_69 tracks her there 1824; watches her
Boscombe
manuscript.
Shelley
--Ecclesiastes.
The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. _5
O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way,
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, _10
Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.
This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow _15
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be, _20
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.
Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? _25
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see? _30
***
A SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD.
LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
[Composed September, 1815. Published with "Alastor", 1816. ]
The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;
And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:
Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, _5
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.
They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,
Responding to the charm with its own mystery. _10
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.
Thou too, aereal Pile! whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, _15
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,
Around whose lessening and invisible height
Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, _20
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,
And mingling with the still night and mute sky
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.
Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild _25
And terrorless as this serenest night:
Here could I hope, like some inquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. _30
***
TO --.
[Published with "Alastor", 1816. See Editor's Note. ]
DAKRTSI DIOISO POTMON 'APOTMON.
Oh! there are spirits of the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As star-beams among twilight trees:--
Such lovely ministers to meet _5
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And moonlight seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things,
Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice _10
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.
And thou hast sought in starry eyes
Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another's wealth:--tame sacrifice
To a fond faith! still dost thou pine? _15
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?
Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth's inconstancy? _20
Did thine own mind afford no scope
Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?
That natural scenes or human smiles
Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles?
Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled _25
Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;
The glory of the moon is dead;
Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed;
Thine own soul still is true to thee,
But changed to a foul fiend through misery. _30
This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
Dream not to chase;--the mad endeavour
Would scourge thee to severer pangs.
Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. _35
NOTES:
_1 of 1816; in 1839.
_8 moonlight 1816; mountain 1839.
***
TO WORDSWORTH.
[Published with "Alastor", 1816. ]
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine _5
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude: _10
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,--
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.
***
FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE.
[Published with "Alastor", 1816. ]
I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan
To think that a most unambitious slave,
Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave
Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne
Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer _5
A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept
In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre,
For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,
Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,
And stifled thee, their minister. I know _10
Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.
***
LINES.
[Published in Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, where it is headed
"November, 1815". Reprinted in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824. See
Editor's Note. ]
1.
The cold earth slept below,
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around, with a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of night like death did flow _5
Beneath the sinking moon.
2.
The wintry hedge was black,
The green grass was not seen,
The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track, _10
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.
3.
Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light;
As a fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream _15
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.
4.
The moon made thy lips pale, beloved--
The wind made thy bosom chill-- _20
The night did shed on thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.
NOTE:
_17 raven 1823; tangled 1824.
***
NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The remainder of Shelley's Poems will be arranged in the order in which
they were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of
the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside,
and I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings
after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of
others, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the poems are
often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess,
by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains
poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the
present arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed
together at the end.
The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the
poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as "Early Poems", the greater
part were published with "Alastor"; some of them were written
previously, some at the same period. The poem beginning 'Oh, there are
spirits in the air' was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never
knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through
his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well.
He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than
conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by
what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.
The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the
churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in
1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in
the open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in
tracing the Thames to its source. He never spent a season more
tranquilly than the summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a severe
pulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near
Windsor Forest; and his life was spent under its shades or on the
water, meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at
extending his political doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in
prose essays to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but
he had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in
England, and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare
the way for better things.
In the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the
books that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814
and 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod,
Theocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes
Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero,
a large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton's
poems, Wordsworth's "Excursion", Southey's "Madoc" and "Thalaba", Locke
"On the Human Understanding", Bacon's "Novum Organum". In Italian,
Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the "Reveries d'un Solitaire"
of Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travel. He
read few novels.
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816.
THE SUNSET.
[Written at Bishopsgate, 1816 (spring). Published in full in the
"Posthumous Poems", 1824. Lines 9-20, and 28-42, appeared in Hunt's
"Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, under the titles, respectively, of
"Sunset. From an Unpublished Poem", And "Grief. A Fragment". ]
There late was One within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,
Genius and death contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath _5
Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walked along the pathway of a field
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, _10
But to the west was open to the sky.
There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
And the old dandelion's hoary beard, _15
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
On the brown massy woods--and in the east
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
While the faint stars were gathering overhead. -- _20
'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the youth,
'I never saw the sun? We will walk here
To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me. '
That night the youth and lady mingled lay
In love and sleep--but when the morning came _25
The lady found her lover dead and cold.
Let none believe that God in mercy gave
That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on--in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, _30
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her aged father, were a kind of madness,
If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts _35
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;--
Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:
Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead--so pale;
Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins _40
And weak articulations might be seen
Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!
'Inheritor of more than earth can give, _45
Passionless calm and silence unreproved,
Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were--Peace! ' _50
This was the only moan she ever made.
NOTES:
_4 death 1839; youth 1824.
_22 sun? We will walk 1824; sunrise? We will wake cj. Forman.
_37 Her eyes. . . wan Hunt, 1823; omitted 1824, 1839.
_38 worn 1824; torn 1839.
***
HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.
[Composed, probably, in Switzerland, in the summer of 1816. Published
in Hunt's "Examiner", January 19, 1817, and with "Rosalind and Helen",
1819. ]
1.
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us,--visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,--
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, _5
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,--
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,--
Like memory of music fled,-- _10
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
2.
Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,--where art thou gone? _15
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, _20
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,--why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?
3.
No voice from some sublimer world hath ever _25
To sage or poet these responses given--
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven.
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells--whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see, _30
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone--like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, _35
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
4.
Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, _40
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies,
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes--
Thou--that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame! _45
Depart not as thy shadow came
Depart not--lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.
5.
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, _50
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard--I saw them not--
When musing deeply on the lot _55
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,--
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! _60
6.
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine--have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers _65
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatched with me the envious night--
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery, _70
That thou--O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.
7.
