She spoke and wept:--the dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
And intertangled lines of light:--a knell _245
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing Forms, o'er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
And intertangled lines of light:--a knell _245
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing Forms, o'er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.
Shelley copy
' where'er we be.
Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, _95
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
Of figures,--disentangle them who may.
Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
Near those a most inexplicable thing, _100
With lead in the middle--I'm conjecturing
How to make Henry understand; but no--
I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. _105
And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews _110
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content;--
I sit--and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them--Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound, _115
I heed him more than them--the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean;--and the vines _120
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines--
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast;--the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, _125
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
On the unquiet world;--while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? the shriek of the world's carrion jays, _130
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,
In vacant chairs, your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should be
But are not. --I demand if ever we _135
Shall meet as then we met;--and she replies.
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
'I know the past alone--but summon home
My sister Hope,--she speaks of all to come. '
But I, an old diviner, who knew well _140
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o'er and o'er
Of our communion--how on the sea-shore _145
We watched the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek--and how we often made _150
Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be;--and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun _155
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not:--or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe, and sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world:--and then anatomize _160
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years;--or widely guess
The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are--
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war _165
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;--or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme,--in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps;--or how we sought _170
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
Or how I, wisest lady! then endued _175
The language of a land which now is free,
And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud,
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
'My name is Legion! '--that majestic tongue _180
Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
Startled oblivion;--thou wert then to me
As is a nurse--when inarticulately _185
A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast _190
Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?
You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. _195
Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see
That which was Godwin,--greater none than he
Though fallen--and fallen on evil times--to stand
Among the spirits of our age and land,
Before the dread tribunal of "to come" _200
The foremost,--while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.
You will see Coleridge--he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind,
Which, with its own internal lightning blind, _200
Flags wearily through darkness and despair--
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls. --
You will see Hunt--one of those happy souls
Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom _210
This world would smell like what it is--a tomb;
Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt
Is still adorned with many a cast from Shout,
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about;
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, _215
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;
The gifts of the most learned among some dozens
Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.
And there is he with his eternal puns,
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns _220
Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say, 'I'm poor! '
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
Things wiser than were ever read in book,
Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness. -- _225
You will see Hogg,--and I cannot express
His virtues,--though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades the gate
Within which they inhabit;--of his wit
And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. _230
He is a pearl within an oyster shell.
One of the richest of the deep;--and there
Is English Peacock, with his mountain Fair,
Turned into a Flamingo;--that shy bird
That gleams i' the Indian air--have you not heard _235
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him? --but you
Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,
With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope
Matched with this cameleopard--his fine wit _240
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
A strain too learned for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page,
Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,
Fold itself up for the serener clime _245
Of years to come, and find its recompense
In that just expectation. --Wit and sense,
Virtue and human knowledge; all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight,
Are all combined in Horace Smith. --And these. _250
With some exceptions, which I need not tease
Your patience by descanting on,--are all
You and I know in London.
I recall
My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.
As water does a sponge, so the moonlight _255
Fills the void, hollow, universal air--
What see you? --unpavilioned Heaven is fair,
Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep; _260
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep,
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,
And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast:--
All this is beautiful in every land. --
But what see you beside? --a shabby stand _265
Of Hackney coaches--a brick house or wall
Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
Of our unhappy politics;--or worse--
A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse
Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade, _270
You must accept in place of serenade--
Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring
To Henry, some unutterable thing.
I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
Built round dark caverns, even to the root _275
Of the living stems that feed them--in whose bowers
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance, _280
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance,
Pale in the open moonshine, but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the milky way;-- _285
Afar the Contadino's song is heard,
Rude, but made sweet by distance--and a bird
Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sings so sweet as it
At this late hour;--and then all is still-- _290
Now--Italy or London, which you will!
Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have
My house by that time turned into a grave
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
And all the dreams which our tormentors are; _295
Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there,
With everything belonging to them fair! --
We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;
And ask one week to make another week
As like his father, as I'm unlike mine, _300
Which is not his fault, as you may divine.
Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, _305
And other such lady-like luxuries,--
Feasting on which we will philosophize!
And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood,
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
And then we'll talk;--what shall we talk about? _310
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant;--as to nerves--
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me--when you are with me there. _315
And they shall never more sip laudanum,
From Helicon or Himeros (1);--well, come,
And in despite of God and of the devil,
We'll make our friendly philosophic revel
Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers _320
Warn the obscure inevitable hours,
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;--
'To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. '
NOTES:
_13 must Bos. manuscript; most edition 1824.
_27 philanthropic Bos. manuscript; philosophic edition 1824.
_29 so 1839, 2nd edition; They owed. . . edition 1824.
_36 Which fishers Bos. manuscript; Which fishes edition 1824;
With fishes editions 1839.
_38 rarely transcript; seldom editions 1824, 1839.
_61 lava--cry]lava-cry editions 1824, 1839.
_63 towers transcript; towns editions 1824, 1839.
_84 queer Bos. manuscript; green transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_92 odd hooks transcript; old books editions 1839 (an evident misprint);
old hooks edition 1824.
_93 A]An edition 1824.
_100 those transcript; them editions 1824, 1839.
_101 lead Bos. manuscript; least transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_127 eye Bos. manuscript, transcript, editions 1839; age edition 1824.
_140 knew Bos. manuscript; know transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_144 citing Bos. manuscript; acting transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_151 Feasts transcript; Treats editions 1824, 1839.
_153 As well it]As it well editions 1824, 1839.
_158 believe, and]believe; or editions 1824, 1839.
_173 their transcript; the editions 1824, 1839.
_188 aethereal transcript; aereal editions 1824, 1839.
_197-201 See notes Volume 3.
_202 Coleridge]C-- edition 1824. So too H--t l. 209; H-- l. 226;
P-- l. 233; H. S. l. 250; H-- -- and -- l. 296.
_205 lightning Bos. manuscript, transcript; lustre editions 1824, 1839.
_224 read Bos. manuscript; said transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_244 time Bos. manuscript, transcript; age editions 1824, 1839.
_245 the transcript: a editions 1824, 1839.
_272, _273 found in the 2nd edition of P. W. , 1839;
wanting in transcript, edition 1824 and 1839, 1st. edition.
_276 that transcript; who editions 1824, 1839.
_288 the transcript; a editions 1824, 1839.
_296 See notes Volume 3.
_299, _300 So 1839, 2nd edition; wanting in editions 1824, 1839, 1st.
_301 So transcript; wanting in editions 1824, 1839.
_317 well, come 1839, 2nd edition; we'll come editions 1824, 1839. 1st.
_318 despite of God] transcript; despite of. . . edition 1824;
spite of. . . editions 1839.
(_317 Imeros, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some
slight shade of difference, a synonym of Love. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ]
***
THE WITCH OF ATLAS.
[Composed at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 14-16, 1820;
published in Posthumous Poems, edition Mrs. Shelley, 1824. The
dedication To Mas-y first appeared in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st
edition Sources of the text are (1) the editio princeps, 1824; (2)
editions 1839 (which agree, and, save in two instances, follow edition
1824); (3) an early and incomplete manuscript in Shelley's handwriting
(now at the Bodleian, here, as throughout, cited as B. ), carefully
collated by Mr. C. D. Locock, who printed the results in his
Examination of the Shelley manuscripts, etc. , Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1903; (4) a later, yet intermediate, transcript by Mrs. Shelley, the
variations of which are noted by Mr. H. Buxton Forman. The original
text is modified in many places by variants from the manuscripts, but
the readings of edition 1824 are, in every instance, given in the
footnotes. ]
TO MARY
(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE
SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST).
1.
How, my dear Mary,--are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten, _5
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
2.
What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions, _10
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile, _15
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.
3.
To thy fair feet a winged Vision came,
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display; _20
The watery bow burned in the evening flame.
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way--
And that is dead. --O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!
4.
Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years _25
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well _30
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.
5.
My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsons--but she matches Peter, _35
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness. ' _40
6.
If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello. _45
If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
Can shrive you of that sin,--if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.
THE WITCH OF ATLAS.
1.
Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, _50
Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth
The pains of putting into learned rhyme,
A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain _55
Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.
2.
Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden _60
In the warm shadow of her loveliness;--
He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
The chamber of gray rock in which she lay--
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
3.
'Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour, _65
And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,
Round the red west when the sun dies in it:
And then into a meteor, such as caper
On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit: _70
Then, into one of those mysterious stars
Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.
4.
Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden
With that bright sign the billows to indent _75
The sea-deserted sand--like children chidden,
At her command they ever came and went--
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden
Took shape and motion: with the living form
Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm. _80
5.
A lovely lady garmented in light
From her own beauty--deep her eyes, as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a Temple's cloven roof--her hair
Dark--the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight. _85
Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things towards this wonder new.
6.
And first the spotted cameleopard came,
And then the wise and fearless elephant; _90
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
Of his own volumes intervolved;--all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
And every beast of beating heart grew bold, _95
Such gentleness and power even to behold.
7.
The brinded lioness led forth her young,
That she might teach them how they should forego
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
His sinews at her feet, and sought to know _100
With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue
How he might be as gentle as the doe.
The magic circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise.
8.
And old Silenus, shaking a green stick _105
Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:
And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
Teasing the God to sing them something new; _110
Till in this cave they found the lady lone,
Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.
9.
And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there,
And though none saw him,--through the adamant
Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air, _115
And through those living spirits, like a want,
He passed out of his everlasting lair
Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,
And felt that wondrous lady all alone,--
And she felt him, upon her emerald throne. _120
10.
And every nymph of stream and spreading tree,
And every shepherdess of Ocean's flocks,
Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
And Ocean with the brine on his gray locks,
And quaint Priapus with his company, _125
All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;--
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.
11.
The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant-- _130
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs, and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
Wet clefts,--and lumps neither alive nor dead, _135
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.
12.
For she was beautiful--her beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
No thought of living spirit could abide, _140
Which to her looks had ever been betrayed,
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.
13.
Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle _145
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds and waves and mountains with; and she
As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle
In the belated moon, wound skilfully; _150
And with these threads a subtle veil she wove--
A shadow for the splendour of her love.
14.
The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
Were stored with magic treasures--sounds of air,
Which had the power all spirits of compelling, _155
Folded in cells of crystal silence there;
Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never die--yet ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
And the regret they leave remains alone. _160
15.
And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis,
Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss.
It was its work to bear to many a saint _165
Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
Even Love's:--and others white, green, gray, and black,
And of all shapes--and each was at her beck.
16.
And odours in a kind of aviary
Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, _170
Clipped in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy
Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept;
As bats at the wired window of a dairy,
They beat their vans; and each was an adept,
When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds, _175
To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.
17.
And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
And change eternal death into a night
Of glorious dreams--or if eyes needs must weep, _180
Could make their tears all wonder and delight,
She in her crystal vials did closely keep:
If men could drink of those clear vials, 'tis said
The living were not envied of the dead.
18.
Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device, _185
The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the Gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
And which might quench the Earth-consuming rage _190
Of gold and blood--till men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above;
19.
And how all things that seem untameable,
Not to be checked and not to be confined,
Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill; _195
Time, earth, and fire--the ocean and the wind,
And all their shapes--and man's imperial will;
And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
The inmost lore of Love--let the profane
Tremble to ask what secrets they contain. _200
20.
And wondrous works of substances unknown,
To which the enchantment of her father's power
Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
Carved lamps and chalices, and vials which shone _205
In their own golden beams--each like a flower,
Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a starless night.
21.
At first she lived alone in this wild home,
And her own thoughts were each a minister, _210
Clothing themselves, or with the ocean foam,
Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
To work whatever purposes might come
Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire
Had girt them with, whether to fly or run, _215
Through all the regions which he shines upon.
22.
The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,
Oreads and Naiads, with long weedy locks,
Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks, _220
And far beneath the matted roots of trees,
And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks,
So they might live for ever in the light
Of her sweet presence--each a satellite.
23.
'This may not be,' the wizard maid replied; _225
'The fountains where the Naiades bedew
Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried;
The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;
The boundless ocean like a drop of dew _230
Will be consumed--the stubborn centre must
Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.
24.
'And ye with them will perish, one by one;--
If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
If I must weep when the surviving Sun _235
Shall smile on your decay--oh, ask not me
To love you till your little race is run;
I cannot die as ye must--over me
Your leaves shall glance--the streams in which ye dwell
Shall be my paths henceforth, and so--farewell! '-- _240
25.
She spoke and wept:--the dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
And intertangled lines of light:--a knell _245
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing Forms, o'er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.
26.
All day the wizard lady sate aloof,
Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity, _250
Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof;
Or broidering the pictured poesy
Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
In hues outshining heaven--and ever she _255
Added some grace to the wrought poesy.
27.
While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece
Of sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon;
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is--
Each flame of it is as a precious stone _260
Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this
Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.
The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand
She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.
28.
This lady never slept, but lay in trance _265
All night within the fountain--as in sleep.
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance;
Through the green splendour of the water deep
She saw the constellations reel and dance
Like fire-flies--and withal did ever keep _270
The tenour of her contemplations calm,
With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm.
29.
And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended
From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,
She passed at dewfall to a space extended, _275
Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel
Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended,
There yawned an inextinguishable well
Of crimson fire--full even to the brim,
And overflowing all the margin trim. _280
30.
Within the which she lay when the fierce war
Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor
In many a mimic moon and bearded star
O'er woods and lawns;--the serpent heard it flicker
In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar-- _285
And when the windless snow descended thicker
Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came
Melt on the surface of the level flame.
31.
She had a boat, which some say Vulcan wrought
For Venus, as the chariot of her star; _290
But it was found too feeble to be fraught
With all the ardours in that sphere which are,
And so she sold it, and Apollo bought
And gave it to this daughter: from a car
Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat _295
Which ever upon mortal stream did float.
32.
And others say, that, when but three hours old,
The first-born Love out of his cradle lept,
And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,
And like a horticultural adept, _300
Stole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould,
And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept
Watering it all the summer with sweet dew,
And with his wings fanning it as it grew.
33.
The plant grew strong and green, the snowy flower _305
Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began
To turn the light and dew by inward power
To its own substance; woven tracery ran
Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er
The solid rind, like a leaf's veined fan-- _310
Of which Love scooped this boat--and with soft motion
Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.
34.
This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit
A living spirit within all its frame,
Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. _315
Couched on the fountain like a panther tame,
One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit--
Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame--
Or on blind Homer's heart a winged thought,--
In joyous expectation lay the boat. _320
35.
Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow
Together, tempering the repugnant mass
With liquid love--all things together grow
Through which the harmony of love can pass;
And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow-- _325
A living Image, which did far surpass
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.
36.
A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
It seemed to have developed no defect _330
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both,--
In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;
The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,
The countenance was such as might select
Some artist that his skill should never die, _335
Imaging forth such perfect purity.
37.
From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,
Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,
Tipped with the speed of liquid lightenings,
Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere: _340
She led her creature to the boiling springs
Where the light boat was moored, and said: 'Sit here! '
And pointed to the prow, and took her seat
Beside the rudder, with opposing feet.
38.
And down the streams which clove those mountains vast, _345
Around their inland islets, and amid
The panther-peopled forests whose shade cast
Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid
In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed;
By many a star-surrounded pyramid _350
Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,
And caverns yawning round unfathomably.
39.
The silver noon into that winding dell,
With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,
Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell; _355
A green and glowing light, like that which drops
From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell,
When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps;
Between the severed mountains lay on high,
Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky. _360
40.
And ever as she went, the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
And o'er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay, _365
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
They had aroused from that full heart and brain.
41.
And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went: _370
Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
The calm and darkness of the deep content
In which they paused; now o'er the shallow road
Of white and dancing waters, all besprent
With sand and polished pebbles:--mortal boat _375
In such a shallow rapid could not float.
42.
And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver
Their snow-like waters into golden air,
Or under chasms unfathomable ever
Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear _380
A subterranean portal for the river,
It fled--the circling sunbows did upbear
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
Lighting it far upon its lampless way.
43.
And when the wizard lady would ascend _385
The labyrinths of some many-winding vale,
Which to the inmost mountain upward tend--
She called 'Hermaphroditus! '--and the pale
And heavy hue which slumber could extend
Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale _390
A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,
Into the darkness of the stream did pass.
44.
And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,
With stars of fire spotting the stream below;
And from above into the Sun's dominions _395
Flinging a glory, like the golden glow
In which Spring clothes her emerald-winged minions,
All interwoven with fine feathery snow
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime,
With which frost paints the pines in winter time. _400
45.
And then it winnowed the Elysian air
Which ever hung about that lady bright,
With its aethereal vans--and speeding there,
Like a star up the torrent of the night,
Or a swift eagle in the morning glare _405
Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.
46.
The water flashed, like sunlight by the prow
Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven; _410
The still air seemed as if its waves did flow
In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven
The lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro:
Beneath, the billows having vainly striven
Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel _415
The swift and steady motion of the keel.
47.
Or, when the weary moon was in the wane,
Or in the noon of interlunar night,
The lady-witch in visions could not chain
Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light _420
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain
Its storm-outspeeding wings, the Hermaphrodite;
She to the Austral waters took her way,
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana,--
48.
Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, _425
Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake,
With the Antarctic constellations paven,
Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake--
There she would build herself a windless haven
Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make _430
The bastions of the storm, when through the sky
The spirits of the tempest thundered by:
49.
A haven beneath whose translucent floor
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
And around which the solid vapours hoar, _435
Based on the level waters, to the sky
Lifted their dreadful crags, and like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed in with rifts and precipices gray,
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay. _440
50.
And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a wounded thing,
And the incessant hail with stony clash
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash _445
Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke--this haven
Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven,--
51.
On which that lady played her many pranks,
Circling the image of a shooting star, _450
Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks
Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are,
In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
She played upon the water, till the car
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, _455
To journey from the misty east began.
52.
And then she called out of the hollow turrets
Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,
The armies of her ministering spirits--
In mighty legions, million after million, _460
They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere
They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.
53.
They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen _465
Of woven exhalations, underlaid
With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen
A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid
With crimson silk--cressets from the serene
Hung there, and on the water for her tread _470
A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,
Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.
54.
And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught
Upon those wandering isles of aery dew,
Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not, _475
She sate, and heard all that had happened new
Between the earth and moon, since they had brought
The last intelligence--and now she grew
Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night--
And now she wept, and now she laughed outright. _480
55.
These were tame pleasures; she would often climb
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the dolphin's back
Ride singing through the shoreless air;--oft-time _485
Following the serpent lightning's winding track,
She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
And laughed to bear the fire-balls roar behind.
56.
And sometimes to those streams of upper air
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round, _490
She would ascend, and win the spirits there
To let her join their chorus. Mortals found
That on those days the sky was calm and fair,
And mystic snatches of harmonious sound
Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed, _495
And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.
57.
But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,
To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads
Egypt and Aethiopia, from the steep
Of utmost Axume, until he spreads, _500
Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep,
His waters on the plain: and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid.
58.
By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes, _505
Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors,
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
Of those huge forms--within the brazen doors _510
Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.
59.
And where within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
And never are erased--but tremble ever _515
Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever
The works of man pierced that serenest sky
With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight
To wander in the shadow of the night. _520
60.
With motion like the spirit of that wind
Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind.
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,
Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined _525
With many a dark and subterranean street
Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.
61.
A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. _530
Here lay two sister twins in infancy;
There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
Within, two lovers linked innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
Like ivy from one stem;--and there lay calm _535
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.
62.
But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song--
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
And pale imaginings of visioned wrong; _540
And all the code of Custom's lawless law
Written upon the brows of old and young:
'This,' said the wizard maiden, 'is the strife
Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life. '
63.
And little did the sight disturb her soul. -- _545
We, the weak mariners of that wide lake
Where'er its shores extend or billows roll,
Our course unpiloted and starless make
O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal:--
But she in the calm depths her way could take, _550
Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide
Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.
64.
And she saw princes couched under the glow
Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
In dormitories ranged, row after row, _555
She saw the priests asleep--all of one sort--
For all were educated to be so. --
The peasants in their huts, and in the port
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,
And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. _560
65.
And all the forms in which those spirits lay
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array
Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us
Only their scorn of all concealment: they _565
Move in the light of their own beauty thus.
But these and all now lay with sleep upon them,
And little thought a Witch was looking on them.
66.
She, all those human figures breathing there,
Beheld as living spirits--to her eyes _570
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,
And often through a rude and worn disguise
She saw the inner form most bright and fair--
And then she had a charm of strange device,
Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, _575
Could make that spirit mingle with her own.
67.
Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given
For such a charm when Tithon became gray?
Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven
Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina _580
Had half (oh! why not all? ) the debt forgiven
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,
To any witch who would have taught you it?
The Heliad doth not know its value yet.
68.
'Tis said in after times her spirit free _585
Knew what love was, and felt itself alone--
But holy Dian could not chaster be
Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,
Than now this lady--like a sexless bee
Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none, _590
Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.
69.
To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:--
They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, _595
And lived thenceforward as if some control,
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. _600
70.
For on the night when they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery _605
Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.
71.
And there the body lay, age after age.
Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, _610
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arraying
In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind _615
And fleeting generations of mankind.
72.
And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake _620
Which the sand covers--all his evil gain
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar's lap;--the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.
73.
The priests would write an explanation full, _625
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the God Apis really was a bull,
And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull
The old cant down; they licensed all to speak _630
Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.
74.
The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne _635
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey. --Every one
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,
And kissed--alas, how many kiss the same! _640
75.
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares;--in a band _645
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.
76.
And timid lovers who had been so coy,
They hardly knew whether they loved or not, _650
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And when next day the maiden and the boy
Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
Blushed at the thing which each believed was done _655
Only in fancy--till the tenth moon shone;
77.
And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one,--and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. _660
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart--a wide wound, mind from mind! --
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
80.
These were the pranks she played among the cities _665
Of mortal men, and what she did to Sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
I will declare another time; for it is
A tale more fit for the weird winter nights _670
Than for these garish summer days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.
NOTES:
_2 dead]deaf cj. A. C. Bradley, who cps. "Adonais" 317.
_65 first was transcript, B. ; was first edition 1824.
_84 Temple's transcript, B. ; tempest's edition 1824.
_165 was its transcript, B. ; is its edition 1824.
_184 envied so all manuscripts and editions;
envious cj. James Thomson ('B. V. ').
_262 upon so all manuscripts and editions: thereon cj. Rossetti.
_333 swelled lightly edition 1824, B. ;
lightly swelled editions 1839;
swelling lightly with its full growth transcript.
_339 lightenings B. , editions 1839; lightnings edition 1824, transcript.
_422 Its transcript; His edition 1824, B.
_424 Thamondocana transcript, B. ; Thamondocona edition 1824.
_442 wind's transcript, B. ; winds' edition 1834.
_493 where transcript, B. ; when edition 1824.
_596 thenceforward B. ;
thence forth edition 1824; henceforward transcript.
_599 Was as a B. ; Was a edition 1824.
_601 night when transcript; night that edition 1824, B.
_612 smiles transcript, B. ; sleep edition 1824.
NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles
from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his
nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood.
The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered
picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The
peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome
sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we
visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of
August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte
San Pellegrino--a mountain of some height, on the top of which there
is a chapel, the object, during certain days of the year, of many
pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he
exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude
and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the
idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his
return, the "Witch of Atlas". This poem is peculiarly characteristic
of his tastes--wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and
discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas
that his imagination suggested.
The surpassing excellence of "The Cenci" had made me greatly desire
that Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that
would more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the
abstract and dreamy spirit of the "Witch of Atlas". It was not only
that I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but
I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers,
and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his
endeavours. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me
on my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was
in the right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the
public; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that
ought to have sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own
resources, and on the inspiration of his own soul; and wrote because
his mind overflowed, without the hope of being appreciated. I had not
the most distant wish that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his
lofty aspirations for the human race to the low ambition and pride of
the many; but I felt sure that, if his poems were more addressed to
the common feelings of men, his proper rank among the writers of the
day would be acknowledged, and that popularity as a poet would enable
his countrymen to do justice to his character and virtues, which in
those days it was the mode to attack with the most flagitious
calumnies and insulting abuse. That he felt these things deeply cannot
be doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting
from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart
sometimes in solitude, and he would writes few unfinished verses that
showed that he felt the sting; among such I find the following:--
'Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.
I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
Untouched by suffering through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
The hearts of others. . . And, when
I went among my kind, with triple brass
Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
To bear scorn, fear, and hate--a woful mass! '
I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of
sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my
persuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural
inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human
passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and
disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved
to shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting
love and hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as
borrowed their hues from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine
or paly twilight, from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of
the woods,--which celebrated the singing of the winds among the pines,
the flow of a murmuring stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds
which Nature creates in her solitudes. These are the materials which
form the "Witch of Atlas": it is a brilliant congregation of ideas
such as his senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during his
rambles in the sunny land he so much loved.
***
OEDIPUS TYRANNUS
OR
SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT.
A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC.
'Choose Reform or Civil War,
When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A CONSORT-QUEEN shall hunt a king with hogs,
Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR. '
[Begun at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 24, 1819;
published anonymously by J. Johnston, Cheapside (imprint C. F.
Seyfang), 1820. On a threat of prosecution the publisher surrendered
the whole impression, seven copies--the total number sold--excepted.
"Oedipus" does not appear in the first edition of the "Poetical
Works", 1839, but it was included by Mrs. Shelley in the second
edition of that year. Our text is that of the editio princeps, 1820,
save in three places, where the reading of edition 1820 will be found
in the notes. ]
ADVERTISEMENT.
Near that a dusty paint-box, some odd hooks,
A half-burnt match, an ivory block, three books,
Where conic sections, spherics, logarithms,
To great Laplace, from Saunderson and Sims, _95
Lie heaped in their harmonious disarray
Of figures,--disentangle them who may.
Baron de Tott's Memoirs beside them lie,
And some odd volumes of old chemistry.
Near those a most inexplicable thing, _100
With lead in the middle--I'm conjecturing
How to make Henry understand; but no--
I'll leave, as Spenser says, with many mo,
This secret in the pregnant womb of time,
Too vast a matter for so weak a rhyme. _105
And here like some weird Archimage sit I,
Plotting dark spells, and devilish enginery,
The self-impelling steam-wheels of the mind
Which pump up oaths from clergymen, and grind
The gentle spirit of our meek reviews _110
Into a powdery foam of salt abuse,
Ruffling the ocean of their self-content;--
I sit--and smile or sigh as is my bent,
But not for them--Libeccio rushes round
With an inconstant and an idle sound, _115
I heed him more than them--the thunder-smoke
Is gathering on the mountains, like a cloak
Folded athwart their shoulders broad and bare;
The ripe corn under the undulating air
Undulates like an ocean;--and the vines _120
Are trembling wide in all their trellised lines--
The murmur of the awakening sea doth fill
The empty pauses of the blast;--the hill
Looks hoary through the white electric rain,
And from the glens beyond, in sullen strain, _125
The interrupted thunder howls; above
One chasm of Heaven smiles, like the eye of Love
On the unquiet world;--while such things are,
How could one worth your friendship heed the war
Of worms? the shriek of the world's carrion jays, _130
Their censure, or their wonder, or their praise?
You are not here! the quaint witch Memory sees,
In vacant chairs, your absent images,
And points where once you sat, and now should be
But are not. --I demand if ever we _135
Shall meet as then we met;--and she replies.
Veiling in awe her second-sighted eyes;
'I know the past alone--but summon home
My sister Hope,--she speaks of all to come. '
But I, an old diviner, who knew well _140
Every false verse of that sweet oracle,
Turned to the sad enchantress once again,
And sought a respite from my gentle pain,
In citing every passage o'er and o'er
Of our communion--how on the sea-shore _145
We watched the ocean and the sky together,
Under the roof of blue Italian weather;
How I ran home through last year's thunder-storm,
And felt the transverse lightning linger warm
Upon my cheek--and how we often made _150
Feasts for each other, where good will outweighed
The frugal luxury of our country cheer,
As well it might, were it less firm and clear
Than ours must ever be;--and how we spun
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun _155
Of this familiar life, which seems to be
But is not:--or is but quaint mockery
Of all we would believe, and sadly blame
The jarring and inexplicable frame
Of this wrong world:--and then anatomize _160
The purposes and thoughts of men whose eyes
Were closed in distant years;--or widely guess
The issue of the earth's great business,
When we shall be as we no longer are--
Like babbling gossips safe, who hear the war _165
Of winds, and sigh, but tremble not;--or how
You listened to some interrupted flow
Of visionary rhyme,--in joy and pain
Struck from the inmost fountains of my brain,
With little skill perhaps;--or how we sought _170
Those deepest wells of passion or of thought
Wrought by wise poets in the waste of years,
Staining their sacred waters with our tears;
Quenching a thirst ever to be renewed!
Or how I, wisest lady! then endued _175
The language of a land which now is free,
And, winged with thoughts of truth and majesty,
Flits round the tyrant's sceptre like a cloud,
And bursts the peopled prisons, and cries aloud,
'My name is Legion! '--that majestic tongue _180
Which Calderon over the desert flung
Of ages and of nations; and which found
An echo in our hearts, and with the sound
Startled oblivion;--thou wert then to me
As is a nurse--when inarticulately _185
A child would talk as its grown parents do.
If living winds the rapid clouds pursue,
If hawks chase doves through the aethereal way,
Huntsmen the innocent deer, and beasts their prey,
Why should not we rouse with the spirit's blast _190
Out of the forest of the pathless past
These recollected pleasures?
You are now
In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow
At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore
Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. _195
Yet in its depth what treasures! You will see
That which was Godwin,--greater none than he
Though fallen--and fallen on evil times--to stand
Among the spirits of our age and land,
Before the dread tribunal of "to come" _200
The foremost,--while Rebuke cowers pale and dumb.
You will see Coleridge--he who sits obscure
In the exceeding lustre and the pure
Intense irradiation of a mind,
Which, with its own internal lightning blind, _200
Flags wearily through darkness and despair--
A cloud-encircled meteor of the air,
A hooded eagle among blinking owls. --
You will see Hunt--one of those happy souls
Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom _210
This world would smell like what it is--a tomb;
Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt
Is still adorned with many a cast from Shout,
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about;
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung, _215
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung;
The gifts of the most learned among some dozens
Of female friends, sisters-in-law, and cousins.
And there is he with his eternal puns,
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns _220
Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say, 'I'm poor! '
Or oft in graver mood, when he will look
Things wiser than were ever read in book,
Except in Shakespeare's wisest tenderness. -- _225
You will see Hogg,--and I cannot express
His virtues,--though I know that they are great,
Because he locks, then barricades the gate
Within which they inhabit;--of his wit
And wisdom, you'll cry out when you are bit. _230
He is a pearl within an oyster shell.
One of the richest of the deep;--and there
Is English Peacock, with his mountain Fair,
Turned into a Flamingo;--that shy bird
That gleams i' the Indian air--have you not heard _235
When a man marries, dies, or turns Hindoo,
His best friends hear no more of him? --but you
Will see him, and will like him too, I hope,
With the milk-white Snowdonian Antelope
Matched with this cameleopard--his fine wit _240
Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it;
A strain too learned for a shallow age,
Too wise for selfish bigots; let his page,
Which charms the chosen spirits of the time,
Fold itself up for the serener clime _245
Of years to come, and find its recompense
In that just expectation. --Wit and sense,
Virtue and human knowledge; all that might
Make this dull world a business of delight,
Are all combined in Horace Smith. --And these. _250
With some exceptions, which I need not tease
Your patience by descanting on,--are all
You and I know in London.
I recall
My thoughts, and bid you look upon the night.
As water does a sponge, so the moonlight _255
Fills the void, hollow, universal air--
What see you? --unpavilioned Heaven is fair,
Whether the moon, into her chamber gone,
Leaves midnight to the golden stars, or wan
Climbs with diminished beams the azure steep; _260
Or whether clouds sail o'er the inverse deep,
Piloted by the many-wandering blast,
And the rare stars rush through them dim and fast:--
All this is beautiful in every land. --
But what see you beside? --a shabby stand _265
Of Hackney coaches--a brick house or wall
Fencing some lonely court, white with the scrawl
Of our unhappy politics;--or worse--
A wretched woman reeling by, whose curse
Mixed with the watchman's, partner of her trade, _270
You must accept in place of serenade--
Or yellow-haired Pollonia murmuring
To Henry, some unutterable thing.
