No More Learning

Taxes too, on wine and bread,
And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,
From which those patriots pure are fed,
Who gorge before they reel to bed _180
The tenfold essence of all these.

8.
There are mincing women, mewing,
(Like cats, who amant misere,)
Of their own virtue, and pursuing
Their gentler sisters to that ruin, _185
Without which--what were chastity? (2)

9.
Lawyers--judges--old hobnobbers
Are there--bailiffs--chancellors--
Bishops--great and little robbers--
Rhymesters--pamphleteers--stock-jobbers-- _190
Men of glory in the wars,--

10.
Things whose trade is, over ladies
To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper,
Till all that is divine in woman
Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman, _195
Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper.

11.
Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,
Frowning, preaching--such a riot!
Each with never-ceasing labour,
Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour, _200
Cheating his own heart of quiet.

12.
And all these meet at levees;--
Dinners convivial and political;--
Suppers of epic poets;--teas,
Where small talk dies in agonies;-- _205
Breakfasts professional and critical;

13.
Lunches and snacks so aldermanic
That one would furnish forth ten dinners,
Where reigns a Cretan-tongued panic,
Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic _210
Should make some losers, and some winners--

45.
At conversazioni--balls--
Conventicles--and drawing-rooms--
Courts of law--committees--calls
Of a morning--clubs--book-stalls-- _215
Churches--masquerades--and tombs.

15.
And this is Hell--and in this smother
All are damnable and damned;
Each one damning, damns the other;
They are damned by one another, _220
By none other are they damned.

16.
'Tis a lie to say, 'God damns'! (1)
Where was Heaven's Attorney General
When they first gave out such flams?
Let there be an end of shams, _225
They are mines of poisonous mineral.

17.
Statesmen damn themselves to be
Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls
To the auction of a fee;
Churchmen damn themselves to see _230
God's sweet love in burning coals.

18.
The rich are damned, beyond all cure,
To taunt, and starve, and trample on
The weak and wretched; and the poor
Damn their broken hearts to endure _235
Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.

19.
Sometimes the poor are damned indeed
To take,--not means for being blessed,--
But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed
From which the worms that it doth feed _240
Squeeze less than they before possessed.

20.
And some few, like we know who,
Damned--but God alone knows why--
To believe their minds are given
To make this ugly Hell a Heaven; _245
In which faith they live and die.

21.
Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,
Each man be he sound or no
Must indifferently sicken;
As when day begins to thicken, _250
None knows a pigeon from a crow,--

22.
So good and bad, sane and mad,
The oppressor and the oppressed;
Those who weep to see what others
Smile to inflict upon their brothers; _255
Lovers, haters, worst and best;

23.
All are damned--they breathe an air,
Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:
Each pursues what seems most fair,
Mining like moles, through mind, and there _260
Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care
In throned state is ever dwelling.


PART 4.

SIN.

1.
Lo. Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square,
A footman in the Devil's service!
And the misjudging world would swear _265
That every man in service there
To virtue would prefer vice.

2.
But Peter, though now damned, was not
What Peter was before damnation.
Men oftentimes prepare a lot _270
Which ere it finds them, is not what
Suits with their genuine station.

3.
All things that Peter saw and felt
Had a peculiar aspect to him;
And when they came within the belt _275
Of his own nature, seemed to melt,
Like cloud to cloud, into him.

4.
And so the outward world uniting
To that within him, he became
Considerably uninviting _280
To those who, meditation slighting,
Were moulded in a different frame.

5.
And he scorned them, and they scorned him;
And he scorned all they did; and they
Did all that men of their own trim _285
Are wont to do to please their whim,
Drinking, lying, swearing, play.

6.
Such were his fellow-servants; thus
His virtue, like our own, was built
Too much on that indignant fuss _290
Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us
To bully one another's guilt.

7.
He had a mind which was somehow
At once circumference and centre
Of all he might or feel or know; _295
Nothing went ever out, although
Something did ever enter.

8.
He had as much imagination
As a pint-pot;--he never could
Fancy another situation, _300
From which to dart his contemplation,
Than that wherein he stood.