The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past--there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, _75
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply _80
Its calm--to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.
NOTES:
_2 among 1819; amongst 1817.
_14 dost 1819; doth 1817.
_21 fear and dream 1819; care and pain Boscombe manuscript.
_37-_48 omitted Boscombe manuscript.
_44 art 1817; are 1819.
_76 or 1819; nor 1839.
***
MONT BLANC.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.
[Composed in Switzerland, July, 1816 (see date below). Printed at the
end of the "History of a Six Weeks' Tour" published by Shelley in 1817,
and reprinted with "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Amongst the Boscombe
manuscripts is a draft of this Ode, mainly in pencil, which has been
collated by Dr. Garnett. ]
1.
The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings _5
Of waters,--with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river _10
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.
2.
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve--dark, deep Ravine--
Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene, _15
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest;--thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, _20
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
To hear--an old and solemn harmony;
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep _25
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desert fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;--
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, _30
A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound--
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange _35
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around; _40
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by _45
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!
3.
Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep,--that death is slumber, _50
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live. --I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep _55
Spread far around and inaccessibly
Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes among the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, _60
Mont Blanc appears,--still, snowy, and serene--
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread _65
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracts her there--how hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high, _70
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. --Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelope once this silent snow?
None can reply--all seems eternal now. _75
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be,
But for such faith, with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal _80
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
4.
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell _85
Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower;--the bound _90
With which from that detested trance they leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him and all that his may be;
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. _95
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And THIS, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep _100
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower _105
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil _110
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; _115
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves _120
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, _125
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.
5.
Mont Blanc yet gleams on high--the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, _130
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them:--Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath _135
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome _140
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
July 23, 1816.
NOTES:
_15 cloud-shadows]cloud shadows 1817;
cloud, shadows 1824; clouds, shadows 1839.
_20 Thy 1824; The 1839.
_53 unfurled]upfurled cj. James Thomson ('B. V. ').
_56 Spread 1824; Speed 1839.
_69 tracks her there 1824; watches her Boscombe manuscript.
_79 But for such 1824; In such a Boscombe manuscript.
_108 boundaries of the sky]boundary of the skies cj. Rossetti
(cf. lines 102, 106).
_121 torrents']torrent's 1817, 1824, 1839.
***
CANCELLED PASSAGE OF MONT BLANC.
[Published by Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
There is a voice, not understood by all,
Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roar
Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call,
Plunging into the vale--it is the blast
Descending on the pines--the torrents pour. . . _5
***
FRAGMENT: HOME.
[Published by Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys,
The least of which wronged Memory ever makes
Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears.
***
FRAGMENT OF A GHOST STORY.
[Published by Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
A shovel of his ashes took
From the hearth's obscurest nook,
Muttering mysteries as she went.
Helen and Henry knew that Granny
Was as much afraid of Ghosts as any, _5
And so they followed hard--
But Helen clung to her brother's arm,
And her own spasm made her shake.
***
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
Shelley wrote little during this year. The poem entitled "The Sunset"
was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at
Bishopsgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva.
The "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was conceived during his voyage round
the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage by
reading the "Nouvelle Heloise" for the first time. The reading it on
the very spot where the scenes are laid added to the interest; and he
was at once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and
earnest enthralling interest that pervade this work. There was
something in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self,
and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley's own
disposition; and, though differing in many of the views and shocked by
others, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating and delightful.
"Mont Blanc" was inspired by a view of that mountain and its
surrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on
his way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following
mention of this poem in his publication of the "History of a Six Weeks'
Tour, and Letters from Switzerland": 'The poem entitled "Mont Blanc" is
written by the author of the two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. It
was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful
feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and, as
an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to
approbation on an attempt to imitate the untamable wildness and
inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang. '
This was an eventful year, and less time was given to study than usual.
In the list of his reading I find, in Greek, Theocritus, the
"Prometheus" of Aeschylus, several of Plutarch's "Lives", and the works
of Lucian. In Latin, Lucretius, Pliny's "Letters", the "Annals" and
"Germany" of Tacitus. In French, the "History of the French Revolution"
by Lacretelle. He read for the first time, this year, Montaigne's
"Essays", and regarded them ever after as one of the most delightful
and instructive books in the world. The list is scanty in English
works: Locke's "Essay", "Political Justice", and Coleridge's "Lay
Sermon", form nearly the whole. It was his frequent habit to read aloud
to me in the evening; in this way we read, this year, the New
Testament, "Paradise Lost", Spenser's "Faery Queen", and "Don Quixote".
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817.
MARIANNE'S DREAM.
[Composed at Marlow, 1817. Published in Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Book",
1819, and reprinted in "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]
1.
A pale Dream came to a Lady fair,
And said, A boon, a boon, I pray!
I know the secrets of the air,
And things are lost in the glare of day,
Which I can make the sleeping see, _5
If they will put their trust in me.
2.
And thou shalt know of things unknown,
If thou wilt let me rest between
The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown
Over thine eyes so dark and sheen: _10
And half in hope, and half in fright,
The Lady closed her eyes so bright.
3.
At first all deadly shapes were driven
Tumultuously across her sleep,
And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven _15
All ghastly-visaged clouds did sweep;
And the Lady ever looked to spy
If the golden sun shone forth on high.
4.
And as towards the east she turned,
She saw aloft in the morning air, _20
Which now with hues of sunrise burned,
A great black Anchor rising there;
And wherever the Lady turned her eyes,
It hung before her in the skies.
5.
The sky was blue as the summer sea, _25
The depths were cloudless overhead,
The air was calm as it could be,
There was no sight or sound of dread,
But that black Anchor floating still
Over the piny eastern hill. _30
6.
