Percy Bysshe Shelley - Delphi Poets Series Read online

  The sins of all the world; He shall arise

  In an unnoticed corner of the earth,

  And there shall die upon a cross, and purge

  The universal crime; so that the few

  On whom My grace descends, those who are marked 140

  As vessels to the honour of their God,

  May credit this strange sacrifice, and save

  Their souls alive: millions shall live and die,

  Who ne’er shall call upon their Saviour’s name,

  But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave. 145

  Thousands shall deem it an old woman’s tale,

  Such as the nurses frighten babes withal:

  These in a gulf of anguish and of flame

  Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,

  Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow, 150

  Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,

  My honour, and the justice of their doom.

  What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts

  Of purity, with radiant genius bright,

  Or lit with human reason’s earthly ray? 155

  Many are called, but few will I elect.

  Do thou My bidding, Moses!’

  Even the murderer’s cheek

  Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips

  Scarce faintly uttered—’O almighty One,

  I tremble and obey!’ 160

  ‘O Spirit! centuries have set their seal

  On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,

  Since the Incarnate came: humbly He came,

  Veiling His horrible Godhead in the shape

  Of man, scorned by the world, His name unheard, 165

  Save by the rabble of His native town,

  Even as a parish demagogue. He led

  The crowd; He taught them justice, truth, and peace,

  In semblance; but He lit within their souls

  The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword 170

  He brought on earth to satiate with the blood

  Of truth and freedom His malignant soul.

  At length His mortal frame was led to death.

  I stood beside Him: on the torturing cross

  No pain assailed His unterrestrial sense; 175

  And yet He groaned. Indignantly I summed

  The massacres and miseries which His name

  Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried,

  “Go! Go!” in mockery.

  A smile of godlike malice reillumed 180

  His fading lineaments.—”I go,” He cried,

  “But thou shalt wander o’er the unquiet earth

  Eternally.” — The dampness of the grave

  Bathed my imperishable front. I fell,

  And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil. 185

  When I awoke Hell burned within my brain,

  Which staggered on its seat; for all around

  The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,

  Even as the Almighty’s ire arrested them,

  And in their various attitudes of death 190

  My murdered children’s mute and eyeless skulls

  Glared ghastily upon me.

  But my soul,

  From sight and sense of the polluting woe

  Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer

  Hell’s freedom to the servitude of Heaven. 195

  Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began

  My lonely and unending pilgrimage,

  Resolved to wage unweariable war

  With my almighty Tyrant, and to hurl

  Defiance at His impotence to harm 200

  Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand

  That barred my passage to the peaceful grave

  Has crushed the earth to misery, and given

  Its empire to the chosen of His slaves.

  These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn 205

  Of weak, unstable and precarious power,

  Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;

  So, when they turned but from the massacre

  Of unoffending infidels, to quench

  Their thirst for ruin in the very blood 210

  That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal

  Froze every human feeling, as the wife

  Sheathed in her husband’s heart the sacred steel,

  Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;

  And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood 215

  Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,

  Scarce satiable by fate’s last death-draught, waged,

  Drunk from the winepress of the Almighty’s wrath;

  Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,

  Pointed to victory! When the fray was done, 220

  No remnant of the exterminated faith

  Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,

  With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,

  That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.

  ‘Yes! I have seen God’s worshippers unsheathe 225

  The sword of His revenge, when grace descended,

  Confirming all unnatural impulses,

  To sanctify their desolating deeds;

  And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross

  O’er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun 230

  On showers of gore from the upflashing steel

  Of safe assassination, and all crime

  Made stingless by the Spirits of the Lord,

  And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.

  ‘Spirit, no year of my eventful being 235

  Has passed unstained by crime and misery,

  Which flows from God’s own faith. I’ve marked His slaves

  With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile

  The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red

  With murder, feign to stretch the other out 240

  For brotherhood and peace; and that they now

  Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds

  Are marked with all the narrowness and crime

  That Freedom’s young arm dare not yet chastise,

  Reason may claim our gratitude, who now 245

  Establishing the imperishable throne

  Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain

  The unprevailing malice of my Foe,

  Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,

  Adds impotent eternities to pain, 250

  Whilst keenest disappointment racks His breast

  To see the smiles of peace around them play,

  To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.

  ‘Thus have I stood, — through a wild waste of years

  Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony, 255

  Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,

  Mocking my powerless Tyrant’s horrible curse

  With stubborn and unalterable will,

  Even as a giant oak, which Heaven’s fierce flame

  Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand 260

  A monument of fadeless ruin there;

  Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves

  The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,

  As in the sunlight’s calm it spreads

  Its worn and withered arms on high 265

  To meet the quiet of a summer’s noon.’

  The Fairy waved her wand:

  Ahasuerus fled

  Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,

  That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove, 270

  Flee from the morning beam:

  The matter of which dreams are made

  Not more endowed with actual life

  Than this phantasmal portraiture

  Of wandering human thought. 275

  8.

  THE FAIRY:

  ‘The Present and the Past thou hast beheld:

  It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn

  The secrets of the Future. — Time!

  U
nfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,

  Render thou up thy half-devoured babes, 5

  And from the cradles of eternity,

  Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep

  By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,

  Tear thou that gloomy shroud. — Spirit, behold

  Thy glorious destiny!’ 10

  Joy to the Spirit came.

