Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down,
These stinking foxes, these devouring otters,
These hares, these wolves, these anything but men.
These stinking foxes, these devouring otters,
These hares, these wolves, these anything but men.
Shelley
down with Swellfoot!
'
PURGANAX:
Hark!
THE SWINE (WITHOUT):
Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!
DAKRY:
I
Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower, _325
Which overlooks the sty, and made a long
Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine,
Of delicacy mercy, judgement, law,
Morals, and precedents, and purity,
Adultery, destitution, and divorce, _330
Piety, faith, and state necessity,
And how I loved the Queen! --and then I wept
With the pathos of my own eloquence,
And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which
Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made _335
A slough of blood and brains upon the place,
Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round
The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up,
And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air,
With dust and stones. --
[ENTER MAMMON. ]
MAMMON:
I wonder that gray wizards _340
Like you should be so beardless in their schemes;
It had been but a point of policy
To keep Iona and the Swine apart.
Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction
Between two parties who will govern you _345
But for my art. --Behold this BAG! it is
The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge,
On which our spies skulked in ovation through
The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead:
A bane so much the deadlier fills it now _350
As calumny is worse than death,--for here
The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled,
Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech,
In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which
That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, _355
Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;--
All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud,
Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor,
And over it the Primate of all Hell
Murmured this pious baptism:--'Be thou called _360
The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine:
That thy contents, on whomsoever poured,
Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks
To savage, foul, and fierce deformity.
Let all baptized by thy infernal dew _365
Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch!
No name left out which orthodoxy loves,
Court Journal or legitimate Review! --
Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover
Of other wives and husbands than their own-- _370
The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps!
Wither they to a ghastly caricature
Of what was human! --let not man or beast
Behold their face with unaverted eyes!
Or hear their names with ears that tingle not _375
With blood of indignation, rage, and shame! '--
This is a perilous liquor;--good my Lords. --
[SWELLFOOT APPROACHES TO TOUCH THE GREEN BAG. ]
Beware! for God's sake, beware! -if you should break
The seal, and touch the fatal liquor--
NOTE:
_373 or edition 1820; nor edition 1839.
PURGANAX:
There,
Give it to me. I have been used to handle _380
All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty
Only desires to see the colour of it.
MAMMON:
Now, with a little common sense, my Lords,
Only undoing all that has been done
(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it), _385
Our victory is assured. We must entice
Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs
Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG
Are the true test of guilt or innocence.
And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her _390
To manifest deformity like guilt.
If innocent, she will become transfigured
Into an angel, such as they say she is;
And they will see her flying through the air,
So bright that she will dim the noonday sun; _395
Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits.
This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing
Swine will believe. I'll wager you will see them
Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties,
With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail _400
Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps
Of one another's ears between their teeth,
To catch the coming hail of comfits in.
You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab,
Make them a solemn speech to this effect: _405
I go to put in readiness the feast
Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine,
Where, for more glory, let the ceremony
Take place of the uglification of the Queen.
DAKRY (TO SWELLFOOT):
I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience, _410
Humbly remind your Majesty that the care
Of your high office, as Man-milliner
To red Bellona, should not be deferred.
PURGANAX:
All part, in happier plight to meet again.
[EXEUNT. ]
END OF THE ACT 1.
ACT 2.
SCENE 1. 2:
THE PUBLIC STY.
THE B0ARS IN FULL ASSEMBLY.
ENTER PUEGANAX.
PURGANAX:
Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars,
Ye, by whose patience under public burthens
The glorious constitution of these sties
Subsists, and shall subsist. The Lean-Pig rates
Grow with the growing populace of Swine, _5
The taxes, that true source of Piggishness
(How can I find a more appropriate term
To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty,
And all that fit Boeotia as a nation
To teach the other nations how to live? ), _10
Increase with Piggishness itself; and still
Does the revenue, that great spring of all
The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments,
Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes,
Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps, _15
All the land's produce will be merged in taxes,
And the revenue will amount to--nothing!
The failure of a foreign market for
Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,
And such home manufactures, is but partial; _20
And, that the population of the Pigs,
Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw
And water, is a fact which is--you know--
That is--it is a state-necessity--
Temporary, of course. Those impious Pigs, _25
Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn
The settled Swellfoot system, or to make
Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions
Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipped
Into a loyal and an orthodox whine. _30
Things being in this happy state, the Queen
Iona--
NOTE:
_16 land's]lands edition 1820.
A LOUD CRY FROM THE PIGS:
She is innocent! most innocent!
PURGANAX:
That is the very thing that I was saying,
Gentlemen Swine; the Queen Iona being
Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes, _35
And the lean Sows and Bears collect about her,
Wishing to make her think that WE believe
(I mean those more substantial Pigs, who swill
Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw)
That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig faction _40
Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been
Your immemorial right, and which I will
Maintain you in to the last drop of--
A BOAR (INTERRUPTING HIM):
What
Does any one accuse her of?
PURGANAX:
Why, no one
Makes ANY positive accusation;--but _45
There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards
Conceived that it became them to advise
His Majesty to investigate their truth;--
Not for his own sake; he could be content
To let his wife play any pranks she pleased, _50
If, by that sufferance, HE could please the Pigs;
But then he fears the morals of the Swine,
The Sows especially, and what effect
It might produce upon the purity and
Religion of the rising generation _55
Of Sucking-Pigs, if it could be suspected
That Queen Iona--
[A PAUSE. ]
FIRST BOAR:
Well, go on; we long
To hear what she can possibly have done.
PURGANAX:
Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull--
Thus much is KNOWN:--the milk-white Bulls that feed _60
Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes
Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews
Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel
Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath
Loading the morning winds until they faint _65
With living fragrance, are so beautiful! --
Well, _I_ say nothing;--but Europa rode
On such a one from Asia into Crete,
And the enamoured sea grew calm beneath
His gliding beauty. And Pasiphae, _70
Iona's grandmother,--but SHE is innocent!
And that both you and I, and all assert.
FIRST BOAR:
Most innocent!
PURGANAX:
Behold this BAG; a bag--
SECOND BOAR:
Oh! no GREEN BAGS! ! Jealousy's eyes are green,
Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts, _75
And verdigris, and--
PURGANAX:
Honourable Swine,
In Piggish souls can prepossessions reign?
Allow me to remind you, grass is green--
All flesh is grass;--no bacon but is flesh--
Ye are but bacon. This divining BAG _80
(Which is not green, but only bacon colour)
Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er
A woman guilty of--we all know what--
Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind
She never can commit the like again. _85
If innocent, she will turn into an angel,
And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits
As she flies up to heaven. Now, my proposal
Is to convert her sacred Majesty
Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do), _90
By pouring on her head this mystic water.
[SHOWING THE BAG. ]
I know that she is innocent; I wish
Only to prove her so to all the world.
FIRST BOAR:
Excellent, just, and noble Purganax.
SECOND BOAR:
How glorious it will be to see her Majesty _95
Flying above our heads, her petticoats
Streaming like--like--like--
THIRD BOAR:
Anything.
PURGANAX:
Oh no!
But like a standard of an admiral's ship,
Or like the banner of a conquering host,
Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day, _100
Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain;
Or like a meteor, or a war-steed's mane,
Or waterfall from a dizzy precipice
Scattered upon the wind.
FIRST BOAR:
Or a cow's tail.
SECOND BOAR:
Or ANYTHING, as the learned Boar observed. _105
PURGANAX:
Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution,
That her most sacred Majesty should be
Invited to attend the feast of Famine,
And to receive upon her chaste white body
Dews of Apotheosis from this BAG. _110
[A GREAT CONFUSION IS HEARD OF THE PIGS OUT OF DOORS, WHICH
COMMUNICATES ITSELF TO THOSE WITHIN. DURING THE FIRST STROPHE, THE
DOORS OF THE STY ARE STAVED IN, AND A NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY LEAN PIGS
AND SOWS AND BOARS RUSH IN. ]
SEMICHORUS 1:
No! Yes!
SEMICHORUS 2:
Yes! No!
SEMICHORUS 1:
A law!
SEMICHORUS 2:
A flaw!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Porkers, we shall lose our wash, _115
Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs!
FIRST BOAR:
Order! order! be not rash!
Was there ever such a scene, Pigs!
AN OLD SOW (RUSHING IN):
I never saw so fine a dash
Since I first began to wean Pigs. _120
SECOND BOAR (SOLEMNLY):
The Queen will be an angel time enough.
I vote, in form of an amendment, that
Purganax rub a little of that stuff
Upon his face.
PURGANAX [HIS HEART IS SEEN TO BEAT THROUGH HIS WAISTCOAT]:
Gods! What would ye be at?
SEMICHORUS 1:
Purganax has plainly shown a _125
Cloven foot and jackdaw feather.
SEMICHORUS 2:
I vote Swellfoot and Iona
Try the magic test together;
Whenever royal spouses bicker,
Both should try the magic liquor. _130
AN OLD BOAR [ASIDE]:
A miserable state is that of Pigs,
For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs,
The Swine must bite each other's ear therefore.
AN OLD SOW [ASIDE]:
A wretched lot Jove has assigned to Swine,
Squabbling makes Pig-herds hungry, and they dine _135
On bacon, and whip Sucking-Pigs the more.
CHORUS:
Hog-wash has been ta'en away:
If the Bull-Queen is divested,
We shall be in every way
Hunted, stripped, exposed, molested; _140
Let us do whate'er we may,
That she shall not be arrested.
QUEEN, we entrench you with walls of brawn,
And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet:
Place your most sacred person here. We pawn _145
Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it.
Those who wrong you, wrong us;
Those who hate you, hate us;
Those who sting you, sting us;
Those who bait you, bait us; _150
The ORACLE is now about to be
Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny;
Which says: 'Thebes, choose REFORM or CIVIL WAR,
When through your streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A CONSORT QUEEN shall hunt a KING with Hogs, _155
Riding upon the IONIAN MINOTAUR. '
NOTE:
_154 streets instead edition 1820.
[ENTER IONA TAURINA. ]
IONA TAURINA (COMING FORWARD):
Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady-Pigs,
The tender heart of every Boar acquits
Their QUEEN, of any act incongruous
With native Piggishness, and she, reposing _160
With confidence upon the grunting nation,
Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all,
Her innocence, into their Hoggish arms;
Nor has the expectation been deceived
Of finding shelter there. Yet know, great Boars, _165
(For such whoever lives among you finds you,
And so do I), the innocent are proud!
I have accepted your protection only
In compliment of your kind love and care,
Not for necessity. The innocent _170
Are safest there where trials and dangers wait;
Innocent Queens o'er white-hot ploughshares tread
Unsinged, and ladies, Erin's laureate sings it,
Decked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still,
Walked from Killarney to the Giant's Causeway, _175
Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry,
White-boys and Orange-boys, and constables,
Tithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured!
Thus I! --
Lord Purganax, I do commit myself _180
Into your custody, and am prepared
To stand the test, whatever it may be!
NOTE:
(_173 'Rich and rare were the gems she wore. ' See Moore's "Irish
Melodies". -- [SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])
PURGANAX:
This magnanimity in your sacred Majesty
Must please the Pigs. You cannot fail of being
A heavenly angel. Smoke your bits of glass, _185
Ye loyal Swine, or her transfiguration
Will blind your wondering eyes.
AN OLD BOAR [ASIDE]:
Take care, my Lord,
They do not smoke you first.
PURGANAX:
At the approaching feast
Of Famine, let the expiation be.
SWINE:
Content! content!
IONA TAURINA [ASIDE]:
I, most content of all, _190
Know that my foes even thus prepare their fall!
[EXEUNT OMNES. ]
SCENE 2. 2:
THE INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF FAMINE.
THE STATUE OF THE GODDESS, A SKELETON CLOTHED IN PARTI-COLOURED RAGS,
SEATED UPON A HEAP OF SKULLS AND LOAVES INTERMINGLED.
A NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY FAT PRIESTS IN BLACK GARMENTS ARRAYED ON EACH
SIDE, WITH MARROW-BONES AND CLEAVERS IN THEIR HANDS.
[SOLOMON, THE COURT PORKMAN. ]
A FLOURISH OF TRUMPETS.
ENTER MAMMON AS ARCH-PRIEST, SWELLFOOT, DAKRY, PURGANAX, LAOCTONOS,
FOLLOWED BY IONA TAURINA GUARDED.
ON THE OTHER SIDE ENTER THE SWINE.
CHORUS OF PRIESTS, ACCOMPANIED BY THE COURT PORKMAN ON MARROW-BONES
AND CLEAVERS:
GODDESS bare, and gaunt, and pale,
Empress of the world, all hail!
What though Cretans old called thee
City-crested Cybele?
We call thee FAMINE! _5
Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming!
Through thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and lords,
Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words,
The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits,
Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots-- _10
Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat,
Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean,
Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that!
And let things be as they have ever been;
At least while we remain thy priests, _15
And proclaim thy fasts and feasts.
Through thee the sacred SWELLF00T dynasty
Is based upon a rock amid that sea
Whose waves are Swine--so let it ever be!
[SWELLFOOT, ETC. , SEAT THEMSELVES AT A TABLE MAGNIFICENTLY COVERED AT
THE UPPER END OF THE TEMPLE.
ATTENDANTS PASS OVER THE STAGE WITH HOG-WASH IN PAILS.
A NUMBER OF PIGS, EXCEEDINGLY LEAN, FOLLOW THEM LICKING UP THE WASH. ]
MAMMON:
I fear your sacred Majesty has lost _20
The appetite which you were used to have.
Allow me now to recommend this dish--
A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook,
Such as is served at the great King's second table.
The price and pains which its ingredients cost _25
Might have maintained some dozen families
A winter or two--not more--so plain a dish
Could scarcely disagree. --
SWELLFOOT:
After the trial,
And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps
I may recover my lost appetite,-- _30
I feel the gout flying about my stomach--
Give me a glass of Maraschino punch.
PURGANAX (FILLING HIS GLASS, AND STANDING UP):
The glorious Constitution of the Pigs!
ALL:
A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three!
DAKRY:
No heel-taps--darken daylights! --
LAOCTONOS:
Claret, somehow, _35
Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret!
SWELLFOOT:
Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment,
But 'tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine,
And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes.
[TO PURGANAX. ]
For God's sake stop the grunting of those Pigs! _40
PURGANAX:
We dare not, Sire, 'tis Famine's privilege.
CHORUS OF SWINE:
Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!
Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags;
Thou devil which livest on damning;
Saint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN BAGS, _45
Till in pity and terror thou risest,
Confounding the schemes of the wisest;
When thou liftest thy skeleton form,
When the loaves and the skulls roll about,
We will greet thee-the voice of a storm _50
Would be lost in our terrible shout!
Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!
Hail to thee, Empress of Earth!
When thou risest, dividing possessions;
When thou risest, uprooting oppressions, _55
In the pride of thy ghastly mirth;
Over palaces, temples, and graves,
We will rush as thy minister-slaves,
Trampling behind in thy train,
Till all be made level again! _60
MAMMON:
I hear a crackling of the giant bones
Of the dread image, and in the black pits
Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames.
These prodigies are oracular, and show
The presence of the unseen Deity. _65
Mighty events are hastening to their doom!
SWELLFOOT:
I only hear the lean and mutinous Swine
Grunting about the temple.
DAKRY:
In a crisis
Of such exceeding delicacy, I think
We ought to put her Majesty, the QUEEN, _70
Upon her trial without delay.
MAMMON:
THE BAG
Is here.
PURGANAX:
I have rehearsed the entire scene
With an ox-bladder and some ditchwater,
On Lady P--; it cannot fail.
[TAKING UP THE BAG. ]
Your Majesty
[TO SWELLFOOT. ]
In such a filthy business had better _75
Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you.
A spot or two on me would do no harm,
Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad Genius
Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell,
Upon my brow--which would stain all its seas, _80
But which those seas could never wash away!
IONA TAURINA:
My Lord, I am ready--nay, I am impatient
To undergo the test.
[A GRACEFUL FIGURE IN A SEMI-TRANSPARENT VEIL PASSES UNNOTICED THROUGH
THE TEMPLE; THE WORD "LIBERTY" IS SEEN THROUGH THE VEIL, AS IF IT WERE
WRITTEN IN FIRE UPON ITS FOREHEAD. ITS WORDS ARE ALMOST DROWNED IN THE
FURIOUS GRUNTING OF THE PIGS, AND THE BUSINESS OF THE TRIAL. SHE
KNEELS ON THE STEPS OF THE ALTAR, AND SPEAKS IN TONES AT FIRST FAINT
AND LOW, BUT WHICH EVER BECOME LOUDER AND LOUDER. ]
Mighty Empress! Death's white wife!
Ghastly mother-in-law of Life! _85
By the God who made thee such,
By the magic of thy touch,
By the starving and the cramming
Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine!
I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude, _90
Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood.
The earth did never mean her foison
For those who crown life's cup with poison
Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge--
But for those radiant spirits, who are still _95
The standard-bearers in the van of Change.
Be they th' appointed stewards, to fill
The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age! --
Remit, O Queen! thy accustomed rage!
Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low _100
FREEDOM calls "Famine",--her eternal foe,
To brief alliance, hollow truce. --Rise now!
