No More Learning

THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH [RUNNING TO ASIA]:
Mother, dearest mother;
May I then talk with thee as I was wont? _25
May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,
After thy looks have made them tired of joy?
May I then play beside thee the long noons,
When work is none in the bright silent air?

ASIA:
I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth _30
Can cherish thee unenvied: speak, I pray:
Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH:
Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child
Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;
And happier too; happier and wiser both. _35
Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,
And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs
That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever
An hindrance to my walks o'er the green world:
And that, among the haunts of humankind, _40
Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,
Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,
Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,
Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts
Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man; _45
And women too, ugliest of all things evil,
(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,
When good and kind, free and sincere like thee)
When false or frowning made me sick at heart
To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen. _50
Well, my path lately lay through a great city
Into the woody hills surrounding it:
A sentinel was sleeping at the gate:
When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook
The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet _55
Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;
A long, long sound, as it would never end:
And all the inhabitants leaped suddenly
Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,
Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet _60
The music pealed along. I hid myself
Within a fountain in the public square,
Where I lay like the reflex of the moon
Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon
Those ugly human shapes and visages _65
Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,
Passed floating through the air, and fading still
Into the winds that scattered them; and those
From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms
After some foul disguise had fallen, and all _70
Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise
And greetings of delighted wonder, all
Went to their sleep again: and when the dawn
Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,
Could e'er be beautiful? yet so they were, _75
And that with little change of shape or hue:
All things had put their evil nature off:
I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake,
Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,
I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward _80
And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,
With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay
Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;
So, with my thoughts full of these happy changes,
We meet again, the happiest change of all. _85

ASIA:
And never will we part, till thy chaste sister
Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon
Will look on thy more warm and equal light
Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow
And love thee.

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH:
What! as Asia loves Prometheus? _90

ASIA:
Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.
Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes
To multiply your lovely selves, and fill
With sphered fires the interlunar air?

SPIRIT OF THE EARTH:
Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp
'Tis hard I should go darkling. _95

ASIA:
Listen; look!

[THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUR ENTERS. ]

PROMETHEUS:
We feel what thou hast heard and seen: yet speak.

SPIRIT OF THE HOUR:
Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,
There was a change: the impalpable thin air _100
And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,
As if the sense of love dissolved in them
Had folded itself round the sphered world.
My vision then grew clear, and I could see
Into the mysteries of the universe: _105
Dizzy as with delight I floated down,
Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,
My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,
Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,
Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire; _110
And where my moonlike car will stand within
A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms
Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,
And you fair nymphs looking the love we feel,--
In memory of the tidings it has borne,-- _115
Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,
And open to the bright and liquid sky.
Yoked to it by an amphisbaenic snake
The likeness of those winged steeds will mock _120
The flight from which they find repose. Alas,
Whither has wandered now my partial tongue
When all remains untold which ye would hear?
As I have said, I floated to the earth:
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss _125
To move, to breathe, to be. I wandering went
Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,
And first was disappointed not to see
Such mighty change as I had felt within
Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked, _130
And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked
One with the other even as spirits do,
None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,
Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows
No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, _135
'All hope abandon ye who enter here;'
None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear
Gazed on another's eye of cold command,
Until the subject of a tyrant's will
Became, worse fate, the abject of his own, _140
Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.
None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines
Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart
The sparks of love and hope till there remained _145
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,
And the wretch crept a vampire among men,
Infecting all with his own hideous ill;
None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk
Which makes the heart deny the "yes" it breathes, _150
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy
With such a self-mistrust as has no name.
And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind
As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms, _155
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And changed to all which once they dared not be,
Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride, _160
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,
The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,
And beside which, by wretched men were borne _165
Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes
Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,
Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,
The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,
Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth _170
In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs
Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,
These imaged to the pride of kings and priests
A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide
As is the world it wasted, and are now _175
But an astonishment; even so the tools
And emblems of its last captivity,
Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,
Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.
And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,-- _180
Which, under many a name and many a form
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;
And which the nations, panic-stricken, served
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love _185
Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,
And slain among men's unreclaiming tears,
Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,--
Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines:
The painted veil, by those who were, called life, _190
Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread,
All men believed and hoped, is torn aside;
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains
Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man
Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, _195
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king
Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man
Passionless? --no, yet free from guilt or pain,
Which were, for his will made or suffered them,
Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, _200
From chance, and death, and mutability,
The clogs of that which else might oversoar
The loftiest star of unascended heaven,
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

NOTES:
_121 flight B, edition 1839; light 1820.
_173 These B; Those 1820.
_187 amid B; among 1820.
_192 or B; and 1820.

END OF ACT 3.


ACT 4.

SCENE 4. 1:
A PART OF THE FOREST NEAR THE CAVE OF PROMETHEUS.
PANTHEA AND IONE ARE SLEEPING: THEY AWAKEN GRADUALLY DURING THE FIRST SONG.

VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS:
The pale stars are gone!
For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,
In the depths of the dawn,
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee _5
Beyond his blue dwelling,
As fawns flee the leopard.
But where are ye?

[A TRAIN OF DARK FORMS AND SHADOWS PASSES BY CONFUSEDLY, SINGING. ]

Here, oh, here:
We bear the bier _10
Of the father of many a cancelled year!
Spectres we
Of the dead Hours be,
We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.

Strew, oh, strew _15
Hair, not yew!
Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!
Be the faded flowers
Of Death's bare bowers
Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours! _20

Haste, oh, haste!
As shades are chased,
Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste.
We melt away,
Like dissolving spray, _25
From the children of a diviner day,
With the lullaby
Of winds that die
On the bosom of their own harmony!

IONE:
What dark forms were they? _30

PANTHEA:
The past Hours weak and gray,
With the spoil which their toil
Raked together
From the conquest but One could foil.

IONE:
Have they passed?

PANTHEA:
They have passed; _35
They outspeeded the blast,
While 'tis said, they are fled:

IONE:
Whither, oh, whither?

PANTHEA:
To the dark, to the past, to the dead.

VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS:
Bright clouds float in heaven, _40
Dew-stars gleam on earth,
Waves assemble on ocean,
They are gathered and driven
By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!
They shake with emotion, _45
They dance in their mirth.
But where are ye?

The pine boughs are singing
Old songs with new gladness,
The billows and fountains _50
Fresh music are flinging,
Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;
The storms mock the mountains
With the thunder of gladness.
But where are ye? _55

IONE:
What charioteers are these?

PANTHEA:
Where are their chariots?

SEMICHORUS OF HOURS:
The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth
Has drawn back the figured curtain of sleep
Which covered our being and darkened our birth
In the deep.

A VOICE:
In the deep?

SEMICHORUS 2:
Oh, below the deep. _60

SEMICHORUS 1:
An hundred ages we had been kept
Cradled in visions of hate and care,
And each one who waked as his brother slept,
Found the truth--

SEMICHORUS 2:
Worse than his visions were!

SEMICHORUS 1:
We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep; _65
We have known the voice of Love in dreams;
We have felt the wand of Power, and leap--

SEMICHORUS 2:
As the billows leap in the morning beams!

CHORUS:
Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,
Pierce with song heaven's silent light, _70
Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,
To check its flight ere the cave of Night.

Once the hungry Hours were hounds
Which chased the day like a bleeding deer,
And it limped and stumbled with many wounds _75
Through the nightly dells of the desert year.

But now, oh weave the mystic measure
Of music, and dance, and shapes of light,
Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure,
Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite--

A VOICE:
Unite! _80

PANTHEA:
See, where the Spirits of the human mind
Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS:
We join the throng
Of the dance and the song,
By the whirlwind of gladness borne along; _85
As the flying-fish leap
From the Indian deep,
And mix with the sea-birds, half-asleep.

CHORUS OF HOURS:
Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet,
For sandals of lightning are on your feet, _90
And your wings are soft and swift as thought,
And your eyes are as love which is veiled not?

CHORUS OF SPIRITS:
We come from the mind
Of human kind
Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind, _95
Now 'tis an ocean
Of clear emotion,
A heaven of serene and mighty motion.

From that deep abyss
Of wonder and bliss, _100
Whose caverns are crystal palaces;
From those skiey towers
Where Thought's crowned powers
Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!

From the dim recesses _105
Of woven caresses,
Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses;
From the azure isles,
Where sweet Wisdom smiles,
Delaying your ships with her siren wiles. _110

From the temples high
Of Man's ear and eye,
Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;
From the murmurings
Of the unsealed springs _115
Where Science bedews her Daedal wings.

Years after years,
Through blood, and tears,
And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears;
We waded and flew, _120
And the islets were few
Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.

Our feet now, every palm,
Are sandalled with calm,
And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm; _125
And, beyond our eyes,
The human love lies
Which makes all it gazes on Paradise.

NOTE:
_116 her B; his 1820.

CHORUS OF SPIRITS AND HOURS:
Then weave the web of the mystic measure;
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth, _130
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,
Fill the dance and the music of mirth,
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by
To an ocean of splendour and harmony!

CHORUS OF SPIRITS:
Our spoil is won, _135
Our task is done,
We are free to dive, or soar, or run;
Beyond and around,
Or within the bound
Which clips the world with darkness round. _140

We'll pass the eyes
Of the starry skies
Into the hoar deep to colonize;
Death, Chaos, and Night,
From the sound of our flight, _145
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might.

And Earth, Air, and Light,
And the Spirit of Might,
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;
And Love, Thought, and Breath, _150
The powers that quell Death,
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.

And our singing shall build
In the void's loose field
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield; _155
We will take our plan
From the new world of man,
And our work shall be called the Promethean.

CHORUS OF HOURS:
Break the dance, and scatter the song;
Let some depart, and some remain; _160

SEMICHORUS 1:
We, beyond heaven, are driven along:

SEMICHORUS 2:
Us the enchantments of earth retain:

SEMICHORUS 1:
Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free,
With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea,
And a heaven where yet heaven could never be; _165

SEMICHORUS 2:
Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright,
Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night,
With the powers of a world of perfect light;

SEMICHORUS 1:
We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,
Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear _170
From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.

SEMICHORUS 2:
We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth,
And the happy forms of its death and birth
Change to the music of our sweet mirth.

CHORUS OF HOURS AND SPIRITS:
Break the dance, and scatter the song; _175
Let some depart, and some remain,
Wherever we fly we lead along
In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,
The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain.

PANTHEA:
Ha! they are gone!

IONE:
Yet feel you no delight _180
From the past sweetness?

PANTHEA:
As the bare green hill
When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,
Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water
To the unpavilioned sky!

IONE:
Even whilst we speak
New notes arise. What is that awful sound? _185

PANTHEA:
'Tis the deep music of the rolling world
Kindling within the strings of the waved air
Aeolian modulations.

IONE:
Listen too,
How every pause is filled with under-notes,
Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones, _190
Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,
As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air
And gaze upon themselves within the sea.

PANTHEA:
But see where through two openings in the forest
Which hanging branches overcanopy, _195
And where two runnels of a rivulet,
Between the close moss violet-inwoven,
Have made their path of melody, like sisters
Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,
Turning their dear disunion to an isle _200
Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;
Two visions of strange radiance float upon
The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,
Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet
Under the ground and through the windless air. _205

IONE:
I see a chariot like that thinnest boat,
In which the Mother of the Months is borne
By ebbing light into her western cave,
When she upsprings from interlunar dreams;
O'er which is curved an orblike canopy _210
Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,
Distinctly seen through that dusk aery veil,
Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;
Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,
Such as the genii of the thunderstorm _215
Pile on the floor of the illumined sea
When the sun rushes under it; they roll
And move and grow as with an inward wind;
Within it sits a winged infant, white
Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow, _220
Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,
Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds
Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl.
Its hair is white, the brightness of white light
Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens _225
Of liquid darkness, which the Deity
Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured
From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,
Tempering the cold and radiant air around,
With fire that is not brightness; in its hand _230
It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point
A guiding power directs the chariot's prow
Over its wheeled clouds, which as they roll
Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds,
Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew. _235

NOTES:
_208 light B; night 1820.
_212 aery B; airy 1820.
_225 strings B, edition 1839; string 1820.

PANTHEA:
And from the other opening in the wood
Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,
A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres,
Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass
Flow, as through empty space, music and light: _240
Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,
Purple and azure, white, and green, and golden,
Sphere within sphere; and every space between
Peopled with unimaginable shapes,
Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep, _245
Yet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl
Over each other with a thousand motions,
Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning,
And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,
Intensely, slowly, solemnly, roll on, _250
Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,
Intelligible words and music wild.
With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb
Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist
Of elemental subtlety, like light; _255
And the wild odour of the forest flowers,
The music of the living grass and air,
The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams
Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed,
Seem kneaded into one aereal mass _260
Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,
Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,
Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil,
On its own folded wings, and wavy hair,
The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep, _265
And you can see its little lips are moving,
Amid the changing light of their own smiles,
Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.

NOTE:
_242 white and green B; white, green 1820.

IONE:
'Tis only mocking the orb's harmony.

PANTHEA:
And from a star upon its forehead, shoot, _270
Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears
With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,
Embleming heaven and earth united now,
Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel
Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought, _275
Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings,
And perpendicular now, and now transverse,
Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,
Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart;
Infinite mine of adamant and gold, _280
Valueless stones, and unimagined gems,
And caverns on crystalline columns poised
With vegetable silver overspread;
Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs
Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed, _285
Whose vapours clothe earth's monarch mountain-tops
With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on
And make appear the melancholy ruins
Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;
Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears, _290
And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels
Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry
Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,
Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems
Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin! _295
The wrecks beside of many a city vast,
Whose population which the earth grew over
Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,
Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,
Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes _300
Huddled in gray annihilation, split,
Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,
The anatomies of unknown winged things,
And fishes which were isles of living scale,
And serpents, bony chains, twisted around _305
The iron crags, or within heaps of dust
To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs
Had crushed the iron crags; and over these
The jagged alligator, and the might
Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once _310
Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,
And weed-overgrown continents of earth,
Increased and multiplied like summer worms
On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe
Wrapped deluge round it like a cloak, and they _315
Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God
Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,
'Be not! ' And like my words they were no more.

NOTES:
_274 spokes B, edition 1839; spoke 1820.
_276 lightenings B; lightnings 1820.
_280 mines B; mine 1820.
_282 poised B; poized edition 1839; poured 1820.

THE EARTH:
The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!
The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness, _320
The vaporous exultation not to be confined!
Ha! ha! the animation of delight
Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,
And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.

THE MOON:
Brother mine, calm wanderer, _325
Happy globe of land and air,
Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,
Which penetrates my frozen frame,
And passes with the warmth of flame,
With love, and odour, and deep melody _330
Through me, through me!

THE EARTH:
Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,
My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains
Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.
The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses, _335
And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses,
Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.

They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse,
Who all our green and azure universe
Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending _340
A solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones,
And splinter and knead down my children's bones,
All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending,--

Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,
Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn, _345
My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire,
My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom
Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,
Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire:

How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up _350
By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup
Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;
And from beneath, around, within, above,
Filling thy void annihilation, love
Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball. _355

NOTES:
_335-_336 the abysses, And 1820, 1839; the abysses Of B.
_355 the omitted 1820.

THE MOON:
The snow upon my lifeless mountains
Is loosened into living fountains,
My solid oceans flow, and sing and shine:
A spirit from my heart bursts forth,
It clothes with unexpected birth _360
My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine
On mine, on mine!

Gazing on thee I feel, I know
Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,
And living shapes upon my bosom move: _365
Music is in the sea and air,
Winged clouds soar here and there,
Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:
'Tis love, all love!

THE EARTH:
It interpenetrates my granite mass, _370
Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass
Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;
Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread,
It wakes a life in the forgotten dead,
They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers. _375

And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison
With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen
Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being:
With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver
Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever, _380
Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,

Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror,
Which could distort to many a shape of error,
This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love;
Which over all his kind, as the sun's heaven _385
Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even,
Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move:

Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left,
Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft
Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured; _390
Then when it wanders home with rosy smile,
Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile
It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.

Man, oh, not men! a chain of linked thought,
Of love and might to be divided not, _395
Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;
As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze,
The unquiet republic of the maze
Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.

Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul, _400
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;
Familiar acts are beautiful through love;
Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be! _405

His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,
A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,
Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm
Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm, _410
Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.

All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass
Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;
Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;
Language is a perpetual Orphic song, _415
Which rules with Daedal harmony a throng
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.

The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on! _420
The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;
And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,
Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.

NOTE:
_387 life B; light 1820.

THE MOON:
The shadow of white death has passed
From my path in heaven at last, _425
A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;
And through my newly-woven bowers,
Wander happy paramours,
Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep
Thy vales more deep. _430

THE EARTH:
As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold
A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,
And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist,
And wanders up the vault of the blue day,
Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray _435
Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.

NOTE:
_432 unfrozen B, edition 1839; infrozen 1820.

THE MOON:
Thou art folded, thou art lying
In the light which is undying
Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;
All suns and constellations shower _440
On thee a light, a life, a power
Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine
On mine, on mine!

THE EARTH:
I spin beneath my pyramid of night,
Which points into the heavens dreaming delight, _445
Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;
As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,
Under the shadow of his beauty lying,
Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.

THE MOON:
As in the soft and sweet eclipse, _450
When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,
High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;
So when thy shadow falls on me,
Then am I mute and still, by thee
Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful, _455
Full, oh, too full!

Thou art speeding round the sun
Brightest world of many a one;
Green and azure sphere which shinest
With a light which is divinest _460
Among all the lamps of Heaven
To whom life and light is given;
I, thy crystal paramour
Borne beside thee by a power
Like the polar Paradise, _465
Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;
I, a most enamoured maiden
Whose weak brain is overladen
With the pleasure of her love,
Maniac-like around thee move
Gazing, an insatiate bride, _470
On thy form from every side
Like a Maenad, round the cup
Which Agave lifted up
In the weird Cadmaean forest. _475
Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest
I must hurry, whirl and follow
Through the heavens wide and hollow,
Sheltered by the warm embrace
Of thy soul from hungry space, _480
Drinking from thy sense and sight
Beauty, majesty, and might,
As a lover or a chameleon
Grows like what it looks upon,
As a violet's gentle eye _485
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds,
As a gray and watery mist
Glows like solid amethyst
Athwart the western mountain it enfolds, _490
When the sunset sleeps
Upon its snow--

THE EARTH:
And the weak day weeps
That it should be so.
Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight _495
Falls on me like thy clear and tender light
Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,
Through isles for ever calm;
Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce
The caverns of my pride's deep universe, _500
Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce
Made wounds which need thy balm.

PANTHEA:
I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,
A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,
Out of the stream of sound.

IONE:
Ah me! sweet sister, _505
The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,
And you pretend to rise out of its wave,
Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew
Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.

PANTHEA:
Peace! peace! a mighty Power, which is as darkness, _510
Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky
Is showered like night, and from within the air
Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up
Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,
Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone, _515
Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.

IONE:
There is a sense of words upon mine ear.

PANTHEA:
An universal sound like words: Oh, list!

DEMOGORGON:
Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,
Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies, _520
Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll
The love which paves thy path along the skies:

THE EARTH:
I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.

DEMOGORGON:
Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth
With wonder, as it gazes upon thee; _525
Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth
Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:

THE MOON:
I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!

DEMOGORGON:
Ye Kings of suns and stars, Daemons and Gods,
Ethereal Dominations, who possess _530
Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes
Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness:

A VOICE FROM ABOVE:
Our great Republic hears: we are blest, and bless.

DEMOGORGON:
Ye happy Dead, whom beams of brightest verse
Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray, _535
Whether your nature is that universe
Which once ye saw and suffered--

A VOICE: FROM BENEATH:
Or as they
Whom we have left, we change and pass away.

DEMOGORGON:
Ye elemental Genii, who have homes
From man's high mind even to the central stone _540
Of sullen lead; from heaven's star-fretted domes
To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:

A CONFUSED VOICE:
We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.

DEMOGORGON:
Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts and birds,
Ye worms and fish; ye living leaves and buds; _545
Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds,
Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes:--

NOTE:
_547 throng 1820, 1839; cancelled for feed B.

A VOICE:
Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.

DEMOGORGON:
Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;
A dupe and a deceiver; a decay; _550
A traveller from the cradle to the grave
Through the dim night of this immortal day:

ALL:
Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.

DEMOGORGON:
This is the day, which down the void abysm
At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism, _555
And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:
Love, from its awful throne of patient power
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour
Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs _560
And folds over the world its healing wings.

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, _565
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o'er the disentangled doom.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; _570
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; _575
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!

NOTES:
_559 dread B, edition 1839; dead 1820.
_575 falter B, edition 1839; flatter 1820.


CANCELLED FRAGMENTS OF "PROMETHEUS UNBOUND".

[First printed by Mr. C. D. Locock, "Examination of the Shelley
Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library", 1903, pages 33-7. ]

(following 1. _37. )
When thou descendst each night with open eyes
In torture, for a tyrant seldom sleeps,
Thou never; . . .
. . .

(following 1. _195. )
Which thou henceforth art doomed to interweave
. . .

(following the first two words of 1. _342. )
[Of Hell:] I placed it in his choice to be
The crown, or trampled refuse of the world
With but one law itself a glorious boon--
I gave--
. . .

(following 1. _707.
)
SECOND SPIRIT:
I leaped on the wings of the Earth-star damp
As it rose on the steam of a slaughtered camp--
The sleeping newt heard not our tramp
As swift as the wings of fire may pass--
We threaded the points of long thick grass
Which hide the green pools of the morass
But shook a water-serpent's couch
In a cleft skull, of many such
The widest; at the meteor's touch
The snake did seem to see in dream
Thrones and dungeons overthrown
Visions how unlike his own. . .
'Twas the hope the prophecy
Which begins and ends in thee
. . .