9.
Yet his was individual mind,
And new created all he saw
In a new manner, and refined _305
Those new creations, and combined
Them, by a master-spirit's law.

10.
Thus--though unimaginative--
An apprehension clear, intense,
Of his mind's work, had made alive _310
The things it wrought on; I believe
Wakening a sort of thought in sense.

11.
But from the first 'twas Peter's drift
To be a kind of moral eunuch,
He touched the hem of Nature's shift, _315
Felt faint--and never dared uplift
The closest, all-concealing tunic.

12.
She laughed the while, with an arch smile,
And kissed him with a sister's kiss,
And said--My best Diogenes, _320
I love you well--but, if you please,
Tempt not again my deepest bliss.

13.
''Tis you are cold--for I, not coy,
Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true;
And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy-- _325
His errors prove it--knew my joy
More, learned friend, than you.

14.
'Boeca bacciata non perde ventura,
Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:--
So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a _330
Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a
Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.

15.
Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe.
And smoothed his spacious forehead down
With his broad palm;--'twixt love and fear, _335
He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,
And in his dream sate down.

16.
The Devil was no uncommon creature;
A leaden-witted thief--just huddled
Out of the dross and scum of nature; _340
A toad-like lump of limb and feature,
With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.

17.
He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,
The spirit of evil well may be:
A drone too base to have a sting; _345
Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing,
And calls lust, luxury.

18.
Now he was quite the kind of wight
Round whom collect, at a fixed aera,
Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,-- _350
Good cheer--and those who come to share it--
And best East Indian madeira!

19.
It was his fancy to invite
Men of science, wit, and learning,
Who came to lend each other light; _355
He proudly thought that his gold's might
Had set those spirits burning.

20.
And men of learning, science, wit,
Considered him as you and I
Think of some rotten tree, and sit _360
Lounging and dining under it,
Exposed to the wide sky.

21.
And all the while with loose fat smile,
The willing wretch sat winking there,
Believing 'twas his power that made _365
That jovial scene--and that all paid
Homage to his unnoticed chair.

22.
Though to be sure this place was Hell;
He was the Devil--and all they--
What though the claret circled well, _370
And wit, like ocean, rose and fell? --
Were damned eternally.


PART 5.

GRACE.

1.
Among the guests who often stayed
Till the Devil's petits-soupers,
A man there came, fair as a maid, _375
And Peter noted what he said,
Standing behind his master's chair.

2.
He was a mighty poet--and
A subtle-souled psychologist;
All things he seemed to understand, _380
Of old or new--of sea or land--
But his own mind--which was a mist.

3.
This was a man who might have turned
Hell into Heaven--and so in gladness
A Heaven unto himself have earned; _385
But he in shadows undiscerned
Trusted. --and damned himself to madness.

4.
He spoke of poetry, and how
'Divine it was--a light--a love--
A spirit which like wind doth blow _390
As it listeth, to and fro;
A dew rained down from God above;

5.
'A power which comes and goes like dream,
And which none can ever trace--
Heaven's light on earth--Truth's brightest beam. ' _395
And when he ceased there lay the gleam
Of those words upon his face.

6.
Now Peter, when he heard such talk,
Would, heedless of a broken pate,
Stand like a man asleep, or balk _400
Some wishing guest of knife or fork,
Or drop and break his master's plate.

7.
At night he oft would start and wake
Like a lover, and began
In a wild measure songs to make _405
On moor, and glen, and rocky lake,
And on the heart of man--

8.
And on the universal sky--
And the wide earth's bosom green,--
And the sweet, strange mystery _410
Of what beyond these things may lie,
And yet remain unseen.

9.
For in his thought he visited
The spots in which, ere dead and damned,
He his wayward life had led; _415
Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed
Which thus his fancy crammed.

10.
And these obscure remembrances
Stirred such harmony in Peter,
That, whensoever he should please, _420
He could speak of rocks and trees
In poetic metre.

11.
For though it was without a sense
Of memory, yet he remembered well
Many a ditch and quick-set fence; _425
Of lakes he had intelligence,
He knew something of heath and fell.

