His mode of life makes
him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to
bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island.
him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to
bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island.
Shelley
Come what may,
The Future must become the Past, and I
As they were to whom once this present hour, _925
This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,
Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy
Never to be attained. --I must rebuke
This drunkenness of triumph ere it die,
And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves! _930
[EXIT MAHMUD. ]
VOICE WITHOUT:
Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks
Are as a brood of lions in the net
Round which the kingly hunters of the earth
Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food
Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, _935
From Thule to the girdle of the world,
Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men;
The cup is foaming with a nation's blood,
Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, _940
Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day!
I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream,
Perch on the trembling pyramid of night,
Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay
In visions of the dawning undelight. _945
Who shall impede her flight?
Who rob her of her prey?
VOICE WITHOUT:
Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eagles
Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light.
Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil! _950
Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!
SEMICHORUS 2:
Thou voice which art
The herald of the ill in splendour hid!
Thou echo of the hollow heart
Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode _955
When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed:
Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloud
Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid
The momentary oceans of the lightning,
Or to some toppling promontory proud _960
Of solid tempest whose black pyramid,
Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright'ning
Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire
Before their waves expire,
When heaven and earth are light, and only light _965
In the thunder-night!
NOTE:
_958 earthquake edition 1822; earthquakes editions 1839.
VOICE WITHOUT:
Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England,
And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France,
Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak.
Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes, _970
These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners
Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.
SEMICHORUS 1:
Alas! for Liberty!
If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,
Or fate, can quell the free! _975
Alas! for Virtue, when
Torments, or contumely, or the sneers
Of erring judging men
Can break the heart where it abides.
Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid, _980
Can change with its false times and tides,
Like hope and terror,--
Alas for Love!
And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,
If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror _985
Before the dazzled eyes of Error,
Alas for thee! Image of the Above.
SEMICHORUS 2:
Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,
Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn
Through many an hostile Anarchy! _990
At length they wept aloud, and cried, 'The Sea! the Sea! '
Through exile, persecution, and despair,
Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become
The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb
Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair: _995
But Greece was as a hermit-child,
Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built
To woman's growth, by dreams so mild,
She knew not pain or guilt;
And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble _1000
When ye desert the free--
If Greece must be
A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,
And build themselves again impregnably
In a diviner clime, _1005
To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,
Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.
SEMICHORUS 1:
Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;
Let the free possess the Paradise they claim;
Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed _1010
With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!
SEMICHORUS 2:
Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,
Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,
Our adversity a dream to pass away--
Their dishonour a remembrance to abide! _1015
VOICE WITHOUT:
Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends
The keys of ocean to the Islamite. --
Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,
And British skill directing Othman might,
Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy _1020
This jubilee of unrevenged blood!
Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Darkness has dawned in the East
On the noon of time:
The death-birds descend to their feast _1025
From the hungry clime.
Let Freedom and Peace flee far
To a sunnier strand,
And follow Love's folding-star
To the Evening land! _1030
SEMICHORUS 2:
The young moon has fed
Her exhausted horn
With the sunset's fire:
The weak day is dead,
But the night is not born; _1035
And, like loveliness panting with wild desire
While it trembles with fear and delight,
Hesperus flies from awakening night,
And pants in its beauty and speed with light
Fast-flashing, soft, and bright. _1040
Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!
Guide us far, far away,
To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day
Thou art hidden
From waves on which weary Noon _1045
Faints in her summer swoon,
Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,
Around mountains and islands inviolably
Pranked on the sapphire sea.
SEMICHORUS 1:
Through the sunset of hope, _1050
Like the shapes of a dream.
What Paradise islands of glory gleam!
Beneath Heaven's cope,
Their shadows more clear float by--
The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky, _1055
The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe
Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,
Through the walls of our prison;
And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!
NOTE:
_1057 dream edition 1822; dreams editions 1839.
CHORUS:
The world's great age begins anew, _1060
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. _1065
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep _1070
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies. _1075
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death's scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy _1080
Which dawns upon the free:
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time _1085
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose _1090
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers. _1095
Oh, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past, _1100
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
NOTES:
_1068 his edition 1822; its editions 1839.
_1072 Argo]Argos edition 1822.
_1091-_1093 See Editor's note.
_1091 bright editions 1839; wise edition 1829 (ed. Galignani).
_1093 unsubdued editions 1839; unwithstood edition 1829 (ed. Galignani).
NOTES.
(1) THE QUENCHLESS ASHES OF MILAN [L. 60].
Milan was the centre of the resistance of the Lombard league against
the Austrian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa burnt the city to the ground,
but liberty lived in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation from
its ruin. See Sismondi's "Histoire des Republiques Italiennes", a book
which has done much towards awakening the Italians to an imitation of
their great ancestors.
(2) THE CHORUS [L. 197].
The popular notions of Christianity are represented in this chorus as
true in their relation to the worship they superseded, and that which
in all probability they will supersede, without considering their
merits in a relation more universal. The first stanza contrasts the
immortality of the living and thinking beings which inhabit the
planets, and to use a common and inadequate phrase, "clothe themselves
in matter", with the transience of the noblest manifestations of the
external world.
The concluding verses indicate a progressive state of more or loss
exalted existence, according to the degree of perfection which every
distinct intelligence may have attained. Let it not be supposed that I
mean to dogmatise upon a subject, concerning which all men are equally
ignorant, or that I think the Gordian knot of the origin of evil can
be disentangled by that or any similar assertions. The received
hypothesis of a Being resembling men in the moral attributes of His
nature, having called us out of non-existence, and after inflicting on
us the misery of the commission of error, should superadd that of the
punishment and the privations consequent upon it, still would remain
inexplicable and incredible. That there is a true solution of the
riddle, and that in our present state that solution is unattainable by
us, are propositions which may be regarded as equally certain:
meanwhile, as it is the province of the poet to attach himself to
those ideas which exalt and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to
have conjectured the condition of that futurity towards which we are
all impelled by an inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until
better arguments can be produced than sophisms which disgrace the
cause, this desire itself must remain the strongest and the only
presumption that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking being.
(3) NO HOARY PRIESTS AFTER THAT PATRIARCH [L. 245].
The Greek Patriarch, after haying been compelled to fulminate an
anathema against the insurgents, was put to death by the Turks.
Fortunately the Greeks have been taught that they cannot buy security
by degradation, and the Turks, though equally cruel, are less cunning
than the smooth-faced tyrants of Europe. As to the anathema, his
Holiness might as well have thrown his mitre at Mount Athos for any
effect that it produced. The chiefs of the Greeks are almost all men
of comprehension and enlightened views on religion and politics.
(4) THE FREEDMAN OF A WESTERN POET-CHIEF [L. 563].
A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant commands the insurgents in
Attica. This Greek, Lord Byron informs me, though a poet and an
enthusiastic patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and
unenterprising person. It appears that circumstances make men what
they are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation
or of greatness whose connection with our character is determined by
events.
(5) THE GREEKS EXPECT A SAVIOUR FROM THE WEST [L. 598].
It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near
Lacedaemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is
irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly
marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.
(6) THE SOUND AS OF THE ASSAULT OF AN IMPERIAL CITY [LL. 814-15].
For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, see
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", volume 12 page 223.
The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will
be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular
conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to
represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in
supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in
which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through
the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess
of passion animating the creations of imagination.
It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a
degree by any one who should have made himself master of the secret
associations of another's thoughts.
(7) THE CHORUS [L. 1060].
The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living
drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumours of
wars, etc. , may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to
anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness is a
more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign.
It will remind the reader 'magno NEC proximus intervallo' of Isaiah
and Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil
which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps
approaching state of society in which the 'lion shall lie down with
the lamb,' and 'omnis feret omnia tellus. ' Let these great names be my
authority and my excuse.
(8) SATURN AND LOVE THEIR LONG REPOSE SHALL BURST [L. 1090].
Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of
innocence and happiness. ALL those WHO FELL, or the Gods of Greece,
Asia, and Egypt; the ONE WHO ROSE, or Jesus Christ, at whose
appearance the idols of the Pagan World wore amerced of their worship;
and the MANY UNSUBDUED, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of
China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America,
certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction
or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been
in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the
arts, perpetually increasing, activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed
to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said,
that as far as temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave so
edifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of
Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a Power,
who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were
called into existence by His sole will; and for the period of a
thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of
men has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who
approached the nearest to His innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under
every aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of
the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well
known.
NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at
the beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a
signal to Italy; secrete societies were formed; and, when Naples rose
to declare the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium
to the foot of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty,
early in 1821 the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at
first their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a
people long enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa
threw off the yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful
imitation, the people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave
the conge to their sovereign, and set up a republic.
Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said that the Austrian
minister presented a list of sixty Carbonari to the Grand Duke, urging
their imprisonment; and the Grand Duke replied, 'I do not know whether
these sixty men are Carbonari, but I know, if I imprison them, I shall
directly have sixty thousand start up. ' But, though the Tuscans had no
desire to disturb the paternal government beneath whose shelter they
slumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian
revolutions with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was
warm in every bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the
Neapolitans would offer no fit resistance to the regular German
troops, and that the overthrow of the constitution in Naples would act
as a decisive blow against all struggles for liberty in Italy.
We have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance
was alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the
peaceful triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion
of freedom in the South of Europe was the only hope of the liberals,
as, if it prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the
example. Happily the reverse has proved the fact. The countries
accustomed to the exercise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited
extent, have extended, and are extending, these limits. Freedom and
knowledge have now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, if it
continue thus, we may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have
said--in 1821--Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty,
looked upon the struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the
destinies of the world, probably for centuries to come. The interest
he took in the progress of affairs was intense. When Genoa declared
itself free, his hopes were at their highest. Day after day he read
the bulletins of the Austrian army, and sought eagerly to gather
tokens of its defeat. He heard of the revolt of Genoa with emotions of
transport. His whole heart and soul were in the triumph of the cause.
We were living at Pisa at that time; and several well-informed
Italians, at the head of whom we may place the celebrated Vacca, were
accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes from Shelley: they did
not find such for the despair they too generally experienced, founded
on contempt for their southern countrymen.
While the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading
Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him
with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several
Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly
Hospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed
finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his
treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the
gentleman to whom the drama of "Hellas" is dedicated. Prince
Mavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of
his country which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen. He
often intimated the possibility of an insurrection in Greece; but we
had no idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of April
1821, he called on Shelley, bringing the proclamation of his cousin,
Prince Ypsilanti, and, radiant with exultation and delight, declared
that henceforth Greece would be free.
Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty in Spain and Naples, in two
odes dictated by the warmest enthusiasm; he felt himself naturally
impelled to decorate with poetry the uprise of the descendants of that
people whose works he regarded with deep admiration, and to adopt the
vaticinatory character in prophesying their success. "Hellas" was
written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to remark how well he
overcomes the difficulty of forming a drama out of such scant
materials. His prophecies, indeed, came true in their general, not
their particular, purport. He did not foresee the death of Lord
Londonderry, which was to be the epoch of a change in English
politics, particularly as regarded foreign affairs; nor that the navy
of his country would fight for instead of against the Greeks, and by
the battle of Navarino secure their enfranchisement from the Turks.
Almost against reason, as it appeared to him, he resolved to believe
that Greece would prove triumphant; and in this spirit, auguring
ultimate good, yet grieving over the vicissitudes to be endured in the
interval, he composed his drama.
"Hellas" was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most
beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in
their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify
Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the
intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the
country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:--
'But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity. '
And again, that philosophical truth felicitously imaged forth--
'Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,
The foul cubs like their parents are,
Their den is in the guilty mind,
And Conscience feeds them with despair. '
The conclusion of the last chorus is among the most beautiful of his
lyrics. The imagery is distinct and majestic; the prophecy, such as
poets love to dwell upon, the Regeneration of Mankind--and that
regeneration reflecting back splendour on the foregone time, from
which it inherits so much of intellectual wealth, and memory of past
virtuous deeds, as must render the possession of happiness and peace
of tenfold value.
***
FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.
[Published in part (lines 1-69, 100-120) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous
Poems", 1824; and again, with the notes, in "Poetical Works", 1839.
Lines 127-238 were printed by Dr. Garnett under the title of "The
Magic Plant" in his "Relics of Shelley", 1862. The whole was edited in
its present form from the Boscombe manuscript by Mr. W. M. Rossetti in
1870 ("Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S. ", Moxon, 2 volumes. ).
'Written at Pisa during the late winter or early spring of 1822'
(Garnett). ]
The following fragments are part of a Drama undertaken for the
amusement of the individuals who composed our intimate society, but
left unfinished. I have preserved a sketch of the story as far as it
had been shadowed in the poet's mind.
An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian
Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble
nature. She becomes enamoured of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal
love, for a while returns her passion; but at length, recalling the
memory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, he escapes from
the Enchanted Island, and returns to his lady.
His mode of life makes
him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to
bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island. --[MRS.
SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1839. ]
SCENE. --BEFORE THE CAVERN OF THE INDIAN ENCHANTRESS.
THE ENCHANTRESS COMES FORTH.
ENCHANTRESS:
He came like a dream in the dawn of life,
He fled like a shadow before its noon;
He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,
And I wander and wane like the weary moon.
O, sweet Echo, wake, _5
And for my sake
Make answer the while my heart shall break!
But my heart has a music which Echo's lips,
Though tender and true, yet can answer not,
And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse _10
Can return not the kiss by his now forgot;
Sweet lips! he who hath
On my desolate path
Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death!
NOTE:
_8 my omitted 1824.
[THE ENCHANTRESS MAKES HER SPELL: SHE IS ANSWERED BY A SPIRIT. ]
SPIRIT:
Within the silent centre of the earth _15
My mansion is; where I have lived insphered
From the beginning, and around my sleep
Have woven all the wondrous imagery
Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;
Infinite depths of unknown elements _20
Massed into one impenetrable mask;
Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins
Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron.
And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven
I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds, _25
And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns
In the dark space of interstellar air.
NOTES:
_15-_27 Within. . . air. 1839; omitted 1824.
See these lines in "Posthumous Poems", 1824, page 209: "Song of a Spirit".
_16 have 1839; omitted 1824, page 209.
_25 seas, and waves 1824, page 209; seas, waves 1839.
[A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate's fate, leads, in a
mysterious manner, the lady of his love to the Enchanted Isle. She is
accompanied by a Youth, who loves the lady, but whose passion she
returns only with a sisterly affection. The ensuing scene takes place
between them on their arrival at the Isle. [MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE,
1839. ]]
ANOTHER SCENE.
INDIAN YOUTH AND LADY.
INDIAN:
And, if my grief should still be dearer to me
Than all the pleasures in the world beside,
Why would you lighten it? --
NOTE:
_29 pleasures]pleasure 1824.
LADY:
I offer only _30
That which I seek, some human sympathy
In this mysterious island.
INDIAN:
Oh! my friend,
My sister, my beloved! --What do I say?
My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know whether
I speak to thee or her.
LADY:
Peace, perturbed heart! _35
I am to thee only as thou to mine,
The passing wind which heals the brow at noon,
And may strike cold into the breast at night,
Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most,
Or long soothe could it linger.
INDIAN:
But you said _40
You also loved?
NOTE:
_32-_41 Assigned to INDIAN, 1824.
LADY:
Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks
This word of love is fit for all the world,
And that for gentle hearts another name
Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns.
I have loved.
INDIAN:
And thou lovest not? if so, _45
Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep.
LADY:
Oh! would that I could claim exemption
From all the bitterness of that sweet name.
I loved, I love, and when I love no more
Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair _50
To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,
The embodied vision of the brightest dream,
Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;
The shadow of his presence made my world
A Paradise. All familiar things he touched, _55
All common words he spoke, became to me
Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.
He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,
As terrible and lovely as a tempest;
He came, and went, and left me what I am. _60
Alas! Why must I think how oft we two
Have sate together near the river springs,
Under the green pavilion which the willow
Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,
Strewn, by the nurslings that linger there, _65
Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,
While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,
Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own?
The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt, _70
And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn;
And on a wintry bough the widowed bird,
Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves,
Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow.
I, left like her, and leaving one like her, _75
Alike abandoned and abandoning
(Oh! unlike her in this! ) the gentlest youth,
Whose love had made my sorrows dear to him,
Even as my sorrow made his love to me!
NOTE:
_71 spray Rossetti 1870, Woodberry; Spring Forman, Dowden.
INDIAN:
One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould _80
The features of the wretched; and they are
As like as violet to violet,
When memory, the ghost, their odours keeps
Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy. --
Proceed.
LADY:
He was a simple innocent boy. _85
I loved him well, but not as he desired;
Yet even thus he was content to be:--
A short content, for I was--
INDIAN [ASIDE]:
God of Heaven!
From such an islet, such a river-spring--!
I dare not ask her if there stood upon it _90
A pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent,
With steps to the blue water.
[ALOUD. ]
It may be
That Nature masks in life several copies
Of the same lot, so that the sufferers
May feel another's sorrow as their own, _95
And find in friendship what they lost in love.
That cannot be: yet it is strange that we,
From the same scene, by the same path to this
Realm of abandonment-- But speak! your breath--
Your breath is like soft music, your words are _100
The echoes of a voice which on my heart
Sleeps like a melody of early days.
But as you said--
LADY:
He was so awful, yet
So beautiful in mystery and terror,
Calming me as the loveliness of heaven _105
Soothes the unquiet sea:--and yet not so,
For he seemed stormy, and would often seem
A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds;
For such his thoughts, and even his actions were;
But he was not of them, nor they of him, _110
But as they hid his splendour from the earth.
Some said he was a man of blood and peril,
And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips.
More need was there I should be innocent,
More need that I should be most true and kind, _115
And much more need that there should be found one
To share remorse and scorn and solitude,
And all the ills that wait on those who do
The tasks of ruin in the world of life.
He fled, and I have followed him.
INDIAN:
Such a one _120
Is he who was the winter of my peace.
But, fairest stranger, when didst thou depart
From the far hills where rise the springs of India?
How didst thou pass the intervening sea?
LADY:
If I be sure I am not dreaming now, _125
I should not doubt to say it was a dream.
Methought a star came down from heaven,
And rested mid the plants of India,
Which I had given a shelter from the frost
Within my chamber. There the meteor lay, _130
Panting forth light among the leaves and flowers,
As if it lived, and was outworn with speed;
Or that it loved, and passion made the pulse
Of its bright life throb like an anxious heart,
Till it diffused itself; and all the chamber _135
And walls seemed melted into emerald fire
That burned not; in the midst of which appeared
A spirit like a child, and laughed aloud
A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment
As made the blood tingle in my warm feet: _140
Then bent over a vase, and murmuring
Low, unintelligible melodies,
Placed something in the mould like melon-seeds,
And slowly faded, and in place of it
A soft hand issued from the veil of fire, _145
Holding a cup like a magnolia flower,
And poured upon the earth within the vase
The element with which it overflowed,
Brighter than morning light, and purer than
The water of the springs of Himalah. _150
NOTE:
_120-_126 Such. . . dream 1839; omitted 1824.
INDIAN:
You waked not?
LADY:
Not until my dream became
Like a child's legend on the tideless sand.
Which the first foam erases half, and half
Leaves legible. At length I rose, and went,
Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought _155
To set new cuttings in the empty urns,
And when I came to that beside the lattice,
I saw two little dark-green leaves
Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then
I half-remembered my forgotten dream. _160
And day by day, green as a gourd in June,
The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew
What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed
Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded
With azure mail and streaks of woven silver; _165
And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds
Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel,
Until the golden eye of the bright flower,
Through the dark lashes of those veined lids,
. . . disencumbered of their silent sleep, _170
Gazed like a star into the morning light.
Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw
The pulses
With which the purple velvet flower was fed
To overflow, and like a poet's heart _175
Changing bright fancy to sweet sentiment,
Changed half the light to fragrance. It soon fell,
And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit
Left all its treasured beauty. Day by day
I nursed the plant, and on the double flute _180
Played to it on the sunny winter days
Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain
On silent leaves, and sang those words in which
Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings;
And I would send tales of forgotten love _185
Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs
Of maids deserted in the olden time,
And weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom
Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant,
So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come, _190
And crept abroad into the moonlight air,
And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon,
The sun averted less his oblique beam.
INDIAN:
And the plant died not in the frost?
LADY:
It grew;
And went out of the lattice which I left _195
Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires
Along the garden and across the lawn,
And down the slope of moss and through the tufts
Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o'ergrown
With simple lichens, and old hoary stones, _200
On to the margin of the glassy pool,
Even to a nook of unblown violets
And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn,
Under a pine with ivy overgrown.
And theme its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard _205
Under the shadows; but when Spring indeed
Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies
Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at
This shape of autumn couched in their recess,
Then it dilated, and it grew until _210
One half lay floating on the fountain wave,
Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies,
Kept time
Among the snowy water-lily buds.
Its shape was such as summer melody _215
Of the south wind in spicy vales might give
To some light cloud bound from the golden dawn
To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed
In hue and form that it had been a mirror
Of all the hues and forms around it and _220
Upon it pictured by the sunny beams
Which, from the bright vibrations of the pool,
Were thrown upon the rafters and the roof
Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems
Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections _225
Of every infant flower and star of moss
And veined leaf in the azure odorous air.
And thus it lay in the Elysian calm
Of its own beauty, floating on the line
Which, like a film in purest space, divided _230
The heaven beneath the water from the heaven
Above the clouds; and every day I went
Watching its growth and wondering;
And as the day grew hot, methought I saw
A glassy vapour dancing on the pool, _235
And on it little quaint and filmy shapes.
With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall,
Like clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.
. . .
O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from Heaven--
As if Heaven dawned upon the world of dream-- _240
When darkness rose on the extinguished day
Out of the eastern wilderness.
INDIAN:
I too
Have found a moment's paradise in sleep
Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow.
***
CHARLES THE FIRST.
["Charles the First" was designed in 1818, begun towards the close of
1819 [Medwin, "Life", 2 page 62], resumed in January, and finally laid
aside by June, 1822. It was published in part in the "Posthumous
Poems", 1824, and printed, in its present form (with the addition of
some 530 lines), by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, 1870. Further particulars are
given in the Editor's Notes at the end of Volume 3. ]
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
KING CHARLES I.
QUEEN HENRIETTA.
LAUD, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD.
LORD COTTINGTON.
LORD WESTON.
LORD COVENTRY.
WILLIAMS, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.
SECRETARY LYTTELTON.
JUXON.
ST. JOHN.
ARCHY, THE COURT FOOL.
HAMPDEN.
PYM.
CROMWELL.
CROMWELL'S DAUGHTER.
SIR HARRY VANE THE YOUNGER.
LEIGHTON.
BASTWICK.
PRYNNE.
GENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT, CITIZENS, PURSUIVANTS,
MARSHALSMEN, LAW STUDENTS, JUDGES, CLERK.
SCENE 1:
THE MASQUE OF THE INNS OF COURT.
A PURSUIVANT:
Place, for the Marshal of the Masque!
FIRST CITIZEN:
What thinkest thou of this quaint masque which turns,
Like morning from the shadow of the night,
The night to day, and London to a place
Of peace and joy?
SECOND CITIZEN:
And Hell to Heaven. _5
Eight years are gone,
And they seem hours, since in this populous street
I trod on grass made green by summer's rain,
For the red plague kept state within that palace
Where now that vanity reigns. In nine years more _10
The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;
And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven
That sin and wrongs wound, as an orphan's cry,
The patience of the great Avenger's ear.
NOTE:
_10 now that vanity reigns 1870; now reigns vanity 1824.
A YOUTH:
Yet, father, 'tis a happy sight to see, _15
Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden
By God or man;--'tis like the bright procession
Of skiey visions in a solemn dream
From which men wake as from a Paradise,
And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life. _20
If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?
And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw
Unseasonable poison from the flowers
Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?
Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present _25
Dark as the future! --
. . .
When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant Fear,
And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping
As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle thoughts
Waken to worship Him who giveth joys _30
With His own gift.
SECOND CITIZEN:
How young art thou in this old age of time!
How green in this gray world? Canst thou discern
The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint
Of change in that stage-scene in which thou art _35
Not a spectator but an actor? or
Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery]?
The day that dawns in fire will die in storms,
Even though the noon be calm. My travel's done,--
Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found _40
My inn of lasting rest; but thou must still
Be journeying on in this inclement air.
Wrap thy old cloak about thy back;
Nor leave the broad and plain and beaten road,
Although no flowers smile on the trodden dust, _45
For the violet paths of pleasure. This Charles the First
Rose like the equinoctial sun,. . .
By vapours, through whose threatening ominous veil
Darting his altered influence he has gained
This height of noon--from which he must decline _50
Amid the darkness of conflicting storms,
To dank extinction and to latest night. . .
There goes
The apostate Strafford; he whose titles
whispered aphorisms _55
From Machiavel and Bacon: and, if Judas
Had been as brazen and as bold as he--
NOTES:
_33-_37 Canst. . . enginery 1870;
Canst thou not think
Of change in that low scene, in which thou art
Not a spectator but an actor? . . . 1824.
_43-_57 Wrap. . . bold as he 1870; omitted 1824.
FIRST CITIZEN:
That
Is the Archbishop.
SECOND CITIZEN:
Rather say the Pope:
London will be soon his Rome: he walks
As if he trod upon the heads of men: _60
He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;--
Beside him moves the Babylonian woman
Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow,
Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin,
Which turns Heaven's milk of mercy to revenge. _65
THIRD CITIZEN [LIFTING UP HIS EYES]:
Good Lord! rain it down upon him! . . .
Amid her ladies walks the papist queen,
As if her nice feet scorned our English earth.
The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be
A dog if I might tear her with my teeth! _70
There's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,
Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,
And others who make base their English breed
By vile participation of their honours
With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates. _75
When lawyers masque 'tis time for honest men
To strip the vizor from their purposes.
A seasonable time for masquers this!
When Englishmen and Protestants should sit
dust on their dishonoured heads _80
To avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt
For the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven
and foreign overthrow.
The remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort
Have been abandoned by their faithless allies _85
To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer
Lewis of France,--the Palatinate is lost--
[ENTER LEIGHTON (WHO HAS BEEN BRANDED IN THE FACE) AND BASTWICK. ]
Canst thou be--art thou?
NOTE:
_73 make 1824; made 1839.
LEIGHTON:
I WAS Leighton: what
I AM thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes,
And with thy memory look on thy friend's mind, _90
Which is unchanged, and where is written deep
The sentence of my judge.
THIRD CITIZEN:
Are these the marks with which
Laud thinks to improve the image of his Maker
Stamped on the face of man? Curses upon him,
The impious tyrant!
SECOND CITIZEN:
It is said besides _95
That lewd and papist drunkards may profane
The Sabbath with their
And has permitted that most heathenish custom
Of dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths
On May-day. _100
A man who thus twice crucifies his God
May well . . . his brother.
The Future must become the Past, and I
As they were to whom once this present hour, _925
This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,
Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy
Never to be attained. --I must rebuke
This drunkenness of triumph ere it die,
And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves! _930
[EXIT MAHMUD. ]
VOICE WITHOUT:
Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks
Are as a brood of lions in the net
Round which the kingly hunters of the earth
Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food
Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death, _935
From Thule to the girdle of the world,
Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men;
The cup is foaming with a nation's blood,
Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream, _940
Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day!
I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream,
Perch on the trembling pyramid of night,
Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay
In visions of the dawning undelight. _945
Who shall impede her flight?
Who rob her of her prey?
VOICE WITHOUT:
Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eagles
Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light.
Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil! _950
Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!
SEMICHORUS 2:
Thou voice which art
The herald of the ill in splendour hid!
Thou echo of the hollow heart
Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode _955
When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed:
Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloud
Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid
The momentary oceans of the lightning,
Or to some toppling promontory proud _960
Of solid tempest whose black pyramid,
Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright'ning
Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire
Before their waves expire,
When heaven and earth are light, and only light _965
In the thunder-night!
NOTE:
_958 earthquake edition 1822; earthquakes editions 1839.
VOICE WITHOUT:
Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England,
And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France,
Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak.
Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes, _970
These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners
Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.
SEMICHORUS 1:
Alas! for Liberty!
If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,
Or fate, can quell the free! _975
Alas! for Virtue, when
Torments, or contumely, or the sneers
Of erring judging men
Can break the heart where it abides.
Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid, _980
Can change with its false times and tides,
Like hope and terror,--
Alas for Love!
And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,
If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror _985
Before the dazzled eyes of Error,
Alas for thee! Image of the Above.
SEMICHORUS 2:
Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,
Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn
Through many an hostile Anarchy! _990
At length they wept aloud, and cried, 'The Sea! the Sea! '
Through exile, persecution, and despair,
Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become
The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb
Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair: _995
But Greece was as a hermit-child,
Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built
To woman's growth, by dreams so mild,
She knew not pain or guilt;
And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble _1000
When ye desert the free--
If Greece must be
A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,
And build themselves again impregnably
In a diviner clime, _1005
To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,
Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.