[WHILST THE VEILED FIGURE HAS BEEN CHANTING THIS STROPHE, MAMMON,
DAKRY, LAOCTONOS, AND SWELLFOOT, HAVE SURROUNDED IONA TAURINA, WHO,
WITH HER HANDS FOLDED ON HER BREAST, AND HER EYES LIFTED TO HEAVEN,
STANDS, AS WITH SAINT-LIKE RESIGNATION, TO WAIT THE ISSUE OF THE
BUSINESS, IN PERFECT CONFIDENCE OF HER INNOCENCE. ]
[PURGANAX, AFTER UNSEALING THE GREEN BAG, IS GRAVELY ABOUT TO POUR THE
LIQUOR UPON HER HEAD, WHEN SUDDENLY THE WHOLE EXPRESSION OF HER FIGURE
AND COUNTENANCE CHANGES; SHE SNATCHES IT FROM HIS HAND WITH A LOUD
LAUGH OF TRIUMPH, AND EMPTIES IT OVER SWELLFOOT AND HIS WHOLE COURT,
WHO ARE INSTANTLY CHANGED INTO A NUMBER OF FILTHY AND UGLY ANIMALS,
AND RUSH OUT OF THE TEMPLE. THE IMAGE OF FAMINE THEN ARISES WITH A
TREMENDOUS SOUND, THE PIGS BEGIN SCRAMBLING FOR THE LOAVES, AND ARE
TRJPPED UP BY THE SKULLS; ALL THOSE WHO EAT THE LOAVES ARE TURNED INTO
BULLS, AND ARRANGE THEMSELVES QUIETLY BEHIND THE ALTAR. THE IMAGE OF
FAMINE SINKS THROUGH A CHASM IN THE EARTH, AND A MINOTAUR RISES. ]
MINOTAUR:
I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest
Of all Europa's taurine progeny--
I am the old traditional Man-Bull; _105
And from my ancestors having been Ionian,
I am called Ion, which, by interpretation,
Is JOHN; in plain Theban, that is to say,
My name's JOHN BULL; I am a famous hunter,
And can leaf any gate in all Boeotia, _110
Even the palings of the royal park,
Or double ditch about the new enclosures;
And if your Majesty will deign to mount me,
At least till you have hunted down your game,
I will not throw you. _115
IONA TAURINA [DURING THIS SPEECH SHE HAS BEEN PUTTING ON BOOTS AND
SPURS, AND A HUNTING-CAP, BUCKISHLY COCKED ON ONE SIDE, AND TUCKING UP
HER HAIR, SHE LEAPS NIMBLY ON HIS BACK]:
Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho!
Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down,
These stinking foxes, these devouring otters,
These hares, these wolves, these anything but men.
Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs
Now let your noses be as keen as beagles', _120
Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries
More dulcet and symphonious than the bells
Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday;
Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music.
Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood? ) _125
But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho!
Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert,
Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!
FULL CHORUS OF I0NA AND THE SWINE:
Tallyho! tallyho!
Through rain, hail, and snow, _130
Through brake, gorse, and briar,
Through fen, flood, and mire,
We go! we go!
Tallyho! tallyho!
Through pond, ditch, and slough, _135
Wind them, and find them,
Like the Devil behind them,
Tallyho! tallyho!
[EXEUNT, IN FULL CRY;
IONA DRIVING ON THE SWINE, WITH THE EMPTY GEEEN BAG. ]
THE END.
NOTE ON OEDIPUS TYRANNUS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August,
1820, Shelley 'begins "Swellfoot the Tyrant", suggested by the pigs at
the fair of San Giuliano. ' This was the period of Queen Caroline's
landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV to get rid of
her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the "Green Bag" on
the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that
an enquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These
circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We
were then at the Baths of San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us on
the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows:
Shelley read to us his "Ode to Liberty"; and was riotously accompanied
by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He
compared it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of
Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous
association suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical
drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve
as chorus--and "Swellfoot" was begun. When finished, it was
transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but
stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the
Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not
immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of
bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and
expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.
Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my
publishing it at first. But I cannot bring myself to keep back
anything he ever wrote; for each word is fraught with the peculiar
views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human
race, and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The
world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it
does not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the
hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who
aspire to pluck bright truth
'from the pale-faced moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep
Where fathom-line would never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned'
truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that
he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in
his slightest word than in the waters of Lethe which are so eagerly
prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woe. This drama,
however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere
plaything of the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among
many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were
full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote,
it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and
indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.
***
EPIPSYCHIDION.
VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V--,
NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF --.
L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' infinito un
Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.
HER OWN WORDS.
["Epipsychidion" was composed at Pisa, January, February, 1821, and
published without the author's name, in the following summer, by C. &
J. Ollier, London. The poem was included by Mrs. Shelley in the
"Poetical Works", 1839, both editions. Amongst the Shelley manuscripts
in the Bodleian is a first draft of "Epipsychidion", 'consisting of
three versions, more or less complete, of the "Preface
[Advertisement]", a version in ink and pencil, much cancelled, of the
last eighty lines of the poem, and some additional lines which did not
appear in print' ("Examination of the Shelley manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library, by C. D. Locock". Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903, page
3). This draft, the writing of which is 'extraordinarily confused and
illegible,' has been carefully deciphered and printed by Mr. Locock in
the volume named above. Our text follows that of the editio princeps,
1821. ]
ADVERTISEMENT.
The Writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was
preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he
had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building,
and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited
perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an
inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular;
less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it,
than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and
feelings. The present Poem, like the "Vita Nuova" of Dante, is
sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a
matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates and to
a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a
defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it
treats. Not but that gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa
sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse
denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace
intendimento.
The present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the
dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page [1] is
almost a literal translation from Dante's famous Canzone
Voi, ch' intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, etc.
The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own
composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate
friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. S.
[1] i. e. the nine lines which follow, beginning, 'My Song, I fear,'
etc. --ED.
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do), _5
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.
EPIPSYCHIDION.
Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,
In my heart's temple I suspend to thee
These votive wreaths of withered memory.
Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage, _5
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;
This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale! _10
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed _15
It over-soared this low and worldly shade,
Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!
I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,
Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. _20
Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse! _25
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!
Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!
Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror _30
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song _35
All of its much mortality and wrong,
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:
Then smile on it, so that it may not die. _40
I never thought before my death to see
Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily,
I love thee; though the world by no thin name
Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.
Would we two had been twins of the same mother! _45
Or, that the name my heart lent to another
Could be a sister's bond for her and thee,
Blending two beams of one eternity!
Yet were one lawful and the other true,
These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due. _50
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!
I am not thine: I am a part of THEE.
Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings
Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,
Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style, _55
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,
A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?
A well of sealed and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star _60
Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone?
A Smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone
Amid rude voices? a beloved light?
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?
A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play _65
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day
And lull fond Grief asleep? a buried treasure?
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
A violet-shrouded grave of Woe? --I measure
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, _70
And find--alas! mine own infirmity.
She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way,
And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,
Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,
Led into light, life, peace. An antelope, _75
In the suspended impulse of its lightness,
Were less aethereally light: the brightness
Of her divinest presence trembles through
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
Embodied in the windless heaven of June _80
Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon
Burns, inextinguishably beautiful:
And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops _85
Of planetary music heard in trance.
In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,
The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap
Under the lightnings of the soul--too deep
For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. _90
The glory of her being, issuing thence,
Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade
Of unentangled intermixture, made
By Love, of light and motion: one intense
Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, _95
Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,
Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing
With the unintermitted blood, which there
Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air
The crimson pulse of living morning quiver,) _100
Continuously prolonged, and ending never,
Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled
Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world;
Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.
Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress _105
And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress
The air of her own speed has disentwined,
The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;
And in the soul a wild odour is felt
Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt _110
Into the bosom of a frozen bud. --
See where she stands! a mortal shape indued
With love and life and light and deity,
And motion which may change but cannot die;
An image of some bright Eternity; _115
A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour
Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender
Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love
Under whose motions life's dull billows move;
A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning; _120
A Vision like incarnate April, warning,
With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy
Into his summer grave.
Ah, woe is me!
What have I dared? where am I lifted? how
Shall I descend, and perish not? I know _125
That Love makes all things equal: I have heard
By mine own heart this joyous truth averred:
The spirit of the worm beneath the sod
In love and worship, blends itself with God.
Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate _130
Whose course has been so starless! O too late
Beloved! O too soon adored, by me!
For in the fields of Immortality
My spirit should at first have worshipped thine,
A divine presence in a place divine; _135
Or should have moved beside it on this earth,
A shadow of that substance, from its birth;
But not as now:--I love thee; yes, I feel
That on the fountain of my heart a seal
Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright _140
For thee, since in those TEARS thou hast delight.
We--are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar;
Such difference without discord, as can make
Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake _145
As trembling leaves in a continuous air?
Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select _150
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, _155
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
True Love in this differs from gold and clay, _160
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human fantasy, _165
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, _170
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
One object, and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity.
Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness; _175
The baser from the nobler; the impure
And frail, from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought, _180
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law _185
By which those live, to whom this world of life
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth.