12.
He had also dim recollections
Of pedlars tramping on their rounds;
Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections _430
Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections
Old parsons make in burying-grounds.

13.
But Peter's verse was clear, and came
Announcing from the frozen hearth
Of a cold age, that none might tame _435
The soul of that diviner flame
It augured to the Earth:

14.
Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,
Making that green which late was gray,
Or like the sudden moon, that stains _440
Some gloomy chamber's window-panes
With a broad light like day.

15.
For language was in Peter's hand
Like clay while he was yet a potter;
And he made songs for all the land, _445
Sweet both to feel and understand,
As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.

16.
And Mr. --, the bookseller,
Gave twenty pounds for some;--then scorning
A footman's yellow coat to wear, _450
Peter, too proud of heart, I fear,
Instantly gave the Devil warning.

17.
Whereat the Devil took offence,
And swore in his soul a great oath then,
'That for his damned impertinence _455
He'd bring him to a proper sense
Of what was due to gentlemen! '


PART 6.

DAMNATION.

1.
'O that mine enemy had written
A book! '--cried Job:--a fearful curse,
If to the Arab, as the Briton, _460
'Twas galling to be critic-bitten:--
The Devil to Peter wished no worse.

2.
When Peter's next new book found vent,
The Devil to all the first Reviews
A copy of it slyly sent, _465
With five-pound note as compliment,
And this short notice--'Pray abuse. '

3.
Then seriatim, month and quarter,
Appeared such mad tirades. --One said--
'Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter, _470
Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,
The last thing as he went to bed. '

4.
Another--'Let him shave his head!
Where's Dr. Willis? --Or is he joking?
What does the rascal mean or hope, _475
No longer imitating Pope,
In that barbarian Shakespeare poking? '

5.
One more, 'Is incest not enough?
And must there be adultery too?
Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar! _480
Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! hell-fire
Is twenty times too good for you.

6.
'By that last book of yours WE think
You've double damned yourself to scorn;
We warned you whilst yet on the brink _485
You stood. From your black name will shrink
The babe that is unborn. '

7.
All these Reviews the Devil made
Up in a parcel, which he had
Safely to Peter's house conveyed. _490
For carriage, tenpence Peter paid--
Untied them--read them--went half mad.

8.
'What! ' cried he, 'this is my reward
For nights of thought, and days, of toil?
Do poets, but to be abhorred _495
By men of whom they never heard,
Consume their spirits' oil?

9.
'What have I done to them? --and who
IS Mrs. Foy? 'Tis very cruel
To speak of me and Betty so! _500
Adultery! God defend me! Oh!
I've half a mind to fight a duel.

10.
'Or,' cried he, a grave look collecting,
'Is it my genius, like the moon,
Sets those who stand her face inspecting, _505
That face within their brain reflecting,
Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune? '

11.
For Peter did not know the town,
But thought, as country readers do,
For half a guinea or a crown, _510
He bought oblivion or renown
From God's own voice (1) in a review.

12.
All Peter did on this occasion
Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.
It is a dangerous invasion _515
When poets criticize; their station
Is to delight, not pose.

13.
The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair
For Born's translation of Kant's book;
A world of words, tail foremost, where _520
Right--wrong--false--true--and foul--and fair
As in a lottery-wheel are shook.

14.
Five thousand crammed octavo pages
Of German psychologics,--he
Who his furor verborum assuages _525
Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages
More than will e'er be due to me.

15.
I looked on them nine several days,
And then I saw that they were bad;
A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,-- _530
He never read them;--with amaze
I found Sir William Drummond had.

16.
When the book came, the Devil sent
It to P. Verbovale (2), Esquire,
With a brief note of compliment, _535
By that night's Carlisle mail. It went,
And set his soul on fire.

17.
Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,
Made him beyond the bottom see
Of truth's clear well--when I and you, Ma'am, _540
Go, as we shall do, subter humum,
We may know more than he.

