The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 41

A CONFUSED VOICE: We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.

DEMOGORGON: Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts and birds, Ye worms and fish; ye living leaves and buds; _545 Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds, Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes:--

NOTE: _547 throng 1820, 1839; cancelled for feed B.

A VOICE: Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.

DEMOGORGON: Man, who wert once a despot and a slave; A dupe and a deceiver; a decay; _550 A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day:

ALL: Speak: thy strong words may never pa.s.s away.

DEMOGORGON: This is the day, which down the void abysm At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism, _555 And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep: Love, from its awful throne of patient power In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep, And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs _560 And folds over the world its healing wings.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, These are the seals of that most firm a.s.surance Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength; And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, _565 Mother of many acts and hours, should free The serpent that would clasp her with his length; These are the spells by which to rea.s.sume An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; _570 To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; _575 This, like thy glory, t.i.tan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!

NOTES: _559 dread B, edition 1839; dead 1820.

_575 falter B, edition 1839; flatter 1820.

CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF "PROMETHEUS UNBOUND".

[First printed by Mr. C.D. Loc.o.c.k, "Examination of the Sh.e.l.ley Ma.n.u.scripts at the Bodleian Library", 1903, pages 33-7.]

(following 1._37.) When thou descendst each night with open eyes In torture, for a tyrant seldom sleeps, Thou never; ...

(following 1._195.) Which thou henceforth art doomed to interweave ...

(following the first two words of 1._342.) [Of h.e.l.l:] I placed it in his choice to be The crown, or trampled refuse of the world With but one law itself a glorious boon-- I gave-- ...

(following 1._707.) SECOND SPIRIT: I leaped on the wings of the Earth-star damp As it rose on the steam of a slaughtered camp-- The sleeping newt heard not our tramp As swift as the wings of fire may pa.s.s-- We threaded the points of long thick gra.s.s Which hide the green pools of the mora.s.s But shook a water-serpent's couch In a cleft skull, of many such The widest; at the meteor's touch The snake did seem to see in dream Thrones and dungeons overthrown Visions how unlike his own...

'Twas the hope the prophecy Which begins and ends in thee ...

(following 2.1._110.) Lift up thine eyes Panthea--they pierce they burn

PANTHEA: Alas! I am consumed--I melt away The fire is in my heart--

ASIA: Thine eyes burn burn!-- Hide them within thine hair--

PANTHEA: O quench thy lips I sink I perish

ASIA: Shelter me now--they burn It is his spirit in their orbs...my life Is ebbing fast--I cannot speak--

PANTHEA: Rest, rest!

Sleep death annihilation pain! aught else ...

(following 2.4._27.) Or looks which tell that while the lips are calm And the eyes cold, the spirit weeps within Tears like the sanguine sweat of agony; ...

UNCANCELLED Pa.s.sAGE.

(following 2.5._71.)

ASIA: You said that spirits spoke, but it was thee Sweet sister, for even now thy curved lips Tremble as if the sound were dying there Not dead

PANTHEA: Alas it was Prometheus spoke Within me, and I know it must be so I mixed my own weak nature with his love ...And my thoughts Are like the many forests of a vale Through which the might of whirlwind and of rain Had pa.s.sed--they rest rest through the evening light As mine do now in thy beloved smile.

CANCELLED STAGE DIRECTIONS.

(following 1._221.) [THE SOUND BENEATH AS OF EARTHQUAKE AND THE DRIVING OF WHIRLWINDS--THE RAVINE IS SPLIT, AND THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER RISES, SURROUNDED BY HEAVY CLOUDS WHICH DART FORTH LIGHTNING.]

(following 1._520.) [ENTER RUSHING BY GROUPS OF HORRIBLE FORMS; THEY SPEAK AS THEY Pa.s.s IN CHORUS.]

(following 1._552.) [A SHADOW Pa.s.sES OVER THE SCENE, AND A PIERCING SHRIEK IS HEARD.]

NOTE ON "PROMETHEUS UNBOUND", BY MRS. Sh.e.l.lEY.

On the 12th of March, 1818, Sh.e.l.ley quitted England, never to return.

His princ.i.p.al motive was the hope that his health would be improved by a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. In December, 1817, he had written from Marlow to a friend, saying:

'My health has been materially worse. My feelings at intervals are of a deadly and torpid kind, or awakened to such a state of unnatural and keen excitement that, only to instance the organ of sight, I find the very blades of gra.s.s and the boughs of distant trees present themselves to me with microscopic distinctness. Towards evening I sink into a state of lethargy and inanimation, and often remain for hours on the sofa between sleep and waking, a prey to the most painful irritability of thought. Such, with little intermission, is my condition. The hours devoted to study are selected with vigilant caution from among these periods of endurance. It is not for this that I think of travelling to Italy, even if I knew that Italy would relieve me. But I have experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and although at present it has pa.s.sed away without any considerable vestige of its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently shows the true nature of my disease to be consumptive. It is to my advantage that this malady is in its nature slow, and, if one is sufficiently alive to its advances, is susceptible of cure from a warm climate. In the event of its a.s.suming any decided shape, IT WOULD BE MY DUTY to go to Italy without delay. It is not mere health, but life, that I should seek, and that not for my own sake--I feel I am capable of trampling on all such weakness; but for the sake of those to whom my life may be a source of happiness, utility, security, and honour, and to some of whom my death might be all that is the reverse.'

