No More Learning

***


TO A SKYLARK.

[Composed at Leghorn, 1820, and published with "Prometheus Unbound" in
the same year. There is a transcript in the Harvard manuscript. ]

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. _5

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. _10

In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are bright'ning.
Thou dost float and run;
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. _15

The pale purple even
Melts around thy flight;
Like a star of Heaven,
In the broad daylight
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight, _20

Keen as are the arrows
Of that silver sphere,
Whose intense lamp narrows
In the white dawn clear
Until we hardly see--we feel that it is there. _25

All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare,
From one lonely cloud
The moon rains out her beams, and Heaven is overflowed. _30

What thou art we know not;
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. _35

Like a Poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: _40

Like a high-born maiden
In a palace-tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: _45

Like a glow-worm golden
In a dell of dew,
Scattering unbeholden
Its aereal hue
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view! _50

Like a rose embowered
In its own green leaves,
By warm winds deflowered,
Till the scent it gives
Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves: _55

Sound of vernal showers
On the twinkling grass,
Rain-awakened flowers,
All that ever was
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass: _60

Teach us, Sprite or Bird,
What sweet thoughts are thine:
I have never heard
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. _65

Chorus Hymeneal,
Or triumphal chant,
Matched with thine would be all
But an empty vaunt,
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. _70

What objects are the fountains
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains?
What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain? _75

With thy clear keen joyance
Languor cannot be:
Shadow of annoyance
Never came near thee:
Thou lovest--but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. _80

Waking or asleep,
Thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep
Than we mortals dream,
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream? _85

We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. _90

Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. _95

Better than all measures
Of delightful sound,
Better than all treasures
That in books are found,
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! _100

Teach me half the gladness
That thy brain must know,
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow
The world should listen then--as I am listening now. _105

NOTE:
_55 those Harvard manuscript: these 1820, 1839.


***


ODE TO LIBERTY.

[Composed early in 1820, and published, with "Prometheus Unbound", in
the same year. A transcript in Shelley's hand of lines 1-21 is included
in the Harvard manuscript book, and amongst the Boscombe manuscripts
there is a fragment of a rough draft (Garnett). For further particulars
concerning the text see Editor's Notes. ]

Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,
Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind. --BYRON.

1.
A glorious people vibrated again
The lightning of the nations: Liberty
From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain,
Scattering contagious fire into the sky,
Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, _5
And in the rapid plumes of song
Clothed itself, sublime and strong;
As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among,
Hovering inverse o'er its accustomed prey;
Till from its station in the Heaven of fame _10
The Spirit's whirlwind rapped it, and the ray
Of the remotest sphere of living flame
Which paves the void was from behind it flung,
As foam from a ship's swiftness, when there came
A voice out of the deep: I will record the same. _15

2.
The Sun and the serenest Moon sprang forth:
The burning stars of the abyss were hurled
Into the depths of Heaven. The daedal earth,
That island in the ocean of the world,
Hung in its cloud of all-sustaining air: _20
But this divinest universe
Was yet a chaos and a curse,
For thou wert not: but, power from worst producing worse,
The spirit of the beasts was kindled there,
And of the birds, and of the watery forms, _25
And there was war among them, and despair
Within them, raging without truce or terms:
The bosom of their violated nurse
Groaned, for beasts warred on beasts, and worms on worms,
And men on men; each heart was as a hell of storms. _30

3.
Man, the imperial shape, then multiplied
His generations under the pavilion
Of the Sun's throne: palace and pyramid,
Temple and prison, to many a swarming million
Were, as to mountain-wolves their ragged caves. _35
This human living multitude
Was savage, cunning, blind, and rude,
For thou wert not; but o'er the populous solitude,
Like one fierce cloud over a waste of waves,
Hung Tyranny; beneath, sate deified _40
The sister-pest, congregator of slaves;
Into the shadow of her pinions wide
Anarchs and priests, who feed on gold and blood
Till with the stain their inmost souls are dyed,
Drove the astonished herds of men from every side. _45

