Percy Bysshe Shelley - Delphi Poets Series Read online

  Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal

  Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise 205

  In time-destroying infiniteness, gift

  With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks

  The unprevailing hoariness of age,

  And man, once fleeting o’er the transient scene

  Swift as an unremembered vision, stands 210

  Immortal upon earth: no longer now

  He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,

  And horribly devours his mangled flesh,

  Which, still avenging Nature’s broken law,

  Kindled all putrid humours in his frame, 215

  All evil passions, and all vain belief,

  Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind,

  The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.

  No longer now the winged habitants,

  That in the woods their sweet lives sing away, — 220

  Flee from the form of man; but gather round,

  And prune their sunny feathers on the hands

  Which little children stretch in friendly sport

  Towards these dreadless partners of their play.

  All things are void of terror: Man has lost 225

  His terrible prerogative, and stands

  An equal amidst equals: happiness

  And science dawn though late upon the earth;

  Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;

  Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here, 230

  Reason and passion cease to combat there;

  Whilst each unfettered o’er the earth extend

  Their all-subduing energies, and wield

  The sceptre of a vast dominion there;

  Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends 235

  Its force to the omnipotence of mind,

  Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth

  To decorate its Paradise of peace.’

  9.

  ‘O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!

  To which those restless souls that ceaselessly

  Throng through the human universe, aspire;

  Thou consummation of all mortal hope!

  Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will! 5

  Whose rays, diffused throughout all space 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,

  Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come: 10

  O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!

  ‘Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,

  And dim forebodings of thy loveliness

  Haunting the human heart, have there entwined

  Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss 15

  Where friends and lovers meet to part no more.

  Thou art the end of all desire and will,

  The product of all action; and the souls

  That by the paths of an aspiring change

  Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace, 20

  There rest from the eternity of toil

  That framed the fabric of thy perfectness.

  ‘Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear;

  That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride,

  So long had ruled the world, that nations fell 25

  Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,

  That for millenniums had withstood the tide

  Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand

  Across that desert where their stones survived

  The name of him whose pride had heaped them there. 30

  Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,

  Was but the mushroom of a summer day,

  That his light-winged footstep pressed to dust:

  Time was the king of earth: all things gave way

  Before him, but the fixed and virtuous will, 35

  The sacred sympathies of soul and sense,

  That mocked his fury and prepared his fall.

  ‘Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love;

  Long lay the clouds of darkness o’er the scene,

  Till from its native Heaven they rolled away: 40

  First, Crime triumphant o’er all hope careered

  Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong;

  Whilst Falsehood, tricked in Virtue’s attributes,

  Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe,

  Till done by her own venomous sting to death, 45

  She left the moral world without a law,

  No longer fettering Passion’s fearless wing, —

  Nor searing Reason with the brand of God.

  Then steadily the happy ferment worked;

  Reason was free; and wild though Passion went 50

  Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads,

  Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers,

  Yet like the bee returning to her queen,

  She bound the sweetest on her sister’s brow,

  Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child, 55

  No longer trembling at the broken rod.

  ‘Mild was the slow necessity of death:

  The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp,

  Without a groan, almost without a fear,

  Calm as a voyager to some distant land, 60

  And full of wonder, full of hope as he.

  The deadly germs of languor and disease

  Died in the human frame, and Purity

  Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers.

  How vigorous then the athletic form of age! 65

  How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!

  Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care,

  Had stamped the seal of gray deformity

  On all the mingling lineaments of time.

  How lovely the intrepid front of youth! 70

  Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace; —

  Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,

  And elevated will, that journeyed on

  Through life’s phantasmal scene in fearlessness,

  With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand. 75

  ‘Then, that sweet bondage which is Freedom’s self,

  And rivets with sensation’s softest tie

  The kindred sympathies of human souls,

  Needed no fetters of tyrannic law:

  Those delicate and timid impulses 80

  In Nature’s primal modesty arose,

  And with undoubted confidence disclosed

  The growing longings of its dawning love,

  Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity,

  That virtue of the cheaply virtuous, 85

  Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost.

  No longer prostitution’s venomed bane

  Poisoned the springs of happiness and life;

  Woman and man, in confidence and love,

  Equal and free and pure together trod 90

  The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more

  Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim’s feet.

  ‘Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride

  The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked

  Famine’s faint groan, and Penury’s silent tear, 95

  A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw

  Year after year their stones upon the field,

  Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves

  Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower

  Usurped the royal ensign’s grandeur, shook 100

  In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower

  And whispered strange tales in the Whirlwind’s ear.

  ‘Low through the lone cathedral’s roofless aisles

  The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung:

  It were a sight of awfulness to see 105

  The works of faith and slavery, so vast,

  So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal!
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br />   Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall.

  A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death

  To-day, the breathing marble glows above 110

  To decorate its memory, and tongues

  Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms

  In silence and in darkness seize their prey.

  ‘Within the massy prison’s mouldering courts,

  Fearless and free the ruddy children played, 115

  Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows

  With the green ivy and the red wallflower,

  That mock the dungeon’s unavailing gloom;

  The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,

  There rusted amid heaps of broken stone 120

  That mingled 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, then freely shone

  On the pure smiles of infant playfulness: 125

  No more the shuddering voice of hoarse Despair

  Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes

  Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds

  And merriment were resonant around.

  ‘These ruins soon left not a wreck behind: 130

  Their elements, wide scattered o’er the globe,

  To happier shapes were moulded, and became

  Ministrant to all blissful impulses:

  Thus human things were perfected, and earth,

  Even as a child beneath its mother’s love, 135

  Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew

  Fairer and nobler with each passing year.