SEMICHORUS 1:
Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;
Let the free possess the Paradise they claim;
Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed _1010
With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!
SEMICHORUS 2:
Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,
Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,
Our adversity a dream to pass away--
Their dishonour a remembrance to abide! _1015
VOICE WITHOUT:
Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends
The keys of ocean to the Islamite. --
Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,
And British skill directing Othman might,
Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy _1020
This jubilee of unrevenged blood!
Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Darkness has dawned in the East
On the noon of time:
The death-birds descend to their feast _1025
From the hungry clime.
Let Freedom and Peace flee far
To a sunnier strand,
And follow Love's folding-star
To the Evening land! _1030
SEMICHORUS 2:
The young moon has fed
Her exhausted horn
With the sunset's fire:
The weak day is dead,
But the night is not born; _1035
And, like loveliness panting with wild desire
While it trembles with fear and delight,
Hesperus flies from awakening night,
And pants in its beauty and speed with light
Fast-flashing, soft, and bright. _1040
Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!
Guide us far, far away,
To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day
Thou art hidden
From waves on which weary Noon _1045
Faints in her summer swoon,
Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,
Around mountains and islands inviolably
Pranked on the sapphire sea.
SEMICHORUS 1:
Through the sunset of hope, _1050
Like the shapes of a dream.
What Paradise islands of glory gleam!
Beneath Heaven's cope,
Their shadows more clear float by--
The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky, _1055
The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe
Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,
Through the walls of our prison;
And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!
NOTE:
_1057 dream edition 1822; dreams editions 1839.
CHORUS:
The world's great age begins anew, _1060
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn:
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. _1065
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
Against the morning star.
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep _1070
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
And loves, and weeps, and dies. _1075
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.
Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,
If earth Death's scroll must be!
Nor mix with Laian rage the joy _1080
Which dawns upon the free:
Although a subtler Sphinx renew
Riddles of death Thebes never knew.
Another Athens shall arise,
And to remoter time _1085
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,
The splendour of its prime;
And leave, if nought so bright may live,
All earth can take or Heaven can give.
Saturn and Love their long repose _1090
Shall burst, more bright and good
Than all who fell, than One who rose,
Than many unsubdued:
Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,
But votive tears and symbol flowers. _1095
Oh, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past, _1100
Oh, might it die or rest at last!
NOTES:
_1068 his edition 1822; its editions 1839.
_1072 Argo]Argos edition 1822.
_1091-_1093 See Editor's note.
_1091 bright editions 1839; wise edition 1829 (ed. Galignani).
_1093 unsubdued editions 1839; unwithstood edition 1829 (ed. Galignani).
NOTES.
(1) THE QUENCHLESS ASHES OF MILAN [L. 60].
Milan was the centre of the resistance of the Lombard league against
the Austrian tyrant. Frederic Barbarossa burnt the city to the ground,
but liberty lived in its ashes, and it rose like an exhalation from
its ruin. See Sismondi's "Histoire des Republiques Italiennes", a book
which has done much towards awakening the Italians to an imitation of
their great ancestors.
(2) THE CHORUS [L. 197].
The popular notions of Christianity are represented in this chorus as
true in their relation to the worship they superseded, and that which
in all probability they will supersede, without considering their
merits in a relation more universal. The first stanza contrasts the
immortality of the living and thinking beings which inhabit the
planets, and to use a common and inadequate phrase, "clothe themselves
in matter", with the transience of the noblest manifestations of the
external world.
The concluding verses indicate a progressive state of more or loss
exalted existence, according to the degree of perfection which every
distinct intelligence may have attained. Let it not be supposed that I
mean to dogmatise upon a subject, concerning which all men are equally
ignorant, or that I think the Gordian knot of the origin of evil can
be disentangled by that or any similar assertions. The received
hypothesis of a Being resembling men in the moral attributes of His
nature, having called us out of non-existence, and after inflicting on
us the misery of the commission of error, should superadd that of the
punishment and the privations consequent upon it, still would remain
inexplicable and incredible. That there is a true solution of the
riddle, and that in our present state that solution is unattainable by
us, are propositions which may be regarded as equally certain:
meanwhile, as it is the province of the poet to attach himself to
those ideas which exalt and ennoble humanity, let him be permitted to
have conjectured the condition of that futurity towards which we are
all impelled by an inextinguishable thirst for immortality. Until
better arguments can be produced than sophisms which disgrace the
cause, this desire itself must remain the strongest and the only
presumption that eternity is the inheritance of every thinking being.
(3) NO HOARY PRIESTS AFTER THAT PATRIARCH [L. 245].
The Greek Patriarch, after haying been compelled to fulminate an
anathema against the insurgents, was put to death by the Turks.
Fortunately the Greeks have been taught that they cannot buy security
by degradation, and the Turks, though equally cruel, are less cunning
than the smooth-faced tyrants of Europe. As to the anathema, his
Holiness might as well have thrown his mitre at Mount Athos for any
effect that it produced. The chiefs of the Greeks are almost all men
of comprehension and enlightened views on religion and politics.
(4) THE FREEDMAN OF A WESTERN POET-CHIEF [L. 563].
A Greek who had been Lord Byron's servant commands the insurgents in
Attica. This Greek, Lord Byron informs me, though a poet and an
enthusiastic patriot, gave him rather the idea of a timid and
unenterprising person. It appears that circumstances make men what
they are, and that we all contain the germ of a degree of degradation
or of greatness whose connection with our character is determined by
events.
(5) THE GREEKS EXPECT A SAVIOUR FROM THE WEST [L. 598].
It is reported that this Messiah had arrived at a seaport near
Lacedaemon in an American brig. The association of names and ideas is
irresistibly ludicrous, but the prevalence of such a rumour strongly
marks the state of popular enthusiasm in Greece.
(6) THE SOUND AS OF THE ASSAULT OF AN IMPERIAL CITY [LL. 814-15].
For the vision of Mahmud of the taking of Constantinople in 1453, see
Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", volume 12 page 223.
The manner of the invocation of the spirit of Mahomet the Second will
be censured as over subtle. I could easily have made the Jew a regular
conjuror, and the Phantom an ordinary ghost. I have preferred to
represent the Jew as disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, in
supernatural agency, and as tempting Mahmud to that state of mind in
which ideas may be supposed to assume the force of sensations through
the confusion of thought with the objects of thought, and the excess
of passion animating the creations of imagination.
It is a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a
degree by any one who should have made himself master of the secret
associations of another's thoughts.
(7) THE CHORUS [L. 1060].
The final chorus is indistinct and obscure, as the event of the living
drama whose arrival it foretells. Prophecies of wars, and rumours of
wars, etc. , may safely be made by poet or prophet in any age, but to
anticipate however darkly a period of regeneration and happiness is a
more hazardous exercise of the faculty which bards possess or feign.
It will remind the reader 'magno NEC proximus intervallo' of Isaiah
and Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil
which we endure and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps
approaching state of society in which the 'lion shall lie down with
the lamb,' and 'omnis feret omnia tellus. ' Let these great names be my
authority and my excuse.
(8) SATURN AND LOVE THEIR LONG REPOSE SHALL BURST [L. 1090].
