Percy Bysshe Shelley - Delphi Poets Series Read online

  ‘Kings, and ministers of state, the real authors of the calamity, sit unmolested in their cabinet, while those against whom the fury of the storm is directed are, for the most part, persons who have been trepanned into the service, or who are dragged unwillingly from their peaceful homes into the field of battle. A soldier is a man whose business it is to kill those who never offended him, and who are the innocent martyrs of other men’s iniquities. Whatever may become of the abstract question of the justifiableness of war, it seems impossible that the soldier should not be a depraved and unnatural being.

  To these more serious and momentous considerations it may be proper to add a recollection of the ridiculousness of the military character. Its first constituent is obedience: a soldier is, of all descriptions of men, the most completely a machine; yet his profession inevitably teaches him something of dogmatism, swaggering, and sell-consequence: he is like the puppet of a showman, who, at the very time he is made to strut and swell and display the most farcical airs, we perfectly know cannot assume the most insignificant gesture, advance either to the right or the left, but as he is moved by his exhibitor.’ — Godwin’s “Enquirer”, Essay 5.

  I will here subjoin a little poem, so strongly expressive of my abhorrence of despotism and falsehood, that I fear lest it never again may be depictured so vividly. This opportunity is perhaps the only one that ever will occur of rescuing it from oblivion.

  FALSEHOOD AND VICE.

  A DIALOGUE.

  Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones

  To hear a famished nation’s groans,

  And hugged the wealth wrung from the woe

  That makes its eyes and veins o’erflow, —

  Those thrones, high built upon the heaps

  Of bones where frenzied Famine sleeps,

  Where Slavery wields her scourge of iron,

  Red with mankind’s unheeded gore,

  And War’s mad fiends the scene environ,

  Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar,

  There Vice and Falsehood took their stand,

  High raised above the unhappy land.

  FALSEHOOD:

  Brother! arise from the dainty fare,

  Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow;

  A finer feast for thy hungry ear

  Is the news that I bring of human woe.

  VICE:

  And, secret one, what hast thou done,

  To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me?

  I, whose career, through the blasted year,

  Has been tracked by despair and agony.

  FALSEHOOD:

  What have I done! — I have torn the robe

  From baby Truth’s unsheltered form,

  And round the desolated globe

  Borne safely the bewildering charm:

  My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor

  Have bound the fearless innocent,

  And streams of fertilizing gore

  Flow from her bosom’s hideous rent,

  Which this unfailing dagger gave…

  I dread that blood! — no more — this day

  Is ours, though her eternal ray

  Must shine upon our grave.

  Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given

  To thee the robe I stole from Heaven,

  Thy shape of ugliness and fear

  Had never gained admission here.

  VICE:

  And know, that had I disdained to toil,

  But sate in my loathsome cave the while,

  And ne’er to these hateful sons of Heaven,

  GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, given;

  Hadst thou with all thine art essayed

  One of thy games then to have played,

  With all thine overweening boast,

  Falsehood! I tell thee thou hadst lost! —

  Yet wherefore this dispute? — we tend,

  Fraternal, to one common end;

  In this cold grave beneath my feet,

  Will our hopes, our fears, and our labours, meet.

  FALSEHOOD:

  I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth:

  She smothered Reason’s babes in their birth;

  But dreaded their mother’s eye severe, —

  So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear,

  And loosed her bloodhounds from the den….

  They started from dreams of slaughtered men,

  And, by the light of her poison eye,

  Did her work o’er the wide earth frightfully:

  The dreadful stench of her torches’ flare,

  Fed with human fat, polluted the air:

  The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries

  Of the many-mingling miseries,

  As on she trod, ascended high

  And trumpeted my victory! —

  Brother, tell what thou hast done.

  VICE:

  I have extinguished the noonday sun,

  In the carnage-smoke of battles won:

  Famine, Murder, Hell and Power

  Were glutted in that glorious hour

  Which searchless fate had stamped for me

  With the seal of her security…

  For the bloated wretch on yonder throne

  Commanded the bloody fray to rise.

  Like me he joyed at the stifled moan

  Wrung from a nation’s miseries;

  While the snakes, whose slime even him DEFILED,

  In ecstasies of malice smiled:

  They thought ‘twas theirs, — but mine the deed!

  Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed —

  Ten thousand victims madly bleed.

  They dream that tyrants goad them there

  With poisonous war to taint the air:

  These tyrants, on their beds of thorn,

  Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame,

  And with their gains to lift my name

  Restless they plan from night to morn:

  I — I do all; without my aid

  Thy daughter, that relentless maid,

  Could never o’er a death-bed urge

  The fury of her venomed scourge.

  FALSEHOOD:

  Brother, well: — the world is ours;

  And whether thou or I have won,

  The pestilence expectant lowers

  On all beneath yon blasted sun.