  Through the wide rent in Time’s eternal veil,

  Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear:

  Earth was no longer Hell;

  Love, freedom, health, had given 15

  Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime,

  And all its pulses beat

  Symphonious to the planetary spheres:

  Then dulcet music swelled

  Concordant with the life-strings of the soul; 20

  It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,

  Catching new life from transitory death, —

  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, 25

  And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits:

  Was the pure stream of feeling

  That sprung from these sweet notes,

  And o’er the Spirit’s human sympathies

  With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed. 30

  Joy to the Spirit came, —

  Such joy as when a lover sees

  The chosen of his soul in happiness,

  And witnesses her peace

  Whose woe to him were bitterer than death, 35

  Sees her unfaded cheek

  Glow mantling in first luxury of health,

  Thrills with her lovely eyes,

  Which like two stars amid the heaving main

  Sparkle through liquid bliss. 40

  Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:

  ‘I will not call the ghost of ages gone

  To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;

  The present now is past,

  And those events that desolate the earth 45

  Have faded from the memory of Time,

  Who dares not give reality to that

  Whose being I annul. To me is given

  The wonders of the human world to keep,

  Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity 50

  Exposes now its treasure; let the sight

  Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.

  O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal

  Where virtue fixes universal peace,

  And midst the ebb and flow of human things, 55

  Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,

  A lighthouse o’er the wild of dreary waves.

  ‘The habitable earth is full of bliss;

  Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled

  By everlasting snowstorms round the poles, 60

  Where matter dared not vegetate or live,

  But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude

  Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;

  And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles

  Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls 65

  Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,

  Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet

  To murmur through the Heaven-breathing groves

  And melodize with man’s blest nature there.

  ‘Those deserts of immeasurable sand, 70

  Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed

  A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,

  Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard’s love

  Broke on the sultry silentness alone,

  Now teem with countless rills and shady woods, 75

  Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;

  And where the startled wilderness beheld

  A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,

  A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs

  The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs, 80

  Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,

  Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,

  Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles

  To see a babe before his mother’s door,

  Sharing his morning’s meal 85

  With the green and golden basilisk

  That comes to lick his feet.

  ‘Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail

  Has seen above the illimitable plain,

  Morning on night, and night on morning rise, 90

  Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread

  Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,

  Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves

  So long have mingled with the gusty wind

  In melancholy loneliness, and swept 95

  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

  Of kindliest human impulses respond. 100

  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,

  Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore, 105

  To meet the kisses of the flow’rets there.

  ‘All things are recreated, and the flame

  Of consentaneous love inspires all life:

  The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck

  To myriads, who still grow beneath her care, 110

  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,

  Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream: 115

  No storms deform the beaming brow of Heaven,

  Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride

  The foliage of the ever-verdant trees;

  But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,

  And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace, 120

  Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,

  Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit

  Reflects its tint, and blushes into love.

  ‘The lion now forgets to thirst for blood:

  There might you see him sporting in the sun 125

  Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed,

  His teeth are harmless, custom’s force has made

  His nature as the nature of a lamb.

  Like passion’s fruit, the nightshade’s tempting bane

  Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows: 130

  All bitterness is past; the cup of joy

  Unmingled mantles to the goblet’s brim,

  And courts the thirsty lips it fled before.

  ‘But chief, ambiguous Man, he that can know

  More misery, and dream more joy than all; 135

  Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast

  To mingle with a loftier instinct there,

  Lending their power to pleasure and to pain,

  Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each;

  Who stands amid the ever-varying world, 140

  The burthen or the glory of the earth;

  He chief perceives the change, his being notes

  The gradual renovation, and defines

  Each movement of its progress on his mind.

  ‘Man, where the gloom of the long polar night 145

  Lowers o’er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,

  Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost

  Basks in the moonlight’s ineffectual glow,

  Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;

  His chilled and narrow energies, his hear
t, 150

  Insensible to courage, truth, or love,

  His stunted stature and imbecile frame,

  Marked him for some abortion of the earth,

  Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around,

  Whose habits and enjoyments were his own: 155

  His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe,

  Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled,

  Apprised him ever of the joyless length

  Which his short being’s wretchedness had reached;

  His death a pang which famine, cold and toil 160

  Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark

  Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought:

  All was inflicted here that Earth’s revenge

  Could wreak on the infringers of her law;

  One curse alone was spared — the name of God. 165

  ‘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 170

  Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,

  Was Man a nobler being; slavery

  Had crushed him to his country’s bloodstained dust;

  Or he was bartered for the fame of power,

  Which all internal impulses destroying, 175

  Makes human will an article of trade;

  Or he was changed with Christians for their gold,

  And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound

  Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work

  Of all-polluting luxury and wealth, 180

  Which doubly visits on the tyrants’ heads

  The long-protracted fulness of their woe;

  Or he was led to legal butchery,

  To turn to worms beneath that burning sun,

  Where kings first leagued against the rights of men, 185

  And priests first traded with the name of God.

  ‘Even where the milder zone afforded Man

  A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,

  Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,

  Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late 190

  Availed to arrest its progress, or create

  That peace which first in bloodless victory waved

  Her snowy standard o’er this favoured clime:

  There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,

  The mimic of surrounding misery, 195

  The jackal of ambition’s lion-rage,

  The bloodhound of religion’s hungry zeal.

  ‘Here now the human being stands adorning

  This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;

  Blessed from his birth with all bland impulses, 200

  Which gently in his noble bosom wake

  All kindly passions and all pure desires.

  Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing