No More Learning

It was the lark, the herald of the morn,
No nightingale: look, love, what envious streaks
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops:
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
Yon light is not daylight: I know it, I;
It is some meteor that the sun exhales,
To be to thee this night a torch-bearer,
And light thee on thy way to Mantua:
Therefore, stay yet; thou need'st not to be gone,
Let me be ta'en, let me be put to death;
I am content, so thou wilt have it so.
I'll say, yon gray is not the morning's eye,
'Tis but the pale reflex of Cynthia's bow;
Nor that is not the lark, whose notes do beat
The vaulty heaven so high above our heads:
I have more care to stay, than will to go;-
Come, death, and welcome: Juliet wills it so-
How is 't, my soul? Let's talk, it is not day.
It is, it is: hie hence, be gone, away!
It is the lark that sings so out of tune,
Straining harsh discords, and unpleasing sharps.
Some say the lark makes sweet division;
This doth not so, for she divideth us:
-
Some say the lark and loathed toad change eyes;
Oh! now I would they had changed voices too,
Since arm from arm that voice doth us affray,
Hunting thee hence with hunts-up to the day.
Oh! now be gone: more light and light it grows.
More light and light, more dark and dark our woes.


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13258
SHAKESPEARE
ANT
NTONY
Scene: The Roman Forum.
-
ANTONY'S SPEECH OVER CÆSAR'S BODY
From Julius Cæsar'
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears:
I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interrèd with their bones:
So let it be with Cæsar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Cæsar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Cæsar answered it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest
(For Brutus is an honorable man;
So are they all, all honorable men),
Come I to speak in Cæsar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome,
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill.
Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Cæsar hath wept;
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honorable man.
You all did see, that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse. Was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And sure, he is an honorable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause;
What cause withholds you, then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me:
My heart is in the coffin there with Cæsar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
But yesterday, the word of Cæsar might
Have stood against the world: now lies he there,
And none so poor to do him reverence.


## p. 13259 (#57) ###########################################

SHAKESPEARE
13259
Fourth Citizen
All-
Antony-
O masters! if I were disposed to stir
Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,
I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong,
Who, you all know, are honorable men.
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you,
Than I will wrong such honorable men.
But here's a parchment with the seal of Cæsar;
I found it in his closet: 'tis his will.
Let but the commons hear this testament
(Which, pardon me, I do not mean to read),
And they would go and kiss dead Cæsar's wounds,
And dip their napkins in his sacred blood;
Yea, beg a hair of him for memory,
And, dying, mention it within their wills,
Bequeathing it as a rich legacy
Unto their issue.
We'll hear the will. Read it, Mark Antony.
The will, the will! we will hear Cæsar's will.
Have patience, gentle friends; I must not read it:
It is not meet you know how Cæsar loved you.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men,
And being men, hearing the will of Cæsar,
It will inflame you, it will make you mad.
'Tis good you know not that you are his heirs;
For if you should, oh, what would come of it?
If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
You all do know this mantle: I remember
The first time ever Cæsar put it on;
'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,
That day he overcame the Nervii.
Look! in this place ran Cassius's dagger through;
See what a rent the envious Casca made:
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed;
And as he plucked his cursed steel away,
Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it,
As rushing out of doors, to be resolved
If Brutus so unkindly knocked, or no:
For Brutus, as you know, was Cæsar's angel;
Judge, O you gods, how dearly Cæsar loved him!
This was the most unkindest cut of all;
For when the noble Cæsar saw him stab,
Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms,
•
. .


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13260
SHAKESPEARE
Quite vanquished him: then burst his mighty heart;
And in his mantle muffling up his face,
Even at the base of Pompey's statue,
Which all the while ran blood, great Cæsar fell.
Oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen!
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.
Oh, now you weep; and I perceive you feel
The dint of pity: these are gracious drops.
Kind souls! What! weep you when you but behold
Our Cæsar's vesture wounded? Look you here,
Here is himself, marred, as you see, with traitors.
First Citizen-O piteous spectacle!
Second Citizen-O noble Cæsar!
Third Citizen-O woeful day!
Fourth Citizen-O traitors! villains!
First Citizen-O most bloody sight!
All-We will be revenged. Revenge! about-seek- burn — fire —
kill slay! -let not a traitor live.
[They are rushing out.
Antony-Stay, countrymen.
First Citizen-Peace there! hear the noble Antony.
Second Citizen - We'll hear him, we'll follow him, we'll die with him.
Antony - Good friends, sweet friends, let me not stir you up
To such a sudden flood of mutiny.
All-
They that have done this deed are honorable:
What private griefs they have, alas! I know not,
That made them do it; they are wise and honorable,
And will, no doubt, with reasons answer you.
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts:
I am no orator, as Brutus is,
But as you know me all, a plain blunt man,
That love my friend; and that they know full well
That gave me public leave to speak of him.
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men's blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know,
Show you sweet Cæsar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths,
And bid them speak for me: but were I Brutus,
And Brutus Antony, there were an Antony
Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue
In every wound of Cæsar, that should move
The stones of Rome to rise and mutiny.
We'll mutiny.


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SHAKESPEARE
13261
MACBETH BEFORE THE DEED
From Macbeth ›
I'
F IT were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come. — But in these cases,
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th' inventor: thus even-handed justice
Commends th' ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips. He's here in double trust:
First as I am his kinsman and his subject;
Strong both against the deed: then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead, like angels trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. -I have no spu
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.
Go: bid thy mistress, when my drink is ready,
She strike upon the bell. Get thee to bed. —
[Exit Servant.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee; -
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling, as to sight? or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?


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13262
SHAKESPEARE
I see thee yet, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.
Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going;
And such an instrument I was to use. -
Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,
Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still;
And on thy blade, and dudgeon, gouts of blood,
Which was not so before. -There's no such thing:
It is the bloody business, which informs
Thus to mine eyes. - Now o'er the one half world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleeper; witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design.
Moves like a ghost. - Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives:
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
[A bell rings. ]
I go, and it is done: the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.
―
HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY
From Hamlet'
[Exit.
T
O BE, or not to be; that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune;
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? -To die - to sleep-
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,-'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die;-to sleep; -
To sleep! perchance to dream; - ay, there's the rub;


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SHAKESPEARE
13263
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death-
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns-puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. -Soft you, now!
The fair Ophelia. - Nymph, in thy orisons,
Be all my sins remembered.
HⓇ
OTHELLO'S WOOING
From Othello'
ER father loved me; oft invited me:
Still questioned me the story of my life,
From year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes,
That I had passed.
I ran it through, even from my boyish days,
To the very moment that he bade me tell it:
Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field;
Of hair-breadth 'scapes i' th' imminent deadly breach;
Of being taken by the insolent foe,
And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence,
And portance in my travel's history;-
Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle,
――――


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13264
SHAKESPEARE
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak, such was the process;-
And of the cannibals that each other eat,
The anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear,
Would Desdemona seriously incline:
But still the house affairs would draw her thence;
Which ever as she could with haste dispatch,
She'd come again, and with a greedy ear
Devour up my discourse. Which I observing,
Took once a pliant hour; and found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart,
That I would all my pilgrimage dilate,
Whereof by parcels she had something heard,
But not intentively: I did consent;
And often did beguile her of her tears,
When I did speak of some distressful stroke
That my youth suffered. My story being done,
She gave me for my pains a world of sighs:
She swore,
-in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing strange;
'Twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful:
She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished
That heaven had made her such a man: she thanked me;
And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her,
I should but teach him how to tell my story,
And that would woo her. On this hint I spake:
She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witchcraft I have used:
Here comes the lady; let her witness it.
―――
―――


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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
D. Grosch


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3


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## p. 13265 (#67) ###########################################

