sold; the solace of all woe Is turned to deadliest agony, old age _190 Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms, And youth's corrupted impulses prepare A life of horror from the blighting bane Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs From unenjoying sensualism, has filled _195 All human life with hydra-headed woes.

'Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest Sets no great value on his hireling faith: A little pa.s.sing pomp, some servile souls, _200 Whom cowardice itself might safely chain, Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe To deck the triumph of their languid zeal, Can make him minister to tyranny.

More daring crime requires a loftier meed: _205 Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lends His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart, When the dread eloquence of dying men, Low mingling on the lonely field of fame, a.s.sails that nature, whose applause he sells _210 For the gross blessings of a patriot mob, For the vile grat.i.tude of heartless kings, And for a cold world's good word,--viler still!

'There is a n.o.bler glory, which survives Until our being fades, and, solacing _215 All human care, accompanies its change; Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom, And, in the precincts of the palace, guides Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime; Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, _220 Even when, from Power's avenging hand, he takes Its sweetest, last and n.o.blest t.i.tle--death; --The consciousness of good, which neither gold, Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,-- _225 Unalterable will, quenchless desire Of universal happiness, the heart That beats with it in unison, the brain, Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal. _230

'This commerce of sincerest virtue needs No mediative signs of selfishness, No jealous intercourse of wretched gain, No balancings of prudence, cold and long; In just and equal measure all is weighed, _235 One scale contains the sum of human weal, And one, the good man's heart.

How vainly seek The selfish for that happiness denied To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they, Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, _240 Who covet power they know not how to use, And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,-- Madly they frustrate still their own designs; And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, _245 Pining regrets, and vain repentances, Disease, disgust, and la.s.situde, pervade Their valueless and miserable lives.

'But h.o.a.ry-headed Selfishness has felt Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave: _250 A brighter morn awaits the human day, When every transfer of earth's natural gifts Shall be a commerce of good words and works; When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame, The fear of infamy, disease and woe, _255 War with its million horrors, and fierce h.e.l.l Shall live but in the memory of Time, Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start, Look back, and shudder at his younger years.'

6.

All touch, all eye, all ear, The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech.

O'er the thin texture of its frame, The varying periods painted changing glows, As on a summer even, _5 When soul-enfolding music floats around, The stainless mirror of the lake Re-images the eastern gloom, Mingling convulsively its purple hues With sunset's burnished gold. _10

Then thus the Spirit spoke: 'It is a wild and miserable world!

Th.o.r.n.y, and full of care, Which every fiend can make his prey at will.

O Fairy! in the lapse of years, _15 Is there no hope in store?

Will yon vast suns roll on Interminably, still illuming The night of so many wretched souls, And see no hope for them? _20 Will not the universal Spirit e'er Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?'

The Fairy calmly smiled In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope Suffused the Spirit's lineaments. _25 'Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts, Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul, That sees the chains which bind it to its doom.

Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth, Falsehood, mistake, and l.u.s.t; _30 But the eternal world Contains at once the evil and the cure.

Some eminent in virtue shall start up, Even in perversest time: The truths of their pure lips, that never die, _35 Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath Of ever-living flame, Until the monster sting itself to death.

'How sweet a scene will earth become!

Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place, _40 Symphonious with the planetary spheres; When man, with changeless Nature coalescing, Will undertake regeneration's work, When its ungenial poles no longer point To the red and baleful sun _45 That faintly twinkles there.

'Spirit! on yonder earth, Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth!

Madness and misery are there! _50 The happiest is most wretched! Yet confide, Until pure health-drops, from the cup of joy, Fall like a dew of balm upon the world.

Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn, And read the blood-stained charter of all woe, _55 Which Nature soon, with re-creating hand, Will blot in mercy from the book of earth.

How bold the flight of Pa.s.sion's wandering wing, How swift the step of Reason's firmer tread, How calm and sweet the victories of life, _60 How terrorless the triumph of the grave!

How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm, Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown!

How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar!

The weight of his exterminating curse _65 How light! and his affected charity, To suit the pressure of the changing times, What palpable deceit!--but for thy aid, Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend, Who peoplest earth with demons, h.e.l.l with men, _70 And Heaven with slaves!

'Thou taintest all thou look'st upon!--the stars, Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet, Were G.o.ds to the distempered playfulness Of thy untutored infancy: the trees, _75 The gra.s.s, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea, All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly, Were G.o.ds: the sun had homage, and the moon Her worshipper. Then thou becam'st, a boy, More daring in thy frenzies: every shape, _80 Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild, Which, from sensation's relics, fancy culls The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost, The genii of the elements, the powers That give a shape to Nature's varied works, _85 Had life and place in the corrupt belief Of thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful hands Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain; Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene, _90 Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride: Their everlasting and unchanging laws Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up The elements of all that thou didst know; _95 The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign, The budding of the Heaven-breathing trees, The eternal orbs that beautify the night, The sunrise, and the setting of the moon, Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease, _100 And all their causes, to an abstract point Converging, thou didst bend and called it G.o.d!

The self-sufficing, the omnipotent, The merciful, and the avenging G.o.d!