So, as I had heard treasures
were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set
off, and at the Tower-- But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found
close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.
were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set
off, and at the Tower-- But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found
close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.
Shelley copy
_53
ARCHY:
When all the fools are whipped, and all the Protestant writers, while
the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch
a thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy
would be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and
all the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and godly slit each other's
noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their
craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to
Bedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic
contemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest
men who lie [pinched? ] up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody
of the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them. _65
NOTE:
_64 pinched marked as doubtful by Rossetti.
1870; Forman, Dowden; penned Woodberry.
[ENTER SECRETARY LYTTELTON, WITH PAPERS. ]
KING [LOOKING OVER THE PAPERS]:
These stiff Scots
His Grace of Canterbury must take order
To force under the Church's yoke. --You, Wentworth,
Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add
Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy, _70
To what in me were wanting. --My Lord Weston,
Look that those merchants draw not without loss
Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment
Of shipmoney, take fullest compensation
For violation of our royal forests, _75
Whose limits, from neglect, have been o'ergrown
With cottages and cornfields. The uttermost
Farthing exact from those who claim exemption
From knighthood: that which once was a reward
Shall thus be made a punishment, that subjects _80
May know how majesty can wear at will
The rugged mood. --My Lord of Coventry,
Lay my command upon the Courts below
That bail be not accepted for the prisoners
Under the warrant of the Star Chamber. _85
The people shall not find the stubbornness
Of Parliament a cheap or easy method
Of dealing with their rightful sovereign:
And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry,
We will find time and place for fit rebuke. -- _90
My Lord of Canterbury.
NOTE:
_22-90 In Paris. . . rebuke 1870; omitted 1824.
ARCHY:
The fool is here.
LAUD:
I crave permission of your Majesty
To order that this insolent fellow be
Chastised: he mocks the sacred character,
Scoffs at the state, and--
NOTE:
_95 state 1870; stake 1824.
KING:
What, my Archy? _95
He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears,
Yet with a quaint and graceful licence--Prithee
For this once do not as Prynne would, were he
Primate of England. With your Grace's leave,
He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot _100
Hung in his gilded prison from the window
Of a queen's bower over the public way,
Blasphemes with a bird's mind:--his words, like arrows
Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit,
Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy. -- _105
[TO ARCHY. ]
Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence
Ten minutes in the rain; be it your penance
To bring news how the world goes there.
[EXIT ARCHY. ]
Poor Archy!
He weaves about himself a world of mirth
Out of the wreck of ours. _110
NOTES:
_99 With your Grace's leave 1870; omitted 1824.
_106-_110 Go. . . ours spoken by THE QUEEN, 1824.
LAUD:
I take with patience, as my Master did,
All scoffs permitted from above.
KING:
My lord,
Pray overlook these papers. Archy's words
Had wings, but these have talons.
QUEEN:
And the lion
That wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord, _115
I see the new-born courage in your eye
Armed to strike dead the Spirit of the Time,
Which spurs to rage the many-headed beast.
Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve,
And it were better thou hadst still remained _120
The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs
The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer;
And Opportunity, that empty wolf,
Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions
Even to the disposition of thy purpose, _125
And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel;
And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak,
Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace
And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss,
As when she keeps the company of rebels, _130
Who think that she is Fear. This do, lest we
Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle
In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream
Out of our worshipped state.
NOTES:
_116 your 1824; thine 1870.
_118 Which. . . beast 1870; omitted 1824.
KING:
Beloved friend,
God is my witness that this weight of power, _135
Which He sets me my earthly task to wield
Under His law, is my delight and pride
Only because thou lovest that and me.
For a king bears the office of a God
To all the under world; and to his God _140
Alone he must deliver up his trust,
Unshorn of its permitted attributes.
[It seems] now as the baser elements
Had mutinied against the golden sun
That kindles them to harmony, and quells _145
Their self-destroying rapine. The wild million
Strike at the eye that guides them; like as humours
Of the distempered body that conspire
Against the spirit of life throned in the heart,--
And thus become the prey of one another, _150
And last of death--
STRAFFORD:
That which would be ambition in a subject
Is duty in a sovereign; for on him,
As on a keystone, hangs the arch of life,
Whose safety is its strength. Degree and form, _155
And all that makes the age of reasoning man
More memorable than a beast's, depend on this--
That Right should fence itself inviolably
With Power; in which respect the state of England
From usurpation by the insolent commons _160
Cries for reform.
Get treason, and spare treasure. Fee with coin
The loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies
Opposing factions,--be thyself of none;
And borrow gold of many, for those who lend _165
Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus
Keep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay,
Till time, and its coming generations
Of nights and days unborn, bring some one chance,
. . .
Or war or pestilence or Nature's self,-- _170
By some distemperature or terrible sign,
Be as an arbiter betwixt themselves.
Nor let your Majesty
Doubt here the peril of the unseen event.
How did your brother Kings, coheritors _175
In your high interest in the subject earth,
Rise past such troubles to that height of power
Where now they sit, and awfully serene
Smile on the trembling world? Such popular storms
Philip the Second of Spain, this Lewis of France, _180
And late the German head of many bodies,
And every petty lord of Italy,
Quelled or by arts or arms. Is England poorer
Or feebler? or art thou who wield'st her power
Tamer than they? or shall this island be-- _185
[Girdled] by its inviolable waters--
To the world present and the world to come
Sole pattern of extinguished monarchy?
Not if thou dost as I would have thee do.
KING:
Your words shall be my deeds: _190
You speak the image of my thought. My friend
(If Kings can have a friend, I call thee so),
Beyond the large commission which [belongs]
Under the great seal of the realm, take this:
And, for some obvious reasons, let there be _195
No seal on it, except my kingly word
And honour as I am a gentleman.
Be--as thou art within my heart and mind--
Another self, here and in Ireland:
Do what thou judgest well, take amplest licence, _200
And stick not even at questionable means.
Hear me, Wentworth. My word is as a wall
Between thee and this world thine enemy--
That hates thee, for thou lovest me.
STRAFFORD:
I own
No friend but thee, no enemies but thine: _205
Thy lightest thought is my eternal law.
How weak, how short, is life to pay--
KING:
Peace, peace.
Thou ow'st me nothing yet.
[TO LAUD. ]
My lord, what say
Those papers?
LAUD:
Your Majesty has ever interposed, _210
In lenity towards your native soil,
Between the heavy vengeance of the Church
And Scotland. Mark the consequence of warming
This brood of northern vipers in your bosom.
The rabble, instructed no doubt _215
By London, Lindsay, Hume, and false Argyll
(For the waves never menace heaven until
Scourged by the wind's invisible tyranny),
Have in the very temple of the Lord
Done outrage to His chosen ministers. _220
They scorn the liturgy of the Holy Church,
Refuse to obey her canons, and deny
The apostolic power with which the Spirit
Has filled its elect vessels, even from him
Who held the keys with power to loose and bind, _225
To him who now pleads in this royal presence. --
Let ample powers and new instructions be
Sent to the High Commissioners in Scotland.
To death, imprisonment, and confiscation,
Add torture, add the ruin of the kindred _230
Of the offender, add the brand of infamy,
Add mutilation: and if this suffice not,
Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst
They may lick up that scum of schismatics.