(following 2. 1. _110. )
Lift up thine eyes Panthea--they pierce they burn

PANTHEA:
Alas! I am consumed--I melt away
The fire is in my heart--

ASIA:
Thine eyes burn burn! --
Hide them within thine hair--

PANTHEA:
O quench thy lips
I sink I perish

ASIA:
Shelter me now--they burn
It is his spirit in their orbs. . . my life
Is ebbing fast--I cannot speak--

PANTHEA:
Rest, rest!
Sleep death annihilation pain! aught else
. . .

(following 2. 4. _27. )
Or looks which tell that while the lips are calm
And the eyes cold, the spirit weeps within
Tears like the sanguine sweat of agony;
. . .

UNCANCELLED PASSAGE.
(following 2. 5. _71. )

ASIA:
You said that spirits spoke, but it was thee
Sweet sister, for even now thy curved lips
Tremble as if the sound were dying there
Not dead

PANTHEA:
Alas it was Prometheus spoke
Within me, and I know it must be so
I mixed my own weak nature with his love
. . . And my thoughts
Are like the many forests of a vale
Through which the might of whirlwind and of rain
Had passed--they rest rest through the evening light
As mine do now in thy beloved smile.

CANCELLED STAGE DIRECTIONS.
(following 1. _221. )
[THE SOUND BENEATH AS OF EARTHQUAKE AND THE DRIVING OF WHIRLWINDS--THE
RAVINE IS SPLIT, AND THE PHANTASM OF JUPITER RISES, SURROUNDED BY
HEAVY CLOUDS WHICH DART FORTH LIGHTNING. ]

(following 1. _520. )
[ENTER RUSHING BY GROUPS OF HORRIBLE FORMS; THEY SPEAK AS THEY PASS IN
CHORUS. ]

(following 1. _552. )
[A SHADOW PASSES OVER THE SCENE, AND A PIERCING SHRIEK IS HEARD. ]


NOTE ON "PROMETHEUS UNBOUND", BY MRS. SHELLEY.

On the 12th of March, 1818, Shelley quitted England, never to return.
His principal motive was the hope that his health would be improved by
a milder climate; he suffered very much during the winter previous to
his emigration, and this decided his vacillating purpose. In December,
1817, he had written from Marlow to a friend, saying:

'My health has been materially worse. My feelings at intervals are of
a deadly and torpid kind, or awakened to such a state of unnatural and
keen excitement that, only to instance the organ of sight, I find the
very blades of grass and the boughs of distant trees present
themselves to me with microscopic distinctness. Towards evening I sink
into a state of lethargy and inanimation, and often remain for hours
on the sofa between sleep and waking, a prey to the most painful
irritability of thought. Such, with little intermission, is my
condition. The hours devoted to study are selected with vigilant
caution from among these periods of endurance. It is not for this that
I think of travelling to Italy, even if I knew that Italy would
relieve me. But I have experienced a decisive pulmonary attack; and
although at present it has passed away without any considerable
vestige of its existence, yet this symptom sufficiently shows the true
nature of my disease to be consumptive. It is to my advantage that
this malady is in its nature slow, and, if one is sufficiently alive
to its advances, is susceptible of cure from a warm climate. In the
event of its assuming any decided shape, IT WOULD BE MY DUTY to go to
Italy without delay. It is not mere health, but life, that I should
seek, and that not for my own sake--I feel I am capable of trampling
on all such weakness; but for the sake of those to whom my life may be
a source of happiness, utility, security, and honour, and to some of
whom my death might be all that is the reverse. '

In almost every respect his journey to Italy was advantageous. He left
behind friends to whom he was attached; but cares of a thousand kinds,
many springing from his lavish generosity, crowded round him in his
native country, and, except the society of one or two friends, he had
no compensation. The climate caused him to consume half his existence
in helpless suffering. His dearest pleasure, the free enjoyment of the
scenes of Nature, was marred by the same circumstance.

He went direct to Italy, avoiding even Paris, and did not make any
pause till he arrived at Milan. The first aspect of Italy enchanted
Shelley; it seemed a garden of delight placed beneath a clearer and
brighter heaven than any he had lived under before. He wrote long
descriptive letters during the first year of his residence in Italy,
which, as compositions, are the most beautiful in the world, and show
how truly he appreciated and studied the wonders of Nature and Art in
that divine land.

The poetical spirit within him speedily revived with all the power and
with more than all the beauty of his first attempts. He meditated
three subjects as the groundwork for lyrical dramas. One was the story
of Tasso; of this a slight fragment of a song of Tasso remains. The
other was one founded on the Book of Job, which he never abandoned in
idea, but of which no trace remains among his papers. The third was
the "Prometheus Unbound". The Greek tragedians were now his most
familiar companions in his wanderings, and the sublime majesty of
Aeschylus filled him with wonder and delight. The father of Greek
tragedy does not possess the pathos of Sophocles, nor the variety and
tenderness of Euripides; the interest on which he founds his dramas is
often elevated above human vicissitudes into the mighty passions and
throes of gods and demi-gods: such fascinated the abstract imagination
of Shelley.