I see a chaos of green leaves and fruit
Built round dark caverns, even to the root _275
Of the living stems that feed them--in whose bowers
There sleep in their dark dew the folded flowers;
Beyond, the surface of the unsickled corn
Trembles not in the slumbering air, and borne
In circles quaint, and ever-changing dance, _280
Like winged stars the fire-flies flash and glance,
Pale in the open moonshine, but each one
Under the dark trees seems a little sun,
A meteor tamed; a fixed star gone astray
From the silver regions of the milky way;-- _285
Afar the Contadino's song is heard,
Rude, but made sweet by distance--and a bird
Which cannot be the Nightingale, and yet
I know none else that sings so sweet as it
At this late hour;--and then all is still-- _290
Now--Italy or London, which you will!
Next winter you must pass with me; I'll have
My house by that time turned into a grave
Of dead despondence and low-thoughted care,
And all the dreams which our tormentors are; _295
Oh! that Hunt, Hogg, Peacock, and Smith were there,
With everything belonging to them fair! --
We will have books, Spanish, Italian, Greek;
And ask one week to make another week
As like his father, as I'm unlike mine, _300
Which is not his fault, as you may divine.
Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let's be merry: we'll have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies, _305
And other such lady-like luxuries,--
Feasting on which we will philosophize!
And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's wood,
To thaw the six weeks' winter in our blood.
And then we'll talk;--what shall we talk about? _310
Oh! there are themes enough for many a bout
Of thought-entangled descant;--as to nerves--
With cones and parallelograms and curves
I've sworn to strangle them if once they dare
To bother me--when you are with me there. _315
And they shall never more sip laudanum,
From Helicon or Himeros (1);--well, come,
And in despite of God and of the devil,
We'll make our friendly philosophic revel
Outlast the leafless time; till buds and flowers _320
Warn the obscure inevitable hours,
Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;--
'To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. '
NOTES:
_13 must Bos. manuscript; most edition 1824.
_27 philanthropic Bos. manuscript; philosophic edition 1824.
_29 so 1839, 2nd edition; They owed. . . edition 1824.
_36 Which fishers Bos. manuscript; Which fishes edition 1824;
With fishes editions 1839.
_38 rarely transcript; seldom editions 1824, 1839.
_61 lava--cry]lava-cry editions 1824, 1839.
_63 towers transcript; towns editions 1824, 1839.
_84 queer Bos. manuscript; green transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_92 odd hooks transcript; old books editions 1839 (an evident misprint);
old hooks edition 1824.
_93 A]An edition 1824.
_100 those transcript; them editions 1824, 1839.
_101 lead Bos. manuscript; least transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_127 eye Bos. manuscript, transcript, editions 1839; age edition 1824.
_140 knew Bos. manuscript; know transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_144 citing Bos. manuscript; acting transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_151 Feasts transcript; Treats editions 1824, 1839.
_153 As well it]As it well editions 1824, 1839.
_158 believe, and]believe; or editions 1824, 1839.
_173 their transcript; the editions 1824, 1839.
_188 aethereal transcript; aereal editions 1824, 1839.
_197-201 See notes Volume 3.
_202 Coleridge]C-- edition 1824. So too H--t l. 209; H-- l. 226;
P-- l. 233; H. S. l. 250; H-- -- and -- l. 296.
_205 lightning Bos. manuscript, transcript; lustre editions 1824, 1839.
_224 read Bos. manuscript; said transcript, editions 1824, 1839.
_244 time Bos. manuscript, transcript; age editions 1824, 1839.
_245 the transcript: a editions 1824, 1839.
_272, _273 found in the 2nd edition of P. W. , 1839;
wanting in transcript, edition 1824 and 1839, 1st. edition.
_276 that transcript; who editions 1824, 1839.
_288 the transcript; a editions 1824, 1839.
_296 See notes Volume 3.
_299, _300 So 1839, 2nd edition; wanting in editions 1824, 1839, 1st.
_301 So transcript; wanting in editions 1824, 1839.
_317 well, come 1839, 2nd edition; we'll come editions 1824, 1839. 1st.
_318 despite of God] transcript; despite of. . . edition 1824;
spite of. . . editions 1839.
(_317 Imeros, from which the river Himera was named, is, with some
slight shade of difference, a synonym of Love. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ]
***
THE WITCH OF ATLAS.
[Composed at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 14-16, 1820;
published in Posthumous Poems, edition Mrs. Shelley, 1824. The
dedication To Mas-y first appeared in the Poetical Works, 1839, 1st
edition Sources of the text are (1) the editio princeps, 1824; (2)
editions 1839 (which agree, and, save in two instances, follow edition
1824); (3) an early and incomplete manuscript in Shelley's handwriting
(now at the Bodleian, here, as throughout, cited as B. ), carefully
collated by Mr. C. D. Locock, who printed the results in his
Examination of the Shelley manuscripts, etc. , Oxford, Clarendon Press,
1903; (4) a later, yet intermediate, transcript by Mrs. Shelley, the
variations of which are noted by Mr. H. Buxton Forman. The original
text is modified in many places by variants from the manuscripts, but
the readings of edition 1824 are, in every instance, given in the
footnotes. ]
TO MARY
(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE
SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST).
1.
How, my dear Mary,--are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten, _5
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
2.
What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions, _10
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile, _15
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.
3.
To thy fair feet a winged Vision came,
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display; _20
The watery bow burned in the evening flame.
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way--
And that is dead. --O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!
4.
Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years _25
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well _30
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.
5.
My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsons--but she matches Peter, _35
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness. ' _40
6.
If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello. _45
If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
Can shrive you of that sin,--if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.
THE WITCH OF ATLAS.
1.
Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth
Incestuous Change bore to her father Time, _50
Error and Truth, had hunted from the Earth
All those bright natures which adorned its prime,
And left us nothing to believe in, worth
The pains of putting into learned rhyme,
A lady-witch there lived on Atlas' mountain _55
Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.
2.
Her mother was one of the Atlantides:
The all-beholding Sun had ne'er beholden
In his wide voyage o'er continents and seas
So fair a creature, as she lay enfolden _60
In the warm shadow of her loveliness;--
He kissed her with his beams, and made all golden
The chamber of gray rock in which she lay--
She, in that dream of joy, dissolved away.
3.
'Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour, _65
And then into a cloud, such clouds as flit,
Like splendour-winged moths about a taper,
Round the red west when the sun dies in it:
And then into a meteor, such as caper
On hill-tops when the moon is in a fit: _70
Then, into one of those mysterious stars
Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.
4.
Ten times the Mother of the Months had bent
Her bow beside the folding-star, and bidden
With that bright sign the billows to indent _75
The sea-deserted sand--like children chidden,
At her command they ever came and went--
Since in that cave a dewy splendour hidden
Took shape and motion: with the living form
Of this embodied Power, the cave grew warm. _80
5.
A lovely lady garmented in light
From her own beauty--deep her eyes, as are
Two openings of unfathomable night
Seen through a Temple's cloven roof--her hair
Dark--the dim brain whirls dizzy with delight. _85
Picturing her form; her soft smiles shone afar,
And her low voice was heard like love, and drew
All living things towards this wonder new.
6.
And first the spotted cameleopard came,
And then the wise and fearless elephant; _90
Then the sly serpent, in the golden flame
Of his own volumes intervolved;--all gaunt
And sanguine beasts her gentle looks made tame.
They drank before her at her sacred fount;
And every beast of beating heart grew bold, _95
Such gentleness and power even to behold.
7.
The brinded lioness led forth her young,
That she might teach them how they should forego
Their inborn thirst of death; the pard unstrung
His sinews at her feet, and sought to know _100
With looks whose motions spoke without a tongue
How he might be as gentle as the doe.
The magic circle of her voice and eyes
All savage natures did imparadise.
8.
And old Silenus, shaking a green stick _105
Of lilies, and the wood-gods in a crew
Came, blithe, as in the olive copses thick
Cicadae are, drunk with the noonday dew:
And Dryope and Faunus followed quick,
Teasing the God to sing them something new; _110
Till in this cave they found the lady lone,
Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.
9.
And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there,
And though none saw him,--through the adamant
Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air, _115
And through those living spirits, like a want,
He passed out of his everlasting lair
Where the quick heart of the great world doth pant,
And felt that wondrous lady all alone,--
And she felt him, upon her emerald throne. _120
10.