I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring _235
What we possess, still prate of Christian peace,
As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers
Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong,
Should be let loose against the innocent sleep
Of templed cities and the smiling fields, _240
For some poor argument of policy
Which touches our own profit or our pride
(Where it indeed were Christian charity
To turn the cheek even to the smiter's hand):
And, when our great Redeemer, when our God, _245
When He who gave, accepted, and retained
Himself in propitiation of our sins,
Is scorned in His immediate ministry,
With hazard of the inestimable loss
Of all the truth and discipline which is _250
Salvation to the extremest generation
Of men innumerable, they talk of peace!
Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now:
For, by that Christ who came to bring a sword,
Not peace, upon the earth, and gave command _255
To His disciples at the Passover
That each should sell his robe and buy a sword,-
Once strip that minister of naked wrath,
And it shall never sleep in peace again
Till Scotland bend or break.
NOTES:
_134-_232 Beloved. . . mutilation 1870; omitted 1824.
_237 arbitrating messengers 1870; messengers of wrath 1824.
_239 the 1870; omitted 1524.
_243-_244 Parentheses inserted 1870.
_246, _247 When He. . . sins 1870; omitted 1824.
_248 ministry 1870; ministers 1824.
_249-52 With. . . innumerable 1870; omitted 1824.
KING:
My Lord Archbishop, _260
Do what thou wilt and what thou canst in this.
Thy earthly even as thy heavenly King
Gives thee large power in his unquiet realm.
But we want money, and my mind misgives me
That for so great an enterprise, as yet, _265
We are unfurnished.
STRAFFORD:
Yet it may not long
Rest on our wills.
COTTINGTON:
The expenses
Of gathering shipmoney, and of distraining
For every petty rate (for we encounter
A desperate opposition inch by inch _270
In every warehouse and on every farm),
Have swallowed up the gross sum of the imposts;
So that, though felt as a most grievous scourge
Upon the land, they stand us in small stead
As touches the receipt.
STRAFFORD:
'Tis a conclusion _275
Most arithmetical: and thence you infer
Perhaps the assembling of a parliament.
Now, if a man should call his dearest enemies
T0 sit in licensed judgement on his life,
His Majesty might wisely take that course. _280
[ASIDE TO COTTINGTON. ]
It is enough to expect from these lean imposts
That they perform the office of a scourge,
Without more profit.
[ALOUD. ]
Fines and confiscations,
And a forced loan from the refractory city,
Will fill our coffers: and the golden love _285
Of loyal gentlemen and noble friends
For the worshipped father of our common country,
With contributions from the catholics,
Will make Rebellion pale in our excess.
Be these the expedients until time and wisdom _290
Shall frame a settled state of government.
LAUD:
And weak expedients they! Have we not drained
All, till the . . . which seemed
A mine exhaustless?
STRAFFORD:
And the love which IS,
If loyal hearts could turn their blood to gold. _295
LAUD:
Both now grow barren: and I speak it not
As loving parliaments, which, as they have been
In the right hand of bold bad mighty kings
The scourges of the bleeding Church, I hate.
Methinks they scarcely can deserve our fear. _300
STRAFFORD:
Oh! my dear liege, take back the wealth thou gavest:
With that, take all I held, but as in trust
For thee, of mine inheritance: leave me but
This unprovided body for thy service,
And a mind dedicated to no care _305
Except thy safety:--but assemble not
A parliament. Hundreds will bring, like me,
Their fortunes, as they would their blood, before--
KING:
No! thou who judgest them art but one. Alas!
We should be too much out of love with Heaven, _310
Did this vile world show many such as thee,
Thou perfect, just, and honourable man!
Never shall it be said that Charles of England
Stripped those he loved for fear of those he scorns;
Nor will he so much misbecome his throne _315
As to impoverish those who most adorn
And best defend it. That you urge, dear Strafford,
Inclines me rather--
QUEEN:
To a parliament?
Is this thy firmness? and thou wilt preside
Over a knot of . . . censurers, _320
To the unswearing of thy best resolves,
And choose the worst, when the worst comes too soon?
Plight not the worst before the worst must come.
Oh, wilt thou smile whilst our ribald foes,
Dressed in their own usurped authority, _325
Sharpen their tongues on Henrietta's fame?
It is enough! Thou lovest me no more!
[WEEPS. ]
KING:
Oh, Henrietta!
[THEY TALK APART. ]
COTTINGTON [TO LAUD]:
Money we have none:
And all the expedients of my Lord of Strafford
Will scarcely meet the arrears.
LAUD:
Without delay _330
An army must be sent into the north;
Followed by a Commission of the Church,
With amplest power to quench in fire and blood,
And tears and terror, and the pity of hell,
The intenser wrath of Heresy. God will give _335
Victory; and victory over Scotland give
The lion England tamed into our hands.
That will lend power, and power bring gold.
COTTINGTON:
Meanwhile
We must begin first where your Grace leaves off.
Gold must give power, or--
LAUD:
I am not averse _340
From the assembling of a parliament.
Strong actions and smooth words might teach them soon
The lesson to obey. And are they not
A bubble fashioned by the monarch's mouth,
The birth of one light breath? If they serve no purpose, _345
A word dissolves them.
STRAFFORD:
The engine of parliaments
Might be deferred until I can bring over
The Irish regiments: they will serve to assure
The issue of the war against the Scots.
And, this game won--which if lost, all is lost-- _350
Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels,
And call them, if you will, a parliament.
KING:
Oh, be our feet still tardy to shed blood.
Guilty though it may be! I would still spare
The stubborn country of my birth, and ward _355
From countenances which I loved in youth
The wrathful Church's lacerating hand.
[TO LAUD. ]
Have you o'erlooked the other articles?
[ENTER ARCHY. ]
LAUD:
Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane,
Cromwell, and other rebels of less note, _360
Intend to sail with the next favouring wind
For the Plantations.
ARCHY:
Where they think to found
A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play,
Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.
NOTE:
_363 Gonzalo's 1870; Gonzaga Boscombe manuscript.
KING:
What's that, sirrah?
ARCHY:
New devil's politics. _365
Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths:
Lucifer was the first republican.
Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three [posts? ]
'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,
Shall sail round the world, and come back again: _370
Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull,
And come back again when the moon is at full:'--
When, in spite of the Church,
They will hear homilies of whatever length
Or form they please. _375
[COTTINGTON? ]:
So please your Majesty to sign this order
For their detention.
ARCHY:
If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout,
rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc. , and you found these diseases
had secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you
think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant
to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man? _383
KING:
If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely;
But in this case--[WRITING]. Here, my lord, take the warrant,
And see it duly executed forthwith. --
That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished. _387
[EXEUNT ALL BUT KING, QUEEN, AND ARCHY. ]
ARCHY:
Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused
by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty
without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of
clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and
the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud--who
would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were
impregnable by composition--all impannelled against poor Archy for
presenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays. _397
QUEEN:
Is the rain over, sirrah?
KING:
When it rains
And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow:
And therefore never smile till you've done crying. _400
ARCHY:
But 'tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky
has wept itself serene.
QUEEN:
What news abroad? how looks the world this morning?
ARCHY:
Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbow
in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for
'A rainbow in the morning _407
Is the shepherd's warning;'
and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the
mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the
breath of May pierces like a January blast. _411
KING:
The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and
the shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs.
QUEEN:
But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the
deluge are gone, and can return no more.