18.
Now Peter ran to seed in soul
Into a walking paradox;
For he was neither part nor whole, _545
Nor good, nor bad--nor knave nor fool;
--Among the woods and rocks

19.
Furious he rode, where late he ran,
Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;
Turned to a formal puritan, _550
A solemn and unsexual man,--
He half believed "White Obi".

20.
This steed in vision he would ride,
High trotting over nine-inch bridges,
With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride, _555
Mocking and mowing by his side--
A mad-brained goblin for a guide--
Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.

21.
After these ghastly rides, he came
Home to his heart, and found from thence _560
Much stolen of its accustomed flame;
His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame
Of their intelligence.

22.
To Peter's view, all seemed one hue;
He was no Whig, he was no Tory; _565
No Deist and no Christian he;--
He got so subtle, that to be
Nothing, was all his glory.

23.
One single point in his belief
From his organization sprung, _570
The heart-enrooted faith, the chief
Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,
That 'Happiness is wrong';

24.
So thought Calvin and Dominic;
So think their fierce successors, who _575
Even now would neither stint nor stick
Our flesh from off our bones to pick,
If they might 'do their do. '

25.
His morals thus were undermined:--
The old Peter--the hard, old Potter-- _580
Was born anew within his mind;
He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,
As when he tramped beside the Otter. (1)

26.
In the death hues of agony
Lambently flashing from a fish, _585
Now Peter felt amused to see
Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,
Mixed with a certain hungry wish(2).

27.
So in his Country's dying face
He looked--and, lovely as she lay, _590
Seeking in vain his last embrace,
Wailing her own abandoned case,
With hardened sneer he turned away:

28.
And coolly to his own soul said;--
'Do you not think that we might make _595
A poem on her when she's dead:--
Or, no--a thought is in my head--
Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:

29.
'My wife wants one. --Let who will bury
This mangled corpse! And I and you, _600
My dearest Soul, will then make merry,
As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,--'
'Ay--and at last desert me too. '

30.
And so his Soul would not be gay,
But moaned within him; like a fawn _605
Moaning within a cave, it lay
Wounded and wasting, day by day,
Till all its life of life was gone.

31.
As troubled skies stain waters clear,
The storm in Peter's heart and mind _610
Now made his verses dark and queer:
They were the ghosts of what they were,
Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.

32.
For he now raved enormous folly,
Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves, _615
'Twould make George Colman melancholy
To have heard him, like a male Molly,
Chanting those stupid staves.

33.
Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse
On Peter while he wrote for freedom, _620
So soon as in his song they spy
The folly which soothes tyranny,
Praise him, for those who feed 'em.

34.
'He was a man, too great to scan;--
A planet lost in truth's keen rays:-- _625
His virtue, awful and prodigious;--
He was the most sublime, religious,
Pure-minded Poet of these days. '

35.
As soon as he read that, cried Peter,
'Eureka! I have found the way _630
To make a better thing of metre
Than e'er was made by living creature
Up to this blessed day. '

36.
Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;--
In one of which he meekly said: _635
'May Carnage and Slaughter,
Thy niece and thy daughter,
May Rapine and Famine,
Thy gorge ever cramming,
Glut thee with living and dead! _640

37.
'May Death and Damnation,
And Consternation,
Flit up from Hell with pure intent!
Slash them at Manchester,
Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester; _645
Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.

38.
'Let thy body-guard yeomen
Hew down babes and women,
And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!
When Moloch in Jewry _650
Munched children with fury,
It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent. (1)


PART 7.

DOUBLE DAMNATION.

1.
The Devil now knew his proper cue. --
Soon as he read the ode, he drove
To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's, _655
A man of interest in both houses,
And said:--'For money or for love,

2.
'Pray find some cure or sinecure;
To feed from the superfluous taxes
A friend of ours--a poet--fewer _660
Have fluttered tamer to the lure
Than he. ' His lordship stands and racks his

3.
Stupid brains, while one might count
As many beads as he had boroughs,--
At length replies; from his mean front, _665
Like one who rubs out an account,
Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:

4.
'It happens fortunately, dear Sir,
I can. I hope I need require
No pledge from you, that he will stir _670
In our affairs;--like Oliver.
That he'll be worthy of his hire. '

5.
These words exchanged, the news sent off
To Peter, home the Devil hied,--
Took to his bed; he had no cough, _675
No doctor,--meat and drink enough. --
Yet that same night he died.

