The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Part 9

They raised me to the platform of the pile, _1225 That column's dizzy height:--the grate of bra.s.s Through which they thrust me, open stood the while, As to its ponderous and suspended ma.s.s, With chains which eat into the flesh, alas!

With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound: _1230 The grate, as they departed to repa.s.s, With horrid clangour fell, and the far sound Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom was drowned.

15.

The noon was calm and bright:--around that column The overhanging sky and circling sea _1235 Spread forth in silentness profound and solemn The darkness of brief frenzy cast on me, So that I knew not my own misery: The islands and the mountains in the day Like clouds reposed afar; and I could see _1240 The town among the woods below that lay, And the dark rocks which bound the bright and gla.s.sy bay.

16.

It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone Swayed in the air:--so bright, that noon did breed _1245 No shadow in the sky beside mine own-- Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone.

Below, the smoke of roofs involved in flame Rested like night, all else was clearly shown In that broad glare; yet sound to me none came, _1250 But of the living blood that ran within my frame.

17.

The peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon!

A ship was lying on the sunny main, Its sails were flagging in the breathless noon-- Its shadow lay beyond--that sight again _1255 Waked, with its presence, in my tranced brain The stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold: I knew that ship bore Cythna o'er the plain Of waters, to her blighting slavery sold, And watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold. _1260

18.

I watched until the shades of evening wrapped Earth like an exhalation--then the bark Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapped.

It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark: Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark _1265 Its path no more!--I sought to close mine eyes, But like the b.a.l.l.s, their lids were stiff and stark; I would have risen, but ere that I could rise, My parched skin was split with piercing agonies.

19.

I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever _1270 Its adamantine links, that I might die: O Liberty! forgive the base endeavour, Forgive me, if, reserved for victory, The Champion of thy faith e'er sought to fly.-- That starry night, with its clear silence, sent _1275 Tameless resolve which laughed at misery Into my soul--linked remembrance lent To that such power, to me such a severe content.

20.

To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair And die, I questioned not; nor, though the Sun _1280 Its shafts of agony kindling through the air Moved over me, nor though in evening dun, Or when the stars their visible courses run, Or morning, the wide universe was spread In dreary calmness round me, did I shun _1285 Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead From one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison shed.

21.

Two days thus pa.s.sed--I neither raved nor died-- Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion's nest Built in mine entrails; I had spurned aside _1290 The water-vessel, while despair possessed My thoughts, and now no drop remained! The uprest Of the third sun brought hunger--but the crust Which had been left, was to my craving breast Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust, _1295 And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.

22.

My brain began to fail when the fourth morn Burst o'er the golden isles--a fearful sleep, Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep _1300 With whirlwind swiftness--a fall far and deep,-- A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness-- These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep Their watch in some dim charnel's loneliness, A sh.o.r.eless sea, a sky sunless and planetless! _1305

23.

The forms which peopled this terrific trance I well remember--like a choir of devils, Around me they involved a giddy dance; Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels, _1310 Foul, ceaseless shadows:--thought could not divide The actual world from these entangling evils, Which so bemocked themselves, that I descried All shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied.

24.

The sense of day and night, of false and true, _1315 Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst That darkness--one, as since that hour I knew, Was not a phantom of the realms accursed, Where then my spirit dwelt--but of the first I know not yet, was it a dream or no. _1320 But both, though not distincter, were immersed In hues which, when through memory's waste they flow, Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now.

25.

Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven Who brought me thither four stiff corpses bare, _1325 And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven Hung them on high by the entangled hair; Swarthy were three--the fourth was very fair; As they retired, the golden moon upsprung, And eagerly, out in the giddy air, _1330 Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.

26.

A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue, The dwelling of the many-coloured worm, Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew _1335 To my dry lips--what radiance did inform Those h.o.r.n.y eyes? whose was that withered form?

Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna's ghost Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm Within my teeth!--a whirlwind keen as frost _1340 Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.

27.

Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane Arose, and bore me in its dark career Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane On the verge of formless s.p.a.ce--it languished there, _1345 And dying, left a silence lone and drear, More horrible than famine:--in the deep The shape of an old man did then appear, Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep. _1350

28.