We spent a month at Milan, visiting the Lake of Como during that
interval. Thence we passed in succession to Pisa, Leghorn, the Baths
of Lucca, Venice, Este, Rome, Naples, and back again to Rome, whither
we returned early in March, 1819. During all this time Shelley
meditated the subject of his drama, and wrote portions of it. Other
poems were composed during this interval, and while at the Bagni di
Lucca he translated Plato's "Symposium". But, though he diversified
his studies, his thoughts centred in the Prometheus. At last, when at
Rome, during a bright and beautiful Spring, he gave up his whole time
to the composition. The spot selected for his study was, as he
mentions in his preface, the mountainous ruins of the Baths of
Caracalla. These are little known to the ordinary visitor at Rome. He
describes them in a letter, with that poetry and delicacy and truth of
description which render his narrated impressions of scenery of
unequalled beauty and interest.

At first he completed the drama in three acts. It was not till several
months after, when at Florence, that he conceived that a fourth act, a
sort of hymn of rejoicing in the fulfilment of the prophecies with
regard to Prometheus, ought to be added to complete the composition.

The prominent feature of Shelley's theory of the destiny of the human
species was that evil is not inherent in the system of the creation,
but an accident that might be expelled. This also forms a portion of
Christianity: God made earth and man perfect, till he, by his fall,

'Brought death into the world and all our woe. '

Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no
evil, and there would be none. It is not my part in these Notes to
notice the arguments that have been urged against this opinion, but to
mention the fact that he entertained it, and was indeed attached to it
with fervent enthusiasm. That man could be so perfectionized as to be
able to expel evil from his own nature, and from the greater part of
the creation, was the cardinal point of his system. And the subject he
loved best to dwell on was the image of One warring with the Evil
Principle, oppressed not only by it, but by all--even the good, who
were deluded into considering evil a necessary portion of humanity; a
victim full of fortitude and hope and the spirit of triumph emanating
from a reliance in the ultimate omnipotence of Good. Such he had
depicted in his last poem, when he made Laon the enemy and the victim
of tyrants. He now took a more idealized image of the same subject. He
followed certain classical authorities in figuring Saturn as the good
principle, Jupiter the usurping evil one, and Prometheus as the
regenerator, who, unable to bring mankind back to primitive innocence,
used knowledge as a weapon to defeat evil, by leading mankind, beyond
the state wherein they are sinless through ignorance, to that in which
they are virtuous through wisdom. Jupiter punished the temerity of the
Titan by chaining him to a rock of Caucasus, and causing a vulture to
devour his still-renewed heart. There was a prophecy afloat in heaven
portending the fall of Jove, the secret of averting which was known
only to Prometheus; and the god offered freedom from torture on
condition of its being communicated to him. According to the
mythological story, this referred to the offspring of Thetis, who was
destined to be greater than his father. Prometheus at last bought
pardon for his crime of enriching mankind with his gifts, by revealing
the prophecy. Hercules killed the vulture, and set him free; and
Thetis was married to Peleus, the father of Achilles.

Shelley adapted the catastrophe of this story to his peculiar views.
The son greater than his father, born of the nuptials of Jupiter and
Thetis, was to dethrone Evil, and bring back a happier reign than that
of Saturn. Prometheus defies the power of his enemy, and endures
centuries of torture; till the hour arrives when Jove, blind to the
real event, but darkly guessing that some great good to himself will
flow, espouses Thetis. At the moment, the Primal Power of the world
drives him from his usurped throne, and Strength, in the person of
Hercules, liberates Humanity, typified in Prometheus, from the
tortures generated by evil done or suffered. Asia, one of the
Oceanides, is the wife of Prometheus--she was, according to other
mythological interpretations, the same as Venus and Nature. When the
benefactor of mankind is liberated, Nature resumes the beauty of her
prime, and is united to her husband, the emblem of the human race, in
perfect and happy union. In the Fourth Act, the Poet gives further
scope to his imagination, and idealizes the forms of creation--such as
we know them, instead of such as they appeared to the Greeks. Maternal
Earth, the mighty parent, is superseded by the Spirit of the Earth,
the guide of our planet through the realms of sky; while his fair and
weaker companion and attendant, the Spirit of the Moon, receives bliss
from the annihilation of Evil in the superior sphere.

Shelley develops, more particularly in the lyrics of this drama, his
abstruse and imaginative theories with regard to the Creation. It
requires a mind as subtle and penetrating as his own to understand the
mystic meanings scattered throughout the poem. They elude the ordinary
reader by their abstraction and delicacy of distinction, but they are
far from vague. It was his design to write prose metaphysical essays
on the nature of Man, which would have served to explain much of what
is obscure in his poetry; a few scattered fragments of observations
and remarks alone remain. He considered these philosophical views of
Mind and Nature to be instinct with the intensest spirit of poetry.

More popular poets clothe the ideal with familiar and sensible
imagery. Shelley loved to idealize the real--to gift the mechanism of
the material universe with a soul and a voice, and to bestow such also
on the most delicate and abstract emotions and thoughts of the mind.
Sophocles was his great master in this species of imagery.

I find in one of his manuscript books some remarks on a line in the
"Oedipus Tyrannus", which show at once the critical subtlety of
Shelley's mind, and explain his apprehension of those 'minute and
remote distinctions of feeling, whether relative to external nature or
the living beings which surround us,' which he pronounces, in the
letter quoted in the note to the "Revolt of Islam", to comprehend all
that is sublime in man.

'In the Greek Shakespeare, Sophocles, we find the image,

Pollas d' odous elthonta phrontidos planois:

a line of almost unfathomable depth of poetry; yet how simple are the
images in which it is arrayed!