13265
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
(1792-1822)
BY GEORGE E. WOODBERRY
ERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, an English poet, was born at Field
Place, Sussex, on August 4th, 1792. He was the eldest son
of Timothy Shelley, an English country gentleman, who
afterwards inherited a baronetcy and a large estate, to which in part
the poet was heir by entail. He was educated at Eton, and went up
to Oxford in 1810; he was expelled from the university on March
25th, 1811, for publishing a pamphlet entitled 'The Necessity of
Atheism. In the summer of the same year he married Harriet West-
brook, a girl of sixteen, the daughter of a retired London tavern-
keeper; and from this time had no cordial relations with his family
at Field Place. He led a wandering and unsettled life in England,
Wales, and Ireland,- visiting the last as a political agitator,—until the
spring of 1814, when domestic difficulties culminated in a separation
from his wife, and an elopement with Mary Godwin, the daughter of
William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. His wife, Harriet, com-
mitted suicide by drowning in the winter of 1816, and immediately
after this event he legally married Mary. The charge of his two
children by Harriet was taken from him early in 1817 by a decision
of the Lord Chancellor, Eldon, on the ground that Shelley held athe-
istical opinions. He remained in England a year longer, and in the
spring of 1818 went to reside in Italy. There he lived, going from
city to city, but mainly at Pisa and its neighborhood, until the sum-
mer of 1822, when he was lost in a storm on July 8th, while sailing
off the coast between Leghorn and Lerici; his body was cast up on
the sands of Viareggio, and was there burned in the presence of
Byron, Leigh Hunt, and his friend Trelawney, on August 18th; the
ashes were buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome. He had
three children by his second wife, of whom one only, Percy Florence,
survived him, afterward inheriting the title and his father's share in
the family estate.
Shelley's literary life began with prose and verse at Eton, and he
had already published before he went up to Oxford. Through all his
wanderings, and amid his many personal difficulties, he was indefati-
gably busy with his pen; and in his earlier days wrote much in prose.
XXIII-830


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13266
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
The first distinctive work was his poem 'Queen Mab' (1813), and this
was followed by 'Alastor' (1816); after which his great works were
produced in rapid succession. While still a youth, he had begun, as a
radical reformer, to take a practical interest in men and events, and
until after his union with Mary much of his energy was consumed
and scattered fruitlessly; but as his poetic instincts and intellectual
power came into fuller control of his life, and the difficulties of his
position isolated him and threw him back upon his own nature, he
gradually gave himself more exclusively to creative literature. The
works written in Italy are of most value: Prometheus Unbound,'
'The Cenci,' 'Adonais,' 'Epipsychidion,' 'Hellas,' together with the
lyrics and fragments. Nevertheless, the bulk of his work is large
and various: it fills several volumes of prose as well as verse, and
includes political, philosophical, and critical miscellanies, writings on
questions of the day, and much translation from ancient and modern
authors.
Shelley himself described his genius as in the main a moral one,
and in this he made a correct analysis. It was fed by ideas derived
from books, and sustained by a sympathy so intense as to become a
passion for moral aims. He was intellectually the child of the Revo-
lution; and from the moment that he drew thoughtful breath he
was a disciple of the radicals in England. The regeneration of man-
kind was the cause that kindled his enthusiasm; and the changes
he looked for were social as well as political. He spent his strength
in advocacy of the doctrines of democracy, and in hostility to its
obvious opponents established in the authority of Church and State,
and in custom; he held the most advanced position, not only in
religion, but in respect to the institution of marriage, the use of
property, and the welfare of the masses of mankind. The first com-
plete expression of his opinion, the precipitate from the ferment
of his boyish years, was given in 'Queen Mab,' a crude poem after
the style of Southey, by which he was long best and most unfavor-
ably known; he recognized its immaturity, and sought to suppress
a pirated edition published in his last years: the violent prejudice
against him in England as an atheist was largely due to this early
work, with its long notes, in connection with the decision of the court
taking from him the custody of his children. The second expres-
sion of his opinions, similar in scope, was given five years later in
'The Revolt of Islam,' a Spenserian poem in twelve books. In this
work the increase of his poetic faculty is shown by his denial of a
didactic aim, and by the series of scenes from nature and human
life which is the web of the verse; but the subject of the poem is
the regeneration of society, and the intellectual impulse which sustains
it is political and philanthropic. Up to the time of its composition