And every nymph of stream and spreading tree,
And every shepherdess of Ocean's flocks,
Who drives her white waves over the green sea,
And Ocean with the brine on his gray locks,
And quaint Priapus with his company, _125
All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks
Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;--
Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.
11.
The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,
And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant-- _130
Their spirits shook within them, as a flame
Stirred by the air under a cavern gaunt:
Pigmies, and Polyphemes, by many a name,
Centaurs, and Satyrs, and such shapes as haunt
Wet clefts,--and lumps neither alive nor dead, _135
Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.
12.
For she was beautiful--her beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade:
No thought of living spirit could abide, _140
Which to her looks had ever been betrayed,
On any object in the world so wide,
On any hope within the circling skies,
But on her form, and in her inmost eyes.
13.
Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle _145
And twined three threads of fleecy mist, and three
Long lines of light, such as the dawn may kindle
The clouds and waves and mountains with; and she
As many star-beams, ere their lamps could dwindle
In the belated moon, wound skilfully; _150
And with these threads a subtle veil she wove--
A shadow for the splendour of her love.
14.
The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
Were stored with magic treasures--sounds of air,
Which had the power all spirits of compelling, _155
Folded in cells of crystal silence there;
Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
Will never die--yet ere we are aware,
The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
And the regret they leave remains alone. _160
15.
And there lay Visions swift, and sweet, and quaint,
Each in its thin sheath, like a chrysalis,
Some eager to burst forth, some weak and faint
With the soft burthen of intensest bliss.
It was its work to bear to many a saint _165
Whose heart adores the shrine which holiest is,
Even Love's:--and others white, green, gray, and black,
And of all shapes--and each was at her beck.
16.
And odours in a kind of aviary
Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept, _170
Clipped in a floating net, a love-sick Fairy
Had woven from dew-beams while the moon yet slept;
As bats at the wired window of a dairy,
They beat their vans; and each was an adept,
When loosed and missioned, making wings of winds, _175
To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.
17.
And liquors clear and sweet, whose healthful might
Could medicine the sick soul to happy sleep,
And change eternal death into a night
Of glorious dreams--or if eyes needs must weep, _180
Could make their tears all wonder and delight,
She in her crystal vials did closely keep:
If men could drink of those clear vials, 'tis said
The living were not envied of the dead.
18.
Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device, _185
The works of some Saturnian Archimage,
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the Gods might win that happy age
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
And which might quench the Earth-consuming rage _190
Of gold and blood--till men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above;
19.
And how all things that seem untameable,
Not to be checked and not to be confined,
Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill; _195
Time, earth, and fire--the ocean and the wind,
And all their shapes--and man's imperial will;
And other scrolls whose writings did unbind
The inmost lore of Love--let the profane
Tremble to ask what secrets they contain. _200
20.
And wondrous works of substances unknown,
To which the enchantment of her father's power
Had changed those ragged blocks of savage stone,
Were heaped in the recesses of her bower;
Carved lamps and chalices, and vials which shone _205
In their own golden beams--each like a flower,
Out of whose depth a fire-fly shakes his light
Under a cypress in a starless night.
21.
At first she lived alone in this wild home,
And her own thoughts were each a minister, _210
Clothing themselves, or with the ocean foam,
Or with the wind, or with the speed of fire,
To work whatever purposes might come
Into her mind; such power her mighty Sire
Had girt them with, whether to fly or run, _215
Through all the regions which he shines upon.
22.
The Ocean-nymphs and Hamadryades,
Oreads and Naiads, with long weedy locks,
Offered to do her bidding through the seas,
Under the earth, and in the hollow rocks, _220
And far beneath the matted roots of trees,
And in the gnarled heart of stubborn oaks,
So they might live for ever in the light
Of her sweet presence--each a satellite.
23.
'This may not be,' the wizard maid replied; _225
'The fountains where the Naiades bedew
Their shining hair, at length are drained and dried;
The solid oaks forget their strength, and strew
Their latest leaf upon the mountains wide;
The boundless ocean like a drop of dew _230
Will be consumed--the stubborn centre must
Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.
24.
'And ye with them will perish, one by one;--
If I must sigh to think that this shall be,
If I must weep when the surviving Sun _235
Shall smile on your decay--oh, ask not me
To love you till your little race is run;
I cannot die as ye must--over me
Your leaves shall glance--the streams in which ye dwell
Shall be my paths henceforth, and so--farewell! '-- _240
25.
She spoke and wept:--the dark and azure well
Sparkled beneath the shower of her bright tears,
And every little circlet where they fell
Flung to the cavern-roof inconstant spheres
And intertangled lines of light:--a knell _245
Of sobbing voices came upon her ears
From those departing Forms, o'er the serene
Of the white streams and of the forest green.
26.
All day the wizard lady sate aloof,
Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity, _250
Under the cavern's fountain-lighted roof;
Or broidering the pictured poesy
Of some high tale upon her growing woof,
Which the sweet splendour of her smiles could dye
In hues outshining heaven--and ever she _255
Added some grace to the wrought poesy.
27.
While on her hearth lay blazing many a piece
Of sandal wood, rare gums, and cinnamon;
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is--
Each flame of it is as a precious stone _260
Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this
Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.
The Witch beheld it not, for in her hand
She held a woof that dimmed the burning brand.
28.
This lady never slept, but lay in trance _265
All night within the fountain--as in sleep.
Its emerald crags glowed in her beauty's glance;
Through the green splendour of the water deep
She saw the constellations reel and dance
Like fire-flies--and withal did ever keep _270
The tenour of her contemplations calm,
With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm.
29.
And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended
From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,
She passed at dewfall to a space extended, _275
Where in a lawn of flowering asphodel
Amid a wood of pines and cedars blended,
There yawned an inextinguishable well
Of crimson fire--full even to the brim,
And overflowing all the margin trim. _280
30.
Within the which she lay when the fierce war
Of wintry winds shook that innocuous liquor
In many a mimic moon and bearded star
O'er woods and lawns;--the serpent heard it flicker
In sleep, and dreaming still, he crept afar-- _285
And when the windless snow descended thicker
Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came
Melt on the surface of the level flame.
31.
She had a boat, which some say Vulcan wrought
For Venus, as the chariot of her star; _290
But it was found too feeble to be fraught
With all the ardours in that sphere which are,
And so she sold it, and Apollo bought
And gave it to this daughter: from a car
Changed to the fairest and the lightest boat _295
Which ever upon mortal stream did float.
32.
And others say, that, when but three hours old,
The first-born Love out of his cradle lept,
And clove dun Chaos with his wings of gold,
And like a horticultural adept, _300
Stole a strange seed, and wrapped it up in mould,
And sowed it in his mother's star, and kept
Watering it all the summer with sweet dew,
And with his wings fanning it as it grew.
33.
The plant grew strong and green, the snowy flower _305
Fell, and the long and gourd-like fruit began
To turn the light and dew by inward power
To its own substance; woven tracery ran
Of light firm texture, ribbed and branching, o'er
The solid rind, like a leaf's veined fan-- _310
Of which Love scooped this boat--and with soft motion
Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.
34.
This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit
A living spirit within all its frame,
Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. _315
Couched on the fountain like a panther tame,
One of the twain at Evan's feet that sit--
Or as on Vesta's sceptre a swift flame--
Or on blind Homer's heart a winged thought,--
In joyous expectation lay the boat. _320
35.
Then by strange art she kneaded fire and snow
Together, tempering the repugnant mass
With liquid love--all things together grow
Through which the harmony of love can pass;
And a fair Shape out of her hands did flow-- _325
A living Image, which did far surpass
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.
36.
A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
It seemed to have developed no defect _330
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both,--
In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked;
The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,
The countenance was such as might select
Some artist that his skill should never die, _335
Imaging forth such perfect purity.
37.
From its smooth shoulders hung two rapid wings,
Fit to have borne it to the seventh sphere,
Tipped with the speed of liquid lightenings,
Dyed in the ardours of the atmosphere: _340
She led her creature to the boiling springs
Where the light boat was moored, and said: 'Sit here! '
And pointed to the prow, and took her seat
Beside the rudder, with opposing feet.
38.
And down the streams which clove those mountains vast, _345
Around their inland islets, and amid
The panther-peopled forests whose shade cast
Darkness and odours, and a pleasure hid
In melancholy gloom, the pinnace passed;
By many a star-surrounded pyramid _350
Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,
And caverns yawning round unfathomably.