There was a Being whom my spirit oft _190
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves _195
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
Paved her light steps;--on an imagined shore,
Under the gray beak of some promontory
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not. In solitudes _200
Her voice came to me through the whispering woods,
And from the fountains, and the odours deep
Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep
Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,
Breathed but of HER to the enamoured air; _205
And from the breezes whether low or loud,
And from the rain of every passing cloud,
And from the singing of the summer-birds,
And from all sounds, all silence. In the words
Of antique verse and high romance,--in form, _210
Sound, colour--in whatever checks that Storm
Which with the shattered present chokes the past;
And in that best philosophy, whose taste
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom; _215
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. --
Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth
I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,
And towards the lodestar of my one desire,
I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight _220
Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light,
When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere
A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,
As if it were a lamp of earthly flame. --
But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, _225
Passed, like a God throned on a winged planet,
Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,
Into the dreary cone of our life's shade;
And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,
I would have followed, though the grave between _230
Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:
When a voice said:--'O thou of hearts the weakest,
The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest. '
Then I--'Where? '--the world's echo answered 'where? '
And in that silence, and in my despair, _235
I questioned every tongueless wind that flew
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew
Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul;
And murmured names and spells which have control
Over the sightless tyrants of our fate; _240
But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate
The night which closed on her; nor uncreate
That world within this Chaos, mine and me,
Of which she was the veiled Divinity,
The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her: _245
And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear
And every gentle passion sick to death,
Feeding my course with expectation's breath,
Into the wintry forest of our life;
And struggling through its error with vain strife, _250
And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,
And half bewildered by new forms, I passed,
Seeking among those untaught foresters
If I could find one form resembling hers,
In which she might have masked herself from me. _255
There,--One, whose voice was venomed melody
Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers:
The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,
Her touch was as electric poison,--flame
Out of her looks into my vitals came, _260
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew
Into the core of my green heart, and lay
Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray
O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime _265
With ruins of unseasonable time.
In many mortal forms I rashly sought
The shadow of that idol of my thought.
And some were fair--but beauty dies away:
Others were wise--but honeyed words betray: _270
And One was true--oh! why not true to me?
Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,
I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,
Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day
Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain. _275
When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again
Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed
As like the glorious shape which I had d reamed
As is the Moon, whose changes ever run
Into themselves, to the eternal Sun; _280
The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles,
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame
Which ever is transformed, yet still the same,
And warms not but illumines. Young and fair _285
As the descended Spirit of that sphere,
She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night
From its own darkness, until all was bright
Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,
And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, _290
She led me to a cave in that wild place,
And sate beside me, with her downward face
Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon
Waxing and waning o'er Endymion.
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, _295
And all my being became bright or dim
As the Moon's image in a summer sea,
According as she smiled or frowned on me;
And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:
Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:-- _300
For at her silver voice came Death and Life,
Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,
Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,
The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,
And through the cavern without wings they flew, _305
And cried 'Away, he is not of our crew. '
I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.
What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,
Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips
Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;-- _310
And how my soul was as a lampless sea,
And who was then its Tempest; and when She,
The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost
Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast
The moving billows of my being fell _315
Into a death of ice, immovable;--
And then--what earthquakes made it gape and split,
The white Moon smiling all the while on it,
These words conceal:--If not, each word would be
The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me! _320
At length, into the obscure Forest came
The Vision I had sought through grief and shame.
Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns
Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's,
And from her presence life was radiated _325
Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead;
So that her way was paved, and roofed above
With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;
And music from her respiration spread
Like light,--all other sounds were penetrated _330
By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,
So that the savage winds hung mute around;
And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair
Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air:
Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, _335
When light is changed to love, this glorious One
Floated into the cavern where I lay,
And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay
Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below
As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow _340
I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night
Was penetrating me with living light:
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me
So many years--that it was Emily.
Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth, _345
This world of loves, this ME; and into birth
Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart
Magnetic might into its central heart;
And lift its billows and its mists, and guide
By everlasting laws, each wind and tide _350
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;
And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave
Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers
The armies of the rainbow-winged showers;
And, as those married lights, which from the towers _355
Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe
In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;
And all their many-mingled influence blend,
If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;--
So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway _360
Govern my sphere of being, night and day!
Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;
Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;
And, through the shadow of the seasons three,
From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity, _365
Light it into the Winter of the tomb,
Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.
Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe
Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion, _370
Alternating attraction and repulsion,
Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;
Oh, float into our azure heaven again!
Be there Love's folding-star at thy return;
The living Sun will feed thee from its urn _375
Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn
In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn
Will worship thee with incense of calm breath
And lights and shadows; as the star of Death
And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild _380
Called Hope and Fear--upon the heart are piled
Their offerings,--of this sacrifice divine
A World shall be the altar.
Lady mine,
Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth
Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth _385
Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,
Will be as of the trees of Paradise.
The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.
To whatsoe'er of dull mortality
Is mine, remain a vestal sister still; _390
To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,
Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united
Even as a bride, delighting and delighted.
The hour is come:--the destined Star has risen
Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. _395
The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set
The sentinels--but true Love never yet
Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:
Like lightning, with invisible violence
Piercing its continents; like Heaven's free breath, _400
Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,
Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way
Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array
Of arms: more strength has Love than he or they;
For it can burst his charnel, and make free _405
The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,
The soul in dust and chaos.
Emily,
A ship is floating in the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor, _410
No keel has ever ploughed that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me? _415
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, _420
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude _425
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.
The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, _430
With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; _435
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year) _440
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
Illumining, with sound that never fails
Accompany the noonday nightingales;
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; _445
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers.
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, _450
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odour, beam and tone,
With that deep music is in unison:
Which is a soul within the soul--they seem _455
Like echoes of an antenatal dream. --
It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. _460
It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,
Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
Sail onward far upon their fatal way:
The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm _465
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.
And from the sea there rise, and from the sky _470
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright.
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness, _475
Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen _480
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices. --
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know: _485
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, _490
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were Titanic; in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown _495
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learned imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit _500
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, _505
Or fragments of the day's intense serene;--
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream _510
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.
This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed
Thee to be lady of the solitude. --
And I have fitted up some chambers there _515
Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
And level with the living winds, which flow
Like waves above the living waves below. --
I have sent books and music there, and all
Those instruments with which high Spirits call _520
The future from its cradle, and the past
Out of its grave, and make the present last
In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,
Folded within their own eternity.
Our simple life wants little, and true taste _525
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste
The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,
Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit _530
Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. _535
Be this our home in life, and when years heap
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the overhanging day,
The living soul of this Elysian isle,
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile _540
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
And wander in the meadows, or ascend
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; _545
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,--
Possessing and possessed by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss, _550
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one:--or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
Through which the awakened day can never peep; _555
A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights:
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought's melody _560
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, _565
And our veins beat together; and our lips
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them, and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be _570
Confused in Passion's golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew, _575
Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
In one another's substance finding food, _580
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, _585
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of Love's rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- _590
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
. . .
PURGANAX:
Hark!
THE SWINE (WITHOUT):
Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!
DAKRY:
I
Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower, _325
Which overlooks the sty, and made a long
Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine,
Of delicacy mercy, judgement, law,
Morals, and precedents, and purity,
Adultery, destitution, and divorce, _330
Piety, faith, and state necessity,
And how I loved the Queen! --and then I wept
With the pathos of my own eloquence,
And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which
Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made _335
A slough of blood and brains upon the place,
Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round
The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up,
And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air,
With dust and stones. --
[ENTER MAMMON. ]
MAMMON:
I wonder that gray wizards _340
Like you should be so beardless in their schemes;
It had been but a point of policy
To keep Iona and the Swine apart.
Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction
Between two parties who will govern you _345
But for my art. --Behold this BAG! it is
The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge,
On which our spies skulked in ovation through
The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead:
A bane so much the deadlier fills it now _350
As calumny is worse than death,--for here
The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled,
Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech,
In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which
That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant, _355
Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;--
All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud,
Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor,
And over it the Primate of all Hell
Murmured this pious baptism:--'Be thou called _360
The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine:
That thy contents, on whomsoever poured,
Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks
To savage, foul, and fierce deformity.
Let all baptized by thy infernal dew _365
Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch!
No name left out which orthodoxy loves,
Court Journal or legitimate Review! --
Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover
Of other wives and husbands than their own-- _370
The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps!
Wither they to a ghastly caricature
Of what was human! --let not man or beast
Behold their face with unaverted eyes!
Or hear their names with ears that tingle not _375
With blood of indignation, rage, and shame! '--
This is a perilous liquor;--good my Lords. --
[SWELLFOOT APPROACHES TO TOUCH THE GREEN BAG. ]
Beware! for God's sake, beware! -if you should break
The seal, and touch the fatal liquor--
NOTE:
_373 or edition 1820; nor edition 1839.
PURGANAX:
There,
Give it to me. I have been used to handle _380
All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty
Only desires to see the colour of it.
MAMMON:
Now, with a little common sense, my Lords,
Only undoing all that has been done
(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it), _385
Our victory is assured. We must entice
Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs
Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG
Are the true test of guilt or innocence.
And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her _390
To manifest deformity like guilt.
If innocent, she will become transfigured
Into an angel, such as they say she is;
And they will see her flying through the air,
So bright that she will dim the noonday sun; _395
Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits.
This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing
Swine will believe. I'll wager you will see them
Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties,
With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail _400
Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps
Of one another's ears between their teeth,
To catch the coming hail of comfits in.
You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab,
Make them a solemn speech to this effect: _405
I go to put in readiness the feast
Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine,
Where, for more glory, let the ceremony
Take place of the uglification of the Queen.
DAKRY (TO SWELLFOOT):
I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience, _410
Humbly remind your Majesty that the care
Of your high office, as Man-milliner
To red Bellona, should not be deferred.
PURGANAX:
All part, in happier plight to meet again.