ARCHY:
Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come
down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies. --The
rainbow hung over the city with all its shops,. . . and churches, from
north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the
masonry of heaven--like a balance in which the angel that distributes
the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in
the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the
meanest feet. _424
QUEEN:
Who taught you this trash, sirrah?
ARCHY:
A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt. --But for the
rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and. . . until the top of the
Tower. . . of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look
as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured
upon one tip, and a mitre on the other.
So, as I had heard treasures
were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set
off, and at the Tower-- But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found
close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.
KING:
Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience. _435
ARCHY:
Then conscience is a fool. --I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I
heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the
very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.
QUEEN:
Archy is shrewd and bitter.
ARCHY:
Like the season, _440
So blow the winds. --But at the other end of the rainbow, where the
gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender
interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what
think you that I found instead of a mitre?
KING:
Vane's wits perhaps. _445
ARCHY:
Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch
over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken
dishes--the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and
the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to
enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of
this ass. _451
QUEEN:
Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane
She place my lute, together with the music
Mari received last week from Italy,
In my boudoir, and--
[EXIT ARCHY. ]
KING:
I'll go in.
NOTE:
_254-_455 For by. . . I'll go in 1870; omitted 1824.
QUEEN:
MY beloved lord, _455
Have you not noted that the Fool of late
Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words
Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?
What can it mean? I should be loth to think
Some factious slave had tutored him.
KING:
Oh, no! _460
He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 'tis
That our minds piece the vacant intervals
Of his wild words with their own fashioning,--
As in the imagery of summer clouds,
Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find _465
The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:
And partly, that the terrors of the time
Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;
And in the lightest and the least, may best
Be seen the current of the coming wind. _470
NOTES:
_460, _461 Oh. . . pupil 1870; omitted 1824.
_461 Partly 'tis 1870; It partly is 1824.
_465 of 1870; in 1824.
QUEEN:
Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.
Come, I will sing to you; let us go try
These airs from Italy; and, as we pass
The gallery, we'll decide where that Correggio
Shall hang--the Virgin Mother _475
With her child, born the King of heaven and earth,
Whose reign is men's salvation. And you shall see
A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,
Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;
Liker than any Vandyke ever made, _480
A pattern to the unborn age of thee,
Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy
A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,
Did I not think that after we were dead
Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that _485
The cares we waste upon our heavy crown
Would make it light and glorious as a wreath
Of Heaven's beams for his dear innocent brow.
NOTE:
_473-_477 and, as. . . salvation 1870; omitted 1824.
KING:
Dear Henrietta!
SCENE 3:
THE STAR CHAMBER.
LAUD, JUXON, STRAFFORD, AND OTHERS, AS JUDGES.
PRYNNE AS A PRISONER, AND THEN BASTWICK.
LAUD:
Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick: let the clerk
Recite his sentence.
CLERK:
'That he pay five thousand
Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded
With red-hot iron on the cheek and forehead,
And be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle _5
During the pleasure of the Court. '
LAUD:
Prisoner,
If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence
Should not be put into effect, now speak.
JUXON:
If you have aught to plead in mitigation,
Speak.
BASTWICK:
Thus, my lords. If, like the prelates, I _10
Were an invader of the royal power
A public scorner of the word of God,
Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious,
Impious in heart and in tyrannic act,
Void of wit, honesty, and temperance; _15
If Satan were my lord, as theirs,--our God
Pattern of all I should avoid to do;
Were I an enemy of my God and King
And of good men, as ye are;--I should merit
Your fearful state and gilt prosperity, _20
Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn
To cowls and robes of everlasting fire.
But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not
The only earthly favour ye can yield,
Or I think worth acceptance at your hands,-- _25
Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment.
even as my Master did,
Until Heaven's kingdom shall descend on earth,
Or earth be like a shadow in the light
Of Heaven absorbed--some few tumultuous years _30
Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes
His will whose will is power.
NOTE:
_27-_32 even. . . power printed as a fragment, Garnett, 1862; inserted
here conjecturally, Rossetti, 1870.
LAUD:
Officer, take the prisoner from the bar,
And be his tongue slit for his insolence.
BASTWICK:
While this hand holds a pen--
LAUD:
Be his hands--
JUXON:
Stop! _35
Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak
No terror, would interpret, being dumb,
Heaven's thunder to our harm;. . .
And hands, which now write only their own shame,
With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away. _40
LAUD:
Much more such 'mercy' among men would be,
Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge
Flinch thus from earthly retribution. I
Could suffer what I would inflict.
[EXIT BASTWICK GUARDED. ]
Bring up
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln. --
[TO STRATFORD. ]
Know you not _45
That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds
Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln,
Were found these scandalous and seditious letters
Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled?
I speak it not as touching this poor person; _50
But of the office which should make it holy,
Were it as vile as it was ever spotless.
Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes
His Majesty, if I misinterpret not.
[ENTER BISHOP WILLIAMS GUARDED. ]
STRAFFORD:
'Twere politic and just that Williams taste _55
The bitter fruit of his connection with
The schismatics. But you, my Lord Archbishop,
Who owed your first promotion to his favour,
Who grew beneath his smile--
LAUD:
Would therefore beg
The office of his judge from this High Court,-- _60
That it shall seem, even as it is, that I,
In my assumption of this sacred robe,
Have put aside all worldly preference,
All sense of all distinction of all persons,
All thoughts but of the service of the Church. -- _65
Bishop of Lincoln!
WILLIAMS:
Peace, proud hierarch!
I know my sentence, and I own it just.
Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve,
In stretching to the utmost
. . .
NOTE:
Scene 3. _1-_69 Bring. . . utmost 1870; omitted 1824.
SCENE 4:
HAMPDEN, PYM, CROMWELL, HIS DAUGHTER, AND YOUNG SIR HARRY VANE.
HAMPDEN:
England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle,
Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!
I held what I inherited in thee
As pawn for that inheritance of freedom
Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile: _5
How can I call thee England, or my country? --
Does the wind hold?
VANE:
The vanes sit steady
Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings
Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke,
Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air. _10
Mark too that flock of fleecy-winged clouds
Sailing athwart St. Margaret's.
NOTE:
_11 flock 1824; fleet 1870.
HAMPDEN:
Hail, fleet herald
Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide
Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,
Beyond the shot of tyranny, _15
Beyond the webs of that swoln spider. . .
Beyond the curses, calumnies, and [lies? ]
Of atheist priests! . . . And thou
Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm, _20
Bright as the path to a beloved home
Oh, light us to the isles of the evening land!
Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions, _25
Where Power's poor dupes and victims yet have never
Propitiated the savage fear of kings
With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns; _30
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo
Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites
Wrest man's free worship, from the God who loves,
To the poor worm who envies us His love!
Receive, thou young . . . of Paradise. _35
These exiles from the old and sinful world!
. . .
This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through their veil
Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth; _40
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall. _45
The boundless universe
Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul
That owns no master; while the loathliest ward
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest
Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,-- _50
To which the eagle spirits of the free,
Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,
Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die
And cannot be repelled. _55
Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,
They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop
Through palaces and temples thunderproof.
NOTES:
_13 rude 1870; wild 1824.
_16-_18 Beyond. . . priests 1870; omitted 1824.
_25 Touched 1870; Tinged 1824.
_34 To the poor 1870; Towards the 1824.
_38 their 1870; the 1824.
_46 boundless 1870; mighty 1824.
_48 owns no 1824; owns a 1870. ward 1870; spot 1824.