4.
The nodding promontories, and blue isles,
And cloud-like mountains, and dividuous waves
Of Greece, basked glorious in the open smiles
Of favouring Heaven: from their enchanted caves
Prophetic echoes flung dim melody. _50
On the unapprehensive wild
The vine, the corn, the olive mild,
Grew savage yet, to human use unreconciled;
And, like unfolded flowers beneath the sea,
Like the man's thought dark in the infant's brain, _55
Like aught that is which wraps what is to be,
Art's deathless dreams lay veiled by many a vein
Of Parian stone; and, yet a speechless child,
Verse murmured, and Philosophy did strain
Her lidless eyes for thee; when o'er the Aegean main _60

5.
Athens arose: a city such as vision
Builds from the purple crags and silver towers
Of battlemented cloud, as in derision
Of kingliest masonry: the ocean-floors
Pave it; the evening sky pavilions it; _65
Its portals are inhabited
By thunder-zoned winds, each head
Within its cloudy wings with sun-fire garlanded,--
A divine work! Athens, diviner yet,
Gleamed with its crest of columns, on the will _70
Of man, as on a mount of diamond, set;
For thou wert, and thine all-creative skill
Peopled, with forms that mock the eternal dead
In marble immortality, that hill
Which was thine earliest throne and latest oracle. _75

6.
Within the surface of Time's fleeting river
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away!
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder _80
With an earth-awakening blast
Through the caverns of the past:
(Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast:)
A winged sound of joy, and love, and wonder,
Which soars where Expectation never flew, _85
Rending the veil of space and time asunder!
One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;
One Sun illumines Heaven; one Spirit vast
With life and love makes chaos ever new,
As Athens doth the world with thy delight renew. _90

7.
Then Rome was, and from thy deep bosom fairest,
Like a wolf-cub from a Cadmaean Maenad,
She drew the milk of greatness, though thy dearest
From that Elysian food was yet unweaned;
And many a deed of terrible uprightness _95
By thy sweet love was sanctified;
And in thy smile, and by thy side,
Saintly Camillus lived, and firm Atilius died.
But when tears stained thy robe of vestal-whiteness,
And gold profaned thy Capitolian throne, _100
Thou didst desert, with spirit-winged lightness,
The senate of the tyrants: they sunk prone
Slaves of one tyrant: Palatinus sighed
Faint echoes of Ionian song; that tone
Thou didst delay to hear, lamenting to disown _105

8.
From what Hyrcanian glen or frozen hill,
Or piny promontory of the Arctic main,
Or utmost islet inaccessible,
Didst thou lament the ruin of thy reign,
Teaching the woods and waves, and desert rocks, _110
And every Naiad's ice-cold urn,
To talk in echoes sad and stern
Of that sublimest lore which man had dared unlearn?
For neither didst thou watch the wizard flocks
Of the Scald's dreams, nor haunt the Druid's sleep. _115
What if the tears rained through thy shattered locks
Were quickly dried? for thou didst groan, not weep,
When from its sea of death, to kill and burn,
The Galilean serpent forth did creep,
And made thy world an undistinguishable heap. _120

9.
A thousand years the Earth cried, 'Where art thou? '
And then the shadow of thy coming fell
On Saxon Alfred's olive-cinctured brow:
And many a warrior-peopled citadel.
Like rocks which fire lifts out of the flat deep, _125
Arose in sacred Italy,
Frowning o'er the tempestuous sea
Of kings, and priests, and slaves, in tower-crowned majesty;
That multitudinous anarchy did sweep
And burst around their walls, like idle foam, _130
Whilst from the human spirit's deepest deep
Strange melody with love and awe struck dumb
Dissonant arms; and Art, which cannot die,
With divine wand traced on our earthly home
Fit imagery to pave Heaven's everlasting dome. _135

10.
Thou huntress swifter than the Moon! thou terror
Of the world's wolves! thou bearer of the quiver,
Whose sunlike shafts pierce tempest-winged Error,
As light may pierce the clouds when they dissever
In the calm regions of the orient day! _140
Luther caught thy wakening glance;
Like lightning, from his leaden lance
Reflected, it dissolved the visions of the trance
In which, as in a tomb, the nations lay;
And England's prophets hailed thee as their queen, _145
In songs whose music cannot pass away,
Though it must flow forever: not unseen
Before the spirit-sighted countenance
Of Milton didst thou pass, from the sad scene
Beyond whose night he saw, with a dejected mien. _150