[EXEUNT. ]
END OF THE ACT 1.
ACT 2.
SCENE 1. 2:
THE PUBLIC STY.
THE B0ARS IN FULL ASSEMBLY.
ENTER PUEGANAX.
PURGANAX:
Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars,
Ye, by whose patience under public burthens
The glorious constitution of these sties
Subsists, and shall subsist. The Lean-Pig rates
Grow with the growing populace of Swine, _5
The taxes, that true source of Piggishness
(How can I find a more appropriate term
To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty,
And all that fit Boeotia as a nation
To teach the other nations how to live? ), _10
Increase with Piggishness itself; and still
Does the revenue, that great spring of all
The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments,
Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes,
Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps, _15
All the land's produce will be merged in taxes,
And the revenue will amount to--nothing!
The failure of a foreign market for
Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,
And such home manufactures, is but partial; _20
And, that the population of the Pigs,
Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw
And water, is a fact which is--you know--
That is--it is a state-necessity--
Temporary, of course. Those impious Pigs, _25
Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn
The settled Swellfoot system, or to make
Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions
Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipped
Into a loyal and an orthodox whine. _30
Things being in this happy state, the Queen
Iona--
NOTE:
_16 land's]lands edition 1820.
A LOUD CRY FROM THE PIGS:
She is innocent! most innocent!
PURGANAX:
That is the very thing that I was saying,
Gentlemen Swine; the Queen Iona being
Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes, _35
And the lean Sows and Bears collect about her,
Wishing to make her think that WE believe
(I mean those more substantial Pigs, who swill
Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw)
That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig faction _40
Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been
Your immemorial right, and which I will
Maintain you in to the last drop of--
A BOAR (INTERRUPTING HIM):
What
Does any one accuse her of?
PURGANAX:
Why, no one
Makes ANY positive accusation;--but _45
There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards
Conceived that it became them to advise
His Majesty to investigate their truth;--
Not for his own sake; he could be content
To let his wife play any pranks she pleased, _50
If, by that sufferance, HE could please the Pigs;
But then he fears the morals of the Swine,
The Sows especially, and what effect
It might produce upon the purity and
Religion of the rising generation _55
Of Sucking-Pigs, if it could be suspected
That Queen Iona--
[A PAUSE. ]
FIRST BOAR:
Well, go on; we long
To hear what she can possibly have done.
PURGANAX:
Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull--
Thus much is KNOWN:--the milk-white Bulls that feed _60
Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes
Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews
Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel
Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath
Loading the morning winds until they faint _65
With living fragrance, are so beautiful! --
Well, _I_ say nothing;--but Europa rode
On such a one from Asia into Crete,
And the enamoured sea grew calm beneath
His gliding beauty. And Pasiphae, _70
Iona's grandmother,--but SHE is innocent!
And that both you and I, and all assert.
FIRST BOAR:
Most innocent!
PURGANAX:
Behold this BAG; a bag--
SECOND BOAR:
Oh! no GREEN BAGS! ! Jealousy's eyes are green,
Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts, _75
And verdigris, and--
PURGANAX:
Honourable Swine,
In Piggish souls can prepossessions reign?
Allow me to remind you, grass is green--
All flesh is grass;--no bacon but is flesh--
Ye are but bacon. This divining BAG _80
(Which is not green, but only bacon colour)
Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er
A woman guilty of--we all know what--
Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind
She never can commit the like again. _85
If innocent, she will turn into an angel,
And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits
As she flies up to heaven. Now, my proposal
Is to convert her sacred Majesty
Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do), _90
By pouring on her head this mystic water.
[SHOWING THE BAG. ]
I know that she is innocent; I wish
Only to prove her so to all the world.
FIRST BOAR:
Excellent, just, and noble Purganax.
SECOND BOAR:
How glorious it will be to see her Majesty _95
Flying above our heads, her petticoats
Streaming like--like--like--
THIRD BOAR:
Anything.
PURGANAX:
Oh no!
But like a standard of an admiral's ship,
Or like the banner of a conquering host,
Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day, _100
Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain;
Or like a meteor, or a war-steed's mane,
Or waterfall from a dizzy precipice
Scattered upon the wind.
FIRST BOAR:
Or a cow's tail.
SECOND BOAR:
Or ANYTHING, as the learned Boar observed. _105
PURGANAX:
Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution,
That her most sacred Majesty should be
Invited to attend the feast of Famine,
And to receive upon her chaste white body
Dews of Apotheosis from this BAG. _110
[A GREAT CONFUSION IS HEARD OF THE PIGS OUT OF DOORS, WHICH
COMMUNICATES ITSELF TO THOSE WITHIN. DURING THE FIRST STROPHE, THE
DOORS OF THE STY ARE STAVED IN, AND A NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY LEAN PIGS
AND SOWS AND BOARS RUSH IN. ]
SEMICHORUS 1:
No! Yes!
SEMICHORUS 2:
Yes! No!
SEMICHORUS 1:
A law!
SEMICHORUS 2:
A flaw!
SEMICHORUS 1:
Porkers, we shall lose our wash, _115
Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs!
FIRST BOAR:
Order! order! be not rash!
Was there ever such a scene, Pigs!
AN OLD SOW (RUSHING IN):
I never saw so fine a dash
Since I first began to wean Pigs. _120
SECOND BOAR (SOLEMNLY):
The Queen will be an angel time enough.
I vote, in form of an amendment, that
Purganax rub a little of that stuff
Upon his face.
PURGANAX [HIS HEART IS SEEN TO BEAT THROUGH HIS WAISTCOAT]:
Gods! What would ye be at?
SEMICHORUS 1:
Purganax has plainly shown a _125
Cloven foot and jackdaw feather.
SEMICHORUS 2:
I vote Swellfoot and Iona
Try the magic test together;
Whenever royal spouses bicker,
Both should try the magic liquor. _130
AN OLD BOAR [ASIDE]:
A miserable state is that of Pigs,
For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs,
The Swine must bite each other's ear therefore.
AN OLD SOW [ASIDE]:
A wretched lot Jove has assigned to Swine,
Squabbling makes Pig-herds hungry, and they dine _135
On bacon, and whip Sucking-Pigs the more.
CHORUS:
Hog-wash has been ta'en away:
If the Bull-Queen is divested,
We shall be in every way
Hunted, stripped, exposed, molested; _140
Let us do whate'er we may,
That she shall not be arrested.
QUEEN, we entrench you with walls of brawn,
And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet:
Place your most sacred person here. We pawn _145
Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it.
Those who wrong you, wrong us;
Those who hate you, hate us;
Those who sting you, sting us;
Those who bait you, bait us; _150
The ORACLE is now about to be
Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny;
Which says: 'Thebes, choose REFORM or CIVIL WAR,
When through your streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A CONSORT QUEEN shall hunt a KING with Hogs, _155
Riding upon the IONIAN MINOTAUR. '
NOTE:
_154 streets instead edition 1820.
[ENTER IONA TAURINA. ]
IONA TAURINA (COMING FORWARD):
Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady-Pigs,
The tender heart of every Boar acquits
Their QUEEN, of any act incongruous
With native Piggishness, and she, reposing _160
With confidence upon the grunting nation,
Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all,
Her innocence, into their Hoggish arms;
Nor has the expectation been deceived
Of finding shelter there. Yet know, great Boars, _165
(For such whoever lives among you finds you,
And so do I), the innocent are proud!
I have accepted your protection only
In compliment of your kind love and care,
Not for necessity. The innocent _170
Are safest there where trials and dangers wait;
Innocent Queens o'er white-hot ploughshares tread
Unsinged, and ladies, Erin's laureate sings it,
Decked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still,
Walked from Killarney to the Giant's Causeway, _175
Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry,
White-boys and Orange-boys, and constables,
Tithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured!
Thus I! --
Lord Purganax, I do commit myself _180
Into your custody, and am prepared
To stand the test, whatever it may be!
NOTE:
(_173 'Rich and rare were the gems she wore. ' See Moore's "Irish
Melodies". -- [SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])
PURGANAX:
This magnanimity in your sacred Majesty
Must please the Pigs. You cannot fail of being
A heavenly angel. Smoke your bits of glass, _185
Ye loyal Swine, or her transfiguration
Will blind your wondering eyes.
AN OLD BOAR [ASIDE]:
Take care, my Lord,
They do not smoke you first.
PURGANAX:
At the approaching feast
Of Famine, let the expiation be.
SWINE:
Content! content!
IONA TAURINA [ASIDE]:
I, most content of all, _190
Know that my foes even thus prepare their fall!
[EXEUNT OMNES. ]
SCENE 2. 2:
THE INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF FAMINE.
THE STATUE OF THE GODDESS, A SKELETON CLOTHED IN PARTI-COLOURED RAGS,
SEATED UPON A HEAP OF SKULLS AND LOAVES INTERMINGLED.
A NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY FAT PRIESTS IN BLACK GARMENTS ARRAYED ON EACH
SIDE, WITH MARROW-BONES AND CLEAVERS IN THEIR HANDS.
[SOLOMON, THE COURT PORKMAN. ]
A FLOURISH OF TRUMPETS.