"Coming to many ways in the wanderings of careful thought. "

If the words odous and planois had not been used, the line might have
been explained in a metaphorical instead of an absolute sense, as we
say "WAYS and means," and "wanderings" for error and confusion. But
they meant literally paths or roads, such as we tread with our feet;
and wanderings, such as a man makes when he loses himself in a desert,
or roams from city to city--as Oedipus, the speaker of this verse, was
destined to wander, blind and asking charity. What a picture does this
line suggest of the mind as a wilderness of intricate paths, wide as
the universe, which is here made its symbol; a world within a world
which he who seeks some knowledge with respect to what he ought to do
searches throughout, as he would search the external universe for some
valued thing which was hidden from him upon its surface. '

In reading Shelley's poetry, we often find similar verses, resembling,
but not imitating the Greek in this species of imagery; for, though he
adopted the style, he gifted it with that originality of form and
colouring which sprung from his own genius.

In the "Prometheus Unbound", Shelley fulfils the promise quoted from a
letter in the Note on the "Revolt of Islam". (While correcting the
proof-sheets of that poem, it struck me that the poet had indulged in
an exaggerated view of the evils of restored despotism; which, however
injurious and degrading, were less openly sanguinary than the triumph
of anarchy, such as it appeared in France at the close of the last
century. But at this time a book, "Scenes of Spanish Life", translated
by Lieutenant Crawford from the German of Dr. Huber, of Rostock, fell
into my hands. The account of the triumph of the priests and the
serviles, after the French invasion of Spain in 1823, bears a strong
and frightful resemblance to some of the descriptions of the massacre
of the patriots in the "Revolt of Islam". ) The tone of the composition
is calmer and more majestic, the poetry more perfect as a whole, and
the imagination displayed at once more pleasingly beautiful and more
varied and daring. The description of the Hours, as they are seen in
the cave of Demogorgon, is an instance of this--it fills the mind as
the most charming picture--we long to see an artist at work to bring
to our view the

'cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds
Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:
Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet's flashing hair: they all
Sweep onward. '

Through the whole poem there reigns a sort of calm and holy spirit of
love; it soothes the tortured, and is hope to the expectant, till the
prophecy is fulfilled, and Love, untainted by any evil, becomes the
law of the world.

England had been rendered a painful residence to Shelley, as much by
the sort of persecution with which in those days all men of liberal
opinions were visited, and by the injustice he had lately endured in
the Court of Chancery, as by the symptoms of disease which made him
regard a visit to Italy as necessary to prolong his life. An exile,
and strongly impressed with the feeling that the majority of his
countrymen regarded him with sentiments of aversion such as his own
heart could experience towards none, he sheltered himself from such
disgusting and painful thoughts in the calm retreats of poetry, and
built up a world of his own--with the more pleasure, since he hoped to
induce some one or two to believe that the earth might become such,
did mankind themselves consent. The charm of the Roman climate helped
to clothe his thoughts in greater beauty than they had ever worn
before. And, as he wandered among the ruins made one with Nature in
their decay, or gazed on the Praxitelean shapes that throng the
Vatican, the Capitol, and the palaces of Rome, his soul imbibed forms
of loveliness which became a portion of itself. There are many
passages in the "Prometheus" which show the intense delight he
received from such studies, and give back the impression with a beauty
of poetical description peculiarly his own. He felt this, as a poet
must feel when he satisfies himself by the result of his labours; and
he wrote from Rome, 'My "Prometheus Unbound" is just finished, and in
a month or two I shall send it. It is a drama, with characters and
mechanism of a kind yet unattempted; and I think the execution is
better than any of my former attempts. '

I may mention, for the information of the more critical reader, that
the verbal alterations in this edition of "Prometheus" are made from a
list of errata written by Shelley himself.

***


THE CENCI.

A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS.

[Composed at Rome and near Leghorn (Villa Valsovano), May-August 5,
1819; published 1820 (spring) by C. & J. Ollier, London. This edition
of two hundred and fifty copies was printed in Italy 'because,' writes
Shelley to Peacock, September 21, 1819, 'it costs, with all duties and
freightage, about half what it would cost in London. ' A Table of
Errata in Mrs. Shelley's handwriting is printed by Forman in "The
Shelley Library", page 91. A second edition, published by Ollier in
1821 (C. H. Reynell, printer), embodies the corrections indicated in
this Table. No manuscript of "The Cenci" is known to exist. Our text
follows that of the second edition (1821); variations of the first
(Italian) edition, the title-page of which bears date 1819, are given
in the footnotes. The text of the "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st and 2nd
editions (Mrs. Shelley), follows for the most part that of the editio
princeps of 1819. ]


DEDICATION, TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.

Mv dear friend--

I inscribe with your name, from a distant country, and after an
absence whose months have seemed years, this the latest of my literary
efforts.

Those writings which I have hitherto published, have been little else
than visions which impersonate my own apprehensions of the beautiful
and the just. I can also perceive in them the literary defects
incidental to youth and impatience; they are dreams of what ought to
be, or may be. The drama which I now present to you is a sad reality.
I lay aside the presumptuous attitude of an instructor, and am content
to paint, with such colours as my own heart furnishes, that which has
been.

Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that
it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the
ornament of his name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent and brave;
one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet
himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive, and
how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he
can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of
purer life and manners I never knew: and I had already been fortunate
in friendships when your name was added to the list.

In that patient and irreconcilable enmity with domestic and political
tyranny and imposture which the tenor of your life has illustrated,
and which, had I health and talents, should illustrate mine, let us,
comforting each other in our task, live and die.

All happiness attend you! Your affectionate friend,

PERCY B. SHELLEY.

Rome, May 29, 1819.


THE CENCI.

PREFACE.