Saturn and Love were among the deities of a real or imaginary state of
innocence and happiness. ALL those WHO FELL, or the Gods of Greece,
Asia, and Egypt; the ONE WHO ROSE, or Jesus Christ, at whose
appearance the idols of the Pagan World wore amerced of their worship;
and the MANY UNSUBDUED, or the monstrous objects of the idolatry of
China, India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America,
certainly have reigned over the understandings of men in conjunction
or in succession, during periods in which all we know of evil has been
in a state of portentous, and, until the revival of learning and the
arts, perpetually increasing, activity. The Grecian gods seem indeed
to have been personally more innocent, although it cannot be said,
that as far as temperance and chastity are concerned, they gave so
edifying an example as their successor. The sublime human character of
Jesus Christ was deformed by an imputed identification with a Power,
who tempted, betrayed, and punished the innocent beings who were
called into existence by His sole will; and for the period of a
thousand years, the spirit of this most just, wise, and benevolent of
men has been propitiated with myriads of hecatombs of those who
approached the nearest to His innocence and wisdom, sacrificed under
every aggravation of atrocity and variety of torture. The horrors of
the Mexican, the Peruvian, and the Indian superstitions are well
known.
NOTE ON HELLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
The South of Europe was in a state of great political excitement at
the beginning of the year 1821. The Spanish Revolution had been a
signal to Italy; secrete societies were formed; and, when Naples rose
to declare the Constitution, the call was responded to from Brundusium
to the foot of the Alps. To crush these attempts to obtain liberty,
early in 1821 the Austrians poured their armies into the Peninsula: at
first their coming rather seemed to add energy and resolution to a
people long enslaved. The Piedmontese asserted their freedom; Genoa
threw off the yoke of the King of Sardinia; and, as if in playful
imitation, the people of the little state of Massa and Carrara gave
the conge to their sovereign, and set up a republic.
Tuscany alone was perfectly tranquil. It was said that the Austrian
minister presented a list of sixty Carbonari to the Grand Duke, urging
their imprisonment; and the Grand Duke replied, 'I do not know whether
these sixty men are Carbonari, but I know, if I imprison them, I shall
directly have sixty thousand start up. ' But, though the Tuscans had no
desire to disturb the paternal government beneath whose shelter they
slumbered, they regarded the progress of the various Italian
revolutions with intense interest, and hatred for the Austrian was
warm in every bosom. But they had slender hopes; they knew that the
Neapolitans would offer no fit resistance to the regular German
troops, and that the overthrow of the constitution in Naples would act
as a decisive blow against all struggles for liberty in Italy.
We have seen the rise and progress of reform. But the Holy Alliance
was alive and active in those days, and few could dream of the
peaceful triumph of liberty. It seemed then that the armed assertion
of freedom in the South of Europe was the only hope of the liberals,
as, if it prevailed, the nations of the north would imitate the
example. Happily the reverse has proved the fact. The countries
accustomed to the exercise of the privileges of freemen, to a limited
extent, have extended, and are extending, these limits. Freedom and
knowledge have now a chance of proceeding hand in hand; and, if it
continue thus, we may hope for the durability of both. Then, as I have
said--in 1821--Shelley, as well as every other lover of liberty,
looked upon the struggles in Spain and Italy as decisive of the
destinies of the world, probably for centuries to come. The interest
he took in the progress of affairs was intense. When Genoa declared
itself free, his hopes were at their highest. Day after day he read
the bulletins of the Austrian army, and sought eagerly to gather
tokens of its defeat. He heard of the revolt of Genoa with emotions of
transport. His whole heart and soul were in the triumph of the cause.
We were living at Pisa at that time; and several well-informed
Italians, at the head of whom we may place the celebrated Vacca, were
accustomed to seek for sympathy in their hopes from Shelley: they did
not find such for the despair they too generally experienced, founded
on contempt for their southern countrymen.
While the fate of the progress of the Austrian armies then invading
Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him
with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several
Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly
Hospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed
finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his
treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the
gentleman to whom the drama of "Hellas" is dedicated. Prince
Mavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence of
his country which filled the hearts of many of his countrymen. He
often intimated the possibility of an insurrection in Greece; but we
had no idea of its being so near at hand, when, on the 1st of April
1821, he called on Shelley, bringing the proclamation of his cousin,
Prince Ypsilanti, and, radiant with exultation and delight, declared
that henceforth Greece would be free.
Shelley had hymned the dawn of liberty in Spain and Naples, in two
odes dictated by the warmest enthusiasm; he felt himself naturally
impelled to decorate with poetry the uprise of the descendants of that
people whose works he regarded with deep admiration, and to adopt the
vaticinatory character in prophesying their success. "Hellas" was
written in a moment of enthusiasm. It is curious to remark how well he
overcomes the difficulty of forming a drama out of such scant
materials. His prophecies, indeed, came true in their general, not
their particular, purport. He did not foresee the death of Lord
Londonderry, which was to be the epoch of a change in English
politics, particularly as regarded foreign affairs; nor that the navy
of his country would fight for instead of against the Greeks, and by
the battle of Navarino secure their enfranchisement from the Turks.
Almost against reason, as it appeared to him, he resolved to believe
that Greece would prove triumphant; and in this spirit, auguring
ultimate good, yet grieving over the vicissitudes to be endured in the
interval, he composed his drama.
"Hellas" was among the last of his compositions, and is among the most
beautiful. The choruses are singularly imaginative, and melodious in
their versification. There are some stanzas that beautifully exemplify
Shelley's peculiar style; as, for instance, the assertion of the
intellectual empire which must be for ever the inheritance of the
country of Homer, Sophocles, and Plato:--
'But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity. '
And again, that philosophical truth felicitously imaged forth--
'Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,
The foul cubs like their parents are,
Their den is in the guilty mind,
And Conscience feeds them with despair. '
The conclusion of the last chorus is among the most beautiful of his
lyrics. The imagery is distinct and majestic; the prophecy, such as
poets love to dwell upon, the Regeneration of Mankind--and that
regeneration reflecting back splendour on the foregone time, from
which it inherits so much of intellectual wealth, and memory of past
virtuous deeds, as must render the possession of happiness and peace
of tenfold value.
***
FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED DRAMA.
[Published in part (lines 1-69, 100-120) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous
Poems", 1824; and again, with the notes, in "Poetical Works", 1839.
Lines 127-238 were printed by Dr. Garnett under the title of "The
Magic Plant" in his "Relics of Shelley", 1862. The whole was edited in
its present form from the Boscombe manuscript by Mr. W. M. Rossetti in
1870 ("Complete Poetical Works of P. B. S. ", Moxon, 2 volumes. ).
'Written at Pisa during the late winter or early spring of 1822'
(Garnett). ]
The following fragments are part of a Drama undertaken for the
amusement of the individuals who composed our intimate society, but
left unfinished. I have preserved a sketch of the story as far as it
had been shadowed in the poet's mind.
An Enchantress, living in one of the islands of the Indian
Archipelago, saves the life of a Pirate, a man of savage but noble
nature. She becomes enamoured of him; and he, inconstant to his mortal
love, for a while returns her passion; but at length, recalling the
memory of her whom he left, and who laments his loss, he escapes from
the Enchanted Island, and returns to his lady.
His mode of life makes
him again go to sea, and the Enchantress seizes the opportunity to
bring him, by a spirit-brewed tempest, back to her Island. --[MRS.