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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13267
the main literary influence that governed him was Latin:
now he
began to feel the power of Greek literature; and partly in making
responses to it, and partly by the expansion of his mind, he revolu-
tionized his poetic method. The result was that in the third and
greatest of his works of this kind, Prometheus Unbound,' he devel-
oped a new type in English,- the lyrical drama. The subject is still
the regeneration of society: but the tale has grown into the drama;
the ideas have generated abstract impersonations which have more
likeness to elemental beings, to Titanic and mythological creations,
than to humanity; while the interest intellectually is still held within
the old limits of the general cause of mankind. The same principles,
the same convictions, the same aims, fused in one moral enthusiasm,
are here: but a transformation has come over their embodiment,-
imagination has seized upon them, a new lyrical music has penetrated
and sublimated them, and the poem so engendered and born is
different in kind from those that went before; it holds a unique
place in the literature of the world, and is the most passionate dream
of the perfect social ideal ever molded in verse. In a fourth work,
'Hellas,' Shelley applied a similar method in an effort to treat the
Greek Revolution as a single instance of the victory of the general
cause which he had most at heart; and in several shorter poems, espe-
cially odes, he from time to time took up the same theme. The ideal
he sets forth in all these writings, clarifying as it goes on, is not dif-
ferent from the millennium of poets and thinkers in all ages: justice
and liberty, love the supreme law, are the ends to be achieved, and
moral excellence with universal happiness is the goal of all.
In the works which have been mentioned, and which contain the
most of Shelley's substantial thought, the moral prepossession of his
mind is most manifest; it belonged to the conscious part of his
being, and would naturally be foremost in his most deliberate writ-
ing. It was, in my judgment, the central thing in his genius; but
genius in working itself out displays special faculties of many kinds,
which must be noticed in their own right. Shelley is, for example,
considered as pre-eminently a poet of nature. His susceptibility to
sensuous impressions was very great, his response to them in love of
beauty and in joy in them was constant; and out of his intimacy with
nature came not merely descriptive power and the habit of inter-
preting emotion through natural images, such as many poets have
compassed, but a peculiar faculty often noticed by his critics, usually
called the myth-making faculty, which is thought of as racial rather
than individual. During his residence in Italy he was steeped in the
Greek spirit as it survives in the philosophy and poetry of antiquity;
and it was in harmony with his mood that he should vitalize the
elements. What is extraordinary is the success, the primitive ease,


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13268
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
the magic, with which he did so. In the simple instances which
recur to every one's memory-'The Skylark,' 'The Cloud,' the 'Ode
to the West Wind'- he has rendered the sense of non-human, of ele-
mental being; and in the characters of 'Prometheus Unbound'-in
Asia especially-he has created such beings, to which the spirits of
the moon and earth as he evoked them seem natural concomitants,
and to them he has given reality for the imagination. It is largely
because he dealt in this witchery, this matter of primeval illusion,
that he gives to some minds the impression of dwelling in an imagi-
nary and unsubstantial world; and the flood of light and glory of
color which he exhales as an atmosphere about the substance of the
verse, dazzle and often bewilder the reader whose eyes are yet to be
familiarized with the shapes and air of his scene. But with few
exceptions, while using this creative power by poetic instinct, he
brings back the verse at the end, whether in the lyrics or the longer
works, to "the hopes and fears of men. " In the ordinary delineation
of nature as it appears, his touch is sure and accurate; with a regard
for detail which shows close observation, and a frequent minuteness
which shows the contemporary of Coleridge and Wordsworth. The
opening passage of Julian and Maddalo,' the lines at Pisa on the
bridge, and the fragment Marenghi,' are three widely different
examples.
Shelley was also strongly attracted by the narrative form for its
own sake.
He was always fond of a story from the days of his boy-
hood; and though the romantic cast of fiction in his youth, both in
prose and verse, might indicate a lack of interest in life, in the taste
for this he was not different from the time he lived in, and the way
to reality lay then through this path. 'Rosalind and Helen' was a
tale like others of its kind, made up of romantic elements; but the
instinct which led Shelley to tell it, as he had told still cruder sto-
ries in his first romances at Eton, was fundamental in him, and led
him afterward, still further refining his matter, to weave out of airy
nothing The Witch of Atlas' almost at the close of his career. The
important matter is, to connect with these narrative beginnings in
prose and verse his serious dramatic work, which has for its prime
example 'The Cenci,' otherwise standing too far apart from his life.
In this drama he undertook to deal with the reality of human nature
in its most difficult literary form, the tragedy; and the success with
which he suppressed his ordinary exuberance of imagery and phrase
and kept to a severe restraint, at the same time producing the one
conspicuous example of tragedy in his century in England, has been
often wondered at. In the unfinished Charles I. ' he made a second
attempt; while in the various dramatic fragments other than this
he seems to have contemplated a new form of romantic drama. It