6.
The Devil's corpse was leaded down;
His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,
Mourning-coaches, many a one, _680
Followed his hearse along the town:--
Where was the Devil himself?

7.
When Peter heard of his promotion,
His eyes grew like two stars for bliss:
There was a bow of sleek devotion _685
Engendering in his back; each motion
Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.

8.
He hired a house, bought plate, and made
A genteel drive up to his door,
With sifted gravel neatly laid,-- _690
As if defying all who said,
Peter was ever poor.

9.
But a disease soon struck into
The very life and soul of Peter--
He walked about--slept--had the hue _695
Of health upon his cheeks--and few
Dug better--none a heartier eater.

10.
And yet a strange and horrid curse
Clung upon Peter, night and day;
Month after month the thing grew worse, _700
And deadlier than in this my verse
I can find strength to say.

11.
Peter was dull--he was at first
Dull--oh, so dull--so very dull!
Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed-- _705
Still with this dulness was he cursed--
Dull--beyond all conception--dull.

12.
No one could read his books--no mortal,
But a few natural friends, would hear him;
The parson came not near his portal; _710
His state was like that of the immortal
Described by Swift--no man could bear him.

13.
His sister, wife, and children yawned,
With a long, slow, and drear ennui,
All human patience far beyond; _715
Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned,
Anywhere else to be.

14.
But in his verse, and in his prose,
The essence of his dulness was
Concentred and compressed so close, _720
'Twould have made Guatimozin doze
On his red gridiron of brass.

15.
A printer's boy, folding those pages,
Fell slumbrously upon one side;
Like those famed Seven who slept three ages. _725
To wakeful frenzy's vigil--rages,
As opiates, were the same applied.

16.
Even the Reviewers who were hired
To do the work of his reviewing,
With adamantine nerves, grew tired;-- _730
Gaping and torpid they retired,
To dream of what they should be doing.

17.
And worse and worse, the drowsy curse
Yawned in him, till it grew a pest--
A wide contagious atmosphere, _735
Creeping like cold through all things near;
A power to infect and to infest.

18.
His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;
His kitten, late a sportive elf;
The woods and lakes, so beautiful, _740
Of dim stupidity were full.
All grew dull as Peter's self.

19.
The earth under his feet--the springs,
Which lived within it a quick life,
The air, the winds of many wings, _745
That fan it with new murmurings,
Were dead to their harmonious strife.

20.
The birds and beasts within the wood,
The insects, and each creeping thing,
Were now a silent multitude; _750
Love's work was left unwrought--no brood
Near Peter's house took wing.

21.
And every neighbouring cottager
Stupidly yawned upon the other:
No jackass brayed; no little cur _755
Cocked up his ears;--no man would stir
To save a dying mother.

22.
Yet all from that charmed district went
But some half-idiot and half-knave,
Who rather than pay any rent, _760
Would live with marvellous content,
Over his father's grave.

23.
No bailiff dared within that space,
For fear of the dull charm, to enter;
A man would bear upon his face, _765
For fifteen months in any case,
The yawn of such a venture.

24.
Seven miles above--below--around--
This pest of dulness holds its sway;
A ghastly life without a sound; _770
To Peter's soul the spell is bound--
How should it ever pass away?