The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear
To see that Anchor ever hanging,
And veiled her eyes; she then did hear
The sound as of a dim low clanging,
And looked abroad if she might know _35
Was it aught else, or but the flow
Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro.
7.
There was a mist in the sunless air,
Which shook as it were with an earthquake's shock,
But the very weeds that blossomed there _40
Were moveless, and each mighty rock
Stood on its basis steadfastly;
The Anchor was seen no more on high.
8.
But piled around, with summits hid
In lines of cloud at intervals, _45
Stood many a mountain pyramid
Among whose everlasting walls
Two mighty cities shone, and ever
Through the red mist their domes did quiver.
9.
On two dread mountains, from whose crest, _50
Might seem, the eagle, for her brood,
Would ne'er have hung her dizzy nest,
Those tower-encircled cities stood.
A vision strange such towers to see,
Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously, _55
Where human art could never be.
10.
And columns framed of marble white,
And giant fanes, dome over dome
Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright
With workmanship, which could not come _60
From touch of mortal instrument,
Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent
From its own shapes magnificent.
11.
But still the Lady heard that clang
Filling the wide air far away; _65
And still the mist whose light did hang
Among the mountains shook alway,
So that the Lady's heart beat fast,
As half in joy, and half aghast,
On those high domes her look she cast. _70
12.
Sudden, from out that city sprung
A light that made the earth grow red;
Two flames that each with quivering tongue
Licked its high domes, and overhead
Among those mighty towers and fanes _75
Dropped fire, as a volcano rains
Its sulphurous ruin on the plains.
13.
And hark! a rush as if the deep
Had burst its bonds; she looked behind
And saw over the western steep _80
A raging flood descend, and wind
Through that wide vale; she felt no fear,
But said within herself, 'Tis clear
These towers are Nature's own, and she
To save them has sent forth the sea. _85
14.
And now those raging billows came
Where that fair Lady sate, and she
Was borne towards the showering flame
By the wild waves heaped tumultuously.
And, on a little plank, the flow _90
Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro.
15.
The flames were fiercely vomited
From every tower and every dome,
And dreary light did widely shed
O'er that vast flood's suspended foam, _95
Beneath the smoke which hung its night
On the stained cope of heaven's light.
16.
The plank whereon that Lady sate
Was driven through the chasms, about and about,
Between the peaks so desolate _100
Of the drowning mountains, in and out,
As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails--
While the flood was filling those hollow vales.
17.
At last her plank an eddy crossed,
And bore her to the city's wall, _105
Which now the flood had reached almost;
It might the stoutest heart appal
To hear the fire roar and hiss
Through the domes of those mighty palaces.
18.
The eddy whirled her round and round _110
Before a gorgeous gate, which stood
Piercing the clouds of smoke which bound
Its aery arch with light like blood;
She looked on that gate of marble clear,
With wonder that extinguished fear. _115
19.
For it was filled with sculptures rarest,
Of forms most beautiful and strange,
Like nothing human, but the fairest
Of winged shapes, whose legions range
Throughout the sleep of those that are, _120
Like this same Lady, good and fair.
20.
And as she looked, still lovelier grew
Those marble forms;--the sculptor sure
Was a strong spirit, and the hue
Of his own mind did there endure _125
After the touch, whose power had braided
Such grace, was in some sad change faded.
21.
She looked, the flames were dim, the flood
Grew tranquil as a woodland river
Winding through hills in solitude; _130
Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver,
And their fair limbs to float in motion,
Like weeds unfolding in the ocean.
22.
And their lips moved; one seemed to speak,
When suddenly the mountains cracked, _135
And through the chasm the flood did break
With an earth-uplifting cataract:
The statues gave a joyous scream,
And on its wings the pale thin Dream
Lifted the Lady from the stream. _140
23.
The dizzy flight of that phantom pale
Waked the fair Lady from her sleep,
And she arose, while from the veil
Of her dark eyes the Dream did creep,
And she walked about as one who knew _145
That sleep has sights as clear and true
As any waking eyes can view.
NOTES:
_18 golden 1819; gold 1824, 1839.
_28 or 1824; nor 1839.
_62 or]a cj. Rossetti.
_63 its]their cj. Rossetti.
_92 flames cj. Rossetti; waves 1819, 1824, 1839.
_101 mountains 1819; mountain 1824, 1839.
_106 flood]flames cj. James Thomson ('B. V. ').
_120 that 1819, 1824; who 1839.
_135 mountains 1819; mountain 1824, 1839.
***
TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley in "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Amongst the
Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian is a chaotic first draft, from
which Mr. Locock ["Examination", etc. , 1903, pages 60-62] has, with
patient ingenuity, disengaged a first and a second stanza consistent
with the metrical scheme of stanzas 3 and 4. The two stanzas thus
recovered are printed here immediately below the poem as edited by Mrs.
Shelley. It need hardly be added that Mr. Locock's restored version
cannot, any more than Mrs. Shelley's obviously imperfect one, be
regarded in the light of a final recension. ]
1.
Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die,
Perchance were death indeed! --Constantia, turn!
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,
Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn
Between thy lips, are laid to sleep; _5
Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour, it is yet,
And from thy touch like fire doth leap.
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet.
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!
2.
A breathless awe, like the swift change _10
Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers,
Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,
Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers.
The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven
By the enchantment of thy strain, _15
And on my shoulders wings are woven,
To follow its sublime career
Beyond the mighty moons that wane
Upon the verge of Nature's utmost sphere,
Till the world's shadowy walls are past and disappear. _20
3.
Her voice is hovering o'er my soul--it lingers
O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings,
The blood and life within those snowy fingers
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.