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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13269
seems to me that this line of his development has been too little
studied; but there is space here only to make the suggestion.
Another subordinate division of Shelley's work lies in his treat-
ment of the ideal of individual nobility and happiness apart from
society. Of course in the character of Laon, and on the grand scale
in that of Prometheus, he set forth traits of the individual ideal; but
in both instances they were social reformers, and had a relation to
mankind. In 'Alastor,' on the contrary, the individual is dealt with
for his own sole sake, and the youth is drawn in lines of melancholy
beauty; he was of the same race as Laon, but existed only in his
own poetic unhappiness; of the same race also was Prince Athanase,
but the poem is too unfinished to permit us to say more than that
as he is disclosed, he is only an individual. In 'Epipsychidion' the
same character reappears as a persistent type in Shelley's mind, with
the traits that he most valued: and the conclusion there is the union
of the lover and his beloved in the enchanted isle, far from the
world; which also is familiar to readers of Shelley in other poems as
a persistent idea in his mind. In these poems one finds the recoil
of Shelley's mind from the task of reform he had undertaken, the
antipodes of the social leader in the lonely exile from all but the one
kindred spirit, the sense of weariness, of defeat, of despair over the
world—the refuge. It is natural, consequently, to feel that Shelley
himself is near in these characters; that they are successive incarna-
tions of his spirit, and frankly such. They are autobiographic with
conscious art, and stand only at one remove from those lyrics of
personal emotion which are unconscious, the cries of the spirit which
have sung themselves into the heart of the world. Upon these lyrics,
which stand apart from his deliberate work,- impulsive, overflowing,
irresistible in their spontaneity,- it may be granted that his popu-
lar fame rests. Many of them are singularly perfect in poetic form
naturally developed; they have the music which is as unforgettable as
the tones of a human voice, as unmistakable, as personal, and which
has winged them to fly through the world. They make one forget
all the rest in Shelley himself, and they express his world-weary yet
still aspiring soul. The most perfect of them, in my judgment, is the
'Ode to the West Wind': in form it is faultless; and it blends in one
expression the power he had to interpret nature's elemental life, the
pathos of his own spirit,- portrayed more nobly than in the cog-
nate passage of the 'Adonais,' because more unconscious of itself,—and
the supreme desire he had to serve the world with those thoughts
blown now through the world,—
"Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind. »
No other of the lyrics seems to me so comprehensive, so adequate.
The 'Adonais' only can compare with it for personal power, for the


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PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13270
penetration of the verse with Shelley's spirit in its eloquent passion.
Of that elegy the poetry is so direct, and the charm so immediate
and constant, that it needs no other mention; further than to say
that like the 'Sensitive Plant,' it has more affinity with Shelley's
lyrics than with his longer works.
Some of the characteristics of Shelley have been mentioned above
with such fullness as our limits allow, and the relations between
his more important works have been roughly indicated. There is
much more to say; but I will add only that in what seems to me a
cardinal point in the criticism of poetry, the poet's conception of
womanhood, of all the poets of the century in England, Shelley is
approached only by Burns in tenderness, and excels Burns in nobleness
of feeling. The reputation of Shelley in his lifetime was but slight in
the world; and it emerged only by slow stages from the neglect and
obloquy which were his portion while he lived and when he died.
In the brief recital of the events of his life which heads this sketch,
it is obvious at a glance that there is much which needs explanation
and defense. The best defense was to throw all possible light upon
his career, and that was done by all who knew him; so that his life
is more minutely exposed from boyhood to his death than that of any
other English poet. As a consequence of this, opinion regarding him
has been much modified; and though it may still be stern, it is now
seldom harsh. The opinions which were regarded as of evil influ-
ence, and the acts which were condemned as wrong acts, are open
to all to understand and pass judgment upon, as they are related in
many books; and in respect to these, each will have his own mind.
Whatever be the judgment, it must be agreed that the century has
brought fame to Shelley, as a poet of the highest class and of a rare
kind; and that as a man he has been an inspiration and almost a
creed in many lives, and has won respect and affection from many
hearts, and a singular devotion from some akin to that which his
friends felt toward him. He has been loved as it is given to few
strangers to be loved, but that is apart from his poetry.
выделитбыть
---
—


## p. 13271 (#73) ###########################################

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13271
FROM PROMETHEUS UNBOUND>
CHORUS OF FURIES
FR
ROM the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,
Where the night has its grave and the morning its
birth,
Come, come, come!
O ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,
When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye
Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,.
And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track,
Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;
Come, come, come!
Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,
Strewed beneath a nation dead;
Leave the hatred, as in ashes
Fire is left for future burning:
It will burst in bloodier flashes
When ye stir it, soon returning:
Leave the self-contempt implanted
In young spirits, sense-enchanted,
Misery's yet unkindled fuel:
Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted
To the maniac dreamer; cruel
More than ye can be with hate
Is he with fear.
Come, come, come!
We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate,
And we burthen the blast of the atmosphere,
But vainly we toil till ye come here.
L'
VOICE IN THE AIR
IFE of Life! thy lips enkindle
With their love the breath between them;
And thy smiles before they dwindle
Make the cold air fire: then screen them
In those looks, where whoso gazes
Faints, entangled in their mazes.
Child of Light! thy limbs are burning
Through the vest which seems to hide them;