NOTES:
(_8 To those who have not duly appreciated the distinction between
Whale and Russia oil, this attribute might rather seem to belong to
the Dandy than the Evangelic. The effect, when to the windward, is
indeed so similar, that it requires a subtle naturalist to
discriminate the animals. They belong, however, to distinct
genera. --[SHELLEY's NOTE. )

(_183 One of the attributes in Linnaeus's description of the Cat. To a
similar cause the caterwauling of more than one species of this genus
is to be referred;--except, indeed, that the poor quadruped is
compelled to quarrel with its own pleasures, whilst the biped is
supposed only to quarrel with those of others. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

(_186 What would this husk and excuse for a virtue be without its
kernel prostitution, or the kernel prostitution without this husk of a
virtue? I wonder the women of the town do not form an association,
like the Society for the Suppression of Vice, for the support of what
may be called the 'King, Church, and Constitution' of their order. But
this subject is almost too horrible for a joke. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

(_222 This libel on our national oath, and this accusation of all our
countrymen of being in the daily practice of solemnly asseverating the
most enormous falsehood, I fear deserves the notice of a more active
Attorney General than that here alluded to. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

_292 one Fleay cj. , Rossetti, Forman, Dowden, Woodberry;
out 1839, 2nd edition.
_500 Betty]Emma 1839, 2nd edition. See letter from Shelley to Ollier,
May 14, 1820 (Shelley Memorials, page 139).

(_512 Vox populi, vox dei. As Mr. Godwin truly observes of a more
famous saying, of some merit as a popular maxim, but totally destitute
of philosophical accuracy. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

(_534 Quasi, Qui valet verba:--i. e. all the words which have been,
are, or may be expended by, for, against, with, or on him. A
sufficient proof of the utility of this history. Peter's progenitor
who selected this name seems to have possessed A PURE ANTICIPATED
COGNITION of the nature and modesty of this ornament of his
posterity. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

_602-3 See Editor's Note.

(_583 A famous river in the new Atlantis of the Dynastophylic
Pantisocratists. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

(_588 See the description of the beautiful colours produced during the
agonizing death of a number of trout, in the fourth part of a long
poem in blank verse, published within a few years. ["The Excursion", 8
2 568-71. --Ed. ] That poem contains curious evidence of the gradual
hardening of a strong but circumscribed sensibility, of the perversion
of a penetrating but panic-stricken understanding. The author might
have derived a lesson which he had probably forgotten from these sweet
and sublime verses:--

'This lesson, Shepherd, let us two divide,
Taught both by what she (Nature) shows and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. '--[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

(_652 It is curious to observe how often extremes meet. Cobbett and
Peter use the same language for a different purpose: Peter is indeed a
sort of metrical Cobbett. Cobbett is, however, more mischievous than
Peter, because he pollutes a holy and how unconquerable cause with the
principles of legitimate murder; whilst the other only makes a bad one
ridiculous and odious.

If either Peter or Cobbett should see this note, each will feel more
indignation at being compared to the other than at any censure implied
in the moral perversion laid to their charge. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])


NOTE ON PETER BELL THE THIRD, BY MRS. SHELLEY.

In this new edition I have added "Peter Bell the Third". A critique on
Wordsworth's "Peter Bell" reached us at Leghorn, which amused Shelley
exceedingly, and suggested this poem.

I need scarcely observe that nothing personal to the author of "Peter
Bell" is intended in this poem. No man ever admired Wordsworth's
poetry more;--he read it perpetually, and taught others to appreciate
its beauties. This poem is, like all others written by Shelley, ideal.
He conceived the idealism of a poet--a man of lofty and creative
genius--quitting the glorious calling of discovering and announcing
the beautiful and good, to support and propagate ignorant prejudices
and pernicious errors; imparting to the unenlightened, not that ardour
for truth and spirit of toleration which Shelley looked on as the
sources of the moral improvement and happiness of mankind, but false
and injurious opinions, that evil was good, and that ignorance and
force were the best allies of purity and virtue. His idea was that a
man gifted, even as transcendently as the author of "Peter Bell", with
the highest qualities of genius, must, if he fostered such errors, be
infected with dulness. This poem was written as a warning--not as a
narration of the reality. He was unacquainted personally with
Wordsworth, or with Coleridge (to whom he alludes in the fifth part of
the poem), and therefore, I repeat, his poem is purely ideal;--it
contains something of criticism on the compositions of those great
poets, but nothing injurious to the men themselves.