In almost every respect his journey to Italy was advantageous. He left behind friends to whom he was attached; but cares of a thousand kinds, many springing from his lavish generosity, crowded round him in his native country, and, except the society of one or two friends, he had no compensation. The climate caused him to consume half his existence in helpless suffering. His dearest pleasure, the free enjoyment of the scenes of Nature, was marred by the same circ.u.mstance.

He went direct to Italy, avoiding even Paris, and did not make any pause till he arrived at Milan. The first aspect of Italy enchanted Sh.e.l.ley; it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and brighter heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long descriptive letters during the first year of his residence in Italy, which, as compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show how truly he appreciated and studied the wonders of Nature and Art in that divine land.

The poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power and with more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He meditated three subjects as the groundwork for lyrical dramas. One was the story of Ta.s.so; of this a slight fragment of a song of Ta.s.so remains. The other was one founded on the Book of Job, which he never abandoned in idea, but of which no trace remains among his papers. The third was the "Prometheus Unbound". The Greek tragedians were now his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of Aeschylus filled him with wonder and delight. The father of Greek tragedy does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and tenderness of Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is often elevated above human vicissitudes into the mighty pa.s.sions and throes of G.o.ds and demi-G.o.ds: such fascinated the abstract imagination of Sh.e.l.ley.

We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that interval. Thence we pa.s.sed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither we returned early in March, 1819. During all this time Sh.e.l.ley meditated the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other poems were composed during this interval, and while at the Bagni di Lucca he translated Plato's "Symposium". But, though he diversified his studies, his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at Rome, during a bright and beautiful Spring, he gave up his whole time to the composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he mentions in his preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of Caracalla. These are little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He describes them in a letter, with that poetry and delicacy and truth of description which render his narrated impressions of scenery of unequalled beauty and interest.

At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several months after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition.

The prominent feature of Sh.e.l.ley's theory of the destiny of the human species was that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of Christianity: G.o.d made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall,

'Brought death into the world and all our woe.'

Sh.e.l.ley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these Notes to notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of the creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he loved best to dwell on was the image of One warring with the Evil Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all--even the good, who were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a victim full of fort.i.tude and hope and the spirit of triumph emanating from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good. Such he had depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim of tyrants. He now took a more idealized image of the same subject. He followed certain cla.s.sical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good principle, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the regenerator, who, unable to bring mankind back to primitive innocence, used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind, beyond the state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which they are virtuous through wisdom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the t.i.tan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to devour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven portending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known only to Prometheus; and the G.o.d offered freedom from torture on condition of its being communicated to him. According to the mythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture, and set him free; and Thetis was married to Peleus, the father of Achilles.

Sh.e.l.ley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar views.

The son greater than his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and Thetis, was to dethrone Evil, and bring back a happier reign than that of Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures centuries of torture; till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the real event, but darkly guessing that some great good to himself will flow, espouses Thetis. At the moment, the Primal Power of the world drives him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the person of Hercules, liberates Humanity, typified in Prometheus, from the tortures generated by evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the Oceanides, is the wife of Prometheus--she was, according to other mythological interpretations, the same as Venus and Nature. When the benefactor of mankind is liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her prime, and is united to her husband, the emblem of the human race, in perfect and happy union. In the Fourth Act, the Poet gives further scope to his imagination, and idealizes the forms of creation--such as we know them, instead of such as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal Earth, the mighty parent, is superseded by the Spirit of the Earth, the guide of our planet through the realms of sky; while his fair and weaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss from the annihilation of Evil in the superior sphere.

Sh.e.l.ley develops, more particularly in the lyrics of this drama, his abstruse and imaginative theories with regard to the Creation. It requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are far from vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical essays on the nature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered fragments of observations and remarks alone remain. He considered these philosophical views of Mind and Nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry.

More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible imagery. Sh.e.l.ley loved to idealize the real--to gift the mechanism of the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also on the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind.

Sophocles was his great master in this species of imagery.

I find in one of his ma.n.u.script books some remarks on a line in the "Oedipus Tyrannus", which show at once the critical subtlety of Sh.e.l.ley's mind, and explain his apprehension of those 'minute and remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or the living beings which surround us,' which he p.r.o.nounces, in the letter quoted in the note to the "Revolt of Islam", to comprehend all that is sublime in man.

'In the Greek Shakespeare, Sophocles, we find the image,