My brain is wild, my breath comes quick-- _25
The blood is listening in my frame,
And thronging shadows, fast and thick,
Fall on my overflowing eyes;
My heart is quivering like a flame;
As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies, _30
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.
4.
I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee,
Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
Flows on, and fills all things with melody. --
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong, _35
On which, like one in trance upborne,
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep,
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.
Now 'tis the breath of summer night,
Which when the starry waters sleep,
Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright, _40
Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.
STANZAS 1 AND 2.
As restored by Mr. C. D. Locock.
1.
Cease, cease--for such wild lessons madmen learn
Thus to be lost, and thus to sink and die
Perchance were death indeed! --Constantia turn
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie
Even though the sounds its voice that were _5
Between [thy] lips are laid to sleep:
Within thy breath, and on thy hair
Like odour, it is [lingering] yet
And from thy touch like fire doth leap--
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet-- _10
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed but not forget.
2.
[A deep and] breathless awe like the swift change
Of dreams unseen but felt in youthful slumbers
Wild sweet yet incommunicably strange
Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers. . . _15
***
TO CONSTANTIA.
[Dated 1817 by Mrs. Shelley, and printed by her in the "Poetical
Works", 1839, 1st edition. A copy exists amongst the Shelley
manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr. C. D. Locock's "Examination", etc. ,
1903, page 46. ]
1.
The rose that drinks the fountain dew
In the pleasant air of noon,
Grows pale and blue with altered hue--
In the gaze of the nightly moon;
For the planet of frost, so cold and bright, _5
Makes it wan with her borrowed light.
2.
Such is my heart--roses are fair,
And that at best a withered blossom;
But thy false care did idly wear
Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom; _10
And fed with love, like air and dew,
Its growth--
NOTES:
_1 The rose]The red Rose B.
_2 pleasant]fragrant B.
_6 her omitted B.
***
FRAGMENT: TO ONE SINGING.
[Dated 1817 by Mrs. Shelley, and published in the "Poetical Works",
1839, 1st edition. The manuscript original, by which Mr. Locock has
revised and (by one line) enlarged the text, is amongst the Shelley
manuscripts at the Bodleian. The metre, as Mr. Locock ("Examination",
etc. , 1903, page 63) points out, is terza rima. ]
My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim
Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,
Far far away into the regions dim
Of rapture--as a boat, with swift sails winging
Its way adown some many-winding river, _5
Speeds through dark forests o'er the waters swinging. . .
NOTES:
_3 Far far away B. ; Far away 1839.
_6 Speeds. . . swinging B. ; omitted 1839.
***
A FRAGMENT: TO MUSIC.
[Published in "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition.
Dated 1817 (Mrs. Shelley). ]
Silver key of the fountain of tears,
Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild;
Softest grave of a thousand fears,
Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child,
Is laid asleep in flowers. _5
***
ANOTHER FRAGMENT: TO MUSIC.
[Published in "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition.
Dated 1817 (Mrs. Shelley). ]
No, Music, thou art not the 'food of Love. '
Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self,
Till it becomes all Music murmurs of.
***
'MIGHTY EAGLE'.
SUPPOSED TO BE ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM GODWIN.
[Published in 1882 ("Poetical Works of P. B. S. ") by Mr. H. Buxton
Forman, C. B. , by whom it is dated 1817. ]
Mighty eagle!
The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone. _5
O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way,
And the billows of cloud that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day, _10
Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.
This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow _15
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be, _20
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.
Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death? _25
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see? _30
***
A SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD.
LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.
[Composed September, 1815. Published with "Alastor", 1816. ]
The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;
And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:
Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men, _5
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.
They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,
Responding to the charm with its own mystery. _10
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.
Thou too, aereal Pile! whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells, _15
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,
Around whose lessening and invisible height
Gather among the stars the clouds of night.
The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound, _20
Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,
And mingling with the still night and mute sky
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.
Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild _25
And terrorless as this serenest night:
Here could I hope, like some inquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep. _30
***
TO --.
[Published with "Alastor", 1816. See Editor's Note. ]
DAKRTSI DIOISO POTMON 'APOTMON.
Oh! there are spirits of the air,
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As star-beams among twilight trees:--
Such lovely ministers to meet _5
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And moonlight seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things,
Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice _10
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.
And thou hast sought in starry eyes
Beams that were never meant for thine,
Another's wealth:--tame sacrifice
To a fond faith! still dost thou pine? _15
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?
Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth's inconstancy? _20
Did thine own mind afford no scope
Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?
That natural scenes or human smiles
Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles?
Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled _25
Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;
The glory of the moon is dead;
Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed;
Thine own soul still is true to thee,
But changed to a foul fiend through misery. _30
This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
Dream not to chase;--the mad endeavour
Would scourge thee to severer pangs.
Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate. _35
NOTES:
_1 of 1816; in 1839.
_8 moonlight 1816; mountain 1839.
***
TO WORDSWORTH.
[Published with "Alastor", 1816. ]
Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine _5
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude: _10
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,--
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.
***
FEELINGS OF A REPUBLICAN ON THE FALL OF BONAPARTE.
[Published with "Alastor", 1816. ]
I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan
To think that a most unambitious slave,
Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave
Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne
Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer _5
A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept
In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre,
For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,
Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,
And stifled thee, their minister. I know _10
Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,
That Virtue owns a more eternal foe
Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,
And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time.
***
LINES.
[Published in Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, where it is headed
"November, 1815". Reprinted in the "Posthumous Poems", 1824. See
Editor's Note. ]
1.
The cold earth slept below,
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around, with a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow,
The breath of night like death did flow _5
Beneath the sinking moon.
2.
The wintry hedge was black,
The green grass was not seen,
The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track, _10
Had bound their folds o'er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.
3.