## p. 13272 (#74) ###########################################

13272
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
As the radiant lines of morning
Through the clouds ere they divide them;
And this atmosphere divinest
Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.
Fair are others: none beholds thee,
But thy voice sounds low and tender
Like the fairest, for it folds thee
From the sight, that liquid splendor;
And all feel, yet see thee never,
As I feel now, lost for ever!
Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest
Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,
And the souls of whom thou lovest
Walk upon the winds with lightness,
Till they fail, as I am failing,
Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!
ASIA
My soul is an enchanted boat,
Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float
Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;
And thine doth like an angel sit
Beside a helm conducting it;
Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.
It seems to float ever, for ever,
Upon that many-winding river,
Between mountains, woods, abysses,
A paradise of wildernesses!
Till, like one in slumber bound,
Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,
Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:
Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions
In music's most serene dominions;
Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.
And we sail on, away, afar,
Without a course, without a star,
But by the instinct of sweet music driven;
Till through Elysian garden islets.
By thee, most beautiful of pilots,
Where never mortal pinnace glided,
The boat of my desire is guided:


## p. 13273 (#75) ###########################################

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13273
EATRICE
Realms where the air we breathe is love,
Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,
Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.
Enter Lucretia, Beatrice, and Giacomo, guarded
-
I hardly dare to fear
B That thou bring'st other news than a just pardon.
Camillo - May God in heaven be less inexorable
LAST HOUR OF BEATRICE
From The Cenci
Beatrice [wildly]-
To the Pope's prayers than he has been to mine.
Here is the sentence and the warrant.
O
My God! Can it be possible I have
To die so suddenly? So young to go
Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
To be nailed down into a narrow place;
To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost —
How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be-
What? Oh, where am I? Let me not go mad!
Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
No God, no heaven, no earth in the void world;
The wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
If all things then should be- my father's spirit,
His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;
The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!
If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,
Even the form which tortured me on earth,
Masked in gray hairs and wrinkles, he should come
And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix
His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!
For was he not alone omnipotent
On earth, and ever present? Even though dead,
Does not his spirit live in all that breathe,
And work for me and mine still the same ruin,
Scorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet returned
To teach the laws of death's untrodden realm ?
Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now
Oh, whither, whither?


## p. 13274 (#76) ###########################################

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13274
Lucretia
Beatrice-
Giacomo
Lucretia
Beatrice-
Trust in God's sweet love,
[During the latter speeches Giacomo has retired conversing with Camillo,
who now goes out; Giacomo advances. ]
The tender promises of Christ: ere night,
Think, we shall be in Paradise.
'Tis past!
Whatever comes, my heart shall sink no more.
And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill:
How tedious, false, and cold, seem all things. I
Have met with much injustice in this world;
No difference has been made by God or man,
Or any power molding my wretched lot,
'Twixt good or evil, as regarded me.
I am cut off from the only world I know,–
From light, and life, and love, in youth's sweet prime.
You do well telling me to trust in God,-
I hope I do trust in him. In whom else
Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold.
Know you not, mother-sister, know you not?
Bernardo even now is gone to implore
The Pope to grant our pardon.
Child, perhaps
It will be granted. We may all then live
To make these woes a tale for distant years:
Oh, what a thought! It gushes to my heart
Like the warm blood.
Yet both will soon be cold.
Oh, trample out that thought! Worse than despair,
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope:
It is the only ill which can find place
Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour
Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost
That it should spare the eldest flower of spring;
Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch
Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free;
Now stench and blackness yawn, like death. Oh plead
With Famine, or wind-walking Pestilence,
Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man!
Cruel, cold, formal man: righteous in words,
In deeds a Cain. No, mother, we must die:
Since such is the reward of innocent lives;
Such the alleviation of worst wrongs.
And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men,