39.
The silver noon into that winding dell,
With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,
Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell; _355
A green and glowing light, like that which drops
From folded lilies in which glow-worms dwell,
When Earth over her face Night's mantle wraps;
Between the severed mountains lay on high,
Over the stream, a narrow rift of sky. _360
40.
And ever as she went, the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes;
And o'er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies,
Chasing the rapid smiles that would not stay, _365
And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs
Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,
They had aroused from that full heart and brain.
41.
And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud
Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went: _370
Now lingering on the pools, in which abode
The calm and darkness of the deep content
In which they paused; now o'er the shallow road
Of white and dancing waters, all besprent
With sand and polished pebbles:--mortal boat _375
In such a shallow rapid could not float.
42.
And down the earthquaking cataracts which shiver
Their snow-like waters into golden air,
Or under chasms unfathomable ever
Sepulchre them, till in their rage they tear _380
A subterranean portal for the river,
It fled--the circling sunbows did upbear
Its fall down the hoar precipice of spray,
Lighting it far upon its lampless way.
43.
And when the wizard lady would ascend _385
The labyrinths of some many-winding vale,
Which to the inmost mountain upward tend--
She called 'Hermaphroditus! '--and the pale
And heavy hue which slumber could extend
Over its lips and eyes, as on the gale _390
A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,
Into the darkness of the stream did pass.
44.
And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,
With stars of fire spotting the stream below;
And from above into the Sun's dominions _395
Flinging a glory, like the golden glow
In which Spring clothes her emerald-winged minions,
All interwoven with fine feathery snow
And moonlight splendour of intensest rime,
With which frost paints the pines in winter time. _400
45.
And then it winnowed the Elysian air
Which ever hung about that lady bright,
With its aethereal vans--and speeding there,
Like a star up the torrent of the night,
Or a swift eagle in the morning glare _405
Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,
The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,
Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.
46.
The water flashed, like sunlight by the prow
Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven; _410
The still air seemed as if its waves did flow
In tempest down the mountains; loosely driven
The lady's radiant hair streamed to and fro:
Beneath, the billows having vainly striven
Indignant and impetuous, roared to feel _415
The swift and steady motion of the keel.
47.
Or, when the weary moon was in the wane,
Or in the noon of interlunar night,
The lady-witch in visions could not chain
Her spirit; but sailed forth under the light _420
Of shooting stars, and bade extend amain
Its storm-outspeeding wings, the Hermaphrodite;
She to the Austral waters took her way,
Beyond the fabulous Thamondocana,--
48.
Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven, _425
Which rain could never bend, or whirl-blast shake,
With the Antarctic constellations paven,
Canopus and his crew, lay the Austral lake--
There she would build herself a windless haven
Out of the clouds whose moving turrets make _430
The bastions of the storm, when through the sky
The spirits of the tempest thundered by:
49.
A haven beneath whose translucent floor
The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,
And around which the solid vapours hoar, _435
Based on the level waters, to the sky
Lifted their dreadful crags, and like a shore
Of wintry mountains, inaccessibly
Hemmed in with rifts and precipices gray,
And hanging crags, many a cove and bay. _440
50.
And whilst the outer lake beneath the lash
Of the wind's scourge, foamed like a wounded thing,
And the incessant hail with stony clash
Ploughed up the waters, and the flagging wing
Of the roused cormorant in the lightning flash _445
Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering
Fragment of inky thunder-smoke--this haven
Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven,--
51.
On which that lady played her many pranks,
Circling the image of a shooting star, _450
Even as a tiger on Hydaspes' banks
Outspeeds the antelopes which speediest are,
In her light boat; and many quips and cranks
She played upon the water, till the car
Of the late moon, like a sick matron wan, _455
To journey from the misty east began.
52.
And then she called out of the hollow turrets
Of those high clouds, white, golden and vermilion,
The armies of her ministering spirits--
In mighty legions, million after million, _460
They came, each troop emblazoning its merits
On meteor flags; and many a proud pavilion
Of the intertexture of the atmosphere
They pitched upon the plain of the calm mere.
53.
They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen _465
Of woven exhalations, underlaid
With lambent lightning-fire, as may be seen
A dome of thin and open ivory inlaid
With crimson silk--cressets from the serene
Hung there, and on the water for her tread _470
A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,
Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.
54.
And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught
Upon those wandering isles of aery dew,
Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not, _475
She sate, and heard all that had happened new
Between the earth and moon, since they had brought
The last intelligence--and now she grew
Pale as that moon, lost in the watery night--
And now she wept, and now she laughed outright. _480
55.
These were tame pleasures; she would often climb
The steepest ladder of the crudded rack
Up to some beaked cape of cloud sublime,
And like Arion on the dolphin's back
Ride singing through the shoreless air;--oft-time _485
Following the serpent lightning's winding track,
She ran upon the platforms of the wind,
And laughed to bear the fire-balls roar behind.
56.
And sometimes to those streams of upper air
Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round, _490
She would ascend, and win the spirits there
To let her join their chorus. Mortals found
That on those days the sky was calm and fair,
And mystic snatches of harmonious sound
Wandered upon the earth where'er she passed, _495
And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.
57.
But her choice sport was, in the hours of sleep,
To glide adown old Nilus, where he threads
Egypt and Aethiopia, from the steep
Of utmost Axume, until he spreads, _500
Like a calm flock of silver-fleeced sheep,
His waters on the plain: and crested heads
Of cities and proud temples gleam amid,
And many a vapour-belted pyramid.
58.
By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes, _505
Strewn with faint blooms like bridal chamber floors,
Where naked boys bridling tame water-snakes,
Or charioteering ghastly alligators,
Had left on the sweet waters mighty wakes
Of those huge forms--within the brazen doors _510
Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,
Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.
59.
And where within the surface of the river
The shadows of the massy temples lie,
And never are erased--but tremble ever _515
Like things which every cloud can doom to die,
Through lotus-paven canals, and wheresoever
The works of man pierced that serenest sky
With tombs, and towers, and fanes, 'twas her delight
To wander in the shadow of the night. _520
60.
With motion like the spirit of that wind
Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
Passed through the peopled haunts of humankind.
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet,
Through fane, and palace-court, and labyrinth mined _525
With many a dark and subterranean street
Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep
She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.
61.
A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see
Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep. _530
Here lay two sister twins in infancy;
There, a lone youth who in his dreams did weep;
Within, two lovers linked innocently
In their loose locks which over both did creep
Like ivy from one stem;--and there lay calm _535
Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.
62.
But other troubled forms of sleep she saw,
Not to be mirrored in a holy song--
Distortions foul of supernatural awe,
And pale imaginings of visioned wrong; _540
And all the code of Custom's lawless law
Written upon the brows of old and young:
'This,' said the wizard maiden, 'is the strife
Which stirs the liquid surface of man's life. '
63.
And little did the sight disturb her soul. -- _545
We, the weak mariners of that wide lake
Where'er its shores extend or billows roll,
Our course unpiloted and starless make
O'er its wild surface to an unknown goal:--
But she in the calm depths her way could take, _550
Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide
Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.
64.
And she saw princes couched under the glow
Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court
In dormitories ranged, row after row, _555
She saw the priests asleep--all of one sort--
For all were educated to be so. --
The peasants in their huts, and in the port
The sailors she saw cradled on the waves,
And the dead lulled within their dreamless graves. _560
65.
And all the forms in which those spirits lay
Were to her sight like the diaphanous
Veils, in which those sweet ladies oft array
Their delicate limbs, who would conceal from us
Only their scorn of all concealment: they _565
Move in the light of their own beauty thus.
But these and all now lay with sleep upon them,
And little thought a Witch was looking on them.
66.
She, all those human figures breathing there,
Beheld as living spirits--to her eyes _570
The naked beauty of the soul lay bare,
And often through a rude and worn disguise
She saw the inner form most bright and fair--
And then she had a charm of strange device,
Which, murmured on mute lips with tender tone, _575
Could make that spirit mingle with her own.
67.
Alas! Aurora, what wouldst thou have given
For such a charm when Tithon became gray?
Or how much, Venus, of thy silver heaven
Wouldst thou have yielded, ere Proserpina _580
Had half (oh! why not all? ) the debt forgiven
Which dear Adonis had been doomed to pay,
To any witch who would have taught you it?
