Is not to-morrow even as
yesterday?
Shelley copy
Watch the look askance and old--
See neglect, and falsehood fold. . . _10
***
ODE TO THE WEST WIND.
(This poem was conceived and chiefly written in a wood that skirts the
Arno, near Florence, and on a day when that tempestuous wind, whose
temperature is at once mild and animating, was collecting the vapours
which pour down the autumnal rains. They began, as I foresaw, at sunset
with a violent tempest of hail and rain, attended by that magnificent
thunder and lightning peculiar to the Cisalpine regions.
The phenomenon alluded to at the conclusion of the third stanza is well
known to naturalists. The vegetation at the bottom of the sea, of
rivers, and of lakes, sympathizes with that of the land in the change
of seasons, and is consequently influenced by the winds which announce
it. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])
[Published with "Prometheus Unbound", 1820. ]
1.
O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, _5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill _10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh, hear!
2.
Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, _15
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head _20
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, _25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!
3.
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, _30
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers _35
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know _40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!
4.
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share _45
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed _50
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed _55
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.
5.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, _60
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse, _65
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O, Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? _70
***
AN EXHORTATION.
[Published with "Prometheus Unbound", 1820. Dated 'Pisa, April, 1820'
in Harvard manuscript (Woodberry), but assigned by Mrs. Shelley to
1819. ]
Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they, _5
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?
Poets are on this cold earth, _10
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
in a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do: _15
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.
Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind: _20
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star, _25
Spirits from beyond the moon,
Oh, refuse the boon!
***
THE INDIAN SERENADE.
[Published, with the title, "Song written for an Indian Air", in "The
Liberal", 2, 1822. Reprinted ("Lines to an Indian Air") by Mrs.
Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. The poem is included in the Harvard
manuscript book, and there is a description by Robert Browning of an
autograph copy presenting some variations from the text of 1824. See
Leigh Hunt's "Correspondence", 2, pages 264-8. ]
1.
I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee, _5
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me--who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!
2.
The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream-- _10
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale's complaint,
It dies upon her heart;--
As I must on thine, _15
Oh, beloved as thou art!
3.
Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale. _20
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;--
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.
NOTES:
_3 Harvard manuscript omits When.
_4 shining]burning Harvard manuscript, 1822.
_7 Hath led Browning manuscript, 1822;
Has borne Harvard manuscript; Has led 1824.
_11 The Champak Harvard manuscript, 1822, 1824;
And the Champak's Browning manuscript.
_15 As I must on 1822, 1824;
As I must die on Harvard manuscript, 1839, 1st edition.
_16 Oh, beloved Browning manuscript, Harvard manuscript, 1839, 1st edition;
Beloved 1822, 1824.
_23 press it to thine own Browning manuscript;
press it close to thine Harvard manuscript, 1824, 1839, 1st edition;
press me to thine own, 1822.
***
CANCELLED PASSAGE.
[Published by W. M. Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works", 1870. ]
O pillow cold and wet with tears!
Thou breathest sleep no more!
***
TO SOPHIA [MISS STACEY].
[Published by W. M. Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works", 1870. ]
1.
Thou art fair, and few are fairer
Of the Nymphs of earth or ocean;
They are robes that fit the wearer--
Those soft limbs of thine, whose motion
Ever falls and shifts and glances _5
As the life within them dances.
2.
Thy deep eyes, a double Planet,
Gaze the wisest into madness
With soft clear fire,--the winds that fan it
Are those thoughts of tender gladness _10
Which, like zephyrs on the billow,
Make thy gentle soul their pillow.
3.
If, whatever face thou paintest
In those eyes, grows pale with pleasure,
If the fainting soul is faintest _15
When it hears thy harp's wild measure,
Wonder not that when thou speakest
Of the weak my heart is weakest.
4.
As dew beneath the wind of morning,
As the sea which whirlwinds waken, _20
As the birds at thunder's warning,
As aught mute yet deeply shaken,
As one who feels an unseen spirit
Is my heart when thine is near it.
***
TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824.
The fragment included in the Harvard manuscript book. ]
(With what truth may I say--
Roma! Roma! Roma!
Non e piu come era prima! )
1.
My lost William, thou in whom
Some bright spirit lived, and did
That decaying robe consume
Which its lustre faintly hid,--
Here its ashes find a tomb, _5
But beneath this pyramid
Thou art not--if a thing divine
Like thee can die, thy funeral shrine
Is thy mother's grief and mine.
2.
Where art thou, my gentle child? _10
Let me think thy spirit feeds,
With its life intense and mild,
The love of living leaves and weeds
Among these tombs and ruins wild;--
Let me think that through low seeds _15
Of sweet flowers and sunny grass
Into their hues and scents may pass
A portion--
NOTE:
Motto _1 may I Harvard manuscript; I may 1824.
_12 With Harvard manuscript, Mrs. Shelley, 1847; Within 1824, 1839.
_16 Of sweet Harvard manuscript; Of the sweet 1824, 1839.
***
TO WILLIAM SHELLEY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. ]
Thy little footsteps on the sands
Of a remote and lonely shore;
The twinkling of thine infant hands,
Where now the worm will feed no more;
Thy mingled look of love and glee _5
When we returned to gaze on thee--
***
TO MARY SHELLEY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone,
And left me in this dreary world alone?
Thy form is here indeed--a lovely one--
But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road,
That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode; _5
Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,
Where
For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.
***
TO MARY SHELLEY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
The world is dreary,
And I am weary
Of wandering on without thee, Mary;
A joy was erewhile
In thy voice and thy smile, _5
And 'tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary.
***
ON THE MEDUSA OF LEONARDO DA VINCI IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]
1.
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie _5
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
2.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone, _10
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain. _15
3.
And from its head as from one body grow,
As . . . grass out of a watery rock,
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
And their long tangles in each other lock, _20
And with unending involutions show
Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
4.
And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft _25
Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,
And he comes hastening like a moth that hies _30
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
5.
'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
Kindled by that inextricable error, _35
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become a . . . and ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there--
A woman's countenance, with serpent-locks,
Gazing in death on Heaven from those wet rocks. _40
NOTES:
_5 seems 1839; seem 1824.
_6 shine]shrine 1824, 1839.
_26 those 1824; these 1839.
***
LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY.
[Published by Leigh Hunt, "The Indicator", December 22, 1819. Reprinted
by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. Included in the Harvard
manuscript book, where it is headed "An Anacreontic", and dated
'January, 1820. ' Written by Shelley in a copy of Hunt's "Literary
Pocket-Book", 1819, and presented to Sophia Stacey, December 29, 1820. ]
1.
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single; _5
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine? --
2.
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another; _10
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth _15
If thou kiss not me?
NOTES:
_3 mix for ever 1819, Stacey manuscript;
meet together, Harvard manuscript.
_7 In one spirit meet and Stacey manuscript;
In one another's being 1819, Harvard manuscript.
_11 No sister 1824, Harvard and Stacey manuscripts; No leaf or 1819.
_12 disdained its 1824, Harvard and Stacey manuscripts;
disdained to kiss its 1819.
_15 is all this sweet work Stacey manuscript;
were these examples Harvard manuscript;
are all these kissings 1819, 1824.
***
FRAGMENT: 'FOLLOW TO THE DEEP WOOD'S WEEDS'.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
Follow to the deep wood's weeds,
Follow to the wild-briar dingle,
Where we seek to intermingle,
And the violet tells her tale
To the odour-scented gale, _5
For they two have enough to do
Of such work as I and you.
***
THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
At the creation of the Earth
Pleasure, that divinest birth,
From the soil of Heaven did rise,
Wrapped in sweet wild melodies--
Like an exhalation wreathing _5
To the sound of air low-breathing
Through Aeolian pines, which make
A shade and shelter to the lake
Whence it rises soft and slow;
Her life-breathing [limbs] did flow _10
In the harmony divine
Of an ever-lengthening line
Which enwrapped her perfect form
With a beauty clear and warm.
***
FRAGMENT: LOVE THE UNIVERSE TO-DAY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. ]
And who feels discord now or sorrow?
Love is the universe to-day--
These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,
Darkening Life's labyrinthine way.
***
FRAGMENT: 'A GENTLE STORY OF TWO LOVERS YOUNG'.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
A gentle story of two lovers young,
Who met in innocence and died in sorrow,
And of one selfish heart, whose rancour clung
Like curses on them; are ye slow to borrow
The lore of truth from such a tale? _5
Or in this world's deserted vale,
Do ye not see a star of gladness
Pierce the shadows of its sadness,--
When ye are cold, that love is a light sent
From Heaven, which none shall quench, to cheer the innocent? _10
NOTE:
_9 cold]told cj. A. C. Bradley.
For the metre cp. Fragment: To a Friend Released from Prison.
***
FRAGMENT: LOVE'S TENDER ATMOSPHERE.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
There is a warm and gentle atmosphere
About the form of one we love, and thus
As in a tender mist our spirits are
Wrapped in the . . . of that which is to us
The health of life's own life-- _5
***
FRAGMENT: WEDDED SOULS.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
I am as a spirit who has dwelt
Within his heart of hearts, and I have felt
His feelings, and have thought his thoughts, and known
The inmost converse of his soul, the tone
Unheard but in the silence of his blood, _5
When all the pulses in their multitude
Image the trembling calm of summer seas.
I have unlocked the golden melodies
Of his deep soul, as with a master-key,
And loosened them and bathed myself therein-- _10
Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist
Clothing his wings with lightning.
***
FRAGMENT: 'IS IT THAT IN SOME BRIGHTER SPHERE'.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
Is it that in some brighter sphere
We part from friends we meet with here?
Or do we see the Future pass
Over the Present's dusky glass?
Or what is that that makes us seem _5
To patch up fragments of a dream,
Part of which comes true, and part
Beats and trembles in the heart?
***
FRAGMENT: SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer
Into the darkness of the day to come?
Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?
And will the day that follows change thy doom?
Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way; _5
And who waits for thee in that cheerless home
Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return
Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?
***
FRAGMENT: 'YE GENTLE VISITATIONS OF CALM THOUGHT'.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. ]
Ye gentle visitations of calm thought--
Moods like the memories of happier earth,
Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth,
Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought,--
But that the clouds depart and stars remain, _5
While they remain, and ye, alas, depart!
***
FRAGMENT: MUSIC AND SWEET POETRY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
How sweet it is to sit and read the tales
Of mighty poets and to hear the while
Sweet music, which when the attention fails
Fills the dim pause--
***
FRAGMENT: THE SEPULCHRE OF MEMORY.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. ]
And where is truth? On tombs? for such to thee
Has been my heart--and thy dead memory
Has lain from childhood, many a changeful year,
Unchangingly preserved and buried there.
***
FRAGMENT: 'WHEN A LOVER CLASPS HIS FAIREST'.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
1.
When a lover clasps his fairest,
Then be our dread sport the rarest.
Their caresses were like the chaff
In the tempest, and be our laugh
His despair--her epitaph! _5
2.
When a mother clasps her child,
Watch till dusty Death has piled
His cold ashes on the clay;
She has loved it many a day--
She remains,--it fades away. _10
***
FRAGMENT: 'WAKE THE SERPENT NOT'.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
Wake the serpent not--lest he
Should not know the way to go,--
Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping
Through the deep grass of the meadow!
Not a bee shall hear him creeping, _5
Not a may-fly shall awaken
From its cradling blue-bell shaken,
Not the starlight as he's sliding
Through the grass with silent gliding.
***
FRAGMENT: RAIN.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
The fitful alternations of the rain,
When the chill wind, languid as with pain
Of its own heavy moisture, here and there
Drives through the gray and beamless atmosphere.
***
FRAGMENT: A TALE UNTOLD.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
One sung of thee who left the tale untold,
Like the false dawns which perish in the bursting;
Like empty cups of wrought and daedal gold,
Which mock the lips with air, when they are thirsting.
***
FRAGMENT: TO ITALY.
[Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]
As the sunrise to the night,
As the north wind to the clouds,
As the earthquake's fiery flight,
Ruining mountain solitudes,
Everlasting Italy, _5
Be those hopes and fears on thee.
