The Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley: (A Modern Library E-Book) Read online

  The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet’s self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. All else, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting misery and loneliness of the world. Those who love not their fellow-beings live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.

  “The good die first,

  And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust.

  Burn to the socket!’

  December 14, 1815.

  Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.

  The Confessions of St. Augustine.

  EARTH, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood!

  If our great Mother has imbued my soul

  With aught of natural piety to feel

  Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;

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  If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,

  With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,

  And solemn midnight’s tingling silentness;

  If autumn’s hollow sighs in the sere wood,

  And winter robing with pure snow and crowns

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  Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs;

  If spring’s voluptuous pantings when she breathes

  Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;

  If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast

  I consciously have injured, but still loved

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  And cherished these my kindred; then forgive

  This boast, belovèd brethren, and withdraw

  No portion of your wonted favour now!

  Mother of this unfathomable world!

  Favour my solemn song, for I have loved

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  Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched

  Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,

  And my heart ever gazes on the depth

  Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed

  In charnels and on coffins, where black death

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  Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,

  Hoping to still these obstinate questionings

  Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost

  Thy messenger, to render up the tale

  Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,

  When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,

  Like an inspired and desperate alchymist

  Staking his very life on some dark hope,

  Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks

  With my most innocent love, until strange tears

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  Uniting with those breathless kisses, made

  Such magic as compels the charmed night

  To render up thy charge: … and, though ne’er yet

  Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,

  Enough from incommunicable dream,

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  And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought,

  Has shone within me, that serenely now

  And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre

  Suspended in the solitary dome

  Of some mysterious and deserted fane,

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  I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain

  May modulate with murmurs of the air,

  And motions of the forests and the sea,

  And voice of living beings, and woven hymns

  Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.

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  There was a Poet whose untimely tomb

  No human hands with pious reverence reared,

  But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds

  Built o’er his mouldering bones a pyramid

  Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:—

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  A lovely youth,—no mourning maiden decked

  With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,

  The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:—

  Gentle, and brave, and generous,—no lorn bard

  Breathed o’er his dark fate one melodious sigh:

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  He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude.

  Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,

  And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined

  And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.

  The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,

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  And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,

  Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

  By solemn vision, and bright silver dream,

  His infancy was nurtured. Every sight

  And sound from the vast earth and ambient air,

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  Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.

  The fountains of divine philosophy

  Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,

  Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past

  In truth or fable consecrates, he felt

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  And knew. When early youth had passed, he left

  His cold fireside and alienated home

  To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.

  Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness

  Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought

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  With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,

  His rest and food. Nature’s most secret steps

  He like her shadow has pursued, where’er

  The red volcano overcanopies

  Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice

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  With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes

  On black bare pointed islets ever beat

  With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves

  Rugged and dark, winding among the springs

  Of fire and poison, inaccessible

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  To avarice or pride, their starry domes

  Of diamond and of gold expand above

  Numberless and immeasurable halls,

  Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines

  Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.

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  Nor had that scene of ampler majesty

  Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven

  And the green earth lost in his heart its claims

  To love and wonder; he would linger long

  In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,

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  Until the doves and squirrels would partake

  From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,

  Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,

  And the wild antelope, that starts whene’er

  The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend

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  Her timid steps to gaze upon a form

  More graceful than her own.

  His wandering step

  Obedient to high thoughts, has visited
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  The awful ruins of the days of old:

  Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste

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  Where stood Jersualem, the fallen towers

  Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,

  Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe’er of strange

  Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,

  Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx,

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  Dark Æthiopia in her desert hills

  Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,

  Stupendous columns, and wild images

  Of more than man, where marble daemons watch

  The Zodiac’s brazen mystery, and dead men

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  Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,

  He lingered, poring on memorials

  Of the world’s youth, through the long burning day

  Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon

  Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades

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  Suspended he that task, but ever gazed

  And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind

  Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw

  The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

  Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,

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  Her daily portion, from her father’s tent,

  And spread her matting for his couch, and stole

  From duties and repose to tend his steps:—

  Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe

  To speak her love:—and watched his nightly sleep,

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  Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips

  Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath

  Of innocent dreams arose: then, when red morn

  Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home

  Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

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  The Poet wandering on, through Arabie

  And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,

  And o’er the aërial mountains which pour down

  Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,

  In joy and exultation held his way;

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  Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within

  Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine

  Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,

  Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched

  His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep

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  There came, a dream of hopes that never yet

  Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veilèd maid

  Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.

  Her voice was like the voice of his own soul

  Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,

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  Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held

  His inmost sense suspended in its web

  Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.

  Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,

  And lofty hopes of divine liberty,

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  Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,

  Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood

  Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame

  A permeating fire: wild numbers then

  She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs

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  Subdued by its own pathos: her fair hands

  Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp

  Strange symphony, and in their branching veins

  The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.

  The beating of her heart was heard to fill

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  The pauses of her music, and her breath

  Tumultuously accorded with those fits

  Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,

  As if her heart impatiently endured

  Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,

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  And saw by the warm light of their own life

  Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil

  Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,

  Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,

  Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips

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  Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.

  His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess

  Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled

  His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet

  Her panting bosom: … she drew back a while,

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  Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,

  With frantic gesture and short breathless cry

  Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.

  Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night

  Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,

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  Like a dark flood suspended in its course,

  Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

  Roused by the shock he started from his trance—

  The cold white light of morning, the blue moon

  Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,

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  The distinct valley and the vacant woods,

  Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled

  The hues of heaven that canopied his bower

  Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,

  The mystery and the majesty of Earth,

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  The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes

  Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly

  As ocean’s moon looks on the moon in heaven.

  The spirit of sweet human love has sent

  A vision to the sleep of him who spurned

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  Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues

  Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;

  He overleaps the bounds. Alas! Alas!

  Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined

  Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost,

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  In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,

  That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death

  Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,

  O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,

  And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,

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  Lead only to a black and watery depth,

  While death’s blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,

  Where every shade which the foul grave exhales

  Hides its dead eye from the detested day,

  Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?

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  This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,

  The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung

  His brain even like despair.

  While daylight held

  The sky, the Poet kept mute conference

  With his still soul. At night the passion came,

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  Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,

  And shook him from his rest, and led him forth

  Into the darkness.—As an eagle grasped

  In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast

  Burn with the poison, and precipitates

  Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,

  Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight

  O’er the wide aëry wilderness: thus driven

  By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,

  Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,

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  Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,

  Startling with careless step the moonlight snake,

  He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,

  Shedding the mockery of its vital hues

  Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on

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  Till vast Aornos seen from Petra’s steep

  Hung o’er the low
horizon like a cloud;

  Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs

  Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind

  Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,

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  Day after day a weary waste of hours,

  Bearing within his life the brooding care

  That ever fed on its decaying flame.

  And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair

  Sered by the autumn of strange suffering

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  Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand

  Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;

  Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone

  As in a furnace burning secretly

  From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,

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  Who ministered with human charity

  His human wants, beheld with wondering awe

  Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,

  Encountering on some dizzy precipice

  That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind

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  With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet

  Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused

  In its career: the infant would conceal