  ‘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: 140

  Thy lore is learned. Earth’s wonders are thine own,

  With all the fear and all the hope they bring.

  My spells are passed: the present now recurs.

  Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains

  Yet unsubdued by man’s reclaiming hand. 145

  ‘Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,

  Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue

  The gradual paths of an aspiring change:

  For birth and life and death, and that strange state

  Before the naked soul has found its home, 150

  All tend to perfect happiness, and urge

  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 spirit to the sense 155

  Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape

  New modes of passion to its frame may lend;

  Life is its state of action, and the store

  Of all events is aggregated there

  That variegate the eternal universe; 160

  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:

  Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk, 165

  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,

  Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile. 170

  ‘Fear not then, Spirit, Death’s disrobing hand,

  So welcome when the tyrant is awake,

  So welcome when the bigot’s hell-torch burns;

  ‘Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,

  The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep. 175

  Death is no foe to Virtue: earth has seen

  Love’s brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,

  Mingling with Freedom’s fadeless laurels there,

  And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.

  Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene 180

  Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?

  Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still,

  When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led,

  Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death?

  And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, 185

  Listening supinely to a bigot’s creed,

  Or tamely crouching to the tyrant’s rod,

  Whose iron thongs are red with human gore?

  Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will

  Is destined an eternal war to wage 190

  With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot

  The germs of misery from the human heart.

  Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe

  The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,

  Whose impotence an easy pardon gains, 195

  Watching its wanderings as a friend’s disease:

  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, 200

  Free from heart-withering custom’s cold control,

  Of passion 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 205

  Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,

  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 210

  Light, life and rapture from thy smile.’

  The Fairy waves her wand of charm.

  Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,

  That rolled beside the battlement,

  Bending her beamy eyes in thankful ness. 215

  Again the enchanted steeds were yoked,

  Again the burning wheels inflame

  The steep descent of Heaven’s untrodden way.

  Fast and far the chariot flew:

  The vast and fiery globes that rolled 220

  Around the Fairy’s palace-gate

  Lessened by slow degrees and soon appeared

  Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs

  That there attendant on the solar power

  With borrowed light pursued their narrower way. 225

  Earth floated then below:

  The chariot paused a moment there;

  The Spirit then descended:

  The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,

  Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done, 230

  Unfurled their pinions to the winds of Heaven.

  The Body and the Soul united then,

  A gentle start convulsed Ianthe’s frame:

  Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;

  Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained: 235

  She looked around in wonder and beheld

  Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,

  Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,

  And the bright beaming stars

  That through the casement shone. 240

  NOTES ON QUEEN MAB.

  SHELLEY’S NOTES.

  1. 242, 243: —

  The sun’s unclouded orb

  Rolled through the black concave.

  Beyond our atmosphere the sun would appear a rayless orb of fire in the midst of a black concave. The equal diffusion of its light on earth is owing to the refraction of the rays by the atmosphere, and their reflection from other bodies. Light consists either of vibrations propagated through a subtle medium, or of numerous minute particles repelled in all directions from the luminous body. Its velocity gre
atly exceeds that of any substance with which we are acquainted: observations on the eclipses of Jupiter’s satellites have demonstrated that light takes up no more than 8 minutes 7 seconds in passing from the sun to the earth, a distance of 95,000,000 miles. — Some idea may be gained of the immense distance of the fixed stars when it is computed that many years would elapse before light could reach this earth from the nearest of them; yet in one year light travels 5,422,400,000,000 miles, which is a distance 5,707,600 times greater than that of the sun from the earth.

  1. 252, 253: —

  Whilst round the chariot’s way

  Innumerable systems rolled.

  The plurality of worlds, — the indefinite immensity of the universe, is a most awful subject of contemplation. He who rightly feels its mystery and grandeur is in no danger of seduction from the falsehoods of religious systems, or of deifying the principle of the universe. It is impossible to believe that the Spirit that pervades this infinite machine begat a son upon the body of a Jewish woman; or is angered at the consequences of that necessity, which is a synonym of itself. All that miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Intercessor, with the childish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is irreconcilable with the knowledge of the stars. The works of His fingers have borne witness against Him.

  The nearest of the fixed stars is inconceivably distant from the earth, and they are probably proportionably distant from each other. By a calculation of the velocity of light, Sirius is supposed to be at least 54,224,000,000,000 miles from the earth. (See Nicholson’s “Encyclopedia”, article Light.) That which appears only like a thin and silvery cloud streaking the heaven is in effect composed of innumerable clusters of suns, each shining with its own light, and illuminating numbers of planets that revolve around them. Millions and millions of suns are ranged around us, all attended by innumerable worlds, yet calm, regular, and harmonious, all keeping the paths of immutable necessity.

  4. 178, 179: —

  These are the hired bravos who defend

  The tyrant’s throne.

  To employ murder as a means of justice is an idea which a man of an enlightened mind will not dwell upon with pleasure. To march forth in rank and file, and all the pomp of streamers and trumpets, for the purpose of shooting at our fellow-men as a mark; to inflict upon them all the variety of wound and anguish; to leave them weltering in their blood; to wander over the field of desolation, and count the number of the dying and the dead, — are employments which in thesis we may maintain to be necessary, but which no good man will contemplate with gratulation and delight. A battle we suppose is won: — thus truth is established, thus the cause of justice is confirmed! It surely requires no common sagacity to discern the connexion between this immense heap of calamities and the assertion of truth or the maintenance of justice.