[ { "title": "Rosalind and Helen. a Modern Eclogue", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "HELEN:", "Come hither, my sweet Rosalind.", "'Tis long since thou and I have met;", "And yet methinks it were unkind", "Those moments to forget.", "Come, sit by me. I see thee stand", "By this lone lake, in this far land,", "Thy loose hair in the light wind flying,", "Thy sweet voice to each tone of even", "United, and thine eyes replying", "To the hues of yon fair heaven.", "Come, gentle friend: wilt sit by me?", "And be as thou wert wont to be", "Ere we were disunited?", "None doth behold us now; the power", "That led us forth at this lone hour", "Will be but ill requited", "If thou depart in scorn: oh! come,", "And talk of our abandoned home.", "Remember, this is Italy,", "And we are exiles. Talk with me", "Of that our land, whose wilds and floods,", "Barren and dark although they be,", "Were dearer than these chestnut woods:", "Those heathy paths, that inland stream,", "And the blue mountains, shapes which seem", "Like wrecks of childhood's sunny dream:", "Which that we have abandoned now,", "Weighs on the heart like that remorse", "Which altered friendship leaves. I seek", "No more our youthful intercourse.", "That cannot be! Rosalind, speak.", "Speak to me. Leave me not.--When morn did come,", "When evening fell upon our common home,", "When for one hour we parted,--do not frown:", "I would not chide thee, though thy faith is broken:", "But turn to me. Oh! by this cherished token,", "Of woven hair, which thou wilt not disown,", "Turn, as 'twere but the memory of me,", "And not my scorned self who prayed to thee.", "", "ROSALIND:", "Is it a dream, or do I see", "And hear frail Helen? I would flee", "Thy tainting touch; but former years", "Arise, and bring forbidden tears;", "And my o'erburthened memory", "Seeks yet its lost repose in thee.", "I share thy crime. I cannot choose", "But weep for thee: mine own strange grief", "But seldom stoops to such relief:", "Nor ever did I love thee less,", "Though mourning o'er thy wickedness", "Even with a sister's woe. I knew", "What to the evil world is due,", "And therefore sternly did refuse", "To link me with the infamy", "Of one so lost as Helen. Now", "Bewildered by my dire despair,", "Wondering I blush, and weep that thou", "Should'st love me still,--thou only!--There,", "Let us sit on that gray stone", "Till our mournful talk be done.", "", "HELEN:", "Alas! not there; I cannot bear", "The murmur of this lake to hear.", "A sound from there, Rosalind dear,", "Which never yet I heard elsewhere", "But in our native land, recurs,", "Even here where now we meet. It stirs", "Too much of suffocating sorrow!", "In the dell of yon dark chestnutwood", "Is a stone seat, a solitude", "Less like our own. The ghost of Peace", "Will not desert this spot. To-morrow,", "If thy kind feelings should not cease,", "We may sit here.", "", "ROSALIND:", "Thou lead, my sweet,", "And I will follow.", "", "HENRY:", "'Tis Fenici's seat", "Where you are going? This is not the way,", "Mamma; it leads behind those trees that grow", "Close to the little river.", "", "HELEN:", "Yes: I know;", "I was bewildered. Kiss me and be gay,", "Dear boy: why do you sob?", "", "HENRY:", "I do not know:", "But it might break any one's heart to see", "You and the lady cry so bitterly.", "", "HELEN:", "It is a gentle child, my friend. Go home,", "Henry, and play with Lilla till I come.", "We only cried with joy to see each other;", "We are quite merry now: Good-night.", "", "The boy", "Lifted a sudden look upon his mother,", "And in the gleam of forced and hollow joy", "Which lightened o'er her face, laughed with the glee", "Of light and unsuspecting infancy,", "And whispered in her ear, 'Bring home with you", "That sweet strange lady-friend.' Then off he flew,", "But stopped, and beckoned with a meaning smile,", "Where the road turned. Pale Rosalind the while,", "Hiding her face, stood weeping silently.", "", "In silence then they took the way", "Beneath the forest's solitude.", "It was a vast and antique wood,", "Thro' which they took their way;", "And the gray shades of evening", "O'er that green wilderness did fling", "Still deeper solitude.", "Pursuing still the path that wound", "The vast and knotted trees around", "Through which slow shades were wandering,", "To a deep lawny dell they came,", "To a stone seat beside a spring,", "O'er which the columned wood did frame", "A roofless temple, like the fane", "Where, ere new creeds could faith obtain,", "Man's early race once knelt beneath", "The overhanging deity.", "O'er this fair fountain hung the sky,", "Now spangled with rare stars. The snake,", "The pale snake, that with eager breath", "Creeps here his noontide thirst to slake,", "Is beaming with many a mingled hue,", "Shed from yon dome's eternal blue,", "When he floats on that dark and lucid flood", "In the light of his own loveliness;", "And the birds that in the fountain dip", "Their plumes, with fearless fellowship", "Above and round him wheel and hover.", "The fitful wind is heard to stir", "One solitary leaf on high;", "The chirping of the grasshopper", "Fills every pause. There is emotion", "In all that dwells at noontide here;", "Then, through the intricate wild wood,", "A maze of life and light and motion", "Is woven. But there is stillness now:", "Gloom, and the trance of Nature now:", "The snake is in his cave asleep;", "The birds are on the branches dreaming:", "Only the shadows creep:", "Only the glow-worm is gleaming:", "Only the owls and the nightingales", "Wake in this dell when daylight fails,", "And gray shades gather in the woods:", "And the owls have all fled far away", "In a merrier glen to hoot and play,", "For the moon is veiled and sleeping now.", "The accustomed nightingale still broods", "On her accustomed bough,", "But she is mute; for her false mate", "Has fled and left her desolate.", "", "This silent spot tradition old", "Had peopled with the spectral dead.", "For the roots of the speaker's hair felt cold", "And stiff, as with tremulous lips he told", "That a hellish shape at midnight led", "The ghost of a youth with hoary hair,", "And sate on the seat beside him there,", "Till a naked child came wandering by,", "When the fiend would change to a lady fair!", "A fearful tale! The truth was worse:", "For here a sister and a brother", "Had solemnized a monstrous curse,", "Meeting in this fair solitude:", "For beneath yon very sky,", "Had they resigned to one another", "Body and soul. The multitude:", "Tracking them to the secret wood,", "Tore limb from limb their innocent child,", "And stabbed and trampled on its mother;", "But the youth, for God's most holy grace,", "A priest saved to burn in the market-place.", "", "Duly at evening Helen came", "To this lone silent spot,", "From the wrecks of a tale of wilder sorrow", "So much of sympathy to borrow", "As soothed her own dark lot.", "Duly each evening from her home,", "With her fair child would Helen come", "To sit upon that antique seat,", "While the hues of day were pale;", "And the bright boy beside her feet", "Now lay, lifting at intervals", "His broad blue eyes on her;", "Now, where some sudden impulse calls", "Following. He was a gentle boy", "And in all gentle sorts took joy;", "Oft in a dry leaf for a boat,", "With a small feather for a sail,", "His fancy on that spring would float,", "If some invisible breeze might stir", "Its marble calm: and Helen smiled", "Through tears of awe on the gay child,", "To think that a boy as fair as he,", "In years which never more may be,", "By that same fount, in that same wood,", "The like sweet fancies had pursued;", "And that a mother, lost like her,", "Had mournfully sate watching him.", "Then all the scene was wont to swim", "Through the mist of a burning tear.", "", "For many months had Helen known", "This scene; and now she thither turned", "Her footsteps, not alone.", "The friend whose falsehood she had mourned,", "Sate with her on that seat of stone.", "Silent they sate; for evening,", "And the power its glimpses bring", "Had, with one awful shadow, quelled", "The passion of their grief. They sate", "With linked hands, for unrepelled", "Had Helen taken Rosalind's.", "Like the autumn wind, when it unbinds", "The tangled locks of the nightshade's hair,", "Which is twined in the sultry summer air", "Round the walls of an outworn sepulchre,", "Did the voice of Helen, sad and sweet,", "And the sound of her heart that ever beat,", "As with sighs and words she breathed on her,", "Unbind the knots of her friend's despair,", "Till her thoughts were free to float and flow;", "And from her labouring bosom now,", "Like the bursting of a prisoned flame,", "The voice of a long pent sorrow came.", "", "ROSALIND:", "I saw the dark earth fall upon", "The coffin; and I saw the stone", "Laid over him whom this cold breast", "Had pillowed to his nightly rest!", "Thou knowest not, thou canst not know", "My agony. Oh! I could not weep:", "The sources whence such blessings flow", "Were not to be approached by me!", "But I could smile, and I could sleep,", "Though with a self-accusing heart.", "In morning's light, in evening's gloom,", "I watched,--and would not thence depart--", "My husband's unlamented tomb.", "My children knew their sire was gone,", "But when I told them,--'He is dead,'--", "They laughed aloud in frantic glee,", "They clapped their hands and leaped about,", "Answering each other's ecstasy", "With many a prank and merry shout.", "But I sate silent and alone,", "Wrapped in the mock of mourning weed.", "", "They laughed, for he was dead: but I", "Sate with a hard and tearless eye,", "And with a heart which would deny", "The secret joy it could not quell,", "Low muttering o'er his loathed name;", "Till from that self-contention came", "Remorse where sin was none; a hell", "Which in pure spirits should not dwell.", "", "I'll tell thee truth. He was a man", "Hard, selfish, loving only gold,", "Yet full of guile; his pale eyes ran", "With tears, which each some falsehood told,", "And oft his smooth and bridled tongue", "Would give the lie to his flushing cheek;", "He was a coward to the strong:", "He was a tyrant to the weak,", "On whom his vengeance he would wreak:", "For scorn, whose arrows search the heart,", "From many a stranger's eye would dart,", "And on his memory cling, and follow", "His soul to its home so cold and hollow.", "He was a tyrant to the weak,", "And we were such, alas the day!", "Oft, when my little ones at play,", "Were in youth's natural lightness gay,", "Or if they listened to some tale", "Of travellers, or of fairy land,--", "When the light from the wood-fire's dying brand", "Flashed on their faces,--if they heard", "Or thought they heard upon the stair", "His footstep, the suspended word", "Died on my lips: we all grew pale:", "The babe at my bosom was hushed with fear", "If it thought it heard its father near;", "And my two wild boys would near my knee", "Cling, cowed and cowering fearfully.", "", "I'll tell thee truth: I loved another.", "His name in my ear was ever ringing,", "His form to my brain was ever clinging:", "Yet if some stranger breathed that name,", "My lips turned white, and my heart beat fast:", "My nights were once haunted by dreams of flame,", "My days were dim in the shadow cast", "By the memory of the same!", "Day and night, day and night,", "He was my breath and life and light,", "For three short years, which soon were passed.", "On the fourth, my gentle mother", "Led me to the shrine, to be", "His sworn bride eternally.", "And now we stood on the altar stair,", "When my father came from a distant land,", "And with a loud and fearful cry", "Rushed between us suddenly.", "I saw the stream of his thin gray hair,", "I saw his lean and lifted hand,", "And heard his words,--and live! Oh God!", "Wherefore do I live?--'Hold, hold!'", "He cried, 'I tell thee 'tis her brother!", "Thy mother, boy, beneath the sod", "Of yon churchyard rests in her shroud so cold:", "I am now weak, and pale, and old:", "We were once dear to one another,", "I and that corpse! Thou art our child!'", "Then with a laugh both long and wild", "The youth upon the pavement fell:", "They found him dead! All looked on me,", "The spasms of my despair to see:", "But I was calm. I went away:", "I was clammy-cold like clay!", "I did not weep: I did not speak:", "But day by day, week after week,", "I walked about like a corpse alive!", "Alas! sweet friend, you must believe", "This heart is stone: it did not break.", "My father lived a little while,", "But all might see that he was dying,", "He smiled with such a woeful smile!", "When he was in the churchyard lying", "Among the worms, we grew quite poor,", "So that no one would give us bread:", "My mother looked at me, and said", "Faint words of cheer, which only meant", "That she could die and be content;", "So I went forth from the same church door", "To another husband's bed.", "And this was he who died at last,", "When weeks and months and years had passed,", "Through which I firmly did fulfil", "My duties, a devoted wife,", "With the stern step of vanquished will,", "Walking beneath the night of life,", "Whose hours extinguished, like slow rain", "Falling for ever, pain by pain,", "The very hope of death's dear rest;", "Which, since the heart within my breast", "Of natural life was dispossessed,", "Its strange sustainer there had been.", "", "When flowers were dead, and grass was green", "Upon my mother's grave,--that mother", "Whom to outlive, and cheer, and make", "My wan eyes glitter for her sake,", "Was my vowed task, the single care", "Which once gave life to my despair,--", "When she was a thing that did not stir", "And the crawling worms were cradling her", "To a sleep more deep and so more sweet", "Than a baby's rocked on its nurse's knee,", "I lived: a living pulse then beat", "Beneath my heart that awakened me.", "What was this pulse so warm and free?", "Alas! I knew it could not be", "My own dull blood: 'twas like a thought", "Of liquid love, that spread and wrought", "Under my bosom and in my brain,", "And crept with the blood through every vein;", "And hour by hour, day after day,", "The wonder could not charm away,", "But laid in sleep, my wakeful pain,", "Until I knew it was a child,", "And then I wept. For long, long years", "These frozen eyes had shed no tears:", "But now--'twas the season fair and mild", "When April has wept itself to May:", "I sate through the sweet sunny day", "By my window bowered round with leaves,", "And down my cheeks the quick tears fell", "Like twinkling rain-drops from the eaves,", "When warm spring showers are passing o'er.", "O Helen, none can ever tell", "The joy it was to weep once more!", "", "I wept to think how hard it were", "To kill my babe, and take from it", "The sense of light, and the warm air,", "And my own fond and tender care,", "And love and smiles; ere I knew yet", "That these for it might, as for me,", "Be the masks of a grinning mockery.", "And haply, I would dream, 'twere sweet", "To feed it from my faded breast,", "Or mark my own heart's restless beat", "Rock it to its untroubled rest,", "And watch the growing soul beneath", "Dawn in faint smiles; and hear its breath,", "Half interrupted by calm sighs,", "And search the depth of its fair eyes", "For long departed memories!", "And so I lived till that sweet load", "Was lightened. Darkly forward flowed", "The stream of years, and on it bore", "Two shapes of gladness to my sight;", "Two other babes, delightful more", "In my lost soul's abandoned night,", "Than their own country ships may be", "Sailing towards wrecked mariners,", "Who cling to the rock of a wintry sea.", "For each, as it came, brought soothing tears;", "And a loosening warmth, as each one lay", "Sucking the sullen milk away", "About my frozen heart, did play,", "And weaned it, oh how painfully--", "As they themselves were weaned each one", "From that sweet food,--even from the thirst", "Of death, and nothingness, and rest,", "Strange inmate of a living breast!", "Which all that I had undergone", "Of grief and shame, since she, who first", "The gates of that dark refuge closed,", "Came to my sight, and almost burst", "The seal of that Lethean spring;", "But these fair shadows interposed:", "For all delights are shadows now!", "And from my brain to my dull brow", "The heavy tears gather and flow:", "I cannot speak: Oh, let me weep!", "", "The tears which fell from her wan eyes", "Glimmered among the moonlight dew:", "Her deep hard sobs and heavy sighs", "Their echoes in the darkness threw.", "When she grew calm, she thus did keep", "The tenor of her tale:", "He died:", "I know not how: he was not old,", "If age be numbered by its years:", "But he was bowed and bent with fears,", "Pale with the quenchless thirst of gold,", "Which, like fierce fever, left him weak;", "And his strait lip and bloated cheek", "Were warped in spasms by hollow sneers;", "And selfish cares with barren plough,", "Not age, had lined his narrow brow,", "And foul and cruel thoughts, which feed", "Upon the withering life within,", "Like vipers on some poisonous weed.", "Whether his ill were death or sin", "None knew, until he died indeed,", "And then men owned they were the same.", "", "Seven days within my chamber lay", "That corse, and my babes made holiday:", "At last, I told them what is death:", "The eldest, with a kind of shame,", "Came to my knees with silent breath,", "And sate awe-stricken at my feet;", "And soon the others left their play,", "And sate there too. It is unmeet", "To shed on the brief flower of youth", "The withering knowledge of the grave;", "From me remorse then wrung that truth.", "I could not bear the joy which gave", "Too just a response to mine own.", "In vain. I dared not feign a groan,", "And in their artless looks I saw,", "Between the mists of fear and awe,", "That my own thought was theirs, and they", "Expressed it not in words, but said,", "Each in its heart, how every day", "Will pass in happy work and play,", "Now he is dead and gone away.", "", "After the funeral all our kin", "Assembled, and the will was read.", "My friend, I tell thee, even the dead", "Have strength, their putrid shrouds within,", "To blast and torture. Those who live", "Still fear the living, but a corse", "Is merciless, and power doth give", "To such pale tyrants half the spoil", "He rends from those who groan and toil,", "Because they blush not with remorse", "Among their crawling worms. Behold,", "I have no child! my tale grows old", "With grief, and staggers: let it reach", "The limits of my feeble speech,", "And languidly at length recline", "On the brink of its own grave and mine.", "", "Thou knowest what a thing is Poverty", "Among the fallen on evil days:", "'Tis Crime, and Fear, and Infamy,", "And houseless Want in frozen ways", "Wandering ungarmented, and Pain,", "And, worse than all, that inward stain", "Foul Self-contempt, which drowns in sneers", "Youth's starlight smile, and makes its tears", "First like hot gall, then dry for ever!", "And well thou knowest a mother never", "Could doom her children to this ill,", "And well he knew the same. The will", "Imported, that if e'er again", "I sought my children to behold,", "Or in my birthplace did remain", "Beyond three days, whose hours were told,", "They should inherit nought: and he,", "To whom next came their patrimony,", "A sallow lawyer, cruel and cold,", "Aye watched me, as the will was read,", "With eyes askance, which sought to see", "The secrets of my agony;", "And with close lips and anxious brow", "Stood canvassing still to and fro", "The chance of my resolve, and all", "The dead man's caution just did call;", "For in that killing lie 'twas said--", "'She is adulterous, and doth hold", "In secret that the Christian creed", "Is false, and therefore is much need", "That I should have a care to save", "My children from eternal fire.'", "Friend, he was sheltered by the grave,", "And therefore dared to be a liar!", "In truth, the Indian on the pyre", "Of her dead husband, half consumed,", "As well might there be false, as I", "To those abhorred embraces doomed,", "Far worse than fire's brief agony", "As to the Christian creed, if true", "Or false, I never questioned it:", "I took it as the vulgar do:", "Nor my vexed soul had leisure yet", "To doubt the things men say, or deem", "That they are other than they seem.", "", "All present who those crimes did hear,", "In feigned or actual scorn and fear,", "Men, women, children, slunk away,", "Whispering with self-contented pride,", "Which half suspects its own base lie.", "I spoke to none, nor did abide,", "But silently I went my way,", "Nor noticed I where joyously", "Sate my two younger babes at play,", "In the court-yard through which I passed;", "But went with footsteps firm and fast", "Till I came to the brink of the ocean green,", "And there, a woman with gray hairs,", "Who had my mother's servant been,", "Kneeling, with many tears and prayers,", "Made me accept a purse of gold,", "Half of the earnings she had kept", "To refuge her when weak and old.", "", "With woe, which never sleeps or slept,", "I wander now. 'Tis a vain thought--", "But on yon alp, whose snowy head", "'Mid the azure air is islanded,", "(We see it o'er the flood of cloud,", "Which sunrise from its eastern caves", "Drives, wrinkling into golden waves,", "Hung with its precipices proud,", "From that gray stone where first we met)", "There now--who knows the dead feel nought?--", "Should be my grave; for he who yet", "Is my soul's soul, once said: ''Twere sweet", "'Mid stars and lightnings to abide,", "And winds and lulling snows, that beat", "With their soft flakes the mountain wide,", "Where weary meteor lamps repose,", "And languid storms their pinions close:", "And all things strong and bright and pure,", "And ever during, aye endure:", "Who knows, if one were buried there,", "But these things might our spirits make,", "Amid the all-surrounding air,", "Their own eternity partake?'", "Then 'twas a wild and playful saying", "At which I laughed, or seemed to laugh:", "They were his words: now heed my praying,", "And let them be my epitaph.", "Thy memory for a term may be", "My monument. Wilt remember me?", "I know thou wilt, and canst forgive", "Whilst in this erring world to live", "My soul disdained not, that I thought", "Its lying forms were worthy aught", "And much less thee.", "", "HELEN:", "O speak not so,", "But come to me and pour thy woe", "Into this heart, full though it be,", "Ay, overflowing with its own:", "I thought that grief had severed me", "From all beside who weep and groan;", "Its likeness upon earth to be,", "Its express image; but thou art", "More wretched. Sweet! we will not part", "Henceforth, if death be not division;", "If so, the dead feel no contrition.", "But wilt thou hear since last we parted", "All that has left me broken hearted?", "", "ROSALIND:", "Yes, speak. The faintest stars are scarcely shorn", "Of their thin beams by that delusive morn", "Which sinks again in darkness, like the light", "Of early love, soon lost in total night.", "", "HELEN:", "Alas! Italian winds are mild,", "But my bosom is cold--wintry cold--", "When the warm air weaves, among the fresh leaves,", "Soft music, my poor brain is wild,", "And I am weak like a nursling child,", "Though my soul with grief is gray and old.", "", "ROSALIND:", "Weep not at thine own words, though they must make", "Me weep. What is thy tale?", "", "HELEN:", "I fear 'twill shake", "Thy gentle heart with tears. Thou well", "Rememberest when we met no more,", "And, though I dwelt with Lionel,", "That friendless caution pierced me sore", "With grief; a wound my spirit bore", "Indignantly, but when he died,", "With him lay dead both hope and pride.", "Alas! all hope is buried now.", "But then men dreamed the aged earth", "Was labouring in that mighty birth,", "Which many a poet and a sage", "Has aye foreseen--the happy age", "When truth and love shall dwell below", "Among the works and ways of men;", "Which on this world not power but will", "Even now is wanting to fulfil.", "", "Among mankind what thence befell", "Of strife, how vain, is known too well;", "When Liberty's dear paean fell", "'Mid murderous howls. To Lionel,", "Though of great wealth and lineage high,", "Yet through those dungeon walls there came", "Thy thrilling light, O Liberty!", "And as the meteor's midnight flame", "Startles the dreamer, sun-like truth", "Flashed on his visionary youth,", "And filled him, not with love, but faith,", "And hope, and courage mute in death;", "For love and life in him were twins,", "Born at one birth: in every other", "First life then love its course begins,", "Though they be children of one mother;", "And so through this dark world they fleet", "Divided, till in death they meet;", "But he loved all things ever. Then", "He passed amid the strife of men,", "And stood at the throne of armed power", "Pleading for a world of woe:", "Secure as one on a rock-built tower", "O'er the wrecks which the surge trails to and fro,", "'Mid the passions wild of human kind", "He stood, like a spirit calming them;", "For, it was said, his words could bind", "Like music the lulled crowd, and stem", "That torrent of unquiet dream", "Which mortals truth and reason deem,", "But is revenge and fear and pride.", "Joyous he was; and hope and peace", "On all who heard him did abide,", "Raining like dew from his sweet talk,", "As where the evening star may walk", "Along the brink of the gloomy seas,", "Liquid mists of splendour quiver.", "His very gestures touched to tears", "The unpersuaded tyrant, never", "So moved before: his presence stung", "The torturers with their victim's pain,", "And none knew how; and through their ears", "The subtle witchcraft of his tongue", "Unlocked the hearts of those who keep", "Gold, the world's bond of slavery.", "Men wondered, and some sneered to see", "One sow what he could never reap:", "For he is rich, they said, and young,", "And might drink from the depths of luxury.", "If he seeks Fame, Fame never crowned", "The champion of a trampled creed:", "If he seeks Power, Power is enthroned", "'Mid ancient rights and wrongs, to feed", "Which hungry wolves with praise and spoil,", "Those who would sit near Power must toil;", "And such, there sitting, all may see.", "What seeks he? All that others seek", "He casts away, like a vile weed", "Which the sea casts unreturningly.", "That poor and hungry men should break", "The laws which wreak them toil and scorn,", "We understand; but Lionel", "We know, is rich and nobly born.", "So wondered they: yet all men loved", "Young Lionel, though few approved;", "All but the priests, whose hatred fell", "Like the unseen blight of a smiling day,", "The withering honey dew, which clings", "Under the bright green buds of May,", "Whilst they unfold their emerald wings:", "For he made verses wild and queer", "On the strange creeds priests hold so dear,", "Because they bring them land and gold.", "Of devils and saints and all such gear,", "He made tales which whoso heard or read", "Would laugh till he were almost dead.", "So this grew a proverb: 'Don't get old", "Till Lionel's \"Banquet in Hell\" you hear,", "And then you will laugh yourself young again.'", "So the priests hated him, and he", "Repaid their hate with cheerful glee.", "", "Ah, smiles and joyance quickly died,", "For public hope grew pale and dim", "In an altered time and tide,", "And in its wasting withered him,", "As a summer flower that blows too soon", "Droops in the smile of the waning moon,", "When it scatters through an April night", "The frozen dews of wrinkling blight.", "None now hoped more. Gray Power was seated", "Safely on her ancestral throne;", "And Faith, the Python, undefeated,", "Even to its blood-stained steps dragged on", "Her foul and wounded train, and men", "Were trampled and deceived again,", "And words and shows again could bind", "The wailing tribes of human kind", "In scorn and famine. Fire and blood", "Raged round the raging multitude,", "To fields remote by tyrants sent", "To be the scorned instrument", "With which they drag from mines of gore", "The chains their slaves yet ever wore:", "And in the streets men met each other,", "And by old altars and in halls,", "And smiled again at festivals.", "But each man found in his heart's brother", "Cold cheer; for all, though half deceived,", "The outworn creeds again believed,", "And the same round anew began,", "Which the weary world yet ever ran.", "", "Many then wept, not tears, but gall", "Within their hearts, like drops which fall", "Wasting the fountain-stone away.", "And in that dark and evil day", "Did all desires and thoughts, that claim", "Men's care--ambition, friendship, fame,", "Love, hope, though hope was now despair--", "Indue the colours of this change,", "As from the all-surrounding air", "The earth takes hues obscure and strange,", "When storm and earthquake linger there.", "", "And so, my friend, it then befell", "To many, most to Lionel,", "Whose hope was like the life of youth", "Within him, and when dead, became", "A spirit of unresting flame,", "Which goaded him in his distress", "Over the world's vast wilderness.", "Three years he left his native land,", "And on the fourth, when he returned,", "None knew him: he was stricken deep", "With some disease of mind, and turned", "Into aught unlike Lionel.", "On him, on whom, did he pause in sleep,", "Serenest smiles were wont to keep,", "And, did he wake, a winged band", "Of bright persuasions, which had fed", "On his sweet lips and liquid eyes,", "Kept their swift pinions half outspread", "To do on men his least command;", "On him, whom once 'twas paradise", "Even to behold, now misery lay:", "In his own heart 'twas merciless,", "To all things else none may express", "Its innocence and tenderness.", "", "'Twas said that he had refuge sought", "In love from his unquiet thought", "In distant lands, and been deceived", "By some strange show; for there were found,", "Blotted with tears as those relieved", "By their own words are wont to do,", "These mournful verses on the ground,", "By all who read them blotted too.", "", "'How am I changed! my hopes were once like fire:", "I loved, and I believed that life was love.", "How am I lost! on wings of swift desire", "Among Heaven's winds my spirit once did move.", "I slept, and silver dreams did aye inspire", "My liquid sleep: I woke, and did approve", "All nature to my heart, and thought to make", "A paradise of earth for one sweet sake.", "", "'I love, but I believe in love no more.", "I feel desire, but hope not. O, from sleep", "Most vainly must my weary brain implore", "Its long lost flattery now: I wake to weep,", "And sit through the long day gnawing the core", "Of my bitter heart, and, like a miser, keep,", "Since none in what I feel take pain or pleasure,", "To my own soul its self-consuming treasure.'", "", "He dwelt beside me near the sea;", "And oft in evening did we meet,", "When the waves, beneath the starlight, flee", "O'er the yellow sands with silver feet,", "And talked: our talk was sad and sweet,", "Till slowly from his mien there passed", "The desolation which it spoke;", "And smiles,--as when the lightning's blast", "Has parched some heaven-delighting oak,", "The next spring shows leaves pale and rare,", "But like flowers delicate and fair,", "On its rent boughs,--again arrayed", "His countenance in tender light:", "His words grew subtile fire, which made", "The air his hearers breathed delight:", "His motions, like the winds, were free,", "Which bend the bright grass gracefully,", "Then fade away in circlets faint:", "And winged Hope, on which upborne", "His soul seemed hovering in his eyes,", "Like some bright spirit newly born", "Floating amid the sunny skies,", "Sprang forth from his rent heart anew.", "Yet o'er his talk, and looks, and mien,", "Tempering their loveliness too keen,", "Past woe its shadow backward threw,", "Till like an exhalation, spread", "From flowers half drunk with evening dew,", "They did become infectious: sweet", "And subtle mists of sense and thought:", "Which wrapped us soon, when we might meet,", "Almost from our own looks and aught", "The wild world holds. And so, his mind", "Was healed, while mine grew sick with fear:", "For ever now his health declined,", "Like some frail bark which cannot bear", "The impulse of an altered wind,", "Though prosperous: and my heart grew full", "'Mid its new joy of a new care:", "For his cheek became, not pale, but fair,", "As rose-o'ershadowed lilies are;", "And soon his deep and sunny hair,", "In this alone less beautiful,", "Like grass in tombs grew wild and rare.", "The blood in his translucent veins", "Beat, not like animal life, but love", "Seemed now its sullen springs to move,", "When life had failed, and all its pains:", "And sudden sleep would seize him oft", "Like death, so calm, but that a tear,", "His pointed eyelashes between,", "Would gather in the light serene", "Of smiles, whose lustre bright and soft", "Beneath lay undulating there.", "His breath was like inconstant flame,", "As eagerly it went and came;", "And I hung o'er him in his sleep,", "Till, like an image in the lake", "Which rains disturb, my tears would break", "The shadow of that slumber deep:", "Then he would bid me not to weep,", "And say, with flattery false, yet sweet,", "That death and he could never meet,", "If I would never part with him.", "And so we loved, and did unite", "All that in us was yet divided:", "For when he said, that many a rite,", "By men to bind but once provided,", "Could not be shared by him and me,", "Or they would kill him in their glee,", "I shuddered, and then laughing said--", "'We will have rites our faith to bind,", "But our church shall be the starry night,", "Our altar the grassy earth outspread,", "And our priest the muttering wind.'", "", "'Twas sunset as I spoke: one star", "Had scarce burst forth, when from afar", "The ministers of misrule sent,", "Seized upon Lionel, and bore", "His chained limbs to a dreary tower,", "In the midst of a city vast and wide.", "For he, they said, from his mind had bent", "Against their gods keen blasphemy,", "For which, though his soul must roasted be", "In hell's red lakes immortally,", "Yet even on earth must he abide", "The vengeance of their slaves: a trial,", "I think, men call it. What avail", "Are prayers and tears, which chase denial", "From the fierce savage, nursed in hate?", "What the knit soul that pleading and pale", "Makes wan the quivering cheek, which late", "It painted with its own delight?", "We were divided. As I could,", "I stilled the tingling of my blood,", "And followed him in their despite,", "As a widow follows, pale and wild,", "The murderers and corse of her only child;", "And when we came to the prison door", "And I prayed to share his dungeon floor", "With prayers which rarely have been spurned,", "And when men drove me forth and I", "Stared with blank frenzy on the sky,", "A farewell look of love he turned,", "Half calming me; then gazed awhile,", "As if thro' that black and massy pile,", "And thro' the crowd around him there,", "And thro' the dense and murky air,", "And the thronged streets, he did espy", "What poets know and prophesy;", "And said, with voice that made them shiver", "And clung like music in my brain,", "And which the mute walls spoke again", "Prolonging it with deepened strain:", "'Fear not the tyrants shall rule for ever,", "Or the priests of the bloody faith;", "They stand on the brink of that mighty river,", "Whose waves they have tainted with death:", "It is fed from the depths of a thousand dells,", "Around them it foams, and rages, and swells,", "And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,", "Like wrecks in the surge of eternity.'", "", "I dwelt beside the prison gate;", "And the strange crowd that out and in", "Passed, some, no doubt, with mine own fate,", "Might have fretted me with its ceaseless din,", "But the fever of care was louder within.", "Soon, but too late, in penitence", "Or fear, his foes released him thence:", "I saw his thin and languid form,", "As leaning on the jailor's arm,", "Whose hardened eyes grew moist the while,", "To meet his mute and faded smile,", "And hear his words of kind farewell,", "He tottered forth from his damp cell.", "Many had never wept before,", "From whom fast tears then gushed and fell:", "Many will relent no more,", "Who sobbed like infants then; aye, all", "Who thronged the prison's stony hall,", "The rulers or the slaves of law,", "Felt with a new surprise and awe", "That they were human, till strong shame", "Made them again become the same.", "The prison blood-hounds, huge and grim,", "From human looks the infection caught,", "And fondly crouched and fawned on him;", "And men have heard the prisoners say,", "Who in their rotting dungeons lay,", "That from that hour, throughout one day,", "The fierce despair and hate which kept", "Their trampled bosoms almost slept:", "Where, like twin vultures, they hung feeding", "On each heart's wound, wide torn and bleeding,--", "Because their jailors' rule, they thought,", "Grew merciful, like a parent's sway.", "", "I know not how, but we were free:", "And Lionel sate alone with me,", "As the carriage drove thro' the streets apace;", "And we looked upon each other's face;", "And the blood in our fingers intertwined", "Ran like the thoughts of a single mind,", "As the swift emotions went and came", "Thro' the veins of each united frame.", "So thro' the long long streets we passed", "Of the million-peopled City vast;", "Which is that desert, where each one", "Seeks his mate yet is alone,", "Beloved and sought and mourned of none;", "Until the clear blue sky was seen,", "And the grassy meadows bright and green,", "And then I sunk in his embrace,", "Enclosing there a mighty space", "Of love: and so we travelled on", "By woods, and fields of yellow flowers,", "And towns, and villages, and towers,", "Day after day of happy hours.", "It was the azure time of June,", "When the skies are deep in the stainless noon,", "And the warm and fitful breezes shake", "The fresh green leaves of the hedgerow briar,", "And there were odours then to make", "The very breath we did respire", "A liquid element, whereon", "Our spirits, like delighted things", "That walk the air on subtle wings,", "Floated and mingled far away,", "'Mid the warm winds of the sunny day.", "And when the evening star came forth", "Above the curve of the new bent moon,", "And light and sound ebbed from the earth,", "Like the tide of the full and the weary sea", "To the depths of its own tranquillity,", "Our natures to its own repose", "Did the earth's breathless sleep attune:", "Like flowers, which on each other close", "Their languid leaves when daylight's gone,", "We lay, till new emotions came,", "Which seemed to make each mortal frame", "One soul of interwoven flame,", "A life in life, a second birth", "In worlds diviner far than earth,", "Which, like two strains of harmony", "That mingle in the silent sky", "Then slowly disunite, passed by", "And left the tenderness of tears,", "A soft oblivion of all fears,", "A sweet sleep: so we travelled on", "Till we came to the home of Lionel,", "Among the mountains wild and lone,", "Beside the hoary western sea,", "Which near the verge of the echoing shore", "The massy forest shadowed o'er.", "", "The ancient steward, with hair all hoar,", "As we alighted, wept to see", "His master changed so fearfully;", "And the old man's sobs did waken me", "From my dream of unremaining gladness;", "The truth flashed o'er me like quick madness", "When I looked, and saw that there was death", "On Lionel: yet day by day", "He lived, till fear grew hope and faith,", "And in my soul I dared to say,", "Nothing so bright can pass away:", "Death is dark, and foul, and dull,", "But he is--O how beautiful!", "Yet day by day he grew more weak,", "And his sweet voice, when he might speak,", "Which ne'er was loud, became more low;", "And the light which flashed through his waxen cheek", "Grew faint, as the rose-like hues which flow", "From sunset o'er the Alpine snow:", "And death seemed not like death in him,", "For the spirit of life o'er every limb", "Lingered, a mist of sense and thought.", "When the summer wind faint odours brought", "From mountain flowers, even as it passed", "His cheek would change, as the noonday sea", "Which the dying breeze sweeps fitfully.", "If but a cloud the sky o'ercast,", "You might see his colour come and go,", "And the softest strain of music made", "Sweet smiles, yet sad, arise and fade", "Amid the dew of his tender eyes;", "And the breath, with intermitting flow,", "Made his pale lips quiver and part.", "You might hear the beatings of his heart,", "Quick, but not strong; and with my tresses", "When oft he playfully would bind", "In the bowers of mossy lonelinesses", "His neck, and win me so to mingle", "In the sweet depth of woven caresses,", "And our faint limbs were intertwined,", "Alas! the unquiet life did tingle", "From mine own heart through every vein,", "Like a captive in dreams of liberty,", "Who beats the walls of his stony cell.", "But his, it seemed already free,", "Like the shadow of fire surrounding me!", "On my faint eyes and limbs did dwell", "That spirit as it passed, till soon,", "As a frail cloud wandering o'er the moon,", "Beneath its light invisible,", "Is seen when it folds its gray wings again", "To alight on midnight's dusky plain,", "I lived and saw, and the gathering soul", "Passed from beneath that strong control,", "And I fell on a life which was sick with fear", "Of all the woe that now I bear.", "", "Amid a bloomless myrtle wood,", "On a green and sea-girt promontory,", "Not far from where we dwelt, there stood", "In record of a sweet sad story,", "An altar and a temple bright", "Circled by steps, and o'er the gate", "Was sculptured, 'To Fidelity;'", "And in the shrine an image sate,", "All veiled: but there was seen the light", "Of smiles which faintly could express", "A mingled pain and tenderness", "Through that ethereal drapery.", "The left hand held the head, the right--", "Beyond the veil, beneath the skin,", "You might see the nerves quivering within--", "Was forcing the point of a barbed dart", "Into its side-convulsing heart.", "An unskilled hand, yet one informed", "With genius, had the marble warmed", "With that pathetic life. This tale", "It told: A dog had from the sea,", "When the tide was raging fearfully,", "Dragged Lionel's mother, weak and pale,", "Then died beside her on the sand,", "And she that temple thence had planned;", "But it was Lionel's own hand", "Had wrought the image. Each new moon", "That lady did, in this lone fane,", "The rites of a religion sweet,", "Whose god was in her heart and brain:", "The seasons' loveliest flowers were strewn", "On the marble floor beneath her feet,", "And she brought crowns of sea-buds white", "Whose odour is so sweet and faint,", "And weeds, like branching chrysolite,", "Woven in devices fine and quaint.", "And tears from her brown eyes did stain", "The altar: need but look upon", "That dying statue fair and wan,", "If tears should cease, to weep again:", "And rare Arabian odours came,", "Through the myrtle copses steaming thence", "From the hissing frankincense,", "Whose smoke, wool-white as ocean foam,", "Hung in dense flocks beneath the dome--", "That ivory dome, whose azure night", "With golden stars, like heaven, was bright--", "O'er the split cedar's pointed flame;", "And the lady's harp would kindle there", "The melody of an old air,", "Softer than sleep; the villagers", "Mixed their religion up with hers,", "And, as they listened round, shed tears.", "", "One eve he led me to this fane:", "Daylight on its last purple cloud", "Was lingering gray, and soon her strain", "The nightingale began; now loud,", "Climbing in circles the windless sky,", "Now dying music; suddenly", "'Tis scattered in a thousand notes,", "And now to the hushed ear it floats", "Like field smells known in infancy,", "Then failing, soothes the air again.", "We sate within that temple lone,", "Pavilioned round with Parian stone:", "His mother's harp stood near, and oft", "I had awakened music soft", "Amid its wires: the nightingale", "Was pausing in her heaven-taught tale:", "'Now drain the cup,' said Lionel,", "'Which the poet-bird has crowned so well", "With the wine of her bright and liquid song!", "Heardst thou not sweet words among", "That heaven-resounding minstrelsy?", "Heard'st thou not that those who die", "Awake in a world of ecstasy?", "That love, when limbs are interwoven,", "And sleep, when the night of life is cloven,", "And thought, to the world's dim boundaries clinging,", "And music, when one beloved is singing,", "Is death? Let us drain right joyously", "The cup which the sweet bird fills for me.'", "He paused, and to my lips he bent", "His own: like spirit his words went", "Through all my limbs with the speed of fire;", "And his keen eyes, glittering through mine,", "Filled me with the flame divine,", "Which in their orbs was burning far,", "Like the light of an unmeasured star,", "In the sky of midnight dark and deep:", "Yes, 'twas his soul that did inspire", "Sounds, which my skill could ne'er awaken;", "And first, I felt my fingers sweep", "The harp, and a long quivering cry", "Burst from my lips in symphony:", "The dusk and solid air was shaken,", "As swift and swifter the notes came", "From my touch, that wandered like quick flame,", "And from my bosom, labouring", "With some unutterable thing:", "The awful sound of my own voice made", "My faint lips tremble; in some mood", "Of wordless thought Lionel stood", "So pale, that even beside his cheek", "The snowy column from its shade", "Caught whiteness: yet his countenance,", "Raised upward, burned with radiance", "Of spirit-piercing joy, whose light,", "Like the moon struggling through the night", "Of whirlwind-rifted clouds, did break", "With beams that might not be confined.", "I paused, but soon his gestures kindled", "New power, as by the moving wind", "The waves are lifted, and my song", "To low soft notes now changed and dwindled,", "And from the twinkling wires among,", "My languid fingers drew and flung", "Circles of life-dissolving sound,", "Yet faint; in aery rings they bound", "My Lionel, who, as every strain", "Grew fainter but more sweet, his mien", "Sunk with the sound relaxedly;", "And slowly now he turned to me,", "As slowly faded from his face", "That awful joy: with looks serene", "He was soon drawn to my embrace,", "And my wild song then died away", "In murmurs: words I dare not say", "We mixed, and on his lips mine fed", "Till they methought felt still and cold:", "'What is it with thee, love?' I said:", "No word, no look, no motion! yes,", "There was a change, but spare to guess,", "Nor let that moment's hope be told.", "I looked, and knew that he was dead,", "And fell, as the eagle on the plain", "Falls when life deserts her brain,", "And the mortal lightning is veiled again.", "", "O that I were now dead! but such", "(Did they not, love, demand too much,", "Those dying murmurs?) he forbade.", "O that I once again were mad!", "And yet, dear Rosalind, not so,", "For I would live to share thy woe.", "Sweet boy! did I forget thee too?", "Alas, we know not what we do", "When we speak words.", "No memory more", "Is in my mind of that sea shore.", "Madness came on me, and a troop", "Of misty shapes did seem to sit", "Beside me, on a vessel's poop,", "And the clear north wind was driving it.", "Then I heard strange tongues, and saw strange flowers,", "And the stars methought grew unlike ours,", "And the azure sky and the stormless sea", "Made me believe that I had died,", "And waked in a world, which was to me", "Drear hell, though heaven to all beside:", "Then a dead sleep fell on my mind,", "Whilst animal life many long years", "Had rescued from a chasm of tears;", "And when I woke, I wept to find", "That the same lady, bright and wise,", "With silver locks and quick brown eyes,", "The mother of my Lionel,", "Had tended me in my distress,", "And died some months before. Nor less", "Wonder, but far more peace and joy,", "Brought in that hour my lovely boy;", "For through that trance my soul had well", "The impress of thy being kept;", "And if I waked, or if I slept,", "No doubt, though memory faithless be,", "Thy image ever dwelt on me;", "And thus, O Lionel, like thee", "Is our sweet child. 'Tis sure most strange", "I knew not of so great a change,", "As that which gave him birth, who now", "Is all the solace of my woe.", "", "That Lionel great wealth had left", "By will to me, and that of all", "The ready lies of law bereft", "My child and me, might well befall.", "But let me think not of the scorn,", "Which from the meanest I have borne,", "When, for my child's beloved sake,", "I mixed with slaves, to vindicate", "The very laws themselves do make:", "Let me not say scorn is my fate,", "Lest I be proud, suffering the same", "With those who live in deathless fame.", "", "She ceased.--'Lo, where red morning thro' the woods", "Is burning o'er the dew;' said Rosalind.", "And with these words they rose, and towards the flood", "Of the blue lake, beneath the leaves now wind", "With equal steps and fingers intertwined:", "Thence to a lonely dwelling, where the shore", "Is shadowed with steep rocks, and cypresses", "Cleave with their dark green cones the silent skies,", "And with their shadows the clear depths below,", "And where a little terrace from its bowers,", "Of blooming myrtle and faint lemon-flowers,", "Scatters its sense-dissolving fragrance o'er", "The liquid marble of the windless lake;", "And where the aged forest's limbs look hoar,", "Under the leaves which their green garments make,", "They come: 'Tis Helen's home, and clean and white,", "Like one which tyrants spare on our own land", "In some such solitude, its casements bright", "Shone through their vine-leaves in the morning sun,", "And even within 'twas scarce like Italy.", "And when she saw how all things there were planned,", "As in an English home, dim memory", "Disturbed poor Rosalind: she stood as one", "Whose mind is where his body cannot be,", "Till Helen led her where her child yet slept,", "And said, 'Observe, that brow was Lionel's,", "Those lips were his, and so he ever kept", "One arm in sleep, pillowing his head with it.", "You cannot see his eyes--they are two wells", "Of liquid love: let us not wake him yet.'", "But Rosalind could bear no more, and wept", "A shower of burning tears, which fell upon", "His face, and so his opening lashes shone", "With tears unlike his own, as he did leap", "In sudden wonder from his innocent sleep.", "", "So Rosalind and Helen lived together", "Thenceforth, changed in all else, yet friends again,", "Such as they were, when o'er the mountain heather", "They wandered in their youth, through sun and rain.", "And after many years, for human things", "Change even like the ocean and the wind,", "Her daughter was restored to Rosalind,", "And in their circle thence some visitings", "Of joy 'mid their new calm would intervene:", "A lovely child she was, of looks serene,", "And motions which o'er things indifferent shed", "The grace and gentleness from whence they came.", "And Helen's boy grew with her, and they fed", "From the same flowers of thought, until each mind", "Like springs which mingle in one flood became,", "And in their union soon their parents saw", "The shadow of the peace denied to them.", "And Rosalind, for when the living stem", "Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall,", "Died ere her time; and with deep grief and awe", "The pale survivors followed her remains", "Beyond the region of dissolving rains,", "Up the cold mountain she was wont to call", "Her tomb; and on Chiavenna's precipice", "They raised a pyramid of lasting ice,", "Whose polished sides, ere day had yet begun,", "Caught the first glow of the unrisen sun,", "The last, when it had sunk; and thro' the night", "The charioteers of Arctos wheeled round", "Its glittering point, as seen from Helen's home,", "Whose sad inhabitants each year would come,", "With willing steps climbing that rugged height,", "And hang long locks of hair, and garlands bound", "With amaranth flowers, which, in the clime's despite,", "Filled the frore air with unaccustomed light:", "Such flowers, as in the wintry memory bloom", "Of one friend left, adorned that frozen tomb.", "", "Helen, whose spirit was of softer mould,", "Whose sufferings too were less, Death slowlier led", "Into the peace of his dominion cold:", "She died among her kindred, being old.", "And know, that if love die not in the dead", "As in the living, none of mortal kind", "Are blest, as now Helen and Rosalind." ], "linecount": "1341" }, { "title": "The Mask of Anarchy. Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "As I lay asleep in Italy", "There came a voice from over the Sea,", "And with great power it forth led me", "To walk in the visions of Poesy.", "", "I met Murder on the way--", "He had a mask like Castlereagh--", "Very smooth he looked, yet grim;", "Seven blood-hounds followed him:", "", "All were fat; and well they might", "Be in admirable plight,", "For one by one, and two by two,", "He tossed them human hearts to chew", "Which from his wide cloak he drew.", "", "Next came Fraud, and he had on,", "Like Eldon, an ermined gown;", "His big tears, for he wept well,", "Turned to mill-stones as they fell.", "", "And the little children, who", "Round his feet played to and fro,", "Thinking every tear a gem,", "Had their brains knocked out by them.", "", "Clothed with the Bible, as with light,", "And the shadows of the night,", "Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy", "On a crocodile rode by.", "", "And many more Destructions played", "In this ghastly masquerade,", "All disguised, even to the eyes,", "Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.", "", "Last came Anarchy: he rode", "On a white horse, splashed with blood;", "He was pale even to the lips,", "Like Death in the Apocalypse.", "", "And he wore a kingly crown;", "And in his grasp a sceptre shone;", "On his brow this mark I saw--", "'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'", "", "With a pace stately and fast,", "Over English land he passed,", "Trampling to a mire of blood", "The adoring multitude.", "", "And a mighty troop around,", "With their trampling shook the ground,", "Waving each a bloody sword,", "For the service of their Lord.", "", "And with glorious triumph, they", "Rode through England proud and gay,", "Drunk as with intoxication", "Of the wine of desolation.", "", "O'er fields and towns, from sea to sea,", "Passed the Pageant swift and free,", "Tearing up, and trampling down;", "Till they came to London town.", "", "And each dweller, panic-stricken,", "Felt his heart with terror sicken", "Hearing the tempestuous cry", "Of the triumph of Anarchy.", "", "For with pomp to meet him came,", "Clothed in arms like blood and flame,", "The hired murderers, who did sing", "'Thou art God, and Law, and King.", "", "'We have waited, weak and lone", "For thy coming, Mighty One!", "Our purses are empty, our swords are cold,", "Give us glory, and blood, and gold.'", "", "Lawyers and priests, a motley crowd,", "To the earth their pale brows bowed;", "Like a bad prayer not over loud,", "Whispering--'Thou art Law and God.'--", "", "Then all cried with one accord,", "'Thou art King, and God, and Lord;", "Anarchy, to thee we bow,", "Be thy name made holy now!'", "", "And Anarchy, the Skeleton,", "Bowed and grinned to every one,", "As well as if his education", "Had cost ten millions to the nation.", "", "For he knew the Palaces", "Of our Kings were rightly his;", "His the sceptre, crown, and globe,", "And the gold-inwoven robe.", "", "So he sent his slaves before", "To seize upon the Bank and Tower,", "And was proceeding with intent", "To meet his pensioned Parliament", "", "When one fled past, a maniac maid,", "And her name was Hope, she said:", "But she looked more like Despair,", "And she cried out in the air:", "", "'My father Time is weak and gray", "With waiting for a better day;", "See how idiot-like he stands,", "Fumbling with his palsied hands!", "", "'He has had child after child,", "And the dust of death is piled", "Over every one but me--", "Misery, oh, Misery!'", "", "Then she lay down in the street,", "Right before the horses' feet,", "Expecting, with a patient eye,", "Murder, Fraud, and Anarchy.", "", "When between her and her foes", "A mist, a light, an image rose,", "Small at first, and weak, and frail", "Like the vapour of a vale:", "", "Till as clouds grow on the blast,", "Like tower-crowned giants striding fast,", "And glare with lightnings as they fly,", "And speak in thunder to the sky,", "", "It grew--a Shape arrayed in mail", "Brighter than the viper's scale,", "And upborne on wings whose grain", "Was as the light of sunny rain.", "", "On its helm, seen far away,", "A planet, like the Morning's, lay;", "And those plumes its light rained through", "Like a shower of crimson dew.", "", "With step as soft as wind it passed", "O'er the heads of men--so fast", "That they knew the presence there,", "And looked,--but all was empty air.", "", "As flowers beneath May's footstep waken,", "As stars from Night's loose hair are shaken,", "As waves arise when loud winds call,", "Thoughts sprung where'er that step did fall.", "", "And the prostrate multitude", "Looked--and ankle-deep in blood,", "Hope, that maiden most serene,", "Was walking with a quiet mien:", "", "And Anarchy, the ghastly birth,", "Lay dead earth upon the earth;", "The Horse of Death tameless as wind", "Fled, and with his hoofs did grind", "To dust the murderers thronged behind.", "", "A rushing light of clouds and splendour,", "A sense awakening and yet tender", "Was heard and felt--and at its close", "These words of joy and fear arose", "", "As if their own indignant Earth", "Which gave the sons of England birth", "Had felt their blood upon her brow,", "And shuddering with a mother's throe", "", "Had turned every drop of blood", "By which her face had been bedewed", "To an accent unwithstood,--", "As if her heart had cried aloud:", "", "'Men of England, heirs of Glory,", "Heroes of unwritten story,", "Nurslings of one mighty Mother,", "Hopes of her, and one another;", "", "'Rise like Lions after slumber", "In unvanquishable number,", "Shake your chains to earth like dew", "Which in sleep had fallen on you--", "Ye are many--they are few.", "", "'What is Freedom?--ye can tell", "That which slavery is, too well--", "For its very name has grown", "To an echo of your own.", "", "''Tis to work and have such pay", "As just keeps life from day to day", "In your limbs, as in a cell", "For the tyrants' use to dwell,", "", "'So that ye for them are made", "Loom, and plough, and sword, and spade,", "With or without your own will bent", "To their defence and nourishment.", "", "''Tis to see your children weak", "With their mothers pine and peak,", "When the winter winds are bleak,--", "They are dying whilst I speak.", "", "''Tis to hunger for such diet", "As the rich man in his riot", "Casts to the fat dogs that lie", "Surfeiting beneath his eye;", "", "''Tis to let the Ghost of Gold", "Take from Toil a thousandfold", "More than e'er its substance could", "In the tyrannies of old.", "", "'Paper coin--that forgery", "Of the title-deeds, which ye", "Hold to something of the worth", "Of the inheritance of Earth.", "", "''Tis to be a slave in soul", "And to hold no strong control", "Over your own wills, but be", "All that others make of ye.", "", "'And at length when ye complain", "With a murmur weak and vain", "'Tis to see the Tyrant's crew", "Ride over your wives and you", "Blood is on the grass like dew.", "", "'Then it is to feel revenge", "Fiercely thirsting to exchange", "Blood for blood--and wrong for wrong--", "Do not thus when ye are strong.", "", "'Birds find rest, in narrow nest", "When weary of their winged quest;", "Beasts find fare, in woody lair", "When storm and snow are in the air.", "", "'Asses, swine, have litter spread", "And with fitting food are fed;", "All things have a home but one--", "Thou, Oh, Englishman, hast none!", "", "'This is Slavery--savage men,", "Or wild beasts within a den", "Would endure not as ye do--", "But such ills they never knew.", "", "'What art thou Freedom? O! could slaves", "Answer from their living graves", "This demand--tyrants would flee", "Like a dream's dim imagery:", "", "'Thou art not, as impostors say,", "A shadow soon to pass away,", "A superstition, and a name", "Echoing from the cave of Fame.", "", "'For the labourer thou art bread,", "And a comely table spread", "From his daily labour come", "In a neat and happy home.", "", "Thou art clothes, and fire, and food", "For the trampled multitude--", "No--in countries that are free", "Such starvation cannot be", "As in England now we see.", "", "'To the rich thou art a check,", "When his foot is on the neck", "Of his victim, thou dost make", "That he treads upon a snake.", "", "Thou art Justice--ne'er for gold", "May thy righteous laws be sold", "As laws are in England--thou", "Shield'st alike the high and low.", "", "'Thou art Wisdom--Freemen never", "Dream that God will damn for ever", "All who think those things untrue", "Of which Priests make such ado.", "", "'Thou art Peace--never by thee", "Would blood and treasure wasted be", "As tyrants wasted them, when all", "Leagued to quench thy flame in Gaul.", "", "'What if English toil and blood", "Was poured forth, even as a flood?", "It availed, Oh, Liberty,", "To dim, but not extinguish thee.", "", "'Thou art Love--the rich have kissed", "Thy feet, and like him following Christ,", "Give their substance to the free", "And through the rough world follow thee,", "", "'Or turn their wealth to arms, and make", "War for thy beloved sake", "On wealth, and war, and fraud--whence they", "Drew the power which is their prey.", "", "'Science, Poetry, and Thought", "Are thy lamps; they make the lot", "Of the dwellers in a cot", "So serene, they curse it not.", "", "'Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,", "All that can adorn and bless", "Art thou--let deeds, not words, express", "Thine exceeding loveliness.", "", "'Let a great Assembly be", "Of the fearless and the free", "On some spot of English ground", "Where the plains stretch wide around.", "", "'Let the blue sky overhead,", "The green earth on which ye tread,", "All that must eternal be", "Witness the solemnity.", "", "'From the corners uttermost", "Of the bounds of English coast;", "From every hut, village, and town", "Where those who live and suffer moan", "For others' misery or their own,", "", "'From the workhouse and the prison", "Where pale as corpses newly risen,", "Women, children, young and old", "Groan for pain, and weep for cold--", "", "'From the haunts of daily life", "Where is waged the daily strife", "With common wants and common cares", "Which sows the human heart with tares--", "", "'Lastly from the palaces", "Where the murmur of distress", "Echoes, like the distant sound", "Of a wind alive around", "", "'Those prison halls of wealth and fashion,", "Where some few feel such compassion", "For those who groan, and toil, and wail", "As must make their brethren pale--", "", "'Ye who suffer woes untold,", "Or to feel, or to behold", "Your lost country bought and sold", "With a price of blood and gold--", "", "'Let a vast assembly be,", "And with great solemnity", "Declare with measured words that ye", "Are, as God has made ye, free--", "", "'Be your strong and simple words", "Keen to wound as sharpened swords,", "And wide as targes let them be,", "With their shade to cover ye.", "", "'Let the tyrants pour around", "With a quick and startling sound,", "Like the loosening of a sea,", "Troops of armed emblazonry.", "", "'Let the charged artillery drive", "Till the dead air seems alive", "With the clash of clanging wheels,", "And the tramp of horses' heels.", "", "'Let the fixed bayonet", "Gleam with sharp desire to wet", "Its bright point in English blood", "Looking keen as one for food.", "", "Let the horsemen's scimitars", "Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars", "Thirsting to eclipse their burning", "In a sea of death and mourning.", "", "'Stand ye calm and resolute,", "Like a forest close and mute,", "With folded arms and looks which are", "Weapons of unvanquished war,", "", "'And let Panic, who outspeeds", "The career of armed steeds", "Pass, a disregarded shade", "Through your phalanx undismayed.", "", "'Let the laws of your own land,", "Good or ill, between ye stand", "Hand to hand, and foot to foot,", "Arbiters of the dispute,", "", "'The old laws of England--they", "Whose reverend heads with age are gray,", "Children of a wiser day;", "And whose solemn voice must be", "Thine own echo--Liberty!", "", "'On those who first should violate", "Such sacred heralds in their state", "Rest the blood that must ensue,", "And it will not rest on you.", "", "'And if then the tyrants dare", "Let them ride among you there,", "Slash, and stab, and maim, and hew,--", "What they like, that let them do.", "", "'With folded arms and steady eyes,", "And little fear, and less surprise,", "Look upon them as they slay", "Till their rage has died away.", "", "Then they will return with shame", "To the place from which they came,", "And the blood thus shed will speak", "In hot blushes on their cheek.", "", "'Every woman in the land", "Will point at them as they stand--", "They will hardly dare to greet", "Their acquaintance in the street.", "", "'And the bold, true warriors", "Who have hugged Danger in wars", "Will turn to those who would be free,", "Ashamed of such base company.", "", "'And that slaughter to the Nation", "Shall steam up like inspiration,", "Eloquent, oracular;", "A volcano heard afar.", "", "'And these words shall then become", "Like Oppression's thundered doom", "Ringing through each heart and brain,", "Heard again--again--again--", "", "'Rise like Lions after slumber", "In unvanquishable number--", "Shake your chains to earth like dew", "Which in sleep had fallen on you--", "Ye are many--they are few.'" ], "linecount": "372" }, { "title": "Letter to Maria Gisborne", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The spider spreads her webs, whether she be", "In poet's tower, cellar, or barn, or tree;", "The silk-worm in the dark green mulberry leaves", "His winding sheet and cradle ever weaves;", "So I, a thing whom moralists call worm,", "Sit spinning still round this decaying form,", "From the fine threads of rare and subtle thought--", "No net of words in garish colours wrought", "To catch the idle buzzers of the day--", "But a soft cell, where when that fades away,", "Memory may clothe in wings my living name", "And feed it with the asphodels of fame,", "Which in those hearts which must remember me", "Grow, making love an immortality.", "", "Whoever should behold me now, I wist,", "Would think I were a mighty mechanist,", "Bent with sublime Archimedean art", "To breathe a soul into the iron heart", "Of some machine portentous, or strange gin,", "Which by the force of figured spells might win", "Its way over the sea, and sport therein;", "For round the walls are hung dread engines, such", "As Vulcan never wrought for Jove to clutch", "Ixion or the Titan:--or the quick", "Wit of that man of God, St. Dominic,", "To convince Atheist, Turk, or Heretic,", "Or those in philanthropic council met,", "Who thought to pay some interest for the debt", "They owed to Jesus Christ for their salvation,", "By giving a faint foretaste of damnation", "To Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, and the rest", "Who made our land an island of the blest,", "When lamp-like Spain, who now relumes her fire", "On Freedom's hearth, grew dim with Empire:--", "With thumbscrews, wheels, with tooth and spike and jag,", "Which fishers found under the utmost crag", "Of Cornwall and the storm-encompassed isles,", "Where to the sky the rude sea rarely smiles", "Unless in treacherous wrath, as on the morn", "When the exulting elements in scorn,", "Satiated with destroyed destruction, lay", "Sleeping in beauty on their mangled prey,", "As panthers sleep;--and other strange and dread", "Magical forms the brick floor overspread,--", "Proteus transformed to metal did not make", "More figures, or more strange; nor did he take", "Such shapes of unintelligible brass,", "Or heap himself in such a horrid mass", "Of tin and iron not to be understood;", "And forms of unimaginable wood,", "To puzzle Tubal Cain and all his brood:", "Great screws, and cones, and wheels, and grooved blocks,", "The elements of what will stand the shocks", "Of wave and wind and time.--Upon the table", "More knacks and quips there be than I am able", "To catalogize in this verse of mine:--", "A pretty bowl of wood--not full of wine,", "But quicksilver; that dew which the gnomes drink", "When at their subterranean toil they swink,", "Pledging the demons of the earthquake, who", "Reply to them in lava--cry halloo!", "And call out to the cities o'er their head,--", "Roofs, towers, and shrines, the dying and the dead,", "Crash through the chinks of earth--and then all quaff", "Another rouse, and hold their sides and laugh.", "This quicksilver no gnome has drunk--within", "The walnut bowl it lies, veined and thin,", "In colour like the wake of light that stains", "The Tuscan deep, when from the moist moon rains", "The inmost shower of its white fire--the breeze", "Is still--blue Heaven smiles over the pale seas.", "And in this bowl of quicksilver--for I", "Yield to the impulse of an infancy", "Outlasting manhood--I have made to float", "A rude idealism of a paper boat:--", "A hollow screw with cogs--Henry will know", "The thing I mean and laugh at me,--if so", "He fears not I should do more mischief.--Next", "Lie bills and calculations much perplexed,", "With steam-boats, frigates, and machinery quaint", "Traced over them in blue and yellow paint.", "Then comes a range of mathematical", "Instruments, for plans nautical and statical,", "A heap of rosin, a queer broken glass", "With ink in it;--a china cup that was", "What it will never be again, I think,--", "A thing from which sweet lips were wont to drink", "The liquor doctors rail at--and which I", "Will quaff in spite of them--and when we die", "We'll toss up who died first of drinking tea,", "And cry out,--'Heads or tails?' 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,", "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,", "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.", "", "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", "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,", "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", "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,", "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,", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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.", "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\"", "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,", "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", "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,", "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", "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.--", "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.", "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", "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", "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", "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.", "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", "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;", "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", "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,", "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", "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,", "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;--", "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--", "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;", "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,", "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,", "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?", "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.", "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", "Warn the obscure inevitable hours,", "Sweet meeting by sad parting to renew;--", "'To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.'" ], "linecount": "325" }, { "title": "The Sensitive Plant", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "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,", "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", "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;", "", "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,", "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,", "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;", "", "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.", "", "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,", "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,", "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,", "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", "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", "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", "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;", "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", "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;", "", "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,", "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,", "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,", "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;", "", "(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", "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.", "", "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,", "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,", "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,", "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.", "", "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,", "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;", "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", "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.", "", "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,", "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", "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", "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!", "", "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", "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,", "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,", "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", "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.", "", "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", "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,", "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,", "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.", "", "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", "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,", "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,", "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!", "", "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,", "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", "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,", "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.", "", "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", "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.", "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", "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;", "", "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", "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,", "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,", "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,", "", "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,", "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", "Exceeds our organs, which endure", "No light, being themselves obscure.", "", "CANCELLED PASSAGE.", "", "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." ], "linecount": "320" }, { "title": "Fragment: A Serpent-Face", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "His face was like a snake's--wrinkled and loose", "And withered--" ], "linecount": "2" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'When Soft Winds and Sunny Skies'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "When soft winds and sunny skies", "With the green earth harmonize,", "And the young and dewy dawn,", "Bold as an unhunted fawn,", "Up the windless heaven is gone,--", "Laugh--for ambushed in the day,--", "Clouds and whirlwinds watch their prey." ], "linecount": "7" }, { "title": "With a Guitar, to Jane", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ariel to Miranda:--Take", "This slave of Music, for the sake", "Of him who is the slave of thee,", "And teach it all the harmony", "In which thou canst, and only thou,", "Make the delighted spirit glow,", "Till joy denies itself again,", "And, too intense, is turned to pain;", "For by permission and command", "Of thine own Prince Ferdinand,", "Poor Ariel sends this silent token", "Of more than ever can be spoken;", "Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who,", "From life to life, must still pursue", "Your happiness;--for thus alone", "Can Ariel ever find his own.", "From Prospero's enchanted cell,", "As the mighty verses tell,", "To the throne of Naples, he", "Lit you o'er the trackless sea,", "Flitting on, your prow before,", "Like a living meteor.", "When you die, the silent Moon,", "In her interlunar swoon,", "Is not sadder in her cell", "Than deserted Ariel.", "When you live again on earth,", "Like an unseen star of birth,", "Ariel guides you o'er the sea", "Of life from your nativity.", "Many changes have been run", "Since Ferdinand and you begun", "Your course of love, and Ariel still", "Has tracked your steps, and served your will;", "Now, in humbler, happier lot,", "This is all remembered not;", "And now, alas! the poor sprite is", "Imprisoned, for some fault of his,", "In a body like a grave;--", "From you he only dares to crave,", "For his service and his sorrow,", "A smile today, a song tomorrow.", "", "The artist who this idol wrought,", "To echo all harmonious thought,", "Felled a tree, while on the steep", "The woods were in their winter sleep,", "Rocked in that repose divine", "On the wind-swept Apennine;", "And dreaming, some of Autumn past,", "And some of Spring approaching fast,", "And some of April buds and showers,", "And some of songs in July bowers,", "And all of love; and so this tree,--", "O that such our death may be!--", "Died in sleep, and felt no pain,", "To live in happier form again:", "From which, beneath Heaven's fairest star,", "The artist wrought this loved Guitar,", "And taught it justly to reply,", "To all who question skilfully,", "In language gentle as thine own;", "Whispering in enamoured tone", "Sweet oracles of woods and dells,", "And summer winds in sylvan cells;", "For it had learned all harmonies", "Of the plains and of the skies,", "Of the forests and the mountains,", "And the many-voiced fountains;", "The clearest echoes of the hills,", "The softest notes of falling rills,", "The melodies of birds and bees,", "The murmuring of summer seas,", "And pattering rain, and breathing dew,", "And airs of evening; and it knew", "That seldom-heard mysterious sound,", "Which, driven on its diurnal round,", "As it floats through boundless day,", "Our world enkindles on its way.--", "All this it knows, but will not tell", "To those who cannot question well", "The Spirit that inhabits it;", "It talks according to the wit", "Of its companions; and no more", "Is heard than has been felt before,", "By those who tempt it to betray", "These secrets of an elder day:", "But, sweetly as its answers will", "Flatter hands of perfect skill,", "It keeps its highest, holiest tone", "For our beloved Jane alone." ], "linecount": "90" }, { "title": "Fragment: To the Moon", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Bright wanderer, fair coquette of Heaven,", "To whom alone it has been given", "To change and be adored for ever,", "Envy not this dim world, for never", "But once within its shadow grew", "One fair as--" ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Kissing Helena", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO.", "", "Kissing Helena, together", "With my kiss, my soul beside it", "Came to my lips, and there I kept it,--", "For the poor thing had wandered thither,", "To follow where the kiss should guide it,", "Oh, cruel I, to intercept it!" ], "linecount": "7" }, { "title": "Scenes From the Magico Prodigioso", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE SPANISH OF CALDERON.", "", "SCENE 1:", "", "ENTER CYPRIAN, DRESSED AS A STUDENT;", "CLARIN AND MOSCON AS POOR SCHOLARS, WITH BOOKS.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "In the sweet solitude of this calm place,", "This intricate wild wilderness of trees", "And flowers and undergrowth of odorous plants,", "Leave me; the books you brought out of the house", "To me are ever best society.", "And while with glorious festival and song,", "Antioch now celebrates the consecration", "Of a proud temple to great Jupiter,", "And bears his image in loud jubilee", "To its new shrine, I would consume what still", "Lives of the dying day in studious thought,", "Far from the throng and turmoil. You, my friends,", "Go, and enjoy the festival; it will", "Be worth your pains. You may return for me", "When the sun seeks its grave among the billows", "Which, among dim gray clouds on the horizon,", "Dance like white plumes upon a hearse;-- and here", "I shall expect you.", "", "MOSCON:", "I cannot bring my mind,", "Great as my haste to see the festival", "Certainly is, to leave you, Sir, without", "Just saying some three or four thousand words.", "How is it possible that on a day", "Of such festivity, you can be content", "To come forth to a solitary country", "With three or four old books, and turn your back", "On all this mirth?", "", "CLARIN:", "My master's in the right;", "There is not anything more tiresome", "Than a procession day, with troops, and priests,", "And dances, and all that.", "", "MOSCON:", "From first to last,", "Clarin, you are a temporizing flatterer;", "You praise not what you feel but what he does;--", "Toadeater!", "", "CLARIN:", "You lie--under a mistake--", "For this is the most civil sort of lie", "That can be given to a man's face. I now", "Say what I think.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Enough, you foolish fellows!", "Puffed up with your own doting ignorance,", "You always take the two sides of one question.", "Now go; and as I said, return for me", "When night falls, veiling in its shadows wide", "This glorious fabric of the universe.", "", "MOSCON:", "How happens it, although you can maintain", "The folly of enjoying festivals,", "That yet you go there?", "", "CLARIN:", "Nay, the consequence", "Is clear:--who ever did what he advises", "Others to do?--", "", "MOSCON:", "Would that my feet were wings,", "So would I fly to Livia.", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "CLARIN:", "To speak truth,", "Livia is she who has surprised my heart;", "But he is more than half-way there.--Soho!", "Livia, I come; good sport, Livia, soho!", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Now, since I am alone, let me examine", "The question which has long disturbed my mind", "With doubt, since first I read in Plinius", "The words of mystic import and deep sense", "In which he defines God. My intellect", "Can find no God with whom these marks and signs", "Fitly agree. It is a hidden truth", "Which I must fathom.", "", "[CYPRIAN READS;", "THE DAEMON, DRESSED IN A COURT DRESS, ENTERS.]", "", "DAEMON:", "Search even as thou wilt,", "But thou shalt never find what I can hide.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "What noise is that among the boughs? Who moves?", "What art thou?--", "", "DAEMON:", "'Tis a foreign gentleman.", "Even from this morning I have lost my way", "In this wild place; and my poor horse at last,", "Quite overcome, has stretched himself upon", "The enamelled tapestry of this mossy mountain,", "And feeds and rests at the same time. I was", "Upon my way to Antioch upon business", "Of some importance, but wrapped up in cares", "(Who is exempt from this inheritance?)", "I parted from my company, and lost", "My way, and lost my servants and my comrades.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "'Tis singular that even within the sight", "Of the high towers of Antioch you could lose", "Your way. Of all the avenues and green paths", "Of this wild wood there is not one but leads,", "As to its centre, to the walls of Antioch;", "Take which you will, you cannot miss your road.", "", "DAEMON:", "And such is ignorance! Even in the sight", "Of knowledge, it can draw no profit from it.", "But as it still is early, and as I", "Have no acquaintances in Antioch,", "Being a stranger there, I will even wait", "The few surviving hours of the day,", "Until the night shall conquer it. I see", "Both by your dress and by the books in which", "You find delight and company, that you", "Are a great student;--for my part, I feel", "Much sympathy in such pursuits.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Have you", "Studied much?", "", "DAEMON:", "No,--and yet I know enough", "Not to be wholly ignorant.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Pray, Sir,", "What science may you know?--", "", "DAEMON:", "Many.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Alas!", "Much pains must we expend on one alone,", "And even then attain it not;--but you", "Have the presumption to assert that you", "Know many without study.", "", "DAEMON:", "And with truth.", "For in the country whence I come the sciences", "Require no learning,--they are known.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Oh, would", "I were of that bright country! for in this", "The more we study, we the more discover", "Our ignorance.", "", "DAEMON:", "It is so true, that I", "Had so much arrogance as to oppose", "The chair of the most high Professorship,", "And obtained many votes, and, though I lost,", "The attempt was still more glorious, than the failure", "Could be dishonourable. If you believe not,", "Let us refer it to dispute respecting", "That which you know the best, and although I", "Know not the opinion you maintain, and though", "It be the true one, I will take the contrary.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "The offer gives me pleasure. I am now", "Debating with myself upon a passage", "Of Plinius, and my mind is racked with doubt", "To understand and know who is the God", "Of whom he speaks.", "", "DAEMON:", "It is a passage, if", "I recollect it right, couched in these words", "'God is one supreme goodness, one pure essence,", "One substance, and one sense, all sight, all hands.'", "", "CYPRIAN:", "'Tis true.", "", "DAEMON:", "What difficulty find you here?", "", "CYPRIAN:", "I do not recognize among the Gods", "The God defined by Plinius; if he must", "Be supreme goodness, even Jupiter", "Is not supremely good; because we see", "His deeds are evil, and his attributes", "Tainted with mortal weakness; in what manner", "Can supreme goodness be consistent with", "The passions of humanity?", "", "DAEMON:", "The wisdom", "Of the old world masked with the names of Gods", "The attributes of Nature and of Man;", "A sort of popular philosophy.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "This reply will not satisfy me, for", "Such awe is due to the high name of God", "That ill should never be imputed. Then,", "Examining the question with more care,", "It follows, that the Gods would always will", "That which is best, were they supremely good.", "How then does one will one thing, one another?", "And that you may not say that I allege", "Poetical or philosophic learning:--", "Consider the ambiguous responses", "Of their oracular statues; from two shrines", "Two armies shall obtain the assurance of", "One victory. Is it not indisputable", "That two contending wills can never lead", "To the same end? And, being opposite,", "If one be good, is not the other evil?", "Evil in God is inconceivable;", "But supreme goodness fails among the Gods", "Without their union.", "", "DAEMON:", "I deny your major.", "These responses are means towards some end", "Unfathomed by our intellectual beam.", "They are the work of Providence, and more", "The battle's loss may profit those who lose,", "Than victory advantage those who win.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "That I admit; and yet that God should not", "(Falsehood is incompatible with deity)", "Assure the victory; it would be enough", "To have permitted the defeat. If God", "Be all sight,--God, who had beheld the truth,", "Would not have given assurance of an end", "Never to be accomplished: thus, although", "The Deity may according to his attributes", "Be well distinguished into persons, yet", "Even in the minutest circumstance", "His essence must be one.", "", "DAEMON:", "To attain the end", "The affections of the actors in the scene", "Must have been thus influenced by his voice.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "But for a purpose thus subordinate", "He might have employed Genii, good or evil,--", "A sort of spirits called so by the learned,", "Who roam about inspiring good or evil,", "And from whose influence and existence we", "May well infer our immortality.", "Thus God might easily, without descent", "To a gross falsehood in his proper person,", "Have moved the affections by this mediation", "To the just point.", "", "DAEMON:", "These trifling contradictions", "Do not suffice to impugn the unity", "Of the high Gods; in things of great importance", "They still appear unanimous; consider", "That glorious fabric, man,--his workmanship", "Is stamped with one conception.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Who made man", "Must have, methinks, the advantage of the others.", "If they are equal, might they not have risen", "In opposition to the work, and being", "All hands, according to our author here,", "Have still destroyed even as the other made?", "If equal in their power, unequal only", "In opportunity, which of the two", "Will remain conqueror?", "", "DAEMON:", "On impossible", "And false hypothesis there can be built", "No argument. Say, what do you infer", "From this?", "", "CYPRIAN:", "That there must be a mighty God", "Of supreme goodness and of highest grace,", "All sight, all hands, all truth, infallible,", "Without an equal and without a rival,", "The cause of all things and the effect of nothing,", "One power, one will, one substance, and one essence.", "And, in whatever persons, one or two,", "His attributes may be distinguished, one", "Sovereign power, one solitary essence,", "One cause of all cause.", "", "[THEY RISE.]", "", "DAEMON:", "How can I impugn", "So clear a consequence?", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Do you regret", "My victory?", "", "DAEMON:", "Who but regrets a check", "In rivalry of wit? I could reply", "And urge new difficulties, but will now", "Depart, for I hear steps of men approaching,", "And it is time that I should now pursue", "My journey to the city.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Go in peace!", "", "DAEMON:", "Remain in peace!--Since thus it profits him", "To study, I will wrap his senses up", "In sweet oblivion of all thought but of", "A piece of excellent beauty; and, as I", "Have power given me to wage enmity", "Against Justina's soul, I will extract", "From one effect two vengeances.", "", "[ASIDE AND EXIT.]", "", "CYPRIAN:", "I never", "Met a more learned person. Let me now", "Revolve this doubt again with careful mind.", "", "[HE READS.]", "", "[FLORO AND LELIO ENTER.]", "", "LELIO:", "Here stop. These toppling rocks and tangled boughs,", "Impenetrable by the noonday beam,", "Shall be sole witnesses of what we--", "", "FLORO:", "Draw!", "If there were words, here is the place for deeds.", "", "LELIO:", "Thou needest not instruct me; well I know", "That in the field, the silent tongue of steel", "Speaks thus,--", "", "[THEY FIGHT.]", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Ha! what is this? Lelio,--Floro,", "Be it enough that Cyprian stands between you,", "Although unarmed.", "", "LELIO:", "Whence comest thou, to stand", "Between me and my vengeance?", "", "FLORO:", "From what rocks", "And desert cells?", "", "[ENTER MOSCON AND CLARIN.]", "", "MOSCON:", "Run! run! for where we left", "My master. I now hear the clash of swords.", "", "CLARIN:", "I never run to approach things of this sort", "But only to avoid them. Sir! Cyprian! sir!", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Be silent, fellows! What! two friends who are", "In blood and fame the eyes and hope of Antioch,", "One of the noble race of the Colalti,", "The other son o' the Governor, adventure", "And cast away, on some slight cause no doubt,", "Two lives, the honour of their country?", "", "LELIO:", "Cyprian!", "Although my high respect towards your person", "Holds now my sword suspended, thou canst not", "Restore it to the slumber of the scabbard:", "Thou knowest more of science than the duel;", "For when two men of honour take the field,", "No counsel nor respect can make them friends", "But one must die in the dispute.", "", "FLORO:", "I pray", "That you depart hence with your people, and", "Leave us to finish what we have begun", "Without advantage.--", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Though you may imagine", "That I know little of the laws of duel,", "Which vanity and valour instituted,", "You are in error. By my birth I am", "Held no less than yourselves to know the limits", "Of honour and of infamy, nor has study", "Quenched the free spirit which first ordered them;", "And thus to me, as one well experienced", "In the false quicksands of the sea of honour,", "You may refer the merits of the case;", "And if I should perceive in your relation", "That either has the right to satisfaction", "From the other, I give you my word of honour", "To leave you.", "", "LELIO:", "Under this condition then", "I will relate the cause, and you will cede", "And must confess the impossibility", "Of compromise; for the same lady is", "Beloved by Floro and myself.", "", "FLORO:", "It seems", "Much to me that the light of day should look", "Upon that idol of my heart--but he--", "Leave us to fight, according to thy word.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Permit one question further: is the lady", "Impossible to hope or not?", "", "LELIO:", "She is", "So excellent, that if the light of day", "Should excite Floro's jealousy, it were", "Without just cause, for even the light of day", "Trembles to gaze on her.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Would you for your", "Part, marry her?", "", "FLORO:", "Such is my confidence.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "And you?", "", "LELIO:", "Oh! would that I could lift my hope", "So high, for though she is extremely poor,", "Her virtue is her dowry.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "And if you both", "Would marry her, is it not weak and vain,", "Culpable and unworthy, thus beforehand", "To slur her honour? What would the world say", "If one should slay the other, and if she", "Should afterwards espouse the murderer?", "", "[THE RIVALS AGREE TO REFER THEIR QUARREL TO CYPRIAN; WHO IN CONSEQUENCE", "VISITS JUSTINA, AND BECOMES ENAMOURED OF HER; SHE DISDAINS HIM, AND HE", "RETIRES TO A SOLITARY SEA-SHORE.]", "", "SCENE 2.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "O memory! permit it not", "That the tyrant of my thought", "Be another soul that still", "Holds dominion o'er the will,", "That would refuse, but can no more,", "To bend, to tremble, and adore.", "Vain idolatry!--I saw,", "And gazing, became blind with error;", "Weak ambition, which the awe", "Of her presence bound to terror!", "So beautiful she was--and I,", "Between my love and jealousy,", "Am so convulsed with hope and fear,", "Unworthy as it may appear;--", "So bitter is the life I live,", "That, hear me, Hell! I now would give", "To thy most detested spirit", "My soul, for ever to inherit,", "To suffer punishment and pine,", "So this woman may be mine.", "Hear'st thou, Hell! dost thou reject it?", "My soul is offered!", "", "DAEMON (UNSEEN):", "I accept it.", "", "[TEMPEST, WITH THUNDER AND LIGHTNING.]", "", "CYPRIAN:", "What is this? ye heavens for ever pure,", "At once intensely radiant and obscure!", "Athwart the aethereal halls", "The lightning's arrow and the thunder-balls", "The day affright,", "As from the horizon round,", "Burst with earthquake sound,", "In mighty torrents the electric fountains;--", "Clouds quench the sun, and thunder-smoke", "Strangles the air, and fire eclipses Heaven.", "Philosophy, thou canst not even", "Compel their causes underneath thy yoke:", "From yonder clouds even to the waves below", "The fragments of a single ruin choke", "Imagination's flight;", "For, on flakes of surge, like feathers light,", "The ashes of the desolation, cast", "Upon the gloomy blast,", "Tell of the footsteps of the storm;", "And nearer, see, the melancholy form", "Of a great ship, the outcast of the sea,", "Drives miserably!", "And it must fly the pity of the port,", "Or perish, and its last and sole resort", "Is its own raging enemy.", "The terror of the thrilling cry", "Was a fatal prophecy", "Of coming death, who hovers now", "Upon that shattered prow,", "That they who die not may be dying still.", "And not alone the insane elements", "Are populous with wild portents,", "But that sad ship is as a miracle", "Of sudden ruin, for it drives so fast", "It seems as if it had arrayed its form", "With the headlong storm.", "It strikes--I almost feel the shock,--", "It stumbles on a jagged rock,--", "Sparkles of blood on the white foam are cast.", "", "[A TEMPEST.]", "", "ALL EXCLAIM [WITHIN]:", "We are all lost!", "", "DAEMON [WITHIN]:", "Now from this plank will I", "Pass to the land and thus fulfil my scheme.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "As in contempt of the elemental rage", "A man comes forth in safety, while the ship's", "Great form is in a watery eclipse", "Obliterated from the Oceans page,", "And round its wreck the huge sea-monsters sit,", "A horrid conclave, and the whistling wave", "Is heaped over its carcase, like a grave.", "", "[THE DAEMON ENTERS, AS ESCAPED FROM THE SEA.]", "", "DAEMON [ASIDE]:", "It was essential to my purposes", "To wake a tumult on the sapphire ocean,", "That in this unknown form I might at length", "Wipe out the blot of the discomfiture", "Sustained upon the mountain, and assail", "With a new war the soul of Cyprian,", "Forging the instruments of his destruction", "Even from his love and from his wisdom.--O", "Beloved earth, dear mother, in thy bosom", "I seek a refuge from the monster who", "Precipitates itself upon me.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Friend,", "Collect thyself; and be the memory", "Of thy late suffering, and thy greatest sorrow", "But as a shadow of the past,--for nothing", "Beneath the circle of the moon, but flows", "And changes, and can never know repose.", "", "DAEMON:", "And who art thou, before whose feet my fate", "Has prostrated me?", "", "CYPRIAN:", "One who, moved with pity,", "Would soothe its stings.", "", "DAEMON:", "Oh, that can never be!", "No solace can my lasting sorrows find.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Wherefore?", "", "DAEMON:", "Because my happiness is lost.", "Yet I lament what has long ceased to be", "The object of desire or memory,", "And my life is not life.", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Now, since the fury", "Of this earthquaking hurricane is still,", "And the crystalline Heaven has reassumed", "Its windless calm so quickly, that it seems", "As if its heavy wrath had been awakened", "Only to overwhelm that vessel,--speak,", "Who art thou, and whence comest thou?", "", "DAEMON:", "Far more", "My coming hither cost, than thou hast seen", "Or I can tell. Among my misadventures", "This shipwreck is the least. Wilt thou hear?", "", "CYPRIAN:", "Speak.", "", "DAEMON:", "Since thou desirest, I will then unveil", "Myself to thee;--for in myself I am", "A world of happiness and misery;", "This I have lost, and that I must lament", "Forever. In my attributes I stood", "So high and so heroically great,", "In lineage so supreme, and with a genius", "Which penetrated with a glance the world", "Beneath my feet, that, won by my high merit,", "A king--whom I may call the King of kings,", "Because all others tremble in their pride", "Before the terrors of His countenance,", "In His high palace roofed with brightest gems", "Of living light--call them the stars of Heaven--", "Named me His counsellor. But the high praise", "Stung me with pride and envy, and I rose", "In mighty competition, to ascend", "His seat and place my foot triumphantly", "Upon His subject thrones. Chastised, I know", "The depth to which ambition falls; too mad", "Was the attempt, and yet more mad were now", "Repentance of the irrevocable deed:--", "Therefore I chose this ruin, with the glory", "Of not to be subdued, before the shame", "Of reconciling me with Him who reigns", "By coward cession.--Nor was I alone,", "Nor am I now, nor shall I be alone;", "And there was hope, and there may still be hope,", "For many suffrages among His vassals", "Hailed me their lord and king, and many still", "Are mine, and many more, perchance shall be.", "Thus vanquished, though in fact victorious,", "I left His seat of empire, from mine eye", "Shooting forth poisonous lightning, while my words", "With inauspicious thunderings shook Heaven,", "Proclaiming vengeance, public as my wrong,", "And imprecating on His prostrate slaves", "Rapine, and death, and outrage. Then I sailed", "Over the mighty fabric of the world,--", "A pirate ambushed in its pathless sands,", "A lynx crouched watchfully among its caves", "And craggy shores; and I have wandered over", "The expanse of these wide wildernesses", "In this great ship, whose bulk is now dissolved", "In the light breathings of the invisible wind,", "And which the sea has made a dustless ruin,", "Seeking ever a mountain, through whose forests", "I seek a man, whom I must now compel", "To keep his word with me. I came arrayed", "In tempest, and although my power could well", "Bridle the forest winds in their career,", "For other causes I forbore to soothe", "Their fury to Favonian gentleness;", "I could and would not;", "[ASIDE.]", "(thus I wake in him", "A love of magic art). Let not this tempest,", "Nor the succeeding calm excite thy wonder;", "For by my art the sun would turn as pale", "As his weak sister with unwonted fear;", "And in my wisdom are the orbs of Heaven", "Written as in a record; I have pierced", "The flaming circles of their wondrous spheres", "And know them as thou knowest every corner", "Of this dim spot. Let it not seem to thee", "That I boast vainly; wouldst thou that I work", "A charm over this waste and savage wood,", "This Babylon of crags and aged trees,", "Filling its leafy coverts with a horror", "Thrilling and strange? I am the friendless guest", "Of these wild oaks and pines--and as from thee", "I have received the hospitality", "Of this rude place, I offer thee the fruit", "Of years of toil in recompense; whate'er", "Thy wildest dream presented to thy thought", "As object of desire, that shall be thine.", "", "...", "", "And thenceforth shall so firm an amity", "'Twixt thee and me be, that neither Fortune,", "The monstrous phantom which pursues success,", "That careful miser, that free prodigal,", "Who ever alternates, with changeful hand,", "Evil and good, reproach and fame; nor Time,", "That lodestar of the ages, to whose beam", "The winged years speed o'er the intervals", "Of their unequal revolutions; nor", "Heaven itself, whose beautiful bright stars", "Rule and adorn the world, can ever make", "The least division between thee and me,", "Since now I find a refuge in thy favour.", "", "SCENE 3.", "", "THE DAEMON TEMPTS JUSTINA, WHO IS A CHRISTIAN.", "", "DAEMON:", "Abyss of Hell! I call on thee,", "Thou wild misrule of thine own anarchy!", "From thy prison-house set free", "The spirits of voluptuous death,", "That with their mighty breath", "They may destroy a world of virgin thoughts;", "Let her chaste mind with fancies thick as motes", "Be peopled from thy shadowy deep,", "Till her guiltless fantasy", "Full to overflowing be!", "And with sweetest harmony,", "Let birds, and flowers, and leaves, and all things move", "To love, only to love.", "Let nothing meet her eyes", "But signs of Love's soft victories;", "Let nothing meet her ear", "But sounds of Love's sweet sorrow,", "So that from faith no succour she may borrow,", "But, guided by my spirit blind", "And in a magic snare entwined,", "She may now seek Cyprian.", "Begin, while I in silence bind", "My voice, when thy sweet song thou hast began.", "", "A VOICE [WITHIN]:", "What is the glory far above", "All else in human life?", "", "ALL:", "Love! love!", "", "[WHILE THESE WORDS ARE SUNG,", "THE DAEMON GOES OUT AT ONE DOOR,", "AND JUSTINA ENTERS AT ANOTHER.]", "", "THE FIRST VOICE:", "There is no form in which the fire", "Of love its traces has impressed not.", "Man lives far more in love's desire", "Than by life's breath, soon possessed not.", "If all that lives must love or die,", "All shapes on earth, or sea, or sky,", "With one consent to Heaven cry", "That the glory far above", "All else in life is--", "", "ALL:", "Love! oh, Love!", "", "JUSTINA:", "Thou melancholy Thought which art", "So flattering and so sweet, to thee", "When did I give the liberty", "Thus to afflict my heart?", "What is the cause of this new Power", "Which doth my fevered being move,", "Momently raging more and more?", "What subtle Pain is kindled now", "Which from my heart doth overflow", "Into my senses?--", "", "ALL:", "Love! oh, Love!", "", "JUSTINA:", "'Tis that enamoured Nightingale", "Who gives me the reply;", "He ever tells the same soft tale", "Of passion and of constancy", "To his mate, who rapt and fond,", "Listening sits, a bough beyond.", "", "Be silent, Nightingale--no more", "Make me think, in hearing thee", "Thus tenderly thy love deplore,", "If a bird can feel his so,", "What a man would feel for me.", "And, voluptuous Vine, O thou", "Who seekest most when least pursuing,--", "To the trunk thou interlacest", "Art the verdure which embracest,", "And the weight which is its ruin,--", "No more, with green embraces, Vine,", "Make me think on what thou lovest,--", "For whilst thus thy boughs entwine", "I fear lest thou shouldst teach me, sophist,", "How arms might be entangled too.", "", "Light-enchanted Sunflower, thou", "Who gazest ever true and tender", "On the sun's revolving splendour!", "Follow not his faithless glance", "With thy faded countenance,", "Nor teach my beating heart to fear,", "If leaves can mourn without a tear,", "How eyes must weep! O Nightingale,", "Cease from thy enamoured tale,--", "Leafy Vine, unwreathe thy bower,", "Restless Sunflower, cease to move,--", "Or tell me all, what poisonous Power", "Ye use against me--", "", "ALL:", "Love! Love! Love!", "", "JUSTINA:", "It cannot be!--Whom have I ever loved?", "Trophies of my oblivion and disdain,", "Floro and Lelio did I not reject?", "And Cyprian?--", "[SHE BECOMES TROUBLED AT THE NAME OF CYPRIAN.]", "Did I not requite him", "With such severity, that he has fled", "Where none has ever heard of him again?--", "Alas! I now begin to fear that this", "May be the occasion whence desire grows bold,", "As if there were no danger. From the moment", "That I pronounced to my own listening heart,", "'Cyprian is absent!'--O me miserable!", "I know not what I feel!", "[MORE CALMLY.]", "It must be pity", "To think that such a man, whom all the world", "Admired, should be forgot by all the world,", "And I the cause.", "[SHE AGAIN BECOMES TROUBLED.]", "And yet if it were pity,", "Floro and Lelio might have equal share,", "For they are both imprisoned for my sake.", "[CALMLY.]", "Alas! what reasonings are these? it is", "Enough I pity him, and that, in vain,", "Without this ceremonious subtlety.", "And, woe is me! I know not where to find him now,", "Even should I seek him through this wide world.", "", "[ENTER DAEMON.]", "", "DAEMON:", "Follow, and I will lead thee where he is.", "", "JUSTINA:", "And who art thou, who hast found entrance hither,", "Into my chamber through the doors and locks?", "Art thou a monstrous shadow which my madness", "Has formed in the idle air?", "", "DAEMON:", "No. I am one", "Called by the Thought which tyrannizes thee", "From his eternal dwelling; who this day", "Is pledged to bear thee unto Cyprian.", "", "JUSTINA:", "So shall thy promise fail. This agony", "Of passion which afflicts my heart and soul", "May sweep imagination in its storm;", "The will is firm.", "", "DAEMON:", "Already half is done", "In the imagination of an act.", "The sin incurred, the pleasure then remains;", "Let not the will stop half-way on the road.", "", "JUSTINA:", "I will not be discouraged, nor despair,", "Although I thought it, and although 'tis true", "That thought is but a prelude to the deed:--", "Thought is not in my power, but action is:", "I will not move my foot to follow thee.", "", "DAEMON:", "But a far mightier wisdom than thine own", "Exerts itself within thee, with such power", "Compelling thee to that which it inclines", "That it shall force thy step; how wilt thou then", "Resist, Justina?", "", "JUSTINA:", "By my free-will.", "", "DAEMON:", "I", "Must force thy will.", "", "JUSTINA:", "It is invincible;", "It were not free if thou hadst power upon it.", "", "[HE DRAWS, BUT CANNOT MOVE HER.]", "", "DAEMON:", "Come, where a pleasure waits thee.", "", "JUSTINA:", "It were bought", "Too dear.", "", "DAEMON:", "'Twill soothe thy heart to softest peace.", "", "JUSTINA:", "'Tis dread captivity.", "", "DAEMON:", "'Tis joy, 'tis glory.", "", "JUSTINA:", "'Tis shame, 'tis torment, 'tis despair.", "", "DAEMON:", "But how", "Canst thou defend thyself from that or me,", "If my power drags thee onward?", "", "JUSTINA:", "My defence", "Consists in God.", "", "[HE VAINLY ENDEAVOURS TO FORCE HER, AND AT LAST RELEASES HER.]", "", "DAEMON:", "Woman, thou hast subdued me,", "Only by not owning thyself subdued.", "But since thou thus findest defence in God,", "I will assume a feigned form, and thus", "Make thee a victim of my baffled rage.", "For I will mask a spirit in thy form", "Who will betray thy name to infamy,", "And doubly shall I triumph in thy loss,", "First by dishonouring thee, and then by turning", "False pleasure to true ignominy.", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "JUSTINA: I", "Appeal to Heaven against thee; so that Heaven", "May scatter thy delusions, and the blot", "Upon my fame vanish in idle thought,", "Even as flame dies in the envious air,", "And as the floweret wanes at morning frost;", "And thou shouldst never--But, alas! to whom", "Do I still speak?--Did not a man but now", "Stand here before me?--No, I am alone,", "And yet I saw him. Is he gone so quickly?", "Or can the heated mind engender shapes", "From its own fear? Some terrible and strange", "Peril is near. Lisander! father! lord!", "Livia!--", "", "[ENTER LISANDER AND LIVIA.]", "", "LISANDER:", "Oh, my daughter! What?", "", "LIVIA:", "What!", "", "JUSTINA:", "Saw you", "A man go forth from my apartment now?--", "I scarce contain myself!", "", "LISANDER:", "A man here!", "", "JUSTINA:", "Have you not seen him?", "", "LIVIA:", "No, Lady.", "", "JUSTINA: I saw him.", "", "LISANDER: 'Tis impossible; the doors", "Which led to this apartment were all locked.", "", "LIVIA [ASIDE]:", "I daresay it was Moscon whom she saw,", "For he was locked up in my room.", "", "LISANDER:", "It must", "Have been some image of thy fantasy.", "Such melancholy as thou feedest is", "Skilful in forming such in the vain air", "Out of the motes and atoms of the day.", "", "LIVIA:", "My master's in the right.", "", "JUSTINA:", "Oh, would it were", "Delusion; but I fear some greater ill.", "I feel as if out of my bleeding bosom", "My heart was torn in fragments; ay,", "Some mortal spell is wrought against my frame;", "So potent was the charm that, had not God", "Shielded my humble innocence from wrong,", "I should have sought my sorrow and my shame", "With willing steps.--Livia, quick, bring my cloak,", "For I must seek refuge from these extremes", "Even in the temple of the highest God", "Where secretly the faithful worship.", "", "LIVIA:", "Here.", "", "JUSTINA [PUTTING ON HER CLOAK]:", "In this, as in a shroud of snow, may I", "Quench the consuming fire in which I burn,", "Wasting away!", "", "LISANDER:", "And I will go with thee.", "", "LIVIA:", "When I once see them safe out of the house", "I shall breathe freely.", "", "JUSTINA:", "So do I confide", "In thy just favour, Heaven!", "", "LISANDER:", "Let us go.", "", "JUSTINA:", "Thine is the cause, great God! turn for my sake,", "And for Thine own, mercifully to me!" ], "linecount": "912" }, { "title": "Scenes From the Faust of Goethe", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "SCENE 1.--PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN.", "", "THE LORD AND THE HOST OF HEAVEN.", "", "ENTER THREE ARCHANGELS.", "", "RAPHAEL:", "The sun makes music as of old", "Amid the rival spheres of Heaven,", "On its predestined circle rolled", "With thunder speed: the Angels even", "Draw strength from gazing on its glance,", "Though none its meaning fathom may:--", "The world's unwithered countenance", "Is bright as at Creation's day.", "", "GABRIEL:", "And swift and swift, with rapid lightness,", "The adorned Earth spins silently,", "Alternating Elysian brightness", "With deep and dreadful night; the sea", "Foams in broad billows from the deep", "Up to the rocks, and rocks and Ocean,", "Onward, with spheres which never sleep,", "Are hurried in eternal motion.", "", "MICHAEL:", "And tempests in contention roar", "From land to sea, from sea to land;", "And, raging, weave a chain of power,", "Which girds the earth, as with a band.--", "A flashing desolation there,", "Flames before the thunder's way;", "But Thy servants, Lord, revere", "The gentle changes of Thy day.", "", "CHORUS OF THE THREE:", "The Angels draw strength from Thy glance,", "Though no one comprehend Thee may;--", "Thy world's unwithered countenance", "Is bright as on Creation's day.", "", "GABRIEL:", "And swift, and inconceivably swift", "The adornment of earth winds itself round,", "And exchanges Paradise-clearness", "With deep dreadful night.", "The sea foams in broad waves", "From its deep bottom, up to the rocks,", "And rocks and sea are torn on together", "In the eternal swift course of the spheres.", "", "MICHAEL:", "And storms roar in emulation", "From sea to land, from land to sea,", "And make, raging, a chain", "Of deepest operation round about.", "There flames a flashing destruction", "Before the path of the thunderbolt.", "But Thy servants, Lord, revere", "The gentle alternations of Thy day.", "", "CHORUS:", "Thy countenance gives the Angels strength,", "Though none can comprehend Thee:", "And all Thy lofty works", "Are excellent as at the first day.", "", "[ENTER MEPHISTOPHELES.]", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "As thou, O Lord, once more art kind enough", "To interest Thyself in our affairs,", "And ask, 'How goes it with you there below?'", "And as indulgently at other times", "Thou tookest not my visits in ill part,", "Thou seest me here once more among Thy household.", "Though I should scandalize this company,", "You will excuse me if I do not talk", "In the high style which they think fashionable;", "My pathos certainly would make You laugh too,", "Had You not long since given over laughing.", "Nothing know I to say of suns and worlds;", "I observe only how men plague themselves;--", "The little god o' the world keeps the same stamp,", "As wonderful as on creation's day:--", "A little better would he live, hadst Thou", "Not given him a glimpse of Heaven's light", "Which he calls reason, and employs it only", "To live more beastlily than any beast.", "With reverence to Your Lordship be it spoken,", "He's like one of those long-legged grasshoppers,", "Who flits and jumps about, and sings for ever", "The same old song i' the grass. There let him lie,", "Burying his nose in every heap of dung.", "", "THE LORD:", "Have you no more to say? Do you come here", "Always to scold, and cavil, and complain?", "Seems nothing ever right to you on earth?", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "No, Lord! I find all there, as ever, bad at best.", "Even I am sorry for man's days of sorrow;", "I could myself almost give up the pleasure", "Of plaguing the poor things.", "", "THE LORD:", "Knowest thou Faust?", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "The Doctor?", "", "THE LORD:", "Ay; My servant Faust.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "In truth", "He serves You in a fashion quite his own;", "And the fool's meat and drink are not of earth.", "His aspirations bear him on so far", "That he is half aware of his own folly,", "For he demands from Heaven its fairest star,", "And from the earth the highest joy it bears,", "Yet all things far, and all things near, are vain", "To calm the deep emotions of his breast.", "", "THE LORD:", "Though he now serves Me in a cloud of error,", "I will soon lead him forth to the clear day.", "When trees look green, full well the gardener knows", "That fruits and blooms will deck the coming year.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "What will You bet?--now am sure of winning--", "Only, observe You give me full permission", "To lead him softly on my path.", "", "THE LORD:", "As long", "As he shall live upon the earth, so long", "Is nothing unto thee forbidden--Man", "Must err till he has ceased to struggle.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Thanks.", "And that is all I ask; for willingly", "I never make acquaintance with the dead.", "The full fresh cheeks of youth are food for me,", "And if a corpse knocks, I am not at home.", "For I am like a cat--I like to play", "A little with the mouse before I eat it.", "", "THE LORD:", "Well, well! it is permitted thee. Draw thou", "His spirit from its springs; as thou find'st power", "Seize him and lead him on thy downward path;", "And stand ashamed when failure teaches thee", "That a good man, even in his darkest longings,", "Is well aware of the right way.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Well and good.", "I am not in much doubt about my bet,", "And if I lose, then 'tis Your turn to crow;", "Enjoy Your triumph then with a full breast.", "Ay; dust shall he devour, and that with pleasure,", "Like my old paramour, the famous Snake.", "", "THE LORD:", "Pray come here when it suits you; for I never", "Had much dislike for people of your sort.", "And, among all the Spirits who rebelled,", "The knave was ever the least tedious to Me.", "The active spirit of man soon sleeps, and soon", "He seeks unbroken quiet; therefore I", "Have given him the Devil for a companion,", "Who may provoke him to some sort of work,", "And must create forever.--But ye, pure", "Children of God, enjoy eternal beauty;--", "Let that which ever operates and lives", "Clasp you within the limits of its love;", "And seize with sweet and melancholy thoughts", "The floating phantoms of its loveliness.", "", "[HEAVEN CLOSES; THE ARCHANGELS EXEUNT.]", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "From time to time I visit the old fellow,", "And I take care to keep on good terms with Him.", "Civil enough is the same God Almighty,", "To talk so freely with the Devil himself.", "", "SCENE 2.--MAY-DAY NIGHT.", "", "THE HARTZ MOUNTAIN, A DESOLATE COUNTRY.", "", "FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Would you not like a broomstick? As for me", "I wish I had a good stout ram to ride;", "For we are still far from the appointed place.", "", "FAUST:", "This knotted staff is help enough for me,", "Whilst I feel fresh upon my legs. What good", "Is there in making short a pleasant way?", "To creep along the labyrinths of the vales,", "And climb those rocks, where ever-babbling springs,", "Precipitate themselves in waterfalls,", "Is the true sport that seasons such a path.", "Already Spring kindles the birchen spray,", "And the hoar pines already feel her breath:", "Shall she not work also within our limbs?", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Nothing of such an influence do I feel.", "My body is all wintry, and I wish", "The flowers upon our path were frost and snow.", "But see how melancholy rises now,", "Dimly uplifting her belated beam,", "The blank unwelcome round of the red moon,", "And gives so bad a light, that every step", "One stumbles 'gainst some crag. With your permission,", "I'll call on Ignis-fatuus to our aid:", "I see one yonder burning jollily.", "Halloo, my friend! may I request that you", "Would favour us with your bright company?", "Why should you blaze away there to no purpose?", "Pray be so good as light us up this way.", "", "IGNIS-FATUUS:", "With reverence be it spoken, I will try", "To overcome the lightness of my nature;", "Our course, you know, is generally zigzag.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Ha, ha! your worship thinks you have to deal", "With men. Go straight on, in the Devil's name,", "Or I shall puff your flickering life out.", "", "IGNIS-FATUUS:", "Well,", "I see you are the master of the house;", "I will accommodate myself to you.", "Only consider that to-night this mountain", "Is all enchanted, and if Jack-a-lantern", "Shows you his way, though you should miss your own,", "You ought not to be too exact with him.", "", "FAUST, MEPHISTOPHELES, AND IGNIS-FATUUS, IN ALTERNATE CHORUS:", "The limits of the sphere of dream,", "The bounds of true and false, are past.", "Lead us on, thou wandering Gleam,", "Lead us onward, far and fast,", "To the wide, the desert waste.", "", "But see, how swift advance and shift", "Trees behind trees, row by row,--", "How, clift by clift, rocks bend and lift", "Their frowning foreheads as we go.", "The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!", "How they snort, and how they blow!", "", "Through the mossy sods and stones,", "Stream and streamlet hurry down--", "A rushing throng! A sound of song", "Beneath the vault of Heaven is blown!", "Sweet notes of love, the speaking tones", "Of this bright day, sent down to say", "That Paradise on Earth is known,", "Resound around, beneath, above.", "All we hope and all we love", "Finds a voice in this blithe strain,", "Which wakens hill and wood and rill,", "And vibrates far o'er field and vale,", "And which Echo, like the tale", "Of old times, repeats again.", "", "To-whoo! to-whoo! near, nearer now", "The sound of song, the rushing throng!", "Are the screech, the lapwing, and the jay,", "All awake as if 'twere day?", "See, with long legs and belly wide,", "A salamander in the brake!", "Every root is like a snake,", "And along the loose hillside,", "With strange contortions through the night,", "Curls, to seize or to affright;", "And, animated, strong, and many,", "They dart forth polypus-antennae,", "To blister with their poison spume", "The wanderer. Through the dazzling gloom", "The many-coloured mice, that thread", "The dewy turf beneath our tread,", "In troops each other's motions cross,", "Through the heath and through the moss;", "And, in legions intertangled,", "The fire-flies flit, and swarm, and throng,", "Till all the mountain depths are spangled.", "", "Tell me, shall we go or stay?", "Shall we onward? Come along!", "Everything around is swept", "Forward, onward, far away!", "Trees and masses intercept", "The sight, and wisps on every side", "Are puffed up and multiplied.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Now vigorously seize my skirt, and gain", "This pinnacle of isolated crag.", "One may observe with wonder from this point,", "How Mammon glows among the mountains.", "", "FAUST:", "Ay--", "And strangely through the solid depth below", "A melancholy light, like the red dawn,", "Shoots from the lowest gorge of the abyss", "Of mountains, lightning hitherward: there rise", "Pillars of smoke, here clouds float gently by;", "Here the light burns soft as the enkindled air,", "Or the illumined dust of golden flowers;", "And now it glides like tender colours spreading;", "And now bursts forth in fountains from the earth;", "And now it winds, one torrent of broad light,", "Through the far valley with a hundred veins;", "And now once more within that narrow corner", "Masses itself into intensest splendour.", "And near us, see, sparks spring out of the ground,", "Like golden sand scattered upon the darkness;", "The pinnacles of that black wall of mountains", "That hems us in are kindled.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Rare: in faith!", "Does not Sir Mammon gloriously illuminate", "His palace for this festival?--it is", "A pleasure which you had not known before.", "I spy the boisterous guests already.", "", "FAUST:", "How", "The children of the wind rage in the air!", "With what fierce strokes they fall upon my neck!", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Cling tightly to the old ribs of the crag.", "Beware! for if with them thou warrest", "In their fierce flight towards the wilderness,", "Their breath will sweep thee into dust, and drag", "Thy body to a grave in the abyss.", "A cloud thickens the night.", "Hark! how the tempest crashes through the forest!", "The owls fly out in strange affright;", "The columns of the evergreen palaces", "Are split and shattered;", "The roots creak, and stretch, and groan;", "And ruinously overthrown,", "The trunks are crushed and shattered", "By the fierce blast's unconquerable stress.", "Over each other crack and crash they all", "In terrible and intertangled fall;", "And through the ruins of the shaken mountain", "The airs hiss and howl--", "It is not the voice of the fountain,", "Nor the wolf in his midnight prowl.", "Dost thou not hear?", "Strange accents are ringing", "Aloft, afar, anear?", "The witches are singing!", "The torrent of a raging wizard song", "Streams the whole mountain along.", "", "CHORUS OF WITCHES:", "The stubble is yellow, the corn is green,", "Now to the Brocken the witches go;", "The mighty multitude here may be seen", "Gathering, wizard and witch, below.", "Sir Urian is sitting aloft in the air;", "Hey over stock! and hey over stone!", "'Twixt witches and incubi, what shall be done?", "Tell it who dare! tell it who dare!", "", "A VOICE:", "Upon a sow-swine, whose farrows were nine,", "Old Baubo rideth alone.", "", "CHORUS:", "Honour her, to whom honour is due,", "Old mother Baubo, honour to you!", "An able sow, with old Baubo upon her,", "Is worthy of glory, and worthy of honour!", "The legion of witches is coming behind,", "Darkening the night, and outspeeding the wind--", "", "A VOICE:", "Which way comest thou?", "", "A VOICE:", "Over Ilsenstein;", "The owl was awake in the white moonshine;", "I saw her at rest in her downy nest,", "And she stared at me with her broad, bright eyne.", "", "VOICES:", "And you may now as well take your course on to Hell,", "Since you ride by so fast on the headlong blast.", "", "A VOICE:", "She dropped poison upon me as I passed.", "Here are the wounds--", "", "CHORUS OF WITCHES:", "Come away! come along!", "The way is wide, the way is long,", "But what is that for a Bedlam throng?", "Stick with the prong, and scratch with the broom.", "The child in the cradle lies strangled at home,", "And the mother is clapping her hands.--", "", "SEMICHORUS OF WIZARDS 1:", "We glide in", "Like snails when the women are all away;", "And from a house once given over to sin", "Woman has a thousand steps to stray.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "A thousand steps must a woman take,", "Where a man but a single spring will make.", "", "VOICES ABOVE:", "Come with us, come with us, from Felsensee.", "", "VOICES BELOW:", "With what joy would we fly through the upper sky!", "We are washed, we are 'nointed, stark naked are we;", "But our toil and our pain are forever in vain.", "", "BOTH CHORUSES:", "The wind is still, the stars are fled,", "The melancholy moon is dead;", "The magic notes, like spark on spark,", "Drizzle, whistling through the dark. Come away!", "", "VOICES BELOW:", "Stay, Oh, stay!", "", "VOICES ABOVE:", "Out of the crannies of the rocks", "Who calls?", "", "VOICES BELOW:", "Oh, let me join your flocks!", "I, three hundred years have striven", "To catch your skirt and mount to Heaven,--", "And still in vain. Oh, might I be", "With company akin to me!", "", "BOTH CHORUSES:", "Some on a ram and some on a prong,", "On poles and on broomsticks we flutter along;", "Forlorn is the wight who can rise not to-night.", "", "A HALF-WITCH BELOW:", "I have been tripping this many an hour:", "Are the others already so far before?", "No quiet at home, and no peace abroad!", "And less methinks is found by the road.", "", "CHORUS OF WITCHES:", "Come onward, away! aroint thee, aroint!", "A witch to be strong must anoint--anoint--", "Then every trough will be boat enough;", "With a rag for a sail we can sweep through the sky,", "Who flies not to-night, when means he to fly?", "", "BOTH CHORUSES:", "We cling to the skirt, and we strike on the ground;", "Witch-legions thicken around and around;", "Wizard-swarms cover the heath all over.", "", "[THEY DESCEND.]", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "What thronging, dashing, raging, rustling;", "What whispering, babbling, hissing, bustling;", "What glimmering, spurting, stinking, burning,", "As Heaven and Earth were overturning.", "There is a true witch element about us;", "Take hold on me, or we shall be divided:--", "Where are you?", "", "FAUST [FROM A DISTANCE]:", "Here!", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "What!", "I must exert my authority in the house.", "Place for young Voland! pray make way, good people.", "Take hold on me, doctor, an with one step", "Let us escape from this unpleasant crowd:", "They are too mad for people of my sort.", "Just there shines a peculiar kind of light--", "Something attracts me in those bushes. Come", "This way: we shall slip down there in a minute.", "", "FAUST:", "Spirit of Contradiction! Well, lead on--", "'Twere a wise feat indeed to wander out", "Into the Brocken upon May-day night,", "And then to isolate oneself in scorn,", "Disgusted with the humours of the time.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "See yonder, round a many-coloured flame", "A merry club is huddled altogether:", "Even with such little people as sit there", "One would not be alone.", "", "FAUST:", "Would that I were", "Up yonder in the glow and whirling smoke,", "Where the blind million rush impetuously", "To meet the evil ones; there might I solve", "Many a riddle that torments me.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Yet", "Many a riddle there is tied anew", "Inextricably. Let the great world rage!", "We will stay here safe in the quiet dwellings.", "'Tis an old custom. Men have ever built", "Their own small world in the great world of all.", "I see young witches naked there, and old ones", "Wisely attired with greater decency.", "Be guided now by me, and you shall buy", "A pound of pleasure with a dram of trouble.", "I hear them tune their instruments--one must", "Get used to this damned scraping. Come, I'll lead you", "Among them; and what there you do and see,", "As a fresh compact 'twixt us two shall be.", "How say you now? this space is wide enough--", "Look forth, you cannot see the end of it--", "An hundred bonfires burn in rows, and they", "Who throng around them seem innumerable:", "Dancing and drinking, jabbering, making love,", "And cooking, are at work. Now tell me, friend,", "What is there better in the world than this?", "", "FAUST:", "In introducing us, do you assume", "The character of Wizard or of Devil?", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "In truth, I generally go about", "In strict incognito; and yet one likes", "To wear one's orders upon gala days.", "I have no ribbon at my knee; but here", "At home, the cloven foot is honourable.", "See you that snail there?--she comes creeping up,", "And with her feeling eyes hath smelt out something.", "I could not, if I would, mask myself here.", "Come now, we'll go about from fire to fire:", "I'll be the Pimp, and you shall be the Lover.", "[TO SOME OLD WOMEN, WHO ARE SITTING ROUND A HEAP OF GLIMMERING COALS.]", "Old gentlewomen, what do you do out here?", "You ought to be with the young rioters", "Right in the thickest of the revelry--", "But every one is best content at home.", "", "General.", "Who dare confide in right or a just claim?", "So much as I had done for them! and now--", "With women and the people 'tis the same,", "Youth will stand foremost ever,--age may go", "To the dark grave unhonoured.", "", "MINISTER:", "Nowadays", "People assert their rights: they go too far;", "But as for me, the good old times I praise;", "Then we were all in all--'twas something worth", "One's while to be in place and wear a star;", "That was indeed the golden age on earth.", "", "PARVENU:", "We too are active, and we did and do", "What we ought not, perhaps; and yet we now", "Will seize, whilst all things are whirled round and round,", "A spoke of Fortune's wheel, and keep our ground.", "", "AUTHOR:", "Who now can taste a treatise of deep sense", "And ponderous volume? 'tis impertinence", "To write what none will read, therefore will I", "To please the young and thoughtless people try.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES [WHO AT ONCE APPEARS TO HAVE GROWN VERY OLD]:", "I", "find the people ripe for the last day,", "Since I last came up to the wizard mountain;", "And as my little cask runs turbid now,", "So is the world drained to the dregs.", "", "PEDLAR-WITCH:", "Look here,", "Gentlemen; do not hurry on so fast;", "And lose the chance of a good pennyworth.", "I have a pack full of the choicest wares", "Of every sort, and yet in all my bundle", "Is nothing like what may be found on earth;", "Nothing that in a moment will make rich", "Men and the world with fine malicious mischief--", "There is no dagger drunk with blood; no bowl", "From which consuming poison may be drained", "By innocent and healthy lips; no jewel,", "The price of an abandoned maiden's shame;", "No sword which cuts the bond it cannot loose,", "Or stabs the wearer's enemy in the back;", "No--", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Gossip, you know little of these times.", "What has been, has been; what is done, is past,", "They shape themselves into the innovations", "They breed, and innovation drags us with it.", "The torrent of the crowd sweeps over us:", "You think to impel, and are yourself impelled.", "", "FAUST:", "What is that yonder?", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Mark her well. It is", "Lilith.", "", "FAUST:", "Who?", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Lilith, the first wife of Adam.", "Beware of her fair hair, for she excels", "All women in the magic of her locks;", "And when she winds them round a young man's neck,", "She will not ever set him free again.", "", "FAUST:", "There sit a girl and an old woman--they", "Seem to be tired with pleasure and with play.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "There is no rest to-night for any one:", "When one dance ends another is begun;", "Come, let us to it. We shall have rare fun.", "", "[FAUST DANCES AND SINGS WITH A GIRL, AND", "MEPHISTOPHELES WITH AN OLD WOMAN.]", "", "FAUST:", "I had once a lovely dream", "In which I saw an apple-tree,", "Where two fair apples with their gleam", "To climb and taste attracted me.", "", "THE GIRL:", "She with apples you desired", "From Paradise came long ago:", "With you I feel that if required,", "Such still within my garden grow.", "", "...", "", "PROCTO-PHANTASMIST:", "What is this cursed multitude about?", "Have we not long since proved to demonstration", "That ghosts move not on ordinary feet?", "But these are dancing just like men and women.", "", "THE GIRL:", "What does he want then at our ball?", "", "FAUST:", "Oh! he", "Is far above us all in his conceit:", "Whilst we enjoy, he reasons of enjoyment;", "And any step which in our dance we tread,", "If it be left out of his reckoning,", "Is not to be considered as a step.", "There are few things that scandalize him not:", "And when you whirl round in the circle now,", "As he went round the wheel in his old mill,", "He says that you go wrong in all respects,", "Especially if you congratulate him", "Upon the strength of the resemblance.", "", "PROCTO-PHANTASMIST:", "Fly!", "Vanish! Unheard-of impudence! What, still there!", "In this enlightened age too, since you have been", "Proved not to exist!--But this infernal brood", "Will hear no reason and endure no rule.", "Are we so wise, and is the POND still haunted?", "How long have I been sweeping out this rubbish", "Of superstition, and the world will not", "Come clean with all my pains!--it is a case", "Unheard of!", "", "THE GIRL:", "Then leave off teasing us so.", "", "PROCTO-PHANTASMIST:", "I tell you, spirits, to your faces now,", "That I should not regret this despotism", "Of spirits, but that mine can wield it not.", "To-night I shall make poor work of it,", "Yet I will take a round with you, and hope", "Before my last step in the living dance", "To beat the poet and the devil together.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "At last he will sit down in some foul puddle;", "That is his way of solacing himself;", "Until some leech, diverted with his gravity,", "Cures him of spirits and the spirit together.", "[TO FAUST, WHO HAS SECEDED FROM THE DANCE.]", "Why do you let that fair girl pass from you,", "Who sung so sweetly to you in the dance?", "", "FAUST:", "A red mouse in the middle of her singing", "Sprung from her mouth.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "That was all right, my friend:", "Be it enough that the mouse was not gray.", "Do not disturb your hour of happiness", "With close consideration of such trifles.", "", "FAUST:", "Then saw I--", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "What?", "", "FAUST:", "Seest thou not a pale,", "Fair girl, standing alone, far, far away?", "She drags herself now forward with slow steps,", "And seems as if she moved with shackled feet:", "I cannot overcome the thought that she", "Is like poor Margaret.", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Let it be--pass on--", "No good can come of it--it is not well", "To meet it--it is an enchanted phantom,", "A lifeless idol; with its numbing look,", "It freezes up the blood of man; and they", "Who meet its ghastly stare are turned to stone,", "Like those who saw Medusa.", "", "FAUST:", "Oh, too true!", "Her eyes are like the eyes of a fresh corpse", "Which no beloved hand has closed, alas!", "That is the breast which Margaret yielded to me--", "Those are the lovely limbs which I enjoyed!", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "It is all magic, poor deluded fool!", "She looks to every one like his first love.", "", "FAUST:", "Oh, what delight! what woe! I cannot turn", "My looks from her sweet piteous countenance.", "How strangely does a single blood-red line,", "Not broader than the sharp edge of a knife,", "Adorn her lovely neck!", "", "MEPHISTOPHELES:", "Ay, she can carry", "Her head under her arm upon occasion;", "Perseus has cut it off for her. These pleasures", "End in delusion.--Gain this rising ground,", "It is as airy here as in a...", "And if I am not mightily deceived,", "I see a theatre.--What may this mean?", "", "ATTENDANT:", "Quite a new piece, the last of seven, for 'tis", "The custom now to represent that number.", "'Tis written by a Dilettante, and", "The actors who perform are Dilettanti;", "Excuse me, gentlemen; but I must vanish.", "I am a Dilettante curtain-lifter.", "", "JUVENILIA." ], "linecount": "689" }, { "title": "Fragment: Omens", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Hark! the owlet flaps his wings", "In the pathless dell beneath;", "Hark! 'tis the night-raven sings", "Tidings of approaching death." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "In Horologium", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Inter marmoreas Leonorae pendula colles", "Fortunata nimis Machina dicit horas.", "Quas MANIBUS premit illa duas insensa papillas", "Cur mihi sit DIGITO tangere, amata, nefas?" ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: Supposed to Be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Corday", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'Tis midnight now--athwart the murky air,", "Dank lurid meteors shoot a livid gleam;", "From the dark storm-clouds flashes a fearful glare,", "It shows the bending oak, the roaring stream.", "", "I pondered on the woes of lost mankind,", "I pondered on the ceaseless rage of Kings;", "My rapt soul dwelt upon the ties that bind", "The mazy volume of commingling things,", "When fell and wild misrule to man stern sorrow brings.", "", "I heard a yell--it was not the knell,", "When the blasts on the wild lake sleep,", "That floats on the pause of the summer gale's swell,", "O'er the breast of the waveless deep.", "", "I thought it had been death's accents cold", "That bade me recline on the shore;", "I laid mine hot head on the surge-beaten mould,", "And thought to breathe no more.", "", "But a heavenly sleep", "That did suddenly steep", "In balm my bosom's pain,", "Pervaded my soul,", "And free from control,", "Did mine intellect range again.", "", "Methought enthroned upon a silvery cloud,", "Which floated mid a strange and brilliant light;", "My form upborne by viewless aether rode,", "And spurned the lessening realms of earthly night.", "What heavenly notes burst on my ravished ears,", "What beauteous spirits met my dazzled eye!", "Hark! louder swells the music of the spheres,", "More clear the forms of speechless bliss float by,", "And heavenly gestures suit aethereal melody.", "", "But fairer than the spirits of the air,", "More graceful than the Sylph of symmetry,", "Than the enthusiast's fancied love more fair,", "Were the bright forms that swept the azure sky.", "Enthroned in roseate light, a heavenly band", "Strewed flowers of bliss that never fade away;", "They welcome virtue to its native land,", "And songs of triumph greet the joyous day", "When endless bliss the woes of fleeting life repay.", "", "Congenial minds will seek their kindred soul,", "E'en though the tide of time has rolled between;", "They mock weak matter's impotent control,", "And seek of endless life the eternal scene.", "At death's vain summons THIS will never die,", "In Nature's chaos THIS will not decay--", "These are the bands which closely, warmly, tie", "Thy soul, O Charlotte, 'yond this chain of clay,", "To him who thine must be till time shall fade away.", "", "Yes, Francis! thine was the dear knife that tore", "A tyrant's heart-strings from his guilty breast,", "Thine was the daring at a tyrant's gore,", "To smile in triumph, to contemn the rest;", "And thine, loved glory of thy sex! to tear", "From its base shrine a despot's haughty soul,", "To laugh at sorrow in secure despair,", "To mock, with smiles, life's lingering control,", "And triumph mid the griefs that round thy fate did roll.", "", "Yes! the fierce spirits of the avenging deep", "With endless tortures goad their guilty shades.", "I see the lank and ghastly spectres sweep", "Along the burning length of yon arcades;", "And I see Satan stalk athwart the plain;", "He hastes along the burning soil of Hell.", "'Welcome, ye despots, to my dark domain,", "With maddening joy mine anguished senses swell", "To welcome to their home the friends I love so well.'", "", "...", "", "Hark! to those notes, how sweet, how thrilling sweet", "They echo to the sound of angels' feet.", "", "...", "", "Oh haste to the bower where roses are spread,", "For there is prepared thy nuptial bed.", "Oh haste--hark! hark!--they're gone.", "", "...", "", "CHORUS OF SPIRITS:", "Stay, ye days of contentment and joy,", "Whilst love every care is erasing,", "Stay ye pleasures that never can cloy,", "And ye spirits that can never cease pleasing.", "", "And if any soft passion be near,", "Which mortals, frail mortals, can know,", "Let love shed on the bosom a tear,", "And dissolve the chill ice-drop of woe.", "", "SYMPHONY.", "", "FRANCIS:", "'Soft, my dearest angel, stay,", "Oh! you suck my soul away;", "Suck on, suck on, I glow, I glow!", "Tides of maddening passion roll,", "And streams of rapture drown my soul.", "Now give me one more billing kiss,", "Let your lips now repeat the bliss,", "Endless kisses steal my breath,", "No life can equal such a death.'", "", "CHARLOTTE:", "'Oh! yes I will kiss thine eyes so fair,", "And I will clasp thy form;", "Serene is the breath of the balmy air,", "But I think, love, thou feelest me warm", "And I will recline on thy marble neck", "Till I mingle into thee;", "And I will kiss the rose on thy cheek,", "And thou shalt give kisses to me.", "For here is no morn to flout our delight,", "Oh! dost thou not joy at this?", "And here we may lie an endless night,", "A long, long night of bliss.'", "", "Spirits! when raptures move,", "Say what it is to love,", "When passion's tear stands on the cheek,", "When bursts the unconscious sigh;", "And the tremulous lips dare not speak", "What is told by the soul-felt eye.", "But what is sweeter to revenge's ear", "Than the fell tyrant's last expiring yell?", "Yes! than love's sweetest blisses 'tis more dear", "To drink the floatings of a despot's knell.", "I wake--'tis done--'tis over.", "", "DESPAIR.", "", "And canst thou mock mine agony, thus calm", "In cloudless radiance, Queen of silver night?", "Can you, ye flow'rets, spread your perfumed balm", "Mid pearly gems of dew that shine so bright?", "And you wild winds, thus can you sleep so still", "Whilst throbs the tempest of my breast so high?", "Can the fierce night-fiends rest on yonder hill,", "And, in the eternal mansions of the sky,", "Can the directors of the storm in powerless silence lie?", "", "Hark! I hear music on the zephyr's wing,", "Louder it floats along the unruffled sky;", "Some fairy sure has touched the viewless string--", "Now faint in distant air the murmurs die.", "Awhile it stills the tide of agony.", "Now--now it loftier swells--again stern woe", "Arises with the awakening melody.", "Again fierce torments, such as demons know,", "In bitterer, feller tide, on this torn bosom flow.", "", "Arise ye sightless spirits of the storm,", "Ye unseen minstrels of the aereal song,", "Pour the fierce tide around this lonely form,", "And roll the tempest's wildest swell along.", "Dart the red lightning, wing the forked flash,", "Pour from thy cloud-formed hills the thunder's roar;", "Arouse the whirlwind--and let ocean dash", "In fiercest tumult on the rocking shore,--", "Destroy this life or let earth's fabric be no more.", "", "Yes! every tie that links me here is dead;", "Mysterious Fate, thy mandate I obey,", "Since hope and peace, and joy, for aye are fled,", "I come, terrific power, I come away.", "Then o'er this ruined soul let spirits of Hell,", "In triumph, laughing wildly, mock its pain;", "And though with direst pangs mine heart-strings swell,", "I'll echo back their deadly yells again,", "Cursing the power that ne'er made aught in vain." ], "linecount": "157" }, { "title": "The Spectral Horseman", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "What was the shriek that struck Fancy's ear", "As it sate on the ruins of time that is past?", "Hark! it floats on the fitful blast of the wind,", "And breathes to the pale moon a funeral sigh.", "It is the Benshie's moan on the storm,", "Or a shivering fiend that thirsting for sin,", "Seeks murder and guilt when virtue sleeps,", "Winged with the power of some ruthless king,", "And sweeps o'er the breast of the prostrate plain.", "It was not a fiend from the regions of Hell", "That poured its low moan on the stillness of night:", "It was not a ghost of the guilty dead,", "Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore;", "But aye at the close of seven years' end,", "That voice is mixed with the swell of the storm,", "And aye at the close of seven years' end,", "A shapeless shadow that sleeps on the hill", "Awakens and floats on the mist of the heath.", "It is not the shade of a murdered man,", "Who has rushed uncalled to the throne of his God,", "And howls in the pause of the eddying storm.", "This voice is low, cold, hollow, and chill,", "'Tis not heard by the ear, but is felt in the soul.", "'Tis more frightful far than the death-daemon's scream,", "Or the laughter of fiends when they howl o'er the corpse", "Of a man who has sold his soul to Hell.", "It tells the approach of a mystic form,", "A white courser bears the shadowy sprite;", "More thin they are than the mists of the mountain,", "When the clear moonlight sleeps on the waveless lake.", "More pale HIS cheek than the snows of Nithona,", "When winter rides on the northern blast,", "And howls in the midst of the leafless wood.", "Yet when the fierce swell of the tempest is raving,", "And the whirlwinds howl in the caves of Inisfallen,", "Still secure mid the wildest war of the sky,", "The phantom courser scours the waste,", "And his rider howls in the thunder's roar.", "O'er him the fierce bolts of avenging Heaven", "Pause, as in fear, to strike his head.", "The meteors of midnight recoil from his figure,", "Yet the 'wildered peasant, that oft passes by,", "With wonder beholds the blue flash through his form:", "And his voice, though faint as the sighs of the dead,", "The startled passenger shudders to hear,", "More distinct than the thunder's wildest roar.", "Then does the dragon, who, chained in the caverns", "To eternity, curses the champion of Erin,", "Moan and yell loud at the lone hour of midnight,", "And twine his vast wreaths round the forms of the daemons;", "Then in agony roll his death-swimming eyeballs,", "Though 'wildered by death, yet never to die!", "Then he shakes from his skeleton folds the nightmares,", "Who, shrieking in agony, seek the couch", "Of some fevered wretch who courts sleep in vain;", "Then the tombless ghosts of the guilty dead", "In horror pause on the fitful gale.", "They float on the swell of the eddying tempest,", "And scared seek the caves of gigantic...", "Where their thin forms pour unearthly sounds", "On the blast that sweets the breast of the lake,", "And mingles its swell with the moonlight air." ], "linecount": "62" }, { "title": "On a Fete at Carlton House: Fragment", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "By the mossy brink,", "With me the Prince shall sit and think;", "Shall muse in visioned Regency,", "Rapt in bright dreams of dawning Royalty." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "To Harriet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ever as now with Love and Virtue's glow", "May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,", "Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow", "Which force from mine such quick and warm return." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Sonnet. on Launching Some Bottles Filled With Knowledge into the Bristol Channel", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Vessels of heavenly medicine! may the breeze", "Auspicious waft your dark green forms to shore;", "Safe may ye stem the wide surrounding roar", "Of the wild whirlwinds and the raging seas;", "And oh! if Liberty e'er deigned to stoop", "From yonder lowly throne her crownless brow,", "Sure she will breathe around your emerald group", "The fairest breezes of her West that blow.", "Yes! she will waft ye to some freeborn soul", "Whose eye-beam, kindling as it meets your freight,", "Her heaven-born flame in suffering Earth will light,", "Until its radiance gleams from pole to pole,", "And tyrant-hearts with powerless envy burst", "To see their night of ignorance dispersed." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Farewell to North Devon", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Where man's profane and tainting hand", "Nature's primaeval loveliness has marred,", "And some few souls of the high bliss debarred", "Which else obey her powerful command;", "...mountain piles", "That load in grandeur Cambria's emerald vales." ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Song From the Wandering Jew", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "See yon opening flower", "Spreads its fragrance to the blast;", "It fades within an hour,", "Its decay is pale--is fast.", "Paler is yon maiden;", "Faster is her heart's decay;", "Deep with sorrow laden,", "She sinks in death away." ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "The Revolt of Islam. a Poem in Twelve Cantos", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Osais de Broton ethnos aglaiais aptomestha", "perainei pros eschaton", "ploon nausi d oute pezos ion an eurois", "es Uperboreon agona thaumatan odon.", "", "Pind. Pyth. x.", "", "DEDICATION.", "", "There is no danger to a man that knows", "What life and death is: there's not any law", "Exceeds his knowledge; neither is it lawful", "That he should stoop to any other law.--CHAPMAN.", "", "TO MARY -- --.", "", "So now my summer-task is ended, Mary,", "And I return to thee, mine own heart's home;", "As to his Queen some victor Knight of Faery,", "Earning bright spoils for her enchanted dome;", "Nor thou disdain, that ere my fame become", "A star among the stars of mortal night,", "If it indeed may cleave its natal gloom,", "Its doubtful promise thus I would unite", "With thy beloved name, thou Child of love and light.", "", "The toil which stole from thee so many an hour,", "Is ended,--and the fruit is at thy feet!", "No longer where the woods to frame a bower", "With interlaced branches mix and meet,", "Or where with sound like many voices sweet,", "Waterfalls leap among wild islands green,", "Which framed for my lone boat a lone retreat", "Of moss-grown trees and weeds, shall I be seen;", "But beside thee, where still my heart has ever been.", "", "Thoughts of great deeds were mine, dear Friend, when first", "The clouds which wrap this world from youth did pass.", "I do remember well the hour which burst", "My spirit's sleep. A fresh May-dawn it was,", "When I walked forth upon the glittering grass,", "And wept, I knew not why; until there rose", "From the near schoolroom, voices that, alas!", "Were but one echo from a world of woes--", "The harsh and grating strife of tyrants and of foes.", "", "And then I clasped my hands and looked around--", "--But none was near to mock my streaming eyes,", "Which poured their warm drops on the sunny ground--", "So without shame I spake:--'I will be wise,", "And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies", "Such power, for I grow weary to behold", "The selfish and the strong still tyrannise", "Without reproach or check.' I then controlled", "My tears, my heart grew calm, and I was meek and bold.", "", "And from that hour did I with earnest thought", "Heap knowledge from forbidden mines of lore;", "Yet nothing that my tyrants knew or taught", "I cared to learn, but from that secret store", "Wrought linked armour for my soul, before", "It might walk forth to war among mankind;", "Thus power and hope were strengthened more and more", "Within me, till there came upon my mind", "A sense of loneliness, a thirst with which I pined.", "", "Alas, that love should be a blight and snare", "To those who seek all sympathies in one!--", "Such once I sought in vain; then black despair,", "The shadow of a starless night, was thrown", "Over the world in which I moved alone:--", "Yet never found I one not false to me,", "Hard hearts, and cold, like weights of icy stone", "Which crushed and withered mine, that could not be", "Aught but a lifeless clod, until revived by thee.", "", "Thou Friend, whose presence on my wintry heart", "Fell, like bright Spring upon some herbless plain;", "How beautiful and calm and free thou wert", "In thy young wisdom, when the mortal chain", "Of Custom thou didst burst and rend in twain,", "And walked as free as light the clouds among,", "Which many an envious slave then breathed in vain", "From his dim dungeon, and my spirit sprung", "To meet thee from the woes which had begirt it long!", "", "No more alone through the world's wilderness,", "Although I trod the paths of high intent,", "I journeyed now: no more companionless,", "Where solitude is like despair, I went.--", "There is the wisdom of a stern content", "When Poverty can blight the just and good,", "When Infamy dares mock the innocent,", "And cherished friends turn with the multitude", "To trample: this was ours, and we unshaken stood!", "", "Now has descended a serener hour,", "And with inconstant fortune, friends return;", "Though suffering leaves the knowledge and the power", "Which says:--Let scorn be not repaid with scorn.", "And from thy side two gentle babes are born", "To fill our home with smiles, and thus are we", "Most fortunate beneath life's beaming morn;", "And these delights, and thou, have been to me", "The parents of the Song I consecrate to thee.", "", "Is it that now my inexperienced fingers", "But strike the prelude of a loftier strain?", "Or, must the lyre on which my spirit lingers", "Soon pause in silence, ne'er to sound again,", "Though it might shake the Anarch Custom's reign,", "And charm the minds of men to Truth's own sway", "Holier than was Amphion's? I would fain", "Reply in hope--but I am worn away,", "And Death and Love are yet contending for their prey.", "", "And what art thou? I know, but dare not speak:", "Time may interpret to his silent years.", "Yet in the paleness of thy thoughtful cheek,", "And in the light thine ample forehead wears,", "And in thy sweetest smiles, and in thy tears,", "And in thy gentle speech, a prophecy", "Is whispered, to subdue my fondest fears:", "And through thine eyes, even in thy soul I see", "A lamp of vestal fire burning internally.", "", "They say that thou wert lovely from thy birth,", "Of glorious parents thou aspiring Child.", "I wonder not--for One then left this earth", "Whose life was like a setting planet mild,", "Which clothed thee in the radiance undefiled", "Of its departing glory; still her fame", "Shines on thee, through the tempests dark and wild", "Which shake these latter days; and thou canst claim", "The shelter, from thy Sire, of an immortal name.", "", "One voice came forth from many a mighty spirit,", "Which was the echo of three thousand years;", "And the tumultuous world stood mute to hear it,", "As some lone man who in a desert hears", "The music of his home:--unwonted fears", "Fell on the pale oppressors of our race,", "And Faith, and Custom, and low-thoughted cares,", "Like thunder-stricken dragons, for a space", "Left the torn human heart, their food and dwelling-place.", "", "Truth's deathless voice pauses among mankind!", "If there must be no response to my cry--", "If men must rise and stamp with fury blind", "On his pure name who loves them,--thou and I,", "Sweet friend! can look from our tranquillity", "Like lamps into the world's tempestuous night,--", "Two tranquil stars, while clouds are passing by", "Which wrap them from the foundering seaman's sight,", "That burn from year to year with unextinguished light.", "", "CANTO 1.", "", "When the last hope of trampled France had failed", "Like a brief dream of unremaining glory,", "From visions of despair I rose, and scaled", "The peak of an aerial promontory,", "Whose caverned base with the vexed surge was hoary;", "And saw the golden dawn break forth, and waken", "Each cloud, and every wave:--but transitory", "The calm; for sudden, the firm earth was shaken,", "As if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken.", "", "So as I stood, one blast of muttering thunder", "Burst in far peals along the waveless deep,", "When, gathering fast, around, above, and under,", "Long trains of tremulous mist began to creep,", "Until their complicating lines did steep", "The orient sun in shadow:--not a sound", "Was heard; one horrible repose did keep", "The forests and the floods, and all around", "Darkness more dread than night was poured upon the ground.", "", "Hark! 'tis the rushing of a wind that sweeps", "Earth and the ocean. See! the lightnings yawn", "Deluging Heaven with fire, and the lashed deeps", "Glitter and boil beneath: it rages on,", "One mighty stream, whirlwind and waves upthrown,", "Lightning, and hail, and darkness eddying by.", "There is a pause--the sea-birds, that were gone", "Into their caves to shriek, come forth, to spy", "What calm has fall'n on earth, what light is in the sky.", "", "For, where the irresistible storm had cloven", "That fearful darkness, the blue sky was seen", "Fretted with many a fair cloud interwoven", "Most delicately, and the ocean green,", "Beneath that opening spot of blue serene,", "Quivered like burning emerald; calm was spread", "On all below; but far on high, between", "Earth and the upper air, the vast clouds fled,", "Countless and swift as leaves on autumn's tempest shed.", "", "For ever, as the war became more fierce", "Between the whirlwinds and the rack on high,", "That spot grew more serene; blue light did pierce", "The woof of those white clouds, which seem to lie", "Far, deep, and motionless; while through the sky", "The pallid semicircle of the moon", "Passed on, in slow and moving majesty;", "Its upper horn arrayed in mists, which soon", "But slowly fled, like dew beneath the beams of noon.", "", "I could not choose but gaze; a fascination", "Dwelt in that moon, and sky, and clouds, which drew", "My fancy thither, and in expectation", "Of what I knew not, I remained:--the hue", "Of the white moon, amid that heaven so blue,", "Suddenly stained with shadow did appear;", "A speck, a cloud, a shape, approaching grew,", "Like a great ship in the sun's sinking sphere", "Beheld afar at sea, and swift it came anear.", "", "Even like a bark, which from a chasm of mountains,", "Dark, vast and overhanging, on a river", "Which there collects the strength of all its fountains,", "Comes forth, whilst with the speed its frame doth quiver,", "Sails, oars and stream, tending to one endeavour;", "So, from that chasm of light a winged Form", "On all the winds of heaven approaching ever", "Floated, dilating as it came; the storm", "Pursued it with fierce blasts, and lightnings swift and warm.", "", "A course precipitous, of dizzy speed,", "Suspending thought and breath; a monstrous sight!", "For in the air do I behold indeed", "An Eagle and a Serpent wreathed in fight:--", "And now, relaxing its impetuous flight,", "Before the aerial rock on which I stood,", "The Eagle, hovering, wheeled to left and right,", "And hung with lingering wings over the flood,", "And startled with its yells the wide air's solitude.", "", "A shaft of light upon its wings descended,", "And every golden feather gleamed therein--", "Feather and scale, inextricably blended.", "The Serpent's mailed and many-coloured skin", "Shone through the plumes its coils were twined within", "By many a swoln and knotted fold, and high", "And far, the neck, receding lithe and thin,", "Sustained a crested head, which warily", "Shifted and glanced before the Eagle's steadfast eye.", "", "Around, around, in ceaseless circles wheeling", "With clang of wings and scream, the Eagle sailed", "Incessantly--sometimes on high concealing", "Its lessening orbs, sometimes as if it failed,", "Drooped through the air; and still it shrieked and wailed,", "And casting back its eager head, with beak", "And talon unremittingly assailed", "The wreathed Serpent, who did ever seek", "Upon his enemy's heart a mortal wound to wreak.", "", "What life, what power, was kindled and arose", "Within the sphere of that appalling fray!", "For, from the encounter of those wondrous foes,", "A vapour like the sea's suspended spray", "Hung gathered; in the void air, far away,", "Floated the shattered plumes; bright scales did leap,", "Where'er the Eagle's talons made their way,", "Like sparks into the darkness;--as they sweep,", "Blood stains the snowy foam of the tumultuous deep.", "", "Swift chances in that combat--many a check,", "And many a change, a dark and wild turmoil;", "Sometimes the Snake around his enemy's neck", "Locked in stiff rings his adamantine coil,", "Until the Eagle, faint with pain and toil,", "Remitted his strong flight, and near the sea", "Languidly fluttered, hopeless so to foil", "His adversary, who then reared on high", "His red and burning crest, radiant with victory.", "", "Then on the white edge of the bursting surge,", "Where they had sunk together, would the Snake", "Relax his suffocating grasp, and scourge", "The wind with his wild writhings; for to break", "That chain of torment, the vast bird would shake", "The strength of his unconquerable wings", "As in despair, and with his sinewy neck,", "Dissolve in sudden shock those linked rings--", "Then soar, as swift as smoke from a volcano springs.", "", "Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,", "Thus long, but unprevailing:--the event", "Of that portentous fight appeared at length:", "Until the lamp of day was almost spent", "It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,", "Hung high that mighty Serpent, and at last", "Fell to the sea, while o'er the continent", "With clang of wings and scream the Eagle passed,", "Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast.", "", "And with it fled the tempest, so that ocean", "And earth and sky shone through the atmosphere--", "Only, 'twas strange to see the red commotion", "Of waves like mountains o'er the sinking sphere", "Of sunset sweep, and their fierce roar to hear", "Amid the calm: down the steep path I wound", "To the sea-shore--the evening was most clear", "And beautiful, and there the sea I found", "Calm as a cradled child in dreamless slumber bound.", "", "There was a Woman, beautiful as morning,", "Sitting beneath the rocks, upon the sand", "Of the waste sea--fair as one flower adorning", "An icy wilderness; each delicate hand", "Lay crossed upon her bosom, and the band", "Of her dark hair had fall'n, and so she sate", "Looking upon the waves; on the bare strand", "Upon the sea-mark a small boat did wait,", "Fair as herself, like Love by Hope left desolate.", "", "It seemed that this fair Shape had looked upon", "That unimaginable fight, and now", "That her sweet eyes were weary of the sun,", "As brightly it illustrated her woe;", "For in the tears which silently to flow", "Paused not, its lustre hung: she watching aye", "The foam-wreaths which the faint tide wove below", "Upon the spangled sands, groaned heavily,", "And after every groan looked up over the sea.", "", "And when she saw the wounded Serpent make", "His path between the waves, her lips grew pale,", "Parted, and quivered; the tears ceased to break", "From her immovable eyes; no voice of wail", "Escaped her; but she rose, and on the gale", "Loosening her star-bright robe and shadowy hair", "Poured forth her voice; the caverns of the vale", "That opened to the ocean, caught it there,", "And filled with silver sounds the overflowing air.", "", "She spake in language whose strange melody", "Might not belong to earth. I heard alone,", "What made its music more melodious be,", "The pity and the love of every tone;", "But to the Snake those accents sweet were known", "His native tongue and hers; nor did he beat", "The hoar spray idly then, but winding on", "Through the green shadows of the waves that meet", "Near to the shore, did pause beside her snowy feet.", "", "Then on the sands the Woman sate again,", "And wept and clasped her hands, and all between,", "Renewed the unintelligible strain", "Of her melodious voice and eloquent mien;", "And she unveiled her bosom, and the green", "And glancing shadows of the sea did play", "O'er its marmoreal depth:--one moment seen,", "For ere the next, the Serpent did obey", "Her voice, and, coiled in rest in her embrace it lay.", "", "Then she arose, and smiled on me with eyes", "Serene yet sorrowing, like that planet fair,", "While yet the daylight lingereth in the skies", "Which cleaves with arrowy beams the dark-red air,", "And said: 'To grieve is wise, but the despair", "Was weak and vain which led thee here from sleep:", "This shalt thou know, and more, if thou dost dare", "With me and with this Serpent, o'er the deep,", "A voyage divine and strange, companionship to keep.'", "", "Her voice was like the wildest, saddest tone,", "Yet sweet, of some loved voice heard long ago.", "I wept. 'Shall this fair woman all alone,", "Over the sea with that fierce Serpent go?", "His head is on her heart, and who can know", "How soon he may devour his feeble prey?'--", "Such were my thoughts, when the tide gan to flow;", "And that strange boat like the moon's shade did sway", "Amid reflected stars that in the waters lay:--", "", "A boat of rare device, which had no sail", "But its own curved prow of thin moonstone,", "Wrought like a web of texture fine and frail,", "To catch those gentlest winds which are not known", "To breathe, but by the steady speed alone", "With which it cleaves the sparkling sea; and now", "We are embarked--the mountains hang and frown", "Over the starry deep that gleams below,", "A vast and dim expanse, as o'er the waves we go.", "", "And as we sailed, a strange and awful tale", "That Woman told, like such mysterious dream", "As makes the slumberer's cheek with wonder pale!", "'Twas midnight, and around, a shoreless stream,", "Wide ocean rolled, when that majestic theme", "Shrined in her heart found utterance, and she bent", "Her looks on mine; those eyes a kindling beam", "Of love divine into my spirit sent,", "And ere her lips could move, made the air eloquent.", "", "'Speak not to me, but hear! Much shalt thou learn,", "Much must remain unthought, and more untold,", "In the dark Future's ever-flowing urn:", "Know then, that from the depth of ages old", "Two Powers o'er mortal things dominion hold,", "Ruling the world with a divided lot,", "Immortal, all-pervading, manifold,", "Twin Genii, equal Gods--when life and thought", "Sprang forth, they burst the womb of inessential Nought.", "", "'The earliest dweller of the world, alone,", "Stood on the verge of chaos. Lo! afar", "O'er the wide wild abyss two meteors shone,", "Sprung from the depth of its tempestuous jar:", "A blood-red Comet and the Morning Star", "Mingling their beams in combat--as he stood,", "All thoughts within his mind waged mutual war,", "In dreadful sympathy--when to the flood", "That fair Star fell, he turned and shed his brother's blood.", "", "'Thus evil triumphed, and the Spirit of evil,", "One Power of many shapes which none may know,", "One Shape of many names; the Fiend did revel", "In victory, reigning o'er a world of woe,", "For the new race of man went to and fro,", "Famished and homeless, loathed and loathing, wild,", "And hating good--for his immortal foe,", "He changed from starry shape, beauteous and mild,", "To a dire Snake, with man and beast unreconciled.", "", "'The darkness lingering o'er the dawn of things,", "Was Evil's breath and life; this made him strong", "To soar aloft with overshadowing wings;", "And the great Spirit of Good did creep among", "The nations of mankind, and every tongue", "Cursed and blasphemed him as he passed; for none", "Knew good from evil, though their names were hung", "In mockery o'er the fane where many a groan,", "As King, and Lord, and God, the conquering Fiend did own,--", "", "'The Fiend, whose name was Legion: Death, Decay,", "Earthquake and Blight, and Want, and Madness pale,", "Winged and wan diseases, an array", "Numerous as leaves that strew the autumnal gale;", "Poison, a snake in flowers, beneath the veil", "Of food and mirth, hiding his mortal head;", "And, without whom all these might nought avail,", "Fear, Hatred, Faith, and Tyranny, who spread", "Those subtle nets which snare the living and the dead.", "", "'His spirit is their power, and they his slaves", "In air, and light, and thought, and language, dwell;", "And keep their state from palaces to graves,", "In all resorts of men--invisible,", "But when, in ebon mirror, Nightmare fell", "To tyrant or impostor bids them rise,", "Black winged demon forms--whom, from the hell,", "His reign and dwelling beneath nether skies,", "He loosens to their dark and blasting ministries.", "", "'In the world's youth his empire was as firm", "As its foundations...Soon the Spirit of Good,", "Though in the likeness of a loathsome worm,", "Sprang from the billows of the formless flood,", "Which shrank and fled; and with that Fiend of blood", "Renewed the doubtful war...Thrones then first shook,", "And earth's immense and trampled multitude", "In hope on their own powers began to look,", "And Fear, the demon pale, his sanguine shrine forsook.", "", "'Then Greece arose, and to its bards and sages,", "In dream, the golden-pinioned Genii came,", "Even where they slept amid the night of ages,", "Steeping their hearts in the divinest flame", "Which thy breath kindled, Power of holiest name!", "And oft in cycles since, when darkness gave", "New weapons to thy foe, their sunlike fame", "Upon the combat shone--a light to save,", "Like Paradise spread forth beyond the shadowy grave.", "", "'Such is this conflict--when mankind doth strive", "With its oppressors in a strife of blood,", "Or when free thoughts, like lightnings, are alive,", "And in each bosom of the multitude", "Justice and truth with Custom's hydra brood", "Wage silent war; when Priests and Kings dissemble", "In smiles or frowns their fierce disquietude,", "When round pure hearts a host of hopes assemble,", "The Snake and Eagle meet--the world's foundations tremble!", "", "'Thou hast beheld that fight--when to thy home", "Thou dost return, steep not its hearth in tears;", "Though thou may'st hear that earth is now become", "The tyrant's garbage, which to his compeers,", "The vile reward of their dishonoured years,", "He will dividing give.--The victor Fiend,", "Omnipotent of yore, now quails, and fears", "His triumph dearly won, which soon will lend", "An impulse swift and sure to his approaching end.", "", "'List, stranger, list, mine is an human form,", "Like that thou wearest--touch me--shrink not now!", "My hand thou feel'st is not a ghost's, but warm", "With human blood.--'Twas many years ago,", "Since first my thirsting soul aspired to know", "The secrets of this wondrous world, when deep", "My heart was pierced with sympathy, for woe", "Which could not be mine own, and thought did keep,", "In dream, unnatural watch beside an infant's sleep.", "", "'Woe could not be mine own, since far from men", "I dwelt, a free and happy orphan child,", "By the sea-shore, in a deep mountain glen;", "And near the waves, and through the forests wild,", "I roamed, to storm and darkness reconciled:", "For I was calm while tempest shook the sky:", "But when the breathless heavens in beauty smiled,", "I wept, sweet tears, yet too tumultuously", "For peace, and clasped my hands aloft in ecstasy.", "", "'These were forebodings of my fate--before", "A woman's heart beat in my virgin breast,", "It had been nurtured in divinest lore:", "A dying poet gave me books, and blessed", "With wild but holy talk the sweet unrest", "In which I watched him as he died away--", "A youth with hoary hair--a fleeting guest", "Of our lone mountains: and this lore did sway", "My spirit like a storm, contending there alway.", "", "'Thus the dark tale which history doth unfold", "I knew, but not, methinks, as others know,", "For they weep not; and Wisdom had unrolled", "The clouds which hide the gulf of mortal woe,--", "To few can she that warning vision show--", "For I loved all things with intense devotion;", "So that when Hope's deep source in fullest flow,", "Like earthquake did uplift the stagnant ocean", "Of human thoughts--mine shook beneath the wide emotion.", "", "'When first the living blood through all these veins", "Kindled a thought in sense, great France sprang forth,", "And seized, as if to break, the ponderous chains", "Which bind in woe the nations of the earth.", "I saw, and started from my cottage-hearth;", "And to the clouds and waves in tameless gladness", "Shrieked, till they caught immeasurable mirth--", "And laughed in light and music: soon, sweet madness", "Was poured upon my heart, a soft and thrilling sadness.", "", "'Deep slumber fell on me:--my dreams were fire--", "Soft and delightful thoughts did rest and hover", "Like shadows o'er my brain; and strange desire,", "The tempest of a passion, raging over", "My tranquil soul, its depths with light did cover,", "Which passed; and calm, and darkness, sweeter far,", "Came--then I loved; but not a human lover!", "For when I rose from sleep, the Morning Star", "Shone through the woodbine-wreaths which round my casement were.", "", "''Twas like an eye which seemed to smile on me.", "I watched, till by the sun made pale, it sank", "Under the billows of the heaving sea;", "But from its beams deep love my spirit drank,", "And to my brain the boundless world now shrank", "Into one thought--one image--yes, for ever!", "Even like the dayspring, poured on vapours dank,", "The beams of that one Star did shoot and quiver", "Through my benighted mind--and were extinguished never.", "", "'The day passed thus: at night, methought, in dream", "A shape of speechless beauty did appear:", "It stood like light on a careering stream", "Of golden clouds which shook the atmosphere;", "A winged youth, his radiant brow did wear", "The Morning Star: a wild dissolving bliss", "Over my frame he breathed, approaching near,", "And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness", "Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss,--", "", "'And said: \"A Spirit loves thee, mortal maiden,", "How wilt thou prove thy worth?\" Then joy and sleep", "Together fled; my soul was deeply laden,", "And to the shore I went to muse and weep;", "But as I moved, over my heart did creep", "A joy less soft, but more profound and strong", "Than my sweet dream; and it forbade to keep", "The path of the sea-shore: that Spirit's tongue", "Seemed whispering in my heart, and bore my steps along.", "", "'How, to that vast and peopled city led,", "Which was a field of holy warfare then,", "I walked among the dying and the dead,", "And shared in fearless deeds with evil men,", "Calm as an angel in the dragon's den--", "How I braved death for liberty and truth,", "And spurned at peace, and power, and fame--and when", "Those hopes had lost the glory of their youth,", "How sadly I returned--might move the hearer's ruth:", "", "'Warm tears throng fast! the tale may not be said--", "Know then, that when this grief had been subdued,", "I was not left, like others, cold and dead;", "The Spirit whom I loved, in solitude", "Sustained his child: the tempest-shaken wood,", "The waves, the fountains, and the hush of night--", "These were his voice, and well I understood", "His smile divine, when the calm sea was bright", "With silent stars, and Heaven was breathless with delight.", "", "'In lonely glens, amid the roar of rivers,", "When the dim nights were moonless, have I known", "Joys which no tongue can tell; my pale lip quivers", "When thought revisits them:--know thou alone,", "That after many wondrous years were flown,", "I was awakened by a shriek of woe;", "And over me a mystic robe was thrown,", "By viewless hands, and a bright Star did glow", "Before my steps--the Snake then met his mortal foe.'", "", "'Thou fearest not then the Serpent on thy heart?'", "'Fear it!' she said, with brief and passionate cry,", "And spake no more: that silence made me start--", "I looked, and we were sailing pleasantly,", "Swift as a cloud between the sea and sky;", "Beneath the rising moon seen far away,", "Mountains of ice, like sapphire, piled on high,", "Hemming the horizon round, in silence lay", "On the still waters--these we did approach alway.", "", "And swift and swifter grew the vessel's motion,", "So that a dizzy trance fell on my brain--", "Wild music woke me; we had passed the ocean", "Which girds the pole, Nature's remotest reign--", "And we glode fast o'er a pellucid plain", "Of waters, azure with the noontide day.", "Ethereal mountains shone around--a Fane", "Stood in the midst, girt by green isles which lay", "On the blue sunny deep, resplendent far away.", "", "It was a Temple, such as mortal hand", "Has never built, nor ecstasy, nor dream", "Reared in the cities of enchanted land:", "'Twas likest Heaven, ere yet day's purple stream", "Ebbs o'er the western forest, while the gleam", "Of the unrisen moon among the clouds", "Is gathering--when with many a golden beam", "The thronging constellations rush in crowds,", "Paving with fire the sky and the marmoreal floods.", "", "Like what may be conceived of this vast dome,", "When from the depths which thought can seldom pierce", "Genius beholds it rise, his native home,", "Girt by the deserts of the Universe;", "Yet, nor in painting's light, or mightier verse,", "Or sculpture's marble language, can invest", "That shape to mortal sense--such glooms immerse", "That incommunicable sight, and rest", "Upon the labouring brain and overburdened breast.", "", "Winding among the lawny islands fair,", "Whose blosmy forests starred the shadowy deep,", "The wingless boat paused where an ivory stair", "Its fretwork in the crystal sea did steep,", "Encircling that vast Fane's aerial heap:", "We disembarked, and through a portal wide", "We passed--whose roof of moonstone carved, did keep", "A glimmering o'er the forms on every side,", "Sculptures like life and thought, immovable, deep-eyed.", "", "We came to a vast hall, whose glorious roof", "Was diamond, which had drunk the lightning's sheen", "In darkness, and now poured it through the woof", "Of spell-inwoven clouds hung there to screen", "Its blinding splendour--through such veil was seen", "That work of subtlest power, divine and rare;", "Orb above orb, with starry shapes between,", "And horned moons, and meteors strange and fair,", "On night-black columns poised--one hollow hemisphere!", "", "Ten thousand columns in that quivering light", "Distinct--between whose shafts wound far away", "The long and labyrinthine aisles--more bright", "With their own radiance than the Heaven of Day;", "And on the jasper walls around, there lay", "Paintings, the poesy of mightiest thought,", "Which did the Spirit's history display;", "A tale of passionate change, divinely taught,", "Which, in their winged dance, unconscious Genii wrought.", "", "Beneath, there sate on many a sapphire throne,", "The Great, who had departed from mankind,", "A mighty Senate;--some, whose white hair shone", "Like mountain snow, mild, beautiful, and blind;", "Some, female forms, whose gestures beamed with mind;", "And ardent youths, and children bright and fair;", "And some had lyres whose strings were intertwined", "With pale and clinging flames, which ever there", "Waked faint yet thrilling sounds that pierced the crystal air.", "", "One seat was vacant in the midst, a throne,", "Reared on a pyramid like sculptured flame,", "Distinct with circling steps which rested on", "Their own deep fire--soon as the Woman came", "Into that hall, she shrieked the Spirit's name", "And fell; and vanished slowly from the sight.", "Darkness arose from her dissolving frame,", "Which gathering, filled that dome of woven light,", "Blotting its sphered stars with supernatural night.", "", "Then first, two glittering lights were seen to glide", "In circles on the amethystine floor,", "Small serpent eyes trailing from side to side,", "Like meteors on a river's grassy shore,", "They round each other rolled, dilating more", "And more--then rose, commingling into one,", "One clear and mighty planet hanging o'er", "A cloud of deepest shadow, which was thrown", "Athwart the glowing steps and the crystalline throne.", "", "The cloud which rested on that cone of flame", "Was cloven; beneath the planet sate a Form,", "Fairer than tongue can speak or thought may frame,", "The radiance of whose limbs rose-like and warm", "Flowed forth, and did with softest light inform", "The shadowy dome, the sculptures, and the state", "Of those assembled shapes--with clinging charm", "Sinking upon their hearts and mine. He sate", "Majestic, yet most mild--calm, yet compassionate.", "", "Wonder and joy a passing faintness threw", "Over my brow--a hand supported me,", "Whose touch was magic strength; an eye of blue", "Looked into mine, like moonlight, soothingly;", "And a voice said:--'Thou must a listener be", "This day--two mighty Spirits now return,", "Like birds of calm, from the world's raging sea,", "They pour fresh light from Hope's immortal urn;", "A tale of human power--despair not--list and learn!", "", "I looked, and lo! one stood forth eloquently.", "His eyes were dark and deep, and the clear brow", "Which shadowed them was like the morning sky,", "The cloudless Heaven of Spring, when in their flow", "Through the bright air, the soft winds as they blow", "Wake the green world--his gestures did obey", "The oracular mind that made his features glow,", "And where his curved lips half-open lay,", "Passion's divinest stream had made impetuous way.", "", "Beneath the darkness of his outspread hair", "He stood thus beautiful; but there was One", "Who sate beside him like his shadow there,", "And held his hand--far lovelier; she was known", "To be thus fair, by the few lines alone", "Which through her floating locks and gathered cloak,", "Glances of soul-dissolving glory, shone:--", "None else beheld her eyes--in him they woke", "Memories which found a tongue as thus he silence broke.", "", "CANTO 2.", "", "The starlight smile of children, the sweet looks", "Of women, the fair breast from which I fed,", "The murmur of the unreposing brooks,", "And the green light which, shifting overhead,", "Some tangled bower of vines around me shed,", "The shells on the sea-sand, and the wild flowers,", "The lamp-light through the rafters cheerly spread,", "And on the twining flax--in life's young hours", "These sights and sounds did nurse my spirit's folded powers.", "", "In Argolis, beside the echoing sea,", "Such impulses within my mortal frame", "Arose, and they were dear to memory,", "Like tokens of the dead:--but others came", "Soon, in another shape: the wondrous fame", "Of the past world, the vital words and deeds", "Of minds whom neither time nor change can tame,", "Traditions dark and old, whence evil creeds", "Start forth, and whose dim shade a stream of poison feeds.", "", "I heard, as all have heard, the various story", "Of human life, and wept unwilling tears.", "Feeble historians of its shame and glory,", "False disputants on all its hopes and fears,", "Victims who worshipped ruin, chroniclers", "Of daily scorn, and slaves who loathed their state", "Yet, flattering power, had given its ministers", "A throne of judgement in the grave:--'twas fate,", "That among such as these my youth should seek its mate.", "", "The land in which I lived, by a fell bane", "Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side,", "And stabled in our homes,--until the chain", "Stifled the captive's cry, and to abide", "That blasting curse men had no shame--all vied", "In evil, slave and despot; fear with lust", "Strange fellowship through mutual hate had tied,", "Like two dark serpents tangled in the dust,", "Which on the paths of men their mingling poison thrust.", "", "Earth, our bright home, its mountains and its waters,", "And the ethereal shapes which are suspended", "Over its green expanse, and those fair daughters,", "The clouds, of Sun and Ocean, who have blended", "The colours of the air since first extended", "It cradled the young world, none wandered forth", "To see or feel; a darkness had descended", "On every heart; the light which shows its worth,", "Must among gentle thoughts and fearless take its birth.", "", "This vital world, this home of happy spirits,", "Was as a dungeon to my blasted kind;", "All that despair from murdered hope inherits", "They sought, and in their helpless misery blind,", "A deeper prison and heavier chains did find,", "And stronger tyrants:--a dark gulf before,", "The realm of a stern Ruler, yawned; behind,", "Terror and Time conflicting drove, and bore", "On their tempestuous flood the shrieking wretch from shore.", "", "Out of that Ocean's wrecks had Guilt and Woe", "Framed a dark dwelling for their homeless thought,", "And, starting at the ghosts which to and fro", "Glide o'er its dim and gloomy strand, had brought", "The worship thence which they each other taught.", "Well might men loathe their life, well might they turn", "Even to the ills again from which they sought", "Such refuge after death!--well might they learn", "To gaze on this fair world with hopeless unconcern!", "", "For they all pined in bondage; body and soul,", "Tyrant and slave, victim and torturer, bent", "Before one Power, to which supreme control", "Over their will by their own weakness lent,", "Made all its many names omnipotent;", "All symbols of things evil, all divine;", "And hymns of blood or mockery, which rent", "The air from all its fanes, did intertwine", "Imposture's impious toils round each discordant shrine.", "", "I heard, as all have heard, life's various story,", "And in no careless heart transcribed the tale;", "But, from the sneers of men who had grown hoary", "In shame and scorn, from groans of crowds made pale", "By famine, from a mother's desolate wail", "O'er her polluted child, from innocent blood", "Poured on the earth, and brows anxious and pale", "With the heart's warfare, did I gather food", "To feed my many thoughts--a tameless multitude!", "", "I wandered through the wrecks of days departed", "Far by the desolated shore, when even", "O'er the still sea and jagged islets darted", "The light of moonrise; in the northern Heaven,", "Among the clouds near the horizon driven,", "The mountains lay beneath one planet pale;", "Around me, broken tombs and columns riven", "Looked vast in twilight, and the sorrowing gale", "Waked in those ruins gray its everlasting wail!", "", "I knew not who had framed these wonders then,", "Nor had I heard the story of their deeds;", "But dwellings of a race of mightier men,", "And monuments of less ungentle creeds", "Tell their own tale to him who wisely heeds", "The language which they speak; and now, to me", "The moonlight making pale the blooming weeds,", "The bright stars shining in the breathless sea,", "Interpreted those scrolls of mortal mystery.", "", "Such man has been, and such may yet become!", "Ay, wiser, greater, gentler even than they", "Who on the fragments of yon shattered dome", "Have stamped the sign of power--I felt the sway", "Of the vast stream of ages bear away", "My floating thoughts--my heart beat loud and fast--", "Even as a storm let loose beneath the ray", "Of the still moon, my spirit onward passed", "Beneath truth's steady beams upon its tumult cast.", "", "It shall be thus no more! too long, too long,", "Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound", "In darkness and in ruin!--Hope is strong,", "Justice and Truth their winged child have found--", "Awake! arise! until the mighty sound", "Of your career shall scatter in its gust", "The thrones of the oppressor, and the ground", "Hide the last altar's unregarded dust,", "Whose Idol has so long betrayed your impious trust!", "", "It must be so--I will arise and waken", "The multitude, and like a sulphurous hill,", "Which on a sudden from its snows has shaken", "The swoon of ages, it shall burst and fill", "The world with cleansing fire; it must, it will--", "It may not be restrained!--and who shall stand", "Amid the rocking earthquake steadfast still,", "But Laon? on high Freedom's desert land", "A tower whose marble walls the leagued storms withstand!", "", "One summer night, in commune with the hope", "Thus deeply fed, amid those ruins gray", "I watched, beneath the dark sky's starry cope;", "And ever from that hour upon me lay", "The burden of this hope, and night or day,", "In vision or in dream, clove to my breast:", "Among mankind, or when gone far away", "To the lone shores and mountains, 'twas a guest", "Which followed where I fled, and watched when I did rest.", "", "These hopes found words through which my spirit sought", "To weave a bondage of such sympathy,", "As might create some response to the thought", "Which ruled me now--and as the vapours lie", "Bright in the outspread morning's radiancy,", "So were these thoughts invested with the light", "Of language: and all bosoms made reply", "On which its lustre streamed, whene'er it might", "Through darkness wide and deep those tranced spirits smite.", "", "Yes, many an eye with dizzy tears was dim,", "And oft I thought to clasp my own heart's brother,", "When I could feel the listener's senses swim,", "And hear his breath its own swift gaspings smother", "Even as my words evoked them--and another,", "And yet another, I did fondly deem,", "Felt that we all were sons of one great mother;", "And the cold truth such sad reverse did seem", "As to awake in grief from some delightful dream.", "", "Yes, oft beside the ruined labyrinth", "Which skirts the hoary caves of the green deep,", "Did Laon and his friend, on one gray plinth,", "Round whose worn base the wild waves hiss and leap,", "Resting at eve, a lofty converse keep:", "And that this friend was false, may now be said", "Calmly--that he like other men could weep", "Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread", "Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.", "", "Then, had no great aim recompensed my sorrow,", "I must have sought dark respite from its stress", "In dreamless rest, in sleep that sees no morrow--", "For to tread life's dismaying wilderness", "Without one smile to cheer, one voice to bless,", "Amid the snares and scoffs of human kind,", "Is hard--but I betrayed it not, nor less", "With love that scorned return sought to unbind", "The interwoven clouds which make its wisdom blind.", "", "With deathless minds which leave where they have passed", "A path of light, my soul communion knew;", "Till from that glorious intercourse, at last,", "As from a mine of magic store, I drew", "Words which were weapons;--round my heart there grew", "The adamantine armour of their power;", "And from my fancy wings of golden hue", "Sprang forth--yet not alone from wisdom's tower,", "A minister of truth, these plumes young Laon bore.", "", "An orphan with my parents lived, whose eyes", "Were lodestars of delight, which drew me home", "When I might wander forth; nor did I prize", "Aught human thing beneath Heaven's mighty dome", "Beyond this child; so when sad hours were come,", "And baffled hope like ice still clung to me,", "Since kin were cold, and friends had now become", "Heartless and false, I turned from all, to be,", "Cythna, the only source of tears and smiles to thee.", "", "What wert thou then? A child most infantine,", "Yet wandering far beyond that innocent age", "In all but its sweet looks and mien divine;", "Even then, methought, with the world's tyrant rage", "A patient warfare thy young heart did wage,", "When those soft eyes of scarcely conscious thought", "Some tale, or thine own fancies, would engage", "To overflow with tears, or converse fraught", "With passion, o'er their depths its fleeting light had wrought.", "", "She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,", "A power, that from its objects scarcely drew", "One impulse of her being--in her lightness", "Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,", "Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue,", "To nourish some far desert; she did seem", "Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,", "Like the bright shade of some immortal dream", "Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream.", "", "As mine own shadow was this child to me,", "A second self, far dearer and more fair;", "Which clothed in undissolving radiancy", "All those steep paths which languor and despair", "Of human things, had made so dark and bare,", "But which I trod alone--nor, till bereft", "Of friends, and overcome by lonely care,", "Knew I what solace for that loss was left,", "Though by a bitter wound my trusting heart was cleft.", "", "Once she was dear, now she was all I had", "To love in human life--this playmate sweet,", "This child of twelve years old--so she was made", "My sole associate, and her willing feet", "Wandered with mine where earth and ocean meet,", "Beyond the aereal mountains whose vast cells", "The unreposing billows ever beat,", "Through forests wild and old, and lawny dells", "Where boughs of incense droop over the emerald wells.", "", "And warm and light I felt her clasping hand", "When twined in mine; she followed where I went,", "Through the lone paths of our immortal land.", "It had no waste but some memorial lent", "Which strung me to my toil--some monument", "Vital with mind; then Cythna by my side,", "Until the bright and beaming day were spent,", "Would rest, with looks entreating to abide,", "Too earnest and too sweet ever to be denied.", "", "And soon I could not have refused her--thus", "For ever, day and night, we two were ne'er", "Parted, but when brief sleep divided us:", "And when the pauses of the lulling air", "Of noon beside the sea had made a lair", "For her soothed senses, in my arms she slept,", "And I kept watch over her slumbers there,", "While, as the shifting visions over her swept,", "Amid her innocent rest by turns she smiled and wept.", "", "And, in the murmur of her dreams was heard", "Sometimes the name of Laon:--suddenly", "She would arise, and, like the secret bird", "Whom sunset wakens, fill the shore and sky", "With her sweet accents, a wild melody!", "Hymns which my soul had woven to Freedom, strong", "The source of passion, whence they rose, to be;", "Triumphant strains, which, like a spirit's tongue,", "To the enchanted waves that child of glory sung--", "", "Her white arms lifted through the shadowy stream", "Of her loose hair. Oh, excellently great", "Seemed to me then my purpose, the vast theme", "Of those impassioned songs, when Cythna sate", "Amid the calm which rapture doth create", "After its tumult, her heart vibrating,", "Her spirit o'er the Ocean's floating state", "From her deep eyes far wandering, on the wing", "Of visions that were mine, beyond its utmost spring!", "", "For, before Cythna loved it, had my song", "Peopled with thoughts the boundless universe,", "A mighty congregation, which were strong", "Where'er they trod the darkness to disperse", "The cloud of that unutterable curse", "Which clings upon mankind:--all things became", "Slaves to my holy and heroic verse,", "Earth, sea and sky, the planets, life and fame", "And fate, or whate'er else binds the world's wondrous frame.", "", "And this beloved child thus felt the sway", "Of my conceptions, gathering like a cloud", "The very wind on which it rolls away:", "Hers too were all my thoughts, ere yet, endowed", "With music and with light, their fountains flowed", "In poesy; and her still and earnest face,", "Pallid with feelings which intensely glowed", "Within, was turned on mine with speechless grace,", "Watching the hopes which there her heart had learned to trace.", "", "In me, communion with this purest being", "Kindled intenser zeal, and made me wise", "In knowledge, which, in hers mine own mind seeing,", "Left in the human world few mysteries:", "How without fear of evil or disguise", "Was Cythna!--what a spirit strong and mild,", "Which death, or pain or peril could despise,", "Yet melt in tenderness! what genius wild", "Yet mighty, was enclosed within one simple child!", "", "New lore was this--old age with its gray hair,", "And wrinkled legends of unworthy things,", "And icy sneers, is nought: it cannot dare", "To burst the chains which life for ever flings", "On the entangled soul's aspiring wings,", "So is it cold and cruel, and is made", "The careless slave of that dark power which brings", "Evil, like blight, on man, who, still betrayed,", "Laughs o'er the grave in which his living hopes are laid.", "", "Nor are the strong and the severe to keep", "The empire of the world: thus Cythna taught", "Even in the visions of her eloquent sleep,", "Unconscious of the power through which she wrought", "The woof of such intelligible thought,", "As from the tranquil strength which cradled lay", "In her smile-peopled rest, my spirit sought", "Why the deceiver and the slave has sway", "O'er heralds so divine of truth's arising day.", "", "Within that fairest form, the female mind,", "Untainted by the poison clouds which rest", "On the dark world, a sacred home did find:", "But else, from the wide earth's maternal breast,", "Victorious Evil, which had dispossessed", "All native power, had those fair children torn,", "And made them slaves to soothe his vile unrest,", "And minister to lust its joys forlorn,", "Till they had learned to breathe the atmosphere of scorn.", "", "This misery was but coldly felt, till she", "Became my only friend, who had endued", "My purpose with a wider sympathy;", "Thus, Cythna mourned with me the servitude", "In which the half of humankind were mewed", "Victims of lust and hate, the slaves of slaves,", "She mourned that grace and power were thrown as food", "To the hyena lust, who, among graves,", "Over his loathed meal, laughing in agony, raves.", "", "And I, still gazing on that glorious child,", "Even as these thoughts flushed o'er her:--'Cythna sweet,", "Well with the world art thou unreconciled;", "Never will peace and human nature meet", "Till free and equal man and woman greet", "Domestic peace; and ere this power can make", "In human hearts its calm and holy seat,", "This slavery must be broken'--as I spake,", "From Cythna's eyes a light of exultation brake.", "", "She replied earnestly:--'It shall be mine,", "This task,--mine, Laon!--thou hast much to gain;", "Nor wilt thou at poor Cythna's pride repine,", "If she should lead a happy female train", "To meet thee over the rejoicing plain,", "When myriads at thy call shall throng around", "The Golden City.'--Then the child did strain", "My arm upon her tremulous heart, and wound", "Her own about my neck, till some reply she found.", "", "I smiled, and spake not.--'Wherefore dost thou smile", "At what I say? Laon, I am not weak,", "And, though my cheek might become pale the while,", "With thee, if thou desirest, will I seek", "Through their array of banded slaves to wreak", "Ruin upon the tyrants. I had thought", "It was more hard to turn my unpractised cheek", "To scorn and shame, and this beloved spot", "And thee, O dearest friend, to leave and murmur not.", "", "'Whence came I what I am? Thou, Laon, knowest", "How a young child should thus undaunted be;", "Methinks, it is a power which thou bestowest,", "Through which I seek, by most resembling thee,", "So to become most good and great and free;", "Yet far beyond this Ocean's utmost roar,", "In towers and huts are many like to me,", "Who, could they see thine eyes, or feel such lore", "As I have learnt from them, like me would fear no more.", "", "'Think'st thou that I shall speak unskilfully,", "And none will heed me? I remember now,", "How once, a slave in tortures doomed to die,", "Was saved, because in accents sweet and low", "He sung a song his Judge loved long ago,", "As he was led to death.--All shall relent", "Who hear me--tears, as mine have flowed, shall flow,", "Hearts beat as mine now beats, with such intent", "As renovates the world; a will omnipotent!", "", "'Yes, I will tread Pride's golden palaces,", "Through Penury's roofless huts and squalid cells", "Will I descend, where'er in abjectness", "Woman with some vile slave her tyrant dwells,", "There with the music of thine own sweet spells", "Will disenchant the captives, and will pour", "For the despairing, from the crystal wells", "Of thy deep spirit, reason's mighty lore,", "And power shall then abound, and hope arise once more.", "", "'Can man be free if woman be a slave?", "Chain one who lives, and breathes this boundless air,", "To the corruption of a closed grave!", "Can they whose mates are beasts, condemned to bear", "Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare", "To trample their oppressors? in their home", "Among their babes, thou knowest a curse would wear", "The shape of woman--hoary Crime would come", "Behind, and Fraud rebuild religion's tottering dome.", "", "'I am a child:--I would not yet depart.", "When I go forth alone, bearing the lamp", "Aloft which thou hast kindled in my heart,", "Millions of slaves from many a dungeon damp", "Shall leap in joy, as the benumbing cramp", "Of ages leaves their limbs--no ill may harm", "Thy Cythna ever--truth its radiant stamp", "Has fixed, as an invulnerable charm,", "Upon her children's brow, dark Falsehood to disarm.", "", "'Wait yet awhile for the appointed day--", "Thou wilt depart, and I with tears shall stand", "Watching thy dim sail skirt the ocean gray;", "Amid the dwellers of this lonely land", "I shall remain alone--and thy command", "Shall then dissolve the world's unquiet trance,", "And, multitudinous as the desert sand", "Borne on the storm, its millions shall advance,", "Thronging round thee, the light of their deliverance.", "", "'Then, like the forests of some pathless mountain,", "Which from remotest glens two warring winds", "Involve in fire which not the loosened fountain", "Of broadest floods might quench, shall all the kinds", "Of evil, catch from our uniting minds", "The spark which must consume them;--Cythna then", "Will have cast off the impotence that binds", "Her childhood now, and through the paths of men", "Will pass, as the charmed bird that haunts the serpent's den.", "", "'We part!--O Laon, I must dare nor tremble,", "To meet those looks no more!--Oh, heavy stroke!", "Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble", "The agony of this thought?'--As thus she spoke", "The gathered sobs her quivering accents broke,", "And in my arms she hid her beating breast.", "I remained still for tears--sudden she woke", "As one awakes from sleep, and wildly pressed", "My bosom, her whole frame impetuously possessed.", "", "'We part to meet again--but yon blue waste,", "Yon desert wide and deep, holds no recess,", "Within whose happy silence, thus embraced", "We might survive all ills in one caress:", "Nor doth the grave--I fear 'tis passionless--", "Nor yon cold vacant Heaven:--we meet again", "Within the minds of men, whose lips shall bless", "Our memory, and whose hopes its light retain", "When these dissevered bones are trodden in the plain.'", "", "I could not speak, though she had ceased, for now", "The fountains of her feeling, swift and deep,", "Seemed to suspend the tumult of their flow;", "So we arose, and by the starlight steep", "Went homeward--neither did we speak nor weep,", "But, pale, were calm with passion--thus subdued", "Like evening shades that o'er the mountains creep,", "We moved towards our home; where, in this mood,", "Each from the other sought refuge in solitude.", "", "CANTO 3.", "", "What thoughts had sway o'er Cythna's lonely slumber", "That night, I know not; but my own did seem", "As if they might ten thousand years outnumber", "Of waking life, the visions of a dream", "Which hid in one dim gulf the troubled stream", "Of mind; a boundless chaos wild and vast,", "Whose limits yet were never memory's theme:", "And I lay struggling as its whirlwinds passed,", "Sometimes for rapture sick, sometimes for pain aghast.", "", "Two hours, whose mighty circle did embrace", "More time than might make gray the infant world,", "Rolled thus, a weary and tumultuous space:", "When the third came, like mist on breezes curled,", "From my dim sleep a shadow was unfurled:", "Methought, upon the threshold of a cave", "I sate with Cythna; drooping briony, pearled", "With dew from the wild streamlet's shattered wave,", "Hung, where we sate to taste the joys which Nature gave.", "", "We lived a day as we were wont to live,", "But Nature had a robe of glory on,", "And the bright air o'er every shape did weave", "Intenser hues, so that the herbless stone,", "The leafless bough among the leaves alone,", "Had being clearer than its own could be,", "And Cythna's pure and radiant self was shown,", "In this strange vision, so divine to me,", "That if I loved before, now love was agony.", "", "Morn fled, noon came, evening, then night descended,", "And we prolonged calm talk beneath the sphere", "Of the calm moon--when suddenly was blended", "With our repose a nameless sense of fear;", "And from the cave behind I seemed to hear", "Sounds gathering upwards!--accents incomplete,", "And stifled shrieks,--and now, more near and near,", "A tumult and a rush of thronging feet", "The cavern's secret depths beneath the earth did beat.", "", "The scene was changed, and away, away, away!", "Through the air and over the sea we sped,", "And Cythna in my sheltering bosom lay,", "And the winds bore me--through the darkness spread", "Around, the gaping earth then vomited", "Legions of foul and ghastly shapes, which hung", "Upon my flight; and ever, as we fled,", "They plucked at Cythna--soon to me then clung", "A sense of actual things those monstrous dreams among.", "", "And I lay struggling in the impotence", "Of sleep, while outward life had burst its bound,", "Though, still deluded, strove the tortured sense", "To its dire wanderings to adapt the sound", "Which in the light of morn was poured around", "Our dwelling; breathless, pale and unaware", "I rose, and all the cottage crowded found", "With armed men, whose glittering swords were bare,", "And whose degraded limbs the tyrant's garb did wear.", "", "And, ere with rapid lips and gathered brow", "I could demand the cause--a feeble shriek--", "It was a feeble shriek, faint, far and low,", "Arrested me--my mien grew calm and meek,", "And grasping a small knife, I went to seek", "That voice among the crowd--'twas Cythna's cry!", "Beneath most calm resolve did agony wreak", "Its whirlwind rage:--so I passed quietly", "Till I beheld, where bound, that dearest child did lie.", "", "I started to behold her, for delight", "And exultation, and a joyance free,", "Solemn, serene and lofty, filled the light", "Of the calm smile with which she looked on me:", "So that I feared some brainless ecstasy,", "Wrought from that bitter woe, had wildered her--", "'Farewell! farewell!' she said, as I drew nigh;", "'At first my peace was marred by this strange stir,", "Now I am calm as truth--its chosen minister.", "", "'Look not so, Laon--say farewell in hope,", "These bloody men are but the slaves who bear", "Their mistress to her task--it was my scope", "The slavery where they drag me now, to share,", "And among captives willing chains to wear", "Awhile--the rest thou knowest--return, dear friend!", "Let our first triumph trample the despair", "Which would ensnare us now, for in the end,", "In victory or in death our hopes and fears must blend.'", "", "These words had fallen on my unheeding ear,", "Whilst I had watched the motions of the crew", "With seeming-careless glance; not many were", "Around her, for their comrades just withdrew", "To guard some other victim--so I drew", "My knife, and with one impulse, suddenly", "All unaware three of their number slew,", "And grasped a fourth by the throat, and with loud cry", "My countrymen invoked to death or liberty!", "", "What followed then, I know not--for a stroke", "On my raised arm and naked head, came down,", "Filling my eyes with blood.--When I awoke,", "I felt that they had bound me in my swoon,", "And up a rock which overhangs the town,", "By the steep path were bearing me; below,", "The plain was filled with slaughter,--overthrown", "The vineyards and the harvests, and the glow", "Of blazing roofs shone far o'er the white Ocean's flow.", "", "Upon that rock a mighty column stood,", "Whose capital seemed sculptured in the sky,", "Which to the wanderers o'er the solitude", "Of distant seas, from ages long gone by,", "Had made a landmark; o'er its height to fly", "Scarcely the cloud, the vulture, or the blast,", "Has power--and when the shades of evening lie", "On Earth and Ocean, its carved summits cast", "The sunken daylight far through the aerial waste.", "", "They bore me to a cavern in the hill", "Beneath that column, and unbound me there;", "And one did strip me stark; and one did fill", "A vessel from the putrid pool; one bare", "A lighted torch, and four with friendless care", "Guided my steps the cavern-paths along,", "Then up a steep and dark and narrow stair", "We wound, until the torch's fiery tongue", "Amid the gushing day beamless and pallid hung.", "", "They raised me to the platform of the pile,", "That column's dizzy height:--the grate of brass", "Through which they thrust me, open stood the while,", "As to its ponderous and suspended mass,", "With chains which eat into the flesh, alas!", "With brazen links, my naked limbs they bound:", "The grate, as they departed to repass,", "With horrid clangour fell, and the far sound", "Of their retiring steps in the dense gloom was drowned.", "", "The noon was calm and bright:--around that column", "The overhanging sky and circling sea", "Spread forth in silentness profound and solemn", "The darkness of brief frenzy cast on me,", "So that I knew not my own misery:", "The islands and the mountains in the day", "Like clouds reposed afar; and I could see", "The town among the woods below that lay,", "And the dark rocks which bound the bright and glassy bay.", "", "It was so calm, that scarce the feathery weed", "Sown by some eagle on the topmost stone", "Swayed in the air:--so bright, that noon did breed", "No shadow in the sky beside mine own--", "Mine, and the shadow of my chain alone.", "Below, the smoke of roofs involved in flame", "Rested like night, all else was clearly shown", "In that broad glare; yet sound to me none came,", "But of the living blood that ran within my frame.", "", "The peace of madness fled, and ah, too soon!", "A ship was lying on the sunny main,", "Its sails were flagging in the breathless noon--", "Its shadow lay beyond--that sight again", "Waked, with its presence, in my tranced brain", "The stings of a known sorrow, keen and cold:", "I knew that ship bore Cythna o'er the plain", "Of waters, to her blighting slavery sold,", "And watched it with such thoughts as must remain untold.", "", "I watched until the shades of evening wrapped", "Earth like an exhalation--then the bark", "Moved, for that calm was by the sunset snapped.", "It moved a speck upon the Ocean dark:", "Soon the wan stars came forth, and I could mark", "Its path no more!--I sought to close mine eyes,", "But like the balls, their lids were stiff and stark;", "I would have risen, but ere that I could rise,", "My parched skin was split with piercing agonies.", "", "I gnawed my brazen chain, and sought to sever", "Its adamantine links, that I might die:", "O Liberty! forgive the base endeavour,", "Forgive me, if, reserved for victory,", "The Champion of thy faith e'er sought to fly.--", "That starry night, with its clear silence, sent", "Tameless resolve which laughed at misery", "Into my soul--linked remembrance lent", "To that such power, to me such a severe content.", "", "To breathe, to be, to hope, or to despair", "And die, I questioned not; nor, though the Sun", "Its shafts of agony kindling through the air", "Moved over me, nor though in evening dun,", "Or when the stars their visible courses run,", "Or morning, the wide universe was spread", "In dreary calmness round me, did I shun", "Its presence, nor seek refuge with the dead", "From one faint hope whose flower a dropping poison shed.", "", "Two days thus passed--I neither raved nor died--", "Thirst raged within me, like a scorpion's nest", "Built in mine entrails; I had spurned aside", "The water-vessel, while despair possessed", "My thoughts, and now no drop remained! The uprest", "Of the third sun brought hunger--but the crust", "Which had been left, was to my craving breast", "Fuel, not food. I chewed the bitter dust,", "And bit my bloodless arm, and licked the brazen rust.", "", "My brain began to fail when the fourth morn", "Burst o'er the golden isles--a fearful sleep,", "Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn", "Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep", "With whirlwind swiftness--a fall far and deep,--", "A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness--", "These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep", "Their watch in some dim charnel's loneliness,", "A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!", "", "The forms which peopled this terrific trance", "I well remember--like a choir of devils,", "Around me they involved a giddy dance;", "Legions seemed gathering from the misty levels", "Of Ocean, to supply those ceaseless revels,", "Foul, ceaseless shadows:--thought could not divide", "The actual world from these entangling evils,", "Which so bemocked themselves, that I descried", "All shapes like mine own self, hideously multiplied.", "", "The sense of day and night, of false and true,", "Was dead within me. Yet two visions burst", "That darkness--one, as since that hour I knew,", "Was not a phantom of the realms accursed,", "Where then my spirit dwelt--but of the first", "I know not yet, was it a dream or no.", "But both, though not distincter, were immersed", "In hues which, when through memory's waste they flow,", "Make their divided streams more bright and rapid now.", "", "Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven", "Who brought me thither four stiff corpses bare,", "And from the frieze to the four winds of Heaven", "Hung them on high by the entangled hair;", "Swarthy were three--the fourth was very fair;", "As they retired, the golden moon upsprung,", "And eagerly, out in the giddy air,", "Leaning that I might eat, I stretched and clung", "Over the shapeless depth in which those corpses hung.", "", "A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue,", "The dwelling of the many-coloured worm,", "Hung there; the white and hollow cheek I drew", "To my dry lips--what radiance did inform", "Those horny eyes? whose was that withered form?", "Alas, alas! it seemed that Cythna's ghost", "Laughed in those looks, and that the flesh was warm", "Within my teeth!--a whirlwind keen as frost", "Then in its sinking gulfs my sickening spirit tossed.", "", "Then seemed it that a tameless hurricane", "Arose, and bore me in its dark career", "Beyond the sun, beyond the stars that wane", "On the verge of formless space--it languished there,", "And dying, left a silence lone and drear,", "More horrible than famine:--in the deep", "The shape of an old man did then appear,", "Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep", "His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake and weep.", "", "And, when the blinding tears had fallen, I saw", "That column, and those corpses, and the moon,", "And felt the poisonous tooth of hunger gnaw", "My vitals, I rejoiced, as if the boon", "Of senseless death would be accorded soon;--", "When from that stony gloom a voice arose,", "Solemn and sweet as when low winds attune", "The midnight pines; the grate did then unclose,", "And on that reverend form the moonlight did repose.", "", "He struck my chains, and gently spake and smiled;", "As they were loosened by that Hermit old,", "Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,", "To answer those kind looks; he did enfold", "His giant arms around me, to uphold", "My wretched frame; my scorched limbs he wound", "In linen moist and balmy, and as cold", "As dew to drooping leaves;--the chain, with sound", "Like earthquake, through the chasm of that steep stair did bound,", "", "As, lifting me, it fell!--What next I heard,", "Were billows leaping on the harbour-bar,", "And the shrill sea-wind, whose breath idly stirred", "My hair;--I looked abroad, and saw a star", "Shining beside a sail, and distant far", "That mountain and its column, the known mark", "Of those who in the wide deep wandering are,", "So that I feared some Spirit, fell and dark,", "In trance had lain me thus within a fiendish bark.", "", "For now indeed, over the salt sea-billow", "I sailed: yet dared not look upon the shape", "Of him who ruled the helm, although the pillow", "For my light head was hollowed in his lap,", "And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap,", "Fearing it was a fiend: at last, he bent", "O'er me his aged face; as if to snap", "Those dreadful thoughts the gentle grandsire bent,", "And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.", "", "A soft and healing potion to my lips", "At intervals he raised--now looked on high,", "To mark if yet the starry giant dips", "His zone in the dim sea--now cheeringly,", "Though he said little, did he speak to me.", "'It is a friend beside thee--take good cheer,", "Poor victim, thou art now at liberty!'", "I joyed as those a human tone to hear,", "Who in cells deep and lone have languished many a year.", "", "A dim and feeble joy, whose glimpses oft", "Were quenched in a relapse of wildering dreams;", "Yet still methought we sailed, until aloft", "The stars of night grew pallid, and the beams", "Of morn descended on the ocean-streams,", "And still that aged man, so grand and mild,", "Tended me, even as some sick mother seems", "To hang in hope over a dying child,", "Till in the azure East darkness again was piled.", "", "And then the night-wind steaming from the shore,", "Sent odours dying sweet across the sea,", "And the swift boat the little waves which bore,", "Were cut by its keen keel, though slantingly;", "Soon I could hear the leaves sigh, and could see", "The myrtle-blossoms starring the dim grove,", "As past the pebbly beach the boat did flee", "On sidelong wing, into a silent cove,", "Where ebon pines a shade under the starlight wove.", "", "CANTO 4.", "", "The old man took the oars, and soon the bark", "Smote on the beach beside a tower of stone;", "It was a crumbling heap, whose portal dark", "With blooming ivy-trails was overgrown;", "Upon whose floor the spangling sands were strown,", "And rarest sea-shells, which the eternal flood,", "Slave to the mother of the months, had thrown", "Within the walls of that gray tower, which stood", "A changeling of man's art nursed amid Nature's brood.", "", "When the old man his boat had anchored,", "He wound me in his arms with tender care,", "And very few, but kindly words he said,", "And bore me through the tower adown a stair,", "Whose smooth descent some ceaseless step to wear", "For many a year had fallen.--We came at last", "To a small chamber, which with mosses rare", "Was tapestried, where me his soft hands placed", "Upon a couch of grass and oak-leaves interlaced.", "", "The moon was darting through the lattices", "Its yellow light, warm as the beams of day--", "So warm, that to admit the dewy breeze,", "The old man opened them; the moonlight lay", "Upon a lake whose waters wove their play", "Even to the threshold of that lonely home:", "Within was seen in the dim wavering ray", "The antique sculptured roof, and many a tome", "Whose lore had made that sage all that he had become.", "", "The rock-built barrier of the sea was past,--", "And I was on the margin of a lake,", "A lonely lake, amid the forests vast", "And snowy mountains:--did my spirit wake", "From sleep as many-coloured as the snake", "That girds eternity? in life and truth,", "Might not my heart its cravings ever slake?", "Was Cythna then a dream, and all my youth,", "And all its hopes and fears, and all its joy and ruth?", "", "Thus madness came again,--a milder madness,", "Which darkened nought but time's unquiet flow", "With supernatural shades of clinging sadness;", "That gentle Hermit, in my helpless woe,", "By my sick couch was busy to and fro,", "Like a strong spirit ministrant of good:", "When I was healed, he led me forth to show", "The wonders of his sylvan solitude,", "And we together sate by that isle-fretted flood.", "", "He knew his soothing words to weave with skill", "From all my madness told; like mine own heart,", "Of Cythna would he question me, until", "That thrilling name had ceased to make me start,", "From his familiar lips--it was not art,", "Of wisdom and of justice when he spoke--", "When mid soft looks of pity, there would dart", "A glance as keen as is the lightning's stroke", "When it doth rive the knots of some ancestral oak.", "", "Thus slowly from my brain the darkness rolled,", "My thoughts their due array did re-assume", "Through the enchantments of that Hermit old;", "Then I bethought me of the glorious doom", "Of those who sternly struggle to relume", "The lamp of Hope o'er man's bewildered lot,", "And, sitting by the waters, in the gloom", "Of eve, to that friend's heart I told my thought--", "That heart which had grown old, but had corrupted not.", "", "That hoary man had spent his livelong age", "In converse with the dead, who leave the stamp", "Of ever-burning thoughts on many a page,", "When they are gone into the senseless damp", "Of graves;--his spirit thus became a lamp", "Of splendour, like to those on which it fed;", "Through peopled haunts, the City and the Camp,", "Deep thirst for knowledge had his footsteps led,", "And all the ways of men among mankind he read.", "", "But custom maketh blind and obdurate", "The loftiest hearts;--he had beheld the woe", "In which mankind was bound, but deemed that fate", "Which made them abject, would preserve them so;", "And in such faith, some steadfast joy to know,", "He sought this cell: but when fame went abroad", "That one in Argolis did undergo", "Torture for liberty, and that the crowd", "High truths from gifted lips had heard and understood;", "", "And that the multitude was gathering wide,--", "His spirit leaped within his aged frame;", "In lonely peace he could no more abide,", "But to the land on which the victor's flame", "Had fed, my native land, the Hermit came:", "Each heart was there a shield, and every tongue", "Was as a sword of truth--young Laon's name", "Rallied their secret hopes, though tyrants sung", "Hymns of triumphant joy our scattered tribes among.", "", "He came to the lone column on the rock,", "And with his sweet and mighty eloquence", "The hearts of those who watched it did unlock,", "And made them melt in tears of penitence.", "They gave him entrance free to bear me thence.", "'Since this,' the old man said, 'seven years are spent,", "While slowly truth on thy benighted sense", "Has crept; the hope which wildered it has lent", "Meanwhile, to me the power of a sublime intent.", "", "'Yes, from the records of my youthful state,", "And from the lore of bards and sages old,", "From whatsoe'er my wakened thoughts create", "Out of the hopes of thine aspirings bold,", "Have I collected language to unfold", "Truth to my countrymen; from shore to shore", "Doctrines of human power my words have told,", "They have been heard, and men aspire to more", "Than they have ever gained or ever lost of yore.", "", "'In secret chambers parents read, and weep,", "My writings to their babes, no longer blind;", "And young men gather when their tyrants sleep,", "And vows of faith each to the other bind;", "And marriageable maidens, who have pined", "With love, till life seemed melting through their look,", "A warmer zeal, a nobler hope, now find;", "And every bosom thus is rapt and shook,", "Like autumn's myriad leaves in one swoln mountain-brook.", "", "'The tyrants of the Golden City tremble", "At voices which are heard about the streets;", "The ministers of fraud can scarce dissemble", "The lies of their own heart, but when one meets", "Another at the shrine, he inly weets,", "Though he says nothing, that the truth is known;", "Murderers are pale upon the judgement-seats,", "And gold grows vile even to the wealthy crone,", "And laughter fills the Fane, and curses shake the Throne.", "", "'Kind thoughts, and mighty hopes, and gentle deeds", "Abound, for fearless love, and the pure law", "Of mild equality and peace, succeeds", "To faiths which long have held the world in awe,", "Bloody and false, and cold:--as whirlpools draw", "All wrecks of Ocean to their chasm, the sway", "Of thy strong genius, Laon, which foresaw", "This hope, compels all spirits to obey,", "Which round thy secret strength now throng in wide array.", "", "'For I have been thy passive instrument'--", "(As thus the old man spake, his countenance", "Gleamed on me like a spirit's)--'thou hast lent", "To me, to all, the power to advance", "Towards this unforeseen deliverance", "From our ancestral chains--ay, thou didst rear", "That lamp of hope on high, which time nor chance", "Nor change may not extinguish, and my share", "Of good, was o'er the world its gathered beams to bear.", "", "'But I, alas! am both unknown and old,", "And though the woof of wisdom I know well", "To dye in hues of language, I am cold", "In seeming, and the hopes which inly dwell,", "My manners note that I did long repel;", "But Laon's name to the tumultuous throng", "Were like the star whose beams the waves compel", "And tempests, and his soul-subduing tongue", "Were as a lance to quell the mailed crest of wrong.", "", "'Perchance blood need not flow, if thou at length", "Wouldst rise, perchance the very slaves would spare", "Their brethren and themselves; great is the strength", "Of words--for lately did a maiden fair,", "Who from her childhood has been taught to bear", "The Tyrant's heaviest yoke, arise, and make", "Her sex the law of truth and freedom hear,", "And with these quiet words--\"for thine own sake", "I prithee spare me;\"--did with ruth so take", "", "'All hearts, that even the torturer who had bound", "Her meek calm frame, ere it was yet impaled,", "Loosened her, weeping then; nor could be found", "One human hand to harm her--unassailed", "Therefore she walks through the great City, veiled", "In virtue's adamantine eloquence,", "'Gainst scorn, and death and pain thus trebly mailed,", "And blending, in the smiles of that defence,", "The Serpent and the Dove, Wisdom and Innocence.", "", "'The wild-eyed women throng around her path:", "From their luxurious dungeons, from the dust", "Of meaner thralls, from the oppressor's wrath,", "Or the caresses of his sated lust", "They congregate:--in her they put their trust;", "The tyrants send their armed slaves to quell", "Her power;--they, even like a thunder-gust", "Caught by some forest, bend beneath the spell", "Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel.", "", "'Thus she doth equal laws and justice teach", "To woman, outraged and polluted long;", "Gathering the sweetest fruit in human reach", "For those fair hands now free, while armed wrong", "Trembles before her look, though it be strong;", "Thousands thus dwell beside her, virgins bright,", "And matrons with their babes, a stately throng!", "Lovers renew the vows which they did plight", "In early faith, and hearts long parted now unite,", "", "'And homeless orphans find a home near her,", "And those poor victims of the proud, no less,", "Fair wrecks, on whom the smiling world with stir,", "Thrusts the redemption of its wickedness:--", "In squalid huts, and in its palaces", "Sits Lust alone, while o'er the land is borne", "Her voice, whose awful sweetness doth repress", "All evil, and her foes relenting turn,", "And cast the vote of love in hope's abandoned urn.", "", "'So in the populous City, a young maiden", "Has baffled Havoc of the prey which he", "Marks as his own, whene'er with chains o'erladen", "Men make them arms to hurl down tyranny,--", "False arbiter between the bound and free;", "And o'er the land, in hamlets and in towns", "The multitudes collect tumultuously,", "And throng in arms; but tyranny disowns", "Their claim, and gathers strength around its trembling thrones.", "", "'Blood soon, although unwillingly, to shed", "The free cannot forbear--the Queen of Slaves,", "The hoodwinked Angel of the blind and dead,", "Custom, with iron mace points to the graves", "Where her own standard desolately waves", "Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings.", "Many yet stand in her array--\"she paves", "Her path with human hearts,\" and o'er it flings", "The wildering gloom of her immeasurable wings.", "", "'There is a plain beneath the City's wall,", "Bounded by misty mountains, wide and vast,", "Millions there lift at Freedom's thrilling call", "Ten thousand standards wide, they load the blast", "Which bears one sound of many voices past,", "And startles on his throne their sceptred foe:", "He sits amid his idle pomp aghast,", "And that his power hath passed away, doth know--", "Why pause the victor swords to seal his overthrow?", "", "'The tyrant's guards resistance yet maintain:", "Fearless, and fierce, and hard as beasts of blood,", "They stand a speck amid the peopled plain;", "Carnage and ruin have been made their food", "From infancy--ill has become their good,", "And for its hateful sake their will has wove", "The chains which eat their hearts. The multitude", "Surrounding them, with words of human love,", "Seek from their own decay their stubborn minds to move.", "", "'Over the land is felt a sudden pause,", "As night and day those ruthless bands around,", "The watch of love is kept:--a trance which awes", "The thoughts of men with hope; as when the sound", "Of whirlwind, whose fierce blasts the waves and clouds confound,", "Dies suddenly, the mariner in fear", "Feels silence sink upon his heart--thus bound,", "The conquerors pause, and oh! may freemen ne'er", "Clasp the relentless knees of Dread, the murderer!", "", "'If blood be shed, 'tis but a change and choice", "Of bonds,--from slavery to cowardice", "A wretched fall!--Uplift thy charmed voice!", "Pour on those evil men the love that lies", "Hovering within those spirit-soothing eyes--", "Arise, my friend, farewell!'--As thus he spake,", "From the green earth lightly I did arise,", "As one out of dim dreams that doth awake,", "And looked upon the depth of that reposing lake.", "", "I saw my countenance reflected there;--", "And then my youth fell on me like a wind", "Descending on still waters--my thin hair", "Was prematurely gray, my face was lined", "With channels, such as suffering leaves behind,", "Not age; my brow was pale, but in my cheek", "And lips a flush of gnawing fire did find", "Their food and dwelling; though mine eyes might speak", "A subtle mind and strong within a frame thus weak.", "", "And though their lustre now was spent and faded,", "Yet in my hollow looks and withered mien", "The likeness of a shape for which was braided", "The brightest woof of genius, still was seen--", "One who, methought, had gone from the world's scene,", "And left it vacant--'twas her lover's face--", "It might resemble her--it once had been", "The mirror of her thoughts, and still the grace", "Which her mind's shadow cast, left there a lingering trace.", "", "What then was I? She slumbered with the dead.", "Glory and joy and peace, had come and gone.", "Doth the cloud perish, when the beams are fled", "Which steeped its skirts in gold? or, dark and lone,", "Doth it not through the paths of night unknown,", "On outspread wings of its own wind upborne", "Pour rain upon the earth? The stars are shown,", "When the cold moon sharpens her silver horn", "Under the sea, and make the wide night not forlorn.", "", "Strengthened in heart, yet sad, that aged man", "I left, with interchange of looks and tears,", "And lingering speech, and to the Camp began", "My war. O'er many a mountain-chain which rears", "Its hundred crests aloft, my spirit bears", "My frame; o'er many a dale and many a moor,", "And gaily now meseems serene earth wears", "The blosmy spring's star-bright investiture,", "A vision which aught sad from sadness might allure.", "", "My powers revived within me, and I went,", "As one whom winds waft o'er the bending grass,", "Through many a vale of that broad continent.", "At night when I reposed, fair dreams did pass", "Before my pillow;--my own Cythna was,", "Not like a child of death, among them ever;", "When I arose from rest, a woful mass", "That gentlest sleep seemed from my life to sever,", "As if the light of youth were not withdrawn for ever.", "", "Aye as I went, that maiden who had reared", "The torch of Truth afar, of whose high deeds", "The Hermit in his pilgrimage had heard,", "Haunted my thoughts.--Ah, Hope its sickness feeds", "With whatsoe'er it finds, or flowers or weeds!", "Could she be Cythna?--Was that corpse a shade", "Such as self-torturing thought from madness breeds?", "Why was this hope not torture? Yet it made", "A light around my steps which would not ever fade.", "", "CANTO 5.", "", "Over the utmost hill at length I sped,", "A snowy steep:--the moon was hanging low", "Over the Asian mountains, and outspread", "The plain, the City, and the Camp below,", "Skirted the midnight Ocean's glimmering flow;", "The City's moonlit spires and myriad lamps,", "Like stars in a sublunar sky did glow,", "And fires blazed far amid the scattered camps,", "Like springs of flame, which burst where'er swift Earthquake stamps.", "", "All slept but those in watchful arms who stood,", "And those who sate tending the beacon's light,", "And the few sounds from that vast multitude", "Made silence more profound.--Oh, what a might", "Of human thought was cradled in that night!", "How many hearts impenetrably veiled", "Beat underneath its shade, what secret fight", "Evil and good, in woven passions mailed,", "Waged through that silent throng--a war that never failed!", "", "And now the Power of Good held victory.", "So, through the labyrinth of many a tent,", "Among the silent millions who did lie", "In innocent sleep, exultingly I went;", "The moon had left Heaven desert now, but lent", "From eastern morn the first faint lustre showed", "An armed youth--over his spear he bent", "His downward face.--'A friend!' I cried aloud,", "And quickly common hopes made freemen understood.", "", "I sate beside him while the morning beam", "Crept slowly over Heaven, and talked with him", "Of those immortal hopes, a glorious theme!", "Which led us forth, until the stars grew dim:", "And all the while, methought, his voice did swim", "As if it drowned in remembrance were", "Of thoughts which make the moist eyes overbrim:", "At last, when daylight 'gan to fill the air,", "He looked on me, and cried in wonder--'Thou art here!'", "", "Then, suddenly, I knew it was the youth", "In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;", "But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,", "And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,", "And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,", "Whilst he was innocent, and I deluded;", "The truth now came upon me, on the ground", "Tears of repenting joy, which fast intruded,", "Fell fast, and o'er its peace our mingling spirits brooded.", "", "Thus, while with rapid lips and earnest eyes", "We talked, a sound of sweeping conflict spread", "As from the earth did suddenly arise;", "From every tent roused by that clamour dread,", "Our bands outsprung and seized their arms--we sped", "Towards the sound: our tribes were gathering far.", "Those sanguine slaves amid ten thousand dead", "Stabbed in their sleep, trampled in treacherous war", "The gentle hearts whose power their lives had sought to spare.", "", "Like rabid snakes, that sting some gentle child", "Who brings them food, when winter false and fair", "Allures them forth with its cold smiles, so wild", "They rage among the camp;--they overbear", "The patriot hosts--confusion, then despair,", "Descends like night--when 'Laon!' one did cry;", "Like a bright ghost from Heaven that shout did scare", "The slaves, and widening through the vaulted sky,", "Seemed sent from Earth to Heaven in sign of victory.", "", "In sudden panic those false murderers fled,", "Like insect tribes before the northern gale:", "But swifter still, our hosts encompassed", "Their shattered ranks, and in a craggy vale,", "Where even their fierce despair might nought avail,", "Hemmed them around!--and then revenge and fear", "Made the high virtue of the patriots fail:", "One pointed on his foe the mortal spear--", "I rushed before its point, and cried 'Forbear, forbear!'", "", "The spear transfixed my arm that was uplifted", "In swift expostulation, and the blood", "Gushed round its point: I smiled, and--'Oh! thou gifted", "With eloquence which shall not be withstood,", "Flow thus!' I cried in joy, 'thou vital flood,", "Until my heart be dry, ere thus the cause", "For which thou wert aught worthy be subdued--", "Ah, ye are pale,--ye weep,--your passions pause,--", "'Tis well! ye feel the truth of love's benignant laws.", "", "'Soldiers, our brethren and our friends are slain.", "Ye murdered them, I think, as they did sleep!", "Alas, what have ye done? the slightest pain", "Which ye might suffer, there were eyes to weep,", "But ye have quenched them--there were smiles to steep", "Your hearts in balm, but they are lost in woe;", "And those whom love did set his watch to keep", "Around your tents, truth's freedom to bestow,", "Ye stabbed as they did sleep--but they forgive ye now.", "", "'Oh wherefore should ill ever flow from ill,", "And pain still keener pain for ever breed?", "We all are brethren--even the slaves who kill", "For hire, are men; and to avenge misdeed", "On the misdoer, doth but Misery feed", "With her own broken heart! O Earth, O Heaven!", "And thou, dread Nature, which to every deed", "And all that lives, or is, to be hath given,", "Even as to thee have these done ill, and are forgiven!", "", "'Join then your hands and hearts, and let the past", "Be as a grave which gives not up its dead", "To evil thoughts.'--A film then overcast", "My sense with dimness, for the wound, which bled", "Freshly, swift shadows o'er mine eyes had shed.", "When I awoke, I lay mid friends and foes,", "And earnest countenances on me shed", "The light of questioning looks, whilst one did close", "My wound with balmiest herbs, and soothed me to repose;", "", "And one whose spear had pierced me, leaned beside", "With quivering lips and humid eyes;--and all", "Seemed like some brothers on a journey wide", "Gone forth, whom now strange meeting did befall", "In a strange land, round one whom they might call", "Their friend, their chief, their father, for assay", "Of peril, which had saved them from the thrall", "Of death, now suffering. Thus the vast array", "Of those fraternal bands were reconciled that day.", "", "Lifting the thunder of their acclamation,", "Towards the City then the multitude,", "And I among them, went in joy--a nation", "Made free by love;--a mighty brotherhood", "Linked by a jealous interchange of good;", "A glorious pageant, more magnificent", "Than kingly slaves arrayed in gold and blood,", "When they return from carnage, and are sent", "In triumph bright beneath the populous battlement.", "", "Afar, the city-walls were thronged on high,", "And myriads on each giddy turret clung,", "And to each spire far lessening in the sky", "Bright pennons on the idle winds were hung;", "As we approached, a shout of joyance sprung", "At once from all the crowd, as if the vast", "And peopled Earth its boundless skies among", "The sudden clamour of delight had cast,", "When from before its face some general wreck had passed.", "", "Our armies through the City's hundred gates", "Were poured, like brooks which to the rocky lair", "Of some deep lake, whose silence them awaits,", "Throng from the mountains when the storms are there", "And, as we passed through the calm sunny air", "A thousand flower-inwoven crowns were shed,", "The token flowers of truth and freedom fair,", "And fairest hands bound them on many a head,", "Those angels of love's heaven that over all was spread.", "", "I trod as one tranced in some rapturous vision:", "Those bloody bands so lately reconciled,", "Were, ever as they went, by the contrition", "Of anger turned to love, from ill beguiled,", "And every one on them more gently smiled,", "Because they had done evil:--the sweet awe", "Of such mild looks made their own hearts grow mild,", "And did with soft attraction ever draw", "Their spirits to the love of freedom's equal law.", "", "And they, and all, in one loud symphony", "My name with Liberty commingling, lifted,", "'The friend and the preserver of the free!", "The parent of this joy!' and fair eyes gifted", "With feelings, caught from one who had uplifted", "The light of a great spirit, round me shone;", "And all the shapes of this grand scenery shifted", "Like restless clouds before the steadfast sun,--", "Where was that Maid? I asked, but it was known of none.", "", "Laone was the name her love had chosen,", "For she was nameless, and her birth none knew:", "Where was Laone now?--The words were frozen", "Within my lips with fear; but to subdue", "Such dreadful hope, to my great task was due,", "And when at length one brought reply, that she", "To-morrow would appear, I then withdrew", "To judge what need for that great throng might be,", "For now the stars came thick over the twilight sea.", "", "Yet need was none for rest or food to care,", "Even though that multitude was passing great,", "Since each one for the other did prepare", "All kindly succour--Therefore to the gate", "Of the Imperial House, now desolate,", "I passed, and there was found aghast, alone,", "The fallen Tyrant!--Silently he sate", "Upon the footstool of his golden throne,", "Which, starred with sunny gems, in its own lustre shone.", "", "Alone, but for one child, who led before him", "A graceful dance: the only living thing", "Of all the crowd, which thither to adore him", "Flocked yesterday, who solace sought to bring", "In his abandonment!--She knew the King", "Had praised her dance of yore, and now she wove", "Its circles, aye weeping and murmuring", "Mid her sad task of unregarded love,", "That to no smiles it might his speechless sadness move.", "", "She fled to him, and wildly clasped his feet", "When human steps were heard:--he moved nor spoke,", "Nor changed his hue, nor raised his looks to meet", "The gaze of strangers--our loud entrance woke", "The echoes of the hall, which circling broke", "The calm of its recesses,--like a tomb", "Its sculptured walls vacantly to the stroke", "Of footfalls answered, and the twilight's gloom", "Lay like a charnel's mist within the radiant dome.", "", "The little child stood up when we came nigh;", "Her lips and cheeks seemed very pale and wan,", "But on her forehead, and within her eye", "Lay beauty, which makes hearts that feed thereon", "Sick with excess of sweetness; on the throne", "She leaned;--the King, with gathered brow, and lips", "Wreathed by long scorn, did inly sneer and frown", "With hue like that when some great painter dips", "His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.", "", "She stood beside him like a rainbow braided", "Within some storm, when scarce its shadows vast", "From the blue paths of the swift sun have faded;", "A sweet and solemn smile, like Cythna's, cast", "One moment's light, which made my heart beat fast,", "O'er that child's parted lips--a gleam of bliss,", "A shade of vanished days,--as the tears passed", "Which wrapped it, even as with a father's kiss", "I pressed those softest eyes in trembling tenderness.", "", "The sceptred wretch then from that solitude", "I drew, and, of his change compassionate,", "With words of sadness soothed his rugged mood.", "But he, while pride and fear held deep debate,", "With sullen guile of ill-dissembled hate", "Glared on me as a toothless snake might glare:", "Pity, not scorn I felt, though desolate", "The desolator now, and unaware", "The curses which he mocked had caught him by the hair.", "", "I led him forth from that which now might seem", "A gorgeous grave: through portals sculptured deep", "With imagery beautiful as dream", "We went, and left the shades which tend on sleep", "Over its unregarded gold to keep", "Their silent watch.--The child trod faintingly,", "And as she went, the tears which she did weep", "Glanced in the starlight; wildered seemed she,", "And, when I spake, for sobs she could not answer me.", "", "At last the tyrant cried, 'She hungers, slave!", "Stab her, or give her bread!'--It was a tone", "Such as sick fancies in a new-made grave", "Might hear. I trembled, for the truth was known;", "He with this child had thus been left alone,", "And neither had gone forth for food,--but he", "In mingled pride and awe cowered near his throne,", "And she a nursling of captivity", "Knew nought beyond those walls, nor what such change might be.", "", "And he was troubled at a charm withdrawn", "Thus suddenly; that sceptres ruled no more--", "That even from gold the dreadful strength was gone,", "Which once made all things subject to its power--", "Such wonder seized him, as if hour by hour", "The past had come again; and the swift fall", "Of one so great and terrible of yore,", "To desolateness, in the hearts of all", "Like wonder stirred, who saw such awful change befall.", "", "A mighty crowd, such as the wide land pours", "Once in a thousand years, now gathered round", "The fallen tyrant;--like the rush of showers", "Of hail in spring, pattering along the ground,", "Their many footsteps fell, else came no sound", "From the wide multitude: that lonely man", "Then knew the burden of his change, and found,", "Concealing in the dust his visage wan,", "Refuge from the keen looks which through his bosom ran.", "", "And he was faint withal: I sate beside him", "Upon the earth, and took that child so fair", "From his weak arms, that ill might none betide him", "Or her;--when food was brought to them, her share", "To his averted lips the child did bear,", "But, when she saw he had enough, she ate", "And wept the while;--the lonely man's despair", "Hunger then overcame, and of his state", "Forgetful, on the dust as in a trance he sate.", "", "Slowly the silence of the multitudes", "Passed, as when far is heard in some lone dell", "The gathering of a wind among the woods--", "'And he is fallen!' they cry, 'he who did dwell", "Like famine or the plague, or aught more fell", "Among our homes, is fallen! the murderer", "Who slaked his thirsting soul as from a well", "Of blood and tears with ruin! he is here!", "Sunk in a gulf of scorn from which none may him rear!'", "", "Then was heard--'He who judged let him be brought", "To judgement! blood for blood cries from the soil", "On which his crimes have deep pollution wrought!", "Shall Othman only unavenged despoil?", "Shall they who by the stress of grinding toil", "Wrest from the unwilling earth his luxuries,", "Perish for crime, while his foul blood may boil,", "Or creep within his veins at will?--Arise!", "And to high justice make her chosen sacrifice!'", "", "'What do ye seek? what fear ye,' then I cried,", "Suddenly starting forth, 'that ye should shed", "The blood of Othman?--if your hearts are tried", "In the true love of freedom, cease to dread", "This one poor lonely man--beneath Heaven spread", "In purest light above us all, through earth--", "Maternal earth, who doth her sweet smiles shed", "For all, let him go free; until the worth", "Of human nature win from these a second birth.", "", "'What call ye \"justice\"? Is there one who ne'er", "In secret thought has wished another's ill?--", "Are ye all pure? Let those stand forth who hear", "And tremble not. Shall they insult and kill,", "If such they be? their mild eyes can they fill", "With the false anger of the hypocrite?", "Alas, such were not pure!--the chastened will", "Of virtue sees that justice is the light", "Of love, and not revenge, and terror and despite.'", "", "The murmur of the people, slowly dying,", "Paused as I spake, then those who near me were,", "Cast gentle looks where the lone man was lying", "Shrouding his head, which now that infant fair", "Clasped on her lap in silence;--through the air", "Sobs were then heard, and many kissed my feet", "In pity's madness, and to the despair", "Of him whom late they cursed, a solace sweet", "His very victims brought--soft looks and speeches meet.", "", "Then to a home for his repose assigned,", "Accompanied by the still throng, he went", "In silence, where, to soothe his rankling mind,", "Some likeness of his ancient state was lent;", "And if his heart could have been innocent", "As those who pardoned him, he might have ended", "His days in peace; but his straight lips were bent,", "Men said, into a smile which guile portended,", "A sight with which that child like hope with fear was blended.", "", "'Twas midnight now, the eve of that great day", "Whereon the many nations at whose call", "The chains of earth like mist melted away,", "Decreed to hold a sacred Festival,", "A rite to attest the equality of all", "Who live. So to their homes, to dream or wake", "All went. The sleepless silence did recall", "Laone to my thoughts, with hopes that make", "The flood recede from which their thirst they seek to slake.", "", "The dawn flowed forth, and from its purple fountains", "I drank those hopes which make the spirit quail,", "As to the plain between the misty mountains", "And the great City, with a countenance pale,", "I went:--it was a sight which might avail", "To make men weep exulting tears, for whom", "Now first from human power the reverend veil", "Was torn, to see Earth from her general womb", "Pour forth her swarming sons to a fraternal doom:", "", "To see, far glancing in the misty morning,", "The signs of that innumerable host;", "To hear one sound of many made, the warning", "Of Earth to Heaven from its free children tossed,", "While the eternal hills, and the sea lost", "In wavering light, and, starring the blue sky", "The city's myriad spires of gold, almost", "With human joy made mute society--", "Its witnesses with men who must hereafter be.", "", "To see, like some vast island from the Ocean,", "The Altar of the Federation rear", "Its pile i' the midst; a work, which the devotion", "Of millions in one night created there,", "Sudden as when the moonrise makes appear", "Strange clouds in the east; a marble pyramid", "Distinct with steps: that mighty shape did wear", "The light of genius; its still shadow hid", "Far ships: to know its height the morning mists forbid!", "", "To hear the restless multitudes for ever", "Around the base of that great Altar flow,", "As on some mountain-islet burst and shiver", "Atlantic waves; and solemnly and slow", "As the wind bore that tumult to and fro,", "To feel the dreamlike music, which did swim", "Like beams through floating clouds on waves below", "Falling in pauses, from that Altar dim,", "As silver-sounding tongues breathed an aerial hymn.", "", "To hear, to see, to live, was on that morn", "Lethean joy! so that all those assembled", "Cast off their memories of the past outworn;", "Two only bosoms with their own life trembled,", "And mine was one,--and we had both dissembled;", "So with a beating heart I went, and one,", "Who having much, covets yet more, resembled;", "A lost and dear possession, which not won,", "He walks in lonely gloom beneath the noonday sun.", "", "To the great Pyramid I came: its stair", "With female choirs was thronged: the loveliest", "Among the free, grouped with its sculptures rare;", "As I approached, the morning's golden mist,", "Which now the wonder-stricken breezes kissed", "With their cold lips, fled, and the summit shone", "Like Athos seen from Samothracia, dressed", "In earliest light, by vintagers, and one", "Sate there, a female Shape upon an ivory throne:", "", "A Form most like the imagined habitant", "Of silver exhalations sprung from dawn,", "By winds which feed on sunrise woven, to enchant", "The faiths of men: all mortal eyes were drawn,", "As famished mariners through strange seas gone", "Gaze on a burning watch-tower, by the light", "Of those divinest lineaments--alone", "With thoughts which none could share, from that fair sight", "I turned in sickness, for a veil shrouded her countenance bright.", "", "And neither did I hear the acclamations,", "Which from brief silence bursting, filled the air", "With her strange name and mine, from all the nations", "Which we, they said, in strength had gathered there", "From the sleep of bondage; nor the vision fair", "Of that bright pageantry beheld,--but blind", "And silent, as a breathing corpse did fare,", "Leaning upon my friend, till like a wind", "To fevered cheeks, a voice flowed o'er my troubled mind.", "", "Like music of some minstrel heavenly gifted,", "To one whom fiends enthral, this voice to me;", "Scarce did I wish her veil to be uplifted,", "I was so calm and joyous.--I could see", "The platform where we stood, the statues three", "Which kept their marble watch on that high shrine,", "The multitudes, the mountains, and the sea;", "As when eclipse hath passed, things sudden shine", "To men's astonished eyes most clear and crystalline.", "", "At first Laone spoke most tremulously:", "But soon her voice the calmness which it shed", "Gathered, and--'Thou art whom I sought to see,", "And thou art our first votary here,' she said:", "'I had a dear friend once, but he is dead!--", "And of all those on the wide earth who breathe,", "Thou dost resemble him alone--I spread", "This veil between us two that thou beneath", "Shouldst image one who may have been long lost in death.", "", "'For this wilt thou not henceforth pardon me?", "Yes, but those joys which silence well requite", "Forbid reply;--why men have chosen me", "To be the Priestess of this holiest rite", "I scarcely know, but that the floods of light", "Which flow over the world, have borne me hither", "To meet thee, long most dear; and now unite", "Thine hand with mine, and may all comfort wither", "From both the hearts whose pulse in joy now beat together,", "", "'If our own will as others' law we bind,", "If the foul worship trampled here we fear;", "If as ourselves we cease to love our kind!'--", "She paused, and pointed upwards--sculptured there", "Three shapes around her ivory throne appear;", "One was a Giant, like a child asleep", "On a loose rock, whose grasp crushed, as it were", "In dream, sceptres and crowns; and one did keep", "Its watchful eyes in doubt whether to smile or weep;", "", "A Woman sitting on the sculptured disk", "Of the broad earth, and feeding from one breast", "A human babe and a young basilisk;", "Her looks were sweet as Heaven's when loveliest", "In Autumn eves. The third Image was dressed", "In white wings swift as clouds in winter skies;", "Beneath his feet, 'mongst ghastliest forms, repressed", "Lay Faith, an obscene worm, who sought to rise,", "While calmly on the Sun he turned his diamond eyes.", "", "Beside that Image then I sate, while she", "Stood, mid the throngs which ever ebbed and flowed,", "Like light amid the shadows of the sea", "Cast from one cloudless star, and on the crowd", "That touch which none who feels forgets, bestowed;", "And whilst the sun returned the steadfast gaze", "Of the great Image, as o'er Heaven it glode,", "That rite had place; it ceased when sunset's blaze", "Burned o'er the isles. All stood in joy and deep amaze--", "--When in the silence of all spirits there", "Laone's voice was felt, and through the air", "Her thrilling gestures spoke, most eloquently fair:--", "", "51.1.", "'Calm art thou as yon sunset! swift and strong", "As new-fledged Eagles, beautiful and young,", "That float among the blinding beams of morning;", "And underneath thy feet writhe Faith, and Folly,", "Custom, and Hell, and mortal Melancholy--", "Hark! the Earth starts to hear the mighty warning", "Of thy voice sublime and holy;", "Its free spirits here assembled", "See thee, feel thee, know thee now,--", "To thy voice their hearts have trembled", "Like ten thousand clouds which flow", "With one wide wind as it flies!--", "Wisdom! thy irresistible children rise", "To hail thee, and the elements they chain", "And their own will, to swell the glory of thy train.", "", "51.2.", "'O Spirit vast and deep as Night and Heaven!", "Mother and soul of all to which is given", "The light of life, the loveliness of being,", "Lo! thou dost re-ascend the human heart,", "Thy throne of power, almighty as thou wert", "In dreams of Poets old grown pale by seeing", "The shade of thee;--now, millions start", "To feel thy lightnings through them burning:", "Nature, or God, or Love, or Pleasure,", "Or Sympathy the sad tears turning", "To mutual smiles, a drainless treasure,", "Descends amidst us;--Scorn and Hate,", "Revenge and Selfishness are desolate--", "A hundred nations swear that there shall be", "Pity and Peace and Love, among the good and free!", "", "51.3.", "'Eldest of things, divine Equality!", "Wisdom and Love are but the slaves of thee,", "The Angels of thy sway, who pour around thee", "Treasures from all the cells of human thought,", "And from the Stars, and from the Ocean brought,", "And the last living heart whose beatings bound thee:", "The powerful and the wise had sought", "Thy coming, thou in light descending", "O'er the wide land which is thine own", "Like the Spring whose breath is blending", "All blasts of fragrance into one,", "Comest upon the paths of men!--", "Earth bares her general bosom to thy ken,", "And all her children here in glory meet", "To feed upon thy smiles, and clasp thy sacred feet.", "", "51.4", "'My brethren, we are free! the plains and mountains,", "The gray sea-shore, the forests and the fountains,", "Are haunts of happiest dwellers;--man and woman,", "Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow", "From lawless love a solace for their sorrow;", "For oft we still must weep, since we are human.", "A stormy night's serenest morrow,", "Whose showers are pity's gentle tears,", "Whose clouds are smiles of those that die", "Like infants without hopes or fears,", "And whose beams are joys that lie", "In blended hearts, now holds dominion;", "The dawn of mind, which upwards on a pinion", "Borne, swift as sunrise, far illumines space,", "And clasps this barren world in its own bright embrace!", "", "51.5", "'My brethren, we are free! The fruits are glowing", "Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing", "O'er the ripe corn, the birds and beasts are dreaming--", "Never again may blood of bird or beast", "Stain with its venomous stream a human feast,", "To the pure skies in accusation steaming;", "Avenging poisons shall have ceased", "To feed disease and fear and madness,", "The dwellers of the earth and air", "Shall throng around our steps in gladness,", "Seeking their food or refuge there.", "Our toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull,", "To make this Earth, our home, more beautiful,", "And Science, and her sister Poesy,", "Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free!", "", "51.6", "'Victory, Victory to the prostrate nations!", "Bear witness Night, and ye mute Constellations", "Who gaze on us from your crystalline cars!", "Thoughts have gone forth whose powers can sleep no more!", "Victory! Victory! Earth's remotest shore,", "Regions which groan beneath the Antarctic stars,", "The green lands cradled in the roar", "Of western waves, and wildernesses", "Peopled and vast, which skirt the oceans", "Where morning dyes her golden tresses,", "Shall soon partake our high emotions:", "Kings shall turn pale! Almighty Fear,", "The Fiend-God, when our charmed name he hear,", "Shall fade like shadow from his thousand fanes,", "While Truth with Joy enthroned o'er his lost empire reigns!'", "", "51.52.", "Ere she had ceased, the mists of night entwining", "Their dim woof, floated o'er the infinite throng;", "She, like a spirit through the darkness shining,", "In tones whose sweetness silence did prolong,", "As if to lingering winds they did belong,", "Poured forth her inmost soul: a passionate speech", "With wild and thrilling pauses woven among,", "Which whoso heard was mute, for it could teach", "To rapture like her own all listening hearts to reach.", "", "Her voice was as a mountain stream which sweeps", "The withered leaves of Autumn to the lake,", "And in some deep and narrow bay then sleeps", "In the shadow of the shores; as dead leaves wake,", "Under the wave, in flowers and herbs which make", "Those green depths beautiful when skies are blue,", "The multitude so moveless did partake", "Such living change, and kindling murmurs flew", "As o'er that speechless calm delight and wonder grew.", "", "Over the plain the throngs were scattered then", "In groups around the fires, which from the sea", "Even to the gorge of the first mountain-glen", "Blazed wide and far: the banquet of the free", "Was spread beneath many a dark cypress-tree,", "Beneath whose spires, which swayed in the red flame,", "Reclining, as they ate, of Liberty,", "And Hope, and Justice, and Laone's name,", "Earth's children did a woof of happy converse frame.", "", "Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother,", "Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles", "In the embrace of Autumn;--to each other", "As when some parent fondly reconciles", "Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles", "With her own sustenance, they relenting weep:", "Such was this Festival, which from their isles", "And continents, and winds, and oceans deep,", "All shapes might throng to share, that fly, or walk or creep,--", "", "Might share in peace and innocence, for gore", "Or poison none this festal did pollute,", "But, piled on high, an overflowing store", "Of pomegranates and citrons, fairest fruit,", "Melons, and dates, and figs, and many a root", "Sweet and sustaining, and bright grapes ere yet", "Accursed fire their mild juice could transmute", "Into a mortal bane, and brown corn set", "In baskets; with pure streams their thirsting lips they wet.", "", "Laone had descended from the shrine,", "And every deepest look and holiest mind", "Fed on her form, though now those tones divine", "Were silent as she passed; she did unwind", "Her veil, as with the crowds of her own kind", "She mixed; some impulse made my heart refrain", "From seeking her that night, so I reclined", "Amidst a group, where on the utmost plain", "A festal watchfire burned beside the dusky main.", "", "And joyous was our feast; pathetic talk,", "And wit, and harmony of choral strains,", "While far Orion o'er the waves did walk", "That flow among the isles, held us in chains", "Of sweet captivity which none disdains", "Who feels; but when his zone grew dim in mist", "Which clothes the Ocean's bosom, o'er the plains", "The multitudes went homeward, to their rest,", "Which that delightful day with its own shadow blessed.", "", "CANTO 6.", "", "Beside the dimness of the glimmering sea,", "Weaving swift language from impassioned themes,", "With that dear friend I lingered, who to me", "So late had been restored, beneath the gleams", "Of the silver stars; and ever in soft dreams", "Of future love and peace sweet converse lapped", "Our willing fancies, till the pallid beams", "Of the last watchfire fell, and darkness wrapped", "The waves, and each bright chain of floating fire was snapped;", "", "And till we came even to the City's wall", "And the great gate; then, none knew whence or why,", "Disquiet on the multitudes did fall:", "And first, one pale and breathless passed us by,", "And stared and spoke not;--then with piercing cry", "A troop of wild-eyed women, by the shrieks", "Of their own terror driven,--tumultuously", "Hither and thither hurrying with pale cheeks,", "Each one from fear unknown a sudden refuge seeks--", "", "Then, rallying cries of treason and of danger", "Resounded: and--'They come! to arms! to arms!", "The Tyrant is amongst us, and the stranger", "Comes to enslave us in his name! to arms!'", "In vain: for Panic, the pale fiend who charms", "Strength to forswear her right, those millions swept", "Like waves before the tempest--these alarms", "Came to me, as to know their cause I lept", "On the gate's turret, and in rage and grief and scorn I wept!", "", "For to the North I saw the town on fire,", "And its red light made morning pallid now,", "Which burst over wide Asia;--louder, higher,", "The yells of victory and the screams of woe", "I heard approach, and saw the throng below", "Stream through the gates like foam-wrought waterfalls", "Fed from a thousand storms--the fearful glow", "Of bombs flares overhead--at intervals", "The red artillery's bolt mangling among them falls.", "", "And now the horsemen come--and all was done", "Swifter than I have spoken--I beheld", "Their red swords flash in the unrisen sun.", "I rushed among the rout, to have repelled", "That miserable flight--one moment quelled", "By voice and looks and eloquent despair,", "As if reproach from their own hearts withheld", "Their steps, they stood; but soon came pouring there", "New multitudes, and did those rallied bands o'erbear.", "", "I strove, as, drifted on some cataract", "By irresistible streams, some wretch might strive", "Who hears its fatal roar:--the files compact", "Whelmed me, and from the gate availed to drive", "With quickening impulse, as each bolt did rive", "Their ranks with bloodier chasm:--into the plain", "Disgorged at length the dead and the alive", "In one dread mass, were parted, and the stain", "Of blood, from mortal steel fell o'er the fields like rain.", "", "For now the despot's bloodhounds with their prey", "Unarmed and unaware, were gorging deep", "Their gluttony of death; the loose array", "Of horsemen o'er the wide fields murdering sweep,", "And with loud laughter for their tyrant reap", "A harvest sown with other hopes; the while,", "Far overhead, ships from Propontis keep", "A killing rain of fire:--when the waves smile", "As sudden earthquakes light many a volcano-isle,", "", "Thus sudden, unexpected feast was spread", "For the carrion-fowls of Heaven.--I saw the sight--", "I moved--I lived--as o'er the heaps of dead,", "Whose stony eyes glared in the morning light", "I trod;--to me there came no thought of flight,", "But with loud cries of scorn, which whoso heard", "That dreaded death, felt in his veins the might", "Of virtuous shame return, the crowd I stirred,", "And desperation's hope in many hearts recurred.", "", "A band of brothers gathering round me, made,", "Although unarmed, a steadfast front, and still", "Retreating, with stern looks beneath the shade", "Of gathered eyebrows, did the victors fill", "With doubt even in success; deliberate will", "Inspired our growing troop; not overthrown", "It gained the shelter of a grassy hill,", "And ever still our comrades were hewn down,", "And their defenceless limbs beneath our footsteps strown.", "", "Immovably we stood--in joy I found,", "Beside me then, firm as a giant pine", "Among the mountain-vapours driven around,", "The old man whom I loved--his eyes divine", "With a mild look of courage answered mine,", "And my young friend was near, and ardently", "His hand grasped mine a moment--now the line", "Of war extended, to our rallying cry", "As myriads flocked in love and brotherhood to die.", "", "For ever while the sun was climbing Heaven", "The horseman hewed our unarmed myriads down", "Safely, though when by thirst of carnage driven", "Too near, those slaves were swiftly overthrown", "By hundreds leaping on them:--flesh and bone", "Soon made our ghastly ramparts; then the shaft", "Of the artillery from the sea was thrown", "More fast and fiery, and the conquerors laughed", "In pride to hear the wind our screams of torment waft.", "", "For on one side alone the hill gave shelter,", "So vast that phalanx of unconquered men,", "And there the living in the blood did welter", "Of the dead and dying, which in that green glen,", "Like stifled torrents, made a plashy fen", "Under the feet--thus was the butchery waged", "While the sun clomb Heaven's eastern steep--but when", "It 'gan to sink--a fiercer combat raged,", "For in more doubtful strife the armies were engaged.", "", "Within a cave upon the hill were found", "A bundle of rude pikes, the instrument", "Of those who war but on their native ground", "For natural rights: a shout of joyance sent", "Even from our hearts the wide air pierced and rent,", "As those few arms the bravest and the best", "Seized, and each sixth, thus armed, did now present", "A line which covered and sustained the rest,", "A confident phalanx, which the foes on every side invest.", "", "That onset turned the foes to flight almost;", "But soon they saw their present strength, and knew", "That coming night would to our resolute host", "Bring victory; so dismounting, close they drew", "Their glittering files, and then the combat grew", "Unequal but most horrible;--and ever", "Our myriads, whom the swift bolt overthrew,", "Or the red sword, failed like a mountain river", "Which rushes forth in foam to sink in sands for ever.", "", "Sorrow and shame, to see with their own kind", "Our human brethren mix, like beasts of blood,", "To mutual ruin armed by one behind", "Who sits and scoffs!--That friend so mild and good,", "Who like its shadow near my youth had stood,", "Was stabbed!--my old preserver's hoary hair", "With the flesh clinging to its roots, was strewed", "Under my feet!--I lost all sense or care,", "And like the rest I grew desperate and unaware.", "", "The battle became ghastlier--in the midst", "I paused, and saw, how ugly and how fell", "O Hate! thou art, even when thy life thou shedd'st", "For love. The ground in many a little dell", "Was broken, up and down whose steeps befell", "Alternate victory and defeat, and there", "The combatants with rage most horrible", "Strove, and their eyes started with cracking stare,", "And impotent their tongues they lolled into the air,", "", "Flaccid and foamy, like a mad dog's hanging;", "Want, and Moon-madness, and the pest's swift Bane", "When its shafts smite--while yet its bow is twanging--", "Have each their mark and sign--some ghastly stain;", "And this was thine, O War! of hate and pain", "Thou loathed slave! I saw all shapes of death", "And ministered to many, o'er the plain", "While carnage in the sunbeam's warmth did seethe,", "Till twilight o'er the east wove her serenest wreath.", "", "The few who yet survived, resolute and firm", "Around me fought. At the decline of day", "Winding above the mountain's snowy term", "New banners shone; they quivered in the ray", "Of the sun's unseen orb--ere night the array", "Of fresh troops hemmed us in--of those brave bands", "I soon survived alone--and now I lay", "Vanquished and faint, the grasp of bloody hands", "I felt, and saw on high the glare of falling brands,", "", "When on my foes a sudden terror came,", "And they fled, scattering--lo! with reinless speed", "A black Tartarian horse of giant frame", "Comes trampling over the dead, the living bleed", "Beneath the hoofs of that tremendous steed,", "On which, like to an Angel, robed in white,", "Sate one waving a sword;--the hosts recede", "And fly, as through their ranks with awful might,", "Sweeps in the shadow of eve that Phantom swift and bright;", "", "And its path made a solitude.--I rose", "And marked its coming: it relaxed its course", "As it approached me, and the wind that flows", "Through night, bore accents to mine ear whose force", "Might create smiles in death--the Tartar horse", "Paused, and I saw the shape its might which swayed,", "And heard her musical pants, like the sweet source", "Of waters in the desert, as she said,", "'Mount with me, Laon, now'--I rapidly obeyed.", "", "Then: 'Away! away!' she cried, and stretched her sword", "As 'twere a scourge over the courser's head,", "And lightly shook the reins.--We spake no word,", "But like the vapour of the tempest fled", "Over the plain; her dark hair was dispread", "Like the pine's locks upon the lingering blast;", "Over mine eyes its shadowy strings it spread", "Fitfully, and the hills and streams fled fast,", "As o'er their glimmering forms the steed's broad shadow passed.", "", "And his hoofs ground the rocks to fire and dust,", "His strong sides made the torrents rise in spray,", "And turbulence, as of a whirlwind's gust", "Surrounded us;--and still away! away!", "Through the desert night we sped, while she alway", "Gazed on a mountain which we neared, whose crest,", "Crowned with a marble ruin, in the ray", "Of the obscure stars gleamed;--its rugged breast", "The steed strained up, and then his impulse did arrest.", "", "A rocky hill which overhung the Ocean:--", "From that lone ruin, when the steed that panted", "Paused, might be heard the murmur of the motion", "Of waters, as in spots for ever haunted", "By the choicest winds of Heaven, which are enchanted", "To music, by the wand of Solitude,", "That wizard wild, and the far tents implanted", "Upon the plain, be seen by those who stood", "Thence marking the dark shore of Ocean's curved flood.", "", "One moment these were heard and seen--another", "Passed; and the two who stood beneath that night,", "Each only heard, or saw, or felt the other;", "As from the lofty steed she did alight,", "Cythna, (for, from the eyes whose deepest light", "Of love and sadness made my lips feel pale", "With influence strange of mournfullest delight,", "My own sweet Cythna looked), with joy did quail,", "And felt her strength in tears of human weakness fail.", "", "And for a space in my embrace she rested,", "Her head on my unquiet heart reposing,", "While my faint arms her languid frame invested;", "At length she looked on me, and half unclosing", "Her tremulous lips, said, 'Friend, thy bands were losing", "The battle, as I stood before the King", "In bonds.--I burst them then, and swiftly choosing", "The time, did seize a Tartar's sword, and spring", "Upon his horse, and swift, as on the whirlwind's wing,", "", "'Have thou and I been borne beyond pursuer,", "And we are here.'--Then, turning to the steed,", "She pressed the white moon on his front with pure", "And rose-like lips, and many a fragrant weed", "From the green ruin plucked, that he might feed;--", "But I to a stone seat that Maiden led,", "And, kissing her fair eyes, said, 'Thou hast need", "Of rest,' and I heaped up the courser's bed", "In a green mossy nook, with mountain flowers dispread.", "", "Within that ruin, where a shattered portal", "Looks to the eastern stars, abandoned now", "By man, to be the home of things immortal,", "Memories, like awful ghosts which come and go,", "And must inherit all he builds below,", "When he is gone, a hall stood; o'er whose roof", "Fair clinging weeds with ivy pale did grow,", "Clasping its gray rents with a verdurous woof,", "A hanging dome of leaves, a canopy moon-proof.", "", "The autumnal winds, as if spell-bound, had made", "A natural couch of leaves in that recess,", "Which seasons none disturbed, but, in the shade", "Of flowering parasites, did Spring love to dress", "With their sweet blooms the wintry loneliness", "Of those dead leaves, shedding their stars, whene'er", "The wandering wind her nurslings might caress;", "Whose intertwining fingers ever there", "Made music wild and soft that filled the listening air.", "", "We know not where we go, or what sweet dream", "May pilot us through caverns strange and fair", "Of far and pathless passion, while the stream", "Of life, our bark doth on its whirlpools bear,", "Spreading swift wings as sails to the dim air;", "Nor should we seek to know, so the devotion", "Of love and gentle thoughts be heard still there", "Louder and louder from the utmost Ocean", "Of universal life, attuning its commotion.", "", "To the pure all things are pure! Oblivion wrapped", "Our spirits, and the fearful overthrow", "Of public hope was from our being snapped,", "Though linked years had bound it there; for now", "A power, a thirst, a knowledge, which below", "All thoughts, like light beyond the atmosphere,", "Clothing its clouds with grace, doth ever flow,", "Came on us, as we sate in silence there,", "Beneath the golden stars of the clear azure air;--", "", "In silence which doth follow talk that causes", "The baffled heart to speak with sighs and tears,", "When wildering passion swalloweth up the pauses", "Of inexpressive speech:--the youthful years", "Which we together passed, their hopes and fears,", "The blood itself which ran within our frames,", "That likeness of the features which endears", "The thoughts expressed by them, our very names,", "And all the winged hours which speechless memory claims,", "", "Had found a voice--and ere that voice did pass,", "The night grew damp and dim, and, through a rent", "Of the ruin where we sate, from the morass", "A wandering Meteor by some wild wind sent,", "Hung high in the green dome, to which it lent", "A faint and pallid lustre; while the song", "Of blasts, in which its blue hair quivering bent,", "Strewed strangest sounds the moving leaves among;", "A wondrous light, the sound as of a spirit's tongue.", "", "The Meteor showed the leaves on which we sate,", "And Cythna's glowing arms, and the thick ties", "Of her soft hair, which bent with gathered weight", "My neck near hers; her dark and deepening eyes,", "Which, as twin phantoms of one star that lies", "O'er a dim well, move, though the star reposes,", "Swam in our mute and liquid ecstasies,", "Her marble brow, and eager lips, like roses,", "With their own fragrance pale, which Spring but half uncloses.", "", "The Meteor to its far morass returned:", "The beating of our veins one interval", "Made still; and then I felt the blood that burned", "Within her frame, mingle with mine, and fall", "Around my heart like fire; and over all", "A mist was spread, the sickness of a deep", "And speechless swoon of joy, as might befall", "Two disunited spirits when they leap", "In union from this earth's obscure and fading sleep.", "", "Was it one moment that confounded thus", "All thought, all sense, all feeling, into one", "Unutterable power, which shielded us", "Even from our own cold looks, when we had gone", "Into a wide and wild oblivion", "Of tumult and of tenderness? or now", "Had ages, such as make the moon and sun,", "The seasons, and mankind their changes know,", "Left fear and time unfelt by us alone below?", "", "I know not. What are kisses whose fire clasps", "The failing heart in languishment, or limb", "Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps", "Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim", "Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,", "In one caress? What is the strong control", "Which leads the heart that dizzy steep to climb,", "Where far over the world those vapours roll", "Which blend two restless frames in one reposing soul?", "", "It is the shadow which doth float unseen,", "But not unfelt, o'er blind mortality,", "Whose divine darkness fled not from that green", "And lone recess, where lapped in peace did lie", "Our linked frames, till, from the changing sky", "That night and still another day had fled;", "And then I saw and felt. The moon was high,", "And clouds, as of a coming storm, were spread", "Under its orb,--loud winds were gathering overhead.", "", "Cythna's sweet lips seemed lurid in the moon,", "Her fairest limbs with the night wind were chill,", "And her dark tresses were all loosely strewn", "O'er her pale bosom:--all within was still,", "And the sweet peace of joy did almost fill", "The depth of her unfathomable look;--", "And we sate calmly, though that rocky hill,", "The waves contending in its caverns strook,", "For they foreknew the storm, and the gray ruin shook.", "", "There we unheeding sate, in the communion", "Of interchanged vows, which, with a rite", "Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.--", "Few were the living hearts which could unite", "Like ours, or celebrate a bridal night", "With such close sympathies, for they had sprung", "From linked youth, and from the gentle might", "Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long,", "Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong.", "", "And such is Nature's law divine, that those", "Who grow together cannot choose but love,", "If faith or custom do not interpose,", "Or common slavery mar what else might move", "All gentlest thoughts; as in the sacred grove", "Which shades the springs of Ethiopian Nile,", "That living tree which, if the arrowy dove", "Strike with her shadow, shrinks in fear awhile,", "But its own kindred leaves clasps while the sunbeams smile;", "", "And clings to them, when darkness may dissever", "The close caresses of all duller plants", "Which bloom on the wide earth--thus we for ever", "Were linked, for love had nursed us in the haunts", "Where knowledge, from its secret source enchants", "Young hearts with the fresh music of its springing,", "Ere yet its gathered flood feeds human wants,", "As the great Nile feeds Egypt; ever flinging", "Light on the woven boughs which o'er its waves are swinging.", "", "The tones of Cythna's voice like echoes were", "Of those far murmuring streams; they rose and fell,", "Mixed with mine own in the tempestuous air,--", "And so we sate, until our talk befell", "Of the late ruin, swift and horrible,", "And how those seeds of hope might yet be sown,", "Whose fruit is evil's mortal poison: well,", "For us, this ruin made a watch-tower lone,", "But Cythna's eyes looked faint, and now two days were gone", "", "Since she had food:--therefore I did awaken", "The Tartar steed, who, from his ebon mane", "Soon as the clinging slumbers he had shaken,", "Bent his thin head to seek the brazen rein,", "Following me obediently; with pain", "Of heart, so deep and dread, that one caress,", "When lips and heart refuse to part again", "Till they have told their fill, could scarce express", "The anguish of her mute and fearful tenderness,", "", "Cythna beheld me part, as I bestrode", "That willing steed--the tempest and the night,", "Which gave my path its safety as I rode", "Down the ravine of rocks, did soon unite", "The darkness and the tumult of their might", "Borne on all winds.--Far through the streaming rain", "Floating at intervals the garments white", "Of Cythna gleamed, and her voice once again", "Came to me on the gust, and soon I reached the plain.", "", "I dreaded not the tempest, nor did he", "Who bore me, but his eyeballs wide and red", "Turned on the lightning's cleft exultingly;", "And when the earth beneath his tameless tread,", "Shook with the sullen thunder, he would spread", "His nostrils to the blast, and joyously", "Mock the fierce peal with neighings;--thus we sped", "O'er the lit plain, and soon I could descry", "Where Death and Fire had gorged the spoil of victory.", "", "There was a desolate village in a wood", "Whose bloom-inwoven leaves now scattering fed", "The hungry storm; it was a place of blood,", "A heap of hearthless walls;--the flames were dead", "Within those dwellings now,--the life had fled", "From all those corpses now,--but the wide sky", "Flooded with lightning was ribbed overhead", "By the black rafters, and around did lie", "Women, and babes, and men, slaughtered confusedly.", "", "Beside the fountain in the market-place", "Dismounting, I beheld those corpses stare", "With horny eyes upon each other's face,", "And on the earth and on the vacant air,", "And upon me, close to the waters where", "I stooped to slake my thirst;--I shrank to taste,", "For the salt bitterness of blood was there;", "But tied the steed beside, and sought in haste", "If any yet survived amid that ghastly waste.", "", "No living thing was there beside one woman,", "Whom I found wandering in the streets, and she", "Was withered from a likeness of aught human", "Into a fiend, by some strange misery:", "Soon as she heard my steps she leaped on me,", "And glued her burning lips to mine, and laughed", "With a loud, long, and frantic laugh of glee,", "And cried, 'Now, Mortal, thou hast deeply quaffed", "The Plague's blue kisses--soon millions shall pledge the draught!", "", "'My name is Pestilence--this bosom dry,", "Once fed two babes--a sister and a brother--", "When I came home, one in the blood did lie", "Of three death-wounds--the flames had ate the other!", "Since then I have no longer been a mother,", "But I am Pestilence;--hither and thither", "I flit about, that I may slay and smother:--", "All lips which I have kissed must surely wither,", "But Death's--if thou art he, we'll go to work together!", "", "'What seek'st thou here? The moonlight comes in flashes,--", "The dew is rising dankly from the dell--", "'Twill moisten her! and thou shalt see the gashes", "In my sweet boy, now full of worms--but tell", "First what thou seek'st.'--'I seek for food.'--''Tis well,", "Thou shalt have food. Famine, my paramour,", "Waits for us at the feast--cruel and fell", "Is Famine, but he drives not from his door", "Those whom these lips have kissed, alone. No more, no more!'", "", "As thus she spake, she grasped me with the strength", "Of madness, and by many a ruined hearth", "She led, and over many a corpse:--at length", "We came to a lone hut where on the earth", "Which made its floor, she in her ghastly mirth,", "Gathering from all those homes now desolate,", "Had piled three heaps of loaves, making a dearth", "Among the dead--round which she set in state", "A ring of cold, stiff babes; silent and stark they sate.", "", "She leaped upon a pile, and lifted high", "Her mad looks to the lightning, and cried: 'Eat!", "Share the great feast--to-morrow we must die!'", "And then she spurned the loaves with her pale feet,", "Towards her bloodless guests;--that sight to meet,", "Mine eyes and my heart ached, and but that she", "Who loved me, did with absent looks defeat", "Despair, I might have raved in sympathy;", "But now I took the food that woman offered me;", "", "And vainly having with her madness striven", "If I might win her to return with me,", "Departed. In the eastern beams of Heaven", "The lightning now grew pallid--rapidly,", "As by the shore of the tempestuous sea", "The dark steed bore me; and the mountain gray", "Soon echoed to his hoofs, and I could see", "Cythna among the rocks, where she alway", "Had sate with anxious eyes fixed on the lingering day.", "", "And joy was ours to meet: she was most pale,", "Famished, and wet and weary, so I cast", "My arms around her, lest her steps should fail", "As to our home we went, and thus embraced,", "Her full heart seemed a deeper joy to taste", "Than e'er the prosperous know; the steed behind", "Trod peacefully along the mountain waste;", "We reached our home ere morning could unbind", "Night's latest veil, and on our bridal-couch reclined.", "", "Her chilled heart having cherished in my bosom,", "And sweetest kisses past, we two did share", "Our peaceful meal:--as an autumnal blossom", "Which spreads its shrunk leaves in the sunny air,", "After cold showers, like rainbows woven there,", "Thus in her lips and cheeks the vital spirit", "Mantled, and in her eyes, an atmosphere", "Of health, and hope; and sorrow languished near it,", "And fear, and all that dark despondence doth inherit.", "", "CANTO 7.", "", "So we sate joyous as the morning ray", "Which fed upon the wrecks of night and storm", "Now lingering on the winds; light airs did play", "Among the dewy weeds, the sun was warm,", "And we sate linked in the inwoven charm", "Of converse and caresses sweet and deep,", "Speechless caresses, talk that might disarm", "Time, though he wield the darts of death and sleep,", "And those thrice mortal barbs in his own poison steep.", "", "I told her of my sufferings and my madness,", "And how, awakened from that dreamy mood", "By Liberty's uprise, the strength of gladness", "Came to my spirit in my solitude;", "And all that now I was--while tears pursued", "Each other down her fair and listening cheek", "Fast as the thoughts which fed them, like a flood", "From sunbright dales; and when I ceased to speak,", "Her accents soft and sweet the pausing air did wake.", "", "She told me a strange tale of strange endurance,", "Like broken memories of many a heart", "Woven into one; to which no firm assurance,", "So wild were they, could her own faith impart.", "She said that not a tear did dare to start", "From the swoln brain, and that her thoughts were firm", "When from all mortal hope she did depart,", "Borne by those slaves across the Ocean's term,", "And that she reached the port without one fear infirm.", "", "One was she among many there, the thralls", "Of the cold Tyrant's cruel lust; and they", "Laughed mournfully in those polluted halls;", "But she was calm and sad, musing alway", "On loftiest enterprise, till on a day", "The Tyrant heard her singing to her lute", "A wild, and sad, and spirit-thrilling lay,", "Like winds that die in wastes--one moment mute", "The evil thoughts it made, which did his breast pollute.", "", "Even when he saw her wondrous loveliness,", "One moment to great Nature's sacred power", "He bent, and was no longer passionless;", "But when he bade her to his secret bower", "Be borne, a loveless victim, and she tore", "Her locks in agony, and her words of flame", "And mightier looks availed not; then he bore", "Again his load of slavery, and became", "A king, a heartless beast, a pageant and a name.", "", "She told me what a loathsome agony", "Is that when selfishness mocks love's delight,", "Foul as in dream's most fearful imagery,", "To dally with the mowing dead--that night", "All torture, fear, or horror made seem light", "Which the soul dreams or knows, and when the day", "Shone on her awful frenzy, from the sight", "Where like a Spirit in fleshly chains she lay", "Struggling, aghast and pale the Tyrant fled away.", "", "Her madness was a beam of light, a power", "Which dawned through the rent soul; and words it gave,", "Gestures and looks, such as in whirlwinds bore", "Which might not be withstood--whence none could save--", "All who approached their sphere,--like some calm wave", "Vexed into whirlpools by the chasms beneath;", "And sympathy made each attendant slave", "Fearless and free, and they began to breathe", "Deep curses, like the voice of flames far underneath.", "", "The King felt pale upon his noonday throne:", "At night two slaves he to her chamber sent,--", "One was a green and wrinkled eunuch, grown", "From human shape into an instrument", "Of all things ill--distorted, bowed and bent.", "The other was a wretch from infancy", "Made dumb by poison; who nought knew or meant", "But to obey: from the fire isles came he,", "A diver lean and strong, of Oman's coral sea.", "", "They bore her to a bark, and the swift stroke", "Of silent rowers clove the blue moonlight seas,", "Until upon their path the morning broke;", "They anchored then, where, be there calm or breeze,", "The gloomiest of the drear Symplegades", "Shakes with the sleepless surge;--the Ethiop there", "Wound his long arms around her, and with knees", "Like iron clasped her feet, and plunged with her", "Among the closing waves out of the boundless air.", "", "'Swift as an eagle stooping from the plain", "Of morning light, into some shadowy wood,", "He plunged through the green silence of the main,", "Through many a cavern which the eternal flood", "Had scooped, as dark lairs for its monster brood;", "And among mighty shapes which fled in wonder,", "And among mightier shadows which pursued", "His heels, he wound: until the dark rocks under", "He touched a golden chain--a sound arose like thunder.", "", "'A stunning clang of massive bolts redoubling", "Beneath the deep--a burst of waters driven", "As from the roots of the sea, raging and bubbling:", "And in that roof of crags a space was riven", "Through which there shone the emerald beams of heaven,", "Shot through the lines of many waves inwoven,", "Like sunlight through acacia woods at even,", "Through which, his way the diver having cloven,", "Passed like a spark sent up out of a burning oven.", "", "'And then,' she said, 'he laid me in a cave", "Above the waters, by that chasm of sea,", "A fountain round and vast, in which the wave", "Imprisoned, boiled and leaped perpetually,", "Down which, one moment resting, he did flee,", "Winning the adverse depth; that spacious cell", "Like an hupaithric temple wide and high,", "Whose aery dome is inaccessible,", "Was pierced with one round cleft through which the sunbeams fell.", "", "'Below, the fountain's brink was richly paven", "With the deep's wealth, coral, and pearl, and sand", "Like spangling gold, and purple shells engraven", "With mystic legends by no mortal hand,", "Left there, when thronging to the moon's command,", "The gathering waves rent the Hesperian gate", "Of mountains, and on such bright floor did stand", "Columns, and shapes like statues, and the state", "Of kingless thrones, which Earth did in her heart create.", "", "'The fiend of madness which had made its prey", "Of my poor heart, was lulled to sleep awhile:", "There was an interval of many a day,", "And a sea-eagle brought me food the while,", "Whose nest was built in that untrodden isle,", "And who, to be the gaoler had been taught", "Of that strange dungeon; as a friend whose smile", "Like light and rest at morn and even is sought", "That wild bird was to me, till madness misery brought.", "", "'The misery of a madness slow and creeping,", "Which made the earth seem fire, the sea seem air,", "And the white clouds of noon which oft were sleeping,", "In the blue heaven so beautiful and fair,", "Like hosts of ghastly shadows hovering there;", "And the sea-eagle looked a fiend, who bore", "Thy mangled limbs for food!--Thus all things were", "Transformed into the agony which I wore", "Even as a poisoned robe around my bosom's core.", "", "'Again I knew the day and night fast fleeing,", "The eagle, and the fountain, and the air;", "Another frenzy came--there seemed a being", "Within me--a strange load my heart did bear,", "As if some living thing had made its lair", "Even in the fountains of my life:--a long", "And wondrous vision wrought from my despair,", "Then grew, like sweet reality among", "Dim visionary woes, an unreposing throng.", "", "'Methought I was about to be a mother--", "Month after month went by, and still I dreamed", "That we should soon be all to one another,", "I and my child; and still new pulses seemed", "To beat beside my heart, and still I deemed", "There was a babe within--and, when the rain", "Of winter through the rifted cavern streamed,", "Methought, after a lapse of lingering pain,", "I saw that lovely shape, which near my heart had lain.", "", "'It was a babe, beautiful from its birth,--", "It was like thee, dear love, its eyes were thine,", "Its brow, its lips, and so upon the earth", "It laid its fingers, as now rest on mine", "Thine own, beloved!--'twas a dream divine;", "Even to remember how it fled, how swift,", "How utterly, might make the heart repine,--", "Though 'twas a dream.'--Then Cythna did uplift", "Her looks on mine, as if some doubt she sought to shift:", "", "A doubt which would not flee, a tenderness", "Of questioning grief, a source of thronging tears;", "Which having passed, as one whom sobs oppress", "She spoke: 'Yes, in the wilderness of years", "Her memory, aye, like a green home appears;", "She sucked her fill even at this breast, sweet love,", "For many months. I had no mortal fears;", "Methought I felt her lips and breath approve,--", "It was a human thing which to my bosom clove.", "", "'I watched the dawn of her first smiles; and soon", "When zenith stars were trembling on the wave,", "Or when the beams of the invisible moon,", "Or sun, from many a prism within the cave", "Their gem-born shadows to the water gave,", "Her looks would hunt them, and with outspread hand,", "From the swift lights which might that fountain pave,", "She would mark one, and laugh, when that command", "Slighting, it lingered there, and could not understand.", "", "'Methought her looks began to talk with me;", "And no articulate sounds, but something sweet", "Her lips would frame,--so sweet it could not be,", "That it was meaningless; her touch would meet", "Mine, and our pulses calmly flow and beat", "In response while we slept; and on a day", "When I was happiest in that strange retreat,", "With heaps of golden shells we two did play,--", "Both infants, weaving wings for time's perpetual way.", "", "'Ere night, methought, her waning eyes were grown", "Weary with joy, and tired with our delight,", "We, on the earth, like sister twins lay down", "On one fair mother's bosom:--from that night", "She fled,--like those illusions clear and bright,", "Which dwell in lakes, when the red moon on high", "Pause ere it wakens tempest;--and her flight,", "Though 'twas the death of brainless fantasy,", "Yet smote my lonesome heart more than all misery.", "", "'It seemed that in the dreary night the diver", "Who brought me thither, came again, and bore", "My child away. I saw the waters quiver,", "When he so swiftly sunk, as once before:", "Then morning came--it shone even as of yore,", "But I was changed--the very life was gone", "Out of my heart--I wasted more and more,", "Day after day, and sitting there alone,", "Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.", "", "'I was no longer mad, and yet methought", "My breasts were swoln and changed:--in every vein", "The blood stood still one moment, while that thought", "Was passing--with a gush of sickening pain", "It ebbed even to its withered springs again:", "When my wan eyes in stern resolve I turned", "From that most strange delusion, which would fain", "Have waked the dream for which my spirit yearned", "With more than human love,--then left it unreturned.", "", "'So now my reason was restored to me", "I struggled with that dream, which, like a beast", "Most fierce and beauteous, in my memory", "Had made its lair, and on my heart did feast;", "But all that cave and all its shapes, possessed", "By thoughts which could not fade, renewed each one", "Some smile, some look, some gesture which had blessed", "Me heretofore: I, sitting there alone,", "Vexed the inconstant waves with my perpetual moan.", "", "'Time passed, I know not whether months or years;", "For day, nor night, nor change of seasons made", "Its note, but thoughts and unavailing tears:", "And I became at last even as a shade,", "A smoke, a cloud on which the winds have preyed,", "Till it be thin as air; until, one even,", "A Nautilus upon the fountain played,", "Spreading his azure sail where breath of Heaven", "Descended not, among the waves and whirlpools driven.", "", "'And, when the Eagle came, that lovely thing,", "Oaring with rosy feet its silver boat,", "Fled near me as for shelter; on slow wing,", "The Eagle, hovering o'er his prey did float;", "But when he saw that I with fear did note", "His purpose, proffering my own food to him,", "The eager plumes subsided on his throat--", "He came where that bright child of sea did swim,", "And o'er it cast in peace his shadow broad and dim.", "", "'This wakened me, it gave me human strength;", "And hope, I know not whence or wherefore, rose,", "But I resumed my ancient powers at length;", "My spirit felt again like one of those", "Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes", "Of humankind their prey--what was this cave?", "Its deep foundation no firm purpose knows", "Immutable, resistless, strong to save,", "Like mind while yet it mocks the all-devouring grave.", "", "'And where was Laon? might my heart be dead,", "While that far dearer heart could move and be?", "Or whilst over the earth the pall was spread,", "Which I had sworn to rend? I might be free,", "Could I but win that friendly bird to me,", "To bring me ropes; and long in vain I sought", "By intercourse of mutual imagery", "Of objects, if such aid he could be taught;", "But fruit, and flowers, and boughs, yet never ropes he brought.", "", "'We live in our own world, and mine was made", "From glorious fantasies of hope departed:", "Aye we are darkened with their floating shade,", "Or cast a lustre on them--time imparted", "Such power to me--I became fearless-hearted,", "My eye and voice grew firm, calm was my mind,", "And piercing, like the morn, now it has darted", "Its lustre on all hidden things, behind", "Yon dim and fading clouds which load the weary wind.", "", "'My mind became the book through which I grew", "Wise in all human wisdom, and its cave,", "Which like a mine I rifled through and through,", "To me the keeping of its secrets gave--", "One mind, the type of all, the moveless wave", "Whose calm reflects all moving things that are,", "Necessity, and love, and life, the grave,", "And sympathy, fountains of hope and fear,", "Justice, and truth, and time, and the world's natural sphere.", "", "'And on the sand would I make signs to range", "These woofs, as they were woven, of my thought;", "Clear, elemental shapes, whose smallest change", "A subtler language within language wrought:", "The key of truths which once were dimly taught", "In old Crotona;--and sweet melodies", "Of love, in that lorn solitude I caught", "From mine own voice in dream, when thy dear eyes", "Shone through my sleep, and did that utterance harmonize.", "", "'Thy songs were winds whereon I fled at will,", "As in a winged chariot, o'er the plain", "Of crystal youth; and thou wert there to fill", "My heart with joy, and there we sate again", "On the gray margin of the glimmering main,", "Happy as then but wiser far, for we", "Smiled on the flowery grave in which were lain", "Fear, Faith and Slavery; and mankind was free,", "Equal, and pure, and wise, in Wisdom's prophecy.", "", "'For to my will my fancies were as slaves", "To do their sweet and subtile ministries;", "And oft from that bright fountain's shadowy waves", "They would make human throngs gather and rise", "To combat with my overflowing eyes,", "And voice made deep with passion--thus I grew", "Familiar with the shock and the surprise", "And war of earthly minds, from which I drew", "The power which has been mine to frame their thoughts anew.", "", "'And thus my prison was the populous earth--", "Where I saw--even as misery dreams of morn", "Before the east has given its glory birth--", "Religion's pomp made desolate by the scorn", "Of Wisdom's faintest smile, and thrones uptorn,", "And dwellings of mild people interspersed", "With undivided fields of ripening corn,", "And love made free,--a hope which we have nursed", "Even with our blood and tears,--until its glory burst.", "", "'All is not lost! There is some recompense", "For hope whose fountain can be thus profound,", "Even throned Evil's splendid impotence,", "Girt by its hell of power, the secret sound", "Of hymns to truth and freedom--the dread bound", "Of life and death passed fearlessly and well,", "Dungeons wherein the high resolve is found,", "Racks which degraded woman's greatness tell,", "And what may else be good and irresistible.", "", "'Such are the thoughts which, like the fires that flare", "In storm-encompassed isles, we cherish yet", "In this dark ruin--such were mine even there;", "As in its sleep some odorous violet,", "While yet its leaves with nightly dews are wet,", "Breathes in prophetic dreams of day's uprise,", "Or as, ere Scythian frost in fear has met", "Spring's messengers descending from the skies,", "The buds foreknow their life--this hope must ever rise.", "", "'So years had passed, when sudden earthquake rent", "The depth of ocean, and the cavern cracked", "With sound, as if the world's wide continent", "Had fallen in universal ruin wracked:", "And through the cleft streamed in one cataract", "The stifling waters--when I woke, the flood", "Whose banded waves that crystal cave had sacked", "Was ebbing round me, and my bright abode", "Before me yawned--a chasm desert, and bare, and broad.", "", "'Above me was the sky, beneath the sea:", "I stood upon a point of shattered stone,", "And heard loose rocks rushing tumultuously", "With splash and shock into the deep--anon", "All ceased, and there was silence wide and lone.", "I felt that I was free! The Ocean-spray", "Quivered beneath my feet, the broad Heaven shone", "Around, and in my hair the winds did play", "Lingering as they pursued their unimpeded way.", "", "'My spirit moved upon the sea like wind", "Which round some thymy cape will lag and hover,", "Though it can wake the still cloud, and unbind", "The strength of tempest: day was almost over,", "When through the fading light I could discover", "A ship approaching--its white sails were fed", "With the north wind--its moving shade did cover", "The twilight deep; the mariners in dread", "Cast anchor when they saw new rocks around them spread.", "", "'And when they saw one sitting on a crag,", "They sent a boat to me;--the Sailors rowed", "In awe through many a new and fearful jag", "Of overhanging rock, through which there flowed", "The foam of streams that cannot make abode.", "They came and questioned me, but when they heard", "My voice, they became silent, and they stood", "And moved as men in whom new love had stirred", "Deep thoughts: so to the ship we passed without a word.", "", "CANTO 8.", "", "'I sate beside the Steersman then, and gazing", "Upon the west, cried, \"Spread the sails! Behold!", "The sinking moon is like a watch-tower blazing", "Over the mountains yet;--the City of Gold", "Yon Cape alone does from the sight withhold;", "The stream is fleet--the north breathes steadily", "Beneath the stars; they tremble with the cold!", "Ye cannot rest upon the dreary sea!--", "Haste, haste to the warm home of happier destiny!\"", "", "'The Mariners obeyed--the Captain stood", "Aloof, and, whispering to the Pilot, said,", "\"Alas, alas! I fear we are pursued", "By wicked ghosts; a Phantom of the Dead,", "The night before we sailed, came to my bed", "In dream, like that!\" The Pilot then replied,", "\"It cannot be--she is a human Maid--", "Her low voice makes you weep--she is some bride,", "Or daughter of high birth--she can be nought beside.\"", "", "'We passed the islets, borne by wind and stream,", "And as we sailed, the Mariners came near", "And thronged around to listen;--in the gleam", "Of the pale moon I stood, as one whom fear", "May not attaint, and my calm voice did rear;", "\"Ye are all human--yon broad moon gives light", "To millions who the selfsame likeness wear,", "Even while I speak--beneath this very night,", "Their thoughts flow on like ours, in sadness or delight.", "", "'\"What dream ye? Your own hands have built an home,", "Even for yourselves on a beloved shore:", "For some, fond eyes are pining till they come,", "How they will greet him when his toils are o'er,", "And laughing babes rush from the well-known door!", "Is this your care? ye toil for your own good--", "Ye feel and think--has some immortal power", "Such purposes? or in a human mood,", "Dream ye some Power thus builds for man in solitude?", "", "'\"What is that Power? Ye mock yourselves, and give", "A human heart to what ye cannot know:", "As if the cause of life could think and live!", "'Twere as if man's own works should feel, and show", "The hopes, and fears, and thoughts from which they flow,", "And he be like to them! Lo! Plague is free", "To waste, Blight, Poison, Earthquake, Hail, and Snow,", "Disease, and Want, and worse Necessity", "Of hate and ill, and Pride, and Fear, and Tyranny!", "", "'\"What is that Power? Some moon-struck sophist stood", "Watching the shade from his own soul upthrown", "Fill Heaven and darken Earth, and in such mood", "The Form he saw and worshipped was his own,", "His likeness in the world's vast mirror shown;", "And 'twere an innocent dream, but that a faith", "Nursed by fear's dew of poison, grows thereon,", "And that men say, that Power has chosen Death", "On all who scorn its laws, to wreak immortal wrath.", "", "'\"Men say that they themselves have heard and seen,", "Or known from others who have known such things,", "A Shade, a Form, which Earth and Heaven between", "Wields an invisible rod--that Priests and Kings,", "Custom, domestic sway, ay, all that brings", "Man's freeborn soul beneath the oppressor's heel,", "Are his strong ministers, and that the stings", "Of death will make the wise his vengeance feel,", "Though truth and virtue arm their hearts with tenfold steel.", "", "'\"And it is said, this Power will punish wrong;", "Yes, add despair to crime, and pain to pain!", "And deepest hell, and deathless snakes among,", "Will bind the wretch on whom is fixed a stain,", "Which, like a plague, a burden, and a bane,", "Clung to him while he lived; for love and hate,", "Virtue and vice, they say are difference vain--", "The will of strength is right--this human state", "Tyrants, that they may rule, with lies thus desolate.", "", "'\"Alas, what strength? Opinion is more frail", "Than yon dim cloud now fading on the moon", "Even while we gaze, though it awhile avail", "To hide the orb of truth--and every throne", "Of Earth or Heaven, though shadow, rests thereon,", "One shape of many names:--for this ye plough", "The barren waves of ocean, hence each one", "Is slave or tyrant; all betray and bow,", "Command, or kill, or fear, or wreak, or suffer woe.", "", "'\"Its names are each a sign which maketh holy", "All power--ay, the ghost, the dream, the shade", "Of power--lust, falsehood, hate, and pride, and folly;", "The pattern whence all fraud and wrong is made,", "A law to which mankind has been betrayed;", "And human love, is as the name well known", "Of a dear mother, whom the murderer laid", "In bloody grave, and into darkness thrown,", "Gathered her wildered babes around him as his own.", "", "'\"O Love, who to the hearts of wandering men", "Art as the calm to Ocean's weary waves!", "Justice, or Truth, or Joy! those only can", "From slavery and religion's labyrinth caves", "Guide us, as one clear star the seaman saves.", "To give to all an equal share of good,", "To track the steps of Freedom, though through graves", "She pass, to suffer all in patient mood,", "To weep for crime, though stained with thy friend's dearest blood,--", "", "'\"To feel the peace of self-contentment's lot,", "To own all sympathies, and outrage none,", "And in the inmost bowers of sense and thought,", "Until life's sunny day is quite gone down,", "To sit and smile with Joy, or, not alone,", "To kiss salt tears from the worn cheek of Woe;", "To live, as if to love and live were one,--", "This is not faith or law, nor those who bow", "To thrones on Heaven or Earth, such destiny may know.", "", "'\"But children near their parents tremble now,", "Because they must obey--one rules another,", "And as one Power rules both high and low,", "So man is made the captive of his brother,", "And Hate is throned on high with Fear her mother,", "Above the Highest--and those fountain-cells,", "Whence love yet flowed when faith had choked all other,", "Are darkened--Woman as the bond-slave dwells", "Of man, a slave; and life is poisoned in its wells.", "", "'\"Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weave", "A lasting chain for his own slavery;--", "In fear and restless care that he may live", "He toils for others, who must ever be", "The joyless thralls of like captivity;", "He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;", "He builds the altar, that its idol's fee", "May be his very blood; he is pursuing--", "O, blind and willing wretch!--his own obscure undoing.", "", "'\"Woman!--she is his slave, she has become", "A thing I weep to speak--the child of scorn,", "The outcast of a desolated home;", "Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn", "Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn,", "As calm decks the false Ocean:--well ye know", "What Woman is, for none of Woman born", "Can choose but drain the bitter dregs of woe,", "Which ever from the oppressed to the oppressors flow.", "", "'\"This need not be; ye might arise, and will", "That gold should lose its power, and thrones their glory;", "That love, which none may bind, be free to fill", "The world, like light; and evil faith, grown hoary", "With crime, be quenched and die.--Yon promontory", "Even now eclipses the descending moon!--", "Dungeons and palaces are transitory--", "High temples fade like vapour--Man alone", "Remains, whose will has power when all beside is gone.", "", "'\"Let all be free and equal!--From your hearts", "I feel an echo; through my inmost frame", "Like sweetest sound, seeking its mate, it darts--", "Whence come ye, friends? Alas, I cannot name", "All that I read of sorrow, toil, and shame,", "On your worn faces; as in legends old", "Which make immortal the disastrous fame", "Of conquerors and impostors false and bold,", "The discord of your hearts, I in your looks behold.", "", "'\"Whence come ye, friends? from pouring human blood", "Forth on the earth? Or bring ye steel and gold,", "That Kings may dupe and slay the multitude?", "Or from the famished poor, pale, weak and cold,", "Bear ye the earnings of their toil? Unfold!", "Speak! Are your hands in slaughter's sanguine hue", "Stained freshly? have your hearts in guile grown old?", "Know yourselves thus! ye shall be pure as dew,", "And I will be a friend and sister unto you.", "", "'\"Disguise it not--we have one human heart--", "All mortal thoughts confess a common home:", "Blush not for what may to thyself impart", "Stains of inevitable crime: the doom", "Is this, which has, or may, or must become", "Thine, and all humankind's. Ye are the spoil", "Which Time thus marks for the devouring tomb--", "Thou and thy thoughts and they, and all the toil", "Wherewith ye twine the rings of life's perpetual coil.", "", "'\"Disguise it not--ye blush for what ye hate,", "And Enmity is sister unto Shame;", "Look on your mind--it is the book of fate--", "Ah! it is dark with many a blazoned name", "Of misery--all are mirrors of the same;", "But the dark fiend who with his iron pen", "Dipped in scorn's fiery poison, makes his fame", "Enduring there, would o'er the heads of men", "Pass harmless, if they scorned to make their hearts his den.", "", "'\"Yes, it is Hate, that shapeless fiendly thing", "Of many names, all evil, some divine,", "Whom self-contempt arms with a mortal sting;", "Which, when the heart its snaky folds entwine", "Is wasted quite, and when it doth repine", "To gorge such bitter prey, on all beside", "It turns with ninefold rage, as with its twine", "When Amphisbaena some fair bird has tied,", "Soon o'er the putrid mass he threats on every side.", "", "'\"Reproach not thine own soul, but know thyself,", "Nor hate another's crime, nor loathe thine own.", "It is the dark idolatry of self,", "Which, when our thoughts and actions once are gone,", "Demands that man should weep, and bleed, and groan;", "Oh, vacant expiation! Be at rest.--", "The past is Death's, the future is thine own;", "And love and joy can make the foulest breast", "A paradise of flowers, where peace might build her nest.", "", "'\"Speak thou! whence come ye?\"--A Youth made reply:", "\"Wearily, wearily o'er the boundless deep", "We sail;--thou readest well the misery", "Told in these faded eyes, but much doth sleep", "Within, which there the poor heart loves to keep,", "Or dare not write on the dishonoured brow;", "Even from our childhood have we learned to steep", "The bread of slavery in the tears of woe,", "And never dreamed of hope or refuge until now.", "", "'\"Yes--I must speak--my secret should have perished", "Even with the heart it wasted, as a brand", "Fades in the dying flame whose life it cherished,", "But that no human bosom can withstand", "Thee, wondrous Lady, and the mild command", "Of thy keen eyes:--yes, we are wretched slaves,", "Who from their wonted loves and native land", "Are reft, and bear o'er the dividing waves", "The unregarded prey of calm and happy graves.", "", "'\"We drag afar from pastoral vales the fairest", "Among the daughters of those mountains lone,", "We drag them there, where all things best and rarest", "Are stained and trampled:--years have come and gone", "Since, like the ship which bears me, I have known", "No thought;--but now the eyes of one dear Maid", "On mine with light of mutual love have shone--", "She is my life,--I am but as the shade", "Of her,--a smoke sent up from ashes, soon to fade.", "", "'\"For she must perish in the Tyrant's hall--", "Alas, alas!\"--He ceased, and by the sail", "Sate cowering--but his sobs were heard by all,", "And still before the ocean and the gale", "The ship fled fast till the stars 'gan to fail;", "And, round me gathered with mute countenance,", "The Seamen gazed, the Pilot, worn and pale", "With toil, the Captain with gray locks, whose glance", "Met mine in restless awe--they stood as in a trance.", "", "'\"Recede not! pause not now! Thou art grown old,", "But Hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth", "Are children of one mother, even Love--behold!", "The eternal stars gaze on us!--is the truth", "Within your soul? care for your own, or ruth", "For others' sufferings? do ye thirst to bear", "A heart which not the serpent Custom's tooth", "May violate?--Be free! and even here,", "Swear to be firm till death!\" They cried, \"We swear! We swear!\"", "", "'The very darkness shook, as with a blast", "Of subterranean thunder, at the cry;", "The hollow shore its thousand echoes cast", "Into the night, as if the sea and sky,", "And earth, rejoiced with new-born liberty,", "For in that name they swore! Bolts were undrawn,", "And on the deck, with unaccustomed eye", "The captives gazing stood, and every one", "Shrank as the inconstant torch upon her countenance shone.", "", "'They were earth's purest children, young and fair,", "With eyes the shrines of unawakened thought,", "And brows as bright as Spring or Morning, ere", "Dark time had there its evil legend wrought", "In characters of cloud which wither not.--", "The change was like a dream to them; but soon", "They knew the glory of their altered lot,", "In the bright wisdom of youth's breathless noon,", "Sweet talk, and smiles, and sighs, all bosoms did attune.", "", "'But one was mute; her cheeks and lips most fair,", "Changing their hue like lilies newly blown,", "Beneath a bright acacia's shadowy hair,", "Waved by the wind amid the sunny noon,", "Showed that her soul was quivering; and full soon", "That Youth arose, and breathlessly did look", "On her and me, as for some speechless boon:", "I smiled, and both their hands in mine I took,", "And felt a soft delight from what their spirits shook.", "", "CANTO 9.", "", "'That night we anchored in a woody bay,", "And sleep no more around us dared to hover", "Than, when all doubt and fear has passed away,", "It shades the couch of some unresting lover,", "Whose heart is now at rest: thus night passed over", "In mutual joy:--around, a forest grew", "Of poplars and dark oaks, whose shade did cover", "The waning stars pranked in the waters blue,", "And trembled in the wind which from the morning flew.", "", "'The joyous Mariners, and each free Maiden", "Now brought from the deep forest many a bough,", "With woodland spoil most innocently laden;", "Soon wreaths of budding foliage seemed to flow", "Over the mast and sails, the stern and prow", "Were canopied with blooming boughs,--the while", "On the slant sun's path o'er the waves we go", "Rejoicing, like the dwellers of an isle", "Doomed to pursue those waves that cannot cease to smile.", "", "'The many ships spotting the dark blue deep", "With snowy sails, fled fast as ours came nigh,", "In fear and wonder; and on every steep", "Thousands did gaze, they heard the startling cry,", "Like Earth's own voice lifted unconquerably", "To all her children, the unbounded mirth,", "The glorious joy of thy name--Liberty!", "They heard!--As o'er the mountains of the earth", "From peak to peak leap on the beams of Morning's birth:", "", "'So from that cry over the boundless hills", "Sudden was caught one universal sound,", "Like a volcano's voice, whose thunder fills", "Remotest skies,--such glorious madness found", "A path through human hearts with stream which drowned", "Its struggling fears and cares, dark Custom's brood;", "They knew not whence it came, but felt around", "A wide contagion poured--they called aloud", "On Liberty--that name lived on the sunny flood.", "", "'We reached the port.--Alas! from many spirits", "The wisdom which had waked that cry, was fled,", "Like the brief glory which dark Heaven inherits", "From the false dawn, which fades ere it is spread,", "Upon the night's devouring darkness shed:", "Yet soon bright day will burst--even like a chasm", "Of fire, to burn the shrouds outworn and dead,", "Which wrap the world; a wide enthusiasm,", "To cleanse the fevered world as with an earthquake's spasm!", "", "'I walked through the great City then, but free", "From shame or fear; those toil-worn Mariners", "And happy Maidens did encompass me;", "And like a subterranean wind that stirs", "Some forest among caves, the hopes and fears", "From every human soul, a murmur strange", "Made as I passed; and many wept, with tears", "Of joy and awe, and winged thoughts did range,", "And half-extinguished words, which prophesied of change.", "", "'For, with strong speech I tore the veil that hid", "Nature, and Truth, and Liberty, and Love,--", "As one who from some mountain's pyramid", "Points to the unrisen sun!--the shades approve", "His truth, and flee from every stream and grove.", "Thus, gentle thoughts did many a bosom fill,--", "Wisdom, the mail of tried affections wove", "For many a heart, and tameless scorn of ill,", "Thrice steeped in molten steel the unconquerable will.", "", "'Some said I was a maniac wild and lost;", "Some, that I scarce had risen from the grave,", "The Prophet's virgin bride, a heavenly ghost:--", "Some said, I was a fiend from my weird cave,", "Who had stolen human shape, and o'er the wave,", "The forest, and the mountain, came;--some said", "I was the child of God, sent down to save", "Woman from bonds and death, and on my head", "The burden of their sins would frightfully be laid.", "", "'But soon my human words found sympathy", "In human hearts: the purest and the best,", "As friend with friend, made common cause with me,", "And they were few, but resolute;--the rest,", "Ere yet success the enterprise had blessed,", "Leagued with me in their hearts;--their meals, their slumber,", "Their hourly occupations, were possessed", "By hopes which I had armed to overnumber", "Those hosts of meaner cares, which life's strong wings encumber.", "", "'But chiefly women, whom my voice did waken", "From their cold, careless, willing slavery,", "Sought me: one truth their dreary prison has shaken,--", "They looked around, and lo! they became free!", "Their many tyrants sitting desolately", "In slave-deserted halls, could none restrain;", "For wrath's red fire had withered in the eye,", "Whose lightning once was death,--nor fear, nor gain", "Could tempt one captive now to lock another's chain.", "", "'Those who were sent to bind me, wept, and felt", "Their minds outsoar the bonds which clasped them round,", "Even as a waxen shape may waste and melt", "In the white furnace; and a visioned swound,", "A pause of hope and awe the City bound,", "Which, like the silence of a tempest's birth,", "When in its awful shadow it has wound", "The sun, the wind, the ocean, and the earth,", "Hung terrible, ere yet the lightnings have leaped forth.", "", "'Like clouds inwoven in the silent sky,", "By winds from distant regions meeting there,", "In the high name of truth and liberty,", "Around the City millions gathered were,", "By hopes which sprang from many a hidden lair,--", "Words which the lore of truth in hues of flame", "Arrayed, thine own wild songs which in the air", "Like homeless odours floated, and the name", "Of thee, and many a tongue which thou hadst dipped in flame.", "", "'The Tyrant knew his power was gone, but Fear,", "The nurse of Vengeance, bade him wait the event--", "That perfidy and custom, gold and prayer,", "And whatsoe'er, when force is impotent,", "To fraud the sceptre of the world has lent,", "Might, as he judged, confirm his failing sway.", "Therefore throughout the streets, the Priests he sent", "To curse the rebels.--To their gods did they", "For Earthquake, Plague, and Want, kneel in the public way.", "", "'And grave and hoary men were bribed to tell", "From seats where law is made the slave of wrong,", "How glorious Athens in her splendour fell,", "Because her sons were free,--and that among", "Mankind, the many to the few belong,", "By Heaven, and Nature, and Necessity.", "They said, that age was truth, and that the young", "Marred with wild hopes the peace of slavery,", "With which old times and men had quelled the vain and free.", "", "'And with the falsehood of their poisonous lips", "They breathed on the enduring memory", "Of sages and of bards a brief eclipse;", "There was one teacher, who necessity", "Had armed with strength and wrong against mankind,", "His slave and his avenger aye to be;", "That we were weak and sinful, frail and blind,", "And that the will of one was peace, and we", "Should seek for nought on earth but toil and misery--", "", "'\"For thus we might avoid the hell hereafter.\"", "So spake the hypocrites, who cursed and lied;", "Alas, their sway was past, and tears and laughter", "Clung to their hoary hair, withering the pride", "Which in their hollow hearts dared still abide;", "And yet obscener slaves with smoother brow,", "And sneers on their strait lips, thin, blue and wide,", "Said that the rule of men was over now,", "And hence, the subject world to woman's will must bow;", "", "'And gold was scattered through the streets, and wine", "Flowed at a hundred feasts within the wall.", "In vain! the steady towers in Heaven did shine", "As they were wont, nor at the priestly call", "Left Plague her banquet in the Ethiop's hall,", "Nor Famine from the rich man's portal came,", "Where at her ease she ever preys on all", "Who throng to kneel for food: nor fear nor shame,", "Nor faith, nor discord, dimmed hope's newly kindled flame.", "", "'For gold was as a god whose faith began", "To fade, so that its worshippers were few,", "And Faith itself, which in the heart of man", "Gives shape, voice, name, to spectral Terror, knew", "Its downfall, as the altars lonelier grew,", "Till the Priests stood alone within the fane;", "The shafts of falsehood unpolluting flew,", "And the cold sneers of calumny were vain,", "The union of the free with discord's brand to stain.", "", "'The rest thou knowest.--Lo! we two are here--", "We have survived a ruin wide and deep--", "Strange thoughts are mine.--I cannot grieve or fear,", "Sitting with thee upon this lonely steep", "I smile, though human love should make me weep.", "We have survived a joy that knows no sorrow,", "And I do feel a mighty calmness creep", "Over my heart, which can no longer borrow", "Its hues from chance or change, dark children of to-morrow.", "", "'We know not what will come--yet, Laon, dearest,", "Cythna shall be the prophetess of Love,", "Her lips shall rob thee of the grace thou wearest,", "To hide thy heart, and clothe the shapes which rove", "Within the homeless Future's wintry grove;", "For I now, sitting thus beside thee, seem", "Even with thy breath and blood to live and move,", "And violence and wrong are as a dream", "Which rolls from steadfast truth, an unreturning stream.", "", "'The blasts of Autumn drive the winged seeds", "Over the earth,--next come the snows, and rain,", "And frosts, and storms, which dreary Winter leads", "Out of his Scythian cave, a savage train;", "Behold! Spring sweeps over the world again,", "Shedding soft dews from her ethereal wings;", "Flowers on the mountains, fruits over the plain,", "And music on the waves and woods she flings,", "And love on all that lives, and calm on lifeless things.", "", "'O Spring, of hope, and love, and youth, and gladness", "Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best and fairest!", "Whence comest thou, when, with dark Winter's sadness", "The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest?", "Sister of joy, thou art the child who wearest", "Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet;", "Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest", "Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,", "Disturbing not the leaves which are her winding-sheet.", "", "'Virtue, and Hope, and Love, like light and Heaven,", "Surround the world.--We are their chosen slaves.", "Has not the whirlwind of our spirit driven", "Truth's deathless germs to thought's remotest caves?", "Lo, Winter comes!--the grief of many graves,", "The frost of death, the tempest of the sword,", "The flood of tyranny, whose sanguine waves", "Stagnate like ice at Faith the enchanter's word,", "And bind all human hearts in its repose abhorred.", "", "'The seeds are sleeping in the soil: meanwhile", "The Tyrant peoples dungeons with his prey,", "Pale victims on the guarded scaffold smile", "Because they cannot speak; and, day by day,", "The moon of wasting Science wanes away", "Among her stars, and in that darkness vast", "The sons of earth to their foul idols pray,", "And gray Priests triumph, and like blight or blast", "A shade of selfish care o'er human looks is cast.", "", "'This is the winter of the world;--and here", "We die, even as the winds of Autumn fade,", "Expiring in the frore and foggy air.", "Behold! Spring comes, though we must pass, who made", "The promise of its birth,--even as the shade", "Which from our death, as from a mountain, flings", "The future, a broad sunrise; thus arrayed", "As with the plumes of overshadowing wings,", "From its dark gulf of chains, Earth like an eagle springs.", "", "'O dearest love! we shall be dead and cold", "Before this morn may on the world arise;", "Wouldst thou the glory of its dawn behold?", "Alas! gaze not on me, but turn thine eyes", "On thine own heart--it is a paradise", "Which everlasting Spring has made its own,", "And while drear Winter fills the naked skies,", "Sweet streams of sunny thought, and flowers fresh-blown,", "Are there, and weave their sounds and odours into one.", "", "'In their own hearts the earnest of the hope", "Which made them great, the good will ever find;", "And though some envious shade may interlope", "Between the effect and it, One comes behind,", "Who aye the future to the past will bind--", "Necessity, whose sightless strength for ever", "Evil with evil, good with good must wind", "In bands of union, which no power may sever:", "They must bring forth their kind, and be divided never!", "", "'The good and mighty of departed ages", "Are in their graves, the innocent and free,", "Heroes, and Poets, and prevailing Sages,", "Who leave the vesture of their majesty", "To adorn and clothe this naked world;--and we", "Are like to them--such perish, but they leave", "All hope, or love, or truth, or liberty,", "Whose forms their mighty spirits could conceive,", "To be a rule and law to ages that survive.", "", "'So be the turf heaped over our remains", "Even in our happy youth, and that strange lot,", "Whate'er it be, when in these mingling veins", "The blood is still, be ours; let sense and thought", "Pass from our being, or be numbered not", "Among the things that are; let those who come", "Behind, for whom our steadfast will has bought", "A calm inheritance, a glorious doom,", "Insult with careless tread, our undivided tomb.", "", "'Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love,", "Our happiness, and all that we have been,", "Immortally must live, and burn and move,", "When we shall be no more;--the world has seen", "A type of peace; and--as some most serene", "And lovely spot to a poor maniac's eye,", "After long years, some sweet and moving scene", "Of youthful hope, returning suddenly,", "Quells his long madness--thus man shall remember thee.", "", "'And Calumny meanwhile shall feed on us,", "As worms devour the dead, and near the throne", "And at the altar, most accepted thus", "Shall sneers and curses be;--what we have done", "None shall dare vouch, though it be truly known;", "That record shall remain, when they must pass", "Who built their pride on its oblivion;", "And fame, in human hope which sculptured was,", "Survive the perished scrolls of unenduring brass.", "", "'The while we two, beloved, must depart,", "And Sense and Reason, those enchanters fair,", "Whose wand of power is hope, would bid the heart", "That gazed beyond the wormy grave despair:", "These eyes, these lips, this blood, seems darkly there", "To fade in hideous ruin; no calm sleep", "Peopling with golden dreams the stagnant air,", "Seems our obscure and rotting eyes to steep", "In joy;--but senseless death--a ruin dark and deep!", "", "'These are blind fancies--reason cannot know", "What sense can neither feel, nor thought conceive;", "There is delusion in the world--and woe,", "And fear, and pain--we know not whence we live,", "Or why, or how, or what mute Power may give", "Their being to each plant, and star, and beast,", "Or even these thoughts.--Come near me! I do weave", "A chain I cannot break--I am possessed", "With thoughts too swift and strong for one lone human breast.", "", "'Yes, yes--thy kiss is sweet, thy lips are warm--", "O! willingly, beloved, would these eyes,", "Might they no more drink being from thy form,", "Even as to sleep whence we again arise,", "Close their faint orbs in death: I fear nor prize", "Aught that can now betide, unshared by thee--", "Yes, Love when Wisdom fails makes Cythna wise:", "Darkness and death, if death be true, must be", "Dearer than life and hope, if unenjoyed with thee.", "", "'Alas, our thoughts flow on with stream, whose waters", "Return not to their fountain--Earth and Heaven,", "The Ocean and the Sun, the Clouds their daughters,", "Winter, and Spring, and Morn, and Noon, and Even,", "All that we are or know, is darkly driven", "Towards one gulf.--Lo! what a change is come", "Since I first spake--but time shall be forgiven,", "Though it change all but thee!'--She ceased--night's gloom", "Meanwhile had fallen on earth from the sky's sunless dome.", "", "Though she had ceased, her countenance uplifted", "To Heaven, still spake, with solemn glory bright;", "Her dark deep eyes, her lips, whose motions gifted", "The air they breathed with love, her locks undight.", "'Fair star of life and love,' I cried, 'my soul's delight,", "Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies?", "O, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night,", "Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes!'", "She turned to me and smiled--that smile was Paradise!", "", "CANTO 10.", "", "Was there a human spirit in the steed,", "That thus with his proud voice, ere night was gone,", "He broke our linked rest? or do indeed", "All living things a common nature own,", "And thought erect an universal throne,", "Where many shapes one tribute ever bear?", "And Earth, their mutual mother, does she groan", "To see her sons contend? and makes she bare", "Her breast, that all in peace its drainless stores may share?", "", "I have heard friendly sounds from many a tongue", "Which was not human--the lone nightingale", "Has answered me with her most soothing song,", "Out of her ivy bower, when I sate pale", "With grief, and sighed beneath; from many a dale", "The antelopes who flocked for food have spoken", "With happy sounds, and motions, that avail", "Like man's own speech; and such was now the token", "Of waning night, whose calm by that proud neigh was broken.", "", "Each night, that mighty steed bore me abroad,", "And I returned with food to our retreat,", "And dark intelligence; the blood which flowed", "Over the fields, had stained the courser's feet;", "Soon the dust drinks that bitter dew,--then meet", "The vulture, and the wild dog, and the snake,", "The wolf, and the hyaena gray, and eat", "The dead in horrid truce: their throngs did make", "Behind the steed, a chasm like waves in a ship's wake.", "", "For, from the utmost realms of earth came pouring", "The banded slaves whom every despot sent", "At that throned traitor's summons; like the roaring", "Of fire, whose floods the wild deer circumvent", "In the scorched pastures of the South; so bent", "The armies of the leagued Kings around", "Their files of steel and flame;--the continent", "Trembled, as with a zone of ruin bound,", "Beneath their feet, the sea shook with their Navies' sound.", "", "From every nation of the earth they came,", "The multitude of moving heartless things,", "Whom slaves call men: obediently they came,", "Like sheep whom from the fold the shepherd brings", "To the stall, red with blood; their many kings", "Led them, thus erring, from their native land;", "Tartar and Frank, and millions whom the wings", "Of Indian breezes lull, and many a band", "The Arctic Anarch sent, and Idumea's sand,", "", "Fertile in prodigies and lies;--so there", "Strange natures made a brotherhood of ill.", "The desert savage ceased to grasp in fear", "His Asian shield and bow, when, at the will", "Of Europe's subtler son, the bolt would kill", "Some shepherd sitting on a rock secure;", "But smiles of wondering joy his face would fill,", "And savage sympathy: those slaves impure,", "Each one the other thus from ill to ill did lure.", "", "For traitorously did that foul Tyrant robe", "His countenance in lies,--even at the hour", "When he was snatched from death, then o'er the globe,", "With secret signs from many a mountain-tower,", "With smoke by day, and fire by night, the power", "Of Kings and Priests, those dark conspirators,", "He called:--they knew his cause their own, and swore", "Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars", "Strange truce, with many a rite which Earth and Heaven abhors.", "", "Myriads had come--millions were on their way;", "The Tyrant passed, surrounded by the steel", "Of hired assassins, through the public way,", "Choked with his country's dead:--his footsteps reel", "On the fresh blood--he smiles. 'Ay, now I feel", "I am a King in truth!' he said, and took", "His royal seat, and bade the torturing wheel", "Be brought, and fire, and pincers, and the hook,", "And scorpions, that his soul on its revenge might look.", "", "'But first, go slay the rebels--why return", "The victor bands?' he said, 'millions yet live,", "Of whom the weakest with one word might turn", "The scales of victory yet;--let none survive", "But those within the walls--each fifth shall give", "The expiation for his brethren here.--", "Go forth, and waste and kill!'--'O king, forgive", "My speech,' a soldier answered--'but we fear", "The spirits of the night, and morn is drawing near;", "", "'For we were slaying still without remorse,", "And now that dreadful chief beneath my hand", "Defenceless lay, when on a hell-black horse,", "An Angel bright as day, waving a brand", "Which flashed among the stars, passed.'--'Dost thou stand", "Parleying with me, thou wretch?' the king replied;", "'Slaves, bind him to the wheel; and of this band,", "Whoso will drag that woman to his side", "That scared him thus, may burn his dearest foe beside;", "", "'And gold and glory shall be his.--Go forth!'", "They rushed into the plain.--Loud was the roar", "Of their career: the horsemen shook the earth;", "The wheeled artillery's speed the pavement tore;", "The infantry, file after file, did pour", "Their clouds on the utmost hills. Five days they slew", "Among the wasted fields; the sixth saw gore", "Stream through the city; on the seventh, the dew", "Of slaughter became stiff, and there was peace anew:", "", "Peace in the desert fields and villages,", "Between the glutted beasts and mangled dead!", "Peace in the silent streets! save when the cries", "Of victims to their fiery judgement led,", "Made pale their voiceless lips who seemed to dread", "Even in their dearest kindred, lest some tongue", "Be faithless to the fear yet unbetrayed;", "Peace in the Tyrant's palace, where the throng", "Waste the triumphal hours in festival and song!", "", "Day after day the burning sun rolled on", "Over the death-polluted land--it came", "Out of the east like fire, and fiercely shone", "A lamp of Autumn, ripening with its flame", "The few lone ears of corn;--the sky became", "Stagnate with heat, so that each cloud and blast", "Languished and died,--the thirsting air did claim", "All moisture, and a rotting vapour passed", "From the unburied dead, invisible and fast.", "", "First Want, then Plague came on the beasts; their food", "Failed, and they drew the breath of its decay.", "Millions on millions, whom the scent of blood", "Had lured, or who, from regions far away,", "Had tracked the hosts in festival array,", "From their dark deserts; gaunt and wasting now,", "Stalked like fell shades among their perished prey;", "In their green eyes a strange disease did glow,", "They sank in hideous spasm, or pains severe and slow.", "", "The fish were poisoned in the streams; the birds", "In the green woods perished; the insect race", "Was withered up; the scattered flocks and herds", "Who had survived the wild beasts' hungry chase", "Died moaning, each upon the other's face", "In helpless agony gazing; round the City", "All night, the lean hyaenas their sad case", "Like starving infants wailed; a woeful ditty!", "And many a mother wept, pierced with unnatural pity.", "", "Amid the aereal minarets on high,", "The Ethiopian vultures fluttering fell", "From their long line of brethren in the sky,", "Startling the concourse of mankind.--Too well", "These signs the coming mischief did foretell:--", "Strange panic first, a deep and sickening dread", "Within each heart, like ice, did sink and dwell,", "A voiceless thought of evil, which did spread", "With the quick glance of eyes, like withering lightnings shed.", "", "Day after day, when the year wanes, the frosts", "Strip its green crown of leaves, till all is bare;", "So on those strange and congregated hosts", "Came Famine, a swift shadow, and the air", "Groaned with the burden of a new despair;", "Famine, than whom Misrule no deadlier daughter", "Feeds from her thousand breasts, though sleeping there", "With lidless eyes, lie Faith, and Plague, and Slaughter,", "A ghastly brood; conceived of Lethe's sullen water.", "", "There was no food, the corn was trampled down,", "The flocks and herds had perished; on the shore", "The dead and putrid fish were ever thrown;", "The deeps were foodless, and the winds no more", "Creaked with the weight of birds, but, as before", "Those winged things sprang forth, were void of shade;", "The vines and orchards, Autumn's golden store,", "Were burned;--so that the meanest food was weighed", "With gold, and Avarice died before the god it made.", "", "There was no corn--in the wide market-place", "All loathliest things, even human flesh, was sold;", "They weighed it in small scales--and many a face", "Was fixed in eager horror then: his gold", "The miser brought; the tender maid, grown bold", "Through hunger, bared her scorned charms in vain;", "The mother brought her eldest born, controlled", "By instinct blind as love, but turned again", "And bade her infant suck, and died in silent pain.", "", "Then fell blue Plague upon the race of man.", "'O, for the sheathed steel, so late which gave", "Oblivion to the dead, when the streets ran", "With brothers' blood! O, that the earthquake's grave", "Would gape, or Ocean lift its stifling wave!'", "Vain cries--throughout the streets thousands pursued", "Each by his fiery torture howl and rave,", "Or sit in frenzy's unimagined mood,", "Upon fresh heaps of dead; a ghastly multitude.", "", "It was not hunger now, but thirst. Each well", "Was choked with rotting corpses, and became", "A cauldron of green mist made visible", "At sunrise. Thither still the myriads came,", "Seeking to quench the agony of the flame,", "Which raged like poison through their bursting veins;", "Naked they were from torture, without shame,", "Spotted with nameless scars and lurid blains,", "Childhood, and youth, and age, writhing in savage pains.", "", "It was not thirst, but madness! Many saw", "Their own lean image everywhere, it went", "A ghastlier self beside them, till the awe", "Of that dread sight to self-destruction sent", "Those shrieking victims; some, ere life was spent,", "Sought, with a horrid sympathy, to shed", "Contagion on the sound; and others rent", "Their matted hair, and cried aloud, 'We tread", "On fire! the avenging Power his hell on earth has spread!'", "", "Sometimes the living by the dead were hid.", "Near the great fountain in the public square,", "Where corpses made a crumbling pyramid", "Under the sun, was heard one stifled prayer", "For life, in the hot silence of the air;", "And strange 'twas, amid that hideous heap to see", "Some shrouded in their long and golden hair,", "As if not dead, but slumbering quietly", "Like forms which sculptors carve, then love to agony.", "", "Famine had spared the palace of the king:--", "He rioted in festival the while,", "He and his guards and priests; but Plague did fling", "One shadow upon all. Famine can smile", "On him who brings it food, and pass, with guile", "Of thankful falsehood, like a courtier gray,", "The house-dog of the throne; but many a mile", "Comes Plague, a winged wolf, who loathes alway", "The garbage and the scum that strangers make her prey.", "", "So, near the throne, amid the gorgeous feast,", "Sheathed in resplendent arms, or loosely dight", "To luxury, ere the mockery yet had ceased", "That lingered on his lips, the warrior's might", "Was loosened, and a new and ghastlier night", "In dreams of frenzy lapped his eyes; he fell", "Headlong, or with stiff eyeballs sate upright", "Among the guests, or raving mad did tell", "Strange truths; a dying seer of dark oppression's hell.", "", "The Princes and the Priests were pale with terror;", "That monstrous faith wherewith they ruled mankind,", "Fell, like a shaft loosed by the bowman's error,", "On their own hearts: they sought and they could find", "No refuge--'twas the blind who led the blind!", "So, through the desolate streets to the high fane,", "The many-tongued and endless armies wind", "In sad procession: each among the train", "To his own Idol lifts his supplications vain.", "", "'O God!' they cried, 'we know our secret pride", "Has scorned thee, and thy worship, and thy name;", "Secure in human power we have defied", "Thy fearful might; we bend in fear and shame", "Before thy presence; with the dust we claim", "Kindred; be merciful, O King of Heaven!", "Most justly have we suffered for thy fame", "Made dim, but be at length our sins forgiven,", "Ere to despair and death thy worshippers be driven.", "", "'O King of Glory! thou alone hast power!", "Who can resist thy will? who can restrain", "Thy wrath, when on the guilty thou dost shower", "The shafts of thy revenge, a blistering rain?", "Greatest and best, be merciful again!", "Have we not stabbed thine enemies, and made", "The Earth an altar, and the Heavens a fane,", "Where thou wert worshipped with their blood, and laid", "Those hearts in dust which would thy searchless works have weighed?", "", "'Well didst thou loosen on this impious City", "Thine angels of revenge: recall them now;", "Thy worshippers, abased, here kneel for pity,", "And bind their souls by an immortal vow:", "We swear by thee! and to our oath do thou", "Give sanction, from thine hell of fiends and flame,", "That we will kill with fire and torments slow,", "The last of those who mocked thy holy name,", "And scorned the sacred laws thy prophets did proclaim.'", "", "Thus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips", "Worshipped their own hearts' image, dim and vast,", "Scared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse", "The light of other minds;--troubled they passed", "From the great Temple;--fiercely still and fast", "The arrows of the plague among them fell,", "And they on one another gazed aghast,", "And through the hosts contention wild befell,", "As each of his own god the wondrous works did tell.", "", "And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet,", "Moses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh,", "A tumult of strange names, which never met", "Before, as watchwords of a single woe,", "Arose; each raging votary 'gan to throw", "Aloft his armed hands, and each did howl", "'Our God alone is God!'--and slaughter now", "Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl", "A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.", "", "'Twas an Iberian Priest from whom it came,", "A zealous man, who led the legioned West,", "With words which faith and pride had steeped in flame,", "To quell the unbelievers; a dire guest", "Even to his friends was he, for in his breast", "Did hate and guile lie watchful, intertwined,", "Twin serpents in one deep and winding nest;", "He loathed all faith beside his own, and pined", "To wreak his fear of Heaven in vengeance on mankind.", "", "But more he loathed and hated the clear light", "Of wisdom and free thought, and more did fear,", "Lest, kindled once, its beams might pierce the night,", "Even where his Idol stood; for, far and near", "Did many a heart in Europe leap to hear", "That faith and tyranny were trampled down;", "Many a pale victim, doomed for truth to share", "The murderer's cell, or see, with helpless groan,", "The priests his children drag for slaves to serve their own.", "", "He dared not kill the infidels with fire", "Or steel, in Europe; the slow agonies", "Of legal torture mocked his keen desire:", "So he made truce with those who did despise", "The expiation, and the sacrifice,", "That, though detested, Islam's kindred creed", "Might crush for him those deadlier enemies;", "For fear of God did in his bosom breed", "A jealous hate of man, an unreposing need.", "", "'Peace! Peace!' he cried, 'when we are dead, the Day", "Of Judgement comes, and all shall surely know", "Whose God is God, each fearfully shall pay", "The errors of his faith in endless woe!", "But there is sent a mortal vengeance now", "On earth, because an impious race had spurned", "Him whom we all adore,--a subtle foe,", "By whom for ye this dread reward was earned,", "And kingly thrones, which rest on faith, nigh overturned.", "", "'Think ye, because ye weep, and kneel, and pray,", "That God will lull the pestilence? It rose", "Even from beneath his throne, where, many a day,", "His mercy soothed it to a dark repose:", "It walks upon the earth to judge his foes;", "And what are thou and I, that he should deign", "To curb his ghastly minister, or close", "The gates of death, ere they receive the twain", "Who shook with mortal spells his undefended reign?", "", "'Ay, there is famine in the gulf of hell,", "Its giant worms of fire for ever yawn.--", "Their lurid eyes are on us! those who fell", "By the swift shafts of pestilence ere dawn,", "Are in their jaws! they hunger for the spawn", "Of Satan, their own brethren, who were sent", "To make our souls their spoil. See! see! they fawn", "Like dogs, and they will sleep with luxury spent,", "When those detested hearts their iron fangs have rent!", "", "'Our God may then lull Pestilence to sleep:--", "Pile high the pyre of expiation now,", "A forest's spoil of boughs, and on the heap", "Pour venomous gums, which sullenly and slow,", "When touched by flame, shall burn, and melt, and flow,", "A stream of clinging fire,--and fix on high", "A net of iron, and spread forth below", "A couch of snakes, and scorpions, and the fry", "Of centipedes and worms, earth's hellish progeny!", "", "'Let Laon and Laone on that pyre,", "Linked tight with burning brass, perish!--then pray", "That, with this sacrifice, the withering ire", "Of Heaven may be appeased.' He ceased, and they", "A space stood silent, as far, far away", "The echoes of his voice among them died;", "And he knelt down upon the dust, alway", "Muttering the curses of his speechless pride,", "Whilst shame, and fear, and awe, the armies did divide.", "", "His voice was like a blast that burst the portal", "Of fabled hell; and as he spake, each one", "Saw gape beneath the chasms of fire immortal,", "And Heaven above seemed cloven, where, on a throne", "Girt round with storms and shadows, sate alone", "Their King and Judge--fear killed in every breast", "All natural pity then, a fear unknown", "Before, and with an inward fire possessed,", "They raged like homeless beasts whom burning woods invest.", "", "'Twas morn.--At noon the public crier went forth,", "Proclaiming through the living and the dead,", "'The Monarch saith, that his great Empire's worth", "Is set on Laon and Laone's head:", "He who but one yet living here can lead,", "Or who the life from both their hearts can wring,", "Shall be the kingdom's heir--a glorious meed!", "But he who both alive can hither bring,", "The Princess shall espouse, and reign an equal King.'", "", "Ere night the pyre was piled, the net of iron", "Was spread above, the fearful couch below;", "It overtopped the towers that did environ", "That spacious square; for Fear is never slow", "To build the thrones of Hate, her mate and foe;", "So, she scourged forth the maniac multitude", "To rear this pyramid--tottering and slow,", "Plague-stricken, foodless, like lean herds pursued", "By gadflies, they have piled the heath, and gums, and wood.", "", "Night came, a starless and a moonless gloom.", "Until the dawn, those hosts of many a nation", "Stood round that pile, as near one lover's tomb", "Two gentle sisters mourn their desolation;", "And in the silence of that expectation,", "Was heard on high the reptiles' hiss and crawl--", "It was so deep--save when the devastation", "Of the swift pest, with fearful interval,", "Marking its path with shrieks, among the crowd would fall.", "", "Morn came,--among those sleepless multitudes,", "Madness, and Fear, and Plague, and Famine still", "Heaped corpse on corpse, as in autumnal woods", "The frosts of many a wind with dead leaves fill", "Earth's cold and sullen brooks; in silence, still", "The pale survivors stood; ere noon, the fear", "Of Hell became a panic, which did kill", "Like hunger or disease, with whispers drear,", "As 'Hush! hark! Come they yet?--Just Heaven! thine hour is near!'", "", "And Priests rushed through their ranks, some counterfeiting", "The rage they did inspire, some mad indeed", "With their own lies; they said their god was waiting", "To see his enemies writhe, and burn, and bleed,--", "And that, till then, the snakes of Hell had need", "Of human souls:--three hundred furnaces", "Soon blazed through the wide City, where, with speed,", "Men brought their infidel kindred to appease", "God's wrath, and, while they burned, knelt round on quivering knees.", "", "The noontide sun was darkened with that smoke,", "The winds of eve dispersed those ashes gray.", "The madness which these rites had lulled, awoke", "Again at sunset.--Who shall dare to say", "The deeds which night and fear brought forth, or weigh", "In balance just the good and evil there?", "He might man's deep and searchless heart display,", "And cast a light on those dim labyrinths, where", "Hope, near imagined chasms, is struggling with despair.", "", "'Tis said, a mother dragged three children then,", "To those fierce flames which roast the eyes in the head,", "And laughed, and died; and that unholy men,", "Feasting like fiends upon the infidel dead,", "Looked from their meal, and saw an Angel tread", "The visible floor of Heaven, and it was she!", "And, on that night, one without doubt or dread", "Came to the fire, and said, 'Stop, I am he!", "Kill me!'--They burned them both with hellish mockery.", "", "And, one by one, that night, young maidens came,", "Beauteous and calm, like shapes of living stone", "Clothed in the light of dreams, and by the flame", "Which shrank as overgorged, they laid them down,", "And sung a low sweet song, of which alone", "One word was heard, and that was Liberty;", "And that some kissed their marble feet, with moan", "Like love, and died; and then that they did die", "With happy smiles, which sunk in white tranquillity.", "", "CANTO 11.", "", "She saw me not--she heard me not--alone", "Upon the mountain's dizzy brink she stood;", "She spake not, breathed not, moved not--there was thrown", "Over her look, the shadow of a mood", "Which only clothes the heart in solitude,", "A thought of voiceless depth;--she stood alone,", "Above, the Heavens were spread;--below, the flood", "Was murmuring in its caves;--the wind had blown", "Her hair apart, through which her eyes and forehead shone.", "", "A cloud was hanging o'er the western mountains;", "Before its blue and moveless depth were flying", "Gray mists poured forth from the unresting fountains", "Of darkness in the North:--the day was dying:--", "Sudden, the sun shone forth, its beams were lying", "Like boiling gold on Ocean, strange to see,", "And on the shattered vapours, which defying", "The power of light in vain, tossed restlessly", "In the red Heaven, like wrecks in a tempestuous sea.", "", "It was a stream of living beams, whose bank", "On either side by the cloud's cleft was made;", "And where its chasms that flood of glory drank,", "Its waves gushed forth like fire, and as if swayed", "By some mute tempest, rolled on HER; the shade", "Of her bright image floated on the river", "Of liquid light, which then did end and fade--", "Her radiant shape upon its verge did shiver;", "Aloft, her flowing hair like strings of flame did quiver.", "", "I stood beside her, but she saw me not--", "She looked upon the sea, and skies, and earth;", "Rapture, and love, and admiration wrought", "A passion deeper far than tears, or mirth,", "Or speech, or gesture, or whate'er has birth", "From common joy; which with the speechless feeling", "That led her there united, and shot forth", "From her far eyes a light of deep revealing,", "All but her dearest self from my regard concealing.", "", "Her lips were parted, and the measured breath", "Was now heard there;--her dark and intricate eyes", "Orb within orb, deeper than sleep or death,", "Absorbed the glories of the burning skies,", "Which, mingling with her heart's deep ecstasies,", "Burst from her looks and gestures;--and a light", "Of liquid tenderness, like love, did rise", "From her whole frame, an atmosphere which quite", "Arrayed her in its beams, tremulous and soft and bright.", "", "She would have clasped me to her glowing frame;", "Those warm and odorous lips might soon have shed", "On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame", "Which now the cold winds stole;--she would have laid", "Upon my languid heart her dearest head;", "I might have heard her voice, tender and sweet;", "Her eyes, mingling with mine, might soon have fed", "My soul with their own joy.--One moment yet", "I gazed--we parted then, never again to meet!", "", "Never but once to meet on Earth again!", "She heard me as I fled--her eager tone", "Sunk on my heart, and almost wove a chain", "Around my will to link it with her own,", "So that my stern resolve was almost gone.", "'I cannot reach thee! whither dost thou fly?", "My steps are faint--Come back, thou dearest one--", "Return, ah me! return!'--The wind passed by", "On which those accents died, faint, far, and lingeringly.", "", "Woe! Woe! that moonless midnight!--Want and Pest", "Were horrible, but one more fell doth rear,", "As in a hydra's swarming lair, its crest", "Eminent among those victims--even the Fear", "Of Hell: each girt by the hot atmosphere", "Of his blind agony, like a scorpion stung", "By his own rage upon his burning bier", "Of circling coals of fire; but still there clung", "One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung:", "", "Not death--death was no more refuge or rest;", "Not life--it was despair to be!--not sleep,", "For fiends and chasms of fire had dispossessed", "All natural dreams: to wake was not to weep,", "But to gaze mad and pallid, at the leap", "To which the Future, like a snaky scourge,", "Or like some tyrant's eye, which aye doth keep", "Its withering beam upon his slaves, did urge", "Their steps; they heard the roar of Hell's sulphureous surge.", "", "Each of that multitude, alone, and lost", "To sense of outward things, one hope yet knew;", "As on a foam-girt crag some seaman tossed", "Stares at the rising tide, or like the crew", "Whilst now the ship is splitting through and through;", "Each, if the tramp of a far steed was heard,", "Started from sick despair, or if there flew", "One murmur on the wind, or if some word", "Which none can gather yet, the distant crowd has stirred.", "", "Why became cheeks, wan with the kiss of death,", "Paler from hope? they had sustained despair.", "Why watched those myriads with suspended breath", "Sleepless a second night? they are not here,", "The victims, and hour by hour, a vision drear,", "Warm corpses fall upon the clay-cold dead;", "And even in death their lips are wreathed with fear.--", "The crowd is mute and moveless--overhead", "Silent Arcturus shines--'Ha! hear'st thou not the tread", "", "'Of rushing feet? laughter? the shout, the scream,", "Of triumph not to be contained? See! hark!", "They come, they come! give way!' Alas, ye deem", "Falsely--'tis but a crowd of maniacs stark", "Driven, like a troop of spectres, through the dark,", "From the choked well, whence a bright death-fire sprung,", "A lurid earth-star, which dropped many a spark", "From its blue train, and spreading widely, clung", "To their wild hair, like mist the topmost pines among.", "", "And many, from the crowd collected there,", "Joined that strange dance in fearful sympathies;", "There was the silence of a long despair,", "When the last echo of those terrible cries", "Came from a distant street, like agonies", "Stifled afar.--Before the Tyrant's throne", "All night his aged Senate sate, their eyes", "In stony expectation fixed; when one", "Sudden before them stood, a Stranger and alone.", "", "Dark Priests and haughty Warriors gazed on him", "With baffled wonder, for a hermit's vest", "Concealed his face; but when he spake, his tone,", "Ere yet the matter did their thoughts arrest,--", "Earnest, benignant, calm, as from a breast", "Void of all hate or terror--made them start;", "For as with gentle accents he addressed", "His speech to them, on each unwilling heart", "Unusual awe did fall--a spirit-quelling dart.", "", "'Ye Princes of the Earth, ye sit aghast", "Amid the ruin which yourselves have made,", "Yes, Desolation heard your trumpet's blast,", "And sprang from sleep!--dark Terror has obeyed", "Your bidding--O, that I whom ye have made", "Your foe, could set my dearest enemy free", "From pain and fear! but evil casts a shade,", "Which cannot pass so soon, and Hate must be", "The nurse and parent still of an ill progeny.", "", "'Ye turn to Heaven for aid in your distress;", "Alas, that ye, the mighty and the wise,", "Who, if ye dared, might not aspire to less", "Than ye conceive of power, should fear the lies", "Which thou, and thou, didst frame for mysteries", "To blind your slaves:--consider your own thought,", "An empty and a cruel sacrifice", "Ye now prepare, for a vain idol wrought", "Out of the fears and hate which vain desires have brought.", "", "'Ye seek for happiness--alas, the day!", "Ye find it not in luxury nor in gold,", "Nor in the fame, nor in the envied sway", "For which, O willing slaves to Custom old,", "Severe taskmistress! ye your hearts have sold.", "Ye seek for peace, and when ye die, to dream", "No evil dreams: all mortal things are cold", "And senseless then; if aught survive, I deem", "It must be love and joy, for they immortal seem.", "", "'Fear not the future, weep not for the past.", "Oh, could I win your ears to dare be now", "Glorious, and great, and calm! that ye would cast", "Into the dust those symbols of your woe,", "Purple, and gold, and steel! that ye would go", "Proclaiming to the nations whence ye came,", "That Want, and Plague, and Fear, from slavery flow;", "And that mankind is free, and that the shame", "Of royalty and faith is lost in freedom's fame!", "", "'If thus, 'tis well--if not, I come to say", "That Laon--' while the Stranger spoke, among", "The Council sudden tumult and affray", "Arose, for many of those warriors young,", "Had on his eloquent accents fed and hung", "Like bees on mountain-flowers; they knew the truth,", "And from their thrones in vindication sprung;", "The men of faith and law then without ruth", "Drew forth their secret steel, and stabbed each ardent youth.", "", "They stabbed them in the back and sneered--a slave", "Who stood behind the throne, those corpses drew", "Each to its bloody, dark, and secret grave;", "And one more daring raised his steel anew", "To pierce the Stranger. 'What hast thou to do", "With me, poor wretch?'--Calm, solemn and severe,", "That voice unstrung his sinews, and he threw", "His dagger on the ground, and pale with fear,", "Sate silently--his voice then did the Stranger rear.", "", "'It doth avail not that I weep for ye--", "Ye cannot change, since ye are old and gray,", "And ye have chosen your lot--your fame must be", "A book of blood, whence in a milder day", "Men shall learn truth, when ye are wrapped in clay:", "Now ye shall triumph. I am Laon's friend,", "And him to your revenge will I betray,", "So ye concede one easy boon. Attend!", "For now I speak of things which ye can apprehend.", "", "'There is a People mighty in its youth,", "A land beyond the Oceans of the West,", "Where, though with rudest rites, Freedom and Truth", "Are worshipped; from a glorious Mother's breast,", "Who, since high Athens fell, among the rest", "Sate like the Queen of Nations, but in woe,", "By inbred monsters outraged and oppressed,", "Turns to her chainless child for succour now,", "It draws the milk of Power in Wisdom's fullest flow.", "", "'That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze", "Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume", "Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze", "Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;", "An epitaph of glory for the tomb", "Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,", "Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;", "Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;", "The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.", "", "'Yes, in the desert there is built a home", "For Freedom. Genius is made strong to rear", "The monuments of man beneath the dome", "Of a new Heaven; myriads assemble there,", "Whom the proud lords of man, in rage or fear,", "Drive from their wasted homes: the boon I pray", "Is this--that Cythna shall be convoyed there--", "Nay, start not at the name--America!", "And then to you this night Laon will I betray.", "", "'With me do what ye will. I am your foe!'", "The light of such a joy as makes the stare", "Of hungry snakes like living emeralds glow,", "Shone in a hundred human eyes--'Where, where", "Is Laon? Haste! fly! drag him swiftly here!", "We grant thy boon.'--'I put no trust in ye,", "Swear by the Power ye dread.'--'We swear, we swear!'", "The Stranger threw his vest back suddenly,", "And smiled in gentle pride, and said, 'Lo! I am he!'", "", "CANTO 12.", "", "The transport of a fierce and monstrous gladness", "Spread through the multitudinous streets, fast flying", "Upon the winds of fear; from his dull madness", "The starveling waked, and died in joy; the dying,", "Among the corpses in stark agony lying,", "Just heard the happy tidings, and in hope", "Closed their faint eyes; from house to house replying", "With loud acclaim, the living shook Heaven's cope,", "And filled the startled Earth with echoes: morn did ope", "", "Its pale eyes then; and lo! the long array", "Of guards in golden arms, and Priests beside,", "Singing their bloody hymns, whose garbs betray", "The blackness of the faith it seems to hide;", "And see, the Tyrant's gem-wrought chariot glide", "Among the gloomy cowls and glittering spears--", "A Shape of light is sitting by his side,", "A child most beautiful. I' the midst appears", "Laon,--exempt alone from mortal hopes and fears.", "", "His head and feet are bare, his hands are bound", "Behind with heavy chains, yet none do wreak", "Their scoffs on him, though myriads throng around;", "There are no sneers upon his lip which speak", "That scorn or hate has made him bold; his cheek", "Resolve has not turned pale,--his eyes are mild", "And calm, and, like the morn about to break,", "Smile on mankind--his heart seems reconciled", "To all things and itself, like a reposing child.", "", "Tumult was in the soul of all beside,", "Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but those who saw", "Their tranquil victim pass, felt wonder glide", "Into their brain, and became calm with awe.--", "See, the slow pageant near the pile doth draw.", "A thousand torches in the spacious square,", "Borne by the ready slaves of ruthless law,", "Await the signal round: the morning fair", "Is changed to a dim night by that unnatural glare.", "", "And see! beneath a sun-bright canopy,", "Upon a platform level with the pile,", "The anxious Tyrant sit, enthroned on high,", "Girt by the chieftains of the host; all smile", "In expectation, but one child: the while", "I, Laon, led by mutes, ascend my bier", "Of fire, and look around: each distant isle", "Is dark in the bright dawn; towers far and near,", "Pierce like reposing flames the tremulous atmosphere.", "", "There was such silence through the host, as when", "An earthquake trampling on some populous town,", "Has crushed ten thousand with one tread, and men", "Expect the second; all were mute but one,", "That fairest child, who, bold with love, alone", "Stood up before the King, without avail,", "Pleading for Laon's life--her stifled groan", "Was heard--she trembled like one aspen pale", "Among the gloomy pines of a Norwegian vale.", "", "What were his thoughts linked in the morning sun,", "Among those reptiles, stingless with delay,", "Even like a tyrant's wrath?--The signal-gun", "Roared--hark, again! In that dread pause he lay", "As in a quiet dream--the slaves obey--", "A thousand torches drop,--and hark, the last", "Bursts on that awful silence; far away,", "Millions, with hearts that beat both loud and fast,", "Watch for the springing flame expectant and aghast.", "", "They fly--the torches fall--a cry of fear", "Has startled the triumphant!--they recede!", "For, ere the cannon's roar has died, they hear", "The tramp of hoofs like earthquake, and a steed", "Dark and gigantic, with the tempest's speed,", "Bursts through their ranks: a woman sits thereon,", "Fairer, it seems, than aught that earth can breed,", "Calm, radiant, like the phantom of the dawn,", "A spirit from the caves of daylight wandering gone.", "", "All thought it was God's Angel come to sweep", "The lingering guilty to their fiery grave;", "The Tyrant from his throne in dread did leap,--", "Her innocence his child from fear did save;", "Scared by the faith they feigned, each priestly slave", "Knelt for his mercy whom they served with blood,", "And, like the refluence of a mighty wave", "Sucked into the loud sea, the multitude", "With crushing panic, fled in terror's altered mood.", "", "They pause, they blush, they gaze,--a gathering shout", "Bursts like one sound from the ten thousand streams", "Of a tempestuous sea:--that sudden rout", "One checked, who, never in his mildest dreams", "Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams", "Of his rent heart so hard and cold a creed", "Had seared with blistering ice--but he misdeems", "That he is wise, whose wounds do only bleed", "Inly for self,--thus thought the Iberian Priest indeed,", "", "And others, too, thought he was wise to see,", "In pain, and fear, and hate, something divine;", "In love and beauty, no divinity.--", "Now with a bitter smile, whose light did shine", "Like a fiend's hope upon his lips and eyne,", "He said, and the persuasion of that sneer", "Rallied his trembling comrades--'Is it mine", "To stand alone, when kings and soldiers fear", "A woman? Heaven has sent its other victim here.'", "", "'Were it not impious,' said the King, 'to break", "Our holy oath?'--'Impious to keep it, say!'", "Shrieked the exulting Priest:--'Slaves, to the stake", "Bind her, and on my head the burden lay", "Of her just torments:--at the Judgement Day", "Will I stand up before the golden throne", "Of Heaven, and cry, \"To Thee did I betray", "An infidel; but for me she would have known", "Another moment's joy! the glory be thine own.\"'", "", "They trembled, but replied not, nor obeyed,", "Pausing in breathless silence. Cythna sprung", "From her gigantic steed, who, like a shade", "Chased by the winds, those vacant streets among", "Fled tameless, as the brazen rein she flung", "Upon his neck, and kissed his mooned brow.", "A piteous sight, that one so fair and young,", "The clasp of such a fearful death should woo", "With smiles of tender joy as beamed from Cythna now.", "", "The warm tears burst in spite of faith and fear", "From many a tremulous eye, but like soft dews", "Which feed Spring's earliest buds, hung gathered there,", "Frozen by doubt,--alas! they could not choose", "But weep; for when her faint limbs did refuse", "To climb the pyre, upon the mutes she smiled;", "And with her eloquent gestures, and the hues", "Of her quick lips, even as a weary child", "Wins sleep from some fond nurse with its caresses mild,", "", "She won them, though unwilling, her to bind", "Near me, among the snakes. When there had fled", "One soft reproach that was most thrilling kind,", "She smiled on me, and nothing then we said,", "But each upon the other's countenance fed", "Looks of insatiate love; the mighty veil", "Which doth divide the living and the dead", "Was almost rent, the world grew dim and pale,--", "All light in Heaven or Earth beside our love did fail.--", "", "Yet--yet--one brief relapse, like the last beam", "Of dying flames, the stainless air around", "Hung silent and serene--a blood-red gleam", "Burst upwards, hurling fiercely from the ground", "The globed smoke,--I heard the mighty sound", "Of its uprise, like a tempestuous ocean;", "And through its chasms I saw, as in a swound,", "The tyrant's child fall without life or motion", "Before his throne, subdued by some unseen emotion.--", "", "And is this death?--The pyre has disappeared,", "The Pestilence, the Tyrant, and the throng;", "The flames grow silent--slowly there is heard", "The music of a breath-suspending song,", "Which, like the kiss of love when life is young,", "Steeps the faint eyes in darkness sweet and deep;", "With ever-changing notes it floats along,", "Till on my passive soul there seemed to creep", "A melody, like waves on wrinkled sands that leap.", "", "The warm touch of a soft and tremulous hand", "Wakened me then; lo! Cythna sate reclined", "Beside me, on the waved and golden sand", "Of a clear pool, upon a bank o'ertwined", "With strange and star-bright flowers, which to the wind", "Breathed divine odour; high above, was spread", "The emerald heaven of trees of unknown kind,", "Whose moonlike blooms and bright fruit overhead", "A shadow, which was light, upon the waters shed.", "", "And round about sloped many a lawny mountain", "With incense-bearing forests and vast caves", "Of marble radiance, to that mighty fountain;", "And where the flood its own bright margin laves,", "Their echoes talk with its eternal waves,", "Which, from the depths whose jagged caverns breed", "Their unreposing strife, it lifts and heaves,--", "Till through a chasm of hills they roll, and feed", "A river deep, which flies with smooth but arrowy speed.", "", "As we sate gazing in a trance of wonder,", "A boat approached, borne by the musical air", "Along the waves which sung and sparkled under", "Its rapid keel--a winged shape sate there,", "A child with silver-shining wings, so fair,", "That as her bark did through the waters glide,", "The shadow of the lingering waves did wear", "Light, as from starry beams; from side to side,", "While veering to the wind her plumes the bark did guide.", "", "The boat was one curved shell of hollow pearl,", "Almost translucent with the light divine", "Of her within; the prow and stern did curl", "Horned on high, like the young moon supine,", "When o'er dim twilight mountains dark with pine,", "It floats upon the sunset's sea of beams,", "Whose golden waves in many a purple line", "Fade fast, till borne on sunlight's ebbing streams,", "Dilating, on earth's verge the sunken meteor gleams.", "", "Its keel has struck the sands beside our feet;--", "Then Cythna turned to me, and from her eyes", "Which swam with unshed tears, a look more sweet", "Than happy love, a wild and glad surprise,", "Glanced as she spake: 'Ay, this is Paradise", "And not a dream, and we are all united!", "Lo, that is mine own child, who in the guise", "Of madness came, like day to one benighted", "In lonesome woods: my heart is now too well requited!'", "", "And then she wept aloud, and in her arms", "Clasped that bright Shape, less marvellously fair", "Than her own human hues and living charms;", "Which, as she leaned in passion's silence there,", "Breathed warmth on the cold bosom of the air,", "Which seemed to blush and tremble with delight;", "The glossy darkness of her streaming hair", "Fell o'er that snowy child, and wrapped from sight", "The fond and long embrace which did their hearts unite.", "", "Then the bright child, the plumed Seraph came,", "And fixed its blue and beaming eyes on mine,", "And said, 'I was disturbed by tremulous shame", "When once we met, yet knew that I was thine", "From the same hour in which thy lips divine", "Kindled a clinging dream within my brain,", "Which ever waked when I might sleep, to twine", "Thine image with HER memory dear--again", "We meet; exempted now from mortal fear or pain.", "", "'When the consuming flames had wrapped ye round,", "The hope which I had cherished went away;", "I fell in agony on the senseless ground,", "And hid mine eyes in dust, and far astray", "My mind was gone, when bright, like dawning day,", "The Spectre of the Plague before me flew,", "And breathed upon my lips, and seemed to say,", "\"They wait for thee, beloved!\"--then I knew", "The death-mark on my breast, and became calm anew.", "", "'It was the calm of love--for I was dying.", "I saw the black and half-extinguished pyre", "In its own gray and shrunken ashes lying;", "The pitchy smoke of the departed fire", "Still hung in many a hollow dome and spire", "Above the towers, like night,--beneath whose shade", "Awed by the ending of their own desire", "The armies stood; a vacancy was made", "In expectation's depth, and so they stood dismayed.", "", "'The frightful silence of that altered mood,", "The tortures of the dying clove alone,", "Till one uprose among the multitude,", "And said--\"The flood of time is rolling on;", "We stand upon its brink, whilst THEY are gone", "To glide in peace down death's mysterious stream.", "Have ye done well? They moulder, flesh and bone,", "Who might have made this life's envenomed dream", "A sweeter draught than ye will ever taste, I deem.", "", "'\"These perish as the good and great of yore", "Have perished, and their murderers will repent,--", "Yes, vain and barren tears shall flow before", "Yon smoke has faded from the firmament", "Even for this cause, that ye who must lament", "The death of those that made this world so fair,", "Cannot recall them now; but there is lent", "To man the wisdom of a high despair,", "When such can die, and he live on and linger here.", "", "'\"Ay, ye may fear not now the Pestilence,", "From fabled hell as by a charm withdrawn;", "All power and faith must pass, since calmly hence", "In pain and fire have unbelievers gone;", "And ye must sadly turn away, and moan", "In secret, to his home each one returning;", "And to long ages shall this hour be known;", "And slowly shall its memory, ever burning,", "Fill this dark night of things with an eternal morning.", "", "'\"For me that world is grown too void and cold,", "Since Hope pursues immortal Destiny", "With steps thus slow--therefore shall ye behold", "How those who love, yet fear not, dare to die;", "Tell to your children this!\" Then suddenly", "He sheathed a dagger in his heart and fell;", "My brain grew dark in death, and yet to me", "There came a murmur from the crowd, to tell", "Of deep and mighty change which suddenly befell.", "", "'Then suddenly I stood, a winged Thought,", "Before the immortal Senate, and the seat", "Of that star-shining spirit, whence is wrought", "The strength of its dominion, good and great,", "The better Genius of this world's estate.", "His realm around one mighty Fane is spread,", "Elysian islands bright and fortunate,", "Calm dwellings of the free and happy dead,", "Where I am sent to lead!' These winged words she said,", "", "And with the silence of her eloquent smile,", "Bade us embark in her divine canoe;", "Then at the helm we took our seat, the while", "Above her head those plumes of dazzling hue", "Into the winds' invisible stream she threw,", "Sitting beside the prow: like gossamer", "On the swift breath of morn, the vessel flew", "O'er the bright whirlpools of that fountain fair,", "Whose shores receded fast, while we seemed lingering there;", "", "Till down that mighty stream, dark, calm, and fleet,", "Between a chasm of cedarn mountains riven,", "Chased by the thronging winds whose viewless feet", "As swift as twinkling beams, had, under Heaven,", "From woods and waves wild sounds and odours driven,", "The boat fled visibly--three nights and days,", "Borne like a cloud through morn, and noon, and even,", "We sailed along the winding watery ways", "Of the vast stream, a long and labyrinthine maze.", "", "A scene of joy and wonder to behold", "That river's shapes and shadows changing ever,", "Where the broad sunrise filled with deepening gold", "Its whirlpools, where all hues did spread and quiver;", "And where melodious falls did burst and shiver", "Among rocks clad with flowers, the foam and spray", "Sparkled like stars upon the sunny river,", "Or when the moonlight poured a holier day,", "One vast and glittering lake around green islands lay.", "", "Morn, noon, and even, that boat of pearl outran", "The streams which bore it, like the arrowy cloud", "Of tempest, or the speedier thought of man,", "Which flieth forth and cannot make abode;", "Sometimes through forests, deep like night, we glode,", "Between the walls of mighty mountains crowned", "With Cyclopean piles, whose turrets proud,", "The homes of the departed, dimly frowned", "O'er the bright waves which girt their dark foundations round.", "", "Sometimes between the wide and flowering meadows,", "Mile after mile we sailed, and 'twas delight", "To see far off the sunbeams chase the shadows", "Over the grass; sometimes beneath the night", "Of wide and vaulted caves, whose roofs were bright", "With starry gems, we fled, whilst from their deep", "And dark-green chasms, shades beautiful and white,", "Amid sweet sounds across our path would sweep,", "Like swift and lovely dreams that walk the waves of sleep.", "", "And ever as we sailed, our minds were full", "Of love and wisdom, which would overflow", "In converse wild, and sweet, and wonderful,", "And in quick smiles whose light would come and go", "Like music o'er wide waves, and in the flow", "Of sudden tears, and in the mute caress--", "For a deep shade was cleft, and we did know,", "That virtue, though obscured on Earth, not less", "Survives all mortal change in lasting loveliness.", "", "Three days and nights we sailed, as thought and feeling", "Number delightful hours--for through the sky", "The sphered lamps of day and night, revealing", "New changes and new glories, rolled on high,", "Sun, Moon and moonlike lamps, the progeny", "Of a diviner Heaven, serene and fair:", "On the fourth day, wild as a windwrought sea", "The stream became, and fast and faster bare", "The spirit-winged boat, steadily speeding there.", "", "Steady and swift, where the waves rolled like mountains", "Within the vast ravine, whose rifts did pour", "Tumultuous floods from their ten thousand fountains,", "The thunder of whose earth-uplifting roar", "Made the air sweep in whirlwinds from the shore,", "Calm as a shade, the boat of that fair child", "Securely fled, that rapid stress before,", "Amid the topmost spray, and sunbows wild,", "Wreathed in the silver mist: in joy and pride we smiled.", "", "The torrent of that wide and raging river", "Is passed, and our aereal speed suspended.", "We look behind; a golden mist did quiver", "When its wild surges with the lake were blended,--", "Our bark hung there, as on a line suspended", "Between two heavens,--that windless waveless lake", "Which four great cataracts from four vales, attended", "By mists, aye feed; from rocks and clouds they break,", "And of that azure sea a silent refuge make.", "", "Motionless resting on the lake awhile,", "I saw its marge of snow-bright mountains rear", "Their peaks aloft, I saw each radiant isle,", "And in the midst, afar, even like a sphere", "Hung in one hollow sky, did there appear", "The Temple of the Spirit; on the sound", "Which issued thence, drawn nearer and more near,", "Like the swift moon this glorious earth around,", "The charmed boat approached, and there its haven found." ], "linecount": "4848" }, { "title": "The Triumph of Life", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Swift as a spirit hastening to his task", "Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth", "Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask", "", "Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth--", "The smokeless altars of the mountain snows", "Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth", "", "Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,", "To which the birds tempered their matin lay.", "All flowers in field or forest which unclose", "", "Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,", "Swinging their censers in the element,", "With orient incense lit by the new ray", "", "Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent", "Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;", "And, in succession due, did continent,", "", "Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear", "The form and character of mortal mould,", "Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear", "", "Their portion of the toil, which he of old", "Took as his own, and then imposed on them:", "But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold", "", "Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem", "The cone of night, now they were laid asleep", "Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem", "", "Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep", "Of a green Apennine: before me fled", "The night; behind me rose the day; the deep", "", "Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,--", "When a strange trance over my fancy grew", "Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread", "", "Was so transparent, that the scene came through", "As clear as when a veil of light is drawn", "O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew", "", "That I had felt the freshness of that dawn", "Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair,", "And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn", "", "Under the self-same bough, and heard as there", "The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold", "Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air,", "And then a vision on my train was rolled.", "", "...", "", "As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,", "This was the tenour of my waking dream:--", "Methought I sate beside a public way", "", "Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream", "Of people there was hurrying to and fro,", "Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,", "", "All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know", "Whither he went, or whence he came, or why", "He made one of the multitude, and so", "", "Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky", "One of the million leaves of summer's bier;", "Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,", "", "Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear,", "Some flying from the thing they feared, and some", "Seeking the object of another's fear;", "", "And others, as with steps towards the tomb,", "Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,", "And others mournfully within the gloom", "", "Of their own shadow walked, and called it death;", "And some fled from it as it were a ghost,", "Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath:", "", "But more, with motions which each other crossed,", "Pursued or shunned the shadows the clouds threw,", "Or birds within the noonday aether lost,", "", "Upon that path where flowers never grew,--", "And, weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,", "Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew", "", "Out of their mossy cells forever burst;", "Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told", "Of grassy paths and wood-lawns interspersed", "", "With overarching elms and caverns cold,", "And violet banks where sweet dreams brood, but they", "Pursued their serious folly as of old.", "", "And as I gazed, methought that in the way", "The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June", "When the south wind shakes the extinguished day,", "", "And a cold glare, intenser than the noon,", "But icy cold, obscured with blinding light", "The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon--", "", "When on the sunlit limits of the night", "Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,", "And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might--", "", "Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear", "The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form", "Bends in dark aether from her infant's chair,--", "", "So came a chariot on the silent storm", "Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape", "So sate within, as one whom years deform,", "", "Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,", "Crouching within the shadow of a tomb;", "And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape", "", "Was bent, a dun and faint aethereal gloom", "Tempering the light. Upon the chariot-beam", "A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume", "", "The guidance of that wonder-winged team;", "The shapes which drew it in thick lightenings", "Were lost:--I heard alone on the air's soft stream", "", "The music of their ever-moving wings.", "All the four faces of that Charioteer", "Had their eyes banded; little profit brings", "", "Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,", "Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun,--", "Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere", "", "Of all that is, has been or will be done;", "So ill was the car guided--but it passed", "With solemn speed majestically on.", "", "The crowd gave way, and I arose aghast,", "Or seemed to rise, so mighty was the trance,", "And saw, like clouds upon the thunder-blast,", "", "The million with fierce song and maniac dance", "Raging around--such seemed the jubilee", "As when to greet some conqueror's advance", "", "Imperial Rome poured forth her living sea", "From senate-house, and forum, and theatre,", "When ... upon the free", "", "Had bound a yoke, which soon they stooped to bear.", "Nor wanted here the just similitude", "Of a triumphal pageant, for where'er", "", "The chariot rolled, a captive multitude", "Was driven;--all those who had grown old in power", "Or misery,--all who had their age subdued", "", "By action or by suffering, and whose hour", "Was drained to its last sand in weal or woe,", "So that the trunk survived both fruit and flower;--", "", "All those whose fame or infamy must grow", "Till the great winter lay the form and name", "Of this green earth with them for ever low;--", "", "All but the sacred few who could not tame", "Their spirits to the conquerors--but as soon", "As they had touched the world with living flame,", "", "Fled back like eagles to their native noon,", "Or those who put aside the diadem", "Of earthly thrones or gems...", "", "Were there, of Athens or Jerusalem.", "Were neither mid the mighty captives seen,", "Nor mid the ribald crowd that followed them,", "", "Nor those who went before fierce and obscene.", "The wild dance maddens in the van, and those", "Who lead it--fleet as shadows on the green,", "", "Outspeed the chariot, and without repose", "Mix with each other in tempestuous measure", "To savage music, wilder as it grows,", "", "They, tortured by their agonizing pleasure,", "Convulsed and on the rapid whirlwinds spun", "Of that fierce Spirit, whose unholy leisure", "", "Was soothed by mischief since the world begun,", "Throw back their heads and loose their streaming hair;", "And in their dance round her who dims the sun,", "", "Maidens and youths fling their wild arms in air", "As their feet twinkle; they recede, and now", "Bending within each other's atmosphere,", "", "Kindle invisibly--and as they glow,", "Like moths by light attracted and repelled,", "Oft to their bright destruction come and go,", "", "Till like two clouds into one vale impelled,", "That shake the mountains when their lightnings mingle", "And die in rain--the fiery band which held", "", "Their natures, snaps--while the shock still may tingle", "One falls and then another in the path", "Senseless--nor is the desolation single,", "", "Yet ere I can say WHERE--the chariot hath", "Passed over them--nor other trace I find", "But as of foam after the ocean's wrath", "", "Is spent upon the desert shore;--behind,", "Old men and women foully disarrayed,", "Shake their gray hairs in the insulting wind,", "", "And follow in the dance, with limbs decayed,", "Seeking to reach the light which leaves them still", "Farther behind and deeper in the shade.", "", "But not the less with impotence of will", "They wheel, though ghastly shadows interpose", "Round them and round each other, and fulfil", "", "Their work, and in the dust from whence they rose", "Sink, and corruption veils them as they lie,", "And past in these performs what ... in those.", "", "Struck to the heart by this sad pageantry,", "Half to myself I said--'And what is this?", "Whose shape is that within the car? And why--'", "", "I would have added--'is all here amiss?