11.
The eager hours and unreluctant years
As on a dawn-illumined mountain stood.
Trampling to silence their loud hopes and fears,
Darkening each other with their multitude,
And cried aloud, 'Liberty! ' Indignation _155
Answered Pity from her cave;
Death grew pale within the grave,
And Desolation howled to the destroyer, Save!
When like Heaven's Sun girt by the exhalation
Of its own glorious light, thou didst arise. _160
Chasing thy foes from nation unto nation
Like shadows: as if day had cloven the skies
At dreaming midnight o'er the western wave,
Men started, staggering with a glad surprise,
Under the lightnings of thine unfamiliar eyes. _165

12.
Thou Heaven of earth! what spells could pall thee then
In ominous eclipse? a thousand years
Bred from the slime of deep Oppression's den.
Dyed all thy liquid light with blood and tears.
Till thy sweet stars could weep the stain away; _170
How like Bacchanals of blood
Round France, the ghastly vintage, stood
Destruction's sceptred slaves, and Folly's mitred brood!
When one, like them, but mightier far than they,
The Anarch of thine own bewildered powers, _175
Rose: armies mingled in obscure array,
Like clouds with clouds, darkening the sacred bowers
Of serene Heaven. He, by the past pursued,
Rests with those dead, but unforgotten hours,
Whose ghosts scare victor kings in their ancestral towers. _180

13.
England yet sleeps: was she not called of old?
Spain calls her now, as with its thrilling thunder
Vesuvius wakens Aetna, and the cold
Snow-crags by its reply are cloven in sunder:
O'er the lit waves every Aeolian isle _185
From Pithecusa to Pelorus
Howls, and leaps, and glares in chorus:
They cry, 'Be dim; ye lamps of Heaven suspended o'er us! '
Her chains are threads of gold, she need but smile
And they dissolve; but Spain's were links of steel, _190
Till bit to dust by virtue's keenest file.
Twins of a single destiny! appeal
To the eternal years enthroned before us
In the dim West; impress us from a seal,
All ye have thought and done! Time cannot dare conceal. _195

14.
Tomb of Arminius! render up thy dead
Till, like a standard from a watch-tower's staff,
His soul may stream over the tyrant's head;
Thy victory shall be his epitaph,
Wild Bacchanal of truth's mysterious wine, _200
King-deluded Germany,
His dead spirit lives in thee.
Why do we fear or hope? thou art already free!
And thou, lost Paradise of this divine
And glorious world! thou flowery wilderness! _205
Thou island of eternity! thou shrine
Where Desolation, clothed with loveliness,
Worships the thing thou wert! O Italy,
Gather thy blood into thy heart; repress
The beasts who make their dens thy sacred palaces. _210

15.
Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name
Of KING into the dust! or write it there,
So that this blot upon the page of fame
Were as a serpent's path, which the light air
Erases, and the flat sands close behind! _215
Ye the oracle have heard:
Lift the victory-flashing sword.
And cut the snaky knots of this foul gordian word,
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
Into a mass, irrefragably firm, _220
The axes and the rods which awe mankind;
The sound has poison in it, 'tis the sperm
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;
Disdain not thou, at thine appointed term,
To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm. _225

16.
Oh, that the wise from their bright minds would kindle
Such lamps within the dome of this dim world,
That the pale name of PRIEST might shrink and dwindle
Into the hell from which it first was hurled,
A scoff of impious pride from fiends impure; _230
Till human thoughts might kneel alone,
Each before the judgement-throne
Of its own aweless soul, or of the Power unknown!
Oh, that the words which make the thoughts obscure
From which they spring, as clouds of glimmering dew _235
From a white lake blot Heaven's blue portraiture,
Were stripped of their thin masks and various hue
And frowns and smiles and splendours not their own,
Till in the nakedness of false and true
They stand before their Lord, each to receive its due! _240

17.
He who taught man to vanquish whatsoever
Can be between the cradle and the grave
Crowned him the King of Life. Oh, vain endeavour!
If on his own high will, a willing slave,
He has enthroned the oppression and the oppressor _245
What if earth can clothe and feed
Amplest millions at their need,
And power in thought be as the tree within the seed?
Or what if Art, an ardent intercessor,
Driving on fiery wings to Nature's throne, _250
Checks the great mother stooping to caress her,
And cries: 'Give me, thy child, dominion
Over all height and depth'? if Life can breed
New wants, and wealth from those who toil and groan,
Rend of thy gifts and hers a thousandfold for one! _255