***
FRAGMENT: WINE OF THE FAIRIES.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. ]
I am drunk with the honey wine
Of the moon-unfolded eglantine,
Which fairies catch in hyacinth bowls.
The bats, the dormice, and the moles
Sleep in the walls or under the sward _5
Of the desolate castle yard;
And when 'tis spilt on the summer earth
Or its fumes arise among the dew,
Their jocund dreams are full of mirth,
They gibber their joy in sleep; for few _10
Of the fairies bear those bowls so new!
***
FRAGMENT: A ROMAN'S CHAMBER.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
1.
In the cave which wild weeds cover
Wait for thine aethereal lover;
For the pallid moon is waning,
O'er the spiral cypress hanging
And the moon no cloud is staining. _5
2.
It was once a Roman's chamber,
Where he kept his darkest revels,
And the wild weeds twine and clamber;
It was then a chasm for devils.
***
FRAGMENT: ROME AND NATURE.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition. ]
Rome has fallen, ye see it lying
Heaped in undistinguished ruin:
Nature is alone undying.
***
VARIATION OF THE SONG OF THE MOON.
[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. ]
("PROMETHEUS UNBOUND", ACT 4. )
As a violet's gentle eye
Gazes on the azure sky
Until its hue grows like what it beholds;
As a gray and empty mist
Lies like solid amethyst _5
Over the western mountain it enfolds,
When the sunset sleeps
Upon its snow;
As a strain of sweetest sound
Wraps itself the wind around _10
Until the voiceless wind be music too;
As aught dark, vain, and dull,
Basking in what is beautiful,
Is full of light and love--
***
CANCELLED STANZA OF THE MASK OF ANARCHY.
[Published by H. Buxton Forman, "The Mask of Anarchy" ("Facsimile of
Shelley's manuscript"), 1887. ]
(FOR WHICH STANZAS 68, 69 HAVE BEEN SUBSTITUTED. )
From the cities where from caves,
Like the dead from putrid graves,
Troops of starvelings gliding come,
Living Tenants of a tomb.
***
NOTE ON POEMS OF 1819, BY MRS. SHELLEY.
Shelley loved the People; and respected them as often more virtuous, as
always more suffering, and therefore more deserving of sympathy, than
the great. He believed that a clash between the two classes of society
was inevitable, and he eagerly ranged himself on the people's side. He
had an idea of publishing a series of poems adapted expressly to
commemorate their circumstances and wrongs. He wrote a few; but, in
those days of prosecution for libel, they could not be printed. They
are not among the best of his productions, a writer being always
shackled when he endeavours to write down to the comprehension of those
who could not understand or feel a highly imaginative style; but they
show his earnestness, and with what heart-felt compassion he went home
to the direct point of injury--that oppression is detestable as being
the parent of starvation, nakedness, and ignorance. Besides these
outpourings of compassion and indignation, he had meant to adorn the
cause he loved with loftier poetry of glory and triumph: such is the
scope of the "Ode to the Assertors of Liberty". He sketched also a new
version of our national anthem, as addressed to Liberty.
***
POEMS WRITTEN IN 1820.
THE SENSITIVE PLANT.
[Composed at Pisa, early in 1820 (dated 'March, 1820,' in Harvard
manuscript), and published, with "Prometheus Unbound", the same year:
included in the Harvard College manuscript book. Reprinted in the
"Poetical Works", 1839, both editions. ]
PART 1.
A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light.
And closed them beneath the kisses of Night.
And the Spring arose on the garden fair, _5
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
But none ever trembled and panted with bliss
In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, _10
Like a doe in the noontide with love's sweet want,
As the companionless Sensitive Plant.
The snowdrop, and then the violet,
Arose from the ground with warm rain wet,
And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent _15
From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.
Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall,
And narcissi, the fairest among them all,
Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess,
Till they die of their own dear loveliness; _20
And the Naiad-like lily of the vale,
Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale
That the light of its tremulous bells is seen
Through their pavilions of tender green;
And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, _25
Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew
Of music so delicate, soft, and intense,
It was felt like an odour within the sense;
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed,
Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, _30
Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air
The soul of her beauty and love lay bare:
And the wand-like lily, which lifted up,
As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup,
Till the fiery star, which is its eye,
Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky; _35
And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose,
The sweetest flower for scent that blows;
And all rare blossoms from every clime
Grew in that garden in perfect prime. _40
And on the stream whose inconstant bosom
Was pranked, under boughs of embowering blossom,
With golden and green light, slanting through
Their heaven of many a tangled hue,
Broad water-lilies lay tremulously, _45
And starry river-buds glimmered by,
And around them the soft stream did glide and dance
With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.
And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss,
Which led through the garden along and across, _50
Some open at once to the sun and the breeze,
Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,
Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells
As fair as the fabulous asphodels,
And flow'rets which, drooping as day drooped too, _55
Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue,
To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew.
And from this undefiled Paradise
The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes
Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet _60
Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),
When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them,
As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem,
Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one _65
Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun;
For each one was interpenetrated
With the light and the odour its neighbour shed,
Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear
Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.
But the Sensitive Plant which could give small fruit _70
Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root,
Received more than all, it loved more than ever,
Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver,--
For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower;
Radiance and odour are not its dower; _75
It loves, even like Love, its deep heart is full,
It desires what it has not, the Beautiful!
The light winds which from unsustaining wings
Shed the music of many murmurings;
The beams which dart from many a star _80
Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar;
The plumed insects swift and free,
Like golden boats on a sunny sea,
Laden with light and odour, which pass
Over the gleam of the living grass; _85
The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie
Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high,
Then wander like spirits among the spheres,
Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears;
The quivering vapours of dim noontide, _90
Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide,
In which every sound, and odour, and beam,
Move, as reeds in a single stream;
Each and all like ministering angels were
For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, _95
Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by
Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky.
And when evening descended from Heaven above,
And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love,
And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, _100
And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep,
And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were drowned
In an ocean of dreams without a sound;
Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress
The light sand which paves it, consciousness; _105
(Only overhead the sweet nightingale
Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,
And snatches of its Elysian chant
Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant);--
The Sensitive Plant was the earliest _110
Upgathered into the bosom of rest;
A sweet child weary of its delight,
The feeblest and yet the favourite,
Cradled within the embrace of Night.
NOTES:
_6 Like the Spirit of Love felt 1820;
And the Spirit of Love felt 1839, 1st edition;
And the Spirit of Love fell 1839, 2nd edition.
_49 and of moss]and moss Harvard manuscript.
_82 The]And the Harvard manuscript.
PART 2.
There was a Power in this sweet place,
An Eve in this Eden; a ruling Grace
Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,
Was as God is to the starry scheme.
A Lady, the wonder of her kind, _5
Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind
Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion
Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,
Tended the garden from morn to even:
And the meteors of that sublunar Heaven, _10
Like the lamps of the air when Night walks forth,
Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth!
She had no companion of mortal race,
But her tremulous breath and her flushing face
Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes, _15
That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise:
As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake
Had deserted Heaven while the stars were awake,
As if yet around her he lingering were,
Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. _20
Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed;
You might hear by the heaving of her breast,
That the coming and going of the wind
Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.
And wherever her aery footstep trod, _25
Her trailing hair from the grassy sod
Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep,
Like a sunny storm o'er the dark green deep.
I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet
Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet; _30
I doubt not they felt the spirit that came
From her glowing fingers through all their frame.
She sprinkled bright water from the stream
On those that were faint with the sunny beam;
And out of the cups of the heavy flowers _35
She emptied the rain of the thunder-showers.
She lifted their heads with her tender hands,
And sustained them with rods and osier-bands;
If the flowers had been her own infants, she
Could never have nursed them more tenderly. _40
And all killing insects and gnawing worms,
And things of obscene and unlovely forms,
She bore, in a basket of Indian woof,
Into the rough woods far aloof,--
In a basket, of grasses and wild-flowers full, _45
The freshest her gentle hands could pull
For the poor banished insects, whose intent,
Although they did ill, was innocent.
But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris
Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss _50
The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she
Make her attendant angels be.
