Percy Bysshe Shelley - Delphi Poets Series Read online

  Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,

  Support the system whence their honours flow…

  They have three words: — well tyrants know their use,

  Well pay them for the loan, with usury

  Torn from a bleeding world! — God, Hell, and Heaven. 210

  A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,

  Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage

  Of tameless tigers hungering for blood.

  Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,

  Where poisonous and undying worms prolong 215

  Eternal misery to those hapless slaves

  Whose life has been a penance for its crimes.

  And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie

  Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe

  Before the mockeries of earthly power. 220

  ‘These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,

  Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,

  Omnipotent in wickedness: the while

  Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does

  His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend 225

  Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.

  ‘They rise, they fall; one generation comes

  Yielding its harvest to destruction’s scythe.

  It fades, another blossoms: yet behold!

  Red glows the tyrant’s stamp-mark on its bloom, 230

  Withering and cankering deep its passive prime.

  He has invented lying words and modes,

  Empty and vain as his own coreless heart;

  Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound,

  To lure the heedless victim to the toils 235

  Spread round the valley of its paradise.

  ‘Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince!

  Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts

  Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,

  With whom thy Master was: — or thou delight’st 240

  In numbering o’er the myriads of thy slain,

  All misery weighing nothing in the scale

  Against thy short-lived fame: or thou dost load

  With cowardice and crime the groaning land,

  A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self! 245

  Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e’er

  Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days

  Days of unsatisfying listlessness?

  Dost thou not cry, ere night’s long rack is o’er,

  “When will the morning come?” Is not thy youth 250

  A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?

  Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?

  Are not thy views of unregretted death

  Drear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind,

  Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame, 255

  Incapable of judgement, hope, or love?

  And dost thou wish the errors to survive

  That bar thee from all sympathies of good,

  After the miserable interest

  Thou hold’st in their protraction? When the grave 260

  Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,

  Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth

  To twine its roots around thy coffined clay,

  Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,

  That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die? 265

  5.

  ‘Thus do the generations of the earth

  Go to the grave, and issue from the womb,

  Surviving still the imperishable change

  That renovates the world; even as the leaves

  Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year 5

  Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped

  For many seasons there — though long they choke,

  Loading with loathsome rottenness the land,

  All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees

  From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes, 10

  Lie level with the earth to moulder there,

  They fertilize the land they long deformed,

  Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs

  Of youth, integrity, and loveliness,

  Like that which gave it life, to spring and die. 15

  Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights

  The fairest feelings of the opening heart,

  Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil

  Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,

  And judgement cease to wage unnatural war 20

  With passion’s unsubduable array.

  Twin-sister of religion, selfishness!

  Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all

  The wanton horrors of her bloody play;

  Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless, 25

  Shunning the light, and owning not its name,

  Compelled, by its deformity, to screen,

  With flimsy veil of justice and of right,

  Its unattractive lineaments, that scare

  All, save the brood of ignorance: at once 30

  The cause and the effect of tyranny;

  Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile;

  Dead to all love but of its abjectness,

  With heart impassive by more noble powers

  Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame; 35

  Despising its own miserable being,

  Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall.

  ‘Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange

  Of all that human art or nature yield;

  Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand, 40

  And natural kindness hasten to supply

  From the full fountain of its boundless love,

  For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.

  Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade

  No solitary virtue dares to spring, 45

  But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand

  Scatter their withering curses, and unfold

  The doors of premature and violent death,

  To pining famine and full-fed disease,

  To all that shares the lot of human life, 50

  Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce drags the chain,

  That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.

  ‘Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,

  The signet of its all-enslaving power

  Upon a shining ore, and called it gold: 55

  Before whose image bow the vulgar great,

  The vainly rich, the miserable proud,

  The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings,

  And with blind feelings reverence the power

  That grinds them to the dust of misery. 60

  But in the temple of their hireling hearts

  Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn

  All earthly things but virtue.

  ‘Since tyrants, by the sale of human life,

  Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame 65

  To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,

  Success has sanctioned to a credulous world

  The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.

  His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes

  The despot numbers; from his cabinet 70

  These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,

  Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,

  Beneath a vulgar master, to perform

  A task of cold and brutal drudgery; —

  Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, 75

  Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,

  Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,

  That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!

  ‘The harmony and happiness of man

  Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts 80

  His nature to the heaven of its pride,

  Is bartered for the poison of his soul;

  The weight that drags to earth his towe
ring hopes,

  Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain,

  Withering all passion but of slavish fear, 85

  Extinguishing all free and generous love

  Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse

  That fancy kindles in the beating heart

  To mingle with sensation, it destroys, —

  Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, 90

  The grovelling hope of interest and gold,

  Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed

  Even by hypocrisy.

  And statesmen boast

  Of wealth! The wordy eloquence, that lives

  After the ruin of their hearts, can gild 95

  The bitter poison of a nation’s woe,

  Can turn the worship of the servile mob

  To their corrupt and glaring idol, Fame,

  From Virtue, trampled by its iron tread,

  Although its dazzling pedestal be raised 100

  Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field,

  With desolated dwellings smoking round.

  The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside,

  To deeds of charitable intercourse,

  And bare fulfilment of the common laws 105

  Of decency and prejudice, confines

  The struggling nature of his human heart,

  Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds

  A passing tear perchance upon the wreck

  Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling’s door 110

  The frightful waves are driven, — when his son

  Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion

  Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man,

  Whose life is misery, and fear, and care;

  Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil; 115

  Who ever hears his famished offspring’s scream,

  Whom their pale mother’s uncomplaining gaze

  For ever meets, and the proud rich man’s eye

  Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene

  Of thousands like himself; — he little heeds 120

  The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate

  Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn

  The vain and bitter mockery of words,

  Feeling the horror of the tyrant’s deeds,

  And unrestrained but by the arm of power, 125

  That knows and dreads his enmity.