ENTER MAMMON AS ARCH-PRIEST, SWELLFOOT, DAKRY, PURGANAX, LAOCTONOS,
FOLLOWED BY IONA TAURINA GUARDED.
ON THE OTHER SIDE ENTER THE SWINE.
CHORUS OF PRIESTS, ACCOMPANIED BY THE COURT PORKMAN ON MARROW-BONES
AND CLEAVERS:
GODDESS bare, and gaunt, and pale,
Empress of the world, all hail!
What though Cretans old called thee
City-crested Cybele?
We call thee FAMINE! _5
Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming!
Through thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and lords,
Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words,
The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits,
Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots-- _10
Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat,
Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean,
Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that!
And let things be as they have ever been;
At least while we remain thy priests, _15
And proclaim thy fasts and feasts.
Through thee the sacred SWELLF00T dynasty
Is based upon a rock amid that sea
Whose waves are Swine--so let it ever be!
[SWELLFOOT, ETC. , SEAT THEMSELVES AT A TABLE MAGNIFICENTLY COVERED AT
THE UPPER END OF THE TEMPLE.
ATTENDANTS PASS OVER THE STAGE WITH HOG-WASH IN PAILS.
A NUMBER OF PIGS, EXCEEDINGLY LEAN, FOLLOW THEM LICKING UP THE WASH. ]
MAMMON:
I fear your sacred Majesty has lost _20
The appetite which you were used to have.
Allow me now to recommend this dish--
A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook,
Such as is served at the great King's second table.
The price and pains which its ingredients cost _25
Might have maintained some dozen families
A winter or two--not more--so plain a dish
Could scarcely disagree. --
SWELLFOOT:
After the trial,
And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps
I may recover my lost appetite,-- _30
I feel the gout flying about my stomach--
Give me a glass of Maraschino punch.
PURGANAX (FILLING HIS GLASS, AND STANDING UP):
The glorious Constitution of the Pigs!
ALL:
A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three!
DAKRY:
No heel-taps--darken daylights! --
LAOCTONOS:
Claret, somehow, _35
Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret!
SWELLFOOT:
Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment,
But 'tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine,
And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes.
[TO PURGANAX. ]
For God's sake stop the grunting of those Pigs! _40
PURGANAX:
We dare not, Sire, 'tis Famine's privilege.
CHORUS OF SWINE:
Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!
Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags;
Thou devil which livest on damning;
Saint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN BAGS, _45
Till in pity and terror thou risest,
Confounding the schemes of the wisest;
When thou liftest thy skeleton form,
When the loaves and the skulls roll about,
We will greet thee-the voice of a storm _50
Would be lost in our terrible shout!
Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!
Hail to thee, Empress of Earth!
When thou risest, dividing possessions;
When thou risest, uprooting oppressions, _55
In the pride of thy ghastly mirth;
Over palaces, temples, and graves,
We will rush as thy minister-slaves,
Trampling behind in thy train,
Till all be made level again! _60
MAMMON:
I hear a crackling of the giant bones
Of the dread image, and in the black pits
Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames.
These prodigies are oracular, and show
The presence of the unseen Deity. _65
Mighty events are hastening to their doom!
SWELLFOOT:
I only hear the lean and mutinous Swine
Grunting about the temple.
DAKRY:
In a crisis
Of such exceeding delicacy, I think
We ought to put her Majesty, the QUEEN, _70
Upon her trial without delay.
MAMMON:
THE BAG
Is here.
PURGANAX:
I have rehearsed the entire scene
With an ox-bladder and some ditchwater,
On Lady P--; it cannot fail.
[TAKING UP THE BAG. ]
Your Majesty
[TO SWELLFOOT. ]
In such a filthy business had better _75
Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you.
A spot or two on me would do no harm,
Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad Genius
Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell,
Upon my brow--which would stain all its seas, _80
But which those seas could never wash away!
IONA TAURINA:
My Lord, I am ready--nay, I am impatient
To undergo the test.
[A GRACEFUL FIGURE IN A SEMI-TRANSPARENT VEIL PASSES UNNOTICED THROUGH
THE TEMPLE; THE WORD "LIBERTY" IS SEEN THROUGH THE VEIL, AS IF IT WERE
WRITTEN IN FIRE UPON ITS FOREHEAD. ITS WORDS ARE ALMOST DROWNED IN THE
FURIOUS GRUNTING OF THE PIGS, AND THE BUSINESS OF THE TRIAL. SHE
KNEELS ON THE STEPS OF THE ALTAR, AND SPEAKS IN TONES AT FIRST FAINT
AND LOW, BUT WHICH EVER BECOME LOUDER AND LOUDER. ]
Mighty Empress! Death's white wife!
Ghastly mother-in-law of Life! _85
By the God who made thee such,
By the magic of thy touch,
By the starving and the cramming
Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine!
I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude, _90
Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood.
The earth did never mean her foison
For those who crown life's cup with poison
Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge--
But for those radiant spirits, who are still _95
The standard-bearers in the van of Change.
Be they th' appointed stewards, to fill
The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age! --
Remit, O Queen! thy accustomed rage!
Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low _100
FREEDOM calls "Famine",--her eternal foe,
To brief alliance, hollow truce. --Rise now!
[WHILST THE VEILED FIGURE HAS BEEN CHANTING THIS STROPHE, MAMMON,
DAKRY, LAOCTONOS, AND SWELLFOOT, HAVE SURROUNDED IONA TAURINA, WHO,
WITH HER HANDS FOLDED ON HER BREAST, AND HER EYES LIFTED TO HEAVEN,
STANDS, AS WITH SAINT-LIKE RESIGNATION, TO WAIT THE ISSUE OF THE
BUSINESS, IN PERFECT CONFIDENCE OF HER INNOCENCE. ]
[PURGANAX, AFTER UNSEALING THE GREEN BAG, IS GRAVELY ABOUT TO POUR THE
LIQUOR UPON HER HEAD, WHEN SUDDENLY THE WHOLE EXPRESSION OF HER FIGURE
AND COUNTENANCE CHANGES; SHE SNATCHES IT FROM HIS HAND WITH A LOUD
LAUGH OF TRIUMPH, AND EMPTIES IT OVER SWELLFOOT AND HIS WHOLE COURT,
WHO ARE INSTANTLY CHANGED INTO A NUMBER OF FILTHY AND UGLY ANIMALS,
AND RUSH OUT OF THE TEMPLE. THE IMAGE OF FAMINE THEN ARISES WITH A
TREMENDOUS SOUND, THE PIGS BEGIN SCRAMBLING FOR THE LOAVES, AND ARE
TRJPPED UP BY THE SKULLS; ALL THOSE WHO EAT THE LOAVES ARE TURNED INTO
BULLS, AND ARRANGE THEMSELVES QUIETLY BEHIND THE ALTAR. THE IMAGE OF
FAMINE SINKS THROUGH A CHASM IN THE EARTH, AND A MINOTAUR RISES. ]
MINOTAUR:
I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest
Of all Europa's taurine progeny--
I am the old traditional Man-Bull; _105
And from my ancestors having been Ionian,
I am called Ion, which, by interpretation,
Is JOHN; in plain Theban, that is to say,
My name's JOHN BULL; I am a famous hunter,
And can leaf any gate in all Boeotia, _110
Even the palings of the royal park,
Or double ditch about the new enclosures;
And if your Majesty will deign to mount me,
At least till you have hunted down your game,
I will not throw you. _115
IONA TAURINA [DURING THIS SPEECH SHE HAS BEEN PUTTING ON BOOTS AND
SPURS, AND A HUNTING-CAP, BUCKISHLY COCKED ON ONE SIDE, AND TUCKING UP
HER HAIR, SHE LEAPS NIMBLY ON HIS BACK]:
Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho!
Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down,
These stinking foxes, these devouring otters,
These hares, these wolves, these anything but men.
Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs
Now let your noses be as keen as beagles', _120
Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries
More dulcet and symphonious than the bells
Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday;
Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music.
Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood? ) _125
But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho!
Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert,
Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!
FULL CHORUS OF I0NA AND THE SWINE:
Tallyho! tallyho!
Through rain, hail, and snow, _130
Through brake, gorse, and briar,
Through fen, flood, and mire,
We go! we go!
Tallyho! tallyho!
Through pond, ditch, and slough, _135
Wind them, and find them,
Like the Devil behind them,
Tallyho! tallyho!
[EXEUNT, IN FULL CRY;
IONA DRIVING ON THE SWINE, WITH THE EMPTY GEEEN BAG. ]
THE END.