And many an antenatal tomb,
Where butterflies dream of the life to come,
She left clinging round the smooth and dark _55
Edge of the odorous cedar bark.
This fairest creature from earliest Spring
Thus moved through the garden ministering
Mi the sweet season of Summertide,
And ere the first leaf looked brown--she died! _60
NOTES:
_15 morn Harvard manuscript, 1839; moon 1820.
_23 and going 1820; and the going Harvard manuscript, 1839.
_59 All 1820, 1839; Through all Harvard manuscript.
PART 3.
Three days the flowers of the garden fair,
Like stars when the moon is awakened, were,
Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous
She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.
And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant _5
Felt the sound of the funeral chant,
And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow,
And the sobs of the mourners, deep and low;
The weary sound and the heavy breath,
And the silent motions of passing death, _10
And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank,
Sent through the pores of the coffin-plank;
The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass,
Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass;
From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, _15
And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.
The garden, once fair, became cold and foul,
Like the corpse of her who had been its soul,
Which at first was lovely as if in sleep,
Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap _20
To make men tremble who never weep.
Swift Summer into the Autumn flowed,
And frost in the mist of the morning rode,
Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright,
Mocking the spoil of the secret night. _25
The rose-leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,
Paved the turf and the moss below.
The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan,
Like the head and the skin of a dying man.
And Indian plants, of scent and hue _30
The sweetest that ever were fed on dew,
Leaf by leaf, day after day,
Were massed into the common clay.
And the leaves, brown, yellow, and gray, and red,
And white with the whiteness of what is dead, _35
Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed;
Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.
And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds,
Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds,
Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, _40
Which rotted into the earth with them.
The water-blooms under the rivulet
Fell from the stalks on which they were set;
And the eddies drove them here and there,
As the winds did those of the upper air. _45
Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks
Were bent and tangled across the walks;
And the leafless network of parasite bowers
Massed into ruin; and all sweet flowers.
Between the time of the wind and the snow _50
All loathliest weeds began to grow,
Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck,
Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's back.
And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank,
And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, _55
Stretched out its long and hollow shank,
And stifled the air till the dead wind stank.
And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath,
Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth,
Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, _60
Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.
And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould
Started like mist from the wet ground cold;
Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead
With a spirit of growth had been animated! _65
Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,
Made the running rivulet thick and dumb,
And at its outlet flags huge as stakes
Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.
And hour by hour, when the air was still, _70
The vapours arose which have strength to kill;
At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt,
At night they were darkness no star could melt.
And unctuous meteors from spray to spray
Crept and flitted in broad noonday _75
Unseen; every branch on which they alit
By a venomous blight was burned and bit.
The Sensitive Plant, like one forbid,
Wept, and the tears within each lid
Of its folded leaves, which together grew, _80
Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.
For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon
By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn;
The sap shrank to the root through every pore
As blood to a heart that will beat no more. _85
For Winter came: the wind was his whip:
One choppy finger was on his lip:
He had torn the cataracts from the hills
And they clanked at his girdle like manacles;
His breath was a chain which without a sound _90
The earth, and the air, and the water bound;
He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne
By the tenfold blasts of the Arctic zone.
Then the weeds which were forms of living death
Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. _95
Their decay and sudden flight from frost
Was but like the vanishing of a ghost!
And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant
The moles and the dormice died for want:
The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air _100
And were caught in the branches naked and bare.
First there came down a thawing rain
And its dull drops froze on the boughs again;
Then there steamed up a freezing dew
Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew; _105
And a northern whirlwind, wandering about
Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out,
Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy, and stiff,
And snapped them off with his rigid griff.
When Winter had gone and Spring came back _110
The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck;
But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and darnels,
Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.
CONCLUSION.
Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that
Which within its boughs like a Spirit sat, _115
Ere its outward form had known decay,
Now felt this change, I cannot say.
Whether that Lady's gentle mind,
No longer with the form combined
Which scattered love, as stars do light, _120
Found sadness, where it left delight,
I dare not guess; but in this life
Of error, ignorance, and strife,
Where nothing is, but all things seem,
And we the shadows of the dream, _125
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one considers it,
To own that death itself must be,
Like all the rest, a mockery.