18.
Come thou, but lead out of the inmost cave
Of man's deep spirit, as the morning-star
Beckons the Sun from the Eoan wave,
Wisdom. I hear the pennons of her car
Self-moving, like cloud charioted by flame; _260
Comes she not, and come ye not,
Rulers of eternal thought,
To judge, with solemn truth, life's ill-apportioned lot?
Blind Love, and equal Justice, and the Fame
Of what has been, the Hope of what will be? _265
O Liberty! if such could be thy name
Wert thou disjoined from these, or they from thee:
If thine or theirs were treasures to be bought
By blood or tears, have not the wise and free
Wept tears, and blood like tears? --The solemn harmony _270

19.
Paused, and the Spirit of that mighty singing
To its abyss was suddenly withdrawn;
Then, as a wild swan, when sublimely winging
Its path athwart the thunder-smoke of dawn,
Sinks headlong through the aereal golden light _275
On the heavy-sounding plain,
When the bolt has pierced its brain;
As summer clouds dissolve, unburthened of their rain;
As a far taper fades with fading night,
As a brief insect dies with dying day,-- _280
My song, its pinions disarrayed of might,
Drooped; o'er it closed the echoes far away
Of the great voice which did its flight sustain,
As waves which lately paved his watery way
Hiss round a drowner's head in their tempestuous play. _285

NOTES:
_4 into]unto Harvard manuscript.
_9 inverse cj. Rossetti; in verse 1820.
_92 See the Bacchae of Euripides--[SHELLEY'S NOTE].
_113 lore 1839; love 1820.
_116 shattered]scattered cj. Rossetti.
_134 wand 1820; want 1830.
_194 us]as cj. Forman.
_212 KING Boscombe manuscript; **** 1820, 1839; CHRIST cj. Swinburne.
_249 Or 1839; O, 1820.
_250 Driving 1820; Diving 1839.

***


CANCELLED PASSAGE OF THE ODE TO LIBERTY.

[Published by Dr. Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862. ]

Within a cavern of man's trackless spirit
Is throned an Image, so intensely fair
That the adventurous thoughts that wander near it
Worship, and as they kneel, tremble and wear
The splendour of its presence, and the light _5
Penetrates their dreamlike frame
Till they become charged with the strength of flame.

***


TO --.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

1.
I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,
Thou needest not fear mine;
My spirit is too deeply laden
Ever to burthen thine.

2.
I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion, _5
Thou needest not fear mine;
Innocent is the heart's devotion
With which I worship thine.

***


ARETHUSA.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824, and dated by her
'Pisa, 1820. ' There is a fair draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at
the Bodleian Library. See Mr. C. D. Locock's "Examination", etc. , 1903,
page 24. ]

1.
Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,--
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag, _5
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;--
Her steps paved with green _10
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep; _15
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.

2.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold, _20
With his trident the mountains strook;
And opened a chasm
In the rocks--with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind _25
It unsealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below. _30
And the beard and the hair
Of the River-god were
Seen through the torrent's sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph's flight _35
To the brink of the Dorian deep.

3.
'Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair! '
The loud Ocean heard, _40
To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer;
And under the water
The Earth's white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam; _45
Behind her descended
Her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream:--
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main _50
Alpheus rushed behind,--
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

4.
Under the bowers _55
Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearled thrones;
Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods,
Over heaps of unvalued stones; _60
Through the dim beams
Which amid the streams
Weave a network of coloured light;
And under the caves,
Where the shadowy waves _65
Are as green as the forest's night:--
Outspeeding the shark,
And the sword-fish dark,
Under the Ocean's foam,
And up through the rifts _70
Of the mountain clifts
They passed to their Dorian home.

5.
And now from their fountains
In Enna's mountains,
Down one vale where the morning basks, _75
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep _80
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of asphodel;
And at night they sleep _85
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;--
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more. _90

NOTES:
_6 unsealed B. ; concealed 1824.
_31 And the B. ; The 1824.
_69 Ocean's B. ; ocean 1824.

***


SONG OF PROSERPINE WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 1st edition. There
is a fair draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian
Library. See Mr. C. D. Locock's "Examination," etc. , 1903, page 24. ]

1.
Sacred Goddess, Mother Earth,
Thou from whose immortal bosom
Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,
Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,
Breathe thine influence most divine _5
On thine own child, Proserpine.