Thine eyes glowed in the glare
Of the moon's dying light;
As a fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream _15
Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,
And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,
That shook in the wind of night.
4.
The moon made thy lips pale, beloved--
The wind made thy bosom chill-- _20
The night did shed on thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.
NOTE:
_17 raven 1823; tangled 1824.
***
NOTE ON THE EARLY POEMS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The remainder of Shelley's Poems will be arranged in the order in which
they were written. Of course, mistakes will occur in placing some of
the shorter ones; for, as I have said, many of these were thrown aside,
and I never saw them till I had the misery of looking over his writings
after the hand that traced them was dust; and some were in the hands of
others, and I never saw them till now. The subjects of the poems are
often to me an unerring guide; but on other occasions I can only guess,
by finding them in the pages of the same manuscript book that contains
poems with the date of whose composition I am fully conversant. In the
present arrangement all his poetical translations will be placed
together at the end.
The loss of his early papers prevents my being able to give any of the
poetry of his boyhood. Of the few I give as "Early Poems", the greater
part were published with "Alastor"; some of them were written
previously, some at the same period. The poem beginning 'Oh, there are
spirits in the air' was addressed in idea to Coleridge, whom he never
knew; and at whose character he could only guess imperfectly, through
his writings, and accounts he heard of him from some who knew him well.
He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than
conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by
what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth.
The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the
churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in
1815. He had been advised by a physician to live as much as possible in
the open air; and a fortnight of a bright warm July was spent in
tracing the Thames to its source. He never spent a season more
tranquilly than the summer of 1815. He had just recovered from a severe
pulmonary attack; the weather was warm and pleasant. He lived near
Windsor Forest; and his life was spent under its shades or on the
water, meditating subjects for verse. Hitherto, he had chiefly aimed at
extending his political doctrines, and attempted so to do by appeals in
prose essays to the people, exhorting them to claim their rights; but
he had now begun to feel that the time for action was not ripe in
England, and that the pen was the only instrument wherewith to prepare
the way for better things.
In the scanty journals kept during those years I find a record of the
books that Shelley read during several years. During the years of 1814
and 1815 the list is extensive. It includes, in Greek, Homer, Hesiod,
Theocritus, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus, and Diogenes
Laertius. In Latin, Petronius, Suetonius, some of the works of Cicero,
a large proportion of those of Seneca and Livy. In English, Milton's
poems, Wordsworth's "Excursion", Southey's "Madoc" and "Thalaba", Locke
"On the Human Understanding", Bacon's "Novum Organum". In Italian,
Ariosto, Tasso, and Alfieri. In French, the "Reveries d'un Solitaire"
of Rousseau. To these may be added several modern books of travel. He
read few novels.
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1816.
THE SUNSET.
[Written at Bishopsgate, 1816 (spring). Published in full in the
"Posthumous Poems", 1824. Lines 9-20, and 28-42, appeared in Hunt's
"Literary Pocket-Book", 1823, under the titles, respectively, of
"Sunset. From an Unpublished Poem", And "Grief. A Fragment". ]
There late was One within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,
Genius and death contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath _5
Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walked along the pathway of a field
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, _10
But to the west was open to the sky.
There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
And the old dandelion's hoary beard, _15
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
On the brown massy woods--and in the east
The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose
Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,
While the faint stars were gathering overhead. -- _20
'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the youth,
'I never saw the sun? We will walk here
To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me. '
That night the youth and lady mingled lay
In love and sleep--but when the morning came _25
The lady found her lover dead and cold.
Let none believe that God in mercy gave
That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,
But year by year lived on--in truth I think
Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles, _30
And that she did not die, but lived to tend
Her aged father, were a kind of madness,
If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.
For but to see her were to read the tale
Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts _35
Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;--
Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:
Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,
Her lips and cheeks were like things dead--so pale;
Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins _40
And weak articulations might be seen
Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self
Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,
Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!
'Inheritor of more than earth can give, _45
Passionless calm and silence unreproved,
Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,
And are the uncomplaining things they seem,
Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;
Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were--Peace! ' _50
This was the only moan she ever made.
NOTES:
_4 death 1839; youth 1824.
_22 sun? We will walk 1824; sunrise? We will wake cj. Forman.
_37 Her eyes. . . wan Hunt, 1823; omitted 1824, 1839.
_38 worn 1824; torn 1839.
***
HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY.
[Composed, probably, in Switzerland, in the summer of 1816. Published
in Hunt's "Examiner", January 19, 1817, and with "Rosalind and Helen",
1819. ]
1.
The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats though unseen among us,--visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,--
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower, _5
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,--
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,--
Like memory of music fled,-- _10
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.
2.
Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form,--where art thou gone? _15
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown, _20
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom,--why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?
3.
No voice from some sublimer world hath ever _25
To sage or poet these responses given--
Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven.
Remain the records of their vain endeavour,
Frail spells--whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,
From all we hear and all we see, _30
Doubt, chance, and mutability.
Thy light alone--like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream, _35
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.
4.
Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart
And come, for some uncertain moments lent.
Man were immortal, and omnipotent,
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, _40
Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.
Thou messenger of sympathies,
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes--
Thou--that to human thought art nourishment,
Like darkness to a dying flame! _45
Depart not as thy shadow came
Depart not--lest the grave should be,
Like life and fear, a dark reality.
5.
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, _50
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
I was not heard--I saw them not--
When musing deeply on the lot _55
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,--
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy! _60
6.
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine--have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers _65
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatched with me the envious night--
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery, _70
That thou--O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.
7.
The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past--there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, _75
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply _80
Its calm--to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.
NOTES:
_2 among 1819; amongst 1817.
_14 dost 1819; doth 1817.
_21 fear and dream 1819; care and pain Boscombe manuscript.