## p. 13275 (#77) ###########################################

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13275
Bernardo-
Beatrice-
Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears
To death as to life's sleep, 'twere just the grave
Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death,
And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!
Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,
And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.
Live ye, who live, subject to one another
As we were once who now
-
Bernardo rushes in
-―――
}
Oh, horrible,
That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer,
Even till the heart is vacant and despairs,
Should all be vain! The ministers of death
Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw
Blood on the face of one. - What if 'twere fancy?
Soon the heart's blood of all I love on earth
Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off
As if 'twere only rain. O life! O world!
Cover me! let me be no more! To see
That perfect mirror of pure innocence
Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,
Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,
Who made all lovely thou didst look upon-
Thee, light of life, dead, dark! while I say
To hear I have no sister; and thou, mother,
Whose love was as a bond to all our loves,
Dead! the sweet bond broken!
Enter Camillo and Guards
"sister"
They come!
Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves
Are blighted white-cold. Say farewell before
Death chokes that gentle voice! Oh, let me hear
You speak.
Let me
Farewell, my tender brother. Think
Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now;
And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee
Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair,
But tears and patience. One thing more, my child:
For thine own sake be constant to the love
Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,
Though wrapt in a strange cloud of crime and shame,
Lived ever holy and unstained. And though


## p. 13276 (#78) ###########################################

13276
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name
Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow
For men to point at as they pass, do thou
Forbear, and never think a thought unkind
Of those who perhaps love thee in their graves.
So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain
Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!
I cannot say, farewell!
Camillo-
O Lady Beatrice!
Beatrice-Give yourself no unnecessary pain,
My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, mother, tie
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair
In any simple knot; ay, that does well.
And yours I see is coming down. How often
Have we done this for one another; now
We shall not do it any more. My lord,
We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well.
Bernardo
ADONAIS
WEEP for Adonais - he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow! Say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the future dares
Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity! "
Where wert thou, mighty mother, when he lay,
When thy son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness? where was lorn Urania
When Adonais died? With veilèd eyes,
'Mid listening echoes, in her paradise
She sate, while one, with soft enamored breath,
Rekindled all the fading melodies
With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.
Oh, weep for Adonais - he is dead!
Wake, melancholy mother, wake and weep!


## p. 13277 (#79) ###########################################

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13277
Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed
Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep,
Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;
For he is gone where all things wise and fair
Descend; - oh, dream not that the amorous deep
Will yet restore him to the vital air:
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.
Most musical of mourners, weep again!
Lament anew, Urania! - He died
Who was the sire of an immortal strain,
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride,
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,
Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite
Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,
Into the gulf of death: but his clear sprite
Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
And happier they their happiness who knew,
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time
In which suns perished; others more sublime,
Struck by the envious wrath of man or God,
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;
And some yet live, treading the thorny road
Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.
But now thy youngest, dearest one has perished,
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,
And fed with true love tears, instead of dew:
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,
The bloom whose petals, nipt before they blew,
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;
The broken lily lies- the storm is overpast.
To that high capital where kingly Death
Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,
He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,
A grave among the eternal. - Come away!
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still
He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;


## p. 13278 (#80) ###########################################

13278
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Awake him not! surely he takes his fill
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.
He will awake no more, oh, never more! -
Within the twilight chamber spreads apace
The shadow of white Death, and at the door
Invisible Corruption waits to trace
His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface
So fair a prey, till darkness and the law
Of change shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain dr
Oh, weep for Adonais! - The quick dreams,
The passion-wingèd ministers of thought,
Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams
Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught
The love which was its music, wander not,-
Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,
But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their
lot
-
Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,
They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.
And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,
And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries:-
"Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies
A tear some dream has loosened from his brain. "
Lost angel of a ruined paradise!
She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.
One from a lucid urn of starry dew
Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;
Another clipt her profuse locks, and threw
The wreath upon him, like an anadem,
Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;
Another in her willful grief would break
Her bow and wingèd reeds, as if to stem
A greater loss with one which was more weak,
And dull the barbèd fire against his frozen cheek.
Another splendor on his mouth alit,-
That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath


## p. 13279 (#81) ###########################################

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13279
Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,
And pass into the panting heart beneath
With lightning and with music: the damp death
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;
And as a dying meteor stains a wreath
Of moonlight vapor, which the cold night clips,
It flushed through his pale limbs, and past to its eclipse.
And others came: Desires and Adorations,
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,
Splendors, and Glooms, and glimmering incarnations
Of Hopes and Fears, and twilight Phantasies;
And Sorrow, with her family of sighs;
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,—
Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.
All he had loved, and molded into thought,
From shape and hue and odor and sweet sound,
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought
Her eastern watch-tower; and her hair unbound,
Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day:
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,
And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,
And will no more reply to winds or fountains,
Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,
Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;
Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear
Than those for whose disdain she pined away
Into a shadow of all sounds: a drear
Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.
Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,
Or they dead leaves: since her delight is flown,
For whom should she have waked the sullen year?
To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear,
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both