The Heliad doth not know its value yet.
68.
'Tis said in after times her spirit free _585
Knew what love was, and felt itself alone--
But holy Dian could not chaster be
Before she stooped to kiss Endymion,
Than now this lady--like a sexless bee
Tasting all blossoms, and confined to none, _590
Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden
Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.
69.
To those she saw most beautiful, she gave
Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:--
They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave, _595
And lived thenceforward as if some control,
Mightier than life, were in them; and the grave
Of such, when death oppressed the weary soul,
Was as a green and overarching bower
Lit by the gems of many a starry flower. _600
70.
For on the night when they were buried, she
Restored the embalmers' ruining, and shook
The light out of the funeral lamps, to be
A mimic day within that deathy nook;
And she unwound the woven imagery _605
Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took
The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,
And threw it with contempt into a ditch.
71.
And there the body lay, age after age.
Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying, _610
Like one asleep in a green hermitage,
With gentle smiles about its eyelids playing,
And living in its dreams beyond the rage
Of death or life; while they were still arraying
In liveries ever new, the rapid, blind _615
And fleeting generations of mankind.
72.
And she would write strange dreams upon the brain
Of those who were less beautiful, and make
All harsh and crooked purposes more vain
Than in the desert is the serpent's wake _620
Which the sand covers--all his evil gain
The miser in such dreams would rise and shake
Into a beggar's lap;--the lying scribe
Would his own lies betray without a bribe.
73.
The priests would write an explanation full, _625
Translating hieroglyphics into Greek,
How the God Apis really was a bull,
And nothing more; and bid the herald stick
The same against the temple doors, and pull
The old cant down; they licensed all to speak _630
Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,
By pastoral letters to each diocese.
74.
The king would dress an ape up in his crown
And robes, and seat him on his glorious seat,
And on the right hand of the sunlike throne _635
Would place a gaudy mock-bird to repeat
The chatterings of the monkey. --Every one
Of the prone courtiers crawled to kiss the feet
Of their great Emperor, when the morning came,
And kissed--alas, how many kiss the same! _640
75.
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism;
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan's sooty abysm,
Beating their swords to ploughshares;--in a band _645
The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism
Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,
To the annoyance of king Amasis.
76.
And timid lovers who had been so coy,
They hardly knew whether they loved or not, _650
Would rise out of their rest, and take sweet joy,
To the fulfilment of their inmost thought;
And when next day the maiden and the boy
Met one another, both, like sinners caught,
Blushed at the thing which each believed was done _655
Only in fancy--till the tenth moon shone;
77.
And then the Witch would let them take no ill:
Of many thousand schemes which lovers find,
The Witch found one,--and so they took their fill
Of happiness in marriage warm and kind. _660
Friends who, by practice of some envious skill,
Were torn apart--a wide wound, mind from mind! --
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
80.
These were the pranks she played among the cities _665
Of mortal men, and what she did to Sprites
And Gods, entangling them in her sweet ditties
To do her will, and show their subtle sleights,
I will declare another time; for it is
A tale more fit for the weird winter nights _670
Than for these garish summer days, when we
Scarcely believe much more than we can see.
NOTES:
_2 dead]deaf cj. A. C. Bradley, who cps. "Adonais" 317.
_65 first was transcript, B. ; was first edition 1824.
_84 Temple's transcript, B. ; tempest's edition 1824.
_165 was its transcript, B. ; is its edition 1824.
_184 envied so all manuscripts and editions;
envious cj. James Thomson ('B. V. ').
_262 upon so all manuscripts and editions: thereon cj. Rossetti.
_333 swelled lightly edition 1824, B. ;
lightly swelled editions 1839;
swelling lightly with its full growth transcript.
_339 lightenings B. , editions 1839; lightnings edition 1824, transcript.
_422 Its transcript; His edition 1824, B.
_424 Thamondocana transcript, B. ; Thamondocona edition 1824.
_442 wind's transcript, B. ; winds' edition 1834.
_493 where transcript, B. ; when edition 1824.
_596 thenceforward B. ;
thence forth edition 1824; henceforward transcript.
_599 Was as a B. ; Was a edition 1824.
_601 night when transcript; night that edition 1824, B.
_612 smiles transcript, B. ; sleep edition 1824.
NOTE ON THE WITCH OF ATLAS, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
We spent the summer of 1820 at the Baths of San Giuliano, four miles
from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his
nervous irritability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood.
The country around is fertile, and diversified and rendered
picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The
peasantry are a handsome intelligent race; and there was a gladsome
sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we
visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of
August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte
San Pellegrino--a mountain of some height, on the top of which there
is a chapel, the object, during certain days of the year, of many
pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted; though he
exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude
and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the
idea, and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his
return, the "Witch of Atlas". This poem is peculiarly characteristic
of his tastes--wildly fanciful, full of brilliant imagery, and
discarding human interest and passion, to revel in the fantastic ideas
that his imagination suggested.
The surpassing excellence of "The Cenci" had made me greatly desire
that Shelley should increase his popularity by adopting subjects that
would more suit the popular taste than a poem conceived in the
abstract and dreamy spirit of the "Witch of Atlas". It was not only
that I wished him to acquire popularity as redounding to his fame; but
I believed that he would obtain a greater mastery over his own powers,
and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his
endeavours. The few stanzas that precede the poem were addressed to me
on my representing these ideas to him. Even now I believe that I was
in the right. Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the
public; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardour that
ought to have sustained him while writing. He was thrown on his own
resources, and on the inspiration of his own soul; and wrote because
his mind overflowed, without the hope of being appreciated. I had not
the most distant wish that he should truckle in opinion, or submit his
lofty aspirations for the human race to the low ambition and pride of
the many; but I felt sure that, if his poems were more addressed to
the common feelings of men, his proper rank among the writers of the
day would be acknowledged, and that popularity as a poet would enable
his countrymen to do justice to his character and virtues, which in
those days it was the mode to attack with the most flagitious
calumnies and insulting abuse. That he felt these things deeply cannot
be doubted, though he armed himself with the consciousness of acting
from a lofty and heroic sense of right. The truth burst from his heart
sometimes in solitude, and he would writes few unfinished verses that
showed that he felt the sting; among such I find the following:--
'Alas! this is not what I thought Life was.
I knew that there were crimes and evil men,
Misery and hate; nor did I hope to pass
Untouched by suffering through the rugged glen.
In mine own heart I saw as in a glass
The hearts of others. . . And, when
I went among my kind, with triple brass
Of calm endurance my weak breast I armed,
To bear scorn, fear, and hate--a woful mass! '
I believed that all this morbid feeling would vanish if the chord of
sympathy between him and his countrymen were touched. But my
persuasions were vain, the mind could not be bent from its natural
inclination. Shelley shrunk instinctively from portraying human
passion, with its mixture of good and evil, of disappointment and
disquiet. Such opened again the wounds of his own heart; and he loved
to shelter himself rather in the airiest flights of fancy, forgetting
love and hate, and regret and lost hope, in such imaginations as
borrowed their hues from sunrise or sunset, from the yellow moonshine
or paly twilight, from the aspect of the far ocean or the shadows of
the woods,--which celebrated the singing of the winds among the pines,
the flow of a murmuring stream, and the thousand harmonious sounds
which Nature creates in her solitudes. These are the materials which
form the "Witch of Atlas": it is a brilliant congregation of ideas
such as his senses gathered, and his fancy coloured, during his
rambles in the sunny land he so much loved.
***
OEDIPUS TYRANNUS
OR
SWELLFOOT THE TYRANT.
A TRAGEDY IN TWO ACTS
TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL DORIC.
'Choose Reform or Civil War,
When through thy streets, instead of hare with dogs,
A CONSORT-QUEEN shall hunt a king with hogs,
Riding on the IONIAN MINOTAUR. '
[Begun at the Baths of San Giuliano, near Pisa, August 24, 1819;
published anonymously by J. Johnston, Cheapside (imprint C. F.
Seyfang), 1820. On a threat of prosecution the publisher surrendered
the whole impression, seven copies--the total number sold--excepted.
"Oedipus" does not appear in the first edition of the "Poetical
Works", 1839, but it was included by Mrs. Shelley in the second
edition of that year. Our text is that of the editio princeps, 1820,
save in three places, where the reading of edition 1820 will be found
in the notes. ]
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