_37-_48 omitted Boscombe manuscript.
_44 art 1817; are 1819.
_76 or 1819; nor 1839.
***
MONT BLANC.
LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.
[Composed in Switzerland, July, 1816 (see date below). Printed at the
end of the "History of a Six Weeks' Tour" published by Shelley in 1817,
and reprinted with "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Amongst the Boscombe
manuscripts is a draft of this Ode, mainly in pencil, which has been
collated by Dr. Garnett. ]
1.
The everlasting universe of things
Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings _5
Of waters,--with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river _10
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.
2.
Thus thou, Ravine of Arve--dark, deep Ravine--
Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,
Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail
Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene, _15
Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down
From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,
Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame
Of lightning through the tempest;--thou dost lie,
Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging, _20
Children of elder time, in whose devotion
The chainless winds still come and ever came
To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging
To hear--an old and solemn harmony;
Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep _25
Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil
Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep
Which when the voices of the desert fail
Wraps all in its own deep eternity;--
Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion, _30
A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;
Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,
Thou art the path of that unresting sound--
Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee
I seem as in a trance sublime and strange _35
To muse on my own separate fantasy,
My own, my human mind, which passively
Now renders and receives fast influencings,
Holding an unremitting interchange
With the clear universe of things around; _40
One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings
Now float above thy darkness, and now rest
Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,
In the still cave of the witch Poesy,
Seeking among the shadows that pass by _45
Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,
Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast
From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!
3.
Some say that gleams of a remoter world
Visit the soul in sleep,--that death is slumber, _50
And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber
Of those who wake and live. --I look on high;
Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled
The veil of life and death? or do I lie
In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep _55
Spread far around and inaccessibly
Its circles? For the very spirit fails,
Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep
That vanishes among the viewless gales!
Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, _60
Mont Blanc appears,--still, snowy, and serene--
Its subject mountains their unearthly forms
Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between
Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,
Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread _65
And wind among the accumulated steeps;
A desert peopled by the storms alone,
Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,
And the wolf tracts her there--how hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high, _70
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. --Is this the scene
Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea
Of fire envelope once this silent snow?
None can reply--all seems eternal now. _75
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be,
But for such faith, with nature reconciled;
Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal _80
Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.
4.
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,
Ocean, and all the living things that dwell _85
Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,
Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,
The torpor of the year when feeble dreams
Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep
Holds every future leaf and flower;--the bound _90
With which from that detested trance they leap;
The works and ways of man, their death and birth,
And that of him and all that his may be;
All things that move and breathe with toil and sound
Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. _95
Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,
Remote, serene, and inaccessible:
And THIS, the naked countenance of earth,
On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains
Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep _100
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,
Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power
Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,
A city of death, distinct with many a tower _105
And wall impregnable of beaming ice.
Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin
Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky
Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing
Its destined path, or in the mangled soil _110
Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down
From yon remotest waste, have overthrown
The limits of the dead and living world,
Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place
Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; _115
Their food and their retreat for ever gone,
So much of life and joy is lost. The race
Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling
Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,
And their place is not known. Below, vast caves _120
Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,
Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling
Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,
The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever
Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves, _125
Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.
5.
Mont Blanc yet gleams on high--the power is there,
The still and solemn power of many sights,
And many sounds, and much of life and death.
In the calm darkness of the moonless nights, _130
In the lone glare of day, the snows descend
Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,
Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,
Or the star-beams dart through them:--Winds contend
Silently there, and heap the snow with breath _135
Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home
The voiceless lightning in these solitudes
Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods
Over the snow. The secret strength of things
Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome _140
Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!
And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind's imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?
July 23, 1816.
NOTES:
_15 cloud-shadows]cloud shadows 1817;
cloud, shadows 1824; clouds, shadows 1839.
_20 Thy 1824; The 1839.
_53 unfurled]upfurled cj. James Thomson ('B. V. ').
_56 Spread 1824; Speed 1839.
_69 tracks her there 1824; watches her Boscombe manuscript.
_79 But for such 1824; In such a Boscombe manuscript.
_108 boundaries of the sky]boundary of the skies cj. Rossetti
(cf. lines 102, 106).
_121 torrents']torrent's 1817, 1824, 1839.
***
CANCELLED PASSAGE OF MONT BLANC.
[Published by Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
There is a voice, not understood by all,
Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roar
Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call,
Plunging into the vale--it is the blast
Descending on the pines--the torrents pour. . . _5
***
FRAGMENT: HOME.
[Published by Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys,
The least of which wronged Memory ever makes
Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears.
***
FRAGMENT OF A GHOST STORY.
[Published by Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
A shovel of his ashes took
From the hearth's obscurest nook,
Muttering mysteries as she went.
Helen and Henry knew that Granny
Was as much afraid of Ghosts as any, _5
And so they followed hard--
But Helen clung to her brother's arm,
And her own spasm made her shake.
***
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1816, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
Shelley wrote little during this year. The poem entitled "The Sunset"
was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at
Bishopsgate. He spent the summer on the shores of the Lake of Geneva.
The "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty" was conceived during his voyage round
the lake with Lord Byron. He occupied himself during this voyage by
reading the "Nouvelle Heloise" for the first time. The reading it on
the very spot where the scenes are laid added to the interest; and he
was at once surprised and charmed by the passionate eloquence and
earnest enthralling interest that pervade this work. There was
something in the character of Saint-Preux, in his abnegation of self,
and in the worship he paid to Love, that coincided with Shelley's own
disposition; and, though differing in many of the views and shocked by
others, yet the effect of the whole was fascinating and delightful.