2.
If with mists of evening dew
Thou dost nourish these young flowers
Till they grow, in scent and hue,
Fairest children of the Hours, _10
Breathe thine influence most divine
On thine own child, Proserpine.

***


HYMN OF APOLLO.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. There is a fair
draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr. C. D.
Locock's "Examination", etc. , 1903, page 25. ]

1.
The sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,
Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries
From the broad moonlight of the sky,
Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,--
Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, _5
Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

2.
Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,
I walk over the mountains and the waves,
Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam;
My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves _10
Are filled with my bright presence, and the air
Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.

3.
The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill
Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day;
All men who do or even imagine ill _15
Fly me, and from the glory of my ray
Good minds and open actions take new might,
Until diminished by the reign of Night.

4.
I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers
With their aethereal colours; the moon's globe _20
And the pure stars in their eternal bowers
Are cinctured with my power as with a robe;
Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine
Are portions of one power, which is mine.

5.
I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, _25
Then with unwilling steps I wander down
Into the clouds of the Atlantic even;
For grief that I depart they weep and frown:
What look is more delightful than the smile
With which I soothe them from the western isle? _30

6.
I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of instrument or verse,
All prophecy, all medicine is mine,
All light of art or nature;--to my song _35
Victory and praise in its own right belong.

NOTES:
_32 itself divine]it is divine B.
_34 is B. ; are 1824.
_36 its cj. Rossetti, 1870, B. ; their 1824.

***


HYMN OF PAN.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. There is a fair
draft amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian. See Mr. C. D.
Locock's "Examination", etc. , 1903, page 25. ]

1.
From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb
Listening to my sweet pipings. _5
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass, _10
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

2.
Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing _15
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and the waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns, _20
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

3.
I sang of the dancing stars, _25
I sang of the daedal Earth,
And of Heaven--and the giant wars,
And Love, and Death, and Birth,--
And then I changed my pipings,--
Singing how down the vale of Maenalus _30
I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed.
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed:
All wept, as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood, _35
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

NOTE:
_5, _12 Listening to]Listening B.

***


THE QUESTION.

[Published by Leigh Hunt (with the signature Sigma) in "The Literary
Pocket-Book", 1822. Reprinted by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems",
1824. Copies exist in the Harvard manuscript book, amongst the Boscombe
manuscripts, and amongst Ollier manuscripts. ]

1.
I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way,
Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring,
And gentle odours led my steps astray,
Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring
Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay _5
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling
Its green arms round the bosom of the stream,
But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream.

2.
There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, _10
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxslips; tender bluebells, at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets--
Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth--
Its mother's face with Heaven's collected tears, _15
When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

3.
And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,
Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured may,
And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine
Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day; _20
And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,
With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray;
And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold,
Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

4.
And nearer to the river's trembling edge _25
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple pranked with white.
And starry river buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light; _30
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

5.
Methought that of these visionary flowers
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way
That the same hues, which in their natural bowers _35
Were mingled or opposed, the like array
Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours
Within my hand,--and then, elate and gay,
I hastened to the spot whence I had come,
That I might there present it! --Oh! to whom? _40

NOTES:
_14 Like. . . mirth Harvard manuscript, Boscombe manuscript;
wanting in Ollier manuscript, 1822, 1824, 1839.
_15 Heaven's collected Harvard manuscript, Ollier manuscript, 1822;
Heaven-collected 1824, 1839.

***


THE TWO SPIRITS: AN ALLEGORY.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

FIRST SPIRIT:
O thou, who plumed with strong desire
Wouldst float above the earth, beware!
A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire--
Night is coming!
Bright are the regions of the air, _5
And among the winds and beams
It were delight to wander there--
Night is coming!

SECOND SPIRIT:
The deathless stars are bright above;
If I would cross the shade of night, _10
Within my heart is the lamp of love,
And that is day!
And the moon will smile with gentle light
On my golden plumes where'er they move;
The meteors will linger round my flight, _15
And make night day.

FIRST SPIRIT:
But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken
Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain;
See, the bounds of the air are shaken--
Night is coming! _20
The red swift clouds of the hurricane
Yon declining sun have overtaken,
The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain--
Night is coming!

SECOND SPIRIT:
I see the light, and I hear the sound; _25
I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark
With the calm within and the light around
Which makes night day:
And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark,
Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound, _30
My moon-like flight thou then mayst mark
On high, far away.