NOTE ON OEDIPUS TYRANNUS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
In the brief journal I kept in those days, I find recorded, in August,
1820, Shelley 'begins "Swellfoot the Tyrant", suggested by the pigs at
the fair of San Giuliano. ' This was the period of Queen Caroline's
landing in England, and the struggles made by George IV to get rid of
her claims; which failing, Lord Castlereagh placed the "Green Bag" on
the table of the House of Commons, demanding in the King's name that
an enquiry should be instituted into his wife's conduct. These
circumstances were the theme of all conversation among the English. We
were then at the Baths of San Giuliano. A friend came to visit us on
the day when a fair was held in the square, beneath our windows:
Shelley read to us his "Ode to Liberty"; and was riotously accompanied
by the grunting of a quantity of pigs brought for sale to the fair. He
compared it to the 'chorus of frogs' in the satiric drama of
Aristophanes; and, it being an hour of merriment, and one ludicrous
association suggesting another, he imagined a political-satirical
drama on the circumstances of the day, to which the pigs would serve
as chorus--and "Swellfoot" was begun. When finished, it was
transmitted to England, printed, and published anonymously; but
stifled at the very dawn of its existence by the Society for the
Suppression of Vice, who threatened to prosecute it, if not
immediately withdrawn. The friend who had taken the trouble of
bringing it out, of course did not think it worth the annoyance and
expense of a contest, and it was laid aside.
Hesitation of whether it would do honour to Shelley prevented my
publishing it at first. But I cannot bring myself to keep back
anything he ever wrote; for each word is fraught with the peculiar
views and sentiments which he believed to be beneficial to the human
race, and the bright light of poetry irradiates every thought. The
world has a right to the entire compositions of such a man; for it
does not live and thrive by the outworn lesson of the dullard or the
hypocrite, but by the original free thoughts of men of genius, who
aspire to pluck bright truth
'from the pale-faced moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep
Where fathom-line would never touch the ground,
And pluck up drowned'
truth. Even those who may dissent from his opinions will consider that
he was a man of genius, and that the world will take more interest in
his slightest word than in the waters of Lethe which are so eagerly
prescribed as medicinal for all its wrongs and woe. This drama,
however, must not be judged for more than was meant. It is a mere
plaything of the imagination; which even may not excite smiles among
many, who will not see wit in those combinations of thought which were
full of the ridiculous to the author. But, like everything he wrote,
it breathes that deep sympathy for the sorrows of humanity, and
indignation against its oppressors, which make it worthy of his name.
***
EPIPSYCHIDION.
VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V--,
NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF --.
L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' infinito un
Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.
HER OWN WORDS.
["Epipsychidion" was composed at Pisa, January, February, 1821, and
published without the author's name, in the following summer, by C. &
J. Ollier, London. The poem was included by Mrs. Shelley in the
"Poetical Works", 1839, both editions. Amongst the Shelley manuscripts
in the Bodleian is a first draft of "Epipsychidion", 'consisting of
three versions, more or less complete, of the "Preface
[Advertisement]", a version in ink and pencil, much cancelled, of the
last eighty lines of the poem, and some additional lines which did not
appear in print' ("Examination of the Shelley manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library, by C. D. Locock". Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1903, page
3). This draft, the writing of which is 'extraordinarily confused and
illegible,' has been carefully deciphered and printed by Mr. Locock in
the volume named above. Our text follows that of the editio princeps,
1821. ]
ADVERTISEMENT.
The Writer of the following lines died at Florence, as he was
preparing for a voyage to one of the wildest of the Sporades, which he
had bought, and where he had fitted up the ruins of an old building,
and where it was his hope to have realised a scheme of life, suited
perhaps to that happier and better world of which he is now an
inhabitant, but hardly practicable in this. His life was singular;
less on account of the romantic vicissitudes which diversified it,
than the ideal tinge which it received from his own character and
feelings. The present Poem, like the "Vita Nuova" of Dante, is
sufficiently intelligible to a certain class of readers without a
matter-of-fact history of the circumstances to which it relates and to
a certain other class it must ever remain incomprehensible, from a
defect of a common organ of perception for the ideas of which it
treats. Not but that gran vergogna sarebbe a colui, che rimasse cosa
sotto veste di figura, o di colore rettorico: e domandato non sapesse
denudare le sue parole da cotal veste, in guisa che avessero verace
intendimento.
The present poem appears to have been intended by the Writer as the
dedication to some longer one. The stanza on the opposite page [1] is
almost a literal translation from Dante's famous Canzone
Voi, ch' intendendo, il terzo ciel movete, etc.
The presumptuous application of the concluding lines to his own
composition will raise a smile at the expense of my unfortunate
friend: be it a smile not of contempt, but pity. S.
[1] i. e. the nine lines which follow, beginning, 'My Song, I fear,'
etc. --ED.
My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few
Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning,
Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;
Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring
Thee to base company (as chance may do), _5
Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,
I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,
My last delight! tell them that they are dull,
And bid them own that thou art beautiful.
EPIPSYCHIDION.
Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,
Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,
In my heart's temple I suspend to thee
These votive wreaths of withered memory.
Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage, _5
Pourest such music, that it might assuage
The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,
Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;
This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale
Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale! _10
But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,
And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.
High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever
Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,
Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed _15
It over-soared this low and worldly shade,
Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast
Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!
I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,
Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee. _20
Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,
Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman
All that is insupportable in thee
Of light, and love, and immortality!
Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse! _25
Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!
Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form
Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!
Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!
Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror _30
In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,
All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!
Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now
Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;
I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song _35
All of its much mortality and wrong,
With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew
From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,
Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:
Then smile on it, so that it may not die. _40
I never thought before my death to see
Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily,
I love thee; though the world by no thin name
Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.
Would we two had been twins of the same mother! _45
Or, that the name my heart lent to another
Could be a sister's bond for her and thee,
Blending two beams of one eternity!
Yet were one lawful and the other true,
These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due. _50
How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!
I am not thine: I am a part of THEE.
Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings
Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,
Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style, _55
All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,
A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?
A well of sealed and secret happiness,
Whose waters like blithe light and music are,
Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star _60
Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone?
A Smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone
Amid rude voices? a beloved light?
A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?
A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play _65
Make music on, to soothe the roughest day
And lull fond Grief asleep? a buried treasure?
A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?
A violet-shrouded grave of Woe? --I measure
The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, _70
And find--alas! mine own infirmity.
She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way,
And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,
Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,
Led into light, life, peace. An antelope, _75
In the suspended impulse of its lightness,
Were less aethereally light: the brightness
Of her divinest presence trembles through
Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew
Embodied in the windless heaven of June _80
Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon
Burns, inextinguishably beautiful:
And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full
Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,
Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops _85
Of planetary music heard in trance.
In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,
The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap
Under the lightnings of the soul--too deep
For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense. _90
The glory of her being, issuing thence,
Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade
Of unentangled intermixture, made
By Love, of light and motion: one intense
Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence, _95
Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,
Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing
With the unintermitted blood, which there
Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air
The crimson pulse of living morning quiver,) _100
Continuously prolonged, and ending never,
Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled
Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world;
Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.
Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress _105
And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress
The air of her own speed has disentwined,
The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;
And in the soul a wild odour is felt
Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt _110
Into the bosom of a frozen bud. --
See where she stands! a mortal shape indued
With love and life and light and deity,
And motion which may change but cannot die;
An image of some bright Eternity; _115
A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour
Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender
Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love
Under whose motions life's dull billows move;
A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning; _120
A Vision like incarnate April, warning,
With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy
Into his summer grave.
Ah, woe is me!
What have I dared? where am I lifted? how
Shall I descend, and perish not? I know _125
That Love makes all things equal: I have heard
By mine own heart this joyous truth averred:
The spirit of the worm beneath the sod
In love and worship, blends itself with God.
Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate _130
Whose course has been so starless! O too late
Beloved! O too soon adored, by me!
For in the fields of Immortality
My spirit should at first have worshipped thine,
A divine presence in a place divine; _135
Or should have moved beside it on this earth,
A shadow of that substance, from its birth;
But not as now:--I love thee; yes, I feel
That on the fountain of my heart a seal
Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright _140
For thee, since in those TEARS thou hast delight.
We--are we not formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar;
Such difference without discord, as can make
Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake _145
As trembling leaves in a continuous air?
Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare
Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.
I never was attached to that great sect,
Whose doctrine is, that each one should select _150
Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,
And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend
To cold oblivion, though it is in the code
Of modern morals, and the beaten road
Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, _155
Who travel to their home among the dead
By the broad highway of the world, and so
With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,
The dreariest and the longest journey go.
True Love in this differs from gold and clay, _160
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding, that grows bright,
Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,
Imagination! which from earth and sky,
And from the depths of human fantasy, _165
As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills
The Universe with glorious beams, and kills
Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow
Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, _170
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
One object, and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity.
Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness; _175
The baser from the nobler; the impure
And frail, from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought, _180
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law _185
By which those live, to whom this world of life
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth.