  Our joys, our toils, our honours meet

  In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet:

  A short-lived hope, unceasing care,

  Some heartless scraps of godly prayer,

  A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep

  Ere gapes the grave’s unclosing deep,

  A tyrant’s dream, a coward’s start,

  The ice that clings to a priestly heart,

  A judge’s frown, a courtier’s smile,

  Make the great whole for which we toil;

  And, brother, whether thou or I

  Have done the work of misery,

  It little boots: thy toil and pain,

  Without my aid, were more than vain;

  And but for thee I ne’er had sate

  The guardian of Heaven’s palace gate.

  5. 1, 2: —

  Thus do the generations of the earth

  Go to the grave, and issue from the womb.

  ‘One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits. All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.’ — Ecclesiastes, chapter 1 verses 4-7.

  5. 4-6.

  Even as the leaves

  Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year

  Has scattered on the forest soil.

  Oin per phullon genee, toiede kai andron.

  Phulla ta men t’ anemos chamadi
s cheei, alla de th’ ule

  Telethoosa phuei, earos d’ epigignetai ore.

  Os andron genee, e men phuei, e d’ apolegei.

  Iliad Z, line 146.

  5. 58: — The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings.

  Suave mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis

  E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem;

  Non quia vexari quemquam est iucunda voluptas,

  Sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.

  Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri

  Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli;

  Sed nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere

  Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,

  Despicere undo queas alios, passimque videre

  Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae;

  Certare ingenio; contendere nobilitate;

  Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore

  Ad summas emergere opes, rerumque potiri.

  O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora caeca!

  Lucret. lib. 2.

  5. 93, 94.

  And statesmen boast

  Of wealth!

  There is no real wealth but the labour of man. Were the mountains of gold and the valleys of silver, the world would not be one grain of corn the richer; no one comfort would be added to the human race. In consequence of our consideration for the precious metals, one man is enabled to heap to himself luxuries at the expense of the necessaries of his neighbour; a system admirably fitted to produce all the varieties of disease and crime, which never fail to characterize the two extremes of opulence and penury. A speculator takes pride to himself as the promoter of his country’s prosperity, who employs a number of hands in the manufacture of articles avowedly destitute of use, or subservient only to the unhallowed cravings of luxury and ostentation. The nobleman, who employs the peasants of his neighbourhood in building his palaces, until ‘jam pauca aratro jugera regiae moles relinquunt,’ flatters himself that he has gained the title of a patriot by yielding to the impulses of vanity. The show and pomp of courts adduce the same apology for its continuance; and many a fete has been given, many a woman has eclipsed her beauty by her dress, to benefit the labouring poor and to encourage trade. Who does not see that this is a remedy which aggravates whilst it palliates the countless diseases of society? The poor are set to labour, — for what? Not the food for which they famish: not the blankets for want of which their babes are frozen by the cold of their miserable hovels: not those comforts of civilization without which civilized man is far more miserable than the meanest savage; oppressed as he is by all its insidious evils, within the daily and taunting prospect of its innumerable benefits assiduously exhibited before him: — no; for the pride of power, for the miserable isolation of pride, for the false pleasures of the hundredth part of society. No greater evidence is afforded of the wide extended and radical mistakes of civilized man than this fact: those arts which are essential to his very being are held in the greatest contempt; employments are lucrative in an inverse ratio to their usefulness (See Rousseau, “De l’Inegalite parmi les Hommes”, note 7.): the jeweller, the toyman, the actor gains fame and wealth by the exercise of his useless and ridiculous art; whilst the cultivator of the earth, he without whom society must cease to subsist, struggles through contempt and penury, and perishes by that famine which but for his unceasing exertions would annihilate the rest of mankind.

  I will not insult common sense by insisting on the doctrine of the natural equality of man. The question is not concerning its desirableness, but its practicability: so far as it is practicable, it is desirable. That state of human society which approaches nearer to an equal partition of its benefits and evils should, caeteris paribus, be preferred: but so long as we conceive that a wanton expenditure of human labour, not for the necessities, not even for the luxuries of the mass of society, but for the egotism and ostentation of a few of its members, is defensible on the ground of public justice, so long we neglect to approximate to the redemption of the human race.

  Labour is required for physical, and leisure for moral improvement: from the former of these advantages the rich, and from the latter the poor, by the inevitable conditions of their respective situations, are precluded. A state which should combine the advantages of both would be subjected to the evils of neither. He that is deficient in firm health, or vigorous intellect, is but half a man: hence it follows that to subject the labouring classes to unnecessary labour is wantonly depriving them of any opportunities of intellectual improvement; and that the rich are heaping up for their own mischief the disease, lassitude, and ennui by which their existence is rendered an intolerable burthen.