_50 cradling 1870; cradled 1824.
_54, _55 Return. . . repelled 1870;
Return to brood over the [ ] thoughts
That cannot die, and may not he repelled 1824.
_56-_58 Like. . . thunderproof 1870; omitted 1824.
SCENE 5:
ARCHY:
I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the
tears shed on its old [roots? ] as the [wind? ] plays the song of
'A widow bird sate mourning
Upon a wintry bough. ' _5
[SINGS]
Heigho! the lark and the owl!
One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:--
Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
'A widow bird sate mourning for her love _10
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare.
No flower upon the ground, _15
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound. '
NOTE:
Scene 5. _1-_9 I'll. . . light 1870; omitted 1824.
***
THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.
[Composed at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezzia in the spring and early
summer of 1822--the poem on which Shelley was engaged at the time of
his death. Published by Mrs. Shelley in the "Posthumous Poems" of
1824, pages 73-95. Several emendations, the result of Dr. Garnett's
examination of the Boscombe manuscript, were given to the world by
Miss Mathilde Blind, "Westminster Review", July, 1870. The poem was,
of course, included in the "Poetical Works", 1839, both editions. See
Editor's Notes. ]
Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth--
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows _5
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, _10
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent, _15
Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould,
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil, which he of old
Took as his own, and then imposed on them: _20
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep _25
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep
Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,--
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread _30
Was so transparent, that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn
Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, _35
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air,
And then a vision on my train was rolled. _40
. . .
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
This was the tenour of my waking dream:--
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to and fro, _45
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, and so
Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky _50
One of the million leaves of summer's bier;
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
Seeking the object of another's fear; _55
And others, as with steps towards the tomb,
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked, and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost, _60
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:
But more, with motions which each other crossed,
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw,
Or birds within the noonday aether lost,
Upon that path where flowers never grew,--
And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells forever burst;
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths and wood-lawns interspersed _70
With overarching elms and caverns cold,
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old.
And as I gazed, methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June _75
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon,
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon--
When on the sunlit limits of the night _80
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might--
Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark aether from her infant's chair,-- _85
So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
So sate within, as one whom years deform,
Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb; _90
And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint aethereal gloom
Tempering the light. Upon the chariot-beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
The guidance of that wonder-winged team; _95
The shapes which drew it in thick lightenings
Were lost:--I heard alone on the air's soft stream
The music of their ever-moving wings.
All the four faces of that Charioteer
Had their eyes banded; little profit brings _100
Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun,--
Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been or will be done;
So ill was the car guided--but it passed _105
With solemn speed majestically on.
The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
And saw, like clouds upon the thunder-blast,
The million with fierce song and maniac dance _110
Raging around--such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet some conqueror's advance
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senate-house, and forum, and theatre,
When . . . upon the free _115
Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the just similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er
The chariot rolled, a captive multitude
Was driven;--all those who had grown old in power _120
Or misery,--all who had their age subdued
By action or by suffering, and whose hour
Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;--
All those whose fame or infamy must grow _125
Till the great winter lay the form and name
Of this green earth with them for ever low;--
All but the sacred few who could not tame
Their spirits to the conquerors--but as soon
As they had touched the world with living flame, _130
Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
Or those who put aside the diadem
Of earthly thrones or gems. . .
Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem.
Were neither mid the mighty captives seen, _135
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them,
Nor those who went before fierce and obscene.
The wild dance maddens in the van, and those
Who lead it--fleet as shadows on the green,
Outspeed the chariot, and without repose _140
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows,
They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure,
Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
Of that fierce Spirit, whose unholy leisure _145
Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair;
And in their dance round her who dims the sun,
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air
As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now _150
Bending within each other's atmosphere,
Kindle invisibly--and as they glow,
Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
Oft to their bright destruction come and go,
Till like two clouds into one vale impelled, _155
That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain--the fiery band which held
Their natures, snaps--while the shock still may tingle
One falls and then another in the path
Senseless--nor is the desolation single, _160
Yet ere I can say WHERE--the chariot hath
Passed over them--nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the ocean's wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore;--behind,
Old men and women foully disarrayed, _165
Shake their gray hairs in the insulting wind,
And follow in the dance, with limbs decayed,
Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still
Farther behind and deeper in the shade.
But not the less with impotence of will _170
They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them and round each other, and fulfil
Their work, and in the dust from whence they rose
Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie,
And past in these performs what . . . in those. _175
Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
Half to myself I said--'And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? And why--'
I would have added--'is all here amiss? --'
But a voice answered--'Life! '--I turned, and knew _180
(O Heaven, have mercy on such wretchedness! )
That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side,
Was indeed one of those deluded crew,
And that the grass, which methought hung so wide _185
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes he vainly sought to hide,
Were or had been eyes:--'If thou canst forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne,'
Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware, _190
'I will unfold that which to this deep scorn
Led me and my companions, and relate
The progress of the pageant since the morn;
'If thirst of knowledge shall not then abate,
Follow it thou even to the night, but I _195
Am weary. '--Then like one who with the weight
Of his own words is staggered, wearily
He paused; and ere he could resume, I cried:
'First, who art thou? '--'Before thy memory,
'I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died, _200
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Had been with purer nutriment supplied,
'Corruption would not now thus much inherit
Of what was once Rousseau,--nor this disguise
Stain that which ought to have disdained to wear it; _205
'If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
A thousand beacons from the spark I bore'--
'And who are those chained to the car? '--'The wise,
'The great, the unforgotten,--they who wore
Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, _210
Signs of thought's empire over thought--their lore
'Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mystery within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
'Caught them ere evening. '--'Who is he with chin _215
Upon his breast, and hands crossed on his chain? '--
'The child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
'The world, and lost all that it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more
Of fame and peace than virtue's self can gain _220
'Without the opportunity which bore
Him on its eagle pinions to the peak
From which a thousand climbers have before
'Fallen, as Napoleon fell. '--I felt my cheek
Alter, to see the shadow pass away, _225
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
That every pigmy kicked it as it lay;
And much I grieved to think how power and will
In opposition rule our mortal day,
And why God made irreconcilable _230
Good and the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eyes' desire to fill
With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be. --'Dost thou behold,'
Said my guide, 'those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire, _235
'Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and Leopold,
And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage--
names which the world thinks always old,
'For in the battle Life and they did wage,
She remained conqueror. I was overcome _240
By my own heart alone, which neither age,
'Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb
Could temper to its object. '--'Let them pass,'
I cried, 'the world and its mysterious doom
'Is not so much more glorious than it was, _245
That I desire to worship those who drew
New figures on its false and fragile glass
'As the old faded. '--'Figures ever new
Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may;
We have but thrown, as those before us threw, _250
'Our shadows on it as it passed away.
But mark how chained to the triumphal chair
The mighty phantoms of an elder day;
'All that is mortal of great Plato there
Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not; _255
The star that ruled his doom was far too fair.
'And life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain,
Or age, or sloth, or slavery could subdue not.
'And near him walk the .
ARCHY:
When all the fools are whipped, and all the Protestant writers, while
the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch
a thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy
would be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and
all the fools laugh at it. [Let the] wise and godly slit each other's
noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their
craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to
Bedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic
contemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest
men who lie [pinched? ] up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody
of the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them. _65
NOTE:
_64 pinched marked as doubtful by Rossetti.
1870; Forman, Dowden; penned Woodberry.