--'", "But a voice answered--'Life!'--I turned, and knew", "(O Heaven, have mercy on such wretchedness!)", "", "That what I thought was an old root which grew", "To strange distortion out of the hill side,", "Was indeed one of those deluded crew,", "", "And that the grass, which methought hung so wide", "And white, was but his thin discoloured hair,", "And that the holes he vainly sought to hide,", "", "Were or had been eyes:--'If thou canst forbear", "To join the dance, which I had well forborne,'", "Said the grim Feature, of my thought aware,", "", "'I will unfold that which to this deep scorn", "Led me and my companions, and relate", "The progress of the pageant since the morn;", "", "'If thirst of knowledge shall not then abate,", "Follow it thou even to the night, but I", "Am weary.'--Then like one who with the weight", "", "Of his own words is staggered, wearily", "He paused; and ere he could resume, I cried:", "'First, who art thou?'--'Before thy memory,", "", "'I feared, loved, hated, suffered, did and died,", "And if the spark with which Heaven lit my spirit", "Had been with purer nutriment supplied,", "", "'Corruption would not now thus much inherit", "Of what was once Rousseau,--nor this disguise", "Stain that which ought to have disdained to wear it;", "", "'If I have been extinguished, yet there rise", "A thousand beacons from the spark I bore'--", "'And who are those chained to the car?'--'The wise,", "", "'The great, the unforgotten,--they who wore", "Mitres and helms and crowns, or wreaths of light,", "Signs of thought's empire over thought--their lore", "", "'Taught them not this, to know themselves; their might", "Could not repress the mystery within,", "And for the morn of truth they feigned, deep night", "", "'Caught them ere evening.'--'Who is he with chin", "Upon his breast, and hands crossed on his chain?'--", "'The child of a fierce hour; he sought to win", "", "'The world, and lost all that it did contain", "Of greatness, in its hope destroyed; and more", "Of fame and peace than virtue's self can gain", "", "'Without the opportunity which bore", "Him on its eagle pinions to the peak", "From which a thousand climbers have before", "", "'Fallen, as Napoleon fell.'--I felt my cheek", "Alter, to see the shadow pass away,", "Whose grasp had left the giant world so weak", "", "That every pigmy kicked it as it lay;", "And much I grieved to think how power and will", "In opposition rule our mortal day,", "", "And why God made irreconcilable", "Good and the means of good; and for despair", "I half disdained mine eyes' desire to fill", "", "With the spent vision of the times that were", "And scarce have ceased to be.--'Dost thou behold,'", "Said my guide, 'those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,", "", "'Frederick, and Paul, Catherine, and Leopold,", "And hoary anarchs, demagogues, and sage--", "names which the world thinks always old,", "", "'For in the battle Life and they did wage,", "She remained conqueror. I was overcome", "By my own heart alone, which neither age,", "", "'Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb", "Could temper to its object.'--'Let them pass,'", "I cried, 'the world and its mysterious doom", "", "'Is not so much more glorious than it was,", "That I desire to worship those who drew", "New figures on its false and fragile glass", "", "'As the old faded.'--'Figures ever new", "Rise on the bubble, paint them as you may;", "We have but thrown, as those before us threw,", "", "'Our shadows on it as it passed away.", "But mark how chained to the triumphal chair", "The mighty phantoms of an elder day;", "", "'All that is mortal of great Plato there", "Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not;", "The star that ruled his doom was far too fair.", "", "'And life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not,", "Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain,", "Or age, or sloth, or slavery could subdue not.", "", "'And near him walk the ... twain,", "The tutor and his pupil, whom Dominion", "Followed as tame as vulture in a chain.", "", "'The world was darkened beneath either pinion", "Of him whom from the flock of conquerors", "Fame singled out for her thunder-bearing minion;", "", "'The other long outlived both woes and wars,", "Throned in the thoughts of men, and still had kept", "The jealous key of Truth's eternal doors,", "", "'If Bacon's eagle spirit had not lept", "Like lightning out of darkness--he compelled", "The Proteus shape of Nature, as it slept", "", "'To wake, and lead him to the caves that held", "The treasure of the secrets of its reign.", "See the great bards of elder time, who quelled", "", "'The passions which they sung, as by their strain", "May well be known: their living melody", "Tempers its own contagion to the vein", "", "'Of those who are infected with it--I", "Have suffered what I wrote, or viler pain!", "And so my words have seeds of misery--", "", "'Even as the deeds of others, not as theirs.'", "And then he pointed to a company,", "", "'Midst whom I quickly recognized the heirs", "Of Caesar's crime, from him to Constantine;", "The anarch chiefs, whose force and murderous snares", "", "Had founded many a sceptre-bearing line,", "And spread the plague of gold and blood abroad:", "And Gregory and John, and men divine,", "", "Who rose like shadows between man and God;", "Till that eclipse, still hanging over heaven,", "Was worshipped by the world o'er which they strode,", "", "For the true sun it quenched--'Their power was given", "But to destroy,' replied the leader:--'I", "Am one of those who have created, even", "", "'If it be but a world of agony.'--", "'Whence camest thou? and whither goest thou?", "How did thy course begin?' I said, 'and why?", "", "'Mine eyes are sick of this perpetual flow", "Of people, and my heart sick of one sad thought--", "Speak!'--'Whence I am, I partly seem to know,", "", "'And how and by what paths I have been brought", "To this dread pass, methinks even thou mayst guess;--", "Why this should be, my mind can compass not;", "", "'Whither the conqueror hurries me, still less;--", "But follow thou, and from spectator turn", "Actor or victim in this wretchedness,", "", "'And what thou wouldst be taught I then may learn", "From thee. Now listen:--In the April prime,", "When all the forest-tips began to burn", "", "'With kindling green, touched by the azure clime", "Of the young season, I was laid asleep", "Under a mountain, which from unknown time", "", "'Had yawned into a cavern, high and deep;", "And from it came a gentle rivulet,", "Whose water, like clear air, in its calm sweep", "", "'Bent the soft grass, and kept for ever wet", "The stems of the sweet flowers, and filled the grove", "With sounds, which whoso hears must needs forget", "", "'All pleasure and all pain, all hate and love,", "Which they had known before that hour of rest;", "A sleeping mother then would dream not of", "", "'Her only child who died upon the breast", "At eventide--a king would mourn no more", "The crown of which his brows were dispossessed", "", "'When the sun lingered o'er his ocean floor", "To gild his rival's new prosperity.", "'Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore", "", "'Ills, which if ills can find no cure from thee,", "The thought of which no other sleep will quell,", "Nor other music blot from memory,", "", "'So sweet and deep is the oblivious spell;", "And whether life had been before that sleep", "The Heaven which I imagine, or a Hell", "", "'Like this harsh world in which I woke to weep,", "I know not. I arose, and for a space", "The scene of woods and waters seemed to keep,", "", "Though it was now broad day, a gentle trace", "Of light diviner than the common sun", "Sheds on the common earth, and all the place", "", "'Was filled with magic sounds woven into one", "Oblivious melody, confusing sense", "Amid the gliding waves and shadows dun;", "", "'And, as I looked, the bright omnipresence", "Of morning through the orient cavern flowed,", "And the sun's image radiantly intense", "", "'Burned on the waters of the well that glowed", "Like gold, and threaded all the forest's maze", "With winding paths of emerald fire; there stood", "", "'Amid the sun, as he amid the blaze", "Of his own glory, on the vibrating", "Floor of the fountain, paved with flashing rays,", "", "'A Shape all light, which with one hand did fling", "Dew on the earth, as if she were the dawn,", "And the invisible rain did ever sing", "", "'A silver music on the mossy lawn;", "And still before me on the dusky grass,", "Iris her many-coloured scarf had drawn:", "", "'In her right hand she bore a crystal glass,", "Mantling with bright Nepenthe; the fierce splendour", "Fell from her as she moved under the mass", "", "'Of the deep cavern, and with palms so tender,", "Their tread broke not the mirror of its billow,", "Glided along the river, and did bend her", "", "'Head under the dark boughs, till like a willow", "Her fair hair swept the bosom of the stream", "That whispered with delight to be its pillow.", "", "'As one enamoured is upborne in dream", "O'er lily-paven lakes, mid silver mist", "To wondrous music, so this shape might seem", "", "'Partly to tread the waves with feet which kissed", "The dancing foam; partly to glide along", "The air which roughened the moist amethyst,", "", "'Or the faint morning beams that fell among", "The trees, or the soft shadows of the trees;", "And her feet, ever to the ceaseless song", "", "'Of leaves, and winds, and waves, and birds, and bees,", "And falling drops, moved in a measure new", "Yet sweet, as on the summer evening breeze,", "", "'Up from the lake a shape of golden dew", "Between two rocks, athwart the rising moon,", "Dances i' the wind, where never eagle flew;", "", "'And still her feet, no less than the sweet tune", "To which they moved, seemed as they moved to blot", "The thoughts of him who gazed on them; and soon", "", "'All that was, seemed as if it had been not;", "And all the gazer's mind was strewn beneath", "Her feet like embers; and she, thought by thought,", "", "'Trampled its sparks into the dust of death", "As day upon the threshold of the east", "Treads out the lamps of night, until the breath", "", "'Of darkness re-illumine even the least", "Of heaven's living eyes--like day she came,", "Making the night a dream; and ere she ceased", "", "'To move, as one between desire and shame", "Suspended, I said--If, as it doth seem,", "Thou comest from the realm without a name", "", "'Into this valley of perpetual dream,", "Show whence I came, and where I am, and why--", "Pass not away upon the passing stream.", "", "'Arise and quench thy thirst, was her reply.", "And as a shut lily stricken by the wand", "Of dewy morning's vital alchemy,", "", "'I rose; and, bending at her sweet command,", "Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,", "And suddenly my brain became as sand", "", "'Where the first wave had more than half erased", "The track of deer on desert Labrador;", "Whilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed,", "", "'Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore,", "Until the second bursts;--so on my sight", "Burst a new vision, never seen before,", "", "'And the fair shape waned in the coming light,", "As veil by veil the silent splendour drops", "From Lucifer, amid the chrysolite", "", "'Of sunrise, ere it tinge the mountain-tops;", "And as the presence of that fairest planet,", "Although unseen, is felt by one who hopes", "", "'That his day's path may end as he began it,", "In that star's smile, whose light is like the scent", "Of a jonquil when evening breezes fan it,", "", "'Or the soft note in which his dear lament", "The Brescian shepherd breathes, or the caress", "That turned his weary slumber to content;", "", "'So knew I in that light's severe excess", "The presence of that Shape which on the stream", "Moved, as I moved along the wilderness,", "", "'More dimly than a day-appearing dream,", "The host of a forgotten form of sleep;", "A light of heaven, whose half-extinguished beam", "", "'Through the sick day in which we wake to weep", "Glimmers, for ever sought, for ever lost;", "So did that shape its obscure tenour keep", "", "'Beside my path, as silent as a ghost;", "But the new Vision, and the cold bright car,", "With solemn speed and stunning music, crossed", "", "'The forest, and as if from some dread war", "Triumphantly returning, the loud million", "Fiercely extolled the fortune of her star.", "", "'A moving arch of victory, the vermilion", "And green and azure plumes of Iris had", "Built high over her wind-winged pavilion,", "", "'And underneath aethereal glory clad", "The wilderness, and far before her flew", "The tempest of the splendour, which forbade", "", "'Shadow to fall from leaf and stone; the crew", "Seemed in that light, like atomies to dance", "Within a sunbeam;--some upon the new", "", "'Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance", "The grassy vesture of the desert, played,", "Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance;", "", "'Others stood gazing, till within the shade", "Of the great mountain its light left them dim;", "Others outspeeded it; and others made", "", "'Circles around it, like the clouds that swim", "Round the high moon in a bright sea of air;", "And more did follow, with exulting hymn,", "", "'The chariot and the captives fettered there:--", "But all like bubbles on an eddying flood", "Fell into the same track at last, and were", "", "'Borne onward.--I among the multitude", "Was swept--me, sweetest flowers delayed not long;", "Me, not the shadow nor the solitude;", "", "'Me, not that falling stream's Lethean song;", "Me, not the phantom of that early Form", "Which moved upon its motion--but among", "", "'The thickest billows of that living storm", "I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime", "Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.", "", "'Before the chariot had begun to climb", "The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,", "Behold a wonder worthy of the rhyme", "", "'Of him who from the lowest depths of hell,", "Through every paradise and through all glory,", "Love led serene, and who returned to tell", "", "'The words of hate and awe; the wondrous story", "How all things are transfigured except Love;", "For deaf as is a sea, which wrath makes hoary,", "", "'The world can hear not the sweet notes that move", "The sphere whose light is melody to lovers--", "A wonder worthy of his rhyme.--The grove", "", "'Grew dense with shadows to its inmost covers,", "The earth was gray with phantoms, and the air", "Was peopled with dim forms, as when there hovers", "", "'A flock of vampire-bats before the glare", "Of the tropic sun, bringing, ere evening,", "Strange night upon some Indian isle;--thus were", "", "'Phantoms diffused around; and some did fling", "Shadows of shadows, yet unlike themselves,", "Behind them; some like eaglets on the wing", "", "'Were lost in the white day; others like elves", "Danced in a thousand unimagined shapes", "Upon the sunny streams and grassy shelves;", "", "'And others sate chattering like restless apes", "On vulgar hands,...", "Some made a cradle of the ermined capes", "", "'Of kingly mantles; some across the tiar", "Of pontiffs sate like vultures; others played", "Under the crown which girt with empire", "", "'A baby's or an idiot's brow, and made", "Their nests in it. The old anatomies", "Sate hatching their bare broods under the shade", "", "'Of daemon wings, and laughed from their dead eyes", "To reassume the delegated power,", "Arrayed in which those worms did monarchize,", "", "'Who made this earth their charnel. Others more", "Humble, like falcons, sate upon the fist", "Of common men, and round their heads did soar;", "", "Or like small gnats and flies, as thick as mist", "On evening marshes, thronged about the brow", "Of lawyers, statesmen, priest and theorist;--", "", "'And others, like discoloured flakes of snow", "On fairest bosoms and the sunniest hair,", "Fell, and were melted by the youthful glow", "", "'Which they extinguished; and, like tears, they were", "A veil to those from whose faint lids they rained", "In drops of sorrow. I became aware", "", "'Of whence those forms proceeded which thus stained", "The track in which we moved. After brief space,", "From every form the beauty slowly waned;", "", "'From every firmest limb and fairest face", "The strength and freshness fell like dust, and left", "The action and the shape without the grace", "", "'Of life. The marble brow of youth was cleft", "With care; and in those eyes where once hope shone,", "Desire, like a lioness bereft", "", "'Of her last cub, glared ere it died; each one", "Of that great crowd sent forth incessantly", "These shadows, numerous as the dead leaves blown", "", "'In autumn evening from a poplar tree.", "Each like himself and like each other were", "At first; but some distorted seemed to be", "", "'Obscure clouds, moulded by the casual air;", "And of this stuff the car's creative ray", "Wrought all the busy phantoms that were there,", "", "'As the sun shapes the clouds; thus on the way", "Mask after mask fell from the countenance", "And form of all; and long before the day", "", "'Was old, the joy which waked like heaven's glance", "The sleepers in the oblivious valley, died;", "And some grew weary of the ghastly dance,", "", "'And fell, as I have fallen, by the wayside;--", "Those soonest from whose forms most shadows passed,", "And least of strength and beauty did abide.", "", "'Then, what is life? I cried.'--", "", "STANZA, WRITTEN AT BRACKNELL.", "", "Thy dewy looks sink in my breast;", "Thy gentle words stir poison there;", "Thou hast disturbed the only rest", "That was the portion of despair!", "Subdued to Duty's hard control,", "I could have borne my wayward lot:", "The chains that bind this ruined soul", "Had cankered then--but crushed it not.", "", "STANZAS.--APRIL, 1814.", "", "Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon,", "Rapid clouds have drank the last pale beam of even:", "Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,", "And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.", "", "Pause not! The time is past! Every voice cries, Away!", "Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood:", "Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:", "Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.", "", "Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;", "Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;", "Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,", "And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth.", "", "The leaves of wasted autumn woods shall float around thine head:", "The blooms of dewy spring shall gleam beneath thy feet:", "But thy soul or this world must fade in the frost that binds the dead,", "Ere midnight's frown and morning's smile, ere thou and peace may meet.", "", "The cloud shadows of midnight possess their own repose,", "For the weary winds are silent, or the moon is in the deep:", "Some respite to its turbulence unresting ocean knows;", "Whatever moves, or toils, or grieves, hath its appointed sleep.", "", "Thou in the grave shalt rest--yet till the phantoms flee", "Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile,", "Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free", "From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile." ], "linecount": "579" }, { "title": "From the Arabic: An Imitation", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "My faint spirit was sitting in the light", "Of thy looks, my love;", "It panted for thee like the hind at noon", "For the brooks, my love.", "Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight", "Bore thee far from me;", "My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,", "Did companion thee.", "", "Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed", "Or the death they bear,", "The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove", "With the wings of care;", "In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,", "Shall mine cling to thee,", "Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love,", "It may bring to thee." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "Mutability", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The flower that smiles to-day", "To-morrow dies;", "All that we wish to stay", "Tempts and then flies.", "What is this world's delight?", "Lightning that mocks the night,", "Brief even as bright.", "", "Virtue, how frail it is!", "Friendship how rare!", "Love, how it sells poor bliss", "For proud despair!", "But we, though soon they fall,", "Survive their joy, and all", "Which ours we call.", "", "Whilst skies are blue and bright,", "Whilst flowers are gay,", "Whilst eyes that change ere night", "Make glad the day;", "Whilst yet the calm hours creep,", "Dream thou--and from thy sleep", "Then wake to weep." ], "linecount": "21" }, { "title": "Sonnet: Political Greatness", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame,", "Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms or arts,", "Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes tame;", "Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts,", "History is but the shadow of their shame,", "Art veils her glass, or from the pageant starts", "As to oblivion their blind millions fleet,", "Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery", "Of their own likeness. What are numbers knit", "By force or custom? Man who man would be,", "Must rule the empire of himself; in it", "Must be supreme, establishing his throne", "On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy", "Of hopes and fears, being himself alone." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "To --", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "When passion's trance is overpast,", "If tenderness and truth could last,", "Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep", "Some mortal slumber, dark and deep,", "I should not weep, I should not weep!", "", "It were enough to feel, to see,", "Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly,", "And dream the rest--and burn and be", "The secret food of fires unseen,", "Couldst thou but be as thou hast been,", "", "After the slumber of the year", "The woodland violets reappear;", "All things revive in field or grove,", "And sky and sea, but two, which move", "And form all others, life and love." ], "linecount": "15" }, { "title": "A Bridal Song", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The golden gates of Sleep unbar", "Where Strength and Beauty, met together,", "Kindle their image like a star", "In a sea of glassy weather!", "Night, with all thy stars look down,--", "Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,--", "Never smiled the inconstant moon", "On a pair so true.", "Let eyes not see their own delight;--", "Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight", "Oft renew.", "", "Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!", "Holy stars, permit no wrong!", "And return to wake the sleeper,", "Dawn,--ere it be long!", "O joy! O fear! what will be done", "In the absence of the sun!", "Come along!" ], "linecount": "18" }, { "title": "Sonnet to Byron", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "If I esteemed you less, Envy would kill", "Pleasure, and leave to Wonder and Despair", "The ministration of the thoughts that fill", "The mind which, like a worm whose life may share", "A portion of the unapproachable,", "Marks your creations rise as fast and fair", "As perfect worlds at the Creator's will.", "", "But such is my regard that nor your power", "To soar above the heights where others ,", "Nor fame, that shadow of the unborn hour", "Cast from the envious future on the time,", "Move one regret for his unhonoured name", "Who dares these words:--the worm beneath the sod", "May lift itself in homage of the God." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'Methought I Was a Billow in the Crowd'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Methought I was a billow in the crowd", "Of common men, that stream without a shore,", "That ocean which at once is deaf and loud;", "That I, a man, stood amid many more", "By a wayside..., which the aspect bore", "Of some imperial metropolis,", "Where mighty shapes--pyramid, dome, and tower--", "Gleamed like a pile of crags--" ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Fragment: The False Laurel and the True", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'What art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest", "The wreath to mighty poets only due,", "Even whilst like a forgotten moon thou wanest?", "Touch not those leaves which for the eternal few", "Who wander o'er the Paradise of fame,", "In sacred dedication ever grew:", "One of the crowd thou art without a name.'", "'Ah, friend, 'tis the false laurel that I wear;", "Bright though it seem, it is not the same", "As that which bound Milton's immortal hair;", "Its dew is poison; and the hopes that quicken", "Under its chilling shade, though seeming fair,", "Are flowers which die almost before they sicken.'" ], "linecount": "13" }, { "title": "Hymn to Mercury", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF HOMER.", "", "Sing, Muse, the son of Maia and of Jove,", "The Herald-child, king of Arcadia", "And all its pastoral hills, whom in sweet love", "Having been interwoven, modest May", "Bore Heaven's dread Supreme. An antique grove", "Shadowed the cavern where the lovers lay", "In the deep night, unseen by Gods or Men,", "And white-armed Juno slumbered sweetly then.", "", "Now, when the joy of Jove had its fulfilling,", "And Heaven's tenth moon chronicled her relief,", "She gave to light a babe all babes excelling,", "A schemer subtle beyond all belief;", "A shepherd of thin dreams, a cow-stealing,", "A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief,", "Who 'mongst the Gods was soon about to thieve,", "And other glorious actions to achieve.", "", "The babe was born at the first peep of day;", "He began playing on the lyre at noon,", "And the same evening did he steal away", "Apollo's herds;--the fourth day of the moon", "On which him bore the venerable May,", "From her immortal limbs he leaped full soon,", "Nor long could in the sacred cradle keep,", "But out to seek Apollo's herds would creep.", "", "Out of the lofty cavern wandering", "He found a tortoise, and cried out--'A treasure!'", "(For Mercury first made the tortoise sing)", "The beast before the portal at his leisure", "The flowery herbage was depasturing,", "Moving his feet in a deliberate measure", "Over the turf. Jove's profitable son", "Eying him laughed, and laughing thus begun:--", "", "'A useful godsend are you to me now,", "King of the dance, companion of the feast,", "Lovely in all your nature! Welcome, you", "Excellent plaything! Where, sweet mountain-beast,", "Got you that speckled shell? Thus much I know,", "You must come home with me and be my guest;", "You will give joy to me, and I will do", "All that is in my power to honour you.", "", "'Better to be at home than out of door,", "So come with me; and though it has been said", "That you alive defend from magic power,", "I know you will sing sweetly when you're dead.'", "Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore,", "Lifting it from the grass on which it fed", "And grasping it in his delighted hold,", "His treasured prize into the cavern old.", "", "Then scooping with a chisel of gray steel,", "He bored the life and soul out of the beast.--", "Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal", "Darts through the tumult of a human breast", "Which thronging cares annoy--not swifter wheel", "The flashes of its torture and unrest", "Out of the dizzy eyes--than Maia's son", "All that he did devise hath featly done.", "", "...", "And through the tortoise's hard stony skin", "At proper distances small holes he made,", "And fastened the cut stems of reeds within,", "And with a piece of leather overlaid", "The open space and fixed the cubits in,", "Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o'er all", "Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical.", "", "When he had wrought the lovely instrument,", "He tried the chords, and made division meet,", "Preluding with the plectrum, and there went", "Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet", "Of mighty sounds, and from his lips he sent", "A strain of unpremeditated wit", "Joyous and wild and wanton--such you may", "Hear among revellers on a holiday.", "", "He sung how Jove and May of the bright sandal", "Dallied in love not quite legitimate;", "And his own birth, still scoffing at the scandal,", "And naming his own name, did celebrate;", "His mother's cave and servant maids he planned all", "In plastic verse, her household stuff and state,", "Perennial pot, trippet, and brazen pan,--", "But singing, he conceived another plan.", "", "...", "Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat,", "He in his sacred crib deposited", "The hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet", "Rushed with great leaps up to the mountain's head,", "Revolving in his mind some subtle feat", "Of thievish craft, such as a swindler might", "Devise in the lone season of dun night.", "", "Lo! the great Sun under the ocean's bed has", "Driven steeds and chariot--the child meanwhile strode", "O'er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows,", "Where the immortal oxen of the God", "Are pastured in the flowering unmown meadows,", "And safely stalled in a remote abode.--", "The archer Argicide, elate and proud,", "Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud.", "", "He drove them wandering o'er the sandy way,", "But, being ever mindful of his craft,", "Backward and forward drove he them astray,", "So that the tracks which seemed before, were aft;", "His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray,", "And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft", "Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs,", "And bound them in a lump with withy twigs.", "", "And on his feet he tied these sandals light,", "The trail of whose wide leaves might not betray", "His track; and then, a self-sufficing wight,", "Like a man hastening on some distant way,", "He from Pieria's mountain bent his flight;", "But an old man perceived the infant pass", "Down green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass.", "", "The old man stood dressing his sunny vine:", "'Halloo! old fellow with the crooked shoulder!", "You grub those stumps? before they will bear wine", "Methinks even you must grow a little older:", "Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine,", "As you would 'scape what might appal a bolder--", "Seeing, see not--and hearing, hear not--and--", "If you have understanding--understand.'", "", "So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast;", "O'er shadowy mountain and resounding dell,", "And flower-paven plains, great Hermes passed;", "Till the black night divine, which favouring fell", "Around his steps, grew gray, and morning fast", "Wakened the world to work, and from her cell", "Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime", "Into her watch-tower just began to climb.", "", "Now to Alpheus he had driven all", "The broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun;", "They came unwearied to the lofty stall", "And to the water-troughs which ever run", "Through the fresh fields--and when with rushgrass tall,", "Lotus and all sweet herbage, every one", "Had pastured been, the great God made them move", "Towards the stall in a collected drove.", "", "A mighty pile of wood the God then heaped,", "And having soon conceived the mystery", "Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches stripped", "The bark, and rubbed them in his palms;--on high", "Suddenly forth the burning vapour leaped", "And the divine child saw delightedly.--", "Mercury first found out for human weal", "Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and steel.", "", "And fine dry logs and roots innumerous", "He gathered in a delve upon the ground--", "And kindled them--and instantaneous", "The strength of the fierce flame was breathed around:", "And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus", "Wrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound,", "Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing loud,", "Close to the fire--such might was in the God.", "", "And on the earth upon their backs he threw", "The panting beasts, and rolled them o'er and o'er,", "And bored their lives out. Without more ado", "He cut up fat and flesh, and down before", "The fire, on spits of wood he placed the two,", "Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all the gore", "Pursed in the bowels; and while this was done", "He stretched their hides over a craggy stone.", "", "We mortals let an ox grow old, and then", "Cut it up after long consideration,--", "But joyous-minded Hermes from the glen", "Drew the fat spoils to the more open station", "Of a flat smooth space, and portioned them; and when", "He had by lot assigned to each a ration", "Of the twelve Gods, his mind became aware", "Of all the joys which in religion are.", "", "For the sweet savour of the roasted meat", "Tempted him though immortal. Natheless", "He checked his haughty will and did not eat,", "Though what it cost him words can scarce express,", "And every wish to put such morsels sweet", "Down his most sacred throat, he did repress;", "But soon within the lofty portalled stall", "He placed the fat and flesh and bones and all.", "", "And every trace of the fresh butchery", "And cooking, the God soon made disappear,", "As if it all had vanished through the sky;", "He burned the hoofs and horns and head and hair,--", "The insatiate fire devoured them hungrily;--", "And when he saw that everything was clear,", "He quenched the coal, and trampled the black dust,", "And in the stream his bloody sandals tossed.", "", "All night he worked in the serene moonshine--", "But when the light of day was spread abroad", "He sought his natal mountain-peaks divine.", "On his long wandering, neither Man nor God", "Had met him, since he killed Apollo's kine,", "Nor house-dog had barked at him on his road;", "Now he obliquely through the keyhole passed,", "Like a thin mist, or an autumnal blast.", "", "Right through the temple of the spacious cave", "He went with soft light feet--as if his tread", "Fell not on earth; no sound their falling gave;", "Then to his cradle he crept quick, and spread", "The swaddling-clothes about him; and the knave", "Lay playing with the covering of the bed", "With his left hand about his knees--the right", "Held his beloved tortoise-lyre tight.", "", "There he lay innocent as a new-born child,", "As gossips say; but though he was a God,", "The Goddess, his fair mother, unbeguiled,", "Knew all that he had done being abroad:", "'Whence come you, and from what adventure wild,", "You cunning rogue, and where have you abode", "All the long night, clothed in your impudence?", "What have you done since you departed hence?", "", "'Apollo soon will pass within this gate", "And bind your tender body in a chain", "Inextricably tight, and fast as fate,", "Unless you can delude the God again,", "Even when within his arms--ah, runagate!", "A pretty torment both for Gods and Men", "Your father made when he made you!'--'Dear mother,'", "Replied sly Hermes, 'wherefore scold and bother?", "", "'As if I were like other babes as old,", "And understood nothing of what is what;", "And cared at all to hear my mother scold.", "I in my subtle brain a scheme have got,", "Which whilst the sacred stars round Heaven are rolled", "Will profit you and me--nor shall our lot", "Be as you counsel, without gifts or food,", "To spend our lives in this obscure abode.", "", "29", "'But we will leave this shadow-peopled cave", "And live among the Gods, and pass each day", "In high communion, sharing what they have", "Of profuse wealth and unexhausted prey;", "And from the portion which my father gave", "To Phoebus, I will snatch my share away,", "Which if my father will not--natheless I,", "Who am the king of robbers, can but try.", "", "'And, if Latona's son should find me out,", "I'll countermine him by a deeper plan;", "I'll pierce the Pythian temple-walls, though stout,", "And sack the fane of everything I can--", "Caldrons and tripods of great worth no doubt,", "Each golden cup and polished brazen pan,", "All the wrought tapestries and garments gay.'--", "So they together talked;--meanwhile the Day", "", "Aethereal born arose out of the flood", "Of flowing Ocean, bearing light to men.", "Apollo passed toward the sacred wood,", "Which from the inmost depths of its green glen", "Echoes the voice of Neptune,--and there stood", "On the same spot in green Onchestus then", "That same old animal, the vine-dresser,", "Who was employed hedging his vineyard there.", "", "Latona's glorious Son began:--'I pray", "Tell, ancient hedger of Onchestus green,", "Whether a drove of kine has passed this way,", "All heifers with crooked horns? for they have been", "Stolen from the herd in high Pieria,", "Where a black bull was fed apart, between", "Two woody mountains in a neighbouring glen,", "And four fierce dogs watched there, unanimous as men.", "", "'And what is strange, the author of this theft", "Has stolen the fatted heifers every one,", "But the four dogs and the black bull are left:--", "Stolen they were last night at set of sun,", "Of their soft beds and their sweet food bereft.--", "Now tell me, man born ere the world begun,", "Have you seen any one pass with the cows?'--", "To whom the man of overhanging brows:", "", "'My friend, it would require no common skill", "Justly to speak of everything I see:", "On various purposes of good or ill", "Many pass by my vineyard,--and to me", "'Tis difficult to know the invisible", "Thoughts, which in all those many minds may be:--", "Thus much alone I certainly can say,", "I tilled these vines till the decline of day,", "", "'And then I thought I saw, but dare not speak", "With certainty of such a wondrous thing,", "A child, who could not have been born a week,", "Those fair-horned cattle closely following,", "And in his hand he held a polished stick:", "And, as on purpose, he walked wavering", "From one side to the other of the road,", "And with his face opposed the steps he trod.'", "", "Apollo hearing this, passed quickly on--", "No winged omen could have shown more clear", "That the deceiver was his father's son.", "So the God wraps a purple atmosphere", "Around his shoulders, and like fire is gone", "To famous Pylos, seeking his kine there,", "And found their track and his, yet hardly cold,", "And cried--'What wonder do mine eyes behold!", "", "'Here are the footsteps of the horned herd", "Turned back towards their fields of asphodel;--", "But THESE are not the tracks of beast or bird,", "Gray wolf, or bear, or lion of the dell,", "Or maned Centaur--sand was never stirred", "By man or woman thus! Inexplicable!", "Who with unwearied feet could e'er impress", "The sand with such enormous vestiges?", "", "'That was most strange--but this is stranger still!'", "Thus having said, Phoebus impetuously", "Sought high Cyllene's forest-cinctured hill,", "And the deep cavern where dark shadows lie,", "And where the ambrosial nymph with happy will", "Bore the Saturnian's love-child, Mercury--", "And a delightful odour from the dew", "Of the hill pastures, at his coming, flew.", "", "And Phoebus stooped under the craggy roof", "Arched over the dark cavern:--Maia's child", "Perceived that he came angry, far aloof,", "About the cows of which he had been beguiled;", "And over him the fine and fragrant woof", "Of his ambrosial swaddling-clothes he piled--", "As among fire-brands lies a burning spark", "Covered, beneath the ashes cold and dark.", "", "There, like an infant who had sucked his fill", "And now was newly washed and put to bed,", "Awake, but courting sleep with weary will,", "And gathered in a lump, hands, feet, and head,", "He lay, and his beloved tortoise still", "He grasped and held under his shoulder-blade.", "Phoebus the lovely mountain-goddess knew,", "Not less her subtle, swindling baby, who", "", "Lay swathed in his sly wiles. Round every crook", "Of the ample cavern, for his kine, Apollo", "Looked sharp; and when he saw them not, he took", "The glittering key, and opened three great hollow", "Recesses in the rock--where many a nook", "Was filled with the sweet food immortals swallow,", "And mighty heaps of silver and of gold", "Were piled within--a wonder to behold!", "", "And white and silver robes, all overwrought", "With cunning workmanship of tracery sweet--", "Except among the Gods there can be nought", "In the wide world to be compared with it.", "Latona's offspring, after having sought", "His herds in every corner, thus did greet", "Great Hermes:--'Little cradled rogue, declare", "Of my illustrious heifers, where they are!", "", "'Speak quickly! or a quarrel between us", "Must rise, and the event will be, that I", "Shall hurl you into dismal Tartarus,", "In fiery gloom to dwell eternally;", "Nor shall your father nor your mother loose", "The bars of that black dungeon--utterly", "You shall be cast out from the light of day,", "To rule the ghosts of men, unblessed as they.", "", "To whom thus Hermes slily answered:--'Son", "Of great Latona, what a speech is this!", "Why come you here to ask me what is done", "With the wild oxen which it seems you miss?", "I have not seen them, nor from any one", "Have heard a word of the whole business;", "If you should promise an immense reward,", "I could not tell more than you now have heard.", "", "'An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong,", "And I am but a little new-born thing,", "Who, yet at least, can think of nothing wrong:--", "My business is to suck, and sleep, and fling", "The cradle-clothes about me all day long,--", "Or half asleep, hear my sweet mother sing,", "And to be washed in water clean and warm,", "And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm.", "", "'O, let not e'er this quarrel be averred!", "The astounded Gods would laugh at you, if e'er", "You should allege a story so absurd", "As that a new-born infant forth could fare", "Out of his home after a savage herd.", "I was born yesterday--my small feet are", "Too tender for the roads so hard and rough:--", "And if you think that this is not enough,", "", "I swear a great oath, by my father's head,", "That I stole not your cows, and that I know", "Of no one else, who might, or could, or did.--", "Whatever things cows are, I do not know,", "For I have only heard the name.'--This said", "He winked as fast as could be, and his brow", "Was wrinkled, and a whistle loud gave he,", "Like one who hears some strange absurdity.", "", "Apollo gently smiled and said:--'Ay, ay,--", "You cunning little rascal, you will bore", "Many a rich man's house, and your array", "Of thieves will lay their siege before his door,", "Silent as night, in night; and many a day", "In the wild glens rough shepherds will deplore", "That you or yours, having an appetite,", "Met with their cattle, comrade of the night!", "", "'And this among the Gods shall be your gift,", "To be considered as the lord of those", "Who swindle, house-break, sheep-steal, and shop-lift;--", "But now if you would not your last sleep doze;", "Crawl out!'--Thus saying, Phoebus did uplift", "The subtle infant in his swaddling clothes,", "And in his arms, according to his wont,", "A scheme devised the illustrious Argiphont.", "", "...", "...", "And sneezed and shuddered--Phoebus on the grass", "Him threw, and whilst all that he had designed", "He did perform--eager although to pass,", "Apollo darted from his mighty mind", "Towards the subtle babe the following scoff:--", "'Do not imagine this will get you off,", "", "'You little swaddled child of Jove and May!", "And seized him:--'By this omen I shall trace", "My noble herds, and you shall lead the way.'--", "Cyllenian Hermes from the grassy place,", "Like one in earnest haste to get away,", "Rose, and with hands lifted towards his face", "Round both his ears up from his shoulders drew", "His swaddling clothes, and--'What mean you to do", "", "'With me, you unkind God?'--said Mercury:", "'Is it about these cows you tease me so?", "I wish the race of cows were perished!--I", "Stole not your cows--I do not even know", "What things cows are. Alas! I well may sigh", "That since I came into this world of woe,", "I should have ever heard the name of one--", "But I appeal to the Saturnian's throne.'", "", "Thus Phoebus and the vagrant Mercury", "Talked without coming to an explanation,", "With adverse purpose. As for Phoebus, he", "Sought not revenge, but only information,", "And Hermes tried with lies and roguery", "To cheat Apollo.--But when no evasion", "Served--for the cunning one his match had found--", "He paced on first over the sandy ground.", "", "...", "He of the Silver Bow the child of Jove", "Followed behind, till to their heavenly Sire", "Came both his children, beautiful as Love,", "And from his equal balance did require", "A judgement in the cause wherein they strove.", "O'er odorous Olympus and its snows", "A murmuring tumult as they came arose,--", "", "And from the folded depths of the great Hill,", "While Hermes and Apollo reverent stood", "Before Jove's throne, the indestructible", "Immortals rushed in mighty multitude;", "And whilst their seats in order due they fill,", "The lofty Thunderer in a careless mood", "To Phoebus said:--'Whence drive you this sweet prey,", "This herald-baby, born but yesterday?--", "", "'A most important subject, trifler, this", "To lay before the Gods!'--'Nay, Father, nay,", "When you have understood the business,", "Say not that I alone am fond of prey.", "I found this little boy in a recess", "Under Cyllene's mountains far away--", "A manifest and most apparent thief,", "A scandalmonger beyond all belief.", "", "'I never saw his like either in Heaven", "Or upon earth for knavery or craft:--", "Out of the field my cattle yester-even,", "By the low shore on which the loud sea laughed,", "He right down to the river-ford had driven;", "And mere astonishment would make you daft", "To see the double kind of footsteps strange", "He has impressed wherever he did range.", "", "'The cattle's track on the black dust, full well", "Is evident, as if they went towards", "The place from which they came--that asphodel", "Meadow, in which I feed my many herds,--", "HIS steps were most incomprehensible--", "I know not how I can describe in words", "Those tracks--he could have gone along the sands", "Neither upon his feet nor on his hands;--", "", "'He must have had some other stranger mode", "Of moving on: those vestiges immense,", "Far as I traced them on the sandy road,", "Seemed like the trail of oak-toppings:--but thence", "No mark nor track denoting where they trod", "The hard ground gave:--but, working at his fence,", "A mortal hedger saw him as he passed", "To Pylos, with the cows, in fiery haste.", "", "'I found that in the dark he quietly", "Had sacrificed some cows, and before light", "Had thrown the ashes all dispersedly", "About the road--then, still as gloomy night,", "Had crept into his cradle, either eye", "Rubbing, and cogitating some new sleight.", "No eagle could have seen him as he lay", "Hid in his cavern from the peering day.", "", "'I taxed him with the fact, when he averred", "Most solemnly that he did neither see", "Nor even had in any manner heard", "Of my lost cows, whatever things cows be;", "Nor could he tell, though offered a reward,", "Not even who could tell of them to me.'", "So speaking, Phoebus sate; and Hermes then", "Addressed the Supreme Lord of Gods and Men:--", "", "'Great Father, you know clearly beforehand", "That all which I shall say to you is sooth;", "I am a most veracious person, and", "Totally unacquainted with untruth.", "At sunrise Phoebus came, but with no band", "Of Gods to bear him witness, in great wrath,", "To my abode, seeking his heifers there,", "And saying that I must show him where they are,", "", "'Or he would hurl me down the dark abyss.", "I know that every Apollonian limb", "Is clothed with speed and might and manliness,", "As a green bank with flowers--but unlike him", "I was born yesterday, and you may guess", "He well knew this when he indulged the whim", "Of bullying a poor little new-born thing", "That slept, and never thought of cow-driving.", "", "'Am I like a strong fellow who steals kine?", "Believe me, dearest Father--such you are--", "This driving of the herds is none of mine;", "Across my threshold did I wander ne'er,", "So may I thrive! I reverence the divine", "Sun and the Gods, and I love you, and care", "Even for this hard accuser--who must know", "I am as innocent as they or you.", "", "'I swear by these most gloriously-wrought portals", "(It is, you will allow, an oath of might)", "Through which the multitude of the Immortals", "Pass and repass forever, day and night,", "Devising schemes for the affairs of mortals--", "I am guiltless; and I will requite,", "Although mine enemy be great and strong,", "His cruel threat--do thou defend the young!'", "", "So speaking, the Cyllenian Argiphont", "Winked, as if now his adversary was fitted:--", "And Jupiter, according to his wont,", "Laughed heartily to hear the subtle-witted", "Infant give such a plausible account,", "And every word a lie. But he remitted", "Judgement at present--and his exhortation", "Was, to compose the affair by arbitration.", "", "And they by mighty Jupiter were bidden", "To go forth with a single purpose both,", "Neither the other chiding nor yet chidden:", "And Mercury with innocence and truth", "To lead the way, and show where he had hidden", "The mighty heifers.--Hermes, nothing loth,", "Obeyed the Aegis-bearer's will--for he", "Is able to persuade all easily.", "", "These lovely children of Heaven's highest Lord", "Hastened to Pylos and the pastures wide", "And lofty stalls by the Alphean ford,", "Where wealth in the mute night is multiplied", "With silent growth. Whilst Hermes drove the herd", "Out of the stony cavern, Phoebus spied", "The hides of those the little babe had slain,", "Stretched on the precipice above the plain.", "", "'How was it possible,' then Phoebus said,", "'That you, a little child, born yesterday,", "A thing on mother's milk and kisses fed,", "Could two prodigious heifers ever flay?", "Even I myself may well hereafter dread", "Your prowess, offspring of Cyllenian May,", "When you grow strong and tall.'--He spoke, and bound", "Stiff withy bands the infant's wrists around.", "", "He might as well have bound the oxen wild;", "The withy bands, though starkly interknit,", "Fell at the feet of the immortal child,", "Loosened by some device of his quick wit.", "Phoebus perceived himself again beguiled,", "And stared--while Hermes sought some hole or pit,", "Looking askance and winking fast as thought,", "Where he might hide himself and not be caught.", "", "Sudden he changed his plan, and with strange skill", "Subdued the strong Latonian, by the might", "Of winning music, to his mightier will;", "His left hand held the lyre, and in his right", "The plectrum struck the chords--unconquerable", "Up from beneath his hand in circling flight", "The gathering music rose--and sweet as Love", "The penetrating notes did live and move", "", "Within the heart of great Apollo--he", "Listened with all his soul, and laughed for pleasure.", "Close to his side stood harping fearlessly", "The unabashed boy; and to the measure", "Of the sweet lyre, there followed loud and free", "His joyous voice; for he unlocked the treasure", "Of his deep song, illustrating the birth", "Of the bright Gods, and the dark desert Earth:", "", "And how to the Immortals every one", "A portion was assigned of all that is;", "But chief Mnemosyne did Maia's son", "Clothe in the light of his loud melodies;--", "And, as each God was born or had begun,", "He in their order due and fit degrees", "Sung of his birth and being--and did move", "Apollo to unutterable love.", "", "These words were winged with his swift delight:", "'You heifer-stealing schemer, well do you", "Deserve that fifty oxen should requite", "Such minstrelsies as I have heard even now.", "Comrade of feasts, little contriving wight,", "One of your secrets I would gladly know,", "Whether the glorious power you now show forth", "Was folded up within you at your birth,", "", "'Or whether mortal taught or God inspired", "The power of unpremeditated song?", "Many divinest sounds have I admired,", "The Olympian Gods and mortal men among;", "But such a strain of wondrous, strange, untired,", "And soul-awakening music, sweet and strong,", "Yet did I never hear except from thee,", "Offspring of May, impostor Mercury!", "", "'What Muse, what skill, what unimagined use,", "What exercise of subtlest art, has given", "Thy songs such power?--for those who hear may choose", "From three, the choicest of the gifts of Heaven,", "Delight, and love, and sleep,--sweet sleep, whose dews", "Are sweeter than the balmy tears of even:--", "And I, who speak this praise, am that Apollo", "Whom the Olympian Muses ever follow:", "", "'And their delight is dance, and the blithe noise", "Of song and overflowing poesy;", "And sweet, even as desire, the liquid voice", "Of pipes, that fills the clear air thrillingly;", "But never did my inmost soul rejoice", "In this dear work of youthful revelry", "As now. I wonder at thee, son of Jove;", "Thy harpings and thy song are soft as love.", "", "'Now since thou hast, although so very small,", "Science of arts so glorious, thus I swear,--", "And let this cornel javelin, keen and tall,", "Witness between us what I promise here,--", "That I will lead thee to the Olympian Hall,", "Honoured and mighty, with thy mother dear,", "And many glorious gifts in joy will give thee,", "And even at the end will ne'er deceive thee.'", "", "To whom thus Mercury with prudent speech:--", "'Wisely hast thou inquired of my skill:", "I envy thee no thing I know to teach", "Even this day:--for both in word and will", "I would be gentle with thee; thou canst reach", "All things in thy wise spirit, and thy sill", "Is highest in Heaven among the sons of Jove,", "Who loves thee in the fulness of his love.", "", "'The Counsellor Supreme has given to thee", "Divinest gifts, out of the amplitude", "Of his profuse exhaustless treasury;", "By thee, 'tis said, the depths are understood", "Of his far voice; by thee the mystery", "Of all oracular fates,--and the dread mood", "Of the diviner is breathed up; even I--", "A child--perceive thy might and majesty.", "", "'Thou canst seek out and compass all that wit", "Can find or teach;--yet since thou wilt, come take", "The lyre--be mine the glory giving it--", "Strike the sweet chords, and sing aloud, and wake", "Thy joyous pleasure out of many a fit", "Of tranced sound--and with fleet fingers make", "Thy liquid-voiced comrade talk with thee,--", "It can talk measured music eloquently.", "", "'Then bear it boldly to the revel loud,", "Love-wakening dance, or feast of solemn state,", "A joy by night or day--for those endowed", "With art and wisdom who interrogate", "It teaches, babbling in delightful mood", "All things which make the spirit most elate,", "Soothing the mind with sweet familiar play,", "Chasing the heavy shadows of dismay.", "", "'To those who are unskilled in its sweet tongue,", "Though they should question most impetuously", "Its hidden soul, it gossips something wrong--", "Some senseless and impertinent reply.", "But thou who art as wise as thou art strong", "Canst compass all that thou desirest. I", "Present thee with this music-flowing shell,", "Knowing thou canst interrogate it well.", "", "'And let us two henceforth together feed,", "On this green mountain-slope and pastoral plain,", "The herds in litigation--they will breed", "Quickly enough to recompense our pain,", "If to the bulls and cows we take good heed;--", "And thou, though somewhat over fond of gain,", "Grudge me not half the profit.'--Having spoke,", "The shell he proffered, and Apollo took;", "", "And gave him in return the glittering lash,", "Installing him as herdsman;--from the look", "Of Mercury then laughed a joyous flash.", "And then Apollo with the plectrum strook", "The chords, and from beneath his hands a crash", "Of mighty sounds rushed up, whose music shook", "The soul with sweetness, and like an adept", "His sweeter voice a just accordance kept.", "", "The herd went wandering o'er the divine mead,", "Whilst these most beautiful Sons of Jupiter", "Won their swift way up to the snowy head", "Of white Olympus, with the joyous lyre", "Soothing their journey; and their father dread", "Gathered them both into familiar", "Affection sweet,--and then, and now, and ever,", "Hermes must love Him of the Golden Quiver,", "", "To whom he gave the lyre that sweetly sounded,", "Which skilfully he held and played thereon.", "He piped the while, and far and wide rebounded", "The echo of his pipings; every one", "Of the Olympians sat with joy astounded;", "While he conceived another piece of fun,", "One of his old tricks--which the God of Day", "Perceiving, said:--'I fear thee, Son of May;--", "", "'I fear thee and thy sly chameleon spirit,", "Lest thou should steal my lyre and crooked bow;", "This glory and power thou dost from Jove inherit,", "To teach all craft upon the earth below;", "Thieves love and worship thee--it is thy merit", "To make all mortal business ebb and flow", "By roguery:--now, Hermes, if you dare", "By sacred Styx a mighty oath to swear", "", "'That you will never rob me, you will do", "A thing extremely pleasing to my heart.'", "Then Mercury swore by the Stygian dew,", "That he would never steal his bow or dart,", "Or lay his hands on what to him was due,", "Or ever would employ his powerful art", "Against his Pythian fane. Then Phoebus swore", "There was no God or Man whom he loved more.", "", "'And I will give thee as a good-will token,", "The beautiful wand of wealth and happiness;", "A perfect three-leaved rod of gold unbroken,", "Whose magic will thy footsteps ever bless;", "And whatsoever by Jove's voice is spoken", "Of earthly or divine from its recess,", "It, like a loving soul, to thee will speak,", "And more than this, do thou forbear to seek.", "", "'For, dearest child, the divinations high", "Which thou requirest, 'tis unlawful ever", "That thou, or any other deity", "Should understand--and vain were the endeavour;", "For they are hidden in Jove's mind, and I,", "In trust of them, have sworn that I would never", "Betray the counsels of Jove's inmost will", "To any God--the oath was terrible.", "", "'Then, golden-wanded brother, ask me not", "To speak the fates by Jupiter designed;", "But be it mine to tell their various lot", "To the unnumbered tribes of human-kind.", "Let good to these, and ill to those be wrought", "As I dispense--but he who comes consigned", "By voice and wings of perfect augury", "To my great shrine, shall find avail in me.", "", "'Him will I not deceive, but will assist;", "But he who comes relying on such birds", "As chatter vainly, who would strain and twist", "The purpose of the Gods with idle words,", "And deems their knowledge light, he shall have missed", "His road--whilst I among my other hoards", "His gifts deposit. Yet, O son of May,", "I have another wondrous thing to say.", "", "'There are three Fates, three virgin Sisters, who", "Rejoicing in their wind-outspeeding wings,", "Their heads with flour snowed over white and new,", "Sit in a vale round which Parnassus flings", "Its circling skirts--from these I have learned true", "Vaticinations of remotest things.", "My father cared not. Whilst they search out dooms,", "They sit apart and feed on honeycombs.", "", "'They, having eaten the fresh honey, grow", "Drunk with divine enthusiasm, and utter", "With earnest willingness the truth they know;", "But if deprived of that sweet food, they mutter", "All plausible delusions;--these to you", "I give;--if you inquire, they will not stutter;", "Delight your own soul with them:--any man", "You would instruct may profit if he can.", "", "'Take these and the fierce oxen, Maia's child--", "O'er many a horse and toil-enduring mule,", "O'er jagged-jawed lions, and the wild", "White-tusked boars, o'er all, by field or pool,", "Of cattle which the mighty Mother mild", "Nourishes in her bosom, thou shalt rule--", "Thou dost alone the veil from death uplift--", "Thou givest not--yet this is a great gift.'", "", "Thus King Apollo loved the child of May", "In truth, and Jove covered their love with joy.", "Hermes with Gods and Men even from that day", "Mingled, and wrought the latter much annoy,", "And little profit, going far astray", "Through the dun night. Farewell, delightful Boy,", "Of Jove and Maia sprung,--never by me,", "Nor thou, nor other songs, shall unremembered be." ], "linecount": "777" }, { "title": "Spirit of Plato", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE GREEK.", "", "Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb?", "To what sublime and star-ypaven home", "Floatest thou?--", "I am the image of swift Plato's spirit,", "Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit", "His corpse below." ], "linecount": "7" }, { "title": "Circumstance", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE GREEK.", "", "A man who was about to hang himself,", "Finding a purse, then threw away his rope;", "The owner, coming to reclaim his pelf,", "The halter found; and used it. So is Hope", "Changed for Despair--one laid upon the shelf,", "We take the other. Under Heaven's high cope", "Fortune is God--all you endure and do", "Depends on circumstance as much as you." ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Bion", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.", "", "Ye Dorian woods and waves, lament aloud,--", "Augment your tide, O streams, with fruitless tears,", "For the beloved Bion is no more.", "Let every tender herb and plant and flower,", "From each dejected bud and drooping bloom,", "Shed dews of liquid sorrow, and with breath", "Of melancholy sweetness on the wind", "Diffuse its languid love; let roses blush,", "Anemones grow paler for the loss", "Their dells have known; and thou, O hyacinth,", "Utter thy legend now--yet more, dumb flower,", "Than 'Ah! alas!'--thine is no common grief--", "Bion the is no more." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "From the Greek of Moschus", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Tan ala tan glaukan otan onemos atrema Balle--k.t.l.", "", "When winds that move not its calm surface sweep", "The azure sea, I love the land no more;", "The smiles of the serene and tranquil deep", "Tempt my unquiet mind.--But when the roar", "Of Ocean's gray abyss resounds, and foam", "Gathers upon the sea, and vast waves burst,", "I turn from the drear aspect to the home", "Of Earth and its deep woods, where, interspersed,", "When winds blow loud, pines make sweet melody.", "Whose house is some lone bark, whose toil the sea,", "Whose prey the wandering fish, an evil lot", "Has chosen.--But I my languid limbs will fling", "Beneath the plane, where the brook's murmuring", "Moves the calm spirit, but disturbs it not." ], "linecount": "15" }, { "title": "Pan, Echo, and the Satyr", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE GREEK OF MOSCHUS.", "", "Pan loved his neighbour Echo--but that child", "Of Earth and Air pined for the Satyr leaping;", "The Satyr loved with wasting madness wild", "The bright nymph Lyda,--and so three went weeping.", "As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the Satyr,", "The Satyr, Lyda; and so love consumed them.--", "And thus to each--which was a woful matter--", "To bear what they inflicted Justice doomed them;", "For, inasmuch as each might hate the lover,", "Each, loving, so was hated.--Ye that love not", "Be warned--in thought turn this example over,", "That when ye love, the like return ye prove not." ], "linecount": "13" }, { "title": "Sonnet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE.", "", "DANTE ALIGHIERI TO GUIDO CAVALCANTI:", "", "Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I,", "Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend", "A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly", "With winds at will where'er our thoughts might wend,", "So that no change, nor any evil chance", "Should mar our joyous voyage; but it might be,", "That even satiety should still enhance", "Between our hearts their strict community:", "And that the bounteous wizard then would place", "Vanna and Bice and my gentle love,", "Companions of our wandering, and would grace", "With passionate talk, wherever we might rove,", "Our time, and each were as content and free", "As I believe that thou and I should be." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "The First Canzone of the Convito", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE ITALIAN OF DANTE.", "", "Ye who intelligent the Third Heaven move,", "Hear the discourse which is within my heart,", "Which cannot be declared, it seems so new.", "The Heaven whose course follows your power and art,", "Oh, gentle creatures that ye are! me drew,", "And therefore may I dare to speak to you,", "Even of the life which now I live--and yet", "I pray that ye will hear me when I cry,", "And tell of mine own heart this novelty;", "How the lamenting Spirit moans in it,", "And how a voice there murmurs against her", "Who came on the refulgence of your sphere.", "", "A sweet Thought, which was once the life within", "This heavy heart, man a time and oft", "Went up before our Father's feet, and there", "It saw a glorious Lady throned aloft;", "And its sweet talk of her my soul did win,", "So that I said, 'Thither I too will fare.'", "That Thought is fled, and one doth now appear", "Which tyrannizes me with such fierce stress,", "That my heart trembles--ye may see it leap--", "And on another Lady bids me keep", "Mine eyes, and says--Who would have blessedness", "Let him but look upon that Lady's eyes,", "Let him not fear the agony of sighs.", "", "This lowly Thought, which once would talk with me", "Of a bright seraph sitting crowned on high,", "Found such a cruel foe it died, and so", "My Spirit wept, the grief is hot even now--", "And said, Alas for me! how swift could flee", "That piteous Thought which did my life console!", "And the afflicted one ... questioning", "Mine eyes, if such a Lady saw they never,", "And why they would...", "I said: 'Beneath those eyes might stand for ever", "He whom ... regards must kill with...", "To have known their power stood me in little stead,", "Those eyes have looked on me, and I am dead.'", "", "'Thou art not dead, but thou hast wandered,", "Thou Soul of ours, who thyself dost fret,'", "A Spirit of gentle Love beside me said;", "For that fair Lady, whom thou dost regret,", "Hath so transformed the life which thou hast led,", "Thou scornest it, so worthless art thou made.", "And see how meek, how pitiful, how staid,", "Yet courteous, in her majesty she is.", "And still call thou her Woman in thy thought;", "Her whom, if thou thyself deceivest not,", "Thou wilt behold decked with such loveliness,", "That thou wilt cry only Lord, lo! here", "Thy handmaiden, do what thou wilt with her.", "", "My song, I fear that thou wilt find but few", "Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning", "Of such hard matter dost thou entertain.", "Whence, if by misadventure chance should bring", "Thee to base company, as chance may do,", "Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,", "I prithee comfort thy sweet self again,", "My last delight; tell them that they are dull,", "And bid them own that thou art beautiful." ], "linecount": "61" }, { "title": "Matilda Gathering Flowers", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE PURGATORIO OF DANTE, CANTO 28, LINES 1-51.", "", "And earnest to explore within--around--", "The divine wood, whose thick green living woof", "Tempered the young day to the sight--I wound", "", "Up the green slope, beneath the forest's roof,", "With slow, soft steps leaving the mountain's steep,", "And sought those inmost labyrinths, motion-proof", "", "Against the air, that in that stillness deep", "And solemn, struck upon my forehead bare,", "The slow, soft stroke of a continuous...", "", "In which the ... leaves tremblingly were", "All bent towards that part where earliest", "The sacred hill obscures the morning air.", "", "Yet were they not so shaken from the rest,", "But that the birds, perched on the utmost spray,", "Incessantly renewing their blithe quest,", "", "With perfect joy received the early day,", "Singing within the glancing leaves, whose sound", "Kept a low burden to their roundelay,", "", "Such as from bough to bough gathers around", "The pine forest on bleak Chiassi's shore,", "When Aeolus Sirocco has unbound.", "", "My slow steps had already borne me o'er", "Such space within the antique wood, that I", "Perceived not where I entered any more,--", "", "When, lo! a stream whose little waves went by,", "Bending towards the left through grass that grew", "Upon its bank, impeded suddenly", "", "My going on. Water of purest hue", "On earth, would appear turbid and impure", "Compared with this, whose unconcealing dew,", "", "Dark, dark, yet clear, moved under the obscure", "Eternal shades, whose interwoven looms", "The rays of moon or sunlight ne'er endure.", "", "I moved not with my feet, but mid the glooms", "Pierced with my charmed eye, contemplating", "The mighty multitude of fresh May blooms", "", "Which starred that night, when, even as a thing", "That suddenly, for blank astonishment,", "Charms every sense, and makes all thought take wing,--", "", "A solitary woman! and she went", "Singing and gathering flower after flower,", "With which her way was painted and besprent.", "", "'Bright lady, who, if looks had ever power", "To bear true witness of the heart within,", "Dost bask under the beams of love, come lower", "", "Towards this bank. I prithee let me win", "This much of thee, to come, that I may hear", "Thy song: like Proserpine, in Enna's glen,", "", "Thou seemest to my fancy, singing here", "And gathering flowers, as that fair maiden when", "She lost the Spring, and Ceres her, more dear." ], "linecount": "52" }, { "title": "Sonnet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE ITALIAN OF CAVALCANTI.", "", "GUIDO CAVALCANTI TO DANTE ALIGHIERI:", "", "Returning from its daily quest, my Spirit", "Changed thoughts and vile in thee doth weep to find:", "It grieves me that thy mild and gentle mind", "Those ample virtues which it did inherit", "Has lost. Once thou didst loathe the multitude", "Of blind and madding men--I then loved thee--", "I loved thy lofty songs and that sweet mood", "When thou wert faithful to thyself and me", "I dare not now through thy degraded state", "Own the delight thy strains inspire--in vain", "I seek what once thou wert--we cannot meet", "And we were wont. Again and yet again", "Ponder my words: so the false Spirit shall fly", "And leave to thee thy true integrity." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "Song", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling,", "Cold are the damps on a dying man's brow,--", "Stern are the seas when the wild waves are rolling,", "And sad is the grave where a loved one lies low;", "But colder is scorn from the being who loved thee,", "More stern is the sneer from the friend who has proved thee,", "More sad are the tears when their sorrows have moved thee,", "Which mixed with groans anguish and wild madness flow--", "", "And ah! poor -- has felt all this horror,", "Full long the fallen victim contended with fate:", "'Till a destitute outcast abandoned to sorrow,", "She sought her babe's food at her ruiner's gate--", "Another had charmed the remorseless betrayer,", "He turned laughing aside from her moans and her prayer,", "She said nothing, but wringing the wet from her hair,", "Crossed the dark mountain side, though the hour it was late.", "'Twas on the wild height of the dark Penmanmawr,", "That the form of the wasted -- reclined;", "She shrieked to the ravens that croaked from afar,", "And she sighed to the gusts of the wild sweeping wind.--", "I call not yon rocks where the thunder peals rattle,", "I call not yon clouds where the elements battle,", "But thee, cruel -- I call thee unkind!'--", "", "Then she wreathed in her hair the wild flowers of the mountain,", "And deliriously laughing, a garland entwined,", "She bedewed it with tears, then she hung o'er the fountain,", "And leaving it, cast it a prey to the wind.", "'Ah! go,' she exclaimed, 'when the tempest is yelling,", "'Tis unkind to be cast on the sea that is swelling,", "But I left, a pitiless outcast, my dwelling,", "My garments are torn, so they say is my mind--'", "", "Not long lived --, but over her grave", "Waved the desolate form of a storm-blasted yew,", "Around it no demons or ghosts dare to rave,", "But spirits of peace steep her slumbers in dew.", "Then stay thy swift steps mid the dark mountain heather,", "Though chill blow the wind and severe is the weather,", "For perfidy, traveller! cannot bereave her,", "Of the tears, to the tombs of the innocent due.--" ], "linecount": "39" }, { "title": "Song", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Fierce roars the midnight storm", "O'er the wild mountain,", "Dark clouds the night deform,", "Swift rolls the fountain--", "", "See! o'er yon rocky height,", "Dim mists are flying--", "See by the moon's pale light,", "Poor Laura's dying!", "", "Shame and remorse shall howl,", "By her false pillow--", "Fiercer than storms that roll,", "O'er the white billow;", "", "No hand her eyes to close,", "When life is flying,", "But she will find repose,", "For Laura's dying!", "", "Then will I seek my love,", "Then will I cheer her,", "Then my esteem will prove,", "When no friend is near her.", "", "On her grave I will lie,", "When life is parted,", "On her grave I will die,", "For the false hearted." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "Sister Rosa: A Ballad", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The death-bell beats!--", "The mountain repeats", "The echoing sound of the knell;", "And the dark Monk now", "Wraps the cowl round his brow,", "As he sits in his lonely cell.", "", "And the cold hand of death", "Chills his shuddering breath,", "As he lists to the fearful lay", "Which the ghosts of the sky,", "As they sweep wildly by,", "Sing to departed day.", "And they sing of the hour", "When the stern fates had power", "To resolve Rosa's form to its clay.", "", "But that hour is past;", "And that hour was the last", "Of peace to the dark Monk's brain.", "Bitter tears, from his eyes, gushed silent and fast;", "And he strove to suppress them in vain.", "", "Then his fair cross of gold he dashed on the floor,", "When the death-knell struck on his ear.--", "'Delight is in store", "For her evermore;", "But for me is fate, horror, and fear.'", "", "Then his eyes wildly rolled,", "When the death-bell tolled,", "And he raged in terrific woe.", "And he stamped on the ground,--", "But when ceased the sound,", "Tears again began to flow.", "", "And the ice of despair", "Chilled the wild throb of care,", "And he sate in mute agony still;", "Till the night-stars shone through the cloudless air,", "And the pale moonbeam slept on the hill.", "", "Then he knelt in his cell:--", "And the horrors of hell", "Were delights to his agonized pain,", "And he prayed to God to dissolve the spell,", "Which else must for ever remain.", "", "And in fervent pray'r he knelt on the ground,", "Till the abbey bell struck One:", "His feverish blood ran chill at the sound:", "A voice hollow and horrible murmured around--", "'The term of thy penance is done!'", "", "Grew dark the night;", "The moonbeam bright", "Waxed faint on the mountain high;", "And, from the black hill,", "Went a voice cold and still,--", "'Monk! thou art free to die.'", "", "Then he rose on his feet,", "And his heart loud did beat,", "And his limbs they were palsied with dread;", "Whilst the grave's clammy dew", "O'er his pale forehead grew;", "And he shuddered to sleep with the dead.", "", "And the wild midnight storm", "Raved around his tall form,", "As he sought the chapel's gloom:", "And the sunk grass did sigh", "To the wind, bleak and high,", "As he searched for the new-made tomb.", "", "And forms, dark and high,", "Seemed around him to fly,", "And mingle their yells with the blast:", "And on the dark wall", "Half-seen shadows did fall,", "As enhorrored he onward passed.", "", "And the storm-fiends wild rave", "O'er the new-made grave,", "And dread shadows linger around.", "The Monk called on God his soul to save,", "And, in horror, sank on the ground.", "", "Then despair nerved his arm", "To dispel the charm,", "And he burst Rosa's coffin asunder.", "And the fierce storm did swell", "More terrific and fell,", "And louder pealed the thunder.", "", "And laughed, in joy, the fiendish throng,", "Mixed with ghosts of the mouldering dead:", "And their grisly wings, as they floated along,", "Whistled in murmurs dread.", "", "And her skeleton form the dead Nun reared", "Which dripped with the chill dew of hell.", "In her half-eaten eyeballs two pale flames appeared,", "And triumphant their gleam on the dark Monk glared,", "As he stood within the cell.", "", "And her lank hand lay on his shuddering brain;", "But each power was nerved by fear.--", "'I never, henceforth, may breathe again;", "Death now ends mine anguished pain.--", "The grave yawns,--we meet there.'", "", "And her skeleton lungs did utter the sound,", "So deadly, so lone, and so fell,", "That in long vibrations shuddered the ground;", "And as the stern notes floated around,", "A deep groan was answered from hell." ], "linecount": "100" }, { "title": "The Drowned Lover", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ah! faint are her limbs, and her footstep is weary,", "Yet far must the desolate wanderer roam;", "Though the tempest is stern, and the mountain is dreary,", "She must quit at deep midnight her pitiless home.", "I see her swift foot dash the dew from the whortle,", "As she rapidly hastes to the green grove of myrtle;", "And I hear, as she wraps round her figure the kirtle,", "'Stay thy boat on the lake,--dearest Henry, I come.'", "", "High swelled in her bosom the throb of affection,", "As lightly her form bounded over the lea,", "And arose in her mind every dear recollection;", "'I come, dearest Henry, and wait but for thee.'", "How sad, when dear hope every sorrow is soothing,", "When sympathy's swell the soft bosom is moving,", "And the mind the mild joys of affection is proving,", "Is the stern voice of fate that bids happiness flee!", "", "Oh! dark lowered the clouds on that horrible eve,", "And the moon dimly gleamed through the tempested air;", "Oh! how could fond visions such softness deceive?", "Oh! how could false hope rend, a bosom so fair?", "Thy love's pallid corse the wild surges are laving,", "O'er his form the fierce swell of the tempest is raving;", "But, fear not, parting spirit; thy goodness is saving,", "In eternity's bowers, a seat for thee there." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "Fragment", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Yes! all is past--swift time has fled away,", "Yet its swell pauses on my sickening mind;", "How long will horror nerve this frame of clay?", "I'm dead, and lingers yet my soul behind.", "Oh! powerful Fate, revoke thy deadly spell,", "And yet that may not ever, ever be,", "Heaven will not smile upon the work of Hell;", "Ah! no, for Heaven cannot smile on me;", "Fate, envious Fate, has sealed my wayward destiny.", "", "I sought the cold brink of the midnight surge,", "I sighed beneath its wave to hide my woes,", "The rising tempest sung a funeral dirge,", "And on the blast a frightful yell arose.", "Wild flew the meteors o'er the maddened main,", "Wilder did grief athwart my bosom glare;", "Stilled was the unearthly howling, and a strain,", "Swelled mid the tumult of the battling air,", "'Twas like a spirit's song, but yet more soft and fair.", "", "I met a maniac--like he was to me,", "I said--'Poor victim, wherefore dost thou roam?", "And canst thou not contend with agony,", "That thus at midnight thou dost quit thine home?'", "'Ah there she sleeps: cold is her bloodless form,", "And I will go to slumber in her grave;", "And then our ghosts, whilst raves the maddened storm,", "Will sweep at midnight o'er the wildered wave;", "Wilt thou our lowly beds with tears of pity lave?'", "", "'Ah! no, I cannot shed the pitying tear,", "This breast is cold, this heart can feel no more--", "But I can rest me on thy chilling bier,", "Can shriek in horror to the tempest's roar.'" ], "linecount": "31" }, { "title": "Stanza From a Translation of the Marseillaise Hymn", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Tremble, Kings despised of man!", "Ye traitors to your Country,", "Tremble! Your parricidal plan", "At length shall meet its destiny...", "We all are soldiers fit to fight,", "But if we sink in glory's night", "Our mother Earth will give ye new", "The brilliant pathway to pursue", "Which leads to Death or Victory..." ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "Bigotry's Victim", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,", "The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?", "When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind", "Repose trust in his footsteps of air?", "No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair,", "The monster transfixes his prey,", "On the sand flows his life-blood away;", "Whilst India's rocks to his death-yells reply,", "Protracting the horrible harmony.", "", "Yet the fowl of the desert, when danger encroaches,", "Dares fearless to perish defending her brood,", "Though the fiercest of cloud-piercing tyrants approaches", "Thirsting--ay, thirsting for blood;", "And demands, like mankind, his brother for food;", "Yet more lenient, more gentle than they;", "For hunger, not glory, the prey", "Must perish. Revenge does not howl in the dead.", "Nor ambition with fame crown the murderer's head.", "", "Though weak as the lama that bounds on the mountains,", "And endued not with fast-fleeting footsteps of air,", "Yet, yet will I draw from the purest of fountains,", "Though a fiercer than tiger is there.", "Though, more dreadful than death, it scatters despair,", "Though its shadow eclipses the day,", "And the darkness of deepest dismay", "Spreads the influence of soul-chilling terror around,", "And lowers on the corpses, that rot on the ground.", "", "They came to the fountain to draw from its stream", "Waves too pure, too celestial, for mortals to see;", "They bathed for awhile in its silvery beam,", "Then perished, and perished like me.", "For in vain from the grasp of the Bigot I flee;", "The most tenderly loved of my soul", "Are slaves to his hated control.", "He pursues me, he blasts me! 'Tis in vain that I fly:", "What remains, but to curse him,--to curse him and die?" ], "linecount": "36" }, { "title": "On an Icicle That Clung to the Grass of a Grave", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Oh! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes,", "Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair,", "In which the warm current of love never freezes,", "As it rises unmingled with selfishness there,", "Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care,", "Might dissolve the dim icedrop, might bid it arise,", "Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies.", "", "Or where the stern warrior, his country defending,", "Dares fearless the dark-rolling battle to pour,", "Or o'er the fell corpse of a dread tyrant bending,", "Where patriotism red with his guilt-reeking gore", "Plants Liberty's flag on the slave-peopled shore,", "With victory's cry, with the shout of the free,", "Let it fly, taintless Spirit, to mingle with thee.", "", "For I found the pure gem, when the daybeam returning,", "Ineffectual gleams on the snow-covered plain,", "When to others the wished-for arrival of morning", "Brings relief to long visions of soul-racking pain;", "But regret is an insult--to grieve is in vain:", "And why should we grieve that a spirit so fair", "Seeks Heaven to mix with its own kindred there?", "", "But still 'twas some Spirit of kindness descending", "To share in the load of mortality's woe,", "Who over thy lowly-built sepulchre bending", "Bade sympathy's tenderest teardrop to flow.", "Not for THEE soft compassion celestials did know,", "But if ANGELS can weep, sure MAN may repine,", "May weep in mute grief o'er thy low-laid shrine.", "", "And did I then say, for the altar of glory,", "That the earliest, the loveliest of flowers I'd entwine,", "Though with millions of blood-reeking victims 'twas gory,", "Though the tears of the widow polluted its shrine,", "Though around it the orphans, the fatherless pine?", "Oh! Fame, all thy glories I'd yield for a tear", "To shed on the grave of a heart so sincere." ], "linecount": "35" }, { "title": "Love", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Why is it said thou canst not live", "In a youthful breast and fair,", "Since thou eternal life canst give,", "Canst bloom for ever there?", "Since withering pain no power possessed,", "Nor age, to blanch thy vermeil hue,", "Nor time's dread victor, death, confessed,", "Though bathed with his poison dew,", "Still thou retain'st unchanging bloom,", "Fixed tranquil, even in the tomb.", "And oh! when on the blest, reviving,", "The day-star dawns of love,", "Each energy of soul surviving", "More vivid, soars above,", "Hast thou ne'er felt a rapturous thrill,", "Like June's warm breath, athwart thee fly,", "O'er each idea then to steal,", "When other passions die?", "Felt it in some wild noonday dream,", "When sitting by the lonely stream,", "Where Silence says, 'Mine is the dell';", "And not a murmur from the plain,", "And not an echo from the fell,", "Disputes her silent reign." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "To a Star", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Sweet star, which gleaming o'er the darksome scene", "Through fleecy clouds of silvery radiance fliest,", "Spanglet of light on evening's shadowy veil,", "Which shrouds the day-beam from the waveless lake,", "Lighting the hour of sacred love; more sweet", "Than the expiring morn-star's paly fires:--", "Sweet star! When wearied Nature sinks to sleep,", "And all is hushed,--all, save the voice of Love,", "Whose broken murmurings swell the balmy blast", "Of soft Favonius, which at intervals", "Sighs in the ear of stillness, art thou aught but", "Lulling the slaves of interest to repose", "With that mild, pitying gaze? Oh, I would look", "In thy dear beam till every bond of sense", "Became enamoured--" ], "linecount": "15" }, { "title": "To Mary Who Died in This Opinion", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Maiden, quench the glare of sorrow", "Struggling in thine haggard eye:", "Firmness dare to borrow", "From the wreck of destiny;", "For the ray morn's bloom revealing", "Can never boast so bright an hue", "As that which mocks concealing,", "And sheds its loveliest light on you.", "", "Yet is the tie departed", "Which bound thy lovely soul to bliss?", "Has it left thee broken-hearted", "In a world so cold as this?", "Yet, though, fainting fair one,", "Sorrow's self thy cup has given,", "Dream thou'lt meet thy dear one,", "Never more to part, in Heaven.", "", "Existence would I barter", "For a dream so dear as thine,", "And smile to die a martyr", "On affection's bloodless shrine.", "Nor would I change for pleasure", "That withered hand and ashy cheek,", "If my heart enshrined a treasure", "Such as forces thine to break." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "A Tale of Society As It Is: From Facts, 1811", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "She was an aged woman; and the years", "Which she had numbered on her toilsome way", "Had bowed her natural powers to decay.", "She was an aged woman; yet the ray", "Which faintly glimmered through her starting tears,", "Pressed into light by silent misery,", "Hath soul's imperishable energy.", "She was a cripple, and incapable", "To add one mite to gold-fed luxury:", "And therefore did her spirit dimly feel", "That poverty, the crime of tainting stain,", "Would merge her in its depths, never to rise again.", "", "One only son's love had supported her.", "She long had struggled with infirmity,", "Lingering to human life-scenes; for to die,", "When fate has spared to rend some mental tie,", "Would many wish, and surely fewer dare.", "But, when the tyrant's bloodhounds forced the child", "For his cursed power unhallowed arms to wield--", "Bend to another's will--become a thing", "More senseless than the sword of battlefield--", "Then did she feel keen sorrow's keenest sting;", "And many years had passed ere comfort they would bring.", "", "For seven years did this poor woman live", "In unparticipated solitude.", "Thou mightst have seen her in the forest rude", "Picking the scattered remnants of its wood.", "If human, thou mightst then have learned to grieve.", "The gleanings of precarious charity", "Her scantiness of food did scarce supply.", "The proofs of an unspeaking sorrow dwelt", "Within her ghastly hollowness of eye:", "Each arrow of the season's change she felt.", "Yet still she groans, ere yet her race were run,", "One only hope: it was--once more to see her son.", "", "It was an eve of June, when every star", "Spoke peace from Heaven to those on earth that live.", "She rested on the moor. 'Twas such an eve", "When first her soul began indeed to grieve:", "Then he was here; now he is very far.", "The sweetness of the balmy evening", "A sorrow o'er her aged soul did fling,", "Yet not devoid of rapture's mingled tear:", "A balm was in the poison of the sting.", "This aged sufferer for many a year", "Had never felt such comfort. She suppressed", "A sigh--and turning round, clasped William to her breast!", "", "And, though his form was wasted by the woe", "Which tyrants on their victims love to wreak,", "Though his sunk eyeballs and his faded cheek", "Of slavery's violence and scorn did speak,", "Yet did the aged woman's bosom glow.", "The vital fire seemed re-illumed within", "By this sweet unexpected welcoming.", "Oh, consummation of the fondest hope", "That ever soared on Fancy's wildest wing!", "Oh, tenderness that foundst so sweet a scope!", "Prince who dost pride thee on thy mighty sway,", "When THOU canst feel such love, thou shalt be great as they!", "", "Her son, compelled, the country's foes had fought,", "Had bled in battle; and the stern control", "Which ruled his sinews and coerced his soul", "Utterly poisoned life's unmingled bowl,", "And unsubduable evils on him brought.", "He was the shadow of the lusty child", "Who, when the time of summer season smiled,", "Did earn for her a meal of honesty,", "And with affectionate discourse beguiled", "The keen attacks of pain and poverty;", "Till Power, as envying her this only joy,", "From her maternal bosom tore the unhappy boy.", "", "And now cold charity's unwelcome dole", "Was insufficient to support the pair;", "And they would perish rather than would bear", "The law's stern slavery, and the insolent stare", "With which law loves to rend the poor man's soul--", "The bitter scorn, the spirit-sinking noise", "Of heartless mirth which women, men, and boys", "Wake in this scene of legal misery.", "", "..." ], "linecount": "80" }, { "title": "To Ireland", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Bear witness, Erin! when thine injured isle", "Sees summer on its verdant pastures smile,", "Its cornfields waving in the winds that sweep", "The billowy surface of thy circling deep!", "Thou tree whose shadow o'er the Atlantic gave", "Peace, wealth and beauty, to its friendly wave, its blossoms fade,", "And blighted are the leaves that cast its shade;", "Whilst the cold hand gathers its scanty fruit,", "Whose chillness struck a canker to its root.", "", "I could stand", "Upon thy shores, O Erin, and could count", "The billows that, in their unceasing swell,", "Dash on thy beach, and every wave might seem", "An instrument in Time the giant's grasp,", "To burst the barriers of Eternity.", "Proceed, thou giant, conquering and to conquer;", "March on thy lonely way! The nations fall", "Beneath thy noiseless footstep; pyramids", "That for millenniums have defied the blast,", "And laughed at lightnings, thou dost crush to nought.", "Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,", "Is but the fungus of a winter day", "That thy light footstep presses into dust.", "Thou art a conqueror, Time; all things give way", "Before thee but the 'fixed and virtuous will';", "The sacred sympathy of soul which was", "When thou wert not, which shall be when thou perishest.", "", "..." ], "linecount": "28" }, { "title": "On Robert Emmet's Grave", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "...", "", "No trump tells thy virtues--the grave where they rest", "With thy dust shall remain unpolluted by fame,", "Till thy foes, by the world and by fortune caressed,", "Shall pass like a mist from the light of thy name.", "", "When the storm-cloud that lowers o'er the day-beam is gone,", "Unchanged, unextinguished its life-spring will shine;", "When Erin has ceased with their memory to groan,", "She will smile through the tears of revival on thine." ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "To Harriet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "It is not blasphemy to hope that Heaven", "More perfectly will give those nameless joys", "Which throb within the pulses of the blood", "And sweeten all that bitterness which Earth", "Infuses in the heaven-born soul. O thou", "Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path", "Which this lone spirit travelled, drear and cold,", "Yet swiftly leading to those awful limits", "Which mark the bounds of Time and of the space", "When Time shall be no more; wilt thou not turn", "Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me,", "Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven,", "And Heaven is Earth?--will not thy glowing cheek,", "Glowing with soft suffusion, rest on mine,", "And breathe magnetic sweetness through the frame", "Of my corporeal nature, through the soul", "Now knit with these fine fibres? I would give", "The longest and the happiest day that fate", "Has marked on my existence but to feel", "ONE soul-reviving kiss...O thou most dear,", "'Tis an assurance that this Earth is Heaven,", "And Heaven the flower of that untainted seed", "Which springeth here beneath such love as ours.", "Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve,", "But ours shall not be mortal! The cold hand", "Of Time may chill the love of earthly minds", "Half frozen now; the frigid intercourse", "Of common souls lives but a summer's day;", "It dies, where it arose, upon this earth.", "But ours! oh, 'tis the stretch of Fancy's hope", "To portray its continuance as now,", "Warm, tranquil, spirit-healing; nor when age", "Has tempered these wild ecstasies, and given", "A soberer tinge to the luxurious glow", "Which blazing on devotion's pinnacle", "Makes virtuous passion supersede the power", "Of reason; nor when life's aestival sun", "To deeper manhood shall have ripened me;", "Nor when some years have added judgement's store", "To all thy woman sweetness, all the fire", "Which throbs in thine enthusiast heart; not then", "Shall holy friendship (for what other name", "May love like ours assume?), not even then", "Shall Custom so corrupt, or the cold forms", "Of this desolate world so harden us,", "As when we think of the dear love that binds", "Our souls in soft communion, while we know", "Each other's thoughts and feelings, can we say", "Unblushingly a heartless compliment,", "Praise, hate, or love with the unthinking world,", "Or dare to cut the unrelaxing nerve", "That knits our love to virtue. Can those eyes,", "Beaming with mildest radiance on my heart", "To purify its purity, e'er bend", "To soothe its vice or consecrate its fears?", "Never, thou second Self! Is confidence", "So vain in virtue that I learn to doubt", "The mirror even of Truth? Dark flood of Time,", "Roll as it listeth thee; I measure not", "By month or moments thy ambiguous course.", "Another may stand by me on thy brink,,", "And watch the bubble whirled beyond his ken,", "Which pauses at my feet. The sense of love,", "The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought", "Prolong my being; if I wake no more,", "My life more actual living will contain", "Than some gray veteran's of the world's cold school,", "Whose listless hours unprofitably roll", "By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed,", "Virtue and Love! unbending Fortitude,", "Freedom, Devotedness and Purity!", "That life my Spirit consecrates to you." ], "linecount": "72" }, { "title": "Sonnet. to a Balloon Laden With Knowledge", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Bright ball of flame that through the gloom of even", "Silently takest thine aethereal way,", "And with surpassing glory dimm'st each ray", "Twinkling amid the dark blue depths of Heaven,--", "Unlike the fire thou bearest, soon shalt thou", "Fade like a meteor in surrounding gloom,", "Whilst that, unquenchable, is doomed to glow", "A watch-light by the patriot's lonely tomb;", "A ray of courage to the oppressed and poor;", "A spark, though gleaming on the hovel's hearth,", "Which through the tyrant's gilded domes shall roar;", "A beacon in the darkness of the Earth;", "A sun which, o'er the renovated scene,", "Shall dart like Truth where Falsehood yet has been." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "The Devil's Walk. a Ballad", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Once, early in the morning, Beelzebub arose,", "With care his sweet person adorning,", "He put on his Sunday clothes.", "", "He drew on a boot to hide his hoof,", "He drew on a glove to hide his claw,", "His horns were concealed by a Bras Chapeau,", "And the Devil went forth as natty a Beau", "As Bond-street ever saw.", "", "He sate him down, in London town,", "Before earth's morning ray;", "With a favourite imp he began to chat,", "On religion, and scandal, this and that,", "Until the dawn of day.", "", "And then to St. James's Court he went,", "And St. Paul's Church he took on his way;", "He was mighty thick with every Saint,", "Though they were formal and he was gay.", "", "The Devil was an agriculturist,", "And as bad weeds quickly grow,", "In looking over his farm, I wist,", "He wouldn't find cause for woe.", "", "He peeped in each hole, to each chamber stole,", "His promising live-stock to view;", "Grinning applause, he just showed them his claws,", "And they shrunk with affright from his ugly sight,", "Whose work they delighted to do.", "", "Satan poked his red nose into crannies so small", "One would think that the innocents fair,", "Poor lambkins! were just doing nothing at all", "But settling some dress or arranging some ball,", "But the Devil saw deeper there.", "", "A Priest, at whose elbow the Devil during prayer", "Sate familiarly, side by side,", "Declared that, if the Tempter were there,", "His presence he would not abide.", "Ah! ah! thought Old Nick, that's a very stale trick,", "For without the Devil, O favourite of Evil,", "In your carriage you would not ride.", "", "Satan next saw a brainless King,", "Whose house was as hot as his own;", "Many Imps in attendance were there on the wing,", "They flapped the pennon and twisted the sting,", "Close by the very Throne.", "", "Ah! ah! thought Satan, the pasture is good,", "My Cattle will here thrive better than others;", "They dine on news of human blood,", "They sup on the groans of the dying and dead,", "And supperless never will go to bed;", "Which will make them fat as their brothers.", "", "Fat as the Fiends that feed on blood,", "Fresh and warm from the fields of Spain,", "Where Ruin ploughs her gory way,", "Where the shoots of earth are nipped in the bud,", "Where Hell is the Victor's prey,", "Its glory the meed of the slain.", "", "Fat--as the Death-birds on Erin's shore,", "That glutted themselves in her dearest gore,", "And flitted round Castlereagh,", "When they snatched the Patriot's heart, that HIS grasp", "Had torn from its widow's maniac clasp,", "--And fled at the dawn of day.", "", "Fat--as the Reptiles of the tomb,", "That riot in corruption's spoil,", "That fret their little hour in gloom,", "And creep, and live the while.", "", "Fat as that Prince's maudlin brain,", "Which, addled by some gilded toy,", "Tired, gives his sweetmeat, and again", "Cries for it, like a humoured boy.", "", "For he is fat,--his waistcoat gay,", "When strained upon a levee day,", "Scarce meets across his princely paunch;", "And pantaloons are like half-moons", "Upon each brawny haunch.", "", "How vast his stock of calf! when plenty", "Had filled his empty head and heart,", "Enough to satiate foplings twenty,", "Could make his pantaloon seams start.", "", "The Devil (who sometimes is called Nature),", "For men of power provides thus well,", "Whilst every change and every feature,", "Their great original can tell.", "", "Satan saw a lawyer a viper slay,", "That crawled up the leg of his table,", "It reminded him most marvellously", "Of the story of Cain and Abel.", "", "The wealthy yeoman, as he wanders", "His fertile fields among,", "And on his thriving cattle ponders,", "Counts his sure gains, and hums a song;", "Thus did the Devil, through earth walking,", "Hum low a hellish song.", "", "For they thrive well whose garb of gore", "Is Satan's choicest livery,", "And they thrive well who from the poor", "Have snatched the bread of penury,", "And heap the houseless wanderer's store", "On the rank pile of luxury.", "", "The Bishops thrive, though they are big;", "The Lawyers thrive, though they are thin;", "For every gown, and every wig,", "Hides the safe thrift of Hell within.", "", "Thus pigs were never counted clean,", "Although they dine on finest corn;", "And cormorants are sin-like lean,", "Although they eat from night to morn.", "", "Oh! why is the Father of Hell in such glee,", "As he grins from ear to ear?", "Why does he doff his clothes joyfully,", "As he skips, and prances, and flaps his wing,", "As he sidles, leers, and twirls his sting,", "And dares, as he is, to appear?", "", "A statesman passed--alone to him,", "The Devil dare his whole shape uncover,", "To show each feature, every limb,", "Secure of an unchanging lover.", "", "At this known sign, a welcome sight,", "The watchful demons sought their King,", "And every Fiend of the Stygian night,", "Was in an instant on the wing.", "", "Pale Loyalty, his guilt-steeled brow,", "With wreaths of gory laurel crowned:", "The hell-hounds, Murder, Want and Woe,", "Forever hungering, flocked around;", "From Spain had Satan sought their food,", "'Twas human woe and human blood!", "", "Hark! the earthquake's crash I hear,--", "Kings turn pale, and Conquerors start,", "Ruffians tremble in their fear,", "For their Satan doth depart.", "", "This day Fiends give to revelry", "To celebrate their King's return,", "And with delight its Sire to see", "Hell's adamantine limits burn.", "", "But were the Devil's sight as keen", "As Reason's penetrating eye,", "His sulphurous Majesty I ween,", "Would find but little cause for joy.", "", "For the sons of Reason see", "That, ere fate consume the Pole,", "The false Tyrant's cheek shall be", "Bloodless as his coward soul." ], "linecount": "142" }, { "title": "On Leaving London for Wales", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Hail to thee, Cambria! for the unfettered wind", "Which from thy wilds even now methinks I feel,", "Chasing the clouds that roll in wrath behind,", "And tightening the soul's laxest nerves to steel;", "True mountain Liberty alone may heal", "The pain which Custom's obduracies bring,", "And he who dares in fancy even to steal", "One draught from Snowdon's ever sacred spring", "Blots out the unholiest rede of worldly witnessing.", "", "And shall that soul, to selfish peace resigned,", "So soon forget the woe its fellows share?", "Can Snowdon's Lethe from the free-born mind", "So soon the page of injured penury tear?", "Does this fine mass of human passion dare", "To sleep, unhonouring the patriot's fall,", "Or life's sweet load in quietude to bear", "While millions famish even in Luxury's hall,", "And Tyranny, high raised, stern lowers on all?", "", "No, Cambria! never may thy matchless vales", "A heart so false to hope and virtue shield;", "Nor ever may thy spirit-breathing gales", "Waft freshness to the slaves who dare to yield.", "For me!...the weapon that I burn to wield", "I seek amid thy rocks to ruin hurled,", "That Reason's flag may over Freedom's field,", "Symbol of bloodless victory, wave unfurled,", "A meteor-sign of love effulgent o'er the world.", "", "...", "", "Do thou, wild Cambria, calm each struggling thought;", "Cast thy sweet veil of rocks and woods between,", "That by the soul to indignation wrought", "Mountains and dells be mingled with the scene;", "Let me forever be what I have been,", "But not forever at my needy door", "Let Misery linger speechless, pale and lean;", "I am the friend of the unfriended poor,--", "Let me not madly stain their righteous cause in gore." ], "linecount": "37" }, { "title": "The Wandering Jew's Soliloquy", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Is it the Eternal Triune, is it He", "Who dares arrest the wheels of destiny", "And plunge me in the lowest Hell of Hells?", "Will not the lightning's blast destroy my frame?", "Will not steel drink the blood-life where it swells?", "No--let me hie where dark Destruction dwells,", "To rouse her from her deeply caverned lair,", "And, taunting her cursed sluggishness to ire,", "Light long Oblivion's death-torch at its flame", "And calmly mount Annihilation's pyre.", "Tyrant of Earth! pale Misery's jackal Thou!", "Are there no stores of vengeful violent fate", "Within the magazines of Thy fierce hate?", "No poison in the clouds to bathe a brow", "That lowers on Thee with desperate contempt?", "Where is the noonday Pestilence that slew", "The myriad sons of Israel's favoured nation?", "Where the destroying Minister that flew", "Pouring the fiery tide of desolation", "Upon the leagued Assyrian's attempt?", "Where the dark Earthquake-daemon who engorged", "At the dread word Korah's unconscious crew?", "Or the Angel's two-edged sword of fire that urged", "Our primal parents from their bower of bliss", "(Reared by Thine hand) for errors not their own", "By Thine omniscient mind foredoomed, foreknown?", "Yes! I would court a ruin such as this,", "Almighty Tyrant! and give thanks to Thee--", "Drink deeply--drain the cup of hate; remit this--I may die." ], "linecount": "29" }, { "title": "To Harriet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "O thou bright Sun! beneath the dark blue line", "Of western distance that sublime descendest,", "And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline,", "Thy million hues to every vapour lendest,", "And, over cobweb lawn and grove and stream", "Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light,", "Till calm Earth, with the parting splendour bright,", "Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream;", "What gazer now with astronomic eye", "Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere?", "Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly", "The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear,", "And, turning senseless from thy warm caress,--", "Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "To Ianthe", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake;", "Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled cheek,", "Thy tender frame, so eloquently weak,", "Love in the sternest heart of hate might wake;", "But more when o'er thy fitful slumber bending", "Thy mother folds thee to her wakeful heart,", "Whilst love and pity, in her glances blending,", "All that thy passive eyes can feel impart:", "More, when some feeble lineaments of her,", "Who bore thy weight beneath her spotless bosom,", "As with deep love I read thy face, recur,--", "More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blossom;", "Dearest when most thy tender traits express", "The image of thy mother's loveliness." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Fragment From the Wandering Jew", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The Elements respect their Maker's seal!", "Still Like the scathed pine tree's height,", "Braving the tempests of the night", "Have I 'scaped the flickering flame.", "Like the scathed pine, which a monument stands", "Of faded grandeur, which the brands", "Of the tempest-shaken air", "Have riven on the desolate heath;", "Yet it stands majestic even in death,", "And rears its wild form there." ], "linecount": "10" }, { "title": "To the Queen of My Heart", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Shall we roam, my love,", "To the twilight grove,", "When the moon is rising bright;", "Oh, I'll whisper there,", "In the cool night-air,", "What I dare not in broad daylight!", "", "I'll tell thee a part", "Of the thoughts that start", "To being when thou art nigh;", "And thy beauty, more bright", "Than the stars' soft light,", "Shall seem as a weft from the sky.", "", "When the pale moonbeam", "On tower and stream", "Sheds a flood of silver sheen,", "How I love to gaze", "As the cold ray strays", "O'er thy face, my heart's throned queen!", "", "Wilt thou roam with me", "To the restless sea,", "And linger upon the steep,", "And list to the flow", "Of the waves below", "How they toss and roar and leap?", "", "Those boiling waves,", "And the storm that raves", "At night o'er their foaming crest,", "Resemble the strife", "That, from earliest life,", "The passions have waged in my breast.", "", "Oh, come then, and rove", "To the sea or the grove,", "When the moon is rising bright;", "And I'll whisper there,", "In the cool night-air,", "What I dare not in broad daylight." ], "linecount": "36" }, { "title": "The Daemon of the World", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A FRAGMENT.", "", "PART 1.", "", "Nec tantum prodere vati,", "Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unam", "Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.", "LUCAN, Phars. v. 176.", "", "How wonderful is Death,", "Death and his brother Sleep!", "One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,", "With lips of lurid blue,", "The other glowing like the vital morn,", "When throned on ocean's wave", "It breathes over the world:", "Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!", "", "Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,", "Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,", "To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne", "Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,", "Which love and admiration cannot view", "Without a beating heart, whose azure veins", "Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,", "Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed", "In light of some sublimest mind, decay?", "Nor putrefaction's breath", "Leave aught of this pure spectacle", "But loathsomeness and ruin?--", "Spare aught but a dark theme,", "On which the lightest heart might moralize?", "Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers", "Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids", "To watch their own repose?", "Will they, when morning's beam", "Flows through those wells of light,", "Seek far from noise and day some western cave,", "Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds", "A lulling murmur weave?--", "Ianthe doth not sleep", "The dreamless sleep of death:", "Nor in her moonlight chamber silently", "Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,", "Or mark her delicate cheek", "With interchange of hues mock the broad moon,", "Outwatching weary night,", "Without assured reward.", "Her dewy eyes are closed;", "On their translucent lids, whose texture fine", "Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below", "With unapparent fire,", "The baby Sleep is pillowed:", "Her golden tresses shade", "The bosom's stainless pride,", "Twining like tendrils of the parasite", "Around a marble column.", "", "Hark! whence that rushing sound?", "'Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps", "Around a lonely ruin", "When west winds sigh and evening waves respond", "In whispers from the shore:", "'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes", "Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves", "The genii of the breezes sweep.", "Floating on waves of music and of light,", "The chariot of the Daemon of the World", "Descends in silent power:", "Its shape reposed within: slight as some cloud", "That catches but the palest tinge of day", "When evening yields to night,", "Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indue", "Its transitory robe.", "Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful", "Draw that strange car of glory, reins of light", "Check their unearthly speed; they stop and fold", "Their wings of braided air:", "The Daemon leaning from the ethereal car", "Gazed on the slumbering maid.", "Human eye hath ne'er beheld", "A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,", "As that which o'er the maiden's charmed sleep", "Waving a starry wand,", "Hung like a mist of light.", "Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds", "Of wakening spring arose,", "Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky.", "Maiden, the world's supremest spirit", "Beneath the shadow of her wings", "Folds all thy memory doth inherit", "From ruin of divinest things,", "Feelings that lure thee to betray,", "And light of thoughts that pass away.", "For thou hast earned a mighty boon,", "The truths which wisest poets see", "Dimly, thy mind may make its own,", "Rewarding its own majesty,", "Entranced in some diviner mood", "Of self-oblivious solitude.", "", "Custom, and Faith, and Power thou spurnest;", "From hate and awe thy heart is free;", "Ardent and pure as day thou burnest,", "For dark and cold mortality", "A living light, to cheer it long,", "The watch-fires of the world among.", "", "Therefore from nature's inner shrine,", "Where gods and fiends in worship bend,", "Majestic spirit, be it thine", "The flame to seize, the veil to rend,", "Where the vast snake Eternity", "In charmed sleep doth ever lie.", "", "All that inspires thy voice of love,", "Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes,", "Or through thy frame doth burn or move,", "Or think or feel, awake, arise!", "Spirit, leave for mine and me", "Earth's unsubstantial mimicry!", "", "It ceased, and from the mute and moveless frame", "A radiant spirit arose,", "All beautiful in naked purity.", "Robed in its human hues it did ascend,", "Disparting as it went the silver clouds,", "It moved towards the car, and took its seat", "Beside the Daemon shape.", "", "Obedient to the sweep of aery song,", "The mighty ministers", "Unfurled their prismy wings.", "The magic car moved on;", "The night was fair, innumerable stars", "Studded heaven's dark blue vault;", "The eastern wave grew pale", "With the first smile of morn.", "The magic car moved on.", "From the swift sweep of wings", "The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew;", "And where the burning wheels", "Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak", "Was traced a line of lightning.", "Now far above a rock the utmost verge", "Of the wide earth it flew,", "The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow", "Frowned o'er the silver sea.", "Far, far below the chariot's stormy path,", "Calm as a slumbering babe,", "Tremendous ocean lay.", "Its broad and silent mirror gave to view", "The pale and waning stars,", "The chariot's fiery track,", "And the grey light of morn", "Tingeing those fleecy clouds", "That cradled in their folds the infant dawn.", "The chariot seemed to fly", "Through the abyss of an immense concave,", "Radiant with million constellations, tinged", "With shades of infinite colour,", "And semicircled with a belt", "Flashing incessant meteors.", "", "As they approached their goal,", "The winged shadows seemed to gather speed.", "The sea no longer was distinguished; earth", "Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, suspended", "In the black concave of heaven", "With the sun's cloudless orb,", "Whose rays of rapid light", "Parted around the chariot's swifter course,", "And fell like ocean's feathery spray", "Dashed from the boiling surge", "Before a vessel's prow.", "", "The magic car moved on.", "Earth's distant orb appeared", "The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens,", "Whilst round the chariot's way", "Innumerable systems widely rolled,", "And countless spheres diffused", "An ever varying glory.", "It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned,", "And like the moon's argentine crescent hung", "In the dark dome of heaven; some did shed", "A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea", "Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashed", "Athwart the night with trains of bickering fire,", "Like sphered worlds to death and ruin driven;", "Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passed", "Bedimmed all other light.", "", "Spirit of Nature! here", "In this interminable wilderness", "Of worlds, at whose involved immensity", "Even soaring fancy staggers,", "Here is thy fitting temple.", "Yet not the lightest leaf", "That quivers to the passing breeze", "Is less instinct with thee,--", "Yet not the meanest worm.", "That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,", "Less shares thy eternal breath.", "Spirit of Nature! thou", "Imperishable as this glorious scene,", "Here is thy fitting temple.", "", "If solitude hath ever led thy steps", "To the shore of the immeasurable sea,", "And thou hast lingered there", "Until the sun's broad orb", "Seemed resting on the fiery line of ocean,", "Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold", "That without motion hang", "Over the sinking sphere:", "Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds,", "Edged with intolerable radiancy,", "Towering like rocks of jet", "Above the burning deep:", "And yet there is a moment", "When the sun's highest point", "Peers like a star o'er ocean's western edge,", "When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam", "Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea:", "Then has thy rapt imagination soared", "Where in the midst of all existing things", "The temple of the mightiest Daemon stands.", "", "Yet not the golden islands", "That gleam amid yon flood of purple light,", "Nor the feathery curtains", "That canopy the sun's resplendent couch,", "Nor the burnished ocean waves", "Paving that gorgeous dome,", "So fair, so wonderful a sight", "As the eternal temple could afford.", "The elements of all that human thought", "Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join", "To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught", "Of earth may image forth its majesty.", "Yet likest evening's vault that faery hall,", "As heaven low resting on the wave it spread", "Its floors of flashing light,", "Its vast and azure dome;", "And on the verge of that obscure abyss", "Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf", "Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse", "Their lustre through its adamantine gates.", "", "The magic car no longer moved;", "The Daemon and the Spirit", "Entered the eternal gates.", "Those clouds of aery gold", "That slept in glittering billows", "Beneath the azure canopy,", "With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;", "While slight and odorous mists", "Floated to strains of thrilling melody", "Through the vast columns and the pearly shrines.", "", "The Daemon and the Spirit", "Approached the overhanging battlement,", "Below lay stretched the boundless universe!", "There, far as the remotest line", "That limits swift imagination's flight.", "Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,", "Immutably fulfilling", "Eternal Nature's law.", "Above, below, around,", "The circling systems formed", "A wilderness of harmony.", "Each with undeviating aim", "In eloquent silence through the depths of space", "Pursued its wondrous way.--", "", "Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.", "Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,", "Strange things within their belted orbs appear.", "Like animated frenzies, dimly moved", "Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,", "Thronging round human graves, and o'er the dead", "Sculpturing records for each memory", "In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,", "Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell", "Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world:", "And they did build vast trophies, instruments", "Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold,", "Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls", "With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,", "Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained", "With blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,", "The sanguine codes of venerable crime.", "The likeness of a throned king came by.", "When these had passed, bearing upon his brow", "A threefold crown; his countenance was calm.", "His eye severe and cold; but his right hand", "Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw", "By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart", "Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,", "A multitudinous throng, around him knelt.", "With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks", "Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by.", "Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,", "Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues", "Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly,", "Breathing in self-contempt fierce blasphemies", "Against the Daemon of the World, and high", "Hurling their armed hands where the pure Spirit,", "Serene and inaccessibly secure,", "Stood on an isolated pinnacle.", "The flood of ages combating below,", "The depth of the unbounded universe", "Above, and all around", "Necessity's unchanging harmony.", "", "PART 2.", "", "O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!", "To which those restless powers that ceaselessly", "Throng through the human universe aspire;", "Thou consummation of all mortal hope!", "Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!", "Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,", "Verge to one point and blend for ever there:", "Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!", "Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,", "Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come:", "O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!", "", "Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,", "And dim forebodings of thy loveliness,", "Haunting the human heart, have there entwined", "Those rooted hopes, that the proud Power of Evil", "Shall not for ever on this fairest world", "Shake pestilence and war, or that his slaves", "With blasphemy for prayer, and human blood", "For sacrifice, before his shrine for ever", "In adoration bend, or Erebus", "With all its banded fiends shall not uprise", "To overwhelm in envy and revenge", "The dauntless and the good, who dare to hurl", "Defiance at his throne, girt tho' it be", "With Death's omnipotence. Thou hast beheld", "His empire, o'er the present and the past;", "It was a desolate sight--now gaze on mine,", "Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time,", "Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,--", "And from the cradles of eternity,", "Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep", "By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,", "Tear thou that gloomy shroud.--Spirit, behold", "Thy glorious destiny!", "", "The Spirit saw", "The vast frame of the renovated world", "Smile in the lap of Chaos, and the sense", "Of hope thro' her fine texture did suffuse", "Such varying glow, as summer evening casts", "On undulating clouds and deepening lakes.", "Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,", "That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea", "And dies on the creation of its breath,", "And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits,", "Was the sweet stream of thought that with wild motion", "Flowed o'er the Spirit's human sympathies.", "The mighty tide of thought had paused awhile,", "Which from the Daemon now like Ocean's stream", "Again began to pour.--", "", "To me is given", "The wonders of the human world to keep-", "Space, matter, time and mind--let the sight", "Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.", "All things are recreated, and the flame", "Of consentaneous love inspires all life:", "The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck", "To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,", "Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:", "The balmy breathings of the wind inhale", "Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:", "Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,", "Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream;", "No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,", "Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride", "The foliage of the undecaying trees;", "But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,", "And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,", "Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,", "Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit", "Reflects its tint and blushes into love.", "", "The habitable earth is full of bliss;", "Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled", "By everlasting snow-storms round the poles,", "Where matter dared not vegetate nor live,", "But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude", "Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;", "And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles", "Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls", "Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,", "Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet", "To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves", "And melodise with man's blest nature there.", "", "The vast tract of the parched and sandy waste", "Now teems with countless rills and shady woods,", "Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages;", "And where the startled wilderness did hear", "A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,", "Hymmng his victory, or the milder snake", "Crushing the bones of some frail antelope", "Within his brazen folds--the dewy lawn,", "Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles", "To see a babe before his mother's door,", "Share with the green and golden basilisk", "That comes to lick his feet, his morning's meal.", "", "Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail", "Has seen, above the illimitable plain,", "Morning on night and night on morning rise,", "Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread", "Its shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea,", "Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves", "So long have mingled with the gusty wind", "In melancholy loneliness, and swept", "The desert of those ocean solitudes,", "But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,", "The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,", "Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds", "Of kindliest human impulses respond:", "Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,", "With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,", "And fertile valleys resonant with bliss,", "Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,", "Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,", "To meet the kisses of the flowerets there.", "", "Man chief perceives the change, his being notes", "The gradual renovation, and defines", "Each movement of its progress on his mind.", "Man, where the gloom of the long polar night", "Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,", "Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost", "Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,", "Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;", "Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day", "With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,", "Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere", "Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed", "Unnatural vegetation, where the land", "Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,", "Was man a nobler being; slavery", "Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust.", "", "Even where the milder zone afforded man", "A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,", "Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,", "Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availed", "Till late to arrest its progress, or create", "That peace which first in bloodless victory waved", "Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime:", "There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,", "The mimic of surrounding misery,", "The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,", "The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.", "", "Here now the human being stands adorning", "This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;", "Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,", "Which gently in his noble bosom wake", "All kindly passions and all pure desires.", "Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing,", "Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal", "Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise", "In time-destroying infiniteness gift", "With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks", "The unprevailing hoariness of age,", "And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene", "Swift as an unremembered vision, stands", "Immortal upon earth: no longer now", "He slays the beast that sports around his dwelling", "And horribly devours its mangled flesh,", "Or drinks its vital blood, which like a stream", "Of poison thro' his fevered veins did flow", "Feeding a plague that secretly consumed", "His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind", "Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief,", "The germs of misery, death, disease and crime.", "No longer now the winged habitants,", "That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,", "Flee from the form of man; but gather round,", "And prune their sunny feathers on the hands", "Which little children stretch in friendly sport", "Towards these dreadless partners of their play.", "All things are void of terror: man has lost", "His desolating privilege, and stands", "An equal amidst equals: happiness", "And science dawn though late upon the earth;", "Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;", "Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,", "Reason and passion cease to combat there;", "Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends", "Its all-subduing energies, and wields", "The sceptre of a vast dominion there.", "", "Mild is the slow necessity of death:", "The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,", "Without a groan, almost without a fear,", "Resigned in peace to the necessity,", "Calm as a voyager to some distant land,", "And full of wonder, full of hope as he.", "The deadly germs of languor and disease", "Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts", "With choicest boons her human worshippers.", "How vigorous now the athletic form of age!", "How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!", "Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care,", "Had stamped the seal of grey deformity", "On all the mingling lineaments of time.", "How lovely the intrepid front of youth!", "How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.", "", "Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,", "Fearless and free the ruddy children play,", "Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows", "With the green ivy and the red wall-flower,", "That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;", "The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,", "There rust amid the accumulated ruins", "Now mingling slowly with their native earth:", "There the broad beam of day, which feebly once", "Lighted the cheek of lean captivity", "With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines", "On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:", "No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair", "Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes", "Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds", "And merriment are resonant around.", "", "The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more", "The voice that once waked multitudes to war", "Thundering thro' all their aisles: but now respond", "To the death dirge of the melancholy wind:", "It were a sight of awfulness to see", "The works of faith and slavery, so vast,", "So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!", "Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall.", "A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death", "To-day, the breathing marble glows above", "To decorate its memory, and tongues", "Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms", "In silence and in darkness seize their prey.", "These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind:", "Their elements, wide-scattered o'er the globe,", "To happier shapes are moulded, and become", "Ministrant to all blissful impulses:", "Thus human things are perfected, and earth,", "Even as a child beneath its mother's love,", "Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows", "Fairer and nobler with each passing year.", "", "Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene", "Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past", "Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done:", "Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own,", "With all the fear and all the hope they bring.", "My spells are past: the present now recurs.", "Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains", "Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.", "", "Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,", "Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue", "The gradual paths of an aspiring change:", "For birth and life and death, and that strange state", "Before the naked powers that thro' the world", "Wander like winds have found a human home,", "All tend to perfect happiness, and urge", "The restless wheels of being on their way,", "Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,", "Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:", "For birth but wakes the universal mind", "Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow", "Thro' the vast world, to individual sense", "Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape", "New modes of passion to its frame may lend;", "Life is its state of action, and the store", "Of all events is aggregated there", "That variegate the eternal universe;", "Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,", "That leads to azure isles and beaming skies", "And happy regions of eternal hope.", "Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:", "Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,", "Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,", "Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth,", "To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,", "That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,", "Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile.", "", "Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand,", "So welcome when the tyrant is awake,", "So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch flares;", "'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,", "The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.", "For what thou art shall perish utterly,", "But what is thine may never cease to be;", "Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seen", "Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,", "Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there,", "And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.", "Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene", "Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?", "Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires", "Of mind as radiant and as pure as thou,", "Have shone upon the paths of men--return,", "Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thou", "Art destined an eternal war to wage", "With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot", "The germs of misery from the human heart.", "Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe", "The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,", "Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,", "Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease:", "Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy", "Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,", "When fenced by power and master of the world.", "Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,", "Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,", "Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.", "Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,", "And therefore art thou worthy of the boon", "Which thou hast now received: virtue shall keep", "Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,", "And many days of beaming hope shall bless", "Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.", "Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy", "Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch", "Light, life and rapture from thy smile.", "", "The Daemon called its winged ministers.", "Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,", "That rolled beside the crystal battlement,", "Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.", "The burning wheels inflame", "The steep descent of Heaven's untrodden way.", "Fast and far the chariot flew:", "The mighty globes that rolled", "Around the gate of the Eternal Fane", "Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared", "Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs", "That ministering on the solar power", "With borrowed light pursued their narrower way.", "Earth floated then below:", "The chariot paused a moment;", "The Spirit then descended:", "And from the earth departing", "The shadows with swift wings", "Speeded like thought upon the light of Heaven.", "", "The Body and the Soul united then,", "A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame:", "Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;", "Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:", "She looked around in wonder and beheld", "Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,", "Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,", "And the bright beaming stars", "That through the casement shone." ], "linecount": "632" }, { "title": "Alastor: Or, the Spirit of Solitude", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'The good die first,", "And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust,", "Burn to the socket!'", "", "Earth, Ocean, Air, beloved brotherhood!", "If our great Mother has imbued my soul", "With aught of natural piety to feel", "Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;", "If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,", "With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,", "And solemn midnight's tingling silentness;", "If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,", "And winter robing with pure snow and crowns", "Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs;", "If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes", "Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me;", "If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast", "I consciously have injured, but still loved", "And cherished these my kindred; then forgive", "This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw", "No portion of your wonted favour now!", "", "Mother of this unfathomable world!", "Favour my solemn song, for I have loved", "Thee ever, and thee only; I have watched", "Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps,", "And my heart ever gazes on the depth", "Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed", "In charnels and on coffins, where black death", "Keeps record of the trophies won from thee,", "Hoping to still these obstinate questionings", "Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost,", "Thy messenger, to render up the tale", "Of what we are. In lone and silent hours,", "When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,", "Like an inspired and desperate alchymist", "Staking his very life on some dark hope,", "Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks", "With my most innocent love, until strange tears,", "Uniting with those breathless kisses, made", "Such magic as compels the charmed night", "To render up thy charge:...and, though ne'er yet", "Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary,", "Enough from incommunicable dream,", "And twilight phantasms, and deep noon-day thought,", "Has shone within me, that serenely now", "And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre", "Suspended in the solitary dome", "Of some mysterious and deserted fane,", "I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain", "May modulate with murmurs of the air,", "And motions of the forests and the sea,", "And voice of living beings, and woven hymns", "Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.", "", "There was a Poet whose untimely tomb", "No human hands with pious reverence reared,", "But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds", "Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid", "Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness:--", "A lovely youth,--no mourning maiden decked", "With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath,", "The lone couch of his everlasting sleep:--", "Gentle, and brave, and generous,--no lorn bard", "Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh:", "He lived, he died, he sung in solitude.", "Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes,", "And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined", "And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes.", "The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,", "And Silence, too enamoured of that voice,", "Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.", "", "By solemn vision, and bright silver dream", "His infancy was nurtured. Every sight", "And sound from the vast earth and ambient air,", "Sent to his heart its choicest impulses.", "The fountains of divine philosophy", "Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great,", "Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past", "In truth or fable consecrates, he felt", "And knew. When early youth had passed, he left", "His cold fireside and alienated home", "To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands.", "Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness", "Has lured his fearless steps; and he has bought", "With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men,", "His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps", "He like her shadow has pursued, where'er", "The red volcano overcanopies", "Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice", "With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes", "On black bare pointed islets ever beat", "With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves,", "Rugged and dark, winding among the springs", "Of fire and poison, inaccessible", "To avarice or pride, their starry domes", "Of diamond and of gold expand above", "Numberless and immeasurable halls,", "Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines", "Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.", "Nor had that scene of ampler majesty", "Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven", "And the green earth lost in his heart its claims", "To love and wonder; he would linger long", "In lonesome vales, making the wild his home,", "Until the doves and squirrels would partake", "From his innocuous hand his bloodless food,", "Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks,", "And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er", "The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend", "Her timid steps, to gaze upon a form", "More graceful than her own.", "His wandering step,", "Obedient to high thoughts, has visited", "The awful ruins of the days of old:", "Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste", "Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers", "Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids,", "Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange,", "Sculptured on alabaster obelisk,", "Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx,", "Dark Aethiopia in her desert hills", "Conceals. Among the ruined temples there,", "Stupendous columns, and wild images", "Of more than man, where marble daemons watch", "The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men", "Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around,", "He lingered, poring on memorials", "Of the world's youth: through the long burning day", "Gazed on those speechless shapes; nor, when the moon", "Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades", "Suspended he that task, but ever gazed", "And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind", "Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw", "The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.", "", "Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food,", "Her daily portion, from her father's tent,", "And spread her matting for his couch, and stole", "From duties and repose to tend his steps,", "Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe", "To speak her love:--and watched his nightly sleep,", "Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips", "Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath", "Of innocent dreams arose; then, when red morn", "Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home", "Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.", "", "The Poet, wandering on, through Arabie,", "And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste,", "And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down", "Indus and Oxus from their icy caves,", "In joy and exultation held his way;", "Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within", "Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine", "Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower,", "Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched", "His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep", "There came, a dream of hopes that never yet", "Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid", "Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.", "Her voice was like the voice of his own soul", "Heard in the calm of thought; its music long,", "Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held", "His inmost sense suspended in its web", "Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.", "Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme,", "And lofty hopes of divine liberty,", "Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,", "Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood", "Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame", "A permeating fire; wild numbers then", "She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs", "Subdued by its own pathos; her fair hands", "Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp", "Strange symphony, and in their branching veins", "The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.", "The beating of her heart was heard to fill", "The pauses of her music, and her breath", "Tumultuously accorded with those fits", "Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,", "As if her heart impatiently endured", "Its bursting burthen: at the sound he turned,", "And saw by the warm light of their own life", "Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil", "Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,", "Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,", "Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips", "Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.", "His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess", "Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled", "His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet", "Her panting bosom:...she drew back a while,", "Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,", "With frantic gesture and short breathless cry", "Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.", "Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night", "Involved and swallowed up the vision; sleep,", "Like a dark flood suspended in its course,", "Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.", "", "Roused by the shock he started from his trance--", "The cold white light of morning, the blue moon", "Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,", "The distinct valley and the vacant woods,", "Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled", "The hues of heaven that canopied his bower", "Of yesternight? The sounds that soothed his sleep,", "The mystery and the majesty of Earth,", "The joy, the exultation? His wan eyes", "Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly", "As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.", "The spirit of sweet human love has sent", "A vision to the sleep of him who spurned", "Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues", "Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade;", "He overleaps the bounds. Alas! Alas!", "Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined", "Thus treacherously? Lost, lost, for ever lost", "In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,", "That beautiful shape! Does the dark gate of death", "Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,", "O Sleep? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds", "And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,", "Lead only to a black and watery depth,", "While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,", "Where every shade which the foul grave exhales", "Hides its dead eye from the detested day,", "Conducts, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms?", "This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart;", "The insatiate hope which it awakened, stung", "His brain even like despair.", "While daylight held", "The sky, the Poet kept mute conference", "With his still soul. At night the passion came,", "Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream,", "And shook him from his rest, and led him forth", "Into the darkness.--As an eagle, grasped", "In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast", "Burn with the poison, and precipitates", "Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,", "Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight", "O'er the wide aery wilderness: thus driven", "By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,", "Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,", "Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,", "Startling with careless step the moonlight snake,", "He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,", "Shedding the mockery of its vital hues", "Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on", "Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep", "Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud;", "Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs", "Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind", "Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,", "Day after day a weary waste of hours,", "Bearing within his life the brooding care", "That ever fed on its decaying flame.", "And now his limbs were lean; his scattered hair,", "Sered by the autumn of strange suffering", "Sung dirges in the wind; his listless hand", "Hung like dead bone within its withered skin;", "Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone", "As in a furnace burning secretly", "From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,", "Who ministered with human charity", "His human wants, beheld with wondering awe", "Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,", "Encountering on some dizzy precipice", "That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind", "With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet", "Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused", "In its career: the infant would conceal", "His troubled visage in his mother's robe", "In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,", "To remember their strange light in many a dream", "Of after-times; but youthful maidens, taught", "By nature, would interpret half the woe", "That wasted him, would call him with false names", "Brother and friend, would press his pallid hand", "At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path", "Of his departure from their father's door.", "", "At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore", "He paused, a wide and melancholy waste", "Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged", "His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there,", "Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds.", "It rose as he approached, and, with strong wings", "Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course", "High over the immeasurable main.", "His eyes pursued its flight:--'Thou hast a home,", "Beautiful bird; thou voyagest to thine home,", "Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck", "With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes", "Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy.", "And what am I that I should linger here,", "With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes,", "Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned", "To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers", "In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven", "That echoes not my thoughts?' A gloomy smile", "Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips.", "For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly", "Its precious charge, and silent death exposed,", "Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure,", "With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.", "", "Startled by his own thoughts he looked around.", "There was no fair fiend near him, not a sight", "Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind.", "A little shallop floating near the shore", "Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.", "It had been long abandoned, for its sides", "Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints", "Swayed with the undulations of the tide.", "A restless impulse urged him to embark", "And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste;", "For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves", "The slimy caverns of the populous deep.", "", "The day was fair and sunny; sea and sky", "Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind", "Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves.", "Following his eager soul, the wanderer", "Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft", "On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat,", "And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea", "Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.", "", "As one that in a silver vision floats", "Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds", "Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly", "Along the dark and ruffled waters fled", "The straining boat.--A whirlwind swept it on,", "With fierce gusts and precipitating force,", "Through the white ridges of the chafed sea.", "The waves arose. Higher and higher still", "Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge", "Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp.", "Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war", "Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast", "Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven", "With dark obliterating course, he sate:", "As if their genii were the ministers", "Appointed to conduct him to the light", "Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate,", "Holding the steady helm. Evening came on,", "The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues", "High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray", "That canopied his path o'er the waste deep;", "Twilight, ascending slowly from the east,", "Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks", "O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day;", "Night followed, clad with stars. On every side", "More horribly the multitudinous streams", "Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war", "Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock", "The calm and spangled sky. The little boat", "Still fled before the storm; still fled, like foam", "Down the steep cataract of a wintry river;", "Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave;", "Now leaving far behind the bursting mass", "That fell, convulsing ocean: safely fled--", "As if that frail and wasted human form,", "Had been an elemental god.", "", "At midnight", "The moon arose; and lo! the ethereal cliffs", "Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone", "Among the stars like sunlight, and around", "Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves", "Bursting and eddying irresistibly", "Rage and resound forever.--Who shall save?--", "The boat fled on,--the boiling torrent drove,--", "The crags closed round with black and jagged arms,", "The shattered mountain overhung the sea,", "And faster still, beyond all human speed,", "Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave,", "The little boat was driven. A cavern there", "Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths", "Ingulfed the rushing sea. The boat fled on", "With unrelaxing speed.--'Vision and Love!'", "The Poet cried aloud, 'I have beheld", "The path of thy departure. Sleep and death", "Shall not divide us long.'", "", "The boat pursued", "The windings of the cavern. Daylight shone", "At length upon that gloomy river's flow;", "Now, where the fiercest war among the waves", "Is calm, on the unfathomable stream", "The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,", "Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,", "Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell", "Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound", "That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass", "Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm:", "Stair above stair the eddying waters rose,", "Circling immeasurably fast, and laved", "With alternating dash the gnarled roots", "Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms", "In darkness over it. I' the midst was left,", "Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud,", "A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.", "Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,", "With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,", "Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,", "Till on the verge of the extremest curve,", "Where, through an opening of the rocky bank,", "The waters overflow, and a smooth spot", "Of glassy quiet mid those battling tides", "Is left, the boat paused shuddering.--Shall it sink", "Down the abyss? Shall the reverting stress", "Of that resistless gulf embosom it?", "Now shall it fall?--A wandering stream of wind,", "Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,", "And, lo! with gentle motion, between banks", "Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,", "Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark!", "The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar,", "With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.", "Where the embowering trees recede, and leave", "A little space of green expanse, the cove", "Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers", "For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes,", "Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave", "Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task,", "Which naught but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,", "Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay", "Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed", "To deck with their bright hues his withered hair,", "But on his heart its solitude returned,", "And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid", "In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame", "Had yet performed its ministry: it hung", "Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud", "Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods", "Of night close over it.", "The noonday sun", "Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass", "Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence", "A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves,", "Scooped in the dark base of their aery rocks,", "Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever.", "The meeting boughs and implicated leaves", "Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led", "By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death,", "He sought in Nature's dearest haunt some bank,", "Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark", "And dark the shades accumulate. The oak,", "Expanding its immense and knotty arms,", "Embraces the light beech. The pyramids", "Of the tall cedar overarching frame", "Most solemn domes within, and far below,", "Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky,", "The ash and the acacia floating hang", "Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed", "In rainbow and in fire, the parasites,", "Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around", "The grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes,", "With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles,", "Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,", "These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs", "Uniting their close union; the woven leaves", "Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,", "And the night's noontide clearness, mutable", "As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns", "Beneath these canopies extend their swells,", "Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms", "Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen", "Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,", "A soul-dissolving odour to invite", "To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,", "Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep", "Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,", "Like vaporous shapes half-seen; beyond, a well,", "Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,", "Images all the woven boughs above,", "And each depending leaf, and every speck", "Of azure sky, darting between their chasms;", "Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves", "Its portraiture, but some inconstant star", "Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,", "Or painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,", "Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,", "Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings", "Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.", "", "Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld", "Their own wan light through the reflected lines", "Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth", "Of that still fountain; as the human heart,", "Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave,", "Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard", "The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung", "Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel", "An unaccustomed presence, and the sound", "Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs", "Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed", "To stand beside him--clothed in no bright robes", "Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,", "Borrowed from aught the visible world affords", "Of grace, or majesty, or mystery;--", "But, undulating woods, and silent well,", "And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom", "Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,", "Held commune with him, as if he and it", "Were all that was,--only...when his regard", "Was raised by intense pensiveness,...two eyes,", "Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,", "And seemed with their serene and azure smiles", "To beckon him.", "", "Obedient to the light", "That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing", "The windings of the dell.--The rivulet,", "Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine", "Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell", "Among the moss with hollow harmony", "Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones", "It danced; like childhood laughing as it went:", "Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept,", "Reflecting every herb and drooping bud", "That overhung its quietness.--'O stream!", "Whose source is inaccessibly profound,", "Whither do thy mysterious waters tend?", "Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness,", "Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulfs,", "Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course", "Have each their type in me; and the wide sky.", "And measureless ocean may declare as soon", "What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud", "Contains thy waters, as the universe", "Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched", "Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste", "I' the passing wind!'", "", "Beside the grassy shore", "Of the small stream he went; he did impress", "On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught", "Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one", "Roused by some joyous madness from the couch", "Of fever, he did move; yet, not like him,", "Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame", "Of his frail exultation shall be spent,", "He must descend. With rapid steps he went", "Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow", "Of the wild babbling rivulet; and now", "The forest's solemn canopies were changed", "For the uniform and lightsome evening sky.", "Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed", "The struggling brook; tall spires of windlestrae", "Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope,", "And nought but gnarled roots of ancient pines", "Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots", "The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here,", "Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away,", "The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin", "And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes", "Had shone, gleam stony orbs:--so from his steps", "Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade", "Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds", "And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued", "The stream, that with a larger volume now", "Rolled through the labyrinthine dell; and there", "Fretted a path through its descending curves", "With its wintry speed. On every side now rose", "Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms,", "Lifted their black and barren pinnacles", "In the light of evening, and its precipice", "Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above,", "Mid toppling stones, black gulfs and yawning caves,", "Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues", "To the loud stream. Lo! where the pass expands", "Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks,", "And seems, with its accumulated crags,", "To overhang the world: for wide expand", "Beneath the wan stars and descending moon", "Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams,", "Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom", "Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills", "Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge", "Of the remote horizon. The near scene,", "In naked and severe simplicity,", "Made contrast with the universe. A pine,", "Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy", "Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast", "Yielding one only response, at each pause", "In most familiar cadence, with the howl", "The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams", "Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river", "Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path,", "Fell into that immeasurable void", "Scattering its waters to the passing winds.", "", "Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine", "And torrent were not all;--one silent nook", "Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain,", "Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks,", "It overlooked in its serenity", "The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars.", "It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile", "Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped", "The fissured stones with its entwining arms,", "And did embower with leaves for ever green,", "And berries dark, the smooth and even space", "Of its inviolated floor, and here", "The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore,", "In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay,", "Red, yellow, or ethereally pale,", "Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt", "Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach", "The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,", "One human step alone, has ever broken", "The stillness of its solitude:--one voice", "Alone inspired its echoes;--even that voice", "Which hither came, floating among the winds,", "And led the loveliest among human forms", "To make their wild haunts the depository", "Of all the grace and beauty that endued", "Its motions, render up its majesty,", "Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,", "And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,", "Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,", "Commit the colours of that varying cheek,", "That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.", "", "The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured", "A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge", "That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist", "Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank", "Wan moonlight even to fulness; not a star", "Shone, not a sound was heard; the very winds,", "Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice", "Slept, clasped in his embrace.--O, storm of death!", "Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night: 610", "And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still", "Guiding its irresistible career", "In thy devastating omnipotence,", "Art king of this frail world, from the red field", "Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital,", "The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed", "Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne,", "A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls", "His brother Death. A rare and regal prey", "He hath prepared, prowling around the world;", "Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men", "Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,", "Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine", "The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.", "", "When on the threshold of the green recess", "The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death", "Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled,", "Did he resign his high and holy soul", "To images of the majestic past,", "That paused within his passive being now,", "Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe", "Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place", "His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk", "Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone", "Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest,", "Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink", "Of that obscurest chasm;--and thus he lay,", "Surrendering to their final impulses", "The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair,", "The torturers, slept; no mortal pain or fear", "Marred his repose; the influxes of sense,", "And his own being unalloyed by pain,", "Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed", "The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there", "At peace, and faintly smiling:--his last sight", "Was the great moon, which o'er the western line", "Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended,", "With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed", "To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills", "It rests; and still as the divided frame", "Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood,", "That ever beat in mystic sympathy", "With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still:", "And when two lessening points of light alone", "Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp", "Of his faint respiration scarce did stir", "The stagnate night:--till the minutest ray", "Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.", "It paused--it fluttered. But when heaven remained", "Utterly black, the murky shades involved", "An image, silent, cold, and motionless,", "As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.", "Even as a vapour fed with golden beams", "That ministered on sunlight, ere the west", "Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame--", "No sense, no motion, no divinity--", "A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings", "The breath of heaven did wander--a bright stream", "Once fed with many-voiced waves--a dream", "Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,", "Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.", "", "Oh, for Medea's wondrous alchemy,", "Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam", "With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale", "From vernal blooms fresh fragrance! O, that God,", "Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice", "Which but one living man has drained, who now,", "Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels", "No proud exemption in the blighting curse", "He bears, over the world wanders for ever,", "Lone as incarnate death! O, that the dream", "Of dark magician in his visioned cave,", "Raking the cinders of a crucible", "For life and power, even when his feeble hand", "Shakes in its last decay, were the true law", "Of this so lovely world! But thou art fled,", "Like some frail exhalation; which the dawn", "Robes in its golden beams,--ah! thou hast fled!", "The brave, the gentle and the beautiful,", "The child of grace and genius. Heartless things", "Are done and said i' the world, and many worms", "And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth", "From sea and mountain, city and wilderness,", "In vesper low or joyous orison,", "Lifts still its solemn voice:--but thou art fled--", "Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes", "Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee", "Been purest ministers, who are, alas!", "Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips", "So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes", "That image sleep in death, upon that form", "Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear", "Be shed--not even in thought. Nor, when those hues", "Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,", "Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone", "In the frail pauses of this simple strain,", "Let not high verse, mourning the memory", "Of that which is no more, or painting's woe", "Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery", "Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,", "And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain", "To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.", "It is a woe \"too deep for tears,\" when all", "Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,", "Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves", "Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,", "The passionate tumult of a clinging hope;", "But pale despair and cold tranquillity,", "Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,", "Birth and the grave, that are not as they were." ], "linecount": "730" }, { "title": "Prince Athanase. a Fragment", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "PART 1.", "", "There was a youth, who, as with toil and travel,", "Had grown quite weak and gray before his time;", "Nor any could the restless griefs unravel", "", "Which burned within him, withering up his prime", "And goading him, like fiends, from land to land.", "Not his the load of any secret crime,", "", "For nought of ill his heart could understand,", "But pity and wild sorrow for the same;--", "Not his the thirst for glory or command,", "", "Baffled with blast of hope-consuming shame;", "Nor evil joys which fire the vulgar breast,", "And quench in speedy smoke its feeble flame,", "", "Had left within his soul their dark unrest:", "Nor what religion fables of the grave", "Feared he,--Philosophy's accepted guest.", "", "For none than he a purer heart could have,", "Or that loved good more for itself alone;", "Of nought in heaven or earth was he the slave.", "", "What sorrow, strange, and shadowy, and unknown,", "Sent him, a hopeless wanderer, through mankind?--", "If with a human sadness he did groan,", "", "He had a gentle yet aspiring mind;", "Just, innocent, with varied learning fed;", "And such a glorious consolation find", "", "In others' joy, when all their own is dead:", "He loved, and laboured for his kind in grief,", "And yet, unlike all others, it is said", "", "That from such toil he never found relief.", "Although a child of fortune and of power,", "Of an ancestral name the orphan chief,", "", "His soul had wedded Wisdom, and her dower", "Is love and justice, clothed in which he sate", "Apart from men, as in a lonely tower,", "", "Pitying the tumult of their dark estate.--", "Yet even in youth did he not e'er abuse", "The strength of wealth or thought, to consecrate", "", "Those false opinions which the harsh rich use", "To blind the world they famish for their pride;", "Nor did he hold from any man his dues,", "", "But, like a steward in honest dealings tried,", "With those who toiled and wept, the poor and wise,", "His riches and his cares he did divide.", "", "Fearless he was, and scorning all disguise,", "What he dared do or think, though men might start,", "He spoke with mild yet unaverted eyes;", "", "Liberal he was of soul, and frank of heart,", "And to his many friends--all loved him well--", "Whate'er he knew or felt he would impart,", "", "If words he found those inmost thoughts to tell;", "If not, he smiled or wept; and his weak foes", "He neither spurned nor hated--though with fell", "", "And mortal hate their thousand voices rose,", "They passed like aimless arrows from his ear--", "Nor did his heart or mind its portal close", "", "To those, or them, or any, whom life's sphere", "May comprehend within its wide array.", "What sadness made that vernal spirit sere?--", "", "He knew not. Though his life, day after day,", "Was failing like an unreplenished stream,", "Though in his eyes a cloud and burthen lay,", "", "Through which his soul, like Vesper's serene beam", "Piercing the chasms of ever rising clouds,", "Shone, softly burning; though his lips did seem", "", "Like reeds which quiver in impetuous floods;", "And through his sleep, and o'er each waking hour,", "Thoughts after thoughts, unresting multitudes,", "", "Were driven within him by some secret power,", "Which bade them blaze, and live, and roll afar,", "Like lights and sounds, from haunted tower to tower", "", "O'er castled mountains borne, when tempest's war", "Is levied by the night-contending winds,", "And the pale dalesmen watch with eager ear;--", "", "Though such were in his spirit, as the fiends", "Which wake and feed an everliving woe,--", "What was this grief, which ne'er in other minds", "", "A mirror found,--he knew not--none could know;", "But on whoe'er might question him he turned", "The light of his frank eyes, as if to show", "", "He knew not of the grief within that burned,", "But asked forbearance with a mournful look;", "Or spoke in words from which none ever learned", "", "The cause of his disquietude; or shook", "With spasms of silent passion; or turned pale:", "So that his friends soon rarely undertook", "", "To stir his secret pain without avail;--", "For all who knew and loved him then perceived", "That there was drawn an adamantine veil", "", "Between his heart and mind,--both unrelieved", "Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.", "Some said that he was mad, others believed", "", "That memories of an antenatal life", "Made this, where now he dwelt, a penal hell;", "And others said that such mysterious grief", "", "From God's displeasure, like a darkness, fell", "On souls like his, which owned no higher law", "Than love; love calm, steadfast, invincible", "", "By mortal fear or supernatural awe;", "And others,--''Tis the shadow of a dream", "Which the veiled eye of Memory never saw,", "", "'But through the soul's abyss, like some dark stream", "Through shattered mines and caverns underground,", "Rolls, shaking its foundations; and no beam", "", "'Of joy may rise, but it is quenched and drowned", "In the dim whirlpools of this dream obscure;", "Soon its exhausted waters will have found", "", "'A lair of rest beneath thy spirit pure,", "O Athanase!--in one so good and great,", "Evil or tumult cannot long endure.", "", "So spake they: idly of another's state", "Babbling vain words and fond philosophy;", "This was their consolation; such debate", "", "Men held with one another; nor did he,", "Like one who labours with a human woe,", "Decline this talk: as if its theme might be", "", "Another, not himself, he to and fro", "Questioned and canvassed it with subtlest wit;", "And none but those who loved him best could know", "", "That which he knew not, how it galled and bit", "His weary mind, this converse vain and cold;", "For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit", "", "Upon his being; a snake which fold by fold", "Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend", "Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold;--", "And so his grief remained--let it remain--untold. [1]", "", "PART 2.", "", "FRAGMENT 1.", "", "Prince Athanase had one beloved friend,", "An old, old man, with hair of silver white,", "And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend", "", "With his wise words; and eyes whose arrowy light", "Shone like the reflex of a thousand minds.", "He was the last whom superstition's blight", "", "Had spared in Greece--the blight that cramps and blinds,--", "And in his olive bower at Oenoe", "Had sate from earliest youth. Like one who finds", "", "A fertile island in the barren sea,", "One mariner who has survived his mates", "Many a drear month in a great ship--so he", "", "With soul-sustaining songs, and sweet debates", "Of ancient lore, there fed his lonely being:--", "'The mind becomes that which it contemplates,'--", "", "And thus Zonoras, by for ever seeing", "Their bright creations, grew like wisest men;", "And when he heard the crash of nations fleeing", "", "A bloodier power than ruled thy ruins then,", "O sacred Hellas! many weary years", "He wandered, till the path of Laian's glen", "", "Was grass-grown--and the unremembered tears", "Were dry in Laian for their honoured chief,", "Who fell in Byzant, pierced by Moslem spears:--", "", "And as the lady looked with faithful grief", "From her high lattice o'er the rugged path,", "Where she once saw that horseman toil, with brief", "", "And blighting hope, who with the news of death", "Struck body and soul as with a mortal blight,", "She saw between the chestnuts, far beneath,", "", "An old man toiling up, a weary wight;", "And soon within her hospitable hall", "She saw his white hairs glittering in the light", "", "Of the wood fire, and round his shoulders fall;", "And his wan visage and his withered mien,", "Yet calm and gentle and majestical.", "", "And Athanase, her child, who must have been", "Then three years old, sate opposite and gazed", "In patient silence.", "", "FRAGMENT 2.", "", "Such was Zonoras; and as daylight finds", "One amaranth glittering on the path of frost,", "When autumn nights have nipped all weaker kinds,", "", "Thus through his age, dark, cold, and tempest-tossed,", "Shone truth upon Zonoras; and he filled", "From fountains pure, nigh overgrown and lost,", "", "The spirit of Prince Athanase, a child,", "With soul-sustaining songs of ancient lore", "And philosophic wisdom, clear and mild.", "", "And sweet and subtle talk they evermore,", "The pupil and the master, shared; until,", "Sharing that undiminishable store,", "", "The youth, as shadows on a grassy hill", "Outrun the winds that chase them, soon outran", "His teacher, and did teach with native skill", "", "Strange truths and new to that experienced man;", "Still they were friends, as few have ever been", "Who mark the extremes of life's discordant span.", "", "So in the caverns of the forest green,", "Or on the rocks of echoing ocean hoar,", "Zonoras and Prince Athanase were seen", "", "By summer woodmen; and when winter's roar", "Sounded o'er earth and sea its blast of war,", "The Balearic fisher, driven from shore,", "", "Hanging upon the peaked wave afar,", "Then saw their lamp from Laian's turret gleam,", "Piercing the stormy darkness, like a star", "", "Which pours beyond the sea one steadfast beam,", "Whilst all the constellations of the sky", "Seemed reeling through the storm...They did but seem--", "", "For, lo! the wintry clouds are all gone by,", "And bright Arcturus through yon pines is glowing,", "And far o'er southern waves, immovably", "", "Belted Orion hangs--warm light is flowing", "From the young moon into the sunset's chasm.--", "'O, summer eve! with power divine, bestowing", "", "'On thine own bird the sweet enthusiasm", "Which overflows in notes of liquid gladness,", "Filling the sky like light! How many a spasm", "", "'Of fevered brains, oppressed with grief and madness,", "Were lulled by thee, delightful nightingale,--", "And these soft waves, murmuring a gentle sadness,--", "", "'And the far sighings of yon piny dale", "Made vocal by some wind we feel not here.--", "I bear alone what nothing may avail", "", "'To lighten--a strange load!'--No human ear", "Heard this lament; but o'er the visage wan", "Of Athanase, a ruffling atmosphere", "", "Of dark emotion, a swift shadow, ran,", "Like wind upon some forest-bosomed lake,", "Glassy and dark.--And that divine old man", "", "Beheld his mystic friend's whole being shake,", "Even where its inmost depths were gloomiest--", "And with a calm and measured voice he spake,", "", "And, with a soft and equal pressure, pressed", "That cold lean hand:--'Dost thou remember yet", "When the curved moon then lingering in the west", "", "'Paused, in yon waves her mighty horns to wet,", "How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea?", "'Tis just one year--sure thou dost not forget--", "", "'Then Plato's words of light in thee and me", "Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east,", "For we had just then read--thy memory", "", "'Is faithful now--the story of the feast;", "And Agathon and Diotima seemed", "From death and dark forgetfulness released...'", "", "FRAGMENT 3.", "", "And when the old man saw that on the green", "Leaves of his opening ... a blight had lighted", "He said: 'My friend, one grief alone can wean", "", "A gentle mind from all that once delighted:--", "Thou lovest, and thy secret heart is laden", "With feelings which should not be unrequited.'", "", "And Athanase ... then smiled, as one o'erladen", "With iron chains might smile to talk (?) of bands", "Twined round her lover's neck by some blithe maiden,", "And said...", "", "FRAGMENT 4.", "", "'Twas at the season when the Earth upsprings", "From slumber, as a sphered angel's child,", "Shadowing its eyes with green and golden wings,", "", "Stands up before its mother bright and mild,", "Of whose soft voice the air expectant seems--", "So stood before the sun, which shone and smiled", "", "To see it rise thus joyous from its dreams,", "The fresh and radiant Earth. The hoary grove", "Waxed green--and flowers burst forth like starry beams;--", "", "The grass in the warm sun did start and move,", "And sea-buds burst under the waves serene:--", "How many a one, though none be near to love,", "", "Loves then the shade of his own soul, half seen", "In any mirror--or the spring's young minions,", "The winged leaves amid the copses green;--", "", "How many a spirit then puts on the pinions", "Of fancy, and outstrips the lagging blast,", "And his own steps--and over wide dominions", "", "Sweeps in his dream-drawn chariot, far and fast,", "More fleet than storms--the wide world shrinks below,", "When winter and despondency are past.", "", "FRAGMENT 5.", "", "'Twas at this season that Prince Athanase", "Passed the white Alps--those eagle-baffling mountains", "Slept in their shrouds of snow;--beside the ways", "", "The waterfalls were voiceless--for their fountains", "Were changed to mines of sunless crystal now,", "Or by the curdling winds--like brazen wings", "", "Which clanged along the mountain's marble brow--", "Warped into adamantine fretwork, hung", "And filled with frozen light the chasms below.", "", "Vexed by the blast, the great pines groaned and swung", "Under their load of --", "...", "...", "Such as the eagle sees, when he dives down", "From the gray deserts of wide air,", " Athanase; and o'er his mien (?) was thrown", "", "The shadow of that scene, field after field,", "Purple and dim and wide...", "", "FRAGMENT 6.", "", "Thou art the wine whose drunkenness is all", "We can desire, O Love! and happy souls,", "Ere from thy vine the leaves of autumn fall,", "", "Catch thee, and feed from their o'erflowing bowls", "Thousands who thirst for thine ambrosial dew;--", "Thou art the radiance which where ocean rolls", "", "Investeth it; and when the heavens are blue", "Thou fillest them; and when the earth is fair", "The shadow of thy moving wings imbue", "", "Its deserts and its mountains, till they wear", "Beauty like some light robe;--thou ever soarest", "Among the towers of men, and as soft air", "", "In spring, which moves the unawakened forest,", "Clothing with leaves its branches bare and bleak,", "Thou floatest among men; and aye implorest", "", "That which from thee they should implore:--the weak", "Alone kneel to thee, offering up the hearts", "The strong have broken--yet where shall any seek", "", "A garment whom thou clothest not? the darts", "Of the keen winter storm, barbed with frost,", "Which, from the everlasting snow that parts", "", "The Alps from Heaven, pierce some traveller lost", "In the wide waved interminable snow", "Ungarmented,...", "", "ANOTHER FRAGMENT (A)", "", "Yes, often when the eyes are cold and dry,", "And the lips calm, the Spirit weeps within", "Tears bitterer than the blood of agony", "", "Trembling in drops on the discoloured skin", "Of those who love their kind and therefore perish", "In ghastly torture--a sweet medicine", "", "Of peace and sleep are tears, and quietly", "Them soothe from whose uplifted eyes they fall", "But...", "", "ANOTHER FRAGMENT (B)", "", "Her hair was brown, her sphered eyes were brown,", "And in their dark and liquid moisture swam,", "Like the dim orb of the eclipsed moon;", "", "Yet when the spirit flashed beneath, there came", "The light from them, as when tears of delight", "Double the western planet's serene flame." ], "linecount": "327" }, { "title": "Julian and Maddalo. a Conversation", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "PREFACE.", "", "The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,", "The goats with the green leaves of budding Spring,", "Are saturated not--nor Love with tears.