A manuscript was communicated to me during my travels in Italy, which
was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains
a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one
of the noblest and richest families of that city during the
Pontificate of Clement VIII, in the year 1599. The story is, that an
old man having spent his life in debauchery and wickedness, conceived
at length an implacable hatred towards his children; which showed
itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion,
aggravated by every circumstance of cruelty and violence. This
daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she
considered a perpetual contamination both of body and mind, at length
plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their common
tyrant. The young maiden, who was urged to this tremendous deed by an
impulse which overpowered its horror, was evidently a most gentle and
amiable being, a creature formed to adorn and be admired, and thus
violently thwarted from her nature by the necessity of circumstance
and opinion. The deed was quickly discovered, and, in spite of the
most earnest prayers made to the Pope by the highest persons in Rome,
the criminals were put to death. The old man had during his life
repeatedly bought his pardon from the Pope for capital crimes of the
most enormous and unspeakable kind, at the price of a hundred thousand
crowns; the death therefore of his victims can scarcely be accounted
for by the love of justice. The Pope, among other motives for
severity, probably felt that whoever killed the Count Cenci deprived
his treasury of a certain and copious source of revenue. (The Papal
Government formerly took the most extraordinary precautions against
the publicity of facts which offer so tragical a demonstration of its
own wickedness and weakness; so that the communication of the
manuscript had become, until very lately, a matter of some
difficulty. ) Such a story, if told so as to present to the reader all
the feelings of those who once acted it, their hopes and fears, their
confidences and misgivings, their various interests, passions, and
opinions, acting upon and with each other, yet all conspiring to one
tremendous end, would be as a light to make apparent some of the most
dark and secret caverns of the human heart.

On my arrival at Rome I found that the story of the Cenci was a
subject not to be mentioned in Italian society without awakening a
deep and breathless interest; and that the feelings of the company
never failed to incline to a romantic pity for the wrongs, and a
passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged her,
who has been mingled two centuries with the common dust. All ranks of
people knew the outlines of this history, and participated in the
overwhelming interest which it seems to have the magic of exciting in
the human heart. I had a copy of Guido's picture of Beatrice which is
preserved in the Colonna Palace, and my servant instantly recognized
it as the portrait of La Cenci.

This national and universal interest which the story produces and has
produced for two centuries and among all ranks of people in a great
City, where the imagination is kept for ever active and awake, first
suggested to me the conception of its fitness for a dramatic purpose.
In fact it is a tragedy which has already received, from its capacity
of awakening and sustaining the sympathy of men, approbation and
success. Nothing remained as I imagined, but to clothe it to the
apprehensions of my countrymen in such language and action as would
bring it home to their hearts. The deepest and the sublimest tragic
compositions, King Lear and the two plays in which the tale of Oedipus
is told, were stories which already existed in tradition, as matters
of popular belief and interest, before Shakspeare and Sophocles made
them familiar to the sympathy of all succeeding generations of
mankind.

This story of the Cenci is indeed eminently fearful and monstrous:
anything like a dry exhibition of it on the stage would be
insupportable. The person who would treat such a subject must increase
the ideal, and diminish the actual horror of the events, so that the
pleasure which arises from the poetry which exists in these
tempestuous sufferings and crimes may mitigate the pain of the
contemplation of the moral deformity from which they spring. There
must also be nothing attempted to make the exhibition subservient to
what is vulgarly termed a moral purpose. The highest moral purpose
aimed at in the highest species of the drama, is the teaching the
human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of
itself; in proportion to the possession of which knowledge, every
human being is wise, just, sincere, tolerant and kind. If dogmas can
do more, it is well: but a drama is no fit place for the enforcement
of them. Undoubtedly, no person can be truly dishonoured by the act of
another; and the fit return to make to the most enormous injuries is
kindness and forbearance, and a resolution to convert the injurer from
his dark passions by peace and love. Revenge, retaliation, atonement,
are pernicious mistakes. If Beatrice had thought in this manner she
would have been wiser and better; but she would never have been a
tragic character: the few whom such an exhibition would have
interested, could never have been sufficiently interested for a
dramatic purpose, from the want of finding sympathy in their interest
among the mass who surround them. It is in the restless and
anatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of
Beatrice, yet feel that she has done what needs justification; it is
in the superstitious horror with which they contemplate alike her
wrongs and their revenge, that the dramatic character of what she did
and suffered, consists.

I have endeavoured as nearly as possible to represent the characters
as they probably were, and have sought to avoid the error of making
them actuated by my own conceptions of right or wrong, false or true:
thus under a thin veil converting names and actions of the sixteenth
century into cold impersonations of my own mind. They are represented
as Catholics, and as Catholics deeply tinged with religion. To a
Protestant apprehension there will appear something unnatural in the
earnest and perpetual sentiment of the relations between God and men
which pervade the tragedy of the Cenci. It will especially be startled
at the combination of an undoubting persuasion of the truth of the
popular religion with a cool and determined perseverance in enormous
guilt. But religion in Italy is not, as in Protestant countries, a
cloak to be worn on particular days; or a passport which those who do
not wish to be railed at carry with them to exhibit; or a gloomy
passion for penetrating the impenetrable mysteries of our being, which
terrifies its possessor at the darkness of the abyss to the brink of
which it has conducted him. Religion coexists, as it were, in the mind
of an Italian Catholic, with a faith in that of which all men have the
most certain knowledge. It is interwoven with the whole fabric of
life. It is adoration, faith, submission, penitence, blind admiration;
not a rule for moral conduct. It has no necessary connection with any
one virtue.