  English reformers exclaim against sinecures, — but the true pension list is the rent-roll of the landed proprietors: wealth is a power usurped by the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit. The laws which support this system derive their force from the ignorance and credulity of its victims: they are the result of a conspiracy of the few against the many, who are themselves obliged to purchase this pre-eminence by the loss of all real comfort.

  ‘The commodities that substantially contribute to the subsistence of the human species form a very short catalogue: they demand from us but a slender portion of industry. If these only were produced, and sufficiently produced, the species of man would be continued. If the labour necessarily required to produce them were equitably divided among the poor, and, still more, if it were equitably divided among all, each man’s share of labour would be light, and his portion of leisure would be ample. There was a time when this leisure would have been of small comparative value: it is to be hoped that the time will come when it will be applied to the most important purposes. Those hours which are not required for the production of the necessaries of life may be devoted to the cultivation of the understanding, the enlarging our stock of knowledge, the refining our taste, and thus opening to us new and more exquisite sources of enjoyment.

  …

  ‘It was perhaps necessary that a period of monopoly and oppression should subsist, before a period of cultivated equality could subsist. Savages perhaps would never have been excited to the discovery of truth and the invention of art but by the narrow motives which such a period affords. But surely, after the savage state has ceased, and men have set out in the glorious career of discovery and invention, monopoly and oppression cannot be necessary to prevent them from returning to a state of barbarism.’ — Godwin’s “Enquirer”, Essay 2. See also “Pol. Jus.”, book 8, chapter 2.

  It is a calculation of this admirable author, that all the conveniences of civilized life might be produced, if society would divide the labour equally among its members, by each individual being employed in labour two hours during the day.

  5. 112, 113: —

  or religion Drives his wife raving mad.

  I am acquainted with a lady of considerable accomplishments, and the mother of a numerous family, whom the Christian religion has goaded to incurable insanity. A parallel case is, I believe, within the experience of every physician.

  Nam iam saepe homines patriam, carosquo parentes

  Prodiderunt, vitare Acherusia templa petentes. — Lucretius.

  5. 189: —

  Even love is sold.

  Not even the intercourse of the sexes is exempt from the despotism of positive institution. Law pretends even to govern the indisciplinable wanderings of passion, to put fetters on the clearest deductions of reason, and, by appeals to the will, to subdue the involuntary affections of our nature. Love is inevitably consequent upon the perception of loveliness. Love withers under constraint: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited, where its votaries live in confidence, equality, and unreserve.

  How long then ought the sexual connection to last? what law ought to specify the extent of the grievances which should limit its duration? A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as
they love each other: any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration. How odious an usurpation of the right of private judgement should that law be considered which should make the ties of friendship indissoluble, in spite of the caprices, the inconstancy, the fallibility, and capacity for improvement of the human mind. And by so much would the fetters of love be heavier and more unendurable than those of friendship, as love is more vehement and capricious, more dependent on those delicate peculiarities of imagination, and less capable of reduction to the ostensible merits of the object.

  The state of society in which we exist is a mixture of feudal savageness and imperfect civilization. The narrow and unenlightened morality of the Christian religion is an aggravation of these evils. It is not even until lately that mankind have admitted that happiness is the sole end of the science of ethics, as of all other sciences; and that the fanatical idea of mortifying the flesh for the love of God has been discarded. I have heard, indeed, an ignorant collegian adduce, in favour of Christianity, its hostility to every worldly feeling! (The first Christian emperor made a law by which seduction was punished with death; if the female pleaded her own consent, she also was punished with death; if the parents endeavoured to screen the criminals, they were banished and their estates were confiscated; the slaves who might be accessory were burned alive, or forced to swallow melted lead. The very offspring of an illegal love were involved in the consequences of the sentence. — Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall”, etc., volume 2, page 210. See also, for the hatred of the primitive Christians to love and even marriage, page 269.)

  But if happiness be the object of morality, of all human unions and disunions; if the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the quantity of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce, then the connection of the sexes is so long sacred as it contributes to the comfort of the parties, and is naturally dissolved when its evils are greater than its benefits. There is nothing immoral in this separation. Constancy has nothing virtuous in itself, independently of the pleasure it confers, and partakes of the temporizing spirit of vice in proportion as it endures tamely moral defects of magnitude in the object of its indiscreet choice. Love is free: to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed: such a vow, in both cases, excludes us from all inquiry. The language of the votarist is this: The woman I now love may be infinitely inferior to many others; the creed I now profess may be a mass of errors and absurdities; but I exclude myself from all future information as to the amiability of the one and the truth of the other, resolving blindly, and in spite of conviction, to adhere to them. Is this the language of delicacy and reason? Is the love of such a frigid heart of more worth than its belief?