--VIRGIL'S \"Gallus\".", "", "I rode one evening with Count Maddalo", "Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow", "Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand", "Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,", "Matted with thistles and amphibious weeds,", "Such as from earth's embrace the salt ooze breeds,", "Is this; an uninhabited sea-side,", "Which the lone fisher, when his nets are dried,", "Abandons; and no other object breaks", "The waste, but one dwarf tree and some few stakes", "Broken and unrepaired, and the tide makes", "A narrow space of level sand thereon,", "Where 'twas our wont to ride while day went down.", "This ride was my delight. I love all waste", "And solitary places; where we taste", "The pleasure of believing what we see", "Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be:", "And such was this wide ocean, and this shore", "More barren than its billows; and yet more", "Than all, with a remembered friend I love", "To ride as then I rode;--for the winds drove", "The living spray along the sunny air", "Into our faces; the blue heavens were bare,", "Stripped to their depths by the awakening north;", "And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth", "Harmonising with solitude, and sent", "Into our hearts aereal merriment.", "So, as we rode, we talked; and the swift thought,", "Winging itself with laughter, lingered not,", "But flew from brain to brain,--such glee was ours,", "Charged with light memories of remembered hours,", "None slow enough for sadness: till we came", "Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame.", "This day had been cheerful but cold, and now", "The sun was sinking, and the wind also.", "Our talk grew somewhat serious, as may be", "Talk interrupted with such raillery", "As mocks itself, because it cannot scorn", "The thoughts it would extinguish: --'twas forlorn,", "Yet pleasing, such as once, so poets tell,", "The devils held within the dales of Hell", "Concerning God, freewill and destiny:", "Of all that earth has been or yet may be,", "All that vain men imagine or believe,", "Or hope can paint or suffering may achieve,", "We descanted; and I (for ever still", "Is it not wise to make the best of ill?)", "Argued against despondency, but pride", "Made my companion take the darker side.", "The sense that he was greater than his kind", "Had struck, methinks, his eagle spirit blind", "By gazing on its own exceeding light.", "Meanwhile the sun paused ere it should alight,", "Over the horizon of the mountains;--Oh,", "How beautiful is sunset, when the glow", "Of Heaven descends upon a land like thee,", "Thou Paradise of exiles, Italy!", "Thy mountains, seas and vineyards, and the towers", "Of cities they encircle!--it was ours", "To stand on thee, beholding it: and then,", "Just where we had dismounted, the Count's men", "Were waiting for us with the gondola.--", "As those who pause on some delightful way", "Though bent on pleasant pilgrimage, we stood", "Looking upon the evening, and the flood", "Which lay between the city and the shore,", "Paved with the image of the sky...the hoar", "And aery Alps towards the North appeared", "Through mist, an heaven-sustaining bulwark reared", "Between the East and West; and half the sky", "Was roofed with clouds of rich emblazonry", "Dark purple at the zenith, which still grew", "Down the steep West into a wondrous hue", "Brighter than burning gold, even to the rent", "Where the swift sun yet paused in his descent", "Among the many-folded hills: they were", "Those famous Euganean hills, which bear,", "As seen from Lido thro' the harbour piles,", "The likeness of a clump of peaked isles--", "And then--as if the Earth and Sea had been", "Dissolved into one lake of fire, were seen", "Those mountains towering as from waves of flame", "Around the vaporous sun, from which there came", "The inmost purple spirit of light, and made", "Their very peaks transparent. 'Ere it fade,'", "Said my companion, 'I will show you soon", "A better station'--so, o'er the lagune", "We glided; and from that funereal bark", "I leaned, and saw the city, and could mark", "How from their many isles, in evening's gleam,", "Its temples and its palaces did seem", "Like fabrics of enchantment piled to Heaven.", "I was about to speak, when--'We are even", "Now at the point I meant,' said Maddalo,", "And bade the gondolieri cease to row.", "'Look, Julian, on the west, and listen well", "If you hear not a deep and heavy bell.'", "I looked, and saw between us and the sun", "A building on an island; such a one", "As age to age might add, for uses vile,", "A windowless, deformed and dreary pile;", "And on the top an open tower, where hung", "A bell, which in the radiance swayed and swung;", "We could just hear its hoarse and iron tongue:", "The broad sun sunk behind it, and it tolled", "In strong and black relief.--'What we behold", "Shall be the madhouse and its belfry tower,'", "Said Maddalo, 'and ever at this hour", "Those who may cross the water, hear that bell", "Which calls the maniacs, each one from his cell,", "To vespers.'--'As much skill as need to pray", "In thanks or hope for their dark lot have they", "To their stern maker,' I replied. 'O ho!", "You talk as in years past,' said Maddalo.", "''Tis strange men change not. You were ever still", "Among Christ's flock a perilous infidel,", "A wolf for the meek lambs--if you can't swim", "Beware of Providence.' I looked on him,", "But the gay smile had faded in his eye.", "'And such,'--he cried, 'is our mortality,", "And this must be the emblem and the sign", "Of what should be eternal and divine!--", "And like that black and dreary bell, the soul,", "Hung in a heaven-illumined tower, must toll", "Our thoughts and our desires to meet below", "Round the rent heart and pray--as madmen do", "For what? they know not,--till the night of death", "As sunset that strange vision, severeth", "Our memory from itself, and us from all", "We sought and yet were baffled.' I recall", "The sense of what he said, although I mar", "The force of his expressions. The broad star", "Of day meanwhile had sunk behind the hill,", "And the black bell became invisible,", "And the red tower looked gray, and all between", "The churches, ships and palaces were seen", "Huddled in gloom;--into the purple sea", "The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.", "We hardly spoke, and soon the gondola", "Conveyed me to my lodging by the way.", "The following morn was rainy, cold, and dim:", "Ere Maddalo arose, I called on him,", "And whilst I waited with his child I played;", "A lovelier toy sweet Nature never made;", "A serious, subtle, wild, yet gentle being,", "Graceful without design and unforeseeing,", "With eyes--Oh speak not of her eyes!--which seem", "Twin mirrors of Italian Heaven, yet gleam", "With such deep meaning, as we never see", "But in the human countenance: with me", "She was a special favourite: I had nursed", "Her fine and feeble limbs when she came first", "To this bleak world; and she yet seemed to know", "On second sight her ancient playfellow,", "Less changed than she was by six months or so;", "For after her first shyness was worn out", "We sate there, rolling billiard balls about,", "When the Count entered. Salutations past--", "'The word you spoke last night might well have cast", "A darkness on my spirit--if man be", "The passive thing you say, I should not see", "Much harm in the religions and old saws", "(Tho' I may never own such leaden laws)", "Which break a teachless nature to the yoke:", "Mine is another faith.'--thus much I spoke", "And noting he replied not, added: 'See", "This lovely child, blithe, innocent and free;", "She spends a happy time with little care,", "While we to such sick thoughts subjected are", "As came on you last night. It is our will", "That thus enchains us to permitted ill--", "We might be otherwise--we might be all", "We dream of happy, high, majestical.", "Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek,", "But in our mind? and if we were not weak", "Should we be less in deed than in desire?'", "'Ay, if we were not weak--and we aspire", "How vainly to be strong!' said Maddalo:", "'You talk Utopia.' 'It remains to know,'", "I then rejoined, 'and those who try may find", "How strong the chains are which our spirit bind;", "Brittle perchance as straw...We are assured", "Much may be conquered, much may be endured,", "Of what degrades and crushes us. We know", "That we have power over ourselves to do", "And suffer--what, we know not till we try;", "But something nobler than to live and die--", "So taught those kings of old philosophy", "Who reigned, before Religion made men blind;", "And those who suffer with their suffering kind", "Yet feel their faith, religion.' 'My dear friend,'", "Said Maddalo, 'my judgement will not bend", "To your opinion, though I think you might", "Make such a system refutation-tight", "As far as words go. I knew one like you", "Who to this city came some months ago,", "With whom I argued in this sort, and he", "Is now gone mad,--and so he answered me,--", "Poor fellow! but if you would like to go,", "We'll visit him, and his wild talk will show", "How vain are such aspiring theories.'", "'I hope to prove the induction otherwise,", "And that a want of that true theory, still,", "Which seeks a \"soul of goodness\" in things ill", "Or in himself or others, has thus bowed", "His being--there are some by nature proud,", "Who patient in all else demand but this--", "To love and be beloved with gentleness;", "And being scorned, what wonder if they die", "Some living death? this is not destiny", "But man's own wilful ill.'", "As thus I spoke", "Servants announced the gondola, and we", "Through the fast-falling rain and high-wrought sea", "Sailed to the island where the madhouse stands.", "We disembarked. The clap of tortured hands,", "Fierce yells and howlings and lamentings keen,", "And laughter where complaint had merrier been,", "Moans, shrieks, and curses, and blaspheming prayers", "Accosted us. We climbed the oozy stairs", "Into an old courtyard. I heard on high,", "Then, fragments of most touching melody,", "But looking up saw not the singer there--", "Through the black bars in the tempestuous air", "I saw, like weeds on a wrecked palace growing,", "Long tangled locks flung wildly forth, and flowing,", "Of those who on a sudden were beguiled", "Into strange silence, and looked forth and smiled", "Hearing sweet sounds. Then I: 'Methinks there were", "A cure of these with patience and kind care,", "If music can thus move...but what is he", "Whom we seek here?' 'Of his sad history", "I know but this,' said Maddalo: 'he came", "To Venice a dejected man, and fame", "Said he was wealthy, or he had been so;", "Some thought the loss of fortune wrought him woe;", "But he was ever talking in such sort", "As you do--far more sadly--he seemed hurt,", "Even as a man with his peculiar wrong,", "To hear but of the oppression of the strong,", "Or those absurd deceits (I think with you", "In some respects, you know) which carry through", "The excellent impostors of this earth", "When they outface detection--he had worth,", "Poor fellow! but a humorist in his way'--", "'Alas, what drove him mad?' 'I cannot say:", "A lady came with him from France, and when", "She left him and returned, he wandered then", "About yon lonely isles of desert sand", "Till he grew wild--he had no cash or land", "Remaining,--the police had brought him here--", "Some fancy took him and he would not bear", "Removal; so I fitted up for him", "Those rooms beside the sea, to please his whim,", "And sent him busts and books and urns for flowers,", "Which had adorned his life in happier hours,", "And instruments of music--you may guess", "A stranger could do little more or less", "For one so gentle and unfortunate:", "And those are his sweet strains which charm the weight", "From madmen's chains, and make this Hell appear", "A heaven of sacred silence, hushed to hear.'--", "'Nay, this was kind of you--he had no claim,", "As the world says'--'None--but the very same", "Which I on all mankind were I as he", "Fallen to such deep reverse;--his melody", "Is interrupted--now we hear the din", "Of madmen, shriek on shriek, again begin;", "Let us now visit him; after this strain", "He ever communes with himself again,", "And sees nor hears not any.' Having said", "These words, we called the keeper, and he led", "To an apartment opening on the sea--", "There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully", "Near a piano, his pale fingers twined", "One with the other, and the ooze and wind", "Rushed through an open casement, and did sway", "His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray;", "His head was leaning on a music book,", "And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook;", "His lips were pressed against a folded leaf", "In hue too beautiful for health, and grief", "Smiled in their motions as they lay apart--", "As one who wrought from his own fervid heart", "The eloquence of passion, soon he raised", "His sad meek face and eyes lustrous and glazed", "And spoke--sometimes as one who wrote, and thought", "His words might move some heart that heeded not,", "If sent to distant lands: and then as one", "Reproaching deeds never to be undone", "With wondering self-compassion; then his speech", "Was lost in grief, and then his words came each", "Unmodulated, cold, expressionless,--", "But that from one jarred accent you might guess", "It was despair made them so uniform:", "And all the while the loud and gusty storm", "Hissed through the window, and we stood behind", "Stealing his accents from the envious wind", "Unseen. I yet remember what he said", "Distinctly: such impression his words made.", "", "'Month after month,' he cried, 'to bear this load", "And as a jade urged by the whip and goad", "To drag life on, which like a heavy chain", "Lengthens behind with many a link of pain!--", "And not to speak my grief--O, not to dare", "To give a human voice to my despair,", "But live, and move, and, wretched thing! smile on", "As if I never went aside to groan,", "And wear this mask of falsehood even to those", "Who are most dear--not for my own repose--", "Alas! no scorn or pain or hate could be", "So heavy as that falsehood is to me--", "But that I cannot bear more altered faces", "Than needs must be, more changed and cold embraces,", "More misery, disappointment, and mistrust", "To own me for their father...Would the dust", "Were covered in upon my body now!", "That the life ceased to toil within my brow!", "And then these thoughts would at the least be fled;", "Let us not fear such pain can vex the dead.", "", "'What Power delights to torture us? I know", "That to myself I do not wholly owe", "What now I suffer, though in part I may.", "Alas! none strewed sweet flowers upon the way", "Where wandering heedlessly, I met pale Pain", "My shadow, which will leave me not again--", "If I have erred, there was no joy in error,", "But pain and insult and unrest and terror;", "I have not as some do, bought penitence", "With pleasure, and a dark yet sweet offence,", "For then,--if love and tenderness and truth", "Had overlived hope's momentary youth,", "My creed should have redeemed me from repenting;", "But loathed scorn and outrage unrelenting", "Met love excited by far other seeming", "Until the end was gained...as one from dreaming", "Of sweetest peace, I woke, and found my state", "Such as it is.--", "'O Thou, my spirit's mate", "Who, for thou art compassionate and wise,", "Wouldst pity me from thy most gentle eyes", "If this sad writing thou shouldst ever see--", "My secret groans must be unheard by thee,", "Thou wouldst weep tears bitter as blood to know", "Thy lost friend's incommunicable woe.", "", "'Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed", "In friendship, let me not that name degrade", "By placing on your hearts the secret load", "Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road", "To peace and that is truth, which follow ye!", "Love sometimes leads astray to misery.", "Yet think not though subdued--and I may well", "Say that I am subdued--that the full Hell", "Within me would infect the untainted breast", "Of sacred nature with its own unrest;", "As some perverted beings think to find", "In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind", "Which scorn or hate have wounded--O how vain!", "The dagger heals not but may rend again...", "Believe that I am ever still the same", "In creed as in resolve, and what may tame", "My heart, must leave the understanding free,", "Or all would sink in this keen agony--", "Nor dream that I will join the vulgar cry;", "Or with my silence sanction tyranny;", "Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain", "In any madness which the world calls gain,", "Ambition or revenge or thoughts as stern", "As those which make me what I am; or turn", "To avarice or misanthropy or lust...", "Heap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust!", "Till then the dungeon may demand its prey,", "And Poverty and Shame may meet and say--", "Halting beside me on the public way--", "\"That love-devoted youth is ours--let's sit", "Beside him--he may live some six months yet.\"", "Or the red scaffold, as our country bends,", "May ask some willing victim; or ye friends", "May fall under some sorrow which this heart", "Or hand may share or vanquish or avert;", "I am prepared--in truth, with no proud joy--", "To do or suffer aught, as when a boy", "I did devote to justice and to love", "My nature, worthless now!...", "'I must remove", "A veil from my pent mind. 'Tis torn aside!", "O, pallid as Death's dedicated bride,", "Thou mockery which art sitting by my side,", "Am I not wan like thee? at the grave's call", "I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball", "To greet the ghastly paramour, for whom", "Thou hast deserted me...and made the tomb", "Thy bridal bed...But I beside your feet", "Will lie and watch ye from my winding-sheet--", "Thus...wide awake tho' dead...yet stay, O stay!", "Go not so soon--I know not what I say--", "Hear but my reasons...I am mad, I fear,", "My fancy is o'erwrought...thou art not here...", "Pale art thou, 'tis most true...but thou art gone,", "Thy work is finished...I am left alone!--", "...", "'Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast", "Which, like a serpent, thou envenomest", "As in repayment of the warmth it lent?", "Didst thou not seek me for thine own content?", "Did not thy love awaken mine? I thought", "That thou wert she who said, \"You kiss me not", "Ever, I fear you do not love me now\"--", "In truth I loved even to my overthrow", "Her, who would fain forget these words: but they", "Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away.", "...", "'You say that I am proud--that when I speak", "My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break", "The spirit it expresses...Never one", "Humbled himself before, as I have done!", "Even the instinctive worm on which we tread", "Turns, though it wound not--then with prostrate head", "Sinks in the dusk and writhes like me--and dies?", "No: wears a living death of agonies!", "As the slow shadows of the pointed grass", "Mark the eternal periods, his pangs pass,", "Slow, ever-moving,--making moments be", "As mine seem--each an immortality!", "...", "'That you had never seen me--never heard", "My voice, and more than all had ne'er endured", "The deep pollution of my loathed embrace--", "That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face--", "That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out", "The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root", "With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne'er", "Our hearts had for a moment mingled there", "To disunite in horror--these were not", "With thee, like some suppressed and hideous thought", "Which flits athwart our musings, but can find", "No rest within a pure and gentle mind...", "Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,", "And searedst my memory o'er them,--for I heard", "And can forget not...they were ministered", "One after one, those curses. Mix them up", "Like self-destroying poisons in one cup,", "And they will make one blessing which thou ne'er", "Didst imprecate for, on me,--death.", "...", "'It were", "A cruel punishment for one most cruel,", "If such can love, to make that love the fuel", "Of the mind's hell; hate, scorn, remorse, despair:", "But ME--whose heart a stranger's tear might wear", "As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone,", "Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan", "For woes which others hear not, and could see", "The absent with the glance of phantasy,", "And with the poor and trampled sit and weep,", "Following the captive to his dungeon deep;", "ME--who am as a nerve o'er which do creep", "The else unfelt oppressions of this earth,", "And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,", "When all beside was cold--that thou on me", "Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony--", "Such curses are from lips once eloquent", "With love's too partial praise--let none relent", "Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name", "Henceforth, if an example for the same", "They seek...for thou on me lookedst so, and so--", "And didst speak thus...and thus...I live to show", "How much men bear and die not!", "...", "'Thou wilt tell", "With the grimace of hate, how horrible", "It was to meet my love when thine grew less;", "Thou wilt admire how I could e'er address", "Such features to love's work...this taunt, though true,", "(For indeed Nature nor in form nor hue", "Bestowed on me her choicest workmanship)", "Shall not be thy defence...for since thy lip", "Met mine first, years long past, since thine eye kindled", "With soft fire under mine, I have not dwindled", "Nor changed in mind or body, or in aught", "But as love changes what it loveth not", "After long years and many trials.", "", "'How vain", "Are words! I thought never to speak again,", "Not even in secret,--not to mine own heart--", "But from my lips the unwilling accents start,", "And from my pen the words flow as I write,", "Dazzling my eyes with scalding tears...my sight", "Is dim to see that charactered in vain", "On this unfeeling leaf which burns the brain", "And eats into it...blotting all things fair", "And wise and good which time had written there.", "", "'Those who inflict must suffer, for they see", "The work of their own hearts, and this must be", "Our chastisement or recompense--O child!", "I would that thine were like to be more mild", "For both our wretched sakes...for thine the most", "Who feelest already all that thou hast lost", "Without the power to wish it thine again;", "And as slow years pass, a funereal train", "Each with the ghost of some lost hope or friend", "Following it like its shadow, wilt thou bend", "No thought on my dead memory?", "...", "'Alas, love!", "Fear me not...against thee I would not move", "A finger in despite. Do I not live", "That thou mayst have less bitter cause to grieve?", "I give thee tears for scorn and love for hate;", "And that thy lot may be less desolate", "Than his on whom thou tramplest, I refrain", "From that sweet sleep which medicines all pain.", "Then, when thou speakest of me, never say", "\"He could forgive not.\" Here I cast away", "All human passions, all revenge, all pride;", "I think, speak, act no ill; I do but hide", "Under these words, like embers, every spark", "Of that which has consumed me--quick and dark", "The grave is yawning...as its roof shall cover", "My limbs with dust and worms under and over", "So let Oblivion hide this grief...the air", "Closes upon my accents, as despair", "Upon my heart--let death upon despair!'", "", "He ceased, and overcome leant back awhile,", "Then rising, with a melancholy smile", "Went to a sofa, and lay down, and slept", "A heavy sleep, and in his dreams he wept", "And muttered some familiar name, and we", "Wept without shame in his society.", "I think I never was impressed so much;", "The man who were not, must have lacked a touch", "Of human nature...then we lingered not,", "Although our argument was quite forgot,", "But calling the attendants, went to dine", "At Maddalo's; yet neither cheer nor wine", "Could give us spirits, for we talked of him", "And nothing else, till daylight made stars dim;", "And we agreed his was some dreadful ill", "Wrought on him boldly, yet unspeakable,", "By a dear friend; some deadly change in love", "Of one vowed deeply which he dreamed not of;", "For whose sake he, it seemed, had fixed a blot", "Of falsehood on his mind which flourished not", "But in the light of all-beholding truth;", "And having stamped this canker on his youth", "She had abandoned him--and how much more", "Might be his woe, we guessed not--he had store", "Of friends and fortune once, as we could guess", "From his nice habits and his gentleness;", "These were now lost...it were a grief indeed", "If he had changed one unsustaining reed", "For all that such a man might else adorn.", "The colours of his mind seemed yet unworn;", "For the wild language of his grief was high,", "Such as in measure were called poetry;", "And I remember one remark which then", "Maddalo made. He said: 'Most wretched men", "Are cradled into poetry by wrong,", "They learn in suffering what they teach in song.'", "", "If I had been an unconnected man,", "I, from this moment, should have formed some plan", "Never to leave sweet Venice,--for to me", "It was delight to ride by the lone sea;", "And then, the town is silent--one may write", "Or read in gondolas by day or night,", "Having the little brazen lamp alight,", "Unseen, uninterrupted; books are there,", "Pictures, and casts from all those statues fair", "Which were twin-born with poetry, and all", "We seek in towns, with little to recall", "Regrets for the green country. I might sit", "In Maddalo's great palace, and his wit", "And subtle talk would cheer the winter night", "And make me know myself, and the firelight", "Would flash upon our faces, till the day", "Might dawn and make me wonder at my stay:", "But I had friends in London too: the chief", "Attraction here, was that I sought relief", "From the deep tenderness that maniac wrought", "Within me--'twas perhaps an idle thought--", "But I imagined that if day by day", "I watched him, and but seldom went away,", "And studied all the beatings of his heart", "With zeal, as men study some stubborn art", "For their own good, and could by patience find", "An entrance to the caverns of his mind,", "I might reclaim him from this dark estate:", "In friendships I had been most fortunate--", "Yet never saw I one whom I would call", "More willingly my friend; and this was all", "Accomplished not; such dreams of baseless good", "Oft come and go in crowds or solitude", "And leave no trace--but what I now designed", "Made for long years impression on my mind.", "The following morning, urged by my affairs,", "I left bright Venice.", "After many years", "And many changes I returned; the name", "Of Venice, and its aspect, was the same;", "But Maddalo was travelling far away", "Among the mountains of Armenia.", "His dog was dead. His child had now become", "A woman; such as it has been my doom", "To meet with few,--a wonder of this earth,", "Where there is little of transcendent worth,", "Like one of Shakespeare's women: kindly she,", "And, with a manner beyond courtesy,", "Received her father's friend; and when I asked", "Of the lorn maniac, she her memory tasked,", "And told as she had heard the mournful tale:", "'That the poor sufferer's health began to fail", "Two years from my departure, but that then", "The lady who had left him, came again.", "Her mien had been imperious, but she now", "Looked meek--perhaps remorse had brought her low.", "Her coming made him better, and they stayed", "Together at my father's--for I played,", "As I remember, with the lady's shawl--", "I might be six years old--but after all", "She left him.'...'Why, her heart must have been tough:", "How did it end?' 'And was not this enough?", "They met--they parted.'--'Child, is there no more?'", "'Something within that interval which bore", "The stamp of WHY they parted, HOW they met:", "Yet if thine aged eyes disdain to wet", "Those wrinkled cheeks with youth's remembered tears,", "Ask me no more, but let the silent years", "Be closed and cered over their memory", "As yon mute marble where their corpses lie.'", "I urged and questioned still, she told me how", "All happened--but the cold world shall not know." ], "linecount": "635" }, { "title": "Prometheus Unbound. a Lyrical Drama in Four Acts", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "AUDISNE HAEC AMPHIARAE, SUB TERRAM ABDITE?", "", "ACT 1.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Monarch of Gods and DAEmons, and all Spirits", "But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds", "Which Thou and I alone of living things", "Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth", "Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou", "Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,", "And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,", "With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.", "Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,", "Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,", "O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.", "Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,", "And moments aye divided by keen pangs", "Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,", "Scorn and despair,--these are mine empire:--", "More glorious far than that which thou surveyest", "From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!", "Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame", "Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here", "Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,", "Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,", "Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.", "Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!", "", "No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.", "I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?", "I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,", "Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,", "Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,", "Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?", "Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!", "", "The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears", "Of their moon-freezing crystals; the bright chains", "Eat with their burning cold into my bones.", "Heaven's winged hound, polluting from thy lips", "His beak in poison not his own, tears up", "My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,", "The ghastly people of the realm of dream,", "Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged", "To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds", "When the rocks split and close again behind:", "While from their loud abysses howling throng", "The genii of the storm, urging the rage", "Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.", "And yet to me welcome is day and night,", "Whether one breaks the hoar-frost of the morn,", "Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs", "The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead", "The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom", "--As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim--", "Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood", "From these pale feet, which then might trample thee", "If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.", "Disdain! Ah, no! I pity thee. What ruin", "Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!", "How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,", "Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,", "Not exultation, for I hate no more,", "As then ere misery made me wise. The curse", "Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,", "Whose many-voiced Echoes, through the mist", "Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!", "Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,", "Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept", "Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,", "Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!", "And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poised wings", "Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,", "As thunder, louder than your own, made rock", "The orbed world! If then my words had power,", "Though I am changed so that aught evil wish", "Is dead within; although no memory be", "Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!", "What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak.", "", "FIRST VOICE (FROM THE MOUNTAINS):", "Thrice three hundred thousand years", "O'er the Earthquake's couch we stood:", "Oft, as men convulsed with fears,", "We trembled in our multitude.", "", "SECOND VOICE (FROM THE SPRINGS):", "Thunderbolts had parched our water,", "We had been stained with bitter blood,", "And had run mute, 'mid shrieks of slaughter,", "Thro' a city and a solitude.", "", "THIRD VOICE (FROM THE AIR):", "I had clothed, since Earth uprose,", "Its wastes in colours not their own,", "And oft had my serene repose", "Been cloven by many a rending groan.", "", "FOURTH VOICE (FROM THE WHIRLWINDS):", "We had soared beneath these mountains", "Unresting ages; nor had thunder,", "Nor yon volcano's flaming fountains,", "Nor any power above or under", "Ever made us mute with wonder.", "", "FIRST VOICE:", "But never bowed our snowy crest", "As at the voice of thine unrest.", "", "SECOND VOICE:", "Never such a sound before", "To the Indian waves we bore.", "A pilot asleep on the howling sea", "Leaped up from the deck in agony,", "And heard, and cried, 'Ah, woe is me!'", "And died as mad as the wild waves be.", "", "THIRD VOICE:", "By such dread words from Earth to Heaven", "My still realm was never riven:", "When its wound was closed, there stood", "Darkness o'er the day like blood.", "", "FOURTH VOICE:", "And we shrank back: for dreams of ruin", "To frozen caves our flight pursuing", "Made us keep silence--thus--and thus--", "Though silence is a hell to us.", "", "THE EARTH:", "The tongueless caverns of the craggy hills", "Cried, 'Misery!' then; the hollow Heaven replied,", "'Misery!' And the Ocean's purple waves,", "Climbing the land, howled to the lashing winds,", "And the pale nations heard it, 'Misery!'", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "I hear a sound of voices: not the voice", "Which I gave forth. Mother, thy sons and thou", "Scorn him, without whose all-enduring will", "Beneath the fierce omnipotence of Jove,", "Both they and thou had vanished, like thin mist", "Unrolled on the morning wind. Know ye not me,", "The Titan? He who made his agony", "The barrier to your else all-conquering foe?", "Oh, rock-embosomed lawns, and snow-fed streams,", "Now seen athwart frore vapours, deep below,", "Through whose o'ershadowing woods I wandered once", "With Asia, drinking life from her loved eyes;", "Why scorns the spirit which informs ye, now", "To commune with me? me alone, who checked,", "As one who checks a fiend-drawn charioteer,", "The falsehood and the force of him who reigns", "Supreme, and with the groans of pining slaves", "Fills your dim glens and liquid wildernesses:", "Why answer ye not, still? Brethren!", "", "THE EARTH:", "They dare not.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.", "Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!", "'Tis scarce like sound: it tingles through the frame", "As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.", "Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice", "I only know that thou art moving near", "And love. How cursed I him?", "", "THE EARTH:", "How canst thou hear", "Who knowest not the language of the dead?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Thou art a living spirit; speak as they.", "", "THE EARTH:", "I dare not speak like life, lest Heaven's fell King", "Should hear, and link me to some wheel of pain", "More torturing than the one whereon I roll.", "Subtle thou art and good; and though the Gods", "Hear not this voice, yet thou art more than God,", "Being wise and kind: earnestly hearken now.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Obscurely through my brain, like shadows dim,", "Sweep awful thoughts, rapid and thick. I feel", "Faint, like one mingled in entwining love;", "Yet 'tis not pleasure.", "", "THE EARTH:", "No, thou canst not hear:", "Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known", "Only to those who die.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "And what art thou,", "O, melancholy Voice?", "", "THE EARTH:", "I am the Earth,", "Thy mother; she within whose stony veins,", "To the last fibre of the loftiest tree", "Whose thin leaves trembled in the frozen air,", "Joy ran, as blood within a living frame,", "When thou didst from her bosom, like a cloud", "Of glory, arise, a spirit of keen joy!", "And at thy voice her pining sons uplifted", "Their prostrate brows from the polluting dust,", "And our almighty Tyrant with fierce dread", "Grew pale, until his thunder chained thee here.", "Then, see those million worlds which burn and roll", "Around us: their inhabitants beheld", "My sphered light wane in wide Heaven; the sea", "Was lifted by strange tempest, and new fire", "From earthquake-rifted mountains of bright snow", "Shook its portentous hair beneath Heaven's frown;", "Lightning and Inundation vexed the plains;", "Blue thistles bloomed in cities; foodless toads", "Within voluptuous chambers panting crawled:", "When Plague had fallen on man, and beast, and worm,", "And Famine; and black blight on herb and tree;", "And in the corn, and vines, and meadow-grass,", "Teemed ineradicable poisonous weeds", "Draining their growth, for my wan breast was dry", "With grief; and the thin air, my breath, was stained", "With the contagion of a mother's hate", "Breathed on her child's destroyer; ay, I heard", "Thy curse, the which, if thou rememberest not,", "Yet my innumerable seas and streams,", "Mountains, and caves, and winds, and yon wide air,", "And the inarticulate people of the dead,", "Preserve, a treasured spell. We meditate", "In secret joy and hope those dreadful words,", "But dare not speak them.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Venerable mother!", "All else who live and suffer take from thee", "Some comfort; flowers, and fruits, and happy sounds,", "And love, though fleeting; these may not be mine.", "But mine own words, I pray, deny me not.", "", "THE EARTH:", "They shall be told. Ere Babylon was dust,", "The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,", "Met his own image walking in the garden.", "That apparition, sole of men, he saw.", "For know there are two worlds of life and death:", "One that which thou beholdest; but the other", "Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit", "The shadows of all forms that think and live", "Till death unite them and they part no more;", "Dreams and the light imaginings of men,", "And all that faith creates or love desires,", "Terrible, strange, sublime and beauteous shapes.", "There thou art, and dost hang, a writhing shade,", "'Mid whirlwind-peopled mountains; all the gods", "Are there, and all the powers of nameless worlds,", "Vast, sceptred phantoms; heroes, men, and beasts;", "And Demogorgon, a tremendous gloom;", "And he, the supreme Tyrant, on his throne", "Of burning gold. Son, one of these shall utter", "The curse which all remember. Call at will", "Thine own ghost, or the ghost of Jupiter,", "Hades or Typhon, or what mightier Gods", "From all-prolific Evil, since thy ruin,", "Have sprung, and trampled on my prostrate sons.", "Ask, and they must reply: so the revenge", "Of the Supreme may sweep through vacant shades,", "As rainy wind through the abandoned gate", "Of a fallen palace.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Mother, let not aught", "Of that which may be evil, pass again", "My lips, or those of aught resembling me.", "Phantasm of Jupiter, arise, appear!", "", "IONE:", "My wings are folded o'er mine ears:", "My wings are crossed o'er mine eyes:", "Yet through their silver shade appears,", "And through their lulling plumes arise,", "A Shape, a throng of sounds;", "May it be no ill to thee", "O thou of many wounds!", "Near whom, for our sweet sister's sake,", "Ever thus we watch and wake.", "", "PANTHEA:", "The sound is of whirlwind underground,", "Earthquake, and fire, and mountains cloven;", "The shape is awful like the sound,", "Clothed in dark purple, star-inwoven.", "A sceptre of pale gold", "To stay steps proud, o'er the slow cloud", "His veined hand doth hold.", "Cruel he looks, but calm and strong,", "Like one who does, not suffers wrong.", "", "PHANTASM OF JUPITER:", "Why have the secret powers of this strange world", "Driven me, a frail and empty phantom, hither", "On direst storms? What unaccustomed sounds", "Are hovering on my lips, unlike the voice", "With which our pallid race hold ghastly talk", "In darkness? And, proud sufferer, who art thou?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Tremendous Image, as thou art must be", "He whom thou shadowest forth. I am his foe,", "The Titan. Speak the words which I would hear,", "Although no thought inform thine empty voice.", "", "THE EARTH:", "Listen! And though your echoes must be mute,", "Grey mountains, and old woods, and haunted springs,", "Prophetic caves, and isle-surrounding streams,", "Rejoice to hear what yet ye cannot speak.", "", "PHANTASM:", "A spirit seizes me and speaks within:", "It tears me as fire tears a thunder-cloud.", "", "PANTHEA:", "See, how he lifts his mighty looks, the Heaven", "Darkens above.", "", "IONE:", "He speaks! O shelter me!", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "I see the curse on gestures proud and cold,", "And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,", "And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,", "Written as on a scroll: yet speak! Oh, speak!", "", "PHANTASM:", "Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind,", "All that thou canst inflict I bid thee do;", "Foul Tyrant both of Gods and Humankind,", "One only being shalt thou not subdue.", "Rain then thy plagues upon me here,", "Ghastly disease, and frenzying fear;", "And let alternate frost and fire", "Eat into me, and be thine ire", "Lightning, and cutting hail, and legioned forms", "Of furies, driving by upon the wounding storms.", "", "Ay, do thy worst. Thou art omnipotent.", "O'er all things but thyself I gave thee power,", "And my own will. Be thy swift mischiefs sent", "To blast mankind, from yon ethereal tower.", "Let thy malignant spirit move", "In darkness over those I love:", "On me and mine I imprecate", "The utmost torture of thy hate;", "And thus devote to sleepless agony,", "This undeclining head while thou must reign on high.", "", "But thou, who art the God and Lord: O, thou,", "Who fillest with thy soul this world of woe,", "To whom all things of Earth and Heaven do bow", "In fear and worship: all-prevailing foe!", "I curse thee! let a sufferer's curse", "Clasp thee, his torturer, like remorse;", "Till thine Infinity shall be", "A robe of envenomed agony;", "And thine Omnipotence a crown of pain,", "To cling like burning gold round thy dissolving brain.", "", "Heap on thy soul, by virtue of this Curse,", "Ill deeds, then be thou damned, beholding good;", "Both infinite as is the universe,", "And thou, and thy self-torturing solitude.", "An awful image of calm power", "Though now thou sittest, let the hour", "Come, when thou must appear to be", "That which thou art internally;", "And after many a false and fruitless crime", "Scorn track thy lagging fall through boundless space and time.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Were these my words, O Parent?", "", "THE EARTH:", "They were thine.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "It doth repent me: words are quick and vain;", "Grief for awhile is blind, and so was mine.", "I wish no living thing to suffer pain.", "", "THE EARTH:", "Misery, Oh misery to me,", "That Jove at length should vanquish thee.", "Wail, howl aloud, Land and Sea,", "The Earth's rent heart shall answer ye.", "Howl, Spirits of the living and the dead,", "Your refuge, your defence, lies fallen and vanquished.", "", "FIRST ECHO:", "Lies fallen and vanquished!", "", "SECOND ECHO:", "Fallen and vanquished!", "", "IONE:", "Fear not: 'tis but some passing spasm,", "The Titan is unvanquished still.", "But see, where through the azure chasm", "Of yon forked and snowy hill", "Trampling the slant winds on high", "With golden-sandalled feet, that glow", "Under plumes of purple dye,", "Like rose-ensanguined ivory,", "A Shape comes now,", "Stretching on high from his right hand", "A serpent-cinctured wand.", "", "PANTHEA:", "'Tis Jove's world-wandering herald, Mercury.", "", "IONE:", "And who are those with hydra tresses", "And iron wings that climb the wind,", "Whom the frowning God represses", "Like vapours steaming up behind,", "Clanging loud, an endless crowd--", "", "PANTHEA:", "These are Jove's tempest-walking hounds,", "Whom he gluts with groans and blood,", "When charioted on sulphurous cloud", "He bursts Heaven's bounds.", "", "IONE:", "Are they now led, from the thin dead", "On new pangs to be fed?", "", "PANTHEA:", "The Titan looks as ever, firm, not proud.", "", "FIRST FURY:", "Ha! I scent life!", "", "SECOND FURY:", "Let me but look into his eyes!", "", "THIRD FURY:", "The hope of torturing him smells like a heap", "Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle.", "", "FIRST FURY:", "Darest thou delay, O Herald! take cheer, Hounds", "Of Hell: what if the Son of Maia soon", "Should make us food and sport--who can please long", "The Omnipotent?", "", "MERCURY:", "Back to your towers of iron,", "And gnash, beside the streams of fire and wail,", "Your foodless teeth. Geryon, arise! and Gorgon,", "Chimaera, and thou Sphinx, subtlest of fiends", "Who ministered to Thebes Heaven's poisoned wine,", "Unnatural love, and more unnatural hate:", "These shall perform your task.", "", "FIRST FURY:", "Oh, mercy! mercy!", "We die with our desire: drive us not back!", "", "MERCURY:", "Crouch then in silence.", "Awful Sufferer!", "To thee unwilling, most unwillingly", "I come, by the great Father's will driven down,", "To execute a doom of new revenge.", "Alas! I pity thee, and hate myself", "That I can do no more: aye from thy sight", "Returning, for a season, Heaven seems Hell,", "So thy worn form pursues me night and day,", "Smiling reproach. Wise art thou, firm and good,", "But vainly wouldst stand forth alone in strife", "Against the Omnipotent; as yon clear lamps", "That measure and divide the weary years", "From which there is no refuge, long have taught", "And long must teach. Even now thy Torturer arms", "With the strange might of unimagined pains", "The powers who scheme slow agonies in Hell,", "And my commission is to lead them here,", "Or what more subtle, foul, or savage fiends", "People the abyss, and leave them to their task.", "Be it not so! there is a secret known", "To thee, and to none else of living things,", "Which may transfer the sceptre of wide Heaven,", "The fear of which perplexes the Supreme:", "Clothe it in words, and bid it clasp his throne", "In intercession; bend thy soul in prayer,", "And like a suppliant in some gorgeous fane,", "Let the will kneel within thy haughty heart:", "For benefits and meek submission tame", "The fiercest and the mightiest.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Evil minds", "Change good to their own nature. I gave all", "He has; and in return he chains me here", "Years, ages, night and day: whether the Sun", "Split my parched skin, or in the moony night", "The crystal-winged snow cling round my hair:", "Whilst my beloved race is trampled down", "By his thought-executing ministers.", "Such is the tyrant's recompense: 'tis just:", "He who is evil can receive no good;", "And for a world bestowed, or a friend lost,", "He can feel hate, fear, shame; not gratitude:", "He but requites me for his own misdeed.", "Kindness to such is keen reproach, which breaks", "With bitter stings the light sleep of Revenge.", "Submission, thou dost know I cannot try:", "For what submission but that fatal word,", "The death-seal of mankind's captivity,", "Like the Sicilian's hair-suspended sword,", "Which trembles o'er his crown, would he accept,", "Or could I yield? Which yet I will not yield.", "Let others flatter Crime, where it sits throned", "In brief Omnipotence: secure are they:", "For Justice, when triumphant, will weep down", "Pity, not punishment, on her own wrongs,", "Too much avenged by those who err. I wait,", "Enduring thus, the retributive hour", "Which since we spake is even nearer now.", "But hark, the hell-hounds clamour: fear delay:", "Behold! Heaven lowers under thy Father's frown.", "", "MERCURY:", "Oh, that we might be spared; I to inflict", "And thou to suffer! Once more answer me:", "Thou knowest not the period of Jove's power?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "I know but this, that it must come.", "", "MERCURY:", "Alas!", "Thou canst not count thy years to come of pain?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "They last while Jove must reign: nor more, nor less", "Do I desire or fear.", "", "MERCURY:", "Yet pause, and plunge", "Into Eternity, where recorded time,", "Even all that we imagine, age on age,", "Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind", "Flags wearily in its unending flight,", "Till it sink, dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless;", "Perchance it has not numbered the slow years", "Which thou must spend in torture, unreprieved?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Perchance no thought can count them, yet they pass.", "", "MERCURY:", "If thou might'st dwell among the Gods the while", "Lapped in voluptuous joy?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "I would not quit", "This bleak ravine, these unrepentant pains.", "", "MERCURY:", "Alas! I wonder at, yet pity thee.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Pity the self-despising slaves of Heaven,", "Not me, within whose mind sits peace serene.", "As light in the sun, throned: how vain is talk!", "Call up the fiends.", "", "IONE:", "O, sister, look! White fire", "Has cloven to the roots yon huge snow-loaded cedar;", "How fearfully God's thunder howls behind!", "", "MERCURY:", "I must obey his words and thine: alas!", "Most heavily remorse hangs at my heart!", "", "PANTHEA:", "See where the child of Heaven, with winged feet,", "Runs down the slanted sunlight of the dawn.", "", "IONE:", "Dear sister, close thy plumes over thine eyes", "Lest thou behold and die: they come: they come", "Blackening the birth of day with countless wings,", "And hollow underneath, like death.", "", "FIRST FURY:", "Prometheus!", "", "SECOND FURY:", "Immortal Titan!", "", "THIRD FURY:", "Champion of Heaven's slaves!", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "He whom some dreadful voice invokes is here,", "Prometheus, the chained Titan. Horrible forms,", "What and who are ye? Never yet there came", "Phantasms so foul through monster-teeming Hell", "From the all-miscreative brain of Jove;", "Whilst I behold such execrable shapes,", "Methinks I grow like what I contemplate,", "And laugh and stare in loathsome sympathy.", "", "FIRST FURY:", "We are the ministers of pain, and fear,", "And disappointment, and mistrust, and hate,", "And clinging crime; and as lean dogs pursue", "Through wood and lake some struck and sobbing fawn,", "We track all things that weep, and bleed, and live,", "When the great King betrays them to our will.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Oh! many fearful natures in one name,", "I know ye; and these lakes and echoes know", "The darkness and the clangour of your wings.", "But why more hideous than your loathed selves", "Gather ye up in legions from the deep?", "", "SECOND FURY:", "We knew not that: Sisters, rejoice, rejoice!", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Can aught exult in its deformity?", "", "SECOND FURY:", "The beauty of delight makes lovers glad,", "Gazing on one another: so are we.", "As from the rose which the pale priestess kneels", "To gather for her festal crown of flowers", "The aereal crimson falls, flushing her cheek,", "So from our victim's destined agony", "The shade which is our form invests us round,", "Else we are shapeless as our mother Night.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "I laugh your power, and his who sent you here,", "To lowest scorn. Pour forth the cup of pain.", "", "FIRST FURY:", "Thou thinkest we will rend thee bone from bone,", "And nerve from nerve, working like fire within?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Pain is my element, as hate is thine;", "Ye rend me now; I care not.", "", "SECOND FURY:", "Dost imagine", "We will but laugh into thy lidless eyes?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "I weigh not what ye do, but what ye suffer,", "Being evil. Cruel was the power which called", "You, or aught else so wretched, into light.", "", "THIRD FURY:", "Thou think'st we will live through thee, one by one,", "Like animal life, and though we can obscure not", "The soul which burns within, that we will dwell", "Beside it, like a vain loud multitude", "Vexing the self-content of wisest men:", "That we will be dread thought beneath thy brain,", "And foul desire round thine astonished heart,", "And blood within thy labyrinthine veins", "Crawling like agony?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Why, ye are thus now;", "Yet am I king over myself, and rule", "The torturing and conflicting throngs within,", "As Jove rules you when Hell grows mutinous.", "", "CHORUS OF FURIES:", "From the ends of the earth, from the ends of the earth,", "Where the night has its grave and the morning its birth,", "Come, come, come!", "Oh, ye who shake hills with the scream of your mirth,", "When cities sink howling in ruin; and ye", "Who with wingless footsteps trample the sea,", "And close upon Shipwreck and Famine's track,", "Sit chattering with joy on the foodless wreck;", "Come, come, come!", "Leave the bed, low, cold, and red,", "Strewed beneath a nation dead;", "Leave the hatred, as in ashes", "Fire is left for future burning:", "It will burst in bloodier flashes", "When ye stir it, soon returning:", "Leave the self-contempt implanted", "In young spirits, sense-enchanted,", "Misery's yet unkindled fuel:", "Leave Hell's secrets half unchanted", "To the maniac dreamer; cruel", "More than ye can be with hate", "Is he with fear.", "Come, come, come!", "We are steaming up from Hell's wide gate", "And we burthen the blast of the atmosphere,", "But vainly we toil till ye come here.", "", "IONE:", "Sister, I hear the thunder of new wings.", "", "PANTHEA:", "These solid mountains quiver with the sound", "Even as the tremulous air: their shadows make", "The space within my plumes more black than night.", "", "FIRST FURY:", "Your call was as a winged car,", "Driven on whirlwinds fast and far;", "It rapped us from red gulfs of war.", "", "SECOND FURY:", "From wide cities, famine-wasted;", "", "THIRD FURY:", "Groans half heard, and blood untasted;", "", "FOURTH FURY:", "Kingly conclaves stern and cold,", "Where blood with gold is bought and sold;", "", "FIFTH FURY:", "From the furnace, white and hot,", "In which--", "", "A FURY:", "Speak not: whisper not:", "I know all that ye would tell,", "But to speak might break the spell", "Which must bend the Invincible,", "The stern of thought;", "He yet defies the deepest power of Hell.", "", "FURY:", "Tear the veil!", "", "ANOTHER FURY:", "It is torn.", "", "CHORUS:", "The pale stars of the morn", "Shine on a misery, dire to be borne.", "Dost thou faint, mighty Titan? We laugh thee to scorn.", "Dost thou boast the clear knowledge thou waken'dst for man?", "Then was kindled within him a thirst which outran", "Those perishing waters; a thirst of fierce fever,", "Hope, love, doubt, desire, which consume him for ever.", "One came forth of gentle worth", "Smiling on the sanguine earth;", "His words outlived him, like swift poison", "Withering up truth, peace, and pity.", "Look! where round the wide horizon", "Many a million-peopled city", "Vomits smoke in the bright air.", "Mark that outcry of despair!", "'Tis his mild and gentle ghost", "Wailing for the faith he kindled:", "Look again, the flames almost", "To a glow-worm's lamp have dwindled:", "The survivors round the embers", "Gather in dread.", "Joy, joy, joy!", "Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,", "And the future is dark, and the present is spread", "Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Drops of bloody agony flow", "From his white and quivering brow.", "Grant a little respite now:", "See a disenchanted nation", "Springs like day from desolation;", "To Truth its state is dedicate,", "And Freedom leads it forth, her mate;", "A legioned band of linked brothers", "Whom Love calls children--", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "'Tis another's:", "See how kindred murder kin:", "'Tis the vintage-time for death and sin:", "Blood, like new wine, bubbles within:", "Till Despair smothers", "The struggling world, which slaves and tyrants win.", "", "[ALL THE FURIES VANISH, EXCEPT ONE.]", "", "IONE:", "Hark, sister! what a low yet dreadful groan", "Quite unsuppressed is tearing up the heart", "Of the good Titan, as storms tear the deep,", "And beasts hear the sea moan in inland caves.", "Darest thou observe how the fiends torture him?", "", "PANTHEA:", "Alas! I looked forth twice, but will no more.", "", "IONE:", "What didst thou see?", "", "PANTHEA:", "A woful sight: a youth", "With patient looks nailed to a crucifix.", "", "IONE:", "What next?", "", "PANTHEA:", "The heaven around, the earth below", "Was peopled with thick shapes of human death,", "All horrible, and wrought by human hands,", "And some appeared the work of human hearts,", "For men were slowly killed by frowns and smiles:", "And other sights too foul to speak and live", "Were wandering by. Let us not tempt worse fear", "By looking forth: those groans are grief enough.", "", "FURY:", "Behold an emblem: those who do endure", "Deep wrongs for man, and scorn, and chains, but heap", "Thousand-fold torment on themselves and him.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Remit the anguish of that lighted stare;", "Close those wan lips; let that thorn-wounded brow", "Stream not with blood; it mingles with thy tears!", "Fix, fix those tortured orbs in peace and death,", "So thy sick throes shake not that crucifix,", "So those pale fingers play not with thy gore.", "O, horrible! Thy name I will not speak,", "It hath become a curse. I see, I see", "The wise, the mild, the lofty, and the just,", "Whom thy slaves hate for being like to thee,", "Some hunted by foul lies from their heart's home,", "An early-chosen, late-lamented home;", "As hooded ounces cling to the driven hind;", "Some linked to corpses in unwholesome cells:", "Some--Hear I not the multitude laugh loud?--", "Impaled in lingering fire: and mighty realms", "Float by my feet, like sea-uprooted isles,", "Whose sons are kneaded down in common blood", "By the red light of their own burning homes.", "", "FURY:", "Blood thou canst see, and fire; and canst hear groans;", "Worse things unheard, unseen, remain behind.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Worse?", "", "FURY:", "In each human heart terror survives", "The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear", "All that they would disdain to think were true:", "Hypocrisy and custom make their minds", "The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.", "They dare not devise good for man's estate,", "And yet they know not that they do not dare.", "The good want power, but to weep barren tears.", "The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.", "The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom;", "And all best things are thus confused to ill.", "Many are strong and rich, and would be just,", "But live among their suffering fellow-men", "As if none felt: they know not what they do.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Thy words are like a cloud of winged snakes;", "And yet I pity those they torture not.", "", "FURY:", "Thou pitiest them? I speak no more!", "[VANISHES.]", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Ah woe!", "Ah woe! Alas! pain, pain ever, for ever!", "I close my tearless eyes, but see more clear", "Thy works within my woe-illumed mind,", "Thou subtle tyrant! Peace is in the grave.", "The grave hides all things beautiful and good:", "I am a God and cannot find it there,", "Nor would I seek it: for, though dread revenge,", "This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.", "The sights with which thou torturest gird my soul", "With new endurance, till the hour arrives", "When they shall be no types of things which are.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Alas! what sawest thou more?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "There are two woes:", "To speak, and to behold; thou spare me one.", "Names are there, Nature's sacred watchwords, they", "Were borne aloft in bright emblazonry;", "The nations thronged around, and cried aloud,", "As with one voice, Truth, liberty, and love!", "Suddenly fierce confusion fell from heaven", "Among them: there was strife, deceit, and fear:", "Tyrants rushed in, and did divide the spoil.", "This was the shadow of the truth I saw.", "", "THE EARTH:", "I felt thy torture, son; with such mixed joy", "As pain and virtue give. To cheer thy state", "I bid ascend those subtle and fair spirits,", "Whose homes are the dim caves of human thought,", "And who inhabit, as birds wing the wind,", "Its world-surrounding aether: they behold", "Beyond that twilight realm, as in a glass,", "The future: may they speak comfort to thee!", "", "PANTHEA:", "Look, sister, where a troop of spirits gather,", "Like flocks of clouds in spring's delightful weather,", "Thronging in the blue air!", "", "IONE:", "And see! more come,", "Like fountain-vapours when the winds are dumb,", "That climb up the ravine in scattered lines.", "And, hark! is it the music of the pines?", "Is it the lake? Is it the waterfall?", "", "PANTHEA:", "'Tis something sadder, sweeter far than all.", "", "CHORUS OF SPIRITS:", "From unremembered ages we", "Gentle guides and guardians be", "Of heaven-oppressed mortality;", "And we breathe, and sicken not,", "The atmosphere of human thought:", "Be it dim, and dank, and gray,", "Like a storm-extinguished day,", "Travelled o'er by dying gleams;", "Be it bright as all between", "Cloudless skies and windless streams,", "Silent, liquid, and serene;", "As the birds within the wind,", "As the fish within the wave,", "As the thoughts of man's own mind", "Float through all above the grave;", "We make there our liquid lair,", "Voyaging cloudlike and unpent", "Through the boundless element:", "Thence we bear the prophecy", "Which begins and ends in thee!", "", "IONE:", "More yet come, one by one: the air around them", "Looks radiant as the air around a star.", "", "FIRST SPIRIT:", "On a battle-trumpet's blast", "I fled hither, fast, fast, fast,", "'Mid the darkness upward cast.", "From the dust of creeds outworn,", "From the tyrant's banner torn,", "Gathering 'round me, onward borne,", "There was mingled many a cry--", "Freedom! Hope! Death! Victory!", "Till they faded through the sky;", "And one sound, above, around,", "One sound beneath, around, above,", "Was moving; 'twas the soul of Love;", "'Twas the hope, the prophecy,", "Which begins and ends in thee.", "", "SECOND SPIRIT:", "A rainbow's arch stood on the sea,", "Which rocked beneath, immovably;", "And the triumphant storm did flee,", "Like a conqueror, swift and proud,", "Between, with many a captive cloud,", "A shapeless, dark and rapid crowd,", "Each by lightning riven in half:", "I heard the thunder hoarsely laugh:", "Mighty fleets were strewn like chaff", "And spread beneath a hell of death", "O'er the white waters. I alit", "On a great ship lightning-split,", "And speeded hither on the sigh", "Of one who gave an enemy", "His plank, then plunged aside to die.", "", "THIRD SPIRIT:", "I sate beside a sage's bed,", "And the lamp was burning red", "Near the book where he had fed,", "When a Dream with plumes of flame,", "To his pillow hovering came,", "And I knew it was the same", "Which had kindled long ago", "Pity, eloquence, and woe;", "And the world awhile below", "Wore the shade, its lustre made.", "It has borne me here as fleet", "As Desire's lightning feet:", "I must ride it back ere morrow,", "Or the sage will wake in sorrow.", "", "FOURTH SPIRIT:", "On a poet's lips I slept", "Dreaming like a love-adept", "In the sound his breathing kept;", "Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses,", "But feeds on the aereal kisses", "Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses.", "He will watch from dawn to gloom", "The lake-reflected sun illume", "The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom,", "Nor heed nor see, what things they be;", "But from these create he can", "Forms more real than living man,", "Nurslings of immortality!", "One of these awakened me,", "And I sped to succour thee.", "", "IONE:", "Behold'st thou not two shapes from the east and west", "Come, as two doves to one beloved nest,", "Twin nurslings of the all-sustaining air", "On swift still wings glide down the atmosphere?", "And, hark! their sweet sad voices! 'tis despair", "Mingled with love and then dissolved in sound.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Canst thou speak, sister? all my words are drowned.", "", "IONE:", "Their beauty gives me voice. See how they float", "On their sustaining wings of skiey grain,", "Orange and azure deepening into gold:", "Their soft smiles light the air like a star's fire.", "", "CHORUS OF SPIRITS:", "Hast thou beheld the form of Love?", "", "FIFTH SPIRIT:", "As over wide dominions", "I sped, like some swift cloud that wings the wide air's wildernesses,", "That planet-crested shape swept by on lightning-braided pinions,", "Scattering the liquid joy of life from his ambrosial tresses:", "His footsteps paved the world with light; but as I passed 'twas fading,", "And hollow Ruin yawned behind: great sages bound in madness,", "And headless patriots, and pale youths who perished, unupbraiding,", "Gleamed in the night. I wandered o'er, till thou, O King of sadness,", "Turned by thy smile the worst I saw to recollected gladness.", "", "SIXTH SPIRIT:", "Ah, sister! Desolation is a delicate thing:", "It walks not on the earth, it floats not on the air,", "But treads with lulling footstep, and fans with silent wing", "The tender hopes which in their hearts the best and gentlest bear;", "Who, soothed to false repose by the fanning plumes above", "And the music-stirring motion of its soft and busy feet,", "Dream visions of aereal joy, and call the monster, Love,", "And wake, and find the shadow Pain, as he whom now we greet.", "", "CHORUS:", "Though Ruin now Love's shadow be,", "Following him, destroyingly,", "On Death's white and winged steed,", "Which the fleetest cannot flee,", "Trampling down both flower and weed,", "Man and beast, and foul and fair,", "Like a tempest through the air;", "Thou shalt quell this horseman grim,", "Woundless though in heart or limb.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Spirits! how know ye this shall be?", "", "CHORUS:", "In the atmosphere we breathe,", "As buds grow red when the snow-storms flee,", "From Spring gathering up beneath,", "Whose mild winds shake the elder-brake,", "And the wandering herdsmen know", "That the white-thorn soon will blow:", "Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Peace,", "When they struggle to increase,", "Are to us as soft winds be", "To shepherd boys, the prophecy", "Which begins and ends in thee.", "", "IONE:", "Where are the Spirits fled?", "", "PANTHEA:", "Only a sense", "Remains of them, like the omnipotence", "Of music, when the inspired voice and lute", "Languish, ere yet the responses are mute,", "Which through the deep and labyrinthine soul,", "Like echoes through long caverns, wind and roll.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "How fair these airborn shapes! and yet I feel", "Most vain all hope but love; and thou art far,", "Asia! who, when my being overflowed,", "Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine", "Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust.", "All things are still: alas! how heavily", "This quiet morning weighs upon my heart;", "Though I should dream I could even sleep with grief", "If slumber were denied not. I would fain", "Be what it is my destiny to be,", "The saviour and the strength of suffering man,", "Or sink into the original gulf of things:", "There is no agony, and no solace left;", "Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Hast thou forgotten one who watches thee", "The cold dark night, and never sleeps but when", "The shadow of thy spirit falls on her?", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "I said all hope was vain but love: thou lovest.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Deeply in truth; but the eastern star looks white,", "And Asia waits in that far Indian vale,", "The scene of her sad exile; rugged once", "And desolate and frozen, like this ravine;", "But now invested with fair flowers and herbs,", "And haunted by sweet airs and sounds, which flow", "Among the woods and waters, from the aether", "Of her transforming presence, which would fade", "If it were mingled not with thine. Farewell!", "", "END OF ACT 1.", "", "ACT 2.", "", "SCENE 2.1:", "MORNING.", "A LOVELY VALE IN THE INDIAN CAUCASUS.", "ASIA, ALONE.", "", "ASIA:", "From all the blasts of heaven thou hast descended:", "Yes, like a spirit, like a thought, which makes", "Unwonted tears throng to the horny eyes,", "And beatings haunt the desolated heart,", "Which should have learnt repose: thou hast descended", "Cradled in tempests; thou dost wake, O Spring!", "O child of many winds! As suddenly", "Thou comest as the memory of a dream,", "Which now is sad because it hath been sweet;", "Like genius, or like joy which riseth up", "As from the earth, clothing with golden clouds", "The desert of our life.", "This is the season, this the day, the hour;", "At sunrise thou shouldst come, sweet sister mine,", "Too long desired, too long delaying, come!", "How like death-worms the wingless moments crawl!", "The point of one white star is quivering still", "Deep in the orange light of widening morn", "Beyond the purple mountains: through a chasm", "Of wind-divided mist the darker lake", "Reflects it: now it wanes: it gleams again", "As the waves fade, and as the burning threads", "Of woven cloud unravel in pale air:", "'Tis lost! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow", "The roseate sunlight quivers: hear I not", "The Aeolian music of her sea-green plumes", "Winnowing the crimson dawn?", "", "PANTHEA [ENTERS]:", "I feel, I see", "Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,", "Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.", "Beloved and most beautiful, who wearest", "The shadow of that soul by which I live,", "How late thou art! the sphered sun had climbed", "The sea; my heart was sick with hope, before", "The printless air felt thy belated plumes.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Pardon, great Sister! but my wings were faint", "With the delight of a remembered dream,", "As are the noontide plumes of summer winds", "Satiate with sweet flowers. I was wont to sleep", "Peacefully, and awake refreshed and calm", "Before the sacred Titan's fall, and thy", "Unhappy love, had made, through use and pity,", "Both love and woe familiar to my heart", "As they had grown to thine: erewhile I slept", "Under the glaucous caverns of old Ocean", "Within dim bowers of green and purple moss,", "Our young Ione's soft and milky arms", "Locked then, as now, behind my dark, moist hair,", "While my shut eyes and cheek were pressed within", "The folded depth of her life-breathing bosom:", "But not as now, since I am made the wind", "Which fails beneath the music that I bear", "Of thy most wordless converse; since dissolved", "Into the sense with which love talks, my rest", "Was troubled and yet sweet; my waking hours", "Too full of care and pain.", "", "ASIA:", "Lift up thine eyes,", "And let me read thy dream.", "", "PANTHEA:", "As I have said", "With our sea-sister at his feet I slept.", "The mountain mists, condensing at our voice", "Under the moon, had spread their snowy flakes,", "From the keen ice shielding our linked sleep.", "Then two dreams came. One, I remember not.", "But in the other his pale wound-worn limbs", "Fell from Prometheus, and the azure night", "Grew radiant with the glory of that form", "Which lives unchanged within, and his voice fell", "Like music which makes giddy the dim brain,", "Faint with intoxication of keen joy:", "'Sister of her whose footsteps pave the world", "With loveliness--more fair than aught but her,", "Whose shadow thou art--lift thine eyes on me.'", "I lifted them: the overpowering light", "Of that immortal shape was shadowed o'er", "By love; which, from his soft and flowing limbs,", "And passion-parted lips, and keen, faint eyes,", "Steamed forth like vaporous fire; an atmosphere", "Which wrapped me in its all-dissolving power,", "As the warm ether of the morning sun", "Wraps ere it drinks some cloud of wandering dew.", "I saw not, heard not, moved not, only felt", "His presence flow and mingle through my blood", "Till it became his life, and his grew mine,", "And I was thus absorbed, until it passed,", "And like the vapours when the sun sinks down,", "Gathering again in drops upon the pines,", "And tremulous as they, in the deep night", "My being was condensed; and as the rays", "Of thought were slowly gathered, I could hear", "His voice, whose accents lingered ere they died", "Like footsteps of weak melody: thy name", "Among the many sounds alone I heard", "Of what might be articulate; though still", "I listened through the night when sound was none.", "Ione wakened then, and said to me:", "'Canst thou divine what troubles me to-night?", "I always knew, what I desired before,", "Nor ever found delight to wish in vain.", "But now I cannot tell thee what I seek;", "I know not; something sweet, since it is sweet", "Even to desire; it is thy sport, false sister;", "Thou hast discovered some enchantment old,", "Whose spells have stolen my spirit as I slept", "And mingled it with thine: for when just now", "We kissed, I felt within thy parted lips", "The sweet air that sustained me, and the warmth", "Of the life-blood, for loss of which I faint,", "Quivered between our intertwining arms.'", "I answered not, for the Eastern star grew pale,", "But fled to thee.", "", "ASIA:", "Thou speakest, but thy words", "Are as the air: I feel them not: Oh, lift", "Thine eyes, that I may read his written soul!", "", "PANTHEA:", "I lift them though they droop beneath the load", "Of that they would express: what canst thou see", "But thine own fairest shadow imaged there?", "", "ASIA:", "Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven", "Contracted to two circles underneath", "Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,", "Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Why lookest thou as if a spirit passed?", "", "ASIA:", "There is a change: beyond their inmost depth", "I see a shade, a shape: 'tis He, arrayed", "In the soft light of his own smiles, which spread", "Like radiance from the cloud-surrounded moon.", "Prometheus, it is thine! depart not yet!", "Say not those smiles that we shall meet again", "Within that bright pavilion which their beams", "Shall build o'er the waste world? The dream is told.", "What shape is that between us? Its rude hair", "Roughens the wind that lifts it, its regard", "Is wild and quick, yet 'tis a thing of air,", "For through its gray robe gleams the golden dew", "Whose stars the noon has quenched not.", "", "DREAM", "Follow! Follow!", "", "PANTHEA:", "It is mine other dream.", "", "ASIA:", "It disappears.", "", "PANTHEA:", "It passes now into my mind. Methought", "As we sate here, the flower-infolding buds", "Burst on yon lightning-blasted almond tree,", "When swift from the white Scythian wilderness", "A wind swept forth wrinkling the Earth with frost:", "I looked, and all the blossoms were blown down;", "But on each leaf was stamped, as the blue bells", "Of Hyacinth tell Apollo's written grief,", "O, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!", "", "ASIA:", "As you speak, your words", "Fill, pause by pause, my own forgotten sleep", "With shapes. Methought among these lawns together", "We wandered, underneath the young gray dawn,", "And multitudes of dense white fleecy clouds", "Were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains", "Shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind;", "And the white dew on the new-bladed grass,", "Just piercing the dark earth, hung silently;", "And there was more which I remember not:", "But on the shadows of the morning clouds,", "Athwart the purple mountain slope, was written", "FOLLOW, O, FOLLOW! as they vanished by;", "And on each herb, from which Heaven's dew had fallen,", "The like was stamped, as with a withering fire;", "A wind arose among the pines; it shook", "The clinging music from their boughs, and then", "Low, sweet, faint sounds, like the farewell of ghosts,", "Were heard: O, FOLLOW, FOLLOW, FOLLOW ME!", "And then I said, 'Panthea, look on me.'", "But in the depth of those beloved eyes", "Still I saw, FOLLOW, FOLLOW!", "", "ECHO:", "Follow, follow!", "", "PANTHEA:", "The crags, this clear spring morning, mock our voices", "As they were spirit-tongued.", "", "ASIA:", "It is some being", "Around the crags. What fine clear sounds! O, list!", "", "ECHOES, UNSEEN:", "Echoes we: listen!", "We cannot stay:", "As dew-stars glisten", "Then fade away--", "Child of Ocean!", "", "ASIA:", "Hark! Spirits speak. The liquid responses", "Of their aereal tongues yet sound.", "", "PANTHEA:", "I hear.", "", "ECHOES:", "Oh, follow, follow,", "As our voice recedeth", "Through the caverns hollow,", "Where the forest spreadeth;", "[MORE DISTANT.]", "Oh, follow, follow!", "Through the caverns hollow,", "As the song floats thou pursue,", "Where the wild bee never flew,", "Through the noontide darkness deep,", "By the odour-breathing sleep", "Of faint night-flowers, and the waves", "At the fountain-lighted caves,", "While our music, wild and sweet,", "Mocks thy gently falling feet,", "Child of Ocean!", "", "ASIA:", "Shall we pursue the sound? It grows more faint", "And distant.", "", "PANTHEA:", "List! the strain floats nearer now.", "", "ECHOES:", "In the world unknown", "Sleeps a voice unspoken;", "By thy step alone", "Can its rest be broken;", "Child of Ocean!", "", "ASIA:", "How the notes sink upon the ebbing wind!", "", "ECHOES:", "Oh, follow, follow!", "Through the caverns hollow,", "As the song floats thou pursue,", "By the woodland noontide dew;", "By the forests, lakes, and fountains,", "Through the many-folded mountains;", "To the rents, and gulfs, and chasms,", "Where the Earth reposed from spasms,", "On the day when He and thou", "Parted, to commingle now;", "Child of Ocean!", "", "ASIA:", "Come, sweet Panthea, link thy hand in mine,", "And follow, ere the voices fade away.", "", "SCENE 2.2:", "A FOREST, INTERMINGLED WITH ROCKS AND CAVERNS.", "ASIA AND PANTHEA PASS INTO IT.", "TWO YOUNG FAUNS ARE SITTING ON A ROCK LISTENING.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1 OF SPIRITS:", "The path through which that lovely twain", "Have passed, by cedar, pine, and yew,", "And each dark tree that ever grew,", "Is curtained out from Heaven's wide blue;", "Nor sun, nor moon, nor wind, nor rain,", "Can pierce its interwoven bowers,", "Nor aught, save where some cloud of dew,", "Drifted along the earth-creeping breeze,", "Between the trunks of the hoar trees,", "Hangs each a pearl in the pale flowers", "Of the green laurel, blown anew,", "And bends, and then fades silently,", "One frail and fair anemone:", "Or when some star of many a one", "That climbs and wanders through steep night,", "Has found the cleft through which alone", "Beams fall from high those depths upon", "Ere it is borne away, away,", "By the swift Heavens that cannot stay,", "It scatters drops of golden light,", "Like lines of rain that ne'er unite:", "And the gloom divine is all around,", "And underneath is the mossy ground.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "There the voluptuous nightingales,", "Are awake through all the broad noonday.", "When one with bliss or sadness fails,", "And through the windless ivy-boughs,", "Sick with sweet love, droops dying away", "On its mate's music-panting bosom;", "Another from the swinging blossom,", "Watching to catch the languid close", "Of the last strain, then lifts on high", "The wings of the weak melody,", "Till some new strain of feeling bear", "The song, and all the woods are mute;", "When there is heard through the dim air", "The rush of wings, and rising there", "Like many a lake-surrounded flute,", "Sounds overflow the listener's brain", "So sweet, that joy is almost pain.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "There those enchanted eddies play", "Of echoes, music-tongued, which draw,", "By Demogorgon's mighty law,", "With melting rapture, or sweet awe,", "All spirits on that secret way;", "As inland boats are driven to Ocean", "Down streams made strong with mountain-thaw:", "And first there comes a gentle sound", "To those in talk or slumber bound,", "And wakes the destined soft emotion,--", "Attracts, impels them; those who saw", "Say from the breathing earth behind", "There steams a plume-uplifting wind", "Which drives them on their path, while they", "Believe their own swift wings and feet", "The sweet desires within obey:", "And so they float upon their way,", "Until, still sweet, but loud and strong,", "The storm of sound is driven along,", "Sucked up and hurrying: as they fleet", "Behind, its gathering billows meet", "And to the fatal mountain bear", "Like clouds amid the yielding air.", "", "FIRST FAUN:", "Canst thou imagine where those spirits live", "Which make such delicate music in the woods?", "We haunt within the least frequented caves", "And closest coverts, and we know these wilds,", "Yet never meet them, though we hear them oft:", "Where may they hide themselves?", "", "SECOND FAUN:", "'Tis hard to tell;", "I have heard those more skilled in spirits say,", "The bubbles, which the enchantment of the sun", "Sucks from the pale faint water-flowers that pave", "The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools,", "Are the pavilions where such dwell and float", "Under the green and golden atmosphere", "Which noontide kindles through the woven leaves;", "And when these burst, and the thin fiery air,", "The which they breathed within those lucent domes,", "Ascends to flow like meteors through the night,", "They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed,", "And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire", "Under the waters of the earth again.", "", "FIRST FAUN:", "If such live thus, have others other lives,", "Under pink blossoms or within the bells", "Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep,", "Or on their dying odours, when they die,", "Or in the sunlight of the sphered dew?", "", "SECOND FAUN:", "Ay, many more which we may well divine.", "But should we stay to speak, noontide would come,", "And thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn,", "And grudge to sing those wise and lovely songs", "Of Fate, and Chance, and God, and Chaos old,", "And Love, and the chained Titan's woful doom,", "And how he shall be loosed, and make the earth", "One brotherhood: delightful strains which cheer", "Our solitary twilights, and which charm", "To silence the unenvying nightingales.", "", "SCENE 2.3:", "A PINNACLE OF ROCK AMONG MOUNTAINS.", "ASIA AND PANTHEA.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Hither the sound has borne us--to the realm", "Of Demogorgon, and the mighty portal,", "Like a volcano's meteor-breathing chasm,", "Whence the oracular vapour is hurled up", "Which lonely men drink wandering in their youth,", "And call truth, virtue, love, genius, or joy,", "That maddening wine of life, whose dregs they drain", "To deep intoxication; and uplift,", "Like Maenads who cry loud, Evoe! Evoe!", "The voice which is contagion to the world.", "", "ASIA:", "Fit throne for such a Power! Magnificent!", "How glorious art thou, Earth! And if thou be", "The shadow of some spirit lovelier still,", "Though evil stain its work, and it should be", "Like its creation, weak yet beautiful,", "I could fall down and worship that and thee.", "Even now my heart adoreth: Wonderful!", "Look, sister, ere the vapour dim thy brain:", "Beneath is a wide plain of billowy mist,", "As a lake, paving in the morning sky,", "With azure waves which burst in silver light,", "Some Indian vale. Behold it, rolling on", "Under the curdling winds, and islanding", "The peak whereon we stand, midway, around,", "Encinctured by the dark and blooming forests,", "Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves,", "And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist;", "And far on high the keen sky-cleaving mountains", "From icy spires of sun-like radiance fling", "The dawn, as lifted Ocean's dazzling spray,", "From some Atlantic islet scattered up,", "Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops.", "The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl", "Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines,", "Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast,", "Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow!", "The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass,", "Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there", "Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds", "As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth", "Is loosened, and the nations echo round,", "Shaken to their roots, as do the mountains now.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Look how the gusty sea of mist is breaking", "In crimson foam, even at our feet! it rises", "As Ocean at the enchantment of the moon", "Round foodless men wrecked on some oozy isle.", "", "ASIA:", "The fragments of the cloud are scattered up;", "The wind that lifts them disentwines my hair;", "Its billows now sweep o'er mine eyes; my brain", "Grows dizzy; see'st thou shapes within the mist?", "", "PANTHEA:", "A countenance with beckoning smiles: there burns", "An azure fire within its golden locks!", "Another and another: hark! they speak!", "", "SONG OF SPIRITS:", "To the deep, to the deep,", "Down, down!", "Through the shade of sleep,", "Through the cloudy strife", "Of Death and of Life;", "Through the veil and the bar", "Of things which seem and are", "Even to the steps of the remotest throne,", "Down, down!", "", "While the sound whirls around,", "Down, down!", "As the fawn draws the hound,", "As the lightning the vapour,", "As a weak moth the taper;", "Death, despair; love, sorrow;", "Time both; to-day, to-morrow;", "As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,", "Down, down!", "", "Through the gray, void abysm,", "Down, down!", "Where the air is no prism,", "And the moon and stars are not,", "And the cavern-crags wear not", "The radiance of Heaven,", "Nor the gloom to Earth given,", "Where there is One pervading, One alone,", "Down, down!", "", "In the depth of the deep,", "Down, down!", "Like veiled lightning asleep,", "Like the spark nursed in embers,", "The last look Love remembers,", "Like a diamond, which shines", "On the dark wealth of mines,", "A spell is treasured but for thee alone.", "Down, down!", "", "We have bound thee, we guide thee;", "Down, down!", "With the bright form beside thee;", "Resist not the weakness,", "Such strength is in meekness", "That the Eternal, the Immortal,", "Must unloose through life's portal", "The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne", "By that alone.", "", "SCENE 2.4:", "THE CAVE OF DEMOGORGON.", "ASIA AND PANTHEA.", "", "PANTHEA:", "What veiled form sits on that ebon throne?", "", "ASIA:", "The veil has fallen.", "", "PANTHEA:", "I see a mighty darkness", "Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom", "Dart round, as light from the meridian sun.", "--Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,", "Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is", "A living Spirit.", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Ask what thou wouldst know.", "", "ASIA:", "What canst thou tell?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "All things thou dar'st demand.", "", "ASIA:", "Who made the living world?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "God.", "", "ASIA:", "Who made all", "That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will,", "Imagination?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "God: Almighty God.", "", "ASIA:", "Who made that sense which, when the winds of Spring", "In rarest visitation, or the voice", "Of one beloved heard in youth alone,", "Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim", "The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,", "And leaves this peopled earth a solitude", "When it returns no more?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Merciful God.", "", "ASIA:", "And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,", "Which from the links of the great chain of things,", "To every thought within the mind of man", "Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels", "Under the load towards the pit of death;", "Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;", "And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;", "Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech", "Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;", "And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "He reigns.", "", "ASIA:", "Utter his name: a world pining in pain", "Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down.", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "He reigns.", "", "ASIA:", "I feel, I know it: who?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "He reigns.", "", "ASIA:", "Who reigns? There was the Heaven and Earth at first,", "And Light and Love; then Saturn, from whose throne", "Time fell, an envious shadow: such the state", "Of the earth's primal spirits beneath his sway,", "As the calm joy of flowers and living leaves", "Before the wind or sun has withered them", "And semivital worms; but he refused", "The birthright of their being, knowledge, power,", "The skill which wields the elements, the thought", "Which pierces this dim universe like light,", "Self-empire, and the majesty of love;", "For thirst of which they fainted. Then Prometheus", "Gave wisdom, which is strength, to Jupiter,", "And with this law alone, 'Let man be free,'", "Clothed him with the dominion of wide Heaven.", "To know nor faith, nor love, nor law; to be", "Omnipotent but friendless is to reign;", "And Jove now reigned; for on the race of man", "First famine, and then toil, and then disease,", "Strife, wounds, and ghastly death unseen before,", "Fell; and the unseasonable seasons drove", "With alternating shafts of frost and fire,", "Their shelterless, pale tribes to mountain caves:", "And in their desert hearts fierce wants he sent,", "And mad disquietudes, and shadows idle", "Of unreal good, which levied mutual war,", "So ruining the lair wherein they raged.", "Prometheus saw, and waked the legioned hopes", "Which sleep within folded Elysian flowers,", "Nepenthe, Moly, Amaranth, fadeless blooms,", "That they might hide with thin and rainbow wings", "The shape of Death; and Love he sent to bind", "The disunited tendrils of that vine", "Which bears the wine of life, the human heart;", "And he tamed fire which, like some beast of prey,", "Most terrible, but lovely, played beneath", "The frown of man; and tortured to his will", "Iron and gold, the slaves and signs of power,", "And gems and poisons, and all subtlest forms", "Hidden beneath the mountains and the waves.", "He gave man speech, and speech created thought,", "Which is the measure of the universe;", "And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven,", "Which shook, but fell not; and the harmonious mind", "Poured itself forth in all-prophetic song;", "And music lifted up the listening spirit", "Until it walked, exempt from mortal care,", "Godlike, o'er the clear billows of sweet sound;", "And human hands first mimicked and then mocked,", "With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,", "The human form, till marble grew divine;", "And mothers, gazing, drank the love men see", "Reflected in their race, behold, and perish.", "He told the hidden power of herbs and springs,", "And Disease drank and slept. Death grew like sleep.", "He taught the implicated orbits woven", "Of the wide-wandering stars; and how the sun", "Changes his lair, and by what secret spell", "The pale moon is transformed, when her broad eye", "Gazes not on the interlunar sea:", "He taught to rule, as life directs the limbs,", "The tempest-winged chariots of the Ocean,", "And the Celt knew the Indian. Cities then", "Were built, and through their snow-like columns flowed", "The warm winds, and the azure ether shone,", "And the blue sea and shadowy hills were seen.", "Such, the alleviations of his state,", "Prometheus gave to man, for which he hangs", "Withering in destined pain: but who rains down", "Evil, the immedicable plague, which, while", "Man looks on his creation like a God", "And sees that it is glorious, drives him on,", "The wreck of his own will, the scorn of earth,", "The outcast, the abandoned, the alone?", "Not Jove: while yet his frown shook Heaven ay, when", "His adversary from adamantine chains", "Cursed him, he trembled like a slave. Declare", "Who is his master? Is he too a slave?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil:", "Thou knowest if Jupiter be such or no.", "", "ASIA:", "Whom calledst thou God?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "I spoke but as ye speak,", "For Jove is the supreme of living things.", "", "ASIA:", "Who is the master of the slave?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "If the abysm", "Could vomit forth its secrets...But a voice", "Is wanting, the deep truth is imageless;", "For what would it avail to bid thee gaze", "On the revolving world? What to bid speak", "Fate, Time, Occasion, Chance and Change? To these", "All things are subject but eternal Love.", "", "ASIA:", "So much I asked before, and my heart gave", "The response thou hast given; and of such truths", "Each to itself must be the oracle.", "One more demand; and do thou answer me", "As my own soul would answer, did it know", "That which I ask. Prometheus shall arise", "Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world:", "When shall the destined hour arrive?", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Behold!", "", "ASIA:", "The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night", "I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds", "Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands", "A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.", "Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,", "And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:", "Others, with burning eyes, lean forth, and drink", "With eager lips the wind of their own speed,", "As if the thing they loved fled on before,", "And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks", "Stream like a comet's flashing hair; they all", "Sweep onward.", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "These are the immortal Hours,", "Of whom thou didst demand. One waits for thee.", "", "ASIA:", "A Spirit with a dreadful countenance", "Checks its dark chariot by the craggy gulf.", "Unlike thy brethren, ghastly charioteer,", "Who art thou? Whither wouldst thou bear me? Speak!", "", "SPIRIT:", "I am the shadow of a destiny", "More dread than is my aspect: ere yon planet", "Has set, the darkness which ascends with me", "Shall wrap in lasting night heaven's kingless throne.", "", "ASIA:", "What meanest thou?", "", "PANTHEA:", "That terrible shadow floats", "Up from its throne, as may the lurid smoke", "Of earthquake-ruined cities o'er the sea.", "Lo! it ascends the car; the coursers fly", "Terrified: watch its path among the stars", "Blackening the night!", "", "ASIA:", "Thus I am answered: strange!", "", "PANTHEA:", "See, near the verge, another chariot stays;", "An ivory shell inlaid with crimson fire,", "Which comes and goes within its sculptured rim", "Of delicate strange tracery; the young spirit", "That guides it has the dove-like eyes of hope;", "How its soft smiles attract the soul! as light", "Lures winged insects through the lampless air.", "", "SPIRIT:", "My coursers are fed with the lightning,", "They drink of the whirlwind's stream,", "And when the red morning is bright'ning", "They bathe in the fresh sunbeam;", "They have strength for their swiftness I deem;", "Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.", "I desire: and their speed makes night kindle;", "I fear: they outstrip the Typhoon;", "Ere the cloud piled on Atlas can dwindle", "We encircle the earth and the moon:", "We shall rest from long labours at noon:", "Then ascend with me, daughter of Ocean.", "", "SCENE 2.5:", "THE CAR PAUSES WITHIN A CLOUD ON THE TOP OF A SNOWY MOUNTAIN.", "ASIA, PANTHEA, AND THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.", "", "SPIRIT:", "On the brink of the night and the morning", "My coursers are wont to respire;", "But the Earth has just whispered a warning", "That their flight must be swifter than fire:", "They shall drink the hot speed of desire!", "", "ASIA:", "Thou breathest on their nostrils, but my breath", "Would give them swifter speed.", "", "SPIRIT:", "Alas! it could not.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Oh Spirit! pause, and tell whence is the light", "Which fills this cloud? the sun is yet unrisen.", "", "SPIRIT:", "The sun will rise not until noon. Apollo", "Is held in heaven by wonder; and the light", "Which fills this vapour, as the aereal hue", "Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water,", "Flows from thy mighty sister.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Yes, I feel--", "", "ASIA:", "What is it with thee, sister? Thou art pale.", "", "PANTHEA:", "How thou art changed! I dare not look on thee;", "I feel but see thee not. I scarce endure", "The radiance of thy beauty. Some good change", "Is working in the elements, which suffer", "Thy presence thus unveiled. The Nereids tell", "That on the day when the clear hyaline", "Was cloven at thine uprise, and thou didst stand", "Within a veined shell, which floated on", "Over the calm floor of the crystal sea,", "Among the Aegean isles, and by the shores", "Which bear thy name; love, like the atmosphere", "Of the sun's fire filling the living world,", "Burst from thee, and illumined earth and heaven", "And the deep ocean and the sunless caves", "And all that dwells within them; till grief cast", "Eclipse upon the soul from which it came:", "Such art thou now; nor is it I alone,", "Thy sister, thy companion, thine own chosen one,", "But the whole world which seeks thy sympathy.", "Hearest thou not sounds i' the air which speak the love", "Of all articulate beings? Feelest thou not", "The inanimate winds enamoured of thee? List!", "", "[MUSIC.]", "", "ASIA:", "Thy words are sweeter than aught else but his", "Whose echoes they are; yet all love is sweet,", "Given or returned. Common as light is love,", "And its familiar voice wearies not ever.", "Like the wide heaven, the all-sustaining air,", "It makes the reptile equal to the God:", "They who inspire it most are fortunate,", "As I am now; but those who feel it most", "Are happier still, after long sufferings,", "As I shall soon become.", "", "PANTHEA:", "List! Spirits speak.", "", "VOICE IN THE AIR, SINGING:", "Life of Life! thy lips enkindle", "With their love the breath between them;", "And thy smiles before they dwindle", "Make the cold air fire; then screen them", "In those looks, where whoso gazes", "Faints, entangled in their mazes.", "", "Child of Light! thy limbs are burning", "Through the vest which seems to hide them;", "As the radiant lines of morning", "Through the clouds ere they divide them;", "And this atmosphere divinest", "Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest.", "", "Fair are others; none beholds thee,", "But thy voice sounds low and tender", "Like the fairest, for it folds thee", "From the sight, that liquid splendour,", "And all feel, yet see thee never,", "As I feel now, lost for ever!", "", "Lamp of Earth! where'er thou movest", "Its dim shapes are clad with brightness,", "And the souls of whom thou lovest", "Walk upon the winds with lightness,", "Till they fail, as I am failing,", "Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing!", "", "ASIA:", "My soul is an enchanted boat,", "Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float", "Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;", "And thine doth like an angel sit", "Beside a helm conducting it,", "Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.", "It seems to float ever, for ever,", "Upon that many-winding river,", "Between mountains, woods, abysses,", "A paradise of wildernesses!", "Till, like one in slumber bound,", "Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,", "Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:", "", "Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions", "In music's most serene dominions;", "Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.", "And we sail on, away, afar,", "Without a course, without a star,", "But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;", "Till through Elysian garden islets", "By thee most beautiful of pilots,", "Where never mortal pinnace glided,", "The boat of my desire is guided:", "Realms where the air we breathe is love,", "Which in the winds on the waves doth move,", "Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.", "", "We have passed Age's icy caves,", "And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,", "And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:", "Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee", "Of shadow-peopled Infancy,", "Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;", "A paradise of vaulted bowers,", "Lit by downward-gazing flowers,", "And watery paths that wind between", "Wildernesses calm and green,", "Peopled by shapes too bright to see,", "And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;", "Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!", "", "END OF ACT 2.", "", "ACT 3.", "", "SCENE 3.1:", "HEAVEN.", "JUPITER ON HIS THRONE; THETIS AND THE OTHER DEITIES ASSEMBLED.", "", "JUPITER:", "Ye congregated powers of heaven, who share", "The glory and the strength of him ye serve,", "Rejoice! henceforth I am omnipotent.", "All else had been subdued to me; alone", "The soul of man, like unextinguished fire,", "Yet burns towards heaven with fierce reproach, and doubt,", "And lamentation, and reluctant prayer,", "Hurling up insurrection, which might make", "Our antique empire insecure, though built", "On eldest faith, and hell's coeval, fear;", "And though my curses through the pendulous air,", "Like snow on herbless peaks, fall flake by flake,", "And cling to it; though under my wrath's night", "It climbs the crags of life, step after step,", "Which wound it, as ice wounds unsandalled feet,", "It yet remains supreme o'er misery,", "Aspiring, unrepressed, yet soon to fall:", "Even now have I begotten a strange wonder,", "That fatal child, the terror of the earth,", "Who waits but till the destined hour arrive,", "Bearing from Demogorgon's vacant throne", "The dreadful might of ever-living limbs", "Which clothed that awful spirit unbeheld,", "To redescend, and trample out the spark.", "Pour forth heaven's wine, Idaean Ganymede,", "And let it fill the Daedal cups like fire,", "And from the flower-inwoven soil divine", "Ye all-triumphant harmonies arise,", "As dew from earth under the twilight stars:", "Drink! be the nectar circling through your veins", "The soul of joy, ye ever-living Gods,", "Till exultation burst in one wide voice", "Like music from Elysian winds.", "And thou", "Ascend beside me, veiled in the light", "Of the desire which makes thee one with me,", "Thetis, bright image of eternity!", "When thou didst cry, 'Insufferable might!", "God! Spare me! I sustain not the quick flames,", "The penetrating presence; all my being,", "Like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw", "Into a dew with poison, is dissolved,", "Sinking through its foundations:' even then", "Two mighty spirits, mingling, made a third", "Mightier than either, which, unbodied now,", "Between us floats, felt, although unbeheld,", "Waiting the incarnation, which ascends,", "(Hear ye the thunder of the fiery wheels", "Griding the winds?) from Demogorgon's throne.", "Victory! victory! Feel'st thou not, O world,", "The earthquake of his chariot thundering up", "Olympus?", "[THE CAR OF THE HOUR ARRIVES.", "DEMOGORGON DESCENDS, AND MOVES TOWARDS THE THRONE OF JUPITER.]", "Awful shape, what art thou? Speak!", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Eternity. Demand no direr name.", "Descend, and follow me down the abyss.", "I am thy child, as thou wert Saturn's child;", "Mightier than thee: and we must dwell together", "Henceforth in darkness. Lift thy lightnings not.", "The tyranny of heaven none may retain,", "Or reassume, or hold, succeeding thee:", "Yet if thou wilt, as 'tis the destiny", "Of trodden worms to writhe till they are dead,", "Put forth thy might.", "", "JUPITER:", "Detested prodigy!", "Even thus beneath the deep Titanian prisons", "I trample thee! thou lingerest?", "Mercy! mercy!", "No pity, no release, no respite! Oh,", "That thou wouldst make mine enemy my judge,", "Even where he hangs, seared by my long revenge,", "On Caucasus! he would not doom me thus.", "Gentle, and just, and dreadless, is he not", "The monarch of the world? What then art thou?", "No refuge! no appeal!", "Sink with me then,", "We two will sink on the wide waves of ruin,", "Even as a vulture and a snake outspent", "Drop, twisted in inextricable fight,", "Into a shoreless sea. Let hell unlock", "Its mounded oceans of tempestuous fire,", "And whelm on them into the bottomless void", "This desolated world, and thee, and me,", "The conqueror and the conquered, and the wreck", "Of that for which they combated.", "Ai, Ai!", "The elements obey me not. I sink", "Dizzily down, ever, for ever, down.", "And, like a cloud, mine enemy above", "Darkens my fall with victory! Ai, Ai!", "", "SCENE 3.2:", "THE MOUTH OF A GREAT RIVER IN THE ISLAND ATLANTIS.", "OCEAN IS DISCOVERED RECLINING NEAR THE SHORE;", "APOLLO STANDS BESIDE HIM.", "", "OCEAN:", "He fell, thou sayest, beneath his conqueror's frown?", "", "APOLLO:", "Ay, when the strife was ended which made dim", "The orb I rule, and shook the solid stars,", "The terrors of his eye illumined heaven", "With sanguine light, through the thick ragged skirts", "Of the victorious darkness, as he fell:", "Like the last glare of day's red agony,", "Which, from a rent among the fiery clouds,", "Burns far along the tempest-wrinkled deep.", "", "OCEAN:", "He sunk to the abyss? To the dark void?", "", "APOLLO:", "An eagle so caught in some bursting cloud", "On Caucasus, his thunder-baffled wings", "Entangled in the whirlwind, and his eyes", "Which gazed on the undazzling sun, now blinded", "By the white lightning, while the ponderous hail", "Beats on his struggling form, which sinks at length", "Prone, and the aereal ice clings over it.", "", "OCEAN:", "Henceforth the fields of heaven-reflecting sea", "Which are my realm, will heave, unstained with blood,", "Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn", "Swayed by the summer air; my streams will flow", "Round many-peopled continents, and round", "Fortunate isles; and from their glassy thrones", "Blue Proteus and his humid nymphs shall mark", "The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see", "The floating bark of the light-laden moon", "With that white star, its sightless pilot's crest,", "Borne down the rapid sunset's ebbing sea;", "Tracking their path no more by blood and groans,", "And desolation, and the mingled voice", "Of slavery and command; but by the light", "Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours,", "And music soft, and mild, free, gentle voices,", "And sweetest music, such as spirits love.", "", "APOLLO:", "And I shall gaze not on the deeds which make", "My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse", "Darkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear", "The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit", "That sits i' the morning star.", "", "OCEAN:", "Thou must away;", "Thy steeds will pause at even, till when farewell:", "The loud deep calls me home even now to feed it", "With azure calm out of the emerald urns", "Which stand for ever full beside my throne.", "Behold the Nereids under the green sea,", "Their wavering limbs borne on the wind-like stream,", "Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair", "With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,", "Hastening to grace their mighty sister's joy.", "[A SOUND OF WAVES IS HEARD.]", "It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm.", "Peace, monster; I come now. Farewell.", "", "APOLLO:", "Farewell.", "", "SCENE 3.3:", "CAUCASUS.", "PROMETHEUS, HERCULES, IONE, THE EARTH, SPIRITS, ASIA,", "AND PANTHEA, BORNE IN THE CAR WITH THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.", "HERCULES UNBINDS PROMETHEUS, WHO DESCENDS.", "", "HERCULES:", "Most glorious among Spirits, thus doth strength", "To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love,", "And thee, who art the form they animate,", "Minister like a slave.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Thy gentle words", "Are sweeter even than freedom long desired", "And long delayed.", "Asia, thou light of life,", "Shadow of beauty unbeheld: and ye,", "Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain", "Sweet to remember, through your love and care:", "Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave,", "All overgrown with trailing odorous plants,", "Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,", "And paved with veined emerald, and a fountain", "Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.", "From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears", "Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,", "Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light:", "And there is heard the ever-moving air,", "Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,", "And bees; and all around are mossy seats,", "And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;", "A simple dwelling, which shall be our own;", "Where we will sit and talk of time and change,", "As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.", "What can hide man from mutability?", "And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,", "Ione, shalt chant fragments of sea-music,", "Until I weep, when ye shall smile away", "The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.", "We will entangle buds and flowers and beams", "Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make", "Strange combinations out of common things,", "Like human babes in their brief innocence;", "And we will search, with looks and words of love,", "For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last,", "Our unexhausted spirits; and like lutes", "Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,", "Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,", "From difference sweet where discord cannot be;", "And hither come, sped on the charmed winds,", "Which meet from all the points of heaven, as bees", "From every flower aereal Enna feeds,", "At their known island-homes in Himera,", "The echoes of the human world, which tell", "Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,", "And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music,", "Itself the echo of the heart, and all", "That tempers or improves man's life, now free;", "And lovely apparitions,--dim at first,", "Then radiant, as the mind, arising bright", "From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms", "Of which these are the phantoms) casts on them", "The gathered rays which are reality--", "Shall visit us, the progeny immortal", "Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,", "And arts, though unimagined, yet to be.", "The wandering voices and the shadows these", "Of all that man becomes, the mediators", "Of that best worship love, by him and us", "Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow", "More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,", "And, veil by veil, evil and error fall:", "Such virtue has the cave and place around.", "[TURNING TO THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.]", "For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,", "Give her that curved shell, which Proteus old", "Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it", "A voice to be accomplished, and which thou", "Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock.", "", "IONE:", "Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely", "Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell;", "See the pale azure fading into silver", "Lining it with a soft yet glowing light:", "Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there?", "", "SPIRIT:", "It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean:", "Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange.", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "Go, borne over the cities of mankind", "On whirlwind-footed coursers: once again", "Outspeed the sun around the orbed world;", "And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,", "Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,", "Loosening its mighty music; it shall be", "As thunder mingled with clear echoes: then", "Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.", "And thou, O Mother Earth!--", "", "THE EARTH:", "I hear, I feel;", "Thy lips are on me, and thy touch runs down", "Even to the adamantine central gloom", "Along these marble nerves; 'tis life, 'tis joy,", "And, through my withered, old, and icy frame", "The warmth of an immortal youth shoots down", "Circling. Henceforth the many children fair", "Folded in my sustaining arms; all plants,", "And creeping forms, and insects rainbow-winged,", "And birds, and beasts, and fish, and human shapes,", "Which drew disease and pain from my wan bosom,", "Draining the poison of despair, shall take", "And interchange sweet nutriment; to me", "Shall they become like sister-antelopes", "By one fair dam, snow-white and swift as wind,", "Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream.", "The dew-mists of my sunless sleep shall float", "Under the stars like balm: night-folded flowers", "Shall suck unwithering hues in their repose:", "And men and beasts in happy dreams shall gather", "Strength for the coming day, and all its joy:", "And death shall be the last embrace of her", "Who takes the life she gave, even as a mother,", "Folding her child, says, 'Leave me not again.'", "", "ASIA:", "Oh, mother! wherefore speak the name of death?", "Cease they to love, and move, and breathe, and speak,", "Who die?", "", "THE EARTH:", "It would avail not to reply:", "Thou art immortal, and this tongue is known", "But to the uncommunicating dead.", "Death is the veil which those who live call life:", "They sleep, and it is lifted: and meanwhile", "In mild variety the seasons mild", "With rainbow-skirted showers, and odorous winds,", "And long blue meteors cleansing the dull night,", "And the life-kindling shafts of the keen sun's", "All-piercing bow, and the dew-mingled rain", "Of the calm moonbeams, a soft influence mild,", "Shall clothe the forests and the fields, ay, even", "The crag-built deserts of the barren deep,", "With ever-living leaves, and fruits, and flowers.", "And thou! There is a cavern where my spirit", "Was panted forth in anguish whilst thy pain", "Made my heart mad, and those who did inhale it", "Became mad too, and built a temple there,", "And spoke, and were oracular, and lured", "The erring nations round to mutual war,", "And faithless faith, such as Jove kept with thee;", "Which breath now rises, as amongst tall weeds", "A violet's exhalation, and it fills", "With a serener light and crimson air", "Intense, yet soft, the rocks and woods around;", "It feeds the quick growth of the serpent vine,", "And the dark linked ivy tangling wild,", "And budding, blown, or odour-faded blooms", "Which star the winds with points of coloured light,", "As they rain through them, and bright golden globes", "Of fruit, suspended in their own green heaven,", "And through their veined leaves and amber stems", "The flowers whose purple and translucid bowls", "Stand ever mantling with aereal dew,", "The drink of spirits: and it circles round,", "Like the soft waving wings of noonday dreams,", "Inspiring calm and happy thoughts, like mine,", "Now thou art thus restored. This cave is thine.", "Arise! Appear!", "[A SPIRIT RISES IN THE LIKENESS OF A WINGED CHILD.]", "This is my torch-bearer;", "Who let his lamp out in old time with gazing", "On eyes from which he kindled it anew", "With love, which is as fire, sweet daughter mine,", "For such is that within thine own. Run, wayward,", "And guide this company beyond the peak", "Of Bacchic Nysa, Maenad-haunted mountain,", "And beyond Indus and its tribute rivers,", "Trampling the torrent streams and glassy lakes", "With feet unwet, unwearied, undelaying,", "And up the green ravine, across the vale,", "Beside the windless and crystalline pool,", "Where ever lies, on unerasing waves,", "The image of a temple, built above,", "Distinct with column, arch, and architrave,", "And palm-like capital, and over-wrought,", "And populous with most living imagery,", "Praxitelean shapes, whose marble smiles", "Fill the hushed air with everlasting love.", "It is deserted now, but once it bore", "Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths", "Bore to thy honour through the divine gloom", "The lamp which was thine emblem; even as those", "Who bear the untransmitted torch of hope", "Into the grave, across the night of life,", "As thou hast borne it most triumphantly", "To this far goal of Time. Depart, farewell.", "Beside that temple is the destined cave.", "", "SCENE 3.4:", "A FOREST. IN THE BACKGROUND A CAVE.", "PROMETHEUS, ASIA, PANTHEA, IONE, AND THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH.", "", "IONE:", "Sister, it is not earthly: how it glides", "Under the leaves! how on its head there burns", "A light, like a green star, whose emerald beams", "Are twined with its fair hair! how, as it moves,", "The splendour drops in flakes upon the grass!", "Knowest thou it?", "", "PANTHEA:", "It is the delicate spirit", "That guides the earth through heaven. From afar", "The populous constellations call that light", "The loveliest of the planets; and sometimes", "It floats along the spray of the salt sea,", "Or makes its chariot of a foggy cloud,", "Or walks through fields or cities while men sleep,", "Or o'er the mountain tops, or down the rivers,", "Or through the green waste wilderness, as now,", "Wondering at all it sees. Before Jove reigned", "It loved our sister Asia, and it came", "Each leisure hour to drink the liquid light", "Out of her eyes, for which it said it thirsted", "As one bit by a dipsas, and with her", "It made its childish confidence, and told her", "All it had known or seen, for it saw much,", "Yet idly reasoned what it saw; and called her--", "For whence it sprung it knew not, nor do I--", "Mother, dear mother.", "", "THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH [RUNNING TO ASIA]:", "Mother, dearest mother;", "May I then talk with thee as I was wont?", "May I then hide my eyes in thy soft arms,", "After thy looks have made them tired of joy?", "May I then play beside thee the long noons,", "When work is none in the bright silent air?", "", "ASIA:", "I love thee, gentlest being, and henceforth", "Can cherish thee unenvied: speak, I pray:", "Thy simple talk once solaced, now delights.", "", "SPIRIT OF THE EARTH:", "Mother, I am grown wiser, though a child", "Cannot be wise like thee, within this day;", "And happier too; happier and wiser both.", "Thou knowest that toads, and snakes, and loathly worms,", "And venomous and malicious beasts, and boughs", "That bore ill berries in the woods, were ever", "An hindrance to my walks o'er the green world:", "And that, among the haunts of humankind,", "Hard-featured men, or with proud, angry looks,", "Or cold, staid gait, or false and hollow smiles,", "Or the dull sneer of self-loved ignorance,", "Or other such foul masks, with which ill thoughts", "Hide that fair being whom we spirits call man;", "And women too, ugliest of all things evil,", "(Though fair, even in a world where thou art fair,", "When good and kind, free and sincere like thee)", "When false or frowning made me sick at heart", "To pass them, though they slept, and I unseen.", "Well, my path lately lay through a great city", "Into the woody hills surrounding it:", "A sentinel was sleeping at the gate:", "When there was heard a sound, so loud, it shook", "The towers amid the moonlight, yet more sweet", "Than any voice but thine, sweetest of all;", "A long, long sound, as it would never end:", "And all the inhabitants leaped suddenly", "Out of their rest, and gathered in the streets,", "Looking in wonder up to Heaven, while yet", "The music pealed along. I hid myself", "Within a fountain in the public square,", "Where I lay like the reflex of the moon", "Seen in a wave under green leaves; and soon", "Those ugly human shapes and visages", "Of which I spoke as having wrought me pain,", "Passed floating through the air, and fading still", "Into the winds that scattered them; and those", "From whom they passed seemed mild and lovely forms", "After some foul disguise had fallen, and all", "Were somewhat changed, and after brief surprise", "And greetings of delighted wonder, all", "Went to their sleep again: and when the dawn", "Came, wouldst thou think that toads, and snakes, and efts,", "Could e'er be beautiful? yet so they were,", "And that with little change of shape or hue:", "All things had put their evil nature off:", "I cannot tell my joy, when o'er a lake,", "Upon a drooping bough with nightshade twined,", "I saw two azure halcyons clinging downward", "And thinning one bright bunch of amber berries,", "With quick long beaks, and in the deep there lay", "Those lovely forms imaged as in a sky;", "So, with my thoughts full of these happy changes,", "We meet again, the happiest change of all.", "", "ASIA:", "And never will we part, till thy chaste sister", "Who guides the frozen and inconstant moon", "Will look on thy more warm and equal light", "Till her heart thaw like flakes of April snow", "And love thee.", "", "SPIRIT OF THE EARTH:", "What! as Asia loves Prometheus?", "", "ASIA:", "Peace, wanton, thou art yet not old enough.", "Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes", "To multiply your lovely selves, and fill", "With sphered fires the interlunar air?", "", "SPIRIT OF THE EARTH:", "Nay, mother, while my sister trims her lamp", "'Tis hard I should go darkling.", "", "ASIA:", "Listen; look!", "", "[THE SPIRIT OF THE HOUR ENTERS.]", "", "PROMETHEUS:", "We feel what thou hast heard and seen: yet speak.", "", "SPIRIT OF THE HOUR:", "Soon as the sound had ceased whose thunder filled", "The abysses of the sky and the wide earth,", "There was a change: the impalpable thin air", "And the all-circling sunlight were transformed,", "As if the sense of love dissolved in them", "Had folded itself round the sphered world.", "My vision then grew clear, and I could see", "Into the mysteries of the universe:", "Dizzy as with delight I floated down,", "Winnowing the lightsome air with languid plumes,", "My coursers sought their birthplace in the sun,", "Where they henceforth will live exempt from toil,", "Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire;", "And where my moonlike car will stand within", "A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms", "Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me,", "And you fair nymphs looking the love we feel,--", "In memory of the tidings it has borne,--", "Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers,", "Poised on twelve columns of resplendent stone,", "And open to the bright and liquid sky.", "Yoked to it by an amphisbaenic snake", "The likeness of those winged steeds will mock", "The flight from which they find repose. Alas,", "Whither has wandered now my partial tongue", "When all remains untold which ye would hear?", "As I have said, I floated to the earth:", "It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss", "To move, to breathe, to be. I wandering went", "Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind,", "And first was disappointed not to see", "Such mighty change as I had felt within", "Expressed in outward things; but soon I looked,", "And behold, thrones were kingless, and men walked", "One with the other even as spirits do,", "None fawned, none trampled; hate, disdain, or fear,", "Self-love or self-contempt, on human brows", "No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell,", "'All hope abandon ye who enter here;'", "None frowned, none trembled, none with eager fear", "Gazed on another's eye of cold command,", "Until the subject of a tyrant's will", "Became, worse fate, the abject of his own,", "Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, to death.", "None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines", "Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;", "None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own heart", "The sparks of love and hope till there remained", "Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed,", "And the wretch crept a vampire among men,", "Infecting all with his own hideous ill;", "None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk", "Which makes the heart deny the \"yes\" it breathes,", "Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy", "With such a self-mistrust as has no name.", "And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind", "As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew", "On the wide earth, past; gentle radiant forms,", "From custom's evil taint exempt and pure;", "Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,", "Looking emotions once they feared to feel,", "And changed to all which once they dared not be,", "Yet being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride,", "Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,", "The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,", "Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.", "", "Thrones, altars, judgement-seats, and prisons; wherein,", "And beside which, by wretched men were borne", "Sceptres, tiaras, swords, and chains, and tomes", "Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignorance,", "Were like those monstrous and barbaric shapes,", "The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame,", "Which, from their unworn obelisks, look forth", "In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs", "Of those who were their conquerors: mouldering round,", "These imaged to the pride of kings and priests", "A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide", "As is the world it wasted, and are now", "But an astonishment; even so the tools", "And emblems of its last captivity,", "Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth,", "Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now.", "And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and man,--", "Which, under many a name and many a form", "Strange, savage, ghastly, dark and execrable,", "Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world;", "And which the nations, panic-stricken, served", "With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, and love", "Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless,", "And slain among men's unreclaiming tears,", "Flattering the thing they feared, which fear was hate,--", "Frown, mouldering fast, o'er their abandoned shrines:", "The painted veil, by those who were, called life,", "Which mimicked, as with colours idly spread,", "All men believed and hoped, is torn aside;", "The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains", "Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man", "Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless,", "Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king", "Over himself; just, gentle, wise; but man", "Passionless?--no, yet free from guilt or pain,", "Which were, for his will made or suffered them,", "Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves,", "From chance, and death, and mutability,", "The clogs of that which else might oversoar", "The loftiest star of unascended heaven,", "Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.", "", "END OF ACT 3.", "", "ACT 4.", "", "SCENE 4.1:", "A PART OF THE FOREST NEAR THE CAVE OF PROMETHEUS.", "PANTHEA AND IONE ARE SLEEPING: THEY AWAKEN GRADUALLY DURING THE FIRST SONG.", "", "VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS:", "The pale stars are gone!", "For the sun, their swift shepherd,", "To their folds them compelling,", "In the depths of the dawn,", "Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee", "Beyond his blue dwelling,", "As fawns flee the leopard.", "But where are ye?", "", "[A TRAIN OF DARK FORMS AND SHADOWS PASSES BY CONFUSEDLY, SINGING.]", "", "Here, oh, here:", "We bear the bier", "Of the father of many a cancelled year!", "Spectres we", "Of the dead Hours be,", "We bear Time to his tomb in eternity.", "", "Strew, oh, strew", "Hair, not yew!", "Wet the dusty pall with tears, not dew!", "Be the faded flowers", "Of Death's bare bowers", "Spread on the corpse of the King of Hours!", "", "Haste, oh, haste!", "As shades are chased,", "Trembling, by day, from heaven's blue waste.", "We melt away,", "Like dissolving spray,", "From the children of a diviner day,", "With the lullaby", "Of winds that die", "On the bosom of their own harmony!", "", "IONE:", "What dark forms were they?", "", "PANTHEA:", "The past Hours weak and gray,", "With the spoil which their toil", "Raked together", "From the conquest but One could foil.", "", "IONE:", "Have they passed?", "", "PANTHEA:", "They have passed;", "They outspeeded the blast,", "While 'tis said, they are fled:", "", "IONE:", "Whither, oh, whither?", "", "PANTHEA:", "To the dark, to the past, to the dead.", "", "VOICE OF UNSEEN SPIRITS:", "Bright clouds float in heaven,", "Dew-stars gleam on earth,", "Waves assemble on ocean,", "They are gathered and driven", "By the storm of delight, by the panic of glee!", "They shake with emotion,", "They dance in their mirth.", "But where are ye?", "", "The pine boughs are singing", "Old songs with new gladness,", "The billows and fountains", "Fresh music are flinging,", "Like the notes of a spirit from land and from sea;", "The storms mock the mountains", "With the thunder of gladness.", "But where are ye?", "", "IONE:", "What charioteers are these?", "", "PANTHEA:", "Where are their chariots?", "", "SEMICHORUS OF HOURS:", "The voice of the Spirits of Air and of Earth", "Has drawn back the figured curtain of sleep", "Which covered our being and darkened our birth", "In the deep.", "", "A VOICE:", "In the deep?", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Oh, below the deep.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "An hundred ages we had been kept", "Cradled in visions of hate and care,", "And each one who waked as his brother slept,", "Found the truth--", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Worse than his visions were!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "We have heard the lute of Hope in sleep;", "We have known the voice of Love in dreams;", "We have felt the wand of Power, and leap--", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "As the billows leap in the morning beams!", "", "CHORUS:", "Weave the dance on the floor of the breeze,", "Pierce with song heaven's silent light,", "Enchant the day that too swiftly flees,", "To check its flight ere the cave of Night.", "", "Once the hungry Hours were hounds", "Which chased the day like a bleeding deer,", "And it limped and stumbled with many wounds", "Through the nightly dells of the desert year.", "", "But now, oh weave the mystic measure", "Of music, and dance, and shapes of light,", "Let the Hours, and the spirits of might and pleasure,", "Like the clouds and sunbeams, unite--", "", "A VOICE:", "Unite!", "", "PANTHEA:", "See, where the Spirits of the human mind", "Wrapped in sweet sounds, as in bright veils, approach.", "", "CHORUS OF SPIRITS:", "We join the throng", "Of the dance and the song,", "By the whirlwind of gladness borne along;", "As the flying-fish leap", "From the Indian deep,", "And mix with the sea-birds, half-asleep.", "", "CHORUS OF HOURS:", "Whence come ye, so wild and so fleet,", "For sandals of lightning are on your feet,", "And your wings are soft and swift as thought,", "And your eyes are as love which is veiled not?", "", "CHORUS OF SPIRITS:", "We come from the mind", "Of human kind", "Which was late so dusk, and obscene, and blind,", "Now 'tis an ocean", "Of clear emotion,", "A heaven of serene and mighty motion.", "", "From that deep abyss", "Of wonder and bliss,", "Whose caverns are crystal palaces;", "From those skiey towers", "Where Thought's crowned powers", "Sit watching your dance, ye happy Hours!", "", "From the dim recesses", "Of woven caresses,", "Where lovers catch ye by your loose tresses;", "From the azure isles,", "Where sweet Wisdom smiles,", "Delaying your ships with her siren wiles.", "", "From the temples high", "Of Man's ear and eye,", "Roofed over Sculpture and Poesy;", "From the murmurings", "Of the unsealed springs", "Where Science bedews her Daedal wings.", "", "Years after years,", "Through blood, and tears,", "And a thick hell of hatreds, and hopes, and fears;", "We waded and flew,", "And the islets were few", "Where the bud-blighted flowers of happiness grew.", "", "Our feet now, every palm,", "Are sandalled with calm,", "And the dew of our wings is a rain of balm;", "And, beyond our eyes,", "The human love lies", "Which makes all it gazes on Paradise.", "", "CHORUS OF SPIRITS AND HOURS:", "Then weave the web of the mystic measure;", "From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth,", "Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,", "Fill the dance and the music of mirth,", "As the waves of a thousand streams rush by", "To an ocean of splendour and harmony!", "", "CHORUS OF SPIRITS:", "Our spoil is won,", "Our task is done,", "We are free to dive, or soar, or run;", "Beyond and around,", "Or within the bound", "Which clips the world with darkness round.", "", "We'll pass the eyes", "Of the starry skies", "Into the hoar deep to colonize;", "Death, Chaos, and Night,", "From the sound of our flight,", "Shall flee, like mist from a tempest's might.", "", "And Earth, Air, and Light,", "And the Spirit of Might,", "Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;", "And Love, Thought, and Breath,", "The powers that quell Death,", "Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.", "", "And our singing shall build", "In the void's loose field", "A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield;", "We will take our plan", "From the new world of man,", "And our work shall be called the Promethean.", "", "CHORUS OF HOURS:", "Break the dance, and scatter the song;", "Let some depart, and some remain;", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "We, beyond heaven, are driven along:", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Us the enchantments of earth retain:", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Ceaseless, and rapid, and fierce, and free,", "With the Spirits which build a new earth and sea,", "And a heaven where yet heaven could never be;", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Solemn, and slow, and serene, and bright,", "Leading the Day and outspeeding the Night,", "With the powers of a world of perfect light;", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "We whirl, singing loud, round the gathering sphere,", "Till the trees, and the beasts, and the clouds appear", "From its chaos made calm by love, not fear.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "We encircle the ocean and mountains of earth,", "And the happy forms of its death and birth", "Change to the music of our sweet mirth.", "", "CHORUS OF HOURS AND SPIRITS:", "Break the dance, and scatter the song;", "Let some depart, and some remain,", "Wherever we fly we lead along", "In leashes, like starbeams, soft yet strong,", "The clouds that are heavy with love's sweet rain.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Ha! they are gone!", "", "IONE:", "Yet feel you no delight", "From the past sweetness?", "", "PANTHEA:", "As the bare green hill", "When some soft cloud vanishes into rain,", "Laughs with a thousand drops of sunny water", "To the unpavilioned sky!", "", "IONE:", "Even whilst we speak", "New notes arise. What is that awful sound?", "", "PANTHEA:", "'Tis the deep music of the rolling world", "Kindling within the strings of the waved air", "Aeolian modulations.", "", "IONE:", "Listen too,", "How every pause is filled with under-notes,", "Clear, silver, icy, keen awakening tones,", "Which pierce the sense, and live within the soul,", "As the sharp stars pierce winter's crystal air", "And gaze upon themselves within the sea.", "", "PANTHEA:", "But see where through two openings in the forest", "Which hanging branches overcanopy,", "And where two runnels of a rivulet,", "Between the close moss violet-inwoven,", "Have made their path of melody, like sisters", "Who part with sighs that they may meet in smiles,", "Turning their dear disunion to an isle", "Of lovely grief, a wood of sweet sad thoughts;", "Two visions of strange radiance float upon", "The ocean-like enchantment of strong sound,", "Which flows intenser, keener, deeper yet", "Under the ground and through the windless air.", "", "IONE:", "I see a chariot like that thinnest boat,", "In which the Mother of the Months is borne", "By ebbing light into her western cave,", "When she upsprings from interlunar dreams;", "O'er which is curved an orblike canopy", "Of gentle darkness, and the hills and woods,", "Distinctly seen through that dusk aery veil,", "Regard like shapes in an enchanter's glass;", "Its wheels are solid clouds, azure and gold,", "Such as the genii of the thunderstorm", "Pile on the floor of the illumined sea", "When the sun rushes under it; they roll", "And move and grow as with an inward wind;", "Within it sits a winged infant, white", "Its countenance, like the whiteness of bright snow,", "Its plumes are as feathers of sunny frost,", "Its limbs gleam white, through the wind-flowing folds", "Of its white robe, woof of ethereal pearl.", "Its hair is white, the brightness of white light", "Scattered in strings; yet its two eyes are heavens", "Of liquid darkness, which the Deity", "Within seems pouring, as a storm is poured", "From jagged clouds, out of their arrowy lashes,", "Tempering the cold and radiant air around,", "With fire that is not brightness; in its hand", "It sways a quivering moonbeam, from whose point", "A guiding power directs the chariot's prow", "Over its wheeled clouds, which as they roll", "Over the grass, and flowers, and waves, wake sounds,", "Sweet as a singing rain of silver dew.", "", "PANTHEA:", "And from the other opening in the wood", "Rushes, with loud and whirlwind harmony,", "A sphere, which is as many thousand spheres,", "Solid as crystal, yet through all its mass", "Flow, as through empty space, music and light:", "Ten thousand orbs involving and involved,", "Purple and azure, white, and green, and golden,", "Sphere within sphere; and every space between", "Peopled with unimaginable shapes,", "Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep,", "Yet each inter-transpicuous, and they whirl", "Over each other with a thousand motions,", "Upon a thousand sightless axles spinning,", "And with the force of self-destroying swiftness,", "Intensely, slowly, solemnly, roll on,", "Kindling with mingled sounds, and many tones,", "Intelligible words and music wild.", "With mighty whirl the multitudinous orb", "Grinds the bright brook into an azure mist", "Of elemental subtlety, like light;", "And the wild odour of the forest flowers,", "The music of the living grass and air,", "The emerald light of leaf-entangled beams", "Round its intense yet self-conflicting speed,", "Seem kneaded into one aereal mass", "Which drowns the sense. Within the orb itself,", "Pillowed upon its alabaster arms,", "Like to a child o'erwearied with sweet toil,", "On its own folded wings, and wavy hair,", "The Spirit of the Earth is laid asleep,", "And you can see its little lips are moving,", "Amid the changing light of their own smiles,", "Like one who talks of what he loves in dream.", "", "IONE:", "'Tis only mocking the orb's harmony.", "", "PANTHEA:", "And from a star upon its forehead, shoot,", "Like swords of azure fire, or golden spears", "With tyrant-quelling myrtle overtwined,", "Embleming heaven and earth united now,", "Vast beams like spokes of some invisible wheel", "Which whirl as the orb whirls, swifter than thought,", "Filling the abyss with sun-like lightenings,", "And perpendicular now, and now transverse,", "Pierce the dark soil, and as they pierce and pass,", "Make bare the secrets of the earth's deep heart;", "Infinite mine of adamant and gold,", "Valueless stones, and unimagined gems,", "And caverns on crystalline columns poised", "With vegetable silver overspread;", "Wells of unfathomed fire, and water springs", "Whence the great sea, even as a child is fed,", "Whose vapours clothe earth's monarch mountain-tops", "With kingly, ermine snow. The beams flash on", "And make appear the melancholy ruins", "Of cancelled cycles; anchors, beaks of ships;", "Planks turned to marble; quivers, helms, and spears,", "And gorgon-headed targes, and the wheels", "Of scythed chariots, and the emblazonry", "Of trophies, standards, and armorial beasts,", "Round which death laughed, sepulchred emblems", "Of dead destruction, ruin within ruin!", "The wrecks beside of many a city vast,", "Whose population which the earth grew over", "Was mortal, but not human; see, they lie,", "Their monstrous works, and uncouth skeletons,", "Their statues, homes and fanes; prodigious shapes", "Huddled in gray annihilation, split,", "Jammed in the hard, black deep; and over these,", "The anatomies of unknown winged things,", "And fishes which were isles of living scale,", "And serpents, bony chains, twisted around", "The iron crags, or within heaps of dust", "To which the tortuous strength of their last pangs", "Had crushed the iron crags; and over these", "The jagged alligator, and the might", "Of earth-convulsing behemoth, which once", "Were monarch beasts, and on the slimy shores,", "And weed-overgrown continents of earth,", "Increased and multiplied like summer worms", "On an abandoned corpse, till the blue globe", "Wrapped deluge round it like a cloak, and they", "Yelled, gasped, and were abolished; or some God", "Whose throne was in a comet, passed, and cried,", "'Be not!' And like my words they were no more.", "", "THE EARTH:", "The joy, the triumph, the delight, the madness!", "The boundless, overflowing, bursting gladness,", "The vaporous exultation not to be confined!", "Ha! ha! the animation of delight", "Which wraps me, like an atmosphere of light,", "And bears me as a cloud is borne by its own wind.", "", "THE MOON:", "Brother mine, calm wanderer,", "Happy globe of land and air,", "Some Spirit is darted like a beam from thee,", "Which penetrates my frozen frame,", "And passes with the warmth of flame,", "With love, and odour, and deep melody", "Through me, through me!", "", "THE EARTH:", "Ha! ha! the caverns of my hollow mountains,", "My cloven fire-crags, sound-exulting fountains", "Laugh with a vast and inextinguishable laughter.", "The oceans, and the deserts, and the abysses,", "And the deep air's unmeasured wildernesses,", "Answer from all their clouds and billows, echoing after.", "", "They cry aloud as I do. Sceptred curse,", "Who all our green and azure universe", "Threatenedst to muffle round with black destruction, sending", "A solid cloud to rain hot thunderstones,", "And splinter and knead down my children's bones,", "All I bring forth, to one void mass battering and blending,--", "", "Until each crag-like tower, and storied column,", "Palace, and obelisk, and temple solemn,", "My imperial mountains crowned with cloud, and snow, and fire,", "My sea-like forests, every blade and blossom", "Which finds a grave or cradle in my bosom,", "Were stamped by thy strong hate into a lifeless mire:", "", "How art thou sunk, withdrawn, covered, drunk up", "By thirsty nothing, as the brackish cup", "Drained by a desert-troop, a little drop for all;", "And from beneath, around, within, above,", "Filling thy void annihilation, love", "Bursts in like light on caves cloven by the thunder-ball.", "", "THE MOON:", "The snow upon my lifeless mountains", "Is loosened into living fountains,", "My solid oceans flow, and sing and shine:", "A spirit from my heart bursts forth,", "It clothes with unexpected birth", "My cold bare bosom: Oh! it must be thine", "On mine, on mine!", "", "Gazing on thee I feel, I know", "Green stalks burst forth, and bright flowers grow,", "And living shapes upon my bosom move:", "Music is in the sea and air,", "Winged clouds soar here and there,", "Dark with the rain new buds are dreaming of:", "'Tis love, all love!", "", "THE EARTH:", "It interpenetrates my granite mass,", "Through tangled roots and trodden clay doth pass", "Into the utmost leaves and delicatest flowers;", "Upon the winds, among the clouds 'tis spread,", "It wakes a life in the forgotten dead,", "They breathe a spirit up from their obscurest bowers.", "", "And like a storm bursting its cloudy prison", "With thunder, and with whirlwind, has arisen", "Out of the lampless caves of unimagined being:", "With earthquake shock and swiftness making shiver", "Thought's stagnant chaos, unremoved for ever,", "Till hate, and fear, and pain, light-vanquished shadows, fleeing,", "", "Leave Man, who was a many-sided mirror,", "Which could distort to many a shape of error,", "This true fair world of things, a sea reflecting love;", "Which over all his kind, as the sun's heaven", "Gliding o'er ocean, smooth, serene, and even,", "Darting from starry depths radiance and life, doth move:", "", "Leave Man, even as a leprous child is left,", "Who follows a sick beast to some warm cleft", "Of rocks, through which the might of healing springs is poured;", "Then when it wanders home with rosy smile,", "Unconscious, and its mother fears awhile", "It is a spirit, then, weeps on her child restored.", "", "Man, oh, not men! a chain of linked thought,", "Of love and might to be divided not,", "Compelling the elements with adamantine stress;", "As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze,", "The unquiet republic of the maze", "Of planets, struggling fierce towards heaven's free wilderness.", "", "Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul,", "Whose nature is its own divine control,", "Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea;", "Familiar acts are beautiful through love;", "Labour, and pain, and grief, in life's green grove", "Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gentle they could be!", "", "His will, with all mean passions, bad delights,", "And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,", "A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,", "Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm", "Love rules, through waves which dare not overwhelm,", "Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sovereign sway.", "", "All things confess his strength. Through the cold mass", "Of marble and of colour his dreams pass;", "Bright threads whence mothers weave the robes their children wear;", "Language is a perpetual Orphic song,", "Which rules with Daedal harmony a throng", "Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless and shapeless were.", "", "The lightning is his slave; heaven's utmost deep", "Gives up her stars, and like a flock of sheep", "They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on!", "The tempest is his steed, he strides the air;", "And the abyss shouts from her depth laid bare,", "Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me; I have none.", "", "THE MOON:", "The shadow of white death has passed", "From my path in heaven at last,", "A clinging shroud of solid frost and sleep;", "And through my newly-woven bowers,", "Wander happy paramours,", "Less mighty, but as mild as those who keep", "Thy vales more deep.", "", "THE EARTH:", "As the dissolving warmth of dawn may fold", "A half unfrozen dew-globe, green, and gold,", "And crystalline, till it becomes a winged mist,", "And wanders up the vault of the blue day,", "Outlives the noon, and on the sun's last ray", "Hangs o'er the sea, a fleece of fire and amethyst.", "", "THE MOON:", "Thou art folded, thou art lying", "In the light which is undying", "Of thine own joy, and heaven's smile divine;", "All suns and constellations shower", "On thee a light, a life, a power", "Which doth array thy sphere; thou pourest thine", "On mine, on mine!", "", "THE EARTH:", "I spin beneath my pyramid of night,", "Which points into the heavens dreaming delight,", "Murmuring victorious joy in my enchanted sleep;", "As a youth lulled in love-dreams faintly sighing,", "Under the shadow of his beauty lying,", "Which round his rest a watch of light and warmth doth keep.", "", "THE MOON:", "As in the soft and sweet eclipse,", "When soul meets soul on lovers' lips,", "High hearts are calm, and brightest eyes are dull;", "So when thy shadow falls on me,", "Then am I mute and still, by thee", "Covered; of thy love, Orb most beautiful,", "Full, oh, too full!", "", "Thou art speeding round the sun", "Brightest world of many a one;", "Green and azure sphere which shinest", "With a light which is divinest", "Among all the lamps of Heaven", "To whom life and light is given;", "I, thy crystal paramour", "Borne beside thee by a power", "Like the polar Paradise,", "Magnet-like of lovers' eyes;", "I, a most enamoured maiden", "Whose weak brain is overladen", "With the pleasure of her love,", "Maniac-like around thee move", "Gazing, an insatiate bride,", "On thy form from every side", "Like a Maenad, round the cup", "Which Agave lifted up", "In the weird Cadmaean forest.", "Brother, wheresoe'er thou soarest", "I must hurry, whirl and follow", "Through the heavens wide and hollow,", "Sheltered by the warm embrace", "Of thy soul from hungry space,", "Drinking from thy sense and sight", "Beauty, majesty, and might,", "As a lover or a chameleon", "Grows like what it looks upon,", "As a violet's gentle eye", "Gazes on the azure sky", "Until its hue grows like what it beholds,", "As a gray and watery mist", "Glows like solid amethyst", "Athwart the western mountain it enfolds,", "When the sunset sleeps", "Upon its snow--", "", "THE EARTH:", "And the weak day weeps", "That it should be so.", "Oh, gentle Moon, the voice of thy delight", "Falls on me like thy clear and tender light", "Soothing the seaman, borne the summer night,", "Through isles for ever calm;", "Oh, gentle Moon, thy crystal accents pierce", "The caverns of my pride's deep universe,", "Charming the tiger joy, whose tramplings fierce", "Made wounds which need thy balm.", "", "PANTHEA:", "I rise as from a bath of sparkling water,", "A bath of azure light, among dark rocks,", "Out of the stream of sound.", "", "IONE:", "Ah me! sweet sister,", "The stream of sound has ebbed away from us,", "And you pretend to rise out of its wave,", "Because your words fall like the clear, soft dew", "Shaken from a bathing wood-nymph's limbs and hair.", "", "PANTHEA:", "Peace! peace! a mighty Power, which is as darkness,", "Is rising out of Earth, and from the sky", "Is showered like night, and from within the air", "Bursts, like eclipse which had been gathered up", "Into the pores of sunlight: the bright visions,", "Wherein the singing spirits rode and shone,", "Gleam like pale meteors through a watery night.", "", "IONE:", "There is a sense of words upon mine ear.", "", "PANTHEA:", "An universal sound like words: Oh, list!", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Thou, Earth, calm empire of a happy soul,", "Sphere of divinest shapes and harmonies,", "Beautiful orb! gathering as thou dost roll", "The love which paves thy path along the skies:", "", "THE EARTH:", "I hear: I am as a drop of dew that dies.", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Thou, Moon, which gazest on the nightly Earth", "With wonder, as it gazes upon thee;", "Whilst each to men, and beasts, and the swift birth", "Of birds, is beauty, love, calm, harmony:", "", "THE MOON:", "I hear: I am a leaf shaken by thee!", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Ye Kings of suns and stars, Daemons and Gods,", "Ethereal Dominations, who possess", "Elysian, windless, fortunate abodes", "Beyond Heaven's constellated wilderness:", "", "A VOICE FROM ABOVE:", "Our great Republic hears: we are blest, and bless.", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Ye happy Dead, whom beams of brightest verse", "Are clouds to hide, not colours to portray,", "Whether your nature is that universe", "Which once ye saw and suffered--", "", "A VOICE: FROM BENEATH:", "Or as they", "Whom we have left, we change and pass away.", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Ye elemental Genii, who have homes", "From man's high mind even to the central stone", "Of sullen lead; from heaven's star-fretted domes", "To the dull weed some sea-worm battens on:", "", "A CONFUSED VOICE:", "We hear: thy words waken Oblivion.", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Spirits, whose homes are flesh; ye beasts and birds,", "Ye worms and fish; ye living leaves and buds;", "Lightning and wind; and ye untameable herds,", "Meteors and mists, which throng air's solitudes:--", "", "A VOICE:", "Thy voice to us is wind among still woods.", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "Man, who wert once a despot and a slave;", "A dupe and a deceiver; a decay;", "A traveller from the cradle to the grave", "Through the dim night of this immortal day:", "", "ALL:", "Speak: thy strong words may never pass away.", "", "DEMOGORGON:", "This is the day, which down the void abysm", "At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heaven's despotism,", "And Conquest is dragged captive through the deep:", "Love, from its awful throne of patient power", "In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour", "Of dread endurance, from the slippery, steep,", "And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs", "And folds over the world its healing wings.", "", "Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,", "These are the seals of that most firm assurance", "Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength;", "And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,", "Mother of many acts and hours, should free", "The serpent that would clasp her with his length;", "These are the spells by which to reassume", "An empire o'er the disentangled doom.", "", "To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;", "To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;", "To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;", "To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates", "From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;", "Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;", "This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be", "Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;", "This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory!" ], "linecount": "3090" }, { "title": "The Cenci. a Tragedy in Five Acts", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "ACT 1.", "", "SCENE 1.1:", "AN APARTMENT IN THE CENCI PALACE.", "ENTER COUNT CENCI AND CARDINAL CAMILLO.", "", "CAMILLO:", "That matter of the murder is hushed up", "If you consent to yield his Holiness", "Your fief that lies beyond the Pincian gate.--", "It needed all my interest in the conclave", "To bend him to this point; he said that you", "Bought perilous impunity with your gold;", "That crimes like yours if once or twice compounded", "Enriched the Church, and respited from hell", "An erring soul which might repent and live: --", "But that the glory and the interest", "Of the high throne he fills, little consist", "With making it a daily mart of guilt", "As manifold and hideous as the deeds", "Which you scarce hide from men's revolted eyes.", "", "CENCI:", "The third of my possessions--let it go!", "Ay, I once heard the nephew of the Pope", "Had sent his architect to view the ground,", "Meaning to build a villa on my vines", "The next time I compounded with his uncle:", "I little thought he should outwit me so!", "Henceforth no witness--not the lamp--shall see", "That which the vassal threatened to divulge", "Whose throat is choked with dust for his reward.", "The deed he saw could not have rated higher", "Than his most worthless life:--it angers me!", "Respited me from Hell! So may the Devil", "Respite their souls from Heaven! No doubt Pope Clement,", "And his most charitable nephews, pray", "That the Apostle Peter and the Saints", "Will grant for their sake that I long enjoy", "Strength, wealth, and pride, and lust, and length of days", "Wherein to act the deeds which are the stewards", "Of their revenue.--But much yet remains", "To which they show no title.", "", "CAMILLO:", "Oh, Count Cenci!", "So much that thou mightst honourably live", "And reconcile thyself with thine own heart", "And with thy God, and with the offended world.", "How hideously look deeds of lust and blood", "Through those snow white and venerable hairs!--", "Your children should be sitting round you now,", "But that you fear to read upon their looks", "The shame and misery you have written there.", "Where is your wife? Where is your gentle daughter?", "Methinks her sweet looks, which make all things else", "Beauteous and glad, might kill the fiend within you.", "Why is she barred from all society", "But her own strange and uncomplaining wrongs?", "Talk with me, Count,--you know I mean you well.", "I stood beside your dark and fiery youth", "Watching its bold and bad career, as men", "Watch meteors, but it vanished not--I marked", "Your desperate and remorseless manhood; now", "Do I behold you in dishonoured age", "Charged with a thousand unrepented crimes.", "Yet I have ever hoped you would amend,", "And in that hope have saved your life three times.", "", "CENCI:", "For which Aldobrandino owes you now", "My fief beyond the Pincian.--Cardinal,", "One thing, I pray you, recollect henceforth,", "And so we shall converse with less restraint.", "A man you knew spoke of my wife and daughter--", "He was accustomed to frequent my house;", "So the next day HIS wife and daughter came", "And asked if I had seen him; and I smiled:", "I think they never saw him any more.", "", "CAMILLO:", "Thou execrable man, beware!--", "", "CENCI:", "Of thee?", "Nay, this is idle: --We should know each other.", "As to my character for what men call crime", "Seeing I please my senses as I list,", "And vindicate that right with force or guile,", "It is a public matter, and I care not", "If I discuss it with you. I may speak", "Alike to you and my own conscious heart--", "For you give out that you have half reformed me,", "Therefore strong vanity will keep you silent", "If fear should not; both will, I do not doubt.", "All men delight in sensual luxury,", "All men enjoy revenge; and most exult", "Over the tortures they can never feel--", "Flattering their secret peace with others' pain.", "But I delight in nothing else. I love", "The sight of agony, and the sense of joy,", "When this shall be another's, and that mine.", "And I have no remorse and little fear,", "Which are, I think, the checks of other men.", "This mood has grown upon me, until now", "Any design my captious fancy makes", "The picture of its wish, and it forms none", "But such as men like you would start to know,", "Is as my natural food and rest debarred", "Until it be accomplished.", "", "CAMILLO:", "Art thou not", "Most miserable?", "", "CENCI:", "Why miserable?--", "No.--I am what your theologians call", "Hardened;--which they must be in impudence,", "So to revile a man's peculiar taste.", "True, I was happier than I am, while yet", "Manhood remained to act the thing I thought;", "While lust was sweeter than revenge; and now", "Invention palls:--Ay, we must all grow old--", "And but that there remains a deed to act", "Whose horror might make sharp an appetite", "Duller than mine--I'd do,--I know not what.", "When I was young I thought of nothing else", "But pleasure; and I fed on honey sweets:", "Men, by St. Thomas! cannot live like bees,", "And I grew tired:--yet, till I killed a foe,", "And heard his groans, and heard his children's groans,", "Knew I not what delight was else on earth,", "Which now delights me little. I the rather", "Look on such pangs as terror ill conceals,", "The dry fixed eyeball; the pale, quivering lip,", "Which tell me that the spirit weeps within", "Tears bitterer than the bloody sweat of Christ.", "I rarely kill the body, which preserves,", "Like a strong prison, the soul within my power,", "Wherein I feed it with the breath of fear", "For hourly pain.", "", "CAMILLO:", "Hell's most abandoned fiend", "Did never, in the drunkenness of guilt,", "Speak to his heart as now you speak to me;", "I thank my God that I believe you not.", "", "[ENTER ANDREA.]", "", "ANDREA:", "My Lord, a gentleman from Salamanca", "Would speak with you.", "", "CENCI:", "Bid him attend me", "In the grand saloon.", "", "[EXIT ANDREA.]", "", "CAMILLO:", "Farewell; and I will pray", "Almighty God that thy false, impious words", "Tempt not his spirit to abandon thee.", "", "[EXIT CAMILLO.]", "", "CENCI:", "The third of my possessions! I must use", "Close husbandry, or gold, the old man's sword,", "Falls from my withered hand. But yesterday", "There came an order from the Pope to make", "Fourfold provision for my cursed sons;", "Whom I had sent from Rome to Salamanca,", "Hoping some accident might cut them off;", "And meaning if I could to starve them there.", "I pray thee, God, send some quick death upon them!", "Bernardo and my wife could not be worse", "If dead and damned:--then, as to Beatrice--", "[LOOKING AROUND HIM SUSPICIOUSLY.]", "I think they cannot hear me at that door;", "What if they should? And yet I need not speak", "Though the heart triumphs with itself in words.", "O, thou most silent air, that shalt not hear", "What now I think! Thou, pavement, which I tread", "Towards her chamber,--let your echoes talk", "Of my imperious step scorning surprise,", "But not of my intent!--Andrea!", "", "[ENTER ANDREA.]", "", "ANDREA:", "My lord?", "", "CENCI:", "Bid Beatrice attend me in her chamber", "This evening:--no, at midnight and alone.", "", "[EXEUNT.]", "", "SCENE 1.2:", "A GARDEN OF THE CENCI PALACE.", "ENTER BEATRICE AND ORSINO, AS IN CONVERSATION.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Pervert not truth,", "Orsino. You remember where we held", "That conversation;--nay, we see the spot", "Even from this cypress;--two long years are past", "Since, on an April midnight, underneath", "The moonlight ruins of Mount Palatine,", "I did confess to you my secret mind.", "", "ORSINO:", "You said you loved me then.", "", "BEATRICE:", "You are a Priest.", "Speak to me not of love.", "", "ORSINO:", "I may obtain", "The dispensation of the Pope to marry.", "Because I am a Priest do you believe", "Your image, as the hunter some struck deer,", "Follows me not whether I wake or sleep?", "", "BEATRICE:", "As I have said, speak to me not of love;", "Had you a dispensation I have not;", "Nor will I leave this home of misery", "Whilst my poor Bernard, and that gentle lady", "To whom I owe life, and these virtuous thoughts,", "Must suffer what I still have strength to share.", "Alas, Orsino! All the love that once", "I felt for you, is turned to bitter pain.", "Ours was a youthful contract, which you first", "Broke, by assuming vows no Pope will loose.", "And thus I love you still, but holily,", "Even as a sister or a spirit might;", "And so I swear a cold fidelity.", "And it is well perhaps we shall not marry.", "You have a sly, equivocating vein", "That suits me not.--Ah, wretched that I am!", "Where shall I turn? Even now you look on me", "As you were not my friend, and as if you", "Discovered that I thought so, with false smiles", "Making my true suspicion seem your wrong.", "Ah, no! forgive me; sorrow makes me seem", "Sterner than else my nature might have been;", "I have a weight of melancholy thoughts,", "And they forebode,--but what can they forebode", "Worse than I now endure?", "", "ORSINO:", "All will be well.", "Is the petition yet prepared? You know", "My zeal for all you wish, sweet Beatrice;", "Doubt not but I will use my utmost skill", "So that the Pope attend to your complaint.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Your zeal for all I wish;--Ah me, you are cold!", "Your utmost skill...speak but one word...", "[ASIDE.]", "Alas!", "Weak and deserted creature that I am,", "Here I stand bickering with my only friend!", "[TO ORSINO.]", "This night my father gives a sumptuous feast,", "Orsino; he has heard some happy news", "From Salamanca, from my brothers there,", "And with this outward show of love he mocks", "His inward hate. 'Tis bold hypocrisy,", "For he would gladlier celebrate their deaths,", "Which I have heard him pray for on his knees:", "Great God! that such a father should be mine!", "But there is mighty preparation made,", "And all our kin, the Cenci, will be there,", "And all the chief nobility of Rome.", "And he has bidden me and my pale Mother", "Attire ourselves in festival array.", "Poor lady! She expects some happy change", "In his dark spirit from this act; I none.", "At supper I will give you the petition:", "Till when--farewell.", "", "ORSINO:", "Farewell.", "[EXIT BEATRICE.]", "I know the Pope", "Will ne'er absolve me from my priestly vow", "But by absolving me from the revenue", "Of many a wealthy see; and, Beatrice,", "I think to win thee at an easier rate.", "Nor shall he read her eloquent petition:", "He might bestow her on some poor relation", "Of his sixth cousin, as he did her sister,", "And I should be debarred from all access.", "Then as to what she suffers from her father,", "In all this there is much exaggeration:--", "Old men are testy and will have their way;", "A man may stab his enemy, or his vassal,", "And live a free life as to wine or women,", "And with a peevish temper may return", "To a dull home, and rate his wife and children;", "Daughters and wives call this foul tyranny.", "I shall be well content if on my conscience", "There rest no heavier sin than what they suffer", "From the devices of my love--a net", "From which he shall escape not. Yet I fear", "Her subtle mind, her awe-inspiring gaze,", "Whose beams anatomize me nerve by nerve", "And lay me bare, and make me blush to see", "My hidden thoughts.--Ah, no! A friendless girl", "Who clings to me, as to her only hope:--", "I were a fool, not less than if a panther", "Were panic-stricken by the antelope's eye,", "If she escape me.", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "SCENE 1.3:", "A MAGNIFICENT HALL IN THE CENCI PALACE.", "A BANQUET.", "ENTER CENCI, LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, ORSINO, CAMILLO, NOBLES.", "", "CENCI:", "Welcome, my friends and kinsmen; welcome ye,", "Princes and Cardinals, pillars of the church,", "Whose presence honours our festivity.", "I have too long lived like an anchorite,", "And in my absence from your merry meetings", "An evil word is gone abroad of me;", "But I do hope that you, my noble friends,", "When you have shared the entertainment here,", "And heard the pious cause for which 'tis given,", "And we have pledged a health or two together,", "Will think me flesh and blood as well as you;", "Sinful indeed, for Adam made all so,", "But tender-hearted, meek and pitiful.", "", "FIRST GUEST:", "In truth, my Lord, you seem too light of heart,", "Too sprightly and companionable a man,", "To act the deeds that rumour pins on you.", "[TO HIS COMPANION.]", "I never saw such blithe and open cheer", "In any eye!", "", "SECOND GUEST:", "Some most desired event,", "In which we all demand a common joy,", "Has brought us hither; let us hear it, Count.", "", "CENCI:", "It is indeed a most desired event.", "If when a parent from a parent's heart", "Lifts from this earth to the great Father of all", "A prayer, both when he lays him down to sleep,", "And when he rises up from dreaming it;", "One supplication, one desire, one hope,", "That he would grant a wish for his two sons,", "Even all that he demands in their regard--", "And suddenly beyond his dearest hope", "It is accomplished, he should then rejoice,", "And call his friends and kinsmen to a feast,", "And task their love to grace his merriment,--", "Then honour me thus far--for I am he.", "", "BEATRICE [TO LUCRETIA]:", "Great God! How horrible! some dreadful ill", "Must have befallen my brothers.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Fear not, child,", "He speaks too frankly.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Ah! My blood runs cold.", "I fear that wicked laughter round his eye,", "Which wrinkles up the skin even to the hair.", "", "CENCI:", "Here are the letters brought from Salamanca;", "Beatrice, read them to your mother. God!", "I thank thee! In one night didst thou perform,", "By ways inscrutable, the thing I sought.", "My disobedient and rebellious sons", "Are dead!--Why, dead!--What means this change of cheer?", "You hear me not, I tell you they are dead;", "And they will need no food or raiment more:", "The tapers that did light them the dark way", "Are their last cost. The Pope, I think, will not", "Expect I should maintain them in their coffins.", "Rejoice with me--my heart is wondrous glad.", "", "[LUCRETIA SINKS, HALF FAINTING; BEATRICE SUPPORTS HER.]", "", "BEATRICE :", "It is not true!--Dear Lady, pray look up.", "Had it been true, there is a God in Heaven,", "He would not live to boast of such a boon.", "Unnatural man, thou knowest that it is false.", "", "CENCI:", "Ay, as the word of God; whom here I call", "To witness that I speak the sober truth;--", "And whose most favouring Providence was shown", "Even in the manner of their deaths. For Rocco", "Was kneeling at the mass, with sixteen others,", "When the church fell and crushed him to a mummy,", "The rest escaped unhurt. Cristofano", "Was stabbed in error by a jealous man,", "Whilst she he loved was sleeping with his rival;", "All in the self-same hour of the same night;", "Which shows that Heaven has special care of me.", "I beg those friends who love me, that they mark", "The day a feast upon their calendars.", "It was the twenty-seventh of December:", "Ay, read the letters if you doubt my oath.", "", "[THE ASSEMBLY APPEARS CONFUSED; SEVERAL OF THE GUESTS RISE.]", "", "FIRST GUEST:", "Oh, horrible! I will depart--", "", "SECOND GUEST:", "And I.--", "", "THIRD GUEST:", "No, stay!", "I do believe it is some jest; though faith!", "'Tis mocking us somewhat too solemnly.", "I think his son has married the Infanta,", "Or found a mine of gold in El Dorado.", "'Tis but to season some such news; stay, stay!", "I see 'tis only raillery by his smile.", "", "CENCI [FILLING A BOWL OF WINE, AND LIFTING IT UP]:", "Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendour leaps", "And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl", "Under the lamplight, as my spirits do,", "To hear the death of my accursed sons!", "Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,", "Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,", "And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,", "Who, if a father's curses, as men say,", "Climb with swift wings after their children's souls,", "And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,", "Now triumphs in my triumph!--But thou art", "Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy,", "And I will taste no other wine to-night.", "Here, Andrea! Bear the bowl around.", "", "A GUEST [RISING]:", "Thou wretch!", "Will none among this noble company", "Check the abandoned villain?", "", "CAMILLO:", "For God's sake,", "Let me dismiss the guests! You are insane,", "Some ill will come of this.", "", "SECOND GUEST:", "Seize, silence him!", "", "FIRST GUEST:", "I will!", "", "THIRD GUEST:", "And I!", "", "CENCI [ADDRESSING THOSE WHO RISE WITH A THREATENING GESTURE]:", "Who moves? Who speaks?", "[TURNING TO THE COMPANY.]", "'tis nothing,", "Enjoy yourselves.--Beware! For my revenge", "Is as the sealed commission of a king", "That kills, and none dare name the murderer.", "", "[THE BANQUET IS BROKEN UP; SEVERAL OF THE GUESTS ARE DEPARTING.]", "", "BEATRICE:", "I do entreat you, go not, noble guests;", "What, although tyranny and impious hate", "Stand sheltered by a father's hoary hair?", "What if 'tis he who clothed us in these limbs", "Who tortures them, and triumphs? What, if we,", "The desolate and the dead, were his own flesh,", "His children and his wife, whom he is bound", "To love and shelter? Shall we therefore find", "No refuge in this merciless wide world?", "O think what deep wrongs must have blotted out", "First love, then reverence in a child's prone mind,", "Till it thus vanquish shame and fear! O think!", "I have borne much, and kissed the sacred hand", "Which crushed us to the earth, and thought its stroke", "Was perhaps some paternal chastisement!", "Have excused much, doubted; and when no doubt", "Remained, have sought by patience, love, and tears", "To soften him, and when this could not be", "I have knelt down through the long sleepless nights", "And lifted up to God, the Father of all,", "Passionate prayers: and when these were not heard", "I have still borne,--until I meet you here,", "Princes and kinsmen, at this hideous feast", "Given at my brothers' deaths. Two yet remain,", "His wife remains and I, whom if ye save not,", "Ye may soon share such merriment again", "As fathers make over their children's graves.", "O Prince Colonna, thou art our near kinsman,", "Cardinal, thou art the Pope's chamberlain,", "Camillo, thou art chief justiciary,", "Take us away!", "", "CENCI [HE HAS BEEN CONVERSING WITH CAMILLO DURING THE FIRST PART OF", "BEATRICE'S SPEECH; HE HEARS THE CONCLUSION, AND NOW ADVANCES]:", "I hope my good friends here", "Will think of their own daughters--or perhaps", "Of their own throats--before they lend an ear", "To this wild girl.", "", "BEATRICE [NOT NOTICING THE WORDS OF CENCI]:", "Dare no one look on me?", "None answer? Can one tyrant overbear", "The sense of many best and wisest men?", "Or is it that I sue not in some form", "Of scrupulous law, that ye deny my suit?", "O God! That I were buried with my brothers!", "And that the flowers of this departed spring", "Were fading on my grave! And that my father", "Were celebrating now one feast for all!", "", "CAMILLO:", "A bitter wish for one so young and gentle.", "Can we do nothing?", "", "COLONNA:", "Nothing that I see.", "Count Cenci were a dangerous enemy:", "Yet I would second any one.", "", "A CARDINAL:", "And I.", "", "CENCI:", "Retire to your chamber, insolent girl!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Retire thou, impious man! Ay, hide thyself", "Where never eye can look upon thee more!", "Wouldst thou have honour and obedience", "Who art a torturer? Father, never dream,", "Though thou mayst overbear this company,", "But ill must come of ill.--Frown not on me!", "Haste, hide thyself, lest with avenging looks", "My brothers' ghosts should hunt thee from thy seat!", "Cover thy face from every living eye,", "And start if thou but hear a human step:", "Seek out some dark and silent corner, there,", "Bow thy white head before offended God,", "And we will kneel around, and fervently", "Pray that he pity both ourselves and thee.", "", "CENCI:", "My friends, I do lament this insane girl", "Has spoilt the mirth of our festivity.", "Good night, farewell; I will not make you longer", "Spectators of our dull domestic quarrels.", "Another time.--", "[EXEUNT ALL BUT CENCI AND BEATRICE.]", "My brain is swimming round;", "Give me a bowl of wine!", "[TO BEATRICE.]", "Thou painted viper!", "Beast that thou art! Fair and yet terrible!", "I know a charm shall make thee meek and tame,", "Now get thee from my sight!", "[EXIT BEATRICE.]", "Here, Andrea,", "Fill up this goblet with Greek wine. I said", "I would not drink this evening; but I must;", "For, strange to say, I feel my spirits fail", "With thinking what I have decreed to do.--", "[DRINKING THE WINE.]", "Be thou the resolution of quick youth", "Within my veins, and manhood's purpose stern,", "And age's firm, cold, subtle villainy;", "As if thou wert indeed my children's blood", "Which I did thirst to drink! The charm works well;", "It must be done; it shall be done, I swear!", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "END OF ACT 1.", "", "ACT 2.", "", "SCENE 2.1:", "AN APARTMENT IN THE CENCI PALACE.", "ENTER LUCRETIA AND BERNARDO.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Weep not, my gentle boy; he struck but me", "Who have borne deeper wrongs. In truth, if he", "Had killed me, he had done a kinder deed.", "O God Almighty, do Thou look upon us,", "We have no other friend but only Thee!", "Yet weep not; though I love you as my own,", "I am not your true mother.", "", "BERNARDO:", "Oh, more, more,", "Than ever mother was to any child,", "That have you been to me! Had he not been", "My father, do you think that I should weep!", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Alas! Poor boy, what else couldst thou have done?", "", "[ENTER BEATRICE.]", "", "BEATRICE [IN A HURRIED VOICE]:", "Did he pass this way? Have you seen him, brother?", "Ah, no! that is his step upon the stairs;", "'Tis nearer now; his hand is on the door;", "Mother, if I to thee have ever been", "A duteous child, now save me! Thou, great God,", "Whose image upon earth a father is,", "Dost thou indeed abandon me? He comes;", "The door is opening now; I see his face;", "He frowns on others, but he smiles on me,", "Even as he did after the feast last night.", "[ENTER A SERVANT.]", "Almighty God, how merciful Thou art!", "'Tis but Orsino's servant.--Well, what news?", "", "SERVANT:", "My master bids me say, the Holy Father", "Has sent back your petition thus unopened.", "[GIVING A PAPER.]", "And he demands at what hour 'twere secure", "To visit you again?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "At the Ave Mary.", "[EXIT SERVANT.]", "So, daughter, our last hope has failed. Ah me!", "How pale you look; you tremble, and you stand", "Wrapped in some fixed and fearful meditation,", "As if one thought were over strong for you:", "Your eyes have a chill glare; O, dearest child!", "Are you gone mad? If not, pray speak to me.", "", "BEATRICE:", "You see I am not mad: I speak to you.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "You talked of something that your father did", "After that dreadful feast? Could it be worse", "Than when he smiled, and cried, 'My sons are dead!'", "And every one looked in his neighbour's face", "To see if others were as white as he?", "At the first word he spoke I felt the blood", "Rush to my heart, and fell into a trance;", "And when it passed I sat all weak and wild;", "Whilst you alone stood up, and with strong words", "Checked his unnatural pride; and I could see", "The devil was rebuked that lives in him.", "Until this hour thus you have ever stood", "Between us and your father's moody wrath", "Like a protecting presence; your firm mind", "Has been our only refuge and defence:", "What can have thus subdued it? What can now", "Have given you that cold melancholy look,", "Succeeding to your unaccustomed fear?", "", "BEATRICE:", "What is it that you say? I was just thinking", "'Twere better not to struggle any more.", "Men, like my father, have been dark and bloody,", "Yet never--Oh! Before worse comes of it", "'Twere wise to die: it ends in that at last.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Oh, talk not so, dear child! Tell me at once", "What did your father do or say to you?", "He stayed not after that accursed feast", "One moment in your chamber.--Speak to me.", "", "BERNARDO:", "Oh, sister, sister, prithee, speak to us!", "", "BEATRICE [SPEAKING VERY SLOWLY, WITH A FORCED CALMNESS]:", "It was one word, Mother, one little word;", "One look, one smile.", "[WILDLY.]", "Oh! He has trampled me", "Under his feet, and made the blood stream down", "My pallid cheeks. And he has given us all", "Ditch-water, and the fever-stricken flesh", "Of buffaloes, and bade us eat or starve,", "And we have eaten.--He has made me look", "On my beloved Bernardo, when the rust", "Of heavy chains has gangrened his sweet limbs,", "And I have never yet despaired--but now!", "What could I say?", "[RECOVERING HERSELF.]", "Ah, no! 'tis nothing new.", "The sufferings we all share have made me wild:", "He only struck and cursed me as he passed;", "He said, he looked, he did;--nothing at all", "Beyond his wont, yet it disordered me.", "Alas! I am forgetful of my duty,", "I should preserve my senses for your sake.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Nay, Beatrice; have courage, my sweet girl.", "If any one despairs it should be I", "Who loved him once, and now must live with him", "Till God in pity call for him or me.", "For you may, like your sister, find some husband,", "And smile, years hence, with children round your knees;", "Whilst I, then dead, and all this hideous coil", "Shall be remembered only as a dream.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Talk not to me, dear lady, of a husband.", "Did you not nurse me when my mother died?", "Did you not shield me and that dearest boy?", "And had we any other friend but you", "In infancy, with gentle words and looks,", "To win our father not to murder us?", "And shall I now desert you? May the ghost", "Of my dead Mother plead against my soul", "If I abandon her who filled the place", "She left, with more, even, than a mother's love!", "", "BERNARDO:", "And I am of my sister's mind. Indeed", "I would not leave you in this wretchedness,", "Even though the Pope should make me free to live", "In some blithe place, like others of my age,", "With sports, and delicate food, and the fresh air.", "Oh, never think that I will leave you, Mother!", "", "LUCRETIA:", "My dear, dear children!", "", "[ENTER CENCI, SUDDENLY.]", "", "CENCI:", "What! Beatrice here!", "Come hither!", "[SHE SHRINKS BACK, AND COVERS HER FACE.]", "Nay, hide not your face, 'tis fair;", "Look up! Why, yesternight you dared to look", "With disobedient insolence upon me,", "Bending a stern and an inquiring brow", "On what I meant; whilst I then sought to hide", "That which I came to tell you--but in vain.", "", "BEATRICE [WILDLY STAGGERING TOWARDS THE DOOR]:", "Oh, that the earth would gape! Hide me, O God!", "", "CENCI:", "Then it was I whose inarticulate words", "Fell from my lips, and who with tottering steps", "Fled from your presence, as you now from mine.", "Stay, I command you--from this day and hour", "Never again, I think, with fearless eye,", "And brow superior, and unaltered cheek,", "And that lip made for tenderness or scorn,", "Shalt thou strike dumb the meanest of mankind;", "Me least of all. Now get thee to thy chamber!", "Thou too, loathed image of thy cursed mother,", "[TO BERNARDO.]", "Thy milky, meek face makes me sick with hate!", "[EXEUNT BEATRICE AND BERNARDO.]", "[ASIDE.]", "So much has passed between us as must make", "Me bold, her fearful.--'Tis an awful thing", "To touch such mischief as I now conceive:", "So men sit shivering on the dewy bank,", "And try the chill stream with their feet; once in...", "How the delighted spirit pants for joy!", "", "LUCRETIA [ADVANCING TIMIDLY TOWARDS HIM]:", "O husband! Pray forgive poor Beatrice.", "She meant not any ill.", "", "CENCI:", "Nor you perhaps?", "Nor that young imp, whom you have taught by rote", "Parricide with his alphabet? Nor Giacomo?", "Nor those two most unnatural sons, who stirred", "Enmity up against me with the Pope?", "Whom in one night merciful God cut off:", "Innocent lambs! They thought not any ill.", "You were not here conspiring? You said nothing", "Of how I might be dungeoned as a madman;", "Or be condemned to death for some offence,", "And you would be the witnesses?--This failing,", "How just it were to hire assassins, or", "Put sudden poison in my evening drink?", "Or smother me when overcome by wine?", "Seeing we had no other judge but God,", "And He had sentenced me, and there were none", "But you to be the executioners", "Of His decree enregistered in heaven?", "Oh, no! You said not this?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "So help me God,", "I never thought the things you charge me with!", "", "CENCI:", "If you dare to speak that wicked lie again", "I'll kill you. What! It was not by your counsel", "That Beatrice disturbed the feast last night?", "You did not hope to stir some enemies", "Against me, and escape, and laugh to scorn", "What every nerve of you now trembles at?", "You judged that men were bolder than they are;", "Few dare to stand between their grave and me.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Look not so dreadfully! By my salvation", "I knew not aught that Beatrice designed;", "Nor do I think she designed any thing", "Until she heard you talk of her dead brothers.", "", "CENCI:", "Blaspheming liar! You are damned for this!", "But I will take you where you may persuade", "The stones you tread on to deliver you:", "For men shall there be none but those who dare", "All things--not question that which I command.", "On Wednesday next I shall set out: you know", "That savage rock, the Castle of Petrella:", "'Tis safely walled, and moated round about:", "Its dungeons underground, and its thick towers", "Never told tales; though they have heard and seen", "What might make dumb things speak.--Why do you linger?", "Make speediest preparation for the journey!", "[EXIT LUCRETIA.]", "The all-beholding sun yet shines; I hear", "A busy stir of men about the streets;", "I see the bright sky through the window panes:", "It is a garish, broad, and peering day;", "Loud, light, suspicious, full of eyes and ears,", "And every little corner, nook, and hole", "Is penetrated with the insolent light.", "Come darkness! Yet, what is the day to me?", "And wherefore should I wish for night, who do", "A deed which shall confound both night and day?", "'Tis she shall grope through a bewildering mist", "Of horror: if there be a sun in heaven", "She shall not dare to look upon its beams;", "Nor feel its warmth. Let her then wish for night;", "The act I think shall soon extinguish all", "For me: I bear a darker deadlier gloom", "Than the earth's shade, or interlunar air,", "Or constellations quenched in murkiest cloud,", "In which I walk secure and unbeheld", "Towards my purpose.--Would that it were done!", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "SCENE 2.2:", "A CHAMBER IN THE VATICAN.", "ENTER CAMILLO AND GIACOMO, IN CONVERSATION.", "", "CAMILLO:", "There is an obsolete and doubtful law", "By which you might obtain a bare provision", "Of food and clothing--", "", "GIACOMO:", "Nothing more? Alas!", "Bare must be the provision which strict law", "Awards, and aged, sullen avarice pays.", "Why did my father not apprentice me", "To some mechanic trade? I should have then", "Been trained in no highborn necessities", "Which I could meet not by my daily toil.", "The eldest son of a rich nobleman", "Is heir to all his incapacities;", "He has wide wants, and narrow powers. If you,", "Cardinal Camillo, were reduced at once", "From thrice-driven beds of down, and delicate food,", "An hundred servants, and six palaces,", "To that which nature doth indeed require?--", "", "CAMILLO:", "Nay, there is reason in your plea; 'twere hard.", "", "GIACOMO:", "'Tis hard for a firm man to bear: but I", "Have a dear wife, a lady of high birth,", "Whose dowry in ill hour I lent my father", "Without a bond or witness to the deed:", "And children, who inherit her fine senses,", "The fairest creatures in this breathing world;", "And she and they reproach me not. Cardinal,", "Do you not think the Pope would interpose", "And stretch authority beyond the law?", "", "CAMILLO:", "Though your peculiar case is hard, I know", "The Pope will not divert the course of law.", "After that impious feast the other night", "I spoke with him, and urged him then to check", "Your father's cruel hand; he frowned and said,", "'Children are disobedient, and they sting", "Their fathers' hearts to madness and despair,", "Requiting years of care with contumely.", "I pity the Count Cenci from my heart;", "His outraged love perhaps awakened hate,", "And thus he is exasperated to ill.", "In the great war between the old and young", "I, who have white hairs and a tottering body,", "Will keep at least blameless neutrality.'", "[ENTER ORSINO.]", "You, my good Lord Orsino, heard those words.", "", "ORSINO:", "What words?", "", "GIACOMO:", "Alas, repeat them not again!", "There then is no redress for me, at least", "None but that which I may achieve myself,", "Since I am driven to the brink.--But, say,", "My innocent sister and my only brother", "Are dying underneath my father's eye.", "The memorable torturers of this land,", "Galeaz Visconti, Borgia, Ezzelin,", "Never inflicted on their meanest slave", "What these endure; shall they have no protection?", "", "CAMILLO:", "Why, if they would petition to the Pope", "I see not how he could refuse it--yet", "He holds it of most dangerous example", "In aught to weaken the paternal power,", "Being, as 'twere, the shadow of his own.", "I pray you now excuse me. I have business", "That will not bear delay.", "", "[EXIT CAMILLO.]", "", "GIACOMO:", "But you, Orsino,", "Have the petition: wherefore not present it?", "", "ORSINO:", "I have presented it, and backed it with", "My earnest prayers, and urgent interest;", "It was returned unanswered. I doubt not", "But that the strange and execrable deeds", "Alleged in it--in truth they might well baffle", "Any belief--have turned the Pope's displeasure", "Upon the accusers from the criminal:", "So I should guess from what Camillo said.", "", "GIACOMO:", "My friend, that palace-walking devil Gold", "Has whispered silence to his Holiness:", "And we are left, as scorpions ringed with fire.", "What should we do but strike ourselves to death?", "For he who is our murderous persecutor", "Is shielded by a father's holy name,", "Or I would--", "", "[STOPS ABRUPTLY.]", "", "ORSINO:", "What? Fear not to speak your thought.", "Words are but holy as the deeds they cover:", "A priest who has forsworn the God he serves;", "A judge who makes Truth weep at his decree;", "A friend who should weave counsel, as I now,", "But as the mantle of some selfish guile;", "A father who is all a tyrant seems,", "Were the profaner for his sacred name.", "", "GIACOMO:", "Ask me not what I think; the unwilling brain", "Feigns often what it would not; and we trust", "Imagination with such fantasies", "As the tongue dares not fashion into words,", "Which have no words, their horror makes them dim", "To the mind's eye.--My heart denies itself", "To think what you demand.", "", "ORSINO:", "But a friend's bosom", "Is as the inmost cave of our own mind", "Where we sit shut from the wide gaze of day,", "And from the all-communicating air.", "You look what I suspected--", "", "GIACOMO:", "Spare me now!", "I am as one lost in a midnight wood,", "Who dares not ask some harmless passenger", "The path across the wilderness, lest he,", "As my thoughts are, should be--a murderer.", "I know you are my friend, and all I dare", "Speak to my soul that will I trust with thee.", "But now my heart is heavy, and would take", "Lone counsel from a night of sleepless care.", "Pardon me, that I say farewell--farewell!", "I would that to my own suspected self", "I could address a word so full of peace.", "", "ORSINO:", "Farewell!--Be your thoughts better or more bold.", "[EXIT GIACOMO.]", "I had disposed the Cardinal Camillo", "To feed his hope with cold encouragement:", "It fortunately serves my close designs", "That 'tis a trick of this same family", "To analyse their own and other minds.", "Such self-anatomy shall teach the will", "Dangerous secrets: for it tempts our powers,", "Knowing what must be thought, and may be done.", "Into the depth of darkest purposes:", "So Cenci fell into the pit; even I,", "Since Beatrice unveiled me to myself,", "And made me shrink from what I cannot shun,", "Show a poor figure to my own esteem,", "To which I grow half reconciled. I'll do", "As little mischief as I can; that thought", "Shall fee the accuser conscience.", "[AFTER A PAUSE.]", "Now what harm", "If Cenci should be murdered?--Yet, if murdered,", "Wherefore by me? And what if I could take", "The profit, yet omit the sin and peril", "In such an action? Of all earthly things", "I fear a man whose blows outspeed his words", "And such is Cenci: and while Cenci lives", "His daughter's dowry were a secret grave", "If a priest wins her.--Oh, fair Beatrice!", "Would that I loved thee not, or loving thee,", "Could but despise danger and gold and all", "That frowns between my wish and its effect.", "Or smiles beyond it! There is no escape...", "Her bright form kneels beside me at the altar,", "And follows me to the resort of men,", "And fills my slumber with tumultuous dreams,", "So when I wake my blood seems liquid fire;", "And if I strike my damp and dizzy head", "My hot palm scorches it: her very name,", "But spoken by a stranger, makes my heart", "Sicken and pant; and thus unprofitably", "I clasp the phantom of unfelt delights", "Till weak imagination half possesses", "The self-created shadow. Yet much longer", "Will I not nurse this life of feverous hours:", "From the unravelled hopes of Giacomo", "I must work out my own dear purposes.", "I see, as from a tower, the end of all:", "Her father dead; her brother bound to me", "By a dark secret, surer than the grave;", "Her mother scared and unexpostulating", "From the dread manner of her wish achieved;", "And she!--Once more take courage, my faint heart;", "What dares a friendless maiden matched with thee?", "I have such foresight as assures success:", "Some unbeheld divinity doth ever,", "When dread events are near, stir up men's minds", "To black suggestions; and he prospers best,", "Not who becomes the instrument of ill,", "But who can flatter the dark spirit, that makes", "Its empire and its prey of other hearts", "Till it become his slave...as I will do.", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "END OF ACT 2.", "", "ACT 3.", "", "SCENE 3.1:", "AN APARTMENT IN THE CENCI PALACE.", "LUCRETIA, TO HER ENTER BEATRICE.", "", "BEATRICE [SHE ENTERS STAGGERING AND SPEAKS WILDLY]:", "Reach me that handkerchief!--My brain is hurt;", "My eyes are full of blood; just wipe them for me...", "I see but indistinctly...", "", "LUCRETIA:", "My sweet child,", "You have no wound; 'tis only a cold dew", "That starts from your dear brow.--Alas! Alas!", "What has befallen?", "", "BEATRICE:", "How comes this hair undone?", "Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,", "And yet I tied it fast.--Oh, horrible!", "The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls", "Spin round! I see a woman weeping there,", "And standing calm and motionless, whilst I", "Slide giddily as the world reels...My God!", "The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!", "The sunshine on the floor is black! The air", "Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe", "In charnel pits! Pah! I am choked! There creeps", "A clinging, black, contaminating mist", "About me...'tis substantial, heavy, thick,", "I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues", "My fingers and my limbs to one another,", "And eats into my sinews, and dissolves", "My flesh to a pollution, poisoning", "The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!", "My God! I never knew what the mad felt", "Before; for I am mad beyond all doubt!", "[MORE WILDLY.]", "No, I am dead! These putrefying limbs", "Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul", "Which would burst forth into the wandering air!", "[A PAUSE.]", "What hideous thought was that I had even now?", "'Tis gone; and yet its burthen remains here", "O'er these dull eyes...upon this weary heart!", "O, world! O, life! O, day! O, misery!", "", "LUCRETIA:", "What ails thee, my poor child? She answers not:", "Her spirit apprehends the sense of pain,", "But not its cause; suffering has dried away", "The source from which it sprung...", "", "BEATRICE [FRANTICLY]:", "Like Parricide...", "Misery has killed its father: yet its father", "Never like mine...O, God! What thing am I?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "My dearest child, what has your father done?", "", "BEATRICE [DOUBTFULLY]:", "Who art thou, questioner? I have no father.", "[ASIDE.]", "She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me,", "It is a piteous office.", "[TO LUCRETIA, IN A SLOW, SUBDUED VOICE.]", "Do you know", "I thought I was that wretched Beatrice", "Men speak of, whom her father sometimes hales", "From hall to hall by the entangled hair;", "At others, pens up naked in damp cells", "Where scaly reptiles crawl, and starves her there,", "Till she will eat strange flesh. This woful story", "So did I overact in my sick dreams,", "That I imagined...no, it cannot be!", "Horrible things have been in this wide world,", "Prodigious mixtures, and confusions strange", "Of good and ill; and worse have been conceived", "Than ever there was found a heart to do.", "But never fancy imaged such a deed", "As...", "[PAUSES, SUDDENLY RECOLLECTING HERSELF.]", "Who art thou? Swear to me, ere I die", "With fearful expectation, that indeed", "Thou art not what thou seemest...Mother!", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Oh!", "My sweet child, know you...", "", "BEATRICE:", "Yet speak it not:", "For then if this be truth, that other too", "Must be a truth, a firm enduring truth,", "Linked with each lasting circumstance of life,", "Never to change, never to pass away.", "Why so it is. This is the Cenci Palace;", "Thou art Lucretia; I am Beatrice.", "I have talked some wild words, but will no more.", "Mother, come near me: from this point of time,", "I am...", "[HER VOICE DIES AWAY FAINTLY.]", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Alas! What has befallen thee, child?", "What has thy father done?", "", "BEATRICE:", "What have I done?", "Am I not innocent? Is it my crime", "That one with white hair, and imperious brow,", "Who tortured me from my forgotten years,", "As parents only dare, should call himself", "My father, yet should be!--Oh, what am I?", "What name, what place, what memory shall be mine?", "What retrospects, outliving even despair?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "He is a violent tyrant, surely, child:", "We know that death alone can make us free;", "His death or ours. But what can he have done", "Of deadlier outrage or worse injury?", "Thou art unlike thyself; thine eyes shoot forth", "A wandering and strange spirit. Speak to me,", "Unlock those pallid hands whose fingers twine", "With one another.", "", "BEATRICE:", "'Tis the restless life", "Tortured within them. If I try to speak,", "I shall go mad. Ay, something must be done;", "What, yet I know not...something which shall make", "The thing that I have suffered but a shadow", "In the dread lightning which avenges it;", "Brief, rapid, irreversible, destroying", "The consequence of what it cannot cure.", "Some such thing is to be endured or done:", "When I know what, I shall be still and calm,", "And never anything will move me more.", "But now!--O blood, which art my father's blood,", "Circling through these contaminated veins,", "If thou, poured forth on the polluted earth,", "Could wash away the crime, and punishment", "By which I suffer...no, that cannot be!", "Many might doubt there were a God above", "Who sees and permits evil, and so die:", "That faith no agony shall obscure in me.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "It must indeed have been some bitter wrong;", "Yet what, I dare not guess. Oh, my lost child,", "Hide not in proud impenetrable grief", "Thy sufferings from my fear.", "", "BEATRICE:", "I hide them not.", "What are the words which yon would have me speak?", "I, who can feign no image in my mind", "Of that which has transformed me: I, whose thought", "Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up", "In its own formless horror: of all words,", "That minister to mortal intercourse,", "Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell", "My misery: if another ever knew", "Aught like to it, she died as I will die,", "And left it, as I must, without a name.", "Death, Death! Our law and our religion call thee", "A punishment and a reward...Oh, which", "Have I deserved?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "The peace of innocence;", "Till in your season you be called to heaven.", "Whate'er you may have suffered, you have done", "No evil. Death must be the punishment", "Of crime, or the reward of trampling down", "The thorns which God has strewed upon the path", "Which leads to immortality.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Ay, death...", "The punishment of crime. I pray thee, God,", "Let me not be bewildered while I judge.", "If I must live day after day, and keep", "These limbs, the unworthy temple of Thy spirit,", "As a foul den from which what Thou abhorrest", "May mock Thee, unavenged...it shall not be!", "Self-murder...no, that might be no escape,", "For Thy decree yawns like a Hell between", "Our will and it:--O! In this mortal world", "There is no vindication and no law", "Which can adjudge and execute the doom", "Of that through which I suffer.", "[ENTER ORSINO.]", "[SHE APPROACHES HIM SOLEMNLY.]", "Welcome, Friend!", "I have to tell you that, since last we met,", "I have endured a wrong so great and strange,", "That neither life nor death can give me rest.", "Ask me not what it is, for there are deeds", "Which have no form, sufferings which have no tongue.", "", "ORSINO:", "And what is he who has thus injured you?", "", "BEATRICE:", "The man they call my father: a dread name.", "", "ORSINO:", "It cannot be...", "", "BEATRICE:", "What it can be, or not,", "Forbear to think. It is, and it has been;", "Advise me how it shall not be again.", "I thought to die; but a religious awe", "Restrains me, and the dread lest death itself", "Might be no refuge from the consciousness", "Of what is yet unexpiated. Oh, speak!", "", "ORSINO:", "Accuse him of the deed, and let the law", "Avenge thee.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Oh, ice-hearted counsellor!", "If I could find a word that might make known", "The crime of my destroyer; and that done,", "My tongue should like a knife tear out the secret", "Which cankers my heart's core; ay, lay all bare,", "So that my unpolluted fame should be", "With vilest gossips a stale mouthed story;", "A mock, a byword, an astonishment:--", "If this were done, which never shall be done,", "Think of the offender's gold, his dreaded hate,", "And the strange horror of the accuser's tale,", "Baffling belief, and overpowering speech;", "Scarce whispered, unimaginable, wrapped", "In hideous hints...Oh, most assured redress!", "", "ORSINO:", "You will endure it then?", "", "BEATRICE:", "Endure!--Orsino,", "It seems your counsel is small profit.", "[TURNS FROM HIM, AND SPEAKS HALF TO HERSELF.]", "Ay,", "All must be suddenly resolved and done.", "What is this undistinguishable mist", "Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow,", "Darkening each other?", "", "ORSINO:", "Should the offender live?", "Triumph in his misdeed? and make, by use,", "His crime, whate'er it is, dreadful no doubt,", "Thine element; until thou mayest become", "Utterly lost; subdued even to the hue", "Of that which thou permittest?", "", "BEATRICE [TO HERSELF]:", "Mighty death!", "Thou double-visaged shadow! Only judge!", "Rightfullest arbiter!", "", "[SHE RETIRES, ABSORBED IN THOUGHT.]", "", "LUCRETIA:", "If the lightning", "Of God has e'er descended to avenge...", "", "ORSINO:", "Blaspheme not! His high Providence commits", "Its glory on this earth, and their own wrongs", "Into the hands of men; if they neglect", "To punish crime...", "", "LUCRETIA:", "But if one, like this wretch,", "Should mock, with gold, opinion, law, and power?", "If there be no appeal to that which makes", "The guiltiest tremble? If because our wrongs,", "For that they are unnatural, strange and monstrous,", "Exceed all measure of belief? O God!", "If, for the very reasons which should make", "Redress most swift and sure, our injurer triumphs?", "And we, the victims, bear worse punishment", "Than that appointed for their torturer?", "", "ORSINO:", "Think not", "But that there is redress where there is wrong,", "So we be bold enough to seize it.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "How?", "If there were any way to make all sure,", "I know not...but I think it might be good", "To...", "", "ORSINO:", "Why, his late outrage to Beatrice;", "For it is such, as I but faintly guess,", "As makes remorse dishonour, and leaves her", "Only one duty, how she may avenge:", "You, but one refuge from ills ill endured;", "Me, but one counsel...", "", "LUCRETIA:", "For we cannot hope", "That aid, or retribution, or resource", "Will arise thence, where every other one", "Might find them with less need.", "", "[BEATRICE ADVANCES.]", "", "ORSINO:", "Then...", "", "BEATRICE:", "Peace, Orsino!", "And, honoured Lady, while I speak, I pray,", "That you put off, as garments overworn,", "Forbearance and respect, remorse and fear,", "And all the fit restraints of daily life,", "Which have been borne from childhood, but which now", "Would be a mockery to my holier plea.", "As I have said, I have endured a wrong,", "Which, though it be expressionless, is such", "As asks atonement; both for what is past,", "And lest I be reserved, day after day,", "To load with crimes an overburthened soul,", "And be...what ye can dream not. I have prayed", "To God, and I have talked with my own heart,", "And have unravelled my entangled will,", "And have at length determined what is right.", "Art thou my friend, Orsino? False or true?", "Pledge thy salvation ere I speak.", "", "ORSINO:", "I swear", "To dedicate my cunning, and my strength,", "My silence, and whatever else is mine,", "To thy commands.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "You think we should devise", "His death?", "", "BEATRICE:", "And execute what is devised,", "And suddenly. We must be brief and bold.", "", "ORSINO:", "And yet most cautious.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "For the jealous laws", "Would punish us with death and infamy", "For that which it became themselves to do.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Be cautious as ye may, but prompt. Orsino,", "What are the means?", "", "ORSINO:", "I know two dull, fierce outlaws,", "Who think man's spirit as a worm's, and they", "Would trample out, for any slight caprice,", "The meanest or the noblest life. This mood", "Is marketable here in Rome. They sell", "What we now want.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "To-morrow before dawn,", "Cenci will take us to that lonely rock,", "Petrella, in the Apulian Apennines.", "If he arrive there...", "", "BEATRICE:", "He must not arrive.", "", "ORSINO:", "Will it be dark before you reach the tower?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "The sun will scarce be set.", "", "BEATRICE:", "But I remember", "Two miles on this side of the fort, the road", "Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,", "And winds with short turns down the precipice;", "And in its depth there is a mighty rock,", "Which has, from unimaginable years,", "Sustained itself with terror and with toil", "Over a gulf, and with the agony", "With which it clings seems slowly coming down;", "Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,", "Clings to the mass of life; yet, clinging, leans;", "And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss", "In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag", "Huge as despair, as if in weariness,", "The melancholy mountain yawns...below,", "You hear but see not an impetuous torrent", "Raging among the caverns, and a bridge", "Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,", "With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,", "Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair", "Is matted in one solid roof of shade", "By the dark ivy's twine. At noonday here", "'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night.", "", "ORSINO:", "Before you reach that bridge make some excuse", "For spurring on your mules, or loitering", "Until...", "", "BEATRICE:", "What sound is that?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Hark! No, it cannot be a servant's step", "It must be Cenci, unexpectedly", "Returned...Make some excuse for being here.", "", "BEATRICE [TO ORSINO AS SHE GOES OUT]:", "That step we hear approach must never pass", "The bridge of which we spoke.", "", "[EXEUNT LUCRETIA AND BEATRICE.]", "", "ORSINO:", "What shall I do?", "Cenci must find me here, and I must bear", "The imperious inquisition of his looks", "As to what brought me hither: let me mask", "Mine own in some inane and vacant smile.", "[ENTER GIACOMO, IN A HURRIED MANNER.]", "How! Have you ventured hither? Know you then", "That Cenci is from home?", "", "GIACOMO:", "I sought him here;", "And now must wait till he returns.", "", "ORSINO:", "Great God!", "Weigh you the danger of this rashness?", "", "GIACOMO:", "Ay!", "Does my destroyer know his danger? We", "Are now no more, as once, parent and child,", "But man to man; the oppressor to the oppressed;", "The slanderer to the slandered; foe to foe:", "He has cast Nature off, which was his shield,", "And Nature casts him off, who is her shame;", "And I spurn both. Is it a father's throat", "Which I will shake, and say, I ask not gold;", "I ask not happy years; nor memories", "Of tranquil childhood; nor home-sheltered love;", "Though all these hast thou torn from me, and more;", "But only my fair fame; only one hoard", "Of peace, which I thought hidden from thy hate,", "Under the penury heaped on me by thee,", "Or I will...God can understand and pardon,", "Why should I speak with man?", "", "ORSINO:", "Be calm, dear friend.", "", "GIACOMO:", "Well, I will calmly tell you what he did.", "This old Francesco Cenci, as you know,", "Borrowed the dowry of my wife from me,", "And then denied the loan; and left me so", "In poverty, the which I sought to mend", "By holding a poor office in the state.", "It had been promised to me, and already", "I bought new clothing for my ragged babes,", "And my wife smiled; and my heart knew repose.", "When Cenci's intercession, as I found,", "Conferred this office on a wretch, whom thus", "He paid for vilest service. I returned", "With this ill news, and we sate sad together", "Solacing our despondency with tears", "Of such affection and unbroken faith", "As temper life's worst bitterness; when he,", "As he is wont, came to upbraid and curse,", "Mocking our poverty, and telling us", "Such was God's scourge for disobedient sons.", "And then, that I might strike him dumb with shame,", "I spoke of my wife's dowry; but he coined", "A brief yet specious tale, how I had wasted", "The sum in secret riot; and he saw", "My wife was touched, and he went smiling forth.", "And when I knew the impression he had made,", "And felt my wife insult with silent scorn", "My ardent truth, and look averse and cold,", "I went forth too: but soon returned again;", "Yet not so soon but that my wife had taught", "My children her harsh thoughts, and they all cried,", "'Give us clothes, father! Give us better food!", "What you in one night squander were enough", "For months!' I looked, and saw that home was hell.", "And to that hell will I return no more", "Until mine enemy has rendered up", "Atonement, or, as he gave life to me", "I will, reversing Nature's law...", "", "ORSINO:", "Trust me,", "The compensation which thou seekest here", "Will be denied.", "", "GIACOMO:", "Then...Are you not my friend?", "Did you not hint at the alternative,", "Upon the brink of which you see I stand,", "The other day when we conversed together?", "My wrongs were then less. That word parricide,", "Although I am resolved, haunts me like fear.", "", "ORSINO:", "It must be fear itself, for the bare word", "Is hollow mockery. Mark, how wisest God", "Draws to one point the threads of a just doom,", "So sanctifying it: what you devise", "Is, as it were, accomplished.", "", "GIACOMO:", "Is he dead?", "", "ORSINO:", "His grave is ready. Know that since we met", "Cenci has done an outrage to his daughter.", "", "GIACOMO:", "What outrage?", "", "ORSINO:", "That she speaks not, but you may", "Conceive such half conjectures as I do,", "From her fixed paleness, and the lofty grief", "Of her stern brow bent on the idle air,", "And her severe unmodulated voice,", "Drowning both tenderness and dread; and last", "From this; that whilst her step-mother and I,", "Bewildered in our horror, talked together", "With obscure hints; both self-misunderstood", "And darkly guessing, stumbling, in our talk,", "Over the truth, and yet to its revenge,", "She interrupted us, and with a look", "Which told, before she spoke it, he must die:...", "", "GIACOMO:", "It is enough. My doubts are well appeased;", "There is a higher reason for the act", "Than mine; there is a holier judge than me,", "A more unblamed avenger. Beatrice,", "Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth", "Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised", "A living flower, but thou hast pitied it", "With needless tears! Fair sister, thou in whom", "Men wondered how such loveliness and wisdom", "Did not destroy each other! Is there made", "Ravage of thee? O, heart, I ask no more", "Justification! Shall I wait, Orsino,", "Till he return, and stab him at the door?", "", "ORSINO:", "Not so; some accident might interpose", "To rescue him from what is now most sure;", "And you are unprovided where to fly,", "How to excuse or to conceal. Nay, listen:", "All is contrived; success is so assured", "That...", "", "[ENTER BEATRICE.]", "", "BEATRICE:", "'Tis my brother's voice! You know me not?", "", "GIACOMO:", "My sister, my lost sister!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Lost indeed!", "I see Orsino has talked with you, and", "That you conjecture things too horrible", "To speak, yet far less than the truth. Now, stay not,", "He might return: yet kiss me; I shall know", "That then thou hast consented to his death.", "Farewell, farewell! Let piety to God,", "Brotherly love, justice and clemency,", "And all things that make tender hardest hearts", "Make thine hard, brother. Answer not...farewell.", "", "[EXEUNT SEVERALLY.]", "", "SCENE 3.2:", "A MEAN APARTMENT IN GIACOMO'S HOUSE.", "GIACOMO ALONE.", "", "GIACOMO:", "'Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.", "[THUNDER, AND THE SOUND OF A STORM.]", "What! can the everlasting elements", "Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft", "Of mercy-winged lightning would not fall", "On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep:", "They are now living in unmeaning dreams:", "But I must wake, still doubting if that deed", "Be just which is most necessary. O,", "Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire", "Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge", "Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,", "Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls,", "Still flickerest up and down, how very soon,", "Did I not feed thee, wouldst thou fail and be", "As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks", "Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:", "But that no power can fill with vital oil", "That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! 'tis the blood", "Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:", "It is the form that moulded mine that sinks", "Into the white and yellow spasms of death:", "It is the soul by which mine was arrayed", "In God's immortal likeness which now stands", "Naked before Heaven's judgement seat!", "[A BELL STRIKES.]", "One! Two!", "The hours crawl on; and, when my hairs are white,", "My son will then perhaps be waiting thus,", "Tortured between just hate and vain remorse;", "Chiding the tardy messenger of news", "Like those which I expect. I almost wish", "He be not dead, although my wrongs are great;", "Yet...'tis Orsino's step...", "[ENTER ORSINO.]", "Speak!", "", "ORSINO:", "I am come", "To say he has escaped.", "", "GIACOMO:", "Escaped!", "", "ORSINO:", "And safe", "Within Petrella. He passed by the spot", "Appointed for the deed an hour too soon.", "", "GIACOMO:", "Are we the fools of such contingencies?", "And do we waste in blind misgivings thus", "The hours when we should act? Then wind and thunder,", "Which seemed to howl his knell, is the loud laughter", "With which Heaven mocks our weakness! I henceforth", "Will ne'er repent of aught designed or done", "But my repentance.", "", "ORSINO:", "See, the lamp is out.", "", "GIACOMO:", "If no remorse is ours when the dim air", "Has drank this innocent flame, why should we quail", "When Cenci's life, that light by which ill spirits", "See the worst deeds they prompt, shall sink for ever?", "No, I am hardened.", "", "ORSINO:", "Why, what need of this?", "Who feared the pale intrusion of remorse", "In a just deed? Although our first plan failed,", "Doubt not but he will soon be laid to rest.", "But light the lamp; let us not talk i' the dark.", "", "GIACOMO [LIGHTING THE LAMP]:", "And yet once quenched I cannot thus relume", "My father's life: do you not think his ghost", "Might plead that argument with God?", "", "ORSINO:", "Once gone", "You cannot now recall your sister's peace;", "Your own extinguished years of youth and hope;", "Nor your wife's bitter words; nor all the taunts", "Which, from the prosperous, weak misfortune takes;", "Nor your dead mother; nor...", "", "GIACOMO:", "O, speak no more!", "I am resolved, although this very hand", "Must quench the life that animated it.", "", "ORSINO:", "There is no need of that. Listen: you know", "Olimpio, the castellan of Petrella", "In old Colonna's time; him whom your father", "Degraded from his post? And Marzio,", "That desperate wretch, whom he deprived last year", "Of a reward of blood, well earned and due?", "", "GIACOMO:", "I knew Olimpio; and they say he hated", "Old Cenci so, that in his silent rage", "His lips grew white only to see him pass.", "Of Marzio I know nothing.", "", "ORSINO:", "Marzio's hate", "Matches Olimpio's. I have sent these men,", "But in your name, and as at your request,", "To talk with Beatrice and Lucretia.", "", "GIACOMO:", "Only to talk?", "", "ORSINO:", "The moments which even now", "Pass onward to to-morrow's midnight hour", "May memorize their flight with death: ere then", "They must have talked, and may perhaps have done,", "And made an end...", "", "GIACOMO:", "Listen! What sound is that?", "", "ORSINO:", "The house-dog moans, and the beams crack: nought else.", "", "GIACOMO:", "It is my wife complaining in her sleep:", "I doubt not she is saying bitter things", "Of me; and all my children round her dreaming", "That I deny them sustenance.", "", "ORSINO:", "Whilst he", "Who truly took it from them, and who fills", "Their hungry rest with bitterness, now sleeps", "Lapped in bad pleasures, and triumphantly", "Mocks thee in visions of successful hate", "Too like the truth of day.", "", "GIACOMO:", "If e'er he wakes", "Again, I will not trust to hireling hands...", "", "ORSINO:", "Why, that were well. I must be gone; good-night.", "When next we meet--may all be done!", "", "GIACOMO:", "And all", "Forgotten: Oh, that I had never been!", "", "[EXEUNT.]", "", "END OF ACT 3.", "", "ACT 4.", "", "SCENE 4.1:", "AN APARTMENT IN THE CASTLE OF PETRELLA.", "ENTER CENCI.", "", "CENCI:", "She comes not; yet I left her even now", "Vanquished and faint. She knows the penalty", "Of her delay: yet what if threats are vain?", "Am I not now within Petrella's moat?", "Or fear I still the eyes and ears of Rome?", "Might I not drag her by the golden hair?", "Stamp on her? keep her sleepless till her brain", "Be overworn? Tame her with chains and famine?", "Less would suffice. Yet so to leave undone", "What I most seek! No, 'tis her stubborn will", "Which by its own consent shall stoop as low", "As that which drags it down.", "[ENTER LUCRETIA.]", "Thou loathed wretch!", "Hide thee from my abhorrence: fly, begone!", "Yet stay! Bid Beatrice come hither.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Oh,", "Husband! I pray, for thine own wretched sake", "Heed what thou dost. A man who walks like thee", "Through crimes, and through the danger of his crimes,", "Each hour may stumble o'er a sudden grave.", "And thou art old; thy hairs are hoary gray;", "As thou wouldst save thyself from death and hell,", "Pity thy daughter; give her to some friend", "In marriage: so that she may tempt thee not", "To hatred, or worse thoughts, if worse there be.", "", "CENCI:", "What! like her sister who has found a home", "To mock my hate from with prosperity?", "Strange ruin shall destroy both her and thee", "And all that yet remain. My death may be", "Rapid, her destiny outspeeds it. Go,", "Bid her come hither, and before my mood", "Be changed, lest I should drag her by the hair.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "She sent me to thee, husband. At thy presence", "She fell, as thou dost know, into a trance;", "And in that trance she heard a voice which said,", "'Cenci must die! Let him confess himself!", "Even now the accusing Angel waits to hear", "If God, to punish his enormous crimes,", "Harden his dying heart!'", "", "CENCI:", "Why--such things are...", "No doubt divine revealings may be made.", "'Tis plain I have been favoured from above,", "For when I cursed my sons they died.--Ay...so...", "As to the right or wrong, that's talk...repentance...", "Repentance is an easy moment's work", "And more depends on God than me. Well...well...", "I must give up the greater point, which was", "To poison and corrupt her soul.", "[A PAUSE, LUCRETIA APPROACHES ANXIOUSLY,", "AND THEN SHRINKS BACK AS HE SPEAKS.]", "One, two;", "Ay...Rocco and Cristofano my curse", "Strangled: and Giacomo, I think, will find", "Life a worse Hell than that beyond the grave:", "Beatrice shall, if there be skill in hate,", "Die in despair, blaspheming: to Bernardo,", "He is so innocent, I will bequeath", "The memory of these deeds, and make his youth", "The sepulchre of hope, where evil thoughts", "Shall grow like weeds on a neglected tomb.", "When all is done, out in the wide Campagna,", "I will pile up my silver and my gold;", "My costly robes, paintings, and tapestries;", "My parchments and all records of my wealth,", "And make a bonfire in my joy, and leave", "Of my possessions nothing but my name;", "Which shall be an inheritance to strip", "Its wearer bare as infamy. That done,", "My soul, which is a scourge, will I resign", "Into the hands of him who wielded it;", "Be it for its own punishment or theirs,", "He will not ask it of me till the lash", "Be broken in its last and deepest wound;", "Until its hate be all inflicted. Yet,", "Lest death outspeed my purpose, let me make", "Short work and sure...", "", "[GOING.]", "", "LUCRETIA [STOPS HIM]:", "Oh, stay! It was a feint:", "She had no vision, and she heard no voice.", "I said it but to awe thee.", "", "CENCI:", "That is well.", "Vile palterer with the sacred truth of God,", "Be thy soul choked with that blaspheming lie!", "For Beatrice worse terrors are in store", "To bend her to my will.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Oh! to what will?", "What cruel sufferings more than she has known", "Canst thou inflict?", "", "CENCI:", "Andrea! Go call my daughter,", "And if she comes not tell her that I come.", "What sufferings? I will drag her, step by step,", "Through infamies unheard of among men:", "She shall stand shelterless in the broad noon", "Of public scorn, for acts blazoned abroad,", "One among which shall be...What? Canst thou guess?", "She shall become (for what she most abhors", "Shall have a fascination to entrap", "Her loathing will) to her own conscious self", "All she appears to others; and when dead,", "As she shall die unshrived and unforgiven,", "A rebel to her father and her God,", "Her corpse shall be abandoned to the hounds;", "Her name shall be the terror of the earth;", "Her spirit shall approach the throne of God", "Plague-spotted with my curses. I will make", "Body and soul a monstrous lump of ruin.", "", "[ENTER ANDREA.]", "", "ANDREA:", "The Lady Beatrice...", "", "CENCI:", "Speak, pale slave! What", "Said she?", "", "ANDREA:", "My Lord, 'twas what she looked; she said:", "'Go tell my father that I see the gulf", "Of Hell between us two, which he may pass,", "I will not.'", "", "[EXIT ANDREA.]", "", "CENCI:", "Go thou quick, Lucretia,", "Tell her to come; yet let her understand", "Her coming is consent: and say, moreover,", "That if she come not I will curse her.", "[EXIT LUCRETIA.]", "Ha!", "With what but with a father's curse doth God", "Panic-strike armed victory, and make pale", "Cities in their prosperity? The world's Father", "Must grant a parent's prayer against his child,", "Be he who asks even what men call me.", "Will not the deaths of her rebellious brothers", "Awe her before I speak? For I on them", "Did imprecate quick ruin, and it came.", "[ENTER LUCRETIA.]", "Well; what? Speak, wretch!", "", "LUCRETIA:", "She said, 'I cannot come;", "Go tell my father that I see a torrent", "Of his own blood raging between us.'", "", "CENCI [KNEELING]:", "God,", "Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,", "Which Thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,", "This particle of my divided being;", "Or rather, this my bane and my disease,", "Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil", "Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant", "To aught good use; if her bright loveliness", "Was kindled to illumine this dark world;", "If nursed by Thy selectest dew of love", "Such virtues blossom in her as should make", "The peace of life, I pray Thee for my sake,", "As Thou the common God and Father art", "Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!", "Earth, in the name of God, let her food be", "Poison, until she be encrusted round", "With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head", "The blistering drops of the Maremma's dew,", "Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up", "Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs", "To loathed lameness! All-beholding sun,", "Strike in thine envy those life-darting eyes", "With thine own blinding beams!", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Peace! Peace!", "For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words.", "When high God grants He punishes such prayers.", "", "CENCI [LEAPING UP, AND THROWING HIS RIGHT HAND TOWARDS HEAVEN]:", "He does his will, I mine! This in addition,", "That if she have a child...", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Horrible thought!", "", "CENCI:", "That if she ever have a child; and thou,", "Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God,", "That thou be fruitful in her, and increase", "And multiply, fulfilling his command,", "And my deep imprecation! May it be", "A hideous likeness of herself, that as", "From a distorting mirror, she may see", "Her image mixed with what she most abhors,", "Smiling upon her from her nursing breast.", "And that the child may from its infancy", "Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,", "Turning her mother's love to misery:", "And that both she and it may live until", "It shall repay her care and pain with hate,", "Or what may else be more unnatural.", "So he may hunt her through the clamorous scoffs", "Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave.", "Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,", "Before my words are chronicled in Heaven.", "[EXIT LUCRETIA.]", "I do not feel as if I were a man,", "But like a fiend appointed to chastise", "The offences of some unremembered world.", "My blood is running up and down my veins;", "A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:", "I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;", "My heart is beating with an expectation", "Of horrid joy.", "[ENTER LUCRETIA.]", "What? Speak!", "", "LUCRETIA:", "She bids thee curse;", "And if thy curses, as they cannot do,", "Could kill her soul...", "", "CENCI:", "She would not come. 'Tis well,", "I can do both; first take what I demand,", "And then extort concession. To thy chamber!", "Fly ere I spurn thee; and beware this night", "That thou cross not my footsteps. It were safer", "To come between the tiger and his prey.", "[EXIT LUCRETIA.]", "It must be late; mine eyes grow weary dim", "With unaccustomed heaviness of sleep.", "Conscience! Oh, thou most insolent of lies!", "They say that sleep, that healing dew of Heaven,", "Steeps not in balm the foldings of the brain", "Which thinks thee an impostor. I will go", "First to belie thee with an hour of rest,", "Which will be deep and calm, I feel: and then...", "O, multitudinous Hell, the fiends will shake", "Thine arches with the laughter of their joy!", "There shall be lamentation heard in Heaven", "As o'er an angel fallen; and upon Earth", "All good shall droop and sicken, and ill things", "Shall with a spirit of unnatural life,", "Stir and be quickened...even as I am now.", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "SCENE 4.2:", "BEFORE THE CASTLE OF PETRELLA.", "ENTER BEATRICE AND LUCRETIA ABOVE ON THE RAMPARTS.", "", "BEATRICE:", "They come not yet.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "'Tis scarce midnight.", "", "BEATRICE:", "How slow", "Behind the course of thought, even sick with speed,", "Lags leaden-footed time!", "", "LUCRETIA:", "The minutes pass...", "If he should wake before the deed is done?", "", "BEATRICE:", "O, mother! He must never wake again.", "What thou hast said persuades me that our act", "Will but dislodge a spirit of deep hell", "Out of a human form.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "'Tis true he spoke", "Of death and judgement with strange confidence", "For one so wicked; as a man believing", "In God, yet recking not of good or ill.", "And yet to die without confession!...", "", "BEATRICE:", "Oh!", "Believe that Heaven is merciful and just,", "And will not add our dread necessity", "To the amount of his offences.", "", "[ENTER OLIMPIO AND MARZIO BELOW.]", "", "LUCRETIA:", "See,", "They come.", "", "BEATRICE:", "All mortal things must hasten thus", "To their dark end. Let us go down.", "", "[EXEUNT LUCRETIA AND BEATRICE FROM ABOVE.]", "", "OLIMPIO:", "How feel you to this work?", "", "MARZIO:", "As one who thinks", "A thousand crowns excellent market price", "For an old murderer's life. Your cheeks are pale.", "", "OLIMPIO:", "It is the white reflection of your own,", "Which you call pale.", "", "MARZIO:", "Is that their natural hue?", "", "OLIMPIO:", "Or 'tis my hate and the deferred desire", "To wreak it, which extinguishes their blood.", "", "MARZIO:", "You are inclined then to this business?", "", "OLIMPIO:", "Ay,", "If one should bribe me with a thousand crowns", "To kill a serpent which had stung my child,", "I could not be more willing.", "[ENTER BEATRICE AND LUCRETIA BELOW.]", "Noble ladies!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Are ye resolved?", "", "OLIMPIO:", "Is he asleep?", "", "MARZIO:", "Is all", "Quiet?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "I mixed an opiate with his drink:", "He sleeps so soundly...", "", "BEATRICE:", "That his death will be", "But as a change of sin-chastising dreams,", "A dark continuance of the Hell within him,", "Which God extinguish! But ye are resolved?", "Ye know it is a high and holy deed?", "", "OLIMPIO:", "We are resolved.", "", "MARZIO:", "As to the how this act", "Be warranted, it rests with you.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Well, follow!", "", "OLIMPIO:", "Hush! Hark! What noise is that?", "", "MARZIO:", "Ha! some one comes!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Ye conscience-stricken cravens, rock to rest", "Your baby hearts. It is the iron gate,", "Which ye left open, swinging to the wind,", "That enters whistling as in scorn. Come, follow!", "And be your steps like mine, light, quick and bold.", "", "[EXEUNT.]", "", "SCENE 4.3:", "AN APARTMENT IN THE CASTLE.", "ENTER BEATRICE AND LUCRETIA.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "They are about it now.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Nay, it is done.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "I have not heard him groan.", "", "BEATRICE:", "He will not groan.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "What sound is that?", "", "BEATRICE:", "List! 'tis the tread of feet", "About his bed.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "My God!", "If he be now a cold, stiff corpse...", "", "BEATRICE:", "O, fear not", "What may be done, but what is left undone:", "The act seals all.", "[ENTER OLIMPIO AND MARZIO.]", "Is it accomplished?", "", "MARZIO:", "What?", "", "OLIMPIO:", "Did you not call?", "", "BEATRICE:", "When?", "", "OLIMPIO:", "Now.", "", "BEATRICE:", "I ask if all is over?", "", "OLIMPIO:", "We dare not kill an old and sleeping man;", "His thin gray hair, his stern and reverend brow,", "His veined hands crossed on his heaving breast,", "And the calm innocent sleep in which he lay,", "Quelled me. Indeed, indeed, I cannot do it.", "", "MARZIO:", "But I was bolder; for I chid Olimpio,", "And bade him bear his wrongs to his own grave", "And leave me the reward. And now my knife", "Touched the loose wrinkled throat, when the old man", "Stirred in his sleep, and said, 'God! hear, O, hear,", "A father's curse! What, art Thou not our Father?'", "And then he laughed. I knew it was the ghost", "Of my dead father speaking through his lips,", "And could not kill him.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Miserable slaves!", "Where, if ye dare not kill a sleeping man,", "Found ye the boldness to return to me", "With such a deed undone? Base palterers!", "Cowards and traitors! Why, the very conscience", "Which ye would sell for gold and for revenge", "Is an equivocation: it sleeps over", "A thousand daily acts disgracing men;", "And when a deed where mercy insults Heaven...", "Why do I talk?", "[SNATCHING A DAGGER FROM ONE OF THEM, AND RAISING IT.]", "Hadst thou a tongue to say,", "'She murdered her own father!'--I must do it!", "But never dream ye shall outlive him long!", "", "OLIMPIO:", "Stop, for God's sake!", "", "MARZIO:", "I will go back and kill him.", "", "OLIMPIO:", "Give me the weapon, we must do thy will.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Take it! Depart! Return!", "[EXEUNT OLIMPIO AND MARZIO.]", "How pale thou art!", "We do but that which 'twere a deadly crime", "To leave undone.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Would it were done!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Even whilst", "That doubt is passing through your mind, the world", "Is conscious of a change. Darkness and Hell", "Have swallowed up the vapour they sent forth", "To blacken the sweet light of life. My breath", "Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood", "Runs freely through my veins. Hark!", "[ENTER OLIMPIO AND MARZIO.]", "He is...", "", "OLIMPIO:", "Dead!", "", "MARZIO:", "We strangled him that there might be no blood;", "And then we threw his heavy corpse i' the garden", "Under the balcony; 'twill seem it fell.", "", "BEATRICE [GIVING THEM A BAG OF COIN]:", "Here, take this gold, and hasten to your homes.", "And, Marzio, because thou wast only awed", "By that which made me tremble, wear thou this!", "[CLOTHES HIM IN A RICH MANTLE.]", "It was the mantle which my grandfather", "Wore in his high prosperity, and men", "Envied his state: so may they envy thine.", "Thou wert a weapon in the hand of God", "To a just use. Live long and thrive! And, mark,", "If thou hast crimes, repent: this deed is none.", "", "[A HORN IS SOUNDED.]", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Hark, 'tis the castle horn: my God! it sounds", "Like the last trump.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Some tedious guest is coming.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "The drawbridge is let down; there is a tramp", "Of horses in the court; fly, hide yourselves!", "", "[EXEUNT OLIMPIO AND MARZIO.]", "", "BEATRICE:", "Let us retire to counterfeit deep rest;", "I scarcely need to counterfeit it now:", "The spirit which doth reign within these limbs", "Seems strangely undisturbed. I could even sleep", "Fearless and calm: all ill is surely past.", "", "[EXEUNT.]", "", "SCENE 4.4:", "ANOTHER APARTMENT IN THE CASTLE.", "ENTER ON ONE SIDE THE LEGATE SAVELLA,", "INTRODUCED BY A SERVANT,", "AND ON THE OTHER LUCRETIA AND BERNARDO.", "", "SAVELLA:", "Lady, my duty to his Holiness", "Be my excuse that thus unseasonably", "I break upon your rest. I must speak with", "Count Cenci; doth he sleep?", "", "LUCRETIA [IN A HURRIED AND CONFUSED MANNER]:", "I think he sleeps;", "Yet, wake him not, I pray, spare me awhile,", "He is a wicked and a wrathful man;", "Should he be roused out of his sleep to-night,", "Which is, I know, a hell of angry dreams,", "It were not well; indeed it were not well.", "Wait till day break...", "[ASIDE.]", "Oh, I am deadly sick!", "", "SAVELLA:", "I grieve thus to distress you, but the Count", "Must answer charges of the gravest import,", "And suddenly; such my commission is.", "", "LUCRETIA [WITH INCREASED AGITATION]:", "I dare not rouse him: I know none who dare...", "'Twere perilous;...you might as safely waken", "A serpent; or a corpse in which some fiend", "Were laid to sleep.", "", "SAVELLA:", "Lady, my moments here", "Are counted. I must rouse him from his sleep,", "Since none else dare.", "", "LUCRETIA [ASIDE]:", "O, terror! O, despair!", "[TO BERNARDO.]", "Bernardo, conduct you the Lord Legate to", "Your father's chamber.", "", "[EXEUNT SAVELLA AND BERNARDO.]", "", "[ENTER BEATRICE.]", "", "BEATRICE:", "'Tis a messenger", "Come to arrest the culprit who now stands", "Before the throne of unappealable God.", "Both Earth and Heaven, consenting arbiters,", "Acquit our deed.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Oh, agony of fear!", "Would that he yet might live! Even now I heard", "The Legate's followers whisper as they passed", "They had a warrant for his instant death.", "All was prepared by unforbidden means", "Which we must pay so dearly, having done.", "Even now they search the tower, and find the body;", "Now they suspect the truth; now they consult", "Before they come to tax us with the fact;", "O, horrible, 'tis all discovered!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Mother,", "What is done wisely, is done well. Be bold", "As thou art just. 'Tis like a truant child", "To fear that others know what thou hast done,", "Even from thine own strong consciousness, and thus", "Write on unsteady eyes and altered cheeks", "All thou wouldst hide. Be faithful to thyself,", "And fear no other witness but thy fear.", "For if, as cannot be, some circumstance", "Should rise in accusation, we can blind", "Suspicion with such cheap astonishment,", "Or overbear it with such guiltless pride,", "As murderers cannot feign. The deed is done,", "And what may follow now regards not me.", "I am as universal as the light;", "Free as the earth-surrounding air; as firm", "As the world's centre. Consequence, to me,", "Is as the wind which strikes the solid rock,", "But shakes it not.", "", "[A CRY WITHIN AND TUMULT.]", "", "VOICES:", "Murder! Murder! Murder!", "", "[ENTER BERNARDO AND SAVELLA.]", "", "SAVELLA [TO HIS FOLLOWERS]:", "Go search the castle round; sound the alarm;", "Look to the gates, that none escape!", "", "BEATRICE:", "What now?", "", "BERNARDO:", "I know not what to say...my father's dead.", "", "BEATRICE:", "How; dead! he only sleeps; you mistake, brother.", "His sleep is very calm, very like death;", "'Tis wonderful how well a tyrant sleeps.", "He is not dead?", "", "BERNARDO:", "Dead; murdered.", "", "LUCRETIA [WITH EXTREME AGITATION]:", "Oh no, no!", "He is not murdered though he may be dead;", "I have alone the keys of those apartments.", "", "SAVELLA:", "Ha! Is it so?", "", "BEATRICE:", "My Lord, I pray excuse us;", "We will retire; my mother is not well:", "She seems quite overcome with this strange horror.", "", "[EXEUNT LUCRETIA AND BEATRICE.]", "", "SAVELLA:", "Can you suspect who may have murdered him?", "", "BERNARDO:", "I know not what to think.", "", "SAVELLA:", "Can you name any", "Who had an interest in his death?", "", "BERNARDO:", "Alas!", "I can name none who had not, and those most", "Who most lament that such a deed is done;", "My mother, and my sister, and myself.", "", "SAVELLA:", "'Tis strange! There were clear marks of violence.", "I found the old man's body in the moonlight", "Hanging beneath the window of his chamber,", "Among the branches of a pine: he could not", "Have fallen there, for all his limbs lay heaped", "And effortless; 'tis true there was no blood...", "Favour me, Sir; it much imports your house", "That all should be made clear; to tell the ladies", "That I request their presence.", "", "[EXIT BERNARDO.]", "", "[ENTER GUARDS, BRINGING IN MARZIO.]", "", "GUARD:", "We have one.", "", "OFFICER:", "My Lord, we found this ruffian and another", "Lurking among the rocks; there is no doubt", "But that they are the murderers of Count Cenci:", "Each had a bag of coin; this fellow wore", "A gold-inwoven robe, which, shining bright", "Under the dark rocks to the glimmering moon", "Betrayed them to our notice: the other fell", "Desperately fighting.", "", "SAVELLA:", "What does he confess?", "", "OFFICER:", "He keeps firm silence; but these lines found on him", "May speak.", "", "SAVELLA:", "Their language is at least sincere.", "[READS.]", "'To the Lady Beatrice.", "That the atonement of what my nature sickens to conjecture may soon", "arrive, I send thee, at thy brother's desire, those who will speak and", "do more than I dare write...", "'Thy devoted servant, Orsino.'", "[ENTER LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, AND BERNARDO.]", "Knowest thou this writing, Lady?", "", "BEATRICE:", "No.", "", "SAVELLA:", "Nor thou?", "", "LUCRETIA [HER CONDUCT THROUGHOUT THE SCENE IS MARKED BY EXTREME AGITATION]:", "Where was it found? What is it? It should be", "Orsino's hand! It speaks of that strange horror", "Which never yet found utterance, but which made", "Between that hapless child and her dead father", "A gulf of obscure hatred.", "", "SAVELLA:", "Is it so?", "Is it true, Lady, that thy father did", "Such outrages as to awaken in thee", "Unfilial hate?", "", "BEATRICE:", "Not hate, 'twas more than hate:", "This is most true, yet wherefore question me?", "", "SAVELLA:", "There is a deed demanding question done;", "Thou hast a secret which will answer not.", "", "BEATRICE:", "What sayest? My Lord, your words are bold and rash.", "", "SAVELLA:", "I do arrest all present in the name", "Of the Pope's Holiness. You must to Rome.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "O, not to Rome! Indeed we are not guilty.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Guilty! Who dares talk of guilt? My Lord,", "I am more innocent of parricide", "Than is a child born fatherless...Dear mother,", "Your gentleness and patience are no shield", "For this keen-judging world, this two-edged lie,", "Which seems, but is not. What! will human laws,", "Rather will ye who are their ministers,", "Bar all access to retribution first,", "And then, when Heaven doth interpose to do", "What ye neglect, arming familiar things", "To the redress of an unwonted crime,", "Make ye the victims who demanded it", "Culprits? 'Tis ye are culprits! That poor wretch", "Who stands so pale, and trembling, and amazed,", "If it be true he murdered Cenci, was", "A sword in the right hand of justest God.", "Wherefore should I have wielded it? Unless", "The crimes which mortal tongue dare never name", "God therefore scruples to avenge.", "", "SAVELLA:", "You own", "That you desired his death?", "", "BEATRICE:", "It would have been", "A crime no less than his, if for one moment", "That fierce desire had faded in my heart.", "'Tis true I did believe, and hope, and pray,", "Ay, I even knew...for God is wise and just,", "That some strange sudden death hung over him.", "'Tis true that this did happen, and most true", "There was no other rest for me on earth,", "No other hope in Heaven...now what of this?", "", "SAVELLA:", "Strange thoughts beget strange deeds; and here are both:", "I judge thee not.", "", "BEATRICE:", "And yet, if you arrest me,", "You are the judge and executioner", "Of that which is the life of life: the breath", "Of accusation kills an innocent name,", "And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life", "Which is a mask without it. 'Tis most false", "That I am guilty of foul parricide;", "Although I must rejoice, for justest cause,", "That other hands have sent my father's soul", "To ask the mercy he denied to me.", "Now leave us free; stain not a noble house", "With vague surmises of rejected crime;", "Add to our sufferings and your own neglect", "No heavier sum: let them have been enough:", "Leave us the wreck we have.", "", "SAVELLA:", "I dare not, Lady.", "I pray that you prepare yourselves for Rome:", "There the Pope's further pleasure will be known.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "O, not to Rome! O, take us not to Rome!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Why not to Rome, dear mother? There as here", "Our innocence is as an armed heel", "To trample accusation. God is there", "As here, and with His shadow ever clothes", "The innocent, the injured and the weak;", "And such are we. Cheer up, dear Lady, lean", "On me; collect your wandering thoughts. My Lord,", "As soon as you have taken some refreshment,", "And had all such examinations made", "Upon the spot, as may be necessary", "To the full understanding of this matter,", "We shall be ready. Mother; will you come?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Ha! they will bind us to the rack, and wrest", "Self-accusation from our agony!", "Will Giacomo be there? Orsino? Marzio?", "All present; all confronted; all demanding", "Each from the other's countenance the thing", "Which is in every heart! O, misery!", "", "[SHE FAINTS, AND IS BORNE OUT.]", "", "SAVELLA:", "She faints: an ill appearance this.", "", "BEATRICE:", "My Lord,", "She knows not yet the uses of the world.", "She fears that power is as a beast which grasps", "And loosens not: a snake whose look transmutes", "All things to guilt which is its nutriment.", "She cannot know how well the supine slaves", "Of blind authority read the truth of things", "When written on a brow of guilelessness:", "She sees not yet triumphant Innocence", "Stand at the judgement-seat of mortal man,", "A judge and an accuser of the wrong", "Which drags it there. Prepare yourself, my Lord;", "Our suite will join yours in the court below.", "", "[EXEUNT.]", "", "END OF ACT 4.", "", "ACT 5.", "", "SCENE 5.1:", "AN APARTMENT IN ORSINO'S PALACE.", "ENTER ORSINO AND GIACOMO.", "", "GIACOMO:", "Do evil deeds thus quickly come to end?", "O, that the vain remorse which must chastise", "Crimes done, had but as loud a voice to warn", "As its keen sting is mortal to avenge!", "O, that the hour when present had cast off", "The mantle of its mystery, and shown", "The ghastly form with which it now returns", "When its scared game is roused, cheering the hounds", "Of conscience to their prey! Alas! Alas!", "It was a wicked thought, a piteous deed,", "To kill an old and hoary-headed father.", "", "ORSINO:", "It has turned out unluckily, in truth.", "", "GIACOMO:", "To violate the sacred doors of sleep;", "To cheat kind Nature of the placid death", "Which she prepares for overwearied age;", "To drag from Heaven an unrepentant soul", "Which might have quenched in reconciling prayers", "A life of burning crimes...", "", "ORSINO:", "You cannot say", "I urged you to the deed.", "", "GIACOMO:", "O, had I never", "Found in thy smooth and ready countenance", "The mirror of my darkest thoughts; hadst thou", "Never with hints and questions made me look", "Upon the monster of my thought, until", "It grew familiar to desire...", "", "ORSINO:", "'Tis thus", "Men cast the blame of their unprosperous acts", "Upon the abettors of their own resolve;", "Or anything but their weak, guilty selves.", "And yet, confess the truth, it is the peril", "In which you stand that gives you this pale sickness", "Of penitence; confess 'tis fear disguised", "From its own shame that takes the mantle now", "Of thin remorse. What if we yet were safe?", "", "GIACOMO:", "How can that be? Already Beatrice,", "Lucretia and the murderer are in prison.", "I doubt not officers are, whilst we speak,", "Sent to arrest us.", "", "ORSINO:", "I have all prepared", "For instant flight. We can escape even now,", "So we take fleet occasion by the hair.", "", "GIACOMO:", "Rather expire in tortures, as I may.", "What! will you cast by self-accusing flight", "Assured conviction upon Beatrice?", "She, who alone in this unnatural work,", "Stands like God's angel ministered upon", "By fiends; avenging such a nameless wrong", "As turns black parricide to piety;", "Whilst we for basest ends...I fear, Orsino,", "While I consider all your words and looks,", "Comparing them with your proposal now,", "That you must be a villain. For what end", "Could you engage in such a perilous crime,", "Training me on with hints, and signs, and smiles,", "Even to this gulf? Thou art no liar? No,", "Thou art a lie! Traitor and murderer!", "Coward and slave! But no, defend thyself;", "[DRAWING.]", "Let the sword speak what the indignant tongue", "Disdains to brand thee with.", "", "ORSINO:", "Put up your weapon.", "Is it the desperation of your fear", "Makes you thus rash and sudden with a friend,", "Now ruined for your sake? If honest anger", "Have moved you, know, that what I just proposed", "Was but to try you. As for me, I think,", "Thankless affection led me to this point,", "From which, if my firm temper could repent,", "I cannot now recede. Even whilst we speak", "The ministers of justice wait below:", "They grant me these brief moments. Now if you", "Have any word of melancholy comfort", "To speak to your pale wife, 'twere best to pass", "Out at the postern, and avoid them so.", "", "GIACOMO:", "O, generous friend! How canst thou pardon me?", "Would that my life could purchase thine!", "", "ORSINO:", "That wish", "Now comes a day too late. Haste; fare thee well!", "Hear'st thou not steps along the corridor?", "[EXIT GIACOMO.]", "I'm sorry for it; but the guards are waiting", "At his own gate, and such was my contrivance", "That I might rid me both of him and them.", "I thought to act a solemn comedy", "Upon the painted scene of this new world,", "And to attain my own peculiar ends", "By some such plot of mingled good and ill", "As others weave; but there arose a Power", "Which grasped and snapped the threads of my device", "And turned it to a net of ruin...Ha!", "[A SHOUT IS HEARD.]", "Is that my name I hear proclaimed abroad?", "But I will pass, wrapped in a vile disguise;", "Rags on my back, and a false innocence", "Upon my face, through the misdeeming crowd", "Which judges by what seems. 'Tis easy then", "For a new name and for a country new,", "And a new life, fashioned on old desires,", "To change the honours of abandoned Rome.", "And these must be the masks of that within,", "Which must remain unaltered...Oh, I fear", "That what is past will never let me rest!", "Why, when none else is conscious, but myself,", "Of my misdeeds, should my own heart's contempt", "Trouble me? Have I not the power to fly", "My own reproaches? Shall I be the slave", "Of...what? A word? which those of this false world", "Employ against each other, not themselves;", "As men wear daggers not for self-offence.", "But if I am mistaken, where shall I", "Find the disguise to hide me from myself,", "As now I skulk from every other eye?", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "SCENE 5.2:", "A HALL OF JUSTICE.", "CAMILLO, JUDGES, ETC., ARE DISCOVERED SEATED;", "MARZIO IS LED IN.", "", "FIRST JUDGE:", "Accused, do you persist in your denial?", "I ask you, are you innocent, or guilty?", "I demand who were the participators", "In your offence? Speak truth, and the whole truth.", "", "MARZIO:", "My God! I did not kill him; I know nothing;", "Olimpio sold the robe to me from which", "You would infer my guilt.", "", "SECOND JUDGE:", "Away with him!", "", "FIRST JUDGE:", "Dare you, with lips yet white from the rack's kiss", "Speak false? Is it so soft a questioner,", "That you would bandy lover's talk with it", "Till it wind out your life and soul? Away!", "", "MARZIO:", "Spare me! O, spare! I will confess.", "", "FIRST JUDGE:", "Then speak.", "", "MARZIO:", "I strangled him in his sleep.", "", "FIRST JUDGE:", "Who urged you to it?", "", "MARZIO:", "His own son Giacomo, and the young prelate", "Orsino sent me to Petrella; there", "The ladies Beatrice and Lucretia", "Tempted me with a thousand crowns, and I", "And my companion forthwith murdered him.", "Now let me die.", "", "FIRST JUDGE:", "This sounds as bad as truth. Guards, there,", "Lead forth the prisoner!", "[ENTER LUCRETIA, BEATRICE AND GIACOMO, GUARDED.]", "Look upon this man;", "When did you see him last?", "", "BEATRICE:", "We never saw him.", "", "MARZIO:", "You know me too well, Lady Beatrice.", "", "BEATRICE:", "I know thee! How? where? when?", "", "MARZIO:", "You know 'twas I", "Whom you did urge with menaces and bribes", "To kill your father. When the thing was done", "You clothed me in a robe of woven gold", "And bade me thrive: how I have thriven, you see.", "You, my Lord Giacomo, Lady Lucretia,", "You know that what I speak is true.", "[BEATRICE ADVANCES TOWARDS HIM;", "HE COVERS HIS FACE, AND SHRINKS BACK.]", "Oh, dart", "The terrible resentment of those eyes", "On the dead earth! Turn them away from me!", "They wound: 'twas torture forced the truth. My Lords,", "Having said this let me be led to death.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Poor wretch, I pity thee: yet stay awhile.", "", "CAMILLO:", "Guards, lead him not away.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Cardinal Camillo,", "You have a good repute for gentleness", "And wisdom: can it be that you sit here", "To countenance a wicked farce like this?", "When some obscure and trembling slave is dragged", "From sufferings which might shake the sternest heart", "And bade to answer, not as he believes,", "But as those may suspect or do desire", "Whose questions thence suggest their own reply:", "And that in peril of such hideous torments", "As merciful God spares even the damned. Speak now", "The thing you surely know, which is that you,", "If your fine frame were stretched upon that wheel,", "And you were told: 'Confess that you did poison", "Your little nephew; that fair blue-eyed child", "Who was the lodestar of your life:'--and though", "All see, since his most swift and piteous death,", "That day and night, and heaven and earth, and time,", "And all the things hoped for or done therein", "Are changed to you, through your exceeding grief,", "Yet you would say, 'I confess anything:'", "And beg from your tormentors, like that slave,", "The refuge of dishonourable death.", "I pray thee, Cardinal, that thou assert", "My innocence.", "", "CAMILLO [MUCH MOVED]:", "What shall we think, my Lords?", "Shame on these tears! I thought the heart was frozen", "Which is their fountain. I would pledge my soul", "That she is guiltless.", "", "JUDGE:", "Yet she must be tortured.", "", "CAMILLO:", "I would as soon have tortured mine own nephew", "(If he now lived he would be just her age;", "His hair, too, was her colour, and his eyes", "Like hers in shape, but blue and not so deep)", "As that most perfect image of God's love", "That ever came sorrowing upon the earth.", "She is as pure as speechless infancy!", "", "JUDGE:", "Well, be her purity on your head, my Lord,", "If you forbid the rack. His Holiness", "Enjoined us to pursue this monstrous crime", "By the severest forms of law; nay even", "To stretch a point against the criminals.", "The prisoners stand accused of parricide", "Upon such evidence as justifies", "Torture.", "", "BEATRICE:", "What evidence? This man's?", "", "JUDGE:", "Even so.", "", "BEATRICE [TO MARZIO]:", "Come near. And who art thou thus chosen forth", "Out of the multitude of living men", "To kill the innocent?", "", "MARZIO:", "I am Marzio,", "Thy father's vassal.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Fix thine eyes on mine;", "Answer to what I ask.", "[TURNING TO THE JUDGES.]", "I prithee mark", "His countenance: unlike bold calumny", "Which sometimes dares not speak the thing it looks,", "He dares not look the thing he speaks, but bends", "His gaze on the blind earth.", "[TO MARZIO.]", "What! wilt thou say", "That I did murder my own father?", "", "MARZIO:", "Oh!", "Spare me! My brain swims round...I cannot speak...", "It was that horrid torture forced the truth.", "Take me away! Let her not look on me!", "I am a guilty miserable wretch;", "I have said all I know; now, let me die!", "", "BEATRICE:", "My Lords, if by my nature I had been", "So stern, as to have planned the crime alleged,", "Which your suspicions dictate to this slave,", "And the rack makes him utter, do you think", "I should have left this two-edged instrument", "Of my misdeed; this man, this bloody knife", "With my own name engraven on the heft,", "Lying unsheathed amid a world of foes,", "For my own death? That with such horrible need", "For deepest silence, I should have neglected", "So trivial a precaution, as the making", "His tomb the keeper of a secret written", "On a thief's memory? What is his poor life?", "What are a thousand lives? A parricide", "Had trampled them like dust; and, see, he lives!", "[TURNING TO MARZIO.]", "And thou...", "", "MARZIO:", "Oh, spare me! Speak to me no more!", "That stern yet piteous look, those solemn tones,", "Wound worse than torture.", "[TO THE JUDGES.]", "I have told it all;", "For pity's sake lead me away to death.", "", "CAMILLO:", "Guards, lead him nearer the Lady Beatrice;", "He shrinks from her regard like autumn's leaf", "From the keen breath of the serenest north.", "", "BEATRICE:", "O thou who tremblest on the giddy verge", "Of life and death, pause ere thou answerest me;", "So mayst thou answer God with less dismay:", "What evil have we done thee? I, alas!", "Have lived but on this earth a few sad years,", "And so my lot was ordered, that a father", "First turned the moments of awakening life", "To drops, each poisoning youth's sweet hope; and then", "Stabbed with one blow my everlasting soul;", "And my untainted fame; and even that peace", "Which sleeps within the core of the heart's heart;", "But the wound was not mortal; so my hate", "Became the only worship I could lift", "To our great father, who in pity and love,", "Armed thee, as thou dost say, to cut him off;", "And thus his wrong becomes my accusation;", "And art thou the accuser? If thou hopest", "Mercy in heaven, show justice upon earth:", "Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.", "If thou hast done murders, made thy life's path", "Over the trampled laws of God and man,", "Rush not before thy Judge, and say: 'My maker,", "I have done this and more; for there was one", "Who was most pure and innocent on earth;", "And because she endured what never any", "Guilty or innocent endured before:", "Because her wrongs could not be told, not thought;", "Because thy hand at length did rescue her;", "I with my words killed her and all her kin.'", "Think, I adjure you, what it is to slay", "The reverence living in the minds of men", "Towards our ancient house, and stainless fame!", "Think what it is to strangle infant pity,", "Cradled in the belief of guileless looks,", "Till it become a crime to suffer. Think", "What 'tis to blot with infamy and blood", "All that which shows like innocence, and is,", "Hear me, great God! I swear, most innocent,", "So that the world lose all discrimination", "Between the sly, fierce, wild regard of guilt,", "And that which now compels thee to reply", "To what I ask: Am I, or am I not", "A parricide?", "", "MARZIO:", "Thou art not!", "", "JUDGE:", "What is this?", "", "MARZIO:", "I here declare those whom I did accuse", "Are innocent. 'Tis I alone am guilty.", "", "JUDGE:", "Drag him away to torments; let them be", "Subtle and long drawn out, to tear the folds", "Of the heart's inmost cell. Unbind him not", "Till he confess.", "", "MARZIO:", "Torture me as ye will:", "A keener pang has wrung a higher truth", "From my last breath. She is most innocent!", "Bloodhounds, not men, glut yourselves well with me;", "I will not give you that fine piece of nature", "To rend and ruin.", "", "[EXIT MARZIO, GUARDED.]", "", "CAMILLO:", "What say ye now, my Lords?", "", "JUDGE:", "Let tortures strain the truth till it be white", "As snow thrice sifted by the frozen wind.", "", "CAMILLO:", "Yet stained with blood.", "", "JUDGE [TO BEATRICE]:", "Know you this paper, Lady?", "", "BEATRICE:", "Entrap me not with questions. Who stands here", "As my accuser? Ha! wilt thou be he,", "Who art my judge? Accuser, witness, judge,", "What, all in one? Here is Orsino's name;", "Where is Orsino? Let his eye meet mine.", "What means this scrawl? Alas! ye know not what,", "And therefore on the chance that it may be", "Some evil, will ye kill us?", "", "[ENTER AN OFFICER.]", "", "OFFICER:", "Marzio's dead.", "", "JUDGE:", "What did he say?", "", "OFFICER:", "Nothing. As soon as we", "Had bound him on the wheel, he smiled on us,", "As one who baffles a deep adversary;", "And holding his breath, died.", "", "JUDGE:", "There remains nothing", "But to apply the question to those prisoners,", "Who yet remain stubborn.", "", "CAMILLO:", "I overrule", "Further proceedings, and in the behalf", "Of these most innocent and noble persons", "Will use my interest with the Holy Father.", "", "JUDGE:", "Let the Pope's pleasure then be done. Meanwhile", "Conduct these culprits each to separate cells;", "And be the engines ready; for this night", "If the Pope's resolution be as grave,", "Pious, and just as once, I'll wring the truth", "Out of those nerves and sinews, groan by groan.", "", "[EXEUNT.]", "", "SCENE 5.3:", "THE CELL OF A PRISON.", "BEATRICE IS DISCOVERED ASLEEP ON A COUCH.", "ENTER BERNARDO.", "", "BERNARDO:", "How gently slumber rests upon her face,", "Like the last thoughts of some day sweetly spent", "Closing in night and dreams, and so prolonged.", "After such torments as she bore last night,", "How light and soft her breathing comes. Ay me!", "Methinks that I shall never sleep again.", "But I must shake the heavenly dew of rest", "From this sweet folded flower, thus...wake, awake!", "What, sister, canst thou sleep?", "", "BEATRICE [AWAKING]:", "I was just dreaming", "That we were all in Paradise. Thou knowest", "This cell seems like a kind of Paradise", "After our father's presence.", "", "BERNARDO:", "Dear, dear sister,", "Would that thy dream were not a dream! O God!", "How shall I tell?", "", "BEATRICE:", "What wouldst thou tell, sweet brother?", "", "BERNARDO:", "Look not so calm and happy, or even whilst", "I stand considering what I have to say", "My heart will break.", "", "BEATRICE:", "See now, thou mak'st me weep:", "How very friendless thou wouldst be, dear child,", "If I were dead. Say what thou hast to say.", "", "BERNARDO:", "They have confessed; they could endure no more", "The tortures...", "", "BEATRICE:", "Ha! What was there to confess?", "They must have told some weak and wicked lie", "To flatter their tormentors. Have they said", "That they were guilty? O white innocence,", "That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide", "Thine awful and serenest countenance", "From those who know thee not!", "[ENTER JUDGE WITH LUCRETIA AND GIACOMO, GUARDED.]", "Ignoble hearts!", "For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least", "As mortal as the limbs through which they pass,", "Are centuries of high splendour laid in dust?", "And that eternal honour which should live", "Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame,", "Changed to a mockery and a byword? What!", "Will you give up these bodies to be dragged", "At horses' heels, so that our hair should sweep", "The footsteps of the vain and senseless crowd,", "Who, that they may make our calamity", "Their worship and their spectacle, will leave", "The churches and the theatres as void", "As their own hearts? Shall the light multitude", "Fling, at their choice, curses or faded pity,", "Sad funeral flowers to deck a living corpse,", "Upon us as we pass to pass away,", "And leave...what memory of our having been?", "Infamy, blood, terror, despair? O thou,", "Who wert a mother to the parentless,", "Kill not thy child! Let not her wrongs kill thee!", "Brother, lie down with me upon the rack,", "And let us each be silent as a corpse;", "It soon will be as soft as any grave.", "'Tis but the falsehood it can wring from fear", "Makes the rack cruel.", "", "GIACOMO:", "They will tear the truth", "Even from thee at last, those cruel pains:", "For pity's sake say thou art guilty now.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Oh, speak the truth! Let us all quickly die;", "And after death, God is our judge, not they;", "He will have mercy on us.", "", "BERNARDO:", "If indeed", "It can be true, say so, dear sister mine;", "And then the Pope will surely pardon you,", "And all be well.", "", "JUDGE:", "Confess, or I will warp", "Your limbs with such keen tortures...", "", "BEATRICE:", "Tortures! Turn", "The rack henceforth into a spinning-wheel!", "Torture your dog, that he may tell when last", "He lapped the blood his master shed...not me!", "My pangs are of the mind, and of the heart,", "And of the soul; ay, of the inmost soul,", "Which weeps within tears as of burning gall", "To see, in this ill world where none are true,", "My kindred false to their deserted selves.", "And with considering all the wretched life", "Which I have lived, and its now wretched end,", "And the small justice shown by Heaven and Earth", "To me or mine; and what a tyrant thou art,", "And what slaves these; and what a world we make,", "The oppressor and the oppressed...such pangs compel", "My answer. What is it thou wouldst with me?", "", "JUDGE:", "Art thou not guilty of thy father's death?", "", "BEATRICE:", "Or wilt thou rather tax high-judging God", "That He permitted such an act as that", "Which I have suffered, and which He beheld;", "Made it unutterable, and took from it", "All refuge, all revenge, all consequence,", "But that which thou hast called my father's death?", "Which is or is not what men call a crime,", "Which either I have done, or have not done;", "Say what ye will. I shall deny no more.", "If ye desire it thus, thus let it be,", "And so an end of all. Now do your will;", "No other pains shall force another word.", "", "JUDGE:", "She is convicted, but has not confessed.", "Be it enough. Until their final sentence", "Let none have converse with them. You, young Lord,", "Linger not here!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Oh, tear him not away!", "", "JUDGE:", "Guards! do your duty.", "", "BERNARDO [EMBRACING BEATRICE]:", "Oh! would ye divide", "Body from soul?", "", "OFFICER:", "That is the headsman's business.", "", "[EXEUNT ALL BUT LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, AND GIACOMO.]", "", "GIACOMO:", "Have I confessed? Is it all over now?", "No hope! No refuge! O weak, wicked tongue", "Which hast destroyed me, would that thou hadst been", "Cut out and thrown to dogs first! To have killed", "My father first, and then betrayed my sister;", "Ay, thee! the one thing innocent and pure", "In this black, guilty world, to that which I", "So well deserve! My wife! my little ones!", "Destitute, helpless, and I...Father! God!", "Canst Thou forgive even the unforgiving,", "When their full hearts break thus, thus!...", "", "[COVERS HIS FACE AND WEEPS.]", "", "LUCRETIA:", "O my child!", "To what a dreadful end are we all come!", "Why did I yield? Why did I not sustain", "Those torments? Oh, that I were all dissolved", "Into these fast and unavailing tears,", "Which flow and feel not!", "", "BEATRICE:", "What 'twas weak to do,", "'Tis weaker to lament, once being done;", "Take cheer! The God who knew my wrong, and made", "Our speedy act the angel of His wrath,", "Seems, and but seems, to have abandoned us.", "Let us not think that we shall die for this.", "Brother, sit near me; give me your firm hand,", "You had a manly heart. Bear up! Bear up!", "O dearest Lady, put your gentle head", "Upon my lap, and try to sleep awhile:", "Your eyes look pale, hollow, and overworn,", "With heaviness of watching and slow grief.", "Come, I will sing you some low, sleepy tune,", "Not cheerful, nor yet sad; some dull old thing,", "Some outworn and unused monotony,", "Such as our country gossips sing and spin,", "Till they almost forget they live: lie down!", "So, that will do. Have I forgot the words?", "Faith! They are sadder than I thought they were.", "", "SONG:", "False friend, wilt thou smile or weep", "When my life is laid asleep?", "Little cares for a smile or a tear,", "The clay-cold corpse upon the bier!", "Farewell! Heighho!", "What is this whispers low?", "There is a snake in thy smile, my dear;", "And bitter poison within thy tear.", "", "Sweet sleep, were death like to thee,", "Or if thou couldst mortal be,", "I would close these eyes of pain;", "When to wake? Never again.", "O World! Farewell!", "Listen to the passing bell!", "It says, thou and I must part,", "With a light and a heavy heart.", "", "[THE SCENE CLOSES.]", "", "SCENE 5.4:", "A HALL OF THE PRISON.", "ENTER CAMILLO AND BERNARDO.", "", "CAMILLO:", "The Pope is stern; not to be moved or bent.", "He looked as calm and keen as is the engine", "Which tortures and which kills, exempt itself", "From aught that it inflicts; a marble form,", "A rite, a law, a custom: not a man.", "He frowned, as if to frown had been the trick", "Of his machinery, on the advocates", "Presenting the defences, which he tore", "And threw behind, muttering with hoarse, harsh voice:", "'Which among ye defended their old father", "Killed in his sleep?' Then to another: 'Thou", "Dost this in virtue of thy place; 'tis well.'", "He turned to me then, looking deprecation,", "And said these three words, coldly: 'They must die.'", "", "BERNARDO:", "And yet you left him not?", "", "CAMILLO:", "I urged him still;", "Pleading, as I could guess, the devilish wrong", "Which prompted your unnatural parent's death.", "And he replied: 'Paolo Santa Croce", "Murdered his mother yester evening,", "And he is fled. Parricide grows so rife", "That soon, for some just cause no doubt, the young", "Will strangle us all, dozing in our chairs.", "Authority, and power, and hoary hair", "Are grown crimes capital. You are my nephew,", "You come to ask their pardon; stay a moment;", "Here is their sentence; never see me more", "Till, to the letter, it be all fulfilled.'", "", "BERNARDO:", "O God, not so! I did believe indeed", "That all you said was but sad preparation", "For happy news. Oh, there are words and looks", "To bend the sternest purpose! Once I knew them,", "Now I forget them at my dearest need.", "What think you if I seek him out, and bathe", "His feet and robe with hot and bitter tears?", "Importune him with prayers, vexing his brain", "With my perpetual cries, until in rage", "He strike me with his pastoral cross, and trample", "Upon my prostrate head, so that my blood", "May stain the senseless dust on which he treads,", "And remorse waken mercy? I will do it!", "Oh, wait till I return!", "", "[RUSHES OUT.]", "", "CAMILLO:", "Alas, poor boy!", "A wreck-devoted seaman thus might pray", "To the deaf sea.", "", "[ENTER LUCRETIA, BEATRICE, AND GIACOMO, GUARDED.]", "", "BEATRICE:", "I hardly dare to fear", "That thou bring'st other news than a just pardon.", "", "CAMILLO:", "May God in heaven be less inexorable", "To the Pope's prayers than he has been to mine.", "Here is the sentence and the warrant.", "", "BEATRICE [WILDLY]:", "O", "My God! Can it be possible I have", "To die so suddenly? So young to go", "Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!", "To be nailed down into a narrow place;", "To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more", "Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again", "Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost--", "How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be...", "What? Oh, where am I? Let me not go mad!", "Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be", "No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;", "The wide, gray, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!", "If all things then should be...my father's spirit,", "His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;", "The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!", "If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,", "Even the form which tortured me on earth,", "Masked in gray hairs and wrinkles, he should come", "And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix", "His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!", "For was he not alone omnipotent", "On Earth, and ever present? Even though dead,", "Does not his spirit live in all that breathe,", "And work for me and mine still the same ruin,", "Scorn, pain, despair? Who ever yet returned", "To teach the laws of Death's untrodden realm?", "Unjust perhaps as those which drive us now,", "Oh, whither, whither?", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Trust in God's sweet love,", "The tender promises of Christ: ere night,", "Think, we shall be in Paradise.", "", "BEATRICE:", "'Tis past!", "Whatever comes, my heart shall sink no more.", "And yet, I know not why, your words strike chill:", "How tedious, false, and cold seem all things. I", "Have met with much injustice in this world;", "No difference has been made by God or man,", "Or any power moulding my wretched lot,", "'Twixt good or evil, as regarded me.", "I am cut off from the only world I know,", "From light, and life, and love, in youth's sweet prime.", "You do well telling me to trust in God;", "I hope I do trust in him. In whom else", "Can any trust? And yet my heart is cold.", "", "[DURING THE LATTER SPEECHES GIACOMO HAS RETIRED CONVERSING WITH", "CAMILLO, WHO NOW GOES OUT;", "GIACOMO ADVANCES.]", "", "GIACOMO:", "Know you not, Mother...Sister, know you not?", "Bernardo even now is gone to implore", "The Pope to grant our pardon.", "", "LUCRETIA:", "Child, perhaps", "It will be granted. We may all then live", "To make these woes a tale for distant years:", "Oh, what a thought! It gushes to my heart", "Like the warm blood.", "", "BEATRICE:", "Yet both will soon be cold.", "Oh, trample out that thought! Worse than despair,", "Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope:", "It is the only ill which can find place", "Upon the giddy, sharp, and narrow hour", "Tottering beneath us. Plead with the swift frost", "That it should spare the eldest flower of spring:", "Plead with awakening earthquake, o'er whose couch", "Even now a city stands, strong, fair, and free;", "Now stench and blackness yawn, like death. Oh, plead", "With famine, or wind-walking Pestilence,", "Blind lightning, or the deaf sea, not with man!", "Cruel, cold, formal man; righteous in words,", "In deeds a Cain. No, Mother, we must die:", "Since such is the reward of innocent lives;", "Such the alleviation of worst wrongs.", "And whilst our murderers live, and hard, cold men,", "Smiling and slow, walk through a world of tears", "To death as to life's sleep; 'twere just the grave", "Were some strange joy for us. Come, obscure Death,", "And wind me in thine all-embracing arms!", "Like a fond mother hide me in thy bosom,", "And rock me to the sleep from which none wake.", "Live ye, who live, subject to one another", "As we were once, who now...", "", "[BERNARDO RUSHES IN.]", "", "BERNARDO:", "Oh, horrible!", "That tears, that looks, that hope poured forth in prayer,", "Even till the heart is vacant and despairs,", "Should all be vain! The ministers of death", "Are waiting round the doors. I thought I saw", "Blood on the face of one...What if 'twere fancy?", "Soon the heart's blood of all I love on earth", "Will sprinkle him, and he will wipe it off", "As if 'twere only rain. O life! O world!", "Cover me! let me be no more! To see", "That perfect mirror of pure innocence", "Wherein I gazed, and grew happy and good,", "Shivered to dust! To see thee, Beatrice,", "Who made all lovely thou didst look upon...", "Thee, light of life ... dead, dark! while I say, sister,", "To hear I have no sister; and thou, Mother,", "Whose love was as a bond to all our loves...", "Dead! The sweet bond broken!", "[ENTER CAMILLO AND GUARDS.]", "They come! Let me", "Kiss those warm lips before their crimson leaves", "Are blighted...white...cold. Say farewell, before", "Death chokes that gentle voice! Oh, let me hear", "You speak!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Farewell, my tender brother. Think", "Of our sad fate with gentleness, as now:", "And let mild, pitying thoughts lighten for thee", "Thy sorrow's load. Err not in harsh despair,", "But tears and patience. One thing more, my child:", "For thine own sake be constant to the love", "Thou bearest us; and to the faith that I,", "Though wrapped in a strange cloud of crime and shame,", "Lived ever holy and unstained. And though", "Ill tongues shall wound me, and our common name", "Be as a mark stamped on thine innocent brow", "For men to point at as they pass, do thou", "Forbear, and never think a thought unkind", "Of those, who perhaps love thee in their graves.", "So mayest thou die as I do; fear and pain", "Being subdued. Farewell! Farewell! Farewell!", "", "BERNARDO:", "I cannot say, farewell!", "", "CAMILLO:", "Oh, Lady Beatrice!", "", "BEATRICE:", "Give yourself no unnecessary pain,", "My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, Mother, tie", "My girdle for me, and bind up this hair", "In any simple knot; ay, that does well.", "And yours I see is coming down. How often", "Have we done this for one another; now", "We shall not do it any more. My Lord,", "We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well." ], "linecount": "3190" }, { "title": "Peter Bell the Third. by Miching Mallecho, Esq", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Is it a party in a parlour,", "Crammed just as they on earth were crammed,", "Some sipping punch--some sipping tea;", "But, as you by their faces see,", "All silent, and all--damned!", "\"Peter Bell\", by W. WORDSWORTH.", "", "OPHELIA.--What means this, my lord?", "HAMLET.--Marry, this is Miching Mallecho; it means mischief.", "SHAKESPEARE.", "", "MICHING MALLECHO.", "", "PROLOGUE.", "", "Peter Bells, one, two and three,", "O'er the wide world wandering be.--", "First, the antenatal Peter,", "Wrapped in weeds of the same metre,", "The so-long-predestined raiment", "Clothed in which to walk his way meant", "The second Peter; whose ambition", "Is to link the proposition,", "As the mean of two extremes--", "(This was learned from Aldric's themes)", "Shielding from the guilt of schism", "The orthodoxal syllogism;", "The First Peter--he who was", "Like the shadow in the glass", "Of the second, yet unripe,", "His substantial antitype.--", "", "Then came Peter Bell the Second,", "Who henceforward must be reckoned", "The body of a double soul,", "And that portion of the whole", "Without which the rest would seem", "Ends of a disjointed dream.--", "And the Third is he who has", "O'er the grave been forced to pass", "To the other side, which is,--", "Go and try else,--just like this.", "", "Peter Bell the First was Peter", "Smugger, milder, softer, neater,", "Like the soul before it is", "Born from THAT world into THIS.", "The next Peter Bell was he,", "Predevote, like you and me,", "To good or evil as may come;", "His was the severer doom,--", "For he was an evil Cotter,", "And a polygamic Potter.", "And the last is Peter Bell,", "Damned since our first parents fell,", "Damned eternally to Hell--", "Surely he deserves it well!", "", "PART 1.", "", "DEATH.", "", "And Peter Bell, when he had been", "With fresh-imported Hell-fire warmed,", "Grew serious--from his dress and mien", "'Twas very plainly to be seen", "Peter was quite reformed.", "", "His eyes turned up, his mouth turned down;", "His accent caught a nasal twang;", "He oiled his hair; there might be heard", "The grace of God in every word", "Which Peter said or sang.", "", "But Peter now grew old, and had", "An ill no doctor could unravel:", "His torments almost drove him mad;--", "Some said it was a fever bad--", "Some swore it was the gravel.", "", "His holy friends then came about,", "And with long preaching and persuasion", "Convinced the patient that, without", "The smallest shadow of a doubt,", "He was predestined to damnation.", "", "They said--'Thy name is Peter Bell;", "Thy skin is of a brimstone hue;", "Alive or dead--ay, sick or well--", "The one God made to rhyme with hell;", "The other, I think, rhymes with you.", "", "Then Peter set up such a yell!--", "The nurse, who with some water gruel", "Was climbing up the stairs, as well", "As her old legs could climb them--fell,", "And broke them both--the fall was cruel.", "", "The Parson from the casement lept", "Into the lake of Windermere--", "And many an eel--though no adept", "In God's right reason for it--kept", "Gnawing his kidneys half a year.", "", "And all the rest rushed through the door", "And tumbled over one another,", "And broke their skulls.--Upon the floor", "Meanwhile sat Peter Bell, and swore,", "And cursed his father and his mother;", "", "And raved of God, and sin, and death,", "Blaspheming like an infidel;", "And said, that with his clenched teeth", "He'd seize the earth from underneath,", "And drag it with him down to hell.", "", "As he was speaking came a spasm,", "And wrenched his gnashing teeth asunder;", "Like one who sees a strange phantasm", "He lay,--there was a silent chasm", "Between his upper jaw and under.", "", "And yellow death lay on his face;", "And a fixed smile that was not human", "Told, as I understand the case,", "That he was gone to the wrong place:--", "I heard all this from the old woman.", "", "Then there came down from Langdale Pike", "A cloud, with lightning, wind and hail;", "It swept over the mountains like", "An ocean,--and I heard it strike", "The woods and crags of Grasmere vale.", "", "And I saw the black storm come", "Nearer, minute after minute;", "Its thunder made the cataracts dumb;", "With hiss, and clash, and hollow hum,", "It neared as if the Devil was in it.", "", "The Devil WAS in it:--he had bought", "Peter for half-a-crown; and when", "The storm which bore him vanished, nought", "That in the house that storm had caught", "Was ever seen again.", "", "The gaping neighbours came next day--", "They found all vanished from the shore:", "The Bible, whence he used to pray,", "Half scorched under a hen-coop lay;", "Smashed glass--and nothing more!", "", "PART 2.", "", "THE DEVIL.", "", "The Devil, I safely can aver,", "Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting;", "Nor is he, as some sages swear,", "A spirit, neither here nor there,", "In nothing--yet in everything.", "", "He is--what we are; for sometimes", "The Devil is a gentleman;", "At others a bard bartering rhymes", "For sack; a statesman spinning crimes;", "A swindler, living as he can;", "", "A thief, who cometh in the night,", "With whole boots and net pantaloons,", "Like some one whom it were not right", "To mention;--or the luckless wight", "From whom he steals nine silver spoons.", "", "But in this case he did appear", "Like a slop-merchant from Wapping,", "And with smug face, and eye severe,", "On every side did perk and peer", "Till he saw Peter dead or napping.", "", "He had on an upper Benjamin", "(For he was of the driving schism)", "In the which he wrapped his skin", "From the storm he travelled in,", "For fear of rheumatism.", "", "He called the ghost out of the corse;--", "It was exceedingly like Peter,--", "Only its voice was hollow and hoarse--", "It had a queerish look of course--", "Its dress too was a little neater.", "", "The Devil knew not his name and lot;", "Peter knew not that he was Bell:", "Each had an upper stream of thought,", "Which made all seem as it was not;", "Fitting itself to all things well.", "", "Peter thought he had parents dear,", "Brothers, sisters, cousins, cronies,", "In the fens of Lincolnshire;", "He perhaps had found them there", "Had he gone and boldly shown his", "", "Solemn phiz in his own village;", "Where he thought oft when a boy", "He'd clomb the orchard walls to pillage", "The produce of his neighbour's tillage,", "With marvellous pride and joy.", "", "And the Devil thought he had,", "'Mid the misery and confusion", "Of an unjust war, just made", "A fortune by the gainful trade", "Of giving soldiers rations bad--", "The world is full of strange delusion--", "", "That he had a mansion planned", "In a square like Grosvenor Square,", "That he was aping fashion, and", "That he now came to Westmoreland", "To see what was romantic there.", "", "And all this, though quite ideal,--", "Ready at a breath to vanish,--", "Was a state not more unreal", "Than the peace he could not feel,", "Or the care he could not banish.", "", "After a little conversation,", "The Devil told Peter, if he chose,", "He'd bring him to the world of fashion", "By giving him a situation", "In his own service--and new clothes.", "", "And Peter bowed, quite pleased and proud,", "And after waiting some few days", "For a new livery--dirty yellow", "Turned up with black--the wretched fellow", "Was bowled to Hell in the Devil's chaise.", "", "PART 3.", "", "HELL.", "", "Hell is a city much like London--", "A populous and a smoky city;", "There are all sorts of people undone,", "And there is little or no fun done;", "Small justice shown, and still less pity.", "", "There is a Castles, and a Canning,", "A Cobbett, and a Castlereagh;", "All sorts of caitiff corpses planning", "All sorts of cozening for trepanning", "Corpses less corrupt than they.", "", "There is a , who has lost", "His wits, or sold them, none knows which;", "He walks about a double ghost,", "And though as thin as Fraud almost--", "Ever grows more grim and rich.", "", "There is a Chancery Court; a King;", "A manufacturing mob; a set", "Of thieves who by themselves are sent", "Similar thieves to represent;", "An army; and a public debt.", "", "Which last is a scheme of paper money,", "And means--being interpreted--", "'Bees, keep your wax--give us the honey,", "And we will plant, while skies are sunny,", "Flowers, which in winter serve instead.'", "", "There is a great talk of revolution--", "And a great chance of despotism--", "German soldiers--camps--confusion--", "Tumults--lotteries--rage--delusion--", "Gin--suicide--and methodism;", "", "Taxes too, on wine and bread,", "And meat, and beer, and tea, and cheese,", "From which those patriots pure are fed,", "Who gorge before they reel to bed", "The tenfold essence of all these.", "", "There are mincing women, mewing,", "(Like cats, who amant misere,)", "Of their own virtue, and pursuing", "Their gentler sisters to that ruin,", "Without which--what were chastity?(2)", "", "Lawyers--judges--old hobnobbers", "Are there--bailiffs--chancellors--", "Bishops--great and little robbers--", "Rhymesters--pamphleteers--stock-jobbers--", "Men of glory in the wars,--", "", "Things whose trade is, over ladies", "To lean, and flirt, and stare, and simper,", "Till all that is divine in woman", "Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,", "Crucified 'twixt a smile and whimper.", "", "Thrusting, toiling, wailing, moiling,", "Frowning, preaching--such a riot!", "Each with never-ceasing labour,", "Whilst he thinks he cheats his neighbour,", "Cheating his own heart of quiet.", "", "And all these meet at levees;--", "Dinners convivial and political;--", "Suppers of epic poets;--teas,", "Where small talk dies in agonies;--", "Breakfasts professional and critical;", "", "Lunches and snacks so aldermanic", "That one would furnish forth ten dinners,", "Where reigns a Cretan-tongued panic,", "Lest news Russ, Dutch, or Alemannic", "Should make some losers, and some winners--", "", "At conversazioni--balls--", "Conventicles--and drawing-rooms--", "Courts of law--committees--calls", "Of a morning--clubs--book-stalls--", "Churches--masquerades--and tombs.", "", "And this is Hell--and in this smother", "All are damnable and damned;", "Each one damning, damns the other;", "They are damned by one another,", "By none other are they damned.", "", "'Tis a lie to say, 'God damns'! (1)", "Where was Heaven's Attorney General", "When they first gave out such flams?", "Let there be an end of shams,", "They are mines of poisonous mineral.", "", "Statesmen damn themselves to be", "Cursed; and lawyers damn their souls", "To the auction of a fee;", "Churchmen damn themselves to see", "God's sweet love in burning coals.", "", "The rich are damned, beyond all cure,", "To taunt, and starve, and trample on", "The weak and wretched; and the poor", "Damn their broken hearts to endure", "Stripe on stripe, with groan on groan.", "", "Sometimes the poor are damned indeed", "To take,--not means for being blessed,--", "But Cobbett's snuff, revenge; that weed", "From which the worms that it doth feed", "Squeeze less than they before possessed.", "", "And some few, like we know who,", "Damned--but God alone knows why--", "To believe their minds are given", "To make this ugly Hell a Heaven;", "In which faith they live and die.", "", "Thus, as in a town, plague-stricken,", "Each man be he sound or no", "Must indifferently sicken;", "As when day begins to thicken,", "None knows a pigeon from a crow,--", "", "So good and bad, sane and mad,", "The oppressor and the oppressed;", "Those who weep to see what others", "Smile to inflict upon their brothers;", "Lovers, haters, worst and best;", "", "All are damned--they breathe an air,", "Thick, infected, joy-dispelling:", "Each pursues what seems most fair,", "Mining like moles, through mind, and there", "Scoop palace-caverns vast, where Care", "In throned state is ever dwelling.", "", "PART 4.", "", "SIN.", "", "Lo. Peter in Hell's Grosvenor Square,", "A footman in the Devil's service!", "And the misjudging world would swear", "That every man in service there", "To virtue would prefer vice.", "", "But Peter, though now damned, was not", "What Peter was before damnation.", "Men oftentimes prepare a lot", "Which ere it finds them, is not what", "Suits with their genuine station.", "", "All things that Peter saw and felt", "Had a peculiar aspect to him;", "And when they came within the belt", "Of his own nature, seemed to melt,", "Like cloud to cloud, into him.", "", "And so the outward world uniting", "To that within him, he became", "Considerably uninviting", "To those who, meditation slighting,", "Were moulded in a different frame.", "", "And he scorned them, and they scorned him;", "And he scorned all they did; and they", "Did all that men of their own trim", "Are wont to do to please their whim,", "Drinking, lying, swearing, play.", "", "Such were his fellow-servants; thus", "His virtue, like our own, was built", "Too much on that indignant fuss", "Hypocrite Pride stirs up in us", "To bully one another's guilt.", "", "He had a mind which was somehow", "At once circumference and centre", "Of all he might or feel or know;", "Nothing went ever out, although", "Something did ever enter.", "", "He had as much imagination", "As a pint-pot;--he never could", "Fancy another situation,", "From which to dart his contemplation,", "Than that wherein he stood.", "", "Yet his was individual mind,", "And new created all he saw", "In a new manner, and refined", "Those new creations, and combined", "Them, by a master-spirit's law.", "", "Thus--though unimaginative--", "An apprehension clear, intense,", "Of his mind's work, had made alive", "The things it wrought on; I believe", "Wakening a sort of thought in sense.", "", "But from the first 'twas Peter's drift", "To be a kind of moral eunuch,", "He touched the hem of Nature's shift,", "Felt faint--and never dared uplift", "The closest, all-concealing tunic.", "", "She laughed the while, with an arch smile,", "And kissed him with a sister's kiss,", "And said--My best Diogenes,", "I love you well--but, if you please,", "Tempt not again my deepest bliss.", "", "''Tis you are cold--for I, not coy,", "Yield love for love, frank, warm, and true;", "And Burns, a Scottish peasant boy--", "His errors prove it--knew my joy", "More, learned friend, than you.", "", "'Boeca bacciata non perde ventura,", "Anzi rinnuova come fa la luna:--", "So thought Boccaccio, whose sweet words might cure a", "Male prude, like you, from what you now endure, a", "Low-tide in soul, like a stagnant laguna.", "", "Then Peter rubbed his eyes severe.", "And smoothed his spacious forehead down", "With his broad palm;--'twixt love and fear,", "He looked, as he no doubt felt, queer,", "And in his dream sate down.", "", "The Devil was no uncommon creature;", "A leaden-witted thief--just huddled", "Out of the dross and scum of nature;", "A toad-like lump of limb and feature,", "With mind, and heart, and fancy muddled.", "", "He was that heavy, dull, cold thing,", "The spirit of evil well may be:", "A drone too base to have a sting;", "Who gluts, and grimes his lazy wing,", "And calls lust, luxury.", "", "Now he was quite the kind of wight", "Round whom collect, at a fixed aera,", "Venison, turtle, hock, and claret,--", "Good cheer--and those who come to share it--", "And best East Indian madeira!", "", "It was his fancy to invite", "Men of science, wit, and learning,", "Who came to lend each other light;", "He proudly thought that his gold's might", "Had set those spirits burning.", "", "And men of learning, science, wit,", "Considered him as you and I", "Think of some rotten tree, and sit", "Lounging and dining under it,", "Exposed to the wide sky.", "", "And all the while with loose fat smile,", "The willing wretch sat winking there,", "Believing 'twas his power that made", "That jovial scene--and that all paid", "Homage to his unnoticed chair.", "", "Though to be sure this place was Hell;", "He was the Devil--and all they--", "What though the claret circled well,", "And wit, like ocean, rose and fell?--", "Were damned eternally.", "", "PART 5.", "", "GRACE.", "", "Among the guests who often stayed", "Till the Devil's petits-soupers,", "A man there came, fair as a maid,", "And Peter noted what he said,", "Standing behind his master's chair.", "", "He was a mighty poet--and", "A subtle-souled psychologist;", "All things he seemed to understand,", "Of old or new--of sea or land--", "But his own mind--which was a mist.", "", "This was a man who might have turned", "Hell into Heaven--and so in gladness", "A Heaven unto himself have earned;", "But he in shadows undiscerned", "Trusted.--and damned himself to madness.", "", "He spoke of poetry, and how", "'Divine it was--a light--a love--", "A spirit which like wind doth blow", "As it listeth, to and fro;", "A dew rained down from God above;", "", "'A power which comes and goes like dream,", "And which none can ever trace--", "Heaven's light on earth--Truth's brightest beam.'", "And when he ceased there lay the gleam", "Of those words upon his face.", "", "Now Peter, when he heard such talk,", "Would, heedless of a broken pate,", "Stand like a man asleep, or balk", "Some wishing guest of knife or fork,", "Or drop and break his master's plate.", "", "At night he oft would start and wake", "Like a lover, and began", "In a wild measure songs to make", "On moor, and glen, and rocky lake,", "And on the heart of man--", "", "And on the universal sky--", "And the wide earth's bosom green,--", "And the sweet, strange mystery", "Of what beyond these things may lie,", "And yet remain unseen.", "", "For in his thought he visited", "The spots in which, ere dead and damned,", "He his wayward life had led;", "Yet knew not whence the thoughts were fed", "Which thus his fancy crammed.", "", "And these obscure remembrances", "Stirred such harmony in Peter,", "That, whensoever he should please,", "He could speak of rocks and trees", "In poetic metre.", "", "For though it was without a sense", "Of memory, yet he remembered well", "Many a ditch and quick-set fence;", "Of lakes he had intelligence,", "He knew something of heath and fell.", "", "He had also dim recollections", "Of pedlars tramping on their rounds;", "Milk-pans and pails; and odd collections", "Of saws, and proverbs; and reflections", "Old parsons make in burying-grounds.", "", "But Peter's verse was clear, and came", "Announcing from the frozen hearth", "Of a cold age, that none might tame", "The soul of that diviner flame", "It augured to the Earth:", "", "Like gentle rains, on the dry plains,", "Making that green which late was gray,", "Or like the sudden moon, that stains", "Some gloomy chamber's window-panes", "With a broad light like day.", "", "For language was in Peter's hand", "Like clay while he was yet a potter;", "And he made songs for all the land,", "Sweet both to feel and understand,", "As pipkins late to mountain Cotter.", "", "And Mr. --, the bookseller,", "Gave twenty pounds for some;--then scorning", "A footman's yellow coat to wear,", "Peter, too proud of heart, I fear,", "Instantly gave the Devil warning.", "", "Whereat the Devil took offence,", "And swore in his soul a great oath then,", "'That for his damned impertinence", "He'd bring him to a proper sense", "Of what was due to gentlemen!'", "", "PART 6.", "", "DAMNATION.", "", "'O that mine enemy had written", "A book!'--cried Job:--a fearful curse,", "If to the Arab, as the Briton,", "'Twas galling to be critic-bitten:--", "The Devil to Peter wished no worse.", "", "When Peter's next new book found vent,", "The Devil to all the first Reviews", "A copy of it slyly sent,", "With five-pound note as compliment,", "And this short notice--'Pray abuse.'", "", "Then seriatim, month and quarter,", "Appeared such mad tirades.--One said--", "'Peter seduced Mrs. Foy's daughter,", "Then drowned the mother in Ullswater,", "The last thing as he went to bed.'", "", "Another--'Let him shave his head!", "Where's Dr. Willis?--Or is he joking?", "What does the rascal mean or hope,", "No longer imitating Pope,", "In that barbarian Shakespeare poking?'", "", "One more, 'Is incest not enough?", "And must there be adultery too?", "Grace after meat? Miscreant and Liar!", "Thief! Blackguard! Scoundrel! Fool! hell-fire", "Is twenty times too good for you.", "", "'By that last book of yours WE think", "You've double damned yourself to scorn;", "We warned you whilst yet on the brink", "You stood. From your black name will shrink", "The babe that is unborn.'", "", "All these Reviews the Devil made", "Up in a parcel, which he had", "Safely to Peter's house conveyed.", "For carriage, tenpence Peter paid--", "Untied them--read them--went half mad.", "", "'What!' cried he, 'this is my reward", "For nights of thought, and days, of toil?", "Do poets, but to be abhorred", "By men of whom they never heard,", "Consume their spirits' oil?", "", "'What have I done to them?--and who", "IS Mrs. Foy? 'Tis very cruel", "To speak of me and Betty so!", "Adultery! God defend me! Oh!", "I've half a mind to fight a duel.", "", "'Or,' cried he, a grave look collecting,", "'Is it my genius, like the moon,", "Sets those who stand her face inspecting,", "That face within their brain reflecting,", "Like a crazed bell-chime, out of tune?'", "", "For Peter did not know the town,", "But thought, as country readers do,", "For half a guinea or a crown,", "He bought oblivion or renown", "From God's own voice (1) in a review.", "", "All Peter did on this occasion", "Was, writing some sad stuff in prose.", "It is a dangerous invasion", "When poets criticize; their station", "Is to delight, not pose.", "", "The Devil then sent to Leipsic fair", "For Born's translation of Kant's book;", "A world of words, tail foremost, where", "Right--wrong--false--true--and foul--and fair", "As in a lottery-wheel are shook.", "", "Five thousand crammed octavo pages", "Of German psychologics,--he", "Who his furor verborum assuages", "Thereon, deserves just seven months' wages", "More than will e'er be due to me.", "", "I looked on them nine several days,", "And then I saw that they were bad;", "A friend, too, spoke in their dispraise,--", "He never read them;--with amaze", "I found Sir William Drummond had.", "", "When the book came, the Devil sent", "It to P. Verbovale (2), Esquire,", "With a brief note of compliment,", "By that night's Carlisle mail. It went,", "And set his soul on fire.", "", "Fire, which ex luce praebens fumum,", "Made him beyond the bottom see", "Of truth's clear well--when I and you, Ma'am,", "Go, as we shall do, subter humum,", "We may know more than he.", "", "Now Peter ran to seed in soul", "Into a walking paradox;", "For he was neither part nor whole,", "Nor good, nor bad--nor knave nor fool;", "--Among the woods and rocks", "", "Furious he rode, where late he ran,", "Lashing and spurring his tame hobby;", "Turned to a formal puritan,", "A solemn and unsexual man,--", "He half believed \"White Obi\".", "", "This steed in vision he would ride,", "High trotting over nine-inch bridges,", "With Flibbertigibbet, imp of pride,", "Mocking and mowing by his side--", "A mad-brained goblin for a guide--", "Over corn-fields, gates, and hedges.", "", "After these ghastly rides, he came", "Home to his heart, and found from thence", "Much stolen of its accustomed flame;", "His thoughts grew weak, drowsy, and lame", "Of their intelligence.", "", "To Peter's view, all seemed one hue;", "He was no Whig, he was no Tory;", "No Deist and no Christian he;--", "He got so subtle, that to be", "Nothing, was all his glory.", "", "One single point in his belief", "From his organization sprung,", "The heart-enrooted faith, the chief", "Ear in his doctrines' blighted sheaf,", "That 'Happiness is wrong';", "", "So thought Calvin and Dominic;", "So think their fierce successors, who", "Even now would neither stint nor stick", "Our flesh from off our bones to pick,", "If they might 'do their do.'", "", "His morals thus were undermined:--", "The old Peter--the hard, old Potter--", "Was born anew within his mind;", "He grew dull, harsh, sly, unrefined,", "As when he tramped beside the Otter. (1)", "", "In the death hues of agony", "Lambently flashing from a fish,", "Now Peter felt amused to see", "Shades like a rainbow's rise and flee,", "Mixed with a certain hungry wish(2).", "", "So in his Country's dying face", "He looked--and, lovely as she lay,", "Seeking in vain his last embrace,", "Wailing her own abandoned case,", "With hardened sneer he turned away:", "", "And coolly to his own soul said;--", "'Do you not think that we might make", "A poem on her when she's dead:--", "Or, no--a thought is in my head--", "Her shroud for a new sheet I'll take:", "", "'My wife wants one.--Let who will bury", "This mangled corpse! And I and you,", "My dearest Soul, will then make merry,", "As the Prince Regent did with Sherry,--'", "'Ay--and at last desert me too.'", "", "And so his Soul would not be gay,", "But moaned within him; like a fawn", "Moaning within a cave, it lay", "Wounded and wasting, day by day,", "Till all its life of life was gone.", "", "As troubled skies stain waters clear,", "The storm in Peter's heart and mind", "Now made his verses dark and queer:", "They were the ghosts of what they were,", "Shaking dim grave-clothes in the wind.", "", "For he now raved enormous folly,", "Of Baptisms, Sunday-schools, and Graves,", "'Twould make George Colman melancholy", "To have heard him, like a male Molly,", "Chanting those stupid staves.", "", "Yet the Reviews, who heaped abuse", "On Peter while he wrote for freedom,", "So soon as in his song they spy", "The folly which soothes tyranny,", "Praise him, for those who feed 'em.", "", "'He was a man, too great to scan;--", "A planet lost in truth's keen rays:--", "His virtue, awful and prodigious;--", "He was the most sublime, religious,", "Pure-minded Poet of these days.'", "", "As soon as he read that, cried Peter,", "'Eureka! I have found the way", "To make a better thing of metre", "Than e'er was made by living creature", "Up to this blessed day.'", "", "Then Peter wrote odes to the Devil;--", "In one of which he meekly said:", "'May Carnage and Slaughter,", "Thy niece and thy daughter,", "May Rapine and Famine,", "Thy gorge ever cramming,", "Glut thee with living and dead!", "", "'May Death and Damnation,", "And Consternation,", "Flit up from Hell with pure intent!", "Slash them at Manchester,", "Glasgow, Leeds, and Chester;", "Drench all with blood from Avon to Trent.", "", "'Let thy body-guard yeomen", "Hew down babes and women,", "And laugh with bold triumph till Heaven be rent!", "When Moloch in Jewry", "Munched children with fury,", "It was thou, Devil, dining with pure intent. (1)", "", "PART 7.", "", "DOUBLE DAMNATION.", "", "The Devil now knew his proper cue.--", "Soon as he read the ode, he drove", "To his friend Lord MacMurderchouse's,", "A man of interest in both houses,", "And said:--'For money or for love,", "", "'Pray find some cure or sinecure;", "To feed from the superfluous taxes", "A friend of ours--a poet--fewer", "Have fluttered tamer to the lure", "Than he.' His lordship stands and racks his", "", "Stupid brains, while one might count", "As many beads as he had boroughs,--", "At length replies; from his mean front,", "Like one who rubs out an account,", "Smoothing away the unmeaning furrows:", "", "'It happens fortunately, dear Sir,", "I can. I hope I need require", "No pledge from you, that he will stir", "In our affairs;--like Oliver.", "That he'll be worthy of his hire.'", "", "These words exchanged, the news sent off", "To Peter, home the Devil hied,--", "Took to his bed; he had no cough,", "No doctor,--meat and drink enough.--", "Yet that same night he died.", "", "The Devil's corpse was leaded down;", "His decent heirs enjoyed his pelf,", "Mourning-coaches, many a one,", "Followed his hearse along the town:--", "Where was the Devil himself?", "", "When Peter heard of his promotion,", "His eyes grew like two stars for bliss:", "There was a bow of sleek devotion", "Engendering in his back; each motion", "Seemed a Lord's shoe to kiss.", "", "He hired a house, bought plate, and made", "A genteel drive up to his door,", "With sifted gravel neatly laid,--", "As if defying all who said,", "Peter was ever poor.", "", "But a disease soon struck into", "The very life and soul of Peter--", "He walked about--slept--had the hue", "Of health upon his cheeks--and few", "Dug better--none a heartier eater.", "", "And yet a strange and horrid curse", "Clung upon Peter, night and day;", "Month after month the thing grew worse,", "And deadlier than in this my verse", "I can find strength to say.", "", "Peter was dull--he was at first", "Dull--oh, so dull--so very dull!", "Whether he talked, wrote, or rehearsed--", "Still with this dulness was he cursed--", "Dull--beyond all conception--dull.", "", "No one could read his books--no mortal,", "But a few natural friends, would hear him;", "The parson came not near his portal;", "His state was like that of the immortal", "Described by Swift--no man could bear him.", "", "His sister, wife, and children yawned,", "With a long, slow, and drear ennui,", "All human patience far beyond;", "Their hopes of Heaven each would have pawned,", "Anywhere else to be.", "", "But in his verse, and in his prose,", "The essence of his dulness was", "Concentred and compressed so close,", "'Twould have made Guatimozin doze", "On his red gridiron of brass.", "", "A printer's boy, folding those pages,", "Fell slumbrously upon one side;", "Like those famed Seven who slept three ages.", "To wakeful frenzy's vigil--rages,", "As opiates, were the same applied.", "", "Even the Reviewers who were hired", "To do the work of his reviewing,", "With adamantine nerves, grew tired;--", "Gaping and torpid they retired,", "To dream of what they should be doing.", "", "And worse and worse, the drowsy curse", "Yawned in him, till it grew a pest--", "A wide contagious atmosphere,", "Creeping like cold through all things near;", "A power to infect and to infest.", "", "His servant-maids and dogs grew dull;", "His kitten, late a sportive elf;", "The woods and lakes, so beautiful,", "Of dim stupidity were full.", "All grew dull as Peter's self.", "", "The earth under his feet--the springs,", "Which lived within it a quick life,", "The air, the winds of many wings,", "That fan it with new murmurings,", "Were dead to their harmonious strife.", "", "The birds and beasts within the wood,", "The insects, and each creeping thing,", "Were now a silent multitude;", "Love's work was left unwrought--no brood", "Near Peter's house took wing.", "", "And every neighbouring cottager", "Stupidly yawned upon the other:", "No jackass brayed; no little cur", "Cocked up his ears;--no man would stir", "To save a dying mother.", "", "Yet all from that charmed district went", "But some half-idiot and half-knave,", "Who rather than pay any rent,", "Would live with marvellous content,", "Over his father's grave.", "", "No bailiff dared within that space,", "For fear of the dull charm, to enter;", "A man would bear upon his face,", "For fifteen months in any case,", "The yawn of such a venture.", "", "Seven miles above--below--around--", "This pest of dulness holds its sway;", "A ghastly life without a sound;", "To Peter's soul the spell is bound--", "How should it ever pass away?" ], "linecount": "837" }, { "title": "The Witch of Atlas", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "TO MARY", "", "(ON HER OBJECTING TO THE FOLLOWING POEM, UPON THE", "SCORE OF ITS CONTAINING NO HUMAN INTEREST).", "", "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,", "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.", "", "What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,", "The youngest of inconstant April's minions,", "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,", "Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.", "", "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;", "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!", "", "Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years", "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", "May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil", "The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.", "", "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,", "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.'", "", "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.", "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.", "", "Before those cruel Twins, whom at one birth", "Incestuous Change bore to her father Time,", "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", "Within a cavern, by a secret fountain.", "", "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", "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.", "", "'Tis said, she first was changed into a vapour,", "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:", "Then, into one of those mysterious stars", "Which hide themselves between the Earth and Mars.", "", "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", "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.", "", "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.", "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.", "", "And first the spotted cameleopard came,", "And then the wise and fearless elephant;", "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,", "Such gentleness and power even to behold.", "", "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", "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.", "", "And old Silenus, shaking a green stick", "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;", "Till in this cave they found the lady lone,", "Sitting upon a seat of emerald stone.", "", "And universal Pan, 'tis said, was there,", "And though none saw him,--through the adamant", "Of the deep mountains, through the trackless air,", "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.", "", "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,", "All came, much wondering how the enwombed rocks", "Could have brought forth so beautiful a birth;--", "Her love subdued their wonder and their mirth.", "", "The herdsmen and the mountain maidens came,", "And the rude kings of pastoral Garamant--", "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,", "Dog-headed, bosom-eyed, and bird-footed.", "", "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,", "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.", "", "Which when the lady knew, she took her spindle", "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;", "And with these threads a subtle veil she wove--", "A shadow for the splendour of her love.", "", "The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling", "Were stored with magic treasures--sounds of air,", "Which had the power all spirits of compelling,", "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.", "", "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", "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.", "", "And odours in a kind of aviary", "Of ever-blooming Eden-trees she kept,", "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,", "To stir sweet thoughts or sad, in destined minds.", "", "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,", "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.", "", "Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device,", "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", "Of gold and blood--till men should live and move", "Harmonious as the sacred stars above;", "", "And how all things that seem untameable,", "Not to be checked and not to be confined,", "Obey the spells of Wisdom's wizard skill;", "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.", "", "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", "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.", "", "At first she lived alone in this wild home,", "And her own thoughts were each a minister,", "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,", "Through all the regions which he shines upon.", "", "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,", "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.", "", "'This may not be,' the wizard maid replied;", "'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", "Will be consumed--the stubborn centre must", "Be scattered, like a cloud of summer dust.", "", "'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", "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!'--", "", "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", "Of sobbing voices came upon her ears", "From those departing Forms, o'er the serene", "Of the white streams and of the forest green.", "", "All day the wizard lady sate aloof,", "Spelling out scrolls of dread antiquity,", "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", "Added some grace to the wrought poesy.", "", "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", "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.", "", "This lady never slept, but lay in trance", "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", "The tenour of her contemplations calm,", "With open eyes, closed feet, and folded palm.", "", "And when the whirlwinds and the clouds descended", "From the white pinnacles of that cold hill,", "She passed at dewfall to a space extended,", "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.", "", "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--", "And when the windless snow descended thicker", "Than autumn leaves, she watched it as it came", "Melt on the surface of the level flame.", "", "She had a boat, which some say Vulcan wrought", "For Venus, as the chariot of her star;", "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", "Which ever upon mortal stream did float.", "", "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,", "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.", "", "The plant grew strong and green, the snowy flower", "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--", "Of which Love scooped this boat--and with soft motion", "Piloted it round the circumfluous ocean.", "", "This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit", "A living spirit within all its frame,", "Breathing the soul of swiftness into it.", "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.", "", "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--", "A living Image, which did far surpass", "In beauty that bright shape of vital stone", "Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.", "", "A sexless thing it was, and in its growth", "It seemed to have developed no defect", "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,", "Imaging forth such perfect purity.", "", "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:", "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.", "", "And down the streams which clove those mountains vast,", "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", "Of icy crag cleaving the purple sky,", "And caverns yawning round unfathomably.", "", "The silver noon into that winding dell,", "With slanted gleam athwart the forest tops,", "Tempered like golden evening, feebly fell;", "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.", "", "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,", "And drinking the warm tears, and the sweet sighs", "Inhaling, which, with busy murmur vain,", "They had aroused from that full heart and brain.", "", "And ever down the prone vale, like a cloud", "Upon a stream of wind, the pinnace went:", "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", "In such a shallow rapid could not float.", "", "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", "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.", "", "And when the wizard lady would ascend", "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", "A rapid shadow from a slope of grass,", "Into the darkness of the stream did pass.", "", "And it unfurled its heaven-coloured pinions,", "With stars of fire spotting the stream below;", "And from above into the Sun's dominions", "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.", "", "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", "Breasting the whirlwind with impetuous flight,", "The pinnace, oared by those enchanted wings,", "Clove the fierce streams towards their upper springs.", "", "The water flashed, like sunlight by the prow", "Of a noon-wandering meteor flung to Heaven;", "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", "The swift and steady motion of the keel.", "", "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", "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,--", "", "Where, like a meadow which no scythe has shaven,", "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", "The bastions of the storm, when through the sky", "The spirits of the tempest thundered by:", "", "A haven beneath whose translucent floor", "The tremulous stars sparkled unfathomably,", "And around which the solid vapours hoar,", "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.", "", "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", "Looked like the wreck of some wind-wandering", "Fragment of inky thunder-smoke--this haven", "Was as a gem to copy Heaven engraven,--", "", "On which that lady played her many pranks,", "Circling the image of a shooting star,", "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,", "To journey from the misty east began.", "", "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,", "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.", "", "They framed the imperial tent of their great Queen", "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", "A tapestry of fleece-like mist was strewn,", "Dyed in the beams of the ascending moon.", "", "And on a throne o'erlaid with starlight, caught", "Upon those wandering isles of aery dew,", "Which highest shoals of mountain shipwreck not,", "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.", "", "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", "Following the serpent lightning's winding track,", "She ran upon the platforms of the wind,", "And laughed to bear the fire-balls roar behind.", "", "And sometimes to those streams of upper air", "Which whirl the earth in its diurnal round,", "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,", "And happy thoughts of hope, too sweet to last.", "", "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,", "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.", "", "By Moeris and the Mareotid lakes,", "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", "Of the great Labyrinth slept both boy and beast,", "Tired with the pomp of their Osirian feast.", "", "And where within the surface of the river", "The shadows of the massy temples lie,", "And never are erased--but tremble ever", "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.", "", "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", "With many a dark and subterranean street", "Under the Nile, through chambers high and deep", "She passed, observing mortals in their sleep.", "", "A pleasure sweet doubtless it was to see", "Mortals subdued in all the shapes of sleep.", "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", "Old age with snow-bright hair and folded palm.", "", "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;", "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.'", "", "And little did the sight disturb her soul.--", "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,", "Where in bright bowers immortal forms abide", "Beneath the weltering of the restless tide.", "", "And she saw princes couched under the glow", "Of sunlike gems; and round each temple-court", "In dormitories ranged, row after row,", "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.", "", "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", "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.", "", "She, all those human figures breathing there,", "Beheld as living spirits--to her eyes", "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,", "Could make that spirit mingle with her own.", "", "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", "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.", "", "'Tis said in after times her spirit free", "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,", "Among those mortal forms, the wizard-maiden", "Passed with an eye serene and heart unladen.", "", "To those she saw most beautiful, she gave", "Strange panacea in a crystal bowl:--", "They drank in their deep sleep of that sweet wave,", "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.", "", "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", "Of second childhood's swaddling bands, and took", "The coffin, its last cradle, from its niche,", "And threw it with contempt into a ditch.", "", "And there the body lay, age after age.", "Mute, breathing, beating, warm, and undecaying,", "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", "And fleeting generations of mankind.", "", "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", "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.", "", "The priests would write an explanation full,", "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", "Whate'er they thought of hawks, and cats, and geese,", "By pastoral letters to each diocese.", "", "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", "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!", "", "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", "The gaolers sent those of the liberal schism", "Free through the streets of Memphis, much, I wis,", "To the annoyance of king Amasis.", "", "And timid lovers who had been so coy,", "They hardly knew whether they loved or not,", "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", "Only in fancy--till the tenth moon shone;", "", "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.", "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.", "", "These were the pranks she played among the cities", "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", "Than for these garish summer days, when we", "Scarcely believe much more than we can see." ], "linecount": "676" }, { "title": "Oedipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot the Tyrant. a Tragedy in Two Acts", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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.'", "", "SCENE.--THEBES.", "", "ACT 1.", "", "SCENE 1.1.--A MAGNIFICENT TEMPLE, BUILT OF THIGH-BONES AND", "DEATH'S-HEADS, AND TILED WITH SCALPS. OVER THE ALTAR THE STATUE OF", "FAMINE, VEILED; A NUMBER OF BOARS, SOWS, AND SUCKING-PIGS, CROWNED", "WITH THISTLE, SHAMROCK, AND OAK, SITTING ON THE STEPS, AND CLINGING", "ROUND THE ALTAR OF THE TEMPLE.", "", "ENTER SWELLFOOT, IN HIS ROYAL ROBES, WITHOUT PERCEIVING THE PIGS.", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "Thou supreme Goddess! by whose power divine", "These graceful limbs are clothed in proud array", "[HE CONTEMPLATES HIMSELF WITH SATISFACTION.]", "Of gold and purple, and this kingly paunch", "Swells like a sail before a favouring breeze,", "And these most sacred nether promontories", "Lie satisfied with layers of fat; and these", "Boeotian cheeks, like Egypt's pyramid,", "(Nor with less toil were their foundations laid),", "Sustain the cone of my untroubled brain,", "That point, the emblem of a pointless nothing!", "Thou to whom Kings and laurelled Emperors,", "Radical-butchers, Paper-money-millers,", "Bishops and Deacons, and the entire army", "Of those fat martyrs to the persecution", "Of stifling turtle-soup, and brandy-devils,", "Offer their secret vows! Thou plenteous Ceres", "Of their Eleusis, hail!", "", "SWINE:", "Eigh! eigh! eigh! eigh!", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "Ha! what are ye,", "Who, crowned with leaves devoted to the Furies,", "Cling round this sacred shrine?", "", "SWINE:", "Aigh! aigh! aigh!", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "What! ye that are", "The very beasts that, offered at her altar", "With blood and groans, salt-cake, and fat, and inwards,", "Ever propitiate her reluctant will", "When taxes are withheld?", "", "SWINE:", "Ugh! ugh! ugh!", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "What! ye who grub", "With filthy snouts my red potatoes up", "In Allan's rushy bog? Who eat the oats", "Up, from my cavalry in the Hebrides?", "Who swill the hog-wash soup my cooks digest", "From bones, and rags, and scraps of shoe-leather,", "Which should be given to cleaner Pigs than you?", "", "SWINE--SEMICHORUS 1:", "The same, alas! the same;", "Though only now the name", "Of Pig remains to me.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "If 'twere your kingly will", "Us wretched Swine to kill,", "What should we yield to thee?", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "Why, skin and bones, and some few hairs for mortar.", "", "CHORUS OF SWINE:", "I have heard your Laureate sing,", "That pity was a royal thing;", "Under your mighty ancestors, we Pigs", "Were bless'd as nightingales on myrtle sprigs,", "Or grasshoppers that live on noonday dew,", "And sung, old annals tell, as sweetly too;", "But now our sties are fallen in, we catch", "The murrain and the mange, the scab and itch;", "Sometimes your royal dogs tear down our thatch,", "And then we seek the shelter of a ditch;", "Hog-wash or grains, or ruta-baga, none", "Has yet been ours since your reign begun.", "", "FIRST SOW:", "My Pigs, 'tis in vain to tug.", "", "SECOND SOW:", "I could almost eat my litter.", "", "FIRST PIG:", "I suck, but no milk will come from the dug.", "", "SECOND PIG:", "Our skin and our bones would be bitter.", "", "THE BOARS:", "We fight for this rag of greasy rug,", "Though a trough of wash would be fitter.", "", "SEMICHORUS:", "Happier Swine were they than we,", "Drowned in the Gadarean sea--", "I wish that pity would drive out the devils,", "Which in your royal bosom hold their revels,", "And sink us in the waves of thy compassion!", "Alas! the Pigs are an unhappy nation!", "Now if your Majesty would have our bristles", "To bind your mortar with, or fill our colons", "With rich blood, or make brawn out of our gristles,", "In policy--ask else your royal Solons--", "You ought to give us hog-wash and clean straw,", "And sties well thatched; besides it is the law!", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "This is sedition, and rank blasphemy!", "Ho! there, my guards!", "", "[ENTER A GUARD.]", "", "GUARD:", "Your sacred Majesty.", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "Call in the Jews, Solomon the court porkman,", "Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah", "The hog-butcher.", "", "GUARD:", "They are in waiting, Sire.", "", "[ENTER SOLOMON, MOSES, AND ZEPHANIAH.]", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "Out with your knife, old Moses, and spay those Sows", "[THE PIGS RUN ABOUT IN CONSTERNATION.]", "That load the earth with Pigs; cut close and deep.", "Moral restraint I see has no effect,", "Nor prostitution, nor our own example,", "Starvation, typhus-fever, war, nor prison--", "This was the art which the arch-priest of Famine", "Hinted at in his charge to the Theban clergy--", "Cut close and deep, good Moses.", "", "MOSES:", "Let your Majesty", "Keep the Boars quiet, else--", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "Zephaniah, cut", "That fat Hog's throat, the brute seems overfed;", "Seditious hunks! to whine for want of grains.", "", "ZEPHANIAH:", "Your sacred Majesty, he has the dropsy;--", "We shall find pints of hydatids in 's liver,", "He has not half an inch of wholesome fat", "Upon his carious ribs--", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "'Tis all the same,", "He'll serve instead of riot money, when", "Our murmuring troops bivouac in Thebes' streets", "And January winds, after a day", "Of butchering, will make them relish carrion.", "Now, Solomon, I'll sell you in a lump", "The whole kit of them.", "", "SOLOMON:", "Why, your Majesty,", "I could not give--", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "Kill them out of the way,", "That shall be price enough, and let me hear", "Their everlasting grunts and whines no more!", "", "[EXEUNT, DRIVING IN THE SWINE.", "ENTER MAMM0N, THE ARCH-PRIEST,", "AND PURGANAX, CHIEF OF THE COUNCIL OF WIZARDS.]", "", "PURGANAX:", "The future looks as black as death, a cloud,", "Dark as the frown of Hell, hangs over it--", "The troops grow mutinous--the revenue fails--", "There's something rotten in us--for the level", "Of the State slopes, its very bases topple,", "The boldest turn their backs upon themselves!", "", "MAMMON:", "Why what's the matter, my dear fellow, now?", "Do the troops mutiny?--decimate some regiments;", "Does money fail?--come to my mint--coin paper,", "Till gold be at a discount, and ashamed", "To show his bilious face, go purge himself,", "In emulation of her vestal whiteness.", "", "PURGANAX:", "Oh, would that this were all! The oracle!!", "", "MAMMON:", "Why it was I who spoke that oracle,", "And whether I was dead drunk or inspired,", "I cannot well remember; nor, in truth,", "The oracle itself!", "", "PURGANAX:", "The words went thus:--", "'Boeotia, choose reform or civil war!", "When through the streets, instead of hare with dogs,", "A Consort Queen shall hunt a King with Hogs,", "Riding on the Ionian Minotaur.'", "", "MAMMON:", "Now if the oracle had ne'er foretold", "This sad alternative, it must arrive,", "Or not, and so it must now that it has;", "And whether I was urged by grace divine", "Or Lesbian liquor to declare these words,", "Which must, as all words must, he false or true,", "It matters not: for the same Power made all,", "Oracle, wine, and me and you--or none--", "'Tis the same thing. If you knew as much", "Of oracles as I do--", "", "PURGANAX:", "You arch-priests", "Believe in nothing; if you were to dream", "Of a particular number in the Lottery,", "You would not buy the ticket?", "", "MAMMON:", "Yet our tickets", "Are seldom blanks. But what steps have you taken?", "For prophecies, when once they get abroad,", "Like liars who tell the truth to serve their ends,", "Or hypocrites who, from assuming virtue,", "Do the same actions that the virtuous do,", "Contrive their own fulfilment. This Iona--", "Well--you know what the chaste Pasiphae did,", "Wife to that most religious King of Crete,", "And still how popular the tale is here;", "And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent", "From the free Minotaur. You know they still", "Call themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate,", "And everything relating to a Bull", "Is popular and respectable in Thebes.", "Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules;", "They think their strength consists in eating beef,--", "Now there were danger in the precedent", "If Queen Iona--", "", "PURGANAX:", "I have taken good care", "That shall not be. I struck the crust o' the earth", "With this enchanted rod, and Hell lay bare!", "And from a cavern full of ugly shapes", "I chose a LEECH, a GADFLY, and a RAT.", "The Gadfly was the same which Juno sent", "To agitate Io, and which Ezekiel mentions", "That the Lord whistled for out of the mountains", "Of utmost Aethiopia, to torment", "Mesopotamian Babylon. The beast", "Has a loud trumpet like the scarabee,", "His crooked tail is barbed with many stings,", "Each able to make a thousand wounds, and each", "Immedicable; from his convex eyes", "He sees fair things in many hideous shapes,", "And trumpets all his falsehood to the world.", "Like other beetles he is fed on dung--", "He has eleven feet with which he crawls,", "Trailing a blistering slime, and this foul beast", "Has tracked Iona from the Theban limits,", "From isle to isle, from city unto city,", "Urging her flight from the far Chersonese", "To fabulous Solyma, and the Aetnean Isle,", "Ortygia, Melite, and Calypso's Rock,", "And the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez,", "Aeolia and Elysium, and thy shores,", "Parthenope, which now, alas! are free!", "And through the fortunate Saturnian land,", "Into the darkness of the West.", "", "MAMMON:", "But if", "This Gadfly should drive Iona hither?", "", "PURGANAX:", "Gods! what an IF! but there is my gray RAT:", "So thin with want, he can crawl in and out", "Of any narrow chink and filthy hole,", "And he shall creep into her dressing-room,", "And--", "", "MAMMON:", "My dear friend, where are your wits? as if", "She does not always toast a piece of cheese", "And bait the trap? and rats, when lean enough", "To crawl through SUCH chinks--", "", "PURGANAX:", "But my LEECH--a leech", "Fit to suck blood, with lubricous round rings,", "Capaciously expatiative, which make", "His little body like a red balloon,", "As full of blood as that of hydrogen,", "Sucked from men's hearts; insatiably he sucks", "And clings and pulls--a horse-leech, whose deep maw", "The plethoric King Swellfoot could not fill,", "And who, till full, will cling for ever.", "", "MAMMON:", "This", "For Queen Jona would suffice, and less;", "But 'tis the Swinish multitude I fear,", "And in that fear I have--", "", "PURGANAX:", "Done what?", "", "MAMMON:", "Disinherited", "My eldest son Chrysaor, because he", "Attended public meetings, and would always", "Stand prating there of commerce, public faith,", "Economy, and unadulterate coin,", "And other topics, ultra-radical;", "And have entailed my estate, called the Fool's Paradise,", "And funds in fairy-money, bonds, and bills,", "Upon my accomplished daughter Banknotina,", "And married her to the gallows. [1]", "", "PURGANAX:", "A good match!", "", "MAMMON:", "A high connexion, Purganax. The bridegroom", "Is of a very ancient family,", "Of Hounslow Heath, Tyburn, and the New Drop,", "And has great influence in both Houses;--oh!", "He makes the fondest husband; nay, TOO fond,--", "New-married people should not kiss in public;", "But the poor souls love one another so!", "And then my little grandchildren, the gibbets,", "Promising children as you ever saw,--", "The young playing at hanging, the elder learning", "How to hold radicals. They are well taught too,", "For every gibbet says its catechism", "And reads a select chapter in the Bible", "Before it goes to play.", "", "[A MOST TREMENDOUS HUMMING IS HEARD.]", "", "PURGANAX:", "Ha! what do I hear?", "", "[ENTER THE GADFLY.]", "", "MAMMON:", "Your Gadfly, as it seems, is tired of gadding.", "", "GADFLY:", "Hum! hum! hum!", "From the lakes of the Alps, and the cold gray scalps", "Of the mountains, I come!", "Hum! hum! hum!", "From Morocco and Fez, and the high palaces", "Of golden Byzantium;", "From the temples divine of old Palestine,", "From Athens and Rome,", "With a ha! and a hum!", "I come! I come!", "", "All inn-doors and windows", "Were open to me:", "I saw all that sin does,", "Which lamps hardly see", "That burn in the night by the curtained bed,--", "The impudent lamps! for they blushed not red,", "Dinging and singing,", "From slumber I rung her,", "Loud as the clank of an ironmonger;", "Hum! hum! hum!", "", "Far, far, far!", "With the trump of my lips, and the sting at my hips,", "I drove her--afar!", "Far, far, far!", "From city to city, abandoned of pity,", "A ship without needle or star;--", "Homeless she passed, like a cloud on the blast,", "Seeking peace, finding war;--", "She is here in her car,", "From afar, and afar;--", "Hum! hum!", "", "I have stung her and wrung her,", "The venom is working;--", "And if you had hung her", "With canting and quirking,", "She could not be deader than she will be soon;--", "I have driven her close to you, under the moon,", "Night and day, hum! hum! ha!", "I have hummed her and drummed her", "From place to place, till at last I have dumbed her,", "Hum! hum! hum!", "", "[ENTER THE LEECH AND THE RAT.]", "", "LEECH:", "I will suck", "Blood or muck!", "The disease of the state is a plethory,", "Who so fit to reduce it as I?", "", "RAT:", "I'll slily seize and", "Let blood from her weasand,--", "Creeping through crevice, and chink, and cranny,", "With my snaky tail, and my sides so scranny.", "", "PURGANAX:", "Aroint ye! thou unprofitable worm!", "[TO THE LEECH.]", "And thou, dull beetle, get thee back to hell!", "[TO THE GADFLY.]", "To sting the ghosts of Babylonian kings,", "And the ox-headed Io--", "", "SWINE (WITHIN):", "Ugh, ugh, ugh!", "Hail! Iona the divine,", "We will be no longer Swine,", "But Bulls with horns and dewlaps.", "", "RAT:", "For,", "You know, my lord, the Minotaur--", "", "PURGANAX (FIERCELY):", "Be silent! get to hell! or I will call", "The cat out of the kitchen. Well, Lord Mammon,", "This is a pretty business.", "", "[EXIT THE RAT.]", "", "MAMMON:", "I will go", "And spell some scheme to make it ugly then.--", "", "[EXIT.]", "", "[ENTER SWELLFOOT.]", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "She is returned! Taurina is in Thebes,", "When Swellfoot wishes that she were in hell!", "Oh, Hymen, clothed in yellow jealousy,", "And waving o'er the couch of wedded kings", "The torch of Discord with its fiery hair;", "This is thy work, thou patron saint of queens!", "Swellfoot is wived! though parted by the sea,", "The very name of wife had conjugal rights;", "Her cursed image ate, drank, slept with me,", "And in the arms of Adiposa oft 290", "Her memory has received a husband's--", "[A LOUD TUMULT, AND CRIES OF 'IONA FOR EVER --NO SWELLFOOT!']", "Hark!", "How the Swine cry Iona Taurina;", "I suffer the real presence; Purganax,", "Off with her head!", "", "PURGANAX:", "But I must first impanel", "A jury of the Pigs.", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "Pack them then.", "", "PURGANAX:", "Or fattening some few in two separate sties.", "And giving them clean straw, tying some bits", "Of ribbon round their legs--giving their Sows", "Some tawdry lace, and bits of lustre glass,", "And their young Boars white and red rags, and tails", "Of cows, and jay feathers, and sticking cauliflowers", "Between the ears of the old ones; and when", "They are persuaded, that by the inherent virtue", "Of these things, they are all imperial Pigs,", "Good Lord! they'd rip each other's bellies up,", "Not to say, help us in destroying her.", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "This plan might be tried too;--where's General Laoctonos?", "[ENTER LAOCTONOS AND DAKRY.]", "It is my royal pleasure", "That you, Lord General, bring the head and body,", "If separate it would please me better, hither", "Of Queen Iona.", "", "LAOCTONOS:", "That pleasure I well knew,", "And made a charge with those battalions bold,", "Called, from their dress and grin, the royal apes,", "Upon the Swine, who in a hollow square", "Enclosed her, and received the first attack", "Like so many rhinoceroses, and then", "Retreating in good order, with bare tusks", "And wrinkled snouts presented to the foe,", "Bore her in triumph to the public sty.", "What is still worse, some Sows upon the ground", "Have given the ape-guards apples, nuts, and gin,", "And they all whisk their tails aloft, and cry,", "'Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!'", "", "PURGANAX:", "Hark!", "", "THE SWINE (WITHOUT):", "Long live Iona! down with Swellfoot!", "", "DAKRY:", "I", "Went to the garret of the swineherd's tower,", "Which overlooks the sty, and made a long", "Harangue (all words) to the assembled Swine,", "Of delicacy mercy, judgement, law,", "Morals, and precedents, and purity,", "Adultery, destitution, and divorce,", "Piety, faith, and state necessity,", "And how I loved the Queen!--and then I wept", "With the pathos of my own eloquence,", "And every tear turned to a mill-stone, which", "Brained many a gaping Pig, and there was made", "A slough of blood and brains upon the place,", "Greased with the pounded bacon; round and round", "The mill-stones rolled, ploughing the pavement up,", "And hurling Sucking-Pigs into the air,", "With dust and stones.--", "", "[ENTER MAMMON.]", "", "MAMMON:", "I wonder that gray wizards", "Like you should be so beardless in their schemes;", "It had been but a point of policy", "To keep Iona and the Swine apart.", "Divide and rule! but ye have made a junction", "Between two parties who will govern you", "But for my art.--Behold this BAG! it is", "The poison BAG of that Green Spider huge,", "On which our spies skulked in ovation through", "The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead:", "A bane so much the deadlier fills it now", "As calumny is worse than death,--for here", "The Gadfly's venom, fifty times distilled,", "Is mingled with the vomit of the Leech,", "In due proportion, and black ratsbane, which", "That very Rat, who, like the Pontic tyrant,", "Nurtures himself on poison, dare not touch;--", "All is sealed up with the broad seal of Fraud,", "Who is the Devil's Lord High Chancellor,", "And over it the Primate of all Hell", "Murmured this pious baptism:--'Be thou called", "The GREEN BAG; and this power and grace be thine:", "That thy contents, on whomsoever poured,", "Turn innocence to guilt, and gentlest looks", "To savage, foul, and fierce deformity.", "Let all baptized by thy infernal dew", "Be called adulterer, drunkard, liar, wretch!", "No name left out which orthodoxy loves,", "Court Journal or legitimate Review!--", "Be they called tyrant, beast, fool, glutton, lover", "Of other wives and husbands than their own--", "The heaviest sin on this side of the Alps!", "Wither they to a ghastly caricature", "Of what was human!--let not man or beast", "Behold their face with unaverted eyes!", "Or hear their names with ears that tingle not", "With blood of indignation, rage, and shame!'--", "This is a perilous liquor;--good my Lords.--", "[SWELLFOOT APPROACHES TO TOUCH THE GREEN BAG.]", "Beware! for God's sake, beware!-if you should break", "The seal, and touch the fatal liquor--", "", "PURGANAX:", "There,", "Give it to me. I have been used to handle", "All sorts of poisons. His dread Majesty", "Only desires to see the colour of it.", "", "MAMMON:", "Now, with a little common sense, my Lords,", "Only undoing all that has been done", "(Yet so as it may seem we but confirm it),", "Our victory is assured. We must entice", "Her Majesty from the sty, and make the Pigs", "Believe that the contents of the GREEN BAG", "Are the true test of guilt or innocence.", "And that, if she be guilty, 'twill transform her", "To manifest deformity like guilt.", "If innocent, she will become transfigured", "Into an angel, such as they say she is;", "And they will see her flying through the air,", "So bright that she will dim the noonday sun;", "Showering down blessings in the shape of comfits.", "This, trust a priest, is just the sort of thing", "Swine will believe. I'll wager you will see them", "Climbing upon the thatch of their low sties,", "With pieces of smoked glass, to watch her sail", "Among the clouds, and some will hold the flaps", "Of one another's ears between their teeth,", "To catch the coming hail of comfits in.", "You, Purganax, who have the gift o' the gab,", "Make them a solemn speech to this effect:", "I go to put in readiness the feast", "Kept to the honour of our goddess Famine,", "Where, for more glory, let the ceremony", "Take place of the uglification of the Queen.", "", "DAKRY (TO SWELLFOOT):", "I, as the keeper of your sacred conscience,", "Humbly remind your Majesty that the care", "Of your high office, as Man-milliner", "To red Bellona, should not be deferred.", "", "PURGANAX:", "All part, in happier plight to meet again.", "", "[EXEUNT.]", "", "END OF THE ACT 1.", "", "ACT 2.", "", "SCENE 1.2:", "THE PUBLIC STY.", "THE B0ARS IN FULL ASSEMBLY.", "ENTER PUEGANAX.", "", "PURGANAX:", "Grant me your patience, Gentlemen and Boars,", "Ye, by whose patience under public burthens", "The glorious constitution of these sties", "Subsists, and shall subsist. The Lean-Pig rates", "Grow with the growing populace of Swine,", "The taxes, that true source of Piggishness", "(How can I find a more appropriate term", "To include religion, morals, peace, and plenty,", "And all that fit Boeotia as a nation", "To teach the other nations how to live?),", "Increase with Piggishness itself; and still", "Does the revenue, that great spring of all", "The patronage, and pensions, and by-payments,", "Which free-born Pigs regard with jealous eyes,", "Diminish, till at length, by glorious steps,", "All the land's produce will be merged in taxes,", "And the revenue will amount to--nothing!", "The failure of a foreign market for", "Sausages, bristles, and blood-puddings,", "And such home manufactures, is but partial;", "And, that the population of the Pigs,", "Instead of hog-wash, has been fed on straw", "And water, is a fact which is--you know--", "That is--it is a state-necessity--", "Temporary, of course. Those impious Pigs,", "Who, by frequent squeaks, have dared impugn", "The settled Swellfoot system, or to make", "Irreverent mockery of the genuflexions", "Inculcated by the arch-priest, have been whipped", "Into a loyal and an orthodox whine.", "Things being in this happy state, the Queen", "Iona--", "", "A LOUD CRY FROM THE PIGS:", "She is innocent! most innocent!", "", "PURGANAX:", "That is the very thing that I was saying,", "Gentlemen Swine; the Queen Iona being", "Most innocent, no doubt, returns to Thebes,", "And the lean Sows and Bears collect about her,", "Wishing to make her think that WE believe", "(I mean those more substantial Pigs, who swill", "Rich hog-wash, while the others mouth damp straw)", "That she is guilty; thus, the Lean-Pig faction", "Seeks to obtain that hog-wash, which has been", "Your immemorial right, and which I will", "Maintain you in to the last drop of--", "", "A BOAR (INTERRUPTING HIM):", "What", "Does any one accuse her of?", "", "PURGANAX:", "Why, no one", "Makes ANY positive accusation;--but", "There were hints dropped, and so the privy wizards", "Conceived that it became them to advise", "His Majesty to investigate their truth;--", "Not for his own sake; he could be content", "To let his wife play any pranks she pleased,", "If, by that sufferance, HE could please the Pigs;", "But then he fears the morals of the Swine,", "The Sows especially, and what effect", "It might produce upon the purity and", "Religion of the rising generation", "Of Sucking-Pigs, if it could be suspected", "That Queen Iona--", "", "[A PAUSE.]", "", "FIRST BOAR:", "Well, go on; we long", "To hear what she can possibly have done.", "", "PURGANAX:", "Why, it is hinted, that a certain Bull--", "Thus much is KNOWN:--the milk-white Bulls that feed", "Beside Clitumnus and the crystal lakes", "Of the Cisalpine mountains, in fresh dews", "Of lotus-grass and blossoming asphodel", "Sleeking their silken hair, and with sweet breath", "Loading the morning winds until they faint", "With living fragrance, are so beautiful!--", "Well, _I_ say nothing;--but Europa rode", "On such a one from Asia into Crete,", "And the enamoured sea grew calm beneath", "His gliding beauty. And Pasiphae,", "Iona's grandmother,--but SHE is innocent!", "And that both you and I, and all assert.", "", "FIRST BOAR:", "Most innocent!", "", "PURGANAX:", "Behold this BAG; a bag--", "", "SECOND BOAR:", "Oh! no GREEN BAGS!! Jealousy's eyes are green,", "Scorpions are green, and water-snakes, and efts,", "And verdigris, and--", "", "PURGANAX:", "Honourable Swine,", "In Piggish souls can prepossessions reign?", "Allow me to remind you, grass is green--", "All flesh is grass;--no bacon but is flesh--", "Ye are but bacon. This divining BAG", "(Which is not green, but only bacon colour)", "Is filled with liquor, which if sprinkled o'er", "A woman guilty of--we all know what--", "Makes her so hideous, till she finds one blind", "She never can commit the like again.", "If innocent, she will turn into an angel,", "And rain down blessings in the shape of comfits", "As she flies up to heaven. Now, my proposal", "Is to convert her sacred Majesty", "Into an angel (as I am sure we shall do),", "By pouring on her head this mystic water.", "[SHOWING THE BAG.]", "I know that she is innocent; I wish", "Only to prove her so to all the world.", "", "FIRST BOAR:", "Excellent, just, and noble Purganax.", "", "SECOND BOAR:", "How glorious it will be to see her Majesty", "Flying above our heads, her petticoats", "Streaming like--like--like--", "", "THIRD BOAR:", "Anything.", "", "PURGANAX:", "Oh no!", "But like a standard of an admiral's ship,", "Or like the banner of a conquering host,", "Or like a cloud dyed in the dying day,", "Unravelled on the blast from a white mountain;", "Or like a meteor, or a war-steed's mane,", "Or waterfall from a dizzy precipice", "Scattered upon the wind.", "", "FIRST BOAR:", "Or a cow's tail.", "", "SECOND BOAR:", "Or ANYTHING, as the learned Boar observed.", "", "PURGANAX:", "Gentlemen Boars, I move a resolution,", "That her most sacred Majesty should be", "Invited to attend the feast of Famine,", "And to receive upon her chaste white body", "Dews of Apotheosis from this BAG.", "", "[A GREAT CONFUSION IS HEARD OF THE PIGS OUT OF DOORS, WHICH", "COMMUNICATES ITSELF TO THOSE WITHIN. DURING THE FIRST STROPHE, THE", "DOORS OF THE STY ARE STAVED IN, AND A NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY LEAN PIGS", "AND SOWS AND BOARS RUSH IN.]", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "No! Yes!", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Yes! No!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "A law!", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "A flaw!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Porkers, we shall lose our wash,", "Or must share it with the Lean-Pigs!", "", "FIRST BOAR:", "Order! order! be not rash!", "Was there ever such a scene, Pigs!", "", "AN OLD SOW (RUSHING IN):", "I never saw so fine a dash", "Since I first began to wean Pigs.", "", "SECOND BOAR (SOLEMNLY):", "The Queen will be an angel time enough.", "I vote, in form of an amendment, that", "Purganax rub a little of that stuff", "Upon his face.", "", "PURGANAX [HIS HEART IS SEEN TO BEAT THROUGH HIS WAISTCOAT]:", "Gods! What would ye be at?", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Purganax has plainly shown a", "Cloven foot and jackdaw feather.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "I vote Swellfoot and Iona", "Try the magic test together;", "Whenever royal spouses bicker,", "Both should try the magic liquor.", "", "AN OLD BOAR [ASIDE]:", "A miserable state is that of Pigs,", "For if their drivers would tear caps and wigs,", "The Swine must bite each other's ear therefore.", "", "AN OLD SOW [ASIDE]:", "A wretched lot Jove has assigned to Swine,", "Squabbling makes Pig-herds hungry, and they dine", "On bacon, and whip Sucking-Pigs the more.", "", "CHORUS:", "Hog-wash has been ta'en away:", "If the Bull-Queen is divested,", "We shall be in every way", "Hunted, stripped, exposed, molested;", "Let us do whate'er we may,", "That she shall not be arrested.", "QUEEN, we entrench you with walls of brawn,", "And palisades of tusks, sharp as a bayonet:", "Place your most sacred person here. We pawn", "Our lives that none a finger dare to lay on it.", "Those who wrong you, wrong us;", "Those who hate you, hate us;", "Those who sting you, sting us;", "Those who bait you, bait us;", "The ORACLE is now about to be", "Fulfilled by circumvolving destiny;", "Which says: 'Thebes, choose REFORM or CIVIL WAR,", "When through your streets, instead of hare with dogs,", "A CONSORT QUEEN shall hunt a KING with Hogs,", "Riding upon the IONIAN MINOTAUR.'", "", "[ENTER IONA TAURINA.]", "", "IONA TAURINA (COMING FORWARD):", "Gentlemen Swine, and gentle Lady-Pigs,", "The tender heart of every Boar acquits", "Their QUEEN, of any act incongruous", "With native Piggishness, and she, reposing", "With confidence upon the grunting nation,", "Has thrown herself, her cause, her life, her all,", "Her innocence, into their Hoggish arms;", "Nor has the expectation been deceived", "Of finding shelter there. Yet know, great Boars,", "(For such whoever lives among you finds you,", "And so do I), the innocent are proud!", "I have accepted your protection only", "In compliment of your kind love and care,", "Not for necessity. The innocent", "Are safest there where trials and dangers wait;", "Innocent Queens o'er white-hot ploughshares tread", "Unsinged, and ladies, Erin's laureate sings it,", "Decked with rare gems, and beauty rarer still,", "Walked from Killarney to the Giant's Causeway,", "Through rebels, smugglers, troops of yeomanry,", "White-boys and Orange-boys, and constables,", "Tithe-proctors, and excise people, uninjured!", "Thus I!--", "Lord Purganax, I do commit myself", "Into your custody, and am prepared", "To stand the test, whatever it may be!", "", "PURGANAX:", "This magnanimity in your sacred Majesty", "Must please the Pigs. You cannot fail of being", "A heavenly angel. Smoke your bits of glass,", "Ye loyal Swine, or her transfiguration", "Will blind your wondering eyes.", "", "AN OLD BOAR [ASIDE]:", "Take care, my Lord,", "They do not smoke you first.", "", "PURGANAX:", "At the approaching feast", "Of Famine, let the expiation be.", "", "SWINE:", "Content! content!", "", "IONA TAURINA [ASIDE]:", "I, most content of all,", "Know that my foes even thus prepare their fall!", "", "[EXEUNT OMNES.]", "", "SCENE 2.2:", "THE INTERIOR OF THE TEMPLE OF FAMINE.", "THE STATUE OF THE GODDESS, A SKELETON CLOTHED IN PARTI-COLOURED RAGS,", "SEATED UPON A HEAP OF SKULLS AND LOAVES INTERMINGLED.", "A NUMBER OF EXCEEDINGLY FAT PRIESTS IN BLACK GARMENTS ARRAYED ON EACH", "SIDE, WITH MARROW-BONES AND CLEAVERS IN THEIR HANDS.", "[SOLOMON, THE COURT PORKMAN.]", "A FLOURISH OF TRUMPETS.", "", "ENTER MAMMON AS ARCH-PRIEST, SWELLFOOT, DAKRY, PURGANAX, LAOCTONOS,", "FOLLOWED BY IONA TAURINA GUARDED.", "ON THE OTHER SIDE ENTER THE SWINE.", "", "CHORUS OF PRIESTS, ACCOMPANIED BY THE COURT PORKMAN ON MARROW-BONES", "AND CLEAVERS:", "GODDESS bare, and gaunt, and pale,", "Empress of the world, all hail!", "What though Cretans old called thee", "City-crested Cybele?", "We call thee FAMINE!", "Goddess of fasts and feasts, starving and cramming!", "Through thee, for emperors, kings, and priests and lords,", "Who rule by viziers, sceptres, bank-notes, words,", "The earth pours forth its plenteous fruits,", "Corn, wool, linen, flesh, and roots--", "Those who consume these fruits through thee grow fat,", "Those who produce these fruits through thee grow lean,", "Whatever change takes place, oh, stick to that!", "And let things be as they have ever been;", "At least while we remain thy priests,", "And proclaim thy fasts and feasts.", "Through thee the sacred SWELLF00T dynasty", "Is based upon a rock amid that sea", "Whose waves are Swine--so let it ever be!", "", "[SWELLFOOT, ETC., SEAT THEMSELVES AT A TABLE MAGNIFICENTLY COVERED AT", "THE UPPER END OF THE TEMPLE.", "ATTENDANTS PASS OVER THE STAGE WITH HOG-WASH IN PAILS.", "A NUMBER OF PIGS, EXCEEDINGLY LEAN, FOLLOW THEM LICKING UP THE WASH.]", "", "MAMMON:", "I fear your sacred Majesty has lost", "The appetite which you were used to have.", "Allow me now to recommend this dish--", "A simple kickshaw by your Persian cook,", "Such as is served at the great King's second table.", "The price and pains which its ingredients cost", "Might have maintained some dozen families", "A winter or two--not more--so plain a dish", "Could scarcely disagree.--", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "After the trial,", "And these fastidious Pigs are gone, perhaps", "I may recover my lost appetite,--", "I feel the gout flying about my stomach--", "Give me a glass of Maraschino punch.", "", "PURGANAX (FILLING HIS GLASS, AND STANDING UP):", "The glorious Constitution of the Pigs!", "", "ALL:", "A toast! a toast! stand up, and three times three!", "", "DAKRY:", "No heel-taps--darken daylights! --", "", "LAOCTONOS:", "Claret, somehow,", "Puts me in mind of blood, and blood of claret!", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "Laoctonos is fishing for a compliment,", "But 'tis his due. Yes, you have drunk more wine,", "And shed more blood, than any man in Thebes.", "[TO PURGANAX.]", "For God's sake stop the grunting of those Pigs!", "", "PURGANAX:", "We dare not, Sire, 'tis Famine's privilege.", "", "CHORUS OF SWINE:", "Hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!", "Thy throne is on blood, and thy robe is of rags;", "Thou devil which livest on damning;", "Saint of new churches, and cant, and GREEN BAGS,", "Till in pity and terror thou risest,", "Confounding the schemes of the wisest;", "When thou liftest thy skeleton form,", "When the loaves and the skulls roll about,", "We will greet thee-the voice of a storm", "Would be lost in our terrible shout!", "", "Then hail to thee, hail to thee, Famine!", "Hail to thee, Empress of Earth!", "When thou risest, dividing possessions;", "When thou risest, uprooting oppressions,", "In the pride of thy ghastly mirth;", "Over palaces, temples, and graves,", "We will rush as thy minister-slaves,", "Trampling behind in thy train,", "Till all be made level again!", "", "MAMMON:", "I hear a crackling of the giant bones", "Of the dread image, and in the black pits", "Which once were eyes, I see two livid flames.", "These prodigies are oracular, and show", "The presence of the unseen Deity.", "Mighty events are hastening to their doom!", "", "SWELLFOOT:", "I only hear the lean and mutinous Swine", "Grunting about the temple.", "", "DAKRY:", "In a crisis", "Of such exceeding delicacy, I think", "We ought to put her Majesty, the QUEEN,", "Upon her trial without delay.", "", "MAMMON:", "THE BAG", "Is here.", "", "PURGANAX:", "I have rehearsed the entire scene", "With an ox-bladder and some ditchwater,", "On Lady P--; it cannot fail.", "[TAKING UP THE BAG.]", "Your Majesty", "[TO SWELLFOOT.]", "In such a filthy business had better", "Stand on one side, lest it should sprinkle you.", "A spot or two on me would do no harm,", "Nay, it might hide the blood, which the sad Genius", "Of the Green Isle has fixed, as by a spell,", "Upon my brow--which would stain all its seas,", "But which those seas could never wash away!", "", "IONA TAURINA:", "My Lord, I am ready--nay, I am impatient", "To undergo the test.", "[A GRACEFUL FIGURE IN A SEMI-TRANSPARENT VEIL PASSES UNNOTICED THROUGH", "THE TEMPLE; THE WORD \"LIBERTY\" IS SEEN THROUGH THE VEIL, AS IF IT WERE", "WRITTEN IN FIRE UPON ITS FOREHEAD. ITS WORDS ARE ALMOST DROWNED IN THE", "FURIOUS GRUNTING OF THE PIGS, AND THE BUSINESS OF THE TRIAL. SHE", "KNEELS ON THE STEPS OF THE ALTAR, AND SPEAKS IN TONES AT FIRST FAINT", "AND LOW, BUT WHICH EVER BECOME LOUDER AND LOUDER.]", "Mighty Empress! Death's white wife!", "Ghastly mother-in-law of Life!", "By the God who made thee such,", "By the magic of thy touch,", "By the starving and the cramming", "Of fasts and feasts! by thy dread self, O Famine!", "I charge thee! when thou wake the multitude,", "Thou lead them not upon the paths of blood.", "The earth did never mean her foison", "For those who crown life's cup with poison", "Of fanatic rage and meaningless revenge--", "But for those radiant spirits, who are still", "The standard-bearers in the van of Change.", "Be they th' appointed stewards, to fill", "The lap of Pain, and Toil, and Age!--", "Remit, O Queen! thy accustomed rage!", "Be what thou art not! In voice faint and low", "FREEDOM calls \"Famine\",--her eternal foe,", "To brief alliance, hollow truce.--Rise now!", "", "[WHILST THE VEILED FIGURE HAS BEEN CHANTING THIS STROPHE, MAMMON,", "DAKRY, LAOCTONOS, AND SWELLFOOT, HAVE SURROUNDED IONA TAURINA, WHO,", "WITH HER HANDS FOLDED ON HER BREAST, AND HER EYES LIFTED TO HEAVEN,", "STANDS, AS WITH SAINT-LIKE RESIGNATION, TO WAIT THE ISSUE OF THE", "BUSINESS, IN PERFECT CONFIDENCE OF HER INNOCENCE.]", "", "[PURGANAX, AFTER UNSEALING THE GREEN BAG, IS GRAVELY ABOUT TO POUR THE", "LIQUOR UPON HER HEAD, WHEN SUDDENLY THE WHOLE EXPRESSION OF HER FIGURE", "AND COUNTENANCE CHANGES; SHE SNATCHES IT FROM HIS HAND WITH A LOUD", "LAUGH OF TRIUMPH, AND EMPTIES IT OVER SWELLFOOT AND HIS WHOLE COURT,", "WHO ARE INSTANTLY CHANGED INTO A NUMBER OF FILTHY AND UGLY ANIMALS,", "AND RUSH OUT OF THE TEMPLE. THE IMAGE OF FAMINE THEN ARISES WITH A", "TREMENDOUS SOUND, THE PIGS BEGIN SCRAMBLING FOR THE LOAVES, AND ARE", "TRJPPED UP BY THE SKULLS; ALL THOSE WHO EAT THE LOAVES ARE TURNED INTO", "BULLS, AND ARRANGE THEMSELVES QUIETLY BEHIND THE ALTAR. THE IMAGE OF", "FAMINE SINKS THROUGH A CHASM IN THE EARTH, AND A MINOTAUR RISES.]", "", "MINOTAUR:", "I am the Ionian Minotaur, the mightiest", "Of all Europa's taurine progeny--", "I am the old traditional Man-Bull;", "And from my ancestors having been Ionian,", "I am called Ion, which, by interpretation,", "Is JOHN; in plain Theban, that is to say,", "My name's JOHN BULL; I am a famous hunter,", "And can leaf any gate in all Boeotia,", "Even the palings of the royal park,", "Or double ditch about the new enclosures;", "And if your Majesty will deign to mount me,", "At least till you have hunted down your game,", "I will not throw you.", "", "IONA TAURINA [DURING THIS SPEECH SHE HAS BEEN PUTTING ON BOOTS AND", "SPURS, AND A HUNTING-CAP, BUCKISHLY COCKED ON ONE SIDE, AND TUCKING UP", "HER HAIR, SHE LEAPS NIMBLY ON HIS BACK]:", "Hoa! hoa! tallyho! tallyho! ho! ho!", "Come, let us hunt these ugly badgers down,", "These stinking foxes, these devouring otters,", "These hares, these wolves, these anything but men.", "Hey, for a whipper-in! my loyal Pigs", "Now let your noses be as keen as beagles',", "Your steps as swift as greyhounds', and your cries", "More dulcet and symphonious than the bells", "Of village-towers, on sunshine holiday;", "Wake all the dewy woods with jangling music.", "Give them no law (are they not beasts of blood?)", "But such as they gave you. Tallyho! ho!", "Through forest, furze, and bog, and den, and desert,", "Pursue the ugly beasts! tallyho! ho!", "", "FULL CHORUS OF I0NA AND THE SWINE:", "Tallyho! tallyho!", "Through rain, hail, and snow,", "Through brake, gorse, and briar,", "Through fen, flood, and mire,", "We go! we go!", "", "Tallyho! tallyho!", "Through pond, ditch, and slough,", "Wind them, and find them,", "Like the Devil behind them,", "Tallyho! tallyho!", "", "[EXEUNT, IN FULL CRY;", "IONA DRIVING ON THE SWINE, WITH THE EMPTY GEEEN BAG.]", "", "THE END." ], "linecount": "1018" }, { "title": "Epipsychidion", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFORTUNATE LADY, EMILIA V--,", "", "NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF --.", "", "L'anima amante si slancia fuori del creato, e si crea nell' infinito un", "Mondo tutto per essa, diverso assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro.", "HER OWN WORDS.", "", "INTRODUCTION", "", "My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few", "Who fitly shalt conceive thy reasoning,", "Of such hard matter dost thou entertain;", "Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring", "Thee to base company (as chance may do),", "Quite unaware of what thou dost contain,", "I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again,", "My last delight! tell them that they are dull,", "And bid them own that thou art beautiful.", "", "EPIPSYCHIDION.", "", "Sweet Spirit! Sister of that orphan one,", "Whose empire is the name thou weepest on,", "In my heart's temple I suspend to thee", "These votive wreaths of withered memory.", "", "Poor captive bird! who, from thy narrow cage,", "Pourest such music, that it might assuage", "The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee,", "Were they not deaf to all sweet melody;", "This song shall be thy rose: its petals pale", "Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale!", "But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom,", "And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.", "", "High, spirit-winged Heart! who dost for ever", "Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour,", "Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed", "It over-soared this low and worldly shade,", "Lie shattered; and thy panting, wounded breast", "Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest!", "I weep vain tears: blood would less bitter be,", "Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.", "", "Seraph of Heaven! too gentle to be human,", "Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman", "All that is insupportable in thee", "Of light, and love, and immortality!", "Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse!", "Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe!", "Thou Moon beyond the clouds! Thou living Form", "Among the Dead! Thou Star above the Storm!", "Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror!", "Thou Harmony of Nature's art! Thou Mirror", "In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun,", "All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on!", "Ay, even the dim words which obscure thee now", "Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow;", "I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song", "All of its much mortality and wrong,", "With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew", "From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through,", "Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy:", "Then smile on it, so that it may not die.", "", "I never thought before my death to see", "Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily,", "I love thee; though the world by no thin name", "Will hide that love from its unvalued shame.", "Would we two had been twins of the same mother!", "Or, that the name my heart lent to another", "Could be a sister's bond for her and thee,", "Blending two beams of one eternity!", "Yet were one lawful and the other true,", "These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due.", "How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me!", "I am not thine: I am a part of THEE.", "", "Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burned its wings", "Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings,", "Young Love should teach Time, in his own gray style,", "All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile,", "A lovely soul formed to be blessed and bless?", "A well of sealed and secret happiness,", "Whose waters like blithe light and music are,", "Vanquishing dissonance and gloom? A Star", "Which moves not in the moving heavens, alone?", "A Smile amid dark frowns? a gentle tone", "Amid rude voices? a beloved light?", "A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight?", "A Lute, which those whom Love has taught to play", "Make music on, to soothe the roughest day", "And lull fond Grief asleep? a buried treasure?", "A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure?", "A violet-shrouded grave of Woe?--I measure", "The world of fancies, seeking one like thee,", "And find--alas! mine own infirmity.", "", "She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way,", "And lured me towards sweet Death; as Night by Day,", "Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope,", "Led into light, life, peace. An antelope,", "In the suspended impulse of its lightness,", "Were less aethereally light: the brightness", "Of her divinest presence trembles through", "Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew", "Embodied in the windless heaven of June", "Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon", "Burns, inextinguishably beautiful:", "And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full", "Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops,", "Killing the sense with passion; sweet as stops", "Of planetary music heard in trance.", "In her mild lights the starry spirits dance,", "The sunbeams of those wells which ever leap", "Under the lightnings of the soul--too deep", "For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.", "The glory of her being, issuing thence,", "Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade", "Of unentangled intermixture, made", "By Love, of light and motion: one intense", "Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence,", "Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing,", "Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing", "With the unintermitted blood, which there", "Quivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air", "The crimson pulse of living morning quiver,)", "Continuously prolonged, and ending never,", "Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled", "Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world;", "Scarce visible from extreme loveliness.", "Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress", "And her loose hair; and where some heavy tress", "The air of her own speed has disentwined,", "The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind;", "And in the soul a wild odour is felt", "Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt", "Into the bosom of a frozen bud.--", "See where she stands! a mortal shape indued", "With love and life and light and deity,", "And motion which may change but cannot die;", "An image of some bright Eternity;", "A shadow of some golden dream; a Splendour", "Leaving the third sphere pilotless; a tender", "Reflection of the eternal Moon of Love", "Under whose motions life's dull billows move;", "A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning;", "A Vision like incarnate April, warning,", "With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy", "Into his summer grave.", "Ah, woe is me!", "What have I dared? where am I lifted? how", "Shall I descend, and perish not? I know", "That Love makes all things equal: I have heard", "By mine own heart this joyous truth averred:", "The spirit of the worm beneath the sod", "In love and worship, blends itself with God.", "", "Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate", "Whose course has been so starless! O too late", "Beloved! O too soon adored, by me!", "For in the fields of Immortality", "My spirit should at first have worshipped thine,", "A divine presence in a place divine;", "Or should have moved beside it on this earth,", "A shadow of that substance, from its birth;", "But not as now:--I love thee; yes, I feel", "That on the fountain of my heart a seal", "Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright", "For thee, since in those TEARS thou hast delight.", "We--are we not formed, as notes of music are,", "For one another, though dissimilar;", "Such difference without discord, as can make", "Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake", "As trembling leaves in a continuous air?", "", "Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare", "Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked.", "I never was attached to that great sect,", "Whose doctrine is, that each one should select", "Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend,", "And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend", "To cold oblivion, though it is in the code", "Of modern morals, and the beaten road", "Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread,", "Who travel to their home among the dead", "By the broad highway of the world, and so", "With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,", "The dreariest and the longest journey go.", "", "True Love in this differs from gold and clay,", "That to divide is not to take away.", "Love is like understanding, that grows bright,", "Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light,", "Imagination! which from earth and sky,", "And from the depths of human fantasy,", "As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills", "The Universe with glorious beams, and kills", "Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow", "Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow", "The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,", "The life that wears, the spirit that creates", "One object, and one form, and builds thereby", "A sepulchre for its eternity.", "", "Mind from its object differs most in this:", "Evil from good; misery from happiness;", "The baser from the nobler; the impure", "And frail, from what is clear and must endure.", "If you divide suffering and dross, you may", "Diminish till it is consumed away;", "If you divide pleasure and love and thought,", "Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not", "How much, while any yet remains unshared,", "Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:", "This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw", "The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law", "By which those live, to whom this world of life", "Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife", "Tills for the promise of a later birth", "The wilderness of this Elysian earth.", "", "There was a Being whom my spirit oft", "Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,", "In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn,", "Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,", "Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves", "Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves", "Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor", "Paved her light steps;--on an imagined shore,", "Under the gray beak of some promontory", "She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,", "That I beheld her not. In solitudes", "Her voice came to me through the whispering woods,", "And from the fountains, and the odours deep", "Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep", "Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,", "Breathed but of HER to the enamoured air;", "And from the breezes whether low or loud,", "And from the rain of every passing cloud,", "And from the singing of the summer-birds,", "And from all sounds, all silence. In the words", "Of antique verse and high romance,--in form,", "Sound, colour--in whatever checks that Storm", "Which with the shattered present chokes the past;", "And in that best philosophy, whose taste", "Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom", "As glorious as a fiery martyrdom;", "Her Spirit was the harmony of truth.--", "", "Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth", "I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire,", "And towards the lodestar of my one desire,", "I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight", "Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light,", "When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere", "A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre,", "As if it were a lamp of earthly flame.--", "But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame,", "Passed, like a God throned on a winged planet,", "Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it,", "Into the dreary cone of our life's shade;", "And as a man with mighty loss dismayed,", "I would have followed, though the grave between", "Yawned like a gulf whose spectres are unseen:", "When a voice said:--'O thou of hearts the weakest,", "The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest.'", "Then I--'Where?'--the world's echo answered 'where?'", "And in that silence, and in my despair,", "I questioned every tongueless wind that flew", "Over my tower of mourning, if it knew", "Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul;", "And murmured names and spells which have control", "Over the sightless tyrants of our fate;", "But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate", "The night which closed on her; nor uncreate", "That world within this Chaos, mine and me,", "Of which she was the veiled Divinity,", "The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her:", "And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear", "And every gentle passion sick to death,", "Feeding my course with expectation's breath,", "Into the wintry forest of our life;", "And struggling through its error with vain strife,", "And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,", "And half bewildered by new forms, I passed,", "Seeking among those untaught foresters", "If I could find one form resembling hers,", "In which she might have masked herself from me.", "There,--One, whose voice was venomed melody", "Sate by a well, under blue nightshade bowers:", "The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,", "Her touch was as electric poison,--flame", "Out of her looks into my vitals came,", "And from her living cheeks and bosom flew", "A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew", "Into the core of my green heart, and lay", "Upon its leaves; until, as hair grown gray", "O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime", "With ruins of unseasonable time.", "", "In many mortal forms I rashly sought", "The shadow of that idol of my thought.", "And some were fair--but beauty dies away:", "Others were wise--but honeyed words betray:", "And One was true--oh! why not true to me?", "Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee,", "I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay,", "Wounded and weak and panting; the cold day", "Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain.", "When, like a noonday dawn, there shone again", "Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed", "As like the glorious shape which I had d reamed", "As is the Moon, whose changes ever run", "Into themselves, to the eternal Sun;", "The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright isles,", "Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles,", "That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame", "Which ever is transformed, yet still the same,", "And warms not but illumines. Young and fair", "As the descended Spirit of that sphere,", "She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night", "From its own darkness, until all was bright", "Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind,", "And, as a cloud charioted by the wind,", "She led me to a cave in that wild place,", "And sate beside me, with her downward face", "Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon", "Waxing and waning o'er Endymion.", "And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb,", "And all my being became bright or dim", "As the Moon's image in a summer sea,", "According as she smiled or frowned on me;", "And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed:", "Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead:--", "For at her silver voice came Death and Life,", "Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,", "Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother,", "The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother,", "And through the cavern without wings they flew,", "And cried 'Away, he is not of our crew.'", "I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.", "", "What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep,", "Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips", "Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse;--", "And how my soul was as a lampless sea,", "And who was then its Tempest; and when She,", "The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost", "Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast", "The moving billows of my being fell", "Into a death of ice, immovable;--", "And then--what earthquakes made it gape and split,", "The white Moon smiling all the while on it,", "These words conceal:--If not, each word would be", "The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me!", "", "At length, into the obscure Forest came", "The Vision I had sought through grief and shame.", "Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns", "Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's,", "And from her presence life was radiated", "Through the gray earth and branches bare and dead;", "So that her way was paved, and roofed above", "With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love;", "And music from her respiration spread", "Like light,--all other sounds were penetrated", "By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound,", "So that the savage winds hung mute around;", "And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair", "Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air:", "Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun,", "When light is changed to love, this glorious One", "Floated into the cavern where I lay,", "And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay", "Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below", "As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow", "I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night", "Was penetrating me with living light:", "I knew it was the Vision veiled from me", "So many years--that it was Emily.", "", "Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth,", "This world of loves, this ME; and into birth", "Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart", "Magnetic might into its central heart;", "And lift its billows and its mists, and guide", "By everlasting laws, each wind and tide", "To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave;", "And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave", "Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers", "The armies of the rainbow-winged showers;", "And, as those married lights, which from the towers", "Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe", "In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe;", "And all their many-mingled influence blend,", "If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end;--", "So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway", "Govern my sphere of being, night and day!", "Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might;", "Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light;", "And, through the shadow of the seasons three,", "From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity,", "Light it into the Winter of the tomb,", "Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom.", "Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce,", "Who drew the heart of this frail Universe", "Towards thine own; till, wrecked in that convulsion,", "Alternating attraction and repulsion,", "Thine went astray and that was rent in twain;", "Oh, float into our azure heaven again!", "Be there Love's folding-star at thy return;", "The living Sun will feed thee from its urn", "Of golden fire; the Moon will veil her horn", "In thy last smiles; adoring Even and Morn", "Will worship thee with incense of calm breath", "And lights and shadows; as the star of Death", "And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild", "Called Hope and Fear--upon the heart are piled", "Their offerings,--of this sacrifice divine", "A World shall be the altar.", "Lady mine,", "Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth", "Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth", "Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes,", "Will be as of the trees of Paradise.", "", "The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me.", "To whatsoe'er of dull mortality", "Is mine, remain a vestal sister still;", "To the intense, the deep, the imperishable,", "Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united", "Even as a bride, delighting and delighted.", "The hour is come:--the destined Star has risen", "Which shall descend upon a vacant prison.", "The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set", "The sentinels--but true Love never yet", "Was thus constrained: it overleaps all fence:", "Like lightning, with invisible violence", "Piercing its continents; like Heaven's free breath,", "Which he who grasps can hold not; liker Death,", "Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way", "Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array", "Of arms: more strength has Love than he or they;", "For it can burst his charnel, and make free", "The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,", "The soul in dust and chaos.", "Emily,", "A ship is floating in the harbour now,", "A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow;", "There is a path on the sea's azure floor,", "No keel has ever ploughed that path before;", "The halcyons brood around the foamless isles;", "The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles;", "The merry mariners are bold and free:", "Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me?", "Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest", "Is a far Eden of the purple East;", "And we between her wings will sit, while Night,", "And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight,", "Our ministers, along the boundless Sea,", "Treading each other's heels, unheededly.", "It is an isle under Ionian skies,", "Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise,", "And, for the harbours are not safe and good,", "This land would have remained a solitude", "But for some pastoral people native there,", "Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air", "Draw the last spirit of the age of gold,", "Simple and spirited; innocent and bold.", "The blue Aegean girds this chosen home,", "With ever-changing sound and light and foam,", "Kissing the sifted sands, and caverns hoar;", "And all the winds wandering along the shore", "Undulate with the undulating tide:", "There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide;", "And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,", "As clear as elemental diamond,", "Or serene morning air; and far beyond,", "The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer", "(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year)", "Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls", "Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls", "Illumining, with sound that never fails", "Accompany the noonday nightingales;", "And all the place is peopled with sweet airs;", "The light clear element which the isle wears", "Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,", "Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers.", "And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep;", "And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,", "And dart their arrowy odour through the brain", "Till you might faint with that delicious pain.", "And every motion, odour, beam and tone,", "With that deep music is in unison:", "Which is a soul within the soul--they seem", "Like echoes of an antenatal dream.--", "It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,", "Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity;", "Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,", "Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.", "It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,", "Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light", "Upon its mountain-peaks; blind vultures, they", "Sail onward far upon their fatal way:", "The winged storms, chanting their thunder-psalm", "To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm", "Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,", "From which its fields and woods ever renew", "Their green and golden immortality.", "And from the sea there rise, and from the sky", "There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright.", "Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,", "Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,", "Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride", "Glowing at once with love and loveliness,", "Blushes and trembles at its own excess:", "Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less", "Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,", "An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile", "Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen", "O'er the gray rocks, blue waves, and forests green,", "Filling their bare and void interstices.--", "But the chief marvel of the wilderness", "Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how", "None of the rustic island-people know:", "'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height", "It overtops the woods; but, for delight,", "Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime", "Had been invented, in the world's young prime,", "Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,", "An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house", "Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.", "It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,", "But, as it were Titanic; in the heart", "Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown", "Out of the mountains, from the living stone,", "Lifting itself in caverns light and high:", "For all the antique and learned imagery", "Has been erased, and in the place of it", "The ivy and the wild-vine interknit", "The volumes of their many-twining stems;", "Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems", "The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky", "Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery", "With moonlight patches, or star atoms keen,", "Or fragments of the day's intense serene;--", "Working mosaic on their Parian floors.", "And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers", "And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem", "To sleep in one another's arms, and dream", "Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we", "Read in their smiles, and call reality.", "", "This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed", "Thee to be lady of the solitude.--", "And I have fitted up some chambers there", "Looking towards the golden Eastern air,", "And level with the living winds, which flow", "Like waves above the living waves below.--", "I have sent books and music there, and all", "Those instruments with which high Spirits call", "The future from its cradle, and the past", "Out of its grave, and make the present last", "In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die,", "Folded within their own eternity.", "Our simple life wants little, and true taste", "Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste", "The scene it would adorn, and therefore still,", "Nature with all her children haunts the hill.", "The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet", "Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit", "Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance", "Between the quick bats in their twilight dance;", "The spotted deer bask in the fresh moonlight", "Before our gate, and the slow, silent night", "Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep.", "Be this our home in life, and when years heap", "Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay,", "Let us become the overhanging day,", "The living soul of this Elysian isle,", "Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile", "We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,", "Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,", "And wander in the meadows, or ascend", "The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend", "With lightest winds, to touch their paramour;", "Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,", "Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea", "Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy,--", "Possessing and possessed by all that is", "Within that calm circumference of bliss,", "And by each other, till to love and live", "Be one:--or, at the noontide hour, arrive", "Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep", "The moonlight of the expired night asleep,", "Through which the awakened day can never peep;", "A veil for our seclusion, close as night's,", "Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights:", "Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain", "Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.", "And we will talk, until thought's melody", "Become too sweet for utterance, and it die", "In words, to live again in looks, which dart", "With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,", "Harmonizing silence without a sound.", "Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,", "And our veins beat together; and our lips", "With other eloquence than words, eclipse", "The soul that burns between them, and the wells", "Which boil under our being's inmost cells,", "The fountains of our deepest life, shall be", "Confused in Passion's golden purity,", "As mountain-springs under the morning sun.", "We shall become the same, we shall be one", "Spirit within two frames, oh! wherefore two?", "One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,", "Till like two meteors of expanding flame,", "Those spheres instinct with it become the same,", "Touch, mingle, are transfigured; ever still", "Burning, yet ever inconsumable:", "In one another's substance finding food,", "Like flames too pure and light and unimbued", "To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,", "Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away:", "One hope within two wills, one will beneath", "Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,", "One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,", "And one annihilation. Woe is me!", "The winged words on which my soul would pierce", "Into the height of Love's rare Universe,", "Are chains of lead around its flight of fire--", "I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire!", "", "...", "", "Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet,", "And say:--'We are the masters of thy slave;", "What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine?'", "Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave,", "All singing loud: 'Love's very pain is sweet,", "But its reward is in the world divine", "Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.'", "So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste", "Over the hearts of men, until ye meet", "Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest,", "And bid them love each other and be blessed:", "And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,", "And come and be my guest,--for I am Love's." ], "linecount": "624" }, { "title": "Adonais", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS,", "AUTHOR OF ENDYMION, HYPERION, ETC.", "", "Aster prin men elampes eni zooisin Eoos", "nun de thanon lampeis Esperos en phthimenois.--PLATO.", "", "I weep for Adonais--he is dead!", "O, weep for Adonais! though our tears", "Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!", "And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years", "To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,", "And teach them thine own sorrow, say: \"With me", "Died Adonais; till the Future dares", "Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be", "An echo and a light unto eternity!\"", "", "Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay,", "When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies", "In darkness? where was lorn Urania", "When Adonais died? With veiled eyes,", "'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise", "She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath,", "Rekindled all the fading melodies,", "With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath,", "He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of Death.", "", "Oh, weep for Adonais--he is dead!", "Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep!", "Yet wherefore? Quench within their burning bed", "Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep", "Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep;", "For he is gone, where all things wise and fair", "Descend;--oh, dream not that the amorous Deep", "Will yet restore him to the vital air;", "Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.", "", "Most musical of mourners, weep again!", "Lament anew, Urania!--He died,", "Who was the Sire of an immortal strain,", "Blind, old and lonely, when his country's pride,", "The priest, the slave, and the liberticide,", "Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite", "Of lust and blood; he went, unterrified,", "Into the gulf of death; but his clear Sprite", "Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the sons of light.", "", "Most musical of mourners, weep anew!", "Not all to that bright station dared to climb;", "And happier they their happiness who knew,", "Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time", "In which suns perished; others more sublime,", "Struck by the envious wrath of man or god,", "Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime;", "And some yet live, treading the thorny road,", "Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.", "", "But now, thy youngest, dearest one, has perished--", "The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew,", "Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished,", "And fed with true-love tears, instead of dew;", "Most musical of mourners, weep anew!", "Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last,", "The bloom, whose petals nipped before they blew", "Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;", "The broken lily lies--the storm is overpast.", "", "To that high Capital, where kingly Death", "Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay,", "He came; and bought, with price of purest breath,", "A grave among the eternal.--Come away!", "Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day", "Is yet his fitting charnel-roof! while still", "He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay;", "Awake him not! surely he takes his fill", "Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.", "", "He will awake no more, oh, never more!--", "Within the twilight chamber spreads apace", "The shadow of white Death, and at the door", "Invisible Corruption waits to trace", "His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place;", "The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe", "Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface", "So fair a prey, till darkness and the law", "Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.", "", "Oh, weep for Adonais!--The quick Dreams,", "The passion-winged Ministers of thought,", "Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams", "Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught", "The love which was its music, wander not,--", "Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain,", "But droop there, whence they sprung; and mourn their lot", "Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain,", "They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.", "", "And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head,", "And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries;", "'Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead;", "See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes,", "Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies", "A tear some Dream has loosened from his brain.'", "Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise!", "She knew not 'twas her own; as with no stain", "She faded, like a cloud which had outwept its rain.", "", "One from a lucid urn of starry dew", "Washed his light limbs as if embalming them;", "Another clipped her profuse locks, and threw", "The wreath upon him, like an anadem,", "Which frozen tears instead of pearls begem;", "Another in her wilful grief would break", "Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem", "A greater loss with one which was more weak;", "And dull the barbed fire against his frozen cheek.", "", "Another Splendour on his mouth alit,", "That mouth, whence it was wont to draw the breath", "Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit,", "And pass into the panting heart beneath", "With lightning and with music: the damp death", "Quenched its caress upon his icy lips;", "And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath", "Of moonlight vapour, which the cold night clips,", "It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed to its eclipse.", "", "And others came...Desires and Adorations,", "Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies,", "Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations", "Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies;", "And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs,", "And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam", "Of her own dying smile instead of eyes,", "Came in slow pomp;--the moving pomp might seem", "Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.", "", "All he had loved, and moulded into thought,", "From shape, and hue, and odour, and sweet sound,", "Lamented Adonais. Morning sought", "Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair unbound,", "Wet with the tears which should adorn the ground,", "Dimmed the aereal eyes that kindle day;", "Afar the melancholy thunder moaned,", "Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay,", "And the wild Winds flew round, sobbing in their dismay.", "", "Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,", "And feeds her grief with his remembered lay,", "And will no more reply to winds or fountains,", "Or amorous birds perched on the young green spray,", "Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing day;", "Since she can mimic not his lips, more dear", "Than those for whose disdain she pined away", "Into a shadow of all sounds:--a drear", "Murmur, between their songs, is all the woodmen hear.", "", "Grief made the young Spring wild, and she threw down", "Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn were,", "Or they dead leaves; since her delight is flown,", "For whom should she have waked the sullen year?", "To Phoebus was not Hyacinth so dear", "Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both", "Thou, Adonais: wan they stand and sere", "Amid the faint companions of their youth,", "With dew all turned to tears; odour, to sighing ruth.", "", "Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightingale", "Mourns not her mate with such melodious pain;", "Not so the eagle, who like thee could scale", "Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's domain", "Her mighty youth with morning, doth complain,", "Soaring and screaming round her empty nest,", "As Albion wails for thee: the curse of Cain", "Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast,", "And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!", "", "Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone,", "But grief returns with the revolving year;", "The airs and streams renew their joyous tone;", "The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear;", "Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead Seasons' bier;", "The amorous birds now pair in every brake,", "And build their mossy homes in field and brere;", "And the green lizard, and the golden snake,", "Like unimprisoned flames, out of their trance awake.", "", "Through wood and stream and field and hill and Ocean", "A quickening life from the Earth's heart has burst", "As it has ever done, with change and motion,", "From the great morning of the world when first", "God dawned on Chaos; in its stream immersed,", "The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer light;", "All baser things pant with life's sacred thirst;", "Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's delight,", "The beauty and the joy of their renewed might.", "", "The leprous corpse, touched by this spirit tender,", "Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath;", "Like incarnations of the stars, when splendour", "Is changed to fragrance, they illumine death", "And mock the merry worm that wakes beneath;", "Nought we know, dies. Shall that alone which knows", "Be as a sword consumed before the sheath", "By sightless lightning?--the intense atom glows", "A moment, then is quenched in a most cold repose.", "", "Alas! that all we loved of him should be,", "But for our grief, as if it had not been,", "And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!", "Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene", "The actors or spectators? Great and mean", "Meet massed in death, who lends what life must borrow.", "As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,", "Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,", "Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.", "", "HE will awake no more, oh, never more!", "'Wake thou,' cried Misery, 'childless Mother, rise", "Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's core,", "A wound more fierce than his, with tears and sighs.'", "And all the Dreams that watched Urania's eyes,", "And all the Echoes whom their sister's song", "Had held in holy silence, cried: 'Arise!'", "Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory stung,", "From her ambrosial rest the fading Splendour sprung.", "", "She rose like an autumnal Night, that springs", "Out of the East, and follows wild and drear", "The golden Day, which, on eternal wings,", "Even as a ghost abandoning a bier,", "Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and fear", "So struck, so roused, so rapped Urania;", "So saddened round her like an atmosphere", "Of stormy mist; so swept her on her way", "Even to the mournful place where Adonais lay.", "", "Out of her secret Paradise she sped,", "Through camps and cities rough with stone, and steel,", "And human hearts, which to her aery tread", "Yielding not, wounded the invisible", "Palms of her tender feet where'er they fell:", "And barbed tongues, and thoughts more sharp than they,", "Rent the soft Form they never could repel,", "Whose sacred blood, like the young tears of May,", "Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving way.", "", "In the death-chamber for a moment Death,", "Shamed by the presence of that living Might,", "Blushed to annihilation, and the breath", "Revisited those lips, and Life's pale light", "Flashed through those limbs, so late her dear delight.", "'Leave me not wild and drear and comfortless,", "As silent lightning leaves the starless night!", "Leave me not!' cried Urania: her distress", "Roused Death: Death rose and smiled, and met her vain caress.", "", "'Stay yet awhile! speak to me once again;", "Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live;", "And in my heartless breast and burning brain", "That word, that kiss, shall all thoughts else survive,", "With food of saddest memory kept alive,", "Now thou art dead, as if it were a part", "Of thee, my Adonais! I would give", "All that I am to be as thou now art!", "But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence depart!", "", "'O gentle child, beautiful as thou wert,", "Why didst thou leave the trodden paths of men", "Too soon, and with weak hands though mighty heart", "Dare the unpastured dragon in his den?", "Defenceless as thou wert, oh, where was then", "Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn the spear?", "Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when", "Thy spirit should have filled its crescent sphere,", "The monsters of life's waste had fled from thee like deer.", "", "'The herded wolves, bold only to pursue;", "The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the dead;", "The vultures to the conqueror's banner true", "Who feed where Desolation first has fed,", "And whose wings rain contagion;--how they fled,", "When, like Apollo, from his golden bow", "The Pythian of the age one arrow sped", "And smiled!--The spoilers tempt no second blow,", "They fawn on the proud feet that spurn them lying low.", "", "'The sun comes forth, and many reptiles spawn;", "He sets, and each ephemeral insect then", "Is gathered into death without a dawn,", "And the immortal stars awake again;", "So is it in the world of living men:", "A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight", "Making earth bare and veiling heaven, and when", "It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or shared its light", "Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's awful night.'", "", "Thus ceased she: and the mountain shepherds came,", "Their garlands sere, their magic mantles rent;", "The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame", "Over his living head like Heaven is bent,", "An early but enduring monument,", "Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song", "In sorrow; from her wilds Ierne sent", "The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong,", "And Love taught Grief to fall like music from his tongue.", "", "Midst others of less note, came one frail Form,", "A phantom among men; companionless", "As the last cloud of an expiring storm", "Whose thunder is its knell; he, as I guess,", "Had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness,", "Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray", "With feeble steps o'er the world's wilderness,", "And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,", "Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.", "", "A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift--", "A Love in desolation masked;--a Power", "Girt round with weakness;--it can scarce uplift", "The weight of the superincumbent hour;", "It is a dying lamp, a falling shower,", "A breaking billow;--even whilst we speak", "Is it not broken? On the withering flower", "The killing sun smiles brightly: on a cheek", "The life can burn in blood, even while the heart may break.", "", "His head was bound with pansies overblown,", "And faded violets, white, and pied, and blue;", "And a light spear topped with a cypress cone,", "Round whose rude shaft dark ivy-tresses grew", "Yet dripping with the forest's noonday dew,", "Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart", "Shook the weak hand that grasped it; of that crew", "He came the last, neglected and apart;", "A herd-abandoned deer struck by the hunter's dart.", "", "All stood aloof, and at his partial moan", "Smiled through their tears; well knew that gentle band", "Who in another's fate now wept his own,", "As in the accents of an unknown land", "He sung new sorrow; sad Urania scanned", "The Stranger's mien, and murmured: 'Who art thou?'", "He answered not, but with a sudden hand", "Made bare his branded and ensanguined brow,", "Which was like Cain's or Christ's--oh! that it should be so!", "", "What softer voice is hushed over the dead?", "Athwart what brow is that dark mantle thrown?", "What form leans sadly o'er the white death-bed,", "In mockery of monumental stone,", "The heavy heart heaving without a moan?", "If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise,", "Taught, soothed, loved, honoured the departed one,", "Let me not vex, with inharmonious sighs,", "The silence of that heart's accepted sacrifice.", "", "Our Adonais has drunk poison--oh!", "What deaf and viperous murderer could crown", "Life's early cup with such a draught of woe?", "The nameless worm would now itself disown:", "It felt, yet could escape, the magic tone", "Whose prelude held all envy, hate and wrong,", "But what was howling in one breast alone,", "Silent with expectation of the song,", "Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver lyre unstrung.", "", "Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!", "Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me,", "Thou noteless blot on a remembered name!", "But be thyself, and know thyself to be!", "And ever at thy season be thou free", "To spill the venom when thy fangs o'erflow;", "Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee;", "Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow,", "And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt--as now.", "", "Nor let us weep that our delight is fled", "Far from these carrion kites that scream below;", "He wakes or sleeps with the enduring dead;", "Thou canst not soar where he is sitting now--", "Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit shall flow", "Back to the burning fountain whence it came,", "A portion of the Eternal, which must glow", "Through time and change, unquenchably the same,", "Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid hearth of shame.", "", "Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep--", "He hath awakened from the dream of life--", "'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep", "With phantoms an unprofitable strife,", "And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife", "Invulnerable nothings.--WE decay", "Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief", "Convulse us and consume us day by day,", "And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.", "", "He has outsoared the shadow of our night;", "Envy and calumny and hate and pain,", "And that unrest which men miscall delight,", "Can touch him not and torture not again;", "From the contagion of the world's slow stain", "He is secure, and now can never mourn", "A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;", "Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,", "With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn.", "", "He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he;", "Mourn not for Adonais.--Thou young Dawn,", "Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee", "The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;", "Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!", "Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,", "Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown", "O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare", "Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!", "", "He is made one with Nature: there is heard", "His voice in all her music, from the moan", "Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;", "He is a presence to be felt and known", "In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,", "Spreading itself where'er that Power may move", "Which has withdrawn his being to its own;", "Which wields the world with never-wearied love,", "Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.", "", "He is a portion of the loveliness", "Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear", "His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress", "Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there", "All new successions to the forms they wear;", "Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks its flight", "To its own likeness, as each mass may bear;", "And bursting in its beauty and its might", "From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light.", "", "The splendours of the firmament of time", "May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;", "Like stars to their appointed height they climb,", "And death is a low mist which cannot blot", "The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought", "Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,", "And love and life contend in it, for what", "Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there", "And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.", "", "The inheritors of unfulfilled renown", "Rose from their thrones, built beyond mortal thought,", "Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton", "Rose pale,--his solemn agony had not", "Yet faded from him; Sidney, as he fought", "And as he fell and as he lived and loved", "Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot,", "Arose; and Lucan, by his death approved:", "Oblivion as they rose shrank like a thing reproved.", "", "And many more, whose names on Earth are dark,", "But whose transmitted effluence cannot die", "So long as fire outlives the parent spark,", "Rose, robed in dazzling immortality.", "'Thou art become as one of us,' they cry,", "'It was for thee yon kingless sphere has long", "Swung blind in unascended majesty,", "Silent alone amid a Heaven of Song.", "Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of our throng!'", "", "Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth,", "Fond wretch! and know thyself and him aright.", "Clasp with thy panting soul the pendulous Earth;", "As from a centre, dart thy spirit's light", "Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might", "Satiate the void circumference: then shrink", "Even to a point within our day and night;", "And keep thy heart light lest it make thee sink", "When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee to the brink.", "", "Or go to Rome, which is the sepulchre,", "Oh, not of him, but of our joy: 'tis nought", "That ages, empires and religions there", "Lie buried in the ravage they have wrought;", "For such as he can lend,--they borrow not", "Glory from those who made the world their prey;", "And he is gathered to the kings of thought", "Who waged contention with their time's decay,", "And of the past are all that cannot pass away.", "", "Go thou to Rome,--at once the Paradise,", "The grave, the city, and the wilderness;", "And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise,", "And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress", "The bones of Desolation's nakedness", "Pass, till the spirit of the spot shall lead", "Thy footsteps to a slope of green access", "Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead", "A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread;", "", "And gray walls moulder round, on which dull Time", "Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary brand;", "And one keen pyramid with wedge sublime,", "Pavilioning the dust of him who planned", "This refuge for his memory, doth stand", "Like flame transformed to marble; and beneath,", "A field is spread, on which a newer band", "Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death,", "Welcoming him we lose with scarce extinguished breath.", "", "Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet", "To have outgrown the sorrow which consigned", "Its charge to each; and if the seal is set,", "Here, on one fountain of a mourning mind,", "Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou find", "Thine own well full, if thou returnest home,", "Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind", "Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb.", "What Adonais is, why fear we to become?", "", "The One remains, the many change and pass;", "Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;", "Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,", "Stains the white radiance of Eternity,", "Until Death tramples it to fragments.--Die,", "If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!", "Follow where all is fled!--Rome's azure sky,", "Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak", "The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.", "", "Why linger, why turn back, why shrink, my Heart?", "Thy hopes are gone before: from all things here", "They have departed; thou shouldst now depart!", "A light is passed from the revolving year,", "And man, and woman; and what still is dear", "Attracts to crush, repels to make thee wither.", "The soft sky smiles,--the low wind whispers near:", "'Tis Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither,", "No more let Life divide what Death can join together.", "", "That Light whose smile kindles the Universe,", "That Beauty in which all things work and move,", "That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse", "Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love", "Which through the web of being blindly wove", "By man and beast and earth and air and sea,", "Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of", "The fire for which all thirst; now beams on me,", "Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality.", "", "The breath whose might I have invoked in song", "Descends on me; my spirit's bark is driven,", "Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng", "Whose sails were never to the tempest given;", "The massy earth and sphered skies are riven!", "I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar;", "Whilst, burning through the inmost veil of Heaven,", "The soul of Adonais, like a star,", "Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are." ], "linecount": "499" }, { "title": "Hellas: A Lyrical Drama", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "MANTIS EIM EZTHLON AGONUN.--OEDIP. COLON.", "", "PROLOGUE TO HELLAS.", "", "HERALD OF ETERNITY:", "It is the day when all the sons of God", "Wait in the roofless senate-house, whose floor", "Is Chaos, and the immovable abyss", "Frozen by His steadfast word to hyaline", "", "The shadow of God, and delegate", "Of that before whose breath the universe", "Is as a print of dew.", "Hierarchs and kings", "Who from your thrones pinnacled on the past", "Sway the reluctant present, ye who sit", "Pavilioned on the radiance or the gloom", "Of mortal thought, which like an exhalation", "Steaming from earth, conceals the ... of heaven", "Which gave it birth. ... assemble here", "Before your Father's throne; the swift decree", "Yet hovers, and the fiery incarnation", "Is yet withheld, clothed in which it shall", "annul", "The fairest of those wandering isles that gem", "The sapphire space of interstellar air,", "That green and azure sphere, that earth enwrapped", "Less in the beauty of its tender light", "Than in an atmosphere of living spirit", "Which interpenetrating all the ...", "it rolls from realm to realm", "And age to age, and in its ebb and flow", "Impels the generations", "To their appointed place,", "Whilst the high Arbiter", "Beholds the strife, and at the appointed time", "Sends His decrees veiled in eternal...", "", "Within the circuit of this pendent orb", "There lies an antique region, on which fell", "The dews of thought in the world's golden dawn", "Earliest and most benign, and from it sprung", "Temples and cities and immortal forms", "And harmonies of wisdom and of song,", "And thoughts, and deeds worthy of thoughts so fair.", "And when the sun of its dominion failed,", "And when the winter of its glory came,", "The winds that stripped it bare blew on and swept", "That dew into the utmost wildernesses", "In wandering clouds of sunny rain that thawed", "The unmaternal bosom of the North.", "Haste, sons of God, ... for ye beheld,", "Reluctant, or consenting, or astonished,", "The stern decrees go forth, which heaped on Greece", "Ruin and degradation and despair.", "A fourth now waits: assemble, sons of God,", "To speed or to prevent or to suspend,", "If, as ye dream, such power be not withheld,", "The unaccomplished destiny.", "", "CHORUS:", "The curtain of the Universe", "Is rent and shattered,", "The splendour-winged worlds disperse", "Like wild doves scattered.", "", "Space is roofless and bare,", "And in the midst a cloudy shrine,", "Dark amid thrones of light.", "In the blue glow of hyaline", "Golden worlds revolve and shine.", "In ... flight", "From every point of the Infinite,", "Like a thousand dawns on a single night", "The splendours rise and spread;", "And through thunder and darkness dread", "Light and music are radiated,", "And in their pavilioned chariots led", "By living wings high overhead", "The giant Powers move,", "Gloomy or bright as the thrones they fill.", "", "...", "", "A chaos of light and motion", "Upon that glassy ocean.", "", "...", "", "The senate of the Gods is met,", "Each in his rank and station set;", "There is silence in the spaces--", "Lo! Satan, Christ, and Mahomet", "Start from their places!", "", "CHRIST:", "Almighty Father!", "Low-kneeling at the feet of Destiny", "", "...", "", "There are two fountains in which spirits weep", "When mortals err, Discord and Slavery named,", "And with their bitter dew two Destinies", "Filled each their irrevocable urns; the third", "Fiercest and mightiest, mingled both, and added", "Chaos and Death, and slow Oblivion's lymph,", "And hate and terror, and the poisoned rain", "", "...", "", "The Aurora of the nations. By this brow", "Whose pores wept tears of blood, by these wide wounds,", "By this imperial crown of agony,", "By infamy and solitude and death,", "For this I underwent, and by the pain", "Of pity for those who would ... for me", "The unremembered joy of a revenge,", "For this I felt--by Plato's sacred light,", "Of which my spirit was a burning morrow--", "By Greece and all she cannot cease to be.", "Her quenchless words, sparks of immortal truth,", "Stars of all night--her harmonies and forms,", "Echoes and shadows of what Love adores", "In thee, I do compel thee, send forth Fate,", "Thy irrevocable child: let her descend,", "A seraph-winged Victory", "In tempest of the omnipotence of God", "Which sweeps through all things.", "", "From hollow leagues, from Tyranny which arms", "Adverse miscreeds and emulous anarchies", "To stamp, as on a winged serpent's seed,", "Upon the name of Freedom; from the storm", "Of faction, which like earthquake shakes and sickens", "The solid heart of enterprise; from all", "By which the holiest dreams of highest spirits", "Are stars beneath the dawn...", "She shall arise", "Victorious as the world arose from Chaos!", "And as the Heavens and the Earth arrayed", "Their presence in the beauty and the light", "Of Thy first smile, O Father,--as they gather", "The spirit of Thy love which paves for them", "Their path o'er the abyss, till every sphere", "Shall be one living Spirit,--so shall Greece--", "", "SATAN:", "Be as all things beneath the empyrean,", "Mine! Art thou eyeless like old Destiny,", "Thou mockery-king, crowned with a wreath of thorns?", "Whose sceptre is a reed, the broken reed", "Which pierces thee! whose throne a chair of scorn;", "For seest thou not beneath this crystal floor", "The innumerable worlds of golden light", "Which are my empire, and the least of them", "which thou wouldst redeem from me?", "Know'st thou not them my portion?", "Or wouldst rekindle the ... strife", "Which our great Father then did arbitrate", "Which he assigned to his competing sons", "Each his apportioned realm?", "Thou Destiny,", "Thou who art mailed in the omnipotence", "Of Him who tends thee forth, whate'er thy task,", "Speed, spare not to accomplish, and be mine", "Thy trophies, whether Greece again become", "The fountain in the desert whence the earth", "Shall drink of freedom, which shall give it strength", "To suffer, or a gulf of hollow death", "To swallow all delight, all life, all hope.", "Go, thou Vicegerent of my will, no less", "Than of the Father's; but lest thou shouldst faint,", "The winged hounds, Famine and Pestilence,", "Shall wait on thee, the hundred-forked snake", "Insatiate Superstition still shall...", "The earth behind thy steps, and War shall hover", "Above, and Fraud shall gape below, and Change", "Shall flit before thee on her dragon wings,", "Convulsing and consuming, and I add", "Three vials of the tears which daemons weep", "When virtuous spirits through the gate of Death", "Pass triumphing over the thorns of life,", "Sceptres and crowns, mitres and swords and snares,", "Trampling in scorn, like Him and Socrates.", "The first is Anarchy; when Power and Pleasure,", "Glory and science and security,", "On Freedom hang like fruit on the green tree,", "Then pour it forth, and men shall gather ashes.", "The second Tyranny--", "", "CHRIST:", "Obdurate spirit!", "Thou seest but the Past in the To-come.", "Pride is thy error and thy punishment.", "Boast not thine empire, dream not that thy worlds", "Are more than furnace-sparks or rainbow-drops", "Before the Power that wields and kindles them.", "True greatness asks not space, true excellence", "Lives in the Spirit of all things that live,", "Which lends it to the worlds thou callest thine.", "", "...", "", "MAHOMET:", "...Haste thou and fill the waning crescent", "With beams as keen as those which pierced the shadow", "Of Christian night rolled back upon the West,", "When the orient moon of Islam rode in triumph", "From Tmolus to the Acroceraunian snow.", "", "...", "", "Wake, thou Word", "Of God, and from the throne of Destiny", "Even to the utmost limit of thy way", "May Triumph", "", "...", "", "Be thou a curse on them whose creed", "Divides and multiplies the most high God.", "", "HELLAS.", "", "DRAMATIS PERSONAE:", "", "MAHMUD.", "HASSAN.", "DAOOD.", "AHASUERUS, A JEW.", "CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN.", "[THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET II. (OMITTED, EDITION 1822.)]", "MESSENGERS, SLAVES, AND ATTENDANTS.", "", "SCENE:", "CONSTANTINOPLE.", "", "TIME: SUNSET.", "", "SCENE:", "A TERRACE ON THE SERAGLIO.", "MAHMUD SLEEPING,", "AN INDIAN SLAVE SITTING BESIDE HIS COUCH.", "", "CHORUS OF GREEK CAPTIVE WOMEN:", "We strew these opiate flowers", "On thy restless pillow,--", "They were stripped from Orient bowers,", "By the Indian billow.", "Be thy sleep", "Calm and deep,", "Like theirs who fell--not ours who weep!", "", "INDIAN:", "Away, unlovely dreams!", "Away, false shapes of sleep", "Be his, as Heaven seems,", "Clear, and bright, and deep!", "Soft as love, and calm as death,", "Sweet as a summer night without a breath.", "", "CHORUS:", "Sleep, sleep! our song is laden", "With the soul of slumber;", "It was sung by a Samian maiden,", "Whose lover was of the number", "Who now keep", "That calm sleep", "Whence none may wake, where none shall weep.", "", "INDIAN:", "I touch thy temples pale!", "I breathe my soul on thee!", "And could my prayers avail,", "All my joy should be", "Dead, and I would live to weep,", "So thou mightst win one hour of quiet sleep.", "", "CHORUS:", "Breathe low, low", "The spell of the mighty mistress now!", "When Conscience lulls her sated snake,", "And Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake.", "Breathe low--low", "The words which, like secret fire, shall flow", "Through the veins of the frozen earth--low, low!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Life may change, but it may fly not;", "Hope may vanish, but can die not;", "Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;", "Love repulsed,--but it returneth!", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Yet were life a charnel where", "Hope lay coffined with Despair;", "Yet were truth a sacred lie,", "Love were lust--", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "If Liberty", "Lent not life its soul of light,", "Hope its iris of delight,", "Truth its prophet's robe to wear,", "Love its power to give and bear.", "", "CHORUS:", "In the great morning of the world,", "The Spirit of God with might unfurled", "The flag of Freedom over Chaos,", "And all its banded anarchs fled,", "Like vultures frighted from Imaus,", "Before an earthquake's tread.--", "So from Time's tempestuous dawn", "Freedom's splendour burst and shone:--", "Thermopylae and Marathon", "Caught like mountains beacon-lighted,", "The springing Fire.--The winged glory", "On Philippi half-alighted,", "Like an eagle on a promontory.", "Its unwearied wings could fan", "The quenchless ashes of Milan.", "From age to age, from man to man,", "It lived; and lit from land to land", "Florence, Albion, Switzerland.", "", "Then night fell; and, as from night,", "Reassuming fiery flight,", "From the West swift Freedom came,", "Against the course of Heaven and doom.", "A second sun arrayed in flame,", "To burn, to kindle, to illume.", "From far Atlantis its young beams", "Chased the shadows and the dreams.", "France, with all her sanguine steams,", "Hid, but quenched it not; again", "Through clouds its shafts of glory rain", "From utmost Germany to Spain.", "As an eagle fed with morning", "Scorns the embattled tempest's warning,", "When she seeks her aerie hanging", "In the mountain-cedar's hair,", "And her brood expect the clanging", "Of her wings through the wild air,", "Sick with famine:--Freedom, so", "To what of Greece remaineth now", "Returns; her hoary ruins glow", "Like Orient mountains lost in day;", "Beneath the safety of her wings", "Her renovated nurslings prey,", "And in the naked lightenings", "Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes.", "Let Freedom leave--where'er she flies,", "A Desert, or a Paradise:", "Let the beautiful and the brave", "Share her glory, or a grave.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "With the gifts of gladness", "Greece did thy cradle strew;", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "With the tears of sadness", "Greece did thy shroud bedew!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "With an orphan's affection", "She followed thy bier through Time;", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "And at thy resurrection", "Reappeareth, like thou, sublime!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "If Heaven should resume thee,", "To Heaven shall her spirit ascend;", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "If Hell should entomb thee,", "To Hell shall her high hearts bend.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "If Annihilation--", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Dust let her glories be!", "And a name and a nation", "Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee!", "", "INDIAN:", "His brow grows darker--breathe not--move not!", "He starts--he shudders--ye that love not,", "With your panting loud and fast,", "Have awakened him at last.", "", "MAHMUD [STARTING FROM HIS SLEEP]:", "Man the Seraglio-guard! make fast the gate!", "What! from a cannonade of three short hours?", "'Tis false! that breach towards the Bosphorus", "Cannot be practicable yet--who stirs?", "Stand to the match; that when the foe prevails", "One spark may mix in reconciling ruin", "The conqueror and the conquered! Heave the tower", "Into the gap--wrench off the roof!", "[ENTER HASSAN.]", "Ha! what!", "The truth of day lightens upon my dream", "And I am Mahmud still.", "", "HASSAN:", "Your Sublime Highness", "Is strangely moved.", "", "MAHMUD:", "The times do cast strange shadows", "On those who watch and who must rule their course,", "Lest they, being first in peril as in glory,", "Be whelmed in the fierce ebb:--and these are of them.", "Thrice has a gloomy vision hunted me", "As thus from sleep into the troubled day;", "It shakes me as the tempest shakes the sea,", "Leaving no figure upon memory's glass.", "Would that--no matter. Thou didst say thou knewest", "A Jew, whose spirit is a chronicle", "Of strange and secret and forgotten things.", "I bade thee summon him:--'tis said his tribe", "Dream, and are wise interpreters of dreams.", "", "HASSAN:", "The Jew of whom I spake is old,--so old", "He seems to have outlived a world's decay;", "The hoary mountains and the wrinkled ocean", "Seem younger still than he;--his hair and beard", "Are whiter than the tempest-sifted snow;", "His cold pale limbs and pulseless arteries", "Are like the fibres of a cloud instinct", "With light, and to the soul that quickens them", "Are as the atoms of the mountain-drift", "To the winter wind:--but from his eye looks forth", "A life of unconsumed thought which pierces", "The Present, and the Past, and the To-come.", "Some say that this is he whom the great prophet", "Jesus, the son of Joseph, for his mockery,", "Mocked with the curse of immortality.", "Some feign that he is Enoch: others dream", "He was pre-adamite and has survived", "Cycles of generation and of ruin.", "The sage, in truth, by dreadful abstinence", "And conquering penance of the mutinous flesh,", "Deep contemplation, and unwearied study,", "In years outstretched beyond the date of man,", "May have attained to sovereignty and science", "Over those strong and secret things and thoughts", "Which others fear and know not.", "", "MAHMUD:", "I would talk", "With this old Jew.", "", "HASSAN:", "Thy will is even now", "Made known to him, where he dwells in a sea-cavern", "'Mid the Demonesi, less accessible", "Than thou or God! He who would question him", "Must sail alone at sunset, where the stream", "Of Ocean sleeps around those foamless isles,", "When the young moon is westering as now,", "And evening airs wander upon the wave;", "And when the pines of that bee-pasturing isle,", "Green Erebinthus, quench the fiery shadow", "Of his gilt prow within the sapphire water,", "Then must the lonely helmsman cry aloud", "'Ahasuerus!' and the caverns round", "Will answer 'Ahasuerus!' If his prayer", "Be granted, a faint meteor will arise", "Lighting him over Marmora, and a wind", "Will rush out of the sighing pine-forest,", "And with the wind a storm of harmony", "Unutterably sweet, and pilot him", "Through the soft twilight to the Bosphorus:", "Thence at the hour and place and circumstance", "Fit for the matter of their conference", "The Jew appears. Few dare, and few who dare", "Win the desired communion--but that shout", "Bodes--", "", "[A SHOUT WITHIN.]", "", "MAHMUD:", "Evil, doubtless; Like all human sounds.", "Let me converse with spirits.", "", "HASSAN:", "That shout again.", "", "MAHMUD:", "This Jew whom thou hast summoned--", "", "HASSAN:", "Will be here--", "", "MAHMUD:", "When the omnipotent hour to which are yoked", "He, I, and all things shall compel--enough!", "Silence those mutineers--that drunken crew,", "That crowd about the pilot in the storm.", "Ay! strike the foremost shorter by a head!", "They weary me, and I have need of rest.", "Kinks are like stars--they rise and set, they have", "The worship of the world, but no repose.", "", "[EXEUNT SEVERALLY.]", "", "CHORUS:", "Worlds on worlds are rolling ever", "From creation to decay,", "Like the bubbles on a river", "Sparkling, bursting, borne away.", "But they are still immortal", "Who, through birth's orient portal", "And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,", "Clothe their unceasing flight", "In the brief dust and light", "Gathered around their chariots as they go;", "New shapes they still may weave,", "New gods, new laws receive,", "Bright or dim are they as the robes they last", "On Death's bare ribs had cast.", "", "A power from the unknown God,", "A Promethean conqueror, came;", "Like a triumphal path he trod", "The thorns of death and shame.", "A mortal shape to him", "Was like the vapour dim", "Which the orient planet animates with light;", "Hell, Sin, and Slavery came,", "Like bloodhounds mild and tame,", "Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight;", "The moon of Mahomet", "Arose, and it shall set:", "While blazoned as on Heaven's immortal noon", "The cross leads generations on.", "", "Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep", "From one whose dreams are Paradise", "Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,", "And Day peers forth with her blank eyes;", "So fleet, so faint, so fair,", "The Powers of earth and air", "Fled from the folding-star of Bethlehem:", "Apollo, Pan, and Love,", "And even Olympian Jove", "Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them;", "Our hills and seas and streams,", "Dispeopled of their dreams,", "Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,", "Wailed for the golden years.", "", "[ENTER MAHMUD, HASSAN, DAOOD, AND OTHERS.]", "", "MAHMUD:", "More gold? our ancestors bought gold with victory,", "And shall I sell it for defeat?", "", "DAOOD:", "The Janizars", "Clamour for pay.", "", "MAHMUD:", "Go! bid them pay themselves", "With Christian blood! Are there no Grecian virgins", "Whose shrieks and spasms and tears they may enjoy?", "No infidel children to impale on spears?", "No hoary priests after that Patriarch", "Who bent the curse against his country's heart,", "Which clove his own at last? Go! bid them kill,", "Blood is the seed of gold.", "", "DAOOD:", "It has been sown,", "And yet the harvest to the sicklemen", "Is as a grain to each.", "", "MAHMUD:", "Then, take this signet,", "Unlock the seventh chamber in which lie", "The treasures of victorious Solyman,--", "An empire's spoil stored for a day of ruin.", "O spirit of my sires! is it not come?", "The prey-birds and the wolves are gorged and sleep;", "But these, who spread their feast on the red earth,", "Hunger for gold, which fills not.--See them fed;", "Then, lead them to the rivers of fresh death.", "[EXIT DAOOD.]", "O miserable dawn, after a night", "More glorious than the day which it usurped!", "O faith in God! O power on earth! O word", "Of the great prophet, whose o'ershadowing wings", "Darkened the thrones and idols of the West,", "Now bright!--For thy sake cursed be the hour,", "Even as a father by an evil child,", "When the orient moon of Islam rolled in triumph", "From Caucasus to White Ceraunia!", "Ruin above, and anarchy below;", "Terror without, and treachery within;", "The Chalice of destruction full, and all", "Thirsting to drink; and who among us dares", "To dash it from his lips? and where is Hope?", "", "HASSAN:", "The lamp of our dominion still rides high;", "One God is God--Mahomet is His prophet.", "Four hundred thousand Moslems, from the limits", "Of utmost Asia, irresistibly", "Throng, like full clouds at the Sirocco's cry;", "But not like them to weep their strength in tears:", "They bear destroying lightning, and their step", "Wakes earthquake to consume and overwhelm,", "And reign in ruin. Phrygian Olympus,", "Tmolus, and Latmos, and Mycale, roughen", "With horrent arms; and lofty ships even now,", "Like vapours anchored to a mountain's edge,", "Freighted with fire and whirlwind, wait at Scala", "The convoy of the ever-veering wind.", "Samos is drunk with blood;--the Greek has paid", "Brief victory with swift loss and long despair.", "The false Moldavian serfs fled fast and far", "When the fierce shout of 'Allah-illa-Allah!'", "Rose like the war-cry of the northern wind", "Which kills the sluggish clouds, and leaves a flock", "Of wild swans struggling with the naked storm.", "So were the lost Greeks on the Danube's day!", "If night is mute, yet the returning sun", "Kindles the voices of the morning birds;", "Nor at thy bidding less exultingly", "Than birds rejoicing in the golden day,", "The Anarchies of Africa unleash", "Their tempest-winged cities of the sea,", "To speak in thunder to the rebel world.", "Like sulphurous clouds, half-shattered by the storm,", "They sweep the pale Aegean, while the Queen", "Of Ocean, bound upon her island-throne,", "Far in the West, sits mourning that her sons", "Who frown on Freedom spare a smile for thee:", "Russia still hovers, as an eagle might", "Within a cloud, near which a kite and crane", "Hang tangled in inextricable fight,", "To stoop upon the victor;--for she fears", "The name of Freedom, even as she hates thine.", "But recreant Austria loves thee as the Grave", "Loves Pestilence, and her slow dogs of war", "Fleshed with the chase, come up from Italy,", "And howl upon their limits; for they see", "The panther, Freedom, fled to her old cover,", "Amid seas and mountains, and a mightier brood", "Crouch round. What Anarch wears a crown or mitre,", "Or bears the sword, or grasps the key of gold,", "Whose friends are not thy friends, whose foes thy foes?", "Our arsenals and our armouries are full;", "Our forts defy assault; ten thousand cannon", "Lie ranged upon the beach, and hour by hour", "Their earth-convulsing wheels affright the city;", "The galloping of fiery steeds makes pale", "The Christian merchant; and the yellow Jew", "Hides his hoard deeper in the faithless earth.", "Like clouds, and like the shadows of the clouds,", "Over the hills of Anatolia,", "Swift in wide troops the Tartar chivalry", "Sweep;--the far flashing of their starry lances", "Reverberates the dying light of day.", "We have one God, one King, one Hope, one Law;", "But many-headed Insurrection stands", "Divided in itself, and soon must fall.", "", "MAHMUD:", "Proud words, when deeds come short, are seasonable:", "Look, Hassan, on yon crescent moon, emblazoned", "Upon that shattered flag of fiery cloud", "Which leads the rear of the departing day;", "Wan emblem of an empire fading now!", "See how it trembles in the blood-red air,", "And like a mighty lamp whose oil is spent", "Shrinks on the horizon's edge, while, from above,", "One star with insolent and victorious light", "Hovers above its fall, and with keen beams,", "Like arrows through a fainting antelope,", "Strikes its weak form to death.", "", "HASSAN:", "Even as that moon", "Renews itself--", "", "MAHMUD:", "Shall we be not renewed!", "Far other bark than ours were needed now", "To stem the torrent of descending time:", "The Spirit that lifts the slave before his lord", "Stalks through the capitals of armed kings,", "And spreads his ensign in the wilderness:", "Exults in chains; and, when the rebel falls,", "Cries like the blood of Abel from the dust;", "And the inheritors of the earth, like beasts", "When earthquake is unleashed, with idiot fear", "Cower in their kingly dens--as I do now.", "What were Defeat when Victory must appal?", "Or Danger, when Security looks pale?--", "How said the messenger--who, from the fort", "Islanded in the Danube, saw the battle", "Of Bucharest?--that--", "", "HASSAN:", "Ibrahim's scimitar", "Drew with its gleam swift victory from Heaven,", "To burn before him in the night of battle--", "A light and a destruction.", "", "MAHMUD:", "Ay! the day", "Was ours: but how?--", "", "HASSAN:", "The light Wallachians,", "The Arnaut, Servian, and Albanian allies", "Fled from the glance of our artillery", "Almost before the thunderstone alit.", "One half the Grecian army made a bridge", "Of safe and slow retreat, with Moslem dead;", "The other--", "", "MAHMUD:", "Speak--tremble not.--", "", "HASSAN:", "Islanded", "By victor myriads, formed in hollow square", "With rough and steadfast front, and thrice flung back", "The deluge of our foaming cavalry;", "Thrice their keen wedge of battle pierced our lines.", "Our baffled army trembled like one man", "Before a host, and gave them space; but soon,", "From the surrounding hills, the batteries blazed,", "Kneading them down with fire and iron rain:", "Yet none approached; till, like a field of corn", "Under the hook of the swart sickleman,", "The band, intrenched in mounds of Turkish dead,", "Grew weak and few.--Then said the Pacha, 'Slaves,", "Render yourselves--they have abandoned you--", "What hope of refuge, or retreat, or aid?", "We grant your lives.' 'Grant that which is thine own!'", "Cried one, and fell upon his sword and died!", "Another--'God, and man, and hope abandon me;", "But I to them, and to myself, remain", "Constant:'--he bowed his head, and his heart burst.", "A third exclaimed, 'There is a refuge, tyrant,", "Where thou darest not pursue, and canst not harm", "Shouldst thou pursue; there we shall meet again.'", "Then held his breath, and, after a brief spasm,", "The indignant spirit cast its mortal garment", "Among the slain--dead earth upon the earth!", "So these survivors, each by different ways,", "Some strange, all sudden, none dishonourable,", "Met in triumphant death; and when our army", "Closed in, while yet wonder, and awe, and shame", "Held back the base hyaenas of the battle", "That feed upon the dead and fly the living,", "One rose out of the chaos of the slain:", "And if it were a corpse which some dread spirit", "Of the old saviours of the land we rule", "Had lifted in its anger, wandering by;--", "Or if there burned within the dying man", "Unquenchable disdain of death, and faith", "Creating what it feigned;--I cannot tell--", "But he cried, 'Phantoms of the free, we come!", "Armies of the Eternal, ye who strike", "To dust the citadels of sanguine kings,", "And shake the souls throned on their stony hearts,", "And thaw their frostwork diadems like dew;--", "O ye who float around this clime, and weave", "The garment of the glory which it wears,", "Whose fame, though earth betray the dust it clasped,", "Lies sepulchred in monumental thought;--", "Progenitors of all that yet is great,", "Ascribe to your bright senate, O accept", "In your high ministrations, us, your sons--", "Us first, and the more glorious yet to come!", "And ye, weak conquerors! giants who look pale", "When the crushed worm rebels beneath your tread,", "The vultures and the dogs, your pensioners tame,", "Are overgorged; but, like oppressors, still", "They crave the relic of Destruction's feast.", "The exhalations and the thirsty winds", "Are sick with blood; the dew is foul with death;", "Heaven's light is quenched in slaughter: thus, where'er", "Upon your camps, cities, or towers, or fleets,", "The obscene birds the reeking remnants cast", "Of these dead limbs,--upon your streams and mountains,", "Upon your fields, your gardens, and your housetops,", "Where'er the winds shall creep, or the clouds fly,", "Or the dews fall, or the angry sun look down", "With poisoned light--Famine, and Pestilence,", "And Panic, shall wage war upon our side!", "Nature from all her boundaries is moved", "Against ye: Time has found ye light as foam.", "The Earth rebels; and Good and Evil stake", "Their empire o'er the unborn world of men", "On this one cast;--but ere the die be thrown,", "The renovated genius of our race,", "Proud umpire of the impious game, descends,", "A seraph-winged Victory, bestriding", "The tempest of the Omnipotence of God,", "Which sweeps all things to their appointed doom,", "And you to oblivion!'--More he would have said,", "But--", "", "MAHMUD:", "Died--as thou shouldst ore thy lips had painted", "Their ruin in the hues of our success.", "A rebel's crime, gilt with a rebel's tongue!", "Your heart is Greek, Hassan.", "", "HASSAN:", "It may be so:", "A spirit not my own wrenched me within,", "And I have spoken words I fear and hate;", "Yet would I die for--", "", "MAHMUD:", "Live! oh live! outlive", "Me and this sinking empire. But the fleet--", "", "HASSAN:", "Alas!--", "", "MAHMUD:", "The fleet which, like a flock of clouds", "Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner!", "Our winged castles from their merchant ships!", "Our myriads before their weak pirate bands!", "Our arms before their chains! our years of empire", "Before their centuries of servile fear!", "Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters!", "They own no more the thunder-bearing banner", "Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed,", "Gorge from a stranger's hand, and rend their master.", "", "HASSAN:", "Latmos, and Ampelos, and Phanae saw", "The wreck--", "", "MAHMUD:", "The caves of the Icarian isles", "Told each to the other in loud mockery,", "And with the tongue as of a thousand echoes,", "First of the sea-convulsing fight--and, then,--", "Thou darest to speak--senseless are the mountains:", "Interpret thou their voice!", "", "HASSAN:", "My presence bore", "A part in that day's shame. The Grecian fleet", "Bore down at daybreak from the North, and hung", "As multitudinous on the ocean line,", "As cranes upon the cloudless Thracian wind.", "Our squadron, convoying ten thousand men,", "Was stretching towards Nauplia when the battle", "Was kindled.--", "First through the hail of our artillery", "The agile Hydriote barks with press of sail", "Dashed:--ship to ship, cannon to cannon, man", "To man were grappled in the embrace of war,", "Inextricable but by death or victory.", "The tempest of the raging fight convulsed", "To its crystalline depths that stainless sea,", "And shook Heaven's roof of golden morning clouds,", "Poised on an hundred azure mountain-isles.", "In the brief trances of the artillery", "One cry from the destroyed and the destroyer", "Rose, and a cloud of desolation wrapped", "The unforeseen event, till the north wind", "Sprung from the sea, lifting the heavy veil", "Of battle-smoke--then victory--victory!", "For, as we thought, three frigates from Algiers", "Bore down from Naxos to our aid, but soon", "The abhorred cross glimmered behind, before,", "Among, around us; and that fatal sign", "Dried with its beams the strength in Moslem hearts,", "As the sun drinks the dew.--What more? We fled!--", "Our noonday path over the sanguine foam", "Was beaconed,--and the glare struck the sun pale,--", "By our consuming transports: the fierce light", "Made all the shadows of our sails blood-red,", "And every countenance blank. Some ships lay feeding", "The ravening fire, even to the water's level;", "Some were blown up; some, settling heavily,", "Sunk; and the shrieks of our companions died", "Upon the wind, that bore us fast and far,", "Even after they were dead. Nine thousand perished!", "We met the vultures legioned in the air", "Stemming the torrent of the tainted wind;", "They, screaming from their cloudy mountain-peaks,", "Stooped through the sulphurous battle-smoke and perched", "Each on the weltering carcase that we loved,", "Like its ill angel or its damned soul,", "Riding upon the bosom of the sea.", "We saw the dog-fish hastening to their feast.", "Joy waked the voiceless people of the sea,", "And ravening Famine left his ocean cave", "To dwell with War, with us, and with Despair.", "We met night three hours to the west of Patmos,", "And with night, tempest--", "", "MAHMUD:", "Cease!", "", "[ENTER A MESSENGER.]", "", "MESSENGER:", "Your Sublime Highness,", "That Christian hound, the Muscovite Ambassador,", "Has left the city.--If the rebel fleet", "Had anchored in the port, had victory", "Crowned the Greek legions in the Hippodrome,", "Panic were tamer.--Obedience and Mutiny,", "Like giants in contention planet-struck,", "Stand gazing on each other.--There is peace", "In Stamboul.--", "", "MAHMUD:", "Is the grave not calmer still?", "Its ruins shall be mine.", "", "HASSAN:", "Fear not the Russian:", "The tiger leagues not with the stag at bay", "Against the hunter.--Cunning, base, and cruel,", "He crouches, watching till the spoil be won,", "And must be paid for his reserve in blood.", "After the war is fought, yield the sleek Russian", "That which thou canst not keep, his deserved portion", "Of blood, which shall not flow through streets and fields,", "Rivers and seas, like that which we may win,", "But stagnate in the veins of Christian slaves!", "", "[ENTER SECOND MESSENGER.]", "", "SECOND MESSENGER:", "Nauplia, Tripolizza, Mothon, Athens,", "Navarin, Artas, Monembasia,", "Corinth, and Thebes are carried by assault,", "And every Islamite who made his dogs", "Fat with the flesh of Galilean slaves", "Passed at the edge of the sword: the lust of blood,", "Which made our warriors drunk, is quenched in death;", "But like a fiery plague breaks out anew", "In deeds which make the Christian cause look pale", "In its own light. The garrison of Patras", "Has store but for ten days, nor is there hope", "But from the Briton: at once slave and tyrant,", "His wishes still are weaker than his fears,", "Or he would sell what faith may yet remain", "From the oaths broke in Genoa and in Norway;", "And if you buy him not, your treasury", "Is empty even of promises--his own coin.", "The freedman of a western poet-chief", "Holds Attica with seven thousand rebels,", "And has beat back the Pacha of Negropont:", "The aged Ali sits in Yanina", "A crownless metaphor of empire:", "His name, that shadow of his withered might,", "Holds our besieging army like a spell", "In prey to famine, pest, and mutiny;", "He, bastioned in his citadel, looks forth", "Joyless upon the sapphire lake that mirrors", "The ruins of the city where he reigned", "Childless and sceptreless. The Greek has reaped", "The costly harvest his own blood matured,", "Not the sower, Ali--who has bought a truce", "From Ypsilanti with ten camel-loads", "Of Indian gold.", "", "[ENTER A THIRD MESSENGER.]", "", "MAHMUD:", "What more?", "", "THIRD MESSENGER:", "The Christian tribes", "Of Lebanon and the Syrian wilderness", "Are in revolt;--Damascus, Hems, Aleppo", "Tremble;--the Arab menaces Medina,", "The Aethiop has intrenched himself in Sennaar,", "And keeps the Egyptian rebel well employed,", "Who denies homage, claims investiture", "As price of tardy aid. Persia demands", "The cities on the Tigris, and the Georgians", "Refuse their living tribute. Crete and Cyprus,", "Like mountain-twins that from each other's veins", "Catch the volcano-fire and earthquake-spasm,", "Shake in the general fever. Through the city,", "Like birds before a storm, the Santons shriek,", "And prophesyings horrible and new", "Are heard among the crowd: that sea of men", "Sleeps on the wrecks it made, breathless and still.", "A Dervise, learned in the Koran, preaches", "That it is written how the sins of Islam", "Must raise up a destroyer even now.", "The Greeks expect a Saviour from the West,", "Who shall not come, men say, in clouds and glory,", "But in the omnipresence of that Spirit", "In which all live and are. Ominous signs", "Are blazoned broadly on the noonday sky:", "One saw a red cross stamped upon the sun;", "It has rained blood; and monstrous births declare", "The secret wrath of Nature and her Lord.", "The army encamped upon the Cydaris", "Was roused last night by the alarm of battle,", "And saw two hosts conflicting in the air,", "The shadows doubtless of the unborn time", "Cast on the mirror of the night. While yet", "The fight hung balanced, there arose a storm", "Which swept the phantoms from among the stars.", "At the third watch the Spirit of the Plague", "Was heard abroad flapping among the tents;", "Those who relieved watch found the sentinels dead.", "The last news from the camp is, that a thousand", "Have sickened, and--", "", "[ENTER A FOURTH MESSENGER.]", "", "MAHMUD:", "And thou, pale ghost, dim shadow", "Of some untimely rumour, speak!", "", "FOURTH MESSENGER:", "One comes", "Fainting with toil, covered with foam and blood:", "He stood, he says, on Chelonites'", "Promontory, which o'erlooks the isles that groan", "Under the Briton's frown, and all their waters", "Then trembling in the splendour of the moon,", "When as the wandering clouds unveiled or hid", "Her boundless light, he saw two adverse fleets", "Stalk through the night in the horizon's glimmer,", "Mingling fierce thunders and sulphureous gleams,", "And smoke which strangled every infant wind", "That soothed the silver clouds through the deep air.", "At length the battle slept, but the Sirocco", "Awoke, and drove his flock of thunder-clouds", "Over the sea-horizon, blotting out", "All objects--save that in the faint moon-glimpse", "He saw, or dreamed he saw, the Turkish admiral", "And two the loftiest of our ships of war,", "With the bright image of that Queen of Heaven,", "Who hid, perhaps, her face for grief, reversed;", "And the abhorred cross--", "", "[ENTER AN ATTENDANT.]", "", "ATTENDANT:", "Your Sublime Highness,", "The Jew, who--", "", "MAHMUD:", "Could not come more seasonably:", "Bid him attend. I'll hear no more! too long", "We gaze on danger through the mist of fear,", "And multiply upon our shattered hopes", "The images of ruin. Come what will!", "To-morrow and to-morrow are as lamps", "Set in our path to light us to the edge", "Through rough and smooth, nor can we suffer aught", "Which He inflicts not in whose hand we are.", "", "[EXEUNT.]", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Would I were the winged cloud", "Of a tempest swift and loud!", "I would scorn", "The smile of morn", "And the wave where the moonrise is born!", "I would leave", "The spirits of eve", "A shroud for the corpse of the day to weave", "From other threads than mine!", "Bask in the deep blue noon divine.", "Who would? Not I.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Whither to fly?", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Where the rocks that gird th' Aegean", "Echo to the battle paean", "Of the free--", "I would flee", "A tempestuous herald of victory!", "My golden rain", "For the Grecian slain", "Should mingle in tears with the bloody main,", "And my solemn thunder-knell", "Should ring to the world the passing-bell", "Of Tyranny!", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Ah king! wilt thou chain", "The rack and the rain?", "Wilt thou fetter the lightning and hurricane?", "The storms are free,", "But we--", "", "CHORUS:", "O Slavery! thou frost of the world's prime,", "Killing its flowers and leaving its thorns bare!", "Thy touch has stamped these limbs with crime,", "These brows thy branding garland bear,", "But the free heart, the impassive soul", "Scorn thy control!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Let there be light! said Liberty,", "And like sunrise from the sea,", "Athens arose!--Around her born,", "Shone like mountains in the morn", "Glorious states;--and are they now", "Ashes, wrecks, oblivion?", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Go,", "Where Thermae and Asopus swallowed", "Persia, as the sand does foam:", "Deluge upon deluge followed,", "Discord, Macedon, and Rome:", "And lastly thou!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Temples and towers,", "Citadels and marts, and they", "Who live and die there, have been ours,", "And may be thine, and must decay;", "But Greece and her foundations are", "Built below the tide of war,", "Based on the crystalline sea", "Of thought and its eternity;", "Her citizens, imperial spirits,", "Rule the present from the past,", "On all this world of men inherits", "Their seal is set.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Hear ye the blast,", "Whose Orphic thunder thrilling calls", "From ruin her Titanian walls?", "Whose spirit shakes the sapless bones", "Of Slavery? Argos, Corinth, Crete", "Hear, and from their mountain thrones", "The daemons and the nymphs repeat", "The harmony.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "I hear! I hear!", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "The world's eyeless charioteer,", "Destiny, is hurrying by!", "What faith is crushed, what empire bleeds", "Beneath her earthquake-footed steeds?", "What eagle-winged victory sits", "At her right hand? what shadow flits", "Before? what splendour rolls behind?", "Ruin and renovation cry", "'Who but We?'", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "I hear! I hear!", "The hiss as of a rushing wind,", "The roar as of an ocean foaming,", "The thunder as of earthquake coming.", "I hear! I hear!", "The crash as of an empire falling,", "The shrieks as of a people calling", "'Mercy! mercy!'--How they thrill!", "Then a shout of 'kill! kill! kill!'", "And then a small still voice, thus--", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "For", "Revenge and Wrong bring forth their kind,", "The foul cubs like their parents are,", "Their den is in the guilty mind,", "And Conscience feeds them with despair.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "In sacred Athens, near the fane", "Of Wisdom, Pity's altar stood:", "Serve not the unknown God in vain.", "But pay that broken shrine again,", "Love for hate and tears for blood.", "", "[ENTER MAHMUD AND AHASUERUS.]", "", "MAHMUD:", "Thou art a man, thou sayest, even as we.", "", "AHASUERUS:", "No more!", "", "MAHMUD:", "But raised above thy fellow-men", "By thought, as I by power.", "", "AHASUERUS:", "Thou sayest so.", "", "MAHMUD:", "Thou art an adept in the difficult lore", "Of Greek and Frank philosophy; thou numberest", "The flowers, and thou measurest the stars;", "Thou severest element from element;", "Thy spirit is present in the Past, and sees", "The birth of this old world through all its cycles", "Of desolation and of loveliness,", "And when man was not, and how man became", "The monarch and the slave of this low sphere,", "And all its narrow circles--it is much--", "I honour thee, and would be what thou art", "Were I not what I am; but the unborn hour,", "Cradled in fear and hope, conflicting storms,", "Who shall unveil? Nor thou, nor I, nor any", "Mighty or wise. I apprehended not", "What thou hast taught me, but I now perceive", "That thou art no interpreter of dreams;", "Thou dost not own that art, device, or God,", "Can make the Future present--let it come!", "Moreover thou disdainest us and ours;", "Thou art as God, whom thou contemplatest.", "", "AHASUERUS:", "Disdain thee?--not the worm beneath thy feet!", "The Fathomless has care for meaner things", "Than thou canst dream, and has made pride for those", "Who would be what they may not, or would seem", "That which they are not. Sultan! talk no more", "Of thee and me, the Future and the Past;", "But look on that which cannot change--the One,", "The unborn and the undying. Earth and ocean,", "Space, and the isles of life or light that gem", "The sapphire floods of interstellar air,", "This firmament pavilioned upon chaos,", "With all its cressets of immortal fire,", "Whose outwall, bastioned impregnably", "Against the escape of boldest thoughts, repels them", "As Calpe the Atlantic clouds--this Whole", "Of suns, and worlds, and men, and beasts, and flowers,", "With all the silent or tempestuous workings", "By which they have been, are, or cease to be,", "Is but a vision;--all that it inherits", "Are motes of a sick eye, bubbles and dreams;", "Thought is its cradle and its grave, nor less", "The Future and the Past are idle shadows", "Of thought's eternal flight--they have no being:", "Nought is but that which feels itself to be.", "", "MAHMUD:", "What meanest thou? Thy words stream like a tempest", "Of dazzling mist within my brain--they shake", "The earth on which I stand, and hang like night", "On Heaven above me. What can they avail?", "They cast on all things surest, brightest, best,", "Doubt, insecurity, astonishment.", "", "AHASUERUS:", "Mistake me not! All is contained in each.", "Dodona's forest to an acorn's cup", "Is that which has been, or will be, to that", "Which is--the absent to the present. Thought", "Alone, and its quick elements, Will, Passion,", "Reason, Imagination, cannot die;", "They are, what that which they regard appears,", "The stuff whence mutability can weave", "All that it hath dominion o'er, worlds, worms,", "Empires, and superstitions. What has thought", "To do with time, or place, or circumstance?", "Wouldst thou behold the Future?--ask and have!", "Knock and it shall be opened--look, and lo!", "The coming age is shadowed on the Past", "As on a glass.", "", "MAHMUD:", "Wild, wilder thoughts convulse", "My spirit--Did not Mahomet the Second", "Win Stamboul?", "", "AHASUERUS:", "Thou wouldst ask that giant spirit", "The written fortunes of thy house and faith.", "Thou wouldst cite one out of the grave to tell", "How what was born in blood must die.", "", "MAHMUD:", "Thy words", "Have power on me! I see--", "", "AHASUERUS:", "What hearest thou?", "", "MAHMUD:", "A far whisper--", "Terrible silence.", "", "AHASUERUS:", "What succeeds?", "", "MAHMUD:", "The sound", "As of the assault of an imperial city,", "The hiss of inextinguishable fire,", "The roar of giant cannon; the earthquaking", "Fall of vast bastions and precipitous towers,", "The shock of crags shot from strange enginery,", "The clash of wheels, and clang of armed hoofs,", "And crash of brazen mail as of the wreck", "Of adamantine mountains--the mad blast", "Of trumpets, and the neigh of raging steeds,", "The shrieks of women whose thrill jars the blood,", "And one sweet laugh, most horrible to hear,", "As of a joyous infant waked and playing", "With its dead mother's breast, and now more loud", "The mingled battle-cry,--ha! hear I not", "'En touto nike!' 'Allah-illa-Allah!'?", "", "AHASUERUS:", "The sulphurous mist is raised--thou seest--", "", "MAHMUD:", "A chasm,", "As of two mountains in the wall of Stamboul;", "And in that ghastly breach the Islamites,", "Like giants on the ruins of a world,", "Stand in the light of sunrise. In the dust", "Glimmers a kingless diadem, and one", "Of regal port has cast himself beneath", "The stream of war. Another proudly clad", "In golden arms spurs a Tartarian barb", "Into the gap, and with his iron mace", "Directs the torrent of that tide of men,", "And seems--he is--Mahomet!", "", "AHASUERUS:", "What thou seest", "Is but the ghost of thy forgotten dream.", "A dream itself, yet less, perhaps, than that", "Thou call'st reality. Thou mayst behold", "How cities, on which Empire sleeps enthroned,", "Bow their towered crests to mutability.", "Poised by the flood, e'en on the height thou holdest,", "Thou mayst now learn how the full tide of power", "Ebbs to its depths.--Inheritor of glory,", "Conceived in darkness, born in blood, and nourished", "With tears and toil, thou seest the mortal throes", "Of that whose birth was but the same. The Past", "Now stands before thee like an Incarnation", "Of the To-come; yet wouldst thou commune with", "That portion of thyself which was ere thou", "Didst start for this brief race whose crown is death,", "Dissolve with that strong faith and fervent passion", "Which called it from the uncreated deep,", "Yon cloud of war, with its tempestuous phantoms", "Of raging death; and draw with mighty will", "The imperial shade hither.", "", "[EXIT AHASUERUS.]", "", "[THE PHANTOM OF MAHOMET THE SECOND APPEARS.]", "", "MAHMUD:", "Approach!", "", "PHANTOM:", "I come", "Thence whither thou must go! The grave is fitter", "To take the living than give up the dead;", "Yet has thy faith prevailed, and I am here.", "The heavy fragments of the power which fell", "When I arose, like shapeless crags and clouds,", "Hang round my throne on the abyss, and voices", "Of strange lament soothe my supreme repose,", "Wailing for glory never to return.--", "A later Empire nods in its decay:", "The autumn of a greener faith is come,", "And wolfish change, like winter, howls to strip", "The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built", "Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below.", "The storm is in its branches, and the frost", "Is on its leaves, and the blank deep expects", "Oblivion on oblivion, spoil on spoil,", "Ruin on ruin:--Thou art slow, my son;", "The Anarchs of the world of darkness keep", "A throne for thee, round which thine empire lies", "Boundless and mute; and for thy subjects thou,", "Like us, shalt rule the ghosts of murdered life,", "The phantoms of the powers who rule thee now--", "Mutinous passions, and conflicting fears,", "And hopes that sate themselves on dust, and die!--", "Stripped of their mortal strength, as thou of thine.", "Islam must fall, but we will reign together", "Over its ruins in the world of death:--", "And if the trunk be dry, yet shall the seed", "Unfold itself even in the shape of that", "Which gathers birth in its decay. Woe! woe!", "To the weak people tangled in the grasp", "Of its last spasms.", "", "MAHMUD:", "Spirit, woe to all!", "Woe to the wronged and the avenger! Woe", "To the destroyer, woe to the destroyed!", "Woe to the dupe, and woe to the deceiver!", "Woe to the oppressed, and woe to the oppressor!", "Woe both to those that suffer and inflict;", "Those who are born and those who die! but say,", "Imperial shadow of the thing I am,", "When, how, by whom, Destruction must accomplish", "Her consummation!", "", "PHANTOM:", "Ask the cold pale Hour,", "Rich in reversion of impending death,", "When HE shall fall upon whose ripe gray hairs", "Sit Care, and Sorrow, and Infirmity--", "The weight which Crime, whose wings are plumed with years,", "Leaves in his flight from ravaged heart to heart", "Over the heads of men, under which burthen", "They bow themselves unto the grave: fond wretch!", "He leans upon his crutch, and talks of years", "To come, and how in hours of youth renewed", "He will renew lost joys, and--", "", "VOICE WITHOUT:", "Victory! Victory!", "", "[THE PHANTOM VANISHES.]", "", "MAHMUD:", "What sound of the importunate earth has broken", "My mighty trance?", "", "VOICE WITHOUT:", "Victory! Victory!", "", "MAHMUD:", "Weak lightning before darkness! poor faint smile", "Of dying Islam! Voice which art the response", "Of hollow weakness! Do I wake and live?", "Were there such things, or may the unquiet brain,", "Vexed by the wise mad talk of the old Jew,", "Have shaped itself these shadows of its fear?", "It matters not!--for nought we see or dream,", "Possess, or lose, or grasp at, can be worth", "More than it gives or teaches. Come what may,", "The Future must become the Past, and I", "As they were to whom once this present hour,", "This gloomy crag of time to which I cling,", "Seemed an Elysian isle of peace and joy", "Never to be attained.--I must rebuke", "This drunkenness of triumph ere it die,", "And dying, bring despair. Victory! poor slaves!", "", "[EXIT MAHMUD.]", "", "VOICE WITHOUT:", "Shout in the jubilee of death! The Greeks", "Are as a brood of lions in the net", "Round which the kingly hunters of the earth", "Stand smiling. Anarchs, ye whose daily food", "Are curses, groans, and gold, the fruit of death,", "From Thule to the girdle of the world,", "Come, feast! the board groans with the flesh of men;", "The cup is foaming with a nation's blood,", "Famine and Thirst await! eat, drink, and die!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Victorious Wrong, with vulture scream,", "Salutes the rising sun, pursues the flying day!", "I saw her, ghastly as a tyrant's dream,", "Perch on the trembling pyramid of night,", "Beneath which earth and all her realms pavilioned lay", "In visions of the dawning undelight.", "Who shall impede her flight?", "Who rob her of her prey?", "", "VOICE WITHOUT:", "Victory! Victory! Russia's famished eagles", "Dare not to prey beneath the crescent's light.", "Impale the remnant of the Greeks! despoil!", "Violate! make their flesh cheaper than dust!", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Thou voice which art", "The herald of the ill in splendour hid!", "Thou echo of the hollow heart", "Of monarchy, bear me to thine abode", "When desolation flashes o'er a world destroyed:", "Oh, bear me to those isles of jagged cloud", "Which float like mountains on the earthquake, mid", "The momentary oceans of the lightning,", "Or to some toppling promontory proud", "Of solid tempest whose black pyramid,", "Riven, overhangs the founts intensely bright'ning", "Of those dawn-tinted deluges of fire", "Before their waves expire,", "When heaven and earth are light, and only light", "In the thunder-night!", "", "VOICE WITHOUT:", "Victory! Victory! Austria, Russia, England,", "And that tame serpent, that poor shadow, France,", "Cry peace, and that means death when monarchs speak.", "Ho, there! bring torches, sharpen those red stakes,", "These chains are light, fitter for slaves and poisoners", "Than Greeks. Kill! plunder! burn! let none remain.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Alas! for Liberty!", "If numbers, wealth, or unfulfilling years,", "Or fate, can quell the free!", "Alas! for Virtue, when", "Torments, or contumely, or the sneers", "Of erring judging men", "Can break the heart where it abides.", "Alas! if Love, whose smile makes this obscure world splendid,", "Can change with its false times and tides,", "Like hope and terror,--", "Alas for Love!", "And Truth, who wanderest lone and unbefriended,", "If thou canst veil thy lie-consuming mirror", "Before the dazzled eyes of Error,", "Alas for thee! Image of the Above.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Repulse, with plumes from conquest torn,", "Led the ten thousand from the limits of the morn", "Through many an hostile Anarchy!", "At length they wept aloud, and cried, 'The Sea! the Sea!'", "Through exile, persecution, and despair,", "Rome was, and young Atlantis shall become", "The wonder, or the terror, or the tomb", "Of all whose step wakes Power lulled in her savage lair:", "But Greece was as a hermit-child,", "Whose fairest thoughts and limbs were built", "To woman's growth, by dreams so mild,", "She knew not pain or guilt;", "And now, O Victory, blush! and Empire, tremble", "When ye desert the free--", "If Greece must be", "A wreck, yet shall its fragments reassemble,", "And build themselves again impregnably", "In a diviner clime,", "To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime,", "Which frowns above the idle foam of Time.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Let the tyrants rule the desert they have made;", "Let the free possess the Paradise they claim;", "Be the fortune of our fierce oppressors weighed", "With our ruin, our resistance, and our name!", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Our dead shall be the seed of their decay,", "Our survivors be the shadow of their pride,", "Our adversity a dream to pass away--", "Their dishonour a remembrance to abide!", "", "VOICE WITHOUT:", "Victory! Victory! The bought Briton sends", "The keys of ocean to the Islamite.--", "Now shall the blazon of the cross be veiled,", "And British skill directing Othman might,", "Thunder-strike rebel victory. Oh, keep holy", "This jubilee of unrevenged blood!", "Kill! crush! despoil! Let not a Greek escape!", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Darkness has dawned in the East", "On the noon of time:", "The death-birds descend to their feast", "From the hungry clime.", "Let Freedom and Peace flee far", "To a sunnier strand,", "And follow Love's folding-star", "To the Evening land!", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "The young moon has fed", "Her exhausted horn", "With the sunset's fire:", "The weak day is dead,", "But the night is not born;", "And, like loveliness panting with wild desire", "While it trembles with fear and delight,", "Hesperus flies from awakening night,", "And pants in its beauty and speed with light", "Fast-flashing, soft, and bright.", "Thou beacon of love! thou lamp of the free!", "Guide us far, far away,", "To climes where now veiled by the ardour of day", "Thou art hidden", "From waves on which weary Noon", "Faints in her summer swoon,", "Between kingless continents sinless as Eden,", "Around mountains and islands inviolably", "Pranked on the sapphire sea.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "Through the sunset of hope,", "Like the shapes of a dream.", "What Paradise islands of glory gleam!", "Beneath Heaven's cope,", "Their shadows more clear float by--", "The sound of their oceans, the light of their sky,", "The music and fragrance their solitudes breathe", "Burst, like morning on dream, or like Heaven on death,", "Through the walls of our prison;", "And Greece, which was dead, is arisen!", "", "CHORUS:", "The world's great age begins anew,", "The golden years return,", "The earth doth like a snake renew", "Her winter weeds outworn:", "Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,", "Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.", "", "A brighter Hellas rears its mountains", "From waves serener far;", "A new Peneus rolls his fountains", "Against the morning star.", "Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep", "Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.", "", "A loftier Argo cleaves the main,", "Fraught with a later prize;", "Another Orpheus sings again,", "And loves, and weeps, and dies.", "A new Ulysses leaves once more", "Calypso for his native shore.", "", "Oh, write no more the tale of Troy,", "If earth Death's scroll must be!", "Nor mix with Laian rage the joy", "Which dawns upon the free:", "Although a subtler Sphinx renew", "Riddles of death Thebes never knew.", "", "Another Athens shall arise,", "And to remoter time", "Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,", "The splendour of its prime;", "And leave, if nought so bright may live,", "All earth can take or Heaven can give.", "", "Saturn and Love their long repose", "Shall burst, more bright and good", "Than all who fell, than One who rose,", "Than many unsubdued:", "Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,", "But votive tears and symbol flowers.", "", "Oh, cease! must hate and death return?", "Cease! must men kill and die?", "Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn", "Of bitter prophecy.", "The world is weary of the past,", "Oh, might it die or rest at last!" ], "linecount": "1506" }, { "title": "Fragments of an Unfinished Drama", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "SCENE.--BEFORE THE CAVERN OF THE INDIAN ENCHANTRESS.", "", "THE ENCHANTRESS COMES FORTH.", "", "ENCHANTRESS:", "He came like a dream in the dawn of life,", "He fled like a shadow before its noon;", "He is gone, and my peace is turned to strife,", "And I wander and wane like the weary moon.", "O, sweet Echo, wake,", "And for my sake", "Make answer the while my heart shall break!", "", "But my heart has a music which Echo's lips,", "Though tender and true, yet can answer not,", "And the shadow that moves in the soul's eclipse", "Can return not the kiss by his now forgot;", "Sweet lips! he who hath", "On my desolate path", "Cast the darkness of absence, worse than death!", "", "[THE ENCHANTRESS MAKES HER SPELL: SHE IS ANSWERED BY A SPIRIT.]", "", "SPIRIT:", "Within the silent centre of the earth", "My mansion is; where I have lived insphered", "From the beginning, and around my sleep", "Have woven all the wondrous imagery", "Of this dim spot, which mortals call the world;", "Infinite depths of unknown elements", "Massed into one impenetrable mask;", "Sheets of immeasurable fire, and veins", "Of gold and stone, and adamantine iron.", "And as a veil in which I walk through Heaven", "I have wrought mountains, seas, and waves, and clouds,", "And lastly light, whose interfusion dawns", "In the dark space of interstellar air.", "", "ANOTHER SCENE.", "", "INDIAN YOUTH AND LADY.", "", "INDIAN:", "And, if my grief should still be dearer to me", "Than all the pleasures in the world beside,", "Why would you lighten it?--", "", "LADY:", "I offer only", "That which I seek, some human sympathy", "In this mysterious island.", "", "INDIAN:", "Oh! my friend,", "My sister, my beloved!--What do I say?", "My brain is dizzy, and I scarce know whether", "I speak to thee or her.", "", "LADY:", "Peace, perturbed heart!", "I am to thee only as thou to mine,", "The passing wind which heals the brow at noon,", "And may strike cold into the breast at night,", "Yet cannot linger where it soothes the most,", "Or long soothe could it linger.", "", "INDIAN:", "But you said", "You also loved?", "", "LADY:", "Loved! Oh, I love. Methinks", "This word of love is fit for all the world,", "And that for gentle hearts another name", "Would speak of gentler thoughts than the world owns.", "I have loved.", "", "INDIAN:", "And thou lovest not? if so,", "Young as thou art thou canst afford to weep.", "", "LADY:", "Oh! would that I could claim exemption", "From all the bitterness of that sweet name.", "I loved, I love, and when I love no more", "Let joys and grief perish, and leave despair", "To ring the knell of youth. He stood beside me,", "The embodied vision of the brightest dream,", "Which like a dawn heralds the day of life;", "The shadow of his presence made my world", "A Paradise. All familiar things he touched,", "All common words he spoke, became to me", "Like forms and sounds of a diviner world.", "He was as is the sun in his fierce youth,", "As terrible and lovely as a tempest;", "He came, and went, and left me what I am.", "Alas! Why must I think how oft we two", "Have sate together near the river springs,", "Under the green pavilion which the willow", "Spreads on the floor of the unbroken fountain,", "Strewn, by the nurslings that linger there,", "Over that islet paved with flowers and moss,", "While the musk-rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow,", "Showered on us, and the dove mourned in the pine,", "Sad prophetess of sorrows not her own?", "The crane returned to her unfrozen haunt,", "And the false cuckoo bade the spray good morn;", "And on a wintry bough the widowed bird,", "Hid in the deepest night of ivy-leaves,", "Renewed the vigils of a sleepless sorrow.", "I, left like her, and leaving one like her,", "Alike abandoned and abandoning", "(Oh! unlike her in this!) the gentlest youth,", "Whose love had made my sorrows dear to him,", "Even as my sorrow made his love to me!", "", "INDIAN:", "One curse of Nature stamps in the same mould", "The features of the wretched; and they are", "As like as violet to violet,", "When memory, the ghost, their odours keeps", "Mid the cold relics of abandoned joy.--", "Proceed.", "", "LADY:", "He was a simple innocent boy.", "I loved him well, but not as he desired;", "Yet even thus he was content to be:--", "A short content, for I was--", "", "INDIAN [ASIDE]:", "God of Heaven!", "From such an islet, such a river-spring--!", "I dare not ask her if there stood upon it", "A pleasure-dome surmounted by a crescent,", "With steps to the blue water.", "[ALOUD.]", "It may be", "That Nature masks in life several copies", "Of the same lot, so that the sufferers", "May feel another's sorrow as their own,", "And find in friendship what they lost in love.", "That cannot be: yet it is strange that we,", "From the same scene, by the same path to this", "Realm of abandonment-- But speak! your breath--", "Your breath is like soft music, your words are", "The echoes of a voice which on my heart", "Sleeps like a melody of early days.", "But as you said--", "", "LADY:", "He was so awful, yet", "So beautiful in mystery and terror,", "Calming me as the loveliness of heaven", "Soothes the unquiet sea:--and yet not so,", "For he seemed stormy, and would often seem", "A quenchless sun masked in portentous clouds;", "For such his thoughts, and even his actions were;", "But he was not of them, nor they of him,", "But as they hid his splendour from the earth.", "Some said he was a man of blood and peril,", "And steeped in bitter infamy to the lips.", "More need was there I should be innocent,", "More need that I should be most true and kind,", "And much more need that there should be found one", "To share remorse and scorn and solitude,", "And all the ills that wait on those who do", "The tasks of ruin in the world of life.", "He fled, and I have followed him.", "", "INDIAN:", "Such a one", "Is he who was the winter of my peace.", "But, fairest stranger, when didst thou depart", "From the far hills where rise the springs of India?", "How didst thou pass the intervening sea?", "", "LADY:", "If I be sure I am not dreaming now,", "I should not doubt to say it was a dream.", "Methought a star came down from heaven,", "And rested mid the plants of India,", "Which I had given a shelter from the frost", "Within my chamber. There the meteor lay,", "Panting forth light among the leaves and flowers,", "As if it lived, and was outworn with speed;", "Or that it loved, and passion made the pulse", "Of its bright life throb like an anxious heart,", "Till it diffused itself; and all the chamber", "And walls seemed melted into emerald fire", "That burned not; in the midst of which appeared", "A spirit like a child, and laughed aloud", "A thrilling peal of such sweet merriment", "As made the blood tingle in my warm feet:", "Then bent over a vase, and murmuring", "Low, unintelligible melodies,", "Placed something in the mould like melon-seeds,", "And slowly faded, and in place of it", "A soft hand issued from the veil of fire,", "Holding a cup like a magnolia flower,", "And poured upon the earth within the vase", "The element with which it overflowed,", "Brighter than morning light, and purer than", "The water of the springs of Himalah.", "", "INDIAN:", "You waked not?", "", "LADY:", "Not until my dream became", "Like a child's legend on the tideless sand.", "Which the first foam erases half, and half", "Leaves legible. At length I rose, and went,", "Visiting my flowers from pot to pot, and thought", "To set new cuttings in the empty urns,", "And when I came to that beside the lattice,", "I saw two little dark-green leaves", "Lifting the light mould at their birth, and then", "I half-remembered my forgotten dream.", "And day by day, green as a gourd in June,", "The plant grew fresh and thick, yet no one knew", "What plant it was; its stem and tendrils seemed", "Like emerald snakes, mottled and diamonded", "With azure mail and streaks of woven silver;", "And all the sheaths that folded the dark buds", "Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel,", "Until the golden eye of the bright flower,", "Through the dark lashes of those veined lids,", "...disencumbered of their silent sleep,", "Gazed like a star into the morning light.", "Its leaves were delicate, you almost saw", "The pulses", "With which the purple velvet flower was fed", "To overflow, and like a poet's heart", "Changing bright fancy to sweet sentiment,", "Changed half the light to fragrance. It soon fell,", "And to a green and dewy embryo-fruit", "Left all its treasured beauty. Day by day", "I nursed the plant, and on the double flute", "Played to it on the sunny winter days", "Soft melodies, as sweet as April rain", "On silent leaves, and sang those words in which", "Passion makes Echo taunt the sleeping strings;", "And I would send tales of forgotten love", "Late into the lone night, and sing wild songs", "Of maids deserted in the olden time,", "And weep like a soft cloud in April's bosom", "Upon the sleeping eyelids of the plant,", "So that perhaps it dreamed that Spring was come,", "And crept abroad into the moonlight air,", "And loosened all its limbs, as, noon by noon,", "The sun averted less his oblique beam.", "", "INDIAN:", "And the plant died not in the frost?", "", "LADY:", "It grew;", "And went out of the lattice which I left", "Half open for it, trailing its quaint spires", "Along the garden and across the lawn,", "And down the slope of moss and through the tufts", "Of wild-flower roots, and stumps of trees o'ergrown", "With simple lichens, and old hoary stones,", "On to the margin of the glassy pool,", "Even to a nook of unblown violets", "And lilies-of-the-valley yet unborn,", "Under a pine with ivy overgrown.", "And theme its fruit lay like a sleeping lizard", "Under the shadows; but when Spring indeed", "Came to unswathe her infants, and the lilies", "Peeped from their bright green masks to wonder at", "This shape of autumn couched in their recess,", "Then it dilated, and it grew until", "One half lay floating on the fountain wave,", "Whose pulse, elapsed in unlike sympathies,", "Kept time", "Among the snowy water-lily buds.", "Its shape was such as summer melody", "Of the south wind in spicy vales might give", "To some light cloud bound from the golden dawn", "To fairy isles of evening, and it seemed", "In hue and form that it had been a mirror", "Of all the hues and forms around it and", "Upon it pictured by the sunny beams", "Which, from the bright vibrations of the pool,", "Were thrown upon the rafters and the roof", "Of boughs and leaves, and on the pillared stems", "Of the dark sylvan temple, and reflections", "Of every infant flower and star of moss", "And veined leaf in the azure odorous air.", "And thus it lay in the Elysian calm", "Of its own beauty, floating on the line", "Which, like a film in purest space, divided", "The heaven beneath the water from the heaven", "Above the clouds; and every day I went", "Watching its growth and wondering;", "And as the day grew hot, methought I saw", "A glassy vapour dancing on the pool,", "And on it little quaint and filmy shapes.", "With dizzy motion, wheel and rise and fall,", "Like clouds of gnats with perfect lineaments.", "", "...", "", "O friend, sleep was a veil uplift from Heaven--", "As if Heaven dawned upon the world of dream--", "When darkness rose on the extinguished day", "Out of the eastern wilderness.", "", "INDIAN:", "I too", "Have found a moment's paradise in sleep", "Half compensate a hell of waking sorrow." ], "linecount": "286" }, { "title": "Charles the First", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "SCENE 1:", "THE MASQUE OF THE INNS OF COURT.", "", "A PURSUIVANT:", "Place, for the Marshal of the Masque!", "", "FIRST CITIZEN:", "What thinkest thou of this quaint masque which turns,", "Like morning from the shadow of the night,", "The night to day, and London to a place", "Of peace and joy?", "", "SECOND CITIZEN:", "And Hell to Heaven.", "Eight years are gone,", "And they seem hours, since in this populous street", "I trod on grass made green by summer's rain,", "For the red plague kept state within that palace", "Where now that vanity reigns. In nine years more", "The roots will be refreshed with civil blood;", "And thank the mercy of insulted Heaven", "That sin and wrongs wound, as an orphan's cry,", "The patience of the great Avenger's ear.", "", "A YOUTH:", "Yet, father, 'tis a happy sight to see,", "Beautiful, innocent, and unforbidden", "By God or man;--'tis like the bright procession", "Of skiey visions in a solemn dream", "From which men wake as from a Paradise,", "And draw new strength to tread the thorns of life.", "If God be good, wherefore should this be evil?", "And if this be not evil, dost thou not draw", "Unseasonable poison from the flowers", "Which bloom so rarely in this barren world?", "Oh, kill these bitter thoughts which make the present", "Dark as the future!--", "", "...", "", "When Avarice and Tyranny, vigilant Fear,", "And open-eyed Conspiracy lie sleeping", "As on Hell's threshold; and all gentle thoughts", "Waken to worship Him who giveth joys", "With His own gift.", "", "SECOND CITIZEN:", "How young art thou in this old age of time!", "How green in this gray world? Canst thou discern", "The signs of seasons, yet perceive no hint", "Of change in that stage-scene in which thou art", "Not a spectator but an actor? or", "Art thou a puppet moved by ?", "The day that dawns in fire will die in storms,", "Even though the noon be calm. My travel's done,--", "Before the whirlwind wakes I shall have found", "My inn of lasting rest; but thou must still", "Be journeying on in this inclement air.", "Wrap thy old cloak about thy back;", "Nor leave the broad and plain and beaten road,", "Although no flowers smile on the trodden dust,", "For the violet paths of pleasure. This Charles the First", "Rose like the equinoctial sun,...", "By vapours, through whose threatening ominous veil", "Darting his altered influence he has gained", "This height of noon--from which he must decline", "Amid the darkness of conflicting storms,", "To dank extinction and to latest night...", "There goes", "The apostate Strafford; he whose titles", "whispered aphorisms", "From Machiavel and Bacon: and, if Judas", "Had been as brazen and as bold as he--", "", "FIRST CITIZEN:", "That", "Is the Archbishop.", "", "SECOND CITIZEN:", "Rather say the Pope:", "London will be soon his Rome: he walks", "As if he trod upon the heads of men:", "He looks elate, drunken with blood and gold;--", "Beside him moves the Babylonian woman", "Invisibly, and with her as with his shadow,", "Mitred adulterer! he is joined in sin,", "Which turns Heaven's milk of mercy to revenge.", "", "THIRD CITIZEN [LIFTING UP HIS EYES]:", "Good Lord! rain it down upon him!...", "Amid her ladies walks the papist queen,", "As if her nice feet scorned our English earth.", "The Canaanitish Jezebel! I would be", "A dog if I might tear her with my teeth!", "There's old Sir Henry Vane, the Earl of Pembroke,", "Lord Essex, and Lord Keeper Coventry,", "And others who make base their English breed", "By vile participation of their honours", "With papists, atheists, tyrants, and apostates.", "When lawyers masque 'tis time for honest men", "To strip the vizor from their purposes.", "A seasonable time for masquers this!", "When Englishmen and Protestants should sit", "dust on their dishonoured heads", "To avert the wrath of Him whose scourge is felt", "For the great sins which have drawn down from Heaven", "and foreign overthrow.", "The remnant of the martyred saints in Rochefort", "Have been abandoned by their faithless allies", "To that idolatrous and adulterous torturer", "Lewis of France,--the Palatinate is lost--", "[ENTER LEIGHTON (WHO HAS BEEN BRANDED IN THE FACE) AND BASTWICK.]", "Canst thou be--art thou?", "", "LEIGHTON:", "I WAS Leighton: what", "I AM thou seest. And yet turn thine eyes,", "And with thy memory look on thy friend's mind,", "Which is unchanged, and where is written deep", "The sentence of my judge.", "", "THIRD CITIZEN:", "Are these the marks with which", "Laud thinks to improve the image of his Maker", "Stamped on the face of man? Curses upon him,", "The impious tyrant!", "", "SECOND CITIZEN:", "It is said besides", "That lewd and papist drunkards may profane", "The Sabbath with their", "And has permitted that most heathenish custom", "Of dancing round a pole dressed up with wreaths", "On May-day.", "A man who thus twice crucifies his God", "May well ... his brother.--In my mind, friend,", "The root of all this ill is prelacy.", "I would cut up the root.", "", "THIRD CITIZEN:", "And by what means?", "", "SECOND CITIZEN:", "Smiting each Bishop under the fifth rib.", "", "THIRD CITIZEN:", "You seem to know the vulnerable place", "Of these same crocodiles.", "", "SECOND CITIZEN:", "I learnt it in", "Egyptian bondage, sir. Your worm of Nile", "Betrays not with its flattering tears like they;", "For, when they cannot kill, they whine and weep.", "Nor is it half so greedy of men's bodies", "As they of soul and all; nor does it wallow", "In slime as they in simony and lies", "And close lusts of the flesh.", "", "A MARSHALSMAN:", "Give place, give place!", "You torch-bearers, advance to the great gate,", "And then attend the Marshal of the Masque", "Into the Royal presence.", "", "A LAW STUDENT:", "What thinkest thou", "Of this quaint show of ours, my aged friend?", "Even now we see the redness of the torches", "Inflame the night to the eastward, and the clarions", " to us on the wind's wave. It comes!", "And their sounds, floating hither round the pageant,", "Rouse up the astonished air.", "", "FIRST CITIZEN:", "I will not think but that our country's wounds", "May yet be healed. The king is just and gracious,", "Though wicked counsels now pervert his will:", "These once cast off--", "", "SECOND CITIZEN:", "As adders cast their skins", "And keep their venom, so kings often change;", "Councils and counsellors hang on one another,", "Hiding the loathsome", "Like the base patchwork of a leper's rags.", "", "THE YOUTH:", "Oh, still those dissonant thoughts!--List how the music", "Grows on the enchanted air! And see, the torches", "Restlessly flashing, and the crowd divided", "Like waves before an admiral's prow!", "", "A MARSHALSMAN:", "Give place", "To the Marshal of the Masque!", "", "A PURSUIVANT:", "Room for the King!", "", "THE YOUTH:", "How glorious! See those thronging chariots", "Rolling, like painted clouds before the wind,", "Behind their solemn steeds: how some are shaped", "Like curved sea-shells dyed by the azure depths", "Of Indian seas; some like the new-born moon;", "And some like cars in which the Romans climbed", "(Canopied by Victory's eagle-wings outspread)", "The Capitolian--See how gloriously", "The mettled horses in the torchlight stir", "Their gallant riders, while they check their pride,", "Like shapes of some diviner element", "Than English air, and beings nobler than", "The envious and admiring multitude.", "", "SECOND CITIZEN:", "Ay, there they are--", "Nobles, and sons of nobles, patentees,", "Monopolists, and stewards of this poor farm,", "On whose lean sheep sit the prophetic crows,", "Here is the pomp that strips the houseless orphan,", "Here is the pride that breaks the desolate heart.", "These are the lilies glorious as Solomon,", "Who toil not, neither do they spin,--unless", "It be the webs they catch poor rogues withal.", "Here is the surfeit which to them who earn", "The niggard wages of the earth, scarce leaves", "The tithe that will support them till they crawl", "Back to her cold hard bosom. Here is health", "Followed by grim disease, glory by shame,", "Waste by lame famine, wealth by squalid want,", "And England's sin by England's punishment.", "And, as the effect pursues the cause foregone,", "Lo, giving substance to my words, behold", "At once the sign and the thing signified--", "A troop of cripples, beggars, and lean outcasts,", "Horsed upon stumbling jades, carted with dung,", "Dragged for a day from cellars and low cabins", "And rotten hiding-holes, to point the moral", "Of this presentment, and bring up the rear", "Of painted pomp with misery!", "", "THE YOUTH:", "'Tis but", "The anti-masque, and serves as discords do", "In sweetest music. Who would love May flowers", "If they succeeded not to Winter's flaw;", "Or day unchanged by night; or joy itself", "Without the touch of sorrow?", "", "SECOND CITIZEN:", "I and thou-", "", "A MARSHALSMAN:", "Place, give place!", "", "SCENE 2:", "A CHAMBER IN WHITEHALL.", "ENTER THE KING, QUEEN, LAUD, LORD STRAFTORD,", "LORD COTTINGTON, AND OTHER LORDS; ARCHY;", "ALSO ST. JOHN, WITH SOME GENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT.", "", "KING:", "Thanks, gentlemen. I heartily accept", "This token of your service: your gay masque", "Was performed gallantly. And it shows well", "When subjects twine such flowers of", "With the sharp thorns that deck the English crown.", "A gentle heart enjoys what it confers,", "Even as it suffers that which it inflicts,", "Though Justice guides the stroke.", "Accept my hearty thanks.", "", "QUEEN:", "And gentlemen,", "Call your poor Queen your debtor. Your quaint pageant", "Rose on me like the figures of past years,", "Treading their still path back to infancy,", "More beautiful and mild as they draw nearer", "The quiet cradle. I could have almost wept", "To think I was in Paris, where these shows", "Are well devised--such as I was ere yet", "My young heart shared a portion of the burthen,", "The careful weight, of this great monarchy.", "There, gentlemen, between the sovereign's pleasure", "And that which it regards, no clamour lifts", "Its proud interposition.", "In Paris ribald censurers dare not move", "Their poisonous tongues against these sinless sports;", "And HIS smile", "Warms those who bask in it, as ours would do", "If ... Take my heart's thanks: add them, gentlemen,", "To those good words which, were he King of France,", "My royal lord would turn to golden deeds.", "", "ST. JOHN:", "Madam, the love of Englishmen can make", "The lightest favour of their lawful king", "Outweigh a despot's.--We humbly take our leaves,", "Enriched by smiles which France can never buy.", "", "[EXEUNT ST. JOHN AND THE GENTLEMEN OF THE INNS OF COURT.]", "", "KING:", "My Lord Archbishop,", "Mark you what spirit sits in St. John's eyes?", "Methinks it is too saucy for this presence.", "", "ARCHY:", "Yes, pray your Grace look: for, like an unsophisticated sees", "everything upside down, you who are wise will discern the shadow of an", "idiot in lawn sleeves and a rochet setting springes to catch woodcocks", "in haymaking time. Poor Archy, whose owl-eyes are tempered to the", "error of his age, and because he is a fool, and by special ordinance", "of God forbidden ever to see himself as he is, sees now in that deep", "eye a blindfold devil sitting on the ball, and weighing words out", "between king and subjects. One scale is full of promises, and the", "other full of protestations: and then another devil creeps behind the", "first out of the dark windings pregnant lawyer's brain, and", "takes the bandage from the other's eyes, and throws a sword into the", "left-hand scale, for all the world like my Lord Essex's there.", "", "STRAFFORD:", "A rod in pickle for the Fool's back!", "", "ARCHY:", "Ay, and some are now smiling whose tears will make the brine; for the", "Fool sees--", "", "STRAFFORD:", "Insolent! You shall have your coat turned and be whipped out of the", "palace for this.", "", "ARCHY:", "When all the fools are whipped, and all the Protestant writers, while", "the knaves are whipping the fools ever since a thief was set to catch", "a thief. If all turncoats were whipped out of palaces, poor Archy", "would be disgraced in good company. Let the knaves whip the fools, and", "all the fools laugh at it. wise and godly slit each other's", "noses and ears (having no need of any sense of discernment in their", "craft); and the knaves, to marshal them, join in a procession to", "Bedlam, to entreat the madmen to omit their sublime Platonic", "contemplations, and manage the state of England. Let all the honest", "men who lie up at the prisons or the pillories, in custody", "of the pursuivants of the High-Commission Court, marshal them.", "", "[ENTER SECRETARY LYTTELTON, WITH PAPERS.]", "", "KING [LOOKING OVER THE PAPERS]:", "These stiff Scots", "His Grace of Canterbury must take order", "To force under the Church's yoke.--You, Wentworth,", "Shall be myself in Ireland, and shall add", "Your wisdom, gentleness, and energy,", "To what in me were wanting.--My Lord Weston,", "Look that those merchants draw not without loss", "Their bullion from the Tower; and, on the payment", "Of shipmoney, take fullest compensation", "For violation of our royal forests,", "Whose limits, from neglect, have been o'ergrown", "With cottages and cornfields. The uttermost", "Farthing exact from those who claim exemption", "From knighthood: that which once was a reward", "Shall thus be made a punishment, that subjects", "May know how majesty can wear at will", "The rugged mood.--My Lord of Coventry,", "Lay my command upon the Courts below", "That bail be not accepted for the prisoners", "Under the warrant of the Star Chamber.", "The people shall not find the stubbornness", "Of Parliament a cheap or easy method", "Of dealing with their rightful sovereign:", "And doubt not this, my Lord of Coventry,", "We will find time and place for fit rebuke.--", "My Lord of Canterbury.", "", "ARCHY:", "The fool is here.", "", "LAUD:", "I crave permission of your Majesty", "To order that this insolent fellow be", "Chastised: he mocks the sacred character,", "Scoffs at the state, and--", "", "KING:", "What, my Archy?", "He mocks and mimics all he sees and hears,", "Yet with a quaint and graceful licence--Prithee", "For this once do not as Prynne would, were he", "Primate of England. With your Grace's leave,", "He lives in his own world; and, like a parrot", "Hung in his gilded prison from the window", "Of a queen's bower over the public way,", "Blasphemes with a bird's mind:--his words, like arrows", "Which know no aim beyond the archer's wit,", "Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy.--", "[TO ARCHY.]", "Go, sirrah, and repent of your offence", "Ten minutes in the rain; be it your penance", "To bring news how the world goes there.", "[EXIT ARCHY.]", "Poor Archy!", "He weaves about himself a world of mirth", "Out of the wreck of ours.", "", "LAUD:", "I take with patience, as my Master did,", "All scoffs permitted from above.", "", "KING:", "My lord,", "Pray overlook these papers. Archy's words", "Had wings, but these have talons.", "", "QUEEN:", "And the lion", "That wears them must be tamed. My dearest lord,", "I see the new-born courage in your eye", "Armed to strike dead the Spirit of the Time,", "Which spurs to rage the many-headed beast.", "Do thou persist: for, faint but in resolve,", "And it were better thou hadst still remained", "The slave of thine own slaves, who tear like curs", "The fugitive, and flee from the pursuer;", "And Opportunity, that empty wolf,", "Flies at his throat who falls. Subdue thy actions", "Even to the disposition of thy purpose,", "And be that tempered as the Ebro's steel;", "And banish weak-eyed Mercy to the weak,", "Whence she will greet thee with a gift of peace", "And not betray thee with a traitor's kiss,", "As when she keeps the company of rebels,", "Who think that she is Fear. This do, lest we", "Should fall as from a glorious pinnacle", "In a bright dream, and wake as from a dream", "Out of our worshipped state.", "", "KING:", "Beloved friend,", "God is my witness that this weight of power,", "Which He sets me my earthly task to wield", "Under His law, is my delight and pride", "Only because thou lovest that and me.", "For a king bears the office of a God", "To all the under world; and to his God", "Alone he must deliver up his trust,", "Unshorn of its permitted attributes.", " now as the baser elements", "Had mutinied against the golden sun", "That kindles them to harmony, and quells", "Their self-destroying rapine. The wild million", "Strike at the eye that guides them; like as humours", "Of the distempered body that conspire", "Against the spirit of life throned in the heart,--", "And thus become the prey of one another,", "And last of death--", "", "STRAFFORD:", "That which would be ambition in a subject", "Is duty in a sovereign; for on him,", "As on a keystone, hangs the arch of life,", "Whose safety is its strength. Degree and form,", "And all that makes the age of reasoning man", "More memorable than a beast's, depend on this--", "That Right should fence itself inviolably", "With Power; in which respect the state of England", "From usurpation by the insolent commons", "Cries for reform.", "Get treason, and spare treasure. Fee with coin", "The loudest murmurers; feed with jealousies", "Opposing factions,--be thyself of none;", "And borrow gold of many, for those who lend", "Will serve thee till thou payest them; and thus", "Keep the fierce spirit of the hour at bay,", "Till time, and its coming generations", "Of nights and days unborn, bring some one chance,", "", "...", "", "Or war or pestilence or Nature's self,--", "By some distemperature or terrible sign,", "Be as an arbiter betwixt themselves.", "Nor let your Majesty", "Doubt here the peril of the unseen event.", "How did your brother Kings, coheritors", "In your high interest in the subject earth,", "Rise past such troubles to that height of power", "Where now they sit, and awfully serene", "Smile on the trembling world? Such popular storms", "Philip the Second of Spain, this Lewis of France,", "And late the German head of many bodies,", "And every petty lord of Italy,", "Quelled or by arts or arms. Is England poorer", "Or feebler? or art thou who wield'st her power", "Tamer than they? or shall this island be--", " by its inviolable waters--", "To the world present and the world to come", "Sole pattern of extinguished monarchy?", "Not if thou dost as I would have thee do.", "", "KING:", "Your words shall be my deeds:", "You speak the image of my thought. My friend", "(If Kings can have a friend, I call thee so),", "Beyond the large commission which", "Under the great seal of the realm, take this:", "And, for some obvious reasons, let there be", "No seal on it, except my kingly word", "And honour as I am a gentleman.", "Be--as thou art within my heart and mind--", "Another self, here and in Ireland:", "Do what thou judgest well, take amplest licence,", "And stick not even at questionable means.", "Hear me, Wentworth. My word is as a wall", "Between thee and this world thine enemy--", "That hates thee, for thou lovest me.", "", "STRAFFORD:", "I own", "No friend but thee, no enemies but thine:", "Thy lightest thought is my eternal law.", "How weak, how short, is life to pay--", "", "KING:", "Peace, peace.", "Thou ow'st me nothing yet.", "[TO LAUD.]", "My lord, what say", "Those papers?", "", "LAUD:", "Your Majesty has ever interposed,", "In lenity towards your native soil,", "Between the heavy vengeance of the Church", "And Scotland. Mark the consequence of warming", "This brood of northern vipers in your bosom.", "The rabble, instructed no doubt", "By London, Lindsay, Hume, and false Argyll", "(For the waves never menace heaven until", "Scourged by the wind's invisible tyranny),", "Have in the very temple of the Lord", "Done outrage to His chosen ministers.", "They scorn the liturgy of the Holy Church,", "Refuse to obey her canons, and deny", "The apostolic power with which the Spirit", "Has filled its elect vessels, even from him", "Who held the keys with power to loose and bind,", "To him who now pleads in this royal presence.--", "Let ample powers and new instructions be", "Sent to the High Commissioners in Scotland.", "To death, imprisonment, and confiscation,", "Add torture, add the ruin of the kindred", "Of the offender, add the brand of infamy,", "Add mutilation: and if this suffice not,", "Unleash the sword and fire, that in their thirst", "They may lick up that scum of schismatics.", "I laugh at those weak rebels who, desiring", "What we possess, still prate of Christian peace,", "As if those dreadful arbitrating messengers", "Which play the part of God 'twixt right and wrong,", "Should be let loose against the innocent sleep", "Of templed cities and the smiling fields,", "For some poor argument of policy", "Which touches our own profit or our pride", "(Where it indeed were Christian charity", "To turn the cheek even to the smiter's hand):", "And, when our great Redeemer, when our God,", "When He who gave, accepted, and retained", "Himself in propitiation of our sins,", "Is scorned in His immediate ministry,", "With hazard of the inestimable loss", "Of all the truth and discipline which is", "Salvation to the extremest generation", "Of men innumerable, they talk of peace!", "Such peace as Canaan found, let Scotland now:", "For, by that Christ who came to bring a sword,", "Not peace, upon the earth, and gave command", "To His disciples at the Passover", "That each should sell his robe and buy a sword,-", "Once strip that minister of naked wrath,", "And it shall never sleep in peace again", "Till Scotland bend or break.", "", "KING:", "My Lord Archbishop,", "Do what thou wilt and what thou canst in this.", "Thy earthly even as thy heavenly King", "Gives thee large power in his unquiet realm.", "But we want money, and my mind misgives me", "That for so great an enterprise, as yet,", "We are unfurnished.", "", "STRAFFORD:", "Yet it may not long", "Rest on our wills.", "", "COTTINGTON:", "The expenses", "Of gathering shipmoney, and of distraining", "For every petty rate (for we encounter", "A desperate opposition inch by inch", "In every warehouse and on every farm),", "Have swallowed up the gross sum of the imposts;", "So that, though felt as a most grievous scourge", "Upon the land, they stand us in small stead", "As touches the receipt.", "", "STRAFFORD:", "'Tis a conclusion", "Most arithmetical: and thence you infer", "Perhaps the assembling of a parliament.", "Now, if a man should call his dearest enemies", "T0 sit in licensed judgement on his life,", "His Majesty might wisely take that course.", "[ASIDE TO COTTINGTON.]", "It is enough to expect from these lean imposts", "That they perform the office of a scourge,", "Without more profit.", "[ALOUD.]", "Fines and confiscations,", "And a forced loan from the refractory city,", "Will fill our coffers: and the golden love", "Of loyal gentlemen and noble friends", "For the worshipped father of our common country,", "With contributions from the catholics,", "Will make Rebellion pale in our excess.", "Be these the expedients until time and wisdom", "Shall frame a settled state of government.", "", "LAUD:", "And weak expedients they! Have we not drained", "All, till the ... which seemed", "A mine exhaustless?", "", "STRAFFORD:", "And the love which IS,", "If loyal hearts could turn their blood to gold.", "", "LAUD:", "Both now grow barren: and I speak it not", "As loving parliaments, which, as they have been", "In the right hand of bold bad mighty kings", "The scourges of the bleeding Church, I hate.", "Methinks they scarcely can deserve our fear.", "", "STRAFFORD:", "Oh! my dear liege, take back the wealth thou gavest:", "With that, take all I held, but as in trust", "For thee, of mine inheritance: leave me but", "This unprovided body for thy service,", "And a mind dedicated to no care", "Except thy safety:--but assemble not", "A parliament. Hundreds will bring, like me,", "Their fortunes, as they would their blood, before--", "", "KING:", "No! thou who judgest them art but one. Alas!", "We should be too much out of love with Heaven,", "Did this vile world show many such as thee,", "Thou perfect, just, and honourable man!", "Never shall it be said that Charles of England", "Stripped those he loved for fear of those he scorns;", "Nor will he so much misbecome his throne", "As to impoverish those who most adorn", "And best defend it. That you urge, dear Strafford,", "Inclines me rather--", "", "QUEEN:", "To a parliament?", "Is this thy firmness? and thou wilt preside", "Over a knot of ... censurers,", "To the unswearing of thy best resolves,", "And choose the worst, when the worst comes too soon?", "Plight not the worst before the worst must come.", "Oh, wilt thou smile whilst our ribald foes,", "Dressed in their own usurped authority,", "Sharpen their tongues on Henrietta's fame?", "It is enough! Thou lovest me no more!", "[WEEPS.]", "", "KING:", "Oh, Henrietta!", "", "[THEY TALK APART.]", "", "COTTINGTON [TO LAUD]:", "Money we have none:", "And all the expedients of my Lord of Strafford", "Will scarcely meet the arrears.", "", "LAUD:", "Without delay", "An army must be sent into the north;", "Followed by a Commission of the Church,", "With amplest power to quench in fire and blood,", "And tears and terror, and the pity of hell,", "The intenser wrath of Heresy. God will give", "Victory; and victory over Scotland give", "The lion England tamed into our hands.", "That will lend power, and power bring gold.", "", "COTTINGTON:", "Meanwhile", "We must begin first where your Grace leaves off.", "Gold must give power, or--", "", "LAUD:", "I am not averse", "From the assembling of a parliament.", "Strong actions and smooth words might teach them soon", "The lesson to obey. And are they not", "A bubble fashioned by the monarch's mouth,", "The birth of one light breath? If they serve no purpose,", "A word dissolves them.", "", "STRAFFORD:", "The engine of parliaments", "Might be deferred until I can bring over", "The Irish regiments: they will serve to assure", "The issue of the war against the Scots.", "And, this game won--which if lost, all is lost--", "Gather these chosen leaders of the rebels,", "And call them, if you will, a parliament.", "", "KING:", "Oh, be our feet still tardy to shed blood.", "Guilty though it may be! I would still spare", "The stubborn country of my birth, and ward", "From countenances which I loved in youth", "The wrathful Church's lacerating hand.", "[TO LAUD.]", "Have you o'erlooked the other articles?", "", "[ENTER ARCHY.]", "", "LAUD:", "Hazlerig, Hampden, Pym, young Harry Vane,", "Cromwell, and other rebels of less note,", "Intend to sail with the next favouring wind", "For the Plantations.", "", "ARCHY:", "Where they think to found", "A commonwealth like Gonzalo's in the play,", "Gynaecocoenic and pantisocratic.", "", "KING:", "What's that, sirrah?", "", "ARCHY:", "New devil's politics.", "Hell is the pattern of all commonwealths:", "Lucifer was the first republican.", "Will you hear Merlin's prophecy, how three", "'In one brainless skull, when the whitethorn is full,", "Shall sail round the world, and come back again:", "Shall sail round the world in a brainless skull,", "And come back again when the moon is at full:'--", "When, in spite of the Church,", "They will hear homilies of whatever length", "Or form they please.", "", "[COTTINGTON?]:", "So please your Majesty to sign this order", "For their detention.", "", "ARCHY:", "If your Majesty were tormented night and day by fever, gout,", "rheumatism, and stone, and asthma, etc., and you found these diseases", "had secretly entered into a conspiracy to abandon you, should you", "think it necessary to lay an embargo on the port by which they meant", "to dispeople your unquiet kingdom of man?", "", "KING:", "If fear were made for kings, the Fool mocks wisely;", "But in this case--[WRITING]. Here, my lord, take the warrant,", "And see it duly executed forthwith.--", "That imp of malice and mockery shall be punished.", "", "[EXEUNT ALL BUT KING, QUEEN, AND ARCHY.]", "", "ARCHY:", "Ay, I am the physician of whom Plato prophesied, who was to be accused", "by the confectioner before a jury of children, who found him guilty", "without waiting for the summing-up, and hanged him without benefit of", "clergy. Thus Baby Charles, and the Twelfth-night Queen of Hearts, and", "the overgrown schoolboy Cottington, and that little urchin Laud--who", "would reduce a verdict of 'guilty, death,' by famine, if it were", "impregnable by composition--all impannelled against poor Archy for", "presenting them bitter physic the last day of the holidays.", "", "QUEEN:", "Is the rain over, sirrah?", "", "KING:", "When it rains", "And the sun shines, 'twill rain again to-morrow:", "And therefore never smile till you've done crying.", "", "ARCHY:", "But 'tis all over now: like the April anger of woman, the gentle sky", "has wept itself serene.", "", "QUEEN:", "What news abroad? how looks the world this morning?", "", "ARCHY:", "Gloriously as a grave covered with virgin flowers. There's a rainbow", "in the sky. Let your Majesty look at it, for", "", "'A rainbow in the morning", "Is the shepherd's warning;'", "", "and the flocks of which you are the pastor are scattered among the", "mountain-tops, where every drop of water is a flake of snow, and the", "breath of May pierces like a January blast.", "", "KING:", "The sheep have mistaken the wolf for their shepherd, my poor boy; and", "the shepherd, the wolves for their watchdogs.", "", "QUEEN:", "But the rainbow was a good sign, Archy: it says that the waters of the", "deluge are gone, and can return no more.", "", "ARCHY:", "Ay, the salt-water one: but that of tears and blood must yet come", "down, and that of fire follow, if there be any truth in lies.--The", "rainbow hung over the city with all its shops,...and churches, from", "north to south, like a bridge of congregated lightning pieced by the", "masonry of heaven--like a balance in which the angel that distributes", "the coming hour was weighing that heavy one whose poise is now felt in", "the lightest hearts, before it bows the proudest heads under the", "meanest feet.", "", "QUEEN:", "Who taught you this trash, sirrah?", "", "ARCHY:", "A torn leaf out of an old book trampled in the dirt.--But for the", "rainbow. It moved as the sun moved, and...until the top of the", "Tower...of a cloud through its left-hand tip, and Lambeth Palace look", "as dark as a rock before the other. Methought I saw a crown figured", "upon one tip, and a mitre on the other. So, as I had heard treasures", "were found where the rainbow quenches its points upon the earth, I set", "off, and at the Tower-- But I shall not tell your Majesty what I found", "close to the closet-window on which the rainbow had glimmered.", "", "KING:", "Speak: I will make my Fool my conscience.", "", "ARCHY:", "Then conscience is a fool.--I saw there a cat caught in a rat-trap. I", "heard the rats squeak behind the wainscots: it seemed to me that the", "very mice were consulting on the manner of her death.", "", "QUEEN:", "Archy is shrewd and bitter.", "", "ARCHY:", "Like the season,", "So blow the winds.--But at the other end of the rainbow, where the", "gray rain was tempered along the grass and leaves by a tender", "interfusion of violet and gold in the meadows beyond Lambeth, what", "think you that I found instead of a mitre?", "", "KING:", "Vane's wits perhaps.", "", "ARCHY:", "Something as vain. I saw a gross vapour hovering in a stinking ditch", "over the carcass of a dead ass, some rotten rags, and broken", "dishes--the wrecks of what once administered to the stuffing-out and", "the ornament of a worm of worms. His Grace of Canterbury expects to", "enter the New Jerusalem some Palm Sunday in triumph on the ghost of", "this ass.", "", "QUEEN:", "Enough, enough! Go desire Lady Jane", "She place my lute, together with the music", "Mari received last week from Italy,", "In my boudoir, and--", "", "[EXIT ARCHY.]", "", "KING:", "I'll go in.", "", "QUEEN:", "MY beloved lord,", "Have you not noted that the Fool of late", "Has lost his careless mirth, and that his words", "Sound like the echoes of our saddest fears?", "What can it mean? I should be loth to think", "Some factious slave had tutored him.", "", "KING:", "Oh, no!", "He is but Occasion's pupil. Partly 'tis", "That our minds piece the vacant intervals", "Of his wild words with their own fashioning,--", "As in the imagery of summer clouds,", "Or coals of the winter fire, idlers find", "The perfect shadows of their teeming thoughts:", "And partly, that the terrors of the time", "Are sown by wandering Rumour in all spirits;", "And in the lightest and the least, may best", "Be seen the current of the coming wind.", "", "QUEEN:", "Your brain is overwrought with these deep thoughts.", "Come, I will sing to you; let us go try", "These airs from Italy; and, as we pass", "The gallery, we'll decide where that Correggio", "Shall hang--the Virgin Mother", "With her child, born the King of heaven and earth,", "Whose reign is men's salvation. And you shall see", "A cradled miniature of yourself asleep,", "Stamped on the heart by never-erring love;", "Liker than any Vandyke ever made,", "A pattern to the unborn age of thee,", "Over whose sweet beauty I have wept for joy", "A thousand times, and now should weep for sorrow,", "Did I not think that after we were dead", "Our fortunes would spring high in him, and that", "The cares we waste upon our heavy crown", "Would make it light and glorious as a wreath", "Of Heaven's beams for his dear innocent brow.", "", "KING:", "Dear Henrietta!", "", "SCENE 3:", "THE STAR CHAMBER.", "LAUD, JUXON, STRAFFORD, AND OTHERS, AS JUDGES.", "PRYNNE AS A PRISONER, AND THEN BASTWICK.", "", "LAUD:", "Bring forth the prisoner Bastwick: let the clerk", "Recite his sentence.", "", "CLERK:", "'That he pay five thousand", "Pounds to the king, lose both his ears, be branded", "With red-hot iron on the cheek and forehead,", "And be imprisoned within Lancaster Castle", "During the pleasure of the Court.'", "", "LAUD:", "Prisoner,", "If you have aught to say wherefore this sentence", "Should not be put into effect, now speak.", "", "JUXON:", "If you have aught to plead in mitigation,", "Speak.", "", "BASTWICK:", "Thus, my lords. If, like the prelates, I", "Were an invader of the royal power", "A public scorner of the word of God,", "Profane, idolatrous, popish, superstitious,", "Impious in heart and in tyrannic act,", "Void of wit, honesty, and temperance;", "If Satan were my lord, as theirs,--our God", "Pattern of all I should avoid to do;", "Were I an enemy of my God and King", "And of good men, as ye are;--I should merit", "Your fearful state and gilt prosperity,", "Which, when ye wake from the last sleep, shall turn", "To cowls and robes of everlasting fire.", "But, as I am, I bid ye grudge me not", "The only earthly favour ye can yield,", "Or I think worth acceptance at your hands,--", "Scorn, mutilation, and imprisonment.", "even as my Master did,", "Until Heaven's kingdom shall descend on earth,", "Or earth be like a shadow in the light", "Of Heaven absorbed--some few tumultuous years", "Will pass, and leave no wreck of what opposes", "His will whose will is power.", "", "LAUD:", "Officer, take the prisoner from the bar,", "And be his tongue slit for his insolence.", "", "BASTWICK:", "While this hand holds a pen--", "", "LAUD:", "Be his hands--", "", "JUXON:", "Stop!", "Forbear, my lord! The tongue, which now can speak", "No terror, would interpret, being dumb,", "Heaven's thunder to our harm;...", "And hands, which now write only their own shame,", "With bleeding stumps might sign our blood away.", "", "LAUD:", "Much more such 'mercy' among men would be,", "Did all the ministers of Heaven's revenge", "Flinch thus from earthly retribution. I", "Could suffer what I would inflict.", "[EXIT BASTWICK GUARDED.]", "Bring up", "The Lord Bishop of Lincoln.--", "[TO STRATFORD.]", "Know you not", "That, in distraining for ten thousand pounds", "Upon his books and furniture at Lincoln,", "Were found these scandalous and seditious letters", "Sent from one Osbaldistone, who is fled?", "I speak it not as touching this poor person;", "But of the office which should make it holy,", "Were it as vile as it was ever spotless.", "Mark too, my lord, that this expression strikes", "His Majesty, if I misinterpret not.", "", "[ENTER BISHOP WILLIAMS GUARDED.]", "", "STRAFFORD:", "'Twere politic and just that Williams taste", "The bitter fruit of his connection with", "The schismatics. But you, my Lord Archbishop,", "Who owed your first promotion to his favour,", "Who grew beneath his smile--", "", "LAUD:", "Would therefore beg", "The office of his judge from this High Court,--", "That it shall seem, even as it is, that I,", "In my assumption of this sacred robe,", "Have put aside all worldly preference,", "All sense of all distinction of all persons,", "All thoughts but of the service of the Church.--", "Bishop of Lincoln!", "", "WILLIAMS:", "Peace, proud hierarch!", "I know my sentence, and I own it just.", "Thou wilt repay me less than I deserve,", "In stretching to the utmost", "", "...", "", "SCENE 4:", "HAMPDEN, PYM, CROMWELL, HIS DAUGHTER, AND YOUNG SIR HARRY VANE.", "", "HAMPDEN:", "England, farewell! thou, who hast been my cradle,", "Shalt never be my dungeon or my grave!", "I held what I inherited in thee", "As pawn for that inheritance of freedom", "Which thou hast sold for thy despoiler's smile:", "How can I call thee England, or my country?--", "Does the wind hold?", "", "VANE:", "The vanes sit steady", "Upon the Abbey towers. The silver lightnings", "Of the evening star, spite of the city's smoke,", "Tell that the north wind reigns in the upper air.", "Mark too that flock of fleecy-winged clouds", "Sailing athwart St. Margaret's.", "", "HAMPDEN:", "Hail, fleet herald", "Of tempest! that rude pilot who shall guide", "Hearts free as his, to realms as pure as thee,", "Beyond the shot of tyranny,", "Beyond the webs of that swoln spider...", "Beyond the curses, calumnies, and", "Of atheist priests! ... And thou", "Fair star, whose beam lies on the wide Atlantic,", "Athwart its zones of tempest and of calm,", "Bright as the path to a beloved home", "Oh, light us to the isles of the evening land!", "Like floating Edens cradled in the glimmer", "Of sunset, through the distant mist of years", "Touched by departing hope, they gleam! lone regions,", "Where Power's poor dupes and victims yet have never", "Propitiated the savage fear of kings", "With purest blood of noblest hearts; whose dew", "Is yet unstained with tears of those who wake", "To weep each day the wrongs on which it dawns;", "Whose sacred silent air owns yet no echo", "Of formal blasphemies; nor impious rites", "Wrest man's free worship, from the God who loves,", "To the poor worm who envies us His love!", "Receive, thou young ... of Paradise.", "These exiles from the old and sinful world!", "", "...", "", "This glorious clime, this firmament, whose lights", "Dart mitigated influence through their veil", "Of pale blue atmosphere; whose tears keep green", "The pavement of this moist all-feeding earth;", "This vaporous horizon, whose dim round", "Is bastioned by the circumfluous sea,", "Repelling invasion from the sacred towers,", "Presses upon me like a dungeon's grate,", "A low dark roof, a damp and narrow wall.", "The boundless universe", "Becomes a cell too narrow for the soul", "That owns no master; while the loathliest ward", "Of this wide prison, England, is a nest", "Of cradling peace built on the mountain tops,--", "To which the eagle spirits of the free,", "Which range through heaven and earth, and scorn the storm", "Of time, and gaze upon the light of truth,", "Return to brood on thoughts that cannot die", "And cannot be repelled.", "Like eaglets floating in the heaven of time,", "They soar above their quarry, and shall stoop", "Through palaces and temples thunderproof.", "", "SCENE 5:", "", "ARCHY:", "I'll go live under the ivy that overgrows the terrace, and count the", "tears shed on its old as the plays the song of", "", "'A widow bird sate mourning", "Upon a wintry bough.'", "[SINGS]", "Heigho! the lark and the owl!", "One flies the morning, and one lulls the night:--", "Only the nightingale, poor fond soul,", "Sings like the fool through darkness and light.", "", "'A widow bird sate mourning for her love", "Upon a wintry bough;", "The frozen wind crept on above,", "The freezing stream below.", "", "There was no leaf upon the forest bare.", "No flower upon the ground,", "And little motion in the air", "Except the mill-wheel's sound.'" ], "linecount": "1007" }, { "title": "To Harriet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Thy look of love has power to calm", "The stormiest passion of my soul;", "Thy gentle words are drops of balm", "In life's too bitter bowl;", "No grief is mine, but that alone", "These choicest blessings I have known.", "", "Harriet! if all who long to live", "In the warm sunshine of thine eye,", "That price beyond all pain must give,--", "Beneath thy scorn to die;", "Then hear thy chosen own too late", "His heart most worthy of thy hate.", "", "Be thou, then, one among mankind", "Whose heart is harder not for state,", "Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind,", "Amid a world of hate;", "And by a slight endurance seal", "A fellow-being's lasting weal.", "", "For pale with anguish is his cheek,", "His breath comes fast, his eyes are dim,", "Thy name is struggling ere he speak,", "Weak is each trembling limb;", "In mercy let him not endure", "The misery of a fatal cure.", "", "Oh, trust for once no erring guide!", "Bid the remorseless feeling flee;", "'Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride,", "'Tis anything but thee;", "Oh, deign a nobler pride to prove,", "And pity if thou canst not love." ], "linecount": "30" }, { "title": "To Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Mine eyes were dim with tears unshed;", "Yes, I was firm--thus wert not thou;--", "My baffled looks did fear yet dread", "To meet thy looks--I could not know", "How anxiously they sought to shine", "With soothing pity upon mine.", "", "To sit and curb the soul's mute rage", "Which preys upon itself alone;", "To curse the life which is the cage", "Of fettered grief that dares not groan,", "Hiding from many a careless eye", "The scorned load of agony.", "", "Whilst thou alone, then not regarded,", "The ... thou alone should be,", "To spend years thus, and be rewarded,", "As thou, sweet love, requited me", "When none were near--Oh! I did wake", "From torture for that moment's sake.", "", "Upon my heart thy accents sweet", "Of peace and pity fell like dew", "On flowers half dead;--thy lips did meet", "Mine tremblingly; thy dark eyes threw", "Their soft persuasion on my brain,", "Charming away its dream of pain.", "", "We are not happy, sweet! our state", "Is strange and full of doubt and fear;", "More need of words that ills abate;--", "Reserve or censure come not near", "Our sacred friendship, lest there be", "No solace left for thee and me.", "", "Gentle and good and mild thou art,", "Nor can I live if thou appear", "Aught but thyself, or turn thine heart", "Away from me, or stoop to wear", "The mask of scorn, although it be", "To hide the love thou feel'st for me." ], "linecount": "36" }, { "title": "To --", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Yet look on me--take not thine eyes away,", "Which feed upon the love within mine own,", "Which is indeed but the reflected ray", "Of thine own beauty from my spirit thrown.", "Yet speak to me--thy voice is as the tone", "Of my heart's echo, and I think I hear", "That thou yet lovest me; yet thou alone", "Like one before a mirror, without care", "Of aught but thine own features, imaged there;", "", "And yet I wear out life in watching thee;", "A toil so sweet at times, and thou indeed", "Art kind when I am sick, and pity me..." ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "Mutability", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;", "How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,", "Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon", "Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:", "", "Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings", "Give various response to each varying blast,", "To whose frail frame no second motion brings", "One mood or modulation like the last.", "", "We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep;", "We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day;", "We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;", "Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:", "", "It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,", "The path of its departure still is free:", "Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;", "Nought may endure but Mutability." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "On Death", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "THERE IS NO WORK, NOR DEVICE, NOR KNOWLEDGE, NOR WISDOM,", "IN THE GRAVE, WHITHER THOU GOEST.--Ecclesiastes.", "", "The pale, the cold, and the moony smile", "Which the meteor beam of a starless night", "Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,", "Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,", "Is the flame of life so fickle and wan", "That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.", "", "O man! hold thee on in courage of soul", "Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way,", "And the billows of cloud that around thee roll", "Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,", "Where Hell and Heaven shall leave thee free", "To the universe of destiny.", "", "This world is the nurse of all we know,", "This world is the mother of all we feel,", "And the coming of death is a fearful blow", "To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;", "When all that we know, or feel, or see,", "Shall pass like an unreal mystery.", "", "The secret things of the grave are there,", "Where all but this frame must surely be,", "Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear", "No longer will live to hear or to see", "All that is great and all that is strange", "In the boundless realm of unending change.", "", "Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?", "Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?", "Who painteth the shadows that are beneath", "The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?", "Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be", "With the fears and the love for that which we see?" ], "linecount": "32" }, { "title": "A Summer Evening Churchyard", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE.", "", "The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere", "Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;", "And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair", "In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:", "Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,", "Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.", "", "They breathe their spells towards the departing day,", "Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;", "Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,", "Responding to the charm with its own mystery.", "The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass", "Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.", "", "Thou too, aereal Pile! whose pinnacles", "Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,", "Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,", "Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,", "Around whose lessening and invisible height", "Gather among the stars the clouds of night.", "", "The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:", "And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,", "Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,", "Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,", "And mingling with the still night and mute sky", "Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.", "", "Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild", "And terrorless as this serenest night:", "Here could I hope, like some inquiring child", "Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight", "Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep", "That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep." ], "linecount": "31" }, { "title": "To --", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "DAKRTSI DIOISO POTMON 'APOTMON.", "", "Oh! there are spirits of the air,", "And genii of the evening breeze,", "And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair", "As star-beams among twilight trees:--", "Such lovely ministers to meet", "Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.", "", "With mountain winds, and babbling springs,", "And moonlight seas, that are the voice", "Of these inexplicable things,", "Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice", "When they did answer thee; but they", "Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.", "", "And thou hast sought in starry eyes", "Beams that were never meant for thine,", "Another's wealth:--tame sacrifice", "To a fond faith! still dost thou pine?", "Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,", "Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands?", "", "Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope", "On the false earth's inconstancy?", "Did thine own mind afford no scope", "Of love, or moving thoughts to thee?", "That natural scenes or human smiles", "Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles?", "", "Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled", "Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;", "The glory of the moon is dead;", "Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed;", "Thine own soul still is true to thee,", "But changed to a foul fiend through misery.", "", "This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever", "Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,", "Dream not to chase;--the mad endeavour", "Would scourge thee to severer pangs.", "Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,", "Dark as it is, all change would aggravate." ], "linecount": "37" }, { "title": "To Wordsworth", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know", "That things depart which never may return:", "Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,", "Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.", "These common woes I feel. One loss is mine", "Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.", "Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine", "On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:", "Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood", "Above the blind and battling multitude:", "In honoured poverty thy voice did weave", "Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,--", "Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,", "Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Feelings of a Republican on the Fall of Bonaparte", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan", "To think that a most unambitious slave,", "Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave", "Of Liberty. Thou mightst have built thy throne", "Where it had stood even now: thou didst prefer", "A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept", "In fragments towards Oblivion. Massacre,", "For this I prayed, would on thy sleep have crept,", "Treason and Slavery, Rapine, Fear, and Lust,", "And stifled thee, their minister. I know", "Too late, since thou and France are in the dust,", "That Virtue owns a more eternal foe", "Than Force or Fraud: old Custom, legal Crime,", "And bloody Faith the foulest birth of Time." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Lines", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The cold earth slept below,", "Above the cold sky shone;", "And all around, with a chilling sound,", "From caves of ice and fields of snow,", "The breath of night like death did flow", "Beneath the sinking moon.", "", "The wintry hedge was black,", "The green grass was not seen,", "The birds did rest on the bare thorn's breast,", "Whose roots, beside the pathway track,", "Had bound their folds o'er many a crack", "Which the frost had made between.", "", "Thine eyes glowed in the glare", "Of the moon's dying light;", "As a fen-fire's beam on a sluggish stream", "Gleams dimly, so the moon shone there,", "And it yellowed the strings of thy raven hair,", "That shook in the wind of night.", "", "The moon made thy lips pale, beloved--", "The wind made thy bosom chill--", "The night did shed on thy dear head", "Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie", "Where the bitter breath of the naked sky", "Might visit thee at will." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "The Sunset", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "There late was One within whose subtle being,", "As light and wind within some delicate cloud", "That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,", "Genius and death contended. None may know", "The sweetness of the joy which made his breath", "Fail, like the trances of the summer air,", "When, with the Lady of his love, who then", "First knew the unreserve of mingled being,", "He walked along the pathway of a field", "Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er,", "But to the west was open to the sky.", "There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold", "Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points", "Of the far level grass and nodding flowers", "And the old dandelion's hoary beard,", "And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay", "On the brown massy woods--and in the east", "The broad and burning moon lingeringly rose", "Between the black trunks of the crowded trees,", "While the faint stars were gathering overhead.--", "'Is it not strange, Isabel,' said the youth,", "'I never saw the sun? We will walk here", "To-morrow; thou shalt look on it with me.'", "", "That night the youth and lady mingled lay", "In love and sleep--but when the morning came", "The lady found her lover dead and cold.", "Let none believe that God in mercy gave", "That stroke. The lady died not, nor grew wild,", "But year by year lived on--in truth I think", "Her gentleness and patience and sad smiles,", "And that she did not die, but lived to tend", "Her aged father, were a kind of madness,", "If madness 'tis to be unlike the world.", "For but to see her were to read the tale", "Woven by some subtlest bard, to make hard hearts", "Dissolve away in wisdom-working grief;--", "Her eyes were black and lustreless and wan:", "Her eyelashes were worn away with tears,", "Her lips and cheeks were like things dead--so pale;", "Her hands were thin, and through their wandering veins", "And weak articulations might be seen", "Day's ruddy light. The tomb of thy dead self", "Which one vexed ghost inhabits, night and day,", "Is all, lost child, that now remains of thee!", "", "'Inheritor of more than earth can give,", "Passionless calm and silence unreproved,", "Whether the dead find, oh, not sleep! but rest,", "And are the uncomplaining things they seem,", "Or live, or drop in the deep sea of Love;", "Oh, that like thine, mine epitaph were--Peace!'", "This was the only moan she ever made." ], "linecount": "51" }, { "title": "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The awful shadow of some unseen Power", "Floats though unseen among us,--visiting", "This various world with as inconstant wing", "As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,--", "Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,", "It visits with inconstant glance", "Each human heart and countenance;", "Like hues and harmonies of evening,--", "Like clouds in starlight widely spread,--", "Like memory of music fled,--", "Like aught that for its grace may be", "Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.", "", "Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate", "With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon", "Of human thought or form,--where art thou gone?", "Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,", "This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?", "Ask why the sunlight not for ever", "Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,", "Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,", "Why fear and dream and death and birth", "Cast on the daylight of this earth", "Such gloom,--why man has such a scope", "For love and hate, despondency and hope?", "", "No voice from some sublimer world hath ever", "To sage or poet these responses given--", "Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven.", "Remain the records of their vain endeavour,", "Frail spells--whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,", "From all we hear and all we see,", "Doubt, chance, and mutability.", "Thy light alone--like mist o'er mountains driven,", "Or music by the night-wind sent", "Through strings of some still instrument,", "Or moonlight on a midnight stream,", "Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.", "", "Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart", "And come, for some uncertain moments lent.", "Man were immortal, and omnipotent,", "Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art,", "Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.", "Thou messenger of sympathies,", "That wax and wane in lovers' eyes--", "Thou--that to human thought art nourishment,", "Like darkness to a dying flame!", "Depart not as thy shadow came", "Depart not--lest the grave should be,", "Like life and fear, a dark reality.", "", "While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped", "Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,", "And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing", "Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.", "I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;", "I was not heard--I saw them not--", "When musing deeply on the lot", "Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing", "All vital things that wake to bring", "News of birds and blossoming,--", "Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;", "I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!", "", "I vowed that I would dedicate my powers", "To thee and thine--have I not kept the vow?", "With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now", "I call the phantoms of a thousand hours", "Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers", "Of studious zeal or love's delight", "Outwatched with me the envious night--", "They know that never joy illumed my brow", "Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free", "This world from its dark slavery,", "That thou--O awful LOVELINESS,", "Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.", "", "The day becomes more solemn and serene", "When noon is past--there is a harmony", "In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,", "Which through the summer is not heard or seen,", "As if it could not be, as if it had not been!", "Thus let thy power, which like the truth", "Of nature on my passive youth", "Descended, to my onward life supply", "Its calm--to one who worships thee,", "And every form containing thee,", "Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind", "To fear himself, and love all human kind." ], "linecount": "84" }, { "title": "Mont Blanc", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "LINES WRITTEN IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.", "", "The everlasting universe of things", "Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,", "Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--", "Now lending splendour, where from secret springs", "The source of human thought its tribute brings", "Of waters,--with a sound but half its own,", "Such as a feeble brook will oft assume", "In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,", "Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,", "Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river", "Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.", "", "Thus thou, Ravine of Arve--dark, deep Ravine--", "Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale,", "Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail", "Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,", "Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down", "From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,", "Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame", "Of lightning through the tempest;--thou dost lie,", "Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,", "Children of elder time, in whose devotion", "The chainless winds still come and ever came", "To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging", "To hear--an old and solemn harmony;", "Thine earthly rainbows stretched across the sweep", "Of the ethereal waterfall, whose veil", "Robes some unsculptured image; the strange sleep", "Which when the voices of the desert fail", "Wraps all in its own deep eternity;--", "Thy caverns echoing to the Arve's commotion,", "A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;", "Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,", "Thou art the path of that unresting sound--", "Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee", "I seem as in a trance sublime and strange", "To muse on my own separate fantasy,", "My own, my human mind, which passively", "Now renders and receives fast influencings,", "Holding an unremitting interchange", "With the clear universe of things around;", "One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings", "Now float above thy darkness, and now rest", "Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,", "In the still cave of the witch Poesy,", "Seeking among the shadows that pass by", "Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,", "Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast", "From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!", "", "Some say that gleams of a remoter world", "Visit the soul in sleep,--that death is slumber,", "And that its shapes the busy thoughts outnumber", "Of those who wake and live.--I look on high;", "Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled", "The veil of life and death? or do I lie", "In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep", "Spread far around and inaccessibly", "Its circles? For the very spirit fails,", "Driven like a homeless cloud from steep to steep", "That vanishes among the viewless gales!", "Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky,", "Mont Blanc appears,--still, snowy, and serene--", "Its subject mountains their unearthly forms", "Pile around it, ice and rock; broad vales between", "Of frozen floods, unfathomable deeps,", "Blue as the overhanging heaven, that spread", "And wind among the accumulated steeps;", "A desert peopled by the storms alone,", "Save when the eagle brings some hunter's bone,", "And the wolf tracts her there--how hideously", "Its shapes are heaped around! rude, bare, and high,", "Ghastly, and scarred, and riven.--Is this the scene", "Where the old Earthquake-daemon taught her young", "Ruin? Were these their toys? or did a sea", "Of fire envelope once this silent snow?", "None can reply--all seems eternal now.", "The wilderness has a mysterious tongue", "Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,", "So solemn, so serene, that man may be,", "But for such faith, with nature reconciled;", "Thou hast a voice, great Mountain, to repeal", "Large codes of fraud and woe; not understood", "By all, but which the wise, and great, and good", "Interpret, or make felt, or deeply feel.", "", "The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams,", "Ocean, and all the living things that dwell", "Within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain,", "Earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane,", "The torpor of the year when feeble dreams", "Visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep", "Holds every future leaf and flower;--the bound", "With which from that detested trance they leap;", "The works and ways of man, their death and birth,", "And that of him and all that his may be;", "All things that move and breathe with toil and sound", "Are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell.", "Power dwells apart in its tranquillity,", "Remote, serene, and inaccessible:", "And THIS, the naked countenance of earth,", "On which I gaze, even these primaeval mountains", "Teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep", "Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,", "Slow rolling on; there, many a precipice,", "Frost and the Sun in scorn of mortal power", "Have piled: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle,", "A city of death, distinct with many a tower", "And wall impregnable of beaming ice.", "Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin", "Is there, that from the boundaries of the sky", "Rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing", "Its destined path, or in the mangled soil", "Branchless and shattered stand; the rocks, drawn down", "From yon remotest waste, have overthrown", "The limits of the dead and living world,", "Never to be reclaimed. The dwelling-place", "Of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil;", "Their food and their retreat for ever gone,", "So much of life and joy is lost. The race", "Of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling", "Vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream,", "And their place is not known. Below, vast caves", "Shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam,", "Which from those secret chasms in tumult welling", "Meet in the vale, and one majestic River,", "The breath and blood of distant lands, for ever", "Rolls its loud waters to the ocean waves,", "Breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.", "", "Mont Blanc yet gleams on high--the power is there,", "The still and solemn power of many sights,", "And many sounds, and much of life and death.", "In the calm darkness of the moonless nights,", "In the lone glare of day, the snows descend", "Upon that Mountain; none beholds them there,", "Nor when the flakes burn in the sinking sun,", "Or the star-beams dart through them:--Winds contend", "Silently there, and heap the snow with breath", "Rapid and strong, but silently! Its home", "The voiceless lightning in these solitudes", "Keeps innocently, and like vapour broods", "Over the snow. The secret strength of things", "Which governs thought, and to the infinite dome", "Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!", "And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,", "If to the human mind's imaginings", "Silence and solitude were vacancy?", "", "July 23, 1816." ], "linecount": "146" }, { "title": "Cancelled Passage of Mont Blanc", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "There is a voice, not understood by all,", "Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roar", "Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call,", "Plunging into the vale--it is the blast", "Descending on the pines--the torrents pour..." ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment: Home", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Dear home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys,", "The least of which wronged Memory ever makes", "Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears." ], "linecount": "3" }, { "title": "Fragment of a Ghost Story", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A shovel of his ashes took", "From the hearth's obscurest nook,", "Muttering mysteries as she went.", "Helen and Henry knew that Granny", "Was as much afraid of Ghosts as any,", "And so they followed hard--", "But Helen clung to her brother's arm,", "And her own spasm made her shake." ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Marianne's Dream", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A pale Dream came to a Lady fair,", "And said, A boon, a boon, I pray!", "I know the secrets of the air,", "And things are lost in the glare of day,", "Which I can make the sleeping see,", "If they will put their trust in me.", "", "And thou shalt know of things unknown,", "If thou wilt let me rest between", "The veiny lids, whose fringe is thrown", "Over thine eyes so dark and sheen:", "And half in hope, and half in fright,", "The Lady closed her eyes so bright.", "", "At first all deadly shapes were driven", "Tumultuously across her sleep,", "And o'er the vast cope of bending heaven", "All ghastly-visaged clouds did sweep;", "And the Lady ever looked to spy", "If the golden sun shone forth on high.", "", "And as towards the east she turned,", "She saw aloft in the morning air,", "Which now with hues of sunrise burned,", "A great black Anchor rising there;", "And wherever the Lady turned her eyes,", "It hung before her in the skies.", "", "The sky was blue as the summer sea,", "The depths were cloudless overhead,", "The air was calm as it could be,", "There was no sight or sound of dread,", "But that black Anchor floating still", "Over the piny eastern hill.", "", "The Lady grew sick with a weight of fear", "To see that Anchor ever hanging,", "And veiled her eyes; she then did hear", "The sound as of a dim low clanging,", "And looked abroad if she might know", "Was it aught else, or but the flow", "Of the blood in her own veins, to and fro.", "", "There was a mist in the sunless air,", "Which shook as it were with an earthquake's shock,", "But the very weeds that blossomed there", "Were moveless, and each mighty rock", "Stood on its basis steadfastly;", "The Anchor was seen no more on high.", "", "But piled around, with summits hid", "In lines of cloud at intervals,", "Stood many a mountain pyramid", "Among whose everlasting walls", "Two mighty cities shone, and ever", "Through the red mist their domes did quiver.", "", "On two dread mountains, from whose crest,", "Might seem, the eagle, for her brood,", "Would ne'er have hung her dizzy nest,", "Those tower-encircled cities stood.", "A vision strange such towers to see,", "Sculptured and wrought so gorgeously,", "Where human art could never be.", "", "And columns framed of marble white,", "And giant fanes, dome over dome", "Piled, and triumphant gates, all bright", "With workmanship, which could not come", "From touch of mortal instrument,", "Shot o'er the vales, or lustre lent", "From its own shapes magnificent.", "", "But still the Lady heard that clang", "Filling the wide air far away;", "And still the mist whose light did hang", "Among the mountains shook alway,", "So that the Lady's heart beat fast,", "As half in joy, and half aghast,", "On those high domes her look she cast.", "", "Sudden, from out that city sprung", "A light that made the earth grow red;", "Two flames that each with quivering tongue", "Licked its high domes, and overhead", "Among those mighty towers and fanes", "Dropped fire, as a volcano rains", "Its sulphurous ruin on the plains.", "", "And hark! a rush as if the deep", "Had burst its bonds; she looked behind", "And saw over the western steep", "A raging flood descend, and wind", "Through that wide vale; she felt no fear,", "But said within herself, 'Tis clear", "These towers are Nature's own, and she", "To save them has sent forth the sea.", "", "And now those raging billows came", "Where that fair Lady sate, and she", "Was borne towards the showering flame", "By the wild waves heaped tumultuously.", "And, on a little plank, the flow", "Of the whirlpool bore her to and fro.", "", "The flames were fiercely vomited", "From every tower and every dome,", "And dreary light did widely shed", "O'er that vast flood's suspended foam,", "Beneath the smoke which hung its night", "On the stained cope of heaven's light.", "", "The plank whereon that Lady sate", "Was driven through the chasms, about and about,", "Between the peaks so desolate", "Of the drowning mountains, in and out,", "As the thistle-beard on a whirlwind sails--", "While the flood was filling those hollow vales.", "", "At last her plank an eddy crossed,", "And bore her to the city's wall,", "Which now the flood had reached almost;", "It might the stoutest heart appal", "To hear the fire roar and hiss", "Through the domes of those mighty palaces.", "", "The eddy whirled her round and round", "Before a gorgeous gate, which stood", "Piercing the clouds of smoke which bound", "Its aery arch with light like blood;", "She looked on that gate of marble clear,", "With wonder that extinguished fear.", "", "For it was filled with sculptures rarest,", "Of forms most beautiful and strange,", "Like nothing human, but the fairest", "Of winged shapes, whose legions range", "Throughout the sleep of those that are,", "Like this same Lady, good and fair.", "", "And as she looked, still lovelier grew", "Those marble forms;--the sculptor sure", "Was a strong spirit, and the hue", "Of his own mind did there endure", "After the touch, whose power had braided", "Such grace, was in some sad change faded.", "", "She looked, the flames were dim, the flood", "Grew tranquil as a woodland river", "Winding through hills in solitude;", "Those marble shapes then seemed to quiver,", "And their fair limbs to float in motion,", "Like weeds unfolding in the ocean.", "", "And their lips moved; one seemed to speak,", "When suddenly the mountains cracked,", "And through the chasm the flood did break", "With an earth-uplifting cataract:", "The statues gave a joyous scream,", "And on its wings the pale thin Dream", "Lifted the Lady from the stream.", "", "The dizzy flight of that phantom pale", "Waked the fair Lady from her sleep,", "And she arose, while from the veil", "Of her dark eyes the Dream did creep,", "And she walked about as one who knew", "That sleep has sights as clear and true", "As any waking eyes can view." ], "linecount": "147" }, { "title": "To Constantia, Singing", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die,", "Perchance were death indeed!--Constantia, turn!", "In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie,", "Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn", "Between thy lips, are laid to sleep;", "Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like odour, it is yet,", "And from thy touch like fire doth leap.", "Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet.", "Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!", "", "A breathless awe, like the swift change", "Unseen, but felt in youthful slumbers,", "Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,", "Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers.", "The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven", "By the enchantment of thy strain,", "And on my shoulders wings are woven,", "To follow its sublime career", "Beyond the mighty moons that wane", "Upon the verge of Nature's utmost sphere,", "Till the world's shadowy walls are past and disappear.", "", "Her voice is hovering o'er my soul--it lingers", "O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings,", "The blood and life within those snowy fingers", "Teach witchcraft to the instrumental strings.", "My brain is wild, my breath comes quick--", "The blood is listening in my frame,", "And thronging shadows, fast and thick,", "Fall on my overflowing eyes;", "My heart is quivering like a flame;", "As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies,", "I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.", "", "I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee,", "Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song", "Flows on, and fills all things with melody.--", "Now is thy voice a tempest swift and strong,", "On which, like one in trance upborne,", "Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep,", "Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.", "Now 'tis the breath of summer night,", "Which when the starry waters sleep,", "Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright,", "Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight." ], "linecount": "42" }, { "title": "To Constantia: Stanzas 1 and 2", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "As restored by Mr. C.D. Locock.", "", "Cease, cease--for such wild lessons madmen learn", "Thus to be lost, and thus to sink and die", "Perchance were death indeed!--Constantia turn", "In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie", "Even though the sounds its voice that were", "Between lips are laid to sleep:", "Within thy breath, and on thy hair", "Like odour, it is yet", "And from thy touch like fire doth leap--", "Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet--", "Alas, that the torn heart can bleed but not forget.", "", " breathless awe like the swift change", "Of dreams unseen but felt in youthful slumbers", "Wild sweet yet incommunicably strange", "Thou breathest now in fast ascending numbers..." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "To Constantia", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The rose that drinks the fountain dew", "In the pleasant air of noon,", "Grows pale and blue with altered hue--", "In the gaze of the nightly moon;", "For the planet of frost, so cold and bright,", "Makes it wan with her borrowed light.", "", "Such is my heart--roses are fair,", "And that at best a withered blossom;", "But thy false care did idly wear", "Its withered leaves in a faithless bosom;", "And fed with love, like air and dew,", "Its growth--" ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "Fragment: To One Singing", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim", "Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing,", "Far far away into the regions dim", "", "Of rapture--as a boat, with swift sails winging", "Its way adown some many-winding river,", "Speeds through dark forests o'er the waters swinging..." ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "A Fragment: To Music", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Silver key of the fountain of tears,", "Where the spirit drinks till the brain is wild;", "Softest grave of a thousand fears,", "Where their mother, Care, like a drowsy child,", "Is laid asleep in flowers." ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Another Fragment: To Music", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "No, Music, thou art not the 'food of Love.'", "Unless Love feeds upon its own sweet self,", "Till it becomes all Music murmurs of." ], "linecount": "3" }, { "title": "'Mighty Eagle'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "SUPPOSED TO BE ADDRESSED TO WILLIAM GODWIN.", "", "Mighty eagle! thou that soarest", "O'er the misty mountain forest,", "And amid the light of morning", "Like a cloud of glory hiest,", "And when night descends defiest", "The embattled tempests' warning!" ], "linecount": "7" }, { "title": "To the Lord Chancellor", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Thy country's curse is on thee, darkest crest", "Of that foul, knotted, many-headed worm", "Which rends our Mother's bosom--Priestly Pest!", "Masked Resurrection of a buried Form!", "", "Thy country's curse is on thee! Justice sold,", "Truth trampled, Nature's landmarks overthrown,", "And heaps of fraud-accumulated gold,", "Plead, loud as thunder, at Destruction's throne.", "", "And whilst that sure slow Angel which aye stands", "Watching the beck of Mutability", "Delays to execute her high commands,", "And, though a nation weeps, spares thine and thee,", "", "Oh, let a father's curse be on thy soul,", "And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb;", "Be both, on thy gray head, a leaden cowl", "To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom.", "", "I curse thee by a parent's outraged love,", "By hopes long cherished and too lately lost,", "By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove,", "By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed;", "", "By those infantine smiles of happy light,", "Which were a fire within a stranger's hearth,", "Quenched even when kindled, in untimely night", "Hiding the promise of a lovely birth:", "", "By those unpractised accents of young speech,", "Which he who is a father thought to frame", "To gentlest lore, such as the wisest teach--", "THOU strike the lyre of mind!--oh, grief and shame!", "", "By all the happy see in children's growth--", "That undeveloped flower of budding years--", "Sweetness and sadness interwoven both,", "Source of the sweetest hopes and saddest fears-", "", "By all the days, under an hireling's care,", "Of dull constraint and bitter heaviness,--", "O wretched ye if ever any were,--", "Sadder than orphans, yet not fatherless!", "", "By the false cant which on their innocent lips", "Must hang like poison on an opening bloom,", "By the dark creeds which cover with eclipse", "Their pathway from the cradle to the tomb--", "", "By thy most impious Hell, and all its terror;", "By all the grief, the madness, and the guilt", "Of thine impostures, which must be their error--", "That sand on which thy crumbling power is built--", "", "By thy complicity with lust and hate--", "Thy thirst for tears--thy hunger after gold--", "The ready frauds which ever on thee wait--", "The servile arts in which thou hast grown old--", "", "By thy most killing sneer, and by thy smile--", "By all the arts and snares of thy black den,", "And--for thou canst outweep the crocodile--", "By thy false tears--those millstones braining men--", "", "By all the hate which checks a father's love--", "By all the scorn which kills a father's care--", "By those most impious hands which dared remove", "Nature's high bounds--by thee--and by despair--", "", "Yes, the despair which bids a father groan,", "And cry, 'My children are no longer mine--", "The blood within those veins may be mine own,", "But--Tyrant--their polluted souls are thine;--", "", "I curse thee--though I hate thee not.--O slave!", "If thou couldst quench the earth-consuming Hell", "Of which thou art a daemon, on thy grave", "This curse should be a blessing. Fare thee well!" ], "linecount": "64" }, { "title": "To William Shelley", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The billows on the beach are leaping around it,", "The bark is weak and frail,", "The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it", "Darkly strew the gale.", "Come with me, thou delightful child,", "Come with me, though the wave is wild,", "And the winds are loose, we must not stay,", "Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.", "", "They have taken thy brother and sister dear,", "They have made them unfit for thee;", "They have withered the smile and dried the tear", "Which should have been sacred to me.", "To a blighting faith and a cause of crime", "They have bound them slaves in youthly prime,", "And they will curse my name and thee", "Because we fearless are and free.", "", "Come thou, beloved as thou art;", "Another sleepeth still", "Near thy sweet mother's anxious heart,", "Which thou with joy shalt fill,", "With fairest smiles of wonder thrown", "On that which is indeed our own,", "And which in distant lands will be", "The dearest playmate unto thee.", "", "Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever,", "Or the priests of the evil faith;", "They stand on the brink of that raging river,", "Whose waves they have tainted with death.", "It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells,", "Around them it foams and rages and swells;", "And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,", "Like wrecks on the surge of eternity.", "", "Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle child!", "The rocking of the boat thou fearest,", "And the cold spray and the clamour wild?--", "There, sit between us two, thou dearest--", "Me and thy mother--well we know", "The storm at which thou tremblest so,", "With all its dark and hungry graves,", "Less cruel than the savage slaves", "Who hunt us o'er these sheltering waves.", "", "This hour will in thy memory", "Be a dream of days forgotten long.", "We soon shall dwell by the azure sea", "Of serene and golden Italy,", "Or Greece, the Mother of the free;", "And I will teach thine infant tongue", "To call upon those heroes old", "In their own language, and will mould", "Thy growing spirit in the flame", "Of Grecian lore, that by such name", "A patriot's birthright thou mayst claim!" ], "linecount": "52" }, { "title": "From the Original Draft of the Poem to William Shelley", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The world is now our dwelling-place;", "Where'er the earth one fading trace", "Of what was great and free does keep,", "That is our home!...", "Mild thoughts of man's ungentle race", "Shall our contented exile reap;", "For who that in some happy place", "His own free thoughts can freely chase", "By woods and waves can clothe his face", "In cynic smiles? Child! we shall weep.", "", "This lament,", "The memory of thy grievous wrong", "Will fade...", "But genius is omnipotent", "To hallow..." ], "linecount": "15" }, { "title": "On Fanny Godwin", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Her voice did quiver as we parted,", "Yet knew I not that heart was broken", "From which it came, and I departed", "Heeding not the words then spoken.", "Misery--O Misery,", "This world is all too wide for thee." ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Lines", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "That time is dead for ever, child!", "Drowned, frozen, dead for ever!", "We look on the past", "And stare aghast", "At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast,", "Of hopes which thou and I beguiled", "To death on life's dark river.", "", "The stream we gazed on then rolled by;", "Its waves are unreturning;", "But we yet stand", "In a lone land,", "Like tombs to mark the memory", "Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee", "In the light of life's dim morning." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Death", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "They die--the dead return not--Misery", "Sits near an open grave and calls them over,", "A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye--", "They are the names of kindred, friend and lover,", "Which he so feebly calls--they all are gone--", "Fond wretch, all dead! those vacant names alone,", "This most familiar scene, my pain--", "These tombs--alone remain.", "", "Misery, my sweetest friend--oh, weep no more!", "Thou wilt not be consoled--I wonder not!", "For I have seen thee from thy dwelling's door", "Watch the calm sunset with them, and this spot", "Was even as bright and calm, but transitory,", "And now thy hopes are gone, thy hair is hoary;", "This most familiar scene, my pain--", "These tombs--alone remain." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "Otho", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Thou wert not, Cassius, and thou couldst not be,", "Last of the Romans, though thy memory claim", "From Brutus his own glory--and on thee", "Rests the full splendour of his sacred fame:", "Nor he who dared make the foul tyrant quail", "Amid his cowering senate with thy name,", "Though thou and he were great--it will avail", "To thine own fame that Otho's should not fail.", "", "'Twill wrong thee not--thou wouldst, if thou couldst feel,", "Abjure such envious fame--great Otho died", "Like thee--he sanctified his country's steel,", "At once the tyrant and tyrannicide,", "In his own blood--a deed it was to bring", "Tears from all men--though full of gentle pride,", "Such pride as from impetuous love may spring,", "That will not be refused its offering." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "Fragments Supposed to Be Parts of Otho", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Those whom nor power, nor lying faith, nor toil,", "Nor custom, queen of many slaves, makes blind,", "Have ever grieved that man should be the spoil", "Of his own weakness, and with earnest mind", "Fed hopes of its redemption; these recur", "Chastened by deathful victory now, and find", "Foundations in this foulest age, and stir", "Me whom they cheer to be their minister.", "", "Dark is the realm of grief: but human things", "Those may not know who cannot weep for them.", "", "...", "", "Once more descend", "The shadows of my soul upon mankind,", "For to those hearts with which they never blend,", "Thoughts are but shadows which the flashing mind", "From the swift clouds which track its flight of fire,", "Casts on the gloomy world it leaves behind.", "", "...", "", "'O THAT A CHARIOT OF CLOUD WERE MINE'.", "", "O that a chariot of cloud were mine!", "Of cloud which the wild tempest weaves in air,", "When the moon over the ocean's line", "Is spreading the locks of her bright gray hair.", "O that a chariot of cloud were mine!", "I would sail on the waves of the billowy wind", "To the mountain peak and the rocky lake,", "And the..." ], "linecount": "27" }, { "title": "Fragment: To a Friend Released From Prison", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble", "In my faint eyes, and that my heart beat fast", "With feelings which make rapture pain resemble,", "Yet, from thy voice that falsehood starts aghast,", "I thank thee--let the tyrant keep", "His chains and tears, yea, let him weep", "With rage to see thee freshly risen,", "Like strength from slumber, from the prison,", "In which he vainly hoped the soul to bind", "Which on the chains must prey that fetter humankind." ], "linecount": "10" }, { "title": "Fragment: Satan Broken Loose", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A golden-winged Angel stood", "Before the Eternal Judgement-seat:", "His looks were wild, and Devils' blood", "Stained his dainty hands and feet.", "The Father and the Son", "Knew that strife was now begun.", "They knew that Satan had broken his chain,", "And with millions of daemons in his train,", "Was ranging over the world again.", "Before the Angel had told his tale,", "A sweet and a creeping sound", "Like the rushing of wings was heard around;", "And suddenly the lamps grew pale--", "The lamps, before the Archangels seven,", "That burn continually in Heaven." ], "linecount": "15" }, { "title": "Fragment: \"Igniculus Desiderii\"", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "To thirst and find no fill--to wail and wander", "With short unsteady steps--to pause and ponder--", "To feel the blood run through the veins and tingle", "Where busy thought and blind sensation mingle;", "To nurse the image of unfelt caresses", "Till dim imagination just possesses", "The half-created shadow, then all the night", "Sick..." ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Fragment: \"Amor Aeternus\"", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Wealth and dominion fade into the mass", "Of the great sea of human right and wrong,", "When once from our possession they must pass;", "But love, though misdirected, is among", "The things which are immortal, and surpass", "All that frail stuff which will be--or which was." ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Fragment: Thoughts Come and Go in Solitude", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "My thoughts arise and fade in solitude,", "The verse that would invest them melts away", "Like moonlight in the heaven of spreading day:", "How beautiful they were, how firm they stood,", "Flecking the starry sky like woven pearl!" ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "A Hate-Song", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A hater he came and sat by a ditch,", "And he took an old cracked lute;", "And he sang a song which was more of a screech", "'Gainst a woman that was a brute." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Lines to a Critic", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Honey from silkworms who can gather,", "Or silk from the yellow bee?", "The grass may grow in winter weather", "As soon as hate in me.", "", "Hate men who cant, and men who pray,", "And men who rail like thee;", "An equal passion to repay", "They are not coy like me.", "", "Or seek some slave of power and gold", "To be thy dear heart's mate;", "Thy love will move that bigot cold", "Sooner than me, thy hate.", "", "A passion like the one I prove", "Cannot divided be;", "I hate thy want of truth and love--", "How should I then hate thee?" ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "Ozymandias", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I met a traveller from an antique land", "Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone", "Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,", "Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,", "And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,", "Tell that its sculptor well those passions read", "Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,", "The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:", "And on the pedestal these words appear:", "'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:", "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'", "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay", "Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare", "The lone and level sands stretch far away." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "To the Nile", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Month after month the gathered rains descend", "Drenching yon secret Aethiopian dells,", "And from the desert's ice-girt pinnacles", "Where Frost and Heat in strange embraces blend", "On Atlas, fields of moist snow half depend.", "Girt there with blasts and meteors Tempest dwells", "By Nile's aereal urn, with rapid spells", "Urging those waters to their mighty end.", "O'er Egypt's land of Memory floods are level", "And they are thine, O Nile--and well thou knowest", "That soul-sustaining airs and blasts of evil", "And fruits and poisons spring where'er thou flowest.", "Beware, O Man--for knowledge must to thee,", "Like the great flood to Egypt, ever be." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Passage of the Apennines", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Listen, listen, Mary mine,", "To the whisper of the Apennine,", "It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,", "Or like the sea on a northern shore,", "Heard in its raging ebb and flow", "By the captives pent in the cave below.", "The Apennine in the light of day", "Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,", "Which between the earth and sky doth lay;", "But when night comes, a chaos dread", "On the dim starlight then is spread,", "And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm,", "Shrouding..." ], "linecount": "13" }, { "title": "The Past", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Wilt thou forget the happy hours", "Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,", "Heaping over their corpses cold", "Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?", "Blossoms which were the joys that fell,", "And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.", "", "Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet", "There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,", "Memories that make the heart a tomb,", "Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom,", "And with ghastly whispers tell", "That joy, once lost, is pain." ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "To Mary --", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "O Mary dear, that you were here", "With your brown eyes bright and clear.", "And your sweet voice, like a bird", "Singing love to its lone mate", "In the ivy bower disconsolate;", "Voice the sweetest ever heard!", "And your brow more...", "Than the ... sky", "Of this azure Italy.", "Mary dear, come to me soon,", "I am not well whilst thou art far;", "As sunset to the sphered moon,", "As twilight to the western star,", "Thou, beloved, art to me.", "", "O Mary dear, that you were here;", "The Castle echo whispers 'Here!'" ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "On a Faded Violet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The odour from the flower is gone", "Which like thy kisses breathed on me;", "The colour from the flower is flown", "Which glowed of thee and only thee!", "", "A shrivelled, lifeless, vacant form,", "It lies on my abandoned breast,", "And mocks the heart which yet is warm,", "With cold and silent rest.", "", "I weep,--my tears revive it not!", "I sigh,--it breathes no more on me;", "Its mute and uncomplaining lot", "Is such as mine should be." ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "OCTOBER, 1818.", "", "Many a green isle needs must be", "In the deep wide sea of Misery,", "Or the mariner, worn and wan,", "Never thus could voyage on--", "Day and night, and night and day,", "Drifting on his dreary way,", "With the solid darkness black", "Closing round his vessel's track:", "Whilst above the sunless sky,", "Big with clouds, hangs heavily,", "And behind the tempest fleet", "Hurries on with lightning feet,", "Riving sail, and cord, and plank,", "Till the ship has almost drank", "Death from the o'er-brimming deep;", "And sinks down, down, like that sleep", "When the dreamer seems to be", "Weltering through eternity;", "And the dim low line before", "Of a dark and distant shore", "Still recedes, as ever still", "Longing with divided will,", "But no power to seek or shun,", "He is ever drifted on", "O'er the unreposing wave", "To the haven of the grave.", "What, if there no friends will greet;", "What, if there no heart will meet", "His with love's impatient beat;", "Wander wheresoe'er he may,", "Can he dream before that day", "To find refuge from distress", "In friendship's smile, in love's caress?", "Then 'twill wreak him little woe", "Whether such there be or no:", "Senseless is the breast, and cold,", "Which relenting love would fold;", "Bloodless are the veins and chill", "Which the pulse of pain did fill;", "Every little living nerve", "That from bitter words did swerve", "Round the tortured lips and brow,", "Are like sapless leaflets now", "Frozen upon December's bough.", "", "On the beach of a northern sea", "Which tempests shake eternally,", "As once the wretch there lay to sleep,", "Lies a solitary heap,", "One white skull and seven dry bones,", "On the margin of the stones,", "Where a few gray rushes stand,", "Boundaries of the sea and land:", "Nor is heard one voice of wail", "But the sea-mews, as they sail", "O'er the billows of the gale;", "Or the whirlwind up and down", "Howling, like a slaughtered town,", "When a king in glory rides", "Through the pomp of fratricides:", "Those unburied bones around", "There is many a mournful sound;", "There is no lament for him,", "Like a sunless vapour, dim,", "Who once clothed with life and thought", "What now moves nor murmurs not.", "", "Ay, many flowering islands lie", "In the waters of wide Agony:", "To such a one this morn was led,", "My bark by soft winds piloted:", "'Mid the mountains Euganean", "I stood listening to the paean", "With which the legioned rooks did hail", "The sun's uprise majestical;", "Gathering round with wings all hoar,", "Through the dewy mist they soar", "Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven", "Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,", "Flecked with fire and azure, lie", "In the unfathomable sky,", "So their plumes of purple grain,", "Starred with drops of golden rain,", "Gleam above the sunlight woods,", "As in silent multitudes", "On the morning's fitful gale", "Through the broken mist they sail,", "And the vapours cloven and gleaming", "Follow, down the dark steep streaming,", "Till all is bright, and clear, and still,", "Round the solitary hill.", "", "Beneath is spread like a green sea", "The waveless plain of Lombardy,", "Bounded by the vaporous air,", "Islanded by cities fair;", "Underneath Day's azure eyes", "Ocean's nursling, Venice lies,", "A peopled labyrinth of walls,", "Amphitrite's destined halls,", "Which her hoary sire now paves", "With his blue and beaming waves.", "Lo! the sun upsprings behind,", "Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined", "On the level quivering line", "Of the waters crystalline;", "And before that chasm of light,", "As within a furnace bright,", "Column, tower, and dome, and spire,", "Shine like obelisks of fire,", "Pointing with inconstant motion", "From the altar of dark ocean", "To the sapphire-tinted skies;", "As the flames of sacrifice", "From the marble shrines did rise,", "As to pierce the dome of gold", "Where Apollo spoke of old.", "", "Sun-girt City, thou hast been", "Ocean's child, and then his queen;", "Now is come a darker day,", "And thou soon must be his prey,", "If the power that raised thee here", "Hallow so thy watery bier.", "A less drear ruin then than now,", "With thy conquest-branded brow", "Stooping to the slave of slaves", "From thy throne, among the waves", "Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew", "Flies, as once before it flew,", "O'er thine isles depopulate,", "And all is in its ancient state,", "Save where many a palace gate", "With green sea-flowers overgrown", "Like a rock of Ocean's own,", "Topples o'er the abandoned sea", "As the tides change sullenly.", "The fisher on his watery way,", "Wandering at the close of day,", "Will spread his sail and seize his oar", "Till he pass the gloomy shore,", "Lest thy dead should, from their sleep", "Bursting o'er the starlight deep,", "Lead a rapid masque of death", "O'er the waters of his path.", "", "Those who alone thy towers behold", "Quivering through aereal gold,", "As I now behold them here,", "Would imagine not they were", "Sepulchres, where human forms,", "Like pollution-nourished worms,", "To the corpse of greatness cling,", "Murdered, and now mouldering:", "But if Freedom should awake", "In her omnipotence, and shake", "From the Celtic Anarch's hold", "All the keys of dungeons cold,", "Where a hundred cities lie", "Chained like thee, ingloriously,", "Thou and all thy sister band", "Might adorn this sunny land,", "Twining memories of old time", "With new virtues more sublime;", "If not, perish thou and they!--", "Clouds which stain truth's rising day", "By her sun consumed away--", "Earth can spare ye: while like flowers,", "In the waste of years and hours,", "From your dust new nations spring", "With more kindly blossoming.", "", "Perish--let there only be", "Floating o'er thy hearthless sea", "As the garment of thy sky", "Clothes the world immortally,", "One remembrance, more sublime", "Than the tattered pall of time,", "Which scarce hides thy visage wan;--", "That a tempest-cleaving Swan", "Of the songs of Albion,", "Driven from his ancestral streams", "By the might of evil dreams,", "Found a nest in thee; and Ocean", "Welcomed him with such emotion", "That its joy grew his, and sprung", "From his lips like music flung", "O'er a mighty thunder-fit,", "Chastening terror:--what though yet", "Poesy's unfailing River,", "Which through Albion winds forever", "Lashing with melodious wave", "Many a sacred Poet's grave,", "Mourn its latest nursling fled?", "What though thou with all thy dead", "Scarce can for this fame repay", "Aught thine own? oh, rather say", "Though thy sins and slaveries foul", "Overcloud a sunlike soul?", "As the ghost of Homer clings", "Round Scamander's wasting springs;", "As divinest Shakespeare's might", "Fills Avon and the world with light", "Like omniscient power which he", "Imaged 'mid mortality;", "As the love from Petrarch's urn,", "Yet amid yon hills doth burn,", "A quenchless lamp by which the heart", "Sees things unearthly;--so thou art,", "Mighty spirit--so shall be", "The City that did refuge thee.", "", "Lo, the sun floats up the sky", "Like thought-winged Liberty,", "Till the universal light", "Seems to level plain and height;", "From the sea a mist has spread,", "And the beams of morn lie dead", "On the towers of Venice now,", "Like its glory long ago.", "By the skirts of that gray cloud", "Many-domed Padua proud", "Stands, a peopled solitude,", "'Mid the harvest-shining plain,", "Where the peasant heaps his grain", "In the garner of his foe,", "And the milk-white oxen slow", "With the purple vintage strain,", "Heaped upon the creaking wain,", "That the brutal Celt may swill", "Drunken sleep with savage will;", "And the sickle to the sword", "Lies unchanged, though many a lord,", "Like a weed whose shade is poison,", "Overgrows this region's foison,", "Sheaves of whom are ripe to come", "To destruction's harvest-home:", "Men must reap the things they sow,", "Force from force must ever flow,", "Or worse; but 'tis a bitter woe", "That love or reason cannot change", "The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.", "", "Padua, thou within whose walls", "Those mute guests at festivals,", "Son and Mother, Death and Sin,", "Played at dice for Ezzelin,", "Till Death cried, \"I win, I win!\"", "And Sin cursed to lose the wager,", "But Death promised, to assuage her,", "That he would petition for", "Her to be made Vice-Emperor,", "When the destined years were o'er,", "Over all between the Po", "And the eastern Alpine snow,", "Under the mighty Austrian.", "Sin smiled so as Sin only can,", "And since that time, ay, long before,", "Both have ruled from shore to shore,--", "That incestuous pair, who follow", "Tyrants as the sun the swallow,", "As Repentance follows Crime,", "And as changes follow Time.", "", "In thine halls the lamp of learning,", "Padua, now no more is burning;", "Like a meteor, whose wild way", "Is lost over the grave of day,", "It gleams betrayed and to betray:", "Once remotest nations came", "To adore that sacred flame,", "When it lit not many a hearth", "On this cold and gloomy earth:", "Now new fires from antique light", "Spring beneath the wide world's might;", "But their spark lies dead in thee,", "Trampled out by Tyranny.", "As the Norway woodman quells,", "In the depth of piny dells,", "One light flame among the brakes,", "While the boundless forest shakes,", "And its mighty trunks are torn", "By the fire thus lowly born:", "The spark beneath his feet is dead,", "He starts to see the flames it fed", "Howling through the darkened sky", "With a myriad tongues victoriously,", "And sinks down in fear: so thou,", "O Tyranny, beholdest now", "Light around thee, and thou hearest", "The loud flames ascend, and fearest:", "Grovel on the earth; ay, hide", "In the dust thy purple pride!", "", "Noon descends around me now:", "'Tis the noon of autumn's glow,", "When a soft and purple mist", "Like a vaporous amethyst,", "Or an air-dissolved star", "Mingling light and fragrance, far", "From the curved horizon's bound", "To the point of Heaven's profound,", "Fills the overflowing sky;", "And the plains that silent lie", "Underneath, the leaves unsodden", "Where the infant Frost has trodden", "With his morning-winged feet,", "Whose bright print is gleaming yet;", "And the red and golden vines,", "Piercing with their trellised lines", "The rough, dark-skirted wilderness;", "The dun and bladed grass no less,", "Pointing from this hoary tower", "In the windless air; the flower", "Glimmering at my feet; the line", "Of the olive-sandalled Apennine", "In the south dimly islanded;", "And the Alps, whose snows are spread", "High between the clouds and sun;", "And of living things each one;", "And my spirit which so long", "Darkened this swift stream of song,--", "Interpenetrated lie", "By the glory of the sky:", "Be it love, light, harmony,", "Odour, or the soul of all", "Which from Heaven like dew doth fall,", "Or the mind which feeds this verse", "Peopling the lone universe.", "", "Noon descends, and after noon", "Autumn's evening meets me soon,", "Leading the infantine moon,", "And that one star, which to her", "Almost seems to minister", "Half the crimson light she brings", "From the sunset's radiant springs:", "And the soft dreams of the morn", "(Which like winged winds had borne", "To that silent isle, which lies", "Mid remembered agonies,", "The frail bark of this lone being)", "Pass, to other sufferers fleeing,", "And its ancient pilot, Pain,", "Sits beside the helm again.", "", "Other flowering isles must be", "In the sea of Life and Agony:", "Other spirits float and flee", "O'er that gulf: even now, perhaps,", "On some rock the wild wave wraps,", "With folded wings they waiting sit", "For my bark, to pilot it", "To some calm and blooming cove,", "Where for me, and those I love,", "May a windless bower be built,", "Far from passion, pain, and guilt,", "In a dell mid lawny hills,", "Which the wild sea-murmur fills,", "And soft sunshine, and the sound", "Of old forests echoing round,", "And the light and smell divine", "Of all flowers that breathe and shine:", "We may live so happy there,", "That the Spirits of the Air,", "Envying us, may even entice", "To our healing Paradise", "The polluting multitude;", "But their rage would be subdued", "By that clime divine and calm,", "And the winds whose wings rain balm", "On the uplifted soul, and leaves", "Under which the bright sea heaves;", "While each breathless interval", "In their whisperings musical", "The inspired soul supplies", "With its own deep melodies;", "And the love which heals all strife", "Circling, like the breath of life,", "All things in that sweet abode", "With its own mild brotherhood,", "They, not it, would change; and soon", "Every sprite beneath the moon", "Would repent its envy vain,", "And the earth grow young again." ], "linecount": "374" }, { "title": "Scene From 'tasso'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "MADDALO, A COURTIER.", "MALPIGLIO, A POET.", "PIGNA, A MINISTER.", "ALBANO, AN USHER.", "", "MADDALO:", "No access to the Duke! You have not said", "That the Count Maddalo would speak with him?", "", "PIGNA:", "Did you inform his Grace that Signor Pigna", "Waits with state papers for his signature?", "", "MALPIGLIO:", "The Lady Leonora cannot know", "That I have written a sonnet to her fame,", "In which I ... Venus and Adonis.", "You should not take my gold and serve me not.", "", "ALBANO:", "In truth I told her, and she smiled and said,", "'If I am Venus, thou, coy Poesy,", "Art the Adonis whom I love, and he", "The Erymanthian boar that wounded him.'", "O trust to me, Signor Malpiglio,", "Those nods and smiles were favours worth the zechin.", "", "MALPIGLIO:", "The words are twisted in some double sense", "That I reach not: the smiles fell not on me.", "", "PIGNA:", "How are the Duke and Duchess occupied?", "", "ALBANO:", "Buried in some strange talk. The Duke was leaning,", "His finger on his brow, his lips unclosed.", "The Princess sate within the window-seat,", "And so her face was hid; but on her knee", "Her hands were clasped, veined, and pale as snow,", "And quivering--young Tasso, too, was there.", "", "MADDALO:", "Thou seest on whom from thine own worshipped heaven", "Thou drawest down smiles--they did not rain on thee.", "", "MALPIGLIO:", "Would they were parching lightnings for his sake", "On whom they fell!", "", "SONG FOR 'TASSO'.", "", "I loved--alas! our life is love;", "But when we cease to breathe and move", "I do suppose love ceases too.", "I thought, but not as now I do,", "Keen thoughts and bright of linked lore,", "Of all that men had thought before.", "And all that Nature shows, and more.", "", "And still I love and still I think,", "But strangely, for my heart can drink", "The dregs of such despair, and live,", "And love;...", "And if I think, my thoughts come fast,", "I mix the present with the past,", "And each seems uglier than the last.", "", "Sometimes I see before me flee", "A silver spirit's form, like thee,", "O Leonora, and I sit", "...still watching it,", "Till by the grated casement's ledge", "It fades, with such a sigh, as sedge", "Breathes o'er the breezy streamlet's edge." ], "linecount": "62" }, { "title": "Invocation to Misery", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Come, be happy!--sit near me,", "Shadow-vested Misery:", "Coy, unwilling, silent bride,", "Mourning in thy robe of pride,", "Desolation--deified!", "", "Come, be happy!--sit near me:", "Sad as I may seem to thee,", "I am happier far than thou,", "Lady, whose imperial brow", "Is endiademed with woe.", "", "Misery! we have known each other,", "Like a sister and a brother", "Living in the same lone home,", "Many years--we must live some", "Hours or ages yet to come.", "", "'Tis an evil lot, and yet", "Let us make the best of it;", "If love can live when pleasure dies,", "We two will love, till in our eyes", "This heart's Hell seem Paradise.", "", "Come, be happy!--lie thee down", "On the fresh grass newly mown,", "Where the Grasshopper doth sing", "Merrily--one joyous thing", "In a world of sorrowing!", "", "There our tent shall be the willow,", "And mine arm shall be thy pillow;", "Sounds and odours, sorrowful", "Because they once were sweet, shall lull", "Us to slumber, deep and dull.", "", "Ha! thy frozen pulses flutter", "With a love thou darest not utter.", "Thou art murmuring--thou art weeping--", "Is thine icy bosom leaping", "While my burning heart lies sleeping?", "", "Kiss me;--oh! thy lips are cold:", "Round my neck thine arms enfold--", "They are soft, but chill and dead;", "And thy tears upon my head", "Burn like points of frozen lead.", "", "Hasten to the bridal bed--", "Underneath the grave 'tis spread:", "In darkness may our love be hid,", "Oblivion be our coverlid--", "We may rest, and none forbid.", "", "Clasp me till our hearts be grown", "Like two shadows into one;", "Till this dreadful transport may", "Like a vapour fade away,", "In the sleep that lasts alway.", "", "We may dream, in that long sleep,", "That we are not those who weep;", "E'en as Pleasure dreams of thee,", "Life-deserting Misery,", "Thou mayst dream of her with me.", "", "Let us laugh, and make our mirth,", "At the shadows of the earth,", "As dogs bay the moonlight clouds,", "Which, like spectres wrapped in shrouds,", "Pass o'er night in multitudes.", "", "All the wide world, beside us,", "Show like multitudinous", "Puppets passing from a scene;", "What but mockery can they mean,", "Where I am--where thou hast been?" ], "linecount": "65" }, { "title": "Stanzas Written in Dejection, Near Naples", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The sun is warm, the sky is clear,", "The waves are dancing fast and bright,", "Blue isles and snowy mountains wear", "The purple noon's transparent might,", "The breath of the moist earth is light,", "Around its unexpanded buds;", "Like many a voice of one delight,", "The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,", "The City's voice itself, is soft like Solitude's.", "", "I see the Deep's untrampled floor", "With green and purple seaweeds strown;", "I see the waves upon the shore,", "Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown:", "I sit upon the sands alone,--", "The lightning of the noontide ocean", "Is flashing round me, and a tone", "Arises from its measured motion,", "How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.", "", "Alas! I have nor hope nor health,", "Nor peace within nor calm around,", "Nor that content surpassing wealth", "The sage in meditation found,", "And walked with inward glory crowned--", "Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.", "Others I see whom these surround--", "Smiling they live, and call life pleasure;--", "To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.", "", "Yet now despair itself is mild,", "Even as the winds and waters are;", "I could lie down like a tired child,", "And weep away the life of care", "Which I have borne and yet must bear,", "Till death like sleep might steal on me,", "And I might feel in the warm air", "My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea", "Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.", "", "Some might lament that I were cold,", "As I, when this sweet day is gone,", "Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,", "Insults with this untimely moan;", "They might lament--for I am one", "Whom men love not,--and yet regret,", "Unlike this day, which, when the sun", "Shall on its stainless glory set,", "Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet." ], "linecount": "45" }, { "title": "The Woodman and the Nightingale", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune", "(I think such hearts yet never came to good)", "Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,", "", "One nightingale in an interfluous wood", "Satiate the hungry dark with melody;--", "And as a vale is watered by a flood,", "", "Or as the moonlight fills the open sky", "Struggling with darkness--as a tuberose", "Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie", "", "Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,", "The singing of that happy nightingale", "In this sweet forest, from the golden close", "", "Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,", "Was interfused upon the silentness;", "The folded roses and the violets pale", "", "Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss", "Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear", "Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness", "", "Of the circumfluous waters,--every sphere", "And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,", "And every wind of the mute atmosphere,", "", "And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,", "And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,", "And every silver moth fresh from the grave", "", "Which is its cradle--ever from below", "Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,", "To be consumed within the purest glow", "", "Of one serene and unapproached star,", "As if it were a lamp of earthly light,", "Unconscious, as some human lovers are,", "", "Itself how low, how high beyond all height", "The heaven where it would perish!--and every form", "That worshipped in the temple of the night", "", "Was awed into delight, and by the charm", "Girt as with an interminable zone,", "Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm", "", "Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion", "Out of their dreams; harmony became love", "In every soul but one.", "", "...", "", "And so this man returned with axe and saw", "At evening close from killing the tall treen,", "The soul of whom by Nature's gentle law", "", "Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green", "The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,", "Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene", "", "With jagged leaves,--and from the forest tops", "Singing the winds to sleep--or weeping oft", "Fast showers of aereal water-drops", "", "Into their mother's bosom, sweet and soft,", "Nature's pure tears which have no bitterness;--", "Around the cradles of the birds aloft", "", "They spread themselves into the loveliness", "Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers", "Hang like moist clouds:--or, where high branches kiss,", "", "Make a green space among the silent bowers,", "Like a vast fane in a metropolis,", "Surrounded by the columns and the towers", "", "All overwrought with branch-like traceries", "In which there is religion--and the mute", "Persuasion of unkindled melodies,", "", "Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute", "Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast", "Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,", "", "Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed", "To such brief unison as on the brain", "One tone, which never can recur, has cast,", "One accent never to return again.", "", "...", "", "The world is full of Woodmen who expel", "Love's gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,", "And vex the nightingales in every dell.", "", "Let those who pine in pride or in revenge,", "Or think that ill for ill should be repaid,", "Who barter wrong for wrong, until the exchange", "Ruins the merchants of such thriftless trade,", "Visit the tower of Vado, and unlearn", "Such bitter faith beside Marenghi's urn.", "", "A massy tower yet overhangs the town,", "A scattered group of ruined dwellings now...", "", "...", "", "Another scene are wise Etruria knew", "Its second ruin through internal strife", "And tyrants through the breach of discord threw", "The chain which binds and kills. As death to life,", "As winter to fair flowers (though some be poison)", "So Monarchy succeeds to Freedom's foison.", "", "In Pisa's church a cup of sculptured gold", "Was brimming with the blood of feuds forsworn:", "A Sacrament more holy ne'er of old", "Etrurians mingled mid the shades forlorn", "Of moon-illumined forests, when...", "", "And reconciling factions wet their lips", "With that dread wine, and swear to keep each spirit", "Undarkened by their country's last eclipse...", "", "...", "", "Was Florence the liberticide? that band", "Of free and glorious brothers who had planted,", "Like a green isle mid Aethiopian sand,", "A nation amid slaveries, disenchanted", "Of many impious faiths--wise, just--do they,", "Does Florence, gorge the sated tyrants' prey?", "", "O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory,", "Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour;", "Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story,", "As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender:--", "The light-invested angel Poesy", "Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee.", "", "And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught", "By loftiest meditations; marble knew", "The sculptor's fearless soul--and as he wrought,", "The grace of his own power and freedom grew.", "And more than all, heroic, just, sublime,", "Thou wart among the false...was this thy crime?", "", "Yes; and on Pisa's marble walls the twine", "Of direst weeds hangs garlanded--the snake", "Inhabits its wrecked palaces;--in thine", "A beast of subtler venom now doth make", "Its lair, and sits amid their glories overthrown,", "And thus thy victim's fate is as thine own.", "", "The sweetest flowers are ever frail and rare,", "And love and freedom blossom but to wither;", "And good and ill like vines entangled are,", "So that their grapes may oft be plucked together;--", "Divide the vintage ere thou drink, then make", "Thy heart rejoice for dead Marenghi's sake.", "", "10a.", " Marenghi was a Florentine;", "If he had wealth, or children, or a wife", "Or friends, or cherished thoughts which twine", "The sights and sounds of home with life's own life", "Of these he was despoiled and Florence sent...", "", "...", "", "No record of his crime remains in story,", "But if the morning bright as evening shone,", "It was some high and holy deed, by glory", "Pursued into forgetfulness, which won", "From the blind crowd he made secure and free", "The patriot's meed, toil, death, and infamy.", "", "For when by sound of trumpet was declared", "A price upon his life, and there was set", "A penalty of blood on all who shared", "So much of water with him as might wet", "His lips, which speech divided not--he went", "Alone, as you may guess, to banishment.", "", "Amid the mountains, like a hunted beast,", "He hid himself, and hunger, toil, and cold,", "Month after month endured; it was a feast", "Whene'er he found those globes of deep-red gold", "Which in the woods the strawberry-tree doth bear,", "Suspended in their emerald atmosphere.", "", "And in the roofless huts of vast morasses,", "Deserted by the fever-stricken serf,", "All overgrown with reeds and long rank grasses,", "And hillocks heaped of moss-inwoven turf,", "And where the huge and speckled aloe made,", "Rooted in stones, a broad and pointed shade,--", "", "He housed himself. There is a point of strand", "Near Vado's tower and town; and on one side", "The treacherous marsh divides it from the land,", "Shadowed by pine and ilex forests wide,", "And on the other, creeps eternally,", "Through muddy weeds, the shallow sullen sea.", "", "Here the earth's breath is pestilence, and few", "But things whose nature is at war with life--", "Snakes and ill worms--endure its mortal dew.", "The trophies of the clime's victorious strife--", "And ringed horns which the buffalo did wear,", "And the wolf's dark gray scalp who tracked him there.", "", "And at the utmost point...stood there", "The relics of a reed-inwoven cot,", "Thatched with broad flags. An outlawed murderer", "Had lived seven days there: the pursuit was hot", "When he was cold. The birds that were his grave", "Fell dead after their feast in Vado's wave.", "", "There must have burned within Marenghi's breast", "That fire, more warm and bright than life and hope,", "(Which to the martyr makes his dungeon...", "More joyous than free heaven's majestic cope", "To his oppressor), warring with decay,--", "Or he could ne'er have lived years, day by day.", "", "Nor was his state so lone as you might think.", "He had tamed every newt and snake and toad,", "And every seagull which sailed down to drink", "Those freshes ere the death-mist went abroad.", "And each one, with peculiar talk and play,", "Wiled, not untaught, his silent time away.", "", "And the marsh-meteors, like tame beasts, at night", "Came licking with blue tongues his veined feet;", "And he would watch them, as, like spirits bright,", "In many entangled figures quaint and sweet", "To some enchanted music they would dance--", "Until they vanished at the first moon-glance.", "", "He mocked the stars by grouping on each weed", "The summer dew-globes in the golden dawn;", "And, ere the hoar-frost languished, he could read", "Its pictured path, as on bare spots of lawn", "Its delicate brief touch in silver weaves", "The likeness of the wood's remembered leaves.", "", "And many a fresh Spring morn would he awaken--", "While yet the unrisen sun made glow, like iron", "Quivering in crimson fire, the peaks unshaken", "Of mountains and blue isles which did environ", "With air-clad crags that plain of land and sea,--", "And feel ... liberty.", "", "And in the moonless nights when the dun ocean", "Heaved underneath wide heaven, star-impearled,", "Starting from dreams...", "Communed with the immeasurable world;", "And felt his life beyond his limbs dilated,", "Till his mind grew like that it contemplated.", "", "His food was the wild fig and strawberry;", "The milky pine-nuts which the autumn-blast", "Shakes into the tall grass; or such small fry", "As from the sea by winter-storms are cast;", "And the coarse bulbs of iris-flowers he found", "Knotted in clumps under the spongy ground.", "", "And so were kindled powers and thoughts which made", "His solitude less dark. When memory came", "(For years gone by leave each a deepening shade),", "His spirit basked in its internal flame,--", "As, when the black storm hurries round at night,", "The fisher basks beside his red firelight.", "", "Yet human hopes and cares and faiths and errors,", "Like billows unawakened by the wind,", "Slept in Marenghi still; but that all terrors,", "Weakness, and doubt, had withered in his mind.", "His couch...", "", "...", "", "And, when he saw beneath the sunset's planet", "A black ship walk over the crimson ocean,--", "Its pennon streaming on the blasts that fan it,", "Its sails and ropes all tense and without motion,", "Like the dark ghost of the unburied even", "Striding athwart the orange-coloured heaven,--", "", "The thought of his own kind who made the soul", "Which sped that winged shape through night and day,--", "The thought of his own country...", "", "..." ], "linecount": "239" }, { "title": "Sonnet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Lift not the painted veil which those who live", "Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,", "And it but mimic all we would believe", "With colours idly spread,--behind, lurk Fear", "And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave", "Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.", "I knew one who had lifted it--he sought,", "For his lost heart was tender, things to love", "But found them not, alas! nor was there aught", "The world contains, the which he could approve.", "Through the unheeding many he did move,", "A splendour among shadows, a bright blot", "Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove", "For truth, and like the Preacher found it not." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Fragment: To Byron", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "O mighty mind, in whose deep stream this age", "Shakes like a reed in the unheeding storm,", "Why dost thou curb not thine own sacred rage?" ], "linecount": "3" }, { "title": "Fragment: Apostrophe to Silence", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Silence! Oh, well are Death and Sleep and Thou", "Three brethren named, the guardians gloomy-winged", "Of one abyss, where life, and truth, and joy", "Are swallowed up--yet spare me, Spirit, pity me,", "Until the sounds I hear become my soul,", "And it has left these faint and weary limbs,", "To track along the lapses of the air", "This wandering melody until it rests", "Among lone mountains in some..." ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "Fragment: The Lake's Margin", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The fierce beasts of the woods and wildernesses", "Track not the steps of him who drinks of it;", "For the light breezes, which for ever fleet", "Around its margin, heap the sand thereon." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'My Head Is Wild With Weeping'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "My head is wild with weeping for a grief", "Which is the shadow of a gentle mind.", "I walk into the air (but no relief", "To seek,--or haply, if I sought, to find;", "It came unsought);--to wonder that a chief", "Among men's spirits should be cold and blind." ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Fragment: The Vine-Shroud", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Flourishing vine, whose kindling clusters glow", "Beneath the autumnal sun, none taste of thee;", "For thou dost shroud a ruin, and below", "The rotting bones of dead antiquity." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Lines Written During the Castlereagh Administration", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Corpses are cold in the tomb;", "Stones on the pavement are dumb;", "Abortions are dead in the womb,", "And their mothers look pale--like the death-white shore", "Of Albion, free no more.", "", "Her sons are as stones in the way--", "They are masses of senseless clay--", "They are trodden, and move not away,--", "The abortion with which SHE travaileth", "Is Liberty, smitten to death.", "", "Then trample and dance, thou Oppressor!", "For thy victim is no redresser;", "Thou art sole lord and possessor", "Of her corpses, and clods, and abortions--they pave", "Thy path to the grave.", "", "Hearest thou the festival din", "Of Death, and Destruction, and Sin,", "And Wealth crying \"Havoc!\" within?", "'Tis the bacchanal triumph that makes Truth dumb,", "Thine Epithalamium.", "", "Ay, marry thy ghastly wife!", "Let Fear and Disquiet and Strife", "Spread thy couch in the chamber of Life!", "Marry Ruin, thou Tyrant! and Hell be thy guide", "To the bed of the bride!" ], "linecount": "25" }, { "title": "Song to the Men of England", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Men of England, wherefore plough", "For the lords who lay ye low?", "Wherefore weave with toil and care", "The rich robes your tyrants wear?", "", "Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save,", "From the cradle to the grave,", "Those ungrateful drones who would", "Drain your sweat--nay, drink your blood?", "", "Wherefore, Bees of England, forge", "Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,", "That these stingless drones may spoil", "The forced produce of your toil?", "", "Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,", "Shelter, food, love's gentle balm?", "Or what is it ye buy so dear", "With your pain and with your fear?", "", "The seed ye sow, another reaps;", "The wealth ye find, another keeps;", "The robes ye weave, another wears;", "The arms ye forge; another bears.", "", "Sow seed,--but let no tyrant reap;", "Find wealth,--let no impostor heap;", "Weave robes,--let not the idle wear;", "Forge arms,--in your defence to bear.", "", "Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;", "In halls ye deck another dwells.", "Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see", "The steel ye tempered glance on ye.", "", "With plough and spade, and hoe and loom,", "Trace your grave, and build your tomb,", "And weave your winding-sheet, till fair", "England be your sepulchre." ], "linecount": "32" }, { "title": "Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "As from an ancestral oak", "Two empty ravens sound their clarion,", "Yell by yell, and croak by croak,", "When they scent the noonday smoke", "Of fresh human carrion:--", "", "As two gibbering night-birds flit", "From their bowers of deadly yew", "Through the night to frighten it,", "When the moon is in a fit,", "And the stars are none, or few:--", "", "As a shark and dog-fish wait", "Under an Atlantic isle,", "For the negro-ship, whose freight", "Is the theme of their debate,", "Wrinkling their red gills the while--", "", "Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,", "Two scorpions under one wet stone,", "Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,", "Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,", "Two vipers tangled into one.", "", "**" ], "linecount": "21" }, { "title": "Fragment: To the People of England", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "People of England, ye who toil and groan,", "Who reap the harvests which are not your own,", "Who weave the clothes which your oppressors wear,", "And for your own take the inclement air;", "Who build warm houses...", "And are like gods who give them all they have,", "And nurse them from the cradle to the grave...", "", "..." ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'What Men Gain Fairly'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "What men gain fairly--that they should possess,", "And children may inherit idleness,", "From him who earns it--This is understood;", "Private injustice may be general good.", "But he who gains by base and armed wrong,", "Or guilty fraud, or base compliances,", "May be despoiled; even as a stolen dress", "Is stripped from a convicted thief; and he", "Left in the nakedness of infamy." ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "A New National Anthem", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "God prosper, speed,and save,", "God raise from England's grave", "Her murdered Queen!", "Pave with swift victory", "The steps of Liberty,", "Whom Britons own to be", "Immortal Queen.", "", "See, she comes throned on high,", "On swift Eternity!", "God save the Queen!", "Millions on millions wait,", "Firm, rapid, and elate,", "On her majestic state!", "God save the Queen!", "", "She is Thine own pure soul", "Moulding the mighty whole,--", "God save the Queen!", "She is Thine own deep love", "Rained down from Heaven above,--", "Wherever she rest or move,", "God save our Queen!", "", "'Wilder her enemies", "In their own dark disguise,--", "God save our Queen!", "All earthly things that dare", "Her sacred name to bear,", "Strip them, as kings are, bare;", "God save the Queen!", "", "Be her eternal throne", "Built in our hearts alone--", "God save the Queen!", "Let the oppressor hold", "Canopied seats of gold;", "She sits enthroned of old", "O'er our hearts Queen.", "", "Lips touched by seraphim", "Breathe out the choral hymn", "'God save the Queen!'", "Sweet as if angels sang,", "Loud as that trumpet's clang", "Wakening the world's dead gang,--", "God save the Queen!" ], "linecount": "42" }, { "title": "Sonnet: England in 1819", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,--", "Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow", "Through public scorn,--mud from a muddy spring,--", "Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,", "But leech-like to their fainting country cling,", "Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--", "A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--", "An army, which liberticide and prey", "Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,--", "Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay;", "Religion Christless, Godless--a book sealed;", "A Senate,--Time's worst statute, unrepealed,--", "Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may", "Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "An Ode, Written October, 1819, Before the Spaniards Had Recovered Their Liberty", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Arise, arise, arise!", "There is blood on the earth that denies ye bread;", "Be your wounds like eyes", "To weep for the dead, the dead, the dead.", "What other grief were it just to pay?", "Your sons, your wives, your brethren, were they;", "Who said they were slain on the battle day?", "", "Awaken, awaken, awaken!", "The slave and the tyrant are twin-born foes;", "Be the cold chains shaken", "To the dust where your kindred repose, repose:", "Their bones in the grave will start and move,", "When they hear the voices of those they love,", "Most loud in the holy combat above.", "", "Wave, wave high the banner!", "When Freedom is riding to conquest by:", "Though the slaves that fan her", "Be Famine and Toil, giving sigh for sigh.", "And ye who attend her imperial car,", "Lift not your hands in the banded war,", "But in her defence whose children ye are.", "", "Glory, glory, glory,", "To those who have greatly suffered and done!", "Never name in story", "Was greater than that which ye shall have won.", "Conquerors have conquered their foes alone,", "Whose revenge, pride, and power they have overthrown", "Ride ye, more victorious, over your own.", "", "Bind, bind every brow", "With crownals of violet, ivy, and pine:", "Hide the blood-stains now", "With hues which sweet Nature has made divine:", "Green strength, azure hope, and eternity:", "But let not the pansy among them be;", "Ye were injured, and that means memory." ], "linecount": "35" }, { "title": "Cancelled Stanza", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Gather, O gather,", "Foeman and friend in love and peace!", "Waves sleep together", "When the blasts that called them to battle, cease.", "For fangless Power grown tame and mild", "Is at play with Freedom's fearless child--", "The dove and the serpent reconciled!" ], "linecount": "7" }, { "title": "Ode to Heaven", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "CHORUS OF SPIRITS:", "", "FIRST SPIRIT:", "Palace-roof of cloudless nights!", "Paradise of golden lights!", "Deep, immeasurable, vast,", "Which art now, and which wert then", "Of the Present and the Past,", "Of the eternal Where and When,", "Presence-chamber, temple, home,", "Ever-canopying dome,", "Of acts and ages yet to come!", "", "Glorious shapes have life in thee,", "Earth, and all earth's company;", "Living globes which ever throng", "Thy deep chasms and wildernesses;", "And green worlds that glide along;", "And swift stars with flashing tresses;", "And icy moons most cold and bright,", "And mighty suns beyond the night,", "Atoms of intensest light.", "", "Even thy name is as a god,", "Heaven! for thou art the abode", "Of that Power which is the glass", "Wherein man his nature sees.", "Generations as they pass", "Worship thee with bended knees.", "Their unremaining gods and they", "Like a river roll away:", "Thou remainest such--alway!--", "", "SECOND SPIRIT:", "Thou art but the mind's first chamber,", "Round which its young fancies clamber,", "Like weak insects in a cave,", "Lighted up by stalactites;", "But the portal of the grave,", "Where a world of new delights", "Will make thy best glories seem", "But a dim and noonday gleam", "From the shadow of a dream!", "", "THIRD SPIRIT:", "Peace! the abyss is wreathed with scorn", "At your presumption, atom-born!", "What is Heaven? and what are ye", "Who its brief expanse inherit?", "What are suns and spheres which flee", "With the instinct of that Spirit", "Of which ye are but a part?", "Drops which Nature's mighty heart", "Drives through thinnest veins! Depart!", "", "What is Heaven? a globe of dew,", "Filling in the morning new", "Some eyed flower whose young leaves waken", "On an unimagined world:", "Constellated suns unshaken,", "Orbits measureless, are furled", "In that frail and fading sphere,", "With ten millions gathered there,", "To tremble, gleam, and disappear." ], "linecount": "58" }, { "title": "Ode to the West Wind", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "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", "(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!", "", "Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion,", "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", "", "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,", "Vaulted with all thy congregated might", "", "Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere", "Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh, hear!", "", "Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams", "The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,", "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", "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", "", "Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,", "And tremble and despoil themselves: oh, hear!", "", "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", "", "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", "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", "One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.", "", "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,", "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,", "", "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?" ], "linecount": "70" }, { "title": "An Exhortation", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "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,", "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:", "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:", "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,", "Spirits from beyond the moon,", "Oh, refuse the boon!" ], "linecount": "27" }, { "title": "The Indian Serenade", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "And a spirit in my feet", "Hath led me--who knows how?", "To thy chamber window, Sweet!", "", "The wandering airs they faint", "On the dark, the silent stream--", "The Champak odours fail", "Like sweet thoughts in a dream;", "The nightingale's complaint,", "It dies upon her heart;--", "As I must on thine,", "Oh, beloved as thou art!", "", "Oh lift me from the grass!", "I die! I faint! I fail!", "Let thy love in kisses rain", "On my lips and eyelids pale.", "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." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "To Sophia [Miss Stacey]", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "As the life within them dances.", "", "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", "Which, like zephyrs on the billow,", "Make thy gentle soul their pillow.", "", "If, whatever face thou paintest", "In those eyes, grows pale with pleasure,", "If the fainting soul is faintest", "When it hears thy harp's wild measure,", "Wonder not that when thou speakest", "Of the weak my heart is weakest.", "", "As dew beneath the wind of morning,", "As the sea which whirlwinds waken,", "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." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "To William Shelley", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "(With what truth may I say--", "Roma! Roma! Roma!", "Non e piu come era prima!)", "", "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,", "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.", "", "Where art thou, my gentle child?", "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", "Of sweet flowers and sunny grass", "Into their hues and scents may pass", "A portion--" ], "linecount": "21" }, { "title": "To William Shelley", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "When we returned to gaze on thee--" ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "To Mary Shelley", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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;", "Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,", "Where", "For thine own sake I cannot follow thee." ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "To Mary Shelley", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The world is dreary,", "And I am weary", "Of wandering on without thee, Mary;", "A joy was erewhile", "In thy voice and thy smile,", "And 'tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary." ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,", "Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,", "The agonies of anguish and of death.", "", "Yet it is less the horror than the grace", "Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone,", "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.", "", "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,", "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.", "", "And, from a stone beside, a poisonous eft", "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", "After a taper; and the midnight sky", "Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.", "", "'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;", "For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare", "Kindled by that inextricable error,", "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." ], "linecount": "40" }, { "title": "Love's Philosophy", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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;", "All things by a law divine", "In one spirit meet and mingle.", "Why not I with thine?--", "", "See the mountains kiss high Heaven", "And the waves clasp one another;", "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", "If thou kiss not me?" ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'Follow to the Deep Wood's Weeds'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "For they two have enough to do", "Of such work as I and you." ], "linecount": "7" }, { "title": "The Birth of Pleasure", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "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 did flow", "In the harmony divine", "Of an ever-lengthening line", "Which enwrapped her perfect form", "With a beauty clear and warm." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Fragment: Love the Universe to-Day", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'A Gentle Story of Two Lovers Young'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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?", "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?" ], "linecount": "10" }, { "title": "Fragment: Love's Tender Atmosphere", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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--" ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment: Wedded Souls", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "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--", "Even as an eagle in a thunder-mist", "Clothing his wings with lightning." ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'Is It That in Some Brighter Sphere'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "To patch up fragments of a dream,", "Part of which comes true, and part", "Beats and trembles in the heart?" ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Fragment: Sufficient Unto the Day", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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;", "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?" ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'Ye Gentle Visitations of Calm Thought'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "While they remain, and ye, alas, depart!" ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Fragment: The Sepulchre of Memory", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: Music and Sweet Poetry", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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--" ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'When a Lover Clasps His Fairest'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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!", "", "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." ], "linecount": "10" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'Wake the Serpent Not'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "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." ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "Fragment: Rain", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: A Tale Untold", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: To Italy", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "As the sunrise to the night,", "As the north wind to the clouds,", "As the earthquake's fiery flight,", "Ruining mountain solitudes,", "Everlasting Italy,", "Be those hopes and fears on thee." ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Fragment: Wine of the Fairies", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "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", "Of the fairies bear those bowls so new!" ], "linecount": "11" }, { "title": "Fragment: A Roman's Chamber", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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.", "", "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." ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "Fragment: Rome and Nature", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Rome has fallen, ye see it lying", "Heaped in undistinguished ruin:", "Nature is alone undying." ], "linecount": "3" }, { "title": "Variation of the Song of the Moon", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "(\"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", "Over the western mountain it enfolds,", "When the sunset sleeps", "Upon its snow;", "As a strain of sweetest sound", "Wraps itself the wind around", "Until the voiceless wind be music too;", "As aught dark, vain, and dull,", "Basking in what is beautiful,", "Is full of light and love--" ], "linecount": "15" }, { "title": "A Vision of the Sea", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'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", "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,", "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", "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,", "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.", "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.", "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,", "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,", "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", "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", "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,", "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,", "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.", "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", "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,", "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,", "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?", "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", "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,", "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", "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,", "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,", "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", "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.", "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,", "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,", "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", "Is the ship? On the verge of the wave where it lay", "One tiger is mingled in ghastly affray", "With a sea-snake. The foam and the smoke of the battle", "Stain the clear air with sunbows; the jar, and the rattle", "Of solid bones crushed by the infinite stress", "Of the snake's adamantine voluminousness;", "And the hum of the hot blood that spouts and rains", "Where the gripe of the tiger has wounded the veins", "Swollen with rage, strength, and effort; the whirl and the splash", "As of some hideous engine whose brazen teeth smash", "The thin winds and soft waves into thunder; the screams", "And hissings crawl fast o'er the smooth ocean-streams,", "Each sound like a centipede. Near this commotion,", "A blue shark is hanging within the blue ocean,", "The fin-winged tomb of the victor. The other", "Is winning his way from the fate of his brother", "To his own with the speed of despair. Lo! a boat", "Advances; twelve rowers with the impulse of thought", "Urge on the keen keel,--the brine foams. At the stern", "Three marksmen stand levelling. Hot bullets burn", "In the breast of the tiger, which yet bears him on", "To his refuge and ruin. One fragment alone,--", "'Tis dwindling and sinking, 'tis now almost gone,--", "Of the wreck of the vessel peers out of the sea.", "With her left hand she grasps it impetuously.", "With her right she sustains her fair infant. Death, Fear,", "Love, Beauty, are mixed in the atmosphere,", "Which trembles and burns with the fervour of dread", "Around her wild eyes, her bright hand, and her head,", "Like a meteor of light o'er the waters! her child", "Is yet smiling, and playing, and murmuring; so smiled", "The false deep ere the storm. Like a sister and brother", "The child and the ocean still smile on each other,", "Whilst--" ], "linecount": "169" }, { "title": "The Cloud", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,", "From the seas and the streams;", "I bear light shade for the leaves when laid", "In their noonday dreams.", "From my wings are shaken the dews that waken", "The sweet buds every one,", "When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,", "As she dances about the sun.", "I wield the flail of the lashing hail,", "And whiten the green plains under,", "And then again I dissolve it in rain,", "And laugh as I pass in thunder.", "", "I sift the snow on the mountains below,", "And their great pines groan aghast;", "And all the night 'tis my pillow white,", "While I sleep in the arms of the blast.", "Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,", "Lightning my pilot sits;", "In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,", "It struggles and howls at fits;", "Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,", "This pilot is guiding me,", "Lured by the love of the genii that move", "In the depths of the purple sea;", "Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills.", "Over the lakes and the plains,", "Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,", "The Spirit he loves remains;", "And I all the while bask in Heaven's blue smile,", "Whilst he is dissolving in rains.", "", "The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,", "And his burning plumes outspread,", "Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,", "When the morning star shines dead;", "As on the jag of a mountain crag,", "Which an earthquake rocks and swings,", "An eagle alit one moment may sit", "In the light of its golden wings.", "And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,", "Its ardours of rest and of love,", "And the crimson pall of eve may fall", "From the depth of Heaven above.", "With wings folded I rest, on mine aery nest,", "As still as a brooding dove.", "", "That orbed maiden with white fire laden,", "Whom mortals call the Moon,", "Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,", "By the midnight breezes strewn;", "And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,", "Which only the angels hear,", "May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof.", "The stars peep behind her and peer;", "And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,", "Like a swarm of golden bees.", "When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,", "Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,", "Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,", "Are each paved with the moon and these.", "", "I bind the Sun's throne with a burning zone,", "And the Moon's with a girdle of pearl;", "The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,", "When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.", "From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,", "Over a torrent sea,", "Sunbeam-proof, I hand like a roof,--", "The mountains its columns be.", "The triumphal arch through which I march", "With hurricane, fire, and snow,", "When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,", "Is the million-coloured bow;", "The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,", "While the moist Earth was laughing below.", "", "I am the daughter of Earth and Water,", "And the nursling of the Sky;", "I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;", "I change, but I cannot die.", "For after the rain when with never a stain", "The pavilion of Heaven is bare,", "And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams", "Build up the blue dome of air,", "I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,", "And out of the caverns of rain,", "Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,", "I arise and unbuild it again." ], "linecount": "84" }, { "title": "To a Skylark", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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.", "", "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.", "", "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.", "", "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,", "", "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.", "", "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.", "", "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.", "", "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:", "", "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:", "", "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!", "", "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:", "", "Sound of vernal showers", "On the twinkling grass,", "Rain-awakened flowers,", "All that ever was", "Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass:", "", "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.", "", "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.", "", "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?", "", "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.", "", "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?", "", "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.", "", "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.", "", "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!", "", "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." ], "linecount": "105" }, { "title": "Ode to Liberty", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Yet, Freedom, yet, thy banner, torn but flying,", "Streams like a thunder-storm against the wind.--BYRON.", "", "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,", "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", "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.", "", "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:", "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,", "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.", "", "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.", "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", "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.", "", "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.", "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,", "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", "", "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;", "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", "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.", "", "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", "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,", "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.", "", "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", "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,", "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", "", "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,", "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.", "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.", "", "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,", "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,", "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.", "", "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!", "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,", "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.", "", "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", "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.", "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.", "", "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;", "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,", "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.", "", "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", "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,", "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.", "", "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,", "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!", "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.", "", "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!", "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,", "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.", "", "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;", "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", "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!", "", "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", "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,", "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!", "", "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;", "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?", "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", "", "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", "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,--", "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." ], "linecount": "287" }, { "title": "Cancelled Passage of the Ode to Liberty", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "Penetrates their dreamlike frame", "Till they become charged with the strength of flame." ], "linecount": "7" }, { "title": "To --", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden,", "Thou needest not fear mine;", "My spirit is too deeply laden", "Ever to burthen thine.", "", "I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,", "Thou needest not fear mine;", "Innocent is the heart's devotion", "With which I worship thine." ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Arethusa", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Arethusa arose", "From her couch of snows", "In the Acroceraunian mountains,--", "From cloud and from crag,", "With many a jag,", "Shepherding her bright fountains.", "She leapt down the rocks,", "With her rainbow locks", "Streaming among the streams;--", "Her steps paved with green", "The downward ravine", "Which slopes to the western gleams;", "And gliding and springing", "She went, ever singing,", "In murmurs as soft as sleep;", "The Earth seemed to love her,", "And Heaven smiled above her,", "As she lingered towards the deep.", "", "Then Alpheus bold,", "On his glacier cold,", "With his trident the mountains strook;", "And opened a chasm", "In the rocks--with the spasm", "All Erymanthus shook.", "And the black south wind", "It unsealed behind", "The urns of the silent snow,", "And earthquake and thunder", "Did rend in sunder", "The bars of the springs below.", "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", "To the brink of the Dorian deep.", "", "'Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!", "And bid the deep hide me,", "For he grasps me now by the hair!'", "The loud Ocean heard,", "To its blue depth stirred,", "And divided at her prayer;", "And under the water", "The Earth's white daughter", "Fled like a sunny beam;", "Behind her descended", "Her billows, unblended", "With the brackish Dorian stream:--", "Like a gloomy stain", "On the emerald main", "Alpheus rushed behind,--", "As an eagle pursuing", "A dove to its ruin", "Down the streams of the cloudy wind.", "", "Under the bowers", "Where the Ocean Powers", "Sit on their pearled thrones;", "Through the coral woods", "Of the weltering floods,", "Over heaps of unvalued stones;", "Through the dim beams", "Which amid the streams", "Weave a network of coloured light;", "And under the caves,", "Where the shadowy waves", "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", "Of the mountain clifts", "They passed to their Dorian home.", "", "And now from their fountains", "In Enna's mountains,", "Down one vale where the morning basks,", "Like friends once parted", "Grown single-hearted,", "They ply their watery tasks.", "At sunrise they leap", "From their cradles steep", "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", "In the rocking deep", "Beneath the Ortygian shore;--", "Like spirits that lie", "In the azure sky", "When they love but live no more." ], "linecount": "90" }, { "title": "Song of Proserpine While Gathering Flowers on the Plain of Enna", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "On thine own child, Proserpine.", "", "If with mists of evening dew", "Thou dost nourish these young flowers", "Till they grow, in scent and hue,", "Fairest children of the Hours,", "Breathe thine influence most divine", "On thine own child, Proserpine." ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "Hymn of Apollo", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.", "", "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", "Are filled with my bright presence, and the air", "Leaves the green Earth to my embraces bare.", "", "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", "Fly me, and from the glory of my ray", "Good minds and open actions take new might,", "Until diminished by the reign of Night.", "", "I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers", "With their aethereal colours; the moon's globe", "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.", "", "I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven,", "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?", "", "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", "Victory and praise in its own right belong." ], "linecount": "36" }, { "title": "Hymn of Pan", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "From the forests and highlands", "We come, we come;", "From the river-girt islands,", "Where loud waves are dumb", "Listening to my sweet pipings.", "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,", "Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,", "Listening to my sweet pipings.", "", "Liquid Peneus was flowing,", "And all dark Tempe lay", "In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing", "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,", "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.", "", "I sang of the dancing stars,", "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", "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,", "At the sorrow of my sweet pipings." ], "linecount": "36" }, { "title": "The Question", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "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.", "", "There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,", "Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth,", "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,", "When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.", "", "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;", "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.", "", "And nearer to the river's trembling edge", "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;", "And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green", "As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.", "", "Methought that of these visionary flowers", "I made a nosegay, bound in such a way", "That the same hues, which in their natural bowers", "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?" ], "linecount": "40" }, { "title": "The Two Spirits: An Allegory", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "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,", "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,", "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!", "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;", "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,", "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", "Mid Alpine mountains;", "And that the languid storm pursuing", "That winged shape, for ever flies", "Round those hoar branches, aye renewing", "Its aery fountains.", "", "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", "Upborne by her wild and glittering hair,", "And when he awakes on the fragrant grass,", "He finds night day." ], "linecount": "53" }, { "title": "Ode to Naples", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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;", "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,", "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", "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", "Weighed on their life; even as the Power divine", "Which then lulled all things, brooded upon mine.", "", "EPODE 2a.", "", "Then gentle winds arose", "With many a mingled close", "Of wild Aeolian sound, and mountain-odours keen;", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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!", "", "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", "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", "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!", "", "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", "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!", "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;", "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", "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!", "", "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,", "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,", "Be thine.--All hail!", "", "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", "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,", "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!", "", "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,", "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,", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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", "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!", "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", "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,", "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", "This city of thy worship ever free!" ], "linecount": "187" }, { "title": "Autumn: A Dirge", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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.", "Come, Months, come away,", "From November to May,", "In your saddest array;", "Follow the bier", "Of the dead cold Year,", "And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.", "", "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", "To his dwelling;", "Come, Months, come away;", "Put on white, black, and gray;", "Let your light sisters play--", "Ye, follow the bier", "Of the dead cold Year,", "And make her grave green with tear on tear." ], "linecount": "22" }, { "title": "The Waning Moon", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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,", "A white and shapeless mass--" ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "To the Moon", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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", "That finds no object worth its constancy?", "", "Thou chosen sister of the Spirit,", "That grazes on thee till in thee it pities..." ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Death", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Death is here and death is there,", "Death is busy everywhere,", "All around, within, beneath,", "Above is death--and we are death.", "", "Death has set his mark and seal", "On all we are and all we feel,", "On all we know and all we fear,", "", "...", "", "First our pleasures die--and then", "Our hopes, and then our fears--and when", "These are dead, the debt is due,", "Dust claims dust--and we die too.", "", "All things that we love and cherish,", "Like ourselves must fade and perish;", "Such is our rude mortal lot--", "Love itself would, did they not." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "Liberty", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The fiery mountains answer each other;", "Their thunderings are echoed from zone to zone;", "The tempestuous oceans awake one another,", "And the ice-rocks are shaken round Winter's throne,", "When the clarion of the Typhoon is blown.", "", "From a single cloud the lightening flashes,", "Whilst a thousand isles are illumined around,", "Earthquake is trampling one city to ashes,", "An hundred are shuddering and tottering; the sound", "Is bellowing underground.", "", "But keener thy gaze than the lightening's glare,", "And swifter thy step than the earthquake's tramp;", "Thou deafenest the rage of the ocean; thy stare", "Makes blind the volcanoes; the sun's bright lamp", "To thine is a fen-fire damp.", "", "From billow and mountain and exhalation", "The sunlight is darted through vapour and blast;", "From spirit to spirit, from nation to nation,", "From city to hamlet thy dawning is cast,--", "And tyrants and slaves are like shadows of night", "In the van of the morning light." ], "linecount": "21" }, { "title": "Summer and Winter", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,", "Towards the end of the sunny month of June,", "When the north wind congregates in crowds", "The floating mountains of the silver clouds", "From the horizon--and the stainless sky", "Opens beyond them like eternity.", "All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,", "The river, and the corn-fields, and the reeds;", "The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,", "And the firm foliage of the larger trees.", "", "It was a winter such as when birds die", "In the deep forests; and the fishes lie", "Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes", "Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes", "A wrinkled clod as hard as brick; and when,", "Among their children, comfortable men", "Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold:", "Alas, then, for the homeless beggar old!" ], "linecount": "18" }, { "title": "The Tower of Famine", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Amid the desolation of a city,", "Which was the cradle, and is now the grave", "Of an extinguished people,--so that Pity", "", "Weeps o'er the shipwrecks of Oblivion's wave,", "There stands the Tower of Famine. It is built", "Upon some prison-homes, whose dwellers rave", "", "For bread, and gold, and blood: Pain, linked to Guilt,", "Agitates the light flame of their hours,", "Until its vital oil is spent or spilt.", "", "There stands the pile, a tower amid the towers", "And sacred domes; each marble-ribbed roof,", "The brazen-gated temples, and the bowers", "", "Of solitary wealth,--the tempest-proof", "Pavilions of the dark Italian air,--", "Are by its presence dimmed--they stand aloof,", "", "And are withdrawn--so that the world is bare;", "As if a spectre wrapped in shapeless terror", "Amid a company of ladies fair", "", "Should glide and glow, till it became a mirror", "Of all their beauty, and their hair and hue,", "The life of their sweet eyes, with all its error,", "Should be absorbed, till they to marble grew." ], "linecount": "22" }, { "title": "An Allegory", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A portal as of shadowy adamant", "Stands yawning on the highway of the life", "Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt;", "Around it rages an unceasing strife", "Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt", "The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high", "Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky.", "", "And many pass it by with careless tread,", "Not knowing that a shadowy ...", "Tracks every traveller even to where the dead", "Wait peacefully for their companion new;", "But others, by more curious humour led,", "Pause to examine;--these are very few,", "And they learn little there, except to know", "That shadows follow them where'er they go." ], "linecount": "15" }, { "title": "The World's Wanderers", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Tell me, thou Star, whose wings of light", "Speed thee in thy fiery flight,", "In what cavern of the night", "Will thy pinions close now?", "", "Tell me, Moon, thou pale and gray", "Pilgrim of Heaven's homeless way,", "In what depth of night or day", "Seekest thou repose now?", "", "Weary Wind, who wanderest", "Like the world's rejected guest,", "Hast thou still some secret nest", "On the tree or billow?" ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "Sonnet", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ye hasten to the grave! What seek ye there,", "Ye restless thoughts and busy purposes", "Of the idle brain, which the world's livery wear?", "O thou quick heart, which pantest to possess", "All that pale Expectation feigneth fair!", "Thou vainly curious mind which wouldest guess", "Whence thou didst come, and whither thou must go,", "And all that never yet was known would know--", "Oh, whither hasten ye, that thus ye press,", "With such swift feet life's green and pleasant path,", "Seeking, alike from happiness and woe,", "A refuge in the cavern of gray death?", "O heart, and mind, and thoughts! what thing do you", "Hope to inherit in the grave below?" ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "Lines to a Reviewer", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Alas, good friend, what profit can you see", "In hating such a hateless thing as me?", "There is no sport in hate where all the rage", "Is on one side: in vain would you assuage", "Your frowns upon an unresisting smile,", "In which not even contempt lurks to beguile", "Your heart, by some faint sympathy of hate.", "Oh, conquer what you cannot satiate!", "For to your passion I am far more coy", "Than ever yet was coldest maid or boy", "In winter noon. Of your antipathy", "If I am the Narcissus, you are free", "To pine into a sound with hating me." ], "linecount": "13" }, { "title": "Fragment of a Satire on Satire", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "If gibbets, axes, confiscations, chains,", "And racks of subtle torture, if the pains", "Of shame, of fiery Hell's tempestuous wave,", "Seen through the caverns of the shadowy grave,", "Hurling the damned into the murky air", "While the meek blest sit smiling; if Despair", "And Hate, the rapid bloodhounds with which Terror", "Hunts through the world the homeless steps of Error,", "Are the true secrets of the commonweal", "To make men wise and just;...", "And not the sophisms of revenge and fear,", "Bloodier than is revenge...", "Then send the priests to every hearth and home", "To preach the burning wrath which is to come,", "In words like flakes of sulphur, such as thaw", "The frozen tears...", "If Satire's scourge could wake the slumbering hounds", "Of Conscience, or erase the deeper wounds,", "The leprous scars of callous Infamy;", "If it could make the present not to be,", "Or charm the dark past never to have been,", "Or turn regret to hope; who that has seen", "What Southey is and was, would not exclaim,", "'Lash on!' ... be the keen verse dipped in flame;", "Follow his flight with winged words, and urge", "The strokes of the inexorable scourge", "Until the heart be naked, till his soul", "See the contagion's spots ... foul;", "And from the mirror of Truth's sunlike shield,", "From which his Parthian arrow...", "Flash on his sight the spectres of the past,", "Until his mind's eye paint thereon--", "Let scorn like ... yawn below,", "And rain on him like flakes of fiery snow.", "This cannot be, it ought not, evil still--", "Suffering makes suffering, ill must follow ill.", "Rough words beget sad thoughts, ... and, beside,", "Men take a sullen and a stupid pride", "In being all they hate in others' shame,", "By a perverse antipathy of fame.", "'Tis not worth while to prove, as I could, how", "From the sweet fountains of our Nature flow", "These bitter waters; I will only say,", "If any friend would take Southey some day,", "And tell him, in a country walk alone,", "Softening harsh words with friendship's gentle tone,", "How incorrect his public conduct is,", "And what men think of it, 'twere not amiss.", "Far better than to make innocent ink--" ], "linecount": "49" }, { "title": "Good-Night", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill", "Which severs those it should unite;", "Let us remain together still,", "Then it will be GOOD night.", "", "How can I call the lone night good,", "Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?", "Be it not said, thought, understood--", "Then it will be--GOOD night.", "", "To hearts which near each other move", "From evening close to morning light,", "The night is good; because, my love,", "They never SAY good-night." ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "Buona Notte", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'Buona notte, buona notte!'--Come mai", "La notte sara buona senza te?", "Non dirmi buona notte,--che tu sai,", "La notte sa star buona da per se.", "", "Solinga, scura, cupa, senza speme,", "La notte quando Lilla m'abbandona;", "Pei cuori chi si batton insieme", "Ogni notte, senza dirla, sara buona.", "", "Come male buona notte ci suona", "Con sospiri e parole interrotte!--", "Il modo di aver la notte buona", "E mai non di dir la buona notte." ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "Orpheus", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A:", "Not far from hence. From yonder pointed hill,", "Crowned with a ring of oaks, you may behold", "A dark and barren field, through which there flows,", "Sluggish and black, a deep but narrow stream,", "Which the wind ripples not, and the fair moon", "Gazes in vain, and finds no mirror there.", "Follow the herbless banks of that strange brook", "Until you pause beside a darksome pond,", "The fountain of this rivulet, whose gush", "Cannot be seen, hid by a rayless night", "That lives beneath the overhanging rock", "That shades the pool--an endless spring of gloom,", "Upon whose edge hovers the tender light,", "Trembling to mingle with its paramour,--", "But, as Syrinx fled Pan, so night flies day,", "Or, with most sullen and regardless hate,", "Refuses stern her heaven-born embrace.", "On one side of this jagged and shapeless hill", "There is a cave, from which there eddies up", "A pale mist, like aereal gossamer,", "Whose breath destroys all life--awhile it veils", "The rock--then, scattered by the wind, it flies", "Along the stream, or lingers on the clefts,", "Killing the sleepy worms, if aught bide there.", "Upon the beetling edge of that dark rock", "There stands a group of cypresses; not such", "As, with a graceful spire and stirring life,", "Pierce the pure heaven of your native vale,", "Whose branches the air plays among, but not", "Disturbs, fearing to spoil their solemn grace;", "But blasted and all wearily they stand,", "One to another clinging; their weak boughs", "Sigh as the wind buffets them, and they shake", "Beneath its blasts--a weatherbeaten crew!", "", "CHORUS:", "What wondrous sound is that, mournful and faint,", "But more melodious than the murmuring wind", "Which through the columns of a temple glides?", "", "A:", "It is the wandering voice of Orpheus' lyre,", "Borne by the winds, who sigh that their rude king", "Hurries them fast from these air-feeding notes;", "But in their speed they bear along with them", "The waning sound, scattering it like dew", "Upon the startled sense.", "", "CHORUS:", "Does he still sing?", "Methought he rashly cast away his harp", "When he had lost Eurydice.", "", "A:", "Ah, no!", "Awhile he paused. As a poor hunted stag", "A moment shudders on the fearful brink", "Of a swift stream--the cruel hounds press on", "With deafening yell, the arrows glance and wound,--", "He plunges in: so Orpheus, seized and torn", "By the sharp fangs of an insatiate grief,", "Maenad-like waved his lyre in the bright air,", "And wildly shrieked 'Where she is, it is dark!'", "And then he struck from forth the strings a sound", "Of deep and fearful melody. Alas!", "In times long past, when fair Eurydice", "With her bright eyes sat listening by his side,", "He gently sang of high and heavenly themes.", "As in a brook, fretted with little waves", "By the light airs of spring--each riplet makes", "A many-sided mirror for the sun,", "While it flows musically through green banks,", "Ceaseless and pauseless, ever clear and fresh,", "So flowed his song, reflecting the deep joy", "And tender love that fed those sweetest notes,", "The heavenly offspring of ambrosial food.", "But that is past. Returning from drear Hell,", "He chose a lonely seat of unhewn stone,", "Blackened with lichens, on a herbless plain.", "Then from the deep and overflowing spring", "Of his eternal ever-moving grief", "There rose to Heaven a sound of angry song.", "'Tis as a mighty cataract that parts", "Two sister rocks with waters swift and strong,", "And casts itself with horrid roar and din", "Adown a steep; from a perennial source", "It ever flows and falls, and breaks the air", "With loud and fierce, but most harmonious roar,", "And as it falls casts up a vaporous spray", "Which the sun clothes in hues of Iris light.", "Thus the tempestuous torrent of his grief", "Is clothed in sweetest sounds and varying words", "Of poesy. Unlike all human works,", "It never slackens, and through every change", "Wisdom and beauty and the power divine", "Of mighty poesy together dwell,", "Mingling in sweet accord. As I have seen", "A fierce south blast tear through the darkened sky,", "Driving along a rack of winged clouds,", "Which may not pause, but ever hurry on,", "As their wild shepherd wills them, while the stars,", "Twinkling and dim, peep from between the plumes.", "Anon the sky is cleared, and the high dome", "Of serene Heaven, starred with fiery flowers,", "Shuts in the shaken earth; or the still moon", "Swiftly, yet gracefully, begins her walk,", "Rising all bright behind the eastern hills.", "I talk of moon, and wind, and stars, and not", "Of song; but, would I echo his high song,", "Nature must lend me words ne'er used before,", "Or I must borrow from her perfect works,", "To picture forth his perfect attributes.", "He does no longer sit upon his throne", "Of rock upon a desert herbless plain,", "For the evergreen and knotted ilexes,", "And cypresses that seldom wave their boughs,", "And sea-green olives with their grateful fruit,", "And elms dragging along the twisted vines,", "Which drop their berries as they follow fast,", "And blackthorn bushes with their infant race", "Of blushing rose-blooms; beeches, to lovers dear,", "And weeping willow trees; all swift or slow,", "As their huge boughs or lighter dress permit,", "Have circled in his throne, and Earth herself", "Has sent from her maternal breast a growth", "Of starlike flowers and herbs of odour sweet,", "To pave the temple that his poesy", "Has framed, while near his feet grim lions couch,", "And kids, fearless from love, creep near his lair.", "Even the blind worms seem to feel the sound.", "The birds are silent, hanging down their heads,", "Perched on the lowest branches of the trees;", "Not even the nightingale intrudes a note", "In rivalry, but all entranced she listens." ], "linecount": "131" }, { "title": "Fiordispina", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The season was the childhood of sweet June,", "Whose sunny hours from morning until noon", "Went creeping through the day with silent feet,", "Each with its load of pleasure; slow yet sweet;", "Like the long years of blest Eternity", "Never to be developed. Joy to thee,", "Fiordispina and thy Cosimo,", "For thou the wonders of the depth canst know", "Of this unfathomable flood of hours,", "Sparkling beneath the heaven which embowers--", "", "...", "", "They were two cousins, almost like to twins,", "Except that from the catalogue of sins", "Nature had rased their love--which could not be", "But by dissevering their nativity.", "And so they grew together like two flowers", "Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers", "Lull or awaken in their purple prime,", "Which the same hand will gather--the same clime", "Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see", "All those who love--and who e'er loved like thee,", "Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo,", "Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow", "The ardours of a vision which obscure", "The very idol of its portraiture.", "He faints, dissolved into a sea of love;", "But thou art as a planet sphered above;", "But thou art Love itself--ruling the motion", "Of his subjected spirit: such emotion", "Must end in sin and sorrow, if sweet May", "Had not brought forth this morn--your wedding-day.", "", "...", "", "'Lie there; sleep awhile in your own dew,", "Ye faint-eyed children of the ... Hours,'", "Fiordispina said, and threw the flowers", "Which she had from the breathing--", "", "...", "", "A table near of polished porphyry.", "They seemed to wear a beauty from the eye", "That looked on them--a fragrance from the touch", "Whose warmth ... checked their life; a light such", "As sleepers wear, lulled by the voice they love, which did reprove", "The childish pity that she felt for them,", "And a ... remorse that from their stem", "She had divided such fair shapes ... made", "A feeling in the ... which was a shade", "Of gentle beauty on the flowers: there lay", "All gems that make the earth's dark bosom gay.", "... rods of myrtle-buds and lemon-blooms,", "And that leaf tinted lightly which assumes", "The livery of unremembered snow--", "Violets whose eyes have drunk--", "", "...", "", "Fiordispina and her nurse are now", "Upon the steps of the high portico,", "Under the withered arm of Media", "She flings her glowing arm", "", "...", "", "... step by step and stair by stair,", "That withered woman, gray and white and brown--", "More like a trunk by lichens overgrown", "Than anything which once could have been human.", "And ever as she goes the palsied woman", "", "...", "", "'How slow and painfully you seem to walk,", "Poor Media! you tire yourself with talk.'", "'And well it may,", "Fiordispina, dearest--well-a-day!", "You are hastening to a marriage-bed;", "I to the grave!'--'And if my love were dead,", "Unless my heart deceives me, I would lie", "Beside him in my shroud as willingly", "As now in the gay night-dress Lilla wrought.'", "'Fie, child! Let that unseasonable thought", "Not be remembered till it snows in June;", "Such fancies are a music out of tune", "With the sweet dance your heart must keep to-night.", "What! would you take all beauty and delight", "Back to the Paradise from which you sprung,", "And leave to grosser mortals?--", "And say, sweet lamb, would you not learn the sweet", "And subtle mystery by which spirits meet?", "Who knows whether the loving game is played,", "When, once of mortal disarrayed,", "The naked soul goes wandering here and there", "Through the wide deserts of Elysian air?", "The violet dies not till it'--" ], "linecount": "87" }, { "title": "Time Long Past", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Like the ghost of a dear friend dead", "Is Time long past.", "A tone which is now forever fled,", "A hope which is now forever past,", "A love so sweet it could not last,", "Was Time long past.", "", "There were sweet dreams in the night", "Of Time long past:", "And, was it sadness or delight,", "Each day a shadow onward cast", "Which made us wish it yet might last--", "That Time long past.", "", "There is regret, almost remorse,", "For Time long past.", "'Tis like a child's beloved corse", "A father watches, till at last", "Beauty is like remembrance, cast", "From Time long past." ], "linecount": "18" }, { "title": "Fragment: The Deserts of Dim Sleep", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I went into the deserts of dim sleep--", "That world which, like an unknown wilderness,", "Bounds this with its recesses wide and deep--" ], "linecount": "3" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'The Viewless and Invisible Consequence'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The viewless and invisible Consequence", "Watches thy goings-out, and comings-in,", "And...hovers o'er thy guilty sleep,", "Unveiling every new-born deed, and thoughts", "More ghastly than those deeds--" ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment: Death in Life", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "My head is heavy, my limbs are weary,", "And it is not life that makes me move." ], "linecount": "2" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'Such Hope, As Is the Sick Despair of Good'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Such hope, as is the sick despair of good,", "Such fear, as is the certainty of ill,", "Such doubt, as is pale Expectation's food", "Turned while she tastes to poison, when the will", "Is powerless, and the spirit..." ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'Alas! This Is Not What I Thought Life Was'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "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!" ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "Fragment: Milton's Spirit", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I dreamed that Milton's spirit rose, and took", "From life's green tree his Uranian lute;", "And from his touch sweet thunder flowed, and shook", "All human things built in contempt of man,--", "And sanguine thrones and impious altars quaked,", "Prisons and citadels..." ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'Unrisen Splendour of the Brightest Sun'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Unrisen splendour of the brightest sun,", "To rise upon our darkness, if the star", "Now beckoning thee out of thy misty throne", "Could thaw the clouds which wage an obscure war", "With thy young brightness!" ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment: Pater Omnipotens", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Serene in his unconquerable might", "Endued[,] the Almighty King, his steadfast throne", "Encompassed unapproachably with power", "And darkness and deep solitude an awe", "Stood like a black cloud on some aery cliff", "Embosoming its lightning--in his sight", "Unnumbered glorious spirits trembling stood", "Like slaves before their Lord--prostrate around", "Heaven's multitudes hymned everlasting praise." ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "Fragment: To the Mind of Man", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Thou living light that in thy rainbow hues", "Clothest this naked world; and over Sea", "And Earth and air, and all the shapes that be", "In peopled darkness of this wondrous world", "The Spirit of thy glory dost diffuse", "... truth ... thou Vital Flame", "Mysterious thought that in this mortal frame", "Of things, with unextinguished lustre burnest", "Now pale and faint now high to Heaven upcurled", "That eer as thou dost languish still returnest", "And ever", "Before the ... before the Pyramids", "", "So soon as from the Earth formless and rude", "One living step had chased drear Solitude", "Thou wert, Thought; thy brightness charmed the lids", "Of the vast snake Eternity, who kept", "The tree of good and evil.--" ], "linecount": "17" }, { "title": "Dirge for the Year", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Orphan Hours, the Year is dead,", "Come and sigh, come and weep!", "Merry Hours, smile instead,", "For the Year is but asleep.", "See, it smiles as it is sleeping,", "Mocking your untimely weeping.", "", "As an earthquake rocks a corse", "In its coffin in the clay,", "So White Winter, that rough nurse,", "Rocks the death-cold Year to-day;", "Solemn Hours! wail aloud", "For your mother in her shroud.", "", "As the wild air stirs and sways", "The tree-swung cradle of a child,", "So the breath of these rude days", "Rocks the Year:--be calm and mild,", "Trembling Hours, she will arise", "With new love within her eyes.", "", "January gray is here,", "Like a sexton by her grave;", "February bears the bier,", "March with grief doth howl and rave,", "And April weeps--but, O ye Hours!", "Follow with May's fairest flowers." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "To Night", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Swiftly walk o'er the western wave,", "Spirit of Night!", "Out of the misty eastern cave,", "Where, all the long and lone daylight,", "Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear,", "'Which make thee terrible and dear,--", "Swift be thy flight!", "", "Wrap thy form in a mantle gray,", "Star-inwrought!", "Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day;", "Kiss her until she be wearied out,", "Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,", "Touching all with thine opiate wand--", "Come, long-sought!", "", "When I arose and saw the dawn,", "I sighed for thee;", "When light rode high, and the dew was gone,", "And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,", "And the weary Day turned to his rest,", "Lingering like an unloved guest, I sighed for thee.", "", "Thy brother Death came, and cried,", "Wouldst thou me?", "Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed,", "Murmured like a noontide bee,", "Shall I nestle near thy side?", "Wouldst thou me?--And I replied,", "No, not thee!", "", "Death will come when thou art dead,", "Soon, too soon--", "Sleep will come when thou art fled;", "Of neither would I ask the boon", "I ask of thee, beloved Night--", "Swift be thine approaching flight,", "Come soon, soon!" ], "linecount": "34" }, { "title": "Time", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Unfathomable Sea! whose waves are years,", "Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe", "Are brackish with the salt of human tears!", "Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow", "Claspest the limits of mortality,", "And sick of prey, yet howling on for more,", "Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore;", "Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm,", "Who shall put forth on thee,", "Unfathomable Sea?" ], "linecount": "10" }, { "title": "Lines", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Far, far away, O ye", "Halcyons of Memory,", "Seek some far calmer nest", "Than this abandoned breast!", "No news of your false spring", "To my heart's winter bring,", "Once having gone, in vain", "Ye come again.", "", "Vultures, who build your bowers", "High in the Future's towers,", "Withered hopes on hopes are spread!", "Dying joys, choked by the dead,", "Will serve your beaks for prey", "Many a day." ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "To Emilia Viviani", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Madonna, wherefore hast thou sent to me", "Sweet-basil and mignonette?", "Embleming love and health, which never yet", "In the same wreath might be.", "Alas, and they are wet!", "Is it with thy kisses or thy tears?", "For never rain or dew", "Such fragrance drew", "From plant or flower--the very doubt endears", "My sadness ever new,", "The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed for thee.", "", "Send the stars light, but send not love to me,", "In whom love ever made", "Health like a heap of embers soon to fade--" ], "linecount": "14" }, { "title": "The Fugitives", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The waters are flashing,", "The white hail is dashing,", "The lightnings are glancing,", "The hoar-spray is dancing--", "Away!", "", "The whirlwind is rolling,", "The thunder is tolling,", "The forest is swinging,", "The minster bells ringing--", "Come away!", "", "The Earth is like Ocean,", "Wreck-strewn and in motion:", "Bird, beast, man and worm", "Have crept out of the storm--", "Come away!", "", "'Our boat has one sail", "And the helmsman is pale;--", "A bold pilot I trow,", "Who should follow us now,'--", "Shouted he--", "", "And she cried: 'Ply the oar!", "Put off gaily from shore!'--", "As she spoke, bolts of death", "Mixed with hail, specked their path", "O'er the sea.", "", "And from isle, tower and rock,", "The blue beacon-cloud broke,", "And though dumb in the blast,", "The red cannon flashed fast", "From the lee.", "", "And 'Fear'st thou?' and 'Fear'st thou?'", "And Seest thou?' and 'Hear'st thou?'", "And 'Drive we not free", "O'er the terrible sea,", "I and thou?'", "", "One boat-cloak did cover", "The loved and the lover--", "Their blood beats one measure,", "They murmur proud pleasure", "Soft and low;--", "", "While around the lashed Ocean,", "Like mountains in motion,", "Is withdrawn and uplifted,", "Sunk, shattered and shifted", "To and fro.", "", "In the court of the fortress", "Beside the pale portress,", "Like a bloodhound well beaten", "The bridegroom stands, eaten", "By shame;", "", "On the topmost watch-turret,", "As a death-boding spirit", "Stands the gray tyrant father,", "To his voice the mad weather", "Seems tame;", "", "And with curses as wild", "As e'er clung to child,", "He devotes to the blast,", "The best, loveliest and last", "Of his name!" ], "linecount": "60" }, { "title": "To --", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Music, when soft voices die,", "Vibrates in the memory--", "Odours, when sweet violets sicken,", "Live within the sense they quicken.", "", "Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,", "Are heaped for the beloved's bed;", "And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,", "Love itself shall slumber on." ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Song", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Rarely, rarely, comest thou,", "Spirit of Delight!", "Wherefore hast thou left me now", "Many a day and night?", "Many a weary night and day", "'Tis since thou art fled away.", "", "How shall ever one like me", "Win thee back again?", "With the joyous and the free", "Thou wilt scoff at pain.", "Spirit false! thou hast forgot", "All but those who need thee not.", "", "As a lizard with the shade", "Of a trembling leaf,", "Thou with sorrow art dismayed;", "Even the sighs of grief", "Reproach thee, that thou art not near,", "And reproach thou wilt not hear.", "", "Let me set my mournful ditty", "To a merry measure;", "Thou wilt never come for pity,", "Thou wilt come for pleasure;", "Pity then will cut away", "Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.", "", "I love all that thou lovest,", "Spirit of Delight!", "The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,", "And the starry night;", "Autumn evening, and the morn", "When the golden mists are born.", "", "I love snow, and all the forms", "Of the radiant frost;", "I love waves, and winds, and storms,", "Everything almost", "Which is Nature's, and may be", "Untainted by man's misery.", "", "I love tranquil solitude,", "And such society", "As is quiet, wise, and good", "Between thee and me", "What difference? but thou dost possess", "The things I seek, not love them less.", "", "I love Love--though he has wings,", "And like light can flee,", "But above all other things,", "Spirit, I love thee--", "Thou art love and life! Oh, come,", "Make once more my heart thy home." ], "linecount": "48" }, { "title": "Lines Written on Hearing the News of the Death of Napoleon", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "What! alive and so bold, O Earth?", "Art thou not overbold?", "What! leapest thou forth as of old", "In the light of thy morning mirth,", "The last of the flock of the starry fold?", "Ha! leapest thou forth as of old?", "Are not the limbs still when the ghost is fled,", "And canst thou move, Napoleon being dead?", "", "How! is not thy quick heart cold?", "What spark is alive on thy hearth?", "How! is not HIS death-knell knolled?", "And livest THOU still, Mother Earth?", "Thou wert warming thy fingers old", "O'er the embers covered and cold", "Of that most fiery spirit, when it fled--", "What, Mother, do you laugh now he is dead?", "", "'Who has known me of old,' replied Earth,", "'Or who has my story told?", "It is thou who art overbold.'", "And the lightning of scorn laughed forth", "As she sung, 'To my bosom I fold", "All my sons when their knell is knolled,", "And so with living motion all are fed,", "And the quick spring like weeds out of the dead.", "", "'Still alive and still bold,' shouted Earth,", "'I grow bolder and still more bold.", "The dead fill me ten thousandfold", "Fuller of speed, and splendour, and mirth.", "I was cloudy, and sullen, and cold,", "Like a frozen chaos uprolled,", "Till by the spirit of the mighty dead", "My heart grew warm. I feed on whom I fed.", "", "'Ay, alive and still bold.' muttered Earth,", "'Napoleon's fierce spirit rolled,", "In terror and blood and gold,", "A torrent of ruin to death from his birth.", "Leave the millions who follow to mould", "The metal before it be cold;", "And weave into his shame, which like the dead", "Shrouds me, the hopes that from his glory fled.'" ], "linecount": "40" }, { "title": "The Aziola", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'Do you not hear the Aziola cry?", "Methinks she must be nigh,'", "Said Mary, as we sate", "In dusk, ere stars were lit, or candles brought;", "And I, who thought", "This Aziola was some tedious woman,", "Asked, 'Who is Aziola?' How elate", "I felt to know that it was nothing human,", "No mockery of myself to fear or hate:", "And Mary saw my soul,", "And laughed, and said, 'Disquiet yourself not;", "'Tis nothing but a little downy owl.'", "", "Sad Aziola! many an eventide", "Thy music I had heard", "By wood and stream, meadow and mountain-side,", "And fields and marshes wide,--", "Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird,", "The soul ever stirred;", "Unlike and far sweeter than them all.", "Sad Aziola! from that moment I", "Loved thee and thy sad cry." ], "linecount": "21" }, { "title": "A Lament", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "O world! O life! O time!", "On whose last steps I climb,", "Trembling at that where I had stood before;", "When will return the glory of your prime?", "No more--Oh, never more!", "", "Out of the day and night", "A joy has taken flight;", "Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar,", "Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight", "No more--Oh, never more!" ], "linecount": "10" }, { "title": "Remembrance", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Swifter far than summer's flight--", "Swifter far than youth's delight--", "Swifter far than happy night,", "Art thou come and gone--", "As the earth when leaves are dead,", "As the night when sleep is sped,", "As the heart when joy is fled,", "I am left lone, alone.", "", "The swallow summer comes again--", "The owlet night resumes her reign--", "But the wild-swan youth is fain", "To fly with thee, false as thou.--", "My heart each day desires the morrow;", "Sleep itself is turned to sorrow;", "Vainly would my winter borrow", "Sunny leaves from any bough.", "", "Lilies for a bridal bed--", "Roses for a matron's head--", "Violets for a maiden dead--", "Pansies let MY flowers be:", "On the living grave I bear", "Scatter them without a tear--", "Let no friend, however dear,", "Waste one hope, one fear for me." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "To Edward Williams", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The serpent is shut out from Paradise.", "The wounded deer must seek the herb no more", "In which its heart-cure lies:", "The widowed dove must cease to haunt a bower", "Like that from which its mate with feigned sighs", "Fled in the April hour.", "I too must seldom seek again", "Near happy friends a mitigated pain.", "", "Of hatred I am proud,--with scorn content;", "Indifference, that once hurt me, now is grown", "Itself indifferent;", "But, not to speak of love, pity alone", "Can break a spirit already more than bent.", "The miserable one", "Turns the mind's poison into food,--", "Its medicine is tears,--its evil good.", "", "Therefore, if now I see you seldomer,", "Dear friends, dear FRIEND! know that I only fly", "Your looks, because they stir", "Griefs that should sleep, and hopes that cannot die:", "The very comfort that they minister", "I scarce can bear, yet I,", "So deeply is the arrow gone,", "Should quickly perish if it were withdrawn.", "", "When I return to my cold home, you ask", "Why I am not as I have ever been.", "YOU spoil me for the task", "Of acting a forced part in life's dull scene,--", "Of wearing on my brow the idle mask", "Of author, great or mean,", "In the world's carnival. I sought", "Peace thus, and but in you I found it not.", "", "Full half an hour, to-day, I tried my lot", "With various flowers, and every one still said,", "'She loves me--loves me not.'", "And if this meant a vision long since fled--", "If it meant fortune, fame, or peace of thought--", "If it meant,--but I dread", "To speak what you may know too well:", "Still there was truth in the sad oracle.", "", "The crane o'er seas and forests seeks her home;", "No bird so wild but has its quiet nest,", "When it no more would roam;", "The sleepless billows on the ocean's breast", "Break like a bursting heart, and die in foam,", "And thus at length find rest:", "Doubtless there is a place of peace", "Where MY weak heart and all its throbs will cease.", "", "I asked her, yesterday, if she believed", "That I had resolution. One who HAD", "Would ne'er have thus relieved", "His heart with words,--but what his judgement bade", "Would do, and leave the scorner unrelieved.", "These verses are too sad", "To send to you, but that I know,", "Happy yourself, you feel another's woe." ], "linecount": "56" }, { "title": "To --", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "One word is too often profaned", "For me to profane it,", "One feeling too falsely disdained", "For thee to disdain it;", "One hope is too like despair", "For prudence to smother,", "And pity from thee more dear", "Than that from another.", "", "I can give not what men call love,", "But wilt thou accept not", "The worship the heart lifts above", "And the Heavens reject not,--", "The desire of the moth for the star,", "Of the night for the morrow,", "The devotion to something afar", "From the sphere of our sorrow?" ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "Epithalamium", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "ANOTHER VERSION OF THE PRECEDING.", "", "Night, with all thine eyes look down!", "Darkness shed its holiest dew!", "When ever smiled the inconstant moon", "On a pair so true?", "Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,", "Lest eyes see their own delight!", "Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight", "Oft renew.", "", "BOYS:", "O joy! O fear! what may be done", "In the absence of the sun?", "Come along!", "The golden gates of sleep unbar!", "When strength and beauty meet together,", "Kindles their image like a star", "In a sea of glassy weather.", "Hence, coy hour! and quench thy light,", "Lest eyes see their own delight!", "Hence, swift hour! and thy loved flight", "Oft renew.", "", "GIRLS:", "O joy! O fear! what may be done", "In the absence of the sun?", "Come along!", "Fairies! sprites! and angels, keep her!", "Holiest powers, permit no wrong!", "And return, to wake the sleeper,", "Dawn, ere it be long.", "Hence, swift hour! and quench thy light,", "Lest eyes see their own delight!", "Hence, coy hour! and thy loved flight", "Oft renew.", "", "BOYS AND GIRLS:", "O joy! O fear! what will be done", "In the absence of the sun?", "Come along!", "", "ANOTHER VERSION OF THE SAME.", "", "BOYS SING:", "Night! with all thine eyes look down!", "Darkness! weep thy holiest dew!", "Never smiled the inconstant moon", "On a pair so true.", "Haste, coy hour! and quench all light,", "Lest eyes see their own delight!", "Haste, swift hour! and thy loved flight", "Oft renew!", "", "GIRLS SING:", "Fairies, sprites, and angels, keep her!", "Holy stars! permit no wrong!", "And return, to wake the sleeper,", "Dawn, ere it be long!", "O joy! O fear! there is not one", "Of us can guess what may be done", "In the absence of the sun:--", "Come along!", "", "BOYS:", "Oh! linger long, thou envious eastern lamp", "In the damp", "Caves of the deep!", "", "GIRLS:", "Nay, return, Vesper! urge thy lazy car!", "Swift unbar", "The gates of Sleep!", "", "CHORUS:", "The golden gate of Sleep unbar,", "When Strength and Beauty, met together,", "Kindle their image, like a star", "In a sea of glassy weather.", "May the purple mist of love", "Round them rise, and with them move,", "Nourishing each tender gem", "Which, like flowers, will burst from them.", "As the fruit is to the tree", "May their children ever be!" ], "linecount": "75" }, { "title": "Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "...", "", "And many there were hurt by that strong boy,", "His name, they said, was Pleasure,", "And near him stood, glorious beyond measure", "Four Ladies who possess all empery", "In earth and air and sea,", "Nothing that lives from their award is free.", "Their names will I declare to thee,", "Love, Hope, Desire, and Fear,", "And they the regents are", "Of the four elements that frame the heart,", "And each diversely exercised her art", "By force or circumstance or sleight", "To prove her dreadful might", "Upon that poor domain.", "Desire presented her glass, and then", "The spirit dwelling there", "Was spellbound to embrace what seemed so fair", "Within that magic mirror,", "And dazed by that bright error,", "It would have scorned the of the avenger", "And death, and penitence, and danger,", "Had not then silent Fear", "Touched with her palsying spear,", "So that as if a frozen torrent", "The blood was curdled in its current;", "It dared not speak, even in look or motion,", "But chained within itself its proud devotion.", "Between Desire and Fear thou wert", "A wretched thing, poor heart!", "Sad was his life who bore thee in his breast,", "Wild bird for that weak nest.", "Till Love even from fierce Desire it bought,", "And from the very wound of tender thought", "Drew solace, and the pity of sweet eyes", "Gave strength to bear those gentle agonies,", "Surmount the loss, the terror, and the sorrow.", "Then Hope approached, she who can borrow", "For poor to-day, from rich tomorrow,", "And Fear withdrew, as night when day", "Descends upon the orient ray,", "And after long and vain endurance", "The poor heart woke to her assurance.", "--At one birth these four were born", "With the world's forgotten morn,", "And from Pleasure still they hold", "All it circles, as of old.", "When, as summer lures the swallow,", "Pleasure lures the heart to follow--", "O weak heart of little wit!", "The fair hand that wounded it,", "Seeking, like a panting hare,", "Refuge in the lynx's lair,", "Love, Desire, Hope, and Fear,", "Ever will be near." ], "linecount": "55" }, { "title": "Fragments Written for Hellas", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Fairest of the Destinies,", "Disarray thy dazzling eyes:", "Keener far thy lightnings are", "Than the winged thou bearest,", "And the smile thou wearest", "Wraps thee as a star", "Is wrapped in light.", "", "Could Arethuse to her forsaken urn", "From Alpheus and the bitter Doris run,", "Or could the morning shafts of purest light", "Again into the quivers of the Sun", "Be gathered--could one thought from its wild flight", "Return into the temple of the brain", "Without a change, without a stain,--", "Could aught that is, ever again", "Be what it once has ceased to be,", "Greece might again be free!", "", "A star has fallen upon the earth", "Mid the benighted nations,", "A quenchless atom of immortal light,", "A living spark of Night,", "A cresset shaken from the constellations.", "Swifter than the thunder fell", "To the heart of Earth, the well", "Where its pulses flow and beat,", "And unextinct in that cold source", "Burns, and on ... course", "Guides the sphere which is its prison,", "Like an angelic spirit pent", "In a form of mortal birth,", "Till, as a spirit half-arisen", "Shatters its charnel, it has rent,", "In the rapture of its mirth,", "The thin and painted garment of the Earth,", "Ruining its chaos--a fierce breath", "Consuming all its forms of living death." ], "linecount": "36" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'I Would Not Be a King'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I would not be a king--enough", "Of woe it is to love;", "The path to power is steep and rough,", "And tempests reign above.", "I would not climb the imperial throne;", "'Tis built on ice which fortune's sun", "Thaws in the height of noon.", "Then farewell, king, yet were I one,", "Care would not come so soon.", "Would he and I were far away", "Keeping flocks on Himalay!" ], "linecount": "11" }, { "title": "Ginevra", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Wild, pale, and wonder-stricken, even as one", "Who staggers forth into the air and sun", "From the dark chamber of a mortal fever,", "Bewildered, and incapable, and ever", "Fancying strange comments in her dizzy brain", "Of usual shapes, till the familiar train", "Of objects and of persons passed like things", "Strange as a dreamer's mad imaginings,", "Ginevra from the nuptial altar went;", "The vows to which her lips had sworn assent", "Rung in her brain still with a jarring din,", "Deafening the lost intelligence within.", "", "And so she moved under the bridal veil,", "Which made the paleness of her cheek more pale,", "And deepened the faint crimson of her mouth,", "And darkened her dark locks, as moonlight doth,--", "And of the gold and jewels glittering there", "She scarce felt conscious,--but the weary glare", "Lay like a chaos of unwelcome light,", "Vexing the sense with gorgeous undelight,", "A moonbeam in the shadow of a cloud", "Was less heavenly fair--her face was bowed,", "And as she passed, the diamonds in her hair", "Were mirrored in the polished marble stair", "Which led from the cathedral to the street;", "And ever as she went her light fair feet", "Erased these images.", "", "The bride-maidens who round her thronging came,", "Some with a sense of self-rebuke and shame,", "Envying the unenviable; and others", "Making the joy which should have been another's", "Their own by gentle sympathy; and some", "Sighing to think of an unhappy home:", "Some few admiring what can ever lure", "Maidens to leave the heaven serene and pure", "Of parents' smiles for life's great cheat; a thing", "Bitter to taste, sweet in imagining.", "", "But they are all dispersed--and, lo! she stands", "Looking in idle grief on her white hands,", "Alone within the garden now her own;", "And through the sunny air, with jangling tone,", "The music of the merry marriage-bells,", "Killing the azure silence, sinks and swells;--", "Absorbed like one within a dream who dreams", "That he is dreaming, until slumber seems", "A mockery of itself--when suddenly", "Antonio stood before her, pale as she.", "With agony, with sorrow, and with pride,", "He lifted his wan eyes upon the bride,", "And said--'Is this thy faith?' and then as one", "Whose sleeping face is stricken by the sun", "With light like a harsh voice, which bids him rise", "And look upon his day of life with eyes", "Which weep in vain that they can dream no more,", "Ginevra saw her lover, and forbore", "To shriek or faint, and checked the stifling blood", "Rushing upon her heart, and unsubdued", "Said--'Friend, if earthly violence or ill,", "Suspicion, doubt, or the tyrannic will", "Of parents, chance or custom, time or change,", "Or circumstance, or terror, or revenge,", "Or wildered looks, or words, or evil speech,", "With all their stings and venom can impeach", "Our love,--we love not:--if the grave which hides", "The victim from the tyrant, and divides", "The cheek that whitens from the eyes that dart", "Imperious inquisition to the heart", "That is another's, could dissever ours,", "We love not.'--'What! do not the silent hours", "Beckon thee to Gherardi's bridal bed?", "Is not that ring'--a pledge, he would have said,", "Of broken vows, but she with patient look", "The golden circle from her finger took,", "And said--'Accept this token of my faith,", "The pledge of vows to be absolved by death;", "And I am dead or shall be soon--my knell", "Will mix its music with that merry bell,", "Does it not sound as if they sweetly said", "\"We toll a corpse out of the marriage-bed\"?", "The flowers upon my bridal chamber strewn", "Will serve unfaded for my bier--so soon", "That even the dying violet will not die", "Before Ginevra.' The strong fantasy", "Had made her accents weaker and more weak,", "And quenched the crimson life upon her cheek,", "And glazed her eyes, and spread an atmosphere", "Round her, which chilled the burning noon with fear,", "Making her but an image of the thought", "Which, like a prophet or a shadow, brought", "News of the terrors of the coming time.", "Like an accuser branded with the crime", "He would have cast on a beloved friend,", "Whose dying eyes reproach not to the end", "The pale betrayer--he then with vain repentance", "Would share, he cannot now avert, the sentence--", "Antonio stood and would have spoken, when", "The compound voice of women and of men", "Was heard approaching; he retired, while she", "Was led amid the admiring company", "Back to the palace,--and her maidens soon", "Changed her attire for the afternoon,", "And left her at her own request to keep", "An hour of quiet rest:--like one asleep", "With open eyes and folded hands she lay,", "Pale in the light of the declining day.", "", "Meanwhile the day sinks fast, the sun is set,", "And in the lighted hall the guests are met;", "The beautiful looked lovelier in the light", "Of love, and admiration, and delight", "Reflected from a thousand hearts and eyes,", "Kindling a momentary Paradise.", "This crowd is safer than the silent wood,", "Where love's own doubts disturb the solitude;", "On frozen hearts the fiery rain of wine", "Falls, and the dew of music more divine", "Tempers the deep emotions of the time", "To spirits cradled in a sunny clime:--", "How many meet, who never yet have met,", "To part too soon, but never to forget.", "How many saw the beauty, power and wit", "Of looks and words which ne'er enchanted yet;", "But life's familiar veil was now withdrawn,", "As the world leaps before an earthquake's dawn,", "And unprophetic of the coming hours,", "The matin winds from the expanded flowers", "Scatter their hoarded incense, and awaken", "The earth, until the dewy sleep is shaken", "From every living heart which it possesses,", "Through seas and winds, cities and wildernesses,", "As if the future and the past were all", "Treasured i' the instant;--so Gherardi's hall", "Laughed in the mirth of its lord's festival,", "Till some one asked--'Where is the Bride?' And then", "A bridesmaid went,--and ere she came again", "A silence fell upon the guests--a pause", "Of expectation, as when beauty awes", "All hearts with its approach, though unbeheld;", "Then wonder, and then fear that wonder quelled;--", "For whispers passed from mouth to ear which drew", "The colour from the hearer's cheeks, and flew", "Louder and swifter round the company;", "And then Gherardi entered with an eye", "Of ostentatious trouble, and a crowd", "Surrounded him, and some were weeping loud.", "", "They found Ginevra dead! if it be death", "To lie without motion, or pulse, or breath,", "With waxen cheeks, and limbs cold, stiff, and white,", "And open eyes, whose fixed and glassy light", "Mocked at the speculation they had owned.", "If it be death, when there is felt around", "A smell of clay, a pale and icy glare,", "And silence, and a sense that lifts the hair", "From the scalp to the ankles, as it were", "Corruption from the spirit passing forth,", "And giving all it shrouded to the earth,", "And leaving as swift lightning in its flight", "Ashes, and smoke, and darkness: in our night", "Of thought we know thus much of death,--no more", "Than the unborn dream of our life before", "Their barks are wrecked on its inhospitable shore.", "The marriage feast and its solemnity", "Was turned to funeral pomp--the company,", "With heavy hearts and looks, broke up; nor they", "Who loved the dead went weeping on their way", "Alone, but sorrow mixed with sad surprise", "Loosened the springs of pity in all eyes,", "On which that form, whose fate they weep in vain,", "Will never, thought they, kindle smiles again.", "The lamps which, half extinguished in their haste,", "Gleamed few and faint o'er the abandoned feast,", "Showed as it were within the vaulted room", "A cloud of sorrow hanging, as if gloom", "Had passed out of men's minds into the air.", "Some few yet stood around Gherardi there,", "Friends and relations of the dead,--and he,", "A loveless man, accepted torpidly", "The consolation that he wanted not;", "Awe in the place of grief within him wrought.", "Their whispers made the solemn silence seem", "More still--some wept,...", "Some melted into tears without a sob,", "And some with hearts that might be heard to throb", "Leaned on the table and at intervals", "Shuddered to hear through the deserted halls", "And corridors the thrilling shrieks which came", "Upon the breeze of night, that shook the flame", "Of every torch and taper as it swept", "From out the chamber where the women kept;--", "Their tears fell on the dear companion cold", "Of pleasures now departed; then was knolled", "The bell of death, and soon the priests arrived,", "And finding Death their penitent had shrived,", "Returned like ravens from a corpse whereon", "A vulture has just feasted to the bone.", "And then the mourning women came.--", "", "..." ], "linecount": "196" }, { "title": "The Dirge", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Old winter was gone", "In his weakness back to the mountains hoar,", "And the spring came down", "From the planet that hovers upon the shore", "", "Where the sea of sunlight encroaches", "On the limits of wintry night;--", "If the land, and the air, and the sea,", "Rejoice not when spring approaches,", "We did not rejoice in thee,", "Ginevra!", "", "She is still, she is cold", "On the bridal couch,", "One step to the white deathbed,", "And one to the bier,", "And one to the charnel--and one, oh where?", "The dark arrow fled", "In the noon.", "", "Ere the sun through heaven once more has rolled,", "The rats in her heart", "Will have made their nest,", "And the worms be alive in her golden hair,", "While the Spirit that guides the sun,", "Sits throned in his flaming chair,", "She shall sleep." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "Evening: Ponte Al Mare, Pisa", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The sun is set; the swallows are asleep;", "The bats are flitting fast in the gray air;", "The slow soft toads out of damp corners creep,", "And evening's breath, wandering here and there", "Over the quivering surface of the stream,", "Wakes not one ripple from its summer dream.", "", "There is no dew on the dry grass to-night,", "Nor damp within the shadow of the trees;", "The wind is intermitting, dry, and light;", "And in the inconstant motion of the breeze", "The dust and straws are driven up and down,", "And whirled about the pavement of the town.", "", "Within the surface of the fleeting river", "The wrinkled image of the city lay,", "Immovably unquiet, and forever", "It trembles, but it never fades away;", "Go to the...", "You, being changed, will find it then as now.", "", "The chasm in which the sun has sunk is shut", "By darkest barriers of cinereous cloud,", "Like mountain over mountain huddled--but", "Growing and moving upwards in a crowd,", "And over it a space of watery blue,", "Which the keen evening star is shining through.." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "The Boat on the Serchio", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Our boat is asleep on Serchio's stream,", "Its sails are folded like thoughts in a dream,", "The helm sways idly, hither and thither;", "Dominic, the boatman, has brought the mast,", "And the oars, and the sails; but 'tis sleeping fast,", "Like a beast, unconscious of its tether.", "", "The stars burnt out in the pale blue air,", "And the thin white moon lay withering there;", "To tower, and cavern, and rift, and tree,", "The owl and the bat fled drowsily.", "Day had kindled the dewy woods,", "And the rocks above and the stream below,", "And the vapours in their multitudes,", "And the Apennine's shroud of summer snow,", "And clothed with light of aery gold", "The mists in their eastern caves uprolled.", "", "Day had awakened all things that be,", "The lark and the thrush and the swallow free,", "And the milkmaid's song and the mower's scythe", "And the matin-bell and the mountain bee:", "Fireflies were quenched on the dewy corn,", "Glow-worms went out on the river's brim,", "Like lamps which a student forgets to trim:", "The beetle forgot to wind his horn,", "The crickets were still in the meadow and hill:", "Like a flock of rooks at a farmer's gun", "Night's dreams and terrors, every one,", "Fled from the brains which are their prey", "From the lamp's death to the morning ray.", "", "All rose to do the task He set to each,", "Who shaped us to His ends and not our own;", "The million rose to learn, and one to teach", "What none yet ever knew or can be known.", "And many rose", "Whose woe was such that fear became desire;--", "Melchior and Lionel were not among those;", "They from the throng of men had stepped aside,", "And made their home under the green hill-side.", "It was that hill, whose intervening brow", "Screens Lucca from the Pisan's envious eye,", "Which the circumfluous plain waving below,", "Like a wide lake of green fertility,", "With streams and fields and marshes bare,", "Divides from the far Apennines--which lie", "Islanded in the immeasurable air.", "", "'What think you, as she lies in her green cove,", "Our little sleeping boat is dreaming of?'", "'If morning dreams are true, why I should guess", "That she was dreaming of our idleness,", "And of the miles of watery way", "We should have led her by this time of day.'-", "", "'Never mind,' said Lionel,", "'Give care to the winds, they can bear it well", "About yon poplar-tops; and see", "The white clouds are driving merrily,", "And the stars we miss this morn will light", "More willingly our return to-night.--", "How it whistles, Dominic's long black hair!", "List, my dear fellow; the breeze blows fair:", "Hear how it sings into the air--'", "", "--'Of us and of our lazy motions,'", "Impatiently said Melchior,", "'If I can guess a boat's emotions;", "And how we ought, two hours before,", "To have been the devil knows where.'", "And then, in such transalpine Tuscan", "As would have killed a Della-Cruscan,", "", "...", "", "So, Lionel according to his art", "Weaving his idle words, Melchior said:", "'She dreams that we are not yet out of bed;", "We'll put a soul into her, and a heart", "Which like a dove chased by a dove shall beat.'", "", "...", "", "'Ay, heave the ballast overboard,", "And stow the eatables in the aft locker.'", "'Would not this keg be best a little lowered?'", "'No, now all's right.' 'Those bottles of warm tea--", "(Give me some straw)--must be stowed tenderly;", "Such as we used, in summer after six,", "To cram in greatcoat pockets, and to mix", "Hard eggs and radishes and rolls at Eton,", "And, couched on stolen hay in those green harbours", "Farmers called gaps, and we schoolboys called arbours,", "Would feast till eight.'", "", "...", "", "With a bottle in one hand,", "As if his very soul were at a stand", "Lionel stood--when Melchior brought him steady:--", "'Sit at the helm--fasten this sheet--all ready!'", "", "The chain is loosed, the sails are spread,", "The living breath is fresh behind,", "As with dews and sunrise fed,", "Comes the laughing morning wind;--", "The sails are full, the boat makes head", "Against the Serchio's torrent fierce,", "Then flags with intermitting course,", "And hangs upon the wave, and stems", "The tempest of the...", "Which fervid from its mountain source", "Shallow, smooth and strong doth come,--", "Swift as fire, tempestuously", "It sweeps into the affrighted sea;", "In morning's smile its eddies coil,", "Its billows sparkle, toss and boil,", "Torturing all its quiet light", "Into columns fierce and bright.", "", "The Serchio, twisting forth", "Between the marble barriers which it clove", "At Ripafratta, leads through the dread chasm", "The wave that died the death which lovers love,", "Living in what it sought; as if this spasm", "Had not yet passed, the toppling mountains cling,", "But the clear stream in full enthusiasm", "Pours itself on the plain, then wandering", "Down one clear path of effluence crystalline", "Sends its superfluous waves, that they may fling", "At Arno's feet tribute of corn and wine;", "Then, through the pestilential deserts wild", "Of tangled marsh and woods of stunted pine,", "It rushes to the Ocean." ], "linecount": "121" }, { "title": "Music", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I pant for the music which is divine,", "My heart in its thirst is a dying flower;", "Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine,", "Loosen the notes in a silver shower;", "Like a herbless plain, for the gentle rain,", "I gasp, I faint, till they wake again.", "", "Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound,", "More, oh more,--I am thirsting yet;", "It loosens the serpent which care has bound", "Upon my heart to stifle it;", "The dissolving strain, through every vein,", "Passes into my heart and brain.", "", "As the scent of a violet withered up,", "Which grew by the brink of a silver lake,", "When the hot noon has drained its dewy cup,", "And mist there was none its thirst to slake--", "And the violet lay dead while the odour flew", "On the wings of the wind o'er the waters blue--", "", "As one who drinks from a charmed cup", "Of foaming, and sparkling, and murmuring wine,", "Whom, a mighty Enchantress filling up,", "Invites to love with her kiss divine..." ], "linecount": "22" }, { "title": "Fragment on Keats", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "ON KEATS, WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB SHOULD BE INSCRIBED--", "", "'Here lieth One whose name was writ on water.", "But, ere the breath that could erase it blew,", "Death, in remorse for that fell slaughter,", "Death, the immortalizing winter, flew", "Athwart the stream,--and time's printless torrent grew", "A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name", "Of Adonais!" ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "To-Morrow", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Where art thou, beloved To-morrow?", "When young and old, and strong and weak,", "Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,", "Thy sweet smiles we ever seek,--", "In thy place--ah! well-a-day!", "We find the thing we fled--To-day." ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Stanza", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "If I walk in Autumn's even", "While the dead leaves pass,", "If I look on Spring's soft heaven,--", "Something is not there which was", "Winter's wondrous frost and snow,", "Summer's clouds, where are they now?" ], "linecount": "6" }, { "title": "Fragment: A Wanderer", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "He wanders, like a day-appearing dream,", "Through the dim wildernesses of the mind;", "Through desert woods and tracts, which seem", "Like ocean, homeless, boundless, unconfined." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: Life Rounded With Sleep", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The babe is at peace within the womb;", "The corpse is at rest within the tomb:", "We begin in what we end." ], "linecount": "3" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'I Faint, I Perish With My Love!'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I faint, I perish with my love! I grow", "Frail as a cloud whose pale", "Under the evening's ever-changing glow:", "I die like mist upon the gale,", "And like a wave under the calm I fail." ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment: The Lady of the South", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Faint with love, the Lady of the South", "Lay in the paradise of Lebanon", "Under a heaven of cedar boughs: the drouth", "Of love was on her lips; the light was gone", "Out of her eyes--" ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment: Zephyrus the Awakener", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Come, thou awakener of the spirit's ocean,", "Zephyr, whom to thy cloud or cave", "No thought can trace! speed with thy gentle motion!" ], "linecount": "3" }, { "title": "Fragment: Rain", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The gentleness of rain was in the wind." ], "linecount": "1" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'And That I Walk Thus Proudly Crowned'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal", "Is that 'tis my distinction; if I fall,", "I shall not weep out of the vital day,", "To-morrow dust, nor wear a dull decay." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'The Rude Wind Is Singing'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The rude wind is singing", "The dirge of the music dead;", "The cold worms are clinging", "Where kisses were lately fed." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'Great Spirit'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Great Spirit whom the sea of boundless thought", "Nurtures within its unimagined caves,", "In which thou sittest sole, as in my mind,", "Giving a voice to its mysterious waves--" ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'O Thou Immortal Deity'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "O thou immortal deity", "Whose throne is in the depth of human thought,", "I do adjure thy power and thee", "By all that man may be, by all that he is not,", "By all that he has been and yet must be!" ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment: May the Limner", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "When May is painting with her colours gay", "The landscape sketched by April her sweet twin..." ], "linecount": "2" }, { "title": "Fragment: Beauty's Halo", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Thy beauty hangs around thee like", "Splendour around the moon--", "Thy voice, as silver bells that strike", "Upon" ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'The Death Knell Is Ringing'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The death knell is ringing", "The raven is singing", "The earth worm is creeping", "The mourners are weeping", "Ding dong, bell--" ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment: 'I Stood upon a Heaven-Cleaving Turret'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I stood upon a heaven-cleaving turret", "Which overlooked a wide Metropolis--", "And in the temple of my heart my Spirit", "Lay prostrate, and with parted lips did kiss", "The dust of Desolations hearth--", "And with a voice too faint to falter", "It shook that trembling fane with its weak prayer", "'Twas noon,--the sleeping skies were blue", "The city" ], "linecount": "9" }, { "title": "The Zucca", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Summer was dead and Autumn was expiring,", "And infant Winter laughed upon the land", "All cloudlessly and cold;--when I, desiring", "More in this world than any understand,", "Wept o'er the beauty, which, like sea retiring,", "Had left the earth bare as the wave-worn sand", "Of my lorn heart, and o'er the grass and flowers", "Pale for the falsehood of the flattering Hours.", "", "Summer was dead, but I yet lived to weep", "The instability of all but weeping;", "And on the Earth lulled in her winter sleep", "I woke, and envied her as she was sleeping.", "Too happy Earth! over thy face shall creep", "The wakening vernal airs, until thou, leaping", "From unremembered dreams, shalt ... see", "No death divide thy immortality.", "", "I loved--oh, no, I mean not one of ye,", "Or any earthly one, though ye are dear", "As human heart to human heart may be;--", "I loved, I know not what--but this low sphere", "And all that it contains, contains not thee,", "Thou, whom, seen nowhere, I feel everywhere.", "From Heaven and Earth, and all that in them are,", "Veiled art thou, like a ... star.", "", "By Heaven and Earth, from all whose shapes thou flowest,", "Neither to be contained, delayed, nor hidden;", "Making divine the loftiest and the lowest,", "When for a moment thou art not forbidden", "To live within the life which thou bestowest;", "And leaving noblest things vacant and chidden,", "Cold as a corpse after the spirit's flight", "Blank as the sun after the birth of night.", "", "In winds, and trees, and streams, and all things common,", "In music and the sweet unconscious tone", "Of animals, and voices which are human,", "Meant to express some feelings of their own;", "In the soft motions and rare smile of woman,", "In flowers and leaves, and in the grass fresh-shown,", "Or dying in the autumn, I the most", "Adore thee present or lament thee lost.", "", "And thus I went lamenting, when I saw", "A plant upon the river's margin lie", "Like one who loved beyond his nature's law,", "And in despair had cast him down to die;", "Its leaves, which had outlived the frost, the thaw", "Had blighted; like a heart which hatred's eye", "Can blast not, but which pity kills; the dew", "Lay on its spotted leaves like tears too true.", "", "The Heavens had wept upon it, but the Earth", "Had crushed it on her maternal breast", "", "...", "", "I bore it to my chamber, and I planted", "It in a vase full of the lightest mould;", "The winter beams which out of Heaven slanted", "Fell through the window-panes, disrobed of cold,", "Upon its leaves and flowers; the stars which panted", "In evening for the Day, whose car has rolled", "Over the horizon's wave, with looks of light", "Smiled on it from the threshold of the night.", "", "The mitigated influences of air", "And light revived the plant, and from it grew", "Strong leaves and tendrils, and its flowers fair,", "Full as a cup with the vine's burning dew,", "O'erflowed with golden colours; an atmosphere", "Of vital warmth enfolded it anew,", "And every impulse sent to every part", "The unbeheld pulsations of its heart.", "", "Well might the plant grow beautiful and strong,", "Even if the air and sun had smiled not on it;", "For one wept o'er it all the winter long", "Tears pure as Heaven's rain, which fell upon it", "Hour after hour; for sounds of softest song", "Mixed with the stringed melodies that won it", "To leave the gentle lips on which it slept,", "Had loosed the heart of him who sat and wept.", "", "Had loosed his heart, and shook the leaves and flowers", "On which he wept, the while the savage storm", "Waked by the darkest of December's hours", "Was raving round the chamber hushed and warm;", "The birds were shivering in their leafless bowers,", "The fish were frozen in the pools, the form", "Of every summer plant was dead", "Whilst this....", "", "..." ], "linecount": "84" }, { "title": "The Magnetic Lady to Her Patient", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'Sleep, sleep on! forget thy pain;", "My hand is on thy brow,", "My spirit on thy brain;", "My pity on thy heart, poor friend;", "And from my fingers flow", "The powers of life, and like a sign,", "Seal thee from thine hour of woe;", "And brood on thee, but may not blend", "With thine.", "", "'Sleep, sleep on! I love thee not;", "But when I think that he", "Who made and makes my lot", "As full of flowers as thine of weeds,", "Might have been lost like thee;", "And that a hand which was not mine", "Might then have charmed his agony", "As I another's--my heart bleeds", "For thine.", "", "'Sleep, sleep, and with the slumber of", "The dead and the unborn", "Forget thy life and love;", "Forget that thou must wake forever;", "Forget the world's dull scorn;", "Forget lost health, and the divine", "Feelings which died in youth's brief morn;", "And forget me, for I can never", "Be thine.", "", "'Like a cloud big with a May shower,", "My soul weeps healing rain", "On thee, thou withered flower!", "It breathes mute music on thy sleep", "Its odour calms thy brain!", "Its light within thy gloomy breast", "Spreads like a second youth again.", "By mine thy being is to its deep", "Possessed.", "", "'The spell is done. How feel you now?'", "'Better--Quite well,' replied", "The sleeper.--'What would do", "You good when suffering and awake?", "What cure your head and side?--'", "'What would cure, that would kill me, Jane:", "And as I must on earth abide", "Awhile, yet tempt me not to break", "My chain.'" ], "linecount": "45" }, { "title": "Lines: 'When the Lamp Is Shattered'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "When the lamp is shattered", "The light in the dust lies dead--", "When the cloud is scattered", "The rainbow's glory is shed.", "When the lute is broken,", "Sweet tones are remembered not;", "When the lips have spoken,", "Loved accents are soon forgot.", "", "As music and splendour", "Survive not the lamp and the lute,", "The heart's echoes render", "No song when the spirit is mute:--", "No song but sad dirges,", "Like the wind through a ruined cell,", "Or the mournful surges", "That ring the dead seaman's knell.", "", "When hearts have once mingled", "Love first leaves the well-built nest;", "The weak one is singled", "To endure what it once possessed.", "O Love! who bewailest", "The frailty of all things here,", "Why choose you the frailest", "For your cradle, your home, and your bier?", "", "Its passions will rock thee", "As the storms rock the ravens on high;", "Bright reason will mock thee,", "Like the sun from a wintry sky.", "From thy nest every rafter", "Will rot, and thine eagle home", "Leave thee naked to laughter,", "When leaves fall and cold winds come." ], "linecount": "32" }, { "title": "To Jane: The Invitation", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Best and brightest, come away!", "Fairer far than this fair Day,", "Which, like thee to those in sorrow,", "Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow", "To the rough Year just awake", "In its cradle on the brake.", "The brightest hour of unborn Spring,", "Through the winter wandering,", "Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn", "To hoar February born,", "Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,", "It kissed the forehead of the Earth,", "And smiled upon the silent sea,", "And bade the frozen streams be free,", "And waked to music all their fountains,", "And breathed upon the frozen mountains,", "And like a prophetess of May", "Strewed flowers upon the barren way,", "Making the wintry world appear", "Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.", "", "Away, away, from men and towns,", "To the wild wood and the downs--", "To the silent wilderness", "Where the soul need not repress", "Its music lest it should not find", "An echo in another's mind,", "While the touch of Nature's art", "Harmonizes heart to heart.", "I leave this notice on my door", "For each accustomed visitor:--", "'I am gone into the fields", "To take what this sweet hour yields;--", "Reflection, you may come to-morrow,", "Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.--", "You with the unpaid bill, Despair,--", "You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,--", "I will pay you in the grave,--", "Death will listen to your stave.", "Expectation too, be off!", "To-day is for itself enough;", "Hope, in pity mock not Woe", "With smiles, nor follow where I go;", "Long having lived on thy sweet food,", "At length I find one moment's good", "After long pain--with all your love,", "This you never told me of.'", "", "Radiant Sister of the Day,", "Awake! arise! and come away!", "To the wild woods and the plains,", "And the pools where winter rains", "Image all their roof of leaves,", "Where the pine its garland weaves", "Of sapless green and ivy dun", "Round stems that never kiss the sun;", "Where the lawns and pastures be,", "And the sandhills of the sea;--", "Where the melting hoar-frost wets", "The daisy-star that never sets,", "And wind-flowers, and violets,", "Which yet join not scent to hue,", "Crown the pale year weak and new;", "When the night is left behind", "In the deep east, dun and blind,", "And the blue noon is over us,", "And the multitudinous", "Billows murmur at our feet,", "Where the earth and ocean meet,", "And all things seem only one", "In the universal sun." ], "linecount": "69" }, { "title": "To Jane: The Recollection", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Now the last day of many days,", "All beautiful and bright as thou,", "The loveliest and the last, is dead,", "Rise, Memory, and write its praise!", "Up,--to thy wonted work! come, trace", "The epitaph of glory fled,--", "For now the Earth has changed its face,", "A frown is on the Heaven's brow.", "", "We wandered to the Pine Forest", "That skirts the Ocean's foam,", "The lightest wind was in its nest,", "The tempest in its home.", "The whispering waves were half asleep,", "The clouds were gone to play,", "And on the bosom of the deep", "The smile of Heaven lay;", "It seemed as if the hour were one", "Sent from beyond the skies,", "Which scattered from above the sun", "A light of Paradise.", "", "We paused amid the pines that stood", "The giants of the waste,", "Tortured by storms to shapes as rude", "As serpents interlaced;", "And, soothed by every azure breath,", "That under Heaven is blown,", "To harmonies and hues beneath,", "As tender as its own,", "Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,", "Like green waves on the sea,", "As still as in the silent deep", "The ocean woods may be.", "", "How calm it was!--the silence there", "By such a chain was bound", "That even the busy woodpecker", "Made stiller by her sound", "The inviolable quietness;", "The breath of peace we drew", "With its soft motion made not less", "The calm that round us grew.", "There seemed from the remotest seat", "Of the white mountain waste,", "To the soft flower beneath our feet,", "A magic circle traced,--", "A spirit interfused around", "A thrilling, silent life,--", "To momentary peace it bound", "Our mortal nature's strife;", "And still I felt the centre of", "The magic circle there", "Was one fair form that filled with love", "The lifeless atmosphere.", "", "We paused beside the pools that lie", "Under the forest bough,--", "Each seemed as 'twere a little sky", "Gulfed in a world below;", "A firmament of purple light", "Which in the dark earth lay,", "More boundless than the depth of night,", "And purer than the day--", "In which the lovely forests grew,", "As in the upper air,", "More perfect both in shape and hue", "Than any spreading there.", "There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,", "And through the dark green wood", "The white sun twinkling like the dawn", "Out of a speckled cloud.", "Sweet views which in our world above", "Can never well be seen,", "Were imaged by the water's love", "Of that fair forest green.", "And all was interfused beneath", "With an Elysian glow,", "An atmosphere without a breath,", "A softer day below.", "Like one beloved the scene had lent", "To the dark water's breast,", "Its every leaf and lineament", "With more than truth expressed;", "Until an envious wind crept by,", "Like an unwelcome thought,", "Which from the mind's too faithful eye", "Blots one dear image out.", "Though thou art ever fair and kind,", "The forests ever green,", "Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind,", "Than calm in waters, seen." ], "linecount": "88" }, { "title": "The Pine Forest of the Cascine Near Pisa", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Dearest, best and brightest,", "Come away,", "To the woods and to the fields!", "Dearer than this fairest day", "Which, like thee to those in sorrow,", "Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow", "To the rough Year just awake", "In its cradle in the brake.", "The eldest of the Hours of Spring,", "Into the Winter wandering,", "Looks upon the leafless wood,", "And the banks all bare and rude;", "Found, it seems, this halcyon Morn", "In February's bosom born,", "Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,", "Kissed the cold forehead of the Earth,", "And smiled upon the silent sea,", "And bade the frozen streams be free;", "And waked to music all the fountains,", "And breathed upon the rigid mountains,", "And made the wintry world appear", "Like one on whom thou smilest, Dear.", "", "Radiant Sister of the Day,", "Awake! arise! and come away!", "To the wild woods and the plains,", "To the pools where winter rains", "Image all the roof of leaves,", "Where the pine its garland weaves", "Sapless, gray, and ivy dun", "Round stems that never kiss the sun--", "To the sandhills of the sea,", "Where the earliest violets be.", "", "Now the last day of many days,", "All beautiful and bright as thou,", "The loveliest and the last, is dead,", "Rise, Memory, and write its praise!", "And do thy wonted work and trace", "The epitaph of glory fled;", "For now the Earth has changed its face,", "A frown is on the Heaven's brow.", "", "We wandered to the Pine Forest", "That skirts the Ocean's foam,", "The lightest wind was in its nest,", "The tempest in its home.", "", "The whispering waves were half asleep,", "The clouds were gone to play,", "And on the woods, and on the deep", "The smile of Heaven lay.", "", "It seemed as if the day were one", "Sent from beyond the skies,", "Which shed to earth above the sun", "A light of Paradise.", "", "We paused amid the pines that stood,", "The giants of the waste,", "Tortured by storms to shapes as rude", "With stems like serpents interlaced.", "", "How calm it was--the silence there", "By such a chain was bound,", "That even the busy woodpecker", "Made stiller by her sound", "", "The inviolable quietness;", "The breath of peace we drew", "With its soft motion made not less", "The calm that round us grew.", "", "It seemed that from the remotest seat", "Of the white mountain's waste", "To the bright flower beneath our feet,", "A magic circle traced;--", "", "A spirit interfused around,", "A thinking, silent life;", "To momentary peace it bound", "Our mortal nature's strife;--", "", "And still, it seemed, the centre of", "The magic circle there,", "Was one whose being filled with love", "The breathless atmosphere.", "", "Were not the crocuses that grew", "Under that ilex-tree", "As beautiful in scent and hue", "As ever fed the bee?", "", "We stood beneath the pools that lie", "Under the forest bough,", "And each seemed like a sky", "Gulfed in a world below;", "", "A purple firmament of light", "Which in the dark earth lay,", "More boundless than the depth of night,", "And clearer than the day--", "", "In which the massy forests grew", "As in the upper air,", "More perfect both in shape and hue", "Than any waving there.", "", "Like one beloved the scene had lent", "To the dark water's breast", "Its every leaf and lineament", "With that clear truth expressed;", "", "There lay far glades and neighbouring lawn,", "And through the dark green crowd", "The white sun twinkling like the dawn", "Under a speckled cloud.", "", "Sweet views, which in our world above", "Can never well be seen,", "Were imaged by the water's love", "Of that fair forest green.", "", "And all was interfused beneath", "With an Elysian air,", "An atmosphere without a breath,", "A silence sleeping there.", "", "Until a wandering wind crept by,", "Like an unwelcome thought,", "Which from my mind's too faithful eye", "Blots thy bright image out.", "", "For thou art good and dear and kind,", "The forest ever green,", "But less of peace in S--'s mind,", "Than calm in waters, seen." ], "linecount": "116" }, { "title": "To Jane: 'The Keen Stars Were Twinkling'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The keen stars were twinkling,", "And the fair moon was rising among them,", "Dear Jane!", "The guitar was tinkling,", "But the notes were not sweet till you sung them", "Again.", "", "As the moon's soft splendour", "O'er the faint cold starlight of Heaven", "Is thrown,", "So your voice most tender", "To the strings without soul had then given", "Its own.", "", "The stars will awaken,", "Though the moon sleep a full hour later,", "To-night;", "No leaf will be shaken", "Whilst the dews of your melody scatter", "Delight.", "", "Though the sound overpowers,", "Sing again, with your dear voice revealing", "A tone", "Of some world far from ours,", "Where music and moonlight and feeling", "Are one." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "A Dirge", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Rough wind, that moanest loud", "Grief too sad for song;", "Wild wind, when sullen cloud", "Knells all the night long;", "Sad storm whose tears are vain,", "Bare woods, whose branches strain,", "Deep caves and dreary main,--", "Wail, for the world's wrong!" ], "linecount": "8" }, { "title": "Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "She left me at the silent time", "When the moon had ceased to climb", "The azure path of Heaven's steep,", "And like an albatross asleep,", "Balanced on her wings of light,", "Hovered in the purple night,", "Ere she sought her ocean nest", "In the chambers of the West.", "She left me, and I stayed alone", "Thinking over every tone", "Which, though silent to the ear,", "The enchanted heart could hear,", "Like notes which die when born, but still", "Haunt the echoes of the hill;", "And feeling ever--oh, too much!--", "The soft vibration of her touch,", "As if her gentle hand, even now,", "Lightly trembled on my brow;", "And thus, although she absent were,", "Memory gave me all of her", "That even Fancy dares to claim:--", "Her presence had made weak and tame", "All passions, and I lived alone", "In the time which is our own;", "The past and future were forgot,", "As they had been, and would be, not.", "But soon, the guardian angel gone,", "The daemon reassumed his throne", "In my faint heart. I dare not speak", "My thoughts, but thus disturbed and weak", "I sat and saw the vessels glide", "Over the ocean bright and wide,", "Like spirit-winged chariots sent", "O'er some serenest element", "For ministrations strange and far;", "As if to some Elysian star", "Sailed for drink to medicine", "Such sweet and bitter pain as mine.", "And the wind that winged their flight", "From the land came fresh and light,", "And the scent of winged flowers,", "And the coolness of the hours", "Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day,", "Were scattered o'er the twinkling bay.", "And the fisher with his lamp", "And spear about the low rocks damp", "Crept, and struck the fish which came", "To worship the delusive flame.", "Too happy they, whose pleasure sought", "Extinguishes all sense and thought", "Of the regret that pleasure leaves,", "Destroying life alone, not peace!" ], "linecount": "52" }, { "title": "Lines: 'We Meet Not As We Parted'", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "We meet not as we parted,", "We feel more than all may see;", "My bosom is heavy-hearted,", "And thine full of doubt for me:--", "One moment has bound the free.", "", "That moment is gone for ever,", "Like lightning that flashed and died--", "Like a snowflake upon the river--", "Like a sunbeam upon the tide,", "Which the dark shadows hide.", "", "That moment from time was singled", "As the first of a life of pain;", "The cup of its joy was mingled", "--Delusion too sweet though vain!", "Too sweet to be mine again.", "", "Sweet lips, could my heart have hidden", "That its life was crushed by you,", "Ye would not have then forbidden", "The death which a heart so true", "Sought in your briny dew.", "", "...", "...", "...", "Methinks too little cost", "For a moment so found, so lost!" ], "linecount": "25" }, { "title": "The Isle", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "There was a little lawny islet", "By anemone and violet,", "Like mosaic, paven:", "And its roof was flowers and leaves", "Which the summer's breath enweaves,", "Where nor sun nor showers nor breeze", "Pierce the pines and tallest trees,", "Each a gem engraven;--", "Girt by many an azure wave", "With which the clouds and mountains pave", "A lake's blue chasm." ], "linecount": "11" }, { "title": "Epitaph", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "These are two friends whose lives were undivided;", "So let their memory be, now they have glided", "Under the grave; let not their bones be parted,", "For their two hearts in life were single-hearted.", "", " This morn thy gallant bark", " Sailed on a sunny sea:", " 'Tis noon, and tempests dark", " Have wrecked it on the lee.", " Ah woe! ah woe!", " By Spirits of the deep", " Thou'rt cradled on the billow", " To thy eternal sleep.", "", " Thou sleep'st upon the shore", " Beside the knelling surge,", " And Sea-nymphs evermore", " Shall sadly chant thy dirge.", " They come, they come,", " The Spirits of the deep,--", " While near thy seaweed pillow", " My lonely watch I keep.", "", " From far across the sea", " I hear a loud lament,", " By Echo's voice for thee", " From Ocean's caverns sent.", " O list! O list!", " The Spirits of the deep!", " They raise a wail of sorrow,", " While I forever weep." ], "linecount": "28" }, { "title": "Homer's Hymn to Castor and Pollux", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ye wild-eyed Muses, sing the Twins of Jove,", "Whom the fair-ankled Leda, mixed in love", "With mighty Saturn's Heaven-obscuring Child,", "On Taygetus, that lofty mountain wild,", "Brought forth in joy: mild Pollux, void of blame,", "And steed-subduing Castor, heirs of fame.", "These are the Powers who earth-born mortals save", "And ships, whose flight is swift along the wave.", "When wintry tempests o'er the savage sea", "Are raging, and the sailors tremblingly", "Call on the Twins of Jove with prayer and vow,", "Gathered in fear upon the lofty prow,", "And sacrifice with snow-white lambs,--the wind", "And the huge billow bursting close behind,", "Even then beneath the weltering waters bear", "The staggering ship--they suddenly appear,", "On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky,", "And lull the blasts in mute tranquillity,", "And strew the waves on the white Ocean's bed,", "Fair omen of the voyage; from toil and dread", "The sailors rest, rejoicing in the sight,", "And plough the quiet sea in safe delight." ], "linecount": "22" }, { "title": "Homer's Hymn to the Moon", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody,", "Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy", "Sing the wide-winged Moon! Around the earth,", "From her immortal head in Heaven shot forth,", "Far light is scattered--boundless glory springs;", "Where'er she spreads her many-beaming wings", "The lampless air glows round her golden crown.", "", "But when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone", "Under the sea, her beams within abide,", "Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean's tide,", "Clothing her form in garments glittering far,", "And having yoked to her immortal car", "The beam-invested steeds whose necks on high", "Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky", "A western Crescent, borne impetuously.", "Then is made full the circle of her light,", "And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright", "Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then,", "A wonder and a sign to mortal men.", "", "The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power", "Mingled in love and sleep--to whom she bore", "Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare", "Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are.", "", "Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity,", "Fair-haired and favourable! thus with thee", "My song beginning, by its music sweet", "Shall make immortal many a glorious feat", "Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well", "Which minstrels, servants of the Muses, tell." ], "linecount": "29" }, { "title": "Homer's Hymn to the Sun", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Offspring of Jove, Calliope, once more", "To the bright Sun, thy hymn of music pour;", "Whom to the child of star-clad Heaven and Earth", "Euryphaessa, large-eyed nymph, brought forth;", "Euryphaessa, the famed sister fair", "Of great Hyperion, who to him did bear", "A race of loveliest children; the young Morn,", "Whose arms are like twin roses newly born,", "The fair-haired Moon, and the immortal Sun,", "Who borne by heavenly steeds his race doth run", "Unconquerably, illuming the abodes", "Of mortal Men and the eternal Gods.", "", "Fiercely look forth his awe-inspiring eyes,", "Beneath his golden helmet, whence arise", "And are shot forth afar, clear beams of light;", "His countenance, with radiant glory bright,", "Beneath his graceful locks far shines around,", "And the light vest with which his limbs are bound,", "Of woof aethereal delicately twined,", "Glows in the stream of the uplifting wind.", "His rapid steeds soon bear him to the West;", "Where their steep flight his hands divine arrest,", "And the fleet car with yoke of gold, which he", "Sends from bright Heaven beneath the shadowy sea." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "Homer's Hymn to the Earth: Mother of All", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "O universal Mother, who dost keep", "From everlasting thy foundations deep,", "Eldest of things, Great Earth, I sing of thee!", "All shapes that have their dwelling in the sea,", "All things that fly, or on the ground divine", "Live, move, and there are nourished--these are thine;", "These from thy wealth thou dost sustain; from thee", "Fair babes are born, and fruits on every tree", "Hang ripe and large, revered Divinity!", "", "The life of mortal men beneath thy sway", "Is held; thy power both gives and takes away!", "Happy are they whom thy mild favours nourish;", "All things unstinted round them grow and flourish.", "For them, endures the life-sustaining field", "Its load of harvest, and their cattle yield", "Large increase, and their house with wealth is filled.", "Such honoured dwell in cities fair and free,", "The homes of lovely women, prosperously;", "Their sons exult in youth's new budding gladness,", "And their fresh daughters free from care or sadness,", "With bloom-inwoven dance and happy song,", "On the soft flowers the meadow-grass among,", "Leap round them sporting--such delights by thee", "Are given, rich Power, revered Divinity.", "", "Mother of gods, thou Wife of starry Heaven,", "Farewell! be thou propitious, and be given", "A happy life for this brief melody,", "Nor thou nor other songs shall unremembered be." ], "linecount": "28" }, { "title": "Homer's Hymn to Minerva", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "I sing the glorious Power with azure eyes,", "Athenian Pallas! tameless, chaste, and wise,", "Tritogenia, town-preserving Maid,", "Revered and mighty; from his awful head", "Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike armour dressed,", "Golden, all radiant! wonder strange possessed", "The everlasting Gods that Shape to see,", "Shaking a javelin keen, impetuously", "Rush from the crest of Aegis-bearing Jove;", "Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did move", "Beneath the might of the Cerulean-eyed;", "Earth dreadfully resounded, far and wide;", "And, lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high", "In purple billows, the tide suddenly", "Stood still, and great Hyperion's son long time", "Checked his swift steeds, till, where she stood sublime,", "Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw", "The arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view.", "Child of the Aegis-bearer, hail to thee,", "Nor thine nor others' praise shall unremembered be." ], "linecount": "20" }, { "title": "Homer's Hymn to Venus", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "[VERSES 1-55, WITH SOME OMISSIONS.]", "", "Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,", "Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight", "Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings", "Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things", "That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,", "Or earth, with her maternal ministry,", "Nourish innumerable, thy delight", "All seek ... O crowned Aphrodite!", "Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell:--", "Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well", "Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame", "Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.", "Diana ... golden-shafted queen,", "Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green", "Of the wild woods, the bow, the...", "And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit", "Of beasts among waste mountains,--such delight", "Is hers, and men who know and do the right.", "Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,", "Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,", "Such was the will of aegis-bearing Jove;", "But sternly she refused the ills of Love,", "And by her mighty Father's head she swore", "An oath not unperformed, that evermore", "A virgin she would live mid deities", "Divine: her father, for such gentle ties", "Renounced, gave glorious gifts--thus in his hall", "She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er all", "In every fane, her honours first arise", "From men--the eldest of Divinities.", "", "These spirits she persuades not, nor deceives,", "But none beside escape, so well she weaves", "Her unseen toils; nor mortal men, nor gods", "Who live secure in their unseen abodes.", "She won the soul of him whose fierce delight", "Is thunder--first in glory and in might.", "And, as she willed, his mighty mind deceiving,", "With mortal limbs his deathless limbs inweaving,", "Concealed him from his spouse and sister fair,", "Whom to wise Saturn ancient Rhea bare.", "but in return,", "In Venus Jove did soft desire awaken,", "That by her own enchantments overtaken,", "She might, no more from human union free,", "Burn for a nursling of mortality.", "For once amid the assembled Deities,", "The laughter-loving Venus from her eyes", "", "Shot forth the light of a soft starlight smile,", "And boasting said, that she, secure the while,", "Could bring at Will to the assembled Gods", "The mortal tenants of earth's dark abodes,", "And mortal offspring from a deathless stem", "She could produce in scorn and spite of them.", "Therefore he poured desire into her breast", "Of young Anchises,", "Feeding his herds among the mossy fountains", "Of the wide Ida's many-folded mountains,--", "Whom Venus saw, and loved, and the love clung", "Like wasting fire her senses wild among." ], "linecount": "60" }, { "title": "The Cyclops", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A SATYRIC DRAMA TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF EURIPIDES.", "", "SILENUS.", "ULYSSES.", "CHORUS OF SATYRS.", "THE CYCLOPS.", "", "SILENUS:", "O Bacchus, what a world of toil, both now", "And ere these limbs were overworn with age,", "Have I endured for thee! First, when thou fled'st", "The mountain-nymphs who nursed thee, driven afar", "By the strange madness Juno sent upon thee;", "Then in the battle of the Sons of Earth,", "When I stood foot by foot close to thy side,", "No unpropitious fellow-combatant,", "And, driving through his shield my winged spear,", "Slew vast Enceladus. Consider now,", "Is it a dream of which I speak to thee?", "By Jove it is not, for you have the trophies!", "And now I suffer more than all before.", "For when I heard that Juno had devised", "A tedious voyage for you, I put to sea", "With all my children quaint in search of you,", "And I myself stood on the beaked prow", "And fixed the naked mast; and all my boys", "Leaning upon their oars, with splash and strain", "Made white with foam the green and purple sea,--", "And so we sought you, king. We were sailing", "Near Malea, when an eastern wind arose,", "And drove us to this waste Aetnean rock;", "The one-eyed children of the Ocean God,", "The man-destroying Cyclopses, inhabit,", "On this wild shore, their solitary caves,", "And one of these, named Polypheme. has caught us", "To be his slaves; and so, for all delight", "Of Bacchic sports, sweet dance and melody,", "We keep this lawless giant's wandering flocks.", "My sons indeed on far declivities,", "Young things themselves, tend on the youngling sheep,", "But I remain to fill the water-casks,", "Or sweeping the hard floor, or ministering", "Some impious and abominable meal", "To the fell Cyclops. I am wearied of it!", "And now I must scrape up the littered floor", "With this great iron rake, so to receive", "My absent master and his evening sheep", "In a cave neat and clean. Even now I see", "My children tending the flocks hitherward.", "Ha! what is this? are your Sicinnian measures", "Even now the same, as when with dance and song", "You brought young Bacchus to Althaea's halls?", "", "CHORUS OF SATYRS:", "", "STROPHE:", "Where has he of race divine", "Wandered in the winding rocks?", "Here the air is calm and fine", "For the father of the flocks;--", "Here the grass is soft and sweet,", "And the river-eddies meet", "In the trough beside the cave,", "Bright as in their fountain wave.--", "Neither here, nor on the dew", "Of the lawny uplands feeding?", "Oh, you come!--a stone at you", "Will I throw to mend your breeding;--", "Get along, you horned thing,", "Wild, seditious, rambling!", "", "EPODE:", "An Iacchic melody", "To the golden Aphrodite", "Will I lift, as erst did I", "Seeking her and her delight", "With the Maenads, whose white feet", "To the music glance and fleet.", "Bacchus, O beloved, where,", "Shaking wide thy yellow hair,", "Wanderest thou alone, afar?", "To the one-eyed Cyclops, we,", "Who by right thy servants are,", "Minister in misery,", "In these wretched goat-skins clad,", "Far from thy delights and thee.", "", "SILENUS:", "Be silent, sons; command the slaves to drive", "The gathered flocks into the rock-roofed cave.", "", "CHORUS:", "Go! But what needs this serious haste, O father?", "", "SILENUS:", "I see a Grecian vessel on the coast,", "And thence the rowers with some general", "Approaching to this cave.--About their necks", "Hang empty vessels, as they wanted food,", "And water-flasks.--Oh, miserable strangers!", "Whence come they, that they know not what and who", "My master is, approaching in ill hour", "The inhospitable roof of Polypheme,", "And the Cyclopian jaw-bone, man-destroying?", "Be silent, Satyrs, while I ask and hear", "Whence coming, they arrive the Aetnean hill.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Friends, can you show me some clear water-spring,", "The remedy of our thirst? Will any one", "Furnish with food seamen in want of it?", "Ha! what is this? We seem to be arrived", "At the blithe court of Bacchus. I observe", "This sportive band of Satyrs near the caves.", "First let me greet the elder.--Hail!", "", "SILENUS:", "Hail thou,", "O Stranger! tell thy country and thy race.", "", "ULYSSES:", "The Ithacan Ulysses and the king", "Of Cephalonia.", "", "SILENUS:", "Oh! I know the man,", "Wordy and shrewd, the son of Sisyphus.", "", "ULYSSES:", "I am the same, but do not rail upon me.--", "", "SILENUS:", "Whence sailing do you come to Sicily?", "", "ULYSSES:", "From Ilion, and from the Trojan toils.", "", "SILENUS:", "How, touched you not at your paternal shore?", "", "ULYSSES:", "The strength of tempests bore me here by force.", "", "SILENUS:", "The self-same accident occurred to me.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Were you then driven here by stress of weather?", "", "SILENUS:", "Following the Pirates who had kidnapped Bacchus.", "", "ULYSSES:", "What land is this, and who inhabit it?--", "", "SILENUS:", "Aetna, the loftiest peak in Sicily.", "", "ULYSSES:", "And are there walls, and tower-surrounded towns?", "", "SILENUS:", "There are not.--These lone rocks are bare of men.", "", "ULYSSES:", "And who possess the land? the race of beasts?", "", "SILENUS:", "Cyclops, who live in caverns, not in houses.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Obeying whom? Or is the state popular?", "", "SILENUS:", "Shepherds: no one obeys any in aught.", "", "ULYSSES:", "How live they? do they sow the corn of Ceres?", "", "SILENUS:", "On milk and cheese, and on the flesh of sheep.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Have they the Bromian drink from the vine's stream?", "", "SILENUS:", "Ah! no; they live in an ungracious land.", "", "ULYSSES:", "And are they just to strangers?--hospitable?", "", "SILENUS:", "They think the sweetest thing a stranger brings", "Is his own flesh.", "", "ULYSSES:", "What! do they eat man's flesh?", "", "SILENUS:", "No one comes here who is not eaten up.", "", "ULYSSES:", "The Cyclops now--where is he? Not at home?", "", "SILENUS:", "Absent on Aetna, hunting with his dogs.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Know'st thou what thou must do to aid us hence?", "", "SILENUS:", "I know not: we will help you all we can.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Provide us food, of which we are in want.", "", "SILENUS:", "Here is not anything, as I said, but meat.", "", "ULYSSES:", "But meat is a sweet remedy for hunger.", "", "SILENUS:", "Cow's milk there is, and store of curdled cheese.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Bring out:--I would see all before I bargain.", "", "SILENUS:", "But how much gold will you engage to give?", "", "ULYSSES:", "I bring no gold, but Bacchic juice.", "", "SILENUS:", "Oh, joy!", "Tis long since these dry lips were wet with wine.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Maron, the son of the God, gave it me.", "", "SILENUS:", "Whom I have nursed a baby in my arms.", "", "ULYSSES:", "The son of Bacchus, for your clearer knowledge.", "", "SILENUS:", "Have you it now?--or is it in the ship?", "", "ULYSSES:", "Old man, this skin contains it, which you see.", "", "SILENUS:", "Why, this would hardly be a mouthful for me.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Nay, twice as much as you can draw from thence.", "", "SILENUS:", "You speak of a fair fountain, sweet to me.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Would you first taste of the unmingled wine?", "", "SILENUS:", "'Tis just--tasting invites the purchaser.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Here is the cup, together with the skin.", "", "SILENUS:", "Pour: that the draught may fillip my remembrance.", "", "ULYSSES:", "See!", "", "SILENUS:", "Papaiapax! what a sweet smell it has!", "", "ULYSSES:", "You see it then?--", "", "SILENUS:", "By Jove, no! but I smell it.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Taste, that you may not praise it in words only.", "", "SILENUS:", "Babai! Great Bacchus calls me forth to dance!", "Joy! joy!", "", "ULYSSES:", "Did it flow sweetly down your throat?", "", "SILENUS:", "So that it tingled to my very nails.", "", "ULYSSES:", "And in addition I will give you gold.", "", "SILENUS:", "Let gold alone! only unlock the cask.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Bring out some cheeses now, or a young goat.", "", "SILENUS:", "That will I do, despising any master.", "Yes, let me drink one cup, and I will give", "All that the Cyclops feed upon their mountains.", "", "...", "", "CHORUS:", "Ye have taken Troy and laid your hands on Helen?", "", "ULYSSES:", "And utterly destroyed the race of Priam.", "", "...", "", "SILENUS:", "The wanton wretch! she was bewitched to see", "The many-coloured anklets and the chain", "Of woven gold which girt the neck of Paris,", "And so she left that good man Menelaus.", "There should be no more women in the world", "But such as are reserved for me alone.--", "See, here are sheep, and here are goats, Ulysses,", "Here are unsparing cheeses of pressed milk;", "Take them; depart with what good speed ye may;", "First leaving my reward, the Bacchic dew", "Of joy-inspiring grapes.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Ah me! Alas!", "What shall we do? the Cyclops is at hand!", "Old man, we perish! whither can we fly?", "", "SILENUS:", "Hide yourselves quick within that hollow rock.", "", "ULYSSES:", "'Twere perilous to fly into the net.", "", "SILENUS:", "The cavern has recesses numberless;", "Hide yourselves quick.", "", "ULYSSES:", "That will I never do!", "The mighty Troy would be indeed disgraced", "If I should fly one man. How many times", "Have I withstood, with shield immovable.", "Ten thousand Phrygians!--if I needs must die,", "Yet will I die with glory;--if I live,", "The praise which I have gained will yet remain.", "", "SILENUS:", "What, ho! assistance, comrades, haste, assistance!", "", "[THE CYCLOPS, SILENUS, ULYSSES; CHORUS.]", "", "CYCLOPS:", "What is this tumult? Bacchus is not here,", "Nor tympanies nor brazen castanets.", "How are my young lambs in the cavern? Milking", "Their dams or playing by their sides? And is", "The new cheese pressed into the bulrush baskets?", "Speak! I'll beat some of you till you rain tears--", "Look up, not downwards when I speak to you.", "", "SILENUS:", "See! I now gape at Jupiter himself;", "I stare upon Orion and the stars.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Well, is the dinner fitly cooked and laid?", "", "SILENUS:", "All ready, if your throat is ready too.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Are the bowls full of milk besides?", "", "SILENUS:", "O'er-brimming;", "So you may drink a tunful if you will.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Is it ewe's milk or cow's milk, or both mixed?--", "", "SILENUS:", "Both, either; only pray don't swallow me.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "By no means.--", "...", "What is this crowd I see beside the stalls?", "Outlaws or thieves? for near my cavern-home", "I see my young lambs coupled two by two", "With willow bands; mixed with my cheeses lie", "Their implements; and this old fellow here", "Has his bald head broken with stripes.", "", "SILENUS:", "Ah me!", "I have been beaten till I burn with fever.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "By whom? Who laid his fist upon your head?", "", "SILENUS:", "Those men, because I would not suffer them", "To steal your goods.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Did not the rascals know", "I am a God, sprung from the race of Heaven?", "", "SILENUS:", "I told them so, but they bore off your things,", "And ate the cheese in spite of all I said,", "And carried out the lambs--and said, moreover,", "They'd pin you down with a three-cubit collar,", "And pull your vitals out through your one eye,", "Furrow your back with stripes, then, binding you,", "Throw you as ballast into the ship's hold,", "And then deliver you, a slave, to move", "Enormous rocks, or found a vestibule.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "In truth? Nay, haste, and place in order quickly", "The cooking-knives, and heap upon the hearth,", "And kindle it, a great faggot of wood.--", "As soon as they are slaughtered, they shall fill", "My belly, broiling warm from the live coals,", "Or boiled and seethed within the bubbling caldron.", "I am quite sick of the wild mountain game;", "Of stags and lions I have gorged enough,", "And I grow hungry for the flesh of men.", "", "SILENUS:", "Nay, master, something new is very pleasant", "After one thing forever, and of late", "Very few strangers have approached our cave.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Hear, Cyclops, a plain tale on the other side.", "We, wanting to buy food, came from our ship", "Into the neighbourhood of your cave, and here", "This old Silenus gave us in exchange", "These lambs for wine, the which he took and drank,", "And all by mutual compact, without force.", "There is no word of truth in what he says,", "For slyly he was selling all your store.", "", "SILENUS:", "I? May you perish, wretch--", "", "ULYSSES:", "If I speak false!", "", "SILENUS:", "Cyclops, I swear by Neptune who begot thee,", "By mighty Triton and by Nereus old,", "Calypso and the glaucous Ocean Nymphs,", "The sacred waves and all the race of fishes--", "Be these the witnesses, my dear sweet master,", "My darling little Cyclops, that I never", "Gave any of your stores to these false strangers;--", "If I speak false may those whom most I love,", "My children, perish wretchedly!", "", "CHORUS:", "There stop!", "I saw him giving these things to the strangers.", "If I speak false, then may my father perish,", "But do not thou wrong hospitality.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "You lie! I swear that he is juster far", "Than Rhadamanthus--I trust more in him.", "But let me ask, whence have ye sailed, O strangers?", "Who are you? And what city nourished ye?", "", "ULYSSES:", "Our race is Ithacan--having destroyed", "The town of Troy, the tempests of the sea", "Have driven us on thy land, O Polypheme.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "What, have ye shared in the unenvied spoil", "Of the false Helen, near Scamander's stream?", "", "ULYSSES:", "The same, having endured a woful toil.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Oh, basest expedition! sailed ye not", "From Greece to Phrygia for one woman's sake?", "", "ULYSSES:", "'Twas the Gods' work--no mortal was in fault.", "But, O great Offspring of the Ocean-King,", "We pray thee and admonish thee with freedom,", "That thou dost spare thy friends who visit thee,", "And place no impious food within thy jaws.", "For in the depths of Greece we have upreared", "Temples to thy great Father, which are all", "His homes. The sacred bay of Taenarus", "Remains inviolate, and each dim recess", "Scooped high on the Malean promontory,", "And aery Sunium's silver-veined crag,", "Which divine Pallas keeps unprofaned ever,", "The Gerastian asylums, and whate'er", "Within wide Greece our enterprise has kept", "From Phrygian contumely; and in which", "You have a common care, for you inhabit", "The skirts of Grecian land, under the roots", "Of Aetna and its crags, spotted with fire.", "Turn then to converse under human laws,", "Receive us shipwrecked suppliants, and provide", "Food, clothes, and fire, and hospitable gifts;", "Nor fixing upon oxen-piercing spits", "Our limbs, so fill your belly and your jaws.", "Priam's wide land has widowed Greece enough;", "And weapon-winged murder leaped together", "Enough of dead, and wives are husbandless,", "And ancient women and gray fathers wail", "Their childless age;--if you should roast the rest--", "And 'tis a bitter feast that you prepare--", "Where then would any turn? Yet be persuaded;", "Forgo the lust of your jaw-bone; prefer", "Pious humanity to wicked will:", "Many have bought too dear their evil joys.", "", "SILENUS:", "Let me advise you, do not spare a morsel", "Of all his flesh. If you should eat his tongue", "You would become most eloquent, O Cyclops.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Wealth, my good fellow, is the wise man's God,", "All other things are a pretence and boast.", "What are my father's ocean promontories,", "The sacred rocks whereon he dwells, to me?", "Stranger, I laugh to scorn Jove's thunderbolt,", "I know not that his strength is more than mine.", "As to the rest I care not.--When he pours", "Rain from above, I have a close pavilion", "Under this rock, in which I lie supine,", "Feasting on a roast calf or some wild beast,", "And drinking pans of milk, and gloriously", "Emulating the thunder of high Heaven.", "And when the Thracian wind pours down the snow,", "I wrap my body in the skins of beasts,", "Kindle a fire, and bid the snow whirl on.", "The earth, by force, whether it will or no,", "Bringing forth grass, fattens my flocks and herds,", "Which, to what other God but to myself", "And this great belly, first of deities,", "Should I be bound to sacrifice? I well know", "The wise man's only Jupiter is this,", "To eat and drink during his little day,", "And give himself no care. And as for those", "Who complicate with laws the life of man,", "I freely give them tears for their reward.", "I will not cheat my soul of its delight,", "Or hesitate in dining upon you:--", "And that I may be quit of all demands,", "These are my hospitable gifts;--fierce fire", "And yon ancestral caldron, which o'er-bubbling", "Shall finely cook your miserable flesh.", "Creep in!--", "", "...", "", "ULYSSES:", "Ai! ai! I have escaped the Trojan toils,", "I have escaped the sea, and now I fall", "Under the cruel grasp of one impious man.", "O Pallas, Mistress, Goddess, sprung from Jove,", "Now, now, assist me! Mightier toils than Troy", "Are these;--I totter on the chasms of peril;--", "And thou who inhabitest the thrones", "Of the bright stars, look, hospitable Jove,", "Upon this outrage of thy deity,", "Otherwise be considered as no God!", "", "CHORUS (ALONE):", "For your gaping gulf and your gullet wide,", "The ravin is ready on every side,", "The limbs of the strangers are cooked and done;", "There is boiled meat, and roast meat, and meat from the coal,", "You may chop it, and tear it, and gnash it for fun,", "An hairy goat's-skin contains the whole.", "Let me but escape, and ferry me o'er", "The stream of your wrath to a safer shore.", "The Cyclops Aetnean is cruel and bold,", "He murders the strangers", "That sit on his hearth,", "And dreads no avengers", "To rise from the earth.", "He roasts the men before they are cold,", "He snatches them broiling from the coal,", "And from the caldron pulls them whole,", "And minces their flesh and gnaws their bone", "With his cursed teeth, till all be gone.", "Farewell, foul pavilion:", "Farewell, rites of dread!", "The Cyclops vermilion,", "With slaughter uncloying,", "Now feasts on the dead,", "In the flesh of strangers joying!", "", "ULYSSES:", "O Jupiter! I saw within the cave", "Horrible things; deeds to be feigned in words,", "But not to be believed as being done.", "", "CHORUS:", "What! sawest thou the impious Polypheme", "Feasting upon your loved companions now?", "", "ULYSSES:", "Selecting two, the plumpest of the crowd,", "He grasped them in his hands.--", "", "CHORUS:", "Unhappy man!", "", "...", "", "ULYSSES:", "Soon as we came into this craggy place,", "Kindling a fire, he cast on the broad hearth", "The knotty limbs of an enormous oak,", "Three waggon-loads at least, and then he strewed", "Upon the ground, beside the red firelight,", "His couch of pine-leaves; and he milked the cows,", "And pouring forth the white milk, filled a bowl", "Three cubits wide and four in depth, as much", "As would contain ten amphorae, and bound it", "With ivy wreaths; then placed upon the fire", "A brazen pot to boil, and made red hot", "The points of spits, not sharpened with the sickle", "But with a fruit tree bough, and with the jaws", "Of axes for Aetnean slaughterings.", "And when this God-abandoned Cook of Hell", "Had made all ready, he seized two of us", "And killed them in a kind of measured manner;", "For he flung one against the brazen rivets", "Of the huge caldron, and seized the other", "By the foot's tendon, and knocked out his brains", "Upon the sharp edge of the craggy stone:", "Then peeled his flesh with a great cooking-knife", "And put him down to roast. The other's limbs", "He chopped into the caldron to be boiled.", "And I, with the tears raining from my eyes,", "Stood near the Cyclops, ministering to him;", "The rest, in the recesses of the cave,", "Clung to the rock like bats, bloodless with fear.", "When he was filled with my companions' flesh,", "He threw himself upon the ground and sent", "A loathsome exhalation from his maw.", "Then a divine thought came to me. I filled", "The cup of Maron, and I offered him", "To taste, and said:--'Child of the Ocean God,", "Behold what drink the vines of Greece produce,", "The exultation and the joy of Bacchus.'", "He, satiated with his unnatural food,", "Received it, and at one draught drank it off,", "And taking my hand, praised me:--'Thou hast given", "A sweet draught after a sweet meal, dear guest.'", "And I, perceiving that it pleased him, filled", "Another cup, well knowing that the wine", "Would wound him soon and take a sure revenge.", "And the charm fascinated him, and I", "Plied him cup after cup, until the drink", "Had warmed his entrails, and he sang aloud", "In concert with my wailing fellow-seamen", "A hideous discord--and the cavern rung.", "I have stolen out, so that if you will", "You may achieve my safety and your own.", "But say, do you desire, or not, to fly", "This uncompanionable man, and dwell", "As was your wont among the Grecian Nymphs", "Within the fanes of your beloved God?", "Your father there within agrees to it,", "But he is weak and overcome with wine,", "And caught as if with bird-lime by the cup,", "He claps his wings and crows in doting joy.", "You who are young escape with me, and find", "Bacchus your ancient friend; unsuited he", "To this rude Cyclops.", "", "CHORUS:", "Oh my dearest friend,", "That I could see that day, and leave for ever", "The impious Cyclops.", "", "...", "", "ULYSSES:", "Listen then what a punishment I have", "For this fell monster, how secure a flight", "From your hard servitude.", "", "CHORUS:", "O sweeter far", "Than is the music of an Asian lyre", "Would be the news of Polypheme destroyed.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Delighted with the Bacchic drink he goes", "To call his brother Cyclops--who inhabit", "A village upon Aetna not far off.", "", "CHORUS:", "I understand, catching him when alone", "You think by some measure to dispatch him,", "Or thrust him from the precipice.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Oh no;", "Nothing of that kind; my device is subtle.", "", "CHORUS:", "How then? I heard of old that thou wert wise.", "", "ULYSSES:", "I will dissuade him from this plan, by saying", "It were unwise to give the Cyclopses", "This precious drink, which if enjoyed alone", "Would make life sweeter for a longer time.", "When, vanquished by the Bacchic power, he sleeps,", "There is a trunk of olive wood within,", "Whose point having made sharp with this good sword", "I will conceal in fire, and when I see", "It is alight, will fix it, burning yet,", "Within the socket of the Cyclops' eye", "And melt it out with fire--as when a man", "Turns by its handle a great auger round,", "Fitting the framework of a ship with beams,", "So will I, in the Cyclops' fiery eye", "Turn round the brand and dry the pupil up.", "", "CHORUS:", "Joy! I am mad with joy at your device.", "", "ULYSSES:", "And then with you, my friends, and the old man,", "We'll load the hollow depth of our black ship,", "And row with double strokes from this dread shore.", "", "CHORUS:", "May I, as in libations to a God,", "Share in the blinding him with the red brand?", "I would have some communion in his death.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Doubtless: the brand is a great brand to hold.", "", "CHORUS:", "Oh! I would lift an hundred waggon-loads,", "If like a wasp's nest I could scoop the eye out", "Of the detested Cyclops.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Silence now!", "Ye know the close device--and when I call,", "Look ye obey the masters of the craft.", "I will not save myself and leave behind", "My comrades in the cave: I might escape,", "Having got clear from that obscure recess,", "But 'twere unjust to leave in jeopardy", "The dear companions who sailed here with me.", "", "CHORUS:", "Come! who is first, that with his hand", "Will urge down the burning brand", "Through the lids, and quench and pierce", "The Cyclops' eye so fiery fierce?", "", "SEMICHORUS 1 [SONG WITHIN]:", "Listen! listen! he is coming,", "A most hideous discord humming.", "Drunken, museless, awkward, yelling,", "Far along his rocky dwelling;", "Let us with some comic spell", "Teach the yet unteachable.", "By all means he must be blinded,", "If my counsel be but minded.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "Happy thou made odorous", "With the dew which sweet grapes weep,", "To the village hastening thus,", "Seek the vines that soothe to sleep;", "Having first embraced thy friend,", "Thou in luxury without end,", "With the strings of yellow hair,", "Of thy voluptuous leman fair,", "Shalt sit playing on a bed!--", "Speak! what door is opened?", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Ha! ha! ha! I'm full of wine,", "Heavy with the joy divine,", "With the young feast oversated;", "Like a merchant's vessel freighted", "To the water's edge, my crop", "Is laden to the gullet's top.", "The fresh meadow grass of spring", "Tempts me forth thus wandering", "To my brothers on the mountains,", "Who shall share the wine's sweet fountains.", "Bring the cask, O stranger, bring!", "", "CHORUS:", "One with eyes the fairest", "Cometh from his dwelling;", "Some one loves thee, rarest", "Bright beyond my telling.", "In thy grace thou shinest", "Like some nymph divinest", "In her caverns dewy:--", "All delights pursue thee,", "Soon pied flowers, sweet-breathing,", "Shall thy head be wreathing.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Listen, O Cyclops, for I am well skilled", "In Bacchus, whom I gave thee of to drink.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "What sort of God is Bacchus then accounted?", "", "ULYSSES:", "The greatest among men for joy of life.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "I gulped him down with very great delight.", "", "ULYSSES:", "This is a God who never injures men.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "How does the God like living in a skin?", "", "ULYSSES:", "He is content wherever he is put.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Gods should not have their body in a skin.", "", "ULYSSES:", "If he gives joy, what is his skin to you?", "", "CYCLOPS:", "I hate the skin, but love the wine within.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Stay here now: drink, and make your spirit glad.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Should I not share this liquor with my brothers?", "", "ULYSSES:", "Keep it yourself, and be more honoured so.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "I were more useful, giving to my friends.", "", "ULYSSES:", "But village mirth breeds contests, broils, and blows.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "When I am drunk none shall lay hands on me.--", "", "ULYSSES:", "A drunken man is better within doors.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "He is a fool, who drinking, loves not mirth.", "", "ULYSSES:", "But he is wise, who drunk, remains at home.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "What shall I do, Silenus? Shall I stay?", "", "SILENUS:", "Stay--for what need have you of pot companions?", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Indeed this place is closely carpeted", "With flowers and grass.", "", "SILENUS:", "And in the sun-warm noon", "'Tis sweet to drink. Lie down beside me now,", "Placing your mighty sides upon the ground.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "What do you put the cup behind me for?", "", "SILENUS:", "That no one here may touch it.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Thievish One!", "You want to drink;--here place it in the midst.", "And thou, O stranger, tell how art thou called?", "", "ULYSSES:", "My name is Nobody. What favour now", "Shall I receive to praise you at your hands?", "", "CYCLOPS:", "I'll feast on you the last of your companions.", "", "ULYSSES:", "You grant your guest a fair reward, O Cyclops.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Ha! what is this? Stealing the wine, you rogue!", "", "SILENUS:", "It was this stranger kissing me because", "I looked so beautiful.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "You shall repent", "For kissing the coy wine that loves you not.", "", "SILENUS:", "By Jupiter! you said that I am fair.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Pour out, and only give me the cup full.", "", "SILENUS:", "How is it mixed? let me observe.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Curse you!", "Give it me so.", "", "SILENUS:", "Not till I see you wear", "That coronal, and taste the cup to you.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Thou wily traitor!", "", "SILENUS:", "But the wine is sweet.", "Ay, you will roar if you are caught in drinking.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "See now, my lip is clean and all my beard.", "", "SILENUS:", "Now put your elbow right and drink again.", "As you see me drink--...", "", "CYCLOPS:", "How now?", "", "SILENUS:", "Ye Gods, what a delicious gulp!", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Guest, take it;--you pour out the wine for me.", "", "ULYSSES:", "The wine is well accustomed to my hand.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Pour out the wine!", "", "ULYSSES:", "I pour; only be silent.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Silence is a hard task to him who drinks.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Take it and drink it off; leave not a dreg.", "Oh that the drinker died with his own draught!", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Papai! the vine must be a sapient plant.", "", "ULYSSES:", "If you drink much after a mighty feast,", "Moistening your thirsty maw, you will sleep well;", "If you leave aught, Bacchus will dry you up.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Ho! ho! I can scarce rise. What pure delight!", "The heavens and earth appear to whirl about", "Confusedly. I see the throne of Jove", "And the clear congregation of the Gods.", "Now if the Graces tempted me to kiss", "I would not--for the loveliest of them all", "I would not leave this Ganymede.", "", "SILENUS:", "Polypheme,", "I am the Ganymede of Jupiter.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "By Jove, you are; I bore you off from Dardanus.", "", "...", "", "[ULYSSES AND THE CHORUS.]", "", "ULYSSES:", "Come, boys of Bacchus, children of high race,", "This man within is folded up in sleep,", "And soon will vomit flesh from his fell maw;", "The brand under the shed thrusts out its smoke,", "No preparation needs, but to burn out", "The monster's eye;--but bear yourselves like men.", "", "CHORUS:", "We will have courage like the adamant rock,", "All things are ready for you here; go in,", "Before our father shall perceive the noise.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Vulcan, Aetnean king! burn out with fire", "The shining eye of this thy neighbouring monster!", "And thou, O Sleep, nursling of gloomy Night,", "Descend unmixed on this God-hated beast,", "And suffer not Ulysses and his comrades,", "Returning from their famous Trojan toils,", "To perish by this man, who cares not either", "For God or mortal; or I needs must think", "That Chance is a supreme divinity,", "And things divine are subject to her power.", "", "CHORUS:", "Soon a crab the throat will seize", "Of him who feeds upon his guest,", "Fire will burn his lamp-like eyes", "In revenge of such a feast!", "A great oak stump now is lying", "In the ashes yet undying.", "Come, Maron, come!", "Raging let him fix the doom,", "Let him tear the eyelid up", "Of the Cyclops--that his cup", "May be evil!", "Oh! I long to dance and revel", "With sweet Bromian, long desired,", "In loved ivy wreaths attired;", "Leaving this abandoned home--", "Will the moment ever come?", "", "ULYSSES:", "Be silent, ye wild things! Nay, hold your peace,", "And keep your lips quite close; dare not to breathe,", "Or spit, or e'en wink, lest ye wake the monster,", "Until his eye be tortured out with fire.", "", "CHORUS:", "Nay, we are silent, and we chaw the air.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Come now, and lend a hand to the great stake", "Within--it is delightfully red hot.", "", "CHORUS:", "You then command who first should seize the stake", "To burn the Cyclops' eye, that all may share", "In the great enterprise.", "", "SEMICHORUS 1:", "We are too far;", "We cannot at this distance from the door", "Thrust fire into his eye.", "", "SEMICHORUS 2:", "And we just now", "Have become lame! cannot move hand or foot.", "", "CHORUS:", "The same thing has occurred to us,--our ankles", "Are sprained with standing here, I know not how.", "", "ULYSSES:", "What, sprained with standing still?", "", "CHORUS:", "And there is dust", "Or ashes in our eyes, I know not whence.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Cowardly dogs! ye will not aid me then?", "", "CHORUS:", "With pitying my own back and my back-bone,", "And with not wishing all my teeth knocked out,", "This cowardice comes of itself--but stay,", "I know a famous Orphic incantation", "To make the brand stick of its own accord", "Into the skull of this one-eyed son of Earth.", "", "ULYSSES:", "Of old I knew ye thus by nature; now", "I know ye better.--I will use the aid", "Of my own comrades. Yet though weak of hand", "Speak cheerfully, that so ye may awaken", "The courage of my friends with your blithe words.", "", "CHORUS:", "This I will do with peril of my life,", "And blind you with my exhortations, Cyclops.", "Hasten and thrust,", "And parch up to dust,", "The eye of the beast", "Who feeds on his guest.", "Burn and blind", "The Aetnean hind!", "Scoop and draw,", "But beware lest he claw", "Your limbs near his maw.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Ah me! my eyesight is parched up to cinders.", "", "CHORUS:", "What a sweet paean! sing me that again!", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Ah me! indeed, what woe has fallen upon me!", "But, wretched nothings, think ye not to flee", "Out of this rock; I, standing at the outlet,", "Will bar the way and catch you as you pass.", "", "CHORUS:", "What are you roaring out, Cyclops?", "", "CYCLOPS:", "I perish!", "", "CHORUS:", "For you are wicked.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "And besides miserable.", "", "CHORUS:", "What, did you fall into the fire when drunk?", "", "CYCLOPS:", "'Twas Nobody destroyed me.", "", "CHORUS:", "Why then no one", "Can be to blame.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "I say 'twas Nobody", "Who blinded me.", "", "CHORUS:", "Why then you are not blind.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "I wish you were as blind as I am.", "", "CHORUS:", "Nay,", "It cannot be that no one made you blind.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "You jeer me; where, I ask, is Nobody?", "", "CHORUS:", "Nowhere, O Cyclops.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "It was that stranger ruined me:--the wretch", "First gave me wine and then burned out my eye,", "For wine is strong and hard to struggle with.", "Have they escaped, or are they yet within?", "", "CHORUS:", "They stand under the darkness of the rock", "And cling to it.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "At my right hand or left?", "", "CHORUS:", "Close on your right.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Where?", "", "CHORUS:", "Near the rock itself.", "You have them.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Oh, misfortune on misfortune!", "I've cracked my skull.", "", "CHORUS:", "Now they escape you--there.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Not there, although you say so.", "", "CHORUS:", "Not on that side.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Where then?", "", "CHORUS:", "They creep about you on your left.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Ah! I am mocked! They jeer me in my ills.", "", "CHORUS:", "Not there! he is a little there beyond you.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Detested wretch! where are you?", "", "ULYSSES:", "Far from you", "I keep with care this body of Ulysses.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "What do you say? You proffer a new name.", "", "ULYSSES:", "My father named me so; and I have taken", "A full revenge for your unnatural feast;", "I should have done ill to have burned down Troy", "And not revenged the murder of my comrades.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Ai! ai! the ancient oracle is accomplished;", "It said that I should have my eyesight blinded", "By your coming from Troy, yet it foretold", "That you should pay the penalty for this", "By wandering long over the homeless sea.", "", "ULYSSES:", "I bid thee weep--consider what I say;", "I go towards the shore to drive my ship", "To mine own land, o'er the Sicilian wave.", "", "CYCLOPS:", "Not so, if, whelming you with this huge stone,", "I can crush you and all your men together;", "I will descend upon the shore, though blind,", "Groping my way adown the steep ravine.", "", "CHORUS:", "And we, the shipmates of Ulysses now,", "Will serve our Bacchus all our happy lives." ], "linecount": "1021" }, { "title": "To Stella", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "FROM THE GREEK OF PLATO.", "", "Thou wert the morning star among the living,", "Ere thy fair light had fled;--", "Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving", "New splendour to the dead." ], "linecount": "5" }, { "title": "Fragment of the Elegy on the Death of Adonis", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "PROM THE GREEK OF BION.", "", "I mourn Adonis dead--loveliest Adonis--", "Dead, dead Adonis--and the Loves lament.", "Sleep no more, Venus, wrapped in purple woof--", "Wake violet-stoled queen, and weave the crown", "Of Death,--'tis Misery calls,--for he is dead.", "", "The lovely one lies wounded in the mountains,", "His white thigh struck with the white tooth; he scarce", "Yet breathes; and Venus hangs in agony there.", "The dark blood wanders o'er his snowy limbs,", "His eyes beneath their lids are lustreless,", "The rose has fled from his wan lips, and there", "That kiss is dead, which Venus gathers yet.", "", "A deep, deep wound Adonis...", "A deeper Venus bears upon her heart.", "See, his beloved dogs are gathering round--", "The Oread nymphs are weeping--Aphrodite", "With hair unbound is wandering through the woods,", "'Wildered, ungirt, unsandalled--the thorns pierce", "Her hastening feet and drink her sacred blood.", "Bitterly screaming out, she is driven on", "Through the long vales; and her Assyrian boy,", "Her love, her husband, calls--the purple blood", "From his struck thigh stains her white navel now,", "Her bosom, and her neck before like snow.", "", "Alas for Cytherea--the Loves mourn--", "The lovely, the beloved is gone!--and now", "Her sacred beauty vanishes away.", "For Venus whilst Adonis lived was fair--", "Alas! her loveliness is dead with him.", "The oaks and mountains cry, Ai! ai! Adonis!", "The springs their waters change to tears and weep--", "The flowers are withered up with grief...", "", "Ai! ai! ... Adonis is dead", "Echo resounds ... Adonis dead.", "Who will weep not thy dreadful woe. O Venus?", "Soon as she saw and knew the mortal wound", "Of her Adonis--saw the life-blood flow", "From his fair thigh, now wasting,--wailing loud", "She clasped him, and cried ... 'Stay, Adonis!", "Stay, dearest one,...", "and mix my lips with thine--", "Wake yet a while, Adonis--oh, but once,", "That I may kiss thee now for the last time--", "But for as long as one short kiss may live--", "Oh, let thy breath flow from thy dying soul", "Even to my mouth and heart, that I may suck", "That...'" ], "linecount": "48" }, { "title": "From Vergil's Tenth Eclogue", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "[VERSES 1-26.]", "", "Melodious Arethusa, o'er my verse", "Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream:", "Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou", "Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam", "Of Syracusan waters, mayst thou flow", "Unmingled with the bitter Doric dew!", "Begin, and, whilst the goats are browsing now", "The soft leaves, in our way let us pursue", "The melancholy loves of Gallus. List!", "We sing not to the dead: the wild woods knew", "His sufferings, and their echoes...", "Young Naiads,...in what far woodlands wild", "Wandered ye when unworthy love possessed", "Your Gallus? Not where Pindus is up-piled,", "Nor where Parnassus' sacred mount, nor where", "Aonian Aganippe expands...", "The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim.", "The pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus,", "The cold crags of Lycaeus, weep for him;", "And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals,", "Came shaking in his speed the budding wands", "And heavy lilies which he bore: we knew", "Pan the Arcadian.", "", "...", "", "'What madness is this, Gallus? Thy heart's care", "With willing steps pursues another there.'" ], "linecount": "27" }, { "title": "The Same", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "(As revised by Mr. C.D. Locock.)", "", "Melodious Arethusa, o'er my verse", "Shed thou once more the spirit of thy stream:", "", "(Two lines missing.)", "", "Who denies verse to Gallus? So, when thou", "Glidest beneath the green and purple gleam", "Of Syracusan waters, mayest thou flow", "Unmingled with the bitter Dorian dew!", "Begin, and whilst the goats are browsing now", "The soft leaves, in our song let us pursue", "The melancholy loves of Gallus. List!", "We sing not to the deaf: the wild woods knew", "His sufferings, and their echoes answer...", "Young Naiades, in what far woodlands wild", "Wandered ye, when unworthy love possessed", "Our Gallus? Nor where Pindus is up-piled,", "Nor where Parnassus' sacred mount, nor where", "Aonian Aganippe spreads its...", "", "(Three lines missing.)", "", "The laurels and the myrtle-copses dim,", "The pine-encircled mountain, Maenalus,", "The cold crags of Lycaeus weep for him.", "", "(Several lines missing.)", "", "'What madness is this, Gallus? thy heart's care,", "Lycoris, mid rude camps and Alpine snow,", "With willing step pursues another there.'", "", "(Some lines missing.)", "", "And Sylvan, crowned with rustic coronals,", "Came shaking in his speed the budding wands", "And heavy lilies which he bore: we knew", "Pan the Arcadian with....", "...and said,", "'Wilt thou not ever cease? Love cares not.", "The meadows with fresh streams, the bees with thyme,", "The goats with the green leaves of budding spring", "Are saturated not--nor Love with tears.'" ], "linecount": "36" }, { "title": "From Vergil's Fourth Georgic", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "[VERSES 360 ET SEQ.]", "", "And the cloven waters like a chasm of mountains", "Stood, and received him in its mighty portal", "And led him through the deep's untrampled fountains", "", "He went in wonder through the path immortal", "Of his great Mother and her humid reign", "And groves profaned not by the step of mortal", "", "Which sounded as he passed, and lakes which rain", "Replenished not girt round by marble caves", "'Wildered by the watery motion of the main", "", "Half 'wildered he beheld the bursting waves", "Of every stream beneath the mighty earth", "Phasis and Lycus which the ... sand paves,", "", " The chasm where old Enipeus has its birth", "And father Tyber and Anienas[?] glow", "And whence Caicus, Mysian stream, comes forth", "", "And rock-resounding Hypanis, and thou", "Eridanus who bearest like empire's sign", "Two golden horns upon thy taurine brow", "", "Thou than whom none of the streams divine", "Through garden-fields and meads with fiercer power,", "Burst in their tumult on the purple brine" ], "linecount": "22" }, { "title": "Fragment", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "ADAPTED FROM THE VITA NUOVA OF DANTE.", "", "What Mary is when she a little smiles", "I cannot even tell or call to mind,", "It is a miracle so new, so rare." ], "linecount": "4" }, { "title": "Ugolino", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "INFERNO 33, 22-75.", "", "Now had the loophole of that dungeon, still", "Which bears the name of Famine's Tower from me,", "And where 'tis fit that many another will", "", "Be doomed to linger in captivity,", "Shown through its narrow opening in my cell", "'Moon after moon slow waning', when a sleep,", "", "'That of the future burst the veil, in dream", "Visited me. It was a slumber deep", "And evil; for I saw, or I did seem'", "", "To see, 'that' tyrant Lord his revels keep", "The leader of the cruel hunt to them,", "Chasing the wolf and wolf-cubs up the steep", "", "Ascent, that from 'the Pisan is the screen'", "Of 'Lucca'; with him Gualandi came,", "Sismondi, and Lanfranchi, 'bloodhounds lean,", "", "Trained to the sport and eager for the game", "Wide ranging in his front;' but soon were seen", "Though by so short a course, with 'spirits tame,'", "", "The father and 'his whelps' to flag at once,", "And then the sharp fangs gored their bosoms deep.", "Ere morn I roused myself, and heard my sons,", "", "For they were with me, moaning in their sleep,", "And begging bread. Ah, for those darling ones!", "Right cruel art thou, if thou dost not weep", "", "In thinking of my soul's sad augury;", "And if thou weepest not now, weep never more!", "They were already waked, as wont drew nigh", "", "The allotted hour for food, and in that hour", "Each drew a presage from his dream. When I", "'Heard locked beneath me of that horrible tower", "", "The outlet; then into their eyes alone", "I looked to read myself,' without a sign", "Or word. I wept not--turned within to stone.", "", "They wept aloud, and little Anselm mine,", "Said--'twas my youngest, dearest little one,--", "\"What ails thee, father? Why look so at thine?\"", "", "In all that day, and all the following night,", "I wept not, nor replied; but when to shine", "Upon the world, not us, came forth the light", "", "Of the new sun, and thwart my prison thrown", "Gleamed through its narrow chink, a doleful sight,", "'Three faces, each the reflex of my own,", "", "Were imaged by its faint and ghastly ray;'", "Then I, of either hand unto the bone,", "Gnawed, in my agony; and thinking they", "", "Twas done from sudden pangs, in their excess,", "All of a sudden raise themselves, and say,", "\"Father! our woes, so great, were yet the less", "", "Would you but eat of us,--twas 'you who clad", "Our bodies in these weeds of wretchedness;", "Despoil them'.\" Not to make their hearts more sad,", "", "I 'hushed' myself. That day is at its close,--", "Another--still we were all mute. Oh, had", "The obdurate earth opened to end our woes!", "", "The fourth day dawned, and when the new sun shone,", "Outstretched himself before me as it rose", "My Gaddo, saying, \"Help, father! hast thou none", "", "For thine own child--is there no help from thee?\"", "He died--there at my feet--and one by one,", "I saw them fall, plainly as you see me.", "", "Between the fifth and sixth day, ere twas dawn,", "I found 'myself blind-groping o'er the three.'", "Three days I called them after they were gone.", "", "Famine of grief can get the mastery." ], "linecount": "65" }, { "title": "Stanzas From Calderon's Cisma De Inglaterra", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "TRANSLATED BY MEDWIN AND CORRECTED BY SHELLEY.", "", "Hast thou not seen, officious with delight,", "Move through the illumined air about the flower", "The Bee, that fears to drink its purple light,", "Lest danger lurk within that Rose's bower?", "Hast thou not marked the moth's enamoured flight", "About the Taper's flame at evening hour;", "'Till kindle in that monumental fire", "His sunflower wings their own funereal pyre?", "", "My heart, its wishes trembling to unfold.", "Thus round the Rose and Taper hovering came,", "'And Passion's slave, Distrust, in ashes cold.", "Smothered awhile, but could not quench the flame,'--", "Till Love, that grows by disappointment bold,", "And Opportunity, had conquered Shame;", "And like the Bee and Moth, in act to close,", "'I burned my wings, and settled on the Rose.'" ], "linecount": "17" }, { "title": "Queen Mab", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM, WITH", "", "ECRASEZ L'INFAME!--Correspondance de Voltaire.", "", "Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante", "Trita solo; juvat integros accedere fonteis;", "Atque haurire: juvatque novos decerpere flores.", "", "...", "", "Unde prius nulli velarint tempora musae.", "Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus; et arctis", "Religionum animos nodis exsolvere pergo.--Lucret. lib. 4.", "", "Dos pon sto, kai kosmon kineso.--Archimedes.", "", "TO HARRIET **.", "", "Whose is the love that gleaming through the world,", "Wards off the poisonous arrow of its scorn?", "Whose is the warm and partial praise,", "Virtue's most sweet reward?", "", "Beneath whose looks did my reviving soul", "Riper in truth and virtuous daring grow?", "Whose eyes have I gazed fondly on,", "And loved mankind the more?", "", "HARRIET! on thine:--thou wert my purer mind;", "Thou wert the inspiration of my song;", "Thine are these early wilding flowers,", "Though garlanded by me.", "", "Then press into thy breast this pledge of love;", "And know, though time may change and years may roll,", "Each floweret gathered in my heart", "It consecrates to thine.", "", "QUEEN MAB.", "", "How wonderful is Death,", "Death and his brother Sleep!", "One, pale as yonder waning moon", "With lips of lurid blue;", "The other, rosy as the morn", "When throned on ocean's wave", "It blushes o'er the world:", "Yet both so passing wonderful!", "", "Hath then the gloomy Power", "Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres", "Seized on her sinless soul?", "Must then that peerless form", "Which love and admiration cannot view", "Without a beating heart, those azure veins", "Which steal like streams along a field of snow,", "That lovely outline, which is fair", "As breathing marble, perish?", "Must putrefaction's breath", "Leave nothing of this heavenly sight", "But loathsomeness and ruin?", "Spare nothing but a gloomy theme,", "On which the lightest heart might moralize?", "Or is it only a sweet slumber", "Stealing o'er sensation,", "Which the breath of roseate morning", "Chaseth into darkness?", "Will Ianthe wake again,", "And give that faithful bosom joy", "Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch", "Light, life and rapture from her smile?", "", "Yes! she will wake again,", "Although her glowing limbs are motionless,", "And silent those sweet lips,", "Once breathing eloquence,", "That might have soothed a tiger's rage,", "Or thawed the cold heart of a conqueror.", "Her dewy eyes are closed,", "And on their lids, whose texture fine", "Scarce hides the dark blue orbs beneath,", "The baby Sleep is pillowed:", "Her golden tresses shade", "The bosom's stainless pride,", "Curling like tendrils of the parasite", "Around a marble column.", "", "Hark! whence that rushing sound?", "'Tis like the wondrous strain", "That round a lonely ruin swells,", "Which, wandering on the echoing shore,", "The enthusiast hears at evening:", "'Tis softer than the west wind's sigh;", "'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes", "Of that strange lyre whose strings", "The genii of the breezes sweep:", "Those lines of rainbow light", "Are like the moonbeams when they fall", "Through some cathedral window, but the tints", "Are such as may not find", "Comparison on earth.", "", "Behold the chariot of the Fairy Queen!", "Celestial coursers paw the unyielding air;", "Their filmy pennons at her word they furl,", "And stop obedient to the reins of light:", "These the Queen of Spells drew in,", "She spread a charm around the spot,", "And leaning graceful from the aethereal car,", "Long did she gaze, and silently,", "Upon the slumbering maid.", "", "Oh! not the visioned poet in his dreams,", "When silvery clouds float through the 'wildered brain,", "When every sight of lovely, wild and grand", "Astonishes, enraptures, elevates,", "When fancy at a glance combines", "The wondrous and the beautiful,--", "So bright, so fair, so wild a shape", "Hath ever yet beheld,", "As that which reined the coursers of the air,", "And poured the magic of her gaze", "Upon the maiden's sleep.", "", "The broad and yellow moon", "Shone dimly through her form--", "That form of faultless symmetry;", "The pearly and pellucid car", "Moved not the moonlight's line:", "'Twas not an earthly pageant:", "Those who had looked upon the sight,", "Passing all human glory,", "Saw not the yellow moon,", "Saw not the mortal scene,", "Heard not the night-wind's rush,", "Heard not an earthly sound,", "Saw but the fairy pageant,", "Heard but the heavenly strains", "That filled the lonely dwelling.", "", "The Fairy's frame was slight, yon fibrous cloud,", "That catches but the palest tinge of even,", "And which the straining eye can hardly seize", "When melting into eastern twilight's shadow,", "Were scarce so thin, so slight; but the fair star", "That gems the glittering coronet of morn,", "Sheds not a light so mild, so powerful,", "As that which, bursting from the Fairy's form,", "Spread a purpureal halo round the scene,", "Yet with an undulating motion,", "Swayed to her outline gracefully.", "", "From her celestial car", "The Fairy Queen descended,", "And thrice she waved her wand", "Circled with wreaths of amaranth:", "Her thin and misty form", "Moved with the moving air,", "And the clear silver tones,", "As thus she spoke, were such", "As are unheard by all but gifted ear.", "", "FAIRY:", "'Stars! your balmiest influence shed!", "Elements! your wrath suspend!", "Sleep, Ocean, in the rocky bounds", "That circle thy domain!", "Let not a breath be seen to stir", "Around yon grass-grown ruin's height,", "Let even the restless gossamer", "Sleep on the moveless air!", "Soul of Ianthe! thou,", "Judged alone worthy of the envied boon,", "That waits the good and the sincere; that waits", "Those who have struggled, and with resolute will", "Vanquished earth's pride and meanness, burst the chains,", "The icy chains of custom, and have shone", "The day-stars of their age;--Soul of Ianthe!", "Awake! arise!'", "", "Sudden arose", "Ianthe's Soul; it stood", "All beautiful in naked purity,", "The perfect semblance of its bodily frame.", "Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace,", "Each stain of earthliness", "Had passed away, it reassumed", "Its native dignity, and stood", "Immortal amid ruin.", "", "Upon the couch the body lay", "Wrapped in the depth of slumber:", "Its features were fixed and meaningless,", "Yet animal life was there,", "And every organ yet performed", "Its natural functions: 'twas a sight", "Of wonder to behold the body and soul.", "The self-same lineaments, the same", "Marks of identity were there:", "Yet, oh, how different! One aspires to Heaven,", "Pants for its sempiternal heritage,", "And ever-changing, ever-rising still,", "Wantons in endless being.", "The other, for a time the unwilling sport", "Of circumstance and passion, struggles on;", "Fleets through its sad duration rapidly:", "Then, like an useless and worn-out machine,", "Rots, perishes, and passes.", "", "FAIRY:", "'Spirit! who hast dived so deep;", "Spirit! who hast soared so high;", "Thou the fearless, thou the mild,", "Accept the boon thy worth hath earned,", "Ascend the car with me.'", "", "SPIRIT:", "'Do I dream? Is this new feeling", "But a visioned ghost of slumber?", "If indeed I am a soul,", "A free, a disembodied soul,", "Speak again to me.'", "", "FAIRY:", "'I am the Fairy MAB: to me 'tis given", "The wonders of the human world to keep:", "The secrets of the immeasurable past,", "In the unfailing consciences of men,", "Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find:", "The future, from the causes which arise", "In each event, I gather: not the sting", "Which retributive memory implants", "In the hard bosom of the selfish man;", "Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb", "Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up", "The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,", "Are unforeseen, unregistered by me:", "And it is yet permitted me, to rend", "The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit,", "Clothed in its changeless purity, may know", "How soonest to accomplish the great end", "For which it hath its being, and may taste", "That peace, which in the end all life will share.", "This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,", "Ascend the car with me!'", "", "The chains of earth's immurement", "Fell from Ianthe's spirit;", "They shrank and brake like bandages of straw", "Beneath a wakened giant's strength.", "She knew her glorious change,", "And felt in apprehension uncontrolled", "New raptures opening round:", "Each day-dream of her mortal life,", "Each frenzied vision of the slumbers", "That closed each well-spent day,", "Seemed now to meet reality.", "", "The Fairy and the Soul proceeded;", "The silver clouds disparted;", "And as the car of magic they ascended,", "Again the speechless music swelled,", "Again the coursers of the air", "Unfurled their azure pennons, and the Queen", "Shaking the beamy reins", "Bade them pursue their way.", "", "The magic car moved on.", "The night was fair, and countless stars", "Studded Heaven's dark blue vault,--", "Just o'er the eastern wave", "Peeped the first faint smile of morn:--", "The magic car moved on--", "From the celestial hoofs", "The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew,", "And where the burning wheels", "Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak,", "Was traced a line of lightning.", "Now it flew far above a rock,", "The utmost verge of earth,", "The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow", "Lowered o'er the silver sea.", "", "Far, far below the chariot's path,", "Calm as a slumbering babe,", "Tremendous Ocean lay.", "The mirror of its stillness showed", "The pale and waning stars,", "The chariot's fiery track,", "And the gray light of morn", "Tinging those fleecy clouds", "That canopied the dawn.", "Seemed it, that the chariot's way", "Lay through the midst of an immense concave,", "Radiant with million constellations, tinged", "With shades of infinite colour,", "And semicircled with a belt", "Flashing incessant meteors.", "", "The magic car moved on.", "As they approached their goal", "The coursers seemed to gather speed;", "The sea no longer was distinguished; earth", "Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere;", "The sun's unclouded orb", "Rolled through the black concave;", "Its rays of rapid light", "Parted around the chariot's swifter course,", "And fell, like ocean's feathery spray", "Dashed from the boiling surge", "Before a vessel's prow.", "", "The magic car moved on.", "Earth's distant orb appeared", "The smallest light that twinkles in the heaven;", "Whilst round the chariot's way", "Innumerable systems rolled,", "And countless spheres diffused", "An ever-varying glory.", "It was a sight of wonder: some", "Were horned like the crescent moon;", "Some shed a mild and silver beam", "Like Hesperus o'er the western sea;", "Some dashed athwart with trains of flame,", "Like worlds to death and ruin driven;", "Some shone like suns, and, as the chariot passed,", "Eclipsed all other light.", "", "Spirit of Nature! here!", "In this interminable wilderness", "Of worlds, at whose immensity", "Even soaring fancy staggers,", "Here is thy fitting temple.", "Yet not the lightest leaf", "That quivers to the passing breeze", "Is less instinct with thee:", "Yet not the meanest worm", "That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead", "Less shares thy eternal breath.", "Spirit of Nature! thou!", "Imperishable as this scene,", "Here is thy fitting temple.", "", "If solitude hath ever led thy steps", "To the wild Ocean's echoing shore,", "And thou hast lingered there,", "Until the sun's broad orb", "Seemed resting on the burnished wave,", "Thou must have marked the lines", "Of purple gold, that motionless", "Hung o'er the sinking sphere:", "Thou must have marked the billowy clouds", "Edged with intolerable radiancy", "Towering like rocks of jet", "Crowned with a diamond wreath.", "And yet there is a moment,", "When the sun's highest point", "Peeps like a star o'er Ocean's western edge,", "When those far clouds of feathery gold,", "Shaded with deepest purple, gleam", "Like islands on a dark blue sea;", "Then has thy fancy soared above the earth,", "And furled its wearied wing", "Within the Fairy's fane.", "", "Yet not the golden islands", "Gleaming in yon flood of light,", "Nor the feathery curtains", "Stretching o'er the sun's bright couch,", "Nor the burnished Ocean waves", "Paving that gorgeous dome,", "So fair, so wonderful a sight", "As Mab's aethereal palace could afford.", "Yet likest evening's vault, that faery Hall!", "As Heaven, low resting on the wave,it spread", "Its floors of flashing light,", "Its vast and azure dome,", "Its fertile golden islands", "Floating on a silver sea;", "Whilst suns their mingling beamings darted", "Through clouds of circumambient darkness,", "And pearly battlements around", "Looked o'er the immense of Heaven.", "", "The magic car no longer moved.", "The Fairy and the Spirit", "Entered the Hall of Spells:", "Those golden clouds", "That rolled in glittering billows", "Beneath the azure canopy", "With the aethereal footsteps trembled not:", "The light and crimson mists,", "Floating to strains of thrilling melody", "Through that unearthly dwelling,", "Yielded to every movement of the will.", "Upon their passive swell the Spirit leaned,", "And, for the varied bliss that pressed around,", "Used not the glorious privilege", "Of virtue and of wisdom.", "", "'Spirit!' the Fairy said,", "And pointed to the gorgeous dome,", "'This is a wondrous sight", "And mocks all human grandeur;", "But, were it virtue's only meed, to dwell", "In a celestial palace, all resigned", "To pleasurable impulses, immured", "Within the prison of itself, the will", "Of changeless Nature would be unfulfilled.", "Learn to make others happy. Spirit, come!", "This is thine high reward:--the past shall rise;", "Thou shalt behold the present; I will teach", "The secrets of the future.'", "", "The Fairy and the Spirit", "Approached the overhanging battlement.--", "Below lay stretched the universe!", "There, far as the remotest line", "That bounds imagination's flight,", "Countless and unending orbs", "In mazy motion intermingled,", "Yet still fulfilled immutably", "Eternal Nature's law.", "Above, below, around,", "The circling systems formed", "A wilderness of harmony;", "Each with undeviating aim,", "In eloquent silence, through the depths of space", "Pursued its wondrous way.", "", "There was a little light", "That twinkled in the misty distance:", "None but a spirit's eye", "Might ken that rolling orb;", "None but a spirit's eye,", "And in no other place", "But that celestial dwelling, might behold", "Each action of this earth's inhabitants.", "But matter, space and time", "In those aereal mansions cease to act;", "And all-prevailing wisdom, when it reaps", "The harvest of its excellence, o'er-bounds", "Those obstacles, of which an earthly soul", "Fears to attempt the conquest.", "", "The Fairy pointed to the earth.", "The Spirit's intellectual eye", "Its kindred beings recognized.", "The thronging thousands, to a passing view,", "Seemed like an ant-hill's citizens.", "How wonderful! that even", "The passions, prejudices, interests,", "That sway the meanest being, the weak touch", "That moves the finest nerve,", "And in one human brain", "Causes the faintest thought, becomes a link", "In the great chain of Nature.", "", "'Behold,' the Fairy cried,", "'Palmyra's ruined palaces!--", "Behold! where grandeur frowned;", "Behold! where pleasure smiled;", "What now remains?--the memory", "Of senselessness and shame--", "What is immortal there?", "Nothing--it stands to tell", "A melancholy tale, to give", "An awful warning: soon", "Oblivion will steal silently", "The remnant of its fame.", "Monarchs and conquerors there", "Proud o'er prostrate millions trod--", "The earthquakes of the human race;", "Like them, forgotten when the ruin", "That marks their shock is past.", "", "'Beside the eternal Nile,", "The Pyramids have risen.", "Nile shall pursue his changeless way:", "Those Pyramids shall fall;", "Yea! not a stone shall stand to tell", "The spot whereon they stood!", "Their very site shall be forgotten,", "As is their builder's name!", "", "'Behold yon sterile spot;", "Where now the wandering Arab's tent", "Flaps in the desert-blast.", "There once old Salem's haughty fane", "Reared high to Heaven its thousand golden domes,", "And in the blushing face of day", "Exposed its shameful glory.", "Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed", "The building of that fane; and many a father;", "Worn out with toil and slavery, implored", "The poor man's God to sweep it from the earth,", "And spare his children the detested task", "Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning", "The choicest days of life,", "To soothe a dotard's vanity.", "There an inhuman and uncultured race", "Howled hideous praises to their Demon-God;", "They rushed to war, tore from the mother's womb", "The unborn child,--old age and infancy", "Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms", "Left not a soul to breathe. Oh! they were fiends:", "But what was he who taught them that the God", "Of nature and benevolence hath given", "A special sanction to the trade of blood?", "His name and theirs are fading, and the tales", "Of this barbarian nation, which imposture", "Recites till terror credits, are pursuing", "Itself into forgetfulness.", "", "'Where Athens, Rome, and Sparta stood,", "There is a moral desert now:", "The mean and miserable huts,", "The yet more wretched palaces,", "Contrasted with those ancient fanes,", "Now crumbling to oblivion;", "The long and lonely colonnades,", "Through which the ghost of Freedom stalks,", "Seem like a well-known tune,", "Which in some dear scene we have loved to hear,", "Remembered now in sadness.", "But, oh! how much more changed,", "How gloomier is the contrast", "Of human nature there!", "Where Socrates expired, a tyrant's slave,", "A coward and a fool, spreads death around--", "Then, shuddering, meets his own.", "Where Cicero and Antoninus lived,", "A cowled and hypocritical monk", "Prays, curses and deceives.", "", "'Spirit, ten thousand years", "Have scarcely passed away,", "Since, in the waste where now the savage drinks", "His enemy's blood, and aping Europe's sons,", "Wakes the unholy song of war, Arose a stately city,", "Metropolis of the western continent:", "There, now, the mossy column-stone,", "Indented by Time's unrelaxing grasp,", "Which once appeared to brave", "All, save its country's ruin;", "There the wide forest scene,", "Rude in the uncultivated loveliness", "Of gardens long run wild,", "Seems, to the unwilling sojourner, whose steps", "Chance in that desert has delayed,", "Thus to have stood since earth was what it is.", "Yet once it was the busiest haunt,", "Whither, as to a common centre, flocked", "Strangers, and ships, and merchandise:", "Once peace and freedom blessed", "The cultivated plain:", "But wealth, that curse of man,", "Blighted the bud of its prosperity:", "Virtue and wisdom, truth and liberty,", "Fled, to return not, until man shall know", "That they alone can give the bliss", "Worthy a soul that claims", "Its kindred with eternity.", "", "'There's not one atom of yon earth", "But once was living man;", "Nor the minutest drop of rain,", "That hangeth in its thinnest cloud,", "But flowed in human veins:", "And from the burning plains", "Where Libyan monsters yell,", "From the most gloomy glens", "Of Greenland's sunless clime,", "To where the golden fields", "Of fertile England spread", "Their harvest to the day,", "Thou canst not find one spot", "Whereon no city stood.", "", "'How strange is human pride!", "I tell thee that those living things,", "To whom the fragile blade of grass,", "That springeth in the morn", "And perisheth ere noon,", "Is an unbounded world;", "I tell thee that those viewless beings,", "Whose mansion is the smallest particle", "Of the impassive atmosphere,", "Think, feel and live like man;", "That their affections and antipathies,", "Like his, produce the laws", "Ruling their moral state;", "And the minutest throb", "That through their frame diffuses", "The slightest, faintest motion,", "Is fixed and indispensable", "As the majestic laws", "That rule yon rolling orbs.'", "", "The Fairy paused. The Spirit,", "In ecstasy of admiration, felt", "All knowledge of the past revived; the events", "Of old and wondrous times,", "Which dim tradition interruptedly", "Teaches the credulous vulgar, were unfolded", "In just perspective to the view;", "Yet dim from their infinitude.", "The Spirit seemed to stand", "High on an isolated pinnacle;", "The flood of ages combating below,", "The depth of the unbounded universe", "Above, and all around", "Nature's unchanging harmony.", "", "'Fairy!' the Spirit said,", "And on the Queen of Spells", "Fixed her aethereal eyes,", "'I thank thee. Thou hast given", "A boon which I will not resign, and taught", "A lesson not to be unlearned. I know", "The past, and thence I will essay to glean", "A warning for the future, so that man", "May profit by his errors, and derive", "Experience from his folly:", "For, when the power of imparting joy", "Is equal to the will, the human soul", "Requires no other Heaven.'", "", "MAB:", "'Turn thee, surpassing Spirit!", "Much yet remains unscanned.", "Thou knowest how great is man,", "Thou knowest his imbecility:", "Yet learn thou what he is:", "Yet learn the lofty destiny", "Which restless time prepares", "For every living soul.", "", "'Behold a gorgeous palace, that, amid", "Yon populous city rears its thousand towers", "And seems itself a city. Gloomy troops", "Of sentinels, in stern and silent ranks,", "Encompass it around: the dweller there", "Cannot be free and happy; hearest thou not", "The curses of the fatherless, the groans", "Of those who have no friend? He passes on:", "The King, the wearer of a gilded chain", "That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool", "Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave", "Even to the basest appetites--that man", "Heeds not the shriek of penury; he smiles", "At the deep curses which the destitute", "Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy", "Pervades his bloodless heart when thousands groan", "But for those morsels which his wantonness", "Wastes in unjoyous revelry, to save", "All that they love from famine: when he hears", "The tale of horror, to some ready-made face", "Of hypocritical assent he turns,", "Smothering the glow of shame, that, spite of him,", "Flushes his bloated cheek.", "Now to the meal", "Of silence, grandeur, and excess, he drags", "His palled unwilling appetite. If gold,", "Gleaming around, and numerous viands culled", "From every clime, could force the loathing sense", "To overcome satiety,--if wealth", "The spring it draws from poisons not,--or vice,", "Unfeeling, stubborn vice, converteth not", "Its food to deadliest venom; then that king", "Is happy; and the peasant who fulfils", "His unforced task, when he returns at even,", "And by the blazing faggot meets again", "Her welcome for whom all his toil is sped,", "Tastes not a sweeter meal.", "Behold him now", "Stretched on the gorgeous couch; his fevered brain", "Reels dizzily awhile: but ah! too soon", "The slumber of intemperance subsides,", "And conscience, that undying serpent, calls", "Her venomous brood to their nocturnal task.", "Listen! he speaks! oh! mark that frenzied eye--", "Oh! mark that deadly visage.'", "", "KING:", "'No cessation!", "Oh! must this last for ever? Awful Death,", "I wish, yet fear to clasp thee!--Not one moment", "Of dreamless sleep! O dear and blessed peace!", "Why dost thou shroud thy vestal purity", "In penury and dungeons? wherefore lurkest", "With danger, death, and solitude; yet shunn'st", "The palace I have built thee? Sacred peace!", "Oh visit me but once, but pitying shed", "One drop of balm upon my withered soul.'", "", "THE FAIRY:", "'Vain man! that palace is the virtuous heart,", "And Peace defileth not her snowy robes", "In such a shed as thine. Hark! yet he mutters;", "His slumbers are but varied agonies,", "They prey like scorpions on the springs of life.", "There needeth not the hell that bigots frame", "To punish those who err: earth in itself", "Contains at once the evil and the cure;", "And all-sufficing Nature can chastise", "Those who transgress her law,--she only knows", "How justly to proportion to the fault", "The punishment it merits.", "Is it strange", "That this poor wretch should pride him in his woe?", "Take pleasure in his abjectness, and hug", "The scorpion that consumes him? Is it strange", "That, placed on a conspicuous throne of thorns,", "Grasping an iron sceptre, and immured", "Within a splendid prison, whose stern bounds", "Shut him from all that's good or dear on earth,", "His soul asserts not its humanity?", "That man's mild nature rises not in war", "Against a king's employ? No--'tis not strange.", "He, like the vulgar, thinks, feels, acts and lives", "Just as his father did; the unconquered powers", "Of precedent and custom interpose", "Between a KING and virtue. Stranger yet,", "To those who know not Nature, nor deduce", "The future from the present, it may seem,", "That not one slave, who suffers from the crimes", "Of this unnatural being; not one wretch,", "Whose children famish, and whose nuptial bed", "Is earth's unpitying bosom, rears an arm", "To dash him from his throne!", "Those gilded flies", "That, basking in the sunshine of a court,", "Fatten on its corruption!--what are they?", "--The drones of the community; they feed", "On the mechanic's labour: the starved hind", "For them compels the stubborn glebe to yield", "Its unshared harvests; and yon squalid form,", "Leaner than fleshless misery, that wastes", "A sunless life in the unwholesome mine,", "Drags out in labour a protracted death,", "To glut their grandeur; many faint with toil,", "That few may know the cares and woe of sloth.", "", "'Whence, think'st thou, kings and parasites arose?", "Whence that unnatural line of drones, who heap", "Toil and unvanquishable penury", "On those who build their palaces, and bring", "Their daily bread?--From vice, black loathsome vice;", "From rapine, madness, treachery, and wrong;", "From all that 'genders misery, and makes", "Of earth this thorny wilderness; from lust,", "Revenge, and murder...And when Reason's voice,", "Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked", "The nations; and mankind perceive that vice", "Is discord, war, and misery; that virtue", "Is peace, and happiness and harmony;", "When man's maturer nature shall disdain", "The playthings of its childhood;--kingly glare", "Will lose its power to dazzle; its authority", "Will silently pass by; the gorgeous throne", "Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall,", "Fast falling to decay; whilst falsehood's trade", "Shall be as hateful and unprofitable", "As that of truth is now.", "Where is the fame", "Which the vainglorious mighty of the earth", "Seek to eternize? Oh! the faintest sound", "From Time's light footfall, the minutest wave", "That swells the flood of ages, whelms in nothing", "The unsubstantial bubble. Ay! today", "Stern is the tyrant's mandate, red the gaze", "That flashes desolation, strong the arm", "That scatters multitudes. To-morrow comes!", "That mandate is a thunder-peal that died", "In ages past; that gaze, a transient flash", "On which the midnight closed, and on that arm", "The worm has made his meal.", "The virtuous man,", "Who, great in his humility, as kings", "Are little in their grandeur; he who leads", "Invincibly a life of resolute good,", "And stands amid the silent dungeon depths", "More free and fearless than the trembling judge,", "Who, clothed in venal power, vainly strove", "To bind the impassive spirit;--when he falls,", "His mild eye beams benevolence no more:", "Withered the hand outstretched but to relieve;", "Sunk Reason's simple eloquence, that rolled", "But to appal the guilty. Yes! the grave", "Hath quenched that eye, and Death's relentless frost", "Withered that arm: but the unfading fame", "Which Virtue hangs upon its votary's tomb;", "The deathless memory of that man, whom kings", "Call to their mind and tremble; the remembrance", "With which the happy spirit contemplates", "Its well-spent pilgrimage on earth,", "Shall never pass away.", "", "'Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;", "The subject, not the citizen: for kings", "And subjects, mutual foes, forever play", "A losing game into each other's hands,", "Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man", "Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.", "Power, like a desolating pestilence,", "Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,", "Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,", "Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,", "A mechanized automaton.", "When Nero,", "High over flaming Rome, with savage joy", "Lowered like a fiend, drank with enraptured ear", "The shrieks of agonizing death, beheld", "The frightful desolation spread, and felt", "A new-created sense within his soul", "Thrill to the sight, and vibrate to the sound;", "Think'st thou his grandeur had not overcome", "The force of human kindness? and, when Rome,", "With one stern blow, hurled not the tyrant down,", "Crushed not the arm red with her dearest blood", "Had not submissive abjectness destroyed", "Nature's suggestions?", "Look on yonder earth:", "The golden harvests spring; the unfailing sun", "Sheds light and life; the fruits, the flowers, the trees,", "Arise in due succession; all things speak", "Peace, harmony, and love. The universe,", "In Nature's silent eloquence, declares", "That all fulfil the works of love and joy,--", "All but the outcast, Man. He fabricates", "The sword which stabs his peace; he cherisheth", "The snakes that gnaw his heart; he raiseth up", "The tyrant, whose delight is in his woe,", "Whose sport is in his agony. Yon sun,", "Lights it the great alone? Yon silver beams,", "Sleep they less sweetly on the cottage thatch", "Than on the dome of kings? Is mother Earth", "A step-dame to her numerous sons, who earn", "Her unshared gifts with unremitting toil;", "A mother only to those puling babes", "Who, nursed in ease and luxury, make men", "The playthings of their babyhood, and mar,", "In self-important childishness, that peace", "Which men alone appreciate?", "", "'Spirit of Nature! no.", "The pure diffusion of thy essence throbs", "Alike in every human heart.", "Thou, aye, erectest there", "Thy throne of power unappealable:", "Thou art the judge beneath whose nod", "Man's brief and frail authority", "Is powerless as the wind", "That passeth idly by.", "Thine the tribunal which surpasseth", "The show of human justice,", "As God surpasses man.", "", "'Spirit of Nature! thou", "Life of interminable multitudes;", "Soul of those mighty spheres", "Whose changeless paths through", "Heaven's deep silence lie;", "Soul of that smallest being,", "The dwelling of whose life", "Is one faint April sun-gleam;--", "Man, like these passive things,", "Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth:", "Like theirs, his age of endless peace,", "Which time is fast maturing,", "Will swiftly, surely come;", "And the unbounded frame, which thou pervadest,", "Will be without a flaw", "Marring its perfect symmetry.", "", "'How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh,", "Which vernal zephyrs breathe in evening's ear,", "Were discord to the speaking quietude", "That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault,", "Studded with stars unutterably bright,", "Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls,", "Seems like a canopy which love had spread", "To curtain her sleeping world. Yon gentle hills,", "Robed in a garment of untrodden snow;", "Yon darksome rocks, whence icicles depend,", "So stainless, that their white and glittering spires", "Tinge not the moon's pure beam; yon castled steep,", "Whose banner hangeth o'er the time-worn tower", "So idly, that rapt fancy deemeth it", "A metaphor of peace;--all form a scene", "Where musing Solitude might love to lift", "Her soul above this sphere of earthliness;", "Where Silence undisturbed might watch alone,", "So cold, so bright, so still.", "The orb of day,", "In southern climes, o'er ocean's waveless field", "Sinks sweetly smiling: not the faintest breath", "Steals o'er the unruffled deep; the clouds of eve", "Reflect unmoved the lingering beam of day;", "And vesper's image on the western main", "Is beautifully still. To-morrow comes:", "Cloud upon cloud, in dark and deepening mass,", "Roll o'er the blackened waters; the deep roar", "Of distant thunder mutters awfully;", "Tempest unfolds its pinion o'er the gloom", "That shrouds the boiling surge; the pitiless fiend,", "With all his winds and lightnings, tracks his prey;", "The torn deep yawns,--the vessel finds a grave", "Beneath its jagged gulf.", "Ah! whence yon glare", "That fires the arch of Heaven!--that dark red smoke", "Blotting the silver moon? The stars are quenched", "In darkness, and the pure and spangling snow", "Gleams faintly through the gloom that gathers round!", "Hark to that roar, whose swift and deaf'ning peals", "In countless echoes through the mountains ring,", "Startling pale Midnight on her starry throne!", "Now swells the intermingling din; the jar", "Frequent and frightful of the bursting bomb;", "The falling beam, the shriek, the groan, the shout,", "The ceaseless clangour, and the rush of men", "Inebriate with rage:--loud, and more loud", "The discord grows; till pale Death shuts the scene,", "And o'er the conqueror and the conquered draws", "His cold and bloody shroud.--Of all the men", "Whom day's departing beam saw blooming there,", "In proud and vigorous health; of all the hearts", "That beat with anxious life at sunset there;", "How few survive, how few are beating now!", "All is deep silence, like the fearful calm", "That slumbers in the storm's portentous pause;", "Save when the frantic wail of widowed love", "Comes shuddering on the blast, or the faint moan", "With which some soul bursts from the frame of clay", "Wrapped round its struggling powers.", "The gray morn", "Dawns on the mournful scene; the sulphurous smoke", "Before the icy wind slow rolls away,", "And the bright beams of frosty morning dance", "Along the spangling snow. There tracks of blood", "Even to the forest's depth, and scattered arms,", "And lifeless warriors, whose hard lineaments", "Death's self could change not, mark the dreadful path", "Of the outsallying victors: far behind,", "Black ashes note where their proud city stood.", "Within yon forest is a gloomy glen--", "Each tree which guards its darkness from the day,", "Waves o'er a warrior's tomb.", "I see thee shrink,", "Surpassing Spirit!--wert thou human else?", "I see a shade of doubt and horror fleet", "Across thy stainless features: yet fear not;", "This is no unconnected misery,", "Nor stands uncaused, and irretrievable.", "Man's evil nature, that apology", "Which kings who rule, and cowards who crouch, set up", "For their unnumbered crimes, sheds not the blood", "Which desolates the discord-wasted land.", "From kings, and priests, and statesmen, war arose,", "Whose safety is man's deep unbettered woe,", "Whose grandeur his debasement. Let the axe", "Strike at the root, the poison-tree will fall;", "And where its venomed exhalations spread", "Ruin, and death, and woe, where millions lay", "Quenching the serpent's famine, and their bones", "Bleaching unburied in the putrid blast,", "A garden shall arise, in loveliness", "Surpassing fabled Eden.", "Hath Nature's soul,", "That formed this world so beautiful, that spread", "Earth's lap with plenty, and life's smallest chord", "Strung to unchanging unison, that gave", "The happy birds their dwelling in the grove,", "That yielded to the wanderers of the deep", "The lovely silence of the unfathomed main,", "And filled the meanest worm that crawls in dust", "With spirit, thought, and love; on Man alone,", "Partial in causeless malice, wantonly", "Heaped ruin, vice, and slavery; his soul", "Blasted with withering curses; placed afar", "The meteor-happiness, that shuns his grasp,", "But serving on the frightful gulf to glare,", "Rent wide beneath his footsteps?", "Nature!--no!", "Kings, priests, and statesmen, blast the human flower", "Even in its tender bud; their influence darts", "Like subtle poison through the bloodless veins", "Of desolate society. The child,", "Ere he can lisp his mother's sacred name,", "Swells with the unnatural pride of crime, and lifts", "His baby-sword even in a hero's mood.", "This infant-arm becomes the bloodiest scourge", "Of devastated earth; whilst specious names,", "Learned in soft childhood's unsuspecting hour,", "Serve as the sophisms with which manhood dims", "Bright Reason's ray, and sanctifies the sword", "Upraised to shed a brother's innocent blood.", "Let priest-led slaves cease to proclaim that man", "Inherits vice and misery, when Force", "And Falsehood hang even o'er the cradled babe", "Stifling with rudest grasp all natural good.", "'Ah! to the stranger-soul, when first it peeps", "From its new tenement, and looks abroad", "For happiness and sympathy, how stern", "And desolate a tract is this wide world!", "How withered all the buds of natural good!", "No shade, no shelter from the sweeping storms", "Of pitiless power! On its wretched frame,", "Poisoned, perchance, by the disease and woe", "Heaped on the wretched parent whence it sprung", "By morals, law, and custom, the pure winds", "Of Heaven, that renovate the insect tribes,", "May breathe not. The untainting light of day", "May visit not its longings. It is bound", "Ere it has life: yea, all the chains are forged", "Long ere its being: all liberty and love", "And peace is torn from its defencelessness;", "Cursed from its birth, even from its cradle doomed", "To abjectness and bondage!", "", "'Throughout this varied and eternal world", "Soul is the only element: the block", "That for uncounted ages has remained", "The moveless pillar of a mountain's weight", "Is active, living spirit. Every grain", "Is sentient both in unity and part,", "And the minutest atom comprehends", "A world of loves and hatreds; these beget", "Evil and good: hence truth and falsehood spring;", "Hence will and thought and action, all the germs", "Of pain or pleasure, sympathy or hate,", "That variegate the eternal universe.", "Soul is not more polluted than the beams", "Of Heaven's pure orb, ere round their rapid lines", "The taint of earth-born atmospheres arise.", "", "'Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds", "Of high resolve, on fancy's boldest wing", "To soar unwearied, fearlessly to turn", "The keenest pangs to peacefulness, and taste", "The joys which mingled sense and spirit yield.", "Or he is formed for abjectness and woe,", "To grovel on the dunghill of his fears,", "To shrink at every sound, to quench the flame", "Of natural love in sensualism, to know", "That hour as blessed when on his worthless days", "The frozen hand of Death shall set its seal,", "Yet fear the cure, though hating the disease.", "The one is man that shall hereafter be;", "The other, man as vice has made him now.", "", "'War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,", "The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade,", "And, to those royal murderers, whose mean thrones", "Are bought by crimes of treachery and gore,", "The bread they eat, the staff on which they lean.", "Guards, garbed in blood-red livery, surround", "Their palaces, participate the crimes", "That force defends, and from a nation's rage", "Secure the crown, which all the curses reach", "That famine, frenzy, woe and penury breathe.", "These are the hired bravos who defend", "The tyrant's throne--the bullies of his fear:", "These are the sinks and channels of worst vice,", "The refuse of society, the dregs", "Of all that is most vile: their cold hearts blend", "Deceit with sternness, ignorance with pride,", "All that is mean and villanous, with rage", "Which hopelessness of good, and self-contempt,", "Alone might kindle; they are decked in wealth,", "Honour and power, then are sent abroad", "To do their work. The pestilence that stalks", "In gloomy triumph through some eastern land", "Is less destroying. They cajole with gold,", "And promises of fame, the thoughtless youth", "Already crushed with servitude: he knows", "His wretchedness too late, and cherishes", "Repentance for his ruin, when his doom", "Is sealed in gold and blood!", "Those too the tyrant serve, who, skilled to snare", "The feet of Justice in the toils of law,", "Stand, ready to oppress the weaker still;", "And right or wrong will vindicate for gold,", "Sneering at public virtue, which beneath", "Their pitiless tread lies torn and trampled, where", "Honour sits smiling at the sale of truth.", "", "'Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,", "Without a hope, a passion, or a love,", "Who, through a life of luxury and lies,", "Have crept by flattery to the seats of power,", "Support the system whence their honours flow...", "They have three words:--well tyrants know their use,", "Well pay them for the loan, with usury", "Torn from a bleeding world!--God, Hell, and Heaven.", "A vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend,", "Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage", "Of tameless tigers hungering for blood.", "Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,", "Where poisonous and undying worms prolong", "Eternal misery to those hapless slaves", "Whose life has been a penance for its crimes.", "And Heaven, a meed for those who dare belie", "Their human nature, quake, believe, and cringe", "Before the mockeries of earthly power.", "", "'These tools the tyrant tempers to his work,", "Wields in his wrath, and as he wills destroys,", "Omnipotent in wickedness: the while", "Youth springs, age moulders, manhood tamely does", "His bidding, bribed by short-lived joys to lend", "Force to the weakness of his trembling arm.", "", "'They rise, they fall; one generation comes", "Yielding its harvest to destruction's scythe.", "It fades, another blossoms: yet behold!", "Red glows the tyrant's stamp-mark on its bloom,", "Withering and cankering deep its passive prime.", "He has invented lying words and modes,", "Empty and vain as his own coreless heart;", "Evasive meanings, nothings of much sound,", "To lure the heedless victim to the toils", "Spread round the valley of its paradise.", "", "'Look to thyself, priest, conqueror, or prince!", "Whether thy trade is falsehood, and thy lusts", "Deep wallow in the earnings of the poor,", "With whom thy Master was:--or thou delight'st", "In numbering o'er the myriads of thy slain,", "All misery weighing nothing in the scale", "Against thy short-lived fame: or thou dost load", "With cowardice and crime the groaning land,", "A pomp-fed king. Look to thy wretched self!", "Ay, art thou not the veriest slave that e'er", "Crawled on the loathing earth? Are not thy days", "Days of unsatisfying listlessness?", "Dost thou not cry, ere night's long rack is o'er,", "\"When will the morning come?\" Is not thy youth", "A vain and feverish dream of sensualism?", "Thy manhood blighted with unripe disease?", "Are not thy views of unregretted death", "Drear, comfortless, and horrible? Thy mind,", "Is it not morbid as thy nerveless frame,", "Incapable of judgement, hope, or love?", "And dost thou wish the errors to survive", "That bar thee from all sympathies of good,", "After the miserable interest", "Thou hold'st in their protraction? When the grave", "Has swallowed up thy memory and thyself,", "Dost thou desire the bane that poisons earth", "To twine its roots around thy coffined clay,", "Spring from thy bones, and blossom on thy tomb,", "That of its fruit thy babes may eat and die?", "", "'Thus do the generations of the earth", "Go to the grave, and issue from the womb,", "Surviving still the imperishable change", "That renovates the world; even as the leaves", "Which the keen frost-wind of the waning year", "Has scattered on the forest soil, and heaped", "For many seasons there--though long they choke,", "Loading with loathsome rottenness the land,", "All germs of promise, yet when the tall trees", "From which they fell, shorn of their lovely shapes,", "Lie level with the earth to moulder there,", "They fertilize the land they long deformed,", "Till from the breathing lawn a forest springs", "Of youth, integrity, and loveliness,", "Like that which gave it life, to spring and die.", "Thus suicidal selfishness, that blights", "The fairest feelings of the opening heart,", "Is destined to decay, whilst from the soil", "Shall spring all virtue, all delight, all love,", "And judgement cease to wage unnatural war", "With passion's unsubduable array.", "Twin-sister of religion, selfishness!", "Rival in crime and falsehood, aping all", "The wanton horrors of her bloody play;", "Yet frozen, unimpassioned, spiritless,", "Shunning the light, and owning not its name,", "Compelled, by its deformity, to screen,", "With flimsy veil of justice and of right,", "Its unattractive lineaments, that scare", "All, save the brood of ignorance: at once", "The cause and the effect of tyranny;", "Unblushing, hardened, sensual, and vile;", "Dead to all love but of its abjectness,", "With heart impassive by more noble powers", "Than unshared pleasure, sordid gain, or fame;", "Despising its own miserable being,", "Which still it longs, yet fears to disenthrall.", "", "'Hence commerce springs, the venal interchange", "Of all that human art or nature yield;", "Which wealth should purchase not, but want demand,", "And natural kindness hasten to supply", "From the full fountain of its boundless love,", "For ever stifled, drained, and tainted now.", "Commerce! beneath whose poison-breathing shade", "No solitary virtue dares to spring,", "But Poverty and Wealth with equal hand", "Scatter their withering curses, and unfold", "The doors of premature and violent death,", "To pining famine and full-fed disease,", "To all that shares the lot of human life,", "Which poisoned, body and soul, scarce drags the chain,", "That lengthens as it goes and clanks behind.", "", "'Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,", "The signet of its all-enslaving power", "Upon a shining ore, and called it gold:", "Before whose image bow the vulgar great,", "The vainly rich, the miserable proud,", "The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings,", "And with blind feelings reverence the power", "That grinds them to the dust of misery.", "But in the temple of their hireling hearts", "Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn", "All earthly things but virtue.", "", "'Since tyrants, by the sale of human life,", "Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame", "To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,", "Success has sanctioned to a credulous world", "The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war.", "His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes", "The despot numbers; from his cabinet", "These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,", "Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,", "Beneath a vulgar master, to perform", "A task of cold and brutal drudgery;--", "Hardened to hope, insensible to fear,", "Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,", "Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,", "That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!", "", "'The harmony and happiness of man", "Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts", "His nature to the heaven of its pride,", "Is bartered for the poison of his soul;", "The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes,", "Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain,", "Withering all passion but of slavish fear,", "Extinguishing all free and generous love", "Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse", "That fancy kindles in the beating heart", "To mingle with sensation, it destroys,--", "Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self,", "The grovelling hope of interest and gold,", "Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed", "Even by hypocrisy.", "And statesmen boast", "Of wealth! The wordy eloquence, that lives", "After the ruin of their hearts, can gild", "The bitter poison of a nation's woe,", "Can turn the worship of the servile mob", "To their corrupt and glaring idol, Fame,", "From Virtue, trampled by its iron tread,", "Although its dazzling pedestal be raised", "Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field,", "With desolated dwellings smoking round.", "The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside,", "To deeds of charitable intercourse,", "And bare fulfilment of the common laws", "Of decency and prejudice, confines", "The struggling nature of his human heart,", "Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds", "A passing tear perchance upon the wreck", "Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling's door", "The frightful waves are driven,--when his son", "Is murdered by the tyrant, or religion", "Drives his wife raving mad. But the poor man,", "Whose life is misery, and fear, and care;", "Whom the morn wakens but to fruitless toil;", "Who ever hears his famished offspring's scream,", "Whom their pale mother's uncomplaining gaze", "For ever meets, and the proud rich man's eye", "Flashing command, and the heart-breaking scene", "Of thousands like himself;--he little heeds", "The rhetoric of tyranny; his hate", "Is quenchless as his wrongs; he laughs to scorn", "The vain and bitter mockery of words,", "Feeling the horror of the tyrant's deeds,", "And unrestrained but by the arm of power,", "That knows and dreads his enmity.", "", "'The iron rod of Penury still compels", "Her wretched slave to bow the knee to wealth,", "And poison, with unprofitable toil,", "A life too void of solace to confirm", "The very chains that bind him to his doom.", "Nature, impartial in munificence,", "Has gifted man with all-subduing will.", "Matter, with all its transitory shapes,", "Lies subjected and plastic at his feet,", "That, weak from bondage, tremble as they tread.", "How many a rustic Milton has passed by,", "Stifling the speechless longings of his heart,", "In unremitting drudgery and care!", "How many a vulgar Cato has compelled", "His energies, no longer tameless then,", "To mould a pin, or fabricate a nail!", "How many a Newton, to whose passive ken", "Those mighty spheres that gem infinity", "Were only specks of tinsel, fixed in Heaven", "To light the midnights of his native town!", "", "'Yet every heart contains perfection's germ:", "The wisest of the sages of the earth,", "That ever from the stores of reason drew", "Science and truth, and virtue's dreadless tone,", "Were but a weak and inexperienced boy,", "Proud, sensual, unimpassioned, unimbued", "With pure desire and universal love,", "Compared to that high being, of cloudless brain,", "Untainted passion, elevated will,", "Which Death (who even would linger long in awe", "Within his noble presence, and beneath", "His changeless eyebeam) might alone subdue.", "Him, every slave now dragging through the filth", "Of some corrupted city his sad life,", "Pining with famine, swoln with luxury,", "Blunting the keenness of his spiritual sense", "With narrow schemings and unworthy cares,", "Or madly rushing through all violent crime,", "To move the deep stagnation of his soul,--", "Might imitate and equal.", "But mean lust", "Has bound its chains so tight around the earth,", "That all within it but the virtuous man", "Is venal: gold or fame will surely reach", "The price prefixed by selfishness, to all", "But him of resolute and unchanging will;", "Whom, nor the plaudits of a servile crowd,", "Nor the vile joys of tainting luxury,", "Can bribe to yield his elevated soul", "To Tyranny or Falsehood, though they wield", "With blood-red hand the sceptre of the world.", "", "'All things are sold: the very light of Heaven", "Is venal; earth's unsparing gifts of love,", "The smallest and most despicable things", "That lurk in the abysses of the deep,", "All objects of our life, even life itself,", "And the poor pittance which the laws allow", "Of liberty, the fellowship of man,", "Those duties which his heart of human love", "Should urge him to perform instinctively,", "Are bought and sold as in a public mart", "Of undisguising selfishness, that sets", "On each its price, the stamp-mark of her reign.", "Even love is sold; the solace of all woe", "Is turned to deadliest agony, old age", "Shivers in selfish beauty's loathing arms,", "And youth's corrupted impulses prepare", "A life of horror from the blighting bane", "Of commerce; whilst the pestilence that springs", "From unenjoying sensualism, has filled", "All human life with hydra-headed woes.", "", "'Falsehood demands but gold to pay the pangs", "Of outraged conscience; for the slavish priest", "Sets no great value on his hireling faith:", "A little passing pomp, some servile souls,", "Whom cowardice itself might safely chain,", "Or the spare mite of avarice could bribe", "To deck the triumph of their languid zeal,", "Can make him minister to tyranny.", "More daring crime requires a loftier meed:", "Without a shudder, the slave-soldier lends", "His arm to murderous deeds, and steels his heart,", "When the dread eloquence of dying men,", "Low mingling on the lonely field of fame,", "Assails that nature, whose applause he sells", "For the gross blessings of a patriot mob,", "For the vile gratitude of heartless kings,", "And for a cold world's good word,--viler still!", "", "'There is a nobler glory, which survives", "Until our being fades, and, solacing", "All human care, accompanies its change;", "Deserts not virtue in the dungeon's gloom,", "And, in the precincts of the palace, guides", "Its footsteps through that labyrinth of crime;", "Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness,", "Even when, from Power's avenging hand, he takes", "Its sweetest, last and noblest title--death;", "--The consciousness of good, which neither gold,", "Nor sordid fame, nor hope of heavenly bliss", "Can purchase; but a life of resolute good,--", "Unalterable will, quenchless desire", "Of universal happiness, the heart", "That beats with it in unison, the brain,", "Whose ever wakeful wisdom toils to change", "Reason's rich stores for its eternal weal.", "", "'This commerce of sincerest virtue needs", "No mediative signs of selfishness,", "No jealous intercourse of wretched gain,", "No balancings of prudence, cold and long;", "In just and equal measure all is weighed,", "One scale contains the sum of human weal,", "And one, the good man's heart.", "How vainly seek", "The selfish for that happiness denied", "To aught but virtue! Blind and hardened, they,", "Who hope for peace amid the storms of care,", "Who covet power they know not how to use,", "And sigh for pleasure they refuse to give,--", "Madly they frustrate still their own designs;", "And, where they hope that quiet to enjoy", "Which virtue pictures, bitterness of soul,", "Pining regrets, and vain repentances,", "Disease, disgust, and lassitude, pervade", "Their valueless and miserable lives.", "", "'But hoary-headed Selfishness has felt", "Its death-blow, and is tottering to the grave:", "A brighter morn awaits the human day,", "When every transfer of earth's natural gifts", "Shall be a commerce of good words and works;", "When poverty and wealth, the thirst of fame,", "The fear of infamy, disease and woe,", "War with its million horrors, and fierce hell", "Shall live but in the memory of Time,", "Who, like a penitent libertine, shall start,", "Look back, and shudder at his younger years.'", "", "All touch, all eye, all ear,", "The Spirit felt the Fairy's burning speech.", "O'er the thin texture of its frame,", "The varying periods painted changing glows,", "As on a summer even,", "When soul-enfolding music floats around,", "The stainless mirror of the lake", "Re-images the eastern gloom,", "Mingling convulsively its purple hues", "With sunset's burnished gold.", "", "Then thus the Spirit spoke:", "'It is a wild and miserable world!", "Thorny, and full of care,", "Which every fiend can make his prey at will.", "O Fairy! in the lapse of years,", "Is there no hope in store?", "Will yon vast suns roll on", "Interminably, still illuming", "The night of so many wretched souls,", "And see no hope for them?", "Will not the universal Spirit e'er", "Revivify this withered limb of Heaven?'", "", "The Fairy calmly smiled", "In comfort, and a kindling gleam of hope", "Suffused the Spirit's lineaments.", "'Oh! rest thee tranquil; chase those fearful doubts,", "Which ne'er could rack an everlasting soul,", "That sees the chains which bind it to its doom.", "Yes! crime and misery are in yonder earth,", "Falsehood, mistake, and lust;", "But the eternal world", "Contains at once the evil and the cure.", "Some eminent in virtue shall start up,", "Even in perversest time:", "The truths of their pure lips, that never die,", "Shall bind the scorpion falsehood with a wreath", "Of ever-living flame,", "Until the monster sting itself to death.", "", "'How sweet a scene will earth become!", "Of purest spirits a pure dwelling-place,", "Symphonious with the planetary spheres;", "When man, with changeless Nature coalescing,", "Will undertake regeneration's work,", "When its ungenial poles no longer point", "To the red and baleful sun", "That faintly twinkles there.", "", "'Spirit! on yonder earth,", "Falsehood now triumphs; deadly power", "Has fixed its seal upon the lip of truth!", "Madness and misery are there!", "The happiest is most wretched! Yet confide,", "Until pure health-drops, from the cup of joy,", "Fall like a dew of balm upon the world.", "Now, to the scene I show, in silence turn,", "And read the blood-stained charter of all woe,", "Which Nature soon, with re-creating hand,", "Will blot in mercy from the book of earth.", "How bold the flight of Passion's wandering wing,", "How swift the step of Reason's firmer tread,", "How calm and sweet the victories of life,", "How terrorless the triumph of the grave!", "How powerless were the mightiest monarch's arm,", "Vain his loud threat, and impotent his frown!", "How ludicrous the priest's dogmatic roar!", "The weight of his exterminating curse", "How light! and his affected charity,", "To suit the pressure of the changing times,", "What palpable deceit!--but for thy aid,", "Religion! but for thee, prolific fiend,", "Who peoplest earth with demons, Hell with men,", "And Heaven with slaves!", "", "'Thou taintest all thou look'st upon!--the stars,", "Which on thy cradle beamed so brightly sweet,", "Were gods to the distempered playfulness", "Of thy untutored infancy: the trees,", "The grass, the clouds, the mountains, and the sea,", "All living things that walk, swim, creep, or fly,", "Were gods: the sun had homage, and the moon", "Her worshipper. Then thou becam'st, a boy,", "More daring in thy frenzies: every shape,", "Monstrous or vast, or beautifully wild,", "Which, from sensation's relics, fancy culls", "The spirits of the air, the shuddering ghost,", "The genii of the elements, the powers", "That give a shape to Nature's varied works,", "Had life and place in the corrupt belief", "Of thy blind heart: yet still thy youthful hands", "Were pure of human blood. Then manhood gave", "Its strength and ardour to thy frenzied brain;", "Thine eager gaze scanned the stupendous scene,", "Whose wonders mocked the knowledge of thy pride:", "Their everlasting and unchanging laws", "Reproached thine ignorance. Awhile thou stoodst", "Baffled and gloomy; then thou didst sum up", "The elements of all that thou didst know;", "The changing seasons, winter's leafless reign,", "The budding of the Heaven-breathing trees,", "The eternal orbs that beautify the night,", "The sunrise, and the setting of the moon,", "Earthquakes and wars, and poisons and disease,", "And all their causes, to an abstract point", "Converging, thou didst bend and called it God!", "The self-sufficing, the omnipotent,", "The merciful, and the avenging God!", "Who, prototype of human misrule, sits", "High in Heaven's realm, upon a golden throne,", "Even like an earthly king; and whose dread work,", "Hell, gapes for ever for the unhappy slaves", "Of fate, whom He created, in his sport,", "To triumph in their torments when they fell!", "Earth heard the name; Earth trembled, as the smoke", "Of His revenge ascended up to Heaven,", "Blotting the constellations; and the cries", "Of millions, butchered in sweet confidence", "And unsuspecting peace, even when the bonds", "Of safety were confirmed by wordy oaths", "Sworn in His dreadful name, rung through the land;", "Whilst innocent babes writhed on thy stubborn spear,", "And thou didst laugh to hear the mother's shriek", "Of maniac gladness, as the sacred steel", "Felt cold in her torn entrails!", "", "'Religion! thou wert then in manhood's prime:", "But age crept on: one God would not suffice", "For senile puerility; thou framedst", "A tale to suit thy dotage, and to glut", "Thy misery-thirsting soul, that the mad fiend", "Thy wickedness had pictured might afford", "A plea for sating the unnatural thirst", "For murder, rapine, violence, and crime,", "That still consumed thy being, even when", "Thou heardst the step of Fate;--that flames might light", "Thy funeral scene, and the shrill horrent shrieks", "Of parents dying on the pile that burned", "To light their children to thy paths, the roar", "Of the encircling flames, the exulting cries", "Of thine apostles, loud commingling there,", "Might sate thine hungry ear", "Even on the bed of death!", "", "'But now contempt is mocking thy gray hairs;", "Thou art descending to the darksome grave,", "Unhonoured and unpitied, but by those", "Whose pride is passing by like thine, and sheds,", "Like thine, a glare that fades before the sun", "Of truth, and shines but in the dreadful night", "That long has lowered above the ruined world.", "", "'Throughout these infinite orbs of mingling light,", "Of which yon earth is one, is wide diffused", "A Spirit of activity and life,", "That knows no term, cessation, or decay;", "That fades not when the lamp of earthly life,", "Extinguished in the dampness of the grave,", "Awhile there slumbers, more than when the babe", "In the dim newness of its being feels", "The impulses of sublunary things,", "And all is wonder to unpractised sense:", "But, active, steadfast, and eternal, still", "Guides the fierce whirlwind, in the tempest roars,", "Cheers in the day, breathes in the balmy groves,", "Strengthens in health, and poisons in disease;", "And in the storm of change, that ceaselessly", "Rolls round the eternal universe, and shakes", "Its undecaying battlement, presides,", "Apportioning with irresistible law", "The place each spring of its machine shall fill;", "So that when waves on waves tumultuous heap", "Confusion to the clouds, and fiercely driven", "Heaven's lightnings scorch the uprooted ocean-fords,", "Whilst, to the eye of shipwrecked mariner,", "Lone sitting on the bare and shuddering rock,", "All seems unlinked contingency and chance:", "No atom of this turbulence fulfils", "A vague and unnecessitated task,", "Or acts but as it must and ought to act.", "Even the minutest molecule of light,", "That in an April sunbeam's fleeting glow", "Fulfils its destined, though invisible work,", "The universal Spirit guides; nor less,", "When merciless ambition, or mad zeal,", "Has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield,", "That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves,", "And call the sad work glory, does it rule", "All passions: not a thought, a will, an act,", "No working of the tyrant's moody mind,", "Nor one misgiving of the slaves who boast", "Their servitude, to hide the shame they feel,", "Nor the events enchaining every will,", "That from the depths of unrecorded time", "Have drawn all-influencing virtue, pass", "Unrecognized, or unforeseen by thee,", "Soul of the Universe! eternal spring", "Of life and death, of happiness and woe,", "Of all that chequers the phantasmal scene", "That floats before our eyes in wavering light,", "Which gleams but on the darkness of our prison,", "Whose chains and massy walls", "We feel, but cannot see.", "", "'Spirit of Nature! all-sufficing Power,", "Necessity! thou mother of the world!", "Unlike the God of human error, thou", "Requir'st no prayers or praises; the caprice", "Of man's weak will belongs no more to thee", "Than do the changeful passions of his breast", "To thy unvarying harmony: the slave,", "Whose horrible lusts spread misery o'er the world,", "And the good man, who lifts, with virtuous pride,", "His being, in the sight of happiness,", "That springs from his own works; the poison-tree", "Beneath whose shade all life is withered up,", "And the fair oak, whose leafy dome affords", "A temple where the vows of happy love", "Are registered, are equal in thy sight:", "No love, no hate thou cherishest; revenge", "And favouritism, and worst desire of fame", "Thou know'st not: all that the wide world contains", "Are but thy passive instruments, and thou", "Regard'st them all with an impartial eye,", "Whose joy or pain thy nature cannot feel,", "Because thou hast not human sense,", "Because thou art not human mind.", "", "'Yes! when the sweeping storm of time", "Has sung its death-dirge o'er the ruined fanes", "And broken altars of the almighty Fiend", "Whose name usurps thy honours, and the blood", "Through centuries clotted there, has floated down", "The tainted flood of ages, shalt thou live", "Unchangeable! A shrine is raised to thee,", "Which, nor the tempest-breath of time,", "Nor the interminable flood,", "Over earth's slight pageant rolling,", "Availeth to destroy,--.", "The sensitive extension of the world.", "That wondrous and eternal fane,", "Where pain and pleasure, good and evil join,", "To do the will of strong necessity,", "And life, in multitudinous shapes,", "Still pressing forward where no term can be,", "Like hungry and unresting flame", "Curls round the eternal columns of its strength.'", "", "SPIRIT:", "'I was an infant when my mother went", "To see an atheist burned. She took me there:", "The dark-robed priests were met around the pile;", "The multitude was gazing silently;", "And as the culprit passed with dauntless mien,", "Tempered disdain in his unaltering eye,", "Mixed with a quiet smile, shone calmly forth:", "The thirsty fire crept round his manly limbs;", "His resolute eyes were scorched to blindness soon;", "His death-pang rent my heart! the insensate mob", "Uttered a cry of triumph, and I wept.", "\"Weep not, child!\" cried my mother, \"for that man", "Has said, There is no God.\"'", "", "FAIRY:", "'There is no God!", "Nature confirms the faith his death-groan sealed:", "Let heaven and earth, let man's revolving race,", "His ceaseless generations tell their tale;", "Let every part depending on the chain", "That links it to the whole, point to the hand", "That grasps its term! let every seed that falls", "In silent eloquence unfold its store", "Of argument; infinity within,", "Infinity without, belie creation;", "The exterminable spirit it contains", "Is nature's only God; but human pride", "Is skilful to invent most serious names", "To hide its ignorance.", "The name of God", "Has fenced about all crime with holiness,", "Himself the creature of His worshippers,", "Whose names and attributes and passions change,", "Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord,", "Even with the human dupes who build His shrines,", "Still serving o'er the war-polluted world", "For desolation's watchword; whether hosts", "Stain His death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on", "Triumphantly they roll, whilst Brahmins raise", "A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans;", "Or countless partners of His power divide", "His tyranny to weakness; or the smoke", "Of burning towns, the cries of female helplessness,", "Unarmed old age, and youth, and infancy,", "Horribly massacred, ascend to Heaven", "In honour of His name; or, last and worst,", "Earth groans beneath religion's iron age,", "And priests dare babble of a God of peace,", "Even whilst their hands are red with guiltless blood,", "Murdering the while, uprooting every germ", "Of truth, exterminating, spoiling all,", "Making the earth a slaughter-house!", "", "'O Spirit! through the sense", "By which thy inner nature was apprised", "Of outward shows, vague dreams have rolled,", "And varied reminiscences have waked", "Tablets that never fade;", "All things have been imprinted there,", "The stars, the sea, the earth, the sky,", "Even the unshapeliest lineaments", "Of wild and fleeting visions", "Have left a record there", "To testify of earth.", "", "'These are my empire, for to me is given", "The wonders of the human world to keep,", "And Fancy's thin creations to endow", "With manner, being, and reality;", "Therefore a wondrous phantom, from the dreams", "Of human error's dense and purblind faith,", "I will evoke, to meet thy questioning.", "Ahasuerus, rise!'", "", "A strange and woe-worn wight", "Arose beside the battlement,", "And stood unmoving there.", "His inessential figure cast no shade", "Upon the golden floor;", "His port and mien bore mark of many years,", "And chronicles of untold ancientness", "Were legible within his beamless eye:", "Yet his cheek bore the mark of youth;", "Freshness and vigour knit his manly frame;", "The wisdom of old age was mingled there", "With youth's primaeval dauntlessness;", "And inexpressible woe,", "Chastened by fearless resignation, gave", "An awful grace to his all-speaking brow.", "", "SPIRIT:", "'Is there a God?'", "", "AHASUERUS:", "'Is there a God!--ay, an almighty God,", "And vengeful as almighty! Once His voice", "Was heard on earth: earth shuddered at the sound;", "The fiery-visaged firmament expressed", "Abhorrence, and the grave of Nature yawned", "To swallow all the dauntless and the good", "That dared to hurl defiance at His throne,", "Girt as it was with power. None but slaves", "Survived,--cold-blooded slaves, who did the work", "Of tyrannous omnipotence; whose souls", "No honest indignation ever urged", "To elevated daring, to one deed", "Which gross and sensual self did not pollute.", "These slaves built temples for the omnipotent Fiend,", "Gorgeous and vast: the costly altars smoked", "With human blood, and hideous paeans rung", "Through all the long-drawn aisles. A murderer heard", "His voice in Egypt, one whose gifts and arts", "Had raised him to his eminence in power,", "Accomplice of omnipotence in crime,", "And confidant of the all-knowing one.", "These were Jehovah's words:--", "", "'From an eternity of idleness", "I, God, awoke; in seven days' toil made earth", "From nothing; rested, and created man:", "I placed him in a Paradise, and there", "Planted the tree of evil, so that he", "Might eat and perish, and My soul procure", "Wherewith to sate its malice, and to turn,", "Even like a heartless conqueror of the earth,", "All misery to My fame. The race of men", "Chosen to My honour, with impunity", "May sate the lusts I planted in their heart.", "Here I command thee hence to lead them on,", "Until, with hardened feet, their conquering troops", "Wade on the promised soil through woman's blood,", "And make My name be dreaded through the land.", "Yet ever-burning flame and ceaseless woe", "Shall be the doom of their eternal souls,", "With every soul on this ungrateful earth,", "Virtuous or vicious, weak or strong,--even all", "Shall perish, to fulfil the blind revenge", "(Which you, to men, call justice) of their God.'", "", "The murderer's brow", "Quivered with horror.", "'God omnipotent,", "Is there no mercy? must our punishment", "Be endless? will long ages roll away,", "And see no term? Oh! wherefore hast Thou made", "In mockery and wrath this evil earth?", "Mercy becomes the powerful--be but just:", "O God! repent and save.'", "", "'One way remains:", "I will beget a Son, and He shall bear", "The sins of all the world; He shall arise", "In an unnoticed corner of the earth,", "And there shall die upon a cross, and purge", "The universal crime; so that the few", "On whom My grace descends, those who are marked", "As vessels to the honour of their God,", "May credit this strange sacrifice, and save", "Their souls alive: millions shall live and die,", "Who ne'er shall call upon their Saviour's name,", "But, unredeemed, go to the gaping grave.", "Thousands shall deem it an old woman's tale,", "Such as the nurses frighten babes withal:", "These in a gulf of anguish and of flame", "Shall curse their reprobation endlessly,", "Yet tenfold pangs shall force them to avow,", "Even on their beds of torment, where they howl,", "My honour, and the justice of their doom.", "What then avail their virtuous deeds, their thoughts", "Of purity, with radiant genius bright,", "Or lit with human reason's earthly ray?", "Many are called, but few will I elect.", "Do thou My bidding, Moses!'", "Even the murderer's cheek", "Was blanched with horror, and his quivering lips", "Scarce faintly uttered--'O almighty One,", "I tremble and obey!'", "", "'O Spirit! centuries have set their seal", "On this heart of many wounds, and loaded brain,", "Since the Incarnate came: humbly He came,", "Veiling His horrible Godhead in the shape", "Of man, scorned by the world, His name unheard,", "Save by the rabble of His native town,", "Even as a parish demagogue. He led", "The crowd; He taught them justice, truth, and peace,", "In semblance; but He lit within their souls", "The quenchless flames of zeal, and blessed the sword", "He brought on earth to satiate with the blood", "Of truth and freedom His malignant soul.", "At length His mortal frame was led to death.", "I stood beside Him: on the torturing cross", "No pain assailed His unterrestrial sense;", "And yet He groaned. Indignantly I summed", "The massacres and miseries which His name", "Had sanctioned in my country, and I cried,", "\"Go! Go!\" in mockery.", "A smile of godlike malice reillumed", "His fading lineaments.--\"I go,\" He cried,", "\"But thou shalt wander o'er the unquiet earth", "Eternally.\"--The dampness of the grave", "Bathed my imperishable front. I fell,", "And long lay tranced upon the charmed soil.", "When I awoke Hell burned within my brain,", "Which staggered on its seat; for all around", "The mouldering relics of my kindred lay,", "Even as the Almighty's ire arrested them,", "And in their various attitudes of death", "My murdered children's mute and eyeless skulls", "Glared ghastily upon me.", "But my soul,", "From sight and sense of the polluting woe", "Of tyranny, had long learned to prefer", "Hell's freedom to the servitude of Heaven.", "Therefore I rose, and dauntlessly began", "My lonely and unending pilgrimage,", "Resolved to wage unweariable war", "With my almighty Tyrant, and to hurl", "Defiance at His impotence to harm", "Beyond the curse I bore. The very hand", "That barred my passage to the peaceful grave", "Has crushed the earth to misery, and given", "Its empire to the chosen of His slaves.", "These have I seen, even from the earliest dawn", "Of weak, unstable and precarious power,", "Then preaching peace, as now they practise war;", "So, when they turned but from the massacre", "Of unoffending infidels, to quench", "Their thirst for ruin in the very blood", "That flowed in their own veins, and pitiless zeal", "Froze every human feeling, as the wife", "Sheathed in her husband's heart the sacred steel,", "Even whilst its hopes were dreaming of her love;", "And friends to friends, brothers to brothers stood", "Opposed in bloodiest battle-field, and war,", "Scarce satiable by fate's last death-draught, waged,", "Drunk from the winepress of the Almighty's wrath;", "Whilst the red cross, in mockery of peace,", "Pointed to victory! When the fray was done,", "No remnant of the exterminated faith", "Survived to tell its ruin, but the flesh,", "With putrid smoke poisoning the atmosphere,", "That rotted on the half-extinguished pile.", "", "'Yes! I have seen God's worshippers unsheathe", "The sword of His revenge, when grace descended,", "Confirming all unnatural impulses,", "To sanctify their desolating deeds;", "And frantic priests waved the ill-omened cross", "O'er the unhappy earth: then shone the sun", "On showers of gore from the upflashing steel", "Of safe assassination, and all crime", "Made stingless by the Spirits of the Lord,", "And blood-red rainbows canopied the land.", "'Spirit, no year of my eventful being", "Has passed unstained by crime and misery,", "Which flows from God's own faith. I've marked His slaves", "With tongues whose lies are venomous, beguile", "The insensate mob, and, whilst one hand was red", "With murder, feign to stretch the other out", "For brotherhood and peace; and that they now", "Babble of love and mercy, whilst their deeds", "Are marked with all the narrowness and crime", "That Freedom's young arm dare not yet chastise,", "Reason may claim our gratitude, who now", "Establishing the imperishable throne", "Of truth, and stubborn virtue, maketh vain", "The unprevailing malice of my Foe,", "Whose bootless rage heaps torments for the brave,", "Adds impotent eternities to pain,", "Whilst keenest disappointment racks His breast", "To see the smiles of peace around them play,", "To frustrate or to sanctify their doom.", "", "'Thus have I stood,--through a wild waste of years", "Struggling with whirlwinds of mad agony,", "Yet peaceful, and serene, and self-enshrined,", "Mocking my powerless Tyrant's horrible curse", "With stubborn and unalterable will,", "Even as a giant oak, which Heaven's fierce flame", "Had scathed in the wilderness, to stand", "A monument of fadeless ruin there;", "Yet peacefully and movelessly it braves", "The midnight conflict of the wintry storm,", "As in the sunlight's calm it spreads", "Its worn and withered arms on high", "To meet the quiet of a summer's noon.'", "", "The Fairy waved her wand:", "Ahasuerus fled", "Fast as the shapes of mingled shade and mist,", "That lurk in the glens of a twilight grove,", "Flee from the morning beam:", "The matter of which dreams are made", "Not more endowed with actual life", "Than this phantasmal portraiture", "Of wandering human thought.", "", "THE FAIRY:", "'The Present and the Past thou hast beheld:", "It was a desolate sight. Now, Spirit, learn", "The secrets of the Future.--Time!", "Unfold the brooding pinion of thy gloom,", "Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,", "And from the cradles of eternity,", "Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep", "By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,", "Tear thou that gloomy shroud.--Spirit, behold", "Thy glorious destiny!'", "", "Joy to the Spirit came.", "Through the wide rent in Time's eternal veil,", "Hope was seen beaming through the mists of fear:", "Earth was no longer Hell;", "Love, freedom, health, had given", "Their ripeness to the manhood of its prime,", "And all its pulses beat", "Symphonious to the planetary spheres:", "Then dulcet music swelled", "Concordant with the life-strings of the soul;", "It throbbed in sweet and languid beatings there,", "Catching new life from transitory death,--", "Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,", "That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea", "And dies on the creation of its breath,", "And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits:", "Was the pure stream of feeling", "That sprung from these sweet notes,", "And o'er the Spirit's human sympathies", "With mild and gentle motion calmly flowed.", "", "Joy to the Spirit came,--", "Such joy as when a lover sees", "The chosen of his soul in happiness,", "And witnesses her peace", "Whose woe to him were bitterer than death,", "Sees her unfaded cheek", "Glow mantling in first luxury of health,", "Thrills with her lovely eyes,", "Which like two stars amid the heaving main", "Sparkle through liquid bliss.", "", "Then in her triumph spoke the Fairy Queen:", "'I will not call the ghost of ages gone", "To unfold the frightful secrets of its lore;", "The present now is past,", "And those events that desolate the earth", "Have faded from the memory of Time,", "Who dares not give reality to that", "Whose being I annul. To me is given", "The wonders of the human world to keep,", "Space, matter, time, and mind. Futurity", "Exposes now its treasure; let the sight", "Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.", "O human Spirit! spur thee to the goal", "Where virtue fixes universal peace,", "And midst the ebb and flow of human things,", "Show somewhat stable, somewhat certain still,", "A lighthouse o'er the wild of dreary waves.", "", "'The habitable earth is full of bliss;", "Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled", "By everlasting snowstorms round the poles,", "Where matter dared not vegetate or live,", "But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude", "Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;", "And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles", "Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls", "Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,", "Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet", "To murmur through the Heaven-breathing groves", "And melodize with man's blest nature there.", "", "'Those deserts of immeasurable sand,", "Whose age-collected fervours scarce allowed", "A bird to live, a blade of grass to spring,", "Where the shrill chirp of the green lizard's love", "Broke on the sultry silentness alone,", "Now teem with countless rills and shady woods,", "Cornfields and pastures and white cottages;", "And where the startled wilderness beheld", "A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,", "A tigress sating with the flesh of lambs", "The unnatural famine of her toothless cubs,", "Whilst shouts and howlings through the desert rang,", "Sloping and smooth the daisy-spangled lawn,", "Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles", "To see a babe before his mother's door,", "Sharing his morning's meal", "With the green and golden basilisk", "That comes to lick his feet.", "", "'Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail", "Has seen above the illimitable plain,", "Morning on night, and night on morning rise,", "Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread", "Its shadowy mountains on the sun-bright sea,", "Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves", "So long have mingled with the gusty wind", "In melancholy loneliness, and swept", "The desert of those ocean solitudes,", "But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,", "The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,", "Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds", "Of kindliest human impulses respond.", "Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,", "With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,", "And fertile valleys, resonant with bliss,", "Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,", "Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,", "To meet the kisses of the flow'rets there.", "", "'All things are recreated, and the flame", "Of consentaneous love inspires all life:", "The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck", "To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,", "Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:", "The balmy breathings of the wind inhale", "Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:", "Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,", "Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream:", "No storms deform the beaming brow of Heaven,", "Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride", "The foliage of the ever-verdant trees;", "But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,", "And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,", "Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,", "Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit", "Reflects its tint, and blushes into love.", "", "'The lion now forgets to thirst for blood:", "There might you see him sporting in the sun", "Beside the dreadless kid; his claws are sheathed,", "His teeth are harmless, custom's force has made", "His nature as the nature of a lamb.", "Like passion's fruit, the nightshade's tempting bane", "Poisons no more the pleasure it bestows:", "All bitterness is past; the cup of joy", "Unmingled mantles to the goblet's brim,", "And courts the thirsty lips it fled before.", "", "'But chief, ambiguous Man, he that can know", "More misery, and dream more joy than all;", "Whose keen sensations thrill within his breast", "To mingle with a loftier instinct there,", "Lending their power to pleasure and to pain,", "Yet raising, sharpening, and refining each;", "Who stands amid the ever-varying world,", "The burthen or the glory of the earth;", "He chief perceives the change, his being notes", "The gradual renovation, and defines", "Each movement of its progress on his mind.", "", "'Man, where the gloom of the long polar night", "Lowers o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,", "Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost", "Basks in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,", "Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;", "His chilled and narrow energies, his heart,", "Insensible to courage, truth, or love,", "His stunted stature and imbecile frame,", "Marked him for some abortion of the earth,", "Fit compeer of the bears that roamed around,", "Whose habits and enjoyments were his own:", "His life a feverish dream of stagnant woe,", "Whose meagre wants, but scantily fulfilled,", "Apprised him ever of the joyless length", "Which his short being's wretchedness had reached;", "His death a pang which famine, cold and toil", "Long on the mind, whilst yet the vital spark", "Clung to the body stubbornly, had brought:", "All was inflicted here that Earth's revenge", "Could wreak on the infringers of her law;", "One curse alone was spared--the name of God.", "", "'Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day", "With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,", "Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere", "Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed", "Unnatural vegetation, where the land", "Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,", "Was Man a nobler being; slavery", "Had crushed him to his country's bloodstained dust;", "Or he was bartered for the fame of power,", "Which all internal impulses destroying,", "Makes human will an article of trade;", "Or he was changed with Christians for their gold,", "And dragged to distant isles, where to the sound", "Of the flesh-mangling scourge, he does the work", "Of all-polluting luxury and wealth,", "Which doubly visits on the tyrants' heads", "The long-protracted fulness of their woe;", "Or he was led to legal butchery,", "To turn to worms beneath that burning sun,", "Where kings first leagued against the rights of men,", "And priests first traded with the name of God.", "", "'Even where the milder zone afforded Man", "A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,", "Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,", "Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth till late", "Availed to arrest its progress, or create", "That peace which first in bloodless victory waved", "Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime:", "There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,", "The mimic of surrounding misery,", "The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,", "The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.", "'Here now the human being stands adorning", "This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;", "Blessed from his birth with all bland impulses,", "Which gently in his noble bosom wake", "All kindly passions and all pure desires.", "Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing", "Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal", "Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise", "In time-destroying infiniteness, gift", "With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks", "The unprevailing hoariness of age,", "And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene", "Swift as an unremembered vision, stands", "Immortal upon earth: no longer now", "He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,", "And horribly devours his mangled flesh,", "Which, still avenging Nature's broken law,", "Kindled all putrid humours in his frame,", "All evil passions, and all vain belief,", "Hatred, despair, and loathing in his mind,", "The germs of misery, death, disease, and crime.", "No longer now the winged habitants,", "That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,--", "Flee from the form of man; but gather round,", "And prune their sunny feathers on the hands", "Which little children stretch in friendly sport", "Towards these dreadless partners of their play.", "All things are void of terror: Man has lost", "His terrible prerogative, and stands", "An equal amidst equals: happiness", "And science dawn though late upon the earth;", "Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;", "Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,", "Reason and passion cease to combat there;", "Whilst each unfettered o'er the earth extend", "Their all-subduing energies, and wield", "The sceptre of a vast dominion there;", "Whilst every shape and mode of matter lends", "Its force to the omnipotence of mind,", "Which from its dark mine drags the gem of truth", "To decorate its Paradise of peace.'", "", "'O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!", "To which those restless souls that ceaselessly", "Throng through the human universe, aspire;", "Thou consummation of all mortal hope!", "Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!", "Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,", "Verge to one point and blend for ever there:", "Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!", "Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,", "Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come:", "O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!", "", "'Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,", "And dim forebodings of thy loveliness", "Haunting the human heart, have there entwined", "Those rooted hopes of some sweet place of bliss", "Where friends and lovers meet to part no more.", "Thou art the end of all desire and will,", "The product of all action; and the souls", "That by the paths of an aspiring change", "Have reached thy haven of perpetual peace,", "There rest from the eternity of toil", "That framed the fabric of thy perfectness.", "", "'Even Time, the conqueror, fled thee in his fear;", "That hoary giant, who, in lonely pride,", "So long had ruled the world, that nations fell", "Beneath his silent footstep. Pyramids,", "That for millenniums had withstood the tide", "Of human things, his storm-breath drove in sand", "Across that desert where their stones survived", "The name of him whose pride had heaped them there.", "Yon monarch, in his solitary pomp,", "Was but the mushroom of a summer day,", "That his light-winged footstep pressed to dust:", "Time was the king of earth: all things gave way", "Before him, but the fixed and virtuous will,", "The sacred sympathies of soul and sense,", "That mocked his fury and prepared his fall.", "", "'Yet slow and gradual dawned the morn of love;", "Long lay the clouds of darkness o'er the scene,", "Till from its native Heaven they rolled away:", "First, Crime triumphant o'er all hope careered", "Unblushing, undisguising, bold and strong;", "Whilst Falsehood, tricked in Virtue's attributes,", "Long sanctified all deeds of vice and woe,", "Till done by her own venomous sting to death,", "She left the moral world without a law,", "No longer fettering Passion's fearless wing,--", "Nor searing Reason with the brand of God.", "Then steadily the happy ferment worked;", "Reason was free; and wild though Passion went", "Through tangled glens and wood-embosomed meads,", "Gathering a garland of the strangest flowers,", "Yet like the bee returning to her queen,", "She bound the sweetest on her sister's brow,", "Who meek and sober kissed the sportive child,", "No longer trembling at the broken rod.", "", "'Mild was the slow necessity of death:", "The tranquil spirit failed beneath its grasp,", "Without a groan, almost without a fear,", "Calm as a voyager to some distant land,", "And full of wonder, full of hope as he.", "The deadly germs of languor and disease", "Died in the human frame, and Purity", "Blessed with all gifts her earthly worshippers.", "How vigorous then the athletic form of age!", "How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!", "Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, nor care,", "Had stamped the seal of gray deformity", "On all the mingling lineaments of time.", "How lovely the intrepid front of youth!", "Which meek-eyed courage decked with freshest grace;--", "Courage of soul, that dreaded not a name,", "And elevated will, that journeyed on", "Through life's phantasmal scene in fearlessness,", "With virtue, love, and pleasure, hand in hand.", "", "'Then, that sweet bondage which is Freedom's self,", "And rivets with sensation's softest tie", "The kindred sympathies of human souls,", "Needed no fetters of tyrannic law:", "Those delicate and timid impulses", "In Nature's primal modesty arose,", "And with undoubted confidence disclosed", "The growing longings of its dawning love,", "Unchecked by dull and selfish chastity,", "That virtue of the cheaply virtuous,", "Who pride themselves in senselessness and frost.", "No longer prostitution's venomed bane", "Poisoned the springs of happiness and life;", "Woman and man, in confidence and love,", "Equal and free and pure together trod", "The mountain-paths of virtue, which no more", "Were stained with blood from many a pilgrim's feet.", "", "'Then, where, through distant ages, long in pride", "The palace of the monarch-slave had mocked", "Famine's faint groan, and Penury's silent tear,", "A heap of crumbling ruins stood, and threw", "Year after year their stones upon the field,", "Wakening a lonely echo; and the leaves", "Of the old thorn, that on the topmost tower", "Usurped the royal ensign's grandeur, shook", "In the stern storm that swayed the topmost tower", "And whispered strange tales in the Whirlwind's ear.", "'Low through the lone cathedral's roofless aisles", "The melancholy winds a death-dirge sung:", "It were a sight of awfulness to see", "The works of faith and slavery, so vast,", "So sumptuous, yet so perishing withal!", "Even as the corpse that rests beneath its wall.", "A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death", "To-day, the breathing marble glows above", "To decorate its memory, and tongues", "Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms", "In silence and in darkness seize their prey.", "", "'Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,", "Fearless and free the ruddy children played,", "Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows", "With the green ivy and the red wallflower,", "That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;", "The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,", "There rusted amid heaps of broken stone", "That mingled slowly with their native earth:", "There the broad beam of day, which feebly once", "Lighted the cheek of lean Captivity", "With a pale and sickly glare, then freely shone", "On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:", "No more the shuddering voice of hoarse Despair", "Pealed through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes", "Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds", "And merriment were resonant around.", "", "'These ruins soon left not a wreck behind:", "Their elements, wide scattered o'er the globe,", "To happier shapes were moulded, and became", "Ministrant to all blissful impulses:", "Thus human things were perfected, and earth,", "Even as a child beneath its mother's love,", "Was strengthened in all excellence, and grew", "Fairer and nobler with each passing year.", "", "'Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene", "Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past", "Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done:", "Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own,", "With all the fear and all the hope they bring.", "My spells are passed: the present now recurs.", "Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains", "Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.", "", "'Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,", "Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue", "The gradual paths of an aspiring change:", "For birth and life and death, and that strange state", "Before the naked soul has found its home,", "All tend to perfect happiness, and urge", "The restless wheels of being on their way,", "Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,", "Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:", "For birth but wakes the spirit to the sense", "Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape", "New modes of passion to its frame may lend;", "Life is its state of action, and the store", "Of all events is aggregated there", "That variegate the eternal universe;", "Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,", "That leads to azure isles and beaming skies", "And happy regions of eternal hope.", "Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:", "Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,", "Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,", "Yet Spring's awakening breath will woo the earth,", "To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,", "That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,", "Lighting the greenwood with its sunny smile.", "", "'Fear not then, Spirit, Death's disrobing hand,", "So welcome when the tyrant is awake,", "So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch burns;", "'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,", "The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.", "Death is no foe to Virtue: earth has seen", "Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,", "Mingling with Freedom's fadeless laurels there,", "And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.", "Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene", "Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?", "Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still,", "When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led,", "Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death?", "And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast,", "Listening supinely to a bigot's creed,", "Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod,", "Whose iron thongs are red with human gore?", "Never: but bravely bearing on, thy will", "Is destined an eternal war to wage", "With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot", "The germs of misery from the human heart.", "Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe", "The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,", "Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,", "Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease:", "Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy", "Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,", "When fenced by power and master of the world.", "Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,", "Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,", "Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.", "Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,", "And therefore art thou worthy of the boon", "Which thou hast now received: Virtue shall keep", "Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,", "And many days of beaming hope shall bless", "Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.", "Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy", "Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch", "Light, life and rapture from thy smile.'", "", "The Fairy waves her wand of charm.", "Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,", "That rolled beside the battlement,", "Bending her beamy eyes in thankful ness.", "Again the enchanted steeds were yoked,", "Again the burning wheels inflame", "The steep descent of Heaven's untrodden way.", "Fast and far the chariot flew:", "The vast and fiery globes that rolled", "Around the Fairy's palace-gate", "Lessened by slow degrees and soon appeared", "Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs", "That there attendant on the solar power", "With borrowed light pursued their narrower way.", "", "Earth floated then below:", "The chariot paused a moment there;", "The Spirit then descended:", "The restless coursers pawed the ungenial soil,", "Snuffed the gross air, and then, their errand done,", "Unfurled their pinions to the winds of Heaven.", "", "The Body and the Soul united then,", "A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame:", "Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;", "Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:", "She looked around in wonder and beheld", "Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,", "Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,", "And the bright beaming stars", "That through the casement shone." ], "linecount": "2353" }, { "title": "Falsehood and Vice", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A DIALOGUE.", "", "Whilst monarchs laughed upon their thrones", "To hear a famished nation's groans,", "And hugged the wealth wrung from the woe", "That makes its eyes and veins o'erflow,--", "Those thrones, high built upon the heaps", "Of bones where frenzied Famine sleeps,", "Where Slavery wields her scourge of iron,", "Red with mankind's unheeded gore,", "And War's mad fiends the scene environ,", "Mingling with shrieks a drunken roar,", "There Vice and Falsehood took their stand,", "High raised above the unhappy land.", "", "FALSEHOOD:", "Brother! arise from the dainty fare,", "Which thousands have toiled and bled to bestow;", "A finer feast for thy hungry ear", "Is the news that I bring of human woe.", "", "VICE:", "And, secret one, what hast thou done,", "To compare, in thy tumid pride, with me?", "I, whose career, through the blasted year,", "Has been tracked by despair and agony.", "", "FALSEHOOD:", "What have I done!--I have torn the robe", "From baby Truth's unsheltered form,", "And round the desolated globe", "Borne safely the bewildering charm:", "My tyrant-slaves to a dungeon-floor", "Have bound the fearless innocent,", "And streams of fertilizing gore", "Flow from her bosom's hideous rent,", "Which this unfailing dagger gave...", "I dread that blood!--no more--this day", "Is ours, though her eternal ray", "Must shine upon our grave.", "Yet know, proud Vice, had I not given", "To thee the robe I stole from Heaven,", "Thy shape of ugliness and fear", "Had never gained admission here.", "", "VICE:", "And know, that had I disdained to toil,", "But sate in my loathsome cave the while,", "And ne'er to these hateful sons of Heaven,", "GOLD, MONARCHY, and MURDER, given;", "Hadst thou with all thine art essayed", "One of thy games then to have played,", "With all thine overweening boast,", "Falsehood! I tell thee thou hadst lost!--", "Yet wherefore this dispute?--we tend,", "Fraternal, to one common end;", "In this cold grave beneath my feet,", "Will our hopes, our fears, and our labours, meet.", "", "FALSEHOOD:", "I brought my daughter, RELIGION, on earth:", "She smothered Reason's babes in their birth;", "But dreaded their mother's eye severe,--", "So the crocodile slunk off slily in fear,", "And loosed her bloodhounds from the den....", "They started from dreams of slaughtered men,", "And, by the light of her poison eye,", "Did her work o'er the wide earth frightfully:", "The dreadful stench of her torches' flare,", "Fed with human fat, polluted the air:", "The curses, the shrieks, the ceaseless cries", "Of the many-mingling miseries,", "As on she trod, ascended high", "And trumpeted my victory!--", "Brother, tell what thou hast done.", "", "VICE:", "I have extinguished the noonday sun,", "In the carnage-smoke of battles won:", "Famine, Murder, Hell and Power", "Were glutted in that glorious hour", "Which searchless fate had stamped for me", "With the seal of her security...", "For the bloated wretch on yonder throne", "Commanded the bloody fray to rise.", "Like me he joyed at the stifled moan", "Wrung from a nation's miseries;", "While the snakes, whose slime even him DEFILED,", "In ecstasies of malice smiled:", "They thought 'twas theirs,--but mine the deed!", "Theirs is the toil, but mine the meed--", "Ten thousand victims madly bleed.", "They dream that tyrants goad them there", "With poisonous war to taint the air:", "These tyrants, on their beds of thorn,", "Swell with the thoughts of murderous fame,", "And with their gains to lift my name", "Restless they plan from night to morn:", "I--I do all; without my aid", "Thy daughter, that relentless maid,", "Could never o'er a death-bed urge", "The fury of her venomed scourge.", "", "FALSEHOOD:", "Brother, well:--the world is ours;", "And whether thou or I have won,", "The pestilence expectant lowers", "On all beneath yon blasted sun.", "Our joys, our toils, our honours meet", "In the milk-white and wormy winding-sheet:", "A short-lived hope, unceasing care,", "Some heartless scraps of godly prayer,", "A moody curse, and a frenzied sleep", "Ere gapes the grave's unclosing deep,", "A tyrant's dream, a coward's start,", "The ice that clings to a priestly heart,", "A judge's frown, a courtier's smile,", "Make the great whole for which we toil;", "And, brother, whether thou or I", "Have done the work of misery,", "It little boots: thy toil and pain,", "Without my aid, were more than vain;", "And but for thee I ne'er had sate", "The guardian of Heaven's palace gate." ], "linecount": "116" }, { "title": "Verses on a Cat", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A cat in distress,", "Nothing more, nor less;", "Good folks, I must faithfully tell ye,", "As I am a sinner,", "It waits for some dinner", "To stuff out its own little belly.", "", "You would not easily guess", "All the modes of distress", "Which torture the tenants of earth;", "And the various evils,", "Which like so many devils,", "Attend the poor souls from their birth.", "", "Some a living require,", "And others desire", "An old fellow out of the way;", "And which is the best", "I leave to be guessed,", "For I cannot pretend to say.", "", "One wants society,", "Another variety,", "Others a tranquil life;", "Some want food,", "Others, as good,", "Only want a wife.", "", "But this poor little cat", "Only wanted a rat,", "To stuff out its own little maw;", "And it were as good", "SOME people had such food,", "To make them HOLD THEIR JAW!" ], "linecount": "30" }, { "title": "Epitaphium", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "[LATIN VERSION OF THE EPITAPH IN GRAY'S ELEGY.]", "", "Hic sinu fessum caput hospitali", "Cespitis dormit juvenis, nec illi", "Fata ridebant, popularis ille", "Nescius aurae.", "", "Musa non vultu genus arroganti", "Rustica natum grege despicata,", "Et suum tristis puerum notavit", "Sollicitudo.", "", "Indoles illi bene larga, pectus", "Veritas sedem sibi vindicavit,", "Et pari tantis meritis beavit", "Munere coelum.", "", "Omne quad moestis habuit miserto", "Corde largivit lacrimam, recepit", "Omne quod coelo voluit, fidelis", "Pectus amici.", "", "Longius sed tu fuge curiosus", "Caeteras laudes fuge suspicari,", "Caeteras culpas fuge velle tractas", "Sede tremenda.", "", "Spe tremescentes recubant in illa", "Sede virtutes pariterque culpae,", "In sui Patris gremio, tremenda", "Sede Deique." ], "linecount": "25" }, { "title": "A Dialogue", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "DEATH:", "For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave,", "I come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave,", "Where Innocence sleeps 'neath the peace-giving sod,", "And the good cease to tremble at Tyranny's nod;", "I offer a calm habitation to thee,--", "Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?", "My mansion is damp, cold silence is there,", "But it lulls in oblivion the fiends of despair;", "Not a groan of regret, not a sigh, not a breath,", "Dares dispute with grim Silence the empire of Death.", "I offer a calm habitation to thee,--", "Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?", "", "MORTAL:", "Mine eyelids are heavy; my soul seeks repose,", "It longs in thy cells to embosom its woes,", "It longs in thy cells to deposit its load,", "Where no longer the scorpions of Perfidy goad,--", "Where the phantoms of Prejudice vanish away,", "And Bigotry's bloodhounds lose scent of their prey.", "Yet tell me, dark Death, when thine empire is o'er,", "What awaits on Futurity's mist-covered shore?", "", "DEATH:", "Cease, cease, wayward Mortal! I dare not unveil", "The shadows that float o'er Eternity's vale;", "Nought waits for the good but a spirit of Love,", "That will hail their blest advent to regions above.", "For Love, Mortal, gleams through the gloom of my sway,", "And the shades which surround me fly fast at its ray.", "Hast thou loved?--Then depart from these regions of hate,", "And in slumber with me blunt the arrows of fate.", "I offer a calm habitation to thee.--", "Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?", "", "MORTAL:", "Oh! sweet is thy slumber! oh! sweet is the ray", "Which after thy night introduces the day;", "How concealed, how persuasive, self-interest's breath,", "Though it floats to mine ear from the bosom of Death!", "I hoped that I quite was forgotten by all,", "Yet a lingering friend might be grieved at my fall,", "And duty forbids, though I languish to die,", "When departure might heave Virtue's breast with a sigh.", "O Death! O my friend! snatch this form to thy shrine,", "And I fear, dear destroyer, I shall not repine." ], "linecount": "44" }, { "title": "To the Moonbeam", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Moonbeam, leave the shadowy vale,", "To bathe this burning brow.", "Moonbeam, why art thou so pale,", "As thou walkest o'er the dewy dale,", "Where humble wild-flowers grow?", "Is it to mimic me?", "But that can never be;", "For thine orb is bright,", "And the clouds are light,", "That at intervals shadow the star-studded night.", "", "Now all is deathy still on earth;", "Nature's tired frame reposes;", "And, ere the golden morning's birth", "Its radiant hues discloses,", "Flies forth its balmy breath.", "But mine is the midnight of Death,", "And Nature's morn", "To my bosom forlorn", "Brings but a gloomier night, implants a deadlier thorn.", "", "Wretch! Suppress the glare of madness", "Struggling in thine haggard eye,", "For the keenest throb of sadness,", "Pale Despair's most sickening sigh,", "Is but to mimic me;", "And this must ever be,", "When the twilight of care,", "And the night of despair,", "Seem in my breast but joys to the pangs that rankle there." ], "linecount": "28" }, { "title": "The Solitary", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Dar'st thou amid the varied multitude", "To live alone, an isolated thing?", "To see the busy beings round thee spring,", "And care for none; in thy calm solitude,", "A flower that scarce breathes in the desert rude", "To Zephyr's passing wing?", "", "Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove,", "Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother's hate,", "Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate", "As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love:", "He bears a load which nothing can remove,", "A killing, withering weight.", "", "He smiles--'tis sorrow's deadliest mockery;", "He speaks--the cold words flow not from his soul;", "He acts like others, drains the genial bowl,--", "Yet, yet he longs--although he fears--to die;", "He pants to reach what yet he seems to fly,", "Dull life's extremest goal." ], "linecount": "18" }, { "title": "To Death", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Death! where is thy victory?", "To triumph whilst I die,", "To triumph whilst thine ebon wing", "Enfolds my shuddering soul?", "O Death! where is thy sting?", "Not when the tides of murder roll,", "When nations groan, that kings may bask in bliss,", "Death! canst thou boast a victory such as this--", "When in his hour of pomp and power", "His blow the mightiest murderer gave,", "Mid Nature's cries the sacrifice", "Of millions to glut the grave;", "When sunk the Tyrant Desolation's slave;", "Or Freedom's life-blood streamed upon thy shrine;", "Stern Tyrant, couldst thou boast a victory such as mine?", "", "To know in dissolution's void", "That mortals' baubles sunk decay;", "That everything, but Love, destroyed", "Must perish with its kindred clay,--", "Perish Ambition's crown,", "Perish her sceptred sway:", "From Death's pale front fades Pride's fastidious frown.", "In Death's damp vault the lurid fires decay,", "That Envy lights at heaven-born Virtue's beam--", "That all the cares subside,", "Which lurk beneath the tide", "Of life's unquiet stream;--", "Yes! this is victory!", "And on yon rock, whose dark form glooms the sky,", "To stretch these pale limbs, when the soul is fled;", "To baffle the lean passions of their prey,", "To sleep within the palace of the dead!", "Oh! not the King, around whose dazzling throne", "His countless courtiers mock the words they say,", "Triumphs amid the bud of glory blown,", "As I in this cold bed, and faint expiring groan!", "", "Tremble, ye proud, whose grandeur mocks the woe", "Which props the column of unnatural state!", "You the plainings, faint and low,", "From Misery's tortured soul that flow,", "Shall usher to your fate.", "", "Tremble, ye conquerors, at whose fell command", "The war-fiend riots o'er a peaceful land!", "You Desolation's gory throng", "Shall bear from Victory along", "To that mysterious strand." ], "linecount": "46" }, { "title": "Love's Rose", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Hopes, that swell in youthful breasts,", "Live not through the waste of time!", "Love's rose a host of thorns invests;", "Cold, ungenial is the clime,", "Where its honours blow.", "Youth says, 'The purple flowers are mine,'", "Which die the while they glow.", "", "Dear the boon to Fancy given,", "Retracted whilst it's granted:", "Sweet the rose which lives in Heaven,", "Although on earth 'tis planted,", "Where its honours blow,", "While by earth's slaves the leaves are riven", "Which die the while they glow.", "", "Age cannot Love destroy,", "But perfidy can blast the flower,", "Even when in most unwary hour", "It blooms in Fancy's bower.", "Age cannot Love destroy,", "But perfidy can rend the shrine", "In which its vermeil splendours shine." ], "linecount": "21" }, { "title": "Eyes: A Fragment", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "How eloquent are eyes!", "Not the rapt poet's frenzied lay", "When the soul's wildest feelings stray", "Can speak so well as they.", "How eloquent are eyes!", "Not music's most impassioned note", "On which Love's warmest fervours float", "Like them bids rapture rise.", "", "Love, look thus again,--", "That your look may light a waste of years,", "Darting the beam that conquers cares", "Through the cold shower of tears.", "Love, look thus again!" ], "linecount": "13" }, { "title": "Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Here I sit with my paper, my pen and my ink,", "First of this thing, and that thing, and t'other thing think;", "Then my thoughts come so pell-mell all into my mind,", "That the sense or the subject I never can find:", "This word is wrong placed,--no regard to the sense,", "The present and future, instead of past tense,", "Then my grammar I want; O dear! what a bore,", "I think I shall never attempt to write more,", "With patience I then my thoughts must arraign,", "Have them all in due order like mutes in a train,", "Like them too must wait in due patience and thought,", "Or else my fine works will all come to nought.", "My wit too's so copious, it flows like a river,", "But disperses its waters on black and white never;", "Like smoke it appears independent and free,", "But ah luckless smoke! it all passes like thee--", "Then at length all my patience entirely lost,", "My paper and pens in the fire are tossed;", "But come, try again--you must never despair,", "Our Murray's or Entick's are not all so rare,", "Implore their assistance--they'll come to your aid,", "Perform all your business without being paid,", "They'll tell you the present tense, future and past,", "Which should come first, and which should come last,", "This Murray will do--then to Entick repair,", "To find out the meaning of any word rare.", "This they friendly will tell, and ne'er make you blush,", "With a jeering look, taunt, or an O fie! tush!", "Then straight all your thoughts in black and white put,", "Not minding the if's, the be's, and the but,", "Then read it all over, see how it will run,", "How answers the wit, the retort, and the pun,", "Your writings may then with old Socrates vie,", "May on the same shelf with Demosthenes lie,", "May as Junius be sharp, or as Plato be sage.", "The pattern or satire to all of the age;", "But stop--a mad author I mean not to turn,", "Nor with thirst of applause does my heated brain burn,", "Sufficient that sense, wit, and grammar combined,", "My letters may make some slight food for the mind;", "That my thoughts to my friends I may freely impart,", "In all the warm language that flows from the heart.", "Hark! futurity calls! it loudly complains,", "It bids me step forward and just hold the reins,", "My excuse shall be humble, and faithful, and true,", "Such as I fear can be made but by few--", "Of writers this age has abundance and plenty,", "Three score and a thousand, two millions and twenty,", "Three score of them wits who all sharply vie,", "To try what odd creature they best can belie,", "A thousand are prudes who for CHARITY write,", "And fill up their sheets with spleen, envy, and spite[,]", "One million are bards, who to Heaven aspire,", "And stuff their works full of bombast, rant, and fire,", "T'other million are wags who in Grubstreet attend,", "And just like a cobbler the old writings mend,", "The twenty are those who for pulpits indite,", "And pore over sermons all Saturday night.", "And now my good friends--who come after I mean,", "As I ne'er wore a cassock, or dined with a dean.", "Or like cobblers at mending I never did try,", "Nor with poets in lyrics attempted to vie;", "As for prudes these good souls I both hate and detest,", "So here I believe the matter must rest.--", "I've heard your complaint--my answer I've made,", "And since to your calls all the tribute I've paid,", "Adieu my good friend; pray never despair,", "But grammar and sense and everything dare,", "Attempt but to write dashing, easy, and free,", "Then take out your grammar and pay him his fee,", "Be not a coward, shrink not to a tense,", "But read it all over and make it out sense.", "What a tiresome girl!--pray soon make an end,", "Else my limited patience you'll quickly expend.", "Well adieu, I no longer your patience will try--", "So swift to the post now the letter shall fly." ], "linecount": "76" }, { "title": "To Miss -- -- [Harriet Grove] From Miss -- -- [Elizabeth Shelley]", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "For your letter, dear -- , accept my best thanks,", "Rendered long and amusing by virtue of franks,", "Though concise they would please, yet the longer the better,", "The more news that's crammed in, more amusing the letter,", "All excuses of etiquette nonsense I hate,", "Which only are fit for the tardy and late,", "As when converse grows flat, of the weather they talk,", "How fair the sun shines--a fine day for a walk,", "Then to politics turn, of Burdett's reformation,", "One declares it would hurt, t'other better the nation,", "Will ministers keep? sure they've acted quite wrong,", "The burden this is of each morning-call song.", "So -- is going to -- you say,", "I hope that success her great efforts will pay [--]", "That will see her, be dazzled outright,", "And declare he can't bear to be out of her sight.", "Write flaming epistles with love's pointed dart,", "Whose sharp little arrow struck right on his heart,", "Scold poor innocent Cupid for mischievous ways,", "He knows not how much to laud forth her praise,", "That he neither eats, drinks or sleeps for her sake,", "And hopes her hard heart some compassion will take,", "A refusal would kill him, so desperate his flame,", "But he fears, for he knows she is not common game,", "Then praises her sense, wit, discernment and grace,", "He's not one that's caught by a sly looking face,", "Yet that's TOO divine--such a black sparkling eye,", "At the bare glance of which near a thousand will die;", "Thus runs he on meaning but one word in ten,", "More than is meant by most such kind of men,", "For they're all alike, take them one with another,", "Begging pardon--with the exception of my brother.", "Of the drawings you mention much praise I have heard,", "Most opinion's the same, with the difference of word,", "Some get a good name by the voice of the crowd,", "Whilst to poor humble merit small praise is allowed,", "As in parliament votes, so in pictures a name,", "Oft determines a fate at the altar of fame.--", "So on Friday this City's gay vortex you quit,", "And no longer with Doctors and Johnny cats sit--", "Now your parcel's arrived -- letter shall go,", "I hope all your joy mayn't be turned into woe,", "Experience will tell you that pleasure is vain,", "When it promises sunshine how often comes rain.", "So when to fond hope every blessing is nigh,", "How oft when we smile it is checked with a sigh,", "When Hope, gay deceiver, in pleasure is dressed,", "How oft comes a stroke that may rob us of rest.", "When we think ourselves safe, and the goal near at hand,", "Like a vessel just landing, we're wrecked near the strand,", "And though memory forever the sharp pang must feel,", "'Tis our duty to bear, and our hardship to steel--", "May misfortunes dear Girl, ne'er thy happiness cloy,", "May thy days glide in peace, love, comfort and joy,", "May thy tears with soft pity for other woes flow,", "Woes, which thy tender heart never may know,", "For hardships our own, God has taught us to bear,", "Though sympathy's soul to a friend drops a tear.", "Oh dear! what sentimental stuff have I written,", "Only fit to tear up and play with a kitten.", "What sober reflections in the midst of this letter!", "Jocularity sure would have suited much better;", "But there are exceptions to all common rules,", "For this is a truth by all boys learned at schools.", "Now adieu my dear -- I'm sure I must tire,", "For if I do, you may throw it into the fire,", "So accept the best love of your cousin and friend,", "Which brings this nonsensical rhyme to an end." ], "linecount": "68" }, { "title": "Song", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Come ! sweet is the hour,", "Soft Zephyrs breathe gently around,", "The anemone's night-boding flower,", "Has sunk its pale head on the ground.", "", "'Tis thus the world's keenness hath torn,", "Some mild heart that expands to its blast,", "'Tis thus that the wretched forlorn,", "Sinks poor and neglected at last.--", "", "The world with its keenness and woe,", "Has no charms or attraction for me,", "Its unkindness with grief has laid low,", "The heart which is faithful to thee.", "The high trees that wave past the moon,", "As I walk in their umbrage with you,", "All declare I must part with you soon,", "All bid you a tender adieu!--", "", "Then ! dearest farewell,", "You and I love, may ne'er meet again;", "These woods and these meadows can tell", "How soft and how sweet was the strain.--" ], "linecount": "20" }, { "title": "Despair", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ask not the pallid stranger's woe,", "With beating heart and throbbing breast,", "Whose step is faltering, weak, and slow,", "As though the body needed rest.--", "", "Whose 'wildered eye no object meets,", "Nor cares to ken a friendly glance,", "With silent grief his bosom beats,--", "Now fixed, as in a deathlike trance.", "", "Who looks around with fearful eye,", "And shuns all converse with man kind,", "As though some one his griefs might spy,", "And soothe them with a kindred mind.", "", "A friend or foe to him the same,", "He looks on each with equal eye;", "The difference lies but in the name,", "To none for comfort can he fly.--", "", "'Twas deep despair, and sorrow's trace,", "To him too keenly given,", "Whose memory, time could not efface--", "His peace was lodged in Heaven.--", "", "He looks on all this world bestows,", "The pride and pomp of power,", "As trifles best for pageant shows", "Which vanish in an hour.", "", "When torn is dear affection's tie,", "Sinks the soft heart full low;", "It leaves without a parting sigh,", "All that these realms bestow." ], "linecount": "28" }, { "title": "Sorrow", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "To me this world's a dreary blank,", "All hopes in life are gone and fled,", "My high strung energies are sank,", "And all my blissful hopes lie dead.--", "", "The world once smiling to my view,", "Showed scenes of endless bliss and joy;", "The world I then but little knew,", "Ah! little knew how pleasures cloy;", "", "All then was jocund, all was gay,", "No thought beyond the present hour,", "I danced in pleasure's fading ray,", "Fading alas! as drooping flower.", "", "Nor do the heedless in the throng,", "One thought beyond the morrow give[,]", "They court the feast, the dance, the song,", "Nor think how short their time to live.", "", "The heart that bears deep sorrow's trace,", "What earthly comfort can console,", "It drags a dull and lengthened pace,", "'Till friendly death its woes enroll.--", "", "The sunken cheek, the humid eyes,", "E'en better than the tongue can tell;", "In whose sad breast deep sorrow lies,", "Where memory's rankling traces dwell.--", "", "The rising tear, the stifled sigh,", "A mind but ill at ease display,", "Like blackening clouds in stormy sky,", "Where fiercely vivid lightnings play.", "", "Thus when souls' energy is dead,", "When sorrow dims each earthly view,", "When every fairy hope is fled,", "We bid ungrateful world adieu." ], "linecount": "32" }, { "title": "Hope", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "And said I that all hope was fled,", "That sorrow and despair were mine,", "That each enthusiast wish was dead,", "Had sank beneath pale Misery's shrine.--", "", "Seest thou the sunbeam's yellow glow,", "That robes with liquid streams of light;", "Yon distant Mountain's craggy brow.", "And shows the rocks so fair,--so bright--", "", "Tis thus sweet expectation's ray,", "In softer view shows distant hours,", "And portrays each succeeding day,", "As dressed in fairer, brighter flowers,--", "", "The vermeil tinted flowers that blossom;", "Are frozen but to bud anew,", "Then sweet deceiver calm my bosom,", "Although thy visions be not true,--", "", "Yet true they are,--and I'll believe,", "Thy whisperings soft of love and peace,", "God never made thee to deceive,", "'Tis sin that bade thy empire cease.", "", "Yet though despair my life should gloom,", "Though horror should around me close,", "With those I love, beyond the tomb,", "Hope shows a balm for all my woes." ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "Song. Translated From the Italian", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Oh! what is the gain of restless care,", "And what is ambitious treasure?", "And what are the joys that the modish share,", "In their sickly haunts of pleasure?", "", "My husband's repast with delight I spread,", "What though 'tis but rustic fare,", "May each guardian angel protect his shed,", "May contentment and quiet be there.", "", "And may I support my husband's years,", "May I soothe his dying pain,", "And then may I dry my fast falling tears,", "And meet him in Heaven again." ], "linecount": "12" }, { "title": "Song. Translated From the German", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ah! grasp the dire dagger and couch the fell spear,", "If vengeance and death to thy bosom be dear,", "The dastard shall perish, death's torment shall prove,", "For fate and revenge are decreed from above.", "", "Ah! where is the hero, whose nerves strung by youth,", "Will defend the firm cause of justice and truth;", "With insatiate desire whose bosom shall swell,", "To give up the oppressor to judgement and Hell--", "", "For him shall the fair one twine chaplets of bays,", "To him shall each warrior give merited praise,", "And triumphant returned from the clangour of arms,", "He shall find his reward in his loved maiden's charms.", "", "In ecstatic confusion the warrior shall sip,", "The kisses that glow on his love's dewy lip,", "And mutual, eternal, embraces shall prove,", "The rewards of the brave are the transports of love." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "The Irishman's Song", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "The stars may dissolve, and the fountain of light", "May sink into ne'er ending chaos and night,", "Our mansions must fall, and earth vanish away,", "But thy courage O Erin! may never decay.", "", "See! the wide wasting ruin extends all around,", "Our ancestors' dwellings lie sunk on the ground,", "Our foes ride in triumph throughout our domains,", "And our mightiest heroes lie stretched on the plains.", "", "Ah! dead is the harp which was wont to give pleasure,", "Ah! sunk is our sweet country's rapturous measure,", "But the war note is waked, and the clangour of spears,", "The dread yell of Sloghan yet sounds in our ears.", "", "Ah! where are the heroes! triumphant in death,", "Convulsed they recline on the blood sprinkled heath,", "Or the yelling ghosts ride on the blast that sweeps by,", "And 'my countrymen! vengeance!' incessantly cry." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "To [Harriet]", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ah! sweet is the moonbeam that sleeps on yon fountain,", "And sweet the mild rush of the soft-sighing breeze,", "And sweet is the glimpse of yon dimly-seen mountain,", "'Neath the verdant arcades of yon shadowy trees.", "", "But sweeter than all was thy tone of affection,", "Which scarce seemed to break on the stillness of eve,", "Though the time it is past!--yet the dear recollection,", "For aye in the heart of thy must live.", "", "Yet he hears thy dear voice in the summer winds sighing,", "Mild accents of happiness lisp in his ear,", "When the hope-winged moments athwart him are flying,", "And he thinks of the friend to his bosom so dear.--", "", "And thou dearest friend in his bosom for ever", "Must reign unalloyed by the fast rolling year,", "He loves thee, and dearest one never, Oh! never", "Canst thou cease to be loved by a heart so sincere." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "To -- [Harriet]", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Stern, stern is the voice of fate's fearful command,", "When accents of horror it breathes in our ear,", "Or compels us for aye bid adieu to the land,", "Where exists that loved friend to our bosom so dear,", "", "'Tis sterner than death o'er the shuddering wretch bending,", "And in skeleton grasp his fell sceptre extending,", "Like the heart-stricken deer to that loved covert wending,", "Which never again to his eyes may appear--", "", "And ah! he may envy the heart-stricken quarry,", "Who bids to the friend of affection farewell,", "He may envy the bosom so bleeding and gory,", "He may envy the sound of the drear passing knell,", "", "Not so deep is his grief on his death couch reposing,", "When on the last vision his dim eyes are closing!", "As the outcast whose love-raptured senses are losing,", "The last tones of thy voice on the wild breeze that swell!", "", "Those tones were so soft, and so sad, that ah! never,", "Can the sound cease to vibrate on Memory's ear,", "In the stern wreck of Nature for ever and ever,", "The remembrance must live of a friend so sincere." ], "linecount": "20" }, { "title": "Saint Edmond's Eve", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Oh! did you observe the Black Canon pass,", "And did you observe his frown?", "He goeth to say the midnight mass,", "In holy St. Edmond's town.", "", "He goeth to sing the burial chaunt,", "And to lay the wandering sprite,", "Whose shadowy, restless form doth haunt,", "The Abbey's drear aisle this night.", "", "It saith it will not its wailing cease,", "'Till that holy man come near,", "'Till he pour o'er its grave the prayer of peace,", "And sprinkle the hallowed tear.", "", "The Canon's horse is stout and strong", "The road is plain and fair,", "But the Canon slowly wends along,", "And his brow is gloomed with care.", "", "Who is it thus late at the Abbey-gate?", "Sullen echoes the portal bell,", "It sounds like the whispering voice of fate,", "It sounds like a funeral knell.", "", "The Canon his faltering knee thrice bowed,", "And his frame was convulsed with fear,", "When a voice was heard distinct and loud,", "'Prepare! for thy hour is near.'", "", "He crosses his breast, he mutters a prayer,", "To Heaven he lifts his eye,", "He heeds not the Abbot's gazing stare,", "Nor the dark Monks who murmured by.", "", "Bare-headed he worships the sculptured saints", "That frown on the sacred walls,", "His face it grows pale,--he trembles, he faints,", "At the Abbot's feet he falls.", "", "And straight the father's robe he kissed,", "Who cried, 'Grace dwells with thee,", "The spirit will fade like the morning mist,", "At your benedicite.", "", "'Now haste within! the board is spread,", "Keen blows the air, and cold,", "The spectre sleeps in its earthy bed,", "'Till St. Edmond's bell hath tolled,--", "", "'Yet rest your wearied limbs to-night,", "You've journeyed many a mile,", "To-morrow lay the wailing sprite,", "That shrieks in the moonlight aisle.", "", "'Oh! faint are my limbs and my bosom is cold,", "Yet to-night must the sprite be laid,", "Yet to-night when the hour of horror's told,", "Must I meet the wandering shade.", "", "'Nor food, nor rest may now delay,--", "For hark! the echoing pile,", "A bell loud shakes!--Oh haste away,", "O lead to the haunted aisle.'", "", "The torches slowly move before,", "The cross is raised on high,", "A smile of peace the Canon wore,", "But horror dimmed his eye--", "", "And now they climb the footworn stair,", "The chapel gates unclose,", "Now each breathed low a fervent prayer,", "And fear each bosom froze--", "", "Now paused awhile the doubtful band", "And viewed the solemn scene,--", "Full dark the clustered columns stand,", "The moon gleams pale between--", "", "'Say father, say, what cloisters' gloom", "Conceals the unquiet shade,", "Within what dark unhallowed tomb,", "The corse unblessed was laid.'", "", "'Through yonder drear aisle alone it walks,", "And murmurs a mournful plaint,", "Of thee! Black Canon, it wildly talks,", "And call on thy patron saint--", "", "The pilgrim this night with wondering eyes,", "As he prayed at St. Edmond's shrine,", "From a black marble tomb hath seen it rise,", "And under yon arch recline.'--", "", "'Oh! say upon that black marble tomb,", "What memorial sad appears.'--", "'Undistinguished it lies in the chancel's gloom,", "No memorial sad it bears'--", "", "The Canon his paternoster reads,", "His rosary hung by his side,", "Now swift to the chancel doors he leads,", "And untouched they open wide,", "", "Resistless, strange sounds his steps impel,", "To approach to the black marble tomb,", "'Oh! enter, Black Canon,' a whisper fell,", "'Oh! enter, thy hour is come.'", "", "He paused, told his beads, and the threshold passed.", "Oh! horror, the chancel doors close,", "A loud yell was borne on the rising blast,", "And a deep, dying groan arose.", "", "The Monks in amazement shuddering stand,", "They burst through the chancel's gloom,", "From St. Edmond's shrine, lo! a skeleton's hand,", "Points to the black marble tomb.", "", "Lo! deeply engraved, an inscription blood red,", "In characters fresh and clear--", "'The guilty Black Canon of Elmham's dead,", "And his wife lies buried here!'", "", "In Elmham's tower he wedded a Nun,", "To St. Edmond's his bride he bore,", "On this eve her noviciate here was begun,", "And a Monk's gray weeds she wore;--", "", "O! deep was her conscience dyed with guilt,", "Remorse she full oft revealed,", "Her blood by the ruthless Black Canon was spilt,", "And in death her lips he sealed;", "", "Her spirit to penance this night was doomed,", "'Till the Canon atoned the deed,", "Here together they now shall rest entombed,", "'Till their bodies from dust are freed--", "", "Hark! a loud peal of thunder shakes the roof,", "Round the altar bright lightnings play,", "Speechless with horror the Monks stand aloof,", "And the storm dies sudden away--", "", "The inscription was gone! a cross on the ground,", "And a rosary shone through the gloom,", "But never again was the Canon there found,", "Or the Ghost on the black marble tomb." ], "linecount": "120" }, { "title": "Revenge", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'Ah! quit me not yet, for the wind whistles shrill,", "Its blast wanders mournfully over the hill,", "The thunder's wild voice rattles madly above,", "You will not then, cannot then, leave me my love.--'", "", "I must dearest Agnes, the night is far gone--", "I must wander this evening to Strasburg alone,", "I must seek the drear tomb of my ancestors' bones,", "And must dig their remains from beneath the cold stones.", "", "'For the spirit of Conrad there meets me this night,", "And we quit not the tomb 'till dawn of the light,", "And Conrad's been dead just a month and a day!", "So farewell dearest Agnes for I must away,--", "", "'He bid me bring with me what most I held dear,", "Or a month from that time should I lie on my bier,", "And I'd sooner resign this false fluttering breath,", "Than my Agnes should dread either danger or death,", "", "'And I love you to madness my Agnes I love,", "My constant affection this night will I prove,", "This night will I go to the sepulchre's jaw", "Alone will I glut its all conquering maw'--", "", "'No! no loved Adolphus thy Agnes will share,", "In the tomb all the dangers that wait for you there,", "I fear not the spirit,--I fear not the grave,", "My dearest Adolphus I'd perish to save'--", "", "'Nay seek not to say that thy love shall not go,", "But spare me those ages of horror and woe,", "For I swear to thee here that I'll perish ere day,", "If you go unattended by Agnes away'--", "", "The night it was bleak the fierce storm raged around,", "The lightning's blue fire-light flashed on the ground,", "Strange forms seemed to flit,--and howl tidings of fate,", "As Agnes advanced to the sepulchre gate.--", "", "The youth struck the portal,--the echoing sound", "Was fearfully rolled midst the tombstones around,", "The blue lightning gleamed o'er the dark chapel spire,", "And tinged were the storm clouds with sulphurous fire.", "", "Still they gazed on the tombstone where Conrad reclined,", "Yet they shrank at the cold chilling blast of the wind,", "When a strange silver brilliance pervaded the scene,", "And a figure advanced--tall in form--fierce in mien.", "", "A mantle encircled his shadowy form,", "As light as a gossamer borne on the storm,", "Celestial terror sat throned in his gaze,", "Like the midnight pestiferous meteor's blaze.--", "", "SPIRIT:", "Thy father, Adolphus! was false, false as hell,", "And Conrad has cause to remember it well,", "He ruined my Mother, despised me his son,", "I quitted the world ere my vengeance was done.", "", "I was nearly expiring--'twas close of the day,--", "A demon advanced to the bed where I lay,", "He gave me the power from whence I was hurled,", "To return to revenge, to return to the world,--", "", "Now Adolphus I'll seize thy best loved in my arms,", "I'll drag her to Hades all blooming in charms,", "On the black whirlwind's thundering pinion I'll ride,", "And fierce yelling fiends shall exult o'er thy bride--", "", "He spoke, and extending his ghastly arms wide,", "Majestic advanced with a swift noiseless stride,", "He clasped the fair Agnes--he raised her on high,", "And cleaving the roof sped his way to the sky--", "", "All was now silent,--and over the tomb,", "Thicker, deeper, was swiftly extended a gloom,", "Adolphus in horror sank down on the stone,", "And his fleeting soul fled with a harrowing groan." ], "linecount": "65" }, { "title": "Ghasta or, the Avenging Demon!!!", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Hark! the owlet flaps her wing,", "In the pathless dell beneath,", "Hark! night ravens loudly sing,", "Tidings of despair and death.--", "", "Horror covers all the sky,", "Clouds of darkness blot the moon,", "Prepare! for mortal thou must die,", "Prepare to yield thy soul up soon--", "", "Fierce the tempest raves around,", "Fierce the volleyed lightnings fly,", "Crashing thunder shakes the ground,", "Fire and tumult fill the sky.--", "", "Hark! the tolling village bell,", "Tells the hour of midnight come,", "Now can blast the powers of Hell,", "Fiend-like goblins now can roam--", "", "See! his crest all stained with rain,", "A warrior hastening speeds his way,", "He starts, looks round him, starts again,", "And sighs for the approach of day.", "", "See! his frantic steed he reins,", "See! he lifts his hands on high,", "Implores a respite to his pains,", "From the powers of the sky.--", "", "He seeks an Inn, for faint from toil,", "Fatigue had bent his lofty form,", "To rest his wearied limbs awhile,", "Fatigued with wandering and the storm.", "", "...", "...", "", "Slow the door is opened wide--", "With trackless tread a stranger came,", "His form Majestic, slow his stride,", "He sate, nor spake,--nor told his name--", "", "Terror blanched the warrior's cheek,", "Cold sweat from his forehead ran,", "In vain his tongue essayed to speak,--", "At last the stranger thus began:", "", "'Mortal! thou that saw'st the sprite,", "Tell me what I wish to know,", "Or come with me before 'tis light,", "Where cypress trees and mandrakes grow.", "", "'Fierce the avenging Demon's ire,", "Fiercer than the wintry blast,", "Fiercer than the lightning's fire,", "When the hour of twilight's past'--", "", "The warrior raised his sunken eye.", "It met the stranger's sullen scowl,", "'Mortal! Mortal! thou must die,'", "In burning letters chilled his soul.", "", "WARRIOR:", "Stranger! whoso'er you are,", "I feel impelled my tale to tell--", "Horrors stranger shalt thou hear,", "Horrors drear as those of Hell.", "", "O'er my Castle silence reigned,", "Late the night and drear the hour,", "When on the terrace I observed,", "A fleeting shadowy mist to lower.--", "", "Light the cloud as summer fog,", "Which transient shuns the morning beam;", "Fleeting as the cloud on bog,", "That hangs or on the mountain stream.--", "", "Horror seized my shuddering brain,", "Horror dimmed my starting eye.", "In vain I tried to speak,--In vain", "My limbs essayed the spot to fly--", "", "At last the thin and shadowy form,", "With noiseless, trackless footsteps came,--", "Its light robe floated on the storm,", "Its head was bound with lambent flame.", "", "In chilling voice drear as the breeze", "Which sweeps along th' autumnal ground,", "Which wanders through the leafless trees,", "Or the mandrake's groan which floats around.", "", "'Thou art mine and I am thine,", "'Till the sinking of the world,", "I am thine and thou art mine,", "'Till in ruin death is hurled--", "", "'Strong the power and dire the fate,", "Which drags me from the depths of Hell,", "Breaks the tomb's eternal gate,", "Where fiendish shapes and dead men yell,", "", "'Haply I might ne'er have shrank", "From flames that rack the guilty dead,", "Haply I might ne'er have sank", "On pleasure's flowery, thorny bed--", "", "--'But stay! no more I dare disclose,", "Of the tale I wish to tell,", "On Earth relentless were my woes,", "But fiercer are my pangs in Hell--", "", "'Now I claim thee as my love,", "Lay aside all chilling fear,", "My affection will I prove,", "Where sheeted ghosts and spectres are!", "", "'For thou art mine, and I am thine,", "'Till the dreaded judgement day,", "I am thine, and thou art mine--", "Night is past--I must away.'", "", "Still I gazed, and still the form", "Pressed upon my aching sight,", "Still I braved the howling storm,", "When the ghost dissolved in night.--", "", "Restless, sleepless fled the night,", "Sleepless as a sick man's bed,", "When he sighs for morning light,", "When he turns his aching head,--", "", "Slow and painful passed the day.", "Melancholy seized my brain,", "Lingering fled the hours away,", "Lingering to a wretch in pain.--", "", "At last came night, ah! horrid hour,", "Ah! chilling time that wakes the dead,", "When demons ride the clouds that lower,", "--The phantom sat upon my bed.", "", "In hollow voice, low as the sound", "Which in some charnel makes its moan,", "What floats along the burying ground,", "The phantom claimed me as her own.", "", "Her chilling finger on my head,", "With coldest touch congealed my soul--", "Cold as the finger of the dead,", "Or damps which round a tombstone roll--", "", "Months are passed in lingering round,", "Every night the spectre comes,", "With thrilling step it shakes the ground,", "With thrilling step it round me roams--", "", "Stranger! I have told to thee,", "All the tale I have to tell--", "Stranger! canst thou tell to me,", "How to 'scape the powers of Hell?--", "", "STRANGER:", "Warrior! I can ease thy woes,", "Wilt thou, wilt thou, come with me--", "Warrior! I can all disclose,", "Follow, follow, follow me.", "", "Yet the tempest's duskiest wing,", "Its mantle stretches o'er the sky,", "Yet the midnight ravens sing,", "'Mortal! Mortal! thou must die.'", "", "At last they saw a river clear,", "That crossed the heathy path they trod,", "The Stranger's look was wild and drear,", "The firm Earth shook beneath his nod--", "", "He raised a wand above his head,", "He traced a circle on the plain,", "In a wild verse he called the dead,", "The dead with silent footsteps came.", "", "A burning brilliance on his head,", "Flaming filled the stormy air,", "In a wild verse he called the dead,", "The dead in motley crowd were there.--", "", "'Ghasta! Ghasta! come along,", "Bring thy fiendish crowd with thee,", "Quickly raise th' avenging Song,", "Ghasta! Ghasta! come to me.'", "", "Horrid shapes in mantles gray,", "Flit athwart the stormy night,", "'Ghasta! Ghasta! come away,", "Come away before 'tis light.'", "", "See! the sheeted Ghost they bring,", "Yelling dreadful o'er the heath,", "Hark! the deadly verse they sing,", "Tidings of despair and death!", "", "The yelling Ghost before him stands,", "See! she rolls her eyes around,", "Now she lifts her bony hands,", "Now her footsteps shake the ground.", "", "STRANGER:", "Phantom of Theresa say,", "Why to earth again you came,", "Quickly speak, I must away!", "Or you must bleach for aye in flame,--", "", "PHANTOM:", "Mighty one I know thee now,", "Mightiest power of the sky,", "Know thee by thy flaming brow,", "Know thee by thy sparkling eye.", "", "That fire is scorching! Oh! I came,", "From the caverned depth of Hell,", "My fleeting false Rodolph to claim,", "Mighty one! I know thee well.--", "", "STRANGER:", "Ghasta! seize yon wandering sprite,", "Drag her to the depth beneath,", "Take her swift, before 'tis light,", "Take her to the cells of death!", "", "Thou that heardst the trackless dead,", "In the mouldering tomb must lie,", "Mortal! look upon my head,", "Mortal! Mortal! thou must die.", "", "Of glowing flame a cross was there,", "Which threw a light around his form,", "Whilst his lank and raven hair,", "Floated wild upon the storm.--", "", "The warrior upwards turned his eyes,", "Gazed upon the cross of fire,", "There sat horror and surprise,", "There sat God's eternal ire.--", "", "A shivering through the Warrior flew,", "Colder than the nightly blast,", "Colder than the evening dew,", "When the hour of twilight's past.--", "", "Thunder shakes th' expansive sky,", "Shakes the bosom of the heath,", "'Mortal! Mortal! thou must die'--", "The warrior sank convulsed in death." ], "linecount": "207" }, { "title": "Fragment, or the Triumph of Conscience", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'Twas dead of the night when I sate in my dwelling,", "One glimmering lamp was expiring and low,--", "Around the dark tide of the tempest was swelling,", "Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling,", "They bodingly presaged destruction and woe!", "", "'Twas then that I started, the wild storm was howling,", "Nought was seen, save the lightning that danced on the sky,", "Above me the crash of the thunder was rolling,", "And low, chilling murmurs the blast wafted by.--", "", "My heart sank within me, unheeded the jar", "Of the battling clouds on the mountain-tops broke,", "Unheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine ear,", "This heart hard as iron was stranger to fear,", "But conscience in low noiseless whispering spoke.", "'Twas then that her form on the whirlwind uprearing,", "The dark ghost of the murdered Victoria strode,", "Her right hand a blood reeking dagger was bearing,", "She swiftly advanced to my lonesome abode.--", "I wildly then called on the tempest to bear me!" ], "linecount": "19" }, { "title": "Victoria", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "'Twas dead of the night, when I sat in my dwelling;", "One glimmering lamp was expiring and low;", "Around, the dark tide of the tempest was swelling,", "Along the wild mountains night-ravens were yelling,--", "They bodingly presaged destruction and woe.", "", "'Twas then that I started!--the wild storm was howling,", "Nought was seen, save the lightning, which danced in the sky;", "Above me, the crash of the thunder was rolling,", "And low, chilling murmurs, the blast wafted by.", "", "My heart sank within me--unheeded the war", "Of the battling clouds, on the mountain-tops, broke;--", "Unheeded the thunder-peal crashed in mine ear--", "This heart, hard as iron, is stranger to fear;", "But conscience in low, noiseless whispering spoke.", "", "'Twas then that her form on the whirlwind upholding,", "The ghost of the murdered Victoria strode;", "In her right hand, a shadowy shroud she was holding,", "She swiftly advanced to my lonesome abode.", "", "I wildly then called on the tempest to bear me--'" ], "linecount": "19" }, { "title": "On the Dark Height of Jura", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling", "Rise on the night-rolling breath of the blast,", "When o'er the dark aether the tempest is swelling,", "And on eddying whirlwind the thunder-peal passed?", "", "For oft have I stood on the dark height of Jura,", "Which frowns on the valley that opens beneath;", "Oft have I braved the chill night-tempest's fury,", "Whilst around me, I thought, echoed murmurs of death.", "", "And now, whilst the winds of the mountain are howling,", "O father! thy voice seems to strike on mine ear;", "In air whilst the tide of the night-storm is rolling,", "It breaks on the pause of the elements' jar.", "", "On the wing of the whirlwind which roars o'er the mountain", "Perhaps rides the ghost of my sire who is dead:", "On the mist of the tempest which hangs o'er the fountain,", "Whilst a wreath of dark vapour encircles his head." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "St. Irvyne's Tower", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "How swiftly through Heaven's wide expanse", "Bright day's resplendent colours fade!", "How sweetly does the moonbeam's glance", "With silver tint St. Irvyne's glade!", "", "No cloud along the spangled air,", "Is borne upon the evening breeze;", "How solemn is the scene! how fair", "The moonbeams rest upon the trees!", "", "Yon dark gray turret glimmers white,", "Upon it sits the mournful owl;", "Along the stillness of the night,", "Her melancholy shriekings roll.", "", "But not alone on Irvyne's tower,", "The silver moonbeam pours her ray;", "It gleams upon the ivied bower,", "It dances in the cascade's spray.", "", "'Ah! why do dark'ning shades conceal", "The hour, when man must cease to be?", "Why may not human minds unveil", "The dim mists of futurity?--", "", "'The keenness of the world hath torn", "The heart which opens to its blast;", "Despised, neglected, and forlorn,", "Sinks the wretch in death at last.'" ], "linecount": "24" }, { "title": "Bereavement", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner,", "As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier,", "As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,", "And drops, to Perfection's remembrance, a tear;", "When floods of despair down his pale cheek are streaming,", "When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,", "Or, if lulled for awhile, soon he starts from his dreaming,", "And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.", "", "Ah! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,", "Or summer succeed to the winter of death?", "Rest awhile, hapless victim, and Heaven will save", "The spirit, that faded away with the breath.", "Eternity points in its amaranth bower,", "Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lower,", "Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,", "When woe fades away like the mist of the heath." ], "linecount": "16" }, { "title": "War", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Ambition, power, and avarice, now have hurled", "Death, fate, and ruin, on a bleeding world.", "See! on yon heath what countless victims lie,", "Hark! what loud shrieks ascend through yonder sky;", "Tell then the cause, 'tis sure the avenger's rage", "Has swept these myriads from life's crowded stage:", "Hark to that groan, an anguished hero dies,", "He shudders in death's latest agonies;", "Yet does a fleeting hectic flush his cheek,", "Yet does his parting breath essay to speak--", "'Oh God! my wife, my children--Monarch thou", "For whose support this fainting frame lies low;", "For whose support in distant lands I bleed,", "Let his friends' welfare be the warrior's meed.", "He hears me not--ah! no--kings cannot hear,", "For passion's voice has dulled their listless ear.", "To thee, then, mighty God, I lift my moan,", "Thou wilt not scorn a suppliant's anguished groan.", "Oh! now I die--but still is death's fierce pain--", "God hears my prayer--we meet, we meet again.'", "He spake, reclined him on death's bloody bed,", "And with a parting groan his spirit fled.", "Oppressors of mankind to YOU we owe", "The baleful streams from whence these miseries flow;", "For you how many a mother weeps her son,", "Snatched from life's course ere half his race was run!", "For you how many a widow drops a tear,", "In silent anguish, on her husband's bier!", "'Is it then Thine, Almighty Power,' she cries,", "'Whence tears of endless sorrow dim these eyes?", "Is this the system which Thy powerful sway,", "Which else in shapeless chaos sleeping lay,", "Formed and approved?--it cannot be--but oh!", "Forgive me, Heaven, my brain is warped by woe.'", "'Tis not--He never bade the war-note swell,", "He never triumphed in the work of hell--", "Monarchs of earth! thine is the baleful deed,", "Thine are the crimes for which thy subjects bleed.", "Ah! when will come the sacred fated time,", "When man unsullied by his leaders' crime,", "Despising wealth, ambition, pomp, and pride,", "Will stretch him fearless by his foe-men's side?", "Ah! when will come the time, when o'er the plain", "No more shall death and desolation reign?", "When will the sun smile on the bloodless field,", "And the stern warrior's arm the sickle wield?", "Not whilst some King, in cold ambition's dreams,", "Plans for the field of death his plodding schemes;", "Not whilst for private pique the public fall,", "And one frail mortal's mandate governs all.", "Swelled with command and mad with dizzying sway;", "Who sees unmoved his myriads fade away.", "Careless who lives or dies--so that he gains", "Some trivial point for which he took the pains.", "What then are Kings?--I see the trembling crowd,", "I hear their fulsome clamours echoed loud;", "Their stern oppressor pleased appears awhile,", "But April's sunshine is a Monarch's smile--", "Kings are but dust--the last eventful day", "Will level all and make them lose their sway;", "Will dash the sceptre from the Monarch's hand,", "And from the warrior's grasp wrest the ensanguined brand.", "Oh! Peace, soft Peace, art thou for ever gone,", "Is thy fair form indeed for ever flown?", "And love and concord hast thou swept away,", "As if incongruous with thy parted sway?", "Alas, I fear thou hast, for none appear.", "Now o'er the palsied earth stalks giant Fear,", "With War, and Woe, and Terror, in his train;--", "List'ning he pauses on the embattled plain,", "Then speeding swiftly o'er the ensanguined heath,", "Has left the frightful work to Hell and Death.", "See! gory Ruin yokes his blood-stained car,", "He scents the battle's carnage from afar;", "Hell and Destruction mark his mad career,", "He tracks the rapid step of hurrying Fear;", "Whilst ruined towns and smoking cities tell,", "That thy work, Monarch, is the work of Hell.", "'It is thy work!' I hear a voice repeat,", "Shakes the broad basis of thy bloodstained seat;", "And at the orphan's sigh, the widow's moan,", "Totters the fabric of thy guilt-stained throne--", "'It is thy work, O Monarch;' now the sound", "Fainter and fainter, yet is borne around,", "Yet to enthusiast ears the murmurs tell", "That Heaven, indignant at the work of Hell,", "Will soon the cause, the hated cause remove,", "Which tears from earth peace, innocence, and love." ], "linecount": "88" }, { "title": "Melody to a Scene of Former Times", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Art thou indeed forever gone,", "Forever, ever, lost to me?", "Must this poor bosom beat alone,", "Or beat at all, if not for thee?", "Ah! why was love to mortals given,", "To lift them to the height of Heaven,", "Or dash them to the depths of Hell?", "Yet I do not reproach thee, dear!", "Ah, no! the agonies that swell", "This panting breast, this frenzied brain,", "Might wake my --'s slumb'ring tear.", "Oh! Heaven is witness I did love,", "And Heaven does know I love thee still,", "Does know the fruitless sick'ning thrill,", "When reason's judgement vainly strove", "To blot thee from my memory;", "But which might never, never be.", "Oh! I appeal to that blest day", "When passion's wildest ecstasy", "Was coldness to the joys I knew,", "When every sorrow sunk away.", "Oh! I had never lived before,", "But now those blisses are no more.", "And now I cease to live again,", "I do not blame thee, love; ah, no!", "The breast that feels this anguished woe.", "Throbs for thy happiness alone.", "Two years of speechless bliss are gone,", "I thank thee, dearest, for the dream.", "'Tis night--what faint and distant scream", "Comes on the wild and fitful blast?", "It moans for pleasures that are past,", "It moans for days that are gone by.", "Oh! lagging hours, how slow you fly!", "I see a dark and lengthened vale,", "The black view closes with the tomb;", "But darker is the lowering gloom", "That shades the intervening dale.", "In visioned slumber for awhile", "I seem again to share thy smile,", "I seem to hang upon thy tone.", "Again you say, 'Confide in me,", "For I am thine, and thine alone,", "And thine must ever, ever be.'", "But oh! awak'ning still anew,", "Athwart my enanguished senses flew", "A fiercer, deadlier agony!" ], "linecount": "47" }, { "title": "To the Republicans of North America", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "Brothers! between you and me", "Whirlwinds sweep and billows roar:", "Yet in spirit oft I see", "On thy wild and winding shore", "Freedom's bloodless banners wave,--", "Feel the pulses of the brave", "Unextinguished in the grave,--", "See them drenched in sacred gore,--", "Catch the warrior's gasping breath", "Murmuring 'Liberty or death!'", "", "Shout aloud! Let every slave,", "Crouching at Corruption's throne,", "Start into a man, and brave", "Racks and chains without a groan:", "And the castle's heartless glow,", "And the hovel's vice and woe,", "Fade like gaudy flowers that blow--", "Weeds that peep, and then are gone", "Whilst, from misery's ashes risen,", "Love shall burst the captive's prison.", "", "Cotopaxi! bid the sound", "Through thy sister mountains ring,", "Till each valley smile around", "At the blissful welcoming!", "And, O thou stern Ocean deep,", "Thou whose foamy billows sweep", "Shores where thousands wake to weep", "Whilst they curse a villain king,", "On the winds that fan thy breast", "Bear thou news of Freedom's rest!", "", "Can the daystar dawn of love,", "Where the flag of war unfurled", "Floats with crimson stain above", "The fabric of a ruined world?", "Never but to vengeance driven", "When the patriot's spirit shriven", "Seeks in death its native Heaven!", "There, to desolation hurled,", "Widowed love may watch thy bier,", "Balm thee with its dying tear." ], "linecount": "40" }, { "title": "The Retrospect: Cwm Elan, 1812", "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley", "lines": [ "A scene, which 'wildered fancy viewed", "In the soul's coldest solitude,", "With that same scene when peaceful love", "Flings rapture's colour o'er the grove,", "When mountain, meadow, wood and stream", "With unalloying glory gleam,", "And to the spirit's ear and eye", "Are unison and harmony.", "The moonlight was my dearer day;", "Then would I wander far away,", "And, lingering on the wild brook's shore", "To hear its unremitting roar,", "Would lose in the ideal flow", "All sense of overwhelming woe;", "Or at the noiseless noon of night", "Would climb some heathy mountain's height,", "And listen to the mystic sound", "That stole in fitful gasps around.", "I joyed to see the streaks of day", "Above the purple peaks decay,", "And watch the latest line of light", "Just mingling with the shades of night;", "For day with me was time of woe", "When even tears refused to flow;", "Then would I stretch my languid frame", "Beneath the wild woods' gloomiest shade,", "And try to quench the ceaseless flame", "That on my withered vitals preyed;", "Would close mine eyes and dream I were", "On some remote and friendless plain,", "And long to leave existence there,", "If with it I might leave the pain", "That with a finger cold and lean", "Wrote madness on my withering mien.", "", "It was not unrequited love", "That bade my 'wildered spirit rove;", "'Twas not the pride disdaining life,", "That with this mortal world at strife", "Would yield to the soul's inward sense,", "Then groan in human impotence,", "And weep because it is not given", "To taste on Earth the peace of Heaven.", "'Twas not that in the narrow sphere", "Where Nature fixed my wayward fate", "There was no friend or kindred dear", "Formed to become that spirit's mate,", "Which, searching on tired pinion, found", "Barren and cold repulse around;", "Oh, no! yet each one sorrow gave", "New graces to the narrow grave.", "For broken vows had early quelled", "The stainless spirit's vestal flame;", "Yes! whilst the faithful bosom swelled,", "Then the envenomed arrow came,", "And Apathy's unaltering eye", "Beamed coldness on the misery;", "And early I had learned to scorn", "The chains of clay that bound a soul", "Panting to seize the wings of morn,", "And where its vital fires were born", "To soar, and spur the cold control", "Which the vile slaves of earthly night", "Would twine around its struggling flight.", "", "Oh, many were the friends whom fame", "Had linked with the unmeaning name,", "Whose magic marked among mankind", "The casket of my unknown mind,", "Which hidden from the vulgar glare", "Imbibed no fleeting radiance there.", "My darksome spirit sought--it found", "A friendless solitude around.", "For who that might undaunted stand,", "The saviour of a sinking land,", "Would crawl, its ruthless tyrant's slave,", "And fatten upon Freedom's grave,", "Though doomed with her to perish, where", "The captive clasps abhorred despair.", "", "They could not share the bosom's feeling,", "Which, passion's every throb revealing,", "Dared force on the world's notice cold", "Thoughts of unprofitable mould,", "Who bask in Custom's fickle ray,", "Fit sunshine of such wintry day!", "They could not in a twilight walk", "Weave an impassioned web of talk,", "Till mysteries the spirits press", "In wild yet tender awfulness,", "Then feel within our narrow sphere", "How little yet how great we are!", "But they might shine in courtly glare,", "Attract the rabble's cheapest stare,", "And might command where'er they move", "A thing that bears the name of love;", "They might be learned, witty, gay,", "Foremost in fashion's gilt array,", "On Fame's emblazoned pages shine,", "Be princes' friends, but never mine!", "", "Ye jagged peaks that frown sublime,", "Mocking the blunted scythe of Time,", "Whence I would watch its lustre pale", "Steal from the moon o'er yonder vale", "Thou rock, whose bosom black and vast,", "Bared to the stream's unceasing flow,", "Ever its giant shade doth cast", "On the tumultuous surge below:", "", "Woods, to whose depths retires to die", "The wounded Echo's melody,", "And whither this lone spirit bent", "The footstep of a wild intent:", "", "Meadows! whose green and spangled breast", "These fevered limbs have often pressed,", "Until the watchful fiend Despair", "Slept in the soothing coolness there!", "Have not your varied beauties seen", "The sunken eye, the withering mien,", "Sad traces of the unuttered pain", "That froze my heart and burned my brain.", "How changed since Nature's summer form", "Had last the power my grief to charm,", "Since last ye soothed my spirit's sadness,", "Strange chaos of a mingled madness!", "Changed!--not the loathsome worm that fed", "In the dark mansions of the dead,", "Now soaring through the fields of air,", "And gathering purest nectar there,", "A butterfly, whose million hues", "The dazzled eye of wonder views,", "Long lingering on a work so strange,", "Has undergone so bright a change.", "How do I feel my happiness?", "I cannot tell, but they may guess", "Whose every gloomy feeling gone,", "Friendship and passion feel alone;", "Who see mortality's dull clouds", "Before affection's murmur fly,", "Whilst the mild glances of her eye", "Pierce the thin veil of flesh that shrouds", "The spirit's inmost sanctuary.", "O thou! whose virtues latest known,", "First in this heart yet claim'st a throne;", "Whose downy sceptre still shall share", "The gentle sway with virtue there;", "Thou fair in form, and pure in mind,", "Whose ardent friendship rivets fast", "The flowery band our fates that bind,", "Which incorruptible shall last", "When duty's hard and cold control", "Has thawed around the burning soul,--", "The gloomiest retrospects that bind", "With crowns of thorn the bleeding mind,", "The prospects of most doubtful hue", "That rise on Fancy's shuddering view,--", "Are gilt by the reviving ray", "Which thou hast flung upon my day." ], "linecount": "154" } ]