## p. 13280 (#82) ###########################################

13280
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere
Amid the faint companions of their youth,
With dew all turned to tears; odor, to sighing ruth.
Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale,
Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;
Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale
Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain
Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,
Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,
As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain
Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,
And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!
Ah, woe is me! winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year.
The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead season's bier;
The amorous birds now pair in every brake,
And build their mossy homes in field and brere;
And the green lizard, and the golden snake,
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.
Through wood and stream and field and hill and ocean
A quickening life from the earth's heart has burst,
As it has ever done, with change and motion,
From the great morning of the world when first
God dawned on chaos: in its stream immersed
The lamps of heaven flash with a softer light;
All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst
Diffuse themselves, and spend in love's delight
The beauty and the joy of their renewèd might.
The leprous corpse touched by this spirit tender
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath ·
Like incarnations of the stars, when splendor
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death.
And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath:
Naught we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows,
Be as a sword consumed before the sheath
By sightless lightning? -th' intense atom glows
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.
Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,


## p. 13281 (#83) ###########################################

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13281
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators? Great and mean
Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
He will awake no more, oh, never more!
"Wake thou," cried Misery, "childless mother, rise
Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core,
A wound more fierce than his with tears and sighs. "
And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes,
And all the Echoes whom their sister's song
Had held in holy silence, cried, "Arise! "
Swift as a thought by the snake Memory stung,
From her ambrosial rest the fading splendor sprung.
She rose like an autumnal night, that springs
Out of the east, and follows wild and drear
The golden day, which, on eternal wings,
Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,
Had left the earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear
So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania;
So saddened round her like an atmosphere
Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way
Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.
Out of her secret paradise she sped,
Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,
And human hearts, which to her airy tread
Yielding not, wounded the invisible
Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell:
And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,
Rent the soft form they never could repel,
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,
Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.
In the death chamber for a moment Death,
Shamed by the presence of that living might
Blushed to annihilation, and the breath
Revisited those lips, and life's pale light
Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.
"Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,
As silent lightning leaves the starless night!
XXIII-831


## p. 13282 (#84) ###########################################

13282
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Leave me not! " cried Urania: her distress
Roused Death; Death rose and smiled, and met her vain
caress.
Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live:
And in my heartless breast and burning brain
That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,
With food of saddest memory kept alive,
Now thou art dead, as if it were a part
Of thee, my Adonais! I would give
All that I am to be as thou now art!
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!
"O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men
Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?
Defenseless as thou wert, oh where was then
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?
Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,
The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.
"The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;
The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead;
The vultures to the conqueror's banner true
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion; - how they fled,
When like Apollo, from his golden bow,
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped
And smiled! -The spoilers tempt no second blow,
They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.
"The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then
Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again;-
So is it in the world of living men:
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light
Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night. "
-
Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;


## p. 13283 (#85) ###########################################

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
13283
The pilgrim of eternity, whose fame.
Over his living head like heaven is bent,
An early but enduring monument,
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song
In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,
And love taught grief to fall like music from his tongue.
Midst others of less note, came one frail form,—
A phantom among men; companionless
As the last cloud of an expiring storm
Whose thunder is its knell: he, as I guess,
Had gazed on nature's naked loveliness,
Actæon-like, and now he fled astray
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,
And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.
__
A pardlike spirit beautiful and swift;
A Love in desolation masked; -
a power
Girt round with weakness: it can scarce uplift
The weight of the superincumbent hour;—
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,
A breaking billow even whilst we speak
Is it not broken? On the withering flower
The killing sun smiles brightly; on a cheek
The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.
His head was bound with pansies overblown,
And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;
And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,
Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses grew,
Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,
Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart
Shook the weak hand that grasped it: of that crew
He came the last, neglected and apart;
A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.
All stood aloof, and at his partial moan
Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band
Who in another's fate now wept his own:
As in the accents of an unknown land,
He sung new sorrow, sad Urania scanned
The stranger's mien, and murmured, "Who art thou?