[ENTER SECRETARY LYTTELTON, WITH PAPERS. ]
KING [LOOKING OVER THE PAPERS]:
These stiff Scots
His Grace of Canterbury must take order
To force under the Church's yoke. --You, Wentworth,
Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add
Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy, _70
To what in me were wanting. --My Lord Weston,
Look that those merchants draw not without loss
Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment
Of shipmoney, take fullest compensation
For violation of our royal forests, _75
Whose limits, from neglect, have been o'ergrown
With cottages and cornfields. The uttermost
Farthing exact from those who claim exemption
From knighthood: that which once was a reward
Shall thus be made a punishment, that subjects _80
May know how majesty can wear at will
The rugged mood. --My Lord of Coventry,
Lay my command upon the Courts below
That bail be not accepted for the prisoners
Under the warrant of the Star Chamber. _85
The people shall not find the stubbornness
Of Parliament a cheap or easy method
Of dealing with their rightful sovereign:
And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry,
We will find time and place for fit rebuke. -- _90
My Lord of Canterbury.
NOTE:
_22-90 In Paris. . . rebuke 1870; omitted 1824.
ARCHY:
The fool is here.
LAUD:
I crave permission of your Majesty
To order that this insolent fellow be
Chastised: he mocks the sacred character,
Scoffs at the state, and--
NOTE:
_95 state 1870; stake 1824.
KING:
What, my Archy? _95
He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears,
Yet with a quaint and graceful licence--Prithee
For this once do not as Prynne would, were he
Primate of England. With your Grace's leave,
He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot _100
Hung in his gilded prison from the window
Of a queen's bower over the public way,
Blasphemes with a bird's mind:--his words, like arrows
Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit,
Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy. -- _105
[TO ARCHY. ]
Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence
Ten minutes in the rain; be it your penance
To bring news how the world goes there.
[EXIT ARCHY. ]
Poor Archy!
He weaves about himself a world of mirth
Out of the wreck of ours. _110
NOTES:
_99 With your Grace's leave 1870; omitted 1824.
_106-_110 Go. . . ours spoken by THE QUEEN, 1824.
LAUD:
I take with patience, as my Master did,
All scoffs permitted from above.
KING:
My lord,
Pray overlook these papers. Archy's words
Had wings, but these have talons.
QUEEN:
And the lion
That wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord, _115
I see the new-born courage in your eye
Armed to strike dead the Spirit of the Time,
Which spurs to rage the many-headed beast.
Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve,
And it were better thou hadst still remained _120
The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs
The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer;
And Opportunity, that empty wolf,
Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions
Even to the disposition of thy purpose, _125
And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel;
And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak,
Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace
And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss,
As when she keeps the company of rebels, _130
Who think that she is Fear. This do, lest we
Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle
In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream
Out of our worshipped state.
NOTES:
_116 your 1824; thine 1870.
_118 Which. . . beast 1870; omitted 1824.
KING:
Beloved friend,
God is my witness that this weight of power, _135
Which He sets me my earthly task to wield
Under His law, is my delight and pride
Only because thou lovest that and me.
For a king bears the office of a God
To all the under world; and to his God _140
Alone he must deliver up his trust,
Unshorn of its permitted attributes.
[It seems] now as the baser elements
Had mutinied against the golden sun
That kindles them to harmony, and quells _145
Their self-destroying rapine. The wild million
Strike at the eye that guides them; like as humours
Of the distempered body that conspire
Against the spirit of life throned in the heart,--
And thus become the prey of one another, _150
And last of death--
STRAFFORD:
That which would be ambition in a subject
Is duty in a sovereign; for on him,
As on a keystone, hangs the arch of life,
Whose safety is its strength. Degree and form, _155
And all that makes the age of reasoning man
More memorable than a beast's, depend on this--
That Right should fence itself inviolably
With Power; in which respect the state of England
From usurpation by the insolent commons _160
Cries for reform.
Get treason, and spare treasure. Fee with coin
The loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies
Opposing factions,--be thyself of none;
And borrow gold of many, for those who lend _165
Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus
Keep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay,
Till time, and its coming generations
Of nights and days unborn, bring some one chance,
. . .
Or war or pestilence or Nature's self,-- _170
By some distemperature or terrible sign,
Be as an arbiter betwixt themselves.
Nor let your Majesty
Doubt here the peril of the unseen event.
How did your brother Kings, coheritors _175
In your high interest in the subject earth,
Rise past such troubles to that height of power
Where now they sit, and awfully serene
Smile on the trembling world? Such popular storms
Philip the Second of Spain, this Lewis of France, _180
And late the German head of many bodies,
And every petty lord of Italy,
Quelled or by arts or arms. Is England poorer
Or feebler? or art thou who wield'st her power
Tamer than they? or shall this island be-- _185
[Girdled] by its inviolable waters--
To the world present and the world to come
Sole pattern of extinguished monarchy?
Not if thou dost as I would have thee do.
KING:
Your words shall be my deeds: _190
You speak the image of my thought. My friend
(If Kings can have a friend, I call thee so),
Beyond the large commission which [belongs]
Under the great seal of the realm, take this:
And, for some obvious reasons, let there be _195
No seal on it, except my kingly word
And honour as I am a gentleman.
Be--as thou art within my heart and mind--
Another self, here and in Ireland:
Do what thou judgest well, take amplest licence, _200
And stick not even at questionable means.
Hear me, Wentworth. My word is as a wall
Between thee and this world thine enemy--
That hates thee, for thou lovest me.
STRAFFORD:
I own
No friend but thee, no enemies but thine: _205
Thy lightest thought is my eternal law.
How weak, how short, is life to pay--
KING:
Peace, peace.
Thou ow'st me nothing yet.
[TO LAUD. ]
My lord, what say
Those papers?
LAUD:
Your Majesty has ever interposed, _210
In lenity towards your native soil,
Between the heavy vengeance of the Church
And Scotland. Mark the consequence of warming
This brood of northern vipers in your bosom.
The rabble, instructed no doubt _215
By London, Lindsay, Hume, and false Argyll
(For the waves never menace heaven until
Scourged by the wind's invisible tyranny),
Have in the very temple of the Lord
Done outrage to His chosen ministers. _220
They scorn the liturgy of the Holy Church,
Refuse to obey her canons, and deny
The apostolic power with which the Spirit
Has filled its elect vessels, even from him
Who held the keys with power to loose and bind, _225
To him who now pleads in this royal presence. --
Let ample powers and new instructions be
Sent to the High Commissioners in Scotland.
To death, imprisonment, and confiscation,
Add torture, add the ruin of the kindred _230
Of the offender, add the brand of infamy,
Add mutilation: and if this suffice not,
Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst
They may lick up that scum of schismatics.
I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring _235
What we possess, still prate of Christian peace,
As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers
Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong,
Should be let loose against the innocent sleep
Of templed cities and the smiling fields, _240
For some poor argument of policy
Which touches our own profit or our pride
(Where it indeed were Christian charity
To turn the cheek even to the smiter's hand):
And, when our great Redeemer, when our God, _245
When He who gave, accepted, and retained
Himself in propitiation of our sins,
Is scorned in His immediate ministry,
With hazard of the inestimable loss
Of all the truth and discipline which is _250
Salvation to the extremest generation
Of men innumerable, they talk of peace!
Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now:
For, by that Christ who came to bring a sword,
Not peace, upon the earth, and gave command _255
To His disciples at the Passover
That each should sell his robe and buy a sword,-
Once strip that minister of naked wrath,
And it shall never sleep in peace again
Till Scotland bend or break.
NOTES:
_134-_232 Beloved. . . mutilation 1870; omitted 1824.
_237 arbitrating messengers 1870; messengers of wrath 1824.
_239 the 1870; omitted 1524.
_243-_244 Parentheses inserted 1870.
_246, _247 When He. . . sins 1870; omitted 1824.
_248 ministry 1870; ministers 1824.
_249-52 With. . . innumerable 1870; omitted 1824.
KING:
My Lord Archbishop, _260
Do what thou wilt and what thou canst in this.
Thy earthly even as thy heavenly King
Gives thee large power in his unquiet realm.
But we want money, and my mind misgives me
That for so great an enterprise, as yet, _265
We are unfurnished.
STRAFFORD:
Yet it may not long
Rest on our wills.
COTTINGTON:
The expenses
Of gathering shipmoney, and of distraining
For every petty rate (for we encounter
A desperate opposition inch by inch _270
In every warehouse and on every farm),
Have swallowed up the gross sum of the imposts;
So that, though felt as a most grievous scourge
Upon the land, they stand us in small stead
As touches the receipt.
STRAFFORD:
'Tis a conclusion _275
Most arithmetical: and thence you infer
Perhaps the assembling of a parliament.
Now, if a man should call his dearest enemies
T0 sit in licensed judgement on his life,
His Majesty might wisely take that course. _280
[ASIDE TO COTTINGTON. ]
It is enough to expect from these lean imposts
That they perform the office of a scourge,
Without more profit.
[ALOUD. ]
Fines and confiscations,
And a forced loan from the refractory city,
Will fill our coffers: and the golden love _285
Of loyal gentlemen and noble friends
For the worshipped father of our common country,
With contributions from the catholics,
Will make Rebellion pale in our excess.
Be these the expedients until time and wisdom _290
Shall frame a settled state of government.
LAUD:
And weak expedients they! Have we not drained
All, till the . . . which seemed
A mine exhaustless?
STRAFFORD:
And the love which IS,
If loyal hearts could turn their blood to gold. _295
LAUD:
Both now grow barren: and I speak it not
As loving parliaments, which, as they have been
In the right hand of bold bad mighty kings
The scourges of the bleeding Church, I hate.
Methinks they scarcely can deserve our fear. _300
STRAFFORD:
Oh! my dear liege, take back the wealth thou gavest:
With that, take all I held, but as in trust
For thee, of mine inheritance: leave me but
This unprovided body for thy service,
And a mind dedicated to no care _305
Except thy safety:--but assemble not
A parliament. Hundreds will bring, like me,
Their fortunes, as they would their blood, before--
KING:
No! thou who judgest them art but one. Alas!
We should be too much out of love with Heaven, _310
Did this vile world show many such as thee,
Thou perfect, just, and honourable man!
Never shall it be said that Charles of England
Stripped those he loved for fear of those he scorns;
Nor will he so much misbecome his throne _315
As to impoverish those who most adorn
And best defend it. That you urge, dear Strafford,
Inclines me rather--
QUEEN:
To a parliament?
Is this thy firmness? and thou wilt preside
Over a knot of . . . censurers, _320
To the unswearing of thy best resolves,
And choose the worst, when the worst comes too soon?
Plight not the worst before the worst must come.
Oh, wilt thou smile whilst our ribald foes,
Dressed in their own usurped authority, _325
Sharpen their tongues on Henrietta's fame?
It is enough! Thou lovest me no more!
[WEEPS. ]
KING:
Oh, Henrietta!
[THEY TALK APART. ]
COTTINGTON [TO LAUD]:
Money we have none:
And all the expedients of my Lord of Strafford
Will scarcely meet the arrears.
LAUD:
Without delay _330
An army must be sent into the north;
Followed by a Commission of the Church,
With amplest power to quench in fire and blood,
And tears and terror, and the pity of hell,
The intenser wrath of Heresy. God will give _335
Victory; and victory over Scotland give
The lion England tamed into our hands.
That will lend power, and power bring gold.
COTTINGTON:
Meanwhile
We must begin first where your Grace leaves off.
Gold must give power, or--
LAUD:
I am not averse _340
From the assembling of a parliament.
Strong actions and smooth words might teach them soon
The lesson to obey. And are they not
A bubble fashioned by the monarch's mouth,
The birth of one light breath? If they serve no purpose, _345
A word dissolves them.
STRAFFORD:
The engine of parliaments
Might be deferred until I can bring over
The Irish regiments: they will serve to assure
The issue of the war against the Scots.
And, this game won--which if lost, all is lost-- _350
Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels,
And call them, if you will, a parliament.
KING:
Oh, be our feet still tardy to shed blood.
Guilty though it may be! I would still spare
The stubborn country of my birth, and ward _355
From countenances which I loved in youth
The wrathful Church's lacerating hand.
[TO LAUD. ]
Have you o'erlooked the other articles?
[ENTER ARCHY. ]
LAUD:
Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane,
Cromwell, and other rebels of less note, _360
Intend to sail with the next favouring wind
For the Plantations.
ARCHY:
Where they think to found
A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play,
Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.
NOTE:
_363 Gonzalo's 1870; Gonzaga Boscombe manuscript.
KING:
What's that, sirrah?
ARCHY:
New devil's politics. _365
Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths:
Lucifer was the first republican.
Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three [posts? ]
'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,
Shall sail round the world, and come back again: _370
Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull,
And come back again when the moon is at full:'--
When, in spite of the Church,
They will hear homilies of whatever length
Or form they please. _375
[COTTINGTON? ]:
So please your Majesty to sign this order
For their detention.
ARCHY:
If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout,
rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc. , and you found these diseases
had secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you
think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant
to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man? _383
KING:
If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely;
But in this case--[WRITING]. Here, my lord, take the warrant,
And see it duly executed forthwith. --
That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished. _387
[EXEUNT ALL BUT KING, QUEEN, AND ARCHY. ]
ARCHY:
Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused
by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty
without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of
clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and
the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud--who
would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were
impregnable by composition--all impannelled against poor Archy for
presenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays. _397
QUEEN:
Is the rain over, sirrah?
KING:
When it rains
And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow:
And therefore never smile till you've done crying. _400
ARCHY:
But 'tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky
has wept itself serene.
QUEEN:
What news abroad? how looks the world this morning?
ARCHY:
Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbow
in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for
'A rainbow in the morning _407
Is the shepherd's warning;'
and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the
mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the
breath of May pierces like a January blast. _411
KING:
The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and
the shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs.
QUEEN:
But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the
deluge are gone, and can return no more.
ARCHY:
Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come
down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies. --The
rainbow hung over the city with all its shops,. . . and churches, from
north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the
masonry of heaven--like a balance in which the angel that distributes
the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in
the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the
meanest feet. _424
QUEEN:
Who taught you this trash, sirrah?
ARCHY:
A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt. --But for the
rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and. . . until the top of the
Tower. . . of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look
as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured
upon one tip, and a mitre on the other.
So, as I had heard treasures
were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set
off, and at the Tower-- But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found
close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.
KING:
Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience. _435
ARCHY:
Then conscience is a fool. --I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I
heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the
very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.
