The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 2

Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.

Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by, Strange things within their belted orbs appear. _255 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 In verse, such as malignant G.o.ds p.r.o.nounce, _260 Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and h.e.l.l Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world: And they did build vast trophies, instruments Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold, Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls _265 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.

The likeness of a throned king came by. _270 When these had pa.s.sed, bearing upon his brow A threefold crown; his countenance was calm.

His eye severe and cold; but his right hand Was charged with b.l.o.o.d.y coin, and he did gnaw By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart _275 Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes, A mult.i.tudinous throng, around him knelt.

With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by.

Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame, _280 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 Hurling their armed hands where the pure Spirit, _285 Serene and inaccessibly secure, Stood on an isolated pinnacle.

The flood of ages combating below, The depth of the unbounded universe Above, and all around _290 Necessity's unchanging harmony.

PART 2.

[Sections 8 and 9 of "Queen Mab" rehandled by Sh.e.l.ley. 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; Thou consummation of all mortal hope! _295 Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!

Whose rays, diffused throughout all s.p.a.ce and time, Verge to one point and blend for ever there: Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!

Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime, _300 Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come: O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!

Genius has seen thee in her pa.s.sionate dreams, And dim forebodings of thy loveliness, Haunting the human heart, have there entwined _305 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 For sacrifice, before his shrine for ever _310 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 Defiance at his throne, girt tho' it be _315 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 h.o.a.ry giant Time, Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,-- _320 And from the cradles of eternity, Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep By the deep murmuring stream of pa.s.sing things, Tear thou that gloomy shroud.--Spirit, behold Thy glorious destiny!

The Spirit saw _325 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 On undulating clouds and deepening lakes. _330 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, Was the sweet stream of thought that with wild motion _335 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 The wonders of the human world to keep- _340 s.p.a.ce, 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: The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck _345 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: Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere, _350 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; But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair, _355 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.

The habitable earth is full of bliss; _360 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 Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed; _365 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 To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves _370 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; And where the startled wilderness did hear _375 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, Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles _380 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 Has seen, above the illimitable plain, _385 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 So long have mingled with the gusty wind _390 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, Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds _395 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, Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave, _400 Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to sh.o.r.e, To meet the kisses of the flowerets there.

Man chief perceives the change, his being notes The gradual renovation, and defines Each movement of its progress on his mind. _405 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, Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night; _410 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 Unnatural vegetation, where the land _415 Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease, Was man a n.o.bler being; slavery Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust.

Even where the milder zone afforded man A seeming shelter, yet contagion there, _420 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 Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime: _425 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.

Here now the human being stands adorning _430 This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind; Blest from his birth with all bland impulses, Which gently in his n.o.ble bosom wake All kindly pa.s.sions and all pure desires.

Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing, _435 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 The unprevailing h.o.a.riness of age, _440 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 And horribly devours its mangled flesh, _445 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 Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief, _450 The germs of misery, death, disease and crime.

No longer now the winged habitants, That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, Flee from the form of man; but gather round, And prune their sunny feathers on the hands _455 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 An equal amidst equals: happiness _460 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 pa.s.sion cease to combat there; Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends _465 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, Without a groan, almost without a fear, _470 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 Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts _475 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, Had stamped the seal of grey deformity _480 On all the mingling lineaments of time.

How lovely the intrepid front of youth!

How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.

Within the ma.s.sy prison's mouldering courts, Fearless and free the ruddy children play, _485 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, There rust amid the acc.u.mulated ruins _490 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 On the pure smiles of infant playfulness: _495 No more the shuddering voice of hoa.r.s.e despair Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds And merriment are resonant around.

The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more _500 The voice that once waked mult.i.tudes 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 The works of faith and slavery, so vast, _505 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 To decorate its memory, and tongues _510 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, To happier shapes are moulded, and become _515 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 Fairer and n.o.bler with each pa.s.sing year. _520

Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done: Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own, With all the fear and all the hope they bring. _525 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, Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue _530 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, All tend to perfect happiness, and urge _535 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 Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow _540 Thro' the vast world, to individual sense Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape New modes of pa.s.sion to its frame may lend; Life is its state of action, and the store Of all events is aggregated there _545 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.

Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on: _550 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, That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens, _555 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 h.e.l.l-torch flares; 'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour, _560 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 Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom, _565 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?

Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires _570 Of mind as radiant and as pure as thou, Have shone upon the paths of men--return, Surpa.s.sing Spirit, to that world, where thou Art destined an eternal war to wage With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot _575 The germs of misery from the human heart.

Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe The th.o.r.n.y pillow of unhappy crime, Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease: _580 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, Free from heart-withering custom's cold control, _585 Of pa.s.sion 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 Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod, _590 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 Light, life and rapture from thy smile. _595

The Daemon called its winged ministers.

Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car, That rolled beside the crystal battlement, Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.

The burning wheels inflame _600 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 Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared _605 Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs That ministering on the solar power With borrowed light pursued their narrower way.

Earth floated then below: The chariot paused a moment; _610 The Spirit then descended: And from the earth departing The shadows with swift wings Speeded like thought upon the light of Heaven.

The Body and the Soul united then, _615 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 Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch, _620 Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love, And the bright beaming stars That through the cas.e.m.e.nt shone.

Notes: _87 Regarding cj. A.C. Bradley.)

ALASTOR: OR, THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE.

[Composed at Bishopsgate Heath, near Windsor Park, 1815 (autumn); published, as the t.i.tle-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. Sh.e.l.ley is responsible.]

PREFACE.

The poem ent.i.tled "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 pa.s.sion 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 ill.u.s.trious superst.i.tion, 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 pa.s.sion 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 mult.i.tudes who const.i.tute, 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.