No poem contains more of Shelley's peculiar views with regard to the
errors into which many of the wisest have fallen, and the pernicious
effects of certain opinions on society. Much of it is beautifully
written: and, though, like the burlesque drama of "Swellfoot", it must
be looked on as a plaything, it has so much merit and poetry--so much
of HIMSELF in it--that it cannot fail to interest greatly, and by
right belongs to the world for whose instruction and benefit it was
written.

***


LETTER TO MARIA GISBORNE.

[Composed during Shelley's occupation of the Gisbornes' house at
Leghorn, July, 1820; published in "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Sources of
the text are (1) a draft in Shelley's hand, 'partly illegible'
(Forman), amongst the Boscombe manuscripts; (2) a transcript by Mrs.
Shelley; (3) the editio princeps, 1824; the text in "Poetical Works",
1839, let and 2nd editions. Our text is that of Mrs. Shelley's
transcript, modified by the Boscombe manuscript. Here, as elsewhere in
this edition, the readings of the editio princeps are preserved in the
footnotes. ]

LEGHORN, July 1, 1820. ]

The spider spreads her webs, whether she be
In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;
The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves
His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;
So I, a thing whom moralists call worm, _5
Sit spinning still round this decaying form,
From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought--
No net of words in garish colours wrought
To catch the idle buzzers of the day--
But a soft cell, where when that fades away, _10
Memory may clothe in wings my living name
And feed it with the asphodels of fame,
Which in those hearts which must remember me
Grow, making love an immortality.

Whoever should behold me now, I wist, _15
Would think I were a mighty mechanist,
Bent with sublime Archimedean art
To breathe a soul into the iron heart
Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,
Which by the force of figured spells might win _20
Its way over the sea, and sport therein;
For round the walls are hung dread engines, such
As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch
Ixion or the Titan:--or the quick
Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic, _25
To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,
Or those in philanthropic council met,
Who thought to pay some interest for the debt
They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,
By giving a faint foretaste of damnation _30
To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest
Who made our land an island of the blest,
When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire
On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire:--
With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag, _35
Which fishers found under the utmost crag
Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,
Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles
Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn
When the exulting elements in scorn, _40
Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay
Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,
As panthers sleep;--and other strange and dread
Magical forms the brick floor overspread,--
Proteus transformed to metal did not make _45
More figures, or more strange; nor did he take
Such shapes of unintelligible brass,
Or heap himself in such a horrid mass
Of tin and iron not to be understood;
And forms of unimaginable wood, _50
To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:
Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks,
The elements of what will stand the shocks
Of wave and wind and time. --Upon the table
More knacks and quips there be than I am able _55
To catalogize in this verse of mine:--
A pretty bowl of wood--not full of wine,
But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink
When at their subterranean toil they swink,
Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who _60
Reply to them in lava--cry halloo!
And call out to the cities o'er their head,--
Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,
Crash through the chinks of earth--and then all quaff
Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh. _65
This quicksilver no gnome has drunk--within
The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,
In colour like the wake of light that stains
The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains
The inmost shower of its white fire--the breeze _70
Is still--blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas.
And in this bowl of quicksilver--for I
Yield to the impulse of an infancy
Outlasting manhood--I have made to float
A rude idealism of a paper boat:-- _75
A hollow screw with cogs--Henry will know
The thing I mean and laugh at me,--if so
He fears not I should do more mischief. --Next
Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,
With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint _80
Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.
Then comes a range of mathematical
Instruments, for plans nautical and statical,
A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass
With ink in it;--a china cup that was _85
What it will never be again, I think,--
A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink
The liquor doctors rail at--and which I
Will quaff in spite of them--and when we die
We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea, _90
And cry out,--'Heads or tails? ' where'er we be.
Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, _95
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
Of figures,--disentangle them who may.
Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
Near those a most inexplicable thing, _100
With lead in the middle--I'm conjecturing
How to make Henry understand; but no--
I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. _105

And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews _110
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content;--
I sit--and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them--Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound, _115
I heed him more than them--the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean;--and the vines _120
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines--
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast;--the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, _125
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
On the unquiet world;--while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? the shriek of the world's carrion jays, _130
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?