"Mont Blanc" was inspired by a view of that mountain and its
surrounding peaks and valleys, as he lingered on the Bridge of Arve on
his way through the Valley of Chamouni. Shelley makes the following
mention of this poem in his publication of the "History of a Six Weeks'
Tour, and Letters from Switzerland": 'The poem entitled "Mont Blanc" is
written by the author of the two letters from Chamouni and Vevai. It
was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful
feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and, as
an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to
approbation on an attempt to imitate the untamable wildness and
inaccessible solemnity from which those feelings sprang. '
This was an eventful year, and less time was given to study than usual.
In the list of his reading I find, in Greek, Theocritus, the
"Prometheus" of Aeschylus, several of Plutarch's "Lives", and the works
of Lucian. In Latin, Lucretius, Pliny's "Letters", the "Annals" and
"Germany" of Tacitus. In French, the "History of the French Revolution"
by Lacretelle. He read for the first time, this year, Montaigne's
"Essays", and regarded them ever after as one of the most delightful
and instructive books in the world. The list is scanty in English
works: Locke's "Essay", "Political Justice", and Coleridge's "Lay
Sermon", form nearly the whole. It was his frequent habit to read aloud
to me in the evening; in this way we read, this year, the New
Testament, "Paradise Lost", Spenser's "Faery Queen", and "Don Quixote".
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1817.
MARIANNE'S DREAM.
[Composed at Marlow, 1817. Published in Hunt's "Literary Pocket-Book",
1819, and reprinted in "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]
1.
A pale Dream came to a Lady fair,
And said, A boon, a boon, I pray!
I know the secrets of the air,
And things are lost in the glare of day,
Which I can make the sleeping see, _5
If they will put their trust in me.
2.
And thou shalt know of things unknown,
If thou wilt let me rest between
The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown
Over thine eyes so dark and sheen: _10
And half in hope, and half in fright,
The Lady closed her eyes so bright.
3.
At first all deadly shapes were driven
Tumultuously across her sleep,
And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven _15
All ghastly-visaged clouds did sweep;
And the Lady ever looked to spy
If the golden sun shone forth on high.
4.
And as towards the east she turned,
She saw aloft in the morning air, _20
Which now with hues of sunrise burned,
A great black Anchor rising there;
And wherever the Lady turned her eyes,
It hung before her in the skies.
5.
The sky was blue as the summer sea, _25
The depths were cloudless overhead,
The air was calm as it could be,
There was no sight or sound of dread,
But that black Anchor floating still
Over the piny eastern hill. _30
6.
The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear
To see that Anchor ever hanging,
And veiled her eyes; she then did hear
The sound as of a dim low clanging,
And looked abroad if she might know _35
Was it aught else, or but the flow
Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro.
7.
There was a mist in the sunless air,
Which shook as it were with an earthquake's shock,
But the very weeds that blossomed there _40
Were moveless, and each mighty rock
Stood on its basis steadfastly;
The Anchor was seen no more on high.
8.
But piled around, with summits hid
In lines of cloud at intervals, _45
Stood many a mountain pyramid
Among whose everlasting walls
Two mighty cities shone, and ever
Through the red mist their domes did quiver.
9.
On two dread mountains, from whose crest, _50
Might seem, the eagle, for her brood,
Would ne'er have hung her dizzy nest,
Those tower-encircled cities stood.
A vision strange such towers to see,
Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously, _55
Where human art could never be.
10.
And columns framed of marble white,
And giant fanes, dome over dome
Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright
With workmanship, which could not come _60
From touch of mortal instrument,
Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent
From its own shapes magnificent.
11.
But still the Lady heard that clang
Filling the wide air far away; _65
And still the mist whose light did hang
Among the mountains shook alway,
So that the Lady's heart beat fast,
As half in joy, and half aghast,
On those high domes her look she cast. _70
12.
Sudden, from out that city sprung
A light that made the earth grow red;
Two flames that each with quivering tongue
Licked its high domes, and overhead
Among those mighty towers and fanes _75
Dropped fire, as a volcano rains
Its sulphurous ruin on the plains.
13.
And hark! a rush as if the deep
Had burst its bonds; she looked behind
And saw over the western steep _80
A raging flood descend, and wind
Through that wide vale; she felt no fear,
But said within herself, 'Tis clear
These towers are Nature's own, and she
To save them has sent forth the sea. _85
14.
And now those raging billows came
Where that fair Lady sate, and she
Was borne towards the showering flame
By the wild waves heaped tumultuously.
And, on a little plank, the flow _90
Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro.
15.
The flames were fiercely vomited
From every tower and every dome,
And dreary light did widely shed
O'er that vast flood's suspended foam, _95
Beneath the smoke which hung its night
On the stained cope of heaven's light.
16.
The plank whereon that Lady sate
Was driven through the chasms, about and about,
Between the peaks so desolate _100
Of the drowning mountains, in and out,
As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails--
While the flood was filling those hollow vales.
17.
At last her plank an eddy crossed,
And bore her to the city's wall, _105
Which now the flood had reached almost;
It might the stoutest heart appal
To hear the fire roar and hiss
Through the domes of those mighty palaces.
18.
The eddy whirled her round and round _110
Before a gorgeous gate, which stood
Piercing the clouds of smoke which bound
Its aery arch with light like blood;
She looked on that gate of marble clear,
With wonder that extinguished fear. _115
19.
For it was filled with sculptures rarest,
Of forms most beautiful and strange,
Like nothing human, but the fairest
Of winged shapes, whose legions range
Throughout the sleep of those that are, _120
Like this same Lady, good and fair.
20.
And as she looked, still lovelier grew
Those marble forms;--the sculptor sure
Was a strong spirit, and the hue
Of his own mind did there endure _125
After the touch, whose power had braided
Such grace, was in some sad change faded.
21.