That garden sweet, that lady fair, _130
And all sweet shapes and odours there,
In truth have never passed away:
'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed; not they.
For love, and beauty, and delight,
There is no death nor change: their might _135
Exceeds our organs, which endure
No light, being themselves obscure.
NOTES:
_19 lovely Harvard manuscript, 1839; lively 1820.
_23 of the morning 1820, 1839; of morning Harvard manuscript.
_26 snow Harvard manuscript, 1839; now 1820.
_28 And lilies were drooping, white and wan Harvard manuscript.
_32 Leaf by leaf, day after day Harvard manuscript;
Leaf after leaf, day after day 1820;
Leaf after leaf, day by day 1839.
_63 mist]mists Harvard manuscript.
_96 and sudden flight]and their sudden flight the Harvard manuscript.
_98 And under]Under Harvard manuscript.
_114 Whether]And if Harvard manuscript.
_118 Whether]Or if Harvard manuscript.
***
CANCELLED PASSAGE.
[This stanza followed 3, 62-65 in the editio princeps, 1820, but was
omitted by Mrs. Shelley from all editions from 1839 onwards. It is
cancelled in the Harvard manuscript. ]
Their moss rotted off them, flake by flake,
Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake,
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high,
Infecting the winds that wander by.
***
A VISION OF THE SEA.
[Composed at Pisa early in 1820, and published with "Prometheus
Unbound" in the same year. A transcript in Mrs. Shelley's handwriting
is included in the Harvard manuscript book, where it is dated 'April,
1820. ']
'Tis the terror of tempest. The rags of the sail
Are flickering in ribbons within the fierce gale:
From the stark night of vapours the dim rain is driven,
And when lightning is loosed, like a deluge from Heaven,
She sees the black trunks of the waterspouts spin _5
And bend, as if Heaven was ruining in,
Which they seemed to sustain with their terrible mass
As if ocean had sunk from beneath them: they pass
To their graves in the deep with an earthquake of sound,
And the waves and the thunders, made silent around, _10
Leave the wind to its echo. The vessel, now tossed
Through the low-trailing rack of the tempest, is lost
In the skirts of the thunder-cloud: now down the sweep
Of the wind-cloven wave to the chasm of the deep
It sinks, and the walls of the watery vale _15
Whose depths of dread calm are unmoved by the gale,
Dim mirrors of ruin, hang gleaming about;
While the surf, like a chaos of stars, like a rout
Of death-flames, like whirlpools of fire-flowing iron,
With splendour and terror the black ship environ, _20
Or like sulphur-flakes hurled from a mine of pale fire
In fountains spout o'er it. In many a spire
The pyramid-billows with white points of brine
In the cope of the lightning inconstantly shine,
As piercing the sky from the floor of the sea. _25
The great ship seems splitting! it cracks as a tree,
While an earthquake is splintering its root, ere the blast
Of the whirlwind that stripped it of branches has passed.
The intense thunder-balls which are raining from Heaven
Have shattered its mast, and it stands black and riven. _30
The chinks suck destruction. The heavy dead hulk
On the living sea rolls an inanimate bulk,
Like a corpse on the clay which is hungering to fold
Its corruption around it. Meanwhile, from the hold,
One deck is burst up by the waters below, _35
And it splits like the ice when the thaw-breezes blow
O'er the lakes of the desert! Who sit on the other?
Is that all the crew that lie burying each other,
Like the dead in a breach, round the foremast? Are those
Twin tigers, who burst, when the waters arose, _40
In the agony of terror, their chains in the hold;
(What now makes them tame, is what then made them bold;)
Who crouch, side by side, and have driven, like a crank,
The deep grip of their claws through the vibrating plank
Are these all? Nine weeks the tall vessel had lain _45
On the windless expanse of the watery plain,
Where the death-darting sun cast no shadow at noon,
And there seemed to be fire in the beams of the moon,
Till a lead-coloured fog gathered up from the deep,
Whose breath was quick pestilence; then, the cold sleep _50
Crept, like blight through the ears of a thick field of corn,
O'er the populous vessel. And even and morn,
With their hammocks for coffins the seamen aghast
Like dead men the dead limbs of their comrades cast
Down the deep, which closed on them above and around, _55
And the sharks and the dogfish their grave-clothes unbound,
And were glutted like Jews with this manna rained down
From God on their wilderness. One after one
The mariners died; on the eve of this day,
When the tempest was gathering in cloudy array, _60
But seven remained. Six the thunder has smitten,
And they lie black as mummies on which Time has written
His scorn of the embalmer; the seventh, from the deck
An oak-splinter pierced through his breast and his back,
And hung out to the tempest, a wreck on the wreck. _65
No more? At the helm sits a woman more fair
Than Heaven, when, unbinding its star-braided hair,
It sinks with the sun on the earth and the sea.
She clasps a bright child on her upgathered knee;
It laughs at the lightning, it mocks the mixed thunder _70
Of the air and the sea, with desire and with wonder
It is beckoning the tigers to rise and come near,
It would play with those eyes where the radiance of fear
Is outshining the meteors; its bosom beats high,
The heart-fire of pleasure has kindled its eye, _75
While its mother's is lustreless. 'Smile not, my child,
But sleep deeply and sweetly, and so be beguiled
Of the pang that awaits us, whatever that be,
So dreadful since thou must divide it with me!
Dream, sleep! This pale bosom, thy cradle and bed, _80
Will it rock thee not, infant? 'Tis beating with dread!
Alas! what is life, what is death, what are we,
That when the ship sinks we no longer may be?
What! to see thee no more, and to feel thee no more?
To be after life what we have been before? _85
Not to touch those sweet hands? Not to look on those eyes,
Those lips, and that hair,--all the smiling disguise
Thou yet wearest, sweet Spirit, which I, day by day,
Have so long called my child, but which now fades away
Like a rainbow, and I the fallen shower? '--Lo! the ship _90
Is settling, it topples, the leeward ports dip;
The tigers leap up when they feel the slow brine
Crawling inch by inch on them; hair, ears, limbs, and eyne,
Stand rigid with horror; a loud, long, hoarse cry
Bursts at once from their vitals tremendously, _95
And 'tis borne down the mountainous vale of the wave,
Rebounding, like thunder, from crag to cave,
Mixed with the clash of the lashing rain,
Hurried on by the might of the hurricane:
The hurricane came from the west, and passed on _100
By the path of the gate of the eastern sun,
Transversely dividing the stream of the storm;
As an arrowy serpent, pursuing the form
Of an elephant, bursts through the brakes of the waste.
Black as a cormorant the screaming blast, _105
Between Ocean and Heaven, like an ocean, passed,
Till it came to the clouds on the verge of the world
Which, based on the sea and to Heaven upcurled,
Like columns and walls did surround and sustain
The dome of the tempest; it rent them in twain, _110
As a flood rends its barriers of mountainous crag:
And the dense clouds in many a ruin and rag,
Like the stones of a temple ere earthquake has passed,
Like the dust of its fall. on the whirlwind are cast;
They are scattered like foam on the torrent; and where _115
The wind has burst out through the chasm, from the air
Of clear morning the beams of the sunrise flow in,
Unimpeded, keen, golden, and crystalline,
Banded armies of light and of air; at one gate
They encounter, but interpenetrate. _120
And that breach in the tempest is widening away,
And the caverns of cloud are torn up by the day,
And the fierce winds are sinking with weary wings,
Lulled by the motion and murmurings
And the long glassy heave of the rocking sea, _125
And overhead glorious, but dreadful to see,
The wrecks of the tempest, like vapours of gold,
Are consuming in sunrise. The heaped waves behold
The deep calm of blue Heaven dilating above,
And, like passions made still by the presence of Love, _130
Beneath the clear surface reflecting it slide
Tremulous with soft influence; extending its tide
From the Andes to Atlas, round mountain and isle,
Round sea-birds and wrecks, paved with Heaven's azure smile,
The wide world of waters is vibrating. Where _135
Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay
One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray
With a sea-snake.