There was a Being whom my spirit oft _190
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves _195
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
Paved her light steps;--on an imagined shore,
Under the gray beak of some promontory
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not. In solitudes _200
Her voice came to me through the whispering woods,
And from the fountains, and the odours deep
Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep
Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,
Breathed but of HER to the enamoured air; _205
And from the breezes whether low or loud,
And from the rain of every passing cloud,
And from the singing of the summer-birds,
And from all sounds, all silence. In the words
Of antique verse and high romance,--in form, _210
Sound, colour--in whatever checks that Storm
Which with the shattered present chokes the past;
And in that best philosophy, whose taste
Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom
As glorious as a fiery martyrdom; _215
Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. --
Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth
I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,
And towards the lodestar of my one desire,
I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight _220
Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light,
When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere
A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,
As if it were a lamp of earthly flame. --
But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, _225
Passed, like a God throned on a winged planet,
Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,
Into the dreary cone of our life's shade;
And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,
I would have followed, though the grave between _230
Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:
When a voice said:--'O thou of hearts the weakest,
The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest. '
Then I--'Where? '--the world's echo answered 'where? '
And in that silence, and in my despair, _235
I questioned every tongueless wind that flew
Over my tower of mourning, if it knew
Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul;
And murmured names and spells which have control
Over the sightless tyrants of our fate; _240
But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate
The night which closed on her; nor uncreate
That world within this Chaos, mine and me,
Of which she was the veiled Divinity,
The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her: _245
And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear
And every gentle passion sick to death,
Feeding my course with expectation's breath,
Into the wintry forest of our life;
And struggling through its error with vain strife, _250
And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,
And half bewildered by new forms, I passed,
Seeking among those untaught foresters
If I could find one form resembling hers,
In which she might have masked herself from me. _255
There,--One, whose voice was venomed melody
Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers:
The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,
Her touch was as electric poison,--flame
Out of her looks into my vitals came, _260
And from her living cheeks and bosom flew
A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew
Into the core of my green heart, and lay
Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray
O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime _265
With ruins of unseasonable time.
In many mortal forms I rashly sought
The shadow of that idol of my thought.
And some were fair--but beauty dies away:
Others were wise--but honeyed words betray: _270
And One was true--oh! why not true to me?
Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,
I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,
Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day
Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain. _275
When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again
Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed
As like the glorious shape which I had d reamed
As is the Moon, whose changes ever run
Into themselves, to the eternal Sun; _280
The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles,
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,
That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame
Which ever is transformed, yet still the same,
And warms not but illumines. Young and fair _285
As the descended Spirit of that sphere,
She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night
From its own darkness, until all was bright
Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,
And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, _290
She led me to a cave in that wild place,
And sate beside me, with her downward face
Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon
Waxing and waning o'er Endymion.
And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, _295
And all my being became bright or dim
As the Moon's image in a summer sea,
According as she smiled or frowned on me;
And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:
Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:-- _300
For at her silver voice came Death and Life,
Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,
Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,
The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,
And through the cavern without wings they flew, _305
And cried 'Away, he is not of our crew. '
I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.
What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,
Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips
Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;-- _310
And how my soul was as a lampless sea,
And who was then its Tempest; and when She,
The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost
Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast
The moving billows of my being fell _315
Into a death of ice, immovable;--
And then--what earthquakes made it gape and split,
The white Moon smiling all the while on it,
These words conceal:--If not, each word would be
The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me! _320
At length, into the obscure Forest came
The Vision I had sought through grief and shame.
Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns
Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's,
And from her presence life was radiated _325
Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead;
So that her way was paved, and roofed above
With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;
And music from her respiration spread
Like light,--all other sounds were penetrated _330
By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,
So that the savage winds hung mute around;
And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair
Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air:
Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, _335
When light is changed to love, this glorious One
Floated into the cavern where I lay,
And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay
Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below
As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow _340
I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night
Was penetrating me with living light:
I knew it was the Vision veiled from me
So many years--that it was Emily.
Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth, _345
This world of loves, this ME; and into birth
Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart
Magnetic might into its central heart;
And lift its billows and its mists, and guide
By everlasting laws, each wind and tide _350
To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;
And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave
Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers
The armies of the rainbow-winged showers;
And, as those married lights, which from the towers _355
Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe
In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;
And all their many-mingled influence blend,
If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;--
So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway _360
Govern my sphere of being, night and day!
Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;
Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;
And, through the shadow of the seasons three,
From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity, _365
Light it into the Winter of the tomb,
Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.
Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,
Who drew the heart of this frail Universe
Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion, _370
Alternating attraction and repulsion,
Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;
Oh, float into our azure heaven again!
Be there Love's folding-star at thy return;
The living Sun will feed thee from its urn _375
Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn
In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn
Will worship thee with incense of calm breath
And lights and shadows; as the star of Death
And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild _380
Called Hope and Fear--upon the heart are piled
Their offerings,--of this sacrifice divine
A World shall be the altar.
Lady mine,
Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth
Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth _385
Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,
Will be as of the trees of Paradise.
The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.
To whatsoe'er of dull mortality
Is mine, remain a vestal sister still; _390
To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,
Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united
Even as a bride, delighting and delighted.
The hour is come:--the destined Star has risen
Which shall descend upon a vacant prison. _395
The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set
The sentinels--but true Love never yet
Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:
Like lightning, with invisible violence
Piercing its continents; like Heaven's free breath, _400
Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,
Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way
Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array
Of arms: more strength has Love than he or they;
For it can burst his charnel, and make free _405
The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,
The soul in dust and chaos.
Emily,
A ship is floating in the harbour now,
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;
There is a path on the sea's azure floor, _410
No keel has ever ploughed that path before;
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;
The merry mariners are bold and free:
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me? _415
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest
Is a far Eden of the purple East;
And we between her wings will sit, while Night,
And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,
Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, _420
Treading each other's heels, unheededly.
It is an isle under Ionian skies,
Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,
And, for the harbours are not safe and good,
This land would have remained a solitude _425
But for some pastoral people native there,
Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air
Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,
Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.
The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, _430
With ever-changing sound and light and foam,
Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;
And all the winds wandering along the shore
Undulate with the undulating tide:
There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide; _435
And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,
As clear as elemental diamond,
Or serene morning air; and far beyond,
The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer
(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year) _440
Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls
Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls
Illumining, with sound that never fails
Accompany the noonday nightingales;
And all the place is peopled with sweet airs; _445
The light clear element which the isle wears
Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,
Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers.
And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;
And from the moss violets and jonquils peep, _450
And dart their arrowy odour through the brain
Till you might faint with that delicious pain.
And every motion, odour, beam and tone,
With that deep music is in unison:
Which is a soul within the soul--they seem _455
Like echoes of an antenatal dream. --
It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;
Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,
Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air. _460
It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,
Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light
Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they
Sail onward far upon their fatal way:
The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm _465
To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm
Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,
From which its fields and woods ever renew
Their green and golden immortality.
And from the sea there rise, and from the sky _470
There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright.
Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,
Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,
Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride
Glowing at once with love and loveliness, _475
Blushes and trembles at its own excess:
Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less
Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,
An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile
Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen _480
O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,
Filling their bare and void interstices. --
But the chief marvel of the wilderness
Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how
None of the rustic island-people know: _485
'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height
It overtops the woods; but, for delight,
Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime
Had been invented, in the world's young prime,
Reared it, a wonder of that simple time, _490
An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house
Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.
It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,
But, as it were Titanic; in the heart
Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown _495
Out of the mountains, from the living stone,
Lifting itself in caverns light and high:
For all the antique and learned imagery
Has been erased, and in the place of it
The ivy and the wild-vine interknit _500
The volumes of their many-twining stems;
Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems
The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky
Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery
With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen, _505
Or fragments of the day's intense serene;--
Working mosaic on their Parian floors.
And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers
And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem
To sleep in one another's arms, and dream _510
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we
Read in their smiles, and call reality.
This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed
Thee to be lady of the solitude. --
And I have fitted up some chambers there _515
Looking towards the golden Eastern air,
And level with the living winds, which flow
Like waves above the living waves below. --
I have sent books and music there, and all
Those instruments with which high Spirits call _520
The future from its cradle, and the past
Out of its grave, and make the present last
In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,
Folded within their own eternity.
Our simple life wants little, and true taste _525
Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste
The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,
Nature with all her children haunts the hill.
The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet
Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit _530
Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance
Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;
The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight
Before our gate, and the slow, silent night
Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. _535
Be this our home in life, and when years heap
Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,
Let us become the overhanging day,
The living soul of this Elysian isle,
Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile _540
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,
And wander in the meadows, or ascend
The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend
With lightest winds, to touch their paramour; _545
Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,
Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea
Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,--
Possessing and possessed by all that is
Within that calm circumference of bliss, _550
And by each other, till to love and live
Be one:--or, at the noontide hour, arrive
Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep
The moonlight of the expired night asleep,
Through which the awakened day can never peep; _555
A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,
Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights:
Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain
Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.
And we will talk, until thought's melody _560
Become too sweet for utterance, and it die
In words, to live again in looks, which dart
With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,
Harmonizing silence without a sound.
Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound, _565
And our veins beat together; and our lips
With other eloquence than words, eclipse
The soul that burns between them, and the wells
Which boil under our being's inmost cells,
The fountains of our deepest life, shall be _570
Confused in Passion's golden purity,
As mountain-springs under the morning sun.
We shall become the same, we shall be one
Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?
One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew, _575
Till like two meteors of expanding flame,
Those spheres instinct with it become the same,
Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still
Burning, yet ever inconsumable:
In one another's substance finding food, _580
Like flames too pure and light and unimbued
To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,
Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:
One hope within two wills, one will beneath
Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death, _585
One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,
And one annihilation. Woe is me!
The winged words on which my soul would pierce
Into the height of Love's rare Universe,
Are chains of lead around its flight of fire-- _590
I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!
. . .