You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,
In vacant chairs, your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should be
But are not. --I demand if ever we _135
Shall meet as then we met;--and she replies.
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
'I know the past alone--but summon home
My sister Hope,--she speaks of all to come. '
But I, an old diviner, who knew well _140
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o'er and o'er
Of our communion--how on the sea-shore _145
We watched the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek--and how we often made _150
Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be;--and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun _155
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not:--or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe, and sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world:--and then anatomize _160
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years;--or widely guess
The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are--
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war _165
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;--or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme,--in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps;--or how we sought _170
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
Or how I, wisest lady! then endued _175
The language of a land which now is free,
And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud,
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
'My name is Legion! '--that majestic tongue _180
Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
Startled oblivion;--thou wert then to me
As is a nurse--when inarticulately _185
A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast _190
Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?
You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. _195
Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see
That which was Godwin,--greater none than he
Though fallen--and fallen on evil times--to stand
Among the spirits of our age and land,
Before the dread tribunal of "to come" _200
The foremost,--while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.
You will see Coleridge--he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind,
Which, with its own internal lightning blind, _200
Flags wearily through darkness and despair--
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls. --
You will see Hunt--one of those happy souls
Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom _210
This world would smell like what it is--a tomb;
Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt
Is still adorned with many a cast from Shout,
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about;
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, _215
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;
The gifts of the most learned among some dozens
Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.
And there is he with his eternal puns,
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns _220
Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say, 'I'm poor! '
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
Things wiser than were ever read in book,
Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness. -- _225
You will see Hogg,--and I cannot express
His virtues,--though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades the gate
Within which they inhabit;--of his wit
And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. _230
He is a pearl within an oyster shell.
One of the richest of the deep;--and there
Is English Peacock, with his mountain Fair,
Turned into a Flamingo;--that shy bird
That gleams i' the Indian air--have you not heard _235
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him? --but you
Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,
With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope
Matched with this cameleopard--his fine wit _240
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
A strain too learned for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page,
Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,
Fold itself up for the serener clime _245
Of years to come, and find its recompense
In that just expectation. --Wit and sense,
Virtue and human knowledge; all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight,
Are all combined in Horace Smith. --And these. _250
With some exceptions, which I need not tease
Your patience by descanting on,--are all
You and I know in London.
I recall
My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.
As water does a sponge, so the moonlight _255
Fills the void, hollow, universal air--
What see you? --unpavilioned Heaven is fair,
Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep; _260
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep,
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,
And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast:--
All this is beautiful in every land. --
But what see you beside? --a shabby stand _265
Of Hackney coaches--a brick house or wall
Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
Of our unhappy politics;--or worse--
A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse
Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade, _270
You must accept in place of serenade--
Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring
To Henry, some unutterable thing.
I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
Built round dark caverns, even to the root _275
Of the living stems that feed them--in whose bowers
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance, _280
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance,
Pale in the open moonshine, but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the milky way;-- _285
Afar the Contadino's song is heard,
Rude, but made sweet by distance--and a bird
Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sings so sweet as it
At this late hour;--and then all is still-- _290
Now--Italy or London, which you will!

Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have
My house by that time turned into a grave
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
And all the dreams which our tormentors are; _295
Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there,
With everything belonging to them fair! --
We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;
And ask one week to make another week
As like his father, as I'm unlike mine, _300
Which is not his fault, as you may divine.
Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, _305
And other such lady-like luxuries,--
Feasting on which we will philosophize!
And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood,
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
And then we'll talk;--what shall we talk about? _310
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant;--as to nerves--
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me--when you are with me there. _315
And they shall never more sip laudanum,
From Helicon or Himeros (1);--well, come,
And in despite of God and of the devil,
We'll make our friendly philosophic revel
Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers _320
Warn the obscure inevitable hours,
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;--
'To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. '

NOTES:
_13 must Bos. manuscript; most edition 1824.
_27 philanthropic Bos. manuscript; philosophic edition 1824.