QUEEN:
Archy is shrewd and bitter.
ARCHY:
Like the season, _440
So blow the winds. --But at the other end of the rainbow, where the
gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender
interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what
think you that I found instead of a mitre?
KING:
Vane's wits perhaps. _445
ARCHY:
Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch
over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken
dishes--the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and
the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to
enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of
this ass. _451
QUEEN:
Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane
She place my lute, together with the music
Mari received last week from Italy,
In my boudoir, and--
[EXIT ARCHY. ]
KING:
I'll go in.
NOTE:
_254-_455 For by. . . I'll go in 1870; omitted 1824.
QUEEN:
MY beloved lord, _455
Have you not noted that the Fool of late
Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words
Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?
What can it mean? I should be loth to think
Some factious slave had tutored him.
KING:
Oh, no! _460
He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 'tis
That our minds piece the vacant intervals
Of his wild words with their own fashioning,--
As in the imagery of summer clouds,
Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find _465
The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:
And partly, that the terrors of the time
Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;
And in the lightest and the least, may best
Be seen the current of the coming wind. _470
NOTES:
_460, _461 Oh. . . pupil 1870; omitted 1824.
_461 Partly 'tis 1870; It partly is 1824.
_465 of 1870; in 1824.
QUEEN:
Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.
Come, I will sing to you; let us go try
These airs from Italy; and, as we pass
The gallery, we'll decide where that Correggio
Shall hang--the Virgin Mother _475
With her child, born the King of heaven and earth,
Whose reign is men's salvation. And you shall see
A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,
Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;
Liker than any Vandyke ever made, _480
A pattern to the unborn age of thee,
Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy
A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,
Did I not think that after we were dead
Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that _485
The cares we waste upon our heavy crown
Would make it light and glorious as a wreath
Of Heaven's beams for his dear innocent brow.
NOTE:
_473-_477 and, as. . . salvation 1870; omitted 1824.
KING:
Dear Henrietta!
SCENE 3:
THE STAR CHAMBER.
LAUD, JUXON, STRAFFORD, AND OTHERS, AS JUDGES.
PRYNNE AS A PRISONER, AND THEN BASTWICK.
LAUD:
Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick: let the clerk
Recite his sentence.
CLERK:
'That he pay five thousand
Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded
With red-hot iron on the cheek and forehead,
And be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle _5
During the pleasure of the Court. '
LAUD:
Prisoner,
If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence
Should not be put into effect, now speak.
JUXON:
If you have aught to plead in mitigation,
Speak.
BASTWICK:
Thus, my lords. If, like the prelates, I _10
Were an invader of the royal power
A public scorner of the word of God,
Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious,
Impious in heart and in tyrannic act,
Void of wit, honesty, and temperance; _15
If Satan were my lord, as theirs,--our God
Pattern of all I should avoid to do;
Were I an enemy of my God and King
And of good men, as ye are;--I should merit
Your fearful state and gilt prosperity, _20
Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn
To cowls and robes of everlasting fire.
But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not
The only earthly favour ye can yield,
Or I think worth acceptance at your hands,-- _25
Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment.
even as my Master did,
Until Heaven's kingdom shall descend on earth,
Or earth be like a shadow in the light
Of Heaven absorbed--some few tumultuous years _30
Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes
His will whose will is power.
NOTE:
_27-_32 even. . . power printed as a fragment, Garnett, 1862; inserted
here conjecturally, Rossetti, 1870.
LAUD:
Officer, take the prisoner from the bar,
And be his tongue slit for his insolence.
BASTWICK:
While this hand holds a pen--
LAUD:
Be his hands--
JUXON:
Stop! _35
Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak
No terror, would interpret, being dumb,
Heaven's thunder to our harm;. . .
And hands, which now write only their own shame,
With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away. _40
LAUD:
Much more such 'mercy' among men would be,
Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge
Flinch thus from earthly retribution. I
Could suffer what I would inflict.
[EXIT BASTWICK GUARDED. ]
Bring up
The Lord Bishop of Lincoln. --
[TO STRATFORD. ]
Know you not _45
That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds
Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln,
Were found these scandalous and seditious letters
Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled?
I speak it not as touching this poor person; _50
But of the office which should make it holy,
Were it as vile as it was ever spotless.
Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes
His Majesty, if I misinterpret not.
[ENTER BISHOP WILLIAMS GUARDED. ]
STRAFFORD:
'Twere politic and just that Williams taste _55
The bitter fruit of his connection with
The schismatics. But you, my Lord Archbishop,
Who owed your first promotion to his favour,
Who grew beneath his smile--
LAUD:
Would therefore beg
The office of his judge from this High Court,-- _60
That it shall seem, even as it is, that I,
In my assumption of this sacred robe,
Have put aside all worldly preference,
All sense of all distinction of all persons,
All thoughts but of the service of the Church. -- _65
Bishop of Lincoln!
WILLIAMS:
Peace, proud hierarch!
I know my sentence, and I own it just.
Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve,
In stretching to the utmost
. . .
NOTE:
Scene 3. _1-_69 Bring. . . utmost 1870; omitted 1824.
SCENE 4:
HAMPDEN, PYM, CROMWELL, HIS DAUGHTER, AND YOUNG SIR HARRY VANE.
HAMPDEN:
England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle,
Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!
I held what I inherited in thee
As pawn for that inheritance of freedom
Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile: _5
How can I call thee England, or my country? --
Does the wind hold?
VANE:
The vanes sit steady
Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings
Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke,
Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air. _10
Mark too that flock of fleecy-winged clouds
Sailing athwart St. Margaret's.
NOTE:
_11 flock 1824; fleet 1870.
HAMPDEN:
Hail, fleet herald
Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide
Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,
Beyond the shot of tyranny, _15
Beyond the webs of that swoln spider. . .
Beyond the curses, calumnies, and [lies? ]
Of atheist priests! . . . And thou
Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,
Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm, _20
Bright as the path to a beloved home
Oh, light us to the isles of the evening land!
Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer
Of sunset, through the distant mist of years
Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions, _25
Where Power's poor dupes and victims yet have never
Propitiated the savage fear of kings
With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew
Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake
To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns; _30
Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo
Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites
Wrest man's free worship, from the God who loves,
To the poor worm who envies us His love!
Receive, thou young . . . of Paradise. _35
These exiles from the old and sinful world!
. . .
This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights
Dart mitigated influence through their veil
Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green
The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth; _40
This vaporous horizon, whose dim round
Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,
Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,
Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,
A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall. _45
The boundless universe
Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul
That owns no master; while the loathliest ward
Of this wide prison, England, is a nest
Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,-- _50
To which the eagle spirits of the free,
Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm
Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,
Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die
And cannot be repelled. _55
Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,
They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop
Through palaces and temples thunderproof.
NOTES:
_13 rude 1870; wild 1824.
_16-_18 Beyond. . . priests 1870; omitted 1824.
_25 Touched 1870; Tinged 1824.
_34 To the poor 1870; Towards the 1824.
_38 their 1870; the 1824.
_46 boundless 1870; mighty 1824.
_48 owns no 1824; owns a 1870. ward 1870; spot 1824.
_50 cradling 1870; cradled 1824.
_54, _55 Return. . . repelled 1870;
Return to brood over the [ ] thoughts
That cannot die, and may not he repelled 1824.
_56-_58 Like. . . thunderproof 1870; omitted 1824.