SHELLEY'S NOTE, 1839. ]
SCENE. --BEFORE THE CAVERN OF THE INDIAN ENCHANTRESS.
THE ENCHANTRESS COMES FORTH.
ENCHANTRESS:
He came like a dream in the dawn of life,
He fled like a shadow before its noon;
He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,
And I wander and wane like the weary moon.
O, sweet Echo, wake, _5
And for my sake
Make answer the while my heart shall break!
But my heart has a music which Echo's lips,
Though tender and true, yet can answer not,
And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse _10
Can return not the kiss by his now forgot;
Sweet lips! he who hath
On my desolate path
Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death!
NOTE:
_8 my omitted 1824.
[THE ENCHANTRESS MAKES HER SPELL: SHE IS ANSWERED BY A SPIRIT. ]
SPIRIT:
Within the silent centre of the earth _15
My mansion is; where I have lived insphered
From the beginning, and around my sleep
Have woven all the wondrous imagery
Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;
Infinite depths of unknown elements _20
Massed into one impenetrable mask;
Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins
Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron.
And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven
I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds, _25
And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns
In the dark space of interstellar air.
NOTES:
_15-_27 Within. . . air. 1839; omitted 1824.
See these lines in "Posthumous Poems", 1824, page 209: "Song of a Spirit".
_16 have 1839; omitted 1824, page 209.
_25 seas, and waves 1824, page 209; seas, waves 1839.
[A good Spirit, who watches over the Pirate's fate, leads, in a
mysterious manner, the lady of his love to the Enchanted Isle. She is
accompanied by a Youth, who loves the lady, but whose passion she
returns only with a sisterly affection. The ensuing scene takes place
between them on their arrival at the Isle. [MRS. SHELLEY'S NOTE,
1839. ]]
ANOTHER SCENE.
INDIAN YOUTH AND LADY.
INDIAN:
And, if my grief should still be dearer to me
Than all the pleasures in the world beside,
Why would you lighten it? --
NOTE:
_29 pleasures]pleasure 1824.
LADY:
I offer only _30
That which I seek, some human sympathy
In this mysterious island.
INDIAN:
Oh! my friend,
My sister, my beloved! --What do I say?
My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know whether
I speak to thee or her.
LADY:
Peace, perturbed heart! _35
I am to thee only as thou to mine,
The passing wind which heals the brow at noon,
And may strike cold into the breast at night,
Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most,
Or long soothe could it linger.
INDIAN:
But you said _40
You also loved?
NOTE:
_32-_41 Assigned to INDIAN, 1824.
LADY:
Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks
This word of love is fit for all the world,
And that for gentle hearts another name
Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns.
I have loved.
INDIAN:
And thou lovest not? if so, _45
Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep.
LADY:
Oh! would that I could claim exemption
From all the bitterness of that sweet name.
I loved, I love, and when I love no more
Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair _50
To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,
The embodied vision of the brightest dream,
Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;
The shadow of his presence made my world
A Paradise. All familiar things he touched, _55
All common words he spoke, became to me
Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.
He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,
As terrible and lovely as a tempest;
He came, and went, and left me what I am. _60
Alas! Why must I think how oft we two
Have sate together near the river springs,
Under the green pavilion which the willow
Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,
Strewn, by the nurslings that linger there, _65
Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,
While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,
Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own?
The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt, _70
And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn;
And on a wintry bough the widowed bird,
Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves,
Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow.
I, left like her, and leaving one like her, _75
Alike abandoned and abandoning
(Oh! unlike her in this! ) the gentlest youth,
Whose love had made my sorrows dear to him,
Even as my sorrow made his love to me!
NOTE:
_71 spray Rossetti 1870, Woodberry; Spring Forman, Dowden.
INDIAN:
One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould _80
The features of the wretched; and they are
As like as violet to violet,
When memory, the ghost, their odours keeps
Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy. --
Proceed.
LADY:
He was a simple innocent boy. _85
I loved him well, but not as he desired;
Yet even thus he was content to be:--
A short content, for I was--
INDIAN [ASIDE]:
God of Heaven!
From such an islet, such a river-spring--!
I dare not ask her if there stood upon it _90
A pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent,
With steps to the blue water.
[ALOUD. ]
It may be
That Nature masks in life several copies
Of the same lot, so that the sufferers
May feel another's sorrow as their own, _95
And find in friendship what they lost in love.
That cannot be: yet it is strange that we,
From the same scene, by the same path to this
Realm of abandonment-- But speak! your breath--
Your breath is like soft music, your words are _100
The echoes of a voice which on my heart
Sleeps like a melody of early days.
But as you said--
LADY:
He was so awful, yet
So beautiful in mystery and terror,
Calming me as the loveliness of heaven _105
Soothes the unquiet sea:--and yet not so,
For he seemed stormy, and would often seem
A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds;
For such his thoughts, and even his actions were;
But he was not of them, nor they of him, _110
But as they hid his splendour from the earth.
Some said he was a man of blood and peril,
And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips.
More need was there I should be innocent,
More need that I should be most true and kind, _115
And much more need that there should be found one
To share remorse and scorn and solitude,
And all the ills that wait on those who do
The tasks of ruin in the world of life.
He fled, and I have followed him.
INDIAN:
Such a one _120
Is he who was the winter of my peace.
But, fairest stranger, when didst thou depart
From the far hills where rise the springs of India?
How didst thou pass the intervening sea?
LADY:
If I be sure I am not dreaming now, _125
I should not doubt to say it was a dream.
Methought a star came down from heaven,
And rested mid the plants of India,
Which I had given a shelter from the frost
Within my chamber. There the meteor lay, _130
Panting forth light among the leaves and flowers,
As if it lived, and was outworn with speed;
Or that it loved, and passion made the pulse
Of its bright life throb like an anxious heart,
Till it diffused itself; and all the chamber _135
And walls seemed melted into emerald fire
That burned not; in the midst of which appeared
A spirit like a child, and laughed aloud
A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment
As made the blood tingle in my warm feet: _140
Then bent over a vase, and murmuring
Low, unintelligible melodies,
Placed something in the mould like melon-seeds,
And slowly faded, and in place of it
A soft hand issued from the veil of fire, _145
Holding a cup like a magnolia flower,
And poured upon the earth within the vase
The element with which it overflowed,
Brighter than morning light, and purer than
The water of the springs of Himalah. _150
NOTE:
_120-_126 Such. . . dream 1839; omitted 1824.
INDIAN:
You waked not?
LADY:
Not until my dream became
Like a child's legend on the tideless sand.
Which the first foam erases half, and half
Leaves legible. At length I rose, and went,
Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought _155
To set new cuttings in the empty urns,
And when I came to that beside the lattice,
I saw two little dark-green leaves
Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then
I half-remembered my forgotten dream. _160
And day by day, green as a gourd in June,
The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew
What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed
Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded
With azure mail and streaks of woven silver; _165
And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds
Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel,
Until the golden eye of the bright flower,
Through the dark lashes of those veined lids,
. . . disencumbered of their silent sleep, _170
Gazed like a star into the morning light.
Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw
The pulses
With which the purple velvet flower was fed
To overflow, and like a poet's heart _175
Changing bright fancy to sweet sentiment,
Changed half the light to fragrance. It soon fell,
And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit
Left all its treasured beauty. Day by day
I nursed the plant, and on the double flute _180
Played to it on the sunny winter days
Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain
On silent leaves, and sang those words in which
Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings;
And I would send tales of forgotten love _185
Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs
Of maids deserted in the olden time,
And weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom
Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant,
So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come, _190
And crept abroad into the moonlight air,
And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon,
The sun averted less his oblique beam.
INDIAN:
And the plant died not in the frost?
LADY:
It grew;
And went out of the lattice which I left _195
Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires
Along the garden and across the lawn,
And down the slope of moss and through the tufts
Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o'ergrown
With simple lichens, and old hoary stones, _200
On to the margin of the glassy pool,
Even to a nook of unblown violets
And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn,
Under a pine with ivy overgrown.
And theme its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard _205
Under the shadows; but when Spring indeed
Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies
Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at
This shape of autumn couched in their recess,
Then it dilated, and it grew until _210
One half lay floating on the fountain wave,
Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies,
Kept time
Among the snowy water-lily buds.
Its shape was such as summer melody _215
Of the south wind in spicy vales might give
To some light cloud bound from the golden dawn
To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed
In hue and form that it had been a mirror
Of all the hues and forms around it and _220
Upon it pictured by the sunny beams
Which, from the bright vibrations of the pool,
Were thrown upon the rafters and the roof
Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems
Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections _225
Of every infant flower and star of moss
And veined leaf in the azure odorous air.
And thus it lay in the Elysian calm
Of its own beauty, floating on the line
Which, like a film in purest space, divided _230
The heaven beneath the water from the heaven
Above the clouds; and every day I went
Watching its growth and wondering;
And as the day grew hot, methought I saw
A glassy vapour dancing on the pool, _235
And on it little quaint and filmy shapes.
With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall,
Like clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.
. . .
O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from Heaven--
As if Heaven dawned upon the world of dream-- _240
When darkness rose on the extinguished day
Out of the eastern wilderness.
INDIAN:
I too
Have found a moment's paradise in sleep
Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow.
***
CHARLES THE FIRST.
["Charles the First" was designed in 1818, begun towards the close of
1819 [Medwin, "Life", 2 page 62], resumed in January, and finally laid
aside by June, 1822. It was published in part in the "Posthumous
Poems", 1824, and printed, in its present form (with the addition of
some 530 lines), by Mr. W. M. Rossetti, 1870. Further particulars are
given in the Editor's Notes at the end of Volume 3. ]
DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
KING CHARLES I.
QUEEN HENRIETTA.
LAUD, ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.
WENTWORTH, EARL OF STRAFFORD.
LORD COTTINGTON.
LORD WESTON.
LORD COVENTRY.
WILLIAMS, BISHOP OF LINCOLN.
SECRETARY LYTTELTON.
JUXON.
ST. JOHN.
ARCHY, THE COURT FOOL.
HAMPDEN.
PYM.
CROMWELL.
CROMWELL'S DAUGHTER.
SIR HARRY VANE THE YOUNGER.
LEIGHTON.
BASTWICK.
PRYNNE.
GENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT, CITIZENS, PURSUIVANTS,
MARSHALSMEN, LAW STUDENTS, JUDGES, CLERK.
SCENE 1:
THE MASQUE OF THE INNS OF COURT.
A PURSUIVANT:
Place, for the Marshal of the Masque!
FIRST CITIZEN:
What thinkest thou of this quaint masque which turns,
Like morning from the shadow of the night,
The night to day, and London to a place
Of peace and joy?
SECOND CITIZEN:
And Hell to Heaven. _5
Eight years are gone,
And they seem hours, since in this populous street
I trod on grass made green by summer's rain,
For the red plague kept state within that palace
Where now that vanity reigns. In nine years more _10
The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;
And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven
That sin and wrongs wound, as an orphan's cry,
The patience of the great Avenger's ear.
NOTE:
_10 now that vanity reigns 1870; now reigns vanity 1824.
A YOUTH:
Yet, father, 'tis a happy sight to see, _15
Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden
By God or man;--'tis like the bright procession
Of skiey visions in a solemn dream
From which men wake as from a Paradise,
And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life. _20
If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?
And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw
Unseasonable poison from the flowers
Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?
Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present _25
Dark as the future! --
. . .
When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant Fear,
And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping
As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle thoughts
Waken to worship Him who giveth joys _30
With His own gift.
SECOND CITIZEN:
How young art thou in this old age of time!
How green in this gray world? Canst thou discern
The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint
Of change in that stage-scene in which thou art _35
Not a spectator but an actor? or
Art thou a puppet moved by [enginery]?
The day that dawns in fire will die in storms,
Even though the noon be calm. My travel's done,--
Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found _40
My inn of lasting rest; but thou must still
Be journeying on in this inclement air.
Wrap thy old cloak about thy back;
Nor leave the broad and plain and beaten road,
Although no flowers smile on the trodden dust, _45
For the violet paths of pleasure. This Charles the First
Rose like the equinoctial sun,. . .
By vapours, through whose threatening ominous veil
Darting his altered influence he has gained
This height of noon--from which he must decline _50
Amid the darkness of conflicting storms,
To dank extinction and to latest night. . .
There goes
The apostate Strafford; he whose titles
whispered aphorisms _55
From Machiavel and Bacon: and, if Judas
Had been as brazen and as bold as he--
NOTES:
_33-_37 Canst. . . enginery 1870;
Canst thou not think
Of change in that low scene, in which thou art
Not a spectator but an actor? . . . 1824.
_43-_57 Wrap. . . bold as he 1870; omitted 1824.
FIRST CITIZEN:
That
Is the Archbishop.
SECOND CITIZEN:
Rather say the Pope:
London will be soon his Rome: he walks
As if he trod upon the heads of men: _60
He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;--
Beside him moves the Babylonian woman
Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow,
Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin,
Which turns Heaven's milk of mercy to revenge. _65
THIRD CITIZEN [LIFTING UP HIS EYES]:
Good Lord! rain it down upon him! . . .
Amid her ladies walks the papist queen,
As if her nice feet scorned our English earth.
The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be
A dog if I might tear her with my teeth! _70
There's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,
Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,
And others who make base their English breed
By vile participation of their honours
With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates. _75
When lawyers masque 'tis time for honest men
To strip the vizor from their purposes.
A seasonable time for masquers this!
When Englishmen and Protestants should sit
dust on their dishonoured heads _80
To avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt
For the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven
and foreign overthrow.
The remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort
Have been abandoned by their faithless allies _85
To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer
Lewis of France,--the Palatinate is lost--
[ENTER LEIGHTON (WHO HAS BEEN BRANDED IN THE FACE) AND BASTWICK. ]
Canst thou be--art thou?
NOTE:
_73 make 1824; made 1839.
LEIGHTON:
I WAS Leighton: what
I AM thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes,
And with thy memory look on thy friend's mind, _90
Which is unchanged, and where is written deep
The sentence of my judge.
THIRD CITIZEN:
Are these the marks with which
Laud thinks to improve the image of his Maker
Stamped on the face of man? Curses upon him,
The impious tyrant!
SECOND CITIZEN:
It is said besides _95
That lewd and papist drunkards may profane
The Sabbath with their
And has permitted that most heathenish custom
Of dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths
On May-day. _100
A man who thus twice crucifies his God
May well . . . his brother.