. . .

Some say there is a precipice
Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin
O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice _35
Mid Alpine mountains;
And that the languid storm pursuing
That winged shape, for ever flies
Round those hoar branches, aye renewing
Its aery fountains. _40

Some say when nights are dry and clear,
And the death-dews sleep on the morass,
Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,
Which make night day:
And a silver shape like his early love doth pass _45
Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,
And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,
He finds night day.

NOTES:
_2 Wouldst 1839; Would 1824.
_31 moon-like 1824; moonlight 1839.
_44 make]makes 1824, 1839.

***


ODE TO NAPLES.

(The Author has connected many recollections of his visit to Pompeii
and Baiae with the enthusiasm excited by the intelligence of the
proclamation of a Constitutional Government at Naples. This has given a
tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes
which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings
permanently connected with the scene of this animating
event. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ])

[Composed at San Juliano di Pisa, August 17-25, 1820; published in
"Posthumous Poems", 1824. There is a copy, 'for the most part neat and
legible,' amongst the Shelley manuscripts at the Bodleian Library. See
Mr. C. D. Locock's "Examination", etc. , 1903, pages 14-18. ]

EPODE 1a.

I stood within the City disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls
Of spirits passing through the streets; and heard
The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals
Thrill through those roofless halls; _5
The oracular thunder penetrating shook
The listening soul in my suspended blood;
I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke--
I felt, but heard not:--through white columns glowed
The isle-sustaining ocean-flood, _10
A plane of light between two heavens of azure!
Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre
Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure
Were to spare Death, had never made erasure;
But every living lineament was clear _15
As in the sculptor's thought; and there
The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy, and pine,
Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,
Seemed only not to move and grow
Because the crystal silence of the air _20
Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine
Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.

NOTE:
_1 Pompeii. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ]

EPODE 2a.

Then gentle winds arose
With many a mingled close
Of wild Aeolian sound, and mountain-odours keen; _25
And where the Baian ocean
Welters with airlike motion,
Within, above, around its bowers of starry green,
Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves,
Even as the ever stormless atmosphere _30
Floats o'er the Elysian realm,
It bore me, like an Angel, o'er the waves
Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air
No storm can overwhelm.
I sailed, where ever flows _35
Under the calm Serene
A spirit of deep emotion
From the unknown graves
Of the dead Kings of Melody.
Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm _40
The horizontal aether; Heaven stripped bare
Its depth over Elysium, where the prow
Made the invisible water white as snow;
From that Typhaean mount, Inarime,
There streamed a sunbright vapour, like the standard _45
Of some aethereal host;
Whilst from all the coast,
Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered
Over the oracular woods and divine sea
Prophesyings which grew articulate--
They seize me--I must speak them! --be they fate! _50

NOTES:
_25 odours B. ; odour 1824.
_42 depth B. ; depths 1824.
_45 sun-bright B. ; sunlit 1824.
_39 Homer and Virgil. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ]

STROPHE 1.

Naples! thou Heart of men which ever pantest
Naked, beneath the lidless eye of Heaven!
Elysian City, which to calm enchantest
The mutinous air and sea! they round thee, even _55
As sleep round Love, are driven!
Metropolis of a ruined Paradise
Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained!
Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice
Which armed Victory offers up unstained _60
To Love, the flower-enchained!
Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be,
Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail,--
Hail, hail, all hail! _65

STROPHE 2.

Thou youngest giant birth
Which from the groaning earth
Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale!
Last of the Intercessors!
Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors _70
Pleadest before God's love! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail,
Wave thy lightning lance in mirth
Nor let thy high heart fail,
Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors
With hurried legions move! _75
Hail, hail, all hail!

ANTISTROPHE 1a.

What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme
Freedom and thee? thy shield is as a mirror
To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam
To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer; _80
A new Actaeon's error
Shall theirs have been--devoured by their own hounds!
Be thou like the imperial Basilisk
Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds!
Gaze on Oppression, till at that dread risk _85
Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk:
Fear not, but gaze--for freemen mightier grow,
And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe:--
If Hope, and Truth, and Justice may avail,
Thou shalt be great--All hail! _90

ANTISTROPHE 2a.

From Freedom's form divine,
From Nature's inmost shrine,
Strip every impious gawd, rend
Error veil by veil;
O'er Ruin desolate,
O'er Falsehood's fallen state, _95
Sit thou sublime, unawed; be the Destroyer pale!
And equal laws be thine,
And winged words let sail,
Freighted with truth even from the throne of God:
That wealth, surviving fate, _100
Be thine. --All hail!

NOTE:
_100 wealth-surviving cj. A. C. Bradley.

ANTISTROPHE 1b.

Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling paean
From land to land re-echoed solemnly,
Till silence became music? From the Aeaean
To the cold Alps, eternal Italy _105
Starts to hear thine! The Sea
Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs
In light, and music; widowed Genoa wan
By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs,
Murmuring, 'Where is Doria? ' fair Milan, _110
Within whose veins long ran
The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel
To bruise his head. The signal and the seal
(If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail)
Art thou of all these hopes. --O hail! _115

NOTES:
_104 Aeaea, the island of Circe. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ]
_112 The viper was the armorial device of the Visconti,
tyrants of Milan. --[SHELLEY'S NOTE. ]

ANTISTROPHE 2b.

Florence! beneath the sun,
Of cities fairest one,
Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation:
From eyes of quenchless hope
Rome tears the priestly cope, _120
As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,--
An athlete stripped to run
From a remoter station
For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore:--
As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, _125
So now may Fraud and Wrong! O hail!

EPODE 1b.

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms
Arrayed against the ever-living Gods?
The crash and darkness of a thousand storms
Bursting their inaccessible abodes _130
Of crags and thunder-clouds?
See ye the banners blazoned to the day,
Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride?
Dissonant threats kill Silence far away,
The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide _135
With iron light is dyed;
The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions
Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating;
An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions
And lawless slaveries,--down the aereal regions _140
Of the white Alps, desolating,
Famished wolves that bide no waiting,
Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory,
Trampling our columned cities into dust,
Their dull and savage lust _145
On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating--
They come! The fields they tread look black and hoary
With fire--from their red feet the streams run gory!

EPODE 2b.

Great Spirit, deepest Love!
Which rulest and dost move _150
All things which live and are, within the Italian shore;
Who spreadest Heaven around it,
Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it;
Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor;
Spirit of beauty! at whose soft command _155
The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison
From the Earth's bosom chill;
Oh, bid those beams be each a blinding brand
Of lightning! bid those showers be dews of poison!
Bid the Earth's plenty kill! _160
Bid thy bright Heaven above,
Whilst light and darkness bound it,
Be their tomb who planned
To make it ours and thine!
Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill _165
And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon
Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire--
Be man's high hope and unextinct desire
The instrument to work thy will divine!
Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, _170
And frowns and fears from thee,
Would not more swiftly flee
Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. --
Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine
Thou yieldest or withholdest, oh, let be _175
This city of thy worship ever free!

NOTES:
_143 old 1824; lost B.
_147 black 1824; blue B.

***


AUTUMN: A DIRGE.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

1.
The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing,
The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,
And the Year
On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead,
Is lying. _5
Come, Months, come away,
From November to May,
In your saddest array;
Follow the bier
Of the dead cold Year, _10
And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

2.
The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling,
The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling
For the Year;
The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone _15
To his dwelling;
Come, Months, come away;
Put on white, black, and gray;
Let your light sisters play--
Ye, follow the bier _20
Of the dead cold Year,
And make her grave green with tear on tear.

***


THE WANING MOON.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

And like a dying lady, lean and pale,
Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil,
Out of her chamber, led by the insane
And feeble wanderings of her fading brain,
The moon arose up in the murky East, _5
A white and shapeless mass--

***


TO THE MOON.

[Published (1) by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824, (2) by W. M.
Rossetti, "Complete Poetical Works", 1870. ]

1.
Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,--
And ever changing, like a joyless eye _5
That finds no object worth its constancy?

2.
Thou chosen sister of the Spirit,
That grazes on thee till in thee it pities. . .

***


DEATH.

[Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Posthumous Poems", 1824. ]

1.
Death is here and death is there,
Death is busy everywhere,
All around, within, beneath,
Above is death--and we are death.

2.
Death has set his mark and seal _5
On all we are and all we feel,
On all we know and all we fear,

. . .

3.
First our pleasures die--and then
Our hopes, and then our fears--and when
These are dead, the debt is due, _10
Dust claims dust--and we die too.