SCENE 5:
ARCHY:
I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the
tears shed on its old [roots? ] as the [wind? ] plays the song of
'A widow bird sate mourning
Upon a wintry bough. ' _5
[SINGS]
Heigho! the lark and the owl!
One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:--
Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,
Sings like the fool through darkness and light.
'A widow bird sate mourning for her love _10
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare.
No flower upon the ground, _15
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel's sound. '
NOTE:
Scene 5. _1-_9 I'll. . . light 1870; omitted 1824.
***
THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.
[Composed at Lerici on the Gulf of Spezzia in the spring and early
summer of 1822--the poem on which Shelley was engaged at the time of
his death. Published by Mrs. Shelley in the "Posthumous Poems" of
1824, pages 73-95. Several emendations, the result of Dr. Garnett's
examination of the Boscombe manuscript, were given to the world by
Miss Mathilde Blind, "Westminster Review", July, 1870. The poem was,
of course, included in the "Poetical Works", 1839, both editions. See
Editor's Notes. ]
Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth--
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows _5
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day, _10
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent, _15
Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould,
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil, which he of old
Took as his own, and then imposed on them: _20
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep _25
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep
Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,--
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread _30
Was so transparent, that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn
Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair, _35
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air,
And then a vision on my train was rolled. _40
. . .
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
This was the tenour of my waking dream:--
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to and fro, _45
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, and so
Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky _50
One of the million leaves of summer's bier;
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,
Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
Seeking the object of another's fear; _55
And others, as with steps towards the tomb,
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked, and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost, _60
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:
But more, with motions which each other crossed,
Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw,
Or birds within the noonday aether lost,
Upon that path where flowers never grew,--
And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells forever burst;
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths and wood-lawns interspersed _70
With overarching elms and caverns cold,
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old.
And as I gazed, methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June _75
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon,
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon--
When on the sunlit limits of the night _80
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might--
Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark aether from her infant's chair,-- _85
So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
So sate within, as one whom years deform,
Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb; _90
And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint aethereal gloom
Tempering the light. Upon the chariot-beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
The guidance of that wonder-winged team; _95
The shapes which drew it in thick lightenings
Were lost:--I heard alone on the air's soft stream
The music of their ever-moving wings.
All the four faces of that Charioteer
Had their eyes banded; little profit brings _100
Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun,--
Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been or will be done;
So ill was the car guided--but it passed _105
With solemn speed majestically on.
The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,
Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,
And saw, like clouds upon the thunder-blast,
The million with fierce song and maniac dance _110
Raging around--such seemed the jubilee
As when to greet some conqueror's advance
Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea
From senate-house, and forum, and theatre,
When . . . upon the free _115
Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear.
Nor wanted here the just similitude
Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er
The chariot rolled, a captive multitude
Was driven;--all those who had grown old in power _120
Or misery,--all who had their age subdued
By action or by suffering, and whose hour
Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,
So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;--
All those whose fame or infamy must grow _125
Till the great winter lay the form and name
Of this green earth with them for ever low;--
All but the sacred few who could not tame
Their spirits to the conquerors--but as soon
As they had touched the world with living flame, _130
Fled back like eagles to their native noon,
Or those who put aside the diadem
Of earthly thrones or gems. . .
Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem.
Were neither mid the mighty captives seen, _135
Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them,
Nor those who went before fierce and obscene.
The wild dance maddens in the van, and those
Who lead it--fleet as shadows on the green,
Outspeed the chariot, and without repose _140
Mix with each other in tempestuous measure
To savage music, wilder as it grows,
They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure,
Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun
Of that fierce Spirit, whose unholy leisure _145
Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,
Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair;
And in their dance round her who dims the sun,
Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air
As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now _150
Bending within each other's atmosphere,
Kindle invisibly--and as they glow,
Like moths by light attracted and repelled,
Oft to their bright destruction come and go,
Till like two clouds into one vale impelled, _155
That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle
And die in rain--the fiery band which held
Their natures, snaps--while the shock still may tingle
One falls and then another in the path
Senseless--nor is the desolation single, _160
Yet ere I can say WHERE--the chariot hath
Passed over them--nor other trace I find
But as of foam after the ocean's wrath
Is spent upon the desert shore;--behind,
Old men and women foully disarrayed, _165
Shake their gray hairs in the insulting wind,
And follow in the dance, with limbs decayed,
Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still
Farther behind and deeper in the shade.
But not the less with impotence of will _170
They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose
Round them and round each other, and fulfil
Their work, and in the dust from whence they rose
Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie,
And past in these performs what . . . in those. _175
Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,
Half to myself I said--'And what is this?
Whose shape is that within the car? And why--'
I would have added--'is all here amiss? --'
But a voice answered--'Life! '--I turned, and knew _180
(O Heaven, have mercy on such wretchedness! )
That what I thought was an old root which grew
To strange distortion out of the hill side,
Was indeed one of those deluded crew,
And that the grass, which methought hung so wide _185
And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,
And that the holes he vainly sought to hide,
Were or had been eyes:--'If thou canst forbear
To join the dance, which I had well forborne,'
Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware, _190
'I will unfold that which to this deep scorn
Led me and my companions, and relate
The progress of the pageant since the morn;
'If thirst of knowledge shall not then abate,
Follow it thou even to the night, but I _195
Am weary. '--Then like one who with the weight
Of his own words is staggered, wearily
He paused; and ere he could resume, I cried:
'First, who art thou? '--'Before thy memory,
'I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died, _200
And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit
Had been with purer nutriment supplied,
'Corruption would not now thus much inherit
Of what was once Rousseau,--nor this disguise
Stain that which ought to have disdained to wear it; _205
'If I have been extinguished, yet there rise
A thousand beacons from the spark I bore'--
'And who are those chained to the car? '--'The wise,
'The great, the unforgotten,--they who wore
Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light, _210
Signs of thought's empire over thought--their lore
'Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might
Could not repress the mystery within,
And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night
'Caught them ere evening. '--'Who is he with chin _215
Upon his breast, and hands crossed on his chain? '--
'The child of a fierce hour; he sought to win
'The world, and lost all that it did contain
Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more
Of fame and peace than virtue's self can gain _220
'Without the opportunity which bore
Him on its eagle pinions to the peak
From which a thousand climbers have before
'Fallen, as Napoleon fell. '--I felt my cheek
Alter, to see the shadow pass away, _225
Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak
That every pigmy kicked it as it lay;
And much I grieved to think how power and will
In opposition rule our mortal day,
And why God made irreconcilable _230
Good and the means of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eyes' desire to fill
With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be. --'Dost thou behold,'
Said my guide, 'those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire, _235
'Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and Leopold,
And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage--
names which the world thinks always old,
'For in the battle Life and they did wage,
She remained conqueror. I was overcome _240
By my own heart alone, which neither age,
'Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb
Could temper to its object. '--'Let them pass,'
I cried, 'the world and its mysterious doom
'Is not so much more glorious than it was, _245
That I desire to worship those who drew
New figures on its false and fragile glass
'As the old faded. '--'Figures ever new
Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may;
We have but thrown, as those before us threw, _250
'Our shadows on it as it passed away.
But mark how chained to the triumphal chair
The mighty phantoms of an elder day;
'All that is mortal of great Plato there
Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not; _255
The star that ruled his doom was far too fair.
'And life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,
Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain,
Or age, or sloth, or slavery could subdue not.
'And near him walk the .