And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw That column, and those corpses, and the moon, And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon Of senseless death would be accorded soon;-- _1355 When from that stony gloom a voice arose, Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose, And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.

29.

He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled; _1360 As they were loosened by that Hermit old, Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled, To answer those kind looks; he did enfold His giant arms around me, to uphold My wretched frame; my scorched limbs he wound _1365 In linen moist and balmy, and as cold As dew to drooping leaves;--the chain, with sound Like earthquake, through the chasm of that steep stair did bound,

30.

As, lifting me, it fell!--What next I heard, Were billows leaping on the harbour-bar, _1370 And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirred My hair;--I looked abroad, and saw a star Shining beside a sail, and distant far That mountain and its column, the known mark Of those who in the wide deep wandering are, _1375 So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark, In trance had lain me thus within a fiendish bark.

31.

For now indeed, over the salt sea-billow I sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow _1380 For my light head was hollowed in his lap, And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap, Fearing it was a fiend: at last, he bent O'er me his aged face; as if to snap Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent, _1385 And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.

32.

A soft and healing potion to my lips At intervals he raised--now looked on high, To mark if yet the starry giant dips His zone in the dim sea--now cheeringly, _1390 Though he said little, did he speak to me.

'It is a friend beside thee--take good cheer, Poor victim, thou art now at liberty!'

I joyed as those a human tone to hear, Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year. _1395

33.

A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams; Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams Of morn descended on the ocean-streams, _1400 And still that aged man, so grand and mild, Tended me, even as some sick mother seems To hang in hope over a dying child, Till in the azure East darkness again was piled.

34.

And then the night-wind steaming from the sh.o.r.e, _1405 Sent odours dying sweet across the sea, And the swift boat the little waves which bore, Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly; Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove, _1410 As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee On sidelong wing, into a silent cove, Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.

NOTES: _1223 torches' editions 1818, 1839.

_1385 bent]meant cj. J. Nettleship.

CANTO 4.

1.

The old man took the oars, and soon the bark Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone; _1415 It was a crumbling heap, whose portal dark With blooming ivy-trails was overgrown; Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown, And rarest sea-sh.e.l.ls, which the eternal flood, Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown _1420 Within the walls of that gray tower, which stood A changeling of man's art nursed amid Nature's brood.

2.

When the old man his boat had anch.o.r.ed, He wound me in his arms with tender care, And very few, but kindly words he said, _1425 And bore me through the tower adown a stair, Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear For many a year had fallen.--We came at last To a small chamber, which with mosses rare Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed _1430 Upon a couch of gra.s.s and oak-leaves interlaced.

3.

The moon was darting through the lattices Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day-- So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze, The old man opened them; the moonlight lay _1435 Upon a lake whose waters wove their play Even to the threshold of that lonely home: Within was seen in the dim wavering ray The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become. _1440

4.

The rock-built barrier of the sea was past,-- And I was on the margin of a lake, A lonely lake, amid the forests vast And snowy mountains:--did my spirit wake From sleep as many-coloured as the snake _1445 That girds eternity? in life and truth, Might not my heart its cravings ever slake?

Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth, And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth?

5.

Thus madness came again,--a milder madness, _1450 Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flow With supernatural shades of clinging sadness; That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe, By my sick couch was busy to and fro, Like a strong spirit ministrant of good: _1455 When I was healed, he led me forth to show The wonders of his sylvan solitude, And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.

6.

He knew his soothing words to weave with skill From all my madness told; like mine own heart, _1460 Of Cythna would he question me, until That thrilling name had ceased to make me start, From his familiar lips--it was not art, Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke-- When mid soft looks of pity, there would dart _1465 A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.

7.

Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled, My thoughts their due array did re-a.s.sume Through the enchantments of that Hermit old; _1470 Then I bethought me of the glorious doom Of those who sternly struggle to relume The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot, And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought-- _1475 That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.

8.

That h.o.a.ry man had spent his livelong age In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page, When they are gone into the senseless damp _1480 Of graves;--his spirit thus became a lamp Of splendour, like to those on which it fed; Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp, Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led, And all the ways of men among mankind he read. _1485