_40
LAUD:
Much more such 'mercy' among men would be,
Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge
Flinch thus from earthly retribution.
LAUD:
Much more such 'mercy' among men would be,
Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge
Flinch thus from earthly retribution.
Shelley copy
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 . . . twain, _260
The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.
'The world was darkened beneath either pinion
Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion; _265
'The other long outlived both woes and wars,
Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept
The jealous key of Truth's eternal doors,
'If Bacon's eagle spirit had not lept
Like lightning out of darkness--he compelled _270
The Proteus shape of Nature, as it slept
'To wake, and lead him to the caves that held
The treasure of the secrets of its reign.
See the great bards of elder time, who quelled
'The passions which they sung, as by their strain _275
May well be known: their living melody
Tempers its own contagion to the vein
'Of those who are infected with it--I
Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!
And so my words have seeds of misery-- _180
'Even as the deeds of others, not as theirs. '
And then he pointed to a company,
'Midst whom I quickly recognized the heirs
Of Caesar's crime, from him to Constantine;
The anarch chiefs, whose force and murderous snares _285
Had founded many a sceptre-bearing line,
And spread the plague of gold and blood abroad:
And Gregory and John, and men divine,
Who rose like shadows between man and God;
Till that eclipse, still hanging over heaven, _290
Was worshipped by the world o'er which they strode,
For the true sun it quenched--'Their power was given
But to destroy,' replied the leader:--'I
Am one of those who have created, even
'If it be but a world of agony. '-- _295
'Whence camest thou? and whither goest thou?
How did thy course begin? ' I said, 'and why?
'Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
Of people, and my heart sick of one sad thought--
Speak! '--'Whence I am, I partly seem to know, _300
'And how and by what paths I have been brought
To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;--
Why this should be, my mind can compass not;
'Whither the conqueror hurries me, still less;--
But follow thou, and from spectator turn _305
Actor or victim in this wretchedness,
'And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn
From thee. Now listen:--In the April prime,
When all the forest-tips began to burn
'With kindling green, touched by the azure clime _310
Of the young season, I was laid asleep
Under a mountain, which from unknown time
'Had yawned into a cavern, high and deep;
And from it came a gentle rivulet,
Whose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep _315
'Bent the soft grass, and kept for ever wet
The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
With sounds, which whoso hears must needs forget
'All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love,
Which they had known before that hour of rest; _320
A sleeping mother then would dream not of
'Her only child who died upon the breast
At eventide--a king would mourn no more
The crown of which his brows were dispossessed
'When the sun lingered o'er his ocean floor _325
To gild his rival's new prosperity.
'Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore
'Ills, which if ills can find no cure from thee,
The thought of which no other sleep will quell,
Nor other music blot from memory, _330
'So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell;
And whether life had been before that sleep
The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell
'Like this harsh world in which I woke to weep,
I know not. I arose, and for a space _335
The scene of woods and waters seemed to keep,
Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace
Of light diviner than the common sun
Sheds on the common earth, and all the place
'Was filled with magic sounds woven into one _340
Oblivious melody, confusing sense
Amid the gliding waves and shadows dun;
'And, as I looked, the bright omnipresence
Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
And the sun's image radiantly intense _345
'Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
Like gold, and threaded all the forest's maze
With winding paths of emerald fire; there stood
'Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze _350
Of his own glory, on the vibrating
Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
'A Shape all light, which with one hand did fling
Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn,
And the invisible rain did ever sing
'A silver music on the mossy lawn; _355
And still before me on the dusky grass,
Iris her many-coloured scarf had drawn:
'In her right hand she bore a crystal glass,
Mantling with bright Nepenthe; the fierce splendour
Fell from her as she moved under the mass _360
'Of the deep cavern, and with palms so tender,
Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
Glided along the river, and did bend her
'Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream _365
That whispered with delight to be its pillow.
'As one enamoured is upborne in dream
O'er lily-paven lakes, mid silver mist
To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
'Partly to tread the waves with feet which kissed _370
The dancing foam; partly to glide along
The air which roughened the moist amethyst,
'Or the faint morning beams that fell among
The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song _375
'Of leaves, and winds, and waves, and birds, and bees,
And falling drops, moved in a measure new
Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze,
'Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon, _380
Dances i' the wind, where never eagle flew;
'And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
To which they moved, seemed as they moved to blot
The thoughts of him who gazed on them; and soon
'All that was, seemed as if it had been not; _385
And all the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers; and she, thought by thought,
'Trampled its sparks into the dust of death
As day upon the threshold of the east
Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath _390
'Of darkness re-illumine even the least
Of heaven's living eyes--like day she came,
Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
'To move, as one between desire and shame
Suspended, I said--If, as it doth seem, _395
Thou comest from the realm without a name
'Into this valley of perpetual dream,
Show whence I came, and where I am, and why--
Pass not away upon the passing stream.
'Arise and quench thy thirst, was her reply. _400
And as a shut lily stricken by the wand
Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,
'I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
And suddenly my brain became as sand _405
'Where the first wave had more than half erased
The track of deer on desert Labrador;
Whilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed,
'Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore,
Until the second bursts;--so on my sight _410
Burst a new vision, never seen before,
'And the fair shape waned in the coming light,
As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
'Of sunrise, ere it tinge the mountain-tops; _415
And as the presence of that fairest planet,
Although unseen, is felt by one who hopes
'That his day's path may end as he began it,
In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent
Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it, _420
'Or the soft note in which his dear lament
The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
That turned his weary slumber to content;
'So knew I in that light's severe excess
The presence of that Shape which on the stream _425
Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
'More dimly than a day-appearing dream,
The host of a forgotten form of sleep;
A light of heaven, whose half-extinguished beam
'Through the sick day in which we wake to weep _430
Glimmers, for ever sought, for ever lost;
So did that shape its obscure tenour keep
'Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;
But the new Vision, and the cold bright car,
With solemn speed and stunning music, crossed _435
'The forest, and as if from some dread war
Triumphantly returning, the loud million
Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.
'A moving arch of victory, the vermilion
And green and azure plumes of Iris had _440
Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
'And underneath aethereal glory clad
The wilderness, and far before her flew
The tempest of the splendour, which forbade
'Shadow to fall from leaf and stone; the crew _445
Seemed in that light, like atomies to dance
Within a sunbeam;--some upon the new
'Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance
The grassy vesture of the desert, played,
Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance; _450
'Others stood gazing, till within the shade
Of the great mountain its light left them dim;
Others outspeeded it; and others made
'Circles around it, like the clouds that swim
Round the high moon in a bright sea of air; _455
And more did follow, with exulting hymn,
'The chariot and the captives fettered there:--
But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
Fell into the same track at last, and were
'Borne onward. --I among the multitude _460
Was swept--me, sweetest flowers delayed not long;
Me, not the shadow nor the solitude;
'Me, not that falling stream's Lethean song;
Me, not the phantom of that early Form
Which moved upon its motion--but among _465
'The thickest billows of that living storm
I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.
'Before the chariot had begun to climb
The opposing steep of that mysterious dell, _470
Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
'Of him who from the lowest depths of hell,
Through every paradise and through all glory,
Love led serene, and who returned to tell
'The words of hate and awe; the wondrous story _475
How all things are transfigured except Love;
For deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes hoary,
'The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
The sphere whose light is melody to lovers--
A wonder worthy of his rhyme. --The grove _480
'Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,
The earth was gray with phantoms, and the air
Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers
'A flock of vampire-bats before the glare
Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening, _485
Strange night upon some Indian isle;--thus were
'Phantoms diffused around; and some did fling
Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
Behind them; some like eaglets on the wing
'Were lost in the white day; others like elves _490
Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
Upon the sunny streams and grassy shelves;
'And others sate chattering like restless apes
On vulgar hands,. . .
Some made a cradle of the ermined capes _495
'Of kingly mantles; some across the tiar
Of pontiffs sate like vultures; others played
Under the crown which girt with empire
'A baby's or an idiot's brow, and made
Their nests in it. The old anatomies _500
Sate hatching their bare broods under the shade
'Of daemon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
To reassume the delegated power,
Arrayed in which those worms did monarchize,
'Who made this earth their charnel. Others more _505
Humble, like falcons, sate upon the fist
Of common men, and round their heads did soar;
Or like small gnats and flies, as thick as mist
On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
Of lawyers, statesmen, priest and theorist;-- _510
'And others, like discoloured flakes of snow
On fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair,
Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
'Which they extinguished; and, like tears, they were
A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained _515
In drops of sorrow. I became aware
'Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
The track in which we moved. After brief space,
From every form the beauty slowly waned;
'From every firmest limb and fairest face _520
The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
The action and the shape without the grace
'Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft
With care; and in those eyes where once hope shone,
Desire, like a lioness bereft _525
'Of her last cub, glared ere it died; each one
Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
'In autumn evening from a poplar tree. _530
Each like himself and like each other were
At first; but some distorted seemed to be
'Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air;
And of this stuff the car's creative ray
Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there,
'As the sun shapes the clouds; thus on the way _535
Mask after mask fell from the countenance
And form of all; and long before the day
'Was old, the joy which waked like heaven's glance
The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died;
And some grew weary of the ghastly dance, _540
'And fell, as I have fallen, by the wayside;--
Those soonest from whose forms most shadows passed,
And least of strength and beauty did abide.
'Then, what is life? I cried. '--
CANCELLED OPENING OF THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.
[Published by Miss M. Blind, "Westminster Review", July, 1870. ]
Out of the eastern shadow of the Earth,
Amid the clouds upon its margin gray
Scattered by Night to swathe in its bright birth
In gold and fleecy snow the infant Day,
The glorious Sun arose: beneath his light, _5
The earth and all. . .
_10-_17 A widow. . . sound 1870; omitted here 1824;
printed as 'A Song,' 1824, page 217.
_34, _35 dawn Bathe Mrs. Shelley (later editions); dawn, Bathed 1824, 1839.
_63 shunned Boscombe manuscript; spurned 1824, 1839.
_70 Of. . . interspersed Boscombe manuscript;
Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed 1824;
wood-lawn-interspersed 1839.
_84 form]frown 1824.
_93 light. . . beam]light upon the chariot beam; 1824.
_96 it omitted 1824.
_109 thunder Boscombe manuscript; thunders 1824; thunder's 1839.
_112 greet Boscombe manuscript; meet 1824, 1839.
_129 conqueror or conqueror's cj. A.
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 . . . twain, _260
The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion
Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.
'The world was darkened beneath either pinion
Of him whom from the flock of conquerors
Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion; _265
'The other long outlived both woes and wars,
Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept
The jealous key of Truth's eternal doors,
'If Bacon's eagle spirit had not lept
Like lightning out of darkness--he compelled _270
The Proteus shape of Nature, as it slept
'To wake, and lead him to the caves that held
The treasure of the secrets of its reign.
See the great bards of elder time, who quelled
'The passions which they sung, as by their strain _275
May well be known: their living melody
Tempers its own contagion to the vein
'Of those who are infected with it--I
Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!
And so my words have seeds of misery-- _180
'Even as the deeds of others, not as theirs. '
And then he pointed to a company,
'Midst whom I quickly recognized the heirs
Of Caesar's crime, from him to Constantine;
The anarch chiefs, whose force and murderous snares _285
Had founded many a sceptre-bearing line,
And spread the plague of gold and blood abroad:
And Gregory and John, and men divine,
Who rose like shadows between man and God;
Till that eclipse, still hanging over heaven, _290
Was worshipped by the world o'er which they strode,
For the true sun it quenched--'Their power was given
But to destroy,' replied the leader:--'I
Am one of those who have created, even
'If it be but a world of agony. '-- _295
'Whence camest thou? and whither goest thou?
How did thy course begin? ' I said, 'and why?
'Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow
Of people, and my heart sick of one sad thought--
Speak! '--'Whence I am, I partly seem to know, _300
'And how and by what paths I have been brought
To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;--
Why this should be, my mind can compass not;
'Whither the conqueror hurries me, still less;--
But follow thou, and from spectator turn _305
Actor or victim in this wretchedness,
'And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn
From thee. Now listen:--In the April prime,
When all the forest-tips began to burn
'With kindling green, touched by the azure clime _310
Of the young season, I was laid asleep
Under a mountain, which from unknown time
'Had yawned into a cavern, high and deep;
And from it came a gentle rivulet,
Whose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep _315
'Bent the soft grass, and kept for ever wet
The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove
With sounds, which whoso hears must needs forget
'All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love,
Which they had known before that hour of rest; _320
A sleeping mother then would dream not of
'Her only child who died upon the breast
At eventide--a king would mourn no more
The crown of which his brows were dispossessed
'When the sun lingered o'er his ocean floor _325
To gild his rival's new prosperity.
'Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore
'Ills, which if ills can find no cure from thee,
The thought of which no other sleep will quell,
Nor other music blot from memory, _330
'So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell;
And whether life had been before that sleep
The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell
'Like this harsh world in which I woke to weep,
I know not. I arose, and for a space _335
The scene of woods and waters seemed to keep,
Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace
Of light diviner than the common sun
Sheds on the common earth, and all the place
'Was filled with magic sounds woven into one _340
Oblivious melody, confusing sense
Amid the gliding waves and shadows dun;
'And, as I looked, the bright omnipresence
Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,
And the sun's image radiantly intense _345
'Burned on the waters of the well that glowed
Like gold, and threaded all the forest's maze
With winding paths of emerald fire; there stood
'Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze _350
Of his own glory, on the vibrating
Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,
'A Shape all light, which with one hand did fling
Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn,
And the invisible rain did ever sing
'A silver music on the mossy lawn; _355
And still before me on the dusky grass,
Iris her many-coloured scarf had drawn:
'In her right hand she bore a crystal glass,
Mantling with bright Nepenthe; the fierce splendour
Fell from her as she moved under the mass _360
'Of the deep cavern, and with palms so tender,
Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,
Glided along the river, and did bend her
'Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow
Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream _365
That whispered with delight to be its pillow.
'As one enamoured is upborne in dream
O'er lily-paven lakes, mid silver mist
To wondrous music, so this shape might seem
'Partly to tread the waves with feet which kissed _370
The dancing foam; partly to glide along
The air which roughened the moist amethyst,
'Or the faint morning beams that fell among
The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;
And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song _375
'Of leaves, and winds, and waves, and birds, and bees,
And falling drops, moved in a measure new
Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze,
'Up from the lake a shape of golden dew
Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon, _380
Dances i' the wind, where never eagle flew;
'And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune
To which they moved, seemed as they moved to blot
The thoughts of him who gazed on them; and soon
'All that was, seemed as if it had been not; _385
And all the gazer's mind was strewn beneath
Her feet like embers; and she, thought by thought,
'Trampled its sparks into the dust of death
As day upon the threshold of the east
Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath _390
'Of darkness re-illumine even the least
Of heaven's living eyes--like day she came,
Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased
'To move, as one between desire and shame
Suspended, I said--If, as it doth seem, _395
Thou comest from the realm without a name
'Into this valley of perpetual dream,
Show whence I came, and where I am, and why--
Pass not away upon the passing stream.
'Arise and quench thy thirst, was her reply. _400
And as a shut lily stricken by the wand
Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,
'I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
And suddenly my brain became as sand _405
'Where the first wave had more than half erased
The track of deer on desert Labrador;
Whilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed,
'Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore,
Until the second bursts;--so on my sight _410
Burst a new vision, never seen before,
'And the fair shape waned in the coming light,
As veil by veil the silent splendour drops
From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite
'Of sunrise, ere it tinge the mountain-tops; _415
And as the presence of that fairest planet,
Although unseen, is felt by one who hopes
'That his day's path may end as he began it,
In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent
Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it, _420
'Or the soft note in which his dear lament
The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress
That turned his weary slumber to content;
'So knew I in that light's severe excess
The presence of that Shape which on the stream _425
Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,
'More dimly than a day-appearing dream,
The host of a forgotten form of sleep;
A light of heaven, whose half-extinguished beam
'Through the sick day in which we wake to weep _430
Glimmers, for ever sought, for ever lost;
So did that shape its obscure tenour keep
'Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;
But the new Vision, and the cold bright car,
With solemn speed and stunning music, crossed _435
'The forest, and as if from some dread war
Triumphantly returning, the loud million
Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.
'A moving arch of victory, the vermilion
And green and azure plumes of Iris had _440
Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,
'And underneath aethereal glory clad
The wilderness, and far before her flew
The tempest of the splendour, which forbade
'Shadow to fall from leaf and stone; the crew _445
Seemed in that light, like atomies to dance
Within a sunbeam;--some upon the new
'Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance
The grassy vesture of the desert, played,
Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance; _450
'Others stood gazing, till within the shade
Of the great mountain its light left them dim;
Others outspeeded it; and others made
'Circles around it, like the clouds that swim
Round the high moon in a bright sea of air; _455
And more did follow, with exulting hymn,
'The chariot and the captives fettered there:--
But all like bubbles on an eddying flood
Fell into the same track at last, and were
'Borne onward. --I among the multitude _460
Was swept--me, sweetest flowers delayed not long;
Me, not the shadow nor the solitude;
'Me, not that falling stream's Lethean song;
Me, not the phantom of that early Form
Which moved upon its motion--but among _465
'The thickest billows of that living storm
I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.
'Before the chariot had begun to climb
The opposing steep of that mysterious dell, _470
Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme
'Of him who from the lowest depths of hell,
Through every paradise and through all glory,
Love led serene, and who returned to tell
'The words of hate and awe; the wondrous story _475
How all things are transfigured except Love;
For deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes hoary,
'The world can hear not the sweet notes that move
The sphere whose light is melody to lovers--
A wonder worthy of his rhyme. --The grove _480
'Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,
The earth was gray with phantoms, and the air
Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers
'A flock of vampire-bats before the glare
Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening, _485
Strange night upon some Indian isle;--thus were
'Phantoms diffused around; and some did fling
Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,
Behind them; some like eaglets on the wing
'Were lost in the white day; others like elves _490
Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes
Upon the sunny streams and grassy shelves;
'And others sate chattering like restless apes
On vulgar hands,. . .
Some made a cradle of the ermined capes _495
'Of kingly mantles; some across the tiar
Of pontiffs sate like vultures; others played
Under the crown which girt with empire
'A baby's or an idiot's brow, and made
Their nests in it. The old anatomies _500
Sate hatching their bare broods under the shade
'Of daemon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes
To reassume the delegated power,
Arrayed in which those worms did monarchize,
'Who made this earth their charnel. Others more _505
Humble, like falcons, sate upon the fist
Of common men, and round their heads did soar;
Or like small gnats and flies, as thick as mist
On evening marshes, thronged about the brow
Of lawyers, statesmen, priest and theorist;-- _510
'And others, like discoloured flakes of snow
On fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair,
Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow
'Which they extinguished; and, like tears, they were
A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained _515
In drops of sorrow. I became aware
'Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained
The track in which we moved. After brief space,
From every form the beauty slowly waned;
'From every firmest limb and fairest face _520
The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left
The action and the shape without the grace
'Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft
With care; and in those eyes where once hope shone,
Desire, like a lioness bereft _525
'Of her last cub, glared ere it died; each one
Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly
These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown
'In autumn evening from a poplar tree. _530
Each like himself and like each other were
At first; but some distorted seemed to be
'Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air;
And of this stuff the car's creative ray
Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there,
'As the sun shapes the clouds; thus on the way _535
Mask after mask fell from the countenance
And form of all; and long before the day
'Was old, the joy which waked like heaven's glance
The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died;
And some grew weary of the ghastly dance, _540
'And fell, as I have fallen, by the wayside;--
Those soonest from whose forms most shadows passed,
And least of strength and beauty did abide.
'Then, what is life? I cried. '--
CANCELLED OPENING OF THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE.
[Published by Miss M. Blind, "Westminster Review", July, 1870. ]
Out of the eastern shadow of the Earth,
Amid the clouds upon its margin gray
Scattered by Night to swathe in its bright birth
In gold and fleecy snow the infant Day,
The glorious Sun arose: beneath his light, _5
The earth and all. . .
_10-_17 A widow. . . sound 1870; omitted here 1824;
printed as 'A Song,' 1824, page 217.
_34, _35 dawn Bathe Mrs. Shelley (later editions); dawn, Bathed 1824, 1839.
_63 shunned Boscombe manuscript; spurned 1824, 1839.
_70 Of. . . interspersed Boscombe manuscript;
Of grassy paths and wood, lawn-interspersed 1824;
wood-lawn-interspersed 1839.
_84 form]frown 1824.
_93 light. . . beam]light upon the chariot beam; 1824.
_96 it omitted 1824.
_109 thunder Boscombe manuscript; thunders 1824; thunder's 1839.
_112 greet Boscombe manuscript; meet 1824, 1839.
_129 conqueror or conqueror's cj. A.