She looked, the flames were dim, the flood
Grew tranquil as a woodland river
Winding through hills in solitude; _130
Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver,
And their fair limbs to float in motion,
Like weeds unfolding in the ocean.
22.
And their lips moved; one seemed to speak,
When suddenly the mountains cracked, _135
And through the chasm the flood did break
With an earth-uplifting cataract:
The statues gave a joyous scream,
And on its wings the pale thin Dream
Lifted the Lady from the stream. _140
23.
The dizzy flight of that phantom pale
Waked the fair Lady from her sleep,
And she arose, while from the veil
Of her dark eyes the Dream did creep,
And she walked about as one who knew _145
That sleep has sights as clear and true
As any waking eyes can view.
NOTES:
_18 golden 1819; gold 1824, 1839.
_28 or 1824; nor 1839.
_62 or]a cj. Rossetti.
_63 its]their cj. Rossetti.
_92 flames cj. Rossetti; waves 1819, 1824, 1839.
_101 mountains 1819; mountain 1824, 1839.
_106 flood]flames cj. James Thomson ('B. V. ').
_120 that 1819, 1824; who 1839.
_135 mountains 1819; mountain 1824, 1839.
***
TO CONSTANTIA, SINGING.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley in "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Amongst the
Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian is a chaotic first draft, from
which Mr. Locock ["Examination", etc. , 1903, pages 60-62] has, with
patient ingenuity, disengaged a first and a second stanza consistent
with the metrical scheme of stanzas 3 and 4. The two stanzas thus
recovered are printed here immediately below the poem as edited by Mrs.
Shelley. It need hardly be added that Mr. Locock's restored version
cannot, any more than Mrs. Shelley's obviously imperfect one, be
regarded in the light of a final recension. ]
1.
Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die,
Perchance were death indeed! --Constantia, turn!
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,
Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn
Between thy lips, are laid to sleep; _5
Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour, it is yet,
And from thy touch like fire doth leap.
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet.
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!
2.
A breathless awe, like the swift change _10
Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers,
Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,
Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers.
The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven
By the enchantment of thy strain, _15
And on my shoulders wings are woven,
To follow its sublime career
Beyond the mighty moons that wane
Upon the verge of Nature's utmost sphere,
Till the world's shadowy walls are past and disappear. _20
3.
Her voice is hovering o'er my soul--it lingers
O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings,
The blood and life within those snowy fingers
Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.
My brain is wild, my breath comes quick-- _25
The blood is listening in my frame,
And thronging shadows, fast and thick,
Fall on my overflowing eyes;
My heart is quivering like a flame;
As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies, _30
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.
4.
I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee,
Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song
Flows on, and fills all things with melody. --
Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong, _35
On which, like one in trance upborne,
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep,
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.
Now 'tis the breath of summer night,
Which when the starry waters sleep,
Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright, _40
Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.
STANZAS 1 AND 2.
As restored by Mr. C. D. Locock.
1.
Cease, cease--for such wild lessons madmen learn
Thus to be lost, and thus to sink and die
Perchance were death indeed! --Constantia turn
In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie
Even though the sounds its voice that were _5
Between [thy] lips are laid to sleep:
Within thy breath, and on thy hair
Like odour, it is [lingering] yet
And from thy touch like fire doth leap--
Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet-- _10
Alas, that the torn heart can bleed but not forget.
2.
[A deep and] breathless awe like the swift change
Of dreams unseen but felt in youthful slumbers
Wild sweet yet incommunicably strange
Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers. . . _15
***
TO CONSTANTIA.
[Dated 1817 by Mrs. Shelley, and printed by her in the "Poetical
Works", 1839, 1st edition. A copy exists amongst the Shelley
manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr. C. D. Locock's "Examination", etc. ,
1903, page 46. ]
1.
The rose that drinks the fountain dew
In the pleasant air of noon,
Grows pale and blue with altered hue--
In the gaze of the nightly moon;
For the planet of frost, so cold and bright, _5
Makes it wan with her borrowed light.
2.
Such is my heart--roses are fair,
And that at best a withered blossom;
But thy false care did idly wear
Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom; _10
And fed with love, like air and dew,
Its growth--
NOTES:
_1 The rose]The red Rose B.
_2 pleasant]fragrant B.
_6 her omitted B.
***
FRAGMENT: TO ONE SINGING.
[Dated 1817 by Mrs. Shelley, and published in the "Poetical Works",
1839, 1st edition. The manuscript original, by which Mr. Locock has
revised and (by one line) enlarged the text, is amongst the Shelley
manuscripts at the Bodleian. The metre, as Mr. Locock ("Examination",
etc. , 1903, page 63) points out, is terza rima. ]
My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim
Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,
Far far away into the regions dim
Of rapture--as a boat, with swift sails winging
Its way adown some many-winding river, _5
Speeds through dark forests o'er the waters swinging. . .
NOTES:
_3 Far far away B. ; Far away 1839.
_6 Speeds. . . swinging B. ; omitted 1839.
***
A FRAGMENT: TO MUSIC.
[Published in "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition.
Dated 1817 (Mrs. Shelley). ]
Silver key of the fountain of tears,
Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild;
Softest grave of a thousand fears,
Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child,
Is laid asleep in flowers. _5
***
ANOTHER FRAGMENT: TO MUSIC.
[Published in "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition.
Dated 1817 (Mrs. Shelley). ]
No, Music, thou art not the 'food of Love. '
Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self,
Till it becomes all Music murmurs of.
***
'MIGHTY EAGLE'.
SUPPOSED TO BE ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM GODWIN.
[Published in 1882 ("Poetical Works of P. B. S. ") by Mr. H. Buxton
Forman, C. B. , by whom it is dated 1817. ]
Mighty eagle!