  ‘The iron rod of Penury still compels

  Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,

  And poison, with unprofitable toil,

  A life too void of solace to confirm 130

  The very chains that bind him to his doom.

  Nature, impartial in munificence,

  Has gifted man with all-subduing will.

  Matter, with all its transitory shapes,

  Lies subjected and plastic at his feet, 135

  That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread.

  How many a rustic Milton has passed by,

  Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,

  In unremitting drudgery and care!

  How many a vulgar Cato has compelled 140

  His energies, no longer tameless then,

  To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail!

  How many a Newton, to whose passive ken

  Those mighty spheres that gem infinity

  Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in Heaven 145

  To light the midnights of his native town!

  ‘Yet every heart contains perfection’s germ:

  The wisest of the sages of the earth,

  That ever from the stores of reason drew

  Science and truth, and virtue’s dreadless tone, 150

  Were but a weak and inexperienced boy,

  Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued

  With pure desire and universal love,

  Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain,

  Untainted passion, elevated will, 155

  Which Death (who even would linger long in awe

  Within his noble presence, and beneath

  His changeless eyebeam) might alone subdue.

  Him, every slave now dragging through the filth

  Of some corrupted city his sad life, 160

  Pining with famine, swoln with luxury,

  Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense

  With narrow schemings and unworthy cares,

  Or madly rushing through all violent crime,

  To move the deep stagnation of his soul, — 165

  Might imitate and equal.

  But mean lust

  Has bound its chains so tight around the earth,

  That all within it but the virtuous man

  Is venal: gold or fame will surely reach

  The price prefixed by selfishness, to all 170

  But him of resolute and unchanging will;

  Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd,

  Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury,

  Can bribe to yield his elevated soul

  To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield 175

  With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.

  ‘All things are sold: the very light of Heaven

  Is venal; earth’s unsparing gifts of love,

  The smallest and most despicable things

  That lurk in the abysses of the deep, 180

  All objects of our life, even life itself,

  And the poor pittance which the laws allow

  Of liberty, the fellowship of man,

  Those duties which his heart of human love

  Should urge him to perform instinctively, 185

  Are bought and sold as in a public mart

  Of undisguising selfishness, that sets

  On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.

  Even love is sold; the solace of all woe

  Is turned to deadliest agony, old age 190

  Shivers in selfish beauty’s loathing arms,

  And youth’s corrupted impulses prepare

  A life of horror from the blighting bane

  Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs

  From unenjoying sensualism, has filled 195

  All human life with hydra-headed woes.

  ‘Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs

  Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest

  Sets no great value on his hireling faith:

  A little passing pomp, some servile souls, 200

  Whom cowardice itself might safely chain,

  Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe

  To deck the triumph of their languid zeal,

  Can make him minister to tyranny.

  More daring crime requires a loftier meed: 205

  Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lends

  His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart,

  When the dread eloquence of dying men,

  Low mingling on the lonely field of fame,

  Assails that nature, whose applause he sells 210

  For the gross blessings of a patriot mob,

  For the vile gratitude of heartless kings,

  And for a cold world’s good word, — viler still!

  ‘There is a nobler glory, which survives

  Until our being fades, and, solacing 215

  All human care, accompanies its change;

  Deserts not virtue in the dungeon’s gloom,

  And, in the precincts of the palace, guides

  Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;

  Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, 220

  Even when, from Power’s avenging hand, he takes

  Its sweetest, last and noblest title — death;

  — The consciousness of good, which neither gold,

  Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss

  Can purchase; but a life of resolute good, — 225

  Unalterable will, quenchless desire

  Of universal happiness, the heart

  That beats with it in un
ison, the brain,

  Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change

  Reason’s rich stores for its eternal weal. 230

  ‘This commerce of sincerest virtue needs

  No mediative signs of selfishness,

  No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,

  No balancings of prudence, cold and long;

  In just and equal measure all is weighed, 235

  One scale contains the sum of human weal,

  And one, the good man’s heart.

  How vainly seek

  The selfish for that happiness denied

  To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they,

  Who hope for peace amid the storms of care, 240

  Who covet power they know not how to use,

  And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give, —

  Madly they frustrate still their own designs;

  And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy

  Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul, 245

  Pining regrets, and vain repentances,

  Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade

  Their valueless and miserable lives.

  ‘But hoary-headed Selfishness has felt

  Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave: 250

  A brighter morn awaits the human day,

  When every transfer of earth’s natural gifts

  Shall be a commerce of good words and works;

  When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,

  The fear of infamy, disease and woe, 255

  War with its million horrors, and fierce hell

  Shall live but in the memory of Time,

  Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,

  Look back, and shudder at his younger years.’

  6.

  All touch, all eye, all ear,

  The Spirit felt the Fairy’s burning speech.

  O’er the thin texture of its frame,

  The varying periods painted changing glows,

  As on a summer even, 5

  When soul-enfolding music floats around,

  The stainless mirror of the lake

  Re-images the eastern gloom,

  Mingling convulsively its purple hues

  With sunset’s burnished gold. 10

  Then thus the Spirit spoke:

  ‘It is a wild and miserable world!

  Thorny, and full of care,

  Which every fiend can make his prey at will.

  O Fairy! in the lapse of years, 15

  Is there no hope in store?

  Will yon vast suns roll on

  Interminably, still illuming

  The night of so many wretched souls,

  And see no hope for them? 20

  Will not the universal Spirit e’er

  Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?’

  The Fairy calmly smiled

  In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope

  Suffused the Spirit’s lineaments